Last week, we had one of the greats of British dance music, Zed Bias, record two FACT mixes. This week, we had the still influential producer – real name Dave Jones – talk in-depth to Joe Muggs about his career highs and lows to date, rediscovering himself, and where he feels he fits in to the current spectrum of dance music.
You probably know Jones best for 2step anthem ‘Neighbourhood’, but his productions, both under his own name and his Maddslinky alias, were vital to the development of the UK’s garage and broken beat scenes, and hold legendary status amongst dubstep’s greats; Skream in particular citing Jones as a particularly prominent inspiration. He may have featured on the Roots of Dubstep compilation, but Zed Bias runs through the roots of grime, funky and the entire spectrum of UK dance music, and in his own words, this in-depth piece “wasn’t just another interview” for him. We’re incredibly proud to present it.
“I put out an album on Sick Trumpet and sold about 350 copies. Regardless of what the album was like, that tore my confidence right up.”
OK, you’ve never stopped making or releasing music but your profile hasn’t been that high since the days of garage – until now. So what has happened to get you back into the public eye?
“Let’s take it back to 2007. In 2007 a couple of things were happening, first among which was that I was rediscovering my love of house music, big time. And [from that] I teamed up with a few people – and I don’t want to put too much importance on this, but it really sorted my head out being able to work with these people, sorted my confidence out, gave me the kick-start to get up and at it. I’d sort of lost motivation by 2006, but I’d moved into a new studio up in Manchester, then in 2007 I put out an album on Sick Trumpet called Experiments in Biasonics as Zed Bias and sold about 350 copies. Regardless of what the album was like, that tore my confidence right up.
“But around that time I started working with Phil Asher and Paul Randolph. Paul is the front man and bass player in Jazzanova at the moment when they do their live thing, Paul’s on the road all the time with them, and he also performed with Amp Fiddler; on Amp’s last album I’d co-produced three of the tracks up in Manchester, and Paul was another person I really wanted to work with. So Phil Asher and Paul Randolph I made quite a lot of house music with. Paul I’ve got an album with that we’ve just got coming out soon, it’s very very nearly finished, and that’s going to be exclusive to Japan. It’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but mainly house music. And [with] Phil I had a single out last year on MN2S ,‘Take me Away’, featuring Fyza on the vocals who was also on our track on his Phlash & Friends album.”
Phil Asher is one of those people who has been around for so long, his influence is kind of etched into the fabric of things. I know a few people in the very, very early UK garage scene were playing his tracks..
“Phil is just one of those unsung heroes. Always been there, always played the best stuff out there across sub-genres, he’s really one of the behemoths of British house music – I’d put him up there as one of our best, like a Kenny Dope sort of figure. Besides being really, really good on the MPC, he’s royalty. House royalty.”
“It’s important because if you don’t have a load of mates in the studio, like you might when you’re young and starting out, nodding or shaking their heads, or just taking the piss, you can find yourself in a place where musically you go further over the edges than you intended”
And he seems to remain influential to this day, behind the scenes, as it were.
“Well he’s been a big, big influence on me [recently], not just in terms of tunes but in terms of just going down to his place, chilling with him, telling him me problems and getting advice. It’s nice because I feel like I provide that role, and have done, for so many younger people I work with, but I’ve not been in the position where I could go to people for advice, not since the very first days when I was starting out above a record shop in Milton Keynes trying to work out how to string breakbeats together.
“So yeah having him as someone who was a sounding board, and would give me an honest reaction on things was so important around 2007 when really it felt like I was starting again from scratch. The distribution I’d set up for my solo things dissolved, I had two or three companies go down, including one I’d sold two or three thousand albums with – taking all our money with it. Mmmm, that was an interesting time… But then I remember January of 2008, I was asked to do a DJ set at Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Awards with Phil Asher, and that again was a massive confidence boost.
