Krust

Benji B

I’ve been looking forward to this one. Welcome along, Sir. I thought we should start this morning with a little bit of background because you’ve been brought up in sound and started off heavily in the soundsystem and hip-hop thing. I just wondered if you could give us a background, musically, of what age and where it started for you?

Krust

I saw this film called Wild Style and that really started it off for me. I was about 14 in school and just spiraled from there. I just watched the film, emulated what they were doing, went out and bought the white gloves, started breaking, formed a little crew in school. The school gave us a little room that we could break in, and we had turntables in there and they let us graffiti up the walls and it kind of kept us out of trouble, so that’s where it started.

There’s a big musical influence in the family. I’ve got an older brother who had a big record collection so I was always hearing music. Funk, electro, early pop music, The Specials, 2-tone, that kind of thing. So I was listening to it for a while and then after a minute, after the Wild Style thing, I was like, “I’ve got to learn how to scratch.” I needed to learn how to do it so my mum had this old gramophone and it had an on and off button and I used to sit there every Sunday and just learn how to scratch. On and off, on and off.

From there it really just went to a youth club that we used to go to called Eagle House and a few of us got together, persuaded our parents to buy us turntables. These really crap ones with elastic bands in them, but they were enough to get us started and we just tried to figure out how to mix and how to scratch and it just got from there. And the crew thing, everyone just watching Wild Style every night, really just trying to copy what these guys were doing and just seeing how that was done.

Benji B

And what year is this?

Krust

I don’t know, ‘86, something like that. This is just like at school. I left school probably at ‘84, ‘85.

Benji B

And where are you from in the world?

Krust

Bristol.

Benji B

Bristol, UK. And how did that have a bearing on what you were doing, what you were getting into, crew-wise and soundsystem-wise?

Krust

Soundsystem-wise Bristol’s got a big cultural background. We have a festival down there called St Paul’s Carnival, and there you have all the different people from all the different backgrounds. They gather around and it’s like a big event over a weekend. You’ve got all these different soundsystems, Smith & Mighty used to do a set there, the Wild Bunch, who are now called Massive Attack, they used to do a sound there and it used to be this big collage of music. You’d hear everything… you’d walk down this one street and there’d be everyone playing everything, from ragga to rock, to Indian music, so there was a big cultural input in the city at that time. So you’d go out in any club, any night, you’d hear a different cross-section of music, so you weren’t subjected to just one vibe all night. You had this big idea of what music was supposed to be, and it wasn’t just one thing… it was a collection of all of those things, and that’s where the ideas were coming from.

Benji B

And your mum and dad? Their history, their heritage?

Krust

They’re Jamaican.

Benji B

And did that have a bearing in Bristol as well, on your soundsystem ethic, or not really?

Krust

Not really. My mum on a Sunday, she’d get out her Gladys Knight & The Pips, a bit of Marvin Gaye and stuff and, so you’d listen to a lot of soul and funk a lot, it’s in the environment. My brother was into George Benson and then, when The Specials and the mod thing came out started listening to that kind of thing… Fun Boy Three, and then pop music and then electro, Kraftwerk, that type of thing. I was pretty open to music, really. I listened to everything. It wasn’t really, “Don’t like that, I don’t like that.” I listened to everything.

Benji B

Did you have your own soundsystem?

Krust

We graduated to that. We ended up buying a couple of speakers similar to those [points to stage speakers] and taking them to youth clubs and going around town in our areas, going to different youth clubs, going to different schools and just playing gigs, just DJing. And competitions, getting our crew and this crew… we had our DJs, they had their DJs. We had our breakers, they had their breakers, and it would just be one of those vibes that you see in the movies.

Benji B

And your love of hip-hop eventually led you on to do a record, right?

Krust

Yeah. My brother just drew out a couple of samples one day, put them together on a cassette or on a turntable, and he was mixing them together and just had this idea that he wanted to do a tune. We met up with these guys called Smith & Mighty, they lived in the area, and he sat in the studio for a year with these guys and made this tune. He kept coming back with what he’d done and was like, “OK, yeah, let’s try this, let’s try that,” and we didn’t have a clue really about making music or the production side of things. It was just three or four samples, “Funky Drummer”, Faze-O “Riding High” and another loop I can’t remember. He just put them together, got this girl to come in and she sung over it and then “Bam,” it’s like … “big tune.”

Benji B

And what was that tune?

Krust

[Laughs] It’s called “Wishing On A Star” and the crew we formed was Fresh 4.

Benji B

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a copy of “Wishing On A Star” to play because it’s not even on Limewire, it’s nowhere, but you need to seek that tune out. You made it on to Top Of The Pops with that?

Krust

The video did, we didn’t actually go on there.

Benji B

Top Of The Pops is the weekly pop show in the UK and that tune charted in the top 40, right?

