Raime Interview

(This is an edited-for-publication version of the interview originally broadcast on Eclectronica)

Raime’s music takes you places. Their new album, “Quarter Turns over a Living Line” transports the listener to a half-lit world of industrial decay and apocalyptic dread, and doesn’t offer any route back out. They are one of a handful of highly idiosyncratic acts to emerge from cutting edge label Blackest Ever Black, an imprint that synthesizes 80s post-industrial music and 00s avant-garde techno into a fresh and vital aesthetic. I spoke to the duo after their recent gig at the Arnolfini on Bristol’s Harbourside about the album, their influences and the visual side of what they do.

How do you think the gig went?

We really enjoyed that one. That for us is our perfect venue because it’s half gallery space and half gig space, which is kind of where we sit. It’s small enough to feel intense but the screen is big enough to be immersive.

Speaking of the screen, the accompanying film was amazing. How did that come about? How did you work your set around it?

That came about through a production company who are good friends of ours. We gave them a brief of the things we were looking for, and they went out and spent three days in this enormous abandoned space in Lisbon and set fire to things. It was all shot on super slow motion cameras. We then spent a couple of weeks editing that. We had a rough idea of our set and we edited to that so we know where key moments land and you can get that synergy between the sound and the image.

How did Raime come about?

We’ve known each other since we were sixteen, so quite a long time. There’s a lot of trust and a relationship built up over the years around music. We’ve both been making music for a while but neither of us had ever released anything because we’d never really found our voice; you’re just emulating. I think it got to the point with Raime where our musical tastes were starting to move into areas that they hadn’t moved into before, and those areas were exciting to us and stimulating us in quite similar ways.

I think there was a point where we were imagining possibilities rather than replicating the glories of other producers. And that’s not saying we’re unique in any way or not a product of our influences – because every artist is – but we got to the point where we were ready to present something to the world outside of the home studio.

From your mixes for FACT and Boiler Room, I know you’re particularly fond of 90s jungle and drum n’ bass. What is it about that genre that inspires you?

The point was about drum n’ bass for us was the emotion, usually acted out with large string sections or synth lines or, for example in Photek tunes, where it’s really just an acutely developed atmosphere. It’s that tension between rhythm and atmosphere and emotion that really inspired us. So again it’s not about a replication but its about a continuity of feeling where the form doesn’t necessarily follow but the emotions do. And it’s that continuity that we find interesting and wanted to explore.

Although all the artists on Blackest Ever Black sound very different to one another, you all draw on similar influences, that is, the darker ends of electronic music from the last three decades. Do you feel part of a movement or an emerging genre?

I don’t know if there’s a genre emerging but the commonality between artists makes you feel more comfortable, it makes it easier to express yourself. But as an artist that’s not something you use as a jumping off point; the reason you’re an artist is because you feel you’ve got something to express. But the more people do it the more it becomes something for people to discuss communally; it becomes more of a shared attitude.

After releasing three 12” singles how did you approach the album? Was there a concept or an aesthetic to begin with?

We tried to move away from sample-based stuff to using more live instrumentation. We did a lot of recording sessions with cellos and drums sessions and guitars. We go through them afterwards with a fine-tooth-comb and pick out the choice moments or things that excite us and then keep going through that process. As it took shape we wanted the album to work as a whole rather than just a collection of singles, we wanted it to have a kind of narrative or structure to it, an arc to it.

Aesthetics are obviously important to your work. I understand that you worked closely with the photographer on the images for the album?

The photographer is actually very close friend of mine who I’ve known for a long time, so there’s a large degree of trust and he understands what we’re trying to get at. We were very keen on using a person, or in this case a dancer. Dance and the human body was interesting to us because it felt like the next logical step from the fairly austere and removed attitude that we’d had to our previous artwork. We wanted to involve the human a bit more because the records do feel austere or maybe influenced by the industrial; but the human is an integral part of that.

What’s next for Raime?

We just want to do the things that are right for us, and it’s very much about picking the right things to do. We’ve very excited about the record coming out but at the same time it’s been a huge amount of effort and work, so its nice to draw a line under that. We’re very keen to get back into the studio and let ourselves go a little bit. Once you’ve finished a piece of work it gives you a little bit of breathing space in your own mind just to experiment and not feel like you have to put something out there straight away.

‘Quarter Turns over a Living Line’ is out now on Blackest Ever Black
(http://blackesteverblack.blogspot.co.uk/)

Eclectronica with Simon B 11/11/12

Tracklisting:
Hakimonu – Last [False Industries]
Tom Ellis – Go Through Me [Indigo Raw]
Last Mood – Tell You Something (Detroit Swindle’s Doomsday Revise) [Dirt Crew]
Nolan – Freak On (Kyodai Remix) [Gruuv]
Christo – Mandelbrot [Superficially Deep]
Motor City Drum Ensemble – Space Cadets [K7 Records]
Djamila & No Dial Tone – About You (Tom Ellis Bump Mix) [Classic Music Company]
Nicone & Sascha Braemer (feat. Souad Massi) – Raoui [Stil Vor Talent]
Deepchord – Spiral 2 [Soma]
Kjofol – Le jour aime la nuit [Apparel Music]
Senking – Unlighted [Raster-Noton]
Vatican Shadow – Worshippers At The Same Mosque [Hospital Productions]
Raime – Your Cast Will Tire [Blackest Ever Black]***
Raime interview
Raime – Soil And Colts [Blackest Ever Black]***
Quantec – Ayahuasca [Elux Records]
Ultramarine – Butch [WNCL Recordings]
Andre Holland – Inversions [Underground Resistance]
Throbbing Gristle – United [Industrial Records]

***Taken from album ‘Quarter Turns Over a Living Line’ due out 19/11/12

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Marcus Intalex interview

Here’s an interview I did with Marcus Intalex for Bristol UWE Student Union’s student newspaper, Western Eye. Original article here:

http://www.westerneye.net/news/2011/05/westerneye-speaks-to-marcus-intalex/

Marcus Intalex should need no introduction to fans of drum n bass in its more purist form. His label Soul:R label has been one of the most respected imprints for the deeper end of the genre for the past decade, both as an outlet for his own productions (be it solo or in conjunction with St Files as M.I.S.T) and with classic releases from the likes of Calibre and Lynx. He also heads up the highly successful Soul:ution club nights which take place in his hometown of Manchester, and here in Bristol.

He’s just released his debut album, 21, which covers not only his signature sound of lush, silvery drum n’ bass (as evidenced in instant classic ‘Celestial Navigation’, a collaboration with S.P.Y), but also a whole range of tempos and styles, such as the brooding melancholic breaks of ‘Dusk’, and perhaps most surprisingly, a weighty remake of a Radiohead song.

I caught up with him to chat about the album, and his time in the drum n’ bass scene.

The name of the album, 21, is a reference to the number of years you’ve been involved in the drum n’ bass scene. Given that most drum n’ bass acts today tend to produce an album within the first five years of their career, how come it’s taken you so long?

