Zinc

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

[applause] So, are you a bit of a scientist, or is it your diet, or what made you choose the “Zinc” name?

ZINC

I never thought you would ask that question. It’s a long, boring story. One of my friends used to... It really is a long boring story.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

We’ve got all the time in the world.

ZINC

OK. My name is Zinc, I’m a drum & bass DJ and producer. I’ve been DJing for about 15 years and producing for about 12 or 13. I started off by getting into the early drum & bass/jungle/acid house scene in London by listening to the pirate radio stations. And that was the only place you could hear that music. Back then, it was either there or going out to the acid house parties. So, I got into pirate radio. I used to spend all my money on records. I couldn’t afford a pair of decks because every time I saved up a little bit of money, there were just too many records I wanted to buy. The first time I ever played on a pair of Technics was when I got into a pirate radio station.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Which station?

ZINC

I played on one that was called Impact FM, and it was on the top floor of a tower block in Hackney in London in a squat. So they would break down the door of an empty flat and just set up a studio. And it was usually dirty and horrible, but I did pirate radio for seven years and through doing pirate I got contacted by a few promoters that asked me to come and play at their clubs. And I met somebody that had a recording studio. This was like ’91, ’92 and in those days, if you wanted to make a tune, you needed to know somebody that had a studio, or you had to have your own studio, or you had to hire a studio. There was no sort of home studio thing. I wanted to get into production and he didn’t have a car. So he said, if I drove him to this rave to give out some promos, he would let me use his studio for four pounds an hour.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

That’s a bit of a dodgy scenario right there.

ZINC

No, no. I thought it was a touch. So I did that, and I started making tracks, and a few promoters contacted me and asked me to come and play in their clubs. One of the big moments for me – and at the time I still worked full-time in an office doing filing and stuff, doing really rubbish. I worked there for years and I got one promotion in six years, it was terrible. In 1995 I did a track called “Super Sharp Shooter,” which was quite a big drum & bass track at the time. I haven’t got it here to play. And, another track I did at the time was a bootleg remix of – is this being recorded? Anyway, Fugees, “Ready or Not.”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Everyone on God’s earth knows that you did it anyway.

ZINC

[smiles and laughter] Those two tracks meant that I could leave my day job, just DJ and produce full-time. And from there I started a record label with two guys called Hype and Pascal, and the dog Snoop. We signed a deal with BMG as Ganja Kru, that was my first experience working with a major record label. So I released loads of drum & bass 12"s and albums – not solo albums, but I’ve been part of albums – up until 2000. And in 2000 I did an EP. It was all drum & bass, but there was one track that was like a breakbeat track, called “138 Trek.”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Which surprisingly was 138...

ZINC

138 BPM, with Star Trek samples. Hence the name. So I did that track. When I did it, I sent it to loads of breakbeat DJs and nobody listened to it, but the kids on the pirate radio, the UK garage kids, started playing it. And it got really big, sort of organically, and then it was signed to a bigger label, went into the charts, and that made me realize I can do stuff at other tempos. And people would listen to it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Did you got any flack from your fellow drum & bass producers?

ZINC

No, not from anybody directly. The only thing I ever heard about it was Fabio and Grooverider – sort of the godfathers of drum & bass – they were in Cardiff, and Grooverider plays house as well as drum & bass, and apparently this kid says to Grooverider, “Oh, what’s he doing playing all this shit? He should just stick to drum & bass.” And Grooverider was like, “I play house and what are you gonna do about it?” To this kid. And apparently Fabio had to stop Grooverider from beating up this kid. So the only thing I ever heard about it was good stuff. A lot of drum & bass people were really supportive and said to me, “Don’t stop making drum & bass but it’s really good what you’re doing.” So, I started doing breaks stuff then and I set up a label called Bingo. The idea for that label is that there ain’t no rules. If I want to release house or drum & bass or breaks or whatever, I do. That’s been going since 2000 and there’s good bits and bad bits about owning the label.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Thank you, that was the Wikipedia version, we’re done then. Nice one. Well, that was a good little intro, but where shall we start? Maybe give a bit of an audio example, do you got any pre-”Super Sharp Shooter” stuff with you?

ZINC

No.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Is that somewhere lost in the secret basement reels?

ZINC

The oldest thing I think I’ve got here is the Fugees bootleg.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Both the pirate scene and the bootlegging scene are two total integral parts of the culture.

ZINC

Massively. Well, the bootlegging maybe, but the pirate radio is so important for English music. And at the moment, in the last month, somebody got killed in Birmingham. There were some race riots and real tension. And they said it happened because somebody on the pirate radio had talked about some skirmish that happened. So the government is going crazy right now on pirate radio. In the last month they’ve gone mad. But I’m friends with a couple of people that own stations, they just stand firm. They do their thing and I think it’s really important, really important. Radio 1 is pretty good now. They do try and play some drum & bass, they’ve got specialist shows. Occasionally, they play stuff daytime, but for the first ten years of drum & bass you just couldn’t really hear it. It’s like grime now. The grime scene in England is not really getting represented on Radio 1, and there’s one guy on Kiss FM that plays it. But if you want to listen to grime all the time, you’ve got to listen to the pirates. Like in my car, all of the presets are pirates. When I go to other countries and flick through the radio I’m sorry for the people that live there, that have such a rubbish selection to listen to. If you come to London, there’s anything. Reggae, house, techno, drum & bass, grime, hip-hop, all on pirate stations. They’ve got very little or no agenda in regards to playlisting. They just play the music that they like, which you don’t really get on Radio 1. The guy that chooses what goes on and what doesn’t go on, whether he’s getting back-handed or whether he’s got issues with certain people, it’s never going to be just pure.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

As we said before, it’s not a total legit scenario. It’s not like you stand around Hackney and go like, “Hang on. Up there, on that floor, there could be a radio station,” or something. You need to find out about these things. How does that whole scene organize itself?

ZINC

How you would get on a pirate in London? You know, you phone a studio while they’re on air. I work quite closely with one pirate and the way they do it is, in order for a new DJ to come on, he’s got to be recommended by some DJs that are already on the station. And if he ends up doing something stupid, then all of them get thrown off. So they only recommend people that they trust.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Proper mafia business then.

