The Bug

Emma Warren

A very big welcome please, the Bug. [applause]

The Bug

Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here.

Emma Warren

So I hear on the grapevine that you have drained all of the subs in Istanbul for the show tonight. Is this true, and what can we expect?

The Bug

There’s actually not enough to be honest, for what we normally ask for. The original amount of speakers that were being allocated to this event just wasn’t enough for what my personal requirements are. On my contract and rider, it generally asks for a specific amount of bassbins which are generally more than a venue will normally provide, just because for me, the impact of my music should really mirror the impact of having a deep-body massage. And having first moved to London and having discovered the joys of Jah Shaka, Iration Steppas, Aba Shanti-I, reggae soundsystem events; and unfortunately a lot of clubs you play just think you’re a lunatic when you ask for more bass, more bass. And for sure I’m addicted to bass and volume. I’m not deaf, I just love the visceral physicality of sound. I want to feel the music deeply and I like it to be loud enough that people can’t use my shows as background music to their conversations. A big problem for me with music generally now is that music’s becoming secondary to people’s lives, it’s becoming an accessory to people’s lifestyles, and for me, music changed my life. Music generally is capable of amazing things, physically and psychologically, and I just think that the more music becomes relegated to a cheap accessory, the less people will realize there’s great magic in music as a form.

Emma Warren

And how does volume make people realize that there is magic in music and it should be at the front of your life, not as an accessory?

The Bug

When I started my music career I probably just wanted to use volume as a sadistic tool to make people suffer, because I was suffering at the time and I needed an outlet. I’d probably have said that I was happiest when I was clearing rooms. I was quite happy to clear rooms, without a doubt. That was a victory when I started making music. But subsequently my whole... Obviously having made music for a fair amount of years now, my ambition for what I want to achieve with shows has changed. And I think that... I’m no hippie, but I believe in music as a transcendental power, that it can take you out of yourself. For me I stopped taking drugs and drinking many years ago because I felt that there was other ways to achieve those mental states and physical states, and I actually think music can do that, and does do that. And, for me, I can get high as a kite off music, and I can love feeling an avalanche of sound. It feels like an experience I can’t get anywhere else or in any other manner, that fulfils that sheer density of impact on my central nervous system, and I think you can achieve mental states through sound that you can’t achieve in other ways. So for me, it’s just to give people an experience that we used to talk about in King Midas Sound with Roger and I. I think it was DJ Premier, of all people, that said that music should shock, excite and amaze. And I feel now that music doesn’t sell, really, at all, that what does sell is an experience, and you want people to evangelize for you, and to spread the word.

For sure, some people at venues that I pull into, or members of audiences that I’ve performed to, probably think I’m borderline insane for playing at the volume levels I play at. But it’s not a sadistic thing, it’s the opposite. The reason I care so much and put so much effort into sound checks and having a very precise rider, is because I feel people have paid to come and see a performance by the Bug, or whichever configuration I’m performing in, and I want to give them the best possible experience I can, that will hopefully change them a little bit, or change their perceptions. However anyone wants to react, is up to them, but fundamentally, I know the music shows that I enjoyed most I would talk about for weeks afterwards, and would literally change my way of thinking somehow about life, music, sound, etc. etc.

Emma Warren

So you’re talking about a show that you’re going to be doing in there tonight. Can you tell us who you’ve brought with you on stage, and also behind the scenes.

The Bug

Yeah, for this show in particular, I’m working with Miss Red. Miss Red is an Israeli MC I’ve been working with since... I think she was 19, when she stole the mic at a show I played in Israel.

Emma Warren

Always a good manoeuvre.

The Bug

Literally. And then, another really integral part of my touring experience is my secret weapon, who’s called Goh Nakada, who’s like a little brother to me. He shares a lot of the same aesthetics in music, and he’s my sound man.