“Gilles has always supported my stuff, but for a few years hadn’t so much – then out of the blue he got in touch and asked me for a remix for one of his acts, Soil & Pimp Sessions, then asked me onto his show, and then onto the Worldwide Awards. It was a crazy time for him to do it, because at the time I had nothing going on, no singles, just a few bits and pieces on this Sick Trumpet album, but judging by the sales that wasn’t going to set the world on fire. So I just thought “fair play”, Gilles just judging the time right, and I used that as a springboard to come back from the ashes or whatever – made a whole lot more house tracks, got a new publishing deal, which again added confidence having someone else on the team to consult on certain things.
“It’s important because if you don’t have a load of mates in the studio, like you might when you’re young and starting out, nodding or shaking their heads, or just taking the piss, you can find yourself in a place where musically you go further over the edges than you intended, you’re not doing what you should be doing, or you’ve just slipped into doing things in a way that doesn’t show your strengths without even realising it. So yeah, it’s good to have people to give you more perspective.”
So you were reconnecting not just with house music but with that whole soul-jazz world of Gilles Peterson – but what about dubstep? You’re pretty well in with that world now.
“Well yeah! It’s been a strange and roundabout route, that. I mean, you know that FWD>> I was kind of part of from day one, up until about two thousand and… three I suppose. But it became mutually obvious between the guys who run Ammunition, and ourselves – ourselves being Phuturistix, which was myself and DJ Injekta, we had the residency at FWD>> and did the bulk of our work together from 2001-2003 – it became obvious that musically we’d gone in different directions. What they were doing was going over my head, and what we were doing was going over theirs.”
“I’d broken my balls to get music with real sound quality together over the years, and here were these people making music on Fruity Loops and even Playstations and they were getting pure love. I was just in a state of disbelief”
To put it in simplistic terms, you were about adding more to the garage framework in terms of jazzy chords, instruments and so on, and they were about stripping even more away!
“Completely. It was completely the opposite happening, completely opposite directions, nobody disrespecting anybody’s music, just a matter of “oh, you’re doing that now”. I mean, Sarah Souljah from Ammunition, she signed me to EMI publishing back in the day, she knows me, my journey, my likes and dislikes, and I know hers – and she’s a soul girl, too, she loves her Roy Ayers all the way, likes her rare groove. So she knew where my heart was at all the way through that period and there was never any hint of “oh Dave you should be doing this or that”, just very much a case of I was doing what I was doing and it was there to be appreciated or not.
“So yeah, you had that whole period where I was going completely soulful and jazzy and they’d gone all minimal, then it was a really nice change to come back and discover how it had all gone. From the early days when they started putting out tracks, those early ones by Benga and Skream and Cyrus, these young lads coming through the ranks doing this incredibly minimal music made on Playstations, on Music 2000, and… I wouldn’t say I turned my nose up at it, but I really didn’t understand it!
“I’d broken my balls to get music with real sound quality together over the years, and here were these people making music on Fruity Loops and even Playstations and they were getting pure love. I was just in a state of disbelief, but also I didn’t really get it because I wasn’t hearing it in context, I wasn’t hearing them on loud soundsystems any more – same with the 8-bar, which turned into grime, that was another scene that totally passed me by. That again was Music 2000 on the Playstation, and you could really tell. So I suppose I just became a little aloof, because I wasn’t backing it myself, I fully wasn’t getting it.
“But then again, you get to 2007, 2008 and boy did I get it! Suddenly people like Benga and Skream whose early tracks I couldn’t listen to and understand in any way, shape or form – these guys were now properly accomplished musicians. There’s actually no other way to look at it, they’re properly accomplished musicians. They’re not just DJ/producers on some half-hearted this-or-that, on a suck-it-and-see for an experience, these guys have developed and honed and really composed their way to the top. I see them as really like classical composers in a way, they don’t have the musicians and the vocalists to fall back on – everything in the tracks they’ve made has been them. I mean, not going too overboard about it, these kids that I just didn’t understand at one point have matured and absolutely come into their own musically, and I am digging it, I mean proper digging it.
