‘There is nothing like hearing a sound that completely takes your breath away.’
No, they’re not names from a new primetime crime drama: Conduct and Lockjaw are three people – obviously – with a new split release on the horizon, Lockjaw’s ‘Big System’ and Conduct’s ‘Futile’, the latter first up in the conversation…
It was a real gamechanger for us personally, before then we’d been more than 100 tracks per tune and we realised less is sometimes more! It’s all about the groove! The mixdown pretty much played itself out as we wrote the tune, we tend to write that way. Plus it’s a lot easier to mix down 20 tracks than 100. We’ve played about with our approach to mixdowns many times but all we’ve really learned is it’s best to not stick to any rules. Some tunes may need to be clean and tight, where we’ll go in all clinical, but others definitely benefit from a gentler approach.
‘Futile’ is a really solid, basic tune for us in terms of instrumentation: our first proper go at a fully dancefloor tune. It all stemmed from that bass patch you hear throughout the tune. We pretty much built the track around that.
There’s two of you, Conduct: do you both do the podcasts?
We’ve done the Lifestyle ones a few times, yeah. It’s good fun! Big up Felix [Catharsis], the big cheese at Lifestyle. We’re normally quite drunk too which is nice. Our main source of music still comes from our hard earned cash, there is nothing quite like getting paid and buying 100+ tracks and having a ‘guess’ mix.
Speaking of mixes, I like that Cable promo mix of yours: the tune about 25mins in…
Nice one mate! People can still check that mix on Lifestyle’s soundcloud page. That’s ‘Shadows’, gonna be on our Lifestyle EP early next year sometime.
Over to you Lockjaw: what was the spark that got you into D&B?
Noisia was the main catalyst… and still are in ways but I got heavily into all the Shogun artists as well as all the other big names from Subtitles, Dispatch, Exit, etc. I was into more guitar and jazz influenced music before and D&B hit the right spots.
Hearing ‘The Liquid’ by Noisia & Evol Intent over a year ago when I saw Noisia live was literally life-changing.
Tell us about Big System.
‘Big System’ is quite an old track for me but at the time, I’d just bought a Virus TI2 so I was experimenting lots with that and created some of the basslines you hear in the tune. I pretty much always start with some kind of rhythmic pattern or little motif that I build tracks around and that track was no different. I really just wanted to do something quite straightforward with a focus on big, twisted sounds and I think I got there, to a degree.
Live-wise what’s your big system, pardon the pun: what do you use?
I use Traktor and an S4 controller. I find producing infinitely more fun than DJing, I would say.
Conduct, what about you?
We’re on Traktor S2 at the moment, but that’s become a bit of a hassle, I think we’ll be on the CDs soon! Although we’ve always wanted to do a proper double laptop set… we’ve dabbled before but never really to it’s full potential. That controller can be really powerful if used to its full extent.
& Conduct, on the production topic what’s something that you’ve heard recently that floored you?
Everything by Audio. He’s just gone mental recently. Just mad. Oh and that DLR & Break tune aswell ‘New Design’. That is ridiculous. That Die remix of Breach ‘Everything You Never Had’ is so sick too. Can never decide on one. Machinedrum ‘Gunshotta’ aswell.
Lockjaw?
‘Deadlock’ by Misanthrop made me bob my head quite a bit. I love how he’s brought that insane Krautrock electro thing he did with Phace as Neosignal into a more minimal D&B setting.
What’s next from you then Lockjaw?
A solo EP from myself on Lifestyles as well as a 3-track EP on Dispatch LTD in December which I’m really excited about.
Conduct?
We’re always just writing tunes innit. We would love to be able to one day be able to leave our shitty day jobs and focus fully on making cool sounds. That’s the dream.
How would you sum up your involvement in D&B, to finish?
We’re fully into all corners of 170 music, nothing touches that energy. To be fair we are both madly into many times of sub heavy music.
There is nothing like hearing a sound that completely takes your breath away, it always gets us thinking how the producer has managed to mangle a sound into what ever state it may be.
