“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

First picking up a set of turntables aged 12 (hence the Toddla moniker) after a cousin got him hooked on hip hop, it all began four years later when he discovered the skankier sounds of Sheffield: dancehall, ragga, grime and techno. “I grew up in an area that was mixed; I went to a mixed school and was really encouraged to get stuck into all kinds of cultures and people. It’s the only way I’ve known. If it was any different, it would be a bit weird. I was encouraged to get stuck into everything and it paid off now with the music. Seeing music as being one thing rather than little pockets of things, it’s all just one thing to me really.” – Toddla T

This inclusive attitude, which epitomizes British music in 2009, has driven his DJing since day one, and it’s the fuel for his creative fire. And it’s contagious. In fact, it’s the reason why, aged 18, he was picked up as a studio engineer at the Kenwood Studios in Sheffield where Dizzee Rascal had made ‘Boy In Da Corner’, working with the likes of Cash Money and Roots Manuva, with no previous experience to speak of. “The only reason I got into the engineering side was because it was the only way; I didn’t know anyone who made music so the only way to do it was learn myself. I spent a few years doing that and it was amazing, I met some wicked people and I learnt how to be in studio environments with everyone from local bands to pop stars.”

Toddla’s first taste of being an artist in his own right came with his original production setup, Small Arms Fiya; a collaboration with fellow producer Scott Moncrieff which yielded several releases and remixes. But it was the combination of releasing his ‘Ghettoblaster’ mixtape and working solo on production that firmly put him on the map. “I wanted to put the mixtape out because I wanted to represent what I was about – not just a couple of rhythm tracks. And then it just went berserk, it got out of hand really! Then I got signed to an album off the back of it, which was just incredible.”

This signing, to 1965 Records – a Sony subsidiary – led to the release of his debut album, ‘Skanky Skanky’, in May of this year. In the couple of years leading to the album, he had carved a name for himself as a producer and remixer of massive repute. From his show stealing production on Roots Manuva’s ‘Buff Nuff’ and ‘Do Nah Bodda Mi’ to the unbridled personality injections in his remixes of the likes of Hot Chip, Tricky and Esser – he repeatedly proved his ability to sculpt tracks that buzz with the crackling energy of dancehall and gut-wrenching low-end.

As for what the young artist is currently working on production-wise, the list is virtually endless. But it’s best put in his own words (which may require a translator) – for, as seen on his cult-worshipped Toddla TV youtube series, there’s no such thing as a conversation with Toddla T; it’s all a whirlwind of character, liveliness and whim.”I’ve been doing some production, I did 2 tracks for Bashy’s album, ‘Catch Me If You Can,’ one of which was lead single – ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.’ I’ve done a track for Tinchy Stryder’s album, which he absolutely murked. Been in with Roisin Murphy working on her record. I’m goin’ to Jamaica in a couple of months for a coupla days in the studio…READY. Also about to go in with Trojan Soundsystem. Started my monthly Radio 1 show, every third Friday of the month, 2-4am….Steel City sonix nation wiiide!!!”

In comes the Steel City via FABRICLIVE 47, a living, breathing summation of all that is exciting about club music today, and for years to come. Veering from genre to genre, never missing a beat, Toddla – aided by the vocals of long term sparring partner MC Serocee – scorches through a searing seventy minute mix that lurches from the familiar electro dancehall of Cavemen’s remix of Duffy and Toddla’s own ‘Fill Up Mi Portion;’ to the Bristol jump-up drum & wobble of the Clipz/Toddla collabo; to the funky of Geeneus and Lil Silva; to dubstep from Untold and Caspa, with plenty of bends and tangents in between. Laced with VIPs, edits, medleys and exclusives throughout, this mix is the sound of one of the world’s most boxfresh artists, standing absolutely on top of the game. “I really wanted to represent an average DJ set in fabric from Toddla T & Serocee, Sheffield sonic stylee – as if a sweaty Sheffield basement was deported to Farringdon for the night! I’ve got exclusives and unreleased stuff from Roots Manuva, Skream, Drums Of Death, Untold, Shake Alleti, Toddla T (obviously), Martelo, Oris Jay, Oneman & Mr Versatile, as well as a few cheeky blends that have never been done before! So hopefully a lot of stuff will be brand new to people’s ears. This is fierce club kinda fodder!” – Toddla T

UK/R.O.W. Retail: 17th August 2009
USA: 8th September 2009

Jay Haze stands out as a visionary in the world of techno and house, a true nonconformist within a blinkered scene. But his work supports his revered status as an exceedingly prolific producer, DJ, live performer, collaborator and label owner. His wide-ranging labels ring true to themselves and never sway, each holding on tight to their own characteristic sound and group of artists: the house-oriented TuningSpork; the harder hitting tech-based Contexterrior and the downtempto dubby tones of Future Dub.

