Your work is largely – completely? – sample-based, is that correct? Was this always going to be your approach? Is it a sampled work out of necessity, or is there an aesthetic agenda or strategy at work? Is it one born of mischief, fandom, or…?
“It’s probably 65% samples, but I also use a few old 80s synth modules whose sound I fell in love with. ‘X-Ray’ on the album is 100% synths and ‘Daisy Chain’ is 100% samples.
“As much as I find the sampling terrorist narrative appealing (Hip-Hop/Plunderphonics etc) I don’t think that in the light of file-sharing and the complete meltdown in the perceived notion of what is illegal and what is legal (does anyone seem to care any more?) that it’s a valid artistic “strategy” any more. Actually I’m very nervous about the uncleared samples in my music. I went to see a Music Lawyer in the West End and, slightly to their surprise, asked them what I would need to do to protect myself in the event of a litigation. This is part of the reason why I’m operating the label as a limited liability company.
“The problem is that I’m too insignificant for any major label to grant me clearance on anything even if I applied for permission. In fact I would need to sell upward of 20, 000 copies of a disc for it even being worth any larger entity taking me to court, and even then the standard fee that artists who sample without permission pay in the event of successful litigation is in the region of 20% of the profits. This is why all the big undie Hip-Hop producers like Madlib never bother clearing their samples.
“To strip away all the bullshit the reason I sample is to do with taking a beautiful sound and releasing it. When Grandmaster Flash was spinning the same section of two tracks back-to-back to create a loop it was because the “break”, often that unadorned drumbeat in the bridge, was what everyone wanted to hear. Often those tracks which got sampled in Hip-Hop, which are now lovingly assembled in curated discs, are basically crap excepting those magic moments. Certainly this was how I ended up making ‘Daisy Chain’. Nestled towards the end of this really horrific Hard Rock Opus there was this, really tiny, sublime section. It’s only about 30 seconds long, but I chopped it up into about 40 pieces, looped some sections to extend them, double-tracked some parts, went back and forth between sections and it ended up nearly 4 minutes-long.
“In fairness there is one critical “meta” aspect of sampling which does appeal to me, and that’s the fingerprint of “zeit” which samples manifest. You hear of people hiring in singers and instrumentalists to copy samples, even firms who specialise in this kind of thing, and you kind of weep so drastically does it miss the point.”
The mix you’ve recorded for FACT is comprised of 90s ambient jungle. Can you tell us a little bit about your relationship with this music? Any clubbing/listening experiences from the 90s, how you came across the music, what your reaction/attitude to the music was then, and what it is now…
“Recently I was talking to a friend about how the Gas records were like the sound of rave all washed-out, as though it was the sound of an exhausted army limping home, that martial gabba drumbeat reduced to a tap-tap-tap. All the music of the rave continuum happened along a timeline which could have been mapped onto an evenings party. Hearing the Droppin’ Science track on that mix my wife said it was like 4am music, and in the timeline of the rave Ambient Jungle was the 4am music. When the sun comes up the morning everyone wants to hear the heavy stuff, so for instance the nastiness of Neurofunk or Gabba, you remember! At 10 in the morning it was probably time to stick the Gas record on. At 11 or 12 at night it might have been Hard Techno or the 1993-era Jungle stuff. You get the idea. But 4am. That was the best time wasn’t it?
“There’s a unspoken bias against Ambient Jungle because of the club Speed as well. I went to all the parties: AWOL, The Paradise Garage (no not that one, Gachet’s home), the Voodoo Magic events, tailing off after the first Metalheadz nights at the Blue Note. Speed was a victim of its own success. I went to the very fist night, when it was just me, two lost-looking Japanese girls and a couple of Reinforced records refugees in Metalheadz t-shirts (this before the label even existed). I was something like a cheerleader and mascot for the place, dancing from early in the night often alone on the dancefloor. It took a long-time before Bjork showed up and people started looking over their shoulders.”
You’ve spoken before about how ambient jungle has fallen out of favour whereas darker and ragga-oriented variants have gained stock with time. Why do you think this is? Do you envisage a wholesale critical reappraisal of this “genre” any time soon?
“Reappraisal? No probably not. The people who have steered the Nuum discourse are not necessarily Dancing People, and actually what made Ambient Jungle so special was that it was the greatest dance music ever. The separation between the bass/drum and those gorgeous arcs of ectoplasm was sublime on the dancefloor. Your head was in the clouds, your limbs in a rapture of clockwork.
“As well the Nuum Guardians the Dubstep masses have favoured the Ragga and Dark stuff. It’s ostensibly much “cooler” music. There is something a bit cheesy about Ambient Jungle, and for instance everything on Good Looking after ‘The Dolphin Tune’ and the subsequent Looking Good stuff unconsciously pushed that cheesiness a little bit too far.”