‘We have a monthly curry night where we all sit around talking about compression… ‘
Conscience has dropped ‘U Make Me Feel’ and ‘Without Sleep’ on Flexout Audio, two infectious cuts, two further augmentations to the Flexout machine. We got the complete story about the release, and about that live date…
Hi Conscience, how’s 2015 been?
This year has been great. Very busy! I had the collaboration with Taelimb (in image below) – ‘Public Eye’ – drop last August on the Logarithmic Volume 2 album on Flexout and it was really well-received…
That was my first ‘proper’ release and I was lucky enough for it to come out on both vinyl and digital.
Tom Retraflex heard ‘U Make Me Feel’ and an early version of ‘Without Sleep’ around the same time and offered me a single release.
So since then it’s been a case of hitting the studio as much as possible to finish off the single and get four new tracks together with Taelimb. Which is easier said than done as a me and Max/Taelimb have quite a lot on between us so we ended up grabbing hours when we could.
On the live front?
I’ve been involved with the Flexout events when they were at Plan B in Brixton, including the legendary night that Fre4knc came down and absolutely smashed the place.
It’s been wicked to be involved and play at those parties as they have such a great vibe and a variety of styles get dropped and everyone gets down.
Looking forward to playing at the next Flexout event on July 18 at Silver Bullet in Finsbury Park.
How did you and Flexout actually get together then?
I linked up with Flexout through Milena – MEDIKA – who runs ‘Noise’. She’s great at putting on parties and getting people together, she had the Flexout guys down to play a few times and Tom met Taelimb which led to the release of ‘Wookie Song’ and ‘Wasteman’ about a year or two ago.
I met Tom later that same year and then Joe PRTCL. It’s kind of a cliché but Flexout is like a family with a huge extended crew of likeminded people.
We have a monthly curry night where we all sit around talking about compression, proper geeky stuff but it’s great to know so many people on the same wavelength all working towards a similar goal.
Tell us about you and electronic music.
I’ve been into electronic music since the late 80s. I didn’t really understand what I was listening to at the time but now I know it was acid house… a mate of mine nicked a tape of Acid Trax from an older sibling and brought it into primary school.
And then rave / hardcore. Having older siblings that are into cool music helped as they exposed me to a lot of music.
Back then for me it was people like Derick May, Juan Atkins and A Guy Called Gerald… then Acen ‘Trip to the Moon’ and all things hardcore through to early Ram Records and then Jungle 1994-95 and D&B.
I still love all of those records and regularly fish out some classic jungle… some of it still sounds so fresh.
In the later 90s it was all about Virus and anything by Optical, Ed Rush, Metalheadz, Lemon D, Dillinja, V, Marcus Intalex, Big Bud and Good Looking , Teebee and Subtitles, Klute, Dom and Roland, everything Renegade Hardware, 31 and Prototype Recordings… the things you’d purchase without even listening to it beforehand.
… Photek, Bad Company, Kemal & Rob Data… all of that future D&B as it was then!
I think it’s obvious that all those guys shaped the sound that’s still killing it today although with a different twist; I can still hear that sound coming through.
And what about today then?
Recently I’ve been into the whole Exit sound with dBridge et al, Skeptical is a f*cking don, Alix Perez and Spectrasoul – 1984 and Delay No More are two of my all time favourite LPs of any genre.
Calibre: been into him for time and he never disappoints.
I can’t get enough of the Ivy Lab stuff… and Anile is another soulful fave. I rate Arkaik in a big way: his forthcoming EP for Flexout is just so good – him and Skeptical are the kinds of producers whose music I’d probably go down the record shop and buy without listening to, if we were still in that time.
‘New’ people like Fearful, PRTCL, Mystic State and Hyroglifics are killing it already – I can’t even imagine where they’ll take their sound in years to come…the same with Interline. I’m really feeling Diffrent, Mauoq, Fre4knc is sick… ‘Marching Cube’ and the VIP is always in the bag. Xtrah – that last Cyber funk release was too much.
