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What other genre had such a moment?
Let me go right back a second.
Cos it was a UK question.
It's like, other than maybe Led Zeppelin
or maybe certain punk rock,
maybe like the Sex Pistols or even The Clash,
Robert Smith, you know, there are moments like that,
I feel, that changed American music forever.
And I think dubstep has to be
I think one of the most significant cultural shifts
in American or just Western music.
If you think about all the things we covered
in this documentary, from movies and the Disneys
and this and that and Grammys and the sound design,
it's like, I don't think there's been something...
- That's had that impact. - That's had that impact.
- I mean... - You know, just...
I think drum and bass and jungle
would've had exactly the same impact,
but they didn't have the internet.
I think a big part of it is just that
the stars aligning with the internet and being at this moment
where we could be in complete control
over what we listen to
at any moment.
And it created this incredible divide,
and it created all this chaos and this tornado of amazingness
and then now, as the dust settles,
electronic music is just ever more artistic
and ever more stronger
and ever more than it has ever been.
You created the name "dubstep"
and yet you're the most humble dude ever since I first met you.
But I think at the same time, it was like,
"OK, we started something that we didn't mean to start."
It was just a sound, just a vibe.
- Yeah. - It kind of just formed.
It just happened.
And what did you think while this was happening though, bro?
♪ Light trails behind me ♪
♪ Looking back's a waste of time ♪
♪ Let's push things forward ♪
♪ And keep our heads held high ♪
♪ Time's passed, we've laughed ♪
♪ We chose new paths ♪
♪ We both ♪
♪ Got so much room to grow ♪
♪ It's all we have ♪
♪ But I know we can ♪
♪ We both ♪
♪ Got so much room to grow ♪
♪ Cause we're doing this Our own way ♪
♪ Gonna turn into something great ♪
♪ We don't care about Past mistakes ♪
♪ Cause we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Yeah, we're doing this Our own way ♪
♪ Gonna turn into something great ♪
♪ We don't care how much it takes ♪
♪ Cause we're doing this Our own way ♪
♪ Our own way ♪
♪ Let's get ready to rumble ♪
♪ Move out my fuckin' way, boy you gonna get sliced ♪
♪ Let's get ready to rumble ♪
Just as much as bass is sound
it's also a feeling, it vibrates you.
Every time we have an opportunity
to expand on the culture in our scene we wanna do that.
That's one of the major things we try and do with Lost Lands.
It takes an army of people
to create what we do for that festival.
When I'm making a track, the only thing I'm think about is:
"What can I do with this track
to give it the biggest emotional impact
on the person who's listening to it?"
Each song deserves its own visual piece
that represents what I was thinking of when I was making that track.
We hire probably a hundred different animators every year.
We use our eyes for everything, so why not maximise visuals?
We want them to have a full sensory experience
and feel the sound.
We want to bring in every single production element we can
from the lights to video mapping,
LED projection, lasers, CO2, fire.
Everything.
How can we deliver someone's best night of their life?
Where the music has come, you know,
our music on the worldwide scale
I still meet people now from back in the day
and they're like, "How's it going? Still busy?"
"Still working?"
And I'm like, I show them pictures and they're, "What!"
People can't believe where our music's got to
and how big it is.
When you look at the Insomniac guys,
I remember coming over here I think it was '93, '94, and playing for Pasquale.
First gigs Pasquale was putting on was in downtown L.A.
500 people, RAM nights on a Wednesday night.
And of course, with that,
look where Pasquale has gone now with EDC.
When you've got people like Gary Richard, Pasquale Rotella,
throwing these massive events now
changing the economies of cities where they show up.
When we put Andy C,
when we put Pendulum on at the biggest stage
which holds 80,000 people at EDC,
that wasn't something that was normal
or had ever been done before here.
And definitely not for us at our festivals.
And now it's become the norm.
And the audience know when you put our music in front of them
with the energy, the tempo, the excitement, it goes off.
That's what keeps people coming back for more.
♪ Five ♪
♪ Four ♪
♪ Three ♪
♪ Two ♪
♪ One ♪
♪ Tell me are you ready for this war on silence ♪
♪ Soundbites get buried in this war on silence ♪
♪ Tell me are you ready for this war on silence ♪
♪ In this tone of silence ♪
♪ The war is violent ♪
♪ Tell me are you ready for this war on silence ♪
♪ Soundbites get buried in this war on silence ♪
♪ Tell me are you ready for this war on silence ♪
♪ Soundbites get buried in this war on silence ♪
♪ Tell me are you ready for this war on silence ♪
♪ In this tone of silence ♪
♪ The war is violent ♪
♪ Tell me are you ready for this war on silence ♪
♪ Soundbites get buried in this war on silence ♪
Raving existed, and trance didn't.
And drum and bass didn't, and dubstep didn't.
It was all melted together. It was all...
You'd hear all those sounds in one set.
What was going on in the UK was super inspiring.
I actually flew to the UK in 1992
because of the lack of events that were happening here
and I had one of the best times of my life.
A specific party I went to in the UK was RAGE.
And I believe it was Grooverider's night.
But it was really the first time I really heard drum and bass
in a live setting.
And I felt electricity through my body
and I was just hyped.
We were standing on rafters that looked over the dancefloor
and I was just taking it all in and I was loving it
and I was dreaming about America catching on
and wanting to help make that happen.
Always when people talked about rave culture as a culture,
it was: "What is that noise? That hum?"
"Well, it's the resonance of very upset people.
Against the government."
"We don't quite know what it is."
Well, you couldn't because you couldn't put a name to it.
♪ Feel good, real good ♪
The culture and the music is so important
but the governments look at it as:
"We can't have these guys getting together."
"More than 20 people in this rave, we could arrest them all."
We went through pandemonium in England, man.
We got dragged out of fields in England for this shit.
The hype was very pure at that time
and everything was simple and a discovery all the time.
Ray and Marty would get out of the car
and he'd stand on the roof of the car
and put his ear up to hear where the music's coming from
and then we'd follow the path.
Drive another hour to some crazy location .
And this first rave that I went to
was in an abandoned, dried up riverbed.
You'd think, "No one's going to be there, it's 7am. No one's gonna be there."
You get there and it's like...
Probably 5,000 people just in the middle of nowhere
like, "How the heck did we find this?"
10,000 kids in one place, and they all walk around
and they find different things in different rooms.
And it was just wonderful, it was just amazing to see
people all moving together, and one song.
It was refreshing because it was no longer about
hooking up with someone or how good do I look.
It was just about the music and being more social
and friendly with other people.
It was all the producers, all the music makers,
all the people who wanted to make music.
They were the people who were going to these raves.
They'd go to the rave and go back to the studio
and then whatever they took from that experience,
they would then put it into their next record.
When I look back at those early days of rave
I see it now as a social change
and something that happened from the people themselves.
Come on. Come on.
Where I grew up on my little estate in Croydon,
we didn't all have the best of the best.
We had to make do with what we got.
Come on.
My mum was a young mum.
She was out raving at the weekends as you do at them ages.
At a very, very young age, my mum went to prison
providing for us.
That was just how things were. She was selling weed.
Come unstuck, and she went and done her time.
We took the rough with the smooth
but all the time things like this was happening,
I always had my music.
It was always a focus for me.
"I want a stereo system like yours, Mum,
with tape decks and stuff."
Then once I had my stereo in my bedroom, it was kind of...
It was just... I'm like, "You've fucked it now,
because all I'm focusing on is music."
I've now got two different stereos playing two different mixtapes
and cutting bits of tape up
and putting audio together on little plastic TDK tapes.
And then it just took over me more and more.
To... '95.
It was just like a drug.
It was just...
It was like, "This is on. It's on. This is me now."
Between my mum and my auntie,
they always made sure I always had a nice set of needles,
a nice set of headphones, the freshest records.
But I always remember getting up at seven or eight in the morning,
going downstairs, my mum's there with her pals,
tunes are blaring, and it was always...
And it was like, "What's this fucking energetic shit?"
And it was jungle, drum and bass.
Of The Jungle Part two" by
We wanted to be recognised for something different.
We tried hip house, it didn't work.
