How Mark Ronson, Daft Punk And Prince Helped Him Out

Darren Hart is a man chasing his own destiny. A guitar virtuoso, he not only plays all the instruments and writes all his own songs, but he remains unaffected by what trends swing in and out of his life and was making real funk music well before the likes of Mark Ronson helped bring it back into the mainstream. But on forthcoming EP, Breakthrough, Hart reveals he’s already moving his stuff forward as to not get lost in the crowd.

"Those big players coming on board are what’s kicked it off and cemented it for a lot of people to take what I’m doing seriously"

“It’s coincidental that artists are coming back with that funk stuff, but I was doing that stuff before even Daft Punk came back with their take on it as well. Those types of artists benefited me in a way, because when a big artist like that comes out with a similar direction, a lot of people seem to stumble on your music. Maybe it’s related on a hashtag or somehow linked, so people discovered my stuff via that bigger stuff. One of the reasons why I want to stand alone in that though, and why some of the EP tracks are a shift in direction from the funk and more into the rock, is because I don’t want to be caught up in that trend. It seems like it’s coming back and that’s cool, but a lot of people will just see me as part of that trend and trying to bring that back. That really wasn’t the case; it was genuine.”

There was a time when Harts didn’t seem to make sense on radio. Hefty support from Prince as well as a lot of triple j play with singles Red & Blue, When A Man’s A Fool and now Breakthrough have seemingly secured him a place on the Australian musical map.

“I feel that now my stuff has much more vision and direction and is much more coherent than some of the stuff I was doing previously. It was a little bit scattered,” he confesses. “Where did it really fit in? Well it didn’t and it was kind of hard for me to create an audience from scratch, pretty much. It’s big props and owed to people like Prince who discovered me and triple j who have been helping promote me for the last nine months or whatever. Those big players coming on board are what’s kicked it off and cemented it for a lot of people to take what I’m doing seriously. But the next EP is more blues with a funk touch, rather than funk with a blues touch. It’s leaning on the rock side and I think that’s what more people are resonating with – the Hendrix-esque guitar playing. That was the natural way to go from the last album to what will be the next album. This EP is the bridge in the sonics and musicality from where I was to where I’m going.”