ZINC

It’s not mafia, they just don’t need somebody coming on the air and swearing or talking about drugs on the air because then the government will lock them down a lot quicker.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So obviously, the FCC or whoever is in charge, does have a certain amount of tolerance towards that.

ZINC

Ofcom are the people that shut down the pirates and they’ve got a budget. And, if you go on radio and you’re swearing, talking about drugs or talking about guns, they’ll put you up the list. You become a high priority for them. If you just play music, shout-out to the milkman, then I think they don’t make you such a priority. I really like the pirate scene and I don’t like the way the government makes it so hard for someone to start a radio station. So that’s why we have to do it.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But isn’t that certain climate of paranoia that you have in England really the one which fries a lot of scenes? That you always have that struggle that certain parts of the authorities who totally go overboard if there’s a shooting or whatever and a lot of kids are frightened?

ZINC

I think in a lot of countries people overreact and try to place the blame in certain areas. Like at the moment because of this shooting, they say that all pirate radio stations earn 400,000 pounds a year in advertising, and that they’re all totally linked with the selling of drugs and guns. And they say that the parties that they advertise on the pirates, the radio stations go down there and sell drugs. This is what they’re saying and it’s just nonsense. I know the guy that runs Kool FM, which is the biggest drum & bass pirate – it’s been going 13 or 14 years – he’s not earning 400,000 pounds a year. I saw him standing outside a club two weeks ago at six in the morning handing out flyers for his party. If he was earning 400 grand for the last 14 years, he’d come down in his helicopter.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Or he’d be really dedicated.

ZINC

Either that or mad. So, the pirate scene, I think, is really important. I think it’s a shame that the government is so against it. But, I guess that’s life.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Nevertheless, obviously you have that problem there of certain parts of the media portraying whatever people care about in a certain light to cater to their readership.

ZINC

They make up lies, basically. The people that read the newspapers are going to say, “These kids earn 400 grand a year, they’re not paying tax and they’re running around with guns. We’ve got to stop it.” When it’s just not the truth. The truth is, when I was on a pirate radio, it was because I wanted to play the music that I love and nothing more.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Well, from the hardcore days onwards, especially your scene always had a really strong love relationship with the media. What were the more hilarious things that you found out about yourself?

ZINC

To be honest, I didn’t do any interviews until 2000. I think I did one interview ever. I just didn’t do interviews because I saw a few times with DJ Hype, I’d be there when he was doing an interview and I would see what he was saying and then see what they printed and it’s just nonsense.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Maybe he was just talking too fast.

ZINC

No, he does talk fast, but it’s just the thing with journalists is that they can write whatever they want and you’ve got no power. All you can do is read the article afterwards and be upset about it. You’re at their mercy, basically. When I started doing some interviews in 2000 a couple of people, I’ve read their interviews before, and I was like, “If you write shit about me, I’m going to find you.” And they were alright. If you write what we’re talking about right now, cool, and you can quote me on anything. But don’t make something up just because I’m not that interesting.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What were the topics that you were trying to steer towards to that you felt more comfortable with?

ZINC

The last time I was doing interviews was when I was doing an album called Faster, which was signed to Polydor, which was my second experience of being signed to a major.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I totally sense a whole lot of excitement in there.

ZINC

Majors are arseholes in my experience, really. Generally, what they do, they’ll sign five or six acts at the same time and they see which one goes and they write off the rest. If you’re not the one that goes, it’s just hard. All they want is massive, instant success. They’re not interested in building and working and doing stuff. So, the last time I signed an album to a major, they released it but fucked it up so much that I ended up going down there. They paid me an advance, I did the album, I ended up going down there saying, “I want it back. I’m going to release it on my own label and I want my copyright back and I’m not giving you the money back. And that’s it.” And they did. Because they’re so shit.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How many people were there with you in that discussion?

ZINC

Just me and my manager. But she’s more scary than me. I’m not scary, she’s scary. I said to the guy, “You fucked it up. You said you’re going to do this, this and this. You haven’t, you fucked everything up, you’re a bunch of idiots and that’s it.” He couldn’t really argue because it was evident. They’re a bunch of idiots. Majors, I’m not really impressed with. So that’s been my experience.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

When do they become a necessary evil?

ZINC

I think more and more they’re losing their place. It used to be the majors, you couldn’t have an independent label that was doing anything half decent. It used to be the very good press people would be working at the major labels, but now the good press people start their own press company. Not always, but a lot of the time. The majors go out of house for artwork and for PR. Why not have your own label and use the same PR and artwork that they do? So, I think majors are becoming less and less important.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Nevertheless, if you use XL as a showcase, that’s a pretty tight organization and a tight roster.

ZINC

But they’re not a major label, are they?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But they do major things.

ZINC

They’re a great example of how an independent can go from being a small independent label to being a force to be reckoned with. I think the majors look at XL and wish that they would be as good as them.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How many people do you got working with you on Bingo?

ZINC

There’s one guy full-time and then sometimes we got kids coming in doing YTS, that sort of training. We go outside for artwork and for manufacturing and for press. But I’ve got a studio that I use to make music and that other people can use.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Your roster is probably more extensive than, let’s say, XL.

ZINC

No, with Bingo I release music that I like. Generally, there’s only a couple of artists in drum & bass that I like everything they do. Usually, what I find is that I like one tune from Calibre, one tune from Pendulum, one tune from this, one tune from that. I just sign tunes on a track-track basis. The only artist I’ve signed is a girl called Jenna G, she’s just finished her first solo album.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Who’s taking care of the art direction on that one?

ZINC

What do you mean, musically or visually?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Visually.

ZINC

We’re doing it with her. I mean, the cover for the singles and the album are pictures of her. We got a photographer, we got a really good photographer to take some shots of that. We get somebody that we know is an artwork guy and we give him the photos, tell him what we want, they’re going to turn it around. It was going to be some people from Germany, but they were taking a long time, they were really busy, so we’ve just changed to different artwork people. We might see some artwork that we like on a record label and usually there’s an email adress from the person that did it, phone ’em up saying, “We want to work with you.”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Now, artwork and drum & bass, that’s a whole different universe of discussions as well.

