DOA: We’ve seen you two collaborating on tunes over the last year or so. When did you first link up together to start creating tracks? 

Optiv: After meeting BTK at a few parties around Switzerland, I went to visit BTK in his studio for a beer. He showed me a few ideas one of which became “Crawler”. From then on we have been meeting up regularly and making tunes together. 

DOA: We know BTK’s from Brazil, and Optiv is from the UK. You’re both now living in Switzerland, right? Were you guys aware that the other was already in Switzerland before running into each other at DnB events? 

BTK: Ah, I was always a big C4C fan and Optiv was already living in the country when I came around. I think that the whole collaboration thing came naturally as our friendship grew. 

DOA: Optiv – you’ve been in the game for a bit, both with Cause 4 Concern and doing your own solo thing. You’ve also collaborated with a number of the scene’s finest in your time. What’s it like working with BTK as opposed to working with some of the other producers out there? 

Optiv: BTK is great to work with, he has many good ideas and there is a real vibe when we get our heads together. Often when working with other producers for the first time it can take a bit of time to get into the swing of things, usually as everyone involved has slightly different ways of working. Having done so much music with BTK we have built up a good working relationship in the studio and we seem to compliment each other’s working style. 



DOA: We’ve heard time and again that the process for making tunes can be varied – some bits coming together very quickly, while others take a bit more time to matriculate. Just looking at the number of tracks you’ve amassed in almost two years, would you say that idea rings true, or do you guys knock things out at a different pace? 

Optiv & BTK: Don’t think we ever struggled to have new ideas for tunes. Since it’s our job to be a music producer, it all comes together naturally when it’s studio time. We also have a lot of fun doing it which definitely helps speed things up. If you go into the studio with a good attitude you can’t fail. 

DOA: With you two already crafting a string of releases for Hardware, Virus, Frequency and Dispatch, when had you decided on working on the tracks that have become Dirty Tricks, your forthcoming album? 

Optiv & BTK: Last year, having just released the single “Backlash” / “Lurker” on Virus, Optical asked us if we would like to do an LP for Virus. We were very excited about the project and got working on it straight away until it was finished. 

DOA: Did Optical and/or Ed Rush have a lot of input on the LP during its creation? 

Optiv & BTK: We were lucky enough to do what we wanted, however, they did choose the final tracks and gave us a few mix pointers. 

DOA: Talk to us about what’s driven you guys to create the sound that’s found on Dirty Tricks. Were you guys working with any particular influence or ideas in mind? 

Optiv & BTK: We’re just doing our thing, trying to create good dancefloor/clubbbing Drum & Bass music. It was all about writing music that we want to play out and luckily Ed Rush & Optical liked it, too. 

DOA: Are there any bits that you think the massive will be particularly excited about? Do you guys have any tunes in particular from this project that you’d consider to be your favorite(s)? 

Optiv & BTK: Our favorite tunes in the album are “Mind Control” (BTK) and “No Way Out” (Optiv). It’s hard to guess what other people will particularly be excited about, hopefully all of it. We know that “Don’t Need You” has been receiving a massive radio support by Friction on Radio 1, Matrix & Futurebound and Crissy Criss… Bailey always drops “Into The Wild”, Andy C plays “Cantilever”, Hype is playing a few on his show, too. Marky said he loves “Riptide”. There’s also the album title track, “Dirty Tricks”, which has that classic Virus worm break on it. 

DOA: Do you two have any tunes lined up for release outside of Dirty Tricks? 

BTK: I’ve got a remix of C4C’s “Paranormal” coming out soon on their own label, and Optiv has done a remix of Maztek’s “Renegade”, which will be coming out on Icarus Audio, as well as some new C4C material. Together we have a BSE remix to work on, singles forthcoming on DJ Hype’s Playaz and Kasra’s Critical Music which we’re very excited about. We’ve also been working on a few new tracks for our own labels; Dutty Audio and Red Light. 

DOA: Outside of the studio, do you guys hang out? If so, what kinds of things do you get into? 

Optiv & BTK: We met sometimes for a beer or two far away from the studio and when the sun still up. Also, we met often on events in the city or when have gigs together. 

DOA: Any shouts before we wrap this up? 

Optiv & BTK: Thanks to Ed Rush & Optical for believing in our music and being so supportive. 

(Source: dogsonacid.com)

DB: When did you start writing ‘Characters’?

N: I started writing when Klute put a gun to my head and yelled at me for more then half an hour that he really wants a Nymfo album for Commercial Suicide. I started working full time on the album last year July. Of course I had some sketches waiting already to finish, but I’ve been the most productive since July last year till February this year.

 

DB: … and how did you know you had an album? When did you stop?

