dBridge

Nick Dwyer

Anyone who’s been near a dancefloor or drum & bass gig will have heard this man’s tunes. He’s been producing for the better part of the last 15 years, has released on various labels and was part of a clique known as Bad Company, one of the biggest cliques in drum & bass for about four years. Now producing solo, ladies and gentleman, give a round of applause and a warm welcome for Mr dBridge. [Applause] Nice to have you here, man. How are you doing?

dBridge

I’m doing alright. I’m happy to be here.

Nick Dwyer

Rather than me trying to describe your sound, I think it’s the best way to play a tune.

dBridge

OK.

Nick Dwyer

Shall we listen to something? What is this we are about to hear?

dBridge

Since I started my solo thing, this is the first track I did on my own, away from the crew. Probably most successful to date. It was released on Metalheadz Platinum, a little offshoot label they started. It was supposed to be for more, as they said, “serious music,” but who knows. I was happy to get that because it was the first release on a label I grew up listening to as well. So yeah, this one is “True Romance.”

Nick Dwyer

I mean, for people that don’t know so much about drum & bass, could you explain the context, because this is probably one of the biggest labels within the evolution of the sound.

dBridge

Yeah, Metalheadz, let me think, when did it start? Maybe 1993, ‘94, maybe a little bit later. They were influential in shaping drum & bass in one of the many different guises it has now. They are important in my upbringing within the music as well, because they had a regular night, they used to play a club called Blue Note, quite a well-known venue in London. And every Sunday the craziest beats used to come out of that place. Metalheadz, that night, influenced a lot of things within drum & bass. At that time I was involved in a group called Future Forces, and me and Jason [Maldini], the other guy, we were going down to this club listening to this music. And from that Renegade Hardware started, which is another big label within the scene. So it has had a definite seeding effect.

Nick Dwyer

During this period of Metalheadz at Blue Note it seemed that you had the situation where producers were getting so inspired, someone would come up with some idea and the others would go back and get into their studios. Was it very much a case of that?

DBridge

Definitely, I think I used to look forward to every Sunday like, “OK, what am I going to get surprised by now?” That was a good thing about that night, it was just really eclectic. I think dance music has suffered from being pigeonholed all the time, and at that time, that night, it was quite defiant in terms of, “Well, we can play whatever we want in here and we will play whatever we want. And you will like it.” And most people genuinely did.

Nick Dwyer

One of the other elements to the Blue Note sessions was that it was one of the first times that a proper soundsystem was tailored especially for this music. Tell us a little bit about that.

DBridge

Back then it was Eskimo’s soundsystem. They had the experience, because the guy who ran the soundsystem knew drum & bass and had grown up listening as well. He knew sonically what it was about. It lent itself very well to drum & bass. Drum & bass does sometimes suffer. Go into certain clubs and it just doesn’t really come over, the bottom end isn’t there or it’s too toppy. I would say now there is another soundsystem, Valve soundsystem, which is Dillinja’s setup, specifically for drum & bass. But back then, within drum & bass they were definitely [the best]. There were other soundsystems going on back then, it was a big part of the UK culture with Shaka and Saxon sound. So in a way it grew out of the the whole soundsystem vibe anyway. It was a natural thing. But the Eskimo soundsystem was good. I think they were going to come over here at one stage. [New York nightclub] Twilo wanted to get them out, you know, get the place set for drum & bass, back when we were cool. [Laughs] But, yeah, it was a really good soundsystem definitely.

Nick Dwyer

We will listen to this, “True Romance.”

(music: DBridge – “True Romance”)

This tune blew up, it was a very big tune. How was it for you? Was it a bit of a confidence boost in a way, going from being in a clique to stepping out solo?

DBridge

It was difficult. I was really difficult. Within the confines of BC, because there’s a group mentality you’ve all got each other’s back, musically as well. So stepping out on your own is like, “OK, do people get what it is that I’m about, and are they going to get my interpretation of this music?” For a while I had a confidence problem because [with] Bad Company, I stepped away around two, three years ago, just around the time of Shot Down On Safari, which was our last big album.

Nick Dwyer

Maybe we’ll talk about that a bit later on, but just for a bit of a history lesson to get an idea of where you’ve come from, you were born in London, lived in London all your life, just moved out to Bristol?

DBridge

No, I’ve not been in London all my life, I lived in a little village called Malvern.

Nick Dwyer

Right.

DBridge

Which is in the West Midlands, out in the sticks basically. So it’s quite weird, because I was one of maybe three mixed race people in the whole town. It was quite an experience but it was good that I spent my formative years within school there, and it definitely helped me to become the person who I am. I think if I had lived in London, if I had stayed in London especially, I don’t think I would have been in music. I probably would have gone down a very dodgy road [laughs].

Nick Dwyer

Was there much happening musically in Malvern?

DBridge

Not really. I started a band, I was the lead singer of it for some reason [laughs] and we used to do covers of Simple Minds and Spencer Davis Group, and I did a good Ben E. King as well. I was quite good. But I think that was my first introduction into making music, and it wasn’t very good at all, you know? We had a fan club, as first-year students, but we were terrible. Some really dodgy things. But that was a start in a way.

I think that was when I first got my head around working with keyboards and trying to work with sequencers. What were we using back then? I can’t even remember, I think it was a [Roland] W-30 [workstation] or something. From there I moved back to London in ‘92, and my brother – he is going to be down here, Spacek – he had just had a decent advance from a publishing deal for his album and he bought a studio, and he didn’t know how to use it. So he had all this really nice equipment and just didn’t have a clue, just knew about the on button and that was about it. But I was coming from a computer background. He was like, “Come down and show me how to use it,” and from then I was just hooked, pretty much.

Nick Dwyer

Like you say, your brother Steve, he’s obviously involved in music. Have you guys come from a musical family? Were your parents were a big influence on you, or what kickstarted the fixation with music?

DBridge

For me, probably my brother to be honest. My musical taste has been quite eclectic. I’ve been into the proper cheesy ‘80s, loved all that, Duran Duran and a bit of the Waterboys. I loved the old...

Nick Dwyer

Duran Duran’s all good man.

DBridge

Duran Duran were rocking, trust me. Depeche Mode. Living in Malvern, I grew up listening to the chart show. There was no real underground music scene within Malvern at all. I grew up listening to pop, to the charts, and then as you grow up and experiment in many different ways your ears open up to new music. That’s when I started getting into… I went down the Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison route for a couple years. Then I got into the UK indie bands... Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, the Charlatans. They had a big influence on me. I started collecting records when they were around and just really taking note of what they were doing. Being in a band, we wanted to emulate these great bands but we were just nowhere near as good.

Nick Dwyer

Obviously moving down to London from Malvern, around ‘92, the whole UK rave scene was just kicking off. Did you get bitten by that bug?

