Caught up with Ed Rush over a greasy English breakfast! If this doesn't build the vibe for this weeks gig then you better dig out your old wormhole tapes cos they'll be plenty of it!
Hey Mate How u doing?
Yeah not to bad mate, just actually having a bit of food.. so probably be just fighting mouthfuls for the first couple of minutes! bit of an english breakfast
hehe, nice 1 man!
Firstly, how would you guys describe current state of drum and bass music at the moment?
Well i guess drum and bass has always been kinda of diverse isn't it, and ah its still kinda that way at the moment, over here in UK is quite segregated to a certain degree, i mean over the last few months the promoters have started to mix it up a little more but until recently in the UK they seem to be booking mainly jump up dj's and everyone's kinda playing it safe as far as the promoters and the dj's were going. people weren't really playing any things that were at all experimental or pushing any kind of different sound. for me personally it was getting a bit boring you know u turn up at a party n you try n play something different & most people are like 'what the fuck is this' but i think recently everyones startin to get bored of hearing the same 10 tunes all night, every night. and i've started recently doing a lot more gigs over here and not compromising in any way, my set is the same set i'd play more or less if i was in Russia and eastern europe and the states and not conforming to what i think people wanna hear.
Do you feel its a bit more like what it used to be when you guys were originally pushing the earlier virus sounds?
Absolutely... definitely the last couple of years have been like that anyway. i Mean its be fine in most of Europe, its been pretty strong places like Switzerland n Belgium, eastern Europe has really started to break through over the last few years as well, they like the harder sounds... and they also love jump up as well cos its fairly new to them still compared to the rest of the world. They are very open minded and seem to accept most things, you'll find once the scene get sort of older people come more purist about certain things. i think in places like Russia there kind of taking everything on board right now and loving it all.
Over the years, at what point have you felt that you’ve enjoyed the music the most?
I can quite honestly say, aside from the wormhole era which was obviously a special time for me with the sound and the breaking thru and people sort of turning the heads and saying, 'well maybe you know, this guys actually doing something different.... beside from that with is the most obvious, i'd probably say.. right now! Its the most exciting time that we've had in the last 10 years or so. purely from enjoyment of dj'ing again, sometimes i was struggling especially over here like i said earlier, trying to find a comprise between what i wanna play and what the people here wanna hear, it was a struggle you know, but now you know what, I'm like... fuck it. and also with production on this new album we've been working on for the last 14 months or so called Travel the Galaxy, i feel like a kid in a candy store again, we've gone thru all our old discs and used our old methods that we used to use for making tunes through the wormhole era, and we've kinda stuck to that throughout the whole album as an underlying thing and we haven't really been influenced by anyone around us. we've just done what we enjoy and what we used to do back in the day. we've had so much fun with it.
Yeah, it sounds really good man, i think a lot of people around the globe have sorta been waiting for that to come again!
Yeah i think we've actually done quite a good job of holding it down, i mean there's one tune chubrub thats leaked out there that we gave to a few people which there's a little buzz about around at the moment although i don't think thats the strongest tune on the album either.
We did an interview with a guy from one of the major magazine companies over here, we sat him down n played home bout 13-14 tunes off the album and he was just totally blown away. there's been a few of the old skool guys that have heard it as well and a lot of them have commented that its definitely got a lot of the wormhole-ish sorta sound again but with current production which is exactly what we were planning to do
Have you had many requests over the years from people to start digging back into the earlier sounds and that sort of thing?
Yeah well i guess you hear criticism's from all over the place and at the end of the day i guess everyone’s got the own opinion. I guess if u make a name for yourself making a certain sound and you start steering away from that, people aren't gonna like it coz its not the sound that they associate with you....as human beings naturally like to pidgeon hole ourselves, we feel safe if we know where something’s coming from and we’re creatures of habit and stuff. I guess the whole chameleon thing was a bit experiment with us, working with vocalists n that... that was like a deliberate shot in another direction and we can kinda say it wasn't our best moment, things didn't quite go as well as they should but now the boat is back on course and we're sailing back in the right direction.
But yeah, Its just one of those things man u cant do the same thing forever cos u just go insane, i guess as certain stages u grow up and mature a bit as your taste changes u have to try things out that u feel like u wanna do at the time and u cant please everyone! Now we’re back on course as we've got all the old wormhole discs out and been reminiscing on the things we used to do, its been great man and its a really exciting time at the moment
What’s in the works for your label – Virus recordings?
I guess we’re pretty sort of relaxed about things at the moment. If we hear something good and we like it... we usually approach someone and see if they wanna put it out on the label but the only thing is we're quite slow with it, we pretty much do things when we feel like doing it and by time we actually wanna put the tunes out there quite possibly gone, been signed to another label or something so we find thats happening quite a lot. We sat on the Terravita track for ages, they made this one track which was completely different style to what the renowned for, its been really heavy and really dirty. so we're just waiting on a b-side from them. The A is called faceless butcher, we've had it for a while but its absolutely heavy. Obviously we've got our album 'Travel The Galaxy' in march '09 and after that we've already got ideas for our own 12's, a few remixes that we wanna do. So yeah there's stuff in the pipeline but were sort of pretty relaxed about the whole thing, things just kinda happen as they happen with us.