We tried all the genres that came and went, you know.
But for jungle to come along,
we all nodded our head to the same beat.
And, of course, the tempos started getting faster.
That was the birth of jungle for us,
which was those very early '90s.
But I was always drawn to this one sound
that I came to understand was jungle drum and bass
because it was faster
and it totally resonated with me.
♪ The jungle, jungle King of the jungle ♪
The most dominant sound that really cut through
and set the bar was Goldie
and all his Metalheadz stuff.
That, from the logo to the look, to the whole attitude.
When Goldie came, he was just standing on the side
looking through the cage with his fingers,
shouting all the time.
I was scared of Goldie at first, to be honest.
I was petrified.
And then how I actually met Goldie, I was just like ,
I come down the stairs one time
and he threw a dubplate in my hand.
And he'd just get in the back seat and is quiet and is like,
"So, Rob, how come it's taken you 14 years to book me?"
I listened to it.
When I got home, I thought, "Fucking hell."
Do you know what I mean?
This guy's got something different going on here.
Dude pulls in in a car, fast,
Ferrari, I don't know, some expensive fast car.
Pulls up right in the front,
double parks, doesn't give a shit
about who is standing there, whatever,
and everybody's like, "You can't park here!"
He's like, "Fuck off!"
"Grab these fucking records, run into the club
get on the decks and fucking smash."
♪ Target, locked, launch ♪
♪ Yeah, launch ♪
Right, make some motherfucking noise
for music.
I mean, I'm a GOAT.
It's alright, I'm a GOAT. I've become a GOAT.
But every GOAT needs to be
a young spring chicken, if you like.
♪ Target, locked, launch ♪
♪ Launch ♪
♪ Target, locked, launch ♪
I remember the first time when Reinforced and Dego and Goldie
and them boys started to time stretch stuff.
When he handed me "Terminator"
and I heard time-stretching for the first time
I was like, "This guy's gonna change the game."
And he did.
Let's get it straight.
"Terminator" ended it for everyone. OK?
"Terminator" ended it. Game over.
Because "Terminator" was a great example of technology concept. A concept record.
Time-stretching was first in "Terminator" with the harmoniser H3000 ,
which was a specific piece of equipment
that we used to harmonise people's vocals that can't sing.
"What if I put breakbeat through it?
No one's ever done it. Let's do it."
So we wired it up
and the whole aspect of "Terminator"
is turning the knob on one programme.
It's got a thousand programmes on it.
But that idea, changing pitch, was not time stretch.
Time stretch is when you put the sample into the 950
and stretch it over the time it's supposed to be stretched.
But at the same time, DJ Hype on Suburban Base
made a tune called "Shot in The Dark"
and they both was around at the same time.
We put out one of the first time stretch records.
A DJ Hype track called "Shot in The Dark".
So the whole idea of "Terminator"
and using, essentially... Which wasn't time stretch.
That's the thing that was the red herring.
"Terminator", everyone seems to think that time-stretching
was first on "Terminator".
You guys thought that it was time-stretching
and that is why the graffiti cast the illusion.
Bam! Done! Job done. You're still sitting there.
By the way, just for the record,
Dan Donnelly's looking miffed behind the lens.
Similar technique that we thought
that Goldie had done in his record "Terminator"
blew my mind when all these years later
he explains to me how he achieved that.
So, I'll have that one, guys. Thank you very much .
This was him and Hype
and the guys at Reinforced and Rob at Moving Shadow
and everyone really testing the boundaries
of what this limited equipment could do.
And that's the story of Urban Legend.
The idea of time stretch. Was it Dego? Was it you guys?
Who was it? But I win, "Terminator", I win.
But the idea of this friendly rivalry,
playing table tennis with mentasm.
These guys were making music to best their peers.
There was that friendly rivalry.
It meant that everyone was raising the bar.
Everyone was pushing the limits of the equipment,
pushing the limits of what we could do with this technology,
where we should take the sound next.
There was no rules.
I think in anything, in any great art,
at least the stuff that I remember looking back at
it was limitation that bred extra creativity
and experimentation and thinking outside the box
because you really had to use all you had.
Even going back to bands like The Ramones,
they bought all their gear from flea markets
and they just wanted the guitars to sound crazy and loud
so they turned gain, treble, mids, bass, volume,
everything up to ten, because that's how they knew to get it,
and that's how I was going, you just get the energy out.
- For life. - For life, man. Exactly.
The word "house music" was named
because it was music that sounded great in warehouses.
That's why it was minimal
that's why the kick drums were so dominant.
It's because it would have to sound good
in a non-acoustic treated area.
We have these drum machines, we have warehouses
and we have whatever.
We've got to make do with what we have.
And from there, they pushed the boundaries
and then house music, the soul, the core,
kick drum music, four-on-the-floor
is embedded in us forever now.
Bang, bang, bang.
You've got Andy C selling out Wembley Arena.
That ties into everything, I think.
Andy knew Wembley was so significant for us
cos it took a long time to get there.
We ended up being the first ever all-night show
of any genre, any act, ever.
Wembley Arena had given us that honour.
Turned out they were well up for putting on an all-night party.
♪ Back and forth ♪
♪ And back and forth ♪
♪ Back and forth, and forth ♪
Roni Size winning the Mercury Prize.
Huge for the scene. Really important.
This was a pivotal moment.
I think everybody was buzzing after that.
Look, I've never won anything in my life,
but we went, we turned up and we won.
And I think we represented, we did our thing.
It wasn't an award just for us,
it was for the whole of what came before.
We really felt like we'd arrived.
It was Roni and those guys who spearheaded that moment,
but we all benefited from it and it was a huge deal.
This is probably the most radical winner in the history of the prize.
Drum and bass is still very much an underground movement in Britain,
but tonight, it really goes overground.
People said we were crazy,
but we just believed in what we was doing.
You know, Die, Suv, Dynamite, Krust,
we've all been working hard for this
and this isn't just about me, it's about, you know, listen.
Originally, jungle had been starting to have its moment,
and then...
At that same time, it started getting super dark.
It got a bit moody.
I like the dark stuff,
but there were no females going down that road.
You'd go to a rave and it was bare men.
I'll always forever credit Dieselboy with destroying drum and bass
from being popular in the U.S. In 1997.
But I always just followed
what I thought sounded the most progressive at the time.
Then Dieselboy was like, "I only play dark shit."
When I was playing dark stuff in '97, '98
and playing a lot of Renegade Hardware stuff,
I just thought that was the most progressive style
of drum and bass that was out at the time.
But as jungle drum and bass emerged
in the UK through the '90s,
there became a point in time
towards the end of the '90s where...
Yeah, UK garage started to creep up on the record shelves.
Garage music was kind of born out of the necessity
for an urban UK music that people could rave to
but was a little bit more female-friendly.
All the girls listening to garage
at the after parties, saying, "You got any garage music?"
You almost get two scenes come from that:
the grime scene, guys like Wiley and Dizzee
and these guys that were part of the garage scene.
And before that, the drum and bass scene, as MCs.
So you've got grime that emerged from this
and these are all ancestrally from that D&B-jungle lineage.
And one of the most important ones
that grew from that was dubstep.
There was one DJ in particular
who was championing this sound
before it really had a name and an identity.
And that was Hatcha,
working out of Big Apple Records.
Here's where it began. Welcome to the home of dubstep.
Dubstep wasn't just me.
Dubstep was a handful of artists that brought this together,
as well as a couple of record labels.
This is where it all started for me, club-wise, to be fair.
This is Granaries nightclub,
and we're right in the centre of Croydon
and I used to play for a pirate radio station called Upfront FM.
And they used to run a weekly every Saturday here at this nightclub.
It used to be called the Ananda Lounge. This was day one for me.
This was where old school garage was happening every Saturday night.
Way before dubstep was even thought of.
Before the genre was even coined.
This is where it started, performing in clubs
and working in the record shop just up the road.
This was the spot for me in the early days.
The shop was in a busy fruit and veg market,
so I knew all the people up and down the stalls.
It's a pound for a bunch.
That's what I wanna hear. You're doing alright.
That's what it's all about.
You stand at the back of the shop and you're like, "The big boys are here."