ZINC

Yeah, a lot of the stuff that we do is pretty basic. The last release I had, there’s a grafitti kid in London, he always does this certain figure, so I found him and said, “Can you do me a record sleeve?” That’s what I try to do, trying to do different things. It’s becoming harder and harder. Vinyl sales are going down and drum & bass is one of the luckier genres because we still sell a lot of vinyl. Nevertheless, a lot of DJs now play CDs rather than records. So it makes it harder to have a big budget for artwork if you’re going to sell 20% less records than three years ago.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Does that in any way play into the decisions when you have a new singer like Jenna and the way you want to portray her? You obviously putting her assets out there.

ZINC

We work out a budget and that budget is based on what we think we’re going to sell of that record.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

OK, does sex sell a lot better in drum & bass than graphics?

ZINC

Does sex sell? I haven’t bought sex. [laughter] Jenna is quite good-looking, she’s got an interesting look and I wasn’t saying to her, “Now, take your top off and go stand in front of a camera because we’re going to sell two thousand more copies.” She was in charge of her [own artwork]. The photos are quite sexy photos, but that was her choice and I don’t know how many people we’re going to look on the front of the CD and go, “Right, I’m gonna buy that,” based on the fact that she’s standing there wearing a skimpy shirt on or something.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Probably the other side of working with Jenna is working with a real vocalist. Can you fill us in about the vocal techniques that you acquired over the years?

ZINC

When I started making music up until about the year 2000 all I did was sample vocals, like Redman, Method Man, the Fugees and this one and that one.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You never had a proper Mickey Mouse-voice phase over the years?

ZINC

There was a lot of that in hardcore but I never really went for the chipmunk thing. I liked hip-hop, I was listening to hip-hop before I was into drum & bass, so I preferred that. So either way I was using samples. So I get a capellas that had been mixed and compressed. Then, when I did this album Faster and a lot of the tracks had vocals, I went into studios and recorded the vocals with proper engineers and learned how to do it. So, when I came to this Jenna album, I recorded about half of the vocals on there.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

That track was probably one of the ones where you had a lot of discussions of how far can you take the whole thing, which probably grew out of DJs playing one hour sets and all in a row and having to go for instant gratification from the crowd.

ZINC

Yeah, the original mix of that I did in ’95 actually had a much longer intro. And then this mix I did in 2002, for which I was using the same samples and everything the same, but it had a shorter intro. It was more instant, more impact and that’s just the way drum & bass has gone. A lot of the tracks I get now have a 16-bar intro and that’s it, they’re in and it seems like it is designed for DJs to play in a club. It’s not about letting the track grow and build. It’s just about having instant impact for the dancefloor, but drum & bass mainly lives on the dancefloor.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But even within that, it’s certainly a slightly different approach than, let’s say, David Mancuso or a Paradise Garage vibe, where you just build up for ages.

ZINC

There’s some drum & bass that I get that does build, where they have like a two-minute intro and I really like that, but there’s not much like that. Like, if you want Andy C to play your record – and Andy C is the biggest drum & bass DJ – if you want him to play your record, it helps if it’s easy to mix. I am not saying he can’t mix, he’s probably technically the best mixer that I’ve ever seen DJing. But I know from personal experience that if I’ve got a track that’s got a simple arrangement and I know it’s going to come in after 32 bars, I’m more likely to play that because if I’m in that sort of one hour bang, bang, bang thing. When I play like a three-hour set, I prefer to let the music breathe a bit and the tracks go on for more than 48-bars each or whatever. But in drum & bass it’s pretty much like, one track, another track, another track, that’s the way the genre has gone.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Did you ever have the feeling that the MC who was currently on the mic while you were playing...

ZINC

...should go home? Yeah, quite often. Generally, there’s an MC in drum & bass and a lot of the time, if it’s a good MC, it really takes the music to another level. A lot of the music is mainly instrumental and a good MC can put another layer to the music. But a bad MC can really fuck things up. You know, I play a track with a full vocal in it and the geezer is chatting over the top of it, so there are two vocals at the same time, totally clashing with each other, and I’d be standing there, looking at the geezer like [mimes asking “What’s up?”]. And he doesn’t stop and just carries on and the guy will come up to me afterwards, “Great!” And I be like, “Really, bruv, you got to listen. When there’s a full vocal in a track, you got to shut up.” It seems simple, but some of them just don’t do it. Most of the drum & bass MCs are good, they really work with the music. There’s a few that I know, that I work with that know every new tune. They’ll hunt every new tune down on the internet, so that when they’re in a club MCing, they’ll know that track. They know when it’s going to break down, they know when it’s going to do this and that. But some of them are really, shockingly bad.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Why does it translate so badly from the live experience to records? It’s not that many drum & bass MCs that did a good record, right?

ZINC

No, I know what you mean. I think a lot of them try and totally recreate what they’re doing in a club. They go in a vocal booth and they literally start MCing as if they were in a club. And, when you’re in a car listening to a CD, you’re not in a room with a thousand people going nuts and all drunk. You’re in your car and it just doesn’t really translate. I’m working on some stuff I can play you, there’s this geezer called Eksman. Two years ago he won Best Newcomer MC, one year ago he won Best MC. So he was coming straight in, and I’ve been doing some stuff with him where I’m trying to sort of break the mold. It’s not him just shouting random stuff.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

“Searching for my Rizla.”

ZINC

That stuff is not too bad. Some of the drum & bass that’s been released is just rubbish, innit? You know, it doesn’t translate like you say. I don’t know what I’ve done with it. [checks his computer] OK, these are just demos that I’ve done with him. Oh, you know what? I haven’t got it here. But I’m trying to do stuff with him where it’s more like verse-chorus-verse, better constructed. The stuff I’ve got here is the sort of stuff that I’m saying is rubbish, but it’s actually designed for the dancefloor. You know, if I’m playing in a club and it has got him in it chatting, and so it is as if he was there, which is cool. And that serves its purpose, but it doesn’t translate well to vinyl to listen to outside of a club environment.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Must be kind of weird for other MCs as well, if you got that dude on a record doing exactly the same kind of thing they are trying to do at that very moment.

