BAD
COMPANY
WORDS
:
BEN
WILLMOTT
PICTURE
:
COURTNEY
HAMILTON
))BAD COMPANY
THERE CAN BE NO STRANGER CAREER IN DRUM & BASS THAN THAT OF BAD COMPANY.
THERE’D BEEN SOME PRETTY PROMISING NOISES FROM FRESH, VEGAS AND RENEGADE HARDWARE DUO
FUTURE FORCES BEFOREHAND, BUT WHEN ALL FOUR TEAMED UP IN 1998,
THEY SEIZED THE SCENE IN A WAY THAT NO-ONE HAS MANAGED BEFORE OR SINCE.
))
Tunes like ‘The Nine’, ‘The Pulse’ and their immense without hearing them in a club, only to end up howling breakbeat DJs, not just drum and bassheads, a chal-
remix of Q Project’s hardcore classic ‘Champion with collective laughter at the sound of their indignant lenge they relish. “They’ve just got a very different way of
Sound’ tore up the rulebook, rebelling against years of ranting and asking, as Maldini does, “We don’t sound like looking at it all,” Fresh continues, “they don’t really see
so-called good taste with frantic, energetic, balls out we’re whinging do we?!” the divisions in it that people do here. To them it’s all the
hardcore rave music not heard since the days of same thing, and the tent they put you in has got all sorts
Rufige Kru and ‘Terminator’. Their debut album, ‘Inside “We just want to tell people that a lot of these magazines of different stuff happening in it.”
The Machine’ was heralded by the critics and caned aren’t giving you the full picture of what’s going on,”
on the dancefloor. maintains Fresh. “It’s just so contrary to our experience of Ironically, after crueller critics compared ‘Digital
what’s happening in the real world, because we’re out Nation’’s extremities unfavourably to heavy metal, a
But what goes up, as Isaac Newton once noted, there all the time and we can see how well the tunes are noticeable chunk of converts to the cause in the US
inevitably has to come down eventually. In the matter going down with people with our own eyes.” have been metal fans. The gap from rock to rocking
of months that it took to make another album - the breakbeats may not be as wide as we thought.
ever fiercer ‘Digital Nation’ - the music press had This much is definitely true. While they may not be But, given that their next three EPs are called ‘Book Of
turned. The smoother, more accessible sounds headlining every trendy London night out like they were The Bad’ Volumes 1-3 - Spinal Tap eat your leather
being played at Swerve and Kosheen’s ‘Hide U’ about 18 months ago, go beyond the Watford Gap and clad hearts out - will we be seeing that metal influence,
were suddenly where the future lay. Meanwhile, ‘that it’s a very different story. In the rest of the UK and never bad for record sales if usually lethal to credibility,
Bad Company sound’, a phrase that basically tarred abroad, they’ve remained a household name. Two days seeping into their music?! “I don’t think so,” laughs
BC with the same brush as their legion of second after the interview one half of the band is due to fly off to D-Bridge. “I mean, there are a couple of guitars on a
class imitators, starts getting slagged off in interviews the States to promote ‘Digital Nation’ (which was couple of our tracks on the new EP but I certainly
with various producers. released more recently there), while the other half wouldn’t call them metal.”
prepares to do Canada.
But if being catapulted from relative obscurity to new He and Fresh seem like the pivotal members of the
skool darlings and then backlash whipping boys (“only In the US, as the band’s most vocal and outspoken team, at least when it comes down to laying down BC
Knowledge and ATM have kept the faith,” says member, Fresh, is quick to point out, BC appears to be policy in interviews, Fresh speaking at a constantly
Maldini) in the space of two years has left the happening big time. At the recent Winter Music Conference excited pace, often coming up with outrageous
foursome bewildered and cynical, they aren’t in Miami, Vegas adds, they were moved from the drum & statements that D-Bridge then streamlines into more
showing many signs of it today. Huddled around a tiny bass stage to play the main live stage along with Basement politically sensitive quotes, punctuating his partner’s
table in an Old Street bar, they’ll have a good moan Jaxx. Elsewhere in the States the bills they’ve been proclamations occasionally with, “hmmm, maybe you’d
about the reviewers who write off their records playing have seen them pitted against hip-hop acts and better not print that.” Maldini, meanwhile, attacks from
16KNOWLEDGE
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