Introspekt

Blackdown: Hey Introspekt, welcome to my blog like it was 2004 all over again!  I'm super excited about your album "Moving the Center" and to hear how it came about. 

To set the scene let's start at the beginning: can you help me understand where you grew up especially in terms of the culture?

Introspekt: I think one of the important things about where I'm from in terms of how it shaped my music is I think the cultural heritage of the neighborhood I grew up in. 

I grew up in Leimert Park in South Central LA. It's seen as the black cultural center of Los Angeles. 

It's got a lot of black people from across the African diaspora and a lot of Caribbean folks. It also just has a political history of pan-Africanist political orientation that's really just very culturally embedded in just how we are.

B: Do you remember the times when awareness of that emerged for you? 

Because as a kid, you've probably just been like, "I'm a kid!" and then, suddenly as you grow, maybe you're like, "actually, I think I might be in the middle of something quite culturally important."

I: I moved there when I was in my early teens, and I think when I moved there I already understood the significance of the area. We would have drum circles in the park every Sunday, and it was just like that kind of community, and also that musical cultural heritage, I think. 

I was very aware of how it was shaping how I thought about the world, politics, but then also music. I think I was pretty aware of it early on. Definitely, the drum circles every week, I consider that to be my musical upbringing, for sure.

B: Just for clarity, were you playing in them, were you watching them, both?

I: Watching, yes. I was watching. I would just go and just sit down and watch and dance a little bit.

B: I saw Sampha do a drum circle on stage last summer and it strikes me as something probably you need a decent level of skill rather than just go, "can I have a go?" because it's like five, six, seven people in sync.

I: That's why I was like 'I'll just let the drummers do their thing' because I haven't trained but I do want to learn. I do want to learn how to play drums, and that sorts of thing. That would be nice, haha.

B: I think I'm seeing a root value there of: community, rhythm and an awareness of the political position as well or all that together. 

B: Can you think of any other examples of things you were part of at that time that your work draws on, people or styles?

I: Oftentimes with the drum circles, there were parking lots around the park where Rastas would set up their sound systems and just be playing dub music. 

That was my introduction to sound system culture as well, which I think, obviously, has shaped so much of my work. I wasn't super involved in a direct participatory sense, but more just in terms of just existing in those spaces and soaking in those influences. I think that's where it all starts. 

Then, I'm trying to think, maybe around 2014, 2013. I started getting involved with the local dubstep scene. I started frequenting a record shop that a friend of mine owned called Touch Vinyl. They would have an open deck night. That's where I learned how to spin records and how to DJ. 

From there I just really got a taste for a lot of the UK dubstep records, a lot of the Digital Mystikz, and D1 and just a lot of that end of the dubstep spectrum. Also, I really got into grime as well around that time. 

I was spinning a lot of that stuff and started playing in clubs around the time I was 16 or so. My first gig was opening for Joe Nice. I got kicked out of the club immediately after my set for being underage.

B: Joe Nice was one of the very first people that played my music.

I: Oh, wow.

B: I think Joe Nice was the first person to cut a dubplate of our music; he was really foundationally supportive, so that's a beautiful connection. 

For completeness I think N:Type was the first to play a track of mine at FWD>>, Kode9 the first on Rinse and Joe was the first to cut one to dubplate. I'll always be grateful for that.

I: Same for me. He was definitely the first person to cut a dubplate of mine. My first track that saw a vinyl release was on his label. This was 10 years ago. He was definitely very foundationally supportive. I tell people I went to the Joe Nice School of dubstep and bass.

I: That's definitely a big formative influence for me.

B: Was that as Introspect, that track on Joe Nice's label?

I: Yes.

B: Very cool. I also think it's interesting that you discovered more the Mystikz, D1 type side of things because by 2014… I mean my experience of LA dubstep was very noisy. 

Dusk and I played there in 2010. We met 12th Planet. He was kinda laughing at us for referencing garage as an influence. We were like, "Yeah so... this LA dubstep stuff is going a whole different way."

I: Very, very different. Very different. 

I was always an outlier in that scene a little bit because I was playing a lot of the more, I guess, stripped back stuff, but then also a lot of grime as well, and a bit of dark garage in my sets. 

I always felt slightly out of place in the LA dubstep scene, but still very formative for sure, just in terms of having a community of people and getting opportunities to play at these gigs on these sound systems. 

The sound at the time was very, very different than what I was more interested in. Everyone was doing, at least the crew that I was a part of, was doing, what they were calling, dungeon dubstep at the time. It was more minimal, but definitely there was a certain kind of sound to it that was pretty different than what I was interested in, but I did like the minimalism a bit. It definitely was influential. haha

B: My memory of the dungeon stuff was probably that's the Youngsta's style stripped back & dubby, which is great. It just is very, very focused around one particular vibe, almost iterating on the same sound.

I: For sure. I definitely agree with that. It was a time for that music haha. There was a lot of the Innamind stuff and what else was happening around the time. I think Innamind was probably the most popular label in that sphere. A lot of the System and Deep Medi stuff was also very popular in the circles that I was in.

B: What's interesting is your musical career & choices, your art has somewhat taken references from that, but now diverges to its own kind of space. 

You're playing to different crowds, eg in queer clubs. Can you talk about how that happened and how you feel that's going?

I: Part of it, I think, has to do with, again, just a lot of the music that I would hear growing up and just the subconscious influences that I really started to explore until maybe a couple of years ago. 

I took a long break from music after about 2016, 2017. I took a break from it for about five years. I wasn't really going to clubs. I wasn't really putting out any music. I was making music just for fun, but I didn't get back into it in a more professional capacity until I think four years ago, after the pandemic, around 2021-22. 

Around that time I was more going to raves and parties in the queer scene. I think the first rave I went to after pandemic times, or lockdown times, was Eris Drew, Octo Octa, and the Bored Lord. 

That was a pretty influential one for me. This was where I met them and started working with them. It was actually the first time I had heard UK garage played at a club in LA by someone, not myself, haha.

 

B: I'm curious about the musical context here. I'm a little familiar with some of the stuff that Eris Drew plays but I don't know there's a huge overlap with bassy music and certainly with what mainstream US dubstep is. 

Can you describe to me what you were hearing in those initial sets?

I: Yes. I think the connection between that crowd and the way that they've influenced my music was not quite as much sonically. 

For a while, I was definitely doing the more house-adjacent garage thing but I've definitely moved a little bit closer to my dubstep-based roots in recent years. I think the real influence from Eris Drew, Octo Octa, and the Bored Lord was really philosophically. 

There's this idea of spirituality in their music and I found that really powerful. This idea of, for lack of a better term, I guess, a sort of divine feminine presence shining throughout the music. 

Eris Drew talks a lot about the Motherbeat, and that sort of thing. That's definitely really shaped my music in terms of trying to put that energy at the forefront of it as opposed to what I feel is some masculinist approach to the big baselines and that sort of thing. 

Even though my music can be quite energetic and, I guess, hard in some senses, I always try to keep it a bit sensual and connected to that feminine spiritual energy.

B: Yes, totally. The most obvious musical element is just groove, right?

I: Definitely.

B: A lot of dubstep lost its real groove in a trade-off against impact.

I: Yes, for sure.

B: Dusk and I went through an existential crisis in about 2004 when halfstep came into FWD>>. We're like, "do we even want to be here?" after the snare started moving to the half-step thing. It felt quite rock & stiff initially. 

When you're thinking about that influence from Eris Drew and you say the Motherbeat, and so on, what are the practical ways you feel are coming through? Is it the selection? Is it the sounds in the tracks that you're playing, as well as making? Is it track references? Is it artwork? How does that express yourself?

I: Definitely, track references and samples and stuff. I remember Eris, she did a mixed tape called, I think it was "Raving Disco Breaks". 

The way she talked about it and the idea behind it was using fragments to create something that's stylistically new. That's a huge approach, especially in my recent productions with just sampling a lot of this old early dubstep, dark garage stuff that kind of recontextualizing it or putting it in an altogether new context. 

That's a big part of my approach that I definitely think was influenced by Eris and Octo Octa and Bored Lord. I also got really into the queer soulful side of dance music with the music that was coming out of the Paradise Garage in the '90s out of the ballroom scenes, and that sort of thing. 

There's a lot of reference to that and my music with the samples. I sample a lot of Masters at Work, and that kind of stuff. I think that's the main connection there. Obviously, very sonically different in a lot of ways, but, I think, rooted in very similar philosophies with respect to that and with respect to queer identity.

B: I think as well, when you're keeping that groove from the early, like the 134bpm type more swung stuff, you can easily go into what you describe as Ballroom or Jersey. I know you do that. 

As an artist, I'm just thinking about this in very practical term as a DJ: If you were in that pocket of lower 130 bpms, you can more easily mix these styles in, whether it's Ballroom or other queer genres, and so on, rather than being stuck being further up there above 140bpm.

I: Exactly. That's what I really like about the 2-step stuff. I feel like it mixes really well with a lot of the Baltimore Club, Baltimore breaks DJ Technics type stuff, as well as the garage, house, New York, New Jersey vibe as well.

B: How active are those scenes at the moment? 

Are those things that you're playing records, particularly Baltimore stuff, is it that you are picking classic records and bringing into your sets now or is it current producers that you are interested in?

I: A little bit of both. I tend to lean a little bit heavier on the classic stuff. I've been playing a lot of old DJ Technics, and Booman, and Diamond K, that kind of stuff. 

I haven't been playing as much Vogue Beats & Ballroom, kind of stuff, just because I feel like that's a very specific insular community and I'm not quite as directly involved with it. 

I've been moving away from that, especially as my music has gotten more attention because I just don't want to blow up the spot so to speak with that.

B: And you don't feel that about Jersey for example?

I: Not quite as much. I think those scenes…. well, Jersey, I don't know, I'm not quite as familiar with the Jersey scene, to be honest.

But with Baltimore, I know historically there was an interesting cross Atlantic dialogue between the Baltimore breaks stuff and the breakbeat hardcore stuff that was happening in the UK. 

I've seen that cross-pollination as well even into the 2-step stuff. A lot of Chris Mac stuff, I feel like references rhythmically, this sort of Baltimore Club bounce, some of Steve Gurley's stuff as well. 

I think there's some similarities there. I'm mostly interested in that era, but I've definitely been really getting into current Baltimore producers like JiaLing and Kade Young, those artists. I think they're making really interesting stuff right now.

