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EBK interview [wersja angielska]
2007-01-11 21:05:32 | czytany: 5323 razy![EBK interview [wersja angielska]](/upload/269515085.jpg)
EBK
How and when did you get into drum & bass? How it was for you to get know this subculture: music, people, etc... Your first tunes were signed on Composite Recordings. Tell us about this label? Who was the owner? How it happened that they signed you and what happened with this label finally?
I got into dance music generally around 1992, before that I was checking early Hip-Hop like NWA, Erik B and Rakim, Gangstarr, Wu-Tang etc and also listening to Acid House on pirate radio stations and UK old School Hardcore which was like Techno but with a breakbeat underneath. I was about 15 at the time when I really started going out every weekend to classic raves like AWOL, Roast, Telepathy and Innersense just as Jungle was being born.
I was already buying records from 1992 but got properly obsessed in the early Jungle days and was in record shops every week trying to get the tracks I'd heard the weekend before. By 1998 I was playing on various pirate radio stations around London. When my friend first played me Satellites by Ed Rush and Optical on Virus Recordings I nearly fell off the sofa! I was totally blown away, they had taken shit to the next level and completely redefined the genre in the process, it was like tech step had suddenly found its soul. I've been completely addicted to that sound since then.
It's a simple story really - I met my mate Ben at university, I was a little rudeboy back then LOL and I remember he was having a mix at some open day or something and I came up to him point blank half way through his set and was like - 'let me have a mix'. He was safe about it, we soon realised we both loved the same things about the scene and the music, so once I had spent all my university student loan on a studio - he said, 'do something good and we'll set up a label'. I wrote Vision, the first tune on Composite, after yet another night at The End club in 1998 listening to all the classic old neuro tunes. All I wanted to do was make a tune that would drop at The End club. Despite the fact that you were producing drum and bass for years, the real popularity came in 2006. How can you explain this break in your career? It's a number of factors really. My early releases came out before the scene was global, before the internet and before I had any big label support. Also I basically produced for 3 years and then stopped because firstly the scene stagnated and then it became very cheesy and also because I was sorting out a lot of personal shit in my life. By which producers and what music were you influenced in the past? And nowadays? There's really too much and too many to list. I'm a big crate digger and have loads of old dub, soul, funk, reggae, hip hop, jungle and DandB records. You probably can't hear it in my music much but dub and funk are probably my biggest influences as well as just living and growing up around dance music in London. There's that Jamaican influence in UK dance music that’s been really obvious since the early 90’s. The best moments in dance music for me are when you get that black and white unity in the sound. People often think Jungle was a black thing, but around '93 before the ragga stuff took over when you had the really classic, classic tracks with mad breaks and techy sounds and fat dub b-lines, that was a merging of black and white cultures and it was amazing. I always try and respect that heritage in my sound and make sure the b-line rumbles a club, but you still have those techy dark elements too. Every tune I write, I try and make sure it has a groove, something to move to when you're on the dance floor.
I didn't give a shit about the money, I hardly had enough to eat on at the time but I knew I wanted to hear my b-line rattle those walls and see that shit pressed on vinyl. I think Ben wanted a label badly enough to sacrifice a lot of time and money as well so together it was a good partnership. Ben is now one of the guys in the Liquid crew HoldTight. I got a lot of respect for that guy.
Your early 20's can be fucked up years and they certainly were for me. It was only when Vicious Circle turned me onto some of Noisia's earlier tracks that I started feeling inspired again and like I could contribute something positive to the scene again. So in many ways I haven't really been producing that long - maybe 6 years in total realistically.
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Producing came after starting Djing. Choosing between spinning records and producing, what would you prefere and why?
They are like two totally different things in terms of both effort and reward for me. I couldn't choose one over the other, but I'd rather they blew up my decks than my studio if I had to choose!
You have been colaborating with few other artists so far? Do you prefere working on your own or collaborate? Why?