It’s not representative of me making music for 21 years; I started buying records and DJing 21 years ago, and I’ve probably been producing about 15 years. Now the album’s come out my thoughts on it are: I should have done this a long time ago! It took me a long time to get to a level where I thought I could make decent music; I’ve never had the confidence to say, “I know what I want my album to be and know I’m good enough to do it”. The reason it’s happened now is because I’d amassed a certain amount of tunes in the studio and it all seemed to be coming together quite easily so I guess it was a sign that I was perhaps ready. I’ve never always enjoyed the studio, but now looking back it’s just ridiculous that I’ve managed to have a career for so long without an album. It says a number of things: firstly, that maybe the stuff I’ve been putting out over time has been of a good enough quality to keep me within the scene. It also says that if I’d done this 10 years ago who know what could have happened! Maybe I’ve wasted a lot of time just getting by and enjoying just getting by, but I could have done something bigger and better if I’d only put the effort and mind into it. Now that I’ve done it, it’s like: “hang on a minute, I literally should have at least attempted this a long time ago”, regardless of what I thought.

If you’re more comfortable with the album format now, will it be long for a follow up? Will we have to wait another 21 years?

No! But will it be another drum n bass album? I don’t know. I’ve probably written another 10 tracks more since this album’s been finished, and I’ve been in the studio every day; I’m enjoying it. As far as the volume of music is concerned, it’s not going to be an issue to get another album together. In the past 18 months I’ve written more music than I’d written in the 21 years leading up to it. It won’t be a long time before there’s another album coming out again, but it’ll have to work out exactly how I want it to be. I do feel a) that I’m capable now and b) that I want to.

One of the more surprising tracks on the album is ‘Climbing up the Walls’, firstly for being a cover of a Radiohead track, but most of all for featuring the vocals of Fierce, who’s better known as a Dj/producer in the drum n’ bass scene. Can you tell us about how that came together?

I think he’s only been singing and playing guitar – two things I never knew he did – for about 2 years. Lynx (co-producer of the track) came up to play Soul:ution in Manchester a couple of years ago and while he was up here we decided to go in the studio; one of the tracks we made had a bassline that sounded quite similar to the Radiohead song, and it got ditched for that specific reason. Around that time Fierce started to send me stuff; we’ve always got on because we are huge fans of Radiohead. He was like, “Marcus can you have a listen to this, I’m teaching myself to play guitar and teaching myself to sing and I’m doing both to Radiohead”, and I’m just like, “f***ing hell, you’re crazy!”, because that’s some of the most difficult music to learn anyway. He sent me four tracks and they were badly recorded, but although they sounded terrible, I was just amazed at what he’d done. It just hit a nerve, and I thought, hang on a minute, I’ve got this track with that Radiohead bassline; we’ll bounce it down and have a go at this. Let’s just experiment and see what happens. It was never with the intention of releasing it. If somebody had told me a year before that I’d be releasing a drum n bass cover version of a Radiohead song, I’d have said they were crazy. When we’d got it done we were happy with it,; I made an enquiry with the record label to get permission and they said yeah, go ahead.

Do you know if Thom Yorke et al have heard it?

If they have, they have come calling to say it’s great or it’s awful, so I have no idea to be fair!

Can we expect any remixes from the album, similar maybe to what Commix did with Recall To Mind?

I’ve not worked that out, for the simple reason Soul:R has always been a non-remix label. We’ve never done remixes, as we’ve always believed in pushing things forward. If there was – and I’m not ruling it out – I think it might be non-drum n’ bass, something a bit different, with people I really admire outside of the scene.

The album isn’t just a drum an bass album, as there are plenty of downtempo tracks on there as well. Do you feel drum n’ bass, although defined by its tempo, is also too limited by it?

It is and it isn’t; its never bothered me up until recently. I just think getting to my age and doing this for so long, you need a try different things like that Radiohead track; you need to take yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s quite easy to say: right, I’m going to make a drum n’ bass tune; you go in the studio and I just switch it all on. I’ve always been a big house fan; I’ve always tried to write house music but never really given it enough effort. Whenever I’d do something that was half decent, I’d get bored of it and speed it up to 175bpm, because I know full well how to finish it, and that I could sell it. It’s just that safety net of knowing what you can do, so I’m now putting myself into a whole different world. Just starting to write a load of downtempo, non drum an bass stuff, because you know it’s a nice refreshing change and a challenge. As much as I love drum n’ bass, I just love all different kinds of music too. And what it does, is that when I come back to drum n bass I just feel a bit fresher, just feel a bit more up for it.

You wear quite a few hats within the scene; as producer, DJ, label owner, promoter, and radio presenter. Do you like being a kind of an all-round impresario?

I just think you have to do it. You’ve just got to be involved with it in any way you can, and I’ve always been like that. I did get asked a question about what makes me so proud about what I do, and I said, I’ve done it all . I’ve done radio, I’ve lost money and earned money on promotions, I’ve worked in a record shop and also been a record buyer, I’ve paid to get into raves and had some amazing nights, and I’ve also been the DJ providing the music. I’m not thinking: right, I need to do this, I need to do that. It jusy happens because it’s what you should be doing. I’m not doing it to push myself out there; it’s all part and parcel of the job. And more that anything, I enjoy doing it!

What better reason?!

Well exactly. I always put off doing the radio show, and then the two hours I do it, I love it. I don’t do enough radio but when I’m sat there doing it, I’m thinking: why don’t I do this more often. But that’s me all over.

One person who is conspicuous by their absence on the album is long time collaborator ST Files. Was that a planned thing?

Not necessarily. He’s moved house, his studios been upside down, he’s had a baby; he been very busy doing a ‘life’ things. We will make music together in the future, but at the time I was doing the album, he was out of the game renovating his house and fathering.

Going back to the 90s and the first half of your career, the drum n’ bass scene seemed to be concentrated around London/greater London, and Bristol had its own thing going on as well. What was it like in Manchester and the north in general, was there much of a scene?

Its been very up and down in Manchester, partly because of what club owners thought jungle and hardcore and drum n’ bass was about, and the kind of people it brought in. The most popular sound in Manchester and the north going back to the early rave days was stuff like Sasha, and vocals and pianos. That brought in all the glamorous people, and then you had drum n’ bass which was a bit grimier. It brought a different crowd and the clubs didn’t like that because they didn’t bring enough money to the bar or they had a different attitude. It’s always been difficult to get a decent venue up north; and then there was all the trouble with guns and gun crime in Manchester. But there was always a great underground following; I knew that because I worked in record shops when there was no clubs, and we would sell more hardcore than the big house and piano tracks. People loved it, they just didn’t have anywhere to go out an listen to it. It was a big struggle for many years, but I took a lot of influence from the DJs in Birmingham and London, and tried to push it in Manchester.

So it was down to club owners; they were afraid of what they thought the jungle crowd were like. There was always stores about guns and stuff. If someone would tell me to go and DJ in places I DJ’d in back then, I’d say they’re crazy. At the time there was a unique atmosphere about it; it was quite dark and intimidating but at the same time there was a real release with the music. It was really special, those times; it was certainly only for the headstrong. I’ve been involved in promotions down the years and it was really difficult. 10-15 years ago. I was one of the first people to bring the likes of Grooverider, Fabio , Doc Scott and LTJ Bukem to Manchester. And whenever you’d booked them, they’d call you up and go: is it safe? Haha, of course it’s safe! Have you ever seen the news where a DJ’s gotten shot?! You used to get that paranoia.

