Hear ye, hear ye! The boys are back!
After quietly slipping off into a 4-year hiatus, deeply adored scene favourites – Brookes Brothers – return with new track ‘Enemies’: a signature sounding track for the pair with a lick of 2024 energy.
From their first release back in 2006 to ‘Make No Sound’ in 2020, the brothers have been churning out feel-good D&B bangers for the entire duration of their career. Welcoming them back with open arms, their return to the scene is a familiarity that feels like home for many, and a total breath of fresh air for a new generation of ravers.
The brothers are back, and they’re doing what they do best. Entering the chat after 4 years: Dan and Phil AKA, Brookes Brothers!
Guys – welcome back to the party. How’s your week been so far?
Dan: Good, thank you! This week we’ve been doing promo for our new track ‘Enemies’, getting everything ticked off and ready for the release. Looking at acoustic mixes, stuff like that. It’s been a while since we’ve released anything so just getting back into the swing of things.
Phil: It’s really exciting to be coming back!
Exciting times, indeed. Why now for the re-emergence?
Dan: We just missed making music together, we missed drum & bass. It’s been a little while, it was just calling us. So, we made our own way back into making drum & bass again.
Phil: We’ve both been making music since our last release, working on different projects. We took a bit of a break from making D&B so it’s exciting to come back and explore D&B again! So much has happened since we’ve been away, drum & bass is in a really interesting and amazing place right now, so it’s fun to get back to the drawing board again. Experiment with different sounds, different styles, see what we can come up with when we put our heads together.
What’s it like coming back into a scene that has changed so drastically in that time you’ve been away?
Dan: D&B right now is kind of where we were hoping it would get to for such a long time. The whole thing has massively opened up now. A few years ago, it was very club-oriented, which meant for a producer, you needed your tunes to pop in the club. That’s less of a thing now. You can write whatever you want because so much fits under the D&B umbrella now. It gives a lot more opportunity to explore stuff as a producer and make different types of tunes.
Phil: It’s funny because I don’t think the sound of D&B has changed since we started making tunes. It’s changed a bit – of course – there are different subgenres now, but at its core, it’s quite similar to what it was when we first got into D&B. It’s about energy. It’s great to see people doing different styles, different things, but I wouldn’t say anyone has reinvented the wheel. Either way, it’s great to see it in such a good position.
Let’s talk about ‘Enemies’! Tell us the whole story.
There was an original vocal by a band called Shade, who are based in Canada. We wrote the original song with them, but it turned out they left their label and there were some complications with clearing the vocal. So, the track was sat around on demo for quite a while. UKF hit us up and said they were really keen to release it so we brushed it up and started to get things rolling again with some new music.
Amazing. Any other releases or an album incoming that we can look forward to?
Phil: No album but we do have a few other releases incoming. We’re just trying to figure out what comes next! We’re still writing too, getting some ideas together, vibing in the studio, even though I’m not in the country at the moment. We work remotely.
Ah, you’re working remotely! After years of working side by side, how are you finding a remote setup?
Dan: It’s different to how we used to work, but it’s all good. We used to live together for a long time. When we first started writing, we both lived at our parents house. We were making tunes in the attic for years. Our mum just thought we were up there smoking but we were making music! Eventually she realised we were doing something productive. That’s where we wrote all of our early songs. We then moved into a flat where we lived together for about 6 years, which is where we finished the first album and wrote the second album. Back then, at the start, we always worked together. I think we had a system where we’d do 15 minutes each…
Phil: Yeah, if someone was a bit puffed out, the other person would jump in. We both had our own setups in our own bedrooms too so when we weren’t writing together, we’d be writing separately in the studio. That’s how the first album came together, both of us writing ideas and then bringing them together.
How does that process compare to the process you have now? Does it help or hinder your creativity working separately?
Phil: I wouldn’t say it’s changed that much to be honest. We’re just a couple of guys vibing on some tunes, really… and then banging our heads together to try and finish them!
Dan: We start ideas independently, then we jointly decide which ones to run with and which ones we want to choose.
How do you manage to stay aligned creatively as a duo, as well as maintaining a relationship as brothers? Have the two things sort of merged into one at this point?
Phil: They have sort of merged into one now! There have been some breaks over the years, arguing over little details, but generally, we do agree on most things. It’s a pretty peaceful process.
Dan: Musically, we have very similar tastes, so that has always helped. If one of us is into an idea, normally the other one is really into it too. We don’t tend to clash too much on the music side of things.
Did you ever consider it risky business, venturing into music as a duo, but also as brothers?
Phil: There was no thought around if it could be an issue or not. Music has always connected us as kids. We’ve always been so close, and best friends as well as brothers. Music was such a unifying thing for us, it was natural to start making it together and I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else
Dan: We never thought twice about it. We were young and just having fun. That’s what music was to us, it was really an enjoyment and getting stuck into something that was really rewarding. We got so much out of it at the start. We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t do any courses or anything!
Phil: No YouTube tutorials. We didn’t know anyone else that made music either. Literally nobody. Nowadays, every kid sort of knows someone that is playing around on Fruity Loops or GarageBand. We didn’t know the first thing about making music.
Dan: We didn’t know what any of our plugins did! The guy that built our computer for us, he built in some different bits and bobs and we really didn’t understand how any of it works. We were just using our ears to make it sound good. We didn’t know what a compressor did for at least 2 years.
You can take more risks with someone by your side, and how amazing that you’re not venturing back down this path together once again, in a new age of D&B, with new technology. Your new chapter…
Dan: We actually know what we’re doing now so yeah, it’s amazing!
Phil: I’d just like to say from both of us a massive shout-out to our fans from over the years. Anyone who has supported us or encouraged us to make music, sorry for the long hiatus, but sending love to everyone and looking forward to seeing everyone soon and releasing music again.
Dan: We have so much love and so many good experiences in this scene. We’re so excited to step back in and do it all over again.
