“I’d broken my balls to get music with real sound quality together over the years, and here were these people making music on Fruity Loops and even Playstations and they were getting pure love. I was just in a state of disbelief”
To put it in simplistic terms, you were about adding more to the garage framework in terms of jazzy chords, instruments and so on, and they were about stripping even more away!
“Completely. It was completely the opposite happening, completely opposite directions, nobody disrespecting anybody’s music, just a matter of “oh, you’re doing that now”. I mean, Sarah Souljah from Ammunition, she signed me to EMI publishing back in the day, she knows me, my journey, my likes and dislikes, and I know hers – and she’s a soul girl, too, she loves her Roy Ayers all the way, likes her rare groove. So she knew where my heart was at all the way through that period and there was never any hint of “oh Dave you should be doing this or that”, just very much a case of I was doing what I was doing and it was there to be appreciated or not.
“So yeah, you had that whole period where I was going completely soulful and jazzy and they’d gone all minimal, then it was a really nice change to come back and discover how it had all gone. From the early days when they started putting out tracks, those early ones by Benga and Skream and Cyrus, these young lads coming through the ranks doing this incredibly minimal music made on Playstations, on Music 2000, and… I wouldn’t say I turned my nose up at it, but I really didn’t understand it!
“I’d broken my balls to get music with real sound quality together over the years, and here were these people making music on Fruity Loops and even Playstations and they were getting pure love. I was just in a state of disbelief, but also I didn’t really get it because I wasn’t hearing it in context, I wasn’t hearing them on loud soundsystems any more – same with the 8-bar, which turned into grime, that was another scene that totally passed me by. That again was Music 2000 on the Playstation, and you could really tell. So I suppose I just became a little aloof, because I wasn’t backing it myself, I fully wasn’t getting it.
“But then again, you get to 2007, 2008 and boy did I get it! Suddenly people like Benga and Skream whose early tracks I couldn’t listen to and understand in any way, shape or form – these guys were now properly accomplished musicians. There’s actually no other way to look at it, they’re properly accomplished musicians. They’re not just DJ/producers on some half-hearted this-or-that, on a suck-it-and-see for an experience, these guys have developed and honed and really composed their way to the top. I see them as really like classical composers in a way, they don’t have the musicians and the vocalists to fall back on – everything in the tracks they’ve made has been them. I mean, not going too overboard about it, these kids that I just didn’t understand at one point have matured and absolutely come into their own musically, and I am digging it, I mean proper digging it.
“So in 2008, when I had my birthday party in January I went down to FWD>>, very very drunk with Jay Electronica and Simbad, and really found out the leaps and bounds that the sonics and the music had made – and kind of felt like a bit of a lemon in a way because I should’ve known what these lot were capable of, I should’ve kept more of an eye on what was going on along the way. But I’m really like this – unless people put something directly under my nose, I’m not the sort of person to be out there looking for new stuff, I’m more likely to go back in time and draw from my previous experience whether that’s music or old films; I’m very much a retrospective sort of a person.
“So yeah, it was funny discovering that all this was happening – and I daresay I could’ve been a part of it back then if things had been different as I was part of the initial FWD>> movement, but as I just didn’t understand it I guess it was only proper the way things went.”
But did you find you could slot back into it easily when you did rediscover the scene? Were they happy to have you, as someone who’d been a strong influence early on, say “yes, I’m into this”?
“Well, what actually happened was they booked me for, I think it was the seventh anniversary do, at a big warehouse off Curtain Road in Shoreditch, and they asked me to play all the bits I used to play at FWD>> with a little bit of what’s going on now. No mention of dubstep or anything like that, but obviously dubstep’s happened by then, it’s well on my radar by then, but I just didn’t know either how good it really was, or how much love that scene still had for where it all came from. So when I went down there and played what I considered to be my standard FWD>> set with a load of early Menta and J Da Flex, all the stuff that I never used to hear in the garage scene, when I played them and had the whole place going berserk like it was back in the day… well it sent me a bit evangelical if anything.