I seemed to take for ever, but then came the jungle explosion and it got so popular that it felt like the whole world was looking at the UK. I guess club owners felt they had to give it a shot and before you know it there was little clubs opening up here and there. With underground jungle and drum n’ bass it got better and better, and for the past ten years Manchester has had a good clubbing scene. But it took a while to get there.

You were producing under the name Da Intalex back then, as part of a duo?

Yeah there was a guy called XTC who used to work in a record shop with me; this was 95/96. We were like best mates but it just didn’t really work as a business together. We never just really saw it in the same way. We’re still good friends but it wasn’t meant to be.

What’s next for Marcus Intalex and the label?

For the label, we’ve pretty much got the SPY album 90% there. And Dub Phyzix is going to do something; Phil Tangent is another guy who’s coming though, I really like his stuff so I’ll be putting more of his music out. There’s a 75% done DRS album done, 7 or 8 of the tunes are immaculate. Hopefully we’ll get a couple more tracks off Calibre for the label. It all just needs organising, but I’ve been concentrating on this album. I’m writing a lot of music; house and techno stuff, some UK Bass…not dubstep exactly but the kind of stuff that’s on the album. I’ve no real idea what I’m gong to do with it, so I’m just enjoying writing at the minute.

Can you se yourself doing this in 21 years time?

I don’t think my ears would allow it! I don’t know; I’m 40 this year, so as long as I’m still enjoying it to an extent. It’s all I do, I’ve forged a career out of it. I guess demand dictates how long you go for; if nobody’s interested it’s because you’re over the hill. If you feel you’re past it then you stop. But right now I’m still there.

Marcus Intalex ’21′ is available now on Soul:R Records.

Klute/The Stupids interview March 2009

Found the first interview I did with Tom Withers/Klute (the second being here), way back in March 2009…

I had a chat with Tom Withers AKA Tommy Stupid, drummer from recently reformed UK skatepunk band The Stupids, before their gig at Bristol Bierkeller. Withers may be better known to drum n’ bass fans as maverick producer Klute, and owner of forward-thinking record label Commercial Suicide. I spoke to him about all of his musical endeavours, including his less publicised career as a composer of airport music – to which I got some ominous answers.

S: So, The Stupids; why the reformation? Are you back for good or is this a one-off?

T: It’s more of a case of unfinished business than anything else really. Martin [AKA Marty Tuff, guitarist] and I had decided to play again, and it wasn’t necessarily going to be The Stupids. It just came about that Boss Tuneage were reissuing the albums; there was an old demo I had recorded by myself when we were still The Stupids, and we decided to record a new album. We’re just doing it for fun, and it is no-mans land for us really.

S: Your style seemed to be quite different from the typical UK hardcore and punk sounds of the 80’s, like anarcho or crust and grind?

T: It was hardcore I guess when we started, we were just really into American sounds; so we just kind of went off and did that, and seemed to be one of the first bands in England that was just really into US stuff. At the time all there was what they call UK82; GBH, Exploited, and that ilk.

S: Were you connected with everything that was going on back then, the ‘scene’ if there was one?

T: No, not really. We were just middle class boys from Ipswich really. We weren’t really taken seriously because we weren’t, as you say, crusty-ish. Everything was politically based then, and we liked The Ramones and how they sang about…well nothing…which meant more to us.

S: You toured the US; did you find more acceptance there because of your sound?

T: Yeah we toured there once with a band called Ludichrist in ‘86 or ‘87. We toured pretty much as an unknown band…as we are now [laughter]. The tour in America was good; I think back in those days there was less music altogether, so people were just more interested and grabbed a hold of things. Now you can go to sleep for two weeks and you’re not going to miss anything

S: The Stupids mk.1 ended in 1990; by this point were you into dance music?

T: No, I was going through a crazy transitional period listening to Joe Satriani and Racer X and all kinds of technical guitar stuff.

S: So when did you actually get into it, when did you start producing?

T: Around 91/92 when I was over in the states actually, through rave in general. I bought a sampler in late ‘92 and just start piddling around with that; it was like a real musical revolution for me. I pretty much overnight rejected any interest in being in a band, and just got into the dance side of things.

S: The first Klute releases were 1995 on Certificate 18, which by that point were well known for the whole ‘intelligent drum n’ bass’ sound. How did you end up getting your first releases with them?

T: The guy who ran it, Paul Arnold, was based up in Ipswich, so my reputation preceded me. He’s always been a communicative and open person, and was just interested straight away because of what I had done in the past, like “oh wow he’s someone from this scene and he’s doing this”. So that’s how it happened.

S: Going from one form of underground music to another, are there any similarities or differences between the organisation and the self-regulation that goes on within these scenes? The Do-It-Yourself ethic appears to be prevalent in both hardcore and drum n’ bass…

T: Drum n’ bass is way more DIY I’d say; I don’t know too much about underground hardcore these days, and most of what I see around is people trying to behave well so they can be as popular as possible; I guess that’s what they call mall punk. I don’t know too much about the underground hardcore scene per se and what is going on.

S: Klute recently toured America with a tour named ‘F*ck You America’?

T: No…it was a big misunderstanding. When I spoke to the agent in America it was a bad connection and I wanted to call it ‘Thank You America’, and the mobile phone [imitates line breaking up]…and so it came out as ‘F*ck You America’. And it was all really unfortunate and embarrassing…

S: In terms of drum n’ bass these seems like the music is moving on again, with lots of deep sounds coming out which are avoiding the pigeon-holing of ‘liquid’ or ‘neuro’. What’s your take on the music at the moment?

T: I’m still totally in love with drum n’ bass, but I think there’s a huge amount of boring music personally. I just think there needs to be more individuality; there’s a sea of mediocrity, it makes it sound like I’m down about it a little bit.

S: I guess that’s the same with any genre?

T: I think it’s more a case of people just going along with the status quo; I don’t think there is anything particularly exciting like when a movement is just really happening; there’s no time to think, there’s no time to talk about it, it’s just happening. And I think there’s a lot of talk and people jeering themselves up, going “yeah it’s good, its good right now”, when it’s fine – yeah – but it’s not superb like it has been.

S: When was it superb?

T: For me it’s never been as blindingly exciting as it was when I discovered it in ’92, but that’s not to say that it’s been like a fuse that’s been dying down, I don’t think it’s like that really. I think people can step out of regiment a bit more than they are.

S: More experimentation?

T: Yeah, I mean I saw a comment “why did Klute not make the intro of this one track symmetrical so its easy to mix, I can’t play it”. And to me, I don’t care. If a track’s good enough, I’ll find a way to mix it. Because you can literally mix d’n’b without hearing a track because you know what the into is; and I think that if that’s the case it’s time to mix things up, keep people on their toes.

S: Another musical endeavour of yours is that I found out that you make muzak of sorts?

T: How dare you! [laughter] Yeah it’s something I can’t really talk about; funnily enough there’s a lot of security issues with airports, and there is technology that you can put into music…there’s a company called Silent Sounds who put subliminal messages in the music.

S: Do you do that?

T: No, it’s nothing to do with me.