DBridge

Yeah, my brother introduced me into that as well. He was a dirty raver, he was like, “Come on, come out with me.” The big nights back then were at Club Astoria, a thing called Roast. What was the other thing? Another big thing at the Hippodrome… Orange, Busby’s. This was just around the time when it was hardcore-stroke-jungle, it was definitely still in its infancy. The Prodigy with “Charly”, Altern-8 and SL2, and all these quite big hardcore groups were around. At the same time we were going raving he was taking me to things like Jah Shaka, these heavy reggae dub soundsystems. So it was like, OK, you can hear that there are similarities with other people I was listening to, being influenced by reggae, and you can hear that coming through in jungle at that time. So it had this whole ragga/reggae element to it.

Nick Dwyer

Going to all these parties, who were the DJs that you had to go check then? What were some of the tunes that you can remember from that era?

DBridge

For me, the DJs back then, it was all about Randall. Randall, too hot to handle. He was super tight with his mixing. His selection was second to none. Tunes from back then… there’s a tune called “Information Center” [by Gappa G and Hyper Hypa]. Do you remember that? I was never very good with names, so you’ll probably be able to back me up with some of this stuff. “Information Center,” LTJ Bukem’s music, that was big back then. We started our group around then. Me and my brother started a thing called the Sewage [Sewer] Monsters [laughs]. We pressed up 500 of our own records, distributed it ourselves, took it down to Black Market Records. As a lot of drum & bass was back then, just sold it out the back of a car, just going around to the individual record shops and building up a rapport.

Nick Dwyer

Was it cool to go through that whole DIY thing?

DBridge

I think it’s still relevant. Just in terms of being in control of what you’re doing. Starting from 500 records and then moving onto a record label where they’ve got the whole that side of things locked down, then to do my own thing it’s like, being in control yourself is just...

Nick Dwyer

The most important thing?

DBridge

In the context of my scene, definitely. It’s almost like, if majors and big independents don’t know that much about drum & bass, and don’t know how to market it as well as I could… do you know what I mean? I know who is listening to it and how to get it to them. Being with Bad Company, we’ve had overground success with some of our tracks and then we’ve done the same thing working in conjunction with major labels. And it’s like, with all their infrastructure and power and everything they got us one extra place in the chart. So it was like, “We can do this ourselves.” There’s definitely something to be said for doing it yourself as well. You’ve just got that ultimate control and there’s no answering to anyone. In drum & bass over the years we’ve had our fingers burnt in a lot of respects. Suddenly we were cool for a while and a lot of majors got involved and started signing up.

Nick Dwyer

Face magazine were doing big spreads on it.

DBridge

Exactly. We were in Dazed & Confused, Kate Moss was at... You know what I mean? But [the scene] learned to take the knocks and go back in on itself and police itself in a lot of ways. That’s why it’s still around. It could have quite easily died. I think it did in a lot of people’s eyes, but there were producers out there who were like, “No, this is too good to let go.”

Nick Dwyer

The UK music press especially, they’ve been so scathing over the years, they just seem to be up for a story. Do you think there is a lot to answer for, with this whole “build them up knock them down” mentality? One minute you’re on the cover and it’s like, “Yeah, drum & bass is the big thing.” Next minute it’s like, “Drum & bass is dead.”

DBridge

Yeah, personally I boiled it down to the emperor’s new clothes, really. With the press it’s cool because they think it’s cool, or they’re led to believe it’s cool, do you know what I mean? Or someone has told them that drum & bass is dead. They don’t really know it, you know? A lot of people don’t take the time to actually find out. Our scene has gone through a lot of ups and downs, and it’s going through another flux at the moment. What happens on the other side I’m not too sure [laughs].

Nick Dwyer

Going back to the influence side of things. One thing that had a healthy symbiosis with the explosion of rave culture in the UK was pirate radio. Tell us a little bit about pirate radio coming to London and how much this was an influence on you as well?

DBridge

It was a major influence. I remember I used to drive around South London and at one time you could pick up 14 or 15 pirate drum & bass stations. There was a South London one called Shockin’ FM, which I appeared on a few times. But they were a big part of creating a hype and creating a buzz and the feeling of belonging as well. We all used to go out at the weekend.

Nick Dwyer

But when you say “creating a hype,” it was a real hype, you know.

DBridge

Yeah, it was like, “What’s the next big party? What’s the one everyone is talking about?” This is before the Criminal Justice Bill managed to get a hold and messed everything up. The big parties were still going on, the Fantasias, the Tribal Gatherings. If you look at some of the people in the scene today, that was a way in for them as well, you know? There are two different ways into the drum & bass scene, DJing or production. And I think now that has thinned down a bit. You have to have both aspects to what you are doing, but back then, radio was the be-all-and-end-all in a lot of ways. You found out what party was on and which tunes were running and everyone was into, where the records were, what shops. It was an informative outlet. Because the major stations around at the time weren’t supporting it, and the DTI, the English governing body for radio, were having had a hard time shutting down stations, because the technology was open to everybody to just [broadcast].

Nick Dwyer

If they did catch you, though, there were severe penalties, weren’t there?

DBridge

There were, but I didn’t really hear of anyone to get into too majorly done. They would hide their receiver on a different block of flats, and by the time they got there, they were gone. I never really heard of anyone having stuff impounded. It was almost like there were so many stations and they were proving hard to track down, and they were moving locations slightly, so it was cool. It has changed now, there are not as many drum & bass [pirate radio stations]. I think that Kool FM is probably still going. But the underground radio stations have always had their finger on the pulse musically with the younger generation within London, you know?

Nick Dwyer

So there is a lot of grime on pirates now?

DBridge

Grime and dubstep and all sorts of music I don’t really know about [laughs].

Nick Dwyer

Going back to the Sewage Monsters thing, you and your brother were doing your thing, you pressed up your records, you went to Black Market and obviously sold the 500...

DBridge

Erm, no.

Nick Dwyer

No?! How many did you sell?

DBridge

Probably 200, 250 max.

Nick Dwyer

So you decided that the project wasn’t the one?

DBridge

No, it was just at a time… my brother was part of another thing called Stex, and Spacek, and he was just working on his album. He was dealing with the live sound of things, you know? Working in a proper band, and I was definitely more in the electronic route. So I started to work with a group called Armshouse Crew and a guy called Lennie De Ice, who was famous for one of the tunes that, I would say, that started this thing.

Nick Dwyer

Using the “Amen” break.

DBridge

Yeah, “We Are I.E.”, which is probably one of the biggest seminal tunes in the scene. I came along to it two or three years after that. It’s quite weird, back then I was the quiet boy in the corner. Back then all the big DJs used to come around there, like Grooverider and Fabio and Hype and all these people. And it’s weird, none of them recognized me and none of them knew who I was. That was about ‘94, ‘95.

Nick Dwyer

Was it a good learning curve to be around them? Obviously they had already established a label that worked with getting DATs to DJs to cut dubs with. Was that a good learning curve?