Krust

It got to number ten. So that was a good look for us. We were 19, 20, we didn’t really understand it. Then, all of a sudden, we’re on the front of magazines and stuff. We were celebrities, we were famous and it can’t last that long. We didn’t really know what we were doing. We got signed to do an album with Virgin. We were like attitude kids from the streets. We were like, “We don’t sell out.” That type of thing. We really didn’t understand the game and how you’re supposed to play it and what you’re supposed to do. What they really wanted was ten “Wishing On A Star,” but we were like, “Nah, we don’t want to do that, we’ve already done it. Let’s do that, let’s do this.” We were supposed to do an album, it never really worked out and eventually we got dropped and back to kicking cans on the street.

Benji B

What happened? Can you join the dots between that and starting to make music yourself?

Krust

From that experience, I liked going into the studio. They put us into the studio, they gave us a few pieces of equipment and I liked it. I liked fiddling around with equipment and when that all kind of died down I checked my brother and he had this old Casio FZ-1 sampler. It had 14-second samples and I just went to his house every day for about three years and learnt how to use this sampler and then learnt how to use Cubase and started getting into the production, really. Figuring out how to sample, how to loop, how to use these basic programs and then it just carried on from there.

There was a little community, there was Smith & Mighty, Wild Bunch was doing something, there was a few other people in Bristol doing something, passing around programs, teaching each other how to use it. So I just mingled with these guys, then started to hang out with Smith & Mighty more, started to just be the fly on the wall in their studio, really. Just used to go there every day and just stand in the corner, really. Just watched those guys, how they produced, take their techniques and what they were doing and really learnt by observing these guys, listening to the sound and taking those vibes home and trying to figure out how I could use it to what I was doing.

Benji B

And when did you start to discover the sound that would eventually become yours? When did you start to mess with breakbeat?

Krust

Well, we used to go to these things… we used to have raves in England where you’d go out in the country. You’d get a phone call or a piece of paper with a number on it, you’d ring the number, they’d tell you where this rave was. You’d drive out to the middle of the country and we used to go out there and listen to this rave music, really. And from there I started to develop an idea of what I was about. I would listen to breaks and beats and a certain vibe in the music, and I’d come back and I’d met DJ Die by now, and I was hanging out with him. So we’d come back and talk about it and we’d start experimenting with beats and breaks and sounds and chopping up beats and breaks, and something was starting to come out. It wasn’t really what was going on but it was kind of something that we were pushing or experimenting with.

Benji B

What year is this? Early ‘90s?

Krust

Early ‘90s, very early ‘90s. You’d go to these raves, and most of the night you’d be hearing this techno stuff and then one tune would come out that’d have a break in it or a little vocal in it and we’d be like, “Yeah, I like that.” That was what we were looking for, something with a bit of bass and some breaks. Slowly, we figured out what we liked and how you achieve that. and then we started to make more tunes like it. Then, gradually over time it progressed into this sound, which they were calling jungle techno at the time, and we were like, “OK, cool.”

Benji B

It seems like a kind of straight lineage from the b-boy ethic of breaks and hip-hop straight through to that?

Krust

For me, it was all about breaks. It was all about the hip-hop element, the attitude of hip-hop and the production on the beats. I was trying to bring that into what I was doing. In the hip-hop era you’d have Ultimate Breaks & Beats albums when everyone used to scratch up two copies. So, we just used those and sampled the breaks from it, and then sped them up a little bit and we kept on speeding them up. We already had the foundation for the beats because we had a big record collection from cutting up stuff, so we went out and bought fresh copies because the beginnings were scratched out. We already understood breaks and how to use them, so it was just a matter of understanding how we could speed them up and make them work in some of the new music we were making.

Benji B

Give me some examples of records that you were making at that period?

Krust

Some of the early V stuff, some of the early Full Cycle stuff. “Music Box” came out about that time but it was in various different stages, a tune called “The Resister” that I did, “Jazz Note”, very early prototype tune, loads of breaks rolling and a lot of jazz influences in it.

Benji B

So we should stop at this point and explain, because you were to become known best for involvement in Full Cycle records but also meeting Bryan Gee and Jumpin’ Jack Frost was pretty important for you as well? Can you just break down both of those record label things for people that don’t know about Full Cycle or V?

Krust

Full Cycle was basically started by myself and Roni Size and DJ Die and Suv. And we were just trying to get signed. We had loads of tunes that we had for a couple of years, and we were sending them out to record labels and not getting any response, and it was purely out of frustration that we started the label.

It was like, “We’re not getting anywhere, lets figure out how to run a label, how to get this thing together.” And “boom…” That’s how the label was born. Then the meeting with Bryan Gee and Frost… that just came about through a mutual friend who heard one of our tunes, passed it on to Bryan. They were looking to start a label, they were looking for artists and when they heard our stuff they were like, “OK cool,” it sounds like something that they’d get into.

The reason why we started our own label as well as going to V was that we had so much material and it all didn’t fit on Full Cycle. Full Cycle at the time was experimental, wasn’t really jazzy but had a jazz element to it, whereas V was a bit more experimental, a bit more of the party bouncy bass vibes. So there was enough to go around at the time. So we put stuff out on V, stuff out on Full Cycle.

Benji B

And you did eventually do another imprint, Dope Dragon?

