How many of us are united by music? Whether it be a friend found in a queue for a festival toilet or a lover who held you up on their shoulders in the rave, there are countless stories of music bringing together people from all walks of life. Bass is no different; even the sweatiest of dancefloors can be the beautiful breeding ground for people to come together.
Introducing… PRFCT Mandem – a couple from very different backgrounds who were brought closer together by a shared love for music. Latvian born Jev came to the UK in 2012 and settled in Manchester, enticed by its bulging melting pot of music as a young producer. Aisling arrived in Manchester from Ireland to study dance at university, and the pair met while working in a bar.
Their shared love of music bloomed at Parklife festival, and flourished at Pirate studios. Like so many of us, their love for bass music came thick and fast, until they formally created this high-energy, genre-blurring drum and bass duo. Grounded in a passion for dubstep and grime, they began as a pair to bring energy, creativity and showmanship to the rave.
Supported by the likes of Bloc2Bloc and Korsakov Music, PRFCT Mandem have been nurtured by close-knit drum and bass communities, while studying the work of many inspiring and dedicated artists at the top of their game. Now a few years deep into their DJing and producing partnership, Jev and Aisling are looking to continue evolving their sound, developing their live performances and perfecting their craft as entertainers.
We caught up with them to hear more about their journey into drum and bass….
A good place to start would be hearing how you met and the origin story of PRFCT Mandem…
Aisling: Originally we were working together in a bar in Manchester called Lock 91 – big up the Lock 91 crew – and from there the friendship grew.
Jev: We started going to festivals together and I think that’s where we discovered that we vibe together musically because we didn’t have any differences in musical taste. We enjoyed the festival life together and then we started going to pirate studios together, where I taught Aisling how to DJ and from there we became PRFCT Mandem.
Amazing – we’ve got to know what this festival was?
Jev: Have you heard of parklife?
Aisling: Manchester’s finest festival!
That’s great! Had you enjoyed drum and bass previously in your own individual lives, or did you discover it together?
Jev: We discovered it as a partnership. I used to produce and DJ more like American dubstep, and only around 2018 I started experimenting with drum and bass because it became more popular with the likes of Dimension pushing the game.
Aisling: For me, I didn’t really know what drum and bass was to be honest until we went to a rave together! It was a Worried About Henry rave with Andy C, Mefjus, North Base.
A great rave to start with!
Aisling: It was an amazing one to start! From there we started going to Pirate studios and we actually didn’t start mixing drum and bass, we were just trying everything. We then discovered the beauty of double dropping, fell in love, and had a lot of fun with that – we still do have a lot of fun!
Pirate studios is like a gateway for so many artists… how did you both end up in Manchester from such different backgrounds?
Aisling: I’m originally a dancer and have been dancing since I was about four. I knew from my young teenage years that I wanted to pursue it professionally, but the colleges for dance in Ireland did not suit what I wanted to do. So I moved to Manchester to go to Northern Ballet School.
Jev: I was into music production before coming to the UK, but I came here in 2012 to pursue music as I was really into dubstep. The early days of UKF, Flux Pavillion, Circus Records gave me a good indicator that the UK was where the party was at. I went to college to study music production and from there I just stayed here because I enjoyed the scene and the people.
I feel like we hear a lot about London and Bristol being the big hubs of drum and bass in the UK, so can you give us an insight into what the scene is like up in Manchester?
Jev: When you look on social media you see all the big hubs like Bristol with Born on Road and Rumble in the Jungle, where there are so many events happening every week. But in Manchester we don’t see it happening like that. Personally, we are starving for more drum and bass events.
Aisling: Particularly big events, there are quite a few smaller independent ones going on.
Jev: Hit and Run on a bi-weekly basis, Warehouse Project seasonally, those are the main ones. Bloc2Bloc obviously run their smaller events, and they’re cool because it feels like a family. There are also not that many venues in Manchester that run these kinds of events.
Aisling: Yeah, it’s a really good community of people in Manchester, but I think it’s the big nights that we’re missing. I think post-pandemic a lot of the smaller clubs didn’t survive unfortunately, but hopefully they’ll make a comeback soon.
It’s really interesting to hear that you think there’s a gap in the market for Manchester to flourish even more. You mention Bloc2Bloc – was having those smaller, close-knit communities important to you when coming into the scene?