“TuningSpork was always the more housey one. Getting people to laugh is a form of seduction, and that’s what TuningSpork is about: being positive, funny, not taking itself too seriously. Then Contexterrior was more serious, more avant garde, more pushing the limits of sounds. I started TuningSpork with Sean O’Neal, aka Someone Else, and Bjoern Hartman, and then I started Contexterrior on my own. Future Dub was a label that exists, but never really existed. We have had 6 releases in 9 years, it was just for my love of dub reggae; if it comes, I’ll release it. I have so many different musical loves.” – Jay Haze

Jay also brought on the explosion of 2003’s Textone, his inventive creation of an online music magazine and internet label, which was created years before digital stores like Beatport or the now-prevalent online magazines/blogs had caught on. Beyond his own labels, Jay Haze’s genre-expanding, experimental productions have graced the catalogues of Playhouse, Kitty-Yo, Cocoon, Get Physical, and his remixes have been on labels far and wide, from Shitkatapult to Playhouse to BPitch Control to Soma. In 2005, he released his debut LP on Kitty-Yo, ‘Love For a Strange World,’ an album that challenged the world of techno further by questioning genre lines and embracing all that’s unconventional and unpredictable. His more dancefloor (and humour) geared moniker Fuckpony launched his career with Get Physical, the ‘Children of Love’ album being one of the most celebrated underground albums of 2006.

It’s interesting that someone whose life story has so many dark chapters still dedicates much of his music to love – wearing his heart on his record sleeves, for instance, as well as his endless dedication to charity work. “I’ve been homeless two times not by my own doing – by life situations, crazy coincidences. In those times on the street, I have seen the lowest things you could possibly imagine – paedophiles, blood suckers, I know what this world is made of. It’s these things that motivate me to do charity work. I want to help people who have it even worse than I did. When I was younger, I got so stuck on thinking my life was so bad, lost in really dark moments – but as I get older, all I can think about is helping others. I think it comes with the happiness of still being alive.” – Jay Haze

And it’s this that leads us on to fabric 47, an incomparable mix that lends itself to the world, in more ways than one. In addition to donating a piece of himself to the music world, Jay Haze will also be donating all profits made from the mix to the rest of the world, specifically “The Democratic Republic of Congo. I work with different charities, and because fabric is a UK company, I wanted to honour that and do something in the UK, so I’m working with Merlin Health Services. What they do is really positive, and 95% of every dollar you give goes out into the field, and this is provable. Right now, they’re working in Congo, a country of 75 million people that’s been in civil war for 50 years. 1200 people die every day of simple things, preventable things, and it breaks my heart.” – Jay Haze

fabric 47 is the deep, wandering heartbeat of 4/4’s most bold, valiant and versatile character; a bright, cohesive mix that is inherently Jay Haze through and through. Deeply-rooted in his free and capricious spirit, the flawlessly assembled collection of tracks thump with soul and alluring eccentricities. Grooving with an airtight flow across wide-ranging beats and styles, fabric 47 is a charismatic portrait of Jay Haze’s musical clan: the mix not only showcases the peerless artists he works with on his family of labels, as well as the many monikers that comprise Jay Haze, it’s also a glimpse into the soul-fuelled, future sound that they’ve collectively mastered. Teased throughout with samples from his Fuckpony track ‘Lady Judy’ (a song dedicated to our own fabric promoter, Judy Griffith – and a nod to the Daniel Bell classic, ‘Baby Judy’) and several other nods to the old school (including the likes of The Last Poets’ ‘When The Revolution Comes’ and Mike Dunn’s ‘Phreaky MF’), he takes things dubbier with Alex Celler’s enchanting ‘Trapped In Dub’, trippier with the groove-laden ‘Mellow Dee’ (created with former studio partner Ricardo Villalobos in ’08), and epic with the penultimate Fuckpony track, ‘Burning’, fabric 47 is Jay Haze incarnate; deep, daring and brave. Seventy minutes in the company of this disc leaves you feeling edified and your faith in music’s brilliance renewed.

