- Mon, 2012-02-13 14:54
Whether as a member of drum and bass supergroup Bad Company, the co-founder of genre-leading label Breakbeat Kaos, or a number-one solo artist, DJ Fresh has been a drum and bass pioneer for close to fifteen years. This summer he returns with the follow-up to his 2010 album Kryptonite. It’s going to be huge.
I Like Music caught up with DJ Fresh and singer Rita Ora - who appears on his new single Hot Right Now - to chat about future plans, falling in love with music, songwriting, and how legendary Bad Company track The Nine fell together.
ILM: The year has just started, what can we expect from you both in 2012? What lies ahead?
DJ Fresh: Mostly working on my album, which is supposed to be finished in three weeks and I’ve barely started! My record label probably disagrees on that assessment, but... Yeah, I’ve gotta finish that. It’s coming out in August. And then I’m doing a big live tour with my band. That’s happening over the summer. We’re doing most of the festivals and touring the UK in May.
Rita Ora: I’m debuting my first single. I did this amazing track with Fresh, and now it’s gonna be my time to finally release my own music, which I’ve been working on for two and a half years. I’m just really looking forward to people’s reactions. That, and just doing gigs all over the place.
ILM: Fresh, what’s the biggest tune in your DJ set right now?
DJ Fresh: A couple of things actually. There’s a track by...I can’t remember the name right now because it’s in Portuguese, but there’s a new track by Buraka Som Sistema. I think it’s called o pe tu or something like that... [Tira o pé – Ed.]. That’s really, really cool. I’ve done a bootleg of Paradise by Coldplay that everybody seems to go nuts for, so I guess that would go in there. There’s loads of really good music around at the moment, so it’s difficult to narrow it down.
ILM: How about you Rita, what musicians have got you hooked at the moment?
Rita Ora: I might be a bit late on this one, but I’m listening to Mumford & Sons right now. I don’t know when or where they came from – maybe I was under a stone – but I’m really killing those right now. I love listening to my dancehall, it never gets old to me; Vybz Kartel. I listen to everything though. I’m listening to Lana Del Rey’s album right now too.
ILM: Have you got any new pieces of hardware or software that you’re making new music with at the moment Fresh?
DJ Fresh: I’m absolutely addicted to Ableton. I’m the Ableton disciple, and I don’t think they’re even aware that I use their software! There are a few people that I’ve converted over to it recently, even though they’ve been using other stuff for a long time. People like Andy C and Ed Rush. Drum and bass guys.
ILM: You converted Andy C to Ableton?
DJ Fresh: Getting him there, yeah! It’s just really refreshing, because for me something like that is such an important part of my life. I spend so much time in the studio and it’s really, really creative and helps you to get ideas out quickly, rather than sitting there for ages fiddling around with setting things up and all the rest of it.
ILM: How do you go about writing your music Rita?
Rita Ora: I just write about what I feel – my day, or what I’ve been going through – so it’s a mixture of my words and those of a co-writer. I always need a second opinion. I never sit there and go through beats. That will just drain me out. I write the song, get a concept of the vibe, and the producer comes in and we all make it work together. I don’t ever have a beat in advance. It’s always organic.
ILM: When did you first realise the effect that music could have on you?
DJ Fresh: My parents bought a piano when I was about five. I went and sat at it and was immediately trying to make and remember music. I was sat there writing something. I couldn’t play the piano at the time, obviously, but I was already trying to form something. At first I was really into classical music and jazz, and then gradually got into electronic music.
ILM: Do you remember the first time you heard something electronic, or the first rave you went to?
DJ Fresh: I remember the very first hardcore that I heard back in about ’92 or ’93. Maybe ’91 actually. There were these kids in the top year of my school, and one guy who was always in trouble – the naughtiest dude in school – but for some reason we kind of got on. He used to come and tell me about these raves that they used to sneak out of school and go to. He gave me a tape, which I listened to on this school music trip (we used to go on these trips just to get out of the school and buy cigarettes!), and I just listened to it on repeat over and over again for the whole night. I was totally blown away by it and I just wanted to make that myself.
Rita Ora: I joined a choir when I was six, so that’s how I started singing and loving the feeling of singing. Since six I just enjoyed knowing I could make a reaction in someone. I loved the feeling of touching someone else, even if it was as part of the whole choir and not just my voice. Then at the age of 14 I got my first big paycheque, and that was from music. I was so proud of it! Those were the two moments that I was like “you know what, I can do this for the rest of my life.”
ILM: We have to talk about The Nine, your track with Bad Company. As soon as I mentioned on Twitter that I’d be talking to you I got so many messages saying “you have to ask him about The Nine!” It’s a track that has had such a huge influence on drum and bass; take us back to when you were putting that track together...
DJ Fresh: I was making it with Jason Maldini. We were in the studio – which was a tiny little room at my mum’s house at the time – and we’d only just started working together and didn’t know each other very well, so Jason would always bring a bottle of vodka or something with him and we’d have a drink and try to get on a vibe. The Nine is so simple. It’s just three elements. There’s this rolling sub bass line, a thing that we used to call ‘the chase’ in Bad Company tunes – the sort of growly notes at the end of every sixteen bars – and a really loud crash cymbal, which we put in if we wanted everything to go off. We were going round in circles on it for ages. Jason had this riff that was going to loop for the whole tune, but I suggested that it just go at the end of each loop, and that we have something that it resets back to so that every time it resets we can change the percussion. I remember we were watching this film Spawn in the background at the time, and because it was quite dark I remember thinking “should we call this tune Spawn?” But I was also reading a book about Roswell and alien landings, and there was apparently a group of Generals that were assembled to spread false rumours about Roswell. They were called The Nine, so that’s where the name came from.
ILM: Drum and bass is such an enduring genre. What do you think it is about drum and bass that keeps people coming back for more?
DJ Fresh: It’s a whole load of things, but one of them is that there has always been something quite secretive about it. It feels like a well-kept secret. I’ve always wanted to change that in the sense of letting more and more people enjoy it without destroying what it is about it that makes it special. But it’s also rebellious. There’s something about being involved in drum and bass that makes you feel like you’re involved in some kind of revolution.
Rita Ora: It’s true. I’m a bit younger, and even though I got into drum and bass a while back I still learn new stuff about it every day. I feel like it’s just one of those things that is never gonna go away or get old because it reinvents itself.
DJ Fresh: That’s right. It’s always taking influence from what’s going on, and reacting and changing according to that.