Do you have any other producers that you like to mention that your feeling at the moment?
Yeah there's loads, especially in your neck of the woods, around that part of the world. obviously the Upbeats, Cern, Bulletproof's production recently has got really good, umm.. Dose, and another kiwi. Trei.
Yeah there's a couple more that aren't springing to mind at the moment but guys like Cern, I'm loving there tunes at the moment man, deep and rollin and just proper, Its the kind of music that you know u can listen to 2-3 years down the track and it still sounds good. There kind of a bit virus'y in a way i think.
And of course the guys from over this side like Noisia, I'm one of the biggest Noisia fans, i love the way they can flip it how they can do the big sort of rinse out tunes like Creep Out n Stigma and then they can still come with the minimal funk sorta stuff like Crank and all those tunes. I also like teebee and calyx they're doing some wicked stuff.
Do you think that a lot of the production/sound these days is over compressed/limited, do u think people need to let dnb breathe a bit more again?
Well yeah, i wish everyone would do that to be honest, stop ramming things so much and as you say let things breathe a bit more, lets have a bit more headroom and dynamics.
There's only so far you can go with squashing the hell out of everything and its gonna stunt the growth of the scene cos it cant go anywhere after that. we are actually sacrificing a lot of the quality and dynamics of the tune just literally for volume which is ridiculous cos all clubs that u play in have all got a gain on the mixer and u can just turn it up if the tracks low, the main thing is that it sounds good. Most producers are getting caught up in it and worrying that is it as loud as 'so and so', i mean who gives a shit at the end of the day as long it sounds good, i mean volume cant be dealt with after. i think if everybody started doing that, it would be a lot better for everyone.
Do you think your production process has changed a lot over the years ?
It definitely has, i mean the earlier stuff was all outboard gear, it has that organic sort of feel with samplers, emu's and the mackie desk, a rack full of effects and i mean now, were totally in the box. we've found the transition was quite tough. Cos a lot of our sorta sound literally was was the mackie desk you know, with lots of red lights where as now were finding we have to be a lot more precise, its just harder to get things to sound more organic in the computer. The thing was we were in a shitty room as well, so it was a combination of trying to teach yourself a new workflow and also trying to learn a new shitty room which made it really hard for us, we had a bit of a blessing is disguise actually as we were on tour and got a call saying our studio had flooded, thankfully none of the gear was affected but, we then moved to a new room and made such a huge difference. Its amazing the affect that a room as on your sound, sometimes even more than the brand of your speakers!
What speakers do you guys use?
We've got the dynaudio's , we've had them for a while now. we actually keep blowing the cones up and replacing them, but yeah there decent man.. Theyr’e a good set and the bass response is decent on them so you can hear what's going on in the low end.
What are the most important pieces of software/hardware in your production process?
Well were just loving the audio in Cubase at the moment, its nice how u can manipulate it and really shape sounds and stuff. Plugins wise we use the Sonnox Oxford Plugs a lot. They sound really good. We use a few nice distortion plugins, also really like using the side-chaining capabilities in cubase., ou can get some really nice stuff going on with it. As for synths, we like the Rob Papen stuff, but at the end of the day you can use to much of that stuff and the track can end up sound generic n too hard and brittle so we try to use as many samples as possible as well as the retain the warmth and help the tune sound more organic.
What can we expect to hear at your current live performances?
Well obviously the album stuff, the tour for us is obviously a chance to sorta get on the road, i find when u have a few of gigs in the weeks, you have the chance on the days in between too work out the things can be reshaped and the show kind of improves as it goes on.
As far as the sound goes that were playing, were playing a lot of the sounds from people we mentioned earlier, like Noisia, Cern, Teebee & Calyx, Hive- were loving his stuff at the moment plus loads of new stuff people haven't heard. I guess its shifting more back to the old days again, not really banging out the anthems as such... its more of an underground thing that were doing. Its nice as a dj to be able do something with a bit of depth to it, to give the audience a bit more of an emotional experience than just banging it out for 3 hours ya know, it can become a bit shallow that sort of method.
Current Top 3
Cause 4 Concern- Stranglehold
Noisia- Stigma
Teebee & Calyx- Make you choice (Spor Rmx)
Last Words.
Its a healthy time right now man, its like this sort of organic nuerofunk sound is back i think, it's a wicked time to do the tour for the tour, really easy to get consumed by what's happening and the general swing of things. But yeah hats off to all the guys that have stuck to it along the way, a lot of respect to them. Were Looking for to getting to Australia mate!
Wicked mate see you then!
Interview by Safire BBA
haha. though i think it's better that i've been made to wait till' now, esp. now that they've returned to the more gritty sound that blew them up so much in the first place. woo!