ZINC

Yeah, generally. I work with a guy called Dynamite a lot and Eksman, a guy called SP, there’s GQ, there’s a lot of big MCs and as soon as they hear a vocal coming in, they will shut up and they will let that vocal do its thing. With Dynamite, I work with him quite a lot, and he will learn in a track when it’s quiet, and he will just chat in that. He will know that there’s this one record that I play quite a lot and it’s just got 16 bars quiet and so he will only talk on that 16 bars. I think it works well because it’s like a different voice, so rather than listening to the same person for an hour or two it changes it a bit.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Is there any kind of crossover with all these eski kids?

ZINC

Eski kids?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You know, the grime kids.

ZINC

I didn’t know the word “eski” had managed to get that far.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

We got educated here.

ZINC

Is there any crossover with the eski kids? OK, I’ll give you an example of an eski crossover thing that I did actually bring with me. This is the eski boy, Wiley. This is a drum & bass track I did and Wiley came in and put a vocal on it for me very generously.

(music: Zinc feat. Wiley – “Wot You Call It (Zinc dubplate)” / applause)

Wiley is one of the few grime MCs that likes drum & bass. There’s a few of them that do, but quite a few are not really into it and so I don’t think they’ll collaborate that much. But I like working with them kids. I’ve done some stuff, there’s a guy called Skepta, he’s part of Roll Deep, and I’ve done some stuff with him. I’ve done some grime stuff with Ms Dynamite. I don’t know whether that will ever come out, but it’s...

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do you got it here somewhere?

ZINC

No, I don’t think so. Sorry.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What do you feel like when you hear kids like JME or Kano, who are slightly junior to us in their years and when they start complaining about kids don’t dance at raves no more and so on?

ZINC

Yeah, I know what you mean. They’re young, but I love the grime scene. I love the energy those kids have got. You know, JME is probably 23, 24, and a lot of the kids are 16, he can look at them and call them kids. The thing about the kids not dancing anymore with grime is that with drum & bass, you go there and if there’s an MC there, it’s cool. But if there is not, it’s still cool. Like, last night we were at the War Room and there was no MC, but everyone was dancing. But with grime they sort of taken it that it’s more like a show. I think So Solid kind of started it and Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, where if you go to a grime party, it’s like a concert. Everybody stands there and watches Wiley or watches Roll Deep. I don’t know if the kids are too cool to dance or whether it’s that concert kind of thing, but there’s definitely that. With drum & bass we’re kind of lucky because kids just dance all the time.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But, I mean, it’s a straight evolution from drum & bass to the extent that there was no other genre where you had so much fixation of the crowd towards the DJ. I mean, if Hype played the Rocket and you had three screens showing what he’s doing, and if you were a proper techno kid, “That’s a rock star.” And still, to this day, you see most people in a drum & bass crowd facing the DJ. What’s the special relation there?

ZINC

I’ve got no idea.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do they scare you when they look at you?

ZINC

I don’t look up, to be honest. When I’m DJing it’s like being in my bedroom mixing two tunes. I see a lot of DJs that are waving at people and I don’t really get massively nervous, but there is a sort DJ superstar thing. Pretty much anybody in that room, if they’d been practicing as long as me, they would be able to do exactly what I’m doing. And if they had done, they would have exactly the same music that I’ve got. So there is no reason that I’m going to stand here and act like I’m really cool.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Nevertheless, you would get a lot more bookings, especially since every two to four years you got some crossover kind of success tune compared to all the guys that have been practicing so hard.

ZINC

If they had been practicing, then they would be making tracks, and now and again they would have a big one. I don’t think that anything I do has got something to do with gift or talent or anything like that. I think I just practice a lot, I work hard, I made a lot of sacrifices over the years.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

As in?

ZINC

As in that Fugees, “Ready Or Not” bootleg that I didn’t do, I was working on that on Christmas Eve 1995. This was when I shared my mate’s spare room and there was like eight people were going down the pub, “Come on, Ben, let’s go down the pub.” I’m like, “No, I’m working on this tune, I’m really into it.” And they’re like, “It’s Christmas Eve.” I’m like, “I don’t care.” And they come back and they were smoking this and smoking that and they’re like, “Get involved, come on, man.” And I’m sitting there with my headphones on, so they can listen to something else while I was working on that track. I think you do make sacrifices. I think I have lost some friends I would have had because I have just locked myself in a studio away for days and days and missed my friends’ birthdays and missed this and that, just because I wanted to make tunes. That’s the sacrifice, I think, but then the upside is amazing.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

You had your odd go with the album format. How do approach that differently to just doing a club banger?

ZINC

Well, when I did an album I thought – because a lot of the music I make is specifically for the dancefloor, like it’s not designed to be listened to anywhere outside of that, really – but with an album it’s more like, what would you like listen to in your car or on your iPod or in your house? So I did some stuff that was not quite as aggressive. I did stuff at different tempos. I can play you one, a slower thing. The last album I did, the concept was that every track got faster than the one before. So it started off really slow and ended up with drum & bass. And this is one of the tracks from the start, so it’s quite a slower one.

(music: Zinc – “You Follow”)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Will you offer that on any sort of download platform as well?

ZINC

Yeah, I want to. Drum & bass DJs, I think, are pretty much the last ones to be playing MP3s. Like I play all vinyl or acetates, I don’t play any CDs. I don’t know if there’s many DJs in different scenes that are like that. I haven’t seen many lately, most people seem to be playing CDs and so it’s a transitional period that we’re going through. So the albums that I release, I’d like them to be available to download and I will make them available. But I don’t know if I would do it in a way that’s got copy protection or not, I haven’t really decided yet. The whole music industry is always on the brink of collapsing, innit? Since I can remember. It’s always going to crash next year, and here we are. I think we will look back at this time and go, “Fucking hell, do you remember when the MP3s came out and everyone thought that it was [destroying the music industry]?” I think essentially, people will always want to make music, people will always want to listen to music and people are happy to pay for that. I think those three things will develop into a way [to make it work]. You know, when there was vinyl only and then cassettes came; before there was cassettes and if you wanted to listen to somebody’s album, you had to go and buy the album. And then all of a sudden, I’d buy one album on vinyl and make five copies on cassette for my friends and it was like, “Geez, the music industry is just going to collapse.” But, it didn’t. I think it will find its feet, but in the meantime, yes, we will be making stuff available to download. Really, if I have it my way, we won’t have any sort of copy protection because it seems pointless.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Obviously, as you say, there’s still people making great music, probably even more so than ever ’cause they got more chances to get it out there. But there’s a whole lot more rubbish as well.