It's like, "You ask for a record." "No, you ask for one."
You get a bit more confidence, finally find your sound,
your style of music.
And at them time, it was early UK garage and jungle.
This was all from a little shop I just found
down the fruit and veg market called Big Apple Records.
This was my thing, in and out of the shop
and it got to the stage I'd get to the shop some days
and there'd be no customers in there.
Then I'd have to make conversation with the guys working behind the counter.
That's when you build up your relationships.
As a DJ who was playing music on a weekly basis
in the vinyl era, record store culture
was probably more important than the club.
At first it was a movement, and then it became a culture
which took over the world.
And also it was a really important meeting place.
I mean, that was our social media.
You can't beat going to a record shop.
We have to go in and hum a few bars
to the guy behind the counter in the record store.
And you know that feeling when you have to have the tune.
It's in your head. You're living it, breathing it.
That was all part of the fun, tracking down this music
and singing a snippet of it: "It goes like this, mate."
The geezer's looking at me, I'm looking at the geezer,
and he's like, "I don't know what that tune is."
The raves are only gonna be on the weekends,
the club's only open on Friday night
but seven days a week that's your link to the scene.
Having these records that you can hold on to
and you can feel and touch.
There's something tangible and there's something real about it.
And that is your connection to the artist.
The sense of community from going into a record store.
To get them white label dubs,
you'd have to know someone behind the counter.
White labels would come in
and it was first come, first served.
You didn't know what was gonna be in it
and there'd be ten people just like me all sitting there,
frantically hoping to get their hands on something.
They'd lay out 100 white labels on the table
and then there'd be about 20 of us like...
It's like a catfight.
And it didn't really have any kind of class,
it didn't have any social standing relative to it.
It was just you were into the music
and that was the beehive.
Me and Artwork had done a Big Apple Records radio.
We put a speaker on each of the lampposts opposite.
That's it.
Ran a wire to the top of the record shop
and we were playing tunes off the Technics, weren't we?
We were doing shouts-out to the market traders.
This is Big Apple Records,
and this is where it all started.
Unfortunately, it's a hair and beauty salon now
but this was our home.
I'd just walked out of my last job,
stopped at the record shop on the way home,
walked in there, sad old face, said, "John, I've been sacked." and all that.
He went, "Jump behind the counter for the day."
At the end of the day, he was like, "You can have a job, mate." I was like, "Sweet."
So, I was here every day and it was on.
It was on, it was the home. Big Apple was the home.
And I'm very grateful to have been part of it.
Wages weren't great, working in the shop.
But what was great was being in that environment,
being with the people that worked in the shop
because that record shop and the people I worked with
meant a lot to me and they still mean a lot to me.
And that was a big part of my career.
There's no way I'd be where I am today,
if it wasn't for Big Apple Records.
So the next thing you know,
we've got this young boy coming into the shop.
Oliver.
Oliver Jones.
We didn't know that
he was gonna turn out to be an absolute genius, did we?
Skream's ears didn't pick up to the regular two-step garage.
The popular stuff.
His ears picked up to the cool stuff.
Me and Ollie built up a relationship.
I was driving home from work and see him waiting at the bus stop in school uniform.
"Want a lift home, mate?"
Two, three, four months later he's come in with a mini-disc.
And you could tell six months down the line
he's still playing with his programme.
I'm like, "He's fucked, he's in this now."
"We've got him for life."
Anyone that was coming into the store producing,
he would encourage them to be making stuff
that was of the style that he could play.
And that was this darker strand of garage and stuff like this.
Hatcha was known for playing garage,
but more so the darker stuff and the B-sides of garage tunes.
It was garage B-sides really.
Like breaky, weird, dubby,
third track on a garage, twelve tunes mixed together.
His sets morphed from those B-sides...
There were signs it was morphing.
...And the dark garage into the music
that people like a very young Skream were giving to him.
- Are we on air? - Yes, you are.
Hello, Ma. I'd like to hear a new beat on the request line.
OK, you got it. Comin' up.
Once Skream got his hands on FruityLoops,
it was goodbye to the rest of the world.
And the music he was writing was dubstep.
But dubstep hadn't been coined yet.
I didn't know what I was witnessing was the birth of dubstep.
So, while Ollie's doing this,
I've got this other youngster that comes into the shop.
And he become another little regular.
And it was Ollie and Bennie, Skream and Benga.
You've just seen the end of Benga and Skream.
That's what everyone wants, innit?
That's why they keep booking us together.
I said, "What kind of music is this?"
Then I found out it was called dubstep.
That was my entrance into dubstep.
I think Skream was one of the first people I ever played.
His take on dubstep was
probably the platform where everyone copied.
I think it's undeniable to show
that all that comes from the likes of Skream and Benga.
New producers started popping up.
One day, one boy comes into the shop
saying he's brought me a CD as well
and I was like, "This is cool. Cheers, mate."
It said on the front of the CD "Quiet Storm" .
Little did I know that Quiet Storm would turn out to be Caspa.
But actually picking up vinyl
and starting to get into the DJing,
that was really, I would say, 2000-2001.
His music's gone straight into the record bag.
Also, I've got a couple of MCs
that I've known in the garage scene before dubstep
that stopped MCing.
They've come in one day and they've gone, "Hatch, I've started writing music."
This was dubstep how I've never heard it before.
Me and Coki had been building tracks for about a year.
And all of a sudden, we give them to Hatcha.
Hatcha's like, "I can play this."
We were like, "Rah, OK!"
Now we've got a good team.
We've got loads of kids coming into the shop giving us good dubstep.
So people like Skream, Benga, Mala, Coki
would all buy records and learn a lot about music
through Hatcha.
They would play the music,
share the music with Hatcha to get feedback.
All they was doing for me was giving me their artillery
and I was just pumping it out in the clubs, on the radio.
Please make some noise
for the guy that goes by the name of DJ Hatcha!
There was a genre...
Not a genre, there was a scene growing with us.
And a guy come into the shop
he was chatting away, I think he was writing notes,
but he was some kind of blogger or interviewer
and he was asking us some questions.
He was like, "What have you called this new genre of music?"
He's fumbling for what do we call this stuff
and, "Well, it's like two-step."
We didn't know it was a new genre.
I thought, "What do you call it?"
And I remember 'dark 2-steppy' kind of stuff.
It's like a darker, dubbier version of two-step.
This is 'dubstep'.
'Dubstep'.
And it was born right there.
That record shop
I mean, pff, dubstep was born there.
Back then, I'm in a point that I'm listening to hip-hop
and drum and bass and reggae and I'm in a metal band
and I'm sitting there at that night
and someone's playing these records
that are somewhere in the middle.
It's heavy like metal, it's slower than drum and bass,
there's hip-hop mash-ups.
It was, take everything that I like.
There was reggae, vocals on it, take everything I like
and put it all together, and that's dubstep.
How mad is that?
I went and asked the DJ, "What the fuck is this?"
He was like, "This guy's Benga, this guy's Skream,
this guy's Mala, this is another Skream record."
It was basically mostly the Croydon boys.
- Yep. - I do understand...
I'm not saying you.
Oh, yeah.
For me, I didn't realise that the music was from Croydon.
At that time,
I was 100% committed to drum and bass.
I got a text from Teck.
She's like, "Yo, are you familiar with dubstep?"
I was like, "What is dubstep?" I'd never even heard this word.
I was like, "Yo, this is really crazy shit."
It might be slow drum and bass,
but the producers know what they're doing.
And I was like, "Oh, so this is Kode9,
this is Coki, this is Mala, this is Skream, this is Benga,
this is Hatcha, this is so-and-so."
And so, from that, that's when I started going deep.
Skrillex, he's been a DJ around L.A. for a long time.
He used to play dubstep at the Cinespace.
He would play on Sundays and I went there one time
and I heard somebody playing dubstep in there
and I was like, "Who is this kid?"
And my friend says, "His name's Sonny
and he was in a band."
We found out he lives in downtown L.A.
And then we were friends, ever since then.
When I first saw 12th Planet live
I'd never felt bass like that.
And I remember where I was.
