INTERVIEW: DJ FRICTION

BW: So, I see you’re playing (legendary jungle night) AWOL….

FRICTION: Yeah, it’s funny because it was AWOL and the Lazerdrome in Peckham that I got into drum and bass through. I had a phone call from Darren Jay - he said, because you’re here now, the kids recognise you that might not know anything about AWOL.
They see you playing music from that era - you know, I’ve got all that music, I can’t wait. My first CD was AWOL Live at The Ministry, the one they recorded with all the crowd noise on there.

BW: That’s going to be an old skool selection then?

FRICTION: Definitely, yeah. Micky Finn rang me up and said ‘just to confirm you know what to play’ and I just texted back a big LOL (lots of laughs). He said, you’d be surprised…. No, you’ve booked me for AWOL and I’m going to get off on playing what got me into it.

BW: Is there one tune in particular you’re looking forward to playing?

FRICTION: ‘Silver Blade’ (by Cybotron aka Dillinja)

and ‘Dark Stranger’, the Origin Unknown remix. What I’ve started doing is getting a lot of tunes like that and speeding them up and re-eq-ing them and remastering them a bit and sending them to be cut like that. You’ve got tools now where you can speed things up and it doesn’t sound all funny, you know, so I’ve been doing that with a few tunes, trying to give a little something different when I’m playing.

I spent years and years and years trying to get where I am now and it’s brilliant. It is hard work but I love it, really really pleased to be in it and doing. Shogun’s gone mad and everyone’s going crazy about Shogun. What I’m trying to do now is go on that sub-genres thing, so when I play I literally will change my set for each venue. What’s happened in drum and bass is, since those AWOL days when it was inspired by rare groove and reggae, that was what started it, now you’ve got electro inspired tunes, hip-hop inspired tunes, you’ve got deep techno inspired tunes, you’ve got all these different tunes.

You’ve got raves like One Nation and random Concept, I’ll go there and really I think the people there want me to go and just smash it. They want to turn up there with an MC like Eksman or Evil B or Skibadee, that kind of thing, and absolutely batter it. They want to rave for an hour or 90 minutes, and that’s one side of the thing. Then you’ve got the Renegade Hardware thing which is all hard stuff.

And then I’ll do a gig like when we’ve did Shogun at The End,


or when we get a new London venue, where I just roll out, which is more what I made my label to be. If I’ve got a night where I’ve got a rave like that and then something like a Renegade Hardware, I have to take two boxes and literally there won’t be more than a couple of tunes which I have to take from one box and transfer to the other. It’s almost like playing two genres, which is cool, but it’s fucking complicated.

But it’s wicked and I think it’s good for the music because I think we’ve got all this different kind of stuff like a lot of the stuff - there’s lots of stuff from a Hardware night that wouldn’t get played on Annie Mac or Zane Lowe show. You know, I’ve just done a single from Hospital with K-Tee and I know Annie Mac and Zane Lowe are on that one really big. You’ve got all these different parts to the music now.

I think it’s good, I like playing all these different sets - you’ve got be clued up and know if you want me to play deep then don’t go to see me at One Nation. If you’re going to see me at a Hardware night then don’t expect me to play a big party tear your head off set. I think that’s why drum and bass is so unique - you’ve got to know where to go.

Now what I do is a lot of uni gigs - uni crowds that haven’t been into d&b for that long, they got into it through Pendulum or now Chase & Status. They kind of want the kind of more commercial d&b sound, I’ll tear it out and then take it down a bit and that is where - a two hour set at a uni gig -I think I can play more of a set with more styles in it. Or of I go abroad somewhere, if I’m in Japan. I’m constantly thinking about what I’m doing, about what style I’m going to play.

I don’t like to label all these different genres, people call things liquid or techno, that’s the one thing I disagreed about the drum and bass awards, they had different genres. I think the d&b nights were great, a packed night and brilliant for d&b, but that’s the one thing I didn’t agree with was having ‘Best Liquid DJ', 'Best Tech DJ’ - just give it to the best DJ. I was runner up in the best DJ category, but I play techhy d&b as well, so it’s a funny thing. It can be split up but don’t label it like that.

BW: Because there have been times when the scene was dominated by just one sound…

FRICTION: I think a good example of that is the 98 period when Ed Rush & Optical and Bad Company were ruling the scene with an iron rod. Literally, they absolutely dominated it with this hard, industrial sound, it was almost like before that the hip-hop orientated sound was massive and that almost disappeared, because of this whole one sound.

But I think at that time that the scene got smaller, that’s why I think that it’s better to have all thoe different styles in it, but I don’t think we should label it. We don’t have to label it. It’s quite good to have One Nation and people know what that thing is all about, and then have Hardware, but don’t label our genre into other sub-genres, is what I think on the whole. I love going and playing different types of drum & bass, but I don’t think it should be necessarily labeled.

BW: Apart from anything else, it’s because there’s so much of it out there now.

FRICTION: I think that’s the good thing about the Pendulum explosion, and now the Chase & Status thing, because they’ve brought so many people into the music.

BW: It has to be accessible to people from the outside, that can only be healthy...

FRICTION: Yeah, because what happens now is that people get into d&b because of Pendulum or because a mate took them to a rave, and then they start going down other avenues and finding other music, and I think that is why it is such a big scene, that’s why there are so many angles to it.

BW: They (Pendulum) have managed to stay within d&b though…

FRICTION: There has been a big load of controversy about it, but they’re doing what they’re doing, and I know that to everyone now pendulum are massive and I know that to quite a few people in the scene they love to hate them, but at the end of the day you can’t get away from the fact that they have made the scene bigger. Chase & status are getting all this coverage now and they’ll do the same. They’ll bring people into the music. We’ve just got a very healthy musical thing going on in right now.