Aisling: Definitely. Bloc2Bloc is a blessing to Manchester. It’s such a good platform for DJs just starting out. Banner is really supportive – he is really supportive of us and everything we do.
Jev: His platform definitely helped us to start and get into the scene back when we were just starting at the end of 2019. Bloc2bloc has been there for so many big names in the scene – when you think of them you think of Bou, Kaz, Chimpo etc. When you are there it always feels like a big family – your position in the scene doesn’t matter, you’re just there to chill.
Aisling: Banner has always been really supportive of new people and he pushes you to do your own thing. So definitely big ups to him.
While we’re on the topic of the early days, we need to clear up where the name came from…
Aisling: The music that I was listening to a lot when we first started hanging out was UK grime and R&B type music, and the word mandem is used a lot in that music. It’s something that we used to then say a lot to each other.
Jev: Before we got into drum and bass we were listening to and DJing a lot of different music and grime was one of those genres. We would talk about the grime scene and how there are always so many people gathered around in the music videos and it gives such a cool sense of community. We really enjoy using the lingo even though we aren’t really a part of that scene, it was something that made me comfortable speaking English as it’s not my first language.
Aisling: For two people not from the UK, it’s a really fun way to get into the UK scene.
Jev: PRFCT Mandem just slipped out one time and I remember when we started taking things more seriously and were thinking what to name ourselves, PRFCT Mandem was just striking and a name that would get people asking questions.
You’ve had dealings with dubstep and grime along the way, but was there a specific drum and bass sub genre that caught your attention?
Jev: I think it was everything, because we were DJing all types of drum and bass and experimenting with double drops where we could take a minimal tune and layer it with a jump up tune or neurofunk tune and create a totally new texture. This inspired us to be more versatile when it comes to our sets and our production as well.
Aisling: There’s such a vast amount of things you can do with the drum and bass genre, it’s unreal, so we love just messing around when DJing or producing to see what we can come up with – we love it all!
Jev: I think that’s why we’re experimenting all the time with new sounds. It’s very hard when we make music to commit to just making rollers or just minimal. Even though we understand the importance of having a signature sound, we started to use experimentation to our advantage.
Has producing played a big part in how you’ve developed as a duo?
Jev: I have been producing for many years and making drum and bass obsessively for maybe three years now. Production has always been a passion and I want to make music as my art. Previously it was quite abstract music that wasn’t particularly dance orientated, so we had to learn to make music made for dancing, not just listening.
We have been analysing music from influential people in the scene and found out what makes us want to boogie. DJing was a secondary but it was something we could collaborate on more closely and what made us a complete duo.
One thing that I think makes a lot of sense is talking about your dance background. You have high energy sets – is that something you wanted to package yourselves as, with high energy music and performance?
Aisling: One hundred percent. It was around when I graduated that we started doing PRFCT Mandem and a real passion of mine is performance, and obviously you can see from our performances that we go crazy and have a lot of fun. We want to bring that fun to other people through our performances.
Jev: Aisling comes from a dance background and I used to dance back in the day as well. I think the main thing that made us explore this idea of being extroverted on the decks was at Parklife when we watched Major Lazer play – they have dancers and all sorts, it’s not just the DJ playing, they have the whole package of visuals, dancers and the DJs themselves having so much fun jumping around the stage. The whole idea is, if they can have that much fun while they are playing, why can’t you do the same as the listener?
Aisling: That’s something that we hope to pursue in the future by adding all these elements of visuals, crazy music, dancing, choreography.
Jev: It’s a step-by-step process because we are learning showmanship. We learn from the big artists how they perform and act, and we try to perfect that and understand what is going on in their mind to be so confident.
Aisling: We are still on the road to figuring how we want to perform ourselves and what feels right.
A lot of DJs have a cool, calm and collected vibe, but each performer certainly has their own style behind the decks. It’s quite unique to have really high energy performers in our UK drum and bass scene. Do you take a lot of inspiration from creating a giant party atmosphere?
Jev: Yeah, that’s the idea of people going to the clubs – it’s for people to go out and forget their day to day activities and feel connected with music and the people around you. If you have a good conductor who hosts well, it’s a great night. Your mission as a DJ is to provide a good time for the people, but how you do that is up to you. Even those people who look very composed, it’s still showmanship. Look at Alix Perez, he is a badman!
