Based on his artist name, Lakeway may sound pastoral and – dare we say it – placid, but he’s keen to point out that his motivation is not so much ‘sheep, fields and dairy products’ but rather D&B ‘with a twist’.
Time to head cross-country via his recent outing on E-Motion, and to touch base (bass?) on five phenomenal random picks at the end too.
Lakeway hi, can you take us through ‘Arroyo’?
My first idea was that it should have a lot of elements of a deep, sub-heavy D&B tune but with a twist.
I wanted to make the intro quite light so the drop would have as much impact as possible, with a much less ‘traditional’ drum pattern.
The production process went by pretty quickly: it was one of those tunes that pretty much wrote itself once the basic ideas were there.
Touching on trad D&B, what got you into the genre?
If I remember correctly it was Pendulum’s ‘Masochist’. I was on a bus and someone got the driver to put on a dodgy mixtape… ‘Masochist’ really stood out for me.
From that moment I was hooked.
So where are you based as such? And what’s the local scene like?
Exeter.
Being based in the South West you would’ve thought it was all sheep, fields, and the dairy product game. This isn’t the case at all.
Exeter is a city with a surprisingly big dance-music scene: there are nights of all genres, and regularly. Promoters like Hold It Down – shouts to Aaron – and Deep End are keeping the scene going, and going strong at that. There’s also Bristol nearby which I don’t have to sum up in terms of the strength of the scene, and I feel I’ve only scraped the top of it.
How did you and the very fine E-Motion label hook up?
It was basically with me sending a bundle of tunes.
I got a lot of feedback, worked hard and that lead to my first release, ‘Digital Serotonin’.
When he heard ‘Arroyo’, Liam messaged me saying he listened to it in the car and the way the sub rattled he just had to sign it!
Can you fill us in about ‘Things You Say’?
With ‘Things You Say’ I really wanted to just put something out there which was a little bit different to what I usually do. I’ve never really released a “chilled out” tune before so it felt like the right time to do exactly that. Chilled out but again with a twist.
The tune was basically built around the drums and vocal sample. It’s a bit of a slower number so I wanted to keep things interesting with the drum patterns and breaks. Manipulating the vocal a lot also helped keep things interesting.
What five tunes are delivering for you right now?
Foreign Beggars & Eprom ‘Sirens’
Whenever Eprom releases something you know it’s going to be decent. The vocals over this minimal beat work so well. Been on repeat since release.
Phazz ‘Insomnia’
I’ve been playing this tune from the Filet Mignon mixtape out for a while and it goes off every time, proper hard hitting stuff.
Dark0 ‘Gaia’
The Fate ep is one of my most listened to pieces of music recently, but this has to be the standout tune. Brilliant stuff.
Darkhouse Family ‘Brockwild’
One of my favourite tunes this year, it goes in hard and doesn’t play about whatsoever. Absolute stonker.
Andy Pain ‘Banana’
Absolutely massive halftime tune. It got put out as a free download on Diffrent so cop dat!