Soul In Motion is on a serious run right now. As momentum continues to push forward at almost a decade of releases, now comes the arrival of the label’s first various artists LP – loaded with 16 unreleased tracks.
Ahead of the SIM SIM (V/A) full release, now feels like the time to capture a few frames of the label always in flux. So we approached founding figure Joe Moses (Need For Mirrors), and some of the talent featured in the new V/A, for a chat about the brand’s progression.
Originally starting as a club night – with a slightly more shotgun approach to sound and style – Moses has carefully been guiding the events towards something that would now be described as a celebration of drum & bass that’s razor sharp, forward-thinking, non-conformist, and all of the above.
As the nights grew in size and found stylistic form, Soul In Motion Records was birthed – a tangible answer to the growing popularity of the SIM club night experience, as Moses recalls “I wanted to move it forward and sign the music that I believed in, which was the soundtrack of the club.”
Bottling this experience up into a string of label releases – and now the SIM SIM compilation – is a gift to any listener who wants something definitively underground, certified by a true tastemaker in Doc Scott… “It’s a fantastic collection of deep, progressive drum & bass that has been in my sets for the last 12 months.”
The balance of pushing boundaries while staying true to the craft is navigated better than most labels in drum & bass right now – providing an important place for newcomer talent to grow in the right direction. Fresh to the roster comes artists like Singr – who has quickly developed a personal style in his first few releases, as he credits the label’s ability to nurture “Joe is always super up-front, specific, and knows what he wants. I feel his attitude encourages me to push towards artistry”.
But equally, Soul In Motion is a place for established artists to bring new flavours, like Anile, who enjoys the experimental space offered “I always feel like SIM offers established artists a more creative avenue to shift away from their comfortable main stays. Artists delve deeper, experiment, and most of all, express!”
A Signature Sound
With a wide variety of drum & bass (and adjacent) sounds coming from the imprint, a uniting sonic identity still vehemently cuts through – as Channell describes it… “I think it’s probably at the forefront of cutting-edge drum & bass right now. Experimental, futuristic, leftfield… I feel like no one else is really in that sort of lane.” Automatic adds “I think SIM is really reshaping a lot of the sound in drum and bass and putting on a really tasteful alternative to the norm.”
This comes as a result of Moses’ philosophy that while each artist has their distinct sound and canvas, they’re sharing the same gallery – trading inspiration but equally trying to stand out from one another, and then using club feedback to chisel a WIP into a work of art. Where it lands is an array of experimental, quality club music.
“With some labels, once you get deeply into their music, they have a signature and every artist is on that same sound. With Soul In Motion, there’s a whole gallery here of artists, and they’re all there with their own palette of sounds and styles.” – Need For Mirrors
The SIM SIM compilation is a pure example of that breadth and depth. Two-step beats, atmospherics, and drips of 303 bass from Automatic, Wagz, or Bigos bring a dousing of electronica, house, and techno influence.
On the other end, inexplicable, future-nostalgic mood-swings are highlighted on M-Zine or Reflect Reaction’s autonomic creations – flexing the experimental nature of the label. And then minimal, growly contributions from L-Side or Phil Tangent keep pace and weight topped up. All together SIM SIM is a showcase of exactly what the label is titled.
“If you were to put the compilation on shuffle, I think most people could spot the majority of the artists, because they have their own sound.
Escher, Reflect Reaction – they stand out as totally different. Jonny L, obviously, has a massive signature sound. You’ve got Anile… and new guys coming through that are still carving out where they’re at. But it doesn’t sound like other things that are out there.” – Need For Mirrors
Combining almost all of the above is a track that deserves a moment: Channell’s ‘Amen (Yeah)’. Digging into the story behind it, the label’s’ ethos holds true – Channell didn’t make this specifically with the label in mind, but the point where Moses’ careful A&R and Channell’s motivations for writing music meet, is a serendipitous moment, as Channell recalls… “I never really think like that [On whether he wrote this specifically for Soul In Motion]. I just have a blank canvas. I’m really into club culture, so I want to make music that talks to people when you’re in a club setting – there’s a booming system, strobe lights, a smoke machine, and it’s sort of transcending you up into the heavens.”
Hearing from both the artists and the label owner separately, it was striking how aligned their views were on music production and consumption – further exemplifying the attention going into Soul In Motion’s curation.
It All Starts In The Club
Soul In Motion the club night has direct impact on Soul In Motion the label. It feeds the music. It breeds new artists. It connects styles and introduces new territory – similar to other boutiques of the same ilk. But it’s also crucially different in the fact that it began in the club, then became a label – giving more consequence to each occasion.