I remember 12th Planet opened up with "Sweet Shop"
and just the contrast between that high Doctor P flute.
And that high note.
Right? And you can almost see it.
I feel like I have synaesthesia.
I can see the shapes and patterns,
at least in my own head, I see how they look to me.
I can see that high thing sitting on top.
And I can feel and see this low, low octave.
Dubstep became a massive influence,
ever since seeing 12th Planet live.
That was the first time I ever saw live dubstep.
All I wanted to do was make a record.
If I could make a record that Excision would play
or 12th Planet, then I was happy, back then.
I remember seeing Sonny at Insomniac raves
before he was Skrillex, and he's quite recognisable.
And he's walking around backstage while I'm like, "Who's that kid?"
I see him at every rave.
And I'd be playing out in San Bernardino
for Forest and Pasquale
and then, "There he is again. It's that kid."
He was DJing as Sonny and the Blood Monkeys,
but he got signed.
And he pretty much spent his whole cheque
on going to Europe.
So then, as far as I understand,
there was something about Noisia doing a remix
where he got involved with Noisia.
Once he worked with those producers,
he came back and his whole ethos was completely changed
and his mixed sounds were crazy.
His way that he approached making music was different
and he was competing and operating at a higher level
than anyone I'd ever seen in my life.
Dance music was forever changed
by Skrillex enlisting the very best drum and bass producers
and coming out with, "My Name is Skrillex".
He went in like a guppy came outta shark.
After learning all about how to be Noisia from Noisia,
people say that he's ghost-produced by them.
I'm like, "No, he wasn't. No, he's just a smart kid."
He knew what he was doing and he knew they were the best
and he went to the best and he became the best.
It appeared that I was this guy
that took a genre, then got a ton of money,
and just made it famous and cashed in on this moment,
but it was really a progression in my whole life
up to that moment of constantly making music.
And not really thinking, taking it in and letting it come out.
Some people might call sleeping in a van
and making $100 a show split amongst eight people
trying to sell $500 of merch to get to the next city a hardship,
but for me it was just fun, it was adventure and growing up
and that's what made me appreciate what I do now as far as travelling goes.
Just to get a hotel room and enough money
to make it to a city as a DJ was insane to me
'cause for the first year and a half of touring
my band, for the first year, we made no money,
we were just in debt.
It was always a passion.
A few months.
Cos they've got no fur. Snuggled in bed.
I've been DJing since 2007
and learned around the street in the first loft I moved into.
There was a DJ that was my neighbour
and he taught me Serato and CDJs.
And back then it was electro, Daft Punk, Mstrkrft, Justice.
I'd DJ warehouses and do little remixes
and that's how I paid my rent in this area, it was very cheap.
So when I started getting busy with touring in about 2010-12,
I didn't live anywhere, I didn't have an apartment or somewhere to call home.
And then crashed at The Compound,
which is 12th Planet,
which was the dubstep hub of Los Angeles.
People crashed in there, making tunes back there,
so many records have been made back there.
Me and John did a couple of songs back there.
And it was just exciting, man.
That's fucking good audio.
It's more about your aesthetic of production.
I love old cameras.
I love my cameras.
The sound is just so spot on.
This is a record that I'm mixing
and I don't look at my music. Some people swear by like...
When Noisia's in the studio, they have the spectral analyser running the whole time
so you're seeing the music.
You're seeing what key the kick drum is.
And you see if it's flowing perfectly in the sub
or if there's a little phasing.
I normally don't do that, but I'll send it to Virtual Riot at the end sometimes.
And this band, this range
is normally on every loud bass record.
And that's my song, so the bass is a little higher.
I like my shit louder, but there's a bump right here.
Ah, yeah.
In between here, then down here, the high mids,
I just ended up boosting a little bit of like 3K right there,
which is normally the harsh shit you wanna get out, but I took it out too much.
So that's what we were just doing.
The way I was doing things and trying to make sounds was so wrong.
I first got FruityLoops when I was 14 years old.
With the demo version,
you'd have to finish a song completely
and you'd render it cos you couldn't save.
So I'd basically have to finish a song
and I can only imagine how insane my project files looked,
just remembering the techniques to get a certain sound.
I still do things the wrong way all the time.
I'm like, "I can't get that sound from there,
I have to try something else."
Sometimes less is more.
I've got a record.
A lot of production techniques
some of the best engineers in the world
come from bass music, like drum and bass.
But there's a big element, especially bass music,
drum and bass, anything that was a little more breaks-oriented
comes from a more reggae sound system.
It all comes from the reggae sound system.
Everything comes from Jamaica.
♪ ...Rebellion, let the whole world know ♪
You can see a direct parallel
between how that influenced the UK urban music scene
and how that was the incubator for hip-hop in the U.S.
DJ Kool Herc in the projects in New York,
he's putting up these speaker stacks
and a couple of turntables, MC.
That's pure reggae sound system.
That's where you're getting hip-hop.
That's the birth of that whole movement.
Drum and bass was the first time
where you really had this integration
of underground West Indian music and techno
and all of these sounds coming together.
So I think that's had a super lasting impact
on all the genres that followed.
I believe bass music producers
tend to be far more technical
than your average music writer.
If you wanna take producing A-level, expert production,
drum and bass is definitely the deep end of the swimming pool.
It's not easy to make this music.
It's not easy to make bass music.
It's not easy to make people screw their face at a sound.
We're in a cut-throat business
where we have to come up with the next new thing.
Nobody knows what the next new thing's gonna be
so you have to create it and develop it
and you push the boundaries of whatever is available to you.
For example, with my Roland W30, my first sampler,
it had 12 seconds of sample time.
You only had 13 seconds to sample.
14 seconds.
Had 11.5 seconds sampling time.
So imagine trying to make a four-minute, five-minute record.
And you have a total of 12 seconds.
We would take a sampler
and we would use it for something they hadn't intended.
So we were taking shit and turning it, spinning it,
chopping up and dicing it.
Programmes like Recycle, when that came up,
which would chop beats into little fragments
in order to speed them up without changing the pitch.
We would do that stuff manually.
What if I just get a sound going
on a microphone.
And put them on a keyboard.
Stretch them over ten keys, ten keys, ten keys.
Play them fast in a row
and then you can change the tempo on something.
We pushed the agenda for the people making the technology sometimes.
It was expensive back then. It was a real barrier to entry.
You couldn't just download some software.
There was no internet.
It's different now cos you think about dubstep
and they have sample packs.
It's like, "Here you go. Make a track with these noises."
Lots of people didn't like it when I put out a sample pack.
And I just did it again
and there's been mild backlash again.
Like: "Everything's gonna sound the same
now everyone has these secret sounds."
Technology's everything, remember.
Technology is the guitar string, technology is the guitar amp,
technology is the recording.
There's always been technology there
but it's just more accessible, cheaper technology.
It just comes from the roll off of this view, it's too strong,
and the movement is the important part.
The producers nowadays, the shit they can do
the way they can get sounds,
the fidelity and nature of the production techniques
are on another planet.
It's an unsung hero,
the production levels of our musics.
But I think it's being that unsung hero
that keeps it in the underground,
keeps it a culture, keeps it moving
when all these accolades fall down, when they all stop.
We all know that the levels of production in dance music are through the roof
and have always been getting better and better.
And that's all we need to know.
I remember I played with Benga at the Apollo in Manchester,
I played right after him and he dropped his last tune before I went on.
And I just grabbed him and I was like, "What's this?"
He was, "Ah, new Skream tune."
The forums the next day were buzzing.
Like going mad.
When I first heard a vocal dubstep tune
it was kind of like, "This can cross over."
Like really cross over, though.
It was the La Roux x Skream remix, "In For The Kill".
A remix of the La Roux.
It crossed over with that song.
This thing is fucking cool.
Now that is fucking good.
♪ Leave them out too long ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ I'm hoping you'll understand ♪
♪ And don't let go of my hand ♪
♪ They say we can love Who we trust ♪
♪ We can fight our desires ♪
♪ And don't let go of my hand ♪
We used to be on AIM, all the dubstep community.
Everyone had AOL Instant Messenger.
The great thing about AOL Instant Messenger is
you don't have to be friends with someone to send them a message.