S: What’s next for Klute and commercial Suicide?

T: I’m working on my sixth artist album, and continuing to release really good stuff on Commercial Suicide. The Stupids have finished an album which is coming out in June.

Klute’s latest single ‘Ashram’ b/w ‘Trust Me’ is out now on Commercial Suicide. The Stupids new single ‘Feel my Suck’ is out now on Boss Tuneage, who are also reissuing their 6 albums from the 80s.

Commix interview January 2009

With the recent release of Recall to Mind, I thought it would be a timely opportunity to get a transcription done of an interview I did with Guy and George AKA Commix back in January 2009. Interesting to note that aside from Burial, none of the names kicked around for remixes have actually appeared on the final album. Personally I would love to hear Claude Von Stroke remixing Commix!

So, Fabric Live 44 mixed by your good selves due out 4th Feb. I’ve seen the tracklisting and it looks fantastic, some big tunes on there and a couple of surprises too at the end of the album which I want to ask you about later.
What were you trying to do with the mix, is it representative of your club sets?

George: Yeah I think it is. That was one of our big angles, we wanted to reflect the way we DJ. We’re very up and downy DJs, we don’t try to just smash the dancefloor over an hour; we try to have some ups and down, some really experimental sections…

Guy: We’re of the opinion that if you’ve got a high point you’ve got to have something leading up to that and away from it. To me just being smacked by lots of records that sound similar to each other isn’t a good experience if you’re out listening to a DJ. The DJs that we’ve felt more affinity towards within Drum & Bass are like people like Marcus Intalex and Doc Scott that can just roll it out for hours. Its all about peaks and troughs rather than just smacking people every 3 minutes…

George: Also a big influence generally are the Detroit DJs, the way they put things together. Like Carl Craig, he’ll keep the bass out of his mixing for half an hour before dropping it back in, and the whole tease mentality is something that we find really cool; it’s a good way of manipulating the crowd into hanging on for the next big thing. That’s a big part of it for us.

At the end of the album there’s a couple of quite obscure old tracks like Yendi by Photek…

Guy: Yeah definitely. We wanted to include some older stuff in the mix simply because that’s where we really came from, We wanted to include things that weren’t necessarily the obvious tracks from those artists; like Yendi was just a b-side off a 12 inch – I don’t think it was on the main album [Photek’s Modus Operandi] – but it was a track that we’ve always loved since it came out. When given the opportunity to do this mix I think it was important for us to try to showcase some of the things that got us into this music in the first place.

And there’s Jonny L’s Common Origin as well, which was the b-side to Piper…

George: For us with the Fabric series, I’ve followed it for a long time and we know roughly that a lot of people listening to it are being educated, a lot of young kids going to Fabric who follow the series and for us it important to out the new music into context by showcasing a bit of the older stuff and where the vibes originally come from. People like Jonny L and Boymerang and PFM and Wax Doctor set the standard really as far as we’re concerned so it was important for us to get some of that on there to show that good music has longevity and is timeless.

Going back to your Djing, I saw your schedule on Myspace; it looks insane for the next couple of months, you seem to be zipping over to Europe every other night. How do you fin the crowds in Europe compared to the UK?

George: Everywhere is really different. Its something over the years of DJing that I’ve gotten really interested in; how kids upbringing can influence the way they listen and go out and dance to music. You might go to Germany where they’re so much about the dancing, but they’re much quieter – they don’t scream and shout like they do in England. You go over to Australia and it’s the opposite; they’re really into shouting and screaming and getting into it. Everywhere has a different vibe and it’s a really interesting job in that respect because as a DJ you have to react to those changes.

Does it affect you as producers?

Guy: Certainly; travelling around the world and experiencing different cultures and meeting different people will always have an effect on whatever artwork your trying to produce or anything you do creatively. But its very specific to different countries; you go to somewhere like Japan, there’s a real fan thing over there. They’ve always got themselves so deeply involved in anything they’ve taken on; if you look at the hip hop scene or they way they react to certain English bands. You see that on a smaller level within the Drum & Bass scene. I always remember being really surprised the first time we were asked to sign a record. To me it’s such an alien thing coming from sitting around getting stoned in a bedroom writing music, and then to have it transfer to signing a record for someone in Japan is quite a big thing for us.

You’re playing New Zealand and China as well at the end of Feb; will it be the first time in those places for you?

George: Yes it’s the first time for both New Zealand and China. We’ve been over to Australia, and we’ve done Japan obviously, and America; so these are a couple of the spots we haven’t hit and we’re looking forward to getting over there, especially off the hype from our album, and hopefully the hype that will be generated from this Fabric mix. It should mean we’ll be playing some wicked parties.

How do you DJ as a duo? Is it one-on-one-off, or half hour each kind of arrangement etc?

Guy: We generally work three-for-three, but on occasion we just do one-tune-for-one-tune. It depends; there are those times where it’s a big pressure set and you’ve got butterflies in your stomach before you go up, and there’s other times like when we’re just DJing at our party in Cambridge, where its more like a piss up with your mates. Basically you have a drink and pass the decks over to the next person, be it George or Nu:tone or Logistics, and just have fun with it.

Your first release was in 2003, and from the start you were releasing on some big labels like Good Looking, Creative Source, 31 Records; how long were you producing before that? When did you first get into Drum & Bass?

George: We both got into it at the same time, though we didn’t really know each other. I think I was about 15/16 when I first started hearing the old tape packs, and when I met Guy he’d already been collecting records for quite a while. He had a couple of crates of the kind of stuff you’d imagine we’d be into: Photek, Johnny L… the early Total Science I remember being really cool. We were actually listening to some really obscure Johnny L b-side when we decided we should give it a go. The music at the time was really minimal, really simple sounding stuff – well it sounded simple, but when we started putting our fingers on the keyboards we realised it was far less simple than it sounded. I think it was a good 2 to 3 years before we had finished a 6 minute track and decided it was good enough to send to some record labels.

You’re associated with Hospital and Metalheadz at the moment; do you have any plans to start your own label?

Guy: That’s definitely something that will come; we’re not in any hurry to rush ourselves into doing it. We’ll probably get the 2nd album out of the way and try and give ourselves a little bit of time around it where we can think about an ethos for the label and a look for the label, and try to do a platform that might be not just for Drum & Bass. Maybe we’ll feel like putting out some other tempos and release some stuff by other people, so its another avenue for us and we’re looking forward to it

George: as far as a record label is concerned – especially in the modern climate – it would have to be polished to the hilt before we were happy enough for it to go out. We’re not in the mindset of just getting a label and whacking out our records; we’d like to have something with a website that ties in the artwork and a big strong concept around it. If you’re going make a product nowadays you’ve got to put in the effort in. It’s something we’ve been thinking about since mid last year and we’re pulling concepts together, talking to graphic designers. It is the pipeline bit we’re not gonna say when it’ll come out because we just want it to be absolutely perfect before we do anything.

Talking about other tempos, I understand Call to Mind is going to remixed in its entirety as a techno record. Who’s involved in that?