Krust

Dope Dragon came about purely from making tunes for the weekends. We were going to play a rave at the weekend and needed a tune for it so we would go to the studio and make a tune as fast as possible and go and cut it at Music House, that was the place we’d go and cut our dubs, and go and play it that night. We used to call it the “Mission Impossible.” You used to have to make a tune, get to London, cut it and play it that night. That’s how Dope Dragon came about.

Benji B

It’s interesting that you mention Music House, that’s a cutting house in London. As you know the scene was developing in London simultaneously as you’re doing your thing in Bristol, how much of that was a factor? Be it a problem or a hassle, how was that, being in Bristol and DJing in London every weekend?

Krust

There was a community building up everywhere, there was stuff up north, Coventry, you had SS in Leicester, you had Doc Scott in Coventry and you had Back 2 Basics in Birmingham, so there was a community building up and everyone converged on Music House. It was a good meeting place, it was a good place to explain music, to exchange ideas, to exchange thoughts. You’d meet people on the scene… this was a brand-new scene that was building up and no one really knew the faces. You’d hear their names but you didn’t really know the faces, so you’d go to Music House and it’d be, “Oh, you’re so and so, you’re so and so,” and you’d exchange tunes, and that was probably one of the highlights of the scene at the time. It was a great communications point, and it was like a youth club, basically, where people would just go every weekend. And as far as just DJing and stuff, me and Roni spent a year sleeping on Bryan Gee’s floor, just to be in London, in the scene, around, to see what was going on. We traveled around the country but London was the place the majority of raves were happening and the majority of people were doing what we were doing so that’s where we had to go, that’s where you had to be.

Benji B

How did you first meet Roni Size?

Krust

I knew Roni for about at least six or seven years before I actually met him. I knew him from being in a soundsystem, and Bristol’s a small place so you know everybody. If you’re in the music scene you meet people eventually. So, he was doing a soundsystem, we were DJing and stuff. We broke into this warehouse in this area in town and we needed a PA for it. So, Suv contacted Roni and he brought his PA down and we started to do a regular party, so I started to get to know him from there. But the real turning point came when we all went to Glastonbury [festival] at the same time. [Roni] was a youth worker, he was there with some kids, me and Die just sneaked in and we met up and hung out for a weekend and talked about music. He had lots of tunes that he was working on his studio, we had lots of tunes that we were working on in our studio, and it just made sense that we would get together and join forces and try and make something happen.

Benji B

But the model that you developed in doing a project with your mates and having a real strong team ethic to what you were doing just seemed so strong throughout the whole ‘90s. For people from the outside looking in, it seemed like a wonderful thing to be able to achieve that.

Krust

That came from the hip-hop thing. You had a crew and so for us it was like an extension of the other crews that we’d been in. The Fresh 4 thing went as far as it could go, and it became Full Cycle. Same thing with Roni, he was in a soundsystem crew and that probably went as far as it could go and then he joined with us for Full Cycle and it was great. We had fun, we had a laugh, we did a lot of things together, we grew up together, we were always in the studio together for days on end, just chatting, politicking, daydreaming about things that we were trying to accomplish, techniques of making records. We’d get a new sampler and would just bury ourselves in it for days on end, trying to suss it out, trying to work out how it worked, so… yeah, you couldn’t have had a better situation.

Benji B

And I imagine there was a healthy competition there as well, trying to match tune for tune?

Krust

Of course, of course. That was the driving force behind it. Someone did a good tune, you wanted to do a good tune as well. That was the real driving force and that’s where a lot of the classics came from, someone going out there and making a tune, you hearing that tune. If you’re screwing your face up and thinking, “Fucking hell!”… that’s what you want to do, you want to make a tune that has that same effect, so you go back into the studio and you sit down and you sized it and you’d do something that’s equally as good as that.

Benji B

Well, seeing as you mentioned the word classic and screwing your face up, I think you should play “Soul In Motion.” Is this the right kind of era?

Krust

Yeah, this is about ‘93, ‘94, ‘95, something like that.

(music: DJ Krust – “Soul In Motion” / applause)

Benji B

It’s criminal to cut that tune there’s another four-and-a-half minutes to go, but anyway… That’s just a perfect example of one of those records that you just need to… I used to play that record over and over again and it’d just get to the end and even now it’s like, 11-and-a-half minutes long or whatever, just pick the needle up and put it back at the start and listen to it again.

It’s funny, Ben, DJ Zinc, just came up and told me a very interesting little fact that that was the first time that people started cutting on 12” plates because the tune was so long. Is that right? Up until that point it’d all been 10” dubplates, but that was the first time people started cutting on 12” dubplates? What’s always struck me about your music is that there’s that sparse thing but it always takes the full length of the record to get your message across. Has that always been important to you?

Krust

I wanted my music to be like a film. I had this thing that I would want to make widescreen music, and for me it was about when you watch a film, you don’t normally get it until the end and that’s why I wanted people to listen to the whole track, it was a journey… you had different sections, different stories, the journey went up and down and I wanted to emulate that in the music and I wanted to take people on that journey, on a ride.