DBridge

Yeah, I think it was. It was a good foot in the door, definitely. I keep my eyes and ears open. I was working around people like, I don’t know if you know Timmi Magic, who was a part of the crew back then, and Spoony. This was when they were into drum & bass. They went off and did their garage thing and became quite big DJs on Radio 1 in their own right. It was good to work out… not to work out my place, but just to work out how things work. Who do I need to be speaking to? Who do I need to get my tunes to and how does the whole structure work? It definitely helped.

Nick Dwyer

A lot of people’s first introduction to your name was Future Forces, which was with Jason, who went on to form half of Bad Company. Tell us, how did you meet with them?

DBridge

Basically, a mutual friend of ours introduced us to Trouble On Vinyl Records. I went down there and they had two studios, the main studio downstairs and the cut-your-teeth, pre-production studio upstairs. Jason was already downstairs, he had a release. I was finding my feet and getting the label used to what I was doing, which was producing tracks 24/7, literally living in that studio. I used to sleep under the mixing desk, it used to get proper grimey down there – but back then you were definitely doing it for the love of it, so sleeping under the desk is no thing, it’s part and parcel. I met him around ‘96, ‘97, and that was when the whole Blue Note and Metalheadz thing was kicking off. It was around that time that we were getting influenced by what was going on in the scene.

So that label at that time, it had two labels – Trouble On Vinyl, which was their main one, their more dancefloor, rave-oriented label, and another one called Renegade, which was catering for... what label did they have then? Intelligent, that was it. Intelligent drum & bass, whatever that is. So what we were doing was obviously a bit grittier, a bit grimier and a bit more aggy. So we literally forced them to start Renegade Hardware. That was mine and Jason’s label. Just before we left we’d had 11 out of the 13 releases. That label kind of started a lot of other careers off, you know? Usual Suspects were on there, even Friction was coming out through Hardware and Trouble On Vinyl. It’s nice to know you have helped to start something that helped other people as well.

Nick Dwyer

Shall we listen another track now? Is there something you have got that we can have a listen to?

DBridge

Yeah, OK. This is a Jenna G thing I want to play.

Nick Dwyer

A very talented vocalist.

DBridge

Yeah, she was part of a crew that was called Un-Cut – no, Future Cut, sorry. They had a major deal and I think, got burned again [laughs].

Nick Dwyer

You have said before that history has dictated that drum & bass artists, every single one pretty much, they go to a major, they get their fingers burned badly, and I think Future Cut, from the stories you hear, is a brilliant case of that. Huge advances and then just...

DBridge

Yeah, as much as it would like to be kind of commercially accepted, it is always going to have a hard time, because we have been quite averse to working with vocals for some weird reason. We always thought that, “Why should we have to add vocals to our music, just so the ‘overground’ will listen to us?” It’s quite a stuck-up attitude in a lot of ways, do you know what I mean? But drum & bass has always had the mentality of rather than us going to them, let them come to us, so we have always wanted to make the underground bigger, if anything, rather than trying to get our stuff more commercially accepted.

Nick Dwyer

I mean, speaking about vocalists though, a lot of the times with drum & bass when there have been vocal tunes, some of them seemed more tokenism: “OK, let us just stick a vocal in there.” Whereas Jenna G actually seems like a proper vocalist, who is tailored to the music properly.

DBridge

Yeah, she is really very talented. I think because she grew up listening to it as well, she’s got a bit of understanding. It’s like when you work as a DJ and you’re working with MCs, it’s better to have an MC who knows what you’re playing and knows when to shut up. I think the same kind of applies with Jenna, she has an understanding of the music, so it just works in her favour. She can lay over what she does and her influences are over it. I think the tracks coming from her album are really good, some really good stuff.

Nick Dwyer

What’s this track called?

DBridge

This track is called “Silent Wonder.” I think it’s out already. It came out on vinyl not too long ago.

(music: DBridge feat. Jenna G - “Silent Wonder”)

Nick Dwyer

How was it working with Jenna? Do you enjoy working with vocalists?

DBridge

Yeah. I’ve done some things with my brother.

Nick Dwyer

That is the one thing you probably get asked a lot. Steve is an amazing vocalist. Are there some [collaborations] floating about?

DBridge

I’m working on some stuff with him. It’s weird because we’ve been on quite separate paths within the music scene so it’s quite rare that we get together. He throws me some a cappellas I can fiddle around with, but I want to work on a 12” specifically, you know? I’m going out to see him soon and work on that. But working with vocalists, it was a whole new ball game for me, coming from drum & bass. Back then there were Ataris, and now Logic and everything, and this whole world of tracking and multi-tracking and backing vocals. So it has added another string to my bow, definitely, working in that field. And working with Steve has helped me a lot in that respect. I think if I did it now without his help it would probably sound all wrong and completely messed up.

Nick Dwyer

For something like that, did Jenna actually come to you, or were vocals sent to you? How did the recording process work?

DBridge

This track I’d written, for a while I had envisioned my brother singing on it, and then I was asked to help on the Jenna album. Because she is so talented, I was like, “Here’s the song. We can mess around with it as you see fit,” and she came back with all this stuff and I was just like, “OK.” Basically, we went down to Zinc’s studio, he’s putting out the album on Bingo, and tried to get a mix, tried to mix it. It could still be better, the mix, I think. It’s definitely fun working with vocalists and I want to do it more. I’m working on the album at the moment, just starting getting into mic-ing up instruments now, things like that.

Nick Dwyer

Which is a fairly un-drum & bass way to go about things, you know?

DBridge

Well, yeah. Within Bad Company, we’d already tried it out with this live project we were doing called Digital Nation.

Nick Dwyer

This guy called Paul Kodish...

DBridge

Yeah, Paul Kodish. He used to drum for Apollo 440, I think he drummed for Jean-Michel Jarre and things like that. So we had already kind of started down that route. But we’re using this guy, he’s really good at hip-hop flute, no, beatbox flute, sorry – it’s sick, proper sick, so we’re trying to infuse that into drum & bass, which is interesting. That’s what I do love about drum & bass, is that it can meld and connect with so many different forms of music. There’s hip-hop, rock, classical, disco, do you know what I mean? All these different versions, and the common theme is that drum & bass can work with all those elements, with those styles, which is cool.

Nick Dwyer

One of the things I wanted to talk about is the history side of things. Something that was just so prevalent, especially in drum & bass, was the whole thing of dubplate culture. Actually going to the cutting house and cutting plates. There seemed to be, not so much a social element to it, but it was like the epicenter where everyone would link up and swap DATs and so forth. Does anyone cut plates anymore? And is it a sad thing to see places like [mastering company] Music House [close down], and that whole culture has kind of died?

