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40 DnB / DUBSTEP / BREAKS www.guestlist.net Issue 38 / APRIL 2012 COMMIX These two first made their mark on the drum and bass scene with the timeless 'Be True' followed by our favourite 'Double Double', now more big tings a gwarn! How is it going at the moment with your music? (George) Good, yeah just got a studio around the corner in Camden which is really nice, so working away there. Have you been working in that studio a lot? Is that where it all happens? (George) For the last few months I've been getting my head around the equipment there and try and forge a new sound in there. It's good. So you're from Cambridge Guy. And are you from London George? (George) Well we grew up in Cambridge together didn't we? (Guy) When we met in Cam- bridge typically everyone was in school. I think I met George when we was 16/17? Typically you gravitate towards people that like the same things as you. Your album was it, 'Call To Mind', that went pretty big? (George) Yeah it did well. It did surprisingly well. We put a lot of effort into it, it was the first time we'd ever done a project like that. So we put a lot of effort into it and it sort of paid off I think. We covered a lot of bases with it and we're really proud of our work. It was a long time ago we did it. When was it actually released? (Guy) I think it was the begin- ning of 2008 so yeah quite a while ago now. So yeah 4 years ago now? Cos we were working together for a good 5 years before that just finding our sound. Have you always been drum and bass right from the begin- ning? We've always dabbled in other things. But drum and bass cer- tainly yeah. So do you see yourselves ever going to do something else? (George) Since doing our last album really it's what we've been doing, exploring other kinds of music, exploring other techniques to write music, it was always building up to the second album which we com- pletely flipped the script. The first album that's really what we wanted to do in the first album, and we wanna carry on album after album, reinventing the sound each time. (George) Well it's a good thing. What dubstep, it started off as an identifying sound but it's bigger than one record shop in Croyden now. (Guy) Most of the stuff that gets called dubstep isn't actu- ally dubstep anymore. You've got guys like Pangea etc most of them are playing house music. It's under this umbrella, this UK base to use a horrible expression. But I mean there's so many different styles going on. I mean you've got proper song writing like James Blake, and then you've got Skream or Benga filling stadiums with this huge sounding dubstep sound. And it's got its good points, and its bad points like anything else. So do you reckon in drum and bass there's those two oppo- sites as well? that just when you think it's dead, something exciting will happen. Over the last couple of years what happened with the whole autonomic thing with D'boyz instrumental etc. Just when it gets dull, you get this big kind of insurgence of people being interested in it. So there's a lot of stuff going on? Yeah totally. So you two both have quite a musical background, is that right? (George) I do, Guy doesn't have as much. When we first met I was kind of a musician and he knew his way around the samplers. ferent ways you can do it when you collaborate. So you never felt like 'I wanna put the whole of myself into a track?' (Guy) We've always written music independently from each other as well so you get that fix from that. And of course when you come to work together it's something completely different. So you're still working together then? Where can we catch you playing soon? (Guy) Nottingham this Friday. (George) All over the place re- ally. We're gonna be doing a bit of touring for this album, we've got a new album coming out at the end of the year. So there will be a lot of us. You'll be able to "You can release single after single but it's until you release a full body of work to do an album that you realise who you are, musically". A lot of dance music artists, a lot of drum and bass artists, don't release a full album. So do you always want to make it complete? (Guy) I think that's a really important thing to do. You can release single after single but it's until you release a full body of work to do an album that you realise who you are, musically. Singles disappear quickly so an album is a chance to put your stamp on it. So what do you think of this whole dubstep thing at the moment? Have you got a view on it? (George) We were just talking about that. I don't think it's as multi layered as that really. think you've got the mainstream stuff which has never really been my bag. You've got the tacky stuff and I think really there's quite a big hole in there, the more song- written, the more musical side of things. I think it's not really got very far. It hasn't really been going any- where amazing in recent years. What got us into drum and bass were people like Photek and Bukem, people like that, rooted far more in music than technol- ogy, you know. (Guy) Drum and bass has always been one of those things I So you put the two together? So when you work on the Call Of Mind album, how does it work producing as a duo? (George) I think we've always come up with ideas ourselves. We used to have our studio in Guy's mum's house and we'd meet up there at 11 o'clock in the morning and go through some old records and pull out bits if they sound nice and pull out samples. And sometimes we'd work on every element of the track together and make deci- sions about how it should be arranged. Other times I'd write an idea and Guy would come and give his influence on it and vice versa. There's a million dif- see us all over the place. So Commix is still around? You're both musical anyway, what kind of thing do you reckon you'd be making? (George) That's a really difficult question because I don't really know. We've both always been into techno we used to be in to DJ Shadow, Aphex Twin, all the kind of intelligence dance music, I suppose that's what you'd call it. I suppose it would be some kind of amalgamation of those. (Guy) I think we've always tried to draw influence from other electronic stars so I imagine that I'd be working in some field of that. So Guy are you gonna be going off and doing a little something yourself? Yeah we've both been work- ing on separate projects for a while. So for the next Commix LP George is gonna continue with that solo. I'll certainly have some sort of input in terms of a and r and the programming of the album I would imagine. But I'm moving away out of England so I'm going on to follow on with a project that I've been working on for the last couple of years. Nice to hear, something for you to look forward to. But you're still gonna be involved in Com- mix, not completely dead? (Guy) No, not completely dead. We've always said that we'd always write music together but for now I want to continue with my own thing and George, his. So just a different question. If you were to run your own country what law would you enforce? (George) No cars. (Guy) I'd probably have some really fascist dictatorship, so people could only listen to the things I listen to. And then you wouldn't be able to argue with anyone, like have any musical debates? Which is fun itself, isn't it? I suppose.