FIRING THE
IMAGINATION
The debut album
from producer/MC
team Lynx & Kemo
is the most eagerly
awaited drum & bass
release in years. Can
their groundbreaking
hybrid funk help to
save d&b from itself?
Words: JOE MADDEN
D
rum & bass is a genre badly in need of an
image makeover. While it’s hardly a dying
form in commercial terms — devoted
followers still pack out clubs and raves in
huge numbers — it’s been a long time since any of
its practitioners were excitedly hailed as boundary-
testing pioneers, as they were back when the sound
first roared its way to mainstream attention in the
mid-’90s.
Compounding the problem has been the inexorable
rise of dubstep, which has almost entirely ousted d&b
as the broadsheet-friendly ‘future music’ du jour. becoming evermore common in these broadband- “We were definitely conscious of making ‘The Raw
Artists such as Commix, Mistabishi and Breakage have boosted times. Truth’ work as a proper album from start to finish
been plugging tirelessly away, releasing deep, risk- “We actually came together via MySpace,” says Lynx. rather than just as a collection of tracks,” affirms
taking tracks that have repeatedly reinvigorated the “I heard a handful of Kemo’s tracks on his MySpace Lynx. “The first eight or so tracks that we made for
faith of junglists still in thrall to the mid-’90s dream page and they instantly impressed me — they had a the album, though, didn’t actually make it onto the
of drum & bass being the final word in beat science. vibe that reminded me of Tricky’s early stuff. So we finished version. They were more along the lines of
But it’s going to take an album of ‘Timeless’ or ‘New sent a few messages back and forth, then bounced a trip-hop than drum & bass, which I think kind of threw
Forms’ proportions, however, to draw back the outsid- few tracks back and forth — I’d send over tunes and Marcus Intalex a little bit [laughs].”
ers who’ve pretty much left drum & bass for dead. Kemo would fire them back with some vocals over the
All hyperbole aside, Lynx and Kemo’s astonishing ‘The top — and it all took off, fairly quickly, from there.” Although the odd track (such as DJ Crystl and Head-
Raw Truth’, out 1st June, could be just that album. A Their first three collaborations were put to bed rush’s lost 1995 classic ‘Perpetual Motion’) has worked
supremely confident combination of Lynx’s twitchy, before the pair had even met in person. Lynx had the rap-over-d&b-breaks angle before, the results
gothic, soulful funk — think an espresso-addled already made a name for himself with the stop-starty have rarely sounded as ‘right’ as they do on ‘The Raw
Burial — and the shivery, spooked-out raps of Kemo, it minimalist boogie of 2007’s ‘Disco Dodo’ (a track that Truth’.
deserves to crossover far beyond the borders of d&b’s split junglist opiniion), but it was his first single with “It’s something you would think should have been
increasingly insular world. Kemo, ‘Global Enemies’, that had tastemakers from done long before,” says Marcus Intalex, “especially
Fabio to Laurent Garnier gushing with praise. Astute considering the marriage between MCs and DJs within
The tale behind the far-flung pair’s coming together Soul:R label boss Marcus Intalex quickly commis- the drum & bass scene. But for whatever reason, it
— Lynx is based in Portsmouth, while Hawaii-born sioned Lynx & Kemo to take their vision of a hip-hop/ was only upon hearing [Lynx & Kemo] that I realised it
Kemo calls Dusseldorf home — is of the kind that’s drum&bass crossbreed and expand it to album length. could be done properly.”
086
www.djmag.com
DJ474.lynx&kemo.indd 86 14/5/09 11:34:15
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