There’s no point building a vivid sonic landscape and then destroying it all with some gritty fart bassline and chunky hard-limit beats
Sabre‘s recent single is called ‘Yoga’, it’s an excellent tune – or simply by his description, ‘ammo’ – by any stretch of the imagination.
Let’s go in about it right now, as well as turn back time with some hip hop insight and get some interesting hints on suggested club night fuel, read on…
First off this new tune ‘Yoga’, what a tune: if it came on it would paralyse everyone, then they’d go crazy. When did ‘Yoga’ come about?
I think I made it about 12 months ago, just before Outlook last year. You need to head out to festivals like that which have tons of your peers on the bill with some ammo that nobody else has, so that was my firepower in the bag.
You have a stunning back cat of music, you must be proud! I first knew you from Bassbin days. In a paragraph or two, how would you say your music has evolved over time?
It’s a bit of confusing catalogue to be honest. I used to be really guilty of jumping from one to style to another before I’d properly made in-roads in that current style.
Looking back I wish I’d spent a little bit more time building a larger body of deep liquid stuff which I maybe steered away from a bit prematurely in favour of classic throwback tech. Tech is what I grew up on, and when I found a bit of stride with the sound design required to make decent techstep I think I felt I needed to keep my momentum going. Then the whole minimal thing came about and finally I managed to settle down a bit and take ownership of my style.
It was the era of music where I finally felt like I was leaving a legacy rather than reinterpreting other peoples’ ideas.
So many Sabre collabs over time such as with Alix P, with Jubei, Survival… can you fill us in on some people you’ve worked with? You must have some good stories? Road stories? Hint hint.
I don’t kiss and tell! But in all honesty this scene is – mostly – made up of good people with good hearts. It’s easy working with this lot, compared to say rappers who are so often total dicks with a poor work ethic.
What was the music you loved before/along with D&B?
Hip-Hop all day long. I was a seriously committed fan with a huge LP collection, plenty of ticket stubs from arena gigs, and a firm explorer of all the cultural trimmings that went along with it; the clothing, the slang, the streetwise mentality. I was seriously hooked, and to be honest I still am.
When it’s on point I far prefer decent Hip-Hop to Drum and Bass, the only issue is it’s a genre in serious denial about its place in the world that lost a lot of its authenticity – so it’s very rarely on point.
So speaking of ‘ownership’ of style, and about influences, what’s something people should consider when stepping into production?
Try to spend as much of your time consuming music outside of the genre you primarily produce. Cross-pollination is the single most exciting aspect of electronic music
How do you yourself check music? Do you check stuff live?
I earn my living in clubs so I don’t often volunteer to spend my weekends off in other club nights unless they’re run by friends or a crew that I really believe in. I’m a Soulection fan so I’ve been making time to check out their parties, but beyond that and maybe the odd gig from Hip Hop guys on tour I tend to stick to blogs and radio shows.
The Wake Up show is still a great source, Pete Rosenberg is a great source, egotripland is fucking awesome. I listen to a lot of classic FM – as long as its moody or sombre selection – in the car and especially like Margherita Taylor. I’m quite narrow in what I’m looking out for so I’ve got a list of preferred go-to tastemakers I’m very reliant on.
This leads me on to your atmospheres, for example your work for Darkestral. Does it happen spontaneously or do things influence your atmospheres?
Yeah I love classical and new-age synth stuff, and for me some of the best of those kind of compositions are in films; and that’s probably because it has a very meaningful agenda behind it: the idea of supplementing an experience or narrative with mood music. It’s something I try if I can to bring that ethos into my own music. But you have to commit.
If you’re going to head down that path in a track it needs to be all-encompassing and not just a moment or intro idea.
No point building a vivid sonic landscape and then destroying it all with some gritty fart bassline and chunky hard-limit beats.
What’s some films you really love?
Gattaca, The Road, Robocop, Soylent Green, Andromeda Strain…
For someone discovering Sabre, what are five things they can track down?
‘Oxygen’, ‘Marvel’, ‘Leaf’, ‘One Man Jettison’, ‘100 Teeth’.
Those tracks betray more of my agenda, background and personality than probably any others.
Back to the release, how did the link up with Plasma happen? I know the single’s shared with Cruel Culture & Keosz (read about them here)
The Plasma guys are an offshoot of BBA which is one of the old school touring crews for visiting D&B DJs in Australia and NZ. They’ve had me out there on three tours now, and over that time I’ve got pretty close with em. On a big overseas tour you always have a couple of days downtime and for the last two visits that’s been spent in Melbourne with those guys. You help your people out when you can and I really wanted to help Safire push Plasma forwards.
Last one, what would you like to see bought back into D&B that happened once that doesn’t so much now?
A smoke in an intimate chin-stroker clubnight.
There was nothing quite as engaging as being nicely-spaced in the presence of an impressive sound system and an on-form DJ. You get tunnel vision, and your attention span narrows onto the music and nothing else.
Not the single girls, not your mates, not the psuedo-psychedelic interior decor designed for the benefit of the pill heads. It’s just you and the beats. Under that kind of influence music penetrates you in a way all other mind-benders can never emulate. It haunts you, you perceive every detail and it sticks with you.
Yoga.