Mind if I send you some stuff via AIM? Cool.
The first thing I started doing was sending to some of the people I knew.
And so I sent it to John
and I believe he hooked me up with Borgore.
I remember one day this kid hits me up: Skrillex.
Flux Pavilion.
I went to speak to Sonny on there.
I remember he sent me...
This record that was called "FM8".
It was called "FM8 Test".
Because he made the record with the synth FM8.
And all he said was, "What do you think of this?"
And I was like, "What is this?"
"What the fuck?"
I was sitting there for a month or two
trying to figure out the sound on this record.
And I was just like, "This is totally unique."
I remember it struck me as not the dubstep that I knew.
And that was later
"Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites".
And I remember sending a message like, "Yeah, it's alright."
The internet's horrible for music.
It's like... Fuck, that's a tough one.
Yeah, that's loaded.
The internet's, I dunno, it's a double-edged sword, innit?
The internet, yeah.
It's a funny question. It can go both ways, I think.
I think the internet in terms of music,
it accelerates everything.
Good or bad.
And it's a product of who we are and what we put into it.
I think to say the internet's bad for it is kind of living in the past.
It's been bad in the fact that...
Music is almost seen, I think,
by the younger generation as more throwaway.
An instant doesn't have much shelf life anymore.
It feels like it's very in and out.
We probably consume more music and entertainment
than at any point in human history.
ITunes has systematically destroyed album culture.
It's destroyed the need
to go and spend your money on the artist.
People were just downloading, file-sharing.
You didn't need to buy a compilation album
because they're picking a track here, a track there
and making their own playlists.
So that business absolutely dropped off completely.
I think other things like SoundCloud and stuff like that,
I think, really changed the way,
that's a music business thing, the way music's listened to
and the way music's shared,
and the amount of music and the quality.
The quality bar, I think, has dropped through things like sound hub.
You could sit there and say,
"I don't like the way Spotify and Pandora pay us
with 0.05 fucking percent of a whatever the fuck that is."
"But look at the amount of views I'm getting."
You were only hearing what you were fed.
The major labels, radio, MTV really had control of things.
Now we can choose what we listen to
at any given moment.
And not only what we listen to, but how we put it out
and who listens to it.
You can get your music to someone now easily.
You can get your music to a label easily.
As in the old days, it was who you know.
You can literally see careers made off the internet now.
I owe a lot of my career to the internet
because without MySpace and YouTube and all that stuff
I'd never be where I am
cos I sent all my records to Dub Police and Hench
and Boka and all these labels
and no one responded. So...
If you're going on the internet and put in creative energy
and sharing your music
that you'd never have the opportunity to do
unless you were signed to a major label,
that's a net positive.
And the more people who are putting good out there,
the internet will be great.
♪ Hit 'em with that ♪
I still to this day say that dubstep
was the first internet-based genre.
And I think dubstep and the internet blew together.
It was the perfect timing for the music just to spread and blow up.
If it wasn't for forums
and people ripping sets and uploading.
With MySpace and Twitter and YouTube.
Other genres of music didn't come up that fast in America.
It took years for even house music to blow up.
Whereas dubstep, the way it blew up so fast
because of online hype,
that's probably how every future genre that blows up
it's gonna happen that exact same way.
And that's kind of why dubstep ramped up in 3-4 years,
what drum and bass tried to do in 15-20 years.
I think the biggest difference between jungle and dubstep,
like what Caspa said,
dubstep took three years to change the world,
where drum and bass had tried for years.
I think it was in that moment of renaissance we were experiencing
with the internet, with digital audio workstations,
Ableton Live, FruityLoops, all these things,
all at the same time.
YouTube, boom!
It was like new energy
and we all had it in the palm of our hands.
The internet to dubstep
was what pirate radio was to drum and bass.
Pirate radio was our version of the internet.
That was my SoundCloud.
That was my internet, was the radio waves.
Pirate radio, still, I was obsessed with it.
Pirate radio was the only place you could hear music,
proper music.
Tell you what, allow the football talk.
We're all gonna fall out and have a rubble.
♪ There's too many men, too many men ♪
♪ Too many men, inside the house ♪
Trust me.
People were tired of not hearing the music they wanted to hear on the radio over here.
Some whizz kid, electronics enthusiasts
started building transmitters.
That's the hardest part of setting up a radio station
is, "Where do you get a transmitter?"
We happened to have a guy in the class that could build one for us.
And it was a bunch of kids in some block of flats somewhere
who figured out how to use an antenna and all this stuff.
This is a test transmission.
Coming soon on this frequency,
London's brand-new station Flex 101.4FM.
You're putting the aerial up
and you're basically trying to piggyback
off other radio stations that have a legitimate licence
of which there were three.
"We want our own radio station", is the attitude.
"We're gonna put the music out there."
Pirate radio was the essential way
to find out what was going on.
Happy old-school Sundays, guys and dolls.
Do the first few shows, set them up,
read it out on the station, "Everyone go down to this venue."
They would tell you
exactly what was going on where, what time, who was playing.
It reached out to so many different people
and dragged people in who didn't even know this music existed.
All the ones that I knew and had anything to do with
would generally be an abandoned flat
in a tower block, you know, government housing.
What we call a block of flats on a council estate.
Just imagine you're going up a flight of stairs
in a 20-storey tower block.
Knocking on the door, like a little shutter, "Who's that?"
In some of them, you go through a secret door
through a cupboard, then you're in the studio.
There'd be nothing in that flat
except for a pair of Technic 1200s and a mixer.
It'd have all the setup to play the music
and that was it, that was all that was in the flat.
It'd most probably be smelly.
Empty crisp packets and coke cans all round the place.
Stinks of smoke, stinks.
Cockroaches everywhere.
And you don't even want to put your record bag down
and, you know, just totally falling apart.
I used to love it.
I'd play four in the morning till six.
Any message, whether it'd be one or three: "Someone's listening!"
You'd just be there playing tunes.
You didn't think any minute the door would come through.
The only thing about it
is that you had to hide from the DTI.
Someone has to watch for this van with an aerial,
and that was my job.
You have to watch for this van, and if you see it,
you're like, "DTI!"
You're running up the stairs and you've gotta grab the aerial
cos that's the thing that costs money.
For me, pirate radio stations are a big part
of the development of rave music from the UK.
There wouldn't be what there is now
on a full open page
for whether it be drum and bass, jungle, anything, if it wasn't for pirate radio,
cos somebody needed to take a risk.
Pirate radio, right, was a revolution.
It was evolution.
Take it on the chin, son. Pick yourself up. Bosh.
This is groundworks.
You want something right now?
That building right there, so, yeah, 2010,
in that second window from the right,
that's where I did "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites"
and lived, actually, from 2009-2010.
In the Arts District.
So, here it is.
You have to think about the whole lead up to that sound.
It was like when we started with Skream
and you go into maybe like Doctor P
and Flux and all of that stuff.
It was the second wave of dubstep for me
that got me really excited.
With the likes of Flux Pavilion, Doctor P.
I try and make wobbly music and always do it really badly.
To the point that Doctor P, who was doing drum and bass
was just like, "Just stop. Just stop doing it."
Then I heard dubstep and I was like,
"Shit, if I just slow down all my songs to 140BPM,
that's it, I was writing it anyway."
Flux played me "Cockney Thug" by Rusko.
Straight away, hearing that tune
opened up potential to me for what dubstep could become.
So, within a couple of weeks of hearing dubstep for the first time
I started writing it.
It was just an immediate: "This is it."
"This is the music."
It was like Croydon being reborn again.
Flux and Doctor P playing right before Diplo at EDC
was a huge moment, not only for bass music,
but for dance music.
The place was going bananas
and people had never heard
a lot of the music they were dropping.
Moments like that contributed to dance music
blowing up in America.
And just created this most amazing music
and just turned everything on its head.
And then Skrillex was like another level of insanity.
I was a big supporter of Skrillex.
I like Skrillex. I thought his production was unbelievable.
Sonny's one of the hardest- working people I've ever met.
I think he's...
The most important person in electronic music
since the 2000s.