N: That’s the hardest part! You never know when you are done to be honest, but at some point you just have to say to yourself you’re done. After that you have to make a final tracklist for the album and you will discover you wrote way too much music. So the hardest part is coming then and that’s ‘deleting’ music and making some tracks shorter maybe. It’s also good to listen to all the tunes in one session with friends while you are driving or travelling for example and ask for their feedback.

DB: Yeah, I feel like it’s tip of the iceberg actually, listening to it all. Do you find it hard to actually STOP doing music? Do you need a priest?

N: I think I never will stop doing music. I started playing the piano when I was a kid (6 years) and starting ‘djing’ when I was 15. I think there always will be something in my life related to music. When I’m old, I want to play piano in a jazz band in old cafes where people smoke cigars.

DB: So how’s the typical day pan out, what’s the regime in the morning for eg, is it straight onto beats or do you have to warm up to it?

N: Because my girlfriend is working 9 – 5, I try to do it as well. Otherwise I never would see her! When I started doing that, I noticed it felt very healthy and good! On the other side, when it comes to producing I never work at night, at some point my creative mind stops in the evening and I can’t write any music anymore. I never put my alarm, but I usually wake up around 8 / 8:30. I start with coffee and answering some emails. Also I do a round of social media and check all the uninterested updates from people. Somewhere in between 10 – 11 I start with writing music, searching for samples or making basslines. It happens sometimes I’m not in the vibe of writing music, so those days ending up with stupid aim conversations with Klute.

DB: What makes you want to get stuck in? I mean for some it’s being out somewhere, hearing a set and almost imagining the tunes they’d like to hear in there too, then making them. You?

N: Maybe it sounds a bit weird, but I really like travelling back home the day after a gig. With a little hangover and your favorite tunes on your iPod, walking on airports and see all the people rushing and running. Those are the moments I get a lot of musical inspiration from as well.

DB: On the topic if you have a tune in your head, what’s the best and quickest way to snapfreeze it, to get the gist of it down quick? I mean with computers, samplers, presets etc it can actually kill off creativity sometimes.

N: For quick sketches when I have an idea in my mind, I always use Reason! Because it’s a very quick program and I started working in Reason when I started producing, I really know how to work quick with this program. The sampler is very easy to use and I always have some Nymfo pre sets in the Maelstrom.

N: What music, any genre is getting you right now? What you listening to?

DB: While writing the answers for this interview, I’m listening to Bonobo. I see in my playlist Danny Breaks ‘Another Dimension’ is coming after that. Albums I’m feeling right now are the new Actress album and ‘Kill for Love’ by the Chromatics. When me and my girl driving to our family I even listen to Lady Gaga sometimes.

DB: Actress always had the best myspace too. Any good food tips? Good sandwiches, coffee, any city, and time of day or night, could be the local Texaco forecourt, I don’t mind.

N: Eggs benedict in New Zealand! Restaurant ‘Wilde Zwijnen’ in my street is one of my favorite restaurants in Amsterdam at the moment. You can always wake me up for a good braai in South Africa. I’m a fan of lots of different Belgian special beers. The best butter chicken you find in club Bacchus in Bangalore.

(Source: friedmylittlebrain.com)

Over the years, many DJs have turned their talents to producing, and others have started their very own labels. One stalwart who followed this trend is Shy FX, who started his career in the early ’90s, at the very beginnings of the drum and bass scene. 
 
Shy FX launched on to the British music scene and into the charts in 1994 with several releases on Sound of The Underground Records. ‘Original Nuttah’, ‘Gangsta Kid’ and ‘Sound of the Beast’ embodied Shy’s jungle-reggae sound, and set the tone for things to come. A few years later Shy FX started his own label, Ebony Records, concentrating more solely on the jungle sound and syncopated drum timbres. But it wasn’t until the early noughties until Shy’s career really hit the big time. His collaborations with fellow British DnB DJ and producer T-Power fused underground drum and bass with more dance-floor pop – creating chart sensationShake Ur Body in 2001, fuelled by cascading piano riffs and crisp drum hits. 

(Youngman)

Throughout the next few years, Shy’s collaborations with T-Power continued to grow – releasing several collaborative singles under the name Ebony Dusters. Eventually in 2005, Shy founded Digital Soundboy Records, and released ‘Diary of a Digital Soundboy’ which showcased the best both Shy and T-Power had to offer as well as subsequent modern classics such as Benny Page’s Turn Down The Lights and more. We probed Shy FX to give us a potted history of Digital Soundboy (DSB) and let us in on the eclectic flavours and carnival spirit of the new Fabriclive release…  

Firstly, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. You must be really pleased with the FabricLive release, the growth of Digital Soundboy and the huge success you’ve been having. How busy has all this been keeping you? 
Busy enough that I can’t finish an album that I’ve been working on for about three years now. But it’s a good busy; we’ve been working hard in what we’re doing. And I’m glad to be caught up in everything. 

