The wait is finally over!
Five years have passed since their incendiary debut LP Crazy World, and J Majik & Wickaman return with their long-awaited follow-up Out Of Sight. 11 tracks of solid contemporary bass gold, it’s the duo at their most expansive and exciting. At points brutal, at others beautiful, not only does it showcase the duo’s strongarm production muscle but it’s also a firesome snapshot of where D&B is at right now.
We caught up with the boys to see where they’re at…
Out Of Sight… Is that a reference to the fact you haven’t had an album out for five years?
W – It wasn’t a direct reference but we realised the irony pretty quickly. We genuinely have been out of sight as a duo!
J – To be honest with you it was a vocal from a track we did with Dee Freer. It was just a lyric! But it’s stuck with us and I think it fits nicely whichever way you look at it.
W – It was a last minute decision and we all just thought ‘hold on, that’s a great name for an album!’ We wrote the lyric the same time we did In Pieces with Dee. We had no idea it would end up being the title of our album! So yeah… Out Of Sight it is. But hopefully not out of mind, too much.
From an artist point of view it must be pretty scary…
J – It’s exciting more than scary. The problem with doing an album is having all these tracks and making sure they all still sound consistent and as good as each other. You can have stuff waiting on your hard drive. Then, when you return to it, it suddenly sounds out of date again. It’s a huge challenge! So to have this body of work and for it to all make sense and be presented as an album is massively exciting for us. We’ve finally done it!
W – Finally! J’s right though; from a production perspective it’s a very complex situation. Production standards just keep getting better and better, especially in mixdowns and especially in drum & bass. That’s scary enough, regardless of having to do an album. Some of these tunes are several years old! But it’s too late now, it’s done and we know we’ve done it as best as we possibly can.
Past the point of no return! So let’s go over some of the older tracks. I think Dream Box was written a few years back, right?
W – Yeah that’s a few years old. It’s actually one of our favourite tunes on the album. It’s so different to what people know us for, but we’ve put that tune on there for us. It’s a personal tune! It’s quite self indulgent but we love it.
J – Right Now is another personal one for me. It was the first track we sat down to write together! We’ve gone back to it so many times and never been completely happy with it. This time round we feel we’re finally happy with it.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rG7i4YZpWw
Was Kate’s vocal the final piece of that jigsaw?
J – Yes and no. We finished it before she heard it. We were going to put it on the album without a vocal but we just played it to her anyway and she came back with a few ideas herself. We recorded it, left it to breathe for a few weeks and it still sounded great when we return to it. It’s very strange hearing stuff that you’ve worked on as an instrumental for years suddenly have a vocal. You can get very precious about these things, especially when the track was already finished in our eyes. But Kate’s vocal took it to a new level.
How did you find Kate anyway? She’s a great consistency throughout the album…
J – The first thing is that we all get on really well.
W – We have a rule; if someone notices that we’re chatting shit then they have to tell us to stop it and get on with our work. Hype is the worst for this; he’ll be with us in the studio and it’ll be jokes all day – we won’t get anything done! These people are the best work with, but you do have to keep an eye on productivity!
J – Kate’s just on the same vibe as us. She’s up for different styles of music, we’ve worked with her on other projects, she’s just keen to do everything.
W – She’s got no fear. When you’re writing songs with singers it’s hard for them not feel awkward; you need to get the notes down and the lyrics will follow. But before you have those lyrics down then the singer just needs to make up a melody with random words. Some singers just can’t do that. Not Kate; she’ll go straight in at the deep end and not worry. We can worry about the lyrics later, the notes need to be done straight away. It’s such a help for the writing process when a singer can apply themselves like that.
Another track that really stands out is Believe. Those guitars! Never heard J Majik & Wickaman on a metal flex before!
J – Adam F was working with a band a few years back and he had this bank full of crazy samples. That’s where they came from; he actually wrote the track with us.
W – It was a new thing for us, there are a lot of layers of guitars in there. It was very fun to make, and great fun working with Adam.
There’s also a co-lab with Sudden Def, right?
W – Yes. He wrote Mike TV with us.
J – Funnily enough he was the first person I wrote tracks with for Infrared many many years ago. Another personal moment, I guess!
W – Mike TV is one of my favourite tracks on the album.
Is the sample from the new Charlie & The Chocolate Factory or the old one?
J & W – The proper one!
J – The new one is too dark. I watched it with my kids and they got scared. It gives the wrong messages. The songs are what made the original. They’re amazing.
W – The old one’s scary, too… That bit on the boat!
I love that bit. Trippy! Back to the album… Let’s chat dubstep for a second. Since the last album it’s blown up way more than anyone imagined. It’s clearly had an influence on your sound, right?
W – When we’ve done dubstep tracks we’ve just enjoyed the fun and the experimentation of it all.
J – For me I’ve been inspired by the fact that producers don’t just have to stick rigidly to genres any more. People are a lot more open to hearing new things and seeing artists do different things. That’s so inspiring and exciting for any producer. I think dubstep gave everything a kick up the arse whether you particularly like the genre or not. It’s brought a lot of new listeners to the scene. They’re seeing it as new music – they might call drum & bass ‘fast dubstep’ but who cares? They’re into the scene, they’re buying the music and they’re going to the shows.
W – It’s mad how quickly the new mind set has established itself. When we started writing some of the dubstep tunes you’ll hear on the album it was still pretty risqué for a D&B artist to do that. Now it’s fair game; do what you like but make sure you do it as best as possible. Knife Party have flown that flag incredibly well.
J – Not just dubstep, but all EDM. Everything is inspiring everything else. It’s not a trend thing, too; producers are getting excited about trying different genres and feel more confident that the fan base will listen to them. That’s not happened like this before. There’s more freedom among the new listeners. It’s like Right Now – there’s no disco D&B at the moment, we’re putting that on the album because we love it and not because it fits in with trends or flavours of the month.
True dat. The album’s quite a personal exercise isn’t it? Maybe more than the last one?
J – Yeah I think so. The last album, looking back, was more of a collection of tracks that we had ready. But this is much more of a body of work. We had 30 tracks lined up for this album and were very picky about the ones that made the cut and how they’re presented and arranged.
30 tracks? So what’s happening with the remaining 19?
J – They’ll see the light of day. They’re not sub-standard, they just didn’t fit the flow of the album.
W – We’ve got so many tracks running at the all times. We work on whichever one we’re feeling the vibe of the most. It’s almost like a lucky dip. Some days tunes write themselves. Other days you hit a brick wall and have to leave it for a while. They’ll all be released one day.
Another album, maybe?
W – We’ll see what happens. It would be great to have something ready before five years. We’re working on a lot of projects at the moment. Who knows what we’ll finish next. Just stay tuned!
Out Of Sight is out now! Listen and download.