He basically took the punk:
"I don't give a fuck, I'm doing whatever I want" wild attitude
to everyone.
And I think it was just exactly what the American rave
and music crowd in general was craving.
♪ Bangarang ♪
♪ You feel the ♪
♪ Bangarang ♪
The sound really resonated with those kids
and the kids who didn't want to be so mainstream
all of a sudden, they had an alternative now.
Well, he stood out to me because he was from America
and he had a different swagger
than everyone else that was doing dubstep.
Someone coming from rock and roll
and then diving into dance music on a level that he did.
When Skrillex stepped up, it was like,
"I'm gonna do what I'm doing", kind of thing.
That became the start of the DJ rock star phase.
♪ Shout to all my lost boys, we rowdy ♪
Skrillex has got the talent
and the amazing production levels,
and also he's a fucking star.
One of the most talented producers
that we've seen from bass music.
You know, you can't deny the guy's work ethic,
dedication to making sure
that he's the best he can possibly be.
This kid is phenomenal.
He was the best producer
and then everyone was laughing at him
for DJing on Ableton instead of CDJs,
and then he became the best fucking DJ.
He's like, "Oh, you guys are laughing at me
for not being able to use Pioneers. Fuck y'all."
He took the top spot.
He took the number one spot.
For forever.
♪ Shout to all my lost boys ♪
♪ Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh, shout to all my lost boys ♪
♪ Bangarang ♪
One week it was me,
I could have the number one track.
The next week it could be Skream.
And then you could have Caspa and Rusko, Doctor P,
Excision.
Every week, someone could come out with that new banger.
And that could take the scene by storm
and be the guy that everyone's talking about.
And you could lose it just as quickly ,
as soon as someone else makes that next banger.
What Sonny did when he stepped up
he took that so far away,
from that kid in the bedroom.
It started off that number one spot
was accessible to the kid in the bedroom
and I feel like he expanded what was possible
as an electronic music producer, as a DJ,
so quickly and so far
that it made it really hard for anyone to catch up, basically.
He was doing something that no one could compare him to at the time,
and people don't like change,
they don't like something different,
they don't like something new until they do.
Then, from that, everyone's like, "Oh, crap.
Now we need to sound like this."
Then the bar was exponentially raised.
Even though the word Skrillex was pissing me off at the time,
I was like, "Yo, we know this guy's sick,
but we don't have to mention it."
I was hearing his name 20 times a day
and I was in a different city every day.
Too many people just followed suit.
The problem was it was the domino effect
of everyone trying to sound like him
and I think that's what ruined everything.
It wasn't necessarily him or a certain sound
cos no one else was doing that sound.
It was everyone else who copied it.
When it went to America
and people like Skrillex took it to another level,
I think it's a good thing because things have to evolve.
Things have to move on.
As somebody who puts something out in the public domain
for people to enjoy and listen to,
you've got to understand that people are gonna
take it, twist it, manipulate it and make it their own.
That's what we do. That's what we did.
We'd always strive to get the sound
as big and spread as wide as possible,
so I could never understand why people were so angry about it.
I weren't angry about it. I was like, "Fair play." We did it to garage.
I get it, man. There was a moment where you'd turn on a Target commercial
and I remember seeing a fake "Bangarang".
Dubstep changed everything.
It wasn't pop music, it changed everything
and this is what people don't comprehend.
It changed everything.
Just the sound was everywhere.
Just like you see anything, like anything that blows up.
It changed daytime radio, it changed festival line-ups.
It changed everything.
We went from room three to room one.
And then what was in room one was now in room three.
By the music being propped up
all the people that were sniffing out money and fame
kind of went to it
and started writing music that sounded like dubstep,
but didn't feel like it.
It just flipped the script.
That's why I think everyone got sick of it.
Listen, attention now. It all sound sick.
Level of production, bass noise, manipulation, mix down
banging!
I probably couldn't tell you who wrote what.
The cyclone happens
and there's all these things that are important in the centre
and all this other shit gets swept in
and it's hard to tell what's what anymore, it's everywhere.
When electronic music and dance music gets pushed
to the mainstream, that's what happens.
People who don't care about the music start writing it.
And they start writing it badly.
That's why it's important, I think, not to be attached to too much
at the end of the day, cos it's out of your control.
We had the two or three-year period
where people became disconnected with dubstep.
And I think it got told that it was cool
and then it had that taken away from it.
And then it did everything it could to stay cool
and then failed.
The worst thing about everything with the change
was some fucking stupid Sun journalist
who quoted me saying "dubstep's dead"
and people still believe I said it.
They put me on a cover, it was a cartoon,
and it was a bomb and it said "U.S. dubstep"
and I was raging on the thing.
It was very obvious.
It was like they Donald-Trump-dubstepped me. I was that image.
It was like, "Let's make this super hyper American thing."
I was, "Borgore ruined dubstep" cos everyone said I ruined it.
So I was like, "Fuck it, I'll ruin it.
I'm going with it."
The Guardian called me "the most hated man in electronic music".
I was doing an interview with him
and I coated him off, basically.
I'm sorry, Sonny.
After, I was like, "Fuck you guys.
Why am I going to sit here and talk to you
as if you have some real questions
and you already have the title of this story pre-planned."
The headline "Skream says dubstep's dead",
I still stand by it. No, I didn't say it.
I was sad, like, this is journalism now.
They don't really care about the real story.
They don't want to hear what we're talking about now.
I remember seeing all this stuff and people hating what Skrillex was doing.
But he just did his thing and kept going
and for me, that was a huge, huge inspiration
for me to keep going, to see other people try things
and get backlash, but keep moving through it.
I don't know, I think especially in the UK
people saw Skrillex as the Antichrist in dubstep.
People are very much still on their "Dubstep is underground."
It shouldn't be Americanised
and it shouldn't be turned into this other thing."
To me, dubstep still is what was happening in Croydon
in South London at that time.
The kind of dubstep I was used to
was more spaced out, focused on the low-end bass.
The dub element had gone, completely left.
And I thought that was always, for me, the basis of the tracks.
The original sound of dubstep,
that tribal, that progressive rolling style,
it kind of just fizzled out.
What do you mean?
Type in "dubstep" and the first thing that'll pop up
will be the thing that's got the most views.
And that would be the American scene.
So that just completely dwarfed us.
We was nothing all of a sudden.
So we'd gone from earning this big money every month
to boom, everything just dropped for us.
I ended up with a bad drug addiction.
I was doing a lot of coke,
drinking a hell of a lot, smoking a lot of weed,
not sleeping a lot.
Being that person for so many years
affected my career.
It affected my family.
When you're there, when you're in that game,
it's a lonely game.
You're doing the drugs, you're doing the drink.
When you come off that stage,
you either party
or you go on your own to your hotel room,
think, "I've got a flight tomorrow, I'll be sensible."
It never works that way.
What do you do? Go back to the hotel,
you act the fool.
And that happened for fucking years, mate.
That happened for years.
And it burnt a lot of bridges.
I never really had no direction how to control my career.
When I was in the record shop,
I had people that knew about the music industry
like, if they was in my life for longer...
I think it would've been a better direction for me.
I didn't feel like I was enjoying myself anymore.
For me, when he decided
to stop doing the dubstep and do the house thing,
I was like, "Cool. Whatever you wanna do."
Skream leaving definitely is bad
for the dubstep scene as a whole.
But, at the same time, I respect it 100%.
What I'd say probably to anybody
that had anything negative to say about Skream,
"If you haven't seen him play a house set yet,
if you can honestly tell me
that he doesn't love it just as much,
then maybe you've got the right to say something.
I've seen Skream play a number of house sets over the years
and I don't see any difference in the way he approaches it or the way he loves it.
The thing is, I'd been doing one-off radio shows
playing disco or playing house or whatever
and I was getting so much more excited about other things.
It made me feel like I was learning again and starting again
and I felt buzzing and excited to do things again.
I will always say
I don't think he should've took the Skream name with the house thing.
He should've maybe with his real name, Oliver Jones, and done it.
But the Skream thing for me was so legendary in that name,
inside I was like, "Don't make that music with that name."
It's too legendary.
When Skream switched from dubstep to house music,
I didn't think it would work.