DBridge

It has, but I can’t say that I ever was in the dubplate culture anyway. When I used to go out raving, the DJs were basically playing the latest white labels and promos that they got. So now this whole kind of dubplate culture came in where it was like, “OK, I’ve got this and I’m different from you,” which was cool, but it has had an adverse affect, I think in a lot of ways. This whole bartering system came into play, a “what have you got for me?” kind of attitude. It was just so uncool, you know? But it was good though, I think. Back then we used to go down to this little place called Music House. Everything was cut there, reggae used to be cut there, the garage scene were coming through there...

Nick Dwyer

It was Wookie’s brother.

DBridge

Yeah, Wookie’s brother.

Nick Dwyer

Leon.

DBridge

Yeah, Leon works down there. It was good being able to socialize with people you produce with, and it was cool in that sense because we were spending this money on these dubplates.

Nick Dwyer

I’m pretty much sure everyone has a theory about what a dubplate is, but some of you don’t. Tell us, what exactly is a dubplate?

DBridge

OK, a dubplate, basically, is just a one-off pressing of a tune. So, say, a tune I have completed today, I can take it to the cutting house and get a one-off record made to play in the club that night.

Nick Dwyer

And it’s not cut onto vinyl.

DBridge

No, it’s cut on a special lacquer. It has a piece of metal running through it, and you probably get about 15-20 plays out of it before it really starts to lose quality or jump. So yeah, it was a really big part of our scene. It used to get quite boring sometimes when you’re sitting down there and it’s the same song being cut by 15 DJs, and it’s songs that are eight, nine minutes long.

Nick Dwyer

You have to sit and wait while you get your plates cut. You have to wait through the whole thing.

DBridge

Yeah, it’s just long-winded. We did a track once, it was nine minutes long and it got cut by about 15 people. I was fed up by the time... I hated the tune, you know what I mean?

Nick Dwyer

You got sick of it even before it had been tested in the party?

DBridge

Exactly. When Music House died, it was, in a way, their own fault, because of the quality. People were starting to demand better quality dubplates, and they weren’t getting it, because we were all cutting onto 10” and we weren’t getting the quality that we wanted. We were getting it because it was cheap and it was cash-in-hand and there was no VAT involved. But then it was like, OK, because we’re cutting this corner, we’re actually cutting corners sonically in terms of how the music sounds within the club. People started to go to another company called Heathman’s, and we were paying upwards of nearly £60 for one 12”.

Nick Dwyer

Two tracks, £60?

DBridge

Two tracks, £60.

Nick dwyer

How many plates would you cut in one session?

DBridge

In one session, maybe four or five. Yeah.

nick dwyer

It starts to add up.

DBridge

It does start to add up. I remember I went away for two weeks and I thought I’d missed out on so much music and I cut 10, 15 tunes, but it came to something well over £1,000 and I was like, “Hold on, this is an expensive game.” [Laughs] But obviously, the CDJs came around, so that kind of had an effect on the drum & bass scene. I think Bad Company were one of the first to start using CDJs within the drum & bass scene as well, because we were always caught up in the latest technology and we always wanted the best, the latest, greatest piece of equipment, and CDJs were just starting to hold their own within the club.

Nick Dwyer

Better for your back as well, rather than carrying around a whole sack of dubplates.

DBridge

But the thing is, it has become a big issue within the drum & bass scene. “Oh, you burn CDs,” and, “Oh, vinyl’s dying.” It’s a hard question to find the right answer to. Within drum & bass now everyone uses AIM…

Nick Dwyer

AOL Instant Messenger.

DBridge

So in a way that has become the new Music House. Instead of people going down to this place and waiting for Ed Rush to turn up with the DAT, we’re like...

Nick Dwyer

You sit alone and wait for Ed Rush to turn up online.

DBridge

Yeah, pretty much. I think the scene can be more experimental in what is played. As far as a dubplate goes, if I’m cutting this plate, I will make sure that I play it, you know? So I want to get my money’s worth out of it. Whereas nowadays, because of the advent of the CDJs, I can try things out before I commit. When it comes to my sets it has definitely helped. I can be a bit more open, a bit more diverse in the directions I can go, and I can literally get a track that afternoon and play it that evening without it breaking the bank.

nick dwyer

What about quality, though, with the whole MP3 thing? Do you think there is a point where the mixdown is just a little bit sloppy? Sonically, do you think there’s a difference with MP3s and CDs?

DBridge

It’s hard to answer because there’s so many different areas where you’re affecting the sound. With drum & bass now, everyone’s moved over to the digital world, so that’s going to affect how something sounds in the first place, and then you’re working with MP3s, so that may have a certain quality. People nowadays are trying to... The mixdowns are definitely better, and the production’s getting better within drum & bass. We were all using dedicated machines back then. We were all using the E-Mu E6400, or even earlier than that it was the Akai S950, the S1100, and basic sequencers. Now everything’s gone into the digital world. People who produce music and have a good understanding of music can notice the difference, but if you’re asking the average punter, they’re probably too off their face to notice.

nick dwyer

More often than not, the soundsystems are probably not the best that they can be.

DBridge

Yeah, exactly, but I think since I’ve moved over to the digital world, it’s like noticing I have to work a lot harder to get my mixes sounding how I would want them to sound, whereas before, I was using the dedicated sampler and the E-Mu had a certain quality to it, and it was going through the desk. Now I’m trying to emulate that within the digital world. After I’ve spent all this time on this production, now it’s, “OK, where is my sound being routed through and what soundcard am I using?” That’s going to affect how it sounds, do you know what I mean?

So you’ve got a lot of these little factors affecting the production as a whole, but I think it’s getting a lot better. People in my generation, a lot of us are bringing our old equipment out again. A lot of us are getting our E-Mus back out and getting some of the old outboard gear that we had, just because there was a certain warmth with analog and digital. There’s a whole aspect of warmth to the sound with what we were doing. Speaking to [people] where I get my records mastered as well, the cutting houses, they’ve noticed a definite difference in quality within drum & bass, and they’re trying to adjust to it as well. The whole market, the scene as a whole is trying to adjust to the digital world. Other problems that we’ve got, like if I’m playing off a CD, I’m relying on whoever sent me that tune to have mixed it down to a decent standard that I can play it out, whereas before, because I was cutting a dubplate, that track was being mastered by an engineer, and so there was a certain level of quality and evenness. So it’s a bit uneven out there, sonically, but I think it will get there eventually. Hopefully it will.

Nick Dwyer

Coming back to the evolution of your productions, we keep coming back to the Bad Company thing. You and Jason were working on tracks for Renegade Hardware like you were saying. At what point did Bad Company come about, and what was the whole idea behind forming a collective?

