May
11
OK you lucky lucky people, we have something very special for you lucky lucky lot. A verified legend of Bristol, and indeed the UK, music scene, if you don't know about Die, do your research. From countless classics on Full Cycle and V Recordings, through winning the Mercury Music prize with Reprazent, to working with Ben Westbeech and Clipz, to setting up his label Clear Skyz and continuing to drop ridiculously good club anthems, Die has seen and done it all. A proper musical hero of both me and Ed, we were honoured when he came back with some properly in-depth answers to our questions. Read, enjoy, and don't forget to cop the next Clear Skyz - Die, Interface and William Cartwright - out in the next week or so.
Let's start somewhat back in the day... Do you have a musical background or family? What inspired you to start making your own tunes?
My first memory ever was seeing Pink Floyd at Knebworth park festival when I was 2 years old. My Mum and Dad were hippy types so I used to go to loads of festivals when I was growing up - I've been going to Glastonbury for as long I can remember and got to see and hear many different types of music. And my Dad played guitar and sung a bit and was in various bands.
I guess I got inspired to start making my own tunes by meeting the people I did. And also not having the right tunes in my DJ box, we had to create the music we really wanted to play.
It must have been amazing to see the Bristol D'n'B scene blow up in the 90s. When did you start to get an inkling as to how far you could take it?
I never really had a clue it was going to blow the way it did - I was just a kid that was in the right place at the right time. I started to DJ because I loved Hip Hop and was fascinated to know how to scratch - 'how do you make that sound?'. Before that I was a skater - I saw learning how to scratch and mix the same as learning a new trick.
From there the journey just unfolded in front of me. Living in Bristol it was easy to get into the scene that was happening all around - there were always house parties and warehouse jams going on and I did my best to go to as many I as i could. DJ crews like The Wild Bunch, Too Bad, FBI Crew and the Fresh 4 were killing it at that time. You also had Ashton Court Festival, which was Europe’s biggest free festival, and St. Paul's Carnival. They were great places to catch some of Bristol’s finest DJs, rappers and crews throwing down.
I hooked up with Flyn Ites and Krust from the Fresh 4 around 1988 and started to roll with them - they were interested in skating and I was interested in DJing. I used to go to various parties and illegal warehouse jams to watch them play - that’s where I really got a proper taste of what it was like to be a DJ. In 1989 The Fresh 4 landed a top ten hit with the track "Wishing On A Star" and things really blew up for them. It was great to be around their success and it inspired me to get deeper into the music side of things.
I met Jody Wisternoff (Way Out West) who was in a Hip Hop Crew with his younger brother called 'Tru Funk' and started hanging out at his yard. I begged him to show me how to scratch and later started producing beats with him. We started off making little hip hop beats, then later made a house tune called '4 AM' and it ended up coming out on Smith and Mighty's 3 Stripe label in 1990. This would be the first record i was part of; I was 18 at the time.
2 years later after honing my skills on the turntables at squat parties, house parties, free raves and anywhere I could get on the decks the whole rave thing exploded. I landed myself a DJ set at a massive legal rave called Universe (In2Orbit). It was at this rave I met up with Roni - we hung out in front of the speakers and listened to LTJ Bukem play. We had a weird connection and seemed to share the same feeling for the music we were hearing; we later found out we also shared the same birthday. The next year I spent going to and DJing at illegal free raves up and down the country. We would meet at Smith and Mighty's studio on Ashley Road, wait to get the info from the rave hotline then head off to some distant location. This pretty much went on every weekend for the whole year. One weekday that year Roni invited me to come to his brother Didi Shrue's studio and make some music with him. In the first session we made 'Agility' which would become one of the tracks from the first V Recordings (then called Vinyl Experience) release 'Made To Fit'. In the next session we made "Music Box" which would become the first release on Full Cycle.
Fast forward four years - after many releases on Full Cycle and V Recordings the LP 'New Forms' came out on Giles Peterson's Talking Loud Records by a band called Reprazent. The band members were Roni Size, Dj Krust, Suv, Dynamite MC, Onallee, Si Jhon, Clive Demer and myself. Later that year we won the Mercury Music Prize and it all went apeshit. World tours, high profile TV appearances, music videos and of course the mad parties. It was rock and roll but with drum and bass instead of guitars.
I never thought ahead past the next week, I literally followed my feet.
How did Dope Dragon come about? Why did you feel you needed a new set of projects / aliases?