B: Then it feels to me like you're blending a bunch of different styles and then taking it into clubs that maybe historically, or more recently, haven't been covering it. Is that fair? 

Are there other people doing that bassy side of things, but taking into queer clubs that have been an inspiration?

I: Definitely. Definitely. I feel like it's a really interesting time right now for this interest in the bassier side of things and queer scenes. 

There's a lot of folks who are pushing that stuff, like Sister Zo and this girl Trussie, I know from LA, and who else is doing that stuff. There's a bunch of girls in like Philly Yes, I feel like it's a pretty interesting time for that right now.

B: Sister Zo has always had just unreal drums, I've just been a fan for ages of the percussion. I was like just drawn to it. We played a bunch of them on Rinse, I was just like 'this!' I mean, talk about 'drum circles' haha…

I: Yes. ... totally, she's got it. She's got the sauce for sure. Also, Bored Lord. She's always dipped into the more bassy stuff, but more from a breakbeat hardcore perspective. 

ADAB I think they're in Philly. I know they play a lot of stuff like that. And Kiernan Laveaux, CCL. I feel like it's a really interesting time for that kind of, yes, just that kind of recontextualizing of that sort of music.

B: Yes! I've been listening to lots of CCL sets recently. So good.

So what are the different ways we can see recontextualizing happening? Is it playing music to different crowds? Is it like different communities embracing it?

I: Yes, when I think of recontextualizing, I'm thinking like: playing these tracks to different crowds who wouldn't have necessarily encountered it when it was newer, or whatever. 

I think also in terms of the newer productions that are being put out, I think a lot of the intention behind it is a little bit different, like in terms of the intended impact, the intended sort of effect that we want it to have on the dancers on the dance floor is pretty different. 

I think oftentimes with dubstep, historically, I feel like the goal often was to get the gun fingers and to get the wheel up; at least in the more popular strands of dubstep. 

I feel like oftentimes now with some of the newer cohort of people making stuff inspired by that history, I think there's more of an influence or, I guess… more of an intention around, like a psychedelic journey around it, or like the sensuality of it, the physicality of the bass and how that makes you feel. 

At least that's how I think about it. I really think about just that physicality and the materiality of that bass weight as sort of a sensual kind of force.

B: Yes, a lot of bass weight in a lot of the early tipping point dubstep scenes... I know you're not using these words, but also I wonder if you're thinking also about quite a lot about "groove" rather than like "gun fingers", which is an awful lot about stopping and building towards this overwhelming moment where then you stop, right?

I: Yes.

B: Which is the classic rewind of course, comes from black culture.

I: Yes. I definitely love a wheel up. I love a wheel up moment but, no, I think also a part of it is a lot of us… the mixing style I think is a little bit different. 

A lot of the current people that I've been, a lot of my peers and for me for sure, I think I tend to mix in a way that's more similar to how house music DJs mix or like, at times club music DJs as well. 

More of an emphasis on this sort of continual movement, as opposed to these moments of stopping. I think it's a balance also because… yes, it's a balance but I definitely think there's more of, like you said, that influence or the intention behind keeping that groove, for sure.

B: Yes, it's a blend, longer blend and, yes, keeping it going. I also think, just from a distance, just a lot of the ways you're presenting things is much more sexual.

I: Yes, evidently, haha.

B: Wonderfully, unapologetically, sexual! I don't think that was really a big part of dubstep early on, which was pretty straight and pretty masculine.

I: Definitely.

B: And it got more macho or brosteppy to the point where it was fucking obnoxious. You can debate whether that was sexual or not haha but I think you take it a different angle. 

How do you think about how you're presenting your work? 

It looks really fun and really positive, the way you're describing it, presenting it sometimes, but - and I don't mean this as criticism of the early years - it's objectively stylistically different from where the dubstep boys started out haha...

I: Yes. I think, definitely, I would challenge that a little bit because I think there is a sexual kind of politics to that early dubstep stuff. It's just that it was a different kind of sexuality that was being presented with the music. 

Maybe it's definitely not as explicitly sexual. I think my music is a lot more explicit in that sort of as what I feel like is a corrective to a more masculine, libidinal, sexual politics with the music. 

I think of like the big drop kind of dubstep as mirroring a sexual approach that is really focused on climaxes, as opposed to the sensuality that I'm trying to push with my music. 

A lot of my music is about like anticipation and the push and pull of that. Yes, like building tension, as opposed to these big moments.

B: Yes. I agree. As you say, sometimes you do it and sometimes there's wheel ups, but generally it's like that. Yes. An amazing groove, building it. I agree. 

Then that makes a lot of sense when you're talking about Baltimore, you're talking about the Paradise Garage or like, DJing a little bit like a house DJ where you're trying to pull people through something rather than up, down, up, down, up, down... I think that makes a lot of sense. And, I like the idea of it being corrective, haha.

I: Yes. Yes. I think it's not fully corrective because I do think I pull a lot of influence from the early, early dubstep garage stuff, a lot of Benny Ill stuff, like the samples and a lot of feminine vocals. 

I think a lot about that track "Poison" from the Benny Ill & Hatcha EP. That track, it's basically like, it's got a Baltimore club sort of pattern to it, but the dubbiness and then it's got the moaning samples. 

I think that track is definitely one of the blueprints for my current sound, I think, haha.

B: Yes. Anyone who finds that track foundational, I will connect with them on some level. "Gorgon Sound" was the one that changed my life, but only because I think I found it first. Then I went digging to the first Tempa 12" and the Turn U On releases. Yes, that stuff's just unreal.

I: Yes, it's so good, haha.

B: I don't have the right vocabulary for a lot of this, but I think what I'm relating to what you're saying is around drop v groove is, when stuff is swung and groove-led and funky, it's about body movement, and it is about, like you say, a form of sensuality, and also maybe just collective community, moving together, rather than, "losing it" as an individual?

I: Yes, for sure. For sure. I think the community aspect is a big part of it, definitely. It is also a little bit personal. 

My artist name, Introspekt, it's very interior. I think that's a really good point. That's a really good point. I think there is something about it that's very community-driven and oriented.

B: What brought you back after those years when you weren't either releasing or putting stuff out? What was the sort of switch of, "hey, I actually want to either release or be more public or lean into this more? What were the emotional drivers for that?

I: I think a big factor was the resurgence of this sort of dark 2-step sound at the time. 

I think the label Time Is Now had just started, and people like Soul Mass Transit System, Interplanetary Criminal, Holloway, and Sully were making this really darker, more stripped back sort of 2-step sound. That was really inspiring for me. 

That's what made me start sending my stuff to those labels and ended up releasing with them. I think that scene has moved in a direction that's definitely diverged a bit. At the time, around that time period of 2019 to 2021, that was a big influencing factor that got me back into directly participating in this sort of dance music stuff. 

It felt like there was an interest in the sound that I had been interested in, but felt like wasn't really connecting with people. Because there was this resurgence, I felt able to connect with other people over it.

B: One of the real roots, very obviously of dubstep is the Paradise Garage, right? Being a gay club. That strand got lost as it got over into the UK, and the UK garage stuff was the London black community and Sunday Scene, but it wasn't explicitly a gay club or a gay sound. I love the idea that what you're doing is going back and finding a new audience, now.

I: Yes. I definitely think, also, I think the other important aspect of it has less to do with the queerness of it, which I think is important for sure. The Paradise Garage was a gay club, but also it was very much a black and brown gay club. 

The sorts of rhythms that were really popular in the music there were taken a lot from Afro-Latin musical heritage, like the tribal house stuff that was happening. I think there's also a connection there with this sort of diasporic blackness in terms of the rhythms, the rhythmic ideas that are being injected into that sort of music.

B: Yes, 100%. Though oddly, a lot of that house world, they can be very snobby towards quite bassy music, even if it's a little bit bassy. 

They're like, "if it's bassy, it's not sophisticated enough." I'm like, "so what you're telling me is this amazing black music is not sophisticated?" It never sits well with me. 

They're like, "oh, we're doing our house thing. It's all beautiful. And what you're doing over there is not." I'm like, "I don't know... I think it's pretty amazing."

I: Yes, I know. Totally. That's always how I felt. I've always felt like there was definitely a connection between the sort of dubstep that I was interested in and the sort of house and techno sort of stuff that I'm also interested in. 

I think that connection has a lot to do with what the Afrofuturists talk about.

 

B: Can you tell me what Afrofuturism means to you?

I: At a most basic level, it's the idea of imagining black futures through art.

Musically, I think this plays out in the way of, for me, taking these rhythms that really go back to traditional African music and using those rhythms in a new sonic context. Similar to what Drexciya and that sort of Detroit techno was doing with that. 

Just imagining a future where blackness and our life worlds have a presence, as opposed to a future where that doesn't exist. I think that's a big part of it, a big theme. 

In my music also, I think a lot about alternative timelines. 

A lot of it is about reimagining the past and also creating a different trajectory or future. That's a big part of my approach and the way that I interpret Afrofuturism into my music.

B: One of the things I think is tricky, as an artist who specializes in audio, is the practical ways that you tell these stories. 

I've noticed over the years that one of the things many ways electronic musicians have struggled, is I often think they have way more broad ideas than is immediately obvious from their music. 

Not that all art should be immediately obvious, but I know for a fact a lot of music stories go untold. I'll give you a practical example. 

Mala said to me a long, long time ago, maybe twenty ish years ago, that the track name "B" had a very specific meaning. From memory, it was inspired by a situation around him and he was guiding someone to: "just be." 

I think he was making a layered point about the fact that someone around him was not really being who they truly are. He was urging them to center on who they actually are. 

Now, to my knowledge, he's never been asked about it and so said this in public. There's a little fragment of something that's actually a pretty, pretty cool story or an artistic message that goes with it, that would widen how people think about that track. 

So this is a rambling way of saying, what are the practical ways that you can express Afrofuturism narratives in your work so that folks can understand it?

I: I think it's tough because I think of my music… there's an abstract quality to it in the sense that I don't think I approach Afrofuturism in a more semiotic or symbolic way, or a way that's more symbolically obvious. 

I think a big part of it has to do with what Kode9 talks about a little bit in his books of somatic rewiring by ways of these certain rhythms and the ways that these rhythms affect us on a physiological level. 

That's been a big thing I've been thinking about is: 'what do these rhythms do to us on a level that's not fully conscious?' I don't know, maybe that's just inconsequential to anything, but that's how I think about it is almost like a sub-political statement, as opposed to something that's more explicitly political.