DBridge

At that time the scene was going through a bit of a low, we felt. We felt that there wasn’t any energy, or not as much energy as there could be. Drum & bass had stripped itself down almost too much, so it was a little bit lifeless in a lot of aspects. Our original ethos, we just wanted to get the whole energy of the rave scene back into it, back into what we were doing. And I think, because the scene had changed anyway, because of the introduction of the Criminal Justice Bill, which was putting these big illegal parties out of business, the music was going into the clubs. But it didn’t quite have the same energy. So we thought, well, maybe a musical thing needs to happen. I was with Renegade Hardware at the time. There was me, Jason and three other guys, and they basically tried to sign us with this Fisher-Price contract. It should have been written in crayon, it was terrible. [Laughter] They came with an ultimatum: “If you don’t sign this, then go.”

Nick Dwyer

Can you give us an example?

DBridge

Oh, it was just there was no contract to talk of, if you know what I mean. It was just like he decided to write something on a bit of paper and said: “Sign here.” I was like, “Come on!” Rather than the artist name, he wanted to sign my name, my personal name, for five years, and I was like, “Come on, this is drum & bass, and really, why?” We found out afterwards there was a major label that had been sniffing around Renegade Hardware’s roster of artists, so because we weren’t officially signed to Renegade Hardware, they felt this label could then quite easily bypass them and they would get nothing out of it. He ended up losing in the long run by trying to make us sign this stupid contract.

That was me and Jason, and then Fresh as well, he had just started down there. We just decided that it was a case of, “Why can’t we do this ourselves?” The drum & bass scene is made up of self-owned labels and it didn’t seem that hard. We were like, “OK, we’ve got the studio.” A friend of ours gave us £2,000 to start off with, to help us start the business, and we spent the first £1,000 on a pair of speakers. That was the level of importance for us. That was around ‘98, and our idea was we were going to just flood the scene with our music. There had to be something that we produced that you liked. It was ridiculous. At one stage there were nearly 35, 40 Bad Company tunes floating around. So we made a point of almost creating our own niche within the whole thing, because we had so much music.

Nick Dwyer

Obviously you achieved that aim. Things blew up pretty majorly in all the magazines and everything.

DBridge

Yeah.

Nick Dwyer

Did that surprise you? You had come in it with a really headstrong attitude anyway. Or was it a surprise that things got to the level that they did?

DBridge

Yeah and no. We were aiming for something high, and in a lot of respects, we were aiming for something higher than what drum & bass could provide us with in a lot of ways. We had reached the top within the scene and we were still asking questions, like, “There’s got to be more to it than this,” which is why we started the live thing as well. Maybe there is another angle to all of this. In terms of was it a surprise, I don’t think so.

Audience member

Excuse me, you’ve got me curious now. I want to hear something...

DBridge

What have I got from Bad Company... you’d think I would [have something]. We do VIPs and specials because we DJ, so it’s a little something that I’ve got. This is a mixture of two tracks which came out on a label called Prototype, which is Grooverider’s label. Probably one of our biggest tracks was called “Planet Dust” and on the other side it was a track called “Speedball,” and we basically blended the two tracks together just for a little DJ tool. This is probably an example of what we were about. Let’s give this a go.

(music: Bad Company - “Planet Dust” vs “Speedball” DJ tool)

Nick Dwyer

Probably the big question with all of that stuff, when you have got four very creative people, how does it work in the studio?

DBridge

It doesn’t always, to be honest. We decided quite early on that BC was going to be any combination of the four of us. We tried to make our studio as four-player as possible, but ended up very much one player, you know? It was always like that, everyone was geared around that one chair, and then it was just like, “Yeah, why don’t you try…?” It can be hard, definitely.

Nick Dwyer

When you have got four different people with four very separate ideas, do you think in situations like that these collectives always doomed to fail, to a certain degree?

DBridge

Yeah, in some sense. It’s difficult because at the end of the day we are dealing with electronic music here, so it’s not as if I can be over there jamming on my guitar, working out something to go in the tune. And likewise with the drummer and bass player and whatever, so electronic music pretty much is one screen in front of you and the keyboards, and you have all got to try and fight to get your voice across. And that’s the thing within a group, it will always be just a quarter of what and who you are in a lot of senses, you know what I mean? Now, I’m doing my own thing. I can really explore where I am musically, and be quite selfish with my music. And that’s a nice feeling to be able to do that, because BC was… it wasn’t limiting in a certain sense, but it’s just that frustration, that you’re just a small part of a whole.

Nick Dwyer

Like we said, things did get really big. I mean, what number in the charts?

DBridge

I think about 25 or something.

Nick Dwyer

Then obviously, things did fall apart. At what point did you realize, “You know what, I don’t know if I’m in this anymore?”

DBridge

I think it came to a stage for all of us where we just realized we all had... Like I said, we all had very different ideas and just wanted different things out of life and out of music. We had different reasons why we were doing it. Working within a group it’s like, OK, there’s so many different aspects of putting out a record, like the artwork and mix CDs, track orders. So you’ve all go to sit down and agree on something, and we didn’t always agree. It just got to the point where it was like, we needed the time apart to be able to explore what it is that we can do. As Bad Company we nearly split up a few times, to be honest, and even quite early on, but we knew that we had something going. There is that side of that like, OK, from a marketability point of view, yeah...

Nick Dwyer

And you got to see a lot of world...

DBridge

Yeah, definitely, Bad Company has taken me around the world three or four times. So it’s probably as big as it could ever get within the drum & bass scene, as big as the drum & bass scene would allow it to get. We were just getting older and it’s just a natural progression, I think. We’ve talked about getting back together as well, but I don’t know. I don’t know.

Nick Dwyer

It brings us to this thing on your T-shirt here [Exit Records], at what point we’re at now. I don’t know if you’ve got “Libra” or “The Bride” here?

DBridge

I’ve got the thing I did with… what have I got?

Nick Dwyer

Exit Recordings is your label. Was the idea for Exit already there in the back of your head while you were still with Bad Company?

DBridge

Well, in a weird kind of way, I didn’t want to start this label. The ideal situation that I wanted was, OK, all of us together are Bad Company and we’ve created this record label, BC Recordings. So now I would like to be able to be DBridge on BC Recordings and Fresh can be Fresh, and take a leaf out of how Reprazent and Full Cycle did it with that. So we could all be people individually and then come back and help each other as a unit.

Nick Dwyer

But under a banner.

DBridge

Under a banner, but it was... I think maybe just because of who we are and the people involved, we couldn’t get past that for some reason. It saddened me a bit, but it was out of necessity as well. I wanted to be able to express myself and put across what it is that this music meant to me and my interpretation of it. I think at the time when I did this label, people weren’t expecting the music that I was doing...

Nick Dwyer

Like I said, it would be cool if one of the first two releases.

dbrdige

I hope I’ve got that here. I probably don’t, knowing me.

Nick Dwyer

Or even one of those early things, kind of on that tip.

DBridge

Yeah, let’s see what I’ve got.

Nick Dwyer

If you listen to the track that we listened to before, the Bad Company track, and then all of a sudden what you were doing first off, do you think it shocked a few people at the start?