Dope Dragon was started so we could flex in a more straight dance floor style. We could do mad b-lines, take samples from more obvious sources and just have fun with it. Dope Dragon would end up putting out the tracks that we had made for that weekend's DJ set, while we kept the more experimental cutting-edge stuff for Full Cycle. A lot of the music we made we made in batches - we would make five tunes at a time, and one of them would end up on Cycle, two on Dope Dragon and we would shelve the other two.
Speaking of Dope Dragon, what is it about the rollers that you like so much? Are you into other kinds of 'rolling' music - like classic techno, or even Steve Reich-style minimalism?
I don't know why I like the rollers, maybe it’s because they're easy to make! I was really into hip hop tracks like Most Wanted 'Carm Down', Sugar Bear 'Don't Scandalise Mine', all the early stuff on Warp Records like Man Machine, Nightmares On Wax (Aftermath) and of course LFO... Also A Tribe Called Quest. There is something really satisfying about getting something that works with very simple ingredients... Don't over-flavour the soup!
Things have changed a lot in dance production from the early days - hardware to software in particular. We heard that you have some pretty sweet outboard, and even still use some of your old samplers - is this true? Are there any other 'old skool' production angles techniques you still use?
I still have all my old bits of equipment set up like the Emu E64, Roland 760 and SP1200, plus some tasty outboard compressors and EQ and some analogue synths - and I do get them going from time to time. Sometimes it’s just to go through my old libraries but I do still love the flavours the different samplers or keyboards give. I recently spend a whole day sampling all the sounds off this old ARP keyboard into the EMU E64, I had almost run out of sample time, and then the bastard crashed. The EMU said Fatal Error whatever that is - it pissed me off. If you can be bothered to take your time and do it the old school way, it is worth it just to get that extra flavour. It shows your passion for the art!
Do you still cut dubs, and is this something that you think will endure as part of the scene?
I stopped cutting dub plates for a bit last August and went Serato because DJ gigs were getting a bit thin and I had to make ends meet. The new Serato SL3 24 box came out, so I did some tests and thought it sounded a lot better that the old box, with a louder level and clearer punch. I recorded a load of my old jungle and early 90s rave collection off a quality hi-fi turntable and through some outboard gear then mastered it a bit in Pro Tools and stated to build my Serato library up with fat quality files. I played this festival called Shambhala and had a load of new beats that I couldn't get to cut. I also wanted to play some classic jungle and rave in my set, so I thought I would give Serato a blast and it ended up being one of most fun sets I played in a long while.
I also play Boogie Funk sets under the name Laminate Radio and have built a fat library of tunes for those sets. Although I own and still buy Boogie Funk and Disco 12s on vinyl its really handy to have such a large selection of music in your laptop.
Very recently I cut a load of plates to play at Ram at Matter. I have played at some clubs recently where Serato has sounded a bit thin and I missed the old vibes of getting that fresh acetate out the bag a slapping it on the turntable. I must say you can't beat playing sets off straight dub plate and vinyl. There's something really satisfying about it - you can’t quite mix and catch the double drops on CDs or Serato as you can on dub plates and vinyl, plus they do sound fatter and warmer.
I will say this to all producers that want to learn and understand the process of making records, it’s a really good experience and exercise to get your tracks cut to dub. You will learn more from cutting a dub than you will from any frequency analyser. If you don't cut a dub plate you will never quite know how it will sound when it gets pressed to vinyl before it's time to master.
All in all though, it doesn't really matter how you play your music as long as people are enjoying the sounds that are coming out the speaker. I use it all, dub plate, CD, Serato. If it works for you then use it but remember this - 'We don't lend or borrow dub!'
It seems that DnB DJing has really ramped up over the last 10 years - the average standard now is incredible, so much higher than most scenes. How and why did that happen, and does it ever feel like an extra level of pressure to be so on point all the time?
Yes the standard is definitely high. Andy C is the boss though, 'the executioner', as he's known, is a machine. He has raised the bar and it makes you have to work harder. When you see him on three decks its hard to work out what's going on - how does any one know their record collection that well, it's sick! Randall is the originator though. He started all double drop stuff really - 'rewind the mix Randall!'
I like to hear different styles though, not every DJ has to double drop. Sometimes is nice to hear somebody roll out or just play some good music you haven't heard before... but you can't beat the impact of 2 records going off together, it just smashes up the dance floor.
Stay tuned for Pt 2...
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