In a world where things sometimes seem to go backwards, Mandidextrous keeps moving forwards. They recently launched a new label, Speedbass Recording, where they showcase their signature sound, full of 4×4, bassline, jungle, and tek flavours. The first official release, ‘Needed You’, has been doing bits. Inviting BEANIE, Gea, and Samurai Breaks to the label, the next few releases are looking promising too.
Mandidextrous truly is a versatile artist. They found their roots in free parties, built the label AMEN4TEKNO up to the leading UK label for raggatek, hardtek, and jungletek. Now they’re well on their way to truly making a mark in the scene with Speedbass Recordings, a venture where they can, in their own words, “truly be themselves”.
We had a chat with Mandidextrous and talked all about the new label, the 15th anniversary of AMEN4TEKNO, and the very last edition of Balter festival.
You recently launched your Speedbass Recordings label, after a soft launch a few years back.
When I started the Speedbass project, I was in a bit of a limbo scenario. I’ve been running my other label AMEN4TEKNO Records for 15 years now and did a soft launch with Speedbass Records in 2022. I did it on Bandcamp and that’s where I uploaded a big body of work as well. But then I got really busy, the bookings started to go crazy, and I lost my trajectory with Speedbass Recordings. I also felt that I needed more help to build the label, so I just let things sit there on Bandcamp for a while. Towards the end of last year, I decided that I really needed to refocus on the speed bass sound. This came from a number of different feelings and places but I reached out to the guys at Cygnus and they’ve been really good. They’re a distribution platform and they have decided to try and help me out with the Speedbass label. I’m going to do a release every month, and I’ve had some really cool submissions already. I’ve also started to make a lot more noise about it.
What’s been bubbling behind the scenes for you?
I love drum & bass, it’s in my heart, and it’s what I was djing when I first started music, djing at free parties. I found the drum & bass scene is quite intense, the levels of production in drum & bass are through the roof, and I’m a bit of an old school head now. My vision of drum & bass is a bit different to what it is now, as much as I love the scene. The thing that I love to do the most is play my speed bass stuff, because that is inherently what I am all about. D&B is one thing, but the speed bass sound… I love creating it! I have endless inspiration for it, and it’s completely my sound and my style. In recent months I’ve decided that I didn’t want to continue battling in the way that I was within the drum & bass scene. There is so much competition, and rightly so, the levels of productions and everything that people put out now is through the roof, but I didn’t want to compete with that. I’d rather cut my own lane and this sound and style take from loads of different pockets. It’s all me. I still love D&B, I still love playing parties, but if I get the chance to just do me and be on a multi-genre lineup and do my speed bass sound, it pops off every time and I love it.
Another thing is, I’ve been running a label called AMEN4TEKNO Records for 15 years now. We release a mix of jungle drum & bass and fast-paced techno inspired by the European hard tech scene. For a long long time, I used to struggle with that sound because I would play a lot in Europe and it would either be too UK for Europe or too European for the UK. There was no real middle ground for me to sit within. I still love that music but I fell out of love with making it and I hit a bit of a rut, so I decided to try and reinvent my wheel. Around that time I was living with my best friend SHOSH, she’s a big garage girl and she’s now come into her own and started her dubstep project which is unreal. I’m so proud of her. She was a big inspiration for me back when we were living together, I really took a lot of inspiration from her trajectory and the way that she worked. It made me think a lot, and I fell in love with bass house and bass line. I’ve always loved that sound, and I fell in love with mixing it. SHOSH and I ended up mixing it at home and all of those different sounds of garage, dubstep, bassline… came together. I wanted to try and recreate those moments into this new sound, which I called speed bass, which is taken from bassline, bass music, drum & bass, and then putting it together but all with a fast 4-4 tempo. That’s how I reinvented myself. The moment I did that, doors started opening. I was bringing a new sound to the table that was inherently my own sound, that was fresh and it had new energy. It revitalized me as an artist and since then I’ve been in love with making music again.
Inventing your own genre! This is a moment people will speak about years and years from now.
I started making music because I couldn’t find the music I wanted to hear anywhere. That was the jungletek sound, so what I used to do was record famous jungle and drum & bass tunes into Ableton, put a 4-4 kick drum under the whole thing, EQ out all of the bass tunes, and make a kick bass for it. Then I would burn it to a cd and play it in my sets. That was my sound of jungletek, that was me mixing jungle drum & bass with techno, but in a production way. When the jungletek scene exploded I started signing artists to my labels that were making that same sound. Alongside that we had Vandal really pushing his raggatek sound, which is world famous. He’s the king of that sound. I for a little while was also named as the queen of raggatek, and the queen of jungletek. I wouldn’t say I invented jungletek, but I instigated it. But with the speed bass sound, that was me not wanting to conform to any genre and just do my own thing. I find it hard to find music that sits with me and that I want to play in my shows. So I just make it myself, and then I invent a name for it.
That’s also a way of describing your whole persona. You can’t fit you in a box.
A big part of my journey in music is blurring the lines. I blur lines between gender and expression as well, and I’m very open and vocal about it. I wear my heart on my sleeve with my music and who I am as a person. By doing that, I’m showing people that if you’re a bit different, you can still cut through. Being different is sometimes a benefit, it can really set you apart from everyone trying to make it.