Its a toss up really, when you're alone you can really get lost in the sound which is good sometimes but counter productive at others. Collaborating is a different experience in many ways, but I couldn't choose between the two. As long as you're in some kind of studio making noise it's all good!
What attracted you to the darker side of drum and bass? It's that kind of London thing again, I know a lot of D’n’B got really cheesy recently, but old Jungle when it was just emerging from Hardcore was always kind of 'darkside'. Also the early neuro stuff was always quite haunting and those are the sounds that attracted me to the music in the first place. That vibe still makes a lot of sense to me when I'm walking around the streets of London and that eerie, cold soundset complements my mood pretty well! I'm definitely not into stuff that’s just dark for the sake of it. What projects are you currently working on? What are your plans for the future? What can we expect from you in 2007?
I think a lot of dark stuff with loads of played out Reeses and Hollywood film samples sounds just as cheesy as some of the worst examples of jump up. I'm more into the ‘on edge’ paranoid neuro sound.
I got a lot of remixes and 12's lined up. I'm mainly concentrating on working with Renegade Hardware for the foreseeable future - they're local to me so I can put names to faces and speak to them on the level - I think they're one of the best labels in D’n’B and I never thought I'd be getting the opportunity to release stuff for them, it feels like a big honour. With that in mind I've got a 12" forthcoming as well as a track on the 'Above The Game' Renegade Hardware album dropping around April. It’s got tracks from a lot of producers I respect on it so I’m really looking forward to touring the album DJ wise as well. I've also got a remix forthcoming on Sudden Def records and if I get a chance, some darker shit for Tech Itch recordings. DJing wise I should be getting about round the world this year, so wherever you are I'll hopefully bump into you at some point!
What are your feelings about worldwide drum and bass developement these last couple of years?
Amazing. Put simply I wouldn't be making DandB now if it wasn't for the inspiration I've drawn from producers outside the UK who have pushed neuro to the next level. What do you think are current strengths and weaknesses of the scene? I don't know really, people talk about the scene like it's some thing you can just sum up as a whole. The scene to me seems different everywhere I go in the world and depending on whether I'm in a club or on the net, but there's always loads of positive aspects to it whichever way I look at it, I don't think I could ever generalise.
Where do you think the neurofunk subgenre will go in the next few years? I'd like to see it go more minimal and experimental, but if I could predict it I'd try and predict the lottery first - I'd probably have more chance of getting it right too!
When I get sent tracks now I don't even ask what country it’s from, the quality is so high around the world. I think the UK had been left behind a little bit, but its gonna bite back in 2007 - I'm a big fan of healthy competition!
How much does the Internet mean for underground genres like drum and bass? Is it the good/ proper way to produce, cooperate (cooperation between artists), create drum and bass subculture?
I think the internet is part of everyone’s lives now and in my experience the D’n’B community has jumped on board maybe even more so than other underground genres.You only need to look at the popularity of forum sites and the widespread use of AIM to see that. In terms of production I personally still like to be in the same physical space as somebody when I'm producing because a lot of stuff happens really spontaneously when you're in the studio together, but I know a lot of people who send files between each other and come up with some wicked colabs so the proof is in the music and obviously it breaks down geographical boundaries which makes a lot of stuff that was previously impossible much easier and cheaper to sort out. In terms of sub culture the days of record shops and dub plate cutting houses being the heart of the scene are long gone. In a way it democratises the whole thing because everyone is in with the same chance regardless of were they come from, but you also lose the personal touch - I guess the ultimate thing would be if we could all just teleport to a big dub plate cutting house in the sky and all meet face to face - but it isn’t gonna happen! Really it’s all about moving forward and I'm definitely not looking back on the past with rose tinted glasses just yet because the future looks a lot more exciting then ever for all real D’n’B heads - Peace!
Words by mi-ka
Zobacz również:
- Wywiady: EBK wywiad [wersja polska]
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