“I realized this mix was a great opportunity for me to put my people on, and it represents exactly what I stand for in this scene and my contribution. In the beginning I thought, should I put my own labels’ music on here? Is that too daft? But after some serious thinking, I really couldn’t be happier with the way it came together. I was able to get some of the core artists I work with to give me some exclusives, some yet to be released and even some edits of tracks I loved from their pasts. And I was able to combine it with a cause I believe is worth fighting for, so in a sense all the music I used brought my artists closer to me, and made them part of my experience. It’s a very personal mix” – Jay Haze

“One day, I found myself in a studio with Paul Waller. That was when I saw a sampler for the first time, and over a series of months I worked out how a sampler works and how to sequence: I had found my calling. I could be a DJ, I could do my soundsystem, but I could also buy a sampler and carry on making music where I had left off with the piano. So I got my first sampler, and the first track I made was ‘Logical Progression’ in 1990. It was a whole transitional period musically, but ‘Logical Progression’ was at a time when drum & bass wasn’t really there – only a few producers were losing the kick drum and making the breakbeat the main part of the tune – and my track had a big breakbeat in it; so it was kind of the start of drum & bass.” – LTJ Bukem

Whilst the likes of the Ragga Twins were fusing breakbeats with ragga samples and creating proto-jungle, Bukem’s masterpiece, firmly rooted in his jazz piano background, was melodically and musically of another planet. His early productions that followed – including ‘Demon’s Theme’, ‘Atlantis’ and ‘Music’ – which built the foundations of the nascent Good Looking empire – carved out a defined niche in the developing scene. It wasn’t long before other young beat makers rushed to get their music into Bukem’s hands, from PFM to one Rupert Parkes aka Photek (“no one had heard of Photek until I was playing out all these sets of his productions”). As the 90s moved on and drum & bass began to develop as a distinct genre, Bukem and long time friend and supporter Fabio set up Speed at the Mars Bar in London’s West End, a night that became integral to D&B’s development.

“We first started Speed on a Tuesday night and about twenty people turned up – a few producers came to hear their tracks and that was kind of all it was. I remember to a certain extent Fabs wanted to give up, and I was like, ‘It’s a perfect place for us to play our music, just give it a few more months.’ He agreed, and then I remember about three weeks later, I walked up to the Mars Bar and there was an almighty queue round the block. And from that moment on, for the next few years every week was packed, and I still don’t know to this day why or what happened to turn it around. The night had a massive effect on me and Fabio personally, because it was around that time that I started getting loads of enquiries from abroad, and it was becoming an international thing – people were flying over to come to Speed.” – LTJ Bukem

In 1996, Bukem released ‘Logical Progression’ – a compilation whose impact on the scene is considered by many to be the equal of Goldie’s ‘Timeless’ and Roni Size & Reprazent’s seminal ‘Newforms’ – bringing together some of the finest moments of the Good Looking catalogue. This has become a hallmark of Bukem’s career: the constant development of the Good Looking empire, a collection of labels that transcended the drum & bass scene for the best part of a decade, sometimes at the expense of his own artistry. For running the Good Looking stable and developing their ever-talented roster was time consuming, and it substantially reduced his beloved studio time: “I had no time to sit and write music…I am at heart a music maker, and I’ve had to sacrifice my art to do some other things, things that benefitted other artists or the label.”

After clearing his release schedule and releasing his artists to pursue label plans of their own, Bukem took a well-earned sabbatical from the Good Looking operation in 2004, and over the subsequent few years experienced a personal and musical rebirth. “I met my original mother two years ago, I was adopted at a very early age. As you grow up, as a person, you need to know who you are, and I never did actually know who I was until a couple of years ago when I met my mother for the first time, and now I feel a totally different person because of it.” – LTJ Bukem

And as he was being given a new lease of life on a personal level, he was also being reinvigorated musically by a glut of new producers: “I just suddenly became engulfed in a world of new music. This is the music that I represent, and I’ve got to support it, so about three years ago I decided to go for it and get the label going again. Now every day I get up feeling inspired, the music that comes through my computer, the new artists, their way of thinking, their work ethic, everything.” – LTJ Bukem

And it’s these artists that Bukem is representing on FABRICLIVE 46. A bold mix of new and burgeoning talent, this is a seventy minute sneak peek at the future of drum & bass. It’s a simple formula – one genius, two decks and 18 great records. This is the mix which will re-establish LTJ Bukem as one of electronic music’s maverick selectors – not afraid to shun the big tunes and, instead, stick to his principles, support the fam and remind the record buying world that Good Looking is still the relentless musical force it always was.

