Heard It Here First

Mere meters from J:Kenzo decimating the Pyramid Stage at Infrasound, the roar of laughter punctuates a conversation discussing the past and future of drum & bass. We were fortunate enough to sit down with soulful drum & bass pioneer BCee.

His music and his work with his label Spearhead Records laid the foundation for drum & bass over the past twenty years. His discography and legacy can only be bested by his larger-than-life personality, his passion tangible with every word he speaks. Twenty years in, he’s still at his best as the genre ascends to new heights in the zeitgeist of dance music.

The lead single of his upcoming album These Are The Days just dropped today and it’s a hell of a release. “Gamble ft. Javeon & Abi Flynn” is a soulful number about taking risks in our love lives. BCee masterfully blends crisp, tight drum & bass production with pop-influenced vocals, making this a perfect lead single for his eighth LP, set to drop October 11th.

To celebrate the release of “Gamble”, we chatted with the legendary artist shortly before his Infrasound set. Check out our interview with BCee below.

Show BCee Support On Socials: Instagram  | Spotify | Youtube

HIHF: Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us! You haven’t played your set yet, but what’s the energy here at Infrasound been like since you got on-site?

BCee: Oh man, I love this place so far. I’ve played a lot of festivals now, and the people here clearly love the music and underground music. One of the things that’s really changed with club culture, when I was first getting into drum & bass, was if you wanted to go to a club in the UK, you had to wear a shirt and trousers, but a drum & bass night, you went how you went, and I love that because drum & bass has always been underground. It’s changed a little now, obviously, but I love the vibe here. It feels like people are here because they love the music, they love the community, and we’re gonna have a vibe.

HIHF: Absolutely. You mentioned things have changed in drum & bass. A lot is being made about drum & bass having another moment here in the States. Have you noticed any shift in how your music is being perceived here?

BCee: I do this as a business every day. I write music, and that’s my passion. I run my label with more of a business hat on. The artist in me comes over here and DJs and gets asked for tracks of mine in my sets that I’ve forgotten I’ve even written. I love that people know the depths of stuff I’ve written over the last 20 years. My business brain sees that there’s been a real shift in the UK for drum & bass artists, kinda to do with Brexit, also to do with the European scene and people like Liquicity growing and having a lot more European drum & bass artists, it’s been a lot of work. You’d go somewhere in Europe every weekend, but that’s kinda gone now; you can’t really do that anymore.

What’s happened is loads of my peers and other drum & bass artists have gone, “We’re gonna get US visas.” My first tour over here there were so many bookings because not a lot of UK artists had visas, now everyone’s got a visa, and as an artist, there have been less places to play. The good thing is for the scene here is that you now have the pick of artists, and I think that’s a good thing because it means you don’t have the same four artists coming through all the time, that can afford a visa. You’ve got a nice, wide selection across the spectrum of the scene and can get some real quality. I will refrain comment about posts about people saving it, but I think we all know what we mean.

HIHF: Didn’t really need saving, did it?

BCee: When I advertised this tour, I put my tour dates up and wrote, “America, I’m coming to save you.” Thankfully, most people thought it was funny.

HIHF: It’s a testament to the genre that a lot of promoters over here are now booking the legends and giving them their flowers. There’s a huge growing appreciation for the underground over here.

BCee: The thing you have over here we used to have in the UK are promoters with small crews of people who all have day jobs, and they’re pooling their money together knowing full well they may perhaps break even on a show, but they really, really love the music and wanna make something happen. Sometimes I almost feel guilty to get paid for it, so you wanna give your best for them to get their money’s worth. It makes it SUCH a great show because any day of the week, I’d rather have fifty-to-a hundred people in a room that are just loving every bit of the music than 10,000 people where nobody cares what you played.

HIHF: You’ve been in the game for a long time. You’ve inspired so many artists and worked with some of the most talented artists in the industry. Who are some of your favorite artists you’ve worked with, and who are your favorites you’ve had on the label?

BCee: My favorite artist I’ve worked with is, without a doubt, Nu:Tone. We haven’t released a track together as BCee and Nu:Tone, but Dan Gresham as Dan Gresham rather than Nu:Tone is really the other half of BCee. I do all of my mixdowns at his studio, and he’s always one step ahead of me. Whenever I’ve got a sample that might be from something big, he has the ability to just listen to it once and not just play the chords, but before he even presses the keyboard, find a plugin and move the settings on it so the chords sound like the sample. Then we can just tweak it enough to be its own sample. Over the years, if I put something in a track that sounds terrible, he’ll say, “What do you think about this?” He’s still such a pro. I know that means, “Take this out.” The tracks are still the same tracks I turn up at his studio with. He’s been the extra ear for me for A&R, and helped me keep pushing my technical skills, and still showing me up by going one step beyond.

Villem, as well. We’ve done The Vanguard Project together. We’ve written a lot of stuff together. We haven’t been as active since the pandemic because both of our roles in our family lives have changed so much during that time. We used to get together every single Tuesday. That’s just totally impractical now. We did actually release three or four things last year, and The Vanguard Project by no means is stopped. We just need to carve out some time to make it happen.

Vocalist-wise, I love working with SOLAH. She’s flipping unbelievable, such a good writer. We’ve done maybe like nine or ten tracks together now. I have to quite obviously put Charlotte Haining at the top of the list of vocalists. Me and Charlotte have known each other quite a bit of years now. Out of all the vocalists I’ve worked with, Charlotte is the person who I’ve lyrically written nearly everything we’ve done together as well. I come up with what I call a “brain dump” of a story from my past or an idea I’ve got for a track. Then