I was watching a lot of films, I loved movies and I loved epics, the big [films] like Star Wars and Blade Runner, that’s where I was getting my vibe from. I’d sit in my studio with the lights out and just zone out and just do whatever came to me. I didn’t really have any ideas about how it was supposed to sound, I didn’t really care about the length, I didn’t really have any preconceived ideas of what I was trying to get to. I was just trying to let it come out and let the journey happen, as it happened and when it happened. That’s all I really thought about when I was making music and what I still think about now.

Benji B

When that record came out, it was so different to so much other stuff that was around the time, not just the sparseness of it but the sound effects and the different textures going on in there. You’ve always struck me as someone who’s not really bothered about keeping up with whatever the latest thing is – even within one genre – and just doing your thing.

Krust

I do what everyone else doesn’t do. Not on purpose, but I just try and be myself. And if you’re yourself, you’re going to be different. That’s why you get some artists that stand out, because they’re really just following their own thing, what they should be doing, and that’s what I try and do, just do what I think I should be doing, and this is what comes out.

Benji B

You’re totally capable of some dancefloor devastation tunes as well. It’s probably worth playing “Warhead” next up. How long after “Soul In Motion” was it?

Krust

Same kind of period. Warhead came about because Die and Roni made a tune called “Mad Professor” and it’s a typical example of the competition between us. I heard that tune and thought, “Nah!” I just screwed my face up and was like, “Yeah, OK,” and I went home and in a night, I made that tune, simply because that was like a heavy tune, there was vibes there and I thought, “You know what? I have to make something on that level, that same kind of energy that same kind of vibe.” That’s where “Warhead” came from.

Benji B

You’re not a stranger to the bottom end… definitely a master of that. That tune was just massive right across the drum & bass community.

Krust

It took a while. I remember I gave it to Bryan [Gee], and he didn’t get it. He kind of looked at me like, “Really?” I’d been listening to it for three days straight so I got it, to me it made perfect sense. I gave it to a few people, Roni kind of got it and then, eventually, after a while, we were all playing it for a while, and about a year later I think it really took off and the clubs really started to embrace it.

I think back in the day it was like a breeding ground with music. You had a tune and you had to mature it. The thing about cutting plates and Music House, you gave it to the men who really understood the tune and they would play the tune and help build the tune. It would be this process of about three to four months. You’d play it and you probably wouldn’t get any reaction, but you’d carry on playing it. After six months, a few people would get it, after nine months people would start requesting it and after about a year, that tune was [released]. And that was the breeding ground of a real classic tune and back in the day that’s how it used to be. People used to ball for the tune; it was a natural thing, and I think that’s changed a little bit now.

Benji B

For some fans of the music, that’s no bad thing because people used to have to wait two years to buy some of the music you were playing. Is it a bit quicker now?

Krust

Sometimes you do a tune in one week, and you can get it out in two weeks, three weeks, everyone’s playing it off mp3 very quickly. I think it’s just a sign of the times, there’s an urgency and a need now to get your music out and not to really be that exclusive anymore. I don’t think there’s a need for that anymore, especially with the networks now, and the community’s so big now, whereas before it was like 28 labels and there were a handful of DJs. Now it’s like 128 labels and you’ve probably got 200 DJs, so there’s a lot more access to distribute your music now.

(music: Krust – “Warhead”)

Benji B

How long, almost ten years now that tune? And what were you making that music on? What kind of equipment were you making that music on?

Krust

That was a 760 Roland sampler, Atari sequencer and a shitty little fucking 12-track desk. That was it. I had no proper equipment, I couldn’t even use it properly or EQ. Didn’t understand that, just get a couple of breaks, layer them on top of each other. The bass… that’s from me touching the wire and then sampling it. That’s where the bass came from. I was trying to plug something in and I just touched it and it went “brrr” and I was like, “Right.” Pressed sample [applause].

Benji B

A lot of the music I hear now doesn’t have that warmth, doesn’t have that ruggedness.

Krust

The switch-over to digital… analogue sound is a lot warmer traditionally and I think the digital switch is convenient because you’ve got instant recall, but you have to sacrifice something for it. You could compare a lot of the tunes from back then and now – technically it’s unmatched, you can’t beat it, but you lose something, a little bit of warmth, the bass is a bit more warm, the beats are a bit grittier and stuff. I think now there’s a trend of moving back towards that now, especially in our scene anyway where we’re trying to understand how to get the best of both worlds. You can’t get away from the digital thing. You need it, the quality of it and the spontaneity… you need that, but the other side of it is, you listen to tunes like that and how they sounded… I do it all the time; I compare a lot of my tunes to a lot of my old tunes and I’m trying to make my music sound more like this now, where it’s a bit warmer and fatter and… it’s an ongoing struggle.

Benji B

And what are you using now? What did you use for the last record?