But obviously, Skream being Skream, he's pulled it off.
It's actually incredible because I can't think
of anyone else that's been able to do that kind of move.
Sticking to who you are, that has longevity.
Having a pre-planned vision of what you're gonna be
and trying to emulate what's hot right now,
that might make you really successful,
but I don't think I'd be able to live with myself.
But sticking by your guns, that's very respectable.
As an artist, if you get known for a certain sound,
it's something that you loved when you started making it.
But if you start to get bored,
you're not gonna make good quality music anymore
because you've lost your passion for that sound.
I feel like as an artist, you need to constantly evolve.
I'd say that that is the mark of an artist
and I will say that he probably had a couple of years
where he had to really be like, "Am I sure about this?"
And sometimes the evolution is a really big step.
You hear something you wanna get involved in
or you have an idea,
and I guess you have to piss some people off
to get to that next level of great music.
To me, it's leaving everyone else in the dust,
and just go ahead and do what you wanna do regardless of what anyone says anyway.
I think it's great what he's done
and what he did for the sound is what we should be focusing on
rather than what he's not doing now or whatever.
If anything, that's the most honourable thing
that he could've done.
He's sticking true to himself
and he's doing what he believes he has to do.
I'm sure there was a manager in a room with Ollie
that was like, "What?"
"You don't wanna do dubstep anymore?"
Skream, he's done so much for dubstep
that you can never say to him, "You can't come back."
It's like he's the ultimate golden boy.
Doesn't matter how long I've still been doing it and he's not,
he's got so many tunes on his belt
and he's done so many things for the music,
that's just what it is and that's a fact.
So he's always welcome back to make a banger or two. We miss him.
What's happening?
- You alright? - Hiya.
- Alright? What's happening? - Always, bruv. Always.
That's Skream.
You're now seeing bass music producers
from the drum and bass scene, from the dubstep scene
working with big major stars
from the U.S. hip-hop, R&B, pop scene.
I called Will at 3am.
He goes, "What's wrong? Who's dead?"
I'm like, "No one's dead.
But I think Snoop Dogg's just messaged us on MySpace."
And then you get the likes of Doctor P getting hollered by Will.i.am
cos he wants to know: "How are you making that sound?"
Yeah, working with Will.i.am was pretty cool.
It was interesting to be in that completely different world.
It's interesting to see how many people
from the drum and bass scene have infiltrated
these more major projects beyond drum and bass
from producing pop records with big artists
like Chase & Status and Rihanna.
I'm at home in bed with my then girlfriend,
asleep at 5-6am or some shit.
My phone rings, I'm like, "Hello."
And he's like, "Saul, it's Jay."
"Hey, man. I've got someone who wants to talk to you."
"Hello?" Then basically it's Rihanna on the phone saying,
I can't do her accent so I'm not gonna try,
on the phone saying, "Yo, Saul, yeah? Chase & Status?"
I'm like, "Yep."
She goes, "Yeah, I heard this record, love it."
"I need that track, I need some more tracks."
Don't give anyone else these tracks."
And I was like, "No problem."
Pop culture starts to like,
"Ooh, what's going on over there?"
If the pop producers are going out
and they're partying and they're raving,
they want to try and replicate it.
But sometimes you've got to go to the source, you know?
And use our guys.
Flux, who was a lovely fella
that used to go to Hatfield University,
and he's doing tunes with Kanye and Jay-Z.
My mind is blown.
Flux Pavilion producing for Kanye,
for Jay-Z, for Roc Nation.
You look at Flux working with Childish Gambino.
Kanye and Jay-Z picked up on "I Can't Stop".
With Jay-Z and Kanye willing to use the track,
I wasn't sold at first.
Dom C, who was their right-hand man called us
and said, "Is it OK if we use 'I Can't Stop'?"
Do I really wanna give my track
that's come from my little chaos bubble
to a bunch of pop stars?
Is that selling out?
I wasn't particularly on board with the idea
of working with any pop stars or anything to begin with.
That felt like selling out to me.
And then I was in New York with Skrillex in a club.
The DJ just kept dropping record after record
and I remember one of them, I turned to Sonny,
I was like, "Who's this?" He was like, "Kanye."
I was like, "Oh, shit."
Next one, "Who's this?" He's like, "Kanye."
I was like, "This is really good."
"Who's this one?" "Jay-Z."
Hearing the music in the context
of where it was meant to be heard
and where it had been created, the place it'd really come from,
I was like, "Shit, Jay-Z and Kanye.
They're not pop stars. This is wild."
And then to get the stems to that track,
my friend had to break down my door,
cos I was away, and open up my computer,
and he couldn't bounce the stems cos they kept crashing,
every time he tried to open the project.
So, one minute Jay-Z and Kanye West are sitting there,
waiting for the stems to this project
and then on the other side of the world
my mate at uni, drunk, is breaking into my room
trying to get the sounds off the computer.
Then Radio one put it on the A List.
And at that point, I started getting an influx
of people telling me I'd sold out.
And that was the day that I gave up on the idea of selling out.
Cos I was like, I wrote a track that no one really liked
and then people started to like it
and then it got played on radio
and throughout all of this
it's been the exact same MP3.
Exact same piece of music, nothing's changed
from something that no one liked at all
to Radio one A List.
And it really opened my eyes to musical culture.
And to think...
Just because someone is really big and popular...
It doesn't mean it's not a great record
that's been written with passion.
♪ I can't stop ♪
♪ Stop, stop, stop, stop ♪
♪ I-I can't-can't stop, stop, stop, stop, stop ♪
♪ I can't stop, stop, stop, stop, stop ♪
I think it's cool that Skrillex and Diplo
are doing pop productions
by using those dubstep and EDM sounds.
I think I'd rather have them doing it
than someone ripping them off.
I thought that whole "Jack Ü" album was really good.
I thought they did something absolutely perfect at the time.
That's funny too cos "Where Are Ü Now" is a dubstep,
almost like a throwback kind of like skanking lil' drop.
But obviously what they were doing with that album
is underground and pop crossover.
That was obviously their concept.
It's like them doing their sound
with some of the top vocalists in the world.
So it's like, "Why not?"
♪ I need you the most ♪
I think that underground music is always gonna contain
the soul of what people wanna hear.
But now the hip-hop producers,
they know they want better.
They don't just want the same thing .
They want the next thing ,
so, of course, that's why they're going to the people
like the Pendulums and the Chase & Status
and the Doctor P and the Flux Pavilions.
You know what? The tempos as well.
140 and 174, well, 170-174,
if you listen to most things now,
are the predominant tempos of most big pop records.
And regardless of what people say,
it all stems back here.
And I just think it's amazing.
I'm really proud of the fact that our music
has gone into mainstream
and has influenced the evolution of music.
♪ Something like... ♪
Hearing house music or electronic music
on a day-to-day basis
was something I never thought would happen
when I started off in music.
Even though I loved electronic music,
I didn't think it'd ever happen, but I was wrong.
Even I sometimes, I could be in a café somewhere,
and like, "What's this? Drum and bass."
I'll say, "That's drum and bass. They play drum and bass here."
It was incredible to hear that house, how fast that spread.
It's literally everywhere.
It's on the Apple cell phone commercials, bass music.
It's on everything.
You listen to TV adverts, you listen to movies.
On video games, FIFAs to fighting games,
to Need for Speeds and all that kind of stuff.
You can turn the TV on now
and I guarantee you every TV advert,
you will hear little bits of our stuff in it.
The Olympics to football games,
UFC. Everywhere, basically.
You look at "How To Get Away With Murder".
Mr Parkes, the infamous Photek.
Photek is multiple Grammy-nominated
as a remix and producer from the drum and bass scene.
He's now winning ASCAPs and BMI awards
for film scoring.
Making an album a week making that soundtrack.
Winning awards, it's amazing.
Getting these ASCAP awards and BMI awards,
it's a little different
in terms of its validation.
ASCAP and the BMI awards
are based off commercial sales, basically.
It's based off the amount of money the productions are making.
So, for me, coming from drum and bass,
and it's all about what people reckon
to just hardcore "better make a shit-ton of money".
