Jamie hooks up with Italian drum and bass pioneers ‘Numa Crew’ to chat about their latest album, jungle influences and who’s hot over in their scene right now
The Numa Crew collective is a mass of DJ’s and producers, how does that work in the studio? Do they go in as a collective, bring the vibe together and come out with something fresh or is it more of a one on one session?
We try to do both things: principally every single producer carries on his work independently, everyone has a different taste and style. We like to collaborate with each other, sometimes all together, sometimes in pairs or groups of three of us. Our creative process is really free, then later we collect all the tunes and depending on what we have, we program our sets.
What would be your DJ’s ideal set up in a club and why?
Turntables, three CDJ’s, a good Pioneer mixer, our MC Ninjaz on the mic and a proper system. That’s all we need to run the dance!
Although self proclaimed pioneers of the Italian dubstep scene, the album features a variety of genres from jungle to breakbeat. In terms of jungle, what does the crew draw their influences from?
We started releasing dubstep in 2007 for the italian label Elastica and that’s why many people consider us as pioneers of this musical movement in Italy. The foundation sound of the crew is jungle and hip-hop and we never lost these roots. Most of our inspiration and influences come from old skool jungle and reggae music, always trying to put a new school flavor to that.
Could the DJ’s of the group name any of their favourite jungle tunes from the 90’s and why?
DJ Hype’s ‘Tiger style’ has all the things that we like to put into music: deep bass, rolling drums and wicked vocal samples
‘Dred Bass’ by Dead Dred because it is the first jungle record I bought. So it’s one of the tracks that contributed to shape our sound
‘The License’ by Krome & Time because it’s the perfect combination of reggae and jungle vibes.
Are any collaborations with UK producers on the cards?
Collaborations with UK producers are currently in the works. We are sourcing some remixes of our album to be released on an EP via Liondub international. We’re excited about this, we’ll see in the next months what’ will be coming out.
If anyone could select one of their all time favourite UK producers who would it be and why would you want to work with them?
We could select so many great producers from the UK scene. Breakage because he always delivers original sound in different styles and his music has always been in our record bags.
Producers such as Bladerunner, Chopstick Dubplate, Serial Killaz and Benny Page because they’re all keeping the jungle movement moving forward, always with quality, and good sound.
How’s the Italian underground dance music scene these days? Could you describe the parties for the people that don’t know about the vibe?
The underground music scene in Italy is certainly suffering because of the political and economic situation that the country is suffering through right now. There’s a very limited choice of places where people can go dance to underground music and listen to that in a proper way as we intend.
Regardless, sound system culture is still alive, maybe not as strong and as popular as in the UK, but a lot of good producers and DJ’s come from here, doing a great job internationally too.
The vibe in the parties can be mad sometimes, some drum and bass DJ’s from the UK would ask “what’s is this cage of unchained monkeys!” All around Italy you can find good parties, from the North to the South of the country. We personally have always found nice vibes. one thing is certain, Italian people know how to party (when they want!) but they don’t dance as well as English ravers.
Who’s big in the up and coming scene?
In the Italian scene we have many big artists still flying high, as for drum and bass masters, Maztek or ArpXP and others coming up as the great producer Dabs, or D-Operation Drop and Piezo is big in dubstep. Clap Clap is putting out fire with his African bass madness; Ckrono & Slesh, Milangeles, The Clerk and Aquadrop are taking off with big bass, trap and tropical influenced productions.
‘Bass Hater’ is, in my opinion, the biggest tune on the album combining some great elements of raw drum & bass, jungle and that classic Congo Natty sound. How’s it doing in the dance?
That tune is doing very well on the dancefloor, people are starting to sing the chorus and it’s a good one to mix with other tunes. Dub Fx is also performing ‘Bass Hater’ in his live set which we had the chance to see, and it was absolutely killer!
‘Control’ has a MAD video and would certainly put most into some kind of fit if they watched in a dark room. Where did the monster face idea come from? What do you feel makes a good music video, especially in the drum & bass scene?
The video was directed by JK Magrini who’s a long time friend of the crew. He’s a talented personality from our city who has had a lot of experience making videos but this was the first time he has worked with animation, can you believe it? The idea of the video was related to the concept of the lyrics. We felt that this song needed a video to be complete, enhancing the message against every form of control and actual institutions.
Onwards to 2015, what’s coming next from Numa Crew?
Next year we’ll keep working on new material, delivering new collaborations and promoting our sound worldwide. We have a three track EP on Moonshine Recordings coming out early in 2015!
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