Krust

On the last album, I’ve got ProTools for sequencing and I did have a Mackie desk, I’ve got rid of it now. But I went back, I used the 760 sampler and a new Roland sampler, keyboard and stuff. I tried to make the last album… I did in the essence of what I got my best results in. I listened to all my tunes, I put them on a CD, like “Soul In Motion,” “Warhead,” “True Stories,” I put about ten of my favorite tunes that I did, I put them onto my iPod, and I listened to them for about six months. I wanted to get back into the spirit, back into that essence, back into the vibe of how I used to make music. Because of the technology it’s like, “Yeah, let’s get this new plug-in, let’s get this new thing.” And it got to a point where I was like, “Hold on a minute.” I used to make tunes with a fucking 14-second sampler and one broken speaker and a dodgy turntable and I was getting blinded by the technology. Technology is here to help us, to get to somewhere it doesn’t replace that. You people use the computers now, and you’ve got endless amounts of sample time in there, endless plug-ins, all these presets and all these standard sounds and I went, “You know what? I have to get back to what’s really me.” So, I sat down, listened to my tunes, listened to what I was about, and got my sampler out. Sat down, got my old samples out, started to listen to them again, got all my old records out, started to listen to them again and thought, “OK, let me just get back to what I do best.” And I just sat down and started to sample again. Spent two days sampling, two days editing, two days making sounds, three days chopping sounds up, making basses again. I was like, “OK, cool, I know what I’m going to do, I know what I’m about now.”

Benji B

So, it’s fair to say that some of the most beautiful things come from the most limited means?

Krust

I think that you are forced to do things you don’t normally do when you haven’t got the resources to do them. It’s all about being creative and having imagination. You really are stuck, and what happens when you don’t have the resources you need it makes you be creative? It makes you think in another way. How can I make this sound like that, how can I make this sample sound like that? We discovered the art of sampling on one-and-a-half seconds. Our first sampler had 14 seconds, you had to use it wisely. You’d make a whole tune in 14 seconds, that takes a lot of skill. Really understanding a break. All you need of a beat is two-and-a-half seconds. And you loop it and you learn how to make a loop. The 760 is great, before that we had the 550, and the 330, and they had functions on there where you could loop forward, loop backwards, loop and continual loop so it had all these different things on it. So, we’d have one beat doing loop forwards, loop backwards, continual loop, so in a track you’d have different mixes of the same beat looping at different start points. We got creative that way. Same thing with basses. You’d have a bass, which would go one way then the other way, and you’d do a fill. We got in deep, that’s all we had, 14 seconds… you had to understand how to use that and get the most out of it.

Benji B

So, would you recommend if people get creative block to just bring it back to basics?

Krust

Do you know what I’ve done? Got rid of all my shit. I’ve gone back to basics, gone back to how I used to make music. Got rid of my desk, got rid of all this other stuff, all these modules I’d bought. I sat in there and saw all these modules and thought, “Where do I start? I’m going to try and do this, try and do that,” and I thought, “You know what? Make life simple. Go back to the simplest way that you can make music and start from there, have a start point.” For me, it was about sampling records and a sampler and my Atari so I’ve gone back… I haven’t gone back to the Atari, that’s too far back, but I’ve gone far as back as I can go back and still be current as well.

Benji B

So, let’s move on to the Reprazent era because I think that’s definitely worth talking about and how you came up with the concept with Roni and Die and Suv for Reprazent, and Dynamite [MC], of course. When did that idea start forming?

Krust

We got approached, first of all, by Paul Martin and Gilles Peterson from Talkin’ Loud. But before that we actually got approached by James Lavelle at Mo’ Wax. We did a remix for him and then we did a remix for Gilles and it was on the cards, we almost signed to Mo’ Wax. And then James longed it out a bit and Gilles, they were a bit more on point and so we signed with them and that whole thing just came about from trying to go to the next level.

We were always about trying to make another tune that was better than the last one, trying to do concepts that were better than the last one. So, on Full Cycle we did a couple of compilations and stuff and we were building towards something, we had a collection of tunes and then we got signed and it was like OK. We all sat around and discussed how the project was going to be and how it was going to go and we were fortunate in that we already had Dynamite on board and then we met Onallee the singer, she’s a local Bristol girl, and the whole thing just grew organically, really.

Roni was the main architect of that project, but we’d come in at different stages of the project and give some input and say how certain things could be and what not. “Share The Fall” was one of the big tracks on the project, and that was a case of us sitting down, all talking about this tune and really that just happened, it was like a section from here, section from there, that was a real big experimental tune that just came together. So, that’s the whole point, it just grew out of different pieces of tracks here and there and then the project just kind of went together, really.

And then the live thing came from trying to work out how to perform it live and how we were going to do it. We didn’t just want to be DJing the project, we wanted to form a band and actually go out there and actually play it. We didn’t have an idea of how to do it… it hadn’t really been done before in the way that we did it so we had to work out how to get the samples and play them live and get the drummer to play in time. We used a guy called Clive Deamer and he’d never played at 170 before so he’d be trying to keep up and we’d play him records and stuff and say, “This is what it sounds like, this is what you have to do.” It took him a while, and fair play to him he got it – Clive Deamer was Portishead’s drummer, so he’s gone from 100bpm to 160bpm. It was a bit of a culture shock for him, but he got it. And then we had Si John, the bass player, he was from Bristol, and we just spent eight months in the studio, rehearsing and jamming and trying to put this thing together with these ideas and these vibes and stuff. And eventually, it came together after about three years.

