Longtime friends and collaborators Battery and Philth have joined forces to launch their own label, Majesty.
It’s built on layers of wisdom amongst the three founders. Craig James and Doug McAvoy’s first release dates back to 2004, right around the peak of liquid drum & bass’ surge, when (alongside Matt Sharp) they were known as Craggz & Parallel Forces. Whereas Phil (Philth) Robinson’s entry began in 2010 with a release on Peer Pressure – going on to build a reputation for abrasive beats, but never without an emotional overlay.
Their first encounter was during nine-to-five hours, at a music teaching conference where Craig and Phil clicked immediately – before getting straight to work writing tunes together with Doug. The chemistry was special, as they quickly wrote four tracks that all got picked up by Ant TC1 for Dispatch Recordings. Then it was another four, all signed again for Dispatch Blueprints.
The choice to kick off their own label became clear – giving them greater control of their release schedule, the freedom to build their own world of visuals and sound, and provide a home for the style they’ve been carving.
Influences come from all places – past, present, and future. They’ve lived through countless evolutions of the industry, their radio residencies and label nights keep them razor sharp, and in their day jobs, they continue to educate the next generation. What this manifests into is a collage of sounds on each release – exemplified on their latest ‘Mesmerize’ EP. Each track leans in a certain direction – liquid, minimal, heavy, experimental – but if you zoom in individually, the detail shows a colourful, continuous weave of sub genres, references, and production techniques from classic to futuristic.
With a love for the underground, the history, and the craft – Battery and Philth aim to bring some more Majesty to drum & bass. We sat down with the trio to get the full story of Majesty, and discuss their aspirations for the label as we hit release 002.
Mesmerize EP Launch Event – Tickets & Lineup
You guys have all been in the game for a long time. Why start a label now? How did it come together?
Craig: Well I met Phil maybe 10 or 15 years ago – we both worked in FE teaching. We’re all teachers, actually.
We met at an exhibition one night when I heard someone shout “Craggz!” across the foyer. We became friends from that point, although obviously we already knew each other through drum & bass. Doug and I had been releasing since 2003, and Phil, you started around 2010 or 2011?
Phil: Yeah, around then.
Craig: The friendship blossomed, and then Doug met Phil not long after that, and we’d hang out and chat about music. We wrote our first track together around 2018…
Phil: When you were living in Thornton Heath, and had studio in the attic – the hottest place I’ve ever been in my life.
Doug: Haha – yes. We basically wrote a bunch of tunes together, gave them to Ant TC1 at Dispatch and he was really into them. It was a very natural working relationship. It was fun and easy, and the music came together naturally.
Phil: Exactly, we wrote four, and they signed four.
Craig: And the outcome was different to what Phil would usually do and what we would do independently, so it felt like a really good collaboration. We enjoyed it and carried on meeting up, making music and releasing together.
Doug: Off the strength of that first EP we signed to Dispatch, the lead track was called ‘Majesty’. That was the one that seemed to connect with people, and that’s where the name for the label eventually originated.
As we continued writing music together, we realised something you probably experience when you’re working with lots of different labels: It’s great releasing with well-established labels, and we’ll continue having those relationships, but you don’t have control over the consistency of your releases.
You might sign a load of tracks and they don’t come out for quite a while. Then suddenly a load come out within a month or two, followed by a period of nothing.
Hadn’t thought of it that way. You’re bound to a different schedule…
Doug: Yeah exactly. And also, we love working together, so we thought it would be great to have a dedicated outlet for that music and build an identity around it – visually and everything else.
Craig: Yeah the visual side is quite a big part of it for us.
When we did the second EP for Dispatch – it came out on Dispatch Blueprints, which has its own artwork template. It looked wicked and we had input into the colours and things, but we’d really loved the collage artwork we’d done around the first ‘Majesty’ EP. We realised we wanted complete control over that visual direction as well.
Doug found a brilliant artist called Sian Pointon, who does hand-cut collage to design the label artwork. What she does really connects with the music, because our music is very collage-based and sample-based. It’s about pulling all of our influences together and what she does reflects that perfectly.
That relates to the name as well. Majesty is meant to be about the majesty of drum & bass, not the majesty of us being wicked producers or anything like that. It’s about the music we love and the majesty of the genre itself.