That pretty much answers the next question - how long have you been able to spend in the studio as an artist yourself?
I’m always in the studio, but in terms of doing my own stuff… it’s only just the last few months I’ve been able to get back into my own stuff. A lot of the time I find with artists it’s a whole development thing. Breakage for example obviously he had his career before but he wasn’t used to working with vocalists or the song arrangements, or just whatever it takes to get your production on to (adapt it). I’m fairly hands on with a lot of the projects we take on board. Even down to the singles we find. I never listen to mix-downs when we receive tunes or demos because what I find is that when we get a tune I always end up mixing it down myself anyway. That’s basically it, just caught up in the studio doing other stuff. 
  
When you formed Digital Soundboy what was your ethos? What was your aim for the label?
Just to put out good music. I mean before that I had the Ebony drum and bass label and I just thought, (well it wasn’t holding me back or anything but…) My vibe is very UK, very eclectic, it’s always been that, and that’s what made me fall in love with jungle in the first place - it was just a mixture of all different vibes and genres. A lot of us who started back then, we all came from different backgrounds - whether it be hip hop or reggae or rock or whatever - so we all had something different to contribute. But along the way a lot of the kids grew up listening to drum and bass and then they were making drum and bass. It’s just that they didn’t have anything else to add to it. It all became a bit (well not all of it)… but it didn’t have the same vibe that I love. But the jungle ethos is that anything goes – a mixture of everything. 

 

(B-Traits)

But yeah, it’s just different vibes and trying to keep it moving. I also didn’t like that when I saw other labels, that they have their main label but then they have their sister label to put out a track and test it, or they might have a dubstep label and a drum and bass one – it’s just a negative…I mean, if it’s a good tune, then it will go on my label – it’s all good music. My vibe is ‘you know it could be a tune that might not break even or might be a tune that hits the top ten’. As long as I would actually feel comfortable going out and buying that track myself, and spend a lot of money, then the tune can go on there. 

How do you think the label has evolved since it started seven years ago?
I’ve never really thought about it to be honest with you. Once we started working with people like Skream and Donaeo and Redlight I think people really started to get the vision a lot more. I started off the label by putting out the Incognito mix of Feelings – which at that point was to send out the message that this isn’t just a drum and bass label, more like a good music label. And I think that slowly, it’s started to become even more eclectic to the point where no one else really knows where it’s going – not even myself. But it’s still keeping with the same type of ethos.

What kind of thing do you look for in potential signings? Is there anything in particular you look for in an artist?
What I hate, and what I’m not looking for, is another Breakage, or Redlight, or Shy FX, or Benny Page, or B-Traits. What happens is a lot of people check out the label and think ‘Oh they put this out, so they want a major tune like this’, but that’s not what I’m looking for. We have listening sessions every Monday where most of the artists get together, and we just play music. We all receive different music and we all buy different music. So just whatever takes us, whatever jumps out – again, I don’t really know what it is, but it’s just a certain something. A quality sound, and again I don’t care about the tempo or anything like that. If it jumps out, and all of us can agree that this is a DSB tune, then I will take it on board. It’s really important that the other artists on the label have a say as well. Because if I put something out that they don’t like… I want them to feel that this is all of our label. And they need to feel comfortable with what’s put out. We all pretty much have a say in what we put out. 

You’ve been at the forefront of music for a while now and you’ve witnessed the progression of the music industry into a more digital era. How do you feel the music industry has changed and how do you think it has affected music and artists like yourself?
I mean there’s good and the bad really. I’m sure we’ve all heard it before, but in terms of record sales, now it just isn’t anywhere near what it used to be. It’s very, very, very easy for people to get a crap piece of software and thrash out a tune and put it out there. You know the quality control has gone down a lot blah blah blah. But at the same time it’s made things a lot more accessible. I don’t know if what I’m doing now would have worked years ago. If I make a tune now and I put it out there, and if I flew to the States tomorrow, loads of people would be familiar with the track already. That’s the good side of it. I wouldn’t have received as many of the tunes that I receive now. 

For me, I think it’s all good to be fair. Now that record sales are affected, it means that people really have to stand out with their music. People really have to put the effort into it. I’m all for it. I had a conversation recently with someone who’s been in the industry for a while and they have the complete opposite view. They harp on about the good old days and all of that, but things move on and I’m glad that I’ve been there and I’ve got some of that flavour to see how we approach stuff now. I’m happy with how things are. 
 

Coming back to Fabriclive, what can we expect from the guys at Digital Soundboy?

Party - carnival vibe. (We) worked really hard in making sure that we covered all bases, and also made it flow right. When you first hear the track listings some people are like ‘Oh my God, how can this work?’ but when you hear it, it really gels together well - mainly, because individually they’re so used to playing eclectic sets, that they just know how to make it work. But I mean we have everything - literally from funk, to dubstep, to house, to reggae – it’s all in there. 

