Transparent have existed for a relatively short time, a quick trajectory initially consisting of (in their own words) ‘messing about on 1210s’ to completing a strong, seamless six tracker for Flexout. And it turns out that a parental figure may have actually AIDED them along the way in D&B: not obstructed. Read on…
Did the Concrete Jungle ep just happen all at once? All tunes, I mean?
All of the tunes where made at different times. Some of them where not intentionally made for the ep… but it all kind of fell into place. The Concrete Jungle ep was originally only going to consist of three tunes, but with (Flexout’s) Tom Bassi’s encouragement and optimism we pushed the boat out and turn it into six.
What inspired the title track?
‘Concrete Jungle’ is probably the most popular tune we have made. It was inspired by artsists such as AMIT as you can tell with the hard sketchy snares. We randomly recorded some bits with our guy DLos in the studio and decided to chop out a catchy riff which led on to being “concrete jungle jungle jungle jungle”.
Ideas and inspiration where pouring out that day and we managed to wrap it up in about six hours.
What D&B in particular inspires you… and from what periods? I mean something from 2007 now could be ‘old school’, never mind ’97…
Most D&B inspires us. I would say the deep minimal techy sound a lot more than others.
Now I hear that your dad was instrumental re D&B too…
From a young age I was always interested in listening to what my dad would mix, eg Good looking, Hospital etc.
Then we found out about ‘jump up’. This was magical at the time as we had never heard anything like it but slowly grew out of that phase by exploring the genre fully and discovering the deep underground tech style… which can I say is also very magical!
There’s two of you… you have a shared mindset?
With both minds I would say we pretty much cover every style of the genre and this shows in our mixes. We both love other genres too. I think if we didn’t, our ideas wouldn’t flow due to lack of inspiration and understanding. We are fans of artists from J Dilla to Synkro to Lee Scratch Perry and old DMZ… MALA is a BEAST!
I totally agree on that! So do you feel that you have the freedom to do anything with the D&B template?
One of the reasons we have a passion for producing D&B is that you can go off in so many directions depending on your mood and mind state. For me, experimenting new sounds and flows has always been a must, this is important to maintain if you want people to recognise you for own sound.
Can we catch Transparent live?
You can catch us in and around London, for example with Flexout at Plan B Brixton, April 18 and also Nottingham mostly. This year we had our first European booking, which has lead onto more international gigs.
We would like to say a big thankyou to the labels which gave us recognition from the begining: Structured Music Recordings, Flexout Audio, SickBrain Music & Primitive People. Big up Mr Tom Bassi & The Flexout Team for putting together the Concrete Jungle ep.