The whole Dispatch crew, Need For Mirrors, Mtwn, Vromm, Xanadu, Shiver, Kolectiv…
The list goes on and on. It’s a great time for the music.
Outside of D&B?
Outside of D&B I’m really into Emika, Four Tet, Burial, Breakage, Maribou State…
To ‘Without Sleep’… I want this in a good club at 5am, wow. When did it arise?
I started ‘Without Sleep’ in April 2014 at a mate’s studio. Me and Rebs were just messing around with a beat I’d made previously and he found these ad lib vocals which I thought were amazing. We also found this film sample where I guy says “how long do you think you can go without sleep”.
I wasn’t happy with it though and ended up doing a total rework after finding these amazing piano samples with loads of atmosphere that sounded great at all different pitches. I made a completely new break amd wrote a new bassline and as it turned out only the ad lib vocals were kept out of all of the sounds I started with! It really was a labour of love finishing that track but I’m happy with the end result and it’s been received well.
You must have a lot of music on the go in general?
I find it best to work on a number of tunes at a time again to keep things fresh as you can easily overlisten to tracks and they sound stale simply because you’ve heard it too much.
I started concentrating a lot more on the EP with Taelimb. I made the first version of ‘Close’ which is on the forthcoming ep in a day just to do something else other than work on ‘Without Sleep’ .
So it was great to have the tracks with Taelimb on the go at the same time. We really bounce off each other and if I’m ever stuck with a track he can usually hear straight away what direction to take and we can get things done pretty quickly.
Tell us about ‘U Make Me Feel’?
It was started about two years ago. As with ‘Without Sleep’ I knew I had a good tune in there and again was really into the vocal snippets and the phrase I’d formed.
I found this beat I’d made, probably during an all night hazy session as until I found it I’d completely forgotten I’d ever made it, and imported the sounds into UMMF, it worked straight away and that ended up being the lift the track needed and I knew then it would get finished. I went on holiday to Gozo and was inspired: the ideas started coming.
When I got back the track came together relatively quickly but needed arranging. Chris Fearful heard the track and asked if he could play it out at a festival so I laid it out in about half an hour just to give him something to play that night – the arrangement worked and it hasn’t changed at all since.
Must big up Amoss and Fearful who have been playing it for almost a year now.
Tell us where you produce.
My studio at home is in my kitchen! I must totally big up my girlfriend Rachel as after 13 years of living together in a small flat in Brixton and me blazing out D&B and often loops for hours at a time she has been nothing but supportive!
What do you use?
I use Logic on an iMac with a Focusright sound card and Yamaha HS80M speakers. That’s it apart from the odd plug in like Massive, FabFilters bundle, a couple of Rob Papen synths, CamelPhat, the Wavesfactory sidechain plug in…
I have really high ceilings and a hard floor so acoustically it’s probably the worst set up imaginable. But I’ve been making music there for so many years that I’m used to the sound.
The thing is to listen to my tracks at so many different places and just get feedback all of the time from DJs who play them out. I then tweak until it’s a good as it can be. But saying that I’m probably never really and truly happy with my mixdowns. I approach most things in a hyper self-critical way.
What films, TV do you like?
So much David Lynch, Ip Man/Kung Fu films, the Batman films with Christian Bale, the Marvel films, The Quiet Man and so many…
What’s forthcoming?
I got the EP with Taelimb coming out on Flexout as I mentioned earlier. It’s called The Form ep and features four fresh tracks. Some of them have being doing the rounds on dub for a while so it will be good to have them finally released. I can see me and Taelimb doing some more bits together. We’ve got about four or five bits that we need to finish some of them we started three years ago now. And he’s working with a great singer called Tifani Juno on an ep. I’ve written a non-D&B track for that which me, Taelimb and a guy called Ogre are planning on finishing asap. That’ll be dropping on ogre and runone’s Fat Back Records at some point.
I’ve sent Tom retraflex a new bit called ‘Connected’ that he wants so that’ll be dropping at some point too.
Big up D&BArena.