“For a few months after, to anyone who’d listen I was just “fuckin’ hell, this dubstep scene’s fuckin’ off it’s head, it’s great!” and I started to want to be… not exactly properly in it, I didn’t see myself being part of it, but I just wanted to experience more of it and get my head around what it all was and where I fit into it. And then once I started properly digging, and going on dubstepforum and stuff, I couldn’t believe what people were writing about the early days and the ‘Roots of Dubstep’ and the dark bits of garage – and especially that a lot of tunes that I’d written off, or even forgotten making, were actually a big part of this thing, still. I was so happy people were still writing about these things, and the ‘Roots of El-B’ and ‘Roots of Dubstep’ things, these albums that came out shone a torch on some of the old productions… well, I was a bit gobsmacked, still am to some degree.
“But it’s given me my new hobby, which is, ummm, making dubstep! [shakes head, laughs in semi-disbelief] And I absolutely love it. I’ve got my head right back into it. I’m not approaching it from the point of view of “I’ve done it before and I want to dig back into that for all it’s worth”, though – the rules have completely changed and my inspirations have changed. I can’t get any more inspiration out of rare groove and jazz funk, I’m 36, I’ve listened to those records hundreds of times, I’ve been to all the blues parties I’m ever going to go to, all the soul revivals, it’s not going to happen for me in that way anymore.
“My inspirations are current producers, doesn’t have to be dubstep, there are quite a few producers up there at the moment whose music inspires me. Benga and Skream are obvious; Benga, I think the way he puts his beats together is amazing, like vooodoo, totally unexplainable, and the way Skream gets power into his tracks in just unfathomable. Having worked with him it’s still unfathomable, he’s just got such skill about where he goes and where he stops, it’s all about knowing where to stop and leave a sound where it is, you can tweak and tweak and tweak and you’ll tweak the goodness out of something, but he’s really inspired me because he’s on such a production level and it’s all about knowing when to stop.”
OK so how does all this come together into what you’re doing now, in 2010?
“Between, I dunno, 2004 and 2007, 08, I was only playing jazzy stuff, nu jazz, broken beat, soulful house, all that kind of thing to small crowds, not so much international stuff just a little gig once in a while somewhere small like the Jazz Rooms down in Brighton. And it was good, but when I got into the house thing with Phil Asher I realised I had to start again completely and it had to be from a place where it was just pure love, pure love for the music. Now my first choice of music since I was really young was proper house music and garage – old garage, four-to-the-floor, vocals, you know… Even now, not that I go out much except to play, if I were to go out it would be to check a Phil Asher set, I can still do a little Rick Astley shuffle to a bit of soulful house
“So the house music is there and it’s at the heart of what I do, but one thing I decided at that point, and actually it was a little bit scary, was not to separate the pseudonyms and the different styles of music as much as I had done. So I want to put the name Zed Bias to everything and be done with it; you’ll see the Maddslinky one has “aka Zed Bias” all over it. The days are gone when everyone bought vinyl, and you might buy a bit of vinyl just because it’s got so-and-so name on it, you buy it because it says Zed Bias on it then you get home having spent blah-blah pounds on it, put it on and it’s not what you wanted. Those days are gone; as soon as you do anything online people know what it is, there’s no surprises, the word’s out. So that’s one reason for me to think I can do that.
“Benga, I think the way he puts his beats together is amazing, like vooodoo, totally unexplainable, and the way Skream gets power into his tracks in just unfathomable”
“So now, I’ve got a soulful house release with Jenna G coming up on a Manchester label called ‘Development’, I’ve got a dubstep release with Skream on Tru Thoughts, I’ve got a free giveaway garage track – then remixes I’ve done lately are a soulful house mix of El-B ‘I Feel’, an old-school steppers 2-step mix of Mighty Moe featuring Wiley… I’m spreading it out, I’m not limiting myself to a certain vibe or a certain style or a certain tempo – and this is purely for my own benefit, mind: I just don’t want to drive myself crazy trying to fit things into boxes. If I wake up one morning and want to do house music then that’s what I’m going to do, and I don’t have to worry if it fits with whatever project I’ve got on the go.
“The last act of breaking the shackles, I suppose, was hooking up with Tru Thoughts and then realising this was a label that has dealt with all of these styles, and when I came with a bit of house music, a bit of dubstep, just general weirdness and hybrid sorts of production, they believed in it. Obviously they didn’t like every single track I played them, but basically when I put all this stuff in front of them that I was doing, they understood it and were enthusiastic about the whole lot. So that’s played a massive part in just being able to march on and do what I do with an air of confidence.”
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