Whether you’ve laughed at one of his videos, thrown your body around vigorously at one of his amazing live shows or smiled when you saw his teeny-tiny glasses, Venjent has been there for us when we’ve needed him the most.
But his now-famous drum and bass memes and videos didn’t happen by accident. After years of making music and honing his production skills, he has developed a keen eye for creating captivating content; striking a tasteful formula that pulls in a crowd, whilst allowing him to flex his creativity in a real and authentic way.
After hitting 2 million followers across his channels, Venjent has taken time to reflect on the importance of his art and the reason why he wanted followers in the first place. His new album Did I Forget Something? is a reminder to himself that he started his videos on social media to promote his music, not the other way around.
He has a strong message of self-love and authenticity, and with a history of working with artists like The Prodigy and Metrik under his belt, it is clear to see that he is building something rather beautiful and exceptionally exciting for us all to be a part of.
With the new album unleashed into the wild, it felt like the perfect time to dig a little deeper into both the project, and the man behind the tiny glasses.
Venjent! How are you this week?
I’m buzzin’! My album has just come out, it’s been so well received. I’ve been working on this album for about two years so I’m so gassed to have it out now and into the world. Feeling good, feeling energised!
You’ve got 23 tracks on Did I Forget Something?. Is there a reason why there are so many?
I set myself a challenge and a goal to have an album released every year since I started doing the Venjent project, but I missed one last year because I released a meme album. So, this is basically a double album. Loads of people were like ‘You should release two albums!’ but I’ve done it how I want to do it and I’m really glad that I have. It’s a body of work from the last two years, why not put it all together?
Absolutely. Is there a particular message you’re trying to send with this project?
The title track is called ‘Did I Forget Something?’ and it’s about getting so lost in the infinite complications and stresses of life that you forget why you started doing something in the first place. That sums up the whole album for me because I’ve worked so, so hard to try and promote myself with all the memes, socials and YouTube channel that I sort of forgot why I started doing it in the first place, and that reason was to promote my music. ‘Did I Forget Something?’ is a nice message for me and hopefully a message that will resonate with other people too.
As an artist first and foremost – what else comes with having such a huge social media following?
When I started putting a lot of time and effort into my socials, I made sure it was fun so that I could carry on doing it. I didn’t want to burn out. When I used to be in bands before the Venjent project, the social media aspect of it was so draining. It was a chore. It was such hard work and felt like a lie. It didn’t feel real or authentic, it felt like I was posing. I can see this in lots of artists now and they’re getting really frustrated with it because all the labels and managers want people with social media followings. And I know why, because it’s free marketing, it’s a powerful tool. I got lucky in creating a little TV channel – that’s how I see it – a channel that’s fun and engaging, and related to my music in a way because they’re all drum and bass remixes. I guess now, I’m still having fun with it but the pressure is trying to find the balance between making memes and making music. How much do I lean into the memes, and how much do I lean back into my music and songs? It’s getting that good balance of the two. It’s kind of like I have to be a YouTuber and an artist all at the same time.
That’s a lot of work for you. How does having to do both affect your creativity?
The magic is, with the meme stuff, there’s no pressure at all. It’s like my playground. I can really play with it, get really experimental, and then when I go back to writing songs, it’s like the other side of me that can be a little more serious. The balance of the two sort of helps each other creatively. If you’re trying to create one thing too many times, over and over again, your creativity can go a bit stale. It’s really helpful for me to have both.
I feel like a lot of artists don’t put out funny content because it’s quite a revealing and scary thing to do. How did you feel when you first started posting?
Oh yeah, self-conscious! Everyone is self-conscious, really. I just sort of pushed through that and kept going, and started having more and more fun with it. I was quite fortunate that I didn’t have anything to lose. I had just quit my band and had this fresh slate. I was already making the drum and bass tunes and had some Venjent tunes there but I was like “OK, how am I going to promote these? There was no pretence there. I could just do what I wanted. I didn’t have a manager or a label telling me what to do. I was just making silly videos and being as silly and as goofy as I wanted. The more videos I did, I found a formula that worked where I enjoyed creating and other people connected with. Then that formula helped shape my brand, it sort of created itself. I’ve got to be honest though, it’s all about the little glasses! I wouldn’t be here talking to you without the little glasses.