Benji B

It’s easy to forget now but I remember that first Jazz Café gig that you did and until that point no one had really seen drummers doing Drum & bass. And also there weren’t a great deal of song songs around, loads of records with samples and stuff but not a great deal of songs. In many ways it was an extremely innovative thing to do. Now, it just seems normal, you always see drummers playing drum & bass or whatever, but that really broke the mold in a lot of ways. Did you have fun touring it as a band, was it a laugh?

Krust

Oh, for real. It was like school camp for about three years. We were on a bus, traveling around America, traveling around Europe, meeting people… you couldn’t have dreamt of it. It was beyond everything that we thought we were ever going to do, and it was great. It was a great adventure and it was probably one of the greatest parts of my life, hanging out with your friends all of the time, touring, going all around the world, it was crazy.

Benji B

And I think it’s a pretty interesting model to talk about, Reprazent getting signed, because, as with many underground scenes there comes a point, maybe a tipping point, where major record labels or whatever vehicle it will be in the future, start to sniff around. I remember in the mid-’90s, certainly with drum & bass, all the majors were starting to sign people up one-by-one… You did it in a really interesting way, because you all signed to a major but without using any of your names. So you signed Reprazent but still you could do records as Krust or Suv or Die or Full Cycle or V [Records].

Krust

What actually happened is that they signed the project as State Of Mind. So, they didn’t actually have the name Reprazent or any of our other names. That was an oversight of theirs or undersight, I guess, and it kind of worked in our favor. We suddenly realized that they didn’t own any of our names and we weren’t contracted not to do it.

Benji B

So, it wasn’t actually a conscious decision on your part?

Krust

No, we just never had a name. We were playing with the idea of State Of Mind at the time and that’s what we signed under and then we came up with Reprazent afterwards.

Benji B

And how do you feel that intervention of the major labels or the mainstream, or however you want to phrase it, affects a scene?

Krust

Nothing can stay underground forever. I think that just by things progressing in a certain way it’s going to grow. You’re going to get attention from certain people and I think in our case we were quite fortunate we had a lot of creative control. No one told us what to do and we did an extension of what we were doing on our own label anyway, so it was a natural thing and because we were working with Talkin’ Loud, we were working with Gilles and Paul, they were quite mellow and relaxed, they let us do exactly what we wanted. We were quite fortunate, we kept it on that level, but majors are always going to be sniffing around what’s new. They always want to know what’s new, they always want to be at the cutting edge of what’s new and say they were the first to do it. I think it’s up to individuals to see how they can profit from it. For us, it worked because we were able to take the music that was created in the streets of England and go and tour in Japan, Australia, in America, and all of a sudden the music became bigger and more worldwide and more well-known, but it was still underground in England. It was still underground in all these places we were going to. Even though we were signed to a major, we were still going to play to a thousand people in America – it wasn’t as if we were going to play these massive stadiums, it was still quite underground at that time, still quite elusive, still quite cool. Majors… they didn’t really understand. It was only Paul and Gilles who understood what it was, the majors didn’t really get it, they couldn’t understand it.

Benji B

Did they understand it a bit more after you won the Mercury prize?

Krust

Well, it made perfect sense then. It was a vehicle for them to make money and from their point of view, that’s all they want. The record industry, when you get to that level is quite simple, you either sell a shitload of units or you don’t. And once you understand the language of their game, once you understand the language of recoup, it’s a whole different ball game.

Benji B

And how did that affect your situation?

Krust

Recoup?

Benji B

Were you savvy to that before you went into it?

Krust

I was lucky that I had the experience of Fresh 4 so I kind of understood it. I knew Simon from back then our manager, Simon Goffe, so it was just a natural thing for me to get him involved, I had a relationship with him already so it was like a phone call, “OK, Simon…” He got involved before all that anyway because we were getting to a certain level that we couldn’t manage any more. We needed a bit of professional help, we were getting into a situation where the label was getting a lot of interest from publishers, so we had to figure out how to run a business now.

It wasn’t just about making records and having fun, doing all the other things… now it’s a case of there’s money coming in, you need to have an accountant, you need to have proper management and you need to know what to do with this money, how to manage it, do contracts. And all of a sudden, it got serious, it wasn’t fun any more, for a minute. You ended up being in meetings with record companies and getting contracts that thick that you couldn’t understand, and you had the manager who wanted 20% so you learn all this new language and it was like, “OK, this isn’t just about sitting in the studio and making tunes all night.” Now we had to put our thinking caps on and think, “OK, this is what it’s really about, if we’re going in this direction.”

And, in a way, it naturally went there, we didn’t look for any of this, it was just the fact that the records were selling more, we were getting more attention, we were playing more gigs, there was more money coming in, we signed off of the dole, we started to make… [to participants] the social. You get social in England, so we signed off the dole and we started to get regular agencies and we had to start paying tax and VAT. And, all of a sudden, it’s a business now and someone had to come in and show us how to do this thing properly. So, with all that in mind, it’s a different ball game. You have to get professional, you have to go into these meetings and try and understand what these people are talking about. Eventually, you get it and eventually you learn and you make mistakes along the way.