DBridge

It did, it did, because they were expecting some kind of like rave, terror, anthem bashing [screams with hands in the air] “let’s have it!” And that’s not really what I’m about. That’s not really what I brought to BC as well. I’m a bit more chilled out. I like melodies, I like chords and also I like the grit as well. So I’m personally trying to fuse the two, just getting some soul back into it. Yeah, what track were we looking for? I haven’t got that, I’m sorry, but I’ve got this track. I did an EP for Bingo, which is a big label, and Zinc was one of the first people to take interest in what I was doing as a solo artist. Because when I left BC I was caught in this real gray area, a definite gray area, I just wasn’t really sure whether the music I was producing was relevant, more than anything.

Nick Dwyer

And also, coming from a group that within a certain genre is as big as it can get, there are all these expectations, all eyes are on you. And you felt that?

DBridge

Yeah, because I think then Fresh started up Breakbeat Kaos, which was responsible for putting out the Pendulum album with Adam F involved. So they had already gone on to continue what Bad Company was about. So there was that pressure there, definitely. I just knew that it was a case of staying true to the craft, true to the music that I loved. I had to kind of go back and ask, what was it about this music that I like? And why isn’t it present anymore, you know? So I sort of went back in and just listened to the music. Working with my brother as well helped me a lot, just working on other genres of music, because I think getting stuck in the one genre you will become quite blinkered.

Nick Dwyer

I was just going to say that. How important has it been for you to maintain your sanity having these different projects? I mean, you worked on the Spacek project, you have done some hip-hop beats.

DBridge

Definitely, it has taught me a lot, because when you’re working at these different tempos, these lower tempos, you get this whole different palette in a way, a whole different area to put sounds. Especially with the lower tempos you’ve got this space to breathe, you have space to create grooves. For me it’s like getting the groove back into it, because drum & bass is quite rigid in terms of it’s very on-bar, everything is just like one-twos and there is no real room for messing around with quantizers as such. But with that last track I’ve played, “Silent Wonder,” I definitely wanted to step away from tracks having to be produced a certain way, and I think drum & bass has suffered from that a little bit because it is a DJ-led scene as well. The producers have made music for that rather than for themselves.

Nick Dwyer

It really seems that, whereas ten years ago you had producers that were just producers, what happened is all those producers started DJing, they started playing at the big raves and whatnot, and all of a sudden the production would change to become formulaic for the dancefloor. Instant impact, “how can I get the most rewinds?” kind of thing.

DBridge

Yeah, and that’s what annoyed me the most, and that’s why I nearly fell out of the scene. I mean, it’s really obvious some of the moves that people are making, chasing the dollar and that kind of thing, and it’s like, what happened to the love of it? I mean, that probably happens in any music scene. You grow up and you’ve got mortgages and kids to think about, so being experimental doesn’t pay the bills for a lot of people. [Laughs] So that affected the scene. But it’s coming back round again. It’s like, those people who are in it for the money, you can see and you can hear it quite easily. And I think you can hear that within most music anyway, but it was never so obvious in drum & bass as now it is. So maybe that’s the kind of a sign that the scene is growing even more, you know?

nick Dwyer

What’s this track called?

DBridge

I’m going to play you “Pipe Dreams.” That’s one of my favorites. “Pipe Dreams” was on my EP for Bingo.

(music: DBridge – “Pipe Dreams”)

Nick Dwyer

Compared with the track we heard before and what we’ve really come to know you for, your music through Bad Company, it’s a lot different. What was influencing this deeper side of things for you at that point in time, and still obviously does now?

DBridge

What was influencing? Well, it always comes back to my brother. At the time when, say like that last track before, it was the big rave track, we were doing an album called Shot Down on Safari, which was a big album within the drum & bass scene, but for me personally wasn’t where I was at musically. Even though it was named Bad Company too, I didn’t have nothing to do with it. That’s when I was caught in this flux of, “What am I going to do?” My brother was like, “Look, come over here, and help me with my album.”

Nick Dwyer

The Spacek album.

DBridge

Yeah, this was the Spacek album on !K7, Vintage Hi-Tech. I helped out on quite a few of the tracks on that, wrote about three of the tracks. I think what I realized is that I had almost fallen out of love with music because of what was going on within my own scene, and he gave me this, like, “Look, no, check it, listen to this.” I was able to say, “Well, OK, there are things that I know within drum & bass that I can apply to this music, that I can apply to this tempo, and likewise as well.” I love hip-hop and soul and R&B and funk and things like that, and it’s those things that I try to get across in what I’m doing.

Drum & bass has a real grit to it that works so well in clubs, but at the same time it’s sometimes devoid of melody. He taught me all about working on an MPC for the first time as well, and just getting used to swing. It was almost like the goal that I found, which became a common goal was like, because we’re working in this digital world, to try and get that human feel into what we’re doing. Especially with drums and getting the way the kicks and things swing, and the way the breaks roll. Getting that human element into what we’re doing is quite important to him and to me as well. At the end of the day, no drummer that I know is digital-tight.

A lot of the breaks that the scene is well known for using are from people who weren’t digitally tight. If I can then I want to try and emulate the live feel within the digital environment. It’s easier to do at slower tempos but it’s a little harder than drum & bass. It’s slowing down, thankfully. It was getting a bit out of hand. I think I’ve heard people producing at like 185 BPM, and that’s just... You can’t do much with that.

Nick Dwyer

Bordering close to gabber, isn’t it?

Nick Dwyer

It’s close.

Nick Dwyer

For you, how does a tune take shape? How does the creative process work for you? Do you hear something and that kind of inspires it? Do you watch something on telly, or just have a thought – how does that process work for you?

DBridge

Well, I come from a sampling school of making music. So I crate-dig, I go looking for records, looking for new samples. I’ve never really been one for synths and sound-shaping. I’ve never really got my head around that. More often than not the sample I find leads on to other things. I mainly start off with drums. Drums is where we get going from.

Nick Dwyer

Favorite breaks for you?

DBridge

Favorite break? Probably “Hot Pants.” And of course Amen as well, but there’s so many different variations of the Amen now .

Nick Dwyer

What is your studio setup looking like at the moment?

DBridge

That’s it there [points at laptop].

Nick Dwyer

That’s it?

DBridge

That’s my studio.

Nick Dwyer

Logic on your Mac?

DBridge

Yeah, Logic on my Mac. I’ve got some of my outboard gear back, I got my E-Mu back, I’ve got an Eventide effects unit, Ensoniq DP4 and a little Mackie 16 deskboard. But more and more it’s coming just within that [points at the laptop]. I think what I have realized is rather than spending all this money on outboard and stuff, I’ve decided to just get a really good soundcard. So I’ve just got the Apogee Rosetta 800, a really good quality sound card. I was quite surprised, that kind of freaked me out when I first got it, because most people I have seen use the MOTU 828 sound card, and then comparing the two, my stuff is sounding… It’s not as good as it should be, obviously. And that’s the thing, within the digital world you have to spend money to get that quality. And I’m not even sure if it is as good quality as it was before, you know? So that’s why a lot of us are going back to the old stuff, but pretty much here it’s just Logic, and everything I do is pretty much based around the EXS sampler.