B: Yes, totally. In very simple terms, I feel like a lot of very swung rhythms that have come out of the different strands of black music are so great for making people dance and hence together.

I: Yes, totally.

B: It's a spectacularly simple thing to be saying: when we're together and moving together, we're... together, rather than divided.

I: Also, I think that part of togetherness is important. 

Also, I think there's something about the polyrhythmic nature of it. The ways that we can all be dancing together, but oftentimes, we're dancing to different rhythms in the same song, which is interesting, too, because there's just this narrative about the nature of how we experience reality. 

It's like we experience it together, but we also experience it in these very unique ways. I think that's an important thought that I've been having with regards to my music and how I want people to experience it.

B: How are you looking at your album as a body of work?

I: With the album, the main idea behind it, the title is Moving the Centre, which is a reference to a collection of speeches and essays from the Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. 

His book, Moving the Centre: the Search for Cultural Freedoms, is a reference to that. 

It's all about this idea of presenting an alternate perspective, as opposed to that which is more dominant in dance music and in dubstep and bass music. 

Also, what I'm trying to do is present a narrative of this music that is rather than locating things in terms of a central origin point, trying to think about the more polycentric nature of where all these influences are pulling from, because obviously, dubstep… South London, that's the point of its genesis. 

There's a lot of focus on that. What I've also been thinking through while making the album is what are the specific demographics that were present in South London and in that context, and the different demographic shifts that have taken place in the UK and across different countries from the Caribbean and West Africa? Out of those, the movement of people across space, how did that influence the sound?

B: There is a paradox you are making me think of: as you're referencing early Croydon and South London, Croydon, Norwood etc and these places but actually, they were pulling in sounds from all over the planet.

I: Exactly.

B: Horsepower's debut album "In Fine Style", to me, is almost like an atlas.

I: Yes. That's exactly it. I think, yes, really trying to center that polycentric, global orientation of the music. 

For me, specifically, focusing on the influence of the African diaspora to the Caribbean and also with continental Africans. That's a huge touching point for what the album is all about, I think.

B: I think it's very timely. It's a different musical angle but with amapiano and afro house bubbling in London, it feels like there's a very powerful voice from Africa in the dialogue at the moment. 

And not to say there wasn't always African music being played, but in the London stuff being made, from my outsider viewpoint, felt like Jamaica and America maybe played the loudest voice, right?

I: Yes, for sure.

 

B: You could see those cultural debates going on. Actually, right now it feels like there's a super loud and creative African voice and filtering through. Then London's doing its thing of, "Oh, if you're doing that... now what do we do?"

How did you come across that body of work?

I: That book I was first introduced to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's work when I spent a semester at Howard University in Washington, DC, which is a historically black college. 

At the time, I was studying Africana Studies, and a lot of my professors used Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o to frame a lot of their work in terms of thinking about taking literature outside of a Western literature context and returning to a tradition of African storytelling and the epistemologies that are present in those cultures. 

This might be a little bit tangential, but the other idea that I think was working through in the creation of the album, and definitely, I don't think this was as conscious while I was creating the album, but I've come to realize that now… in those early sorts of years of dubstep, I feel like you can hear dubstep escaping from UK garage in a sense of, I think it was a reaction to just some of the class politics of the more 'champagne bottle service' kind of UK garage stuff.

B: It really was.

I: That's also a big part of my album is it's a big sonic shift from a lot of the stuff I was doing before and a lot of the scenes that I think I was more adjacent to with the UK garage stuff. 

I feel like the direction the UK garage scene has gone in the past two years is very different than what I'm trying to do with my music. I think you can hear that also in the album of escaping that prism or that UK garage framework.

B: While I love and will always love UK garage and I'm happy a new generation have embraced it, I'm a little skeptical about the current new garage stuff, culturally, and musically very skeptical. 

I watched the end of garage happen. I went to Twice as Nice a bit at the end. Culturally, it's not the same people. It doesn't look very black to me.

I: No, not at all.

B: It doesn't seem to be rooted in the black community, and garage is black music.

I: Exactly.

B: But yet when I bike around London there are still billboards for the OG garage brands - which seems to be an entirely different scene. 

With afrohouse/tribal/amapiano nights like HouSupa and Awoken and when Dusk or Emma Warren and I go, we wallflower, we are guests. It is a black scene, there's mad creativity going on but trust me they're not playing UK garage.

I: No, exactly. That's what I've come to feel about the garage scene right now. 

When I go to the UK and I play these garage parties, it's just all these white faces. A bunch of lads, lots of university student kind of… It's like university student music a little bit, and that's not at all what I'm trying to do. 

When I just look out at these crowds and I just don't see anyone who looks like me, or even when I do see people in the dance floor who look like me, I see a discomfort on their face sometimes. 

It's sad that, for a while, I felt like I was playing in these shows, or these venues, or these nights, where it was just if a black woman or a black trans woman like me were in the space as a dancer, she probably wouldn't feel safe or comfortable. 

That made me realize the need for a big shift in terms of what I'm aligning with in terms of the scene, in terms of other artists, and what kinds of audiences I'm trying to connect with.

B: I think you nailed what I find a little bit unexciting about the current new wave garage. And look: obviously I'm white, middle-class, and university-educated, so it's culturally me, but it doesn't excite me or bring me joy, as I can't see how the form is evolving or being contributed to, though I'm happy they're having fun.

I: Exactly. I've been holding my tongue on it, too, because I have a lot of friends in that scene. I don't want to seem like I'm poo-pooing what they're doing. There's just those aspects of it where I feel like it doesn't exactly align with my values or my goals as an artist. 

There's a parallel there with the direction my music is going and the direction the early dubstep scene was taking away from the garage stuff.

B: Yes, which I'd rather listen to garage than terrible rock or even just the brostep side of things. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to involve any of the black originators or current very many members of the black community who actually make garage. Nor much fundamental evolution of the musical form.

I: Exactly.

B: Do better.

I: Right.

B: Are there other themes in your album you want to pull out, areas you want to convey?

I: I think my album is also a narrative about time, about temporality. I think oftentimes we think about time and history as a linear progressive current. 

Whereas in my music and taking from a lot of West African cosmological ideas about time, I think there's this idea of time as a spiral and as open-ended. 

I think that's behind the impulses towards the ways that I use samples and things like that. 

I want my music to sound as though you can't exactly locate it in a certain time period necessarily. It doesn't really sound like much of the music that people are making right now. 

It vaguely sounds like the stuff that was being made around 2002-2004, but not exactly. It sounds a bit futurist, but also, it has that nostalgic element to it. 

I think there's definitely this nonlinear temporality that's present in the music as well, which is definitely a reference to indigenous African and also indigenous North American ideas of time and the rhythm of the universe, kind of…I don't know how to fully talk about that without sounding too abstract.

B: Something you're making me think about, I don't know if it's in your work, but as stuff gets really swung, if you think of a bar, the stuff I love sometimes is like the little hits at the end of the bar can loop to the beginning. 

Then the last note of one bar can actually be rhythmically part of the next one. As that stuff gets really swung but you're not really saying it's super stiff if everything lines up, it's more like the little hits here bounce you there into a spiral. 

Then that's also why it works really well with body movement because you're properly moving in the way that our bodies aren't perfectly symmetrical and the ups and downs aren't perfectly distanced.

I: That's a really good point. Definitely, it's very present in those rhythms. It's not quantized perfectly. It's very nonlinear.

B: You need the imperfections a little bit of, the timing is slightly off. It's some swung this way or swung that way or pitched up or pitched down.

Okay, great. I really enjoyed this. Thank you. There's lots of music that I feel as if we've lived through together, particularly musically. There's loads of stuff that you're thinking about that's totally new to me. I'm just like, "it's absolutely amazing hearing about it."

I: Thank you so much for making the time. I've always appreciated your words. I remember being in high school, reading your blog. I feel like it's really fitting that you're writing the biography for the album.

B: I loved this conversation. And, yes, I really want to help. 

Apart from all the other reasons, just the fact that you love this early "roots of…" sound that, frankly, is what I originally fell in love with and are doing so much to bring it to new audiences is just like, "yes! go for it! Just kill it, please." If I can help in any small way, that's great.

I: Perfect. Sounds good.

B: Cool. Have a good Sunday.

I: All right, you too.

• Enjoyed this read? Listen "Moving the Center" 
• Listen to Introspekt b2b Dusk + Blackdown b2b Kellen303 on the Lot Radio May '25  
• More of Blackdown's recent writing? Check Kevin Saunderson and Sully interviews over at RA.
• Hear more? 20 years of Keysound this year: check the label's Bandcamp for releases.

Traditions and telling your own story: "Rollage vol 6 EP"

I've interviewed 100s of dance music producers over decades & I've spotted a pattern. 

Unlike, say, songwriters there's usually more stories behind the music, titles and art work than is immediately obvious when simply listening to the track. 

I think producers should do more to tell those stories, so walk the walk, here's some thoughts about some of the thoughts behind our new EP "Traditions". 

As ever the idea behind the rollage series is simple: all tracks are the same tempo (130 bpm) so they can be easily mixed together but each is different in intensity, mood, structure. For us, that tempo is a balance point between drop/groove, swing/driving urgency & more that allows creative unity + diversity. 

That sense of creative freedom (from) within constraints is perhaps the series’ own sonic tradition, drawing from styles and eras, while at the same time optimistically looking forward to embrace new traditions as they emerge.

But like many of the rollage EPs, all the tracks are made from the same bank of sounds. So we started with one, then spawned another project file and went in another direction. It means the tracks are like close family members: both similar and different.

The title track "Tradition" came first. I came across the vocals in a video and just had that producer "lightbulb" moment. 

The funny thing is, while his patois sounds super serious, in the video it's a joke -  he's going around a room laid out with food for friends and family, and massively overhyping ox tail stew or mac 'n' cheese. Being absurdly "serious" about eating way too much food with loved ones.

Sooooo... obviously from patois about mac 'n' cheese, my brain's like "ok, so I wonder if we can make a 2004-style youngsta halfstep dubstep tune but at 130bpm, to keep things interesting!" 

The sample "tradition" initially spoke to us because it just sounded great - it had instant identity and intensity. But the funny thing is once you hone in one sample in a track ("tradition") for how it sounds, as you use it, it starts to take on these other resonances. 