Doug: Sian does all of the artwork as hand-cut collage. We loved the first thing she did for us so much that when we decided to start a label, we wanted to continue with that imagery.
With any label, I think it’s really important that the visual identity is strong and consistent. As the releases and catalogue build, it becomes about more than a logo. There’s an aesthetic to it that’s strong and unique.
Something to be proud of when you see all the releases line up together.
Craig: Yeah, we wanted a strong identity for the sound of course, but also for it to go beyond the music. There’s the release artwork, and also maybe in the future we’ve chatted about having an exhibition or gallery with the music and visuals.
Then there’s our radio show, and the events we’ve started putting on. We’ve already had a couple of Majesty events. So it’s all-encompassing. I hate to say the word, but it’s a brand.
Phil: And really, it’s all based around how much fun we have in the studio together. It’s three friends making music, and it’s so easy.
I do a lot of collaborations, and sometimes you really catch a vibe, while other times it doesn’t go anywhere and you never quite finish the tune. But when the three of us work together, it seems like every time we’re in the studio, a tune gets finished. It writes itself, as cheesy as that is to say.
So if it’s that fluid, starting a label together definitely makes sense.
Exactly – rather than being at the mercy of another label’s schedule. We’re always going to do projects for Dispatch and Metalheadz. They’re labels we’ll continue working with. But with this project, realistically, we can pull together an EP in about a week.
We tend to write in half-term. I don’t teach in the formal system anymore – I do private teaching – but when these guys are on half-term, I’ll come and stay in London at Doug’s. Within three or four days, we’ve got three or four tunes down.
It makes sense to immediately start thinking, “When are we releasing these? What are we doing with the artwork?” rather than, “Who are we sending these to?”
Craig: And because we work quickly, we’re still excited by the tunes when they’re finished. We’re all fighting to get to the computer to play something in or programme something. It stops us overproducing the music and getting sick of it because we’ve heard it 5,000 times.
Phil: It’s the freedom to do what we want without worrying about if it fits a label. I definitely do that to myself sometimes. I’ll get three-quarters of the way through a tune and start making decisions based on who I’m going to send it to, instead of thinking how I actually want to finish it.
With Majesty, it’s just: what do the other two guys think is the best outcome? If all three of us agree, we take it there and release it.
When you think of successful labels, they can cover quite a broad spectrum but there’s usually still an identifiable sound. Is that something you’re consciously trying to establish, or are you having fun and letting it work itself out?
Doug: I feel like organically there is still a sound when the three of us make music together. Regardless of what we’re referencing on a particular track, or which subgenre of drum & bass it might fit into, there are common themes running through the production that are distinctive.
We’re combining modern drum sounds with more traditional break processing. There’s the synthesis side of it, the ambient and atmospheric stuff. There are threads running throughout.
So we’re not consciously sitting there trying to establish a ‘Majesty’ sound, but naturally I think there is a cohesive sound. This is technically EP number two on Majesty, but really it’s our fourth EP together if you count the 2 EP’s on Dispatch – and if you put all those tracks side-by-side, I think there’s a cohesive sound there.
Craig: In terms of style, what we’re aiming to do with each EP is represent a good range across the spectrum.
Phil: Yeah, we’re definitely all on the spectrum – but that’s a different story.
Ha, that probably helps.
Phil: Haha – yeah it does.
Craig: We’ve always drawn influence from outside drum & bass. That’s what the best drum & bass has always done, right? It’s a melting pot. It takes rare groove, metal, soul, funk – everything. So after we write one track, we might say, “That was quite soulful. Let’s do something more tech or minimal now. Let’s do something with more house or techno influence.” Because we love it all.
Phil: I think the one distinctive thing you could say always runs through the music is that it’s emotive. We don’t tend to write functional DJ music. There’s always an emotional element to it. That and maybe the way we do drums are the things connecting the tracks.
We’re not thinking about getting to the drop quickly. We write the music and, if it feels right, it feels right. If that’s a three-minute intro, so be it. We know that’s not necessarily cool or in vogue, but we don’t give a s*** really. We write based on how we’re feeling.