Cool as ice, but it works so well…
Jev: For me personally, when we did our last livestream, I tried to be more composed and not get too over-excited because there is a threshold where it can look awkward, especially on a livestream when there are no people around. It’s a work in progress to find the perfect balance of lots of energy, but not over the top.
You describe it as a work in progress – has there been anyone or anything that has been inspiring you on this journey to finding who you want to be as artists?
Aisling: I suppose DJ wise and in terms of showmanship, Camo & Krooked – everything they do I love!
Jev: We have taken great inspiration from them in terms of the way they treat their DJ sets. It’s not just a party set, it’s a journey that tells you a story. They create very unique textures in terms of the music they select and their approach to mixing is very inspiring to us. To tell a story and take people on a journey with you – that’s what we want.
Aisling: Let’s not forget A.M.C and Andy C, always going in and bringing the party and infectious vibes. It’s so inspiring to us as they have so much fun behind the decks.
Jev: It’s very interesting watching their sets and dissecting what makes it work. You wouldn’t DJ a jump up set the same way you would DJ a liquid set, so it’s really cool to understand the system and then experiment with it.
We kind of developed our own sign language system in a way because with the headphones and earplugs in a loud environment, we don’t want to shout at each other, so we use our hands to signal what’s going to happen or how we should do something. It brings an extra element of fun to it.
That’s the special part of being a duo, you’ve got that extra bit of chemistry between you that can bring a new level to your work – two creative minds – do you feel that you empower each other in that sense?
Jev: You describe it so well. Not just in our sets but in our production as well. It’s an opportunity to learn from each other. Through music it gives us a medium to learn about each other or ourselves. It opens a whole new way of looking at things and shows you different ways to work.
Aisling: We bounce off each other, trying different things to see what works. There are some tunes that Jev puts together that I never would have thought to and I think, wow thank you!
You’re dissecting other people’s work in the scene, but we want to dissect you… So can you give us a summary of what your vision is and how you see yourselves at this early stage in your careers?
Jev: Our driving force when it comes to making music and our sets, and how we present ourselves to the world even on social media, comes down to three words: versatility, quality and uniqueness. It doesn’t mean that we need to be super different from others – we don’t want to reinvent the wheel, we just want to make it our own. We also try to approach things with quality because we have high standards of what music we make and how we want it to sound. We also have fun with what we do and not take it too seriously. You can hear it in our music that we are taking the piss a little bit!
Aisling: Some of the tunes we’ve had the most fun with and perhaps turned out the most silly are our personal favourite tunes. Bringing fun while maintaining that quality is important.
Jev: We always try to look at what we can bring to the world. This is something that we want to experiment with more in the future with different content. We want to show our message to the world through our music and our story.
Speaking of the future, is there anything you’re particularly striving towards?
Jev: There is a long-term plan and a short-term plan. I think for the long-term plan there are still a couple of interviews to come before we get to that point! At the moment our vision of where we want to take PRFCT Mandem first of all is solidifying ourselves in the drum and bass scene, and then take it outside of the scene into different genres because we see ourselves as multi-genre artists.
Aisling: We both appreciate many different genres of music, so we’re definitely interested in branching out and then learning from the other genres and bringing it back into drum and bass as well.
Jev: That’s our musical journey, and eventually we want to move up into creating our own imprint, label, company, collective – whatever you may call it! But we can talk about that another time…
To be continued… for the time being, what’s coming up from PRFCT Mandem in the near future?
Jev: We have our next tune out on Korsakov Music called Upside Down, which is a hybrid drum and bass tune inspired by the thought “what if Koan Sound made a release on Neksus Sound?”
Aisling: We are going to be releasing a tune a month at least for the next five or six months.
Jev: The idea is that we want to stay present in the scene because last year we were lacking in that.
Aisling: Last year we took our time but this year we’re ready to smash it out. In terms of gigs we have some coming up across the UK and Europe in the next few months.
PRFCT Mandem – Upside Down is out now on Korsakov Music
Follow PRFCT Mandem: Facebook / Instagram / Soundcloud