Benji B

And how does all that affect your own label, the smaller label up the road that you’re still running and your relationship with all the people there?

Krust

We benefited from it because on all the stuff that came from Talkin’ Loud, we had a Full Cycle logo on there and we directed everybody to our website and our merchandise, so that was the good part of it. As well as touring as Reprazent, everybody knew we were from Full Cycle so we used that as a vehicle to promote our own business. And one thing we did… we learnt very early how the majors worked. We studied it, we scienced it, we talked to everybody in the industry, we spoke to the press people, we spoke to the promotions and we really scienced it and tried to understand how it works, tried to understand the language and made a lot of friends and a lot of contacts in there and we just used it on our own imprint. Just modelled it, really.

When the whole thing ended we had a saying, “This is what they do, this is what we’re going to do.” We want to sell units? We do it this way. We want to get press? We go and do that, we go and do this way. There are certain principles in the business you have to emulate, and if you stick to the principles, you’ll do what you need to do, but in amongst those principles you can be flexible and you can still be creative and you can still do certain things. You’re in the business of distribution, you want to get your music out, so you get your music out.

Benji B

And if you had to pick a couple of principles – three principles – for people that don’t want those pitfalls, for people that even though they’ve been told it a hundred times, just a couple of things, you don’t have to be specific.

Krust

Only get a manager when you can’t do the business yourself, that’s a standard thing – don’t just go out there and get a manager. Second of all, don’t get it twisted; the people you meet along the way aren’t your friends. You have your friends in your crew, and that’s it. If you meet them along the way, they know you through the business, so keep it business. Try and be as professional as possible. Always get it in writing and always get it checked over. Be as professional as possible, as much as you can.

Benji B

Earlier you were talking about the expansion of the scene and how it went from something small to something big. And drum & bass is a beautiful example of how something that was very localized has become totally global. For a number of years, people outside of the inner circle of drum & bass producers and DJs could be forgiven for thinking that it was a closed shop in terms of the way that it seemed to be a club… like you say, Music House and all of that whole thing… Where was the tipping point where suddenly people were accepting people making tunes in America, or accepting people making music from outside of the UK, from Asia or Australia and where your sound and involvement in Reprazent and all of that stuff… when it exploded?

Krust

I think that it just gradually got that way. DJs started to go abroad, people started to go to Germany, France, places around Europe, and gradually it started to build up and you started to go a bit further, to Japan, and then people were going to America. So slowly, it began to just spread out. People were starting to hear about it from other scenes. I think from different walks of life, people from hip hop, people from house, people from jazz, they recognized the elements in it and it expanded from there. From our point of view, from Reprazent, we were fortunate that we actually got put into different scenarios, we were playing to typical jazz audiences. When we got on the road, our first tour was with Galliano, Shawn Lee and Karime Kendra, so we were playing with, like a rock band. Galliano, jazz-fusion… and it was us – jungle – playing these festivals. It was different.

I remember when me and Dynamite toured with a rock band in America called Soul Coughing and the drummer, who’s a friend of mine now, his name is Yuval Gabay… he was in London and he picked up this tape. He’d heard about jungle and he’d bought this tape, and it had some jungle on it, so he took it back to his band in America and he played it to them and they were like “OK…” They could hear it. He was like, “I want these guys to come and tour with us.” So, we went to America and opened up for this rock band, and it was crazy. We were playing at some places and we’d go there and we’d start playing, and people would just come in and be like [mimes unimpressed face] for about a good 45 minutes and it was hard work, very intimidating.

You’ve got these hardcore rock fans listening to you playing this uptempo music, looking at you like you’re in the wrong club. But after about an hour of it they would slowly come round and we saw it for about 12 nights – it was exactly the same thing. First 45 minutes everyone would be just standing there watching us, and then after an hour they’d try and work out how to dance to it. But Dynamite was showing them, he’d be up on stage showing them how to dance and, slowly but surely, they’d be getting into it. That for me was a real eye-opener into how the music was crossing over. People who didn’t have any idea about what it was could potentially get involved and hear it and maybe like it’s music they’ve never actually heard.

I saw something on that tour of those people and that opened my eyes to it and that’s how the music generally went. Say, if we went to Japan. When we went there… the first time we did Reprazent there, we played and we’re Reprazent and we had this reaction where we’d play and everyone would go mad, the crowd would go mad. Went to Japan, played the first song and everyone just stood there. But that was just the Japanese, they didn’t really go mad, didn’t really react, and then we went there a couple of years later and it’d all changed and they’d really got into it.

So, throughout the whole sort of five-year period of when everyone first started to go away to maybe when it started to get really big, there was a big change – everyone started to see and understand this music and really get into it, and people started to make it from their own point of view like the Americans and some Europeans. That’s only really happened in the last four to five years, really. But that’s what happens. You make music, people emulate it like we were emulating hip-hop back in the day, that’s what happens. So, the American cats are doing the same thing, but now it’s kind of cool, they’ve got their own vibe of it and same thing with everywhere else they’ve got their own vibe of it and it’s on the level right now, it’s good.