George: Not so much as a techno record, we’ve commissioned people we’re really influenced by and have a lot of respect for all across electronic music. We’ve got Mark Pritchard as Harmonic 313, he’s going to be doing a mix; Burial’s done a 2 step mix, we’ve got Matthew Johnson, Conrad Black, Johnny D and Claude Von Stroke.

Guy: From a Drum & Bass perspective we’ve got Instra:mental and dBridge who are some of our favourite artists right now and really still pushing things.

George: It’s looking like its going to be an interesting project. We’ve always been into the remix project idea. The last time it happened to Drum & Bass was Reprazent; the whole remix package thing. Its really cool to get another genres take on your tracks.

On the original Call to Mind you had Underground Resistance who did a remix which must have been a major coup I imagine they’re not people who would just work with anyone. How did you get them on board?

Guy: That’s something that came around through our connection with Goldie. When you’re two young Drum & Bass producers from Cambridge it’s difficult to sort out those kinds of things unless you’ve got a lot of capital behind you. But with Goldie behind us, with his artistic flair and his temperament he’s been good in securing people which without him we would have found impossible really.

Ed Rush and Marcus Intalex have done Tech-House sets this year, DJ Zinc is doing his fidget house thing; why do you think there’s such a resurgence of interest in four to the four styles in Drum & Bass at the moment?

George: It all comes from Disco doesn’t it. Drum & Bass pulls on Techno and House music so much anyway. Its always been so bizarre to me that they haven’t been more affiliated. I think I’ve only played one night where there’s been proper techno in the other room and that was Chibuku in Liverpool. I just think they’re great music together.

Guy: I think with Drum & Bass it’s such an amalgamation of sounds as well; when you listen to it you can hear so many influences be it Soul, Dub, Reggae, Techno whatever, so it’s no surprise that the guys pushing the Drum & Bass sound are going to be interested in things like Techno.

Are you likely to be playing any Techno in your sets or even doing a completely Techno set?

George: We’re spending a lot of time at the moment producing Techno, Deep House and Tech-House stuff.., we recently played a load of Techno at Plastic People and that went down really well. We spend a lot of time, listening to, making and playing techno and we think it has a really good effect on our Drum & Bass as well. So you can expect a lot more of that from us.

You mentioned earlier about the 2nd Commix album artist proper. Any idea when that is likely to be, what plans you’ve got for it?

George: We wouldn’t really want to put any specific timeframe on it at the moment. The same as we worked on the last album; its just a matter of writing stuff very slowly, not really with an album in mind and waiting until we’ve got a large collection of music which we can pick and choose tracks from. Which is how Call To Mind came together.

Also on the Fabric Live mix is Bear Music which is a massive tune at the moment. It was on the last installment of Future Sound of Cambridge with Nu:Tone and Logistics. Any more from that to come?

George: I’m sure we’ll dive into that once a year at least; we’re very closely affiliated with Matt and Dan – Nu:Tone and Logistics – we grew up together making music we’ve always had a friendly competition vibe going on, we’re from the same city. I think from now on it’ll be nice once a year or more to touch base and put something together which showcases how we’ve gone in our different directions, which I think is what is cool about Future Sound of Cambridge part 3. Because we started out doing exactly the same thing, and through our own little journeys of DJing around the world and all the influences that you collect over the years it’s sent us all in our different directions; which for me, and I hope the listener too, is really interesting

Do you have any other collaborations coming up? Do you have any dream collaborations?

Guy: We’ve done a thing with Goldie, which I believe is going to come out the first half of this year. I think that’s planned as a twelve inch with another one of our things on the other side. Aside from that there’s plenty of people we’d like to work with within Drum & Bass and outside of that. I certainly gig to look into getting Burial in the studio; I know he’s been doing some things with Goldie recently, so that would be a real achievement

George: we also put a track together in the middle of last year with MC:SP, and we’re going to try to pull that together as a larger project and do a few more tracks with him. We’re probably going to doing some work with dBridge and Instra:mental over the next year. With Marcus Intalex…I was up in Manchester recently having a dabble in his studio. Basically we’re in part of a small corner of Drum & Bass scene and there’s lots of collaborations that are out there to be had.

I put it to those lovely folks on the forum at DOA if there was anything they wanted me to ask you. So first of all, Carpet wants to know about the spelling of your name – are you deliberately trying to encourage poor spelling in the youth of today?

George: oh my gawd.

Guy: He wants to look up Commix in the dictionary before asking questions like that. Commix means an amalgamation of elements, which I think is what we’ve always tried to do with our music. Try to look in different sources and find things that you wouldn’t usually throw together.

George: It is actually in the dictionary spelt like that, so correct Carpet.

2turtables asks what’s your favourite curry from Kismet? I’m guessing that’s a Cambridge thing?

George: That is and it would probably able a chicken tikka masala madras hot.

Guy: I’d go for the tikka shaslik for me definitely.

Hubris asks what gear you’re using these days? I remember hearing you use Reason?

George: We’ve used reason for many years and we still use it for the things we think its good for. We also use Cubase for plug-ins, FX and instruments, Logic for FX; we’re not particularly fussy about the platform that we’re using. Depending on the track we’re writing, we use each bit of software or each bit of kit for the thing that its best for.

Coming off that, how do you work in the studio? I know with Total Science one guy is the tech-y guy, one guy is the ideas guy. Is it that kind of set up?

George: no not really; we both come to the table with ideas. I’m very much a keyboard player, I was a musician before I got into Drum & Bass so I’ve got quite a lot of musical knowledge as far as composition is concerned

Guy: For me I think I’m just more of record collector out of the two of us, so I guess in terms of coming up with ideas George is definitely more au fait with chords and chord structures, and I might have more of an insight with electronic music as a whole maybe. But over the years its crossed over and we’ve learnt a lot off each other, so it keeps on developing really

Paul M from Beatplexity asks what your best gig of 2008 was?

George: For me it would have Womb in Tokyo; that was at the beginning of the year, amazing gig; we had people chanting our names by the end. It was 7th anniversary of Womb, which is renown around the world by Djs as one of the best clubs to play at, so that was an obvious highlight.

Guy: I think for me maybe Star Wars over in Belgium. It’s a really surprising venue; it’s huge for a start – maybe 3000 people there – but what’s refreshing about it is you don’t feel you have to play a particular way to please the crowd. You can drop something completely abstract and people seem to enjoy it as much as if you drop something hard.

To wrap things up, what else have you got lined up for 2009?

George: Just working really hard on making new music towards our next album. The Recall to Mind album which were working hard on; we’re getting the artwork rehashed in the opposite style, so you’ll probably see another CD cover with a big bear on it. We’ve revamped our studio; expanded it and tried to make it more fitting for making techno. So hopefully you’ll hear a new sound from us this year.

Recall to Mind is out now on Metalheadz.

http://soundcloud.com/commix

http://www.myspace.com/commix

Zero T FabricLive 52 interview May 2010

It’s taken me a looooong time to transcribe the 30 minute phone interview Zero T graced me with back in May when FabricLive 52 was about to drop but here it finally is. Big thanks to Oli at Fabric for arranging this, and thanks of course to Cian Zero T for being such a congenial interviewee. I guess the release of FabricLive 52 was delayed in the end due to Fabric’s various tribulations but it now looks set to be released on Aug 10th.