ZINC

Absolutely, yeah. The thing I noticed, when I used to get acetates to DJ I’d go to a place where they would cut the acetates. There was one place called Music House that everybody went to, Grooverider, Fabio, Jumpin’ Jack Frost, Randall, Ed Rush and Optical, everybody went down there.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

And still it’s the size of that room.

ZINC

Yeah, it’s like a box. There used to be a queue of people out the door, and I’d get there at one o’clock. I’d cut two plates and I’d still be there at ten o’clock waiting in line to cut my two plates. It was a shambles, but that’s how you would get new music. Ed Rush would say, “I left a DAT at Music House.” So I would go down there and cut his new track. And that was pretty much the only way I got music in order to play. And when you could burn CDs, these people started to send me CDs, so I would get one or two CDs a week from Ed Rush or this producer or that producer. And then, when the broadband, instant messenger, FTP thing happened, all of a sudden now I get like at least a hundred tracks a week. And I’ve got to listen to all of them and work out which ones I like and the ones I don’t. You know, when I made my first track, I had to drive this geezer down to a rave to give out records, so that I could go in his studio and it took me a year to get myself into that sort of situation where I could do that. Whereas now, if you know someone with a PC, you can make a tune. Which is great, because all you need is laptop and you can make a tune, which is fantastic. But the trouble with that is that all you need is a laptop and you can make a tune. There’s kids in Eastern Europe and places like Brazil, where they’ve got no money, but now they can make music. They make amazing music. But I would book studio time six weeks in advance and in that six weeks I would work out what I was going to do and make notes. The bass does this and where this does that and I’d be collecting my samples. But now you can start in five minutes on your laptop, and so I think there’s a lot more shit. I get send so much rubbish that I have to sift through. So, generally I think it’s good, but yeah, there is a lot more music now. And I think with drum & bass that’s part of the decline in record sales. It’s not necessarily from people playing CDs. Eight or nine years ago you’d get seven or eight releases a week and five were going to be good on Moving Shadow, Suburban Base, Ram, Ganja and so-and-so and there’d be two shit ones. And now there’s 20 releases, but only five of them are good. Still, only five of them are good and there are 15 rubbish ones and a lot of kids will buy a rubbish one ’cause it’s on a white label or a test press.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But even then it got to the stage where you got ten Moving Shadow releases in one box and you were like, “What?” But nevertheless, probably it’s just a clever marketing thing as having a name on a list, no matter which format you use, whether it’s a record store with folders or whether it’s an alphabetically-ordered list on your computer, the “Z” will always end up last. So, that’s one way to stick out, but since we can’t all call ourselves “AAA” and “ZZZ,” what are the other things that people will associate something good with your name or your projects?

ZINC

I think the most important thing is having your own sound.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So what’s up with the mystery of the tight old boys network?

ZINC

You know, that’s nonsense. I hear that again and again about drum & bass, it’s like a club and if you’re in, you’re in, and if you’re not, don’t bother. But I think it’s generally people that are making music that’s not that good, really. ’Cause if you look at Pendulum, they’re a drum & bass production outfit, they made a track called “Vault,” which was a drum & bass anthem. It was the biggest track in drum & bass. And they’re in. Straight away, they’re in. Grooverider didn’t phone up Jumpin’ Jack Frost, “Fuck, we better ban these boys. They’re from Australia, make sure they stay there, don’t let them come to England.” There’s none of that, it’s like, “Great, you’re in.” So that’s production-wise, if you make a good tune, you’re in. That’s it, simple as that. There’s no trying to hold anybody back that I’ve ever heard or experienced at all. With DJing, DJ Marky, for instance, I went to Brazil, saw him DJing and I thought, “Fucking hell! This geezer is amazing.” As soon as he came to London, there is only one person that I know that was a little bit like anti-him. That’s something I heard about and I think he was a little bit threatened by how good Marky was. But 99% of the people are very welcoming. Osunlade was saying there’s no community in New York with house, but in drum & bass there is. I checked my instant messenger a minute ago and Nicky Blackmarket sending me a message, you know he’s loopy, like, “What are you doing?” I talk to so many people on the phone or instant messenger within drum & bass, it is really a tight community. There is not really much beef between people. But there is definitely no boys club. If you’re in, you’re in. I don’t think so. I guess, everybody is looking out for themselves. Occasionally, there are meetings. I’ve never been to one of them, but there have been a couple of meetings, where a load of the drum & bass people get together. The last one was about trying to slow it down a bit because some people felt it got a little bit too fast. But no one made any slower tunes, so...

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I’m just having this slightly bizarre picture in my mind of the knights of the round table, “We have to go back to 168 [BPM] now.”

ZINC

That’s what they were saying. The thing that I can understand what they were saying. There was a couple of people that were kind of like the leaders and they were saying, “The music got up to 176, 178 BPM. There is no room to let the music move, it’s just too fast. If you take it to 168...”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

That’s what you got the pitch for, right?

ZINC

Absolutely. But they were saying, “If we slow it down, we can use more live elements, we can do this and that.” But I didn’t really agree with what they were saying. I think you can use live elements at 200 BPM if you want. The thing that I’m getting a little frustrated about is that all of the music now is limited and compressed really a lot and it loses some of the soul in that process. That’s what they were saying, it was just too loud and crushed.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Just back to the maximum impact thing.

ZINC

It’s just that technology over the last two or three years, it’s becoming a part of the drum & bass sound to have very loud mixes and you achieve that by using limiters on your final mix or on individual sounds within the track. I don’t really like that, I don’t use limiters on what I do. I only use compression on a live vocal that actually needs help with dynamics. I don’t like the limiting thing. I think that’s what they were getting at was that. If you look at the music on a computer screen, it’s just a fat line of just fatness. If you look at old tunes, there’s quiet bits and loud bits and I like having quiet bits, you know? If you don’t have any quiet bits, the loud bits ain’t loud, you know what I mean?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I think we hear you there. There’s another mystery of why only so little drum & bass DJs are getting away with playing anything else than just drum & bass.