So I looked it up: traditions are long-established customs or beliefs that have been passed on from one generation to another, often orally. The roots of the word join fragments relating to “giving” and “across.”

And I thought: you know, there's a lot of what I love in music that are traditions, and about giving of particular emotions between producers, DJs and communities. 

And then I added a small detail: the tracks are variants of "Tradition" but the EP is called "Traditions" - the more I looked at it, the plural felt more inclusive: traditions from now, from then, to come. Our traditions, yours, theirs.

Being a producer is a curious thing with regards to traditions: when you write music you have to make thousands of micro decisions. "Does this sound good or not if I add this or take it away?" "Is this better if I turn that to the left or not?" "Is it boring in those 8 bars?"

And I think in part you make those decisions based on your past traditions - music you've loved, hated, absorbed as part of who you are and what you listen to. Each new track becomes both a reflection of what came before and the new traditions you want to bring into the world.

Like, here's one micro example of a tradition that runs through these EPs. Dusk + I don't make jungle, but will always be junglists at heart, amongst other loves of course. 

A while back we found this stand alone free bit of software that allows you to replicate the original, iconic Akai timestretch effect so beloved in jungle. There's still something so futuristic sounding, 30+ years after it was first used, of having a sound stay at the same pitch but being stretched out in time until it decomposes into grainy fragments.

We used this throughout the "Rollage Vol 6" tracks, especially on the weightless mix. It gives this amazing sense of future/past, now. Obviously could have downloaded some 160 bpm breaks, whacked it over the drop and been literally junglist, but that's not what we as a duo are trying to do here.

Another tradition we loved is pirate radio -  now diminished as a driving cultural force since smartphones democratised self publishing and DAB came in. But that sound of FM crackle, sonic distortion still resonates. So when I was wanging some controls around on a plug in and it started to sound like a radio being tuned, Dusk and I could feel the resonance, the tradition.

I talked about it when I put out my weightless LP "Those Moments" in 2017: the weightless epiphany for me came when Mumdance started an amazing series of free nights at The Victoria in Dalston - a pub with a secret back room with a function 1 system. 

A weightless producer was doing a set and he was like "oi, come here and listen to this!!!" Hearing music over heavy soundsystems was long since a beloved tradition of mine but suddenly all made sense.

Once Dusk and I had finished the weightless version, we could just feel the itching to have a percussive version over those pads. Layered over the warm sub, they sounded so jungly and it made me think of some of Marcus Intalex's 130 work like "Taking Over Me", or earlier jungle classics that had a lush pad in the long intro before falling into a dark contrasting drop. The pad roller remix was born.

When I listen back to the pad roller remix, it reminds me of listening to an early version of it the summer of July 2021, just as the UK was emerging from lockdowns. 

We'd tried to go away with mates, but they'd called us while we were driving there to say there was covid near them and they couldn't risk it. We zigzagged between light and the darkness.

A tradition Dusk and I have maintained for nearly 20 years now, is writing music together on Monday nights. Why Mondays? Because no one wants Monday nights - they're dead time in the week. The first "tradition" track was started before the pandemic and the versions were worked on sporadically when restrictions would allow.

With the lead track, while it is structured like a 2004 halfstep track (albeit at the "wrong" tempo) I wanted to find a way to use that new school iconic sound, the drill snare. Each era has its own iconic sound - the timestretch, FM radio crackle, Wiley's eski click, the bed creak in Jersey club, Donk's erm donk. 

I'd been listing to bits of drill for a while - Loski, Unknown T, LD, Headie One, iLL Blu "Dumpa" and as well as that amazing warping FL bassline, these dons had found some distinct drum sounds. 

Then I saw Ikonika (a producer on FIRE right now!) half mention the "Young Chop snare" or something and thought, "oh, so that's what it's called?"

Putting sounds from one context in another is definitely a tradition of ours. And while using a popular snare is hardly some radical statement, it's these little touches & new contexts that inch things forward for me towards an optimistic future, rather than just fixating on looking backwards.

I've found gqom is amazing to work to - relentless drums and so upbeat - and my go to is the #GomFridays Mix on Afrimusico . 

Obviously at amapiano is popping now (HousSupa label of the year?), with UK producers taking their twist on the South African sound, just as UK producers did on the NY garage sound in the 90s. 

Gqom producers have this tradition of using vocals in a relentless way, so we took bits of "tradition" audio and messed around with then.  I don't think we're qualified to be gqom producers per se, but happy accidents sometimes occur when you try something and don't get it quite "right". 

This is why we named it the "gqom wrong" mix, because we tried some gqom influences (MOAR toms!!!) and it's all gone wrong. And hopefully that's OK. 

Respect to afrimusico and all the gqom pioneers. We played two DJ Lag tracks on last night's Rinse show btw.

Anyway, that's a lot of musical producer waffle. Bass heavy music has a lot of other great traditions, from the meet up at the pub beforehand to people who DJ with their shoes off, like the don Joe nice. 

What are yours?

François K inspiration but wrong

Went to see François K talk about his musical journey at the British Library last night at Classic Album Sundays. 

And I’m reminded: here’s how he accidentally inspired a track I made, “UKD”.

François K’s been involved with so many musical moments: being in the room to see the Second Great Miles Davis Quintet reform (including Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams & Wayne Shorter). A&R/production at legendary disco label Prelude. Or DJing as part of the foundations of house and garage Walter Gibbons, David Mancuso and Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage... yes where the word “garage” comes from. 

Producing for Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk. Or starting Body & Soul with Joe Claussell and Danny Krivit and the Deep Space night at Cielo that welcomed people like Mala DMZ into the dubby house world. He mentioned, but didn’t namecheck Dub War bigup Dave Q, Ken Sekkle, Joe Nice, Juakali & all the gang.

Anyway: you might remember a Reel I made recently when “Rollage Vol 5: eM-PLT” EP came out and I talked about imagining influences and getting them wrong. Well seeing François K reminded me of how his “edits” technique accidentally inspired creative sideways step in a section of a track I put out called “UKD”.

Obviously the main idea of this track is the middle point between UKG (garage... Paradise Garage) and Detroit techno, hence “UKD.” And admittedly there’s another “imagined influence, but wrong” in the kick pattern for this, because Dusk and I have been using rippled Jersey kicks without really knowing much about Jersey club. On beat in the first half of the bar, counterpoint in the second half... funky!

But here’s how thinking of François K, but not actually listening to his music at the time, inspired a section in “UKD”.

Last night he described how his DJ career accelerated when he turned what Walter Gibbons would do with two copies of a record and decks - then a very forward thinking idea - into an edit recorded to a dubplate. See the clip above “Happy Song (The François K & Walter Gibbons Edits)“, complete with dubplate cutting lathe equipment in the background. It might not sound much on your phone now, but the bass in the congas sounded like THUNDER in the British Library over a system, and like the future in the ’70s, I’d imagine.

Cutting up edits of the tape, literal tape, in 1977 to loop the most intense parts of organic disco records into these more inorganic, intense drum tracks was ahead of its time and the start of house music. This technique of collage, of contrasts of organic/inorganic, live band/drum machines, working only with a master always stuck with me, esp when you add dub inspired FX as he did to make it sound otherworldly.

So as I got most of the way through writing “UKD”, which is pretty inorganic to me - halcyon clear pads and crystal shards of zaps - I suddenly had a lateral François K-but-wrong-inspired idea. What if I layered in organic sounds for a section? I began jamming with some horn and vocal samples from some old afrobeat records, and found they fitted as this strange coda to the track. LDN > Detroit > NYC > NJ and now Nigeria, in one.

Was this a “reel to reel edit?” No, I’d got that wrong. Was this what François K was doing with disco into (early) house with a dub influence? No, wrong. But look what the happy, accidental influence did! My sideways “imagined influence, but wrong” had ended up somewhere else entirely.

I need a better phrase for “imagined influence, but wrong”, but for now bigup François K and anyone with as much passion for music as he still has, to this day.

Kellen303 interview 2022: "Life's Different Now"

"Life's Different Now" EP [Keysound] is out now on Bandcamp and Spotify.

Hey Joe! So what inspired the feel of this EP? 

My work is usually based around the themes of questioning consciousness and dreams. 

During the pandemic, I learned that if I set an intention before going to sleep I could use my dreams as tools to solve creative barriers I had while awake. There’s a surreal eeriness that comes from this practice. 

Using music as therapy during this time, the songs are a reflection of my feelings in isolation and wanting to fill the first club I played with as much bass as possible when the pandemic was over. 

You're a visual as well as audio person, what do you see when you hear these tracks? Did you visualise anything when you were made them?

Yes, especially “Life’s Different Now (Roots VIP)”. I took a lot of trains home in the middle of the night that either had myself and one other person in the car or were completely empty during 2020 . 

This was a very unsettling feeling as a New Yorker and those days when you’re completely drained and are falling asleep in these situations is what I was seeing and trying to capture. The feel near abandon transit system and the hypnic jerks that bolt you back awake.

You're based in NYC, but some of these have a very London feel, while others parts almost have a Detroit techno mood, is this something you intentionally meant to evoke? If so, how come?

I was listening to a lot of Footwork/UKG/Gqom and Detroit techno and I wanted to see how I could mold these sounds together and make them my own. 

Life is different now, but can you explain a little bit what you mean by that? Different for whom? And where? And when?

The quote stuck out to me because of how different life became and still is. I don’t think we'll ever return to 2019 world and there is still a profound sense of hopelessness moving forward. 

It’s amazing that as a world, we all are going through the same things differently and it’s okay to not be okay.

Read the full BigUp interview

I think we first spoke (for BigUp Magazine) in Feb 2014. In your eyes and the creative areas you're interested in, how has New York's underground music scene evolved in that time? What are the notable trends, if any?

Speed! Lots of percussive Techno and Bass experiments around 140+ BPM. 

I feel the NYC bass scene is going through a renaissance at the moment especially since established European and UK labels are taking notice. Lots of forward thinking ideas.

Thinking about NYC in 2022, what pockets of musical creativity are you excited about? Acts, collectives, scenes, venues etc? 

In the bass scene, Kindergarten records and SLINK are two collective I always keep my eyes on. Both groups are multi-cultural and bring a lot of different influences to their music. 

There’s also HOMAGE records which is run by Ryan Clover and Fabio Castro if you’re into Big Room bangers. NewTypeRhythms/ NewType Flash helmed by Sheepshead at Jupiter Disco and Heaven or Las Vegas are always fun nights for people looking for established and emerging artists in the scene. 

