Luca Venezia, aka Drop The Lime, is a difficult character to pin down. He runs one of the most influential labels in the emerging heavy bass party music circuit in the US (Brooklyn-based Trouble & Bass), and is as comfortable DJing the occasional all-rockabilly set at an underground bar as he is serving bass-heavy club throttlers to hundreds of hungry, obsessive fans, lost in a sea of T&B t-shirts and pumping fists. Similar to their creator, Drop The Lime’s productions have an innate ability to disorient all traditional restrictions. Artfully fusing sounds and styles, his music manages to destroy the delicate politics of genres completely: an element that shines on his upcoming artist album (his second to date, out on Trouble & Bass this October).

“The new album has transformed into this mixture of rockabilly, surf, and western guitar influence melded into the dance music stuff that I’m known for doing. It was a really cool, natural progression. What happened was I started playing a lot of rockabilly, a lot of the songs that I grew up with, that my mom was playing. I started doing rockabilly sets in bars, and then I started to incorporate a few songs into my DJ sets. And people would lose their shit! It was so out of the blue and unexpected, and so organic compared to how electronic my sets were. And just naturally, I started doing my own edits and bootlegs, and that’s how the album sort of got shaped this way. The album includes vocals and I also play guitar.” – Drop The Lime

As a 7 year old in Manhattan, falling helpless to the romance of rock n roll (specifically the dramatic glamour of Ritchie Valens in ‘La Bamba’), Luca’s first guitar teacher suggested he purchase a drum machine to stay on beat, a foreshadowing purchase for his beat-orientated explorations later on. In fact, various dots connect along the way of his musical path – being forced to join his school’s gospel choir, falling into the New York punk and hardcore scene as teenager, discovering New York’s hard techno rave scene in his late teens, fortuitously being handed D&B mixes recorded from London’s pirate radio waves at 16 – in a way that almost seems fated. It was only a matter of time until destiny led him to a group of likeminded spirits who shared his DIY attitude and art-driven ethos, and the Trouble & Bass empire began.

“I started to get more into the 4/4 versions of the grime tracks, the grime instrumentals; on the B-side, there’d always be a 4/4 version. I loved the idea of a house tempo drum & bass sound. I started trying to make my own versions of that, and Math Head (T&B co-founder) did as well, but we didn’t have anywhere to put it out so we made our own label.

We’re all best friends in T&B – we all hang out all the time, and it probably goes back to us all going to art school. We’re very DIY. We’ve always done things ourselves in terms of the artwork, the promotion; it’s always been very hands-on with everything. I hope that comes through with our branding – we want to make the crowd and the fans feel like they’re a part of something, a part of a family. We’ve recently been doing these series of singles called ‘Heavy Bass Champions of the World,’ and it’s just straight-up dance club tunes that are fun. I did it so that Trouble & Bass as a label can focus on albums and really build the artists – like myself, AC Slater, Little Jinder, Supra1, 77 Klash – and they can really do songs that aren’t only for the club. And ‘Heavy Bass Champions of the World’ are a series of club bangers. I don’t want to get pigeonholed as a strictly dance label, so I really wanted to make a separation between the two.” – Drop The Lime

Pigeonholes are gracefully obliterated, and Drop The Lime’s signature all-in-the-box DJing style encompassed, on the thrilling, adventurous FABRICLIVE 53. As with all DTL mixes, the most unlikely beats and artists suddenly make perfect sense alongside one another: the raw 303s of Maurice introduce acid to Untold’s future bump, Drop The Lime’s own housey summer hit ‘Sex Sax’ steps and twirls to the swing of Bill Haley & His Comets, and the glittery synth pop of Little Jinder fades into the melodic grace of Reso’s dubbed-out ambience. Filled with teasings of Drop The Lime’s newest work, and of course his unmistakable vocals, overall the mix is every bit as rare and passionate – and unpredictable – as the charismatic artist himself.

“I’m surprised I got away with putting rockabilly on a FABRICLIVE CD! I wanted to make the mix timeless; it’s tempting to pick all of the cool hype tracks, or all of the newest tracks, but I wanted to make something that you could listen to a few years down the line and still love it. And it’s something you can listen to, it’s a mix, not necessarily something you want to pump your first in the air to. That’s what the club is for; I feel like a mix is for listening to and really appreciating the music. I start on the deeper side of things, a little bit of techy house and then I go into the new future garage sound that’s coming out of London, like Untold, and then I go more into my signature heavy bass 4/4 sound into a little bit of Dutch-influenced stuff, into some tribal, percussive house tracks…it’s all over the place, but I really tried to build a rollercoaster of a ride. It goes huge, then gets taken back down, and built back up, and really ends beautifully with some ambient stuff.” – Drop The Lime