“So in 2008, when I had my birthday party in January I went down to FWD>>, very very drunk with Jay Electronica and Simbad, and really found out the leaps and bounds that the sonics and the music had made – and kind of felt like a bit of a lemon in a way because I should’ve known what these lot were capable of, I should’ve kept more of an eye on what was going on along the way. But I’m really like this – unless people put something directly under my nose, I’m not the sort of person to be out there looking for new stuff, I’m more likely to go back in time and draw from my previous experience whether that’s music or old films; I’m very much a retrospective sort of a person.
“So yeah, it was funny discovering that all this was happening – and I daresay I could’ve been a part of it back then if things had been different as I was part of the initial FWD>> movement, but as I just didn’t understand it I guess it was only proper the way things went.”
But did you find you could slot back into it easily when you did rediscover the scene? Were they happy to have you, as someone who’d been a strong influence early on, say “yes, I’m into this”?
“Well, what actually happened was they booked me for, I think it was the seventh anniversary do, at a big warehouse off Curtain Road in Shoreditch, and they asked me to play all the bits I used to play at FWD>> with a little bit of what’s going on now. No mention of dubstep or anything like that, but obviously dubstep’s happened by then, it’s well on my radar by then, but I just didn’t know either how good it really was, or how much love that scene still had for where it all came from. So when I went down there and played what I considered to be my standard FWD>> set with a load of early Menta and J Da Flex, all the stuff that I never used to hear in the garage scene, when I played them and had the whole place going berserk like it was back in the day… well it sent me a bit evangelical if anything.
“For a few months after, to anyone who’d listen I was just “fuckin’ hell, this dubstep scene’s fuckin’ off it’s head, it’s great!” and I started to want to be… not exactly properly in it, I didn’t see myself being part of it, but I just wanted to experience more of it and get my head around what it all was and where I fit into it. And then once I started properly digging, and going on dubstepforum and stuff, I couldn’t believe what people were writing about the early days and the ‘Roots of Dubstep’ and the dark bits of garage – and especially that a lot of tunes that I’d written off, or even forgotten making, were actually a big part of this thing, still. I was so happy people were still writing about these things, and the ‘Roots of El-B’ and ‘Roots of Dubstep’ things, these albums that came out shone a torch on some of the old productions… well, I was a bit gobsmacked, still am to some degree.
“But it’s given me my new hobby, which is, ummm, making dubstep! [shakes head, laughs in semi-disbelief] And I absolutely love it. I’ve got my head right back into it. I’m not approaching it from the point of view of “I’ve done it before and I want to dig back into that for all it’s worth”, though – the rules have completely changed and my inspirations have changed. I can’t get any more inspiration out of rare groove and jazz funk, I’m 36, I’ve listened to those records hundreds of times, I’ve been to all the blues parties I’m ever going to go to, all the soul revivals, it’s not going to happen for me in that way anymore.
“My inspirations are current producers, doesn’t have to be dubstep, there are quite a few producers up there at the moment whose music inspires me. Benga and Skream are obvious; Benga, I think the way he puts his beats together is amazing, like vooodoo, totally unexplainable, and the way Skream gets power into his tracks in just unfathomable. Having worked with him it’s still unfathomable, he’s just got such skill about where he goes and where he stops, it’s all about knowing where to stop and leave a sound where it is, you can tweak and tweak and tweak and you’ll tweak the goodness out of something, but he’s really inspired me because he’s on such a production level and it’s all about knowing when to stop.”
OK so how does all this come together into what you’re doing now, in 2010?
“Between, I dunno, 2004 and 2007, 08, I was only playing jazzy stuff, nu jazz, broken beat, soulful house, all that kind of thing to small crowds, not so much international stuff just a little gig once in a while somewhere small like the Jazz Rooms down in Brighton. And it was good, but when I got into the house thing with Phil Asher I realised I had to start again completely and it had to be from a place where it was just pure love, pure love for the music. Now my first choice of music since I was really young was proper house music and garage – old garage, four-to-the-floor, vocals, you know… Even now, not that I go out much except to play, if I were to go out it would be to check a Phil Asher set, I can still do a little Rick Astley shuffle to a bit of soulful house
“So the house music is there and it’s at the heart of what I do, but one thing I decided at that point, and actually it was a little bit scary, was not to separate the pseudonyms and the different styles of music as much as I had done. So I want to put the name Zed Bias to everything and be done with it; you’ll see the Maddslinky one has “aka Zed Bias” all over it. The days are gone when everyone bought vinyl, and you might buy a bit of vinyl just because it’s got so-and-so name on it, you buy it because it says Zed Bias on it then you get home having spent blah-blah pounds on it, put it on and it’s not what you wanted. Those days are gone; as soon as you do anything online people know what it is, there’s no surprises, the word’s out. So that’s one reason for me to think I can do that.
