Clubs

Drum ’n’ bass producer and Soul:R Records boss Marcus Intalex is in top gear: ‘I recently DJed at a sunny rave extravaganza in Barcelona. The DJ before me was so ridiculously intense I made up my mind: Right, I’m gonna take you somewhere you’ve never been before, take you right into the depths.’ Fighting fire with a more subtle fire? ‘It’s just that so many DJs only want to rinse the fuck out of the place! One hard, fast track was enough, but after an hour it starts to cancel itself out.’

What’s going on exactly? Why is there such an emphasis on making a heavy impact on the part of some drum ‘n’ bass DJs, intent on bludgeoning the audience into submission?
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Without being flippant, two words come to mind when gauging the scene: climate and change. The culture of instant gratification via downloads, the egocentricity of the MySpace crowd, seismic shifts in the way the music is perceived by producers, promoters and punters alike (is it ‘liquid? Is it ‘jump up’? Is three decks enough? Has everyone just disappeared outside to have a cig?)… it all adds up to something potentially volatile and unstable.

Yet at the core the music is as impervious to criticism as ever, which usually chugs along the familiar lines of ‘It’s too formulaic/got none of the mystery of old jungle.’ Drum ‘n’ bass just will not roll over and die. How dare it!

Fabric Live on Friday has been rammed solid now for years, as a cursory glance at Time Out’s Nightlife section will explain: week after week of jaw-dropping line-ups that, to those fans displaced in, say, Greenland or on oil rigs must be utter torture. Shaun Roberts, Fabric Live promoter and compilation A&R boss summarises: ‘A lot of people are scared of drum ’n’ bass; it’s big, heavy and fast. But even when there are multiple drum ‘n’ bass nights on at the same time in London I’ll speak to other promoters who will also have had to turn people away at the door. It’s enormous.’

And how does Fabric contain the uncontainable considering its multifarious approach to various nights and styles? ‘There’s room for everything, even when you had kids getting back into rock bands or into new rave and digging back through the crates, it’s all cyclical,’ says Roberts. ‘Drum ‘n’ bass works in all rooms of the club. Overall we push a relevance in the programming, that people can stand in a central point of the club and find something interesting to gravitate towards.’

That also includes some drum ‘n’ bass which isn’t so locked into impact mode. Like Marcus. ‘We loved what he brought to the club, his production, where he was at, plus we’d heard about his Soul:R nights in Manchester. With Marcus there’s always so much good material.’

Yet despite this, Marcus himself has sometimes voiced grave concerns about the scene in the past, some of which fuelled this year’s barbed, occasionally brittle and brilliant ‘11th Hour’ album. ‘I found there were less and less people to look up to,’ he says. ‘I’m a fan first and foremost. But recently everything changed.’

There’s a new vitality (and new label collaboration in the works), a palpable excitement as both Intalex and Roberts speak which hums through Intalex’s new Fabric Live 35 CD mix, an assured, swaggering snapshot of drum ‘n’ bass at its most unpredictable and artistic, slow burning as it does with the lowslung grit of Lynx, headturners Zero T and Alix Perez, Soul:R collaborator Calibre, the fractured, renegade sound of Breakage and (a recently very prolific) Jonny L. Some downtempo was also apparently considered, having crept into both his and Calibre’s repertoire, but Marcus was determined to keep the selection 100% drum ‘n’ bass. Flawless.

‘I wanted to present the true Marcus Intalex, and not just for drum ‘n’ bass people, some of whom may judge it on the noisy, ravey end of it. I mean, drum ‘n’ bass’s a fast music, you don’t need to make it sound any faster! I wanted to set the record straight, to impress.’ Job done.

‘Fabric Live 35: Marcus Intalex’ is out on Monday 20. Marcus Intalex DJs at Fabric Live presents True Playaz at Fabric on Friday 24.