As far a clubs, Nowadays is probably the one that’s blowing me away the most. They’re sound-system is killer.

Despite being a New Yorker, to me your music has a really authentic relationship with some of the London bass music genres from the last 20 years, especially elements of dubstep and grime. Can you tell me how you think about this?

From the past 20yrs I would have to credit Getdarkertv every Tuesday from 7pm-11pm. Minimal Mondays with Youngsta, The Grime Show with Sir Spryo, Anti-social with Jay5ive and top it off with Reconstrvct. 

When dubstep was still a dirty word in 2012 Reconstrvct was New York’s for-front dubstep/grime/130 and forward thinking techno. 

I’d had never been to a party where the bass rattled your chest and shook a warehouse from floor to ceiling. It was a night where everyone was excited to hear and dance to new music. 

Reconstrvct was a family, I made a lot of friends stateside and internationally from those nights. It was a special time that has had a significant impact on how I produce music. 

Based on your radio show, you also have a passion for music far wider than bass music (which is extremely healthy)! Do you ever feel like wider listening informs your productions?

Definitely. I love trying to expand my sound by bringing in other influences. I listen to a lot of industrial noise music and have been trying to figure out how to add that into my productions. 

Have you been working on any visual work recently? If so, can you tell us about it and how you find working on visual work?

I’ve been trying to finish one of three feature length psychological horror films. This is where my dream practice comes in hand the most.

That taxi car crash you had (& posted on Insta about) looked serious: are you OK? Do you know how it happened?

I was asleep when it happen. I read the police report that said the Uber was rear ended, but that all I know. At this time, I am fine. I gotta away with a sore neck, nothing broken possibly just a minor ligament sprain.

OK these are all overly serious questions: what's the most you've laughed recently and what was it about? 🙂

I told a friend his new hair cut made him look like he stormed the capital on January 6th. 

Finally: would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses, and why?

Horse Sized Duck. I could probably tame it.

• "Life's Different Now" EP [Keysound] is out now on Bandcamp and Spotify.
• Next: read my first interview with Kellen303 from 2018.

Oris Jay (RS4) part 2: on Forward>> & lack of diversity in the breaks scene

This is the second part on my interview with Oris Jay aka RS4. 

• Part 1 is here
• Full interview as video

Lockdown

[B]:  Can you tell me a little bit more about the house track that you're making or some of the stuff that you're like excited by at the moment? What have you heard recently or made recently that's got you in back in the studio?

 [O]:  You know? Weirdly I think because of lockdown I’ve been watching movies so I what I used to like do any sampling films in sound so the last the last EP I put out as Oris Jay at 140bpm, I think all three of those tracks are just from movies, like the sounds, might have got sound in are two of them are from movies. Yeah, coz one's from like [big Hollywood film], which is I don't know why I use [big Hollywood film] but it worked. And then the other one was from the movie [another big Hollywood film]. 

And I think that's how I used to like to do things, that I would hear a clip of a film and think how can I put that in a track? You know, it used to be like the jungle days you'd hear stuff, you'd hear things from old own fashion movies or reggae sound system tapes where they’d robbed some vocals off the back of there. 

That was how I used to like to make music is just find some weird thing that somebody said in a film and find a way to put it in a song or in a track. So I did that for a bit last couple of tracks that I did, just sort of find influences from movies or just sounds or just listening to things like that. So that last EP I did was literally just from watching a couple of films where I did it. 

The house stuff is harder to do that with because it's not really a genre where they throw in bits from films really, or bits from reggae sound systems, so it's a bit more difficult because you've got to find say, maybe a vocal that might recognize or vocal that sounds similar to something they might recognize. Or something that's a little bit catchy. 

Your thought processes a little bit different when you make in house then it would be 140. At 140 I can literally could have thrown anything in and try to make it into a track, where when I'm doing like 123 BPM or lower, I've got I think this is, this is not a genre that is heavily influenced by reggae or heavily influenced by movies..

[B]:  Could be, it could be, surely you should do whatever you want!

[O]: If you imagine if you had like a Scarface reference in like a dubstep track, you'd go, yeah, I could understand why that's in there. 

But if you had like Scarface referencing like the house track, you almost be like, not sure this works in this. You're almost expecting it to have a female or male vocalist in a house track, you're not really expecting to hear Scarface, do you know what I mean? 

So you're right, you could probably put it in, you could try it, but what you're doing is, you're almost…. you're almost how can I put it, you're going a little bit off piste. So you're taking a bigger risk that that track’ll work. So you’ve still got to spend the same amount of time with a track that you might not work as you would that a track, you know, will just fit anywhere.

[B]:  So seemed like a whole bunch of a whole generation of lockdown discovered Double 99 “RIP Groove” for the first time. And yeah, that's a pretty ragga-y house track. I mean, I know it's garage, but you know...

[O]:  But again, that would have be somebody like I don't know, it'd been some massive DJ somewhere. As for you know what I'm going to play this tune for fun, see what happens. Now the minute they would have done that, all the kids would have been like, what's tune is this? They've got the Shazams out. It's very easy to Shazams a tune like that. 

And then they'll play it as well, because they're the big DJ that just heard playing it, so it must be a big tune. They don't know its history. They don't know his heritage. They don't  care about that. They just care that it's fun and it's loud and it's got a big bass line and their favourite DJ played it, on some mix. 

So but, but your right, that’d be like an anomaly? Or should I say that's not, that's not an invention. That's something I've just pulled from old school and brought new school for fun for a minute. So I think if somebody was like, “I'm going to make a set of tunes, like ‘Rip Groove’ with the same style.” I think it'd be fun for a minute, but then the people would be like “I want to go back to some girl or some boys singing…”

[B]:  To be fair, that tune is difficult to top. It's pretty, it's pretty special. It's been pretty special for a long time, on a whole bunch of levels. But I don't think you can make a whole set of tunes that are that hype because it's kind of the peak of the whole speed garage movement isn't it? It was literally a UK number one record wasn't it? 

Talking about [London’s] speed garage, did you ever connect with [Sheffield’s later genre] baseline? Was that ever your thing?  

[O]:  Erm…. [laughs]... not…. not really. I'll give you a little short story. So, when I started playing UK garage but when it was 4x4. And to me, I thought this was, I thought this was universal music. I'm like, “how can, how can everybody not like this?” It's got 4x4, which everybody knows it's got bass, which everybody knows. Yeah, it's got a couple of you know, little bits and bobs or like ragga samples in there but so what, it works. 

So to me, I thought this was universal. So I was, I was coming to London and I was buying all these UK garage tracks and we had a club in Sheffield called Niche.

And I got booked to play at Niche and for our wicked, so I can introduce Sheffield to… well, really baseline because that's kind of what it was but we just called, 4x4 garage at the time. 

And I played a set there and the crowd liked it. But at the end of the finishing set the promoter came to me when, “I don't really know what that was that you play that jungle music. But you can't play here again.” So, I was like, “alright.” I got hired and fired in an hour. That's a first. 

[B]:  Did you play jungle or garage?

[O]:  That was garage, but to them, it's so different… right? To them it felt like it was jungle music. That's what they define it as just because they hear the odd man talking about you know, gunshots. So to them the music was so different to what it was used to in that club. Didn't want it in there anymore. Now, as it turns out, it basically then became baseline anyway. 

[B]:  Yeah, for people who don't know, as far as I understand it, bassline was Sheffield and Leeds taking really heavy 4x4 speed garage stuff and just keeping it going in their own way, like making their own stuff

[O]:  I just, I just did it too early in there. That's all it was. 

So, I mean, I could have persevered and I could have changed the style and made it a little bit more, you know, user friendly for a few weeks, and then, threw in the odd track, but I didn't want to do that as like, I've got a bag of these brand new music have just bought up on the train from London, I’ve come all the way up here to try to introduce it. They weren't ready. 

So I thought I'm not taming it down for them, I'll just stay playing in London. That was it. So, so whilst I was down south, that's when baseline became bigger up north. 

So, but there was some DJs up here that I proper love like DJ Q up here, you’ve got Fredo up here… Skills. So these are DJs when I can sit and listen to them all day playing the baseline stuff. When you hear it you can see it was influenced from the old school garage-y stuff.

Yeah, exactly. It's just that at the time when I was playing it, it was too new. Easy way to put it: too new for Sheffield. 

[B]:  I saw you played recently in Sheffield, what was that?

[O]:  Yeah, that was alright. It was my first gig since lockdown. So weirdly, I was kind of nervous was like: “how can I be nervous when I’ve been DJing since I was 14?” But I was kind of nervous in there. And then it’'s like my phones didn't work and I'm like, “is it me? Or is it the headphones.” I can't tell headphones on for like two years. 

But the vibe was all right people's in there was loving it. It was more me who just it was just me just a little bit like “this is a strange feeling to have that I've been in this industry since I was 14 years old. And I'm now nervous to be behind a pair of decks” This is not me! But I've got over myself after about 10 minutes. 

[B]:  I mean… I don't want to be too flattering, but you’ve always seemed like a really natural DJ. So it's kind of funny to hear you say that!

[O]:  Well, that was the same thing for me. I'm literally I'm going to the club almost to check my music about 20 times on that day just to make sure of it. 

And then I'm like, it was like the weirdest experience I've gotten behind these decks. I'm like, “What am I supposed to do? What am I'm I supposed to do with these?” I'm like, they're just decks … but you forget you get for a minute. 

Because all the way through lockdown I've got some CDJs here but I don't touch them. So this was literally the first time I've been in a club situation since before lockdown. Now the only saving grace is just before I did the gig I did a radio spot before it. So that gave me sort of like the courage to remember where things are and what I'm doing.

But I played jungle sets so it was a little bit different. So it was easier because I didn't MC so I was like, “wow, no one's gonna notice if I make a few mistakes because the MC will cover it up.” But at the club, obviously, there's no MC. So that's just me. So it was a little bit more pressure to get it right. Because there was no one to cover me up. Just meet me, me, me.

[B]:  I find it weird that you're weirded out by the decks. I think I'll be weirded out by the number of people. Because like for two years in covid lockdowns, we had to hide ourselves away from large groups of people. 

[O]:  Yeah! The walking in is where I got that first, right. So as I pulled up and I was like, “there's a lot of people outside here.” 