ZINC

Drum & bass is very separate from other musics in tempo and on the odd occasion that I’ve played a different-tempo track within a drum & bass set, it hasn’t really worked. I played a breaks set at Fabric once, they asked me to do it, and I was like, “Fuck, I really don’t want to, but I’ll give it a go.” And I spent a week getting the music together. If I was going to play a house set tomorrow night, I’d be out of the door right now going down to the record shop, because it’s going to take me at least a day to get my head around the music that I want to be playing. I think drum & bass is so separate from everything else. I listen to all music, but I don’t follow another scene close enough to be able to play it well. If you play house, you can play breaks within house, or you could play some sort of tech house tune, a tribal this or whatever. They can kind of inter-mix. But with drum & bass, it’s like 30 or 40 BPM over there, innit?

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So, when you did “138 Trek,” I guess you must have had the odd offer or two to play more around that region.

ZINC

Yeah, I got offered more money to play that than I did drum & bass, but it just wasn’t me.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Do you got the track here as an example maybe?

ZINC

I just thought it’s not me. If you play music and you want to play it successfully, you got to be into it. I’m into it, but for a start with drum & bass DJ bookings, I don’t have any other days free. I’ve got bookings now until the end of March or April and it’s always like that, a lot of the drum & bass parties book very far in advance, so I wouldn’t have any time to do a breaks set. But if I wanted to stop doing drum & bass and do breaks, I wouldn’t do it unless I could do it [properly]. If I play a drum & bass set, Grooverider might have a few tunes that I haven’t got, Andy C might have a few tracks that I haven’t got, but pretty much I can hold my own. I’ve got enough exclusives and big tracks to be able to have a good set of music, but that takes a lot of time. I’m always talking to people, I’m always on their case to get this new tune or that new tune, I’m listening to a hundred tracks a week to work out what I like. I haven’t got time to do that with breaks, I would have to give something up. I would have to stop producing in order to be able to play breaks and to do it properly.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Did the pressure to play something new and exclusive increase or decrease with more tunes out there?

ZINC

I don’t think that changed.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

What’s the lifespan of a tune these days?

ZINC

It depends, sometimes I get sent a track a year before it’s released and I’ll be playing it for a year and then it gets released. Once it’s released, generally I won’t play it as much because chances are that the guy that was on before me played it. With drum & bass there’s a real dubplate culture. 90% of the music that I play is unreleased, on dubplate and 30 or 40% of it is unavailable to anybody else. There’s quite a lot of music that I play that nobody else has got in the world and that helps with DJ bookings. I just play this. This is a breaks thing I did. This is the first thing that’s kind of breakbeat tempo track that I did.

(music: Zinc – “138 Trek” / applause)

After I did that I did a load more stuff on the same sort of tempo.

ZINC

When I was doing breaks music, because I’m from drum & bass, it sounded like drum & bass, but slower.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

I mean, that pretty much sounded like Shut Up & Dance, in a way.

ZINC

Yeah. So this is one that really has a drum & bass vibe.

(music: Zinc – “Hello”)

So that’s a kind of breaks, drum & bass vibe but at breakbeat tempo. I still do that stuff now, but the first few I did it was cool because people like Carl Cox were playing them, and every big UK garage DJ right through to someone like Carl Cox were all playing these tracks and it was cool. I never did go to any clubs that were playing it. I just made the tracks and gave them to people, but it was cool, because with drum & bass, if I make a track in a week and then I’ll get an acetate cut, then I’ll play it on a Friday night and then I maybe tweak the mix a bit, change this or change that and then I give it to Andy C next week and then I’ll be in a club and I’ll hear him play it. I’m really in that, it’s like a bubble that I’m in, that drum & bass thing. But that was cool because there was music that I was making that was getting played in clubs. There’s life outside of drum & bass. It was like I was in a room and suddenly someone opened the door and I was like, “Fucking hell, there’s all these other rooms in the house.” It was really like that, it was a sort of wake-up call.

(music: Jenna G – “Don’t Bury Me” / applause)

So that’s more kind of chilled. Thanks.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It’s a pretty un-Ben like bassline, is it?

ZINC

Yeah, I maded that beat, that was more of a track that I just did more naturally. Some of the stuff I do is more like, “How is this gonna sound in a club? I better make it slamming.” You know, it’s more like by design. I’ve got an EP out, Beats By Design, because sometimes that’s exactly what it is. It’s designed to work on a dancefloor. But then sometimes I don’t follow that. Everything I make is always me making a track. Sometimes when I try and do more mellow stuff I end up doing really cheesy stuff. When I’m producing I generally get a lot samples together and they do exactly what I want. And when I think, “I’m gonna make a so-and-so tune,” it just doesn’t happen and it goes completely differently. And I just kind of go with that, go with the flow. But that one I just had a vibe to make a more mellow rolling track.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Yet, within a club context with tension, release and build-ups and stuff, you could definitely play that tune?

ZINC

Yeah, I know a few DJs that are playing that track in clubs, but it’s the more chilled DJs like Fabio and Bukem.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Slighty different musical background as well.

ZINC

Yeah, the guys that tend to play the more musical kind of drum & bass, the more mellow, chilled stuff. That’s kind of the angle I’ve gone for with the Jenna album. And with that particular track what I did was, that was just a demo, it wasn’t a finished mix, but there’s no harmonies, or backing vocals or anything, it was just one take her singing it. I really wanted to do that. When I work with her she does like 25 harmonies for everything and I just wanted to do one... You know, she’s got just such an amazing voice... You know, the thing you said about people working with artists in the studios and they’re having tantrums and them being this or that, I think artists in general are [a bit troubled]. Me as an artist, I’m quite unusual because I’m pretty normal, like quite balanced. I don’t really have massive depression and massive elation, I’m just getting on with it. But most of the artists I’ve worked with are really bipolar. And the thing that makes it all worth it is when they go in the box and start singing. With Jenna sometimes she’s hard to work with. Like, she was unhappy with the mixdown on one of the tracks that somebody else did so I had to get all of the parts and me and her mixed it down. We were sitting there for eight hours, it was really hard work, but at the end of it it sounded really, really good. But the bit that always brings it all together for me is when she goes in the box and starts singing. It’s just like magic. Amazing. With her I’m lucky to produce an album of her music on my label. I feel lucky to be involved in the production. You know, when I made that beat and she went into the box and started singing I was like, “Fucking hell!” It’s just like magic.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Proper bit of real-time life advice, what does Sarah feel like when you’re not coming home from the studio and you’ve been with Jenna for 12 hours?