“With the mix I really wanted to highlight what I’m doing as a DJ. I could’ve sat there with a computer and done what a lot of people do: a computer mix, which is great fun as you can do what you can’t do live. But for me personally, I wanted it to be exactly what I do on a Friday night, strictly dubplates and records. I also wanted to represent people on the mix that I am working with on Good Looking, who I have a strong belief will have some longevity in what they are doing, and are going to be prolific artists in their own right. For me, it doesn’t matter who the artist is, it’s just about good music. That’s been my ethos since day one.” – LTJ Bukem

Released
UK/R.O.W. on 15th June 2009
USA on 14th July 2009

“Hip hop is one thing that gives me my credibility, but I’m into all this other dancey electronic stuff. I’m able to have a foot in different scenes and bring a lot of the music together and bridge gaps.” – A-Trak

It all started very early, and developed very quickly, for A-Trak. As a young teenager in Montreal, he would scratch on one turntable for his brother (of Chromeo) Dave’s high school band. He begun practising, “with the discipline of a monk”, and after winning the Canadian, and later World, DMCs found himself an honorary member of Q-Bert’s legendary Skratch Piklz crew. He soon hooked up with DJ Craze and joined another famous scratch troupe, The Allies, and spent half a decade touring as hip hop’s hottest turntablist crew. Five years ago, after a chance meeting with Kanye West at a London in-store, A-Trak performed his first gig with the superstar, without a rehearsal, in front of 12,000 people – and from then on did every show with him for four years.

“Just as people were realising I was Kanye’s DJ, I got exposed to a whole new audience, a new generation. But once I started gigging with Kanye, it became a priority for me to make even more of a conscious effort to push the A-Trak stuff, because I didn’t wanna suddenly become “A-Trak, Kanye’s DJ” and lose my own identity. I was already working on this DVD called ‘Sunglasses Is A Must’, so I finished up my DVD and put it out. I was doing some different type of gigs, so I began organising my gigs better, doing tours, putting out mix CDs and getting my A-Trak projects a little more focused.” – A-Trak

Three years ago, after meeting the rising Chicagoan rapper Kid Sister, A-Trak began dabbling his way into production, which – also by way of happenstance – led to the beginnings of a record label. Ironically named Fool’s Gold, considering how many prosperous treasures it’s unearthed, the label has gone on to become one of the most sought-after imprints on the underground radar: a cross-over idol that’s wildly and unpretentiously united the worlds of club music and hip hop.

“Meeting Kid Sister when she was first budding as a rapper was great timing for me, because it allowed me to experiment with a whole different style of production, with an artist who was brand new. It was okay for me to make mistakes and make a bad demo or whatever, because we could kind of figure it out together. Meanwhile, when Nick Catchdubs (who I knew through The Rub) and I were having discussions about the Kid Sister single, I suggested it may be the pretext for starting the label that we’d always talked about, and that’s how Fool’s Gold started. In any city that Nick or I would go to in North America to do a gig, there would be a little scene that would be just like the parties that we were doing in New York: playing some hip hop stuff, some electronic stuff, a couple of Justice records mixed with a bootleg…it was all cross-genres with the only common denominator being that it was some kind of club music and it was all selected with a hip hop ear. It was a lot of fast, fun, creative club music, and that was where we saw Fool’s Gold fitting in.” – A-Trak

On FABRICLIVE 45, A-Trak slams down an unrivalled blend of everything hot, fast, fun and creative in clubland today. Try and fathom how a mix with a tracklist that lurches from Boys Noize and Baltimore edits to Aeroplane and Todd Terje remixes to a nine year old scene-altering UK garage anthem actually fits together. It is this that makes FABRICLIVE 45 one of our most distinctive and jaw-dropping mixes yet – rarely has there been a disc that so epitomizes the style and ability of the DJ in question. A-Trak loops, layers, scratches, doubles-up, re-edits, re-tweaks and does God knows what else to make this mix both cohesive and breathtakingly brilliant.