So that's when I've got that sort of wave of “there's a lot of people in this place.” And you start thinking about Covid. But you know, I tell you once you're in the club, and you are behind the decks, you're not, you're not thinking like that anymore. It was just more when I looked at these CDJs are like, “I don't really know what I'm doing with these things here. But no doubt I'll work it out.” 

So, I put the first song when it worked, was like “right I’m in”. I mean, it worked. I didn't need to get too technical, didn't need to find the engineer to press play - it worked.  

[B]:  Yeah, when the Rinse studio shut in lockdown, me and Dusk got Pioneer DDJ-1000s, and I'm glad we did because it's a really beautiful bit of kit and has allowed us to keep the radio show going during lockdown.  And then yeah, yeah, you have to get used to each piece of kit, but it's really well made. 

But I wanted to ask you about lockdown. How did you find your behaviour and your approach to music change, when suddenly we had all our community and our connections taken away?

We couldn’t share the music with a lot of other people or be in a loud sound system or there was no clubs to play the tunes. And there was, for me at least, there were periods of feeling like, “is this the end of the world? This feels bad”  Like people - a lot of people - are dying. I can't go out.  We're asked to stay in our houses. Did you find your approach to music change at all? Or your emotions around music change at all? 

[O]:  Yeah, I had a lot of mixed feelings. I'll be honest with you. I didn't like lockdown at all. I know, a lot of people were like “oh wicked, I could play Xbox 24/7” or whatever, but I'm not build like that. So I didn't really like it. 

And then my first thought was right, okay, so all I'm going to do now is make music all day. That was my first thought. 

And then I had this weird sort of reality of, well, I only make, I don't make songs, I make club tracks. My tracks don't sound great if you just play them, on a radio sort of thing. They're built for a club. And there is no clubs. So what am I building this music for, if there's no where to play it? 

So then I was sitting there and I was like, “well do I start making the arrangements different?” so they work as a radio track, or they would work if you just went on to Spotify or whatever. 

But I was then saying, “well, that's, that's not me.” So I'd be changing who I am as a producer, for the sake of lockdown. And I didn't really want to do that, because it took me too long to get to the point where I'm comfortable with the music I make to then completely change. 

I was getting people saying to me I should just make some songs, all that sort of three minute things, with basically no intro and you know, and I was like “I could…?” And then I started thinking, “well do I do a club version and then do like a radio version?”  

But in my mind was still saying to me, but “there is no club. So why are you making a club version, if there is no clubs?” And without a club version, I then couldn't make the radio version. 

So I was in this weird catch 22 where I was… I couldn't… I didn't really see why I was making music. So I didn't really make much through lockdown. 

I was thinking in the 18 months, I probably did one EP, in that length of time, like, in reality that length of time you got off work or whatever I should have be able to make two albums or three albums out of that. But I didn't. I made three tracks in a whole of lockdown. That was it.

[B]:  That’s pattern many of us felt  andI heard from many other people. I think it's been a really unusual social ‘experiment.’ And experiment is not the right word for it. But like, it sort of has  been a bit of an experiment. 

And I think in the arts club music had it worst because it turns out I think you were if you were to invent a formula for super-spreading Covid it would probably look like a club. 

Get a bunch of people together, yelling and breathing on each other and then lower the ceiling and make it hot and then don't have any ventilation. Like that's what my favourite clubs felt like! Clubs like FWD>> and like Blue Note and DMZ  [and Corsica room 2]. That's exactly what they were. 

But instead if your thing was playing classical music in a big field, then maybe you were like, okay after a while. Or your thing was singing outside with your friends doing choral music or something. But for club music, we were hit so hard with that. 

But I suppose the thing that's interesting for me is the difference between percussive music and then music for a club which are kind of the same. But in lockdown I didn't feel like I stopped loving percussive dance music just because clubs were shut. But I certainly made less music than I thought I would as well [probably because of the early sense of dread].

[O]:  You know when I've started listening to almost like old school and new… people like Mighty Crown, the reggae sound system and listening to stuff like that and hoping one of them would make me go actually “know what I'm going to make a tune off this!” 

All I just kept telling myself was “when this tune is finished, what are you actually going to do with it? Because there's nowhere to play it. It's built to be on a sound system and there's no sound system. 

So, on my little Rokit speakers I'm not writing albums just to play on them. It’s literally almost like I feel like I missed an opportunity to write another album, which I kicked myself for in a way… but I wouldn't want to do a half hearted album. I wasn't in the mood or the mindset to make music… If I've did it I’d be making music by numbers, that was it. It would be just math.

[B]:  It sounds like it took away the “why” for you… the “why you do it?” 

[O]:  Exactly what it did yeah, if you think [I had] the arrangement, the format, the sounds, everything you would need to make music: I had. In the process of lockdown I’d got a new computer, brand new sounds. I’d literally made it so I was ready to go for go to write as much music as physically possible. 

And then did three tracks in 18 months. 

And even those I was like, I'm going to shorten the intros to like 30 seconds. Because I think, I don't think people are playing one minute intros anymore. So even that I didn't like how they started. But I thought 30 seconds I still kind of got an intro so I’m alright with that. 

But again, these are not things I should have been thinking about. Normally I’ll just sit in the studio and just jam. Where now I'm sitting the studio, I'm like, “well I've got think about this I've got to think about that, what if...?” And that took away creativity because I'm thinking about too many other outside influences rather than just seeing in there making music.

[B]:  Yeah, I think the bit that kills me is like when a mixdown is not working. That can be that can be like really… like… a bit of a head f**k. But yeah, it sounds like it wasn't a great creative period for you. And I really heard it all over the place, people saying the same thing is like, should have been amazing, but it really affected everyone how they felt about music. 

[O]:  Yeah, you know, it comes down mental health init? Because, you know, when you're you you've got too many things telling you can't do something, but really it’s just your mind stopping you from doing it. 

I could have wrote an album, but I just literally tried. I sat down in the studio, I'm sitting there, and I’ve got everything turned on. I'm good to go, cup of tea on the side there. I've got peace all day. I turn it on… probably be near 20 minutes… turn it off, literally just turn it off, because I don't really I don't really know what I'm doing. It's almost like… imagine you're pro footballer, but there's no football pitch or football. So you’ve got nowhere to play. So as much as you want to and your minds ready to do it, if you haven’t got no football pitch what are you going to do?

[B]:  Are there any kind of memories of the early Forward>> stuff that's worth sharing? Like, for those for people that didn't go to the really early Forward>> parties like Velvet Rooms.

I was there for that photo shoot for The Face magazine photo shoot… you're in that right and Zinc and it's like it's on the roof? Yeah, that's it. Those are like 2001, 2000, those are really early times, right? For folks that weren't part of that or didn't get a chance to see it, do you have any good memories of that or can describe what it felt like?

[O]:  You know, it was an awesome feeling to be part of something new. But some of the people that was in that scene were already established producers. So it was almost I had to try harder to be better. Because this is not a set of people who have just started making music yesterday. These are people who know what they're doing. 

And if you imagine, I didn't really know what I were doing. So in a way I was happy to be the underdog or happy to be at the bottom because I know that means I've got to work up. 

So when I did “Bigging up the Massive” I was on a little course, a little music technology course in Sheffield. Me and a couple of the other guys, students who were around at my house. I had a few drinks and I put the format together, just based on a clip I had from a [club night] promotion a friend of mine did. 

[B]:  To be fair, I have to say no one at the time thought you were like, making it up or an amateur, when you were making music, if you, if you were trying really hard at a point to step up levels, it worked because like, I can't ever remember thinking “Oh Oris Jay doesn't know what he’s doing production-wise.” 

But I think what’s in what you're saying, which maybe is worth teasing out: is it true that the early era of producers around what became dubstep but certainly the early Forward>> stuff was pretty competitive?

[O]:  Yeah… a lot of the guys already knew how to make music, so it was already very, very good at producing. But if you imagine in a new genre and a new era: whose sound is the one that people are going to follow? 

So imagine you've got the El-B sound, you have the Benny Ill sound. They sounded similar but different. You had Zed Bias' sound: he was a little bit more musical. Even at that time, you had a bit of Wookie as well doing some of the harder stuff then you had Zinc doing breaky stuff. 

So it's like: everybody was holding their own. But still, it was a bit competitive, because you're almost thinking “well, I've heard that tune, that tune is going off. I need to make a tune that sounds like me but will also go off in a club as well.”

[B]:  So I think there could have been scenes… well there are scenes… where people are just focused on having a few beers, mucking around and having a party. I think there's probably been loads of them. 

But [in Forward>>] I witnessed this kind of arms race with like producers and I think, I'd totally I think it was, it was competitive in a good way. I definitely like remember things like people saying “well, I heard that big tune last time that was Forward>> so I got to come back with something that's even bigger” and that may be just that competitiveness pushed the scene forward. 

[O]:  Yeah,

[B]:  No pun intended!

[O]:  I wish there was still a little bit of that now, you know, because imagine you got booked for Forward>>. You can't go to a record shop and just buy whatever the latest releases were and play them. That doesn't work. 

So the minute you got that call from Sarah [Soulja - co-founder of Forward>>/Ammunition promotions etc], saying “I want to put you on this gig.” Your whole life from there is changed. 

Because what you then got to do is think: “I've got to now make as many dubs as possible or get tunes from people I know who only exist in this space, to be able to play a set. 

So, you'd go in studio think “I saw what happened in the last Forward>> I can't be under that, I can be on par with it, I'm not trying to be better than it, but I can't be under it. It's as simple as that. 

So if you think your music production went up because it had to. But you had a baseline so you almost knew where you're setting your bar. 

So imagine now, there's no bar to set, you know like I could go in and I can make some any music or like there's no, I'm not competing against anything, I'm not comparing it to anything. Whereas back in the Forward>> eras, you saw what Hatcha did in there. All you saw was J Da Flex did in there. And you're next. So: what are you going to do?

[B]:  Because the funny detail you’ve got to add, for folks who weren't there is you're saying Sarah rings, books and you think “oh, this is basically my Olympics, or this is my marathon, like, I've got a come and put time in the studio and come up with an amazing set. And, you know, you can't buy in a shop” 

But we got to remember, a lot of those Forwards>> were pretty empty. Yeah, the way you describe the story, if you don't add this detail, and you think like your like Andy C going into [legendary 93/94 jungle rave] A.W.O.L. and it's rammed.