Not many electronic artists travel with their own sound men. But for me, he’s a crucial, crucial part of our setup. A) because he’s a dub head. He knows how to dub out Miss Red’s vocals in the way I would in the studio. B) technically he’s incredible. He’s very conscientious. He takes his job seriously, and he knows the levels of physicality that I want to achieve because he and I share very similar musical tastes. Also he’s Japanese and he plays the card of, “Sorry I don’t speak the language,” when people are interfering with him and his job. And also it’s just good to know there’s someone out there who will know what the balance should be. I made the decision to have sound men tour with me because I’d be playing shows where people would say either they couldn’t hear the vocals, or the music wasn’t loud enough, or it was just weak in some way. And like I said, I think people pay for a concert and deserve the best that they can get. For me it’s a position of trust and I know I can trust Goh implicitly because his tastes and mine are so aligned.

Emma Warren

So there’s a research unit in London, at Goldsmiths University, called the Bass Culture Research Unit, and they did this brilliant event recently which was celebrating soundsystem culture, and one of the people speaking was the sound man for one of the major South London soundsystems. And he talked about the stringing up and the taking down of his soundsystem, the putting together of it at a dance and the taking down of it, and how he took extreme care with every part of that process and that was why his sound sounded better than everyone else’s. Do you have a sound man who looks after your own soundsystem? Or is that Goh’s job as well?

The Bug

No, it’s me and Goh. We both do. I mean Go is more technical than I am, without a shadow of a doubt. But we both have to lift very heavy boxes and have been injured in the process many times.

Emma Warren

So tell us about your soundsystem though. Because you have your own rig, don’t you?

The Bug

Yeah.

Emma Warren

And this is not a very common thing.

The Bug

No, it’s not very common at all. I had signed the record deal with a major label called Warner Brothers to deliver a record under the name, Ice. And that album was specifically meant to be a project where I would be working with people who I knew I couldn’t tour with. People like El-P from Run the Jewels, was on the record. Blixa Bargeld from Einstürzende Neubauten was on the record. Antipop Consortium, members of New Kingdom. Just a lot of people I admired, mostly as vocalists. And I wanted to make this very futuristic hip-hop record that mixed live playing from the band that I’d formed with members of GOD and Godflesh, with MCs that I’d become totally smitten by. And it got signed by Kevin Shields’ sister, Ann-Marie Shields, who was a friend...

Emma Warren

My Bloody Valentine.

The Bug

Yeah. Who was a friend at the time. And the demos she heard that she signed us for were very different to what they got as a record at the end of the process. And halfway through the process, I was sort of losing the plot a bit really, and the direction of the record... Because I was becoming more and more obsessed with a lot of sound design software, like GRM Tools sound design software, and just getting more and more distanced from the original parts that I’d been working on. And also going through a lot of social problems at the time as well, which just made me very insecure. And it basically meant that I just wanted to dump what we’d originally done and... Or mash it up unrecognizably. And I think the label sensed that something was going wrong, which is my head. And they were trying desperately to get the music finished and out, that they’d invested in. And they said, “OK, we’ve paid you half the advance, how are you going to tour this record?” And I was like, “Yo, this was never meant to be toured. That was never part of the deal.” And they basically said, “Well, if you don’t tour, we’re not going to give you the rest of the money.” And I was broke. The last thing I wanted to hear was that. So I had to come up with a very quick fix. And I just came up with an idea that I didn’t think they’d go for. And I basically said, “OK, it’s impossible to tour with these guys, but I’ll tour as a soundsystem, but then you have to give me an extra ten grand to buy a soundsystem. And they did it. [laughs]

I’d become good friends with Russ Bell-Brown from a soundsystem called The Disciples. And they used to provide tunes for Shaka. Jah Shaka. And I asked for Russ’s help to design a soundsystem. I didn’t know anything about soundsystems, other than I liked getting floored by them. And Russ basically took me to all these backstreet garages in places like South End, where these crusty rastas would be building speaker boxes for the dub community in London. And Warner Brothers were paying for it, which was kind of them. And by the time they’d paid and the soundsystem was built, I’d finished the record. The label hated the record. I only ever did one interview for the whole world. I hate the record. It’s the last record I ever did put vocals on. And I had a soundsystem after they dropped me. Of course it was my dream to have a soundsystem, but the reality is, you need a crew and a team around you, as you say this guy was telling you, mentioning in this bass culture research lecture you said you went to. I didn’t. I didn’t even drive.