“I mixed in some old, classic house records with some newer funk-loop house records that reference the old house records, mixed with some kooky weird Baltimore-ish club edits, mixed with some techno stuff, some slow disco and my own productions. If you see it on paper it looks like a whole mish-mash but the way I put together the mix, it somehow comes together and makes sense. I just looked at it really as a DJ mix: the way that I bring the songs in and the way that I try to put my stamp on it, rocking doubles on some of the records and doing scratch routines and adding layers on top of my edits of the songs, that’s what defines its identity. I wanted to let the mix itself do the talking.” – A-Trak

uk/r.o.w: 13/04/09 usa: 05/05/09

As he says himself: “All the people I release on my label are from Michigan – because people from Detroit or Michigan need to be heard.”

His ever-supportive family has been the connecting link between each step of his musical upbringing – raised on his dad’s love of 50s/60s Motown (“I’ve probably listened to more Motown than anyone else in dance music today”); his eldest brother and sister (a decade older than him) introduced him to house music; his older cousin, a house DJ, would pass him mixtapes from Chicago; his sister bought him a keyboard at age 11 (“I was playing a lot of Chicago house records, like ‘Jack Your Body.’”); his second older brother bought him his first tables when he was 15; his grandfather owned an arcade (“Video games have had a big influence on my productions, definitely.”). Even his venture into establishing the label stemmed from his older brother.

“I’ve been producing since the early 90s, when I was about 17 or 18. After a while, I kept making tracks, I was making so many tracks. And my oldest brother came once and brought me an article by Ron Murphy in the ‘Detroit Metro Times’; it said there was some guy cutting everybody’s records. I made an appointment and got a record cut – that was the Omar-S 001, in June or July of 2001. At the time, I had the money to get the records cut but I didn’t know the first thing about distribution so this shit got sat on for years. I guess the label started taking off around the time of Omar-S 004, I established it properly around 2004 or 2005. The name FXHE is a trip because I was only about 3 years old – I wrote FXHE all over the walls in our laundry chute. It’s still written on the wall in my daddy’s house.” – Omar-S

Producing at such a prolific rate at an impressively young age, his style was so different that for years, the rest of Detroit didn’t get it. Even now, despite his devout following and a myriad of hugely celebrated releases under his belt (‘Psychotic Photosynthesis,’ his wondrously adventurous LP’s, his collaboration with Shadow Ray as Oasis, etc), he rarely plays in Detroit and his hometown is none the wiser about the sound he’s perfected. And his fan base, meanwhile, is none the wiser about the enigmatic man himself: with only two known interviews to date, looming aspects of his personal life, like his street-racing profile (a prevalent part of his Detroit life the last 14 years), have simply gone undocumented.

“I don’t know what to look for as far as having a certain sound. Sounds just come about. I just fuck around until it sounds good. The majority of my shit is made in a matter of minutes. I’m one of those people that can’t sit still. I just can’t sit in the studio for 30 minutes or for fucking hours, I do the shit and that’s it. The track ‘Psychotic Photosynthesis’ – that was made in minutes. A lot of my music sounds better when it’s really, really, really loud, because I made it really, really, really loud. All the speakers in my studio are blown right now. The same headphones you see me DJ with are the same headphones I’ve had for fifteen years. Every track I’ve released came through those Sony headphones that I travel with. ” – Omar-S

On ‘fabric 45: Omar-S – DETROIT,’ Omar-S provides the uneducated with a stunning, arresting portrait of who he is as an artist, as a DJ, as an outsider, as a radical in an otherwise indifferent music world. Enter the wide, unformulaic world of Alex Omar Smith, where all rules of techno and house are contorted, and no directions can ever be predicted. His complex yet austere productions build and interlock individually, in the same way they bind collectively to form a fluid, surreal anthology. Deep, challenging and all-consuming, fabric 45 is aural poetry, atmospheric bliss: put simply, a work of art.

“My booking agent and I were talking about doing a mix for fabric over the last year, and for me, over the last year I haven’t really been feeling anybody’s music. I’d rather do a mix for fabric that’s all my own shit, because there are still a lot of people out there that don’t know about FXHE records or Omar-S or Oasis. I did a few different versions, remixes, of a few of the tracks on the CD, and there are about four tracks on there that haven’t been released yet. I know a lot of new people will listen to it, so of course I put my important songs on there, but I wanted to make it varied and mix it the right way. That’s why I mixed a lot of the songs a different way; but with the famous songs, I didn’t touch those because I want the new people to hear the original. I don’t need other people’s music; I got over 100 songs released.” – Omar-S

Since January ’06, Get Familiar has grown from strength to strength, showcasing immense live performances from South Rakkas Crew, Buraka Som Sistema, Kid Sister, Spank Rock, Plastic Little, Bonde Do Role, Kool Keith and Boy Better Know; jam-hot DJ sets from DJ Funk, Diplo, A-Trak, DJ Assault, Toddla T, The Rub, The Heatwave, Sany Pitbull, Dexplicit and Hot Chip, among countless others. Showcasing an all-embracing variety of sounds and styles, their programming for Get Familiar mimics Switch & Sinden’s unconventional creations as a production duo.

