‘You don’t see as much of the screw-face rude boys you used to get when I first went raving… You often spent the night wondering if you would get stabbed or mugged’
Dan and Chris AKA DC Breaks take time to discuss future moves and ‘Faithless’ plus give us the dirt on the forthcoming album.
They’re busy… not like they’re off surfing or at the pub.
DC Breaks: what are you doing right now as the weather gets a bit nicer?
Chris: I’ve got a rare weekend off so I’m going surfing in Devon with friends this weekend.
Dan: Pub lunch!
‘Faithless’ is slamming and I have to ask how does it sound live? I’m thinking ‘Building Six’ when I say ‘live’.
Well we haven’t performed it TOTALLY live with Bianca yet, but the latest mix is very fresh and it’s been great to finally play out the final master – we find it’s a good blend of summery vocal and hard hitting beats and bass.
It seems to have loads of energy and we use it to take the vibe in a slightly different direction or sometimes just to increase the energy.
UKF at Building Six was sick, really great crowd, great sound, amazing line-up. We tried out a few new bits from the album and they got a great reaction so that was really satisfying.
In fact is D&B live on a big scale something really hard to do? What’s it like, to play ‘big’ D&B? Compared to a smaller club.
When you’ve been doing it a long time it’s no different to any show really.
There was a time when a huge crowd might have got the nerves going but now it’s second nature and you just want to be on stage doing your thing.
Small clubs can be a lot of fun too, it all comes down to the vibe on the night.
Is your typical D&B audience changing?
We find it funny that some of the tunes we play are older than the ravers we’re playing to!
D&B has certainly changed a lot over the last 20 years but in essence the tempo is the same, the vibe is the same – it’s all about the unique energy of 170bpm and enjoying the rave.
You don’t see as much of the screw-face rude boys you used to get when I first went raving when you often spent the night wondering if you would get stabbed or mugged.
Things feel a bit safer these days – for better or worse – sometimes you need a bit of an edge to a night!
Tell us about the linkup with Bianca for ‘Faithless’? Who is she? She’s perfect for this.
Bianca had worked with another singer we were working with, and he hooked us up, knowing that she’d be perfect for it.
She’s got a huge voice which matched the power of the backing track. Bianca has been on the scene for a little while I think, working on her own material and she’ll be breaking through any day now.
And about that smashed statue image! Looks serious! Crikey.
When we saw this art we were a bit concerned some people might find the image offensive, but it’s not about anything religious at all.
If anything it’s the opposite, to us the song is about cutting loose and losing yourself in the dance, we wanted to make a really feel-good vibe summer tune that was completely different to the ‘Swag’ and ‘Gambino’ sound we’d done before and this was the result.
The album’s been on the horizon for a short while, so what can we expect? Will you go downtempo?
It certainly has been! Yeah we’ve been talking about it for a long time, but to be honest, it’s all come together at the right point. There’s no way we could have written the more song-based records before now, and our production is better than ever, meaning that we can be more ambitious than ever before.
It’s got a different vibe to it in general than our recent stuff, but I think we’re just bolder in general now about our music. There might be one downtempo record on the album, but otherwise it’s full on 170 goodness!
What about art: have you thought about album artwork and a ‘look and feel’?
Well, let’s just say that like a ‘classic’ DC Breaks record – where you have no idea what it’s going to be – it’s going to be something unexpected.
Have your production techniques changed over time?
Oh definitely, you’re always learning new tricks, new plugins, new bits of hardware. You don’t want to settle into a rhythm for too long, it’s good to sometimes do the opposite of what you think is right!
We often discuss production on the road with other artists and share techniques, kit and so on. It’s a constant learning curve, but one we take seriously.
Here’s a real luddite question: if you get to the final stage of producing a tune prior to mixdown, it also means that you have everything set up just right… so couldn’t you leave everything like this and create sh*tloads of material?
If only it was that simple!
Maybe we like to make things hard for ourselves but we tend to change things for every tune. You do end up recycling projects, bits of audio, synth presets etc but when it comes to mix-downs every tune is different in vibe, key, structure and so on, so you always have to treat it differently to get the best out of the record, even if the principles you use are the same.
If you don’t switch things up, try new things then everything will end up sounding the same which is boring, right?
It’s not something really intentional that we do, I think we both just get bored very quickly so things change all the time in the studio and that keeps things progressing into new areas – stylistically and production-wise.
The temptation might be to say ‘oh yeah, SWAG was big, let’s write more like that’, but our writing process seems to continually want to make things that sound different to the last record we wrote.
What’s some D&B albums that really work, to you… albums that aren’t just compilations of tracks that are real organic, wonderful beasts that will sound great in 20 years’ time?
Goldie Timeless
Logical Progression 1… we know it’s a comp but it’s as organic as you get.
Pendulum Hold Your Colour
Chase & Status More Than A Lot
Bad Company Digital Nation
Tell us about some things on the horizon live-wise and release-wise we can look forward to from you?
We’ve got a very busy summer of festivals coming up, a huge UK one we can’t officially announce just yet but we’re at Nass, UAF, SW4, Ibiza and tons more as well as plenty of club nights too so keep an eye on our socials.
Music-wise we’ve got a couple of remixes out soon for Eelke Kleijn and Zomboy.
The next two singles from our album will be dropping too in the not-too distant future and the album a bit later this year, watch this space!