So FabricLive 52; following on soon after D-Bridge and Instra:mental’s Autonomic FabricLive – was there a lot of pressure on?

A tough act to follow. The boys did a really good job and managed to create something really unique with their Autonomic mix, so a bit daunting. There’s only been about 10 drum n bass CDs since they [Fabric] started doing it 10 years ago, so yeah a there’s a certain pressure to represent the scene accurately. But to be honest I didn’t think about it too much, I just did my own thing and I’m fairly happy mine will stand out on its own as a significantly different vibe from any other previous DnB mixes on FabricLive.

It’s certainly a varied mix. What’s your take on the whole minimal and halfstep thing? I know you’ve got a bit of it in their with Rockwell and the Commix remix.

Yeah I think it’s been healthy in bringing DnB back to the attention of the wider music industry and the general dance music scene. There’s not been a significant arm of that more deeper more musically orientated DnB that’s been noteworthy for a long time, since the late 90s really. It’s been great to see other scenes like dubstep and everything under the dubstep umbrella really embracing the minimal sound. For me its another strata to the DnB arsenal, as I hope my mix will show. I try to get everything in there from rawkus heavyweight Dillinja tunes to minimal Autonomic stuff to everything in between.

Do you feel it’s important to tie it back into the wider picture of DnB rather than just becoming an entity on its own?

Yeah I’ve always been wary of that whole subdividing of DnB since it started… jungle then drum n bass, then intelligent DnB then hard step…tech step then you’ve got neuro and liquid and neuro and jump up. I understand why these names develop and it does make it easy for people to characterise stuff.  Magazines and journalistic forms find it easy to stick in a label on a new approach.

I’m a Dj first – I started Djing as a kid, got my first break as a Dj before I started producing -  so my ethos has always been you should draw from all sides of a scene and be as diverse as you can. It’s different from D-Bridge and Intstra:mental because it’s their baby and they’ve been the figureheads if this scene and they’re trying to do something that’s very specific and new. Whereas I just cherry pick my favourite tracks out of every different strand of DnB and put it together into an interesting Dj set. That’s my goal.

It certainly comes across in the mix. Even in the press release we got from Fabric, you call it ‘jungle’ – going back to a time before there were delineations between jungle and DnB.

Yeah that’s I was first introduced to it, in 94/95. It was just called ‘jungle drum n bass’…they were interchangeable terms. It was before ‘jungle’ had to have reggae vocals, and everything else was DnB. Jungle was this huge phenomenon, and in the pop charts with General Levy and Shy FX, so I can see why the likes of Bukem and Goldie wanted to give it a different name so it wouldn’t be bracketed in with the popular end of the ragga jungle scene. But generally I just think it’s all jungle music; it’s the UK format, the UK Hip hop for me. That’s what enticed me in the first place, that there was very much a similar ethos to hip-hop but very distinctively a UK idea and very indigenous thing. I like to call it jungle still, but maybe I’m an old man haha

Just going back to how you got started, you got in with the Bassbin label fairly early. What ever happened to the them?

An Anglo Irish guy called Rohan started it in 1996. I haven’t heard from him in a while but as far as I know in the last couple of years he got married and is living in Spain. He opted out of the music scene and is doing other things. So to my knowledge Bassbin is no more. They haven’t released anything on the last couple of years.

Are you still based in Dublin?

I moved over to London in 2006. I spent the first half of the decade in Dublin and going back an forth and working for various labels – Commercial Suicide, Hospital, Subtitles, C.I.A, Reinforced. So I used to come over a couple of times a year play some gigs and do some networking. But then I decided to move over in 2006 to make a go of it and see if I could earn a living out of it.

Is DnB still very much a UK centred scene then in that respect? To be taken seriously do you feel you have to be based here?

Not necessarily. There are enough examples of people who are massive in DnB who are still based where they’re from. Noisia in Holland, Marky in Brazil, Calibre even in Belfast – he’s never left where he started, there are definitely examples. Makoto in Japan, Subwave in Russia. But it is a UK thing, it was born in the UK and obviously there’s a huge network of nights all over the island. It makes it a bit more practical; unless you’re a scene-defining artist like Noisia or Calibre it’s going to be more difficult for you to make a living out of performing if you’re based somewhere remote. Just the practicalities of it; someone would have to fly you from Ireland to England and then from England to Portugal or wherever else it might it is, because there might not be a direct flight. All this adds expense and makes you less likely to get work I suppose.

So in that sense it was an obvious choice for me. But there were other non-music factors in me wanting to leave Dublin and wanting to come to London. And of course I got out before the economic crash so I’m quite pleased I did now haha.

Going back to the mix, the last part definitely holds a few surprises, not only in dropping the tempo way back down. One of the tracks is Wookie’s remix of SIA’s Little Man, which was a real UKG anthem from years back. UKG used to be frowned upon by your more furrow-browed electronic music fans but now there seems to be a real revaluation of it, I guess because of dubstep and the likes of Joy Orbison. What’s your take on it?

In the late 90s when speed garage and then UKG was dominating everything it seemed it was going to be the UK dance music that was going to cross over onto the pop charts, and it did. We all remember Craig David and all that. And especially as a junglist, that was the enemy and they were stealing our thunder and all that sort of stuff. You couldn’t like it basically, it was against the rules! But garage didn’t export like DnB did; I never saw a big garage Dj play a gig in Dublin. yet I’ve seen every big DnB Dj over the years playing there. I don’t think it left the UK, so I never get to experience it first hand. But through the 4 Hero connection I got very much into Broken Beat and the West London Bugz in the Attic type of sound. I got heavily in that in the early part of the 2000s. I think dubstep is somewhere in between breakbeat, garage and jungle or to least it was when it first started. Wookie’s younger brother is a good friend of mine, and I just thought it would be nice to get a little nod to him in there. He’s actually playing at the launch party in June in Fabric; he’s doing his first ever UKG set, apparently he never even played garage sets in his heyday! Should be interesting as well because Pinch is doing his Tektonic night in room 1 and Autonomic in room 3, so there should be a lot of people in all 3 rooms interested to see what Wookie’s going to play.

Like you say, Garage was frowned upon and looked down upon by dance music enthusiasts first time around and now its sort cool or avant garde to drop a garage tune, but I think about the 80s the similar way. I remember being a kid in the 80s and then in the 90s when the music revolution happened; there was this total disdain for anything 80s, other than maybe early hip hop. Everything from the 80s was naff and the opposite of everything people wanted to hear. But now there’s been a total revaluation and its not an inorganic thing; I even listen back to songs from the 80s I would never have even liked as a kid, or in the 90sa as young teenager and think they’re great.

Speaking of going back to influences I believe you’ve got a funk band preparing to take off?

Yeah, ‘funk band’ a bit of a misnomer. I’ve always been into Neo-soul and that whole Eryka Badu, Jill Scott, Dwele, D’angelo sort of US Soul, particularly 90s stuff. I’ve been doing something in conjunction with live players, a trio of vocalists. There’s two guys and one girl, the guys can sing and rap and the girl can sing.

At the moment it’s all in prototype stages so I don’t want to say too much about it in case nothing ever comes of it.

It started out as a labour of love,  but ultimately I’d love to be producing music for other artists, singer/songwriters etc.