Ha! Big up the little glasses… Your fans love how authentic you are, and how much fun you have. We are very used to years of the typically cool DJ persona. It’s refreshing that we’ve started to break away from that now.
I know what you mean, there have always been a lot of mysterious and cool DJs out there so I wanted to break down that barrier a little bit. I wanted to give people something real to believe in. Something that isn’t perfect, it’s goofy and rough around the edges, it’s just me being myself times a hundred.
Most of us are little weirdos really… Especially when we’re with our friends. So when we see other people being expressive and a bit fruity, we like it. You have an interesting history in music, working with Prodigy and Metrik, talk to us about your journey so far.
I’ve always been in bands as a drummer, that’s my history. It was my dream as a kid, to be the next big drummer. I managed to get signed to SONY with my band which was called Black Futures at the time, then it changed to Never Not Nothing. Whilst I was in that project I did some really amazing things. I did my first gig in China when I was 19. I travelled to Japan and the US. We did a full film score for a film called The Others with Maisie Williams in it. It was all very dramatic the stuff that we did, it was all really creative and I absolutely loved it. We did a couple of tracks with The Prodigy too. ‘Rok-Weiler’ was the track that I named personally. My guitarist was like ‘That’s such a sh*t name, mate.’ Then Liam liked it and they kept it. Which was pretty sweet. Then during COVID, I fell out of love with being in a band, I felt like I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t, so we decided to split, which was like getting a divorce. After that, I thought, well what do I love doing? I make drum and bass all the time so I might as well try this Venjent thing out and have a bit of fun with it, and then that ended up kicking off! I did some ghostwriting with Metrik on the track ‘Immortal’ too, and wrote the topline and lyrics which was pretty cool. I’ve got to thank my history for Venjent taking off how it did, for giving me the tools to make the videos and the music, to produce content and memes. I’m really grateful for my journey. I have so much creative freedom now, I’m not signed, I release all my tracks through my mate’s label Chilli Tribe and we have such an amazing, supportive culture. Now I’m playing loads of countries and playing in places I never thought I would. It’s crazy.
Sounds like quite a whirlwind few years. Do you have any goals you’re working towards with the Venjent project?
It has been a whirlwind, and also within that whirlwind, I did a live band show in London at Village Underground which was awesome. We sold it out. We had a full band, full visual show and it was amazing but it was so much work to get it done that I haven’t done another since. But, that is my future goal, to take it into a live band setting again because I do miss it from my younger days. I love The Prodigy and Pendulum, they’re some of my favourite bands growing up. I want to bring back that energy and live band crossover. So that is one of my goals, to start touring more as a band in the future.
You have a constant thread of positivity, self-love and authenticity throughout your music and branding. Why is this messaging so important to you?
Because it’s the only thing that really matters to me, to be honest. If you live by some simple philosophies your life can be so much more manageable. The philosophy of “Love Is The Answer”, I can’t fault in any area of life, personally. My music will always have that as an underlying message. That feeling helps me create in a way that is positive, and people can then receive it in a way which is positive too. It’s quite a powerful thing to have that message. I was inspired by a podcast when I first started out called ‘Create Art, Not Content’, which is a really cool podcast. The main thing I got from it was: know what your message is and everything will fall into place from there. It really helped me. It also helped me with the socials too. I thought, OK, I’m not creating content, I’m creating art. Even if it’s a joke, it’s still art, it still has a deeper underlying message.
It’s all about the mindset…
It really is. Everyone has problems, everyone needs a bit of help to try and make their lives that little bit easier and music, I think, is the most powerful tool to do that.
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