Benji B

So the Reprazent thing kind of took a breather or naturally came to a halt for a minute and you did another record… you did your solo record?

Krust

I did a solo album, Coded Language.

Benji B

And the title track of that was featuring…

Krust

Saul Williams. I had the original track of that just made and I didn’t really know what to do with it. I knew I wanted a vocal on there, but Gilles and Paul Martin, they knew this cat Saul Williams and they suggested that we meet and I brought the track… He already had this whole thing written out on this fucking scroll thing that he just recited one day and it was like… I’d never heard anything like it and the next day we went into the studio and we put the track down and that became the title track of the album.

Benji B

Let’s check it.

(music: Krust feat Saul Williams – “Coded Language” / applause)

Benji B

So, where are we at now? What are you up to in the present day?

Krust

Now, I’ve just finished the new album called Hidden Knowledge – that came out earlier this year on Full Cycle – been putting a band together, rehearsing with them for the last couple of months and we did our first show last week in Cargo [in London] – that was fun. So, really just getting this live thing together, getting the band tight, rehearsing, getting the next project together.

Benji B

And the new album is out?

Krust

The new album is out in the shops now, it’s called Hidden Knowledge, on Full Cycle. This is from the new album, it’s a track called “Belief System”…

Benji B

Let’s check that out now, just to get an idea.

(music: Krust – “Belief System” / applause)

I mean, evidently, the deeper sound of the music has always been your thing, how do you feel about the state of music generally… in electronic dance music at the moment, but also your scene and your ability to keep making music within that?

Krust

I think the music scene’s interesting right now. There’s a lot of music, and just being here this week, I’ve heard some fucking outstanding music. People have brought stuff and recommended stuff, and I’m happy with the scene. In drum & bass right now, it’s getting good, it’s getting exciting and there’s some cats out there really pushing it again. Some exciting stuff, some new cats coming through with some new techniques and it’s getting healthy again. Everything moves in cycles, so I think we’ve gone through one and we’re going back to the music side of things again, the jungle side of things again, the big basses, the unusual arrangements, the dropping the unexpected drops, and it’s good, exciting.

Benji B

And in your own life, what cycle are you at in terms of creating, moving… life stuff?

Krust

Caught me off guard there, bruvv. Whatever man, I’m just following my own thing, really. I’m trying to just have fun, trying to create, trying to just explore different things in the music and in life, just trying to go forward, trying not to do the same things over again. With my music, I try and see what’s next. I think it’s been good that I’ve been involved in the music and in the label and that we’ve been able to keep on pushing each other and go forward and keep building on stuff, and I think having a good core solid group around you who are on the same wavelength helps because we can keep each other in check and say, “Let’s do this, let’s do that,” and we keep on building so the label’s starting to progress.

We’ve got Full Cycle TV, which is like us from the film and stuff we did for Reprazent… it’s taken on a life of its own. We’ve gone out and shot documentaries on people that we really admire in the music, and got their take on the history of their music, just to see where our musical backgrounds come from, so were really excited about that. That’s one of the new projects that were doing and we’re starting a downtempo label as well so we can explore the variety of the music we’re into. For us, we’re going back to our roots in a sense. We came from the downtempo thing and we’ve explored the drum & bass thing and we’ll still explore it, but as well we’re getting back into the downtempo thing, there’s a real pull to that. Die’s just done this new project with Ben Westbeech, Roni’s just done a project with Vikter Duplaix, I’m working on a project with my brother from the Fresh 4 era. So, growing up, moving on, exploring new territories and seeing what else is out there.

Benji B

How do you think we’ll be experiencing music in ten years’ time?

Krust

It’s interesting. I think the formats will just keep on changing and I’ve heard of crazy stuff. Optical drives and stuff with music on lasers and hard drives and stuff and… I don’t know where it’s going. I heard something the other day where someone said it’s going to be beamed directly into peoples’ heads. That’s already kind of happening, there was a disabled guy, who was disabled from the neck down, and they put a chip in his head and he sent the first email by thought. So the technology is there for these things to be available and it’s just a matter of time before it becomes available to the general public. Anything is possible. I just use the technology.

Benji B

And you’ve been studying recently, beyond the technology?

Krust

I’ve been getting into consciousness. My last album was called Hidden Knowledge and it was based on the stuff that I’d been studying. I’d been studying a lot of consciousness and spirituality, and that’s been the driving force in my life as well as the music. So, I’ve been combining the two things together through the last couple of years, and it was a real conscious decision to say, “Let’s make this project around the subject. Let’s call it Hidden Knowledge, let’s talk about the subjects that aren’t readily available.” Every track on the album is titled with a name you could go deeper into, if you really wanted to, and find out more information and get knowledge. I think that we’re at a point in time now where we’re all looking for something, and we’re all looking for some answers to questions that we really don’t get from the mainstream. So, I just did what I do with my music and put something out there. On the CD there’s information, there’s websites to look for, just to gather information. I think that if someone knows something about something they should teach someone else about it. That’s where I’m coming from, that simple analogy “each one, teach one” is why I’m in this music and what I’m about right now.

Benji B

Amen.