But let’s back up, before the pair joined forces for Get Familiar; before they teamed up for their Counterfeet label (which has released Radioclit, Sinden, Count Of Monte Cristal and Solid Groove); before, as A Brucker & Sinden, they created scene-shaking remixes for the likes of Lady Sovereign and Bugz In The Attic; before the duo concurrently stormed the world with a twisted, glitchy house beat that beggars description (‘Fidget House’ being the moniker that journalists keep inaccurately clinging onto); before Sinden went on to extend his remix credentials (which include Mark Ronson, Björk, Crystal Castles, Chromeo, Estelle, Santogold, Sam Sparro, Alphabeat, to name but a few); before his weekly Kiss 100 show became a cult sensation; before The Count & Sinden blew up the underground radar (with their club smash ‘Beeper’); before Sinden’s Machines Don’t Care project (with Hervé, Trevor Loveys, Fake Blood, Detboi, Drop The Lime, Toddla T, Serocee, Affie Yusef and A-Trak) turned into a worldwide takeover…Let’s go way back and way east to Essex, where a young Graeme Sinden was zealously collecting records and attending Def Leppard shows with his mum (true story).

With an obsessive and diverse collection forming, even from a young age Sinden’s record selections (“I was into everything – 2 Live Crew and Public Enemy, but at the same time I was into Nirvana, the grunge scene and heavy metal. It’s not often that people put me on to music – I’ve always really liked to discover things for myself”) foreshadowed the radical, all-in-the-box international DJ that he would become today. A music lover with an unrivalled passion for seeking innovative sounds and uncovering gems, both old and new, it’s Sinden’s sheer enthusiasm that has connected the dots along the way of his winding, remarkable career.

On FABRICLIVE 43: Switch & Sinden Present Get Familiar, the ever-unstoppable Sinden provides a bumping, thumping representation of the no-holds-barred mindset Switch & Sinden bring to each Get Familiar club night. Sinden delivers a flawless blend of upfront exclusives, pushing music from streets all over the world – from the gutter sound of Baltimore (reppin’ scene legends King Tutt and Scottie B) to the hooky wonky synths of Africa (bigging up Mujava with Sinden’s own exclusive remix), from the percussive energy of Kuduru (with Lisbon’s heroes Buraka Som Sistema) to the low-slung bass-heavy sounds of London’s grittiest corners (featuring all-star bangers across bassline, dubstep and grime).

“I’ve always been interested in the idea of world-music-meets-dance-music – I explored that a lot on the mix. I decided to make a very current, present-day CD, there aren’t too many old classics or throwbacks; it’s really about what’s going on in clubland right now. It’s just future jams, the kind of new world sounds you’d hear at any Get Familiar night at FABRICLIVE.” – Sinden, Get Familiar.

“I remember one of my roommates’ boyfriends worked in a vinyl shop on Edgware Road and I used to go up there around ’93, ’94 – just at the point where the rave scene had kind of split into happy hardcore and darkcore. Literally, you’d walk into the store and one side would be happy hardcore and the other would be darkcore! I liked the darkcore stuff that was heavier and darker with reggae samples – I guess that was the beginnings of jungle. Through a friend of a friend, I managed to join up with Sour Records, which put out UK Apache and Shy FX’s “Original Nuttah.” Then Botchit & Scarper started doing the early beats and breakbeat stuff as a sister label to SOUR/Emotif and amongst others Matt (MJ Cole) started out engineering there before he moved onto his garage stuff. It was interesting because that one studio was an intersection for the burgeoning jungle scene, speed garage scene and breakbeat scene, and so many seminal artists came out of it…. Shy FX, T Power, MJ Cole, BLIM and more. I think that’s why some of the early Botchit & Scarper releases were so varied, because people were making half time jungle records, because it was the same engineers that would be making the jungle records.” – FreQ Nasty

No matter what new genre or new scene steals the media spotlight these days, FreQ Nasty has the wisdom and experience to see it for what it is. After all, the cycles have spun around countless times within his vast, expandable career. Continually shape shifting under the wide umbrella of bass culture, FreQ Nasty forever stays one step ahead of its ongoing hype-fuelled evolution.