ZINC

Oh, she knows. I don’t think she thinks that I was trying to bend her over in the studio, you know? [laughs] But I don’t know, she might have a hidden camera in there. My girlfriend is in the music industry, which is largely male. She has meetings. Next week she’s going to New York for two days and I’m going to look after the baby and I’m not worried about if she’s gonna do whatever. And she doesn’t think that I would try to get it on with Jenna.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Through having someone else working in the industry, did you develop some sort of different approach to the gender issue and the repesentation in the business as such?

ZINC

Say that again but a bit slower. [laughter]

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Through being very close with someone who’s working in the same environment, did you develop a different sensibility towards the repesentation of gender in general. I mean, how many well-known drum & bass DJs do you know who are not male?

ZINC

Not many. There’s like three or four in England and there’s a few around the world. In Nagoya in Japan there’s a girl called Asayo, one of the biggest DJs in Nagoya. Again, I don’t think girls are being discriminated against, it’s not like a boys club. If the DJ’s good, then they’re good and that’s that. It doesn’t matter what country you’re form, what color you are, what sex you are. That’s one of the things that I love about drum & bass as well, it doesn’t matter what color you are. In England the acid house scene was pretty much the first one where there was black people and white people in the same party, because before that white people go the pub and black people used to go to blues parties. The area I grew up in there was more minorities than majorities, there was more black people and Indian people than white. So I grew up with that being a normal thing. When I go into a pub and it’s all white people I feel really funny, like, “Fucking hell! I feel that this is a bit wrong.” And so that’s what I really liked about the rave scene, that it was really everybody mixed up. That is still now in drum & bass clubs, it’s very unusual to go to a club and it be all white people or all black people. And I really like that. Getting back to your actual question, “Did having a girlfriend working in the music industry change my sensibilities?” I don’t know if I’m even sure what sensibility means, but I think I’ve got a lot of respect for my girlfriend as an individual, professionally. Before she was my girlfriend we worked together and I saw her working and I admired her how she worked. I recognized there was definitely a lot of things that she could do a lot better than I could do within the music industry. I think as well as an individual I’m not like sexist, basically. The way I’ve grown up is in a very equal environment and if the A&R manager is a woman or a man, it doesn’t make any difference. I’m not like, as soon as there’s a girl in the studio I’m trying to get my leg over. I think that might answer your question.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Before we open up for some questions from the audience, I mean, with that stuff there might be a bit of potential of A&Rs from those dubious majors calling again. Over the years you have seen quite few cycles of all of your mates getting new cars from advances and...

ZINC

I’ve been there twice, Jenna has been there once, we’ve seen it before. There are majors right now [being interested]. Since we’ve got an album with full vocals in drum & bass, and Pendulum just had a big drum & bass album and got daytime radio play, and that was on an independent, so the majors want the next big drum & bass thing. And so there is some of them trying to sign Pendulum, I guess, and I know some of them are saying to us, “Can we hear some of Jenna’s stuff?” The thing is, after everything I’ve learned, if they say, “We give you 500 grand for that album,” I’m not just going to ignore it. Even though I know there are chances they would fuck it up – that’s what majors do, they offer you a load of money and they give you all this this spiel of, “We make it all work.” You know, when I signed an album to Polydor I said to my manager, “My ambition is to get my music to the most amount of people. I don’t care if I earn ten grand or a hundred grand or a million, I just want the music to be out there as much as possible.” And so my manager advised me that this is probably my best chance at that. And in the end they fucked it up. But I don’t think it was bad advice, I think it’s just life. I would say to Jenna if we get an offer from a major to take the album, I would ask Jenna what does she want to do. Because basically it’s her. I’ve got some say over it, but really, she is the artist. So I would say to her, “What do you want to do?”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But obviously, with having been there twice already, with a lot of the texts, the emails, the instant messages you get are, “I’ve heard that thing before.” It will be a lot easier to keep your calm and not getting totally excited.

ZINC

The guy who runs Bingo told me, “This A&R from whatever company wants to hear Jenna’s album,” and I told him to fuck off. But if they are serious about it, it’s hard to ignore.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

How do you recognize that they could potentially be serious about it?

ZINC

They hunt you down. They literally just won’t let go. Like a dog fucking grabbing on your heels. That’s how you know, is because they’re just relentless. The thing is with Jenna’s album it could actually go much, much further being on a major because they got international distribution and licensing. With her album we’re probably going to license it to two other territories for it to be domestically released. But if it was on a major, they could do that in 12 or 13 [countries], they could put in the contract, by contract they must release it in these territories and maybe that’s what Jenna wants. It’s one of those things, every time it happens, I think, “Here we go again and it’s gonna be the same thing.” Then you have a meeting with them and, like I said, the A&R man at Polydor was really into it, a really good person, and his musical knowledge was amazing, and he’s a really good DJ, runs one of the coolest club nights in London, so I knew he was genuine person. If you meet someone like that from a major and they’re very positive, you can get influenced by that and you tend to forget that it’s only two stages down the line there’s some idiot that’s going to be in charge and they’re not going to understand and not being really into it. They just worry about their share price and that’s all they give a shit about. It’s not just the money, the money does come into it, that majors offer, but it’s also about the potential of what they can do. And, obviously, they’ll talk it up.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I know everyone loves “Ready or Not,” the Fugees cut, it’s kind of meaningful to me and when the jungle mix came out it was a big tune in New Zealand, every DJ has it. You mentioned that you played it to the Fugees to see if they were into it, can we dig a little deeper into the whole sampling thing and ripping shit off because that’s what it’s all about, right? Take something you like, make it your own and do something with it. The original sample from “Ready or Not” came from Enya, do you know anything about the history of the lawsuit clearing the Enya sample because they never got clearance?

ZINC

They didn’t clear it. The Fugees used that sample but didn’t clear it. And Enya’s people really don’t fuck about, either they don’t allow samples or they take a 100% of the publishing. They’re really stiff. So the Fugees did it and released it so they had to pay through their nose because, otherwise they would have had to stop selling the record and the record was just so big, wasn’t it? So I thought that it was quite funny that they didn’t like the idea that they were being sampled when the whole strings out of that song [was a sample].