Emma Warren

That definitely is a big problem in terms of transporting huge speaker boxes and a soundsystem around from place to place.

The Bug

So basically, I had a soundsystem in storage for years, and there’s a couple of times when I thought I’d had a few people around me that maybe we could sort it out. The last, most notably, was, I remember telling Mala and Loefah, just after I met them at FWD>>, just after FWD>> had begun, “Hey, I’ve got a soundsystem. Let’s use it.” And they were up for it, but somehow it never happened.

Emma Warren

So we’re talking the early days of dubstep here. These are seminal figures from that moment. I have to just say, I used to live next door to a very famous soundsystem guy called Jah Shaka, who you’ve mentioned, and he really did have a team of people to move his kit about. A van would drive up outside the house, and maybe ten or 15 dreadlocked guys in boiler suits with tools with the name Shaka sprayed on the back would come out carrying heavy things. It’s definitely a communal effort. But you use your soundsystem now for your event... Do you use that at your event in Berlin?

The Bug

Well, that was the thing. It’s sort of crazy that I paid storage for ten years on a soundsystem that was never used in London. I paid more in storage than I ever paid for the system, just because I wanted to keep a dream alive, and my dream was to run a rig, to run a system. When I decided to leave London, the system still hadn’t been used. By this time it’s an antiquated system, it’s very old technology. It was already DIY technology to begin with. I just remember speaking to my then-girlfriend, now-wife, and saying, “Look, what should I do? Should I bring the soundsystem to Berlin or what?” And just having the choice to try or not. And I’d spoken to a couple of people in advance of moving to Berlin to see if they could help me store it, because that’s a major issue if you have a soundsystem. Where can you put the beast?

Emma Warren

A big garage.

The Bug

Yeah. So in the end, I managed to find someone who would agree to take the system short-term, arrange for the rig to be moved... I came back to London and had friends in London who helped me, then break the rig down, put it into a van, drive it across to Berlin, into its temporary home. Still no real plan of how the hell it was going to work, practically. Just as a dream, still.

Then, about a year later, I lost the storage space. Back to square one. What am I going to do? Am I going to sell this soundsystem? Am I going to keep it? Do I keep this dream alive? I had no options other than selling it, other than my last thought and straw was to call a guy that I knew that ran a club in Berlin called Gretchen, called Lars, who’s my guardian angel, actually. Because I said, “Look, Lars. I’ve got a problem. I’m going to have to sell this reggae soundsystem if I can’t find somewhere to store it. How do you fancy I store it at your club?” [laughs] He was like, “OK, how big is it?” I was, “Hard to describe. It’s ten 18" scoops.” He said, “OK, what are you doing tomorrow?” He came to see the size; said, “I can store it, but what are you going to do with it?” And I said, “I’ll run a club, if you want. I can run a club. I’ll start a club night up.” And that’s what we did. We started a club at Gretchen in Berlin, and it’s about once every three months, four months, at Gretchen, under the name Pressure.

And it was just a joy. I remember the first time we finally got the rig up and running, me and Goh, because Goh’s as much of a soundsystem addict as I am, and just couldn’t believe we’re finally running it. Just one of the most important things in music for me, is its connection to your brain, dreams and creativity. I’m no Satanist, but I believe in Aleister Crowley’s philosophy of making will real and making dreams real, and I’ve managed to do that. My dream was to be a musician, since I was a kid. I had no other choice. I don’t come from an affluent background. I don’t have money. My parents didn’t have money. I didn’t have an education because I dropped out of college after I discovered music, drugs, girls. Education couldn’t compete. Therefore there was no safety net. No education, no money, no rich links. Terror, fear, anxiety and absolute passion for music has kept me going all the time.