The blueprint for this compilation, as well as the label itself, can be found on your favourite night out. “I’m looking at the club night as five hours. It’s the start, middle and the end.” says Moses. “The old Soul In Motion nights that I didn’t enjoy are the ones where it’s just a whole lot of DJs and they end up playing these sets that don’t interconnect. I prefer each DJ building into the next DJ – even though there are gaps between the sets, the momentum and the movement goes through.”
The earliest events go back to 2014, where the usual set-menu of knocks were felt between then and now – club closures, covid, cost of living, and more generally feeling out the right settings and sounds that would define Soul In Motion’s DNA.
“Going to the early Soul In Motion nights really opened my eyes – really opened my ears – to a different side of the genre.” – Channell
With artists like Doc Scott, Marcus Intalex, and Klute featuring on those early lineups – the events have always been relied on as a place where proper underground, future-thinking music can be heard. Then when the label kicked-off in 2017, it was a new series of challenges in linking the two. But through the following decade, Moses has been mindfully beat-matching the two entities…
“The record label, when it started, wasn’t a good representation of the club, because the club night had no direction and was welcoming to all styles of drum & bass. That will never happen now. The SIM record label and the club are completely one and the same thing.”
As the sole curator, he’s developed a formula for A&R that he says both starts in the club: “Some of these songs I had without even the thought of signing them. They just sent me songs to play at Soul In Motion, and then over time it’s like, ‘Oh, what’s happening with this?’ And then it can come on the compilation or future releases.” And lives in the club, too: “Every song on the label, I play. I don’t sign anything that I’m never going to play. It has to be something that I’ll look back on and play for years to come.”
Staying True
It’s unapologetically faithful towards the club culture that is responsible for its very existence. But as it continues to grow and succeed, it comes against increasing pressure to engage in the less pure, more commercial ends of the industry.
Moses certainly isn’t the first label owner in this game to understand the greater-good behind resisting commercialisation, algorithms, or the digital clout chase. He asserts “I don’t need to feed the algorithm and feed this insatiable thirst that the industry is being pushed into.” But what does make his imprint increasingly distinctive is its efforts towards working on the offence… “I feel like we need to refocus the machine around the music – the deep end, which SIM maybe sits in. It’s food for thought. It’s not fast food.”
It really is all about the musical output. Not only for his own label, but for how he wants see others follow, and for the whole industry to develop “I don’t want to see track breakdowns, hard sell videos pimping your music. I want the music to be magical, and a lot of the time anonymous. The song just has to be a great song for me.”
In the same spirit of living in the physical world, away from screens – Soul In Motion over-indexes on delivering tangible, ownable outputs. Taking the SIM SIM release as an example, which will see a release on cassette tape, and like the rest of the discography, features hand-made art as the visual… “My dad did the piece of art that I used for the cover – it’s a very large work. A running theme with Soul In Motion Records has been having physical artworks, photographed and scanned.”
“None of this is digital. These are paintings or collages. It actually exists in the real world. Somebody’s made that with their hands. They’ve gotten dirty doing it.”
Forward Moving
SIM SIM is a snapshot of a label in motion. In the same vein of Soul:r’s DAT Music or V Recordings’ Planet V, this is a moment to look back on for a view of where the label was, and where it was going.
As the volume of music output rises exponentially, somehow the rate of memorable various artist releases like this one feels increasingly slowed – overtaken by Spotify playlists and the commercial ‘sense’ of releasing tracks one-by-one for maximum squeeze.
But true to a more purist mindset, Moses chooses to present it the way he wants “All these songs could potentially have been EPs, but this was just a far more interesting way of getting a cohesive family of songs together.”
With strong support from some of drum & bass’ most beloved, it’s clear Soul In Motion is offering something special with this release, as Klute weighs in “quietly building over the past few years Soul In Motion reveals their hand with the compilation of the year, an album of very high quality, future drum & bass that leaves most others in the dust scratching their heads, wondering what’s going on”.
Looking ahead, things won’t slow down. With release 050 about to land, Moses also reveals there will be three, maybe four, artist albums on the way in the next 12 months – along with the usual schedule of top-drawer EPs and singles.
Newcomer, and roster mainstay Automatic’s perspective paints an exciting picture for the label’s current and future catalogue… “Every tune on the label is a kind of one of one. It fills a certain space and time for the artist and for the label. You can go look at the back catalogue and there are still tunes that will be drawn on for years to come as they capture a certain feeling.”
The SIM SIM release is certainly cause for pause – a true statement piece that hits on everything the label stands for in 2026 – but as we hit play again, expect surprises and continued excellence as Soul In Motion keeps it moving.
Tickets: Soul In Motion – Pre NY Drum & Bass Party @ Phonox, London | 30 December 2026