There are a number of DnB Djs who are making their way into the wider realms of production, for example Chase & Status with Rhianna.

Yeah big time. Its happening a lot now. I’ve seen Sub Focus’s current single has Sting’s daughter on it. That Coco girl is Sting’s daughter but I don’t think she wants too many people knowing that.

Chase and Status and Pendulum are pop stars in their own right. A benefit of the dubstep revolution is that it has reopened the industries eyes to the talent that comes out of this country all the time.

I’d love to end up doing that myself. Would be a dream come true making pop tunes for J Lo or Beyonce [laughs]

At the end of the mix, there’s a hip hop tune form a band called The Reds? I believe you’re involved with that?

Reds is a producer and the other featured artists are at rapper and a collaborator on the beat. There some guys local to where I live, which is north London way. The guy is a friend of the guy I was living with; I heard a demo through the wall and just asked what it was. I liked the old style approach they had to it, it reminded me of vintage Bristol – Roni Size, Reprazent kind of vibe, sampling cosmic 60′s surfer music and stuff like that. I Thought was a charming track. I’m planning on releasing it later in the year along with a couple of other things on the mix there. I’ve got it put aside for Footprints, my label.

The Walk Away remix – is that going to get a release?

That is. Basically there’s going to be a single of remixes from my album a couple of years back on CIA; that will be on one side, and an Ulterior Motive remix of me & Bailey’s track called Robots; both seem to be getting a lot of support already. Think that’s supposed to be out in July, maybe September….not sure on that. Should be CIA or CIA limited, one of those labels.

Do you foresee yourself making another artist album; is that on the cards?

I’ve been toying with the idea. I think next year. Defiantly looking to do an artist album either on my own label, or an artist compilation much like Marcus Intalex does with DAT Music on Soul:R – where he has a CD and a bunch of tracks from him and the usual Soul:R stalwarts, then stuff from people that he likes as well. So at the moment I’m toying with those ideas, maybe both – a Zero T album for another label and a Footprints compilation I’ll do myself.

It’s the first year of my label so I’m just looking to make sure I get 6 solid releases out in the opening 12 months, that’s my main priority, I want to have that locked down by mid-summer. I’ll have the schedule ready for the rest of the year; then I’ll spend the 2^nd half of the year deciding what I’m going to do in 2011.

The latest release is the Wasp Factory single with Bailey?

That was the first release, there’s been another one, out a couple of weeks ago by me & Mosus called Shallow Grave, and has my old Basement friend Beta 2 on the other side who been away for quite a while.

And number 3 which dropped at the same time was a remix I did for a band called All Thieves

That’s on the mix isn’t?

Yeah, It’s Rollo – one of the guys behind Faithless – his new venture and I got commissioned to do the remix; for whatever reason I don’t know if the original track is coming out  Not really sure what the scenario is there but they’ve given us permission to release it vinyl only on Footprints. So that will be an unofficial sampler for the Fabric album. And then some of the other tracks that are on the CD will be appearing from September to Xmas along with some other stuff that you haven’t heard yet.

The All Thieves track is certainly a highlight of the mix for me.

It definitely seems to be getting a lot of popular support; everyone from Grooverider to Ed Rush to the deeper guys all seem to like it so I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of reception it gets when released to vinyl.

Another rack I wanted to ask about is your remix of Positive Education, the old techno tune by Slam; did that start out as a bootleg or an official commission?

Yeah it’s funny, that one actually I just did for myself because it’s one of my favourites tunes. I thought I’ll just do a little version for myself and played it at Plastic People. The guy who works with Soma and Dave Clarke was there and asked would I like him to speak to them about it. They really like it but I don’t think it’s going to see the light of day so the mix might the only place you can buy it; they’ve just done a 15 year anniversary release with a load of remixes, and I did my version just after they did that which is slightly unfortunate, so I didn’t manage to get on that package. But if it gets a load of responses off the Fabric CD I might be able to convince them to do a joint release or something like that; but yeah it seems to be quite popular.

Talking about techno; at the end of the mix you’ve got Marcus Intalex doing a techno track, and Calibre doing a kind of house thing. Do you plan on doing any four-to-the-floor stuff?

Well yeah I’ve got all sorts of bits and pieces, but not any four-to-the-floor stuff. But I’ve got the live band idea, like garage with all live instruments and 808. But no four-to-the floor because my background’s always been breakbeat orientated; jazz through to hip-hop and any of the music I’ve grown up on. In the last couple of years I’ve gotten an appreciation for four-to-the-floor but its not something I’d do myself at the moment. Marcus is a big techno fan and Calibre a big soulful house fan, but wary of being too eclectic, a jack of all trades and master of none. I think you’ve got to go with what your confident with and what comes natural.

I look forward to hearing this live garage thing when it sees the light of day!

I tried to get it onto the CD but for various back end reasons the singer – Steo again, from Walk Away– wanted to retrack the vocals and I didn’t get it finished in time. But hopefully you’ll be seeing some bits and pieces from The Jones’ towards the end the year

So just to wrap things up, what else is upcoming for Zero T?

I’ve finished a remix for Kabuki who’s just done an album for V, a track featuring reggae singer Paul St Hillarie. That’s coming out in the summer I think. I’ve got a 12” on Subtitles, one side in collaboration with Ulterior Motive. I have another release on Doc Scott’s 31 records coming up. There’s a couple of remixes – one for Revolution Records and one for Sonorous Music. And I’m going to try to get on Footprints 6 by Xmas. We’re going to be on 3 by next month then September will be 4, November 5, and January 6; I want to make sure with all those 6 releases each one is as good or better than the last.

Zero T: thank you for sparing us the time.

The pleasure’s all mine, sir.

Klute interview May 2010

Tom Withers’ music career in the late 80s and 90s seemed to be synchronised with my own teenage musical proclivities. From drummer/vocalist in UK hardcore band The Stupids (who had a reunion tour last year following the reissue of their back catalogue by Boss Tuneage) to becoming a maverick purveyor of drum n bass’ more purist strains, it seemed like his name could always be found somewhere in my music collection.
This was the second interview I did with Tom, the first occurring last year before one of The Stupids’ reunion shows. This one was done in May on what was to have been the eve of the release of the sixth Klute album ‘Music for Prophet’, now pushed back to 26th July 2010 on his label Commercial Suicide.

Last I spoke to you was backstage at Bristol Bierkeller for one of The Stupids revival gigs….

I wouldn’t want to call it a revival tour, nothing much was brought back to life. If you remember there wasn’t much life in the venue…I wouldn’t call it a revival!

So what’s happening with The Stupids now?

Things are on hold. Well actually, we’ve got a gig tomorrow; we’re playing some festival in Manchester. But otherwise everything’s been put on hold for some personal reasons; one of the band members has got some family stuff to sort out and I’m really busy with the Klute album.
We’ll probably pick up the loose ends towards autumn time and get back to work then.

The Bierkeller has a locally infamous ‘oompah band’ night on a Saturday; sort of like a wedding reception on acid. You might have gone down better playing to all the drunk stag and hen parties in their lederhosen.