What about signing others to the label? You’re all music teachers, which presumably means you’re exposed to a lot of newcomers…
Craig: Phil, your teaching is particularly mentoring-focused, and you’ve already had some success stories with people going on to release on labels like Metalheadz?
Phil: Yeah. It’s mad how it happened with Rift. Goldie is so theatrical – he was so excited about the music. He rang me first to tell me he loved it, asked me for Rift’s number, and then called him. His EP came out on Metalheadz quite recently – really good music, and so rewarding for me as a teacher.
One of the really joyful things about the work I do is being able to connect new people with the right home for their music. And it may well be that, in years to come, Majesty becomes more of a scouting thing for all of us too, because we’re always trying to keep our ears to the ground.
Doug: We showcase a lot of brand-new music on the radio show as well, and the same with our events.
We’ve played quite a lot of our students’ work on the radio and at live events.
Craig and I both work at Point Blank teaching music production, and we do private tuition as well, similar to Phil. As a consequence, we’re regularly coming into contact with people who are developing as artists. From an A&R perspective, that’s a great position to be in.
But it’s also about giving the next generation of artists opportunities. That’s what keeps anything moving forward.
Does being in teaching keep you sharp within the scene?
Phil: For sure. You learn things from younger people all the time. Although, we work with people our age too. With private teaching, you get plenty of people in their 30s and 40s who work full-time jobs and never really had the opportunity before, but now want to put some time into music.
Craig: We can give the older people an opportunity too!
You’ve all lived through a few different cycles of drum & bass. How do you feel about where the scene is now compared with when you were first establishing yourselves?
Doug: Because we’ve all been involved in this music for so long, I think we exist in a bit of a vacuum. When we check our promo inbox, we’re inundated with incredible music. The side of the scene we see is great because we’re getting sent music from artists and labels we admire.
So generally, I feel very positive about new music. There’s tons of great music coming out all the time.
But if you’re coming into drum & bass as a newcomer now with no prior idea of what the music is or what it should be, your first exposure is probably very different to ours. What’s most visible and what is deemed successful by whatever metric is quite different to when we first experienced the music. But ultimately, you focus on what you like.
Craig: It’s incredibly different to when Doug and I first started making music, and when I first started releasing.
Phil: You were sending people CDs.
Craig: I was sending people DATs, to be honest! My first release came out in 1998, so I’ve seen a lot of different cycles. It was incredibly difficult to get your music heard then. A lot has changed for the positive.
Like we’ve just been saying, a student or some random person can send us music now and nine times out of ten we’re going to listen to it. If it’s good, we’ll get back to them. Back in the day, even if your music was good, getting it to the right people was incredibly hard.
I agree – I think it’s in a very positive position, if you know what you like.
Craig: I’m friends with loads of drum & bass and jungle producers, and quite a few of them are negative about what’s going on. I don’t see it that way. There’s so much great music out there. Why pay attention to what you’re not into? What’s the point in wasting your time whinging about something when you could be listening to amazing music. Turn it off. Listen to the music you like. Dig deeper.
Phil: Craig, I think one thing that you’re good at doing is separating ‘the scene’ from ‘the music’. They may be two different things now in a way they weren’t before, because social media is such a huge part of everything.
The social media side can be over the top and quite cringey. And we have mates who just moan about it all day long. My attitude is: don’t follow people if you’re not into what they’re doing.
Craig: Within what is a really saturated scene, excellent music isn’t hard to find if you actually look for it. It’s an amazing, rich, wonderful scene.
Phil: It used to be much closer together. The big tunes would be played by all the DJs because they were all cutting dubplates at the same places.
Nowadays it’s splintered so far and wide that if you want to find stuff you don’t like, it’s pretty easy. But if you want to find stuff you do like, you can ignore everything else. There’s so much great music happening all the time.
Doug: That’s music in general now, though, right? Because of the internet, social media and the way we live. Coming into drum & bass as a new person must be quite overwhelming – or you simply don’t know half of what’s going on because it’s so broad.
The only way to cope with the information overload we live with is to keep an eye on the things you like and try not to pay too much attention to the things that aren’t your cup of tea. There’s more than enough amazing stuff going on to keep you positive and inspired if you look in the right places.