BW: In any case, when you’re booked for so many gigs it’d be grim to be playing he same set everywhere.

FRICTION: I have to have a change. I practice, still now, I mix two days a week. I go in my studio, turn the phone off, maybe take a couple of beers up there and mix tunes together for three or four hours. It’s like being a big fucking kid again. I sit there and discover mixes that work well to play out at the weekend. I have to be on top of my selection - it’s very demanding to do it as well as possible, so many styles of music, so much to listen to.

BW: It’s a kind of a courtesy to the people who go to a club to know a bit about what the club’s about…

FRICTION: Yeah, my agent thinks I’m an absolute nightmare because I want to know everything - I want to know this, that, whether they want me to play a certain style, who else is on the bill. It’s because I want to make sure I go there and do the right thing. The thing is, there are quite a few places I go to quite regularly so I know what to go there and do. It’s cool. I like it that way.

BW: Is the scene healthy worldwide at the moment?

FRICTION: Yeah, we did a show in LA, a Shogun party at a warehouse about three months ago with me, Alix (Perez) and Icicle,


and sold it out. It was so good, and just generally everything is sold out. The mainstream loves d&b, which since I’ve been into d&b and junglwe, bar the days of M Beat and General Levy, when it kind of got big for a bit, now the press loves us, the music’s cool again, it’s doing really well. I think that’s because there’s something for everyone. You might hear one tune and think ‘it’s too mental for me’ so what about this one, a D-Bridge tune.

BW: There’s always an in point for everyone

FRICTION: I can always find a d&b tune that someone will like. There might be one that they hate but there’ll be one they think is wicked.

BW: What’s happening with your label Shogun Audio?

FRICTION: It’s all very serious now. I started it off four years ago, was an emerging DJ, things were happening, so I wanted to start a record label. The first release I did was with Jay Frenzic from ATM, I’ve got the samples from ‘RType‘ (by Jo),


do you want to do it together? That was like the first release on the label, as it was getting bigger and moving along, it was just me running it and not really running it that professionally, I was paying people a bit of money to do a tune, it wasn’t really a serious business. About nine months ago K-Tee, who obviously I’ve known for years, one of my closest friends and we’ve made tunes together, came to me with an idea, that we should relaunch it with both of us being owners.

BW: It’s a very time consuming business.

FRICTION: Yeah, mental. So we relaunched the label and we have signed artists like Alix Perez

and Icicle now, it’s a real proper business now. The releases are getting really big, we’ve got the Spor thing floating about,



which is getting so much love it’s unbelievable, a track called ‘Aztec’, which has literally blown up, it’s gone crazy. Then we’ve got the Alix Perez album which will be out in September, that is going to cross over and twist people’s minds. It’s not just a mellow d&b album, if anyone thinks it’s gonna be, it’s awesome. The tunes we’ve got so far, we’ve got trip hop, ambient Zero 7 type stuff, working with loads of vocalists, and it’s just going to be a proper album. And then Icicle we’re working with, he’ll be next year when his album comes out.

BW: Tell us about Icicle…

FRICTION: He’s from Holland, he’s been bubbling around for a while now making nasty, proper kind of rollers, just really thick b-line tunes. Real old Certificate 18, Photek-style tunes - I know Photek really loves his stuff - and he’s been getting a lot of love. He’ll kind of be the next album project, and then hopefully me and K-Tee, we’ve been writing new tunes too. And we’ve got Spectrasoul, who are making some amazing music. They’ve got big so quickly, they’ve already got stuff on Metalheadz, Subtitles, Hardware, Critical, they’re really doing the rounds and making some great music so I really want to crack on with them.

BW: So we’ll be seeing some more Friction and K-Tee tunes soon?

FRICTION: We’ve just done a tune called ‘Fired up’, which is with Diane Charlemagne, which is a liquidy vocal thing which has been going off crazy, and that’s on the forthcoming Hospital album which is a compilation which I think is called the ‘Sick’ LP. I’ve got a track called ‘Set It Off’, and another called ’The Bleeps’, which are going to be two sides of a 12”.That’s a proper Shogun tune. I’ve sat down with K-Tee over the last few months and said; I want to get serious about writing tunes again, I know there are only a certain amount of hours in the day but together we can do it.

BW: You’ve been a prolific producer over the years though…

FRICTION: Yeah, but I wanted to get serious about production again, like when I was young. I’ve had a few things recently, like the ‘Back To Your roots’ remix (Johnny L), stuff like that, but I haven’t really given production my proper attention. I want to get back into it again, and hopefully write an album.

BW: You don’t feel you’ve given it your proper attention before?

FRICTION: My production career has been weird. I’ve written a good one, then I’ve written one that I wasn’t that happy with and finished it anyway because I wanted to have a new tune and I was thinking about my DJ gigs at the weekend. I am primarily a DJ but I know I can write music, I just need to give it my proper attention. I might even take some time off, a few months off from DJing, to really nail some big tunes.

BW: And there’s a Shogun mix album in the pipeline too...

FRICTION: I’ve done mix albums for other people before, the ’Next Level’ thing on Valve, the ’Drum & Bass Arena’ thing and one for Bingo, so I felt it was time I did my own one. But I want this to be my own brand, I’m just compiling it at the moment and really sorting everything out. I’ve got an hour and ten minutes to cover all these sub-genres. I’ll have the mix with SP doing the MCing on one CD, then on the second CD have the mix without it for those people who don’t want to hear an MC. Although I think SP is so good he can actually be on a mix CD without annoying people! He knows the right point to come in, and he’s got amazing lyrics.

BW: Is it a kind of ‘Best of Shogun Audio‘?

FRICTION: No, it will have Shogun tunes on there but it won’t just be Shogun tunes. I want it to really represent what I play, to be a real blend of different things, a journey CD.