Emma Warren

And in a way, those things that you describe, not having money, not having access to mainstream... Not knowing people, not having links, it’s a thing that’s common for lots of musicians all around the world. So what do you know about how you keep going when things are really tough like that?

The Bug

The irony is, people that think of the Bug, generally have this misconception that I must have achieved financial stability by now, which is a million lightyears from the truth. At least once a year I tremble when I look at my bank balance, because I choose to make music that’s non-conformist, uncommercial by commercial standards, personal, and right now, I feel the majority of music and the majority of the industry we’re part of dumbs its audiences down, makes cheap output for the biggest returns possible. And of course, I could make whatever music’s current, to try and jump the latest craze, wave, whatever. And there are many producers in dance music who do that, but that’s really not me. I want to live with myself, and the one thing I would say is I’m not rich financially, but I’m rich psychologically. I feel blessed in every way. I make the music I love, I love playing every show that I play. Every show is a battle with soundsystems, sound engineers, totally unpredictable in terms of how many people are going to come through the door, but I’m still even more passionate about making music now than I ever have been in my life.

Emma Warren

Will you play us a little something that you’re... Find something that you’ve done recently that makes you feel like that? Just a piece of music of yours which describes what you’re just talking about. While you’re looking, I have to say, I think it’s really powerful when musicians are very transparent about money. I’ve seen a few musicians recently doing this. Some of the South London jazz musicians I’m connected with back home have been starting to be public about the fact that them and their band are booked to do shows for no money, or very little money, and that they wake up in the middle of the night not sure about anything, because there’s no food in the fridge and they can’t pay their rent. This thing of not having money is perennial for musicians all over the world, and it’s good when people are honest about it, because when people are honest about it, it makes it harder for promoters to not pay people.

The Bug

I’m not saying that I don’t get paid okay for shows. When the shows happen, you get... By this time, I can at least... There’s a level at which I can get paid. But you notice there’s a disparity for people who make music that’s challenging compared to those people that make music that’s not a hard sell.

Emma Warren

What have you selected for us here?

The Bug

As an example of something that’s very different, in a contrarian manner, to what we’ve been talking about and what people expect from me. Just before coming here, I spent three days and nights working with a Japanese vocalist called Hatis Noit, who has got an extraordinary voice. I should’ve got some rest between coming from Armenia to come to here, for myself and my family, but when the opportunity arises to work with someone who’s so special, and in a situation where we are both inspired by each other’s music to that degree, that I was going to do that, even though it didn’t make sense to. And the results, for me, also are really important, because people have a very different opinion of what I normally do.

Emma Warren

Yeah, let’s have a listen. A little couple of minutes would be great.

(_music: The Bug & Hatis Noit – “Sake”)

Wow, that is very beautiful. Thank you for sharing a little thing that you’re working on. One thing that occurred to me while we were listening to that, and something that’s true, I think, of a lot of your music, is this weightiness that you have in so much of your output. We know how you add weight to the music in the performance of it, because we’ve heard you talking about your soundsystem and the fact that you have a sound man traveling with you, but how do you add so much weight to your music when you’re making it in the studio?