AUDIENCE MEMBER

That’s why I thought it was a bit strange. They have a problem with it, when they ripped it off in the first place.

ZINC

Exactly, it’s just fair enough. The thing with sampling for me is that sometimes it is blatant and it is a rip-off and I understand and I’m doing it. But I take samples from really, really weird places and I think it is kind of like carrying it on a little bit. I always use breaks in tunes and I try always to get the original break. You take a piece of the original and you can imagine the geezer in the studio – [to interviewer] you had Purdie in here before – can you imagine him in the studio somewhere and you’re taking that and sort of time-travelling into this different thing. I really like the idea of taking all these different souls and vibes being mashed together in one track. It’s weird, I know.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

That brings me to my next question, actually, it’s back to the whole thing about the music speeding up. Do you feel like it’s losing a lot of the funk that these original funk breaks had? That’s the thing about the Bingo stuff, it’s more at the natural speed of these breaks from the funk and soul records. Do you feel like all this Pendulum, all this popular stuff, do you think that this stuff is losing the funk? What jungle had for me was the polyrhythms, but now it is more like four-to-the-floor, do you feel like it’s losing the funk? What do you think about that and the future of drum & bass?

ZINC

At the moment this sort of trendy sound in drum & bass is the Pendulum sound. They get their breaks from drum machines not breaks, and Sub Focus as well, and I’m not really into that sound. The thing that got me into the music in the first place was the breaks. I’ve always just been moved by breaks at whatever tempo, whether it’s 70 BPM or 170, if there’s a break, it just makes me want to dance. That kind of stuff to me hasn’t got the same soul but it works really well in a club. With drum & bass it always [goes in cycles], one time it is sort of hip-hop samples really trendy, then it’s jazz samples. I think at the moment loads of producers that don’t have their own very strong direction are influenced by that, and me as well. I think I’m one of the people that gets influenced by that.

I’ve recently got a kick drum and a snare out and had a go at it, but it’s not really me so I didn’t pursue it. It happens in drum & bass, every few years someone comes along, like a while ago it was Optical and Ed Rush, and they bring a new plate to the table. And everybody learns a bit from it and everybody steals a bit from it, and then there’s a new flavor of the month. That’s just the way drum & bass goes. I think what I learned from making music slower than drum & bass, because it was like a revelation for me in 2000-2001 when I started doing that stuff, it was like you can have snares at slightly different volumes within the break and it sounds cool. Whereas with drum & bass you got a kick and a snare and hi-hats, you haven’t really got room for anything else. I try and use different breaks and different patterns but generally most of my stuff, even if I use a totally different drum break, it still sounds the same. So I really enjoy doing slower stuff, there’s just so much more room to use beats in their more natural way.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I really admire your work both as a producer and as a label owner. I think you’ve really done important work in the fields of drum & bass and breaks. I really like your “Flim” track on the last album with Slarta John, and I really didn’t know the “Don’t Bury Me” track with Jenna G was yours. And going back again to working with vocalists and MCs, how do you work with them? Do you start with your own beats? Do they give you an idea? Do you just jam?

ZINC

You know what? If someone is a vocalist and they say, oh can you do me a track, invariably I get the Rhodes out and do some very like pissy-Rhodes-y thing. It’s much better when I do a track and someone hears it and says, “I like that beat.” Because if I make a tune for a vocalist, I tend to kind of go off on a tangent and it doesn’t really work. It’s much better if I just do some instrumentals, like with that “Don’t Bury Me” track. That was meant to be an instrumental b-side, and Jenna heard it and she was like, “Fucking hell. Gimme that!” And I was like, “OK, cool.”

The thing with drum & bass, one of the things as a DJ you and try and do is to get specials, exclusives. So the one with Wiley on it from Roll Deep, he’s saying my name in there, so it’s an exclusive, nobody’s got that record. If you come and see me DJ, you know that I’m going to play music you won’t hear anywhere else. So Slarta John is the guy that did “Jump N Shout” for Basement Jaxx and when I was doing a track with him, I said to him, “Can you do me a special?” And he said, “Yeah, cool. Run a track and I’ll do your special.” So he did “Jump N Shout,” but he did put my name in it, and so nobody else has got it.

(music: Zinc feat. Slarta John – “Jump N Shout” / applause)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

So what do you do when you pester a vocalist to get you an exclusive?

ZINC

Every vocalist I work with I’m like, “Do me an exclusive, come on.”

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

But I mean, if you hunt someone down, because you heard his voice somewhere and you really want him to be on there, and it’s this big hassle that you have to go through, and you get the thing back and you’re like, “Oh, no...”

ZINC

Every vocalist pretty much I’ve worked with I thought, “There’s no chance that they gonna do this, but fuck it, I’ll ask ’em.” And invariably they’ve said yeah, and I’ve been really surprised and sort of flattered that they were up for doing it. I was really happy when Slarta John did me that vocal. And basically, I got an old track that I had done with a similar vibe and rebuilt the track around his vocal.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

With the Wiley thing earlier on, for example, if you just had the original a cappella of “Wot You Call It,” you might have had a better track in the end if you did it yourself. But obviously, you got the MC in there and you’re like, “It’s an exclusive, so...” How do you go about it?

ZINC

I was in the studio recording something else with Wiley and I said to him, “Do us a special.” And he was like, “Yeah, cool. Run the track.” When I get people to do specials I like them to do one of their tracks so people know it’s them but with my name in it. Then it’s like perfect. There’s quite a lot of stuff like that that I’ve got that will never come out. I’ve got another one. There’s a track that I did and I got a special of it.

(music: Zinc feat. Ms Dynamite – “Freenote”)

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

It’s not the worst thing for someone who claims to never get out of his sad and lonely studio box to have all these records with his name on it, eh?

ZINC

I just love that. I love having specials, it’s great for...

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

...for the ego.

ZINC

[laughter] It’s great for the ego, makes me feel good. I think it just helps for DJing if you’ve got tracks nobody else has got.

TORSTEN SCHMIDT

Well, give the man a hand for being [with us]. [applause]

ZINC

Thanks.