“London still seems to have this thing of spitting out a genre – a distinct genre – every 18 months. I think it’s as exciting as it ever was; there’s loads of good new music out there and it’s interesting to see where those things come from. If you look at the Garage side of things, there’s that bumpy four-on-the-floor Bassline/Niche stuff coming out and there’s Dubstep, which draws its roots from Garage as well – so there’s two radically different, distinct scenes that have branched off from the same place. And there are some great records that came out in-between 2 Step Garage and dubstep. I remember when Tempa were putting out those Horsepower records of these crazy, chopped-up drums and mental syncopations – not really on the double time, but not really on the half-time, like dubstep, either. I thought they were really interesting phases in themselves; they never took off into a scene but who knows, if some journalist had picked up on it and gone, ‘Hey, you know those mental syncopated rhythms that sound like a jazz drummer on amphetamines, I’m going to call it such-and-such genre’ – perhaps that could’ve been a scene in itself! So at every stage in the evolution of dance music, there’s really interesting points that maybe don’t get the hype to become a scene as such.”- FreQ Nasty

Bridging the gap between the most current scenes in London’s bass culture, FreQ Nasty rumbles with underground thunder on FABRICLIVE 42, a staggering showcase of some of the rawest breaks-led beats around. Evading the pitfalls of a genre-controlled mix, yet at the same time avoiding the stop-start feel of a “mash up” mix, on FABRICLIVE 42 he’s imaginatively arranged a flowing, tightly-connected blend of FreQ-y tracks. With the bass heavy stomp of L-Vis 1990′s UK take on Baltimore house, the blistering shatter of TRG and several of his own storming productions, including his Santogold hit ‘Creator,’ the mix is a terror to bassbins worldwide. Buckle up.

“It’s balls-to-the-wall from the very beginning! But that’s the way I’m playing these days – there are so many good, full-on tracks out at the moment, I just come out and go BAM!…and then think about chilling out. I ended up finding that the relationship between the tunes in this mix wasn’t about genres – it wasn’t “it’s a breakbeat tune” or “it’s a dubstep tune” or “it’s a Baltimore tune” or whatever else – it was more about the feeling of the tune, the intensity of it. It’s odd because really, there isn’t a straight up breaks tune on the mix, but that wasn’t intentional. It’s bassline and breaks all the way through, just different permutations of them.” – FreQ Nasty

James: “With Simian, we were signed to Virgin…”
Jas: “It was actually a small label called Source that was eaten by Virgin, which was part of its downfall. The band kind of split up at the end of a cruel, hot tour in the states, but probably for the best. I think what made Simian interesting was the sort of tensions within, particularly musically – but we were pulling more in an electronic direction, up until the point that it was actually not so productive.”
James: “Jas and I had already started DJing while we were in the band. We started out playing really eclectic sets, because it was more what we wanted to hear – we’d play stuff like Sun Ra, Raymond Scott, really all over the shop. But we really, really enjoyed it, and that was the main thing. Then when the band split up, we sort of carried on DJing. We’d already started doing a few remixes while we were in the band, and we were also making mixtapes that represented our DJ sets at the time; some of them got printed up by the label – mixtapes called Simian Mobile Disco. They were just little promos, but that’s where we made the name up; because we were in Simian, it was just a jokey name. If we’d thought about that band ending and this being a new band, we would’ve made up a new name, but it didn’t work like that.”

Life before the band: Jas and James share a similar upbringing, despite being raised in different parts of the country. In a small town outside of London, Jas grew up in a house that played “pretty straight stuff” – Elvis, The Beatles, David Bowie – so he’d often find himself on a train heading into the city, on a quest for new sounds. Continually adding to his ever-growing collection, on his London record shop adventures, Jas would get beautifully lost in a world of rock ballads, The Cure and Pantera. It was only a matter of time before he picked up a guitar and, likewise, a pair of turntables. Meanwhile, up north, the Stoke-On-Trent native James was wrapped up in piano lessons and began kick-starting bands at the ripe age of 11. Playing bass and singing, and spanning everything from rock to jazz to pop (“I remember covering ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’!”), even from an early age James was en-route to becoming the producing/performing innovator that he’s developed into today (he’s an award-winning producer outside of SMD, working with the likes of the Klaxons, Arctic Monkeys, Mystery Jets and The Last Shadow Puppets). The two musically kindred souls gravitated towards each other at Manchester University when they both decided to start a band and, with Simon William Lord and Alex MacNaghten, created the force that would eventually become Simian.