The Bug

The key is layering. Something like “Skeng,” which is the track that most people know me most for, sounds like one bassline, but it’s not just one bass. It’s about three or four layers of bass, each sculpted to complement each other to form this one massive bassline. A lot of hardware. My studio’s like a spaceship, really. And better monitoring in the end. When I first started making music, it was relatively basic, as opposed to full of bass, because of not having the tools. But I know prior to this discussion, you told me some of the things we’d probably chat about, but I have to say that even if I had a tin can and one effects pedal, I would make music. I think the tools that are most important are between your ears, and the reason for making music is what’s crucial. What sparked me into making music was punk music, because it addressed the chaos that I felt was in my life from coming from a not very pleasant family existence. I’ve heard amazing recordings by amazing artists that are so lo-fi that audiophiles would cringe. Some of my favorite producers have broken every rule in the book. I think what’s most important is just to come with a concept of why you’re doing what you’re doing and what it is you’re trying to achieve. What’s helped me more over the years is not just experimenting for the sake of experimenting, although I had to do that to get to the stage where I’m at now, but it’s just to think why you’re doing what you’re doing and what it is you’re trying to do. Particularly now, because it’s so easy to make music. There’s so many different ways to make music. There’s so many different pieces of hardware, software, where it’s become relatively much more accessible to make music than it ever has done. So now, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not about making music that’s that important to me, as the act of. What’s important is, what are you trying to do emotionally, creatively? I feel that it’s like a craft for me. It’s ended up being like a craft. I think if you’d said that to me 25 years ago, I’d say you’re insane to even talk in those terms, but actually, as times went on, I feel that it’s become a craft and an obsession to try and carve out sound with whatever tool you have, and the challenge is just how you can make it sound personal when you’re dealing with inanimate objects. [laughs]

Emma Warren

I mean, some of you guys might be at that point in your music-making journey, where you’re doing stuff but maybe don’t have access to a ton of kit. If you were to cast your mind back to that version of you, what would you tell that person? What do they need to remember?

The Bug

When I started, all I had was a saxophone and some effects pedals, and my sampler was a CD player that had an A point and a B point, and you could make loops at any stage of any CD you listened to, and the first Techno Animal record, in fact, the second one too I think, was just made up of me writing down the numbers for each tiny piece of music that I wanted to sample, and then I would go to Justin’s [Broadrick] studio in the Midlands and he would... He had a sampler, I didn’t, and he would make it into a loop. The reason I mention this is just because, where there’s a will, there’s a way. You beg, borrow, steal. I’ve done all those things [laughs] to make music because I needed to make music. It’s like I said, it goes beyond just... I didn’t make music to be famous. I couldn’t give a shit about being famous, that’s a non-entity. I didn’t do it be rich. I did it because I had to, to stay sane. My music world is almost like a parallel world to the crazy world we all have to live in, it’s my way of trying to find some form of beauty in the world, and understanding. It’s my way of translating the madness of it all, and that’s always been the case. I sometimes question it. My father was a musician, my grandfather was a musician, my mom was obsessed by music. She had speakers in every room of our house playing terrible heavy metal all the time, but it’s in me since I was a kid, and my way of escaping the sound of my parents fighting and beating each other up was to put a pair of speakers on either side of my head and just drown it all out. In a way that’s never changed; maybe I just never changed. There is no sense of progress. I think that I made music because I couldn’t, and didn’t, want to do anything else. I made a choice wherever possible, whenever possible: I didn’t want to work for anyone. I’ve never had a proper job. And my mom always said, “Music’s not a proper job, you should get a proper job.” And I’ve still never done it really.

Emma Warren

I remember hearing someone from New Order, obviously a huge band, talking about the same discussion with their parents, and them saying to their mum, “Oh, I can’t come around for tea on Sunday because I’ve got an interview,” meaning they were being interviewed by a journalist. And their mom was like, “Oh, thank god. What’s the interview for?” Like hoping upon hope that it was actually a job interview and that he might actually get a proper job.

You just mentioned that you started off with a saxophone, you started off as a saxophone player, and I wondered: Some of you guys may be using live instruments in what you’re doing as well. Where live instrumentation sits in what you’re doing and who you’re collaborating with at the moment?