How did you find your strength in that?
It can be really hard. There’s a lot of copycatting going on at the moment, and there’s a lot of people that compare themselves to other artists and other journeys. What we see online is all smoke and mirrors. You might see a really happy video from an artist but they might be going through hell in their life, but it’s just the way that we have to be. I’ve sometimes felt like the industry has been against me because I am trans, I’m non-binary, and I’ve been very feminine but also very masculine. My music is individual to a certain extent. I sent a lot of my music to labels and it got to a point where the amount of rejection really started eating away at me. When you get music rejected it might not necessarily be for the fact that your music’s bad or not well made, but all of that eats you alive. Finding middle ground has been very hard over the years and I think that my journey has taken quite a slow trajectory, but as long as you stick at it and you keep going eventually things will come up roses. I’m gassed to be here at 41 years old, still doing this.
Let’s go back to Speedbass Recordings. You told me that there are going to be monthly releases… Can you tell us a bit more about that already?
The first release, ‘Needed You’, did really, really well. The response on that tune has been unreal. The next one is coming up on April 25. The track is called ‘The Signs’ and it’s with an amazing vocalist called BEANIE who’s just coming through. It’s got hyper pop vibes to it and it’s got a big cheesy full forward section and then switches into jungly drum & bass. It’s really high energy, I love it. After that I’m working with an artist called Gea. She’s killing it in the Spanish scene and is now moving over into the French scene a bit. She does singing, she’s a lyricist, she’s a producer, she’s a DJ, she’s a content creator. Everything all in one. We did a track together called ‘The Beat’, and that’s going to be the third release on the label. I’ve also got a really cool collaboration with Samurai Breaks coming up. I absolutely love that guy, he’s a mad inspiration. His music really sits with mine, and his label Super Sonic Booty Bangers is one of my favorite labels. A lot of the music that sits there makes its way into my sets. We’ve got two tracks together, one of which features vocals from Leanne Louise.
Another thing you’ve mentioned was your AMEN4TEKNO label. You’ve been running this for 15 years this year! Anything planned for that?
I haven’t thought about that, to be honest. I’m so proud of the guys on my label and the core collective, T-Menace, Matt Scratch, Slinks, Roland.K. When I started getting really busy within the drum and bass community just after covid, things all kicked off for me. Playing Let It Roll really launched me into the D&B scene and at that point I wasn’t really writing music for the label anymore. I was ready to close the doors on it, I’d run out of steam for it, but the boys really stepped up and they told me, let us run the label for you, and they’ve done exactly that. They’ve absolutely smashed it and I’m so proud of them. For the last couple of years, AMEN4TEKNO has been putting out around three tracks every month from new artists all over Europe and the UK, and we’re still the UK’s number one jungletek, raggatek, and hardtek label. In Europe we’ve also been hitting the top of the charts on the main distro. It’s been an amazing thing to see. So yes, we probably should be celebrating those 15 years, because it’s quite a milestone!
It’s good to have people that you can really trust and to have people that have the same vision as you. That’s actually something that daunts me a little bit now with Speedbass Recordings. I am starting to get submissions, which is amazing. Other artists are starting to really tap into this little niche bubble that I’m trying to build, and in time that’s going to need more attention. I’m going to want to nurture those artists some more and in a way I might be putting myself back on the chopping board for solely running another label but it’s fine. I’m hoping it will be just as well, if not better than anything I’ve done before.
In one of the interviews I read, you talked about how you were involved at Balter. How is it to have been involved from the first till the last edition?
I’ve been playing Balter since day dot. I was at the first one and I’m playing the very last one. I lived with the organiser, E-Coli, for a number of years and I would often get very involved in the build-up and the breakdown of the festival. I ended up running one of the stages for him, the Jigsaw, and being a stage manager there. I’ve had quite a lot of involvement. The last few years I’ve stepped back from all of that because I’ve been so busy as an artist myself, but I’m part of the furniture there, just like with Boomtown. I love the UK festivals a lot with Balter as one of my favourites. It’s going to be an emotional party to say the least. I’m actually closing a stage and I’m probably going to end up crying at that one. The first ever time I played my speed bass sound was at Balter, some of the biggest jungletek and raggatek shows I’ve ever done have been at Balter. One of the best memories I have is when my good friend Vandal and I struggled to get to the end of a set when we played back to back. People would go so crazy for it, we’d have to shut the venue. It was just too over capacity. We finally managed to get to the end of a show at the recent Balter festival pre-party at Motion, the first time me and Vandal had finished the B2B together at a Balter party! It’s going to be super special closing the festival and this coming festival will be the last one in the series. So much love for Balter, it’s a shame to see it go.
It’ll be special for sure! Any last thoughts?
A big part of why I’m doing this now and why I’m really pushing it, is to be able to help cut my own lane within the music industry, and not worry so much about rejection from labels. I find that getting rejected for my music can be quite sobering, but like I said earlier, there are always reasons behind it. It’s not that my music’s bad, it’s just not quite right for that moment in time. To find a place and a voice for trans people and non-binary people within the music industry and show people that we can do it, we can be relevant, we can be out here and cut in our own lanes, that’s the goal.
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