the other side, usually with a healthy dose of filthy In the DJ arena, meanwhile, they’ve been overhauling What is becoming very clear is that far from being
humour whenever he reckons anyone else is starting to tradition by cutting up-to-the minute tracks on CD to undermined by the backlash, BC seem to have
sound too grandiose or over the top. roadtest them alongside the latest vinyl. Fresh is the been even more fired up by it. It’s almost as if, as
format’s most vociferous supporter, enthusing about people, they’re secretly or even subconsciously more
So, after you’ve given up trying to find anything to talk about being able to play out tracks literally only hours old and comfortable as underdogs than flavour of the month.
that all four of them actually agree on, you begin to realise insisting much of people’s love of vinyl is down to Fresh even confesses that he often logs on to a
it’s the combination of these polar elements, these four very nostalgia. But his statements provoke the others to pitch growing site called www.dogsonacid.com, where
different people, that actually drives their music. Just as in and stick up for vinyl and dubplates, Maldini insisting, disgruntled d&b heads chat and rant without
ideas are tossed around the table, so the band’s music “Nothing’s going to replace vinyl, I reckon we’ll always constraint. “It’s great, because people will say we
sounds like the vinyl embodiment of conflict and struggle. use vinyl in our sets.” thought this or that was shit to you - you get real
Nothing’s stationary - everything is being manipulated,
unadulterated, honest opinions on there. It’s all under
pulled from side to side, up and down, the whole time. It’s a similar state of affairs when Fresh says he could
assumed names, but I’m sure there are one or two
envisage the darker end of drum & bass splitting apart
other producers on there too.”
Even their modus operandi in the studio, recording tunes from the music mainstream and mutating into a scene all
with whatever members are around at the time rather of its own, the others quick to point out that they dis-
And, in the best d&b tradition, their anger is being chan-
than wait for the increasingly rare moments when all four agree. It’s a fascinating theory all the same, especially
nelled directly back into the music. The first
of them can actually get together, is the opposite of the when you remember that none of the producers who instalment of the ‘Book Of The Bad’ trilogy is even more
traditional group set up. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the have gone off to build up their own followings and sign raging and tempestuous than ‘Digital Nation’ was, even
Drum Kru supergroup they’ve formed with Optical, Ed their own like-minded artists after being given the cold the deeper sounding ‘Numbers’ is uncomfortably
Rush, Matrix, Ryme Tyme and Fierce operates along shoulder in public (Hype, Zinc, Shy FX, LTJ Bukem, intense in all the right ways. If you’re holding your
pretty much the same lines, not least because you Mickey Finn and Aphrodite all spring to mind) have breath for that female-fronted Swerve anthem,
probably couldn’t fit all of them in one studio at the same suffered in the slightest as a result. The fact is that like all stop now because it simply is not going to happen.
time. But if ‘Thin Air’ and ‘Poltergeist’ on the Kru’s first 12” those other exiled producers before them, in another Then again, with BC, it’s probably wisest to merely
(out on Ryme Tyme’s 1210 label), are anything to go on, couple of years the same journalists currently being expect the unexpected.
it’s a formula that reaps devastating results, even if the grumbled about around the pub table will be dispensing
public never knows precisely who has twiddled what on glowing praise again. “We kind of knew this would But when Fresh fixes you in the eye and says, as if his
which record. “It’s our Wu-Tang,” says D-Bridge of the happen anyway,” D-Bridge says. “We were quite cynical life truly depends on it, “we’re going to crack ‘Digital
project, with tongue slightly in cheek, adding a brief about all the good reviews we got when we started. We Nation’,” somehow you know they will. Whatever, the
impersonation of ‘36 Chambers’ for afters. were thinking ‘it can’t really be this easy’.” big noise is not over yet.
KNOWLEDGE 17
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