The Bug

The track I played you, “Sake” by Hatis Noit, she came to the studio with the guy that runs the Erased Tapes label, Rob. And we were talking about how I make music, and they were asking me how I make this X sound, Y sound or Z sound, and I wasn’t being elusive, to try and hide my secrets, I literally am happy when I can’t remember how I found the original source material. Like I said, luckily, any money I have made out of music has went straight back into music, to my studio. Of course, I’ve amassed an armory of weapons, but I try not to remember how I made something, weirdly enough. It sort of helps if you can’t recognize the source material, ’cause it gives it its own space and it gives it its own sense of mystery as well. It’s just a way of trying to strive for originality. For me, the electronic producers I like most, and generally think have achieved an ultimate goal, are the ones where you recognize their voice within 10 to twenty seconds. The guy from Dopplereffekt, today, was asking me what I thought of Aphex Twin’s new record. Richard James, you can recognize his voice quick, in sound. And that’s been my goal, is to find out what Kevin Martin’s sound is. Have I been able to translate my emotions and personality through sound. Anyone that listens to my music will probably think I’m a hideous person. [laughs] But I have, I think, managed to find a voice. The trick is how do you continue to do that without becoming a caricature of yourself, and how do you grow as an artist?

That track I just played you, I don’t think I would have been able... Well, actually maybe there were tracks with Techno Animal we made in that area. But as I mentioned a few minutes ago, I think that my craft’s improved. I never feel anything I’ve made is perfect and I don’t really care about the tools that go into making them, as long as they fulfil the idea I had to begin with, before I started working on the track or the album or the single. I think it’s very important to have a vision and an aesthetic path that you’re following for any release or project that you want to be involved in, because otherwise it can just end up being a bit neutral, or just experimentation for the sake of it, or just get lost in a void of averageness.

Emma Warren

Have you got a little something else that you can play us around that?

The Bug

Yeah, I can play you... What can I play you? I can play you a track by the lady I’m going to work with tonight.

(music: The Bug & Miss Red – Unknown)

Emma Warren

What do you want to tell us about that? What can you tell us about that?

The Bug

I think Miss Red is a freak like me. I think, when I met her in Israel, I can’t say in any single iota of my brain, I would think that I would meet a dancehall MC in Israel who was part of a crew of ’80s-dancehall-obsessed MCs, and I loved the randomness of that. I like the fact, particularly right now, when there’s many debates about gender and identity in music, that unpredictability can be so vital in music. And I like the fact that Sharon, who is Miss Red, goes against the grain. When I first worked with her, I mean I first worked with her because she literally tapped me on the shoulder at a show that I wasn’t meant to play and asked to grab a mic that I didn’t even know was there. And I was skeptical, in all honesty, as I am if anyone asks to grab a mic. You just don’t know what’s going to happen, if it’s going to be embarrassing, and if you just want to make a quick exit. And she blew my head off straight away within the first track, ’cause it was the voice and tone that I’d been looking to work with anyway. ’Cause I had wanted to work with Stush for a long time, and that had never happened. Because she’s in the high register, I don’t have to make any compromise. She can sit up there and dominate, because I’ve got all the rest to play with. And just out of sheer enthusiasm, at the end of the show, people were bouncing off walls. I think we even managed to smash a window in the venue with the bass, but the owners of the tiny venue we played were loving it all, ’cause there were people dancing on chairs, on tables, on top of each other, it was a mental scene. And I was on such a high afterwards. I said, “Look, my flight is at 2 PM in the afternoon.” And I’m saying this to her at 4 or 5 AM, “If I can find a studio, do you want to get into a studio and record?” ’Cause life can be short, it can be long, you just never know what’s around the corner. She agreed to, then I had to hassle anyone at the venue, and the promoters that had brought me to Israel, to see if they could find a studio in time, before I’d have to catch a plane. And she had never recorded at that point, either. It was literally her first proper recording. She arrived still drunk from the show and it was wicked and it was released. I then released it on my Acid Ragga label through Ninja Tune. And again, it just validates what I was saying regarding... I’d been looking for a voice like that anyway. She found me through hearing the Bug was playing in town but didn’t really know my music. But somehow, I do sort of believe that, in this crazy world, you can make things happen and you can just, by focusing your energies and focusing your attention, you can find what it is you’re looking for. And that can be good, and it can be bad, but I believe there’s ways and means to make things happen and try and locate magic around every corner.

Emma Warren

Yeah. And you know, music has a reflective surface, right? You can see things in it and you can maybe sense some kindred spirits.