We understand that you can’t single out favourites, but which five Soundboy artists should we be watching out for over the next year?

In terms of newbies, Dismantle. He’s definitely someone to watch. He fuses the whole Dutch-house stuff, with dubstep tempo… I’ve heard his next few releases and they’re bangin’. B-Traits, her next two singles are running. They capture what DSB is all about, all the vibes and stuff. Breakage’s album is nearly completed and that’s going to be sounding good. Myself – I’ve got a roots-reggae album coming, and I’m following it up with a full on dance project. And Youngman’s album is coming along really well, and I’m excited about that. And within the camp there are other artists, but these are the artists that have releases coming out soon. 

Finally, Is there anything else we should be looking out for over the coming months from Digital Soundboy – anything that fans can really get excited about?

Yeah we’ve got a few festivals coming up. We’ve got a stage at Lovebox – and that’s the first festival where we’ve actually got our own stage. And then we’ve got a stage at Global, Metropolis and a few others which just got confirmed recently. We are also going to start doing parties that represent DSB. We are trying to keep away from the Saturday night rave format and will definitely be doing different parties that will surprise people - ones that also keep in line with what we’re about.

(Breakage)

(Source: datatransmission.co.uk)

The project features collaborations with artists that share Gerber’s poignant spirit such as Deniz Kurtel (ahead of her album on Wolf + Lamb this summer) and Clarian North from the band Footprintz (ahead of their album on Visionquest later this year). These labels and artists are weaved into Gerber’s own current story as his closest peers and co-conspirators. The mix itself is in many ways what you expect from Gerber - driving and emotive - yet in others it builds a new dimension to his style. His use of ethereal vocals in tracks like ‘The Rhythm’ and ‘The Golden Sun and The Silver Moon’ create more resonance and the subtle builds climb higher that he has gone before, soul searching in rolling melodies and echoing drums.

(Source: fabriclondon.com)

Hot on the heels of his digital-only, appetite-whetting single “Give & Take” comes the next installment from Netsky’s highly anticipated second album, which is due out at the end of June on Hospital Records. ”Come Alive” kicks off with a quirky marimba melody so simple it catches you by surprise and builds towards the drop with a sweep of vocal and punchy drum rolls. An enthralling slice of something different from Netsky. The Culture Shock remix ramps up the energy with high-octane drums, booming bassline and turbo-charged builds. A surefire dancefloor destroyer. Rockwell’s controversial remix features a bassline that “feels like a stomach convulsing into itself” according to FACT Magazine and adds a quirky, experimental re-imagination of the original, whilst Submerse’s sublime remix strips things back with a pumping garage beat.

 

(Source: hospitalrecords.com)

Work Experience: if you could collaborate with any artist, who would they be? And why?

We checked in with Hospital’s S.P.Y this week to find out his dream collabos. But first, a little on his monstrous four tracker Love & Hate: Out now and available here, each cut stinks of gritty old school flavours.

“Yes definitely,” chuckles S.P.Y who, incidentally, loves good food and hates empty promises. “The whole EP and most of the tracks I have produced in general have this old school feel. I really enjoy working with breaks and manipulating and transforming samples. This probably comes from my background in music as I was always a big fan of hip-hop. Looking at it more broadly, the concept I have used for the Love & Hate EP tracks was ‘less is more’ and always pushing the tracks for a more underground old school feel.”

Complete with a sonorous rendition of Submotion Orchestra’s All Yours, it’s yet another worthy addition to Hospital’s armoury. Having signed to the mega-label last year, S.P.Y still finds himself pinching himself at his latest career move.

“It’s a pretty good feeling,” he grins. “To be honest I was quite surprised to be approached by them, but because I’ve known the Hospital crew for so long I don’t just feel like I’ve signed to one of the biggest labels in D&B, it feels more like I’m back working with my good friends, which is great.”

A perfect working relationship if ever we heard one. Just like S.P.Y’s own dream collaborations…

The Prodigy

“I was always a big fan of The Prodigy, especially the early work. Albums like Experience and Music For The Jilted Generation were a big influence on what I do right now. I would love to have worked with them!”

Total Science

“Even knowing that I have already collaborated in the studio with them, they are just my ultimate favourite producers. There were always a big inspiration for my music and we have a lot in common when in the studio. So for me, working with them was a big personal achievement.”

Stakka & Skynet

“They were so ahead of their time! Their tracks still sound fresh today – those two were a big influence. I always wonder how they managed to write so many amazing tracks on such a basic set up.”

The debut album Characters LP from The Netherlands favourite Drum and Bass tech funkster Nymfo is to be released on 04.06.2012 on Klute’s Commercial Suicide label.

 

(Source: esp-agency.com)