So the mindset, I totally agree with you as I was there but often it was like, 40 people, or less, you know, 10… or 50? But like, it wasn't like some massive Metalheadz rave or some massive Jungle Roast thing where there was loads of people and… maybe that made it worse haha...

[O]:  When, when you think of it, though, they would be 10 or 20 or 30 people in there what, what almost like, would be trainspotting your tracks. For instance I might have gone there and I brought a new version of “As We Enta” or something like that, where if I did a VIP mix of hours track now I don't really think anyone would notice it was a VIP track to be honest. But back then people would notice. 

Right, they would notice that the track is different. Like I remember going to Forward>> and I  can't remember what track it was I did, but I had free guys just staring at the dub just going round and round and round. And they was telling me what this track is. 

Now if you think: I've just made this and it’s not like the internet even existed where it could have read it, but the reason they knew what it was is because they knew it was a VIP [mix] of something else. 

But there was like, so they almost even got the timeline right, when I must have made it based on when that came out, and now I'm playing it. So these, these are people that studied the sound. So there might have been 40 people in there but 20 of them were like scientists when it came to what new music is. So it was still fun to do because it was like proper appreciation. 

Because you've just been in studio all day just to make a version of a track you've already done just to play at Forward>>. So you want somebody to notice. That was a place for it.

[B]:  I got to add though, like this sounds like it could also be really dry or really boring. But the sound systems were so physical that they were fun… exciting, almost like flight or fight, as your chest is coming in [from the sound/air pressure] and, and you're like, “whoa, my head's exploding because it was this new tune?” The way you're describing, maybe if you hadn't been there, you can think “oh, that sounds like a bunch of people in a very dry way.” But no, it was the excitement of the rush of the new and this competition.

[O]:  Absolutely. Yeah. One, one of my one of my favourite nights there, I think I drove to London to just play it Forward>> and was driving straight back. And I was doing a back to back with Hatcha. And I didn't know Hatcha that well back then. I wish I did haha… because basically we would play three tunes. Yeah, wicked… 

But I think I only played three tunes, because what he was doing is every tune he played rewound it, and then they played it again and then rewound it, so one tune would probably get four or five rewinds. Right. And then he played another tune and then rewind it and then he played a VIP of that tune and then rewind it, right? 

So if you imagine his three tunes was actually more like a journey into these three tunes. So I'm sitting there going to “so when am I going to play mine?” Because I was trying to just get my in and out to get him back on, so we can you know, we can juggle. Nah, he wasn’t juggling. He was literally going rewind, rewind, rewind and the crowd were loving it. 

So because he was on a flow I couldn't say anything. And I was like: “yeah man I drove from Sheffield, to London, and I played three tunes and drove back.”

But it was vibes, it was vibes. And that was the bit where I was like, if I'm trying to explain this to someone who lives up north, they would say are you crazy? Like “you drove to London for three tunes?” But I’m like “if you was there, you would understand that it was still beneficial, it was still awesome to see and to watch.”

[B] History is on your side, history was made there. We couldn't have been sure that that scene was going to go anywhere and clubs come and go, nights come and go but it turns out that what happened there made history in loads of different ways. Maybe it was worth driving. 

Now, I feel like Dusk would kill me if I don't tell you this [Forward>> era] story. And I don't know if, I don't know if it's something we ever told you about. You've just reminded me of this. Maybe Dusk could tell it better than me.

There was one time we were at the back of Plastic People. It was one of the few times that Normski turned up. Like, I don't know how well known Normski is now but obviously he was the face of Dance Energy on Channel 4 and like the rave generation, right? He's pretty famous, much more famous than anyone in that club mostly - a big personality. 

And anyway so, he comes running off the dance when you just played your set. And I don't remember exactly how this conversation started or went, but basically he was kind of talking to everyone and no-one and the bit that just stuck in me and Dusk's head is he goes, “I've got all those tunes. Yeah, I've got all those tunes,” [pointing at the decks] but then he kind of walked up the stairs and leaves like and we’re like “hmm alright… because Oris has just played an upfront selection of his own dubs that literally nobody else in the world has?” Like, there's just no way Normski you have these tunes: that's the point of this club. And we’re just laughing in disbelief.

[O] Because he came to me! And he said to me “all them tunes you've got there I've already got them.” [laughs] And I was like “riiiiight! Okay, well…” because one of the last one that I played there, it's not even finished. 

I literally had to run out of my house, because we had a guy up here in Sheffield where we used to cut dubs in Sheffield and I literally called him with the last thing before I set off. “I know I’m getting you out of bed or whatever but can you cut this for me right now? I've got a play it tonight.” And I played it and it wasn't finished at the end but I thought “you know what, four minutes is enough.” 

But Normski is telling me, he's already got that. He's had that for a while, that tune. And I'm like: “this acetate still smells of acetate because I've literally just cut this right now.”

But he was excited. You know, he was jumping around and he was like, he was getting a vibe. He was telling lots of people that all these tunes, he’s got them all already.

[B]:  It's kind of weird, because he didn't come many times. And I don't remember him being part of the scene and there were a bunch of well known people did come. Ms Dynamite came a bunch of times, loads of times, and obviously, Wiley and Skepta were there a whole bunch of times too. And Geeneus and Slimzee were a huge part of it. 

Normski: I only remember him a couple of coming a couple of times. And it's just too weird … maybe he didn't even know what a weird thing that was to say? The whole scene is about dubplates and he's telling you he’s got dubsplates - yours - and he's got them…

[O]:  He was convinced and it wasn't for me to un-convince him that he didn't have any of the tunes that I played, as he was excited. And I didn't want to take someone's excitement away from me as he was buzzing. He was like, “yeah, got all it got all of them.” And I was like “riiiight, okay, because I've literally just got these, you know. And he was like, “yeah, I know. I know. I know. But I've already got that.”

[B]:  I reckon it’s a skill - and I’m not sure I've got it - in just looking really deadpan and not saying much in the face of total absurdity, just maybe “uh huh… right.” Or just quietly “no” but without even saying the word “no.”

[O]: He was too excited. You know, it was like, it wasn't for me to take that excitement away but I'm surprised you remember that because I remember saying the exact same thing: “Normski just told me he's got every one of these [tunes] for ages. And literally this one here is so fresh, I cut it and came straight to London. I didn't even know if it played, it because I didn't even test it before I set off. So, the minute he was cut, I was gone.

[B]:  And, yeah, well, there were a bunch of great moments before, but probably few were as funny as that one. 

Now I wonder if there's enough water under the bridge where we can talk about the whole breakstep thing because again, it's one of those funny things that at the time, was really political [inside Forward>>]. 

And actually, even though that we'd met each other through “Biggin’ Up the Massive” and some of that stuff in the really early Velvet Rooms. But the time they got to the full breaks thing and the breakstep thing I remember it being like you and I were on the other side, different sides of the fence a little bit, and I was unpopular for expressing views about that.

So how do you look back on that, on that era? 

Sorry, just to clarify for people: there were a bunch of styles that came out of or were played at Forward>>. Broken beat, grime was played there, though, obviously, grime was invented somewhere else. Like, you know, there's the break-y sides of dubstep, dubstep itself, garage all those things. 

And then eventually there was a brief period where there was quite a polarised camp between the people playing stuff that was breaky-er and folks who were playing stuff that had no breaks in it. And that second bit became probably more recognized as what we call dubstep now.

So anyway, what do you remember that stuff? How do you reflect on that era?

[O]:  Um, it was a it was a strange thing, right, because… I used to like breakbeats because I come from jungle anyway… so putting the odd break here and there in garage… 

And it wasn't me trying to be in a scene or me trying to do anything else. I was still using an Akai sampler, filled with breakbeats. So I'm not going to dismiss them just because it's not in the scene that I'm in. Right? So I've started throwing the odd one in here and there. 

Now, I remember doing a track. Well I've done a couple of tracks before. 'Confused', which was basically the first one on Texture was a breakbeat, I took that from Erica Badu and the b-side is the exact same breakbeat, I just played it differently. 

So if you think of putting a break in music…it wasn't an alien to me, it was just what I did. And then I did 'Said the Spider', which is just a break again. And all I did is I just kept the format of 2step but used a breakbeat to do it. And had like a weird didgeridoo bass in there. 

Now, I remember first time, I think the first time I sent that to Sarah, and only did it coz I wanted a dub what no one has got for Forward>> as well that track “Said the Spider.” 

So I played it to her and she’s like “I don't know what this is, but I'm not sure this is gonna work out.” 

So I was like, “Okay!” because I literally I just did it, just to play for me anyway, so it doesn't really matter. I'm just gonna just play it Forward>> and she went “yeah, cool. No problem.”

And that was kind of the story; that was done. And then about, about three four hours later she rang me back and she went “that tune there, you haven’t scrapped it, have you?” 

I was like “no, I'm not you made me think I should play it but I ain’t scrapped it” and she went “keep the tune! I have just played it a few people in there telling me that they want it.” So I was like, “alright cool.” 

So now that tune, I don't know what happened there. But there was a breaks scene really in sort of adjacent to the garage scene. I was unaware of this at the time. But after “Said the Spider”, what started to happen is people I've never heard of, DJ I've never heard of, who've got kind of status in their world, but I didn't know what their world is, are saying “we need that tune.” 

So, I'm kind of like, “eeerm…. okay, well, what, what do you do?” They’re like: “We do? We do Breaks and breakstep stuff, right?” I’m like “What's that?” 

And I started to listen to the stuff and I was like “oh okay, I get it.” But some of the breakbeat what they was doing was very much almost like slowed down drum & bass. That's what that that was like, so I… I didn't fit there. So then I became this like grey area. 

Because if you imagine the breaks scene was a different scene to the dark garage scene. But they were playing my tracks in that scene. So I was in this weird grey area. So I think that's where people say, well, what you do is kind of like breakstep because it doesn't sound like the dark garage stuff but it's not breaks, what you are [using breaks].

[B]:  'Confused' is a good tune for that, because I remember it being quite like funky and like the hits are on there. But I think… break thing is the breaks thing, right, that was always a big scene anyway. 

And but then there's also that, that era of that history where [the Forward>> scene] started using breaks within the camp. I guess maybe Search & Destroy is a good example of that sort of made things within the camp of the people making [what was played there] harder and breakier and more a bit more distorted. Whereas “Confused” is super light and funky, and you can still hear the hits. 

And it felt like, it was like the energy levels and the production levels we're heading towards basically where the harder end of dubstep ended up. But certainly was quite different to what was going on with folks, I suppose [producers like] Digital Mystikz and those [sort of strands] like within, within the scene. 