Nick Dwyer

Obviously, we are talking about before Exit Recordings. You have got another label which has made up a big part of your production for the last while, which is the Exit/Versus thing and collaborations. You are collaborating with a lot of people, with other people that are of major note in the drum & bass scene, and they have their own unique vibe. I mean, how important is the collaboration thing for you at the moment?

DBridge

It’s important for me because, for me personally, I’m always learning. Especially now, when we are in this realm of things [points at his laptop], just probably half of the people out here know more than me with some of this stuff. I’ve constantly got a hunger to learn new things. With Exit/Versus as well it was a chance to work with the people I look up to as well. It was a good excuse to get them out of their studios and come to mine, or for me to go and visit them. And I’ve learned a lot working with Calibre.

Nick Dwyer

Have you got that tune here?

DBridge

Yeah. Working with Calibre, he’s like a musical don, you know? Just the way he manipulates samples. And I worked with D.Kay as well, another big producer, and learned a lot from him in terms of mixdowns and things like that. Yeah, I want to work with everybody pretty much within my scene. I mean, I’m up for it.

Nick Dwyer

And how does it work in terms of the dynamic in the studio? How does it vary from person to person?

DBridge

It does. With Calibre I went over to Belfast for five days and we just hung out for a bit. Hung out, listening to music as well, and we have realized that we have common interests and common themes in our music. Some of the samples that we were bringing to the table it was like, “OK yeah, I know that,” and “Yeah, I was thinking of using that.” So we’ve got similar views in that point of view. It depends, the other side of the track I play, a track called “Providence,” with a group called Commix, that was all done within Reason.

Nick Dwyer

Wow.

DBridge

And they had been working with Reason for quite a while, so that was a new experience as well, getting my head around that one.

Nick Dwyer

What are your views on Reason?

DBridge

What are my views on Reason? I don’t know, I think it has its place. For a while there was a snotty attitude within drum & bass. People could tell if something was made on Reason, and certain labels weren’t signing things if things were made on Reason [interviewer laughs]. But for me, I haven’t really given it the time of day to be able to pass judgement, but I did feel for me personally that it had a certain overall sound to it which I didn’t want. It was hard to get your own personalized sound to it, because you’re using the components, just these components within that program. But yeah, it was interesting to use it, not sure if I’d use it again personally. But I used to use Fruity Loops as well for a while. Fruity Loops is a pretty cool program. Fruity Loops is good for building breaks.

Nick Dwyer

I mean, it seems that pretty much 80% of the whole grime scene, all these young guys, they just use Fruity Loops.

DBridge

Yeah, I heard reggaeton pretty much uses Fruity Loops as well. There’s something to be said for that program, definitely, it’s a good program. But yeah, this track is going to be the next release on Exit/Versus, which is me and Calibre, and then me and Commix on the other side.

(music: dBridge vs. Calibre – “Hot Flush”)

(music: DBridge vs. Commix – “Providence”)

In my scene that’s probably an example of a tune that’s well liked, but won’t necessarily get played.

nick dwyer

Why do you say that?

DBridge

Within the scene it’s still quite... People don’t want to stray too far from the norm, shall we say?

nick dwyer

Yeah, yeah.

DBridge

I think that’s the problem the drum & bass scene had for a while. It was producing music for the wrong reasons. I think now, especially this year and next year, more people are producing music that they want to produce, or producing for the love of it again. That did go out of it for a while. I think one good thing about it is there’s this new generation now of kids coming through, into drum & bass, who are doing it for the right reasons again, who are doing it for the same reasons that people my age were doing it for. I’ve kind of, in a weird kind of way, accepted the fact that I’m not going to make much money from my record label and that’s not why I’ve got it. It’s not really...

nick dwyer

But creatively, you’re feeling more honest than you’ve ever been?

DBridge

Yeah definitely, it’s like I can put out the music that I’m into. I can spend time on putting out a product which is right, rather than putting out something because I’ve got to be able to fund the next release. You can get caught in that cycle of creativity over running a business. Those things have an effect on the music and I’m sure it’s affected other scenes as well, but the drum & bass scene has definitely been affected by that need to... I shouldn’t say it’s a need to make money, but to think that because everyone’s listening to it…. It’s just bandwagon jumping. It’s been going on for years within the scene.

Since I’ve been doing my thing now, trying to do my thing, people are like, "Oh, OK." I’m probably going to suffer from the same thing as well. What I’m doing is the cool thing now. Who knows? It’s just our scene’s like that. I think it’s going to take a few years yet, but there’s music that’s being made that just won’t get played, whereas years ago it used to. But I think that will come as the new generation of listeners grow up with the music. They’ve got a better understanding. For me, the difficulty I’ve got is because I’m playing to second generation ravers. Some of the music out there is presenting drum & bass in a way [that] I can see why the present crop of people are into it. It’s not that dissimilar from when I was going out, it’s not that dissimilar from happy hardcore and hardcore. We’ve all got our ways in. We’re going for this second cycle now, a new wave of producers and a new wave of listeners. Hopefully where drum & bass was in ‘96, where it was at its most experimental and most challenging, that will come around again. There’s a new crop of artists that are stepping up the game.

Nick Dwyer

One of the most important things about that, and I’d just like to touch on that quickly, is the whole distribution thing. I think drum & bass, out of all genres of music, went really tits up with the distribution companies. [DBridge sighs]. I mean, I know you guys were affected by…

DBridge

Oh, we were affected big time.

Nick Dwyer

Tell us a little bit about this. And how important it is to find an honest distributor?

DBridge

[Sighs] Good luck. So, when we was part of BC, we were putting things out, and we were so caught up in putting music out, it was our own fault in a lot of ways. We didn’t have the business sense of what we were doing. We were just like, “Whoa, let’s put out records,” and, “Whoa, I’m going to America tomorrow,” you know? It was just doing things because it’s funny and it’s a laugh, and then suddenly you realize there is some money being made. And then the distributors we were with were really shady, they were so shady. And probably 75% of the drum & bass scene went through this one distributor as well. To cut a long story short: they ran off with our money.

Nick Dwyer

But we’re not talking a couple of quid here.

DBridge

[Burying his face in his hands] No, we had lost out on about close to £200,000.

Nick Dwyer

And you were just one artist.

DBridge

Yeah.

Nick Dwyer

That got ripped off for that amount?

DBridge

Yeah, we were the biggest debt. That and EMI were the biggest debt. EMI came first, and then we were second. And part of that was our own fault for not [knowing] it for what was going on properly.

Nick Dwyer

This was only over a period of releasing records with them for two, three years. How on earth did the distribution company manage to…?