I think we went down fine. I think it was just that we were booked into a venue that holds about 15000 people, whereas if we’d played at somewhere else…there’s another pub somewhere in Bristol that’s more in touch with the punk side of things

Yeah, The Junction, which sadly closed down. There were loads of Junction regulars at the gig that night.

Would’ve been better there.

So on to the real business which is the Music for Prophet album. First of all the title, what does it mean? Where’s the definitive article gone? Why not ‘Music for a Prophet’ or ‘Music for the Prophet’?

That’s because it’s not directed at a prophet, which as its spelt is a term for a deity or whatever. I believe in recent years that its been appropriated by some people as a name to represent their prophet so I purposely didn’t put capitals on there.

There is no ‘The Prophet’ in my eyes. So it’s not referring to anyone or anything in particular.

But it’s a play on words too, you know – ‘Music for profit’. Everything’s gone awry in the advent of consumerism; it’s served us quite well for however many decades but I think we’re on the brink of it no longer working. A lot of things in life these days are judged by commercial success rather than any other way.

So it’s just a play on those words. Most things nowadays are done for profit, things that didn’t used to be. If you think about the railways and possibly soon the post office; they were national interests but now they’re run it the interests of profit and profit alone.

So, it’s a play on words… made me chuckle at the time.

That continues into the song titles, for example in the collaboration with Dom & Roland: ‘Buy more now’. You also recently did the DNBTV set with him; is this going to be an ongoing collaboration?

Well it already is; I mean we’ve been friends for a long time. Dom was one of the first people I met when I came into the scene. We did a tune a couple of years ago called ‘Maximus’ for Dom’s label. We get on really well; we have a similar sense of humour and have done a few back-to-back DJ sets. So yeah it’s a casual mutual affection [laughs].

Can you talk us through the process of collaborating on a track; are you both in the studio, or do you just send each other parts; how do you decide on the direction of a track?

Well in the two instances we’ve worked together so far we’ve gone to each other’s studio and basically sat there and made the music. Dom’s a bit of a bossy soul so he tends to elbow you out of the way [laughs] and gets on the mouse or whatever. He’s very good with Logic, and I’m a Cubase user so we’ve used both; Cubase when he’s here or Logic when I’m there. So yeah we’re both present.

Keeping on the subject of the creative process; this is your sixth album, and fourth double album. Do you make tracks with an album in mind or do you just accumulate tracks and then fit them together into some kinda of coherent order?

I definitely accumulate tracks. I think things change over the course of the months that it takes to write something, so that you can’t direct things. You just have an idea when the tracks finished that you go ‘yeah, I’ll save that’. A lot of tracks don’t make sense as a 12” single; sometimes those tunes are quite obvious to me, those that you know will be a single.

Recently Commercial Suicide put out the single by Nymfo ‘Matchstick’ b/w ‘Bionic Fingers’. The press release said you worked quite closely with him on this; how did you feel about taking on the mentor role?

Well in terms of working closely it a case of …2 or 3 years ago I was talking to him and reflecting my interests in wanting to work with him, and get some stuff released by him. It was a casual process, it wasn’t strictly as case of ‘here, I’ve made this for you, here you go’; it was a slow casual process of weeding out things. We had the B-side ‘Bionic fingers’ for a few months and we were waiting for the other side to come. Lo and behold Matchstick came and it just fit like a glove. So I’m really glad I waited rather than just go for any old thing, not that he makes any old thing!

Having a strong A & B side is a rarity in dance music in general I think…

12-inch singles for me are the same sort of thing as a 7” 45 single; you only get a certain amount of information on them. They are 12” to serve a mechanical purpose of playing music at a louder volume in a DJ setting. Otherwise if it’s a listening experience, I prefer 6 tracks a side, so I can put the record on and listen to it.

Of course; extending into an album setting…

Yeah It’s funny because if you’ve got a properly weighted turntable – as in not a Technics with a brick on top of the cartridge – it wont play through a drum n bass 12” because its been mastered so loudly the grooves would kick the needle out.

I realise this is an old, ongoing debate but do you foresee vinyl maintaining its reign in drum n bass?

That’s a very difficult question to answer because it’s still my primary medium. But when it comes to a lot of what I play its unreleased music; I ‘m not a big believer in dubplates so I’ll end using CDs as the format to play the music. But in terms of appreciating the music and ultimate sound quality and stuff like that, yeah its vinyl for me. Its whether drum n bass can justify all those releases belling released on vinyl.

It’s all but vanished in other genres of dance music, certainly in house and techno…most of it is CDs; well, mp3 and CDRs for DJing.

Yes which is the ultimate disposable format!

Do you think it has a bearing on quality control?

I think so, but that isn’t why the quality of music has gone down. I think the quality of music has gone down because there’s too much. You’d think that with there being more music there’d be more access to better music but the better music just gets lost; swamped.

There’s more music being released. Whereas before everyone could make music, but it was harder getting it out there. Now getting it out there isn’t a problem; you can sign up with a digital distributor and bobs your uncle.

That’s right, or you can upload it yourself and say ‘go at it’, and it’s effectively a release. It’s a funny debate because there’s a lot of people that think it’s justified that it should be free; I don’t. Perhaps if a car mechanic would take the same stance, you know. ‘I’ll give you some tunes if you repair my car’, but unfortunately that’s not the case at the moment.

Of course. Music for profit!

[laughs] But I don’t make music for prophet – that not my paramount concern.

Ok; music to get by?

Yeah I think people take exception to that, in that’s commonly seen as living the dream, the life of riley; it’s anything but to be honest! There’s days when I wake up and wish I had that kind of routine. You know, talking around the coffee machine and stuff. But then I’m not going to complain and say I don’t enjoy what I do, because I do.

Last time we spoke I mentioned the airport music thing, which seemed to be shrouded in secrecy. Black Dog recently released their own take on Brian Eno’s Music for Airports; can you foresee Klute ever do something similar? Will the airport music ever see the light of day?

Not really. I thought that topic of Black Dog’s was pretty weak really. I’m friendly with the original founding members – the guys who went on to become Plaid – and they’re the kind of people who never look back. They’re not particularly referential in what they do. They’re out to create their own thing whereas Black Dog is now something quite different. What is the point in making any comment on something that was made back in the 70s.

Back to ‘Music for Prophet’ and all the promotion behind that; you’ve got an official tour for it. A lot of your tour dates seem to be down under?

Yeah I m off to Australia on Tuesday, and I’ve just been to New Zealand. I just have a good connection with people down there, especially with New Zealand. I’ve been going there routinely every year for the last 8 or 9 years.

Its just one of the most consistent countries; and Australia is really building as well. I’d say in the more distant past it was one of my weaker destinations, and that’s definitely not case now; its just building and building and I’m finding myself in the last 3 or 4 years going out there every year.

OK cool. We’ll wrap up the interview with an obligatory “what’s next after the promotion for the new album’s done?”

There’s a bunch of stuff coming on the label; more from Nymfo, more from Mindscape, Amit, The Upbeats, something from Dom & Roland, Vicious Circle.
Keeping it ticking over, really.

I’ll probably be electing an artist for an album; just keeping my eye on who would be the best person to elect for that.

Big thanks for chatting to us, best of luck with the album and tour.

Cheers!

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