“Benga, I think the way he puts his beats together is amazing, like vooodoo, totally unexplainable, and the way Skream gets power into his tracks in just unfathomable”
“So now, I’ve got a soulful house release with Jenna G coming up on a Manchester label called ‘Development’, I’ve got a dubstep release with Skream on Tru Thoughts, I’ve got a free giveaway garage track – then remixes I’ve done lately are a soulful house mix of El-B ‘I Feel’, an old-school steppers 2-step mix of Mighty Moe featuring Wiley… I’m spreading it out, I’m not limiting myself to a certain vibe or a certain style or a certain tempo – and this is purely for my own benefit, mind: I just don’t want to drive myself crazy trying to fit things into boxes. If I wake up one morning and want to do house music then that’s what I’m going to do, and I don’t have to worry if it fits with whatever project I’ve got on the go.
“The last act of breaking the shackles, I suppose, was hooking up with Tru Thoughts and then realising this was a label that has dealt with all of these styles, and when I came with a bit of house music, a bit of dubstep, just general weirdness and hybrid sorts of production, they believed in it. Obviously they didn’t like every single track I played them, but basically when I put all this stuff in front of them that I was doing, they understood it and were enthusiastic about the whole lot. So that’s played a massive part in just being able to march on and do what I do with an air of confidence.”
“Not wanting to make a pun, but I felt like I’d been here before.”
It’s interesting that you’ve found the space to do what you wanted in Manchester and Brighton, both towns with their own deep rooted club scenes that are quite independent from London…
“Yeah, I think Manchester’s gone full circle actually, it’s absolutely amazing again at the moment. I’ve seen it go from really quite poor when I moved up there to being one of the best nights out in the country. Monday nights at Hit and Run are sick. You’ll hear drum & bass, dubstep and all sorts, and they bring all the good guests up to Manchester; Skream loves playing there, MJ Cole really loves it, I’ve done it and loved it… and on a Monday night, they’ve got six, seven hundred people – now I can’t remember the last time I went to London and played to seven hundred people who were bang into it, let alone on a weeknight, unless it was a one-off special or something. But the last three or four gigs I’ve played in Manchester have been really heavy.”
And Manchester’s got the history of eclecticism in clubs like Electric Chair and now Hoya Hoya.
“Those Hoya Hoya guys have really done something good there, I have respect for those guys Ryan and Jonny – they’ve just stuck to their guns, walked their own path and the times have caught up with them. They bring a lot of cool heads to Manchester, they’re linked up the whole Brainfeeder scene. It’s the right time now – but the thing is that’s what they were always into and always doing anyway, so it’s great, all power to ’em!”
Talking of what’s current, but on more of a London thing, what have you made of funky?
“Not wanting to make a pun, but I felt like I’d been here before. Absolutely. To me it’s Masters At Work, it’s DJ Gregory, it’s Phil Asher… I’ve got tracks of his from years back that people would say now are funky though-and-through. It’s young kids being exposed to a certain strain of high-quality house music and wanting to make it their own. Having said that, when I first heard it, it was four-to-the-floor, that snare rhythm, quite a standard rhythm – but there are definitely those coming through now who are pushing it somewhere more interesting. I like a few… DVA, Lil Silva…. but Roska is the obvious choice, he’s come on leaps and bounds since I first became aware of him.