DBridge

Well, that distribution company was conceived in a prison cell [laughter]. That probably goes some way to saying how £200,000 can go missing. It all got very gangster, and all got very silly, and someone who owed a lot of money just decided to clean out that bank account, basically. So, we went through the legal route of trying to take them to court and get our money back and it was the most longwinded… It got to the point where we sat down and we were like, “We may as well just wash our hands of this debt,” you know? What were they saying? “We can pay you back a pound a week.” One pound and there is £200,000, and you get one pound every week, £52 a year. Actually, first of all we went down there and acquired some studio equipment in lieu of payment [chuckles] So we got a lathe out of it.

Nick Dwyer

Like a cutting lathe?

DBridge

Yeah, we got a cutting lathe out of it, we got a pair of Tannoy speakers, got a Moog, got some cool bits of equipment. But it still didn’t add up to what they owed us. So right now, there’s probably only the two main distributors – there’s three, there’s another one coming through – but there’s two main distributors within drum & bass, which are SRD and ST Holdings.

Nick Dwyer

You’re with ST, or?

DBridge

I’m with SRD.

Nick Dwyer

OK. What’s your relationship like with them?

DBridge

It’s good. I’m doing a pressing and distribution [deal], I’m in a P&D deal at the moment. I don’t know if you know, a pressing and distribution deal basically means they pay for all my pressing and distribution. Literally, I could just provide them with a DAT and they could have a record out for me. It’s weird, distribution companies almost took on the role of what record labels should have done in a way. In the sense that they’re basically funding people’s ideas. So they’re funding Exit right now, until I get to a stage where I can take back and do the pressing myself.

Nick Dwyer

Now with a P&D deal, who has the say on, for example, how many copies get pressed up? Or if it goes out of print, represses, all that kind of stuff. Is it with you or is it with the company?

DBridge

They obviously try and sell it as best as they can, they usually get the pre-sales in and then do the preorders off the back of those, of the pre-sales. The drum & bass scene is a lot more cautious than it used to be. We used to press up [more] because it would work out cheaper to press more, obviously, and then we were like, “OK, well, we know we are going to get like a re-order of 500 or 1,000,” so we have already got that out there. But nowadays you can’t always been guaranteed that, because our sales figures have dropped dramatically. Drum & bass, in terms of vinyl, we were outselling most other forms of music.

Nick Dwyer

I mean, for example, a big tune would sell how many?

DBridge

A big tune would sell between 15 and 20,000. I think back then an average tune was doing maybe six, seven [thousand] and the average nowadays is between two and a half and three thousand. So yeah, it has changed dramatically. But what always annoyed me though is that the drum & bass scene, if it was sold through the right shops, we’d be charting every week. It’s just because our records don’t sell through the majors and the chains we don’t get that positioning. To get a top ten hit in the UK right now in the pop charts, you only have to sell maybe 12,000 in a week, which isn’t a lot really, and drum & bass used to do that on a regular basis.

Nick Dwyer

They basically just take the SoundScans [sales measurements] from the HMVs and all those [chain stores], not the Black Markets.

DBridge

All the independent record shops, it doesn’t get recognized. So yeah, HMV, Woolworths and all that kind of thing. The reason why I’m with SRD is because they have a connection with the chain stores. So my music does get into the Virgins and HMVs, which is in itself another double-edged sword because with chain stores they’ve got a monopoly on the whole thing. So they’re like, “Well, we’ll take this amount at this reduced rate.” They get the most ridiculously reduced rate, and even then it’s sale or return. You don’t want to be end up with a load of over-pressed records because HMV decided they didn’t need that many. So you see, getting that right is a balance.

Nick Dwyer

Just to wrap things up, what else is happening with you at the moment, what are you working on at the moment?

DBridge

I’m writing an album with a guy called Fierce, he was part of the whole Virus Crew, he has been a part of some big tunes within drum & bass. I’m working on that and it has taken up a lot of my time, but it’s weird because my things have shifted slightly. Whereas before I was concentrating mainly on music, it’s now the DJing side of things is really blowing up for me.

Nick Dwyer

Are you finding yourself going to different places that you might not have visited even with Bad Company?

DBridge

Yeah, definitely. Some really interesting places, the smaller venues, more intimate clubs. And it has just been going nuts for me worldwide. It almost feels like I’m busier now than I was back then. So yeah, the album is a big part of what I’m doing right now, and I’m looking to go over to Australia to work with my brother on a 12” specifically for Exit. And I’m always producing hip-hop beats as well. Whoever is interested, really. I mean, my brother is a good link because obviously he has been working with people like J Dilla, Waajeed, all those major players within the scene. So for me getting my track on his last album was probably the biggest high point for me.

Nick Dwyer

Really?

DBridge

Yeah, just because I was in the company of musicians that I look up to. Like J Dilla, he’s just a modern day genius. So, I’m always going to continue on that path.

Nick Dwyer

One thing I was going to say was, you guys had a night going down at Plastic People in London. I’ve never been there myself but a lot of people say it is one of the finest soundsystems they have ever witnessed. You had a night called The Istickz.

DBridge

Yeah Istickz studio, it was cool, what we used to do, we used to go down there because this soundsystem…

Nick Dwyer

When you say “we,” who are you talking about?

DBridge

Me, my brother and the Spacek crew, which was my brother, a guy called Edmund and Morgan. And then we had a singer called Umpah, amazing singer, and a few other people as well. So what we used to do was, basically, last Thursday of every month we used to just go down with our laptops and set up a little table in the middle of the dancefloor with three MPC players on it. One had the drums, another had bass and another had pads. What we tried to do was theme the night. So a session was based around, say, the soundtrack for The Thomas Crown Affair, so we’d have that and a lot of the sounds from that record were in one of the MPCs, and we’d literally just jam within the club. We had like two DJ sets and people used to come around with saxophones, and it was quite an open-mic affair. But it was cool, because we literally used to just build tracks in the middle of this club. And it was probably one of the best clubs that we were doing it in. We want to start it again, but just because all of us are so global in the moment it’s hard to lock it down.

Nick Dwyer

It still exists.

DBridge

It still exists, and it will come back and be hopefully bigger than what it was before. It was definitely a good night and a good idea as well. It was like battles, laptop battles. Who has got the hottest loop? So it was cool, definitely.

Nick Dwyer

Wicked. What I thought would be quite a good track to play just to close things off. Have you got the track that you did for your brother’s album?

DBridge

Yeah, I have it, sure. So this is me stepping into other worlds.

Nick Dwyer

And this track will be called?

DBridge

This track is called “The Hills.”

(music: Steve Spacek – “The Hills”)

Nick Dwyer

Nice, and the album’s called?

DBridge

Space Shift out on Sound In Color, the label.

Nick Dwyer

Darren, thank you very much for taking time coming to us.

DBridge

Thank you.