After the official split in 2005, just as Simian Mobile Disco had really started to come into its own, in 2006 a Simian single was given an unexpected resuscitation, when a submission from a remix competition transformed into one of the biggest anthems of the year.
Jas: “‘We Are Your Friends’ came up because of a France-only remix competition for one of the singles we did with Simian.”
James: “We picked the one that seemed the furthest away from the track, which was just really noisy and distorted. But also on that CD was the ‘We Are Your Friends’ Justice remix – that was about 4 years before it actually came out. From there, they got signed to Ed Banger and Pedro [Winter] put that out as a 12″, and then it got put on Virgin, and then it kind of just became the club hit that it became. It was just a weird phenomenon, really.”

As a result, perhaps it’s only natural that their eclectic DJ sets often surprise those who expect the electro-heavy sounds of Justice to pour out of the speakers.
James: “We’ve always had a sort of – well, not contrary, but we sort of try to do the opposite…”
Jas: “See, that is contrary.”
James: “Well in that case, I guess we’ve always been quite contrary. (laughs) Maybe people expect us to play Ed Bangers or distorted electro, but we don’t play any of that stuff. We’ve just been DJing in America and I think, there especially, Justice are doing really well – obviously with our association with them, people expect us to play that sort of music. I suppose we play quite minimal stuff, really stripped-out disco. But that’s just the stuff we’re excited about.”

All DJing aside, and considering their music backgrounds, inevitably the duo decided to explore the realms of a live platform. Their blinding (in more ways than one), unpredictable live shows have since become a mainstay on festival stages around the world.
Jas: “We actually only intended to do very few live shows. We knew we didn’t want to put a proper live band together, because we’d been down that route with Simian. And although both of us play instruments, we didn’t really feel that represented the record. So the closest thing we could think of is to pretty much build a studio on stage and have loads of room for us to experiment and improvise. Then we kind of realised that people wouldn’t know what we were doing, so we thought we’d get shitloads of lights to make it more interesting for other people to watch.” (laughs)
James: “The main thing is that it is actually something organic. We really didn’t want to be behind laptops, we really like old gear – we like the way it makes you approach making music. We were very keen to have that as part of our live show, so we’ve got old synthesizers and drum machines on there. Really, we’ve made it quite flexible so we can change it every time we do it – and because we’re mixing it all live as well, there are lots of areas where we can mix it up on the spot. Makes it more tied to a moment I suppose.”
Jas: “There are quite a few moments where absolutely nothing is planned, and they don’t always go well! But that’s kind of the beauty of it. Different things are appropriate for different nights: if we’re playing to a bar-type crowd, we’re not going to play tracks really long and stripped-out; we’ll play the shorter, punchier tracks, maybe even more vocal ones. But then quite often we’ll play in a dance venue, like fabric – and at fabric, you can get away with playing a track for ten minutes. Maybe you only play half the tunes you normally would, but you play them different. We’re not that good of showmen; if we’re bored, we look bored. So at least this way it keeps us on our toes.”

Simian Mobile Disco keeps all listeners keenly on their toes and, taking a step away from any misguided preconceptions, showcases an exemplary DJ set on FABRICLIVE 41: an arresting, expansive mix that shuffles with 4/4 rarities and gems. At times tough, other times spacey, and riveting throughout, the iridescent collection is an exploratory trip onto a dancefloor commanded by the improvisatory musicians. SMD strips back and lets loose with the thump of Smith N Hack, the disco shine of Metro Area and the proggy sounds of Sisters of Transistors.

“We dug through a lot of stuff that’s not very current. With a lot of mix CDs, you do them and you know it’s just going to go out and do its thing, but we always think a fabric mix is something that sticks around a lot longer. We weren’t aiming to make it the most current mix of tunes; of course there will be a few new things but a lot of it is us digging back into our record collections, just the stuff that people may have forgotten about, or that went overlooked.” – Simian Mobile Disco