‘Both of us lean towards music that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up’
Matrix & Futurebound‘s remix of ‘Not Letting Go’ heads up a comp via Viper called The Sound of Drum & Bass 2016. It features the likes of Noisia, The Upbeats, Cyantific, The Prototypes, InsideInfo, Mefjus, Tantrum Desire, Smooth, Trei, Mob Tactics… the list goes on and on, biff bang pow. SO it made sense to ask:
Regarding this comp, there’s a LOT of tracks: how the hell do you in the Viper capacity choose the tunes?
Yeah absolutely. We like to be hands on with the label, so selecting and A&R-ing the music that will make a great sounding release is essential.
Every track that comes in to us at the label is listened to properly.
Not everything is up to scratch but we always try to feedback to people.
If people can take the time to make music and send it to us then it’s the least we can do.
We find doing these albums very enjoyable. You keep going over the music until the jigsaw is complete.
Once you’ve put a number of tracks forward it’s about listening closely to the music in various tracklists and if you get a gut feeling when listening through you know it’s right.
Thankfully we’ve got a great catalogue and we get a lot of producers wanting to release with us so when selecting the exclusives it’s important to make sure there’s a good balance in styles and more importantly to make sure they fit into the style of Viper.
How did your remix of ‘Not Letting Go’ come about?
This was a no-brainer as we’ve got huge respect for Tinie and Jess Glynne as artists.
We try not to take on too many remixes, we only pick the good ones we’re feeling and we were definitely feeling the original.
Any remix offers we receive we like to study if the parts are up to scratch.
How has D&B changed in recent times? Some are complaining there’s too much polished stuff but for me it’s business as usual, with mainstream stuff and tons of underground, pure art…
What can you do about haters and moaners.
Those sort of people will always moan instead of turning their gripes with something into positive energy.
And you’re right it is business as usual. If there’s a particular sound of D&B that’s sounding too polished, there will always be another 100 killer tracks that sound rough and ready, continuing the upward trajectory of the genre.
If we stand back and look at the wider picture of D&B then It’s looks like a work of art to us. So much colour throughout. I don’t think our scene has ever had so much variety.
Whether it’s acts such as InsideInfo and Mefjus right through to people like Sigma, these people are attracting more and more new people to the scene. That’s a great thing right?
You must feel quite reflective of YOUR time in the music? I first heard you on Fab & Groove’s show and you were one of the first to bring the big multicoloured euphoric vibe.
Yeah it has been a great journey for us and we’re very proud of what we’ve achieved and given to D&B.
Since we came together in 2006 there’s been so many great memories that will stay etched in the mind forever. We’ve never set out to make a particular sound or copy anyone else’s style, it’s always come from the heart and I think from the very 1st few sessions working together we kind of knew we both had very similar thought processes of how we liked D&B and music in general to sound.
Both of us lean towards music that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up whether it’s euphoric or twisted and that comes through in our productions, for us it’s always been about not standing still with one sound… to make the next track different from the last and for the most part we’ve been true to that.
People say to us “Your album Universal Truth got me into drum & bass” and we’re totally blown away by those sort of comments. If anything you do in life inspires the next person to do something then that’s a pretty amazing feeling for us.
We’ve still got mad love for it, we’ve given our lives to this thing and our hunger for it isn’t waning one single bit.
What are some tunes you’d pick at will here… not faves as such but more just like a lucky dip of reaching in and pulling out names at random.
Gotta say we love this new Cyantific track ‘Outatime’: this sounds fresh. It’s going to be a big year for Cyantific.
The new bit by Loko ‘Who Are You’ is straight up, skank fire, and Cynematic’s track ‘Exhale’ is a pretty special tune too.
We think the new The Sound of Drum & Bass 2016 album is a perfect snapshot of drum & bass in the year 2016 and every track selected is of the highest order.
The Euro front interests me… is Europe more of a ‘foreign’ stronghold than USA, for D&B? They sure go in on the beats but not necessarily the personality. Just saying.
Ha ha well we’re not going to comment on the personality: there’s no problem on the euro personality as far as we’re concerned anyway.
But looking at Europe and USA and trying to compare them there’s not much in it really.
Obviously Europe is closer to the epicenter of D&B – the UK – so they’re getting a lot of the scenes producers week in, week out.
The U.K never really wanes in its enthusiasm for D&B but other countries dip in an out from time to time.
Right now for us, in Europe it’s all about Holland and Czech Republic. Those two places are hot beds for the best events, and new producers coming through.
You just know anytime you’re booked in those places it’s going to be ram jammed and super-lively.
North America is its own animal; it’s a massive territory but in places like LA they’re some of the best places you can play at.
We’ve got to take our hat off to the EDC and Bassrush guys for what they’re trying to do for D&B and bass music throughout North America.
They really are pushing it.
So what’s happening on the label front for the rest of the year, and after a strong start?
So many exciting things are happening for Viper right now. Viper’s more than just a record label these days, we’ve firmly positioned our events brand ‘Viper live’ now and will continue to make that grow. We’ve also launched a publishing & sync arm to the company and that will bring in new exciting opportunities for our acts.
On the music front it feels like we’ve got a never ending flow of stunning releases.
Alongside the many great singles and Eps, we’ve also got brand new artist albums incoming this year from Koven, Brookes Brothers and Inside Info.
We’re about to release new music from Jaguar Skills: we’re very excited by that as his music certainly reflects his amazing live shows.
There’s also some new acts that are about to sign to the label. People who we think are going to go onto great things and carry the D&B baton over the coming years.
As well as all that there’s some pretty big joint ventures we’re working on in different territories which we can’t say too much about at this moment.
Just like to say a massive thank you to the super talented artists at Viper that we work with as well as the ones we’re going to be working with in the future.
Watch this space!