Craig: Back to what Phil was saying before – one thing that’s definitely changed is that it used to be a more cohesive scene where everyone would play all the different styles.
Now you’ve got camps. Labels specialise in a particular sound – tech, liquid, whatever – and they’ll have nights that are exclusively that sound. That’s fine, but part of what we’re trying to do with Majesty is bring a bit of that breadth back.
This is something I’m hearing a lot about in interviews and on nights out – there’s a desire for more musical variety on lineups.
Doug: I never wanted to hear the same style of music all night long. I didn’t then and I don’t now. I’d get bored pretty quickly, whatever the style was.
For me, what makes music exciting is dynamics and contrast. Ups and downs. A journey. I’d like to see more of that again. There’s a bit less separation between the different scenes.
You think about something like Metalheadz, which was a huge influence on me. Yes, it had a sound, but within that you had really mellow, musical stuff and really dark, hard stuff.
I always saw drum & bass as all of these different moods, shapes and shades being represented. That’s what I want to hear, and that’s how I want to make music. I couldn’t sit down and make one mood over and over again. It would suck all the life out of me.
Craig: Someone else who did that, even though there was an overarching soulful sound, was Lenzman with The North Quarter. There was a soulfulness to it all, but he’d release stuff from right across the board – Total Science, Submotive, everything else.
I looked at Lenzman a lot and how he built The North Quarter – the sound and the overarching feel – and thought that was an amazing way to approach having a label. It’s a celebration of this wonderful music we call drum & bass.
Definitely a modern example of achieving exactly what we’re talking about.
Phil: We were talking earlier about how people love to complain about the scene changing – but I think if you’re not happy about something, do something about it rather than moaning.
We’re not seeing as much of that mixed flow of music within club nights anymore, so we’re putting our own nights on. We’re not particularly moany people about drum & bass. We love this music, making it and hearing it.
When we put together wish lists for Majesty lineups, we’re thinking about having something like Fabio and Equinox on the same night – opposite ends of the spectrum.
A big reason for having our own platform is that we can bring back some of the things we’ve loved over the 25 or 30 years we’ve been involved in this music, while still pushing things forward.
We’re not waiting for somebody else to book an event with different styles. We’ll do it ourselves.
Craig: There’s an openness and togetherness to that as well. I remember travelling down from Newcastle as a teenager to go to Speed, and Doug did the same.
Seeing that togetherness and the diversity of the movement blew my mind – the diversity of the people, the music and the influences. That still stays with me today.
It’s such an important thing to retain. I don’t mean this negatively, but I think we need to bring more of that back into jungle and drum & bass because that’s part of the foundation of this music.
How have your last few events been?
Craig: We’ve done a few. We’ve done one in Hackney at Cu, Planet Wax, one in Newcastle, a couple down in Peckham…
Doug: Generally, every time we release an EP, we want to do a launch night alongside it. Obviously we’ll DJ, but we’ll also bring in an established artist – often somebody we know – and then look for breaking or younger DJs doing things we like. Again, it’s about broadening it out rather than it just being our mates.
We’re launching Majesty 002 (Mesmerize EP) at Four Quarters in Peckham, on Friday 18 September – we’ve got us, Rockwell, Haste b2b Alley Cat, LS Dare & Ella Sopp, and Alasdair B Dixon all on the lineup. So a nice mix of styles.
Ultimately, every time we release something, we want to put on an event. The goal is to build Majesty in all directions, so the events can get bigger as everything else grows.
What’s up next outside of the EP launch event?
We’re also ahead of schedule with the music. The next EP is pretty much shaped and ready to go, and pencilled in for the end of the year. The schedule we’re aiming for is three EPs a year.
Craig: And – it’s not just the label. It’s the events, the artwork, the radio show and the releases. They’re all under this overarching Majesty umbrella…
Phil: And also… wait, what are the individual bits of an umbrella called? I think this analogy is going to break down.
Doug: Yeah, forget that, haha.
Phil: But across everything we’re doing, we’re trying to push variety. At every opportunity, we’re playing all the styles of jungle and drum & bass that we love. Maybe that’s slightly confusing at first because Majesty isn’t just ‘one thing’. But the one thing is that: we love all of it, and that’s what we’re trying to get across.