I kind of like that validation.
It's got nothing to do with even how good I was
at what I was doing.
It's just that my skillset makes money for other people.
That's been the last thing on my mind my whole life,
is how much money my skillset in music makes.
It's like the last thing ever, but now I get awards for that.
It's the complete flipside of that coin.
I'm amused and excited
when I hear drum and bass pop up in a commercial or in a movie
or some random background clip, like a radio drop, or whatever.
- But... - But...
- But at the same time...
No one wants to go to the source a lot of the time.
Come on, guys. Clearly you're making beats that emulate what we're experts at
and we're all fans.
This is a no-brainer. We'd be there in a minute.
On another note, you've got Skrillex.
Won five Grammys.
Gets up and you're like, "Five Grammys?
Absolute gangster. What a legend."
Next thing you know, you're watching it.
Not only did he win five Grammys,
he then gets up on stage
does his shout-outs, does his thank yous,
and then he takes time to thank Croydon and the Croydon people.
For best remix recording, non-classical
the nominees are: Sonny Moore, Afrojack,
Photek, Abel Aguilera & Ralphi Rosario, deadmau5.
And the Grammy goes to...
Sonny Moore for "Cinema, ".
There's a lot of people that have been here before us doing what we've been doing.
I think Justice's "Cross" should've won a Grammy
I think Daft Punk should've won Grammys,
but it's cool that now, this year it's gonna open doors for everyone.
There's labels out there that have been doing what we've been doing
for a long time like Dub Police and Never Say Die and the list goes on.
All the Croydon dub guys that started this all in 2003.
It's crazy.
I mean, this is...
I remember talking to Dieselboy one day.
He was telling me that all the boats rise with the water, so this is cool.
I'm gonna stop talking now. Thank you, guys.
We flew in to London
and I'd been on a group chat.
It was Flux, Doctor P and SKisM.
And I'd never met any of those guys in real life.
We grabbed beers and walked around London
and it was surreal, being with these guys.
These guys were gods to me back then.
- Thank you, guys. - Thank you very much.
Cheers.
We ended up going to an Example show that night
and then I met Skream backstage.
And there was a bar backstage, we were having some drinks
and Skream had this whistle he was blowing like
in people's faces.
And he was so nice to me, man, and this is when I started...
By the way, I didn't know about this hate culture
when it comes to dubstep.
I didn't know the online culture.
Whatever was coming out was just everything I was hearing in my life.
So that's when I started hearing:
"Oh yeah, these people in London, don't fuck with what I'm doing."
So, I heard Skream was there, I was almost a little nervous.
And it was the opposite. He was so loving.
He was like, "Dude, what you're doing
is taking it to the next level."
And he was like, all these compliments,
it was such a sweetheart.
And a lot of these other dubstep guys, Caspa,
and people I already mentioned were always super supportive.
The only thing I don't like about all that shit
is when people speak for me when I didn't say anything.
I never came in
trying to take a genre away from anybody or change it.
I was making what I made
and I think in defence of even that
is like, "Dude, you can't be precious about anything."
- You know? - Yeah, yeah.
That's a remix with the band.
I lost myself for quite some years
to addiction and stuff.
- Yeah. - Lost a lot of friends.
And I wasn't really being the person I could be
till quite recently.
I phoned up a few people, made amends
for shit I'd fucked up over years.
It takes... Man, for someone to say that.
There are people out there that can't even say that.
Yeah.
I can admit I was wrong.
Those are the moments, when you can really admit that you did wrong
and make amends, where you actually grow.
You know, still working hard.
Clearing up a trail of disaster to a certain extent
over the last few years,
but it makes us stronger, right?
♪
There's no one bigger than the music.
It wasn't dubstep to me, it was electronic music to me.
Call it whatever you want. Bass music, EDM.
Whatever genre, they don't mean anything to me.
It was bigger than all that
and it was a way I could be myself again.
It's a release, it's a way out.
It's a sound and it's a feeling.
Anything with a pure thing
that comes from something so pure and real
is gonna have the sort of Godfathers
or the guard.
These guys, whether we want to admit it or not,
were part of the music industry already
just doing their thing on the side.
And now, it is the music industry.
We've set the trends, always, always, always.
We never follow, we always lead.
The importance of this music is seen
by the tens of thousands of people that are out every week.
The huge stars that you see now
producing mainstream pop acts.
Call it pop, call it whatever you want,
it comes from DJ culture, it comes from electronic music.
The impact is global.
The influence is...
You can't calculate the influence.
You know what I mean?
Cos foundation and underground is cool, right?
Everybody wants to resonate with that
and our music is that, always has been, always will be.
So it's not just what we've influenced up to now,
it's what we're gonna influence going forward.
As long as people are talking about it,
as long as people are playing it and still enjoying it,
then I believe that it won't ever disappear.
Now we're in a new resurgence of dubstep cos that bit's over,
and the only people that are left writing dubstep are the people who believe in it.
All the kings need to take their crowns back
and start saying, "This is the new wave.
Do something different. Change it."
And the true innovators and kings of that shit
will rise again.
And the kings will rise again.
There was no one before. There weren't.
There's been a lot after, but there's no one before.
It's in my fucking blood, man.
I'll make 140 again at some point.
And I'll do it and I'll come with something
that'll fucking hopefully blow people's heads off.
And I'll do it and I'll come with something
that'll fucking hopefully blow people's heads off.
And so is this.
When I played EDC, it was nostalgic.
That was the charm of it. It was nostalgia.
Loads of people messaging, "People won't appreciate it, da-da-da-da."
Half the people probably never heard the songs before.
That's the thing. It's a lot of kids.
That was one of the main driving forces of me doing it
is that I could stand there and play them tunes with pride
to people who ain't heard 'em before.
Some had, but a lot hadn't.
We didn't mean to do this.
We was just doing what we loved.
Dubstep took three years to change the world
where drum and bass had been trying for years.
I think it was in that moment of renaissance we were experiencing.
Dubstep changed everything
and this is what people don't really comprehend.
It changed everything.
If you listen to most things now
are the predominant tempos of most big pop records.
It's literally everywhere.
Grammy goes to...
And the Grammy goes to...
- Sonny Moore! - Skrillex and Diplo!
Skrillex, come back.
Regardless of what people say, it all stems back here.
♪ We can fight our desires ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ But when we start making fires ♪
♪ I'm going in for the kill ♪
♪ I'm doing it for a thrill ♪
♪ Oh, I'm hoping You'll understand ♪
♪ And don't let go of my hand ♪
♪ I'm going in for the kill ♪
♪ I'm doing it for a thrill ♪
If you were to go out
and take away everything that's influenced by urban music
and bass culture,
it's a bit of a blank canvas you're looking at.
♪ I'm going in ♪
♪ I'm doing it ♪
♪ Oh, I'm hoping you ♪
♪ Will understand ♪
♪ I'm doing it ♪
♪ Oh, I'm hoping you ♪
♪ Will understand ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
It's over.
I feel tore up.
♪ Light trails behind me ♪
♪ Looking back's a waste of time ♪
♪ Let's push things forward ♪
♪ And keep our heads held high ♪
♪ Time's passed, we've laughed ♪
♪ We chose new paths ♪
♪ We both ♪
♪ Got so much room to grow ♪
♪ It's all we have ♪
♪ But I know we can ♪
♪ We both ♪
♪ Got so much room to grow ♪
♪ Cos we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Gonna turn into something great ♪
♪ We don't care about past mistakes ♪
♪ Cos we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Yeah, we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Gonna turn into something great ♪
♪ We don't care how much it takes ♪
♪ Cos we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Our own way ♪
♪ Our own way, our own way our own way ♪
♪ Our own way ♪
♪ Cos we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Gonna turn into something great ♪
♪ We don't care about past mistakes ♪
♪ Cos we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Our own way our own way, our own way ♪
♪ Our own way ♪
♪ Cos we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Gonna turn into something great ♪
♪ We don't care about past mistakes ♪
♪ Cos we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Yeah, we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Gonna turn into something great ♪
♪ We don't care how much it takes ♪
♪ Cos we're doing this our own way ♪
♪ Our own way ♪