And I just remember that era getting quite political and people getting quite angry about a bunch of the sides getting angry at me for saying, “Well, I think this bit is dubstep and I think this is a breaker thing.” I mean, maybe it doesn't matter either way, but I remember it being difficult to talk about for a while because people were polarised...

[O]:  Oh yeah, I remember, because I was kind of getting booked for breaks clubs and it was a weirdest situation being in a club I didn't know anyone. 

It was like… the demographic was completely different. It just felt odd being there. And then it was almost like some of the garage people would say, “why are you doing them clubs?” 

To me I'm just playing my music in there. But I could see where the divide was because they had a different principle, it was different discipline. Like the guys who were at the top of the breaks scene, he wanted to keep it clean, keep it breaks. They didn't really want hybrid music. That's not their thing. 

But then on the flip side, they did play Zinc tunes and play my tunes, but they didn't really want to go beyond that. So it's almost like we need the hype of this other genre, we just don't want that genre. 

So I could see where there was a bit of a divide back in a day because I felt it myself. I met some good people in the break, scene, and I'm not gonna lie, but I also got a lot of pushback as well. I didn't “fit.” 

Like an easy way to put it: there was like me and another DJ called Tayo. That was the only version of kind of colour in that scene.

[B]:  Did you feel explicitly that the pushback was about colour as well as the music you were making?

[O] I wouldn't I wouldn't have said it was that but, like… imagine I went into a club, the first time I went to a breaks club I had my Avrex on. So when I walked in and as I walked in, the first thing a girl said to me is “are you So Solid?” 

And I was like, “So Solid’s like a crew, it’s not like a one person thing, there's like a few of them. Right?” And I laughed because I thought you know what “she's just she's drunk.” And then I got to the DJ box and another guy says to me “are you So Solid?” 

I was like “so this is a thing around there, like if you're black and you've got an Avrex you've got to be So Solid.” 

Like, now if you imagine it in the scene I'm from that is just a jacket no cares about that, that wasn't like a thing.

But in the breaks scene it was if you imagine… I’d walk in a club and I would be representing all ethnic minorities in one in the breaks scene so it was a different… the scene was a lot different and I think they kind of wanted it to stay like that. If I'll be honest.

[B]:  That's pretty unpleasant.

[O]: Yeah, and I know. At the era you had the MCs and at that point people were talking about “garage's clubs are getting shut down” and the issue of MCs. And I think that their mentality was “if you just keep it away from that scene as much as physically possible” i.e.  take the colour out of it, then you're more likely to be able to hire clubs you know, you're not going to get any issues you're not going to get any problems so I think that was their mentality. 

I don't think there was going in there actually thinking “let's keep it white,” I think it was, just, just we'll just keep it as “let's just keep the MCs out.” And the way to keep the MCs out is always to keep it as sort of one dimensional as possible.

[B]:  Funnily enough you mentioned that you have made me think about a little connection back to deep tech. If you ask what happened to deep tech… and you can probably help me out with that but… I got the sense about the middle point of deep tech as it got bigger, a bunch of them [had strong opinions about MCs]... 

Because there was UK funky before that wasn't that far behind deep tech. And they felt like those people had sort of seen it before, as UK funky came out of producers like Kerri Chandler are some of these other US folk making more like traditional house and stuff. 

And I definitely remember with the deep tech there were [scene] conversations, “like no, we can't involve MCs coz we look what happened with [polarising UK funky MC novelty track] 'Heads, Knees & Toes'”, and all that stuff and all the MC tracks in UK funky we gotta we got to keep it instrumental and the fear of what [would happen if they didn’t].

And yet my memory of deep tech was like it was more multicultural than way you describe breaks. So in the case of deep tech I think a lot of the producers that are saying this are black. They're just saying keep the MCs out because that's because then you know the MCs take over. Do you remember any of that?

[O]:  I missed the UK funky scene. I knew of it. But I didn't really make any of that beat, that sort of that sort of pattern. I didn't really do many tunes like that. So [got into deep tech] when it became something new and uk funky started to fade out a little bit. So I don't remember it. I haven't really got much that I could comment about the transition of those two, because I weren’t really in that scene.

[B]:  Yeah, I don't know what to say. I think I've always loved MCs. And I think one of the things I loved about Forward>> was there were people from all different walks of life. And I met people there that I never met in other parts of life and we had something in common for many years and that was like, actually a really special thing, even though the music was good, that was a bonus: getting to meet people.

[O]:  Yeah, yeah, I've got people that I'll probably talk to for the rest of my life that I met at Forward>> you know, like that's it that's what it was about. As it older you know, and it got became more popular, yeah, you had ravers in there at that point. But at the beginning, they were just people who just wanted to hear the latest greatest music by a specific DJ or producer. 

If you had one of your tracks played in there, it was like an honour. You know, like, like now if I hear one of my tracks play in a club I woudldn’t think “it’s is an honour to hear it.” I'll be just more like, “ah all right, wicked, you did get that email then.”  But the mentalities has changed. But back then it was special if somebody played one of your tracks at Forward>>.

[B]: Yeah, I didn't get many plays. But when I did, I remember them very clearly.

[O]:  That... I used to buzz off that. That's the reason I would travel three hours or whatever from Sheffield to get there, listen to it and drive back. That was why we would do that.

[B]: So I for the last few questions I want to ask about the Keysound EP, so 'I'll Be Good,” “My Mind” and “Ticking me off.” 

It was just one of those things that Dusk and I were just thinking about, like, “hey, we like we were really curious about the deep tech scene, I put a Truce EP out as well as one from Hugo Massien. Truce’s was really basically in bleepy. 

I just come back to tracks that have like a groove and bleepy baseline and I'm just was like “I wonder if Oris would be up for doing something like that?” 

Can you tell me a little bit about making those tunes and what you thought about when you were doing?

[O]:  Yeah, the “Ticking Me Off” one, out of those it was wierdly probably my favourite one because I've had that vocal for like forever, and I could never get it to fit in a track. I've tried numerous tracks I just can't get it to fit, because he was almost singing it off [beat]. 

So I've started, scrapped it, started, scrapped it. And then, I thought for the final time I’m try this vocal just one more time. If it doesn't work at this time, then I'm not supposed to have this, right? Move on with your life, leave it alone. 

So l loaded it in last. So, I loaded it, I started a track first then I thought let me try if it fits. I can get it to just fit. And it fitted into grooves, like… almost by itself. 

So I think it must have realized that it was going to get deleted if it didn't fit this time, right? It fit into groves. 

I was like “wow, okay.” So, yeah, I had to do a bit of manipulation to get it to be like, right. But I think that track there was probably my most favourite, out of the EP. 

But that was probably our most fun out of the three to make. And then the, the other one that I really enjoyed making was the, I think was the first one I sent to ya, which has got like a weird grove.

[B]:  'I'll be Good’?

[O]:  Yeah,' I'll be good'. Yeah.  Again, I found a vocal, I really liked it. I was like it's not going to fit in a 140 track. So let me see. I'll do a house track with it. 

Just got some new sounds for the studio. So I was like, let me see what I can do with these new sounds and a vocal that I’ve just found and sat there and it kind of, it kinda was quite fluid that track it wasn't one that was a nightmare to me in any way. 

I probably got it wrapped up… it was probably done in a day and a half. That was fully finished. So I enjoyed making it.

The middle one, “My Mind” took longer. So that was about three, four days in time to do it. I think the longer it takes me to make a track the less love I have for ‘em, because I've heard it too many times. 

So it's a good it's a great track like obviously, if you wasn't sat in a studio for four days with me you will like it is just for me it just that track was the longest out of the three to do. 

Just because everything I've tried I wasn't happy with this bit. This bit didn't sound right, took this out, put it back in. Change the bass, then it sounded like a different track, I put the bass back in, then “was that exactly how I put it in? I can't remember.” So it was a lot of to and fro with that one.

[B]:  But what I think is cool about them is… house music is mostly routed around the kick, right kick & the hat, kick & the snare. That's the main focus. And dubstep is was really quite a lot about the baselines very obviously, right? 

But those tracks on your Keysound EP are doing - and some of the deep tech stuff - there is an interplay between the bass and the kick. It’s just a really beautiful thing. 

I think if you get just a really beautiful bleep or baseline or bassy bleep - they can go down to like frequency - then it is so perfect. 

And I think a lot of dance music is about… so I don't do it very well, but I think dance music can sometimes about finding a few really amazing elements. 

But not loads and loads and loads of elements… not like you're not running an orchestra for a film wherever you need everything to be in key and 17 parts. 

Some of the dance music is about the really hard problem of finding a few perfect music elements. And some of those tracks like, you know, especially 'I'll be Good' has really got that… the riff, the way it just always comes back to the last two notes of the bar. It’s hypnotic. Anyway, that's my enthusiasm for those tracks!

[O]:  Yeah, I did like that groove. The groove in a ways like a one off because I've tried to do another one similar with a similar groove and I can't get it to roll as nice as that. 

So that's probably going to be like a one off sounding like that. Like a lot of tunes sometimes I can make this sound, sound a little bit like that sound, and you can hear that it’s me that’s done it, it's got that, idiosyncrasy to it. 

But that one 'I'll be good' was I just sat there and it came to me like that: I just felt it. 

It just fitted it in there. I wish I had that feeling often where I can just do it like that!

[B]:  Dance is about about slightly breaking rules in interesting ways - not smashing the rules - otherwise, you can't dance to it. 

But what I like about the tracks especially, especially in 'I'll be good'... is it breaking the rules because basically the baselines hitting on the 3 and 4? 

You think of dancing being putting your foot down on the one, up on the two, down on the three, up on the floor, right?

But that groove just like, you know, it ends in the 3-4, 3-4. And that's kind of a really happy, like, tweak of the rule. It's not like 1 2 3 4. And it's not like one, two or up and down, you got this groove and it just gets into my brain, Oris it’s brilliant!

[O]:  Yeah, it's a good tune, I like that tune, the groove kind of just came to me. And again, I've tried doing a similar one to that. After that and it didn't work the same. So that was that was kind of the ideas kind of like a “one off” idea.

[B]:  It's great. All right, I'm gonna leave it there. It's getting late. Thank you so much for all this time. 

[O]:  It’s good to talk, I haven’t talked to you in years and you were there. Alright see you in a bit, bye!