Hear Today Records / DEADBOY

DEADBOY

Who is Deadboy? Introduce yourself to our seven readers...

Hi! Deadboy is from south east london, and makes kind of uncertain garage/house/R'nB/rave/step on a probably too old laptop, and sometimes DJs. And sometimes makes wierd R'nB/hiphop stuff as well.

Uncertain as in you're not sure what you're doing?

More as in the tunes are not sure what they're supposed to be, but I'm into that, I like hearing a record that sounds like a bunch of disparate stuff all working together, as long as its coherent to some degree and not 'novelty'. But its all definitely rooted in garage. It's garage that sounds like other stuff.

Yeah, those drum patterns feel unmistakeably rooted in garage. Was garage a big part of your musical upbringing? I'm one of these mugs who's only really discovering a lot of it during this current revival...

I guess so, I was pretty young at the time, my older sister in the room next to me was well into jungle and garage and stuff, always playing all of the tape packs and compilations. I was in bands and stuff in my youth but I always listened to dance music and made bits of it on the side. I got properly stuck in with grime I guess, thats when I got a dodgy copy of reason and started making crappy kind of grimey 2 step tunes, and bought a cheap pair of decks, around the time of stuff like Jon e Cash, Wizzbit, Wiley's instrumentals, Slimzee mixes, More Fire Crew and Roll Deep and stuff, then got into dubstep through hearing people like Plasticman (before he was plastician), Slaughter Mob, early Kode9 and Digital Mystikz and Markone and D1. I liked it because it seemed like dubby future garage and grime at the time, but then when it all got half step and overtly agressive I totally lost interest, and the more minimal techno influenced stuff left me a bit cold so I went back to things like dancehall and the original garage stuff and more recently UK funky, which I think is more of a continuation of garage than dubstep is. There's still the odd dubstep tune that pricks up my ears but I dont really care to sift through all the boring stuff to find them, luckily I have some good mates who do that for me so I can just listen to them play out.

The Grime and Dancehall influences come through... Your beats sound really raw and emotive... Not over-processed or over-tweaked... What's inspiring you musically right now? Any hot picks we should be checking for?

Yeah thats fair to say, I was never really that technical or patient, if something doesn't sound right pretty quickly I won't spend long tweaking it, I'll scrap it and try something else.

Lately I've been listening to a bit of 4x4 stuff from people like Tuff Jam, Confetti Records, Anthill Mob and Todd Edwards, stuff like that, and some early rave stuff like Foul Play and Manix. I really like bassline house, and a lot of dancehall, particularly with female vocals, and RnB, especially from the Dream and Danja. I love Cassie, Official Girl is one of my favourite tunes right now. And I listen to a lot of Scott Walker. I was really into the stuff from James Blake, and Julio Bashmore and Karizma are making some great house at the moment. At this point I should shout out Ultrasound and Alex Gordon who are making some great big tunes right now that people will be hearing soon hopefully. And of course Hyper Black Bass.

Shit, I really need to check that Dream album... I also love Cassie... Really into the CFCF remix of Official girl. Big fan of James Blake too... I saw him play live recently... not only a badman producer but an incredible singer. Before we let you go, what have we got to look forward to from yourself? Releases / remixes?

I've just finished a little kind of 2 step remix thing of Official girl, gonna upload it soon probably.
Got the U Cheated 12" coming out on Well Rounded very very soon, and a couple of 7"s of some cheeky RnB/rap bootlegs from the likes of Cassie, Ashanti, Three-Six Mafia and Lil Kim in the pipeline as well. And hopefully a bunch more shows.

I think U Cheated is going to be one of the 12"s of the year... Thanks very much for taking the time out to talk to us...

Thanks! No problem.

- Click here for more on Deadboy and check out Brock Lee Riddim, from the forthcoming 12", streaming below...

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Posted by steve on 08/26 at 01:16 PM