“He got in touch a year or two ago and asked if he could remix a couple of my old garage things, way before he was doing anything popular – and he’s a very popular lad right now – but he got in touch and I sent him parts of an old track I did called ‘Spare Ribs’, and he absolutely annihilated that, so I thought “OK, righto, this kid’s on something”, and every time since then I check out where he’s going and what he’s doing he’s just gone from strength to strength.”
The great thing about Roska is how he’s kept to his style of really sparse, bare, rhythms but done it on a huge scale. I saw him tear up Sónar in front of 2,000-odd people, and he had the confidence to keep it raw and rough.
“Yep, that’s it – confidence. I’ve said the word a few times now today, but confidence is what makes the difference between a good producer and a great producer. A great producer, like I said with Skream, is someone who knows when to stop, who knows when to stop tweaking. Like a great artist is someone who knows when to make the last brushstroke. And with Roska, I listen to tracks he did a couple of years ago and they’re not as stripped down and dynamic as what he’s doing now. The elements are the same, but it’s what he’s decided to leave out that’s making it better. And he absolutely smashed it with his remix of ‘Neighbourhood’, a hard track to remix or so I’m told! [chuckles]”
“People ask me lately, “what sound are you into at the moment” and I just say ‘Footcrab’!”
And in between funky, dubstep and all the other variants of sound, there’s a whole genre meltdown where something like Hyperdub, Deep Medi, Swamp81 or Hessle Audio labels can become completely flexible with sound and tempo; is that something you feel at home amongst?
“Yeah. It’s a very brave move to attempt to make a label that can have such wide parameters, it’s definitely brave. Obviously it’s a lot easier to market a label if you can say “we make this kind of music”, it’s much easier; not necessarily better or even more successful but definitely much easier. It’s so much easier if you come from the dubstep world and have a label to just go “I’ll get the best of the dubstep world, whack it out, everyone knows that’s what we’re about, there you go”. But anyone who is looking to be that eclectic these days, it’s gonna be hard work, but Loefah’s label is really proving that it’s not only possible to do but possible to do with amazing A&R. He’s picked some really great artists, and great tunes from them. Ramadanman, I’ve had my eye on for a little while, he was making great tunes that were just sort of garagey, within a certain style, very El-B back in the day with a hint of Burial spaced-out kind of thing, but a really nice sound. To begin with I’d say to myself, it’s really nice, I love this sound but I can’t play these tracks in my set, but now I can’t stop playing his tracks in my set! ‘Work Them’ is a big tune, a really big tune across genres, and that proves that the crossover can happen – same way as the Joy Orbison track last year. And also on Swamp81 ‘Footcrab’! ‘Footcrab’ is a genre. People ask me lately, “what sound are you into at the moment” and I just say ‘Footcrab’!”
And so your Maddslinky album is an attempt to pull this diversity together into a coherent album format? Do you think it worked, as something to listen to from beginning to end rather than a selection of varied club tracks?
“I used to worry that it hadn’t. Coming from where I come from and being conditioned into thinking there was this rule and that rule when it comes to making an album, I was concerned that it wasn’t a coherent listen. But actually I stopped listening to it after I compiled it, then started listening to it again quite recently, and now, knowing that Rob Luis of Tru Thoughts has signed it off, I can listen to it more as a punter – and taking into consideration how much more widely accepted dubstep is now and the general gnarliness and extremity that is acceptable in even chart music right now, I think yeah, it is coherent, and it does hold together properly. You can sit down and listen from beginning to end, even if, worst case scenario, you’re skipping one track that’s not your taste.”
Well it’s not short of variety, you’ve gone all the way from fully abstract electronic tracks to an out-and-out ballad.
“Yeah ‘Further Away’ with Tawiah; it’s a ballad, definitely. The thing is, if you go back to 70s music and pick up an album, 70s bands – I’m not talking rock bands, but pop, soul, funk, that sort of thing, the sort of thing that was really my first introduction to music – you’ll get lots of different tempos, loads of different styles even. You’ll have one or two ballads on an album, a couple of really uptempo numbers, a couple of out-and-out singles, more commercial things, and you’ll have a quirky thing on there. Well, I could’ve just described my album there, couldn’t I?”
Joe Muggs
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