On the scene since 2000, Cian McCann has been supplying his variety of beats for some time now. Drum & bass knows him as Zero T (FKA Zero Tolerance) – the Dublin native who brings a constant stream of quality tracks that range from soul-driven to utterly filthy.
His output is huge, with constant remixes and releases across the most highly renowned labels: CIA, Sofa Sound, Integral, Metalheadz, and of course The North Quarter, where he’s particularly associated.
In The North Quarter’s annual NQ State of Mind series, 2024 was the year he and fellow Irishman Steo got the call up. While he’s not a label owner like others of his ilk, we got a taste of his A&R chops as he and Lenzman selected ten previously unreleased tracks to showcase what the label is about. From ‘Certified’, the banger by Kublai, to ‘Bittersweet’, an emotional one by Wagz – the breadth of TNQ is exhibited entirely.
But it’s not just the Zero T alias keeping him active. Cian’s love for broken beat started around the same time as he began releasing drum & bass – and in the last five years he decided to start seriously contributing to the resurging genre under the alias of Bruk Rogers. Having a full career behind him on his first alias, navigating it a second time seems to have expedited things. As Bruk Rogers he’s quickly been picked up by the beloved, eclectic label Tru Thoughts – releasing his first album Loopholes in 2024, and being asked to remix one of his all time favourite group of artists, Catpack.
And if that wasn’t enough, Cian’s now on his way to social media stardom. His increasingly popular series ‘Gettin’ Diggy With It’ sees him taking on the challenge of creating a track entirely from a random record draw – and the collection is insane. From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Soundtrack to Cheech & Chong’s Wedding Album the source material is deep cut, but often hilariously difficult to re-imagine. Still, Cian always manages to flip it into something that viewers beg to be released by the end.
On his lunch break from his day job as a video editor (yes, he has a full time job on top of all this), UKF sat down with the man of many hats to chat through all his projects, and a few thoughts on the state of electronic music in 2025.
What’s been up today?
I’m just working, I work full time as a video editor these days.
I had no idea you worked full time too. You have so many music projects …
Yeah so about 11 years ago I went back to a normal job. I ended up in this video world, and I love it. I actually prefer not being a full time music person because it can change your relationship with making music from just a pleasure thing, into a pressure thing.
I was a full-time producer all through my twenties, and that’s fine when you’re a young single person, but then when all the other parts of life start kicking in, it sapped all the fun out of it for me.
Having fun while doing it has got to correlate to better music too. On that note, how was the process for putting together NQ State of Mind?
It was a combined effort with Teije [Lenzman]. We had a chat about it first, discussing which artists we rate who haven’t been on The North Quarter, who we really like that we could grab. I brought on Minor Forms, Kublai, and Wagz, and there were a couple of other near-misses too. We had a tune from The Sauce, but unfortunately we couldn’t make it work. Teije brought in Xeonz and Azotix. And as for the rest, it was filled out with the usual suspects on The North Quarter.
So that was the first part – getting the ten tunes and clearing all the samples and things – and the last bit was me putting it into a mix to be hosted by Steo. I had to take my favourite NQ back-catalogue stuff, but also select no tunes that have already been used on previous three NQ State of Mind mixes. Teije didn’t strictly impose this rule, but I was just thinking as a punter: If I want to listen to all the mixes in a row, I don’t really want to keep hearing the same tunes. The North Quarter has a lot of music, there’s hundreds of songs to pick from.
Once I had the tracks picked it was time to craft something special with Steo. Obviously he features on a lot of the NQ back catalogue and giving him a canvas to show both his singing and spitting talents was the main focus for me.
Do you have any stand-outs from the compilation?
‘Certified’ is a banger and has been heavily supported – Kublai smashed that one. And the one I’ve played the most since I got it is the Azotix track ‘Reflections’. I’ve literally played it in every single set for the past 18 months. It’s musical, but it’s got a little something else: What I call an ‘inbetweener’. It’s not purely liquid and musical, it’s not dark and heavy, but it can get you from one to the other. A great transitional tune for me, and those are really important in my set.
I’ve just been listening to your Bruk Rogers stuff – can you tell me a little more about how that project kicked off?
So that style of music – broken beat – was something that popped off in the late 90s or early 00s, right as I was first getting tunes signed by UK labels. It really appealed to me. It allows for more musical scope than I’m comfortable with in drum & bass. With drum & bass, even if it’s musical, it has to be quite restrained and contained, otherwise it can get cheesy pretty quickly for me. This genre is more about musicality. You can have a two minute saxophone solo in the middle of a broken beat tune, and that’s fine. In a drum & bass tune, for me, that would be very questionable!
The influences on broken beat are similar to what’s in jungle or older drum & bass, but just interpreted differently in a way. A lot of the originators were jungle producers like 4hero, or Bugz In The Attic, who were the big supergroup back in the day – and a bunch of those guys were Reinforced Records jungle producers. Drum & bass had changed from music about drums and drum patterns, to the drums being repetitive and simple with everything else changing around them. So I think a lot of those guys moved away from it when the rhythmic, musicality of jungle dissipated.
What happened to broken beat?
Well, it seemed to die off around the mid-2000s, and never really stuck as a permanent UK-based music genre like lots of others did. There was about a 5-7 year period where it was a hot thing, getting lots of press, Amy Winehouse was getting remixed by Bugz in the Attic. It looked like it was going to mirror what happened to drum & bass in the mid-90s, where the mainstream cottoned-on to it and made it popular. It felt like that would happen, but it didn’t.
And now you’re trying to bring it back?
I would say I’ve joined a new wave of interest in the genre, and hopefully my contribution is helping build it back up.
During lockdown, I played a virtual version of Giles Peterson’s We Out Here festival hosted by Hit+Run. I wasn’t aware of this broken beat resurgence at the time, but I just thought: I like it, and I’ve got a lot of it. So I filled the first hour of my set with it before getting into the drum & bass. One of the crew, MAKO MCR, came up to me afterward and said he loved broken beat, he’d just discovered it and started trying to make it. It was all just very inspiring.
I went home and made a tune, then Bugz In The Attic ended up signing it and releasing it. I followed up with an EP for their label, and then for Tru Thoughts – who I consider the modern day Talking Loud. So when they came in and offered me a multi-album deal, I bit their hand off!
My first album Loopholes came out in May 2024, and I’ve been DJing at festivals and clubs with this sound, easing into it, so yeah, it’s been amazing.
I’ve also gotten to work with artists who I’m a big fan of: Moonchild would be the best example of that – a modern neo-soul band from LA. The singer (Amber Navran) from that band just started another trio called Cat Pack who are also signed to Tru Thoughts. They picked me to do a remix of a track off their first album. That’s my highlight of the year! It’s a musical act that I really rate and listen to all the time, so for them to like my sound enough to select me, it means a lot.
Did Kilburn Park come before Bruk Rogers? It sounds similar.
I met Onj in September of 2021, and I think Bruk Rogers actually preceded that. I would say what led into this was the Searchlight project, which was myself and Beta 2, and was a Metalheadz-related thing. Goldie asked us to put together an album using live musicians and gave us total freedom. We ended up not including any drum and bass and it was all neo-soul and nu jazz influenced stuff.
With me and Andre [Onj], – the Kilburn album – none of it was planned at all. There was no pre-meditation about it. We met through happenstance, and we literally ended up puking out all these tunes in quick succession. We both work insanely fast, we met in September and I think we gave Teije [Lenzman] the album by Christmas.
So there’s no real direct connection conceptually between the Kilburn LP and Bruk Rogers. That literally just birthed itself – I don’t think either of us were really in control of that to be honest. The music gods playing puppetry.
Well it’s no secret your work-rate is pretty insane. We get a bit of an insight on your ‘Gettin’ Diggy With It’ series. What inspired this?
Well it’s a couple of things. Firstly is that my day job is video production – I felt a little bit like I wasn’t really maximising my skills. So much of what’s important now with being an artist is your presence on social media, and how popular you are on there is what seems to decide whether you get bookings or not. I don’t even want to get into whether that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s a bit like a black cab driver in London – they spend two years studying every street in London, and then Google Maps comes along. You can get pissy about it, or you can try to continue to fight for your spot.
It took me a while to come up with an idea. I wanted it to be completely self-sufficient, so I’m the cameraman, editor, colour grader, audio, I’m making the tune obviously.
I’ve got this big record collection that’s full of random stuff from charity shops, inherited collections from old neighbours. The point of the series is to show that there’s something useful in every single piece of recorded sound in history. There is no bad source material.
The next challenge was how to show the whole process in 90 seconds. People say I make it look easy, but it’s the editing that makes it look easy. If there was a live stream of me doing it, it would be a loong video.
People seem to be loving it.
Definitely. It’s getting love from a lot of non-drum & bass and non-production people too. I knew drum & bass nerds were going to like it, seeing a bit behind the curtain. But I wanted it to also be something for someone with no interest in production or drum & bass – the average joe sitting on the toilet scrolling. I think all human beings enjoy watching someone make something good from scratch.
The next step for it was an elongated version – which was picked up by Deutsche Telekom Electronic Beats TV. A ten minute video where you get to see a little more about the process and how the track actually gets made. It’s not a Patreon-style tutorial, but there’s enough there to satisfy both the drum & bass heads, as well as keep the lay-person interested. Hopefully that continues to bring in a bigger audience.
How do we get the tracks?
Everyone keeps asking! So I’ll do a poll on social media after episode 26 asking people to vote for their favourite ones. I’ll finish the five most popular, and give them away free on Bandcamp as Gettin’ Diggy With It Volume One.
Twice a year I’ll run the vote. If your favourite didn’t make volume one, it can still make it onto volume two. I think it will be fun and get people involved and engaged. I’m also going to encourage as much voter-fraud and electioneering as possible: Make 12 accounts to vote for your favourite, use your dog’s account, get Putin involved. Whatever it takes to get your favourite tune released!
I’m setting up the bots as we speak. Anything else to shout out coming up in 2025?
I’ve got a bunch of remixes coming: Closer by Klinical and Rizzle has just dropped on Overview. There’s a remix of a Trail tune for Flexout, not sure when that’s coming out. There’s also two jungle drum & bass remixes from my Bruk Rogers album – one by myself and one by En:vy. Two tracks are coming from the Metalheadz 30 album this year and I’m also currently writing new releases for Sofa Sound, The North Quarter, Carbon, and CIA, so there will be a very regular flow of releases in 2025.
I’m DJing at Phonox at the end of the month with The North Quarter too, which I’m really excited about because we’ve got Fabio down there. He’s one of my earliest supporters and backers, and then I played at his nights for years and years. So that will be a sick night. You can also catch me in Manchester for Planet Hz on February 8, and Brighton for Essence of Chi February 14.
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