Some combinations of words are truly beautiful…
“Culprate on a drum & bass flex” is one of those combos.
And it’s exactly what’s happened lately as part of Culprate’s new Bandcamp-released Dawn EP in the form of the its self-titled Heavyweight-style groaner.
Here it is if you haven’t heard it…
Dawn, and another drum & bass track on the EP entitled Fester, are by no means Culprate’s first drum & bass tracks.
2016’s Diablo VIP was an adventure into the halftime’s strangest glitchy ditches, 2015’s critically insane Logic Bomb on Phace’s Phace & Friends EP was a Culprate WIP for over 10 years while 2014’s album Deliverance is fully charged with skitty Squarepusher style drum mathematics.
Go back even further in time and you’ll find it was drum & bass that turned the Bristol artist on to bass music and production to begin with… And it’s where he sees some exciting potential to develop his trademark sound in the future.
Throw in the fact he’s going to remaster and re-release his first two albums and has two album’s worth of stems from a collaborative project on Twitch and it’s definitely a good time to be a Culprate fan.
Find out more…
Drum & bass was the first thing you started producing 10 or so years ago wasn’t it? Did much of that see the light of day?
It was indeed, around 15 years ago, but pretty much none of it was released. There were a few tracks like, Dark Matter and Jedi Remix. But apart from that, they just spent their life on MySpace!
Can we call Dawn and Fester ‘back to your roots’ tracks?
Quite so! Fester especially. Dawn is something I’d tried in the past to do, but failed!
Dawn reminds me of Fresh’s Heavyweight actually…. Are you cool with a comparison like that?
I’m extremely happy with that comparison!
Last time we spoke you told us Logic Bomb with Phace was a sketch of yours from 10 years before… Have any of these tracks have a similar historic development?
Well Fester was started in 2014, not quite a decade but quite a long time for a track to be a WIP!
There are some really interesting switches, glitches and surprises on Fester too… Perhaps the closest-styled stuff you’ve done to the Deliverance work but more aimed the dancefloor. Is this dark, apocalyptic, very cinematic style of drum & bass a place where those worlds overlap easiest or more cohesively for you?
Indeed, I think this style of drum & bass is ripe for experimentation! (Without sounding too pretentious) It appeals to me directly for its sense of space and its almost perfect balance of simplicity and precision. It provides plenty of opportunity for the unexpected to show its face.
What’s next?
For me, this year is going to be busier than usual! I’ve been streaming on Twitch for around a year and recently put out a request for stems. Suffice to say, I got quite a few sets of stems… Enough to make 2 LPs… So that’s happening. Also, I recently got the rights back for Colours and Flatline so they’ll be re-mastered and released independently.
Awesome. Now give us your five life-changing drum & bass tunes. GO:
Goldie – Timeless (1995, Metalheadz/FFRR)
Ultimately it’s the quality. For me, it was one of the finest productions of its time and really set the standard for my dance music tastes.
Bad company – The Nine (1998, BC Recordings)
The sheer darkness… It’s one of those tunes which I’ll always hold in high esteem, and eventually try to create something that measures up on the darkness scale!
Jo – R-Type (Friction Remix) (2004, Shogun Audio)
For no other reason but sheer nostalgia
Ed Rush & Optical – Bacteria (Pendulum Remix) (2004, Virus)
I was going to say Vault, but this remix totally smashed my perceptions of drum & bass! Pendulum, in general, had a really fresh sound which still resonates today… Really, they shifted the direction of the genre as a whole.
Noisia – Block Control (2005, Moving Shadow)
This was, and continues to be, a massive influence in my productions. I never get bored of that groove!
Never get bored of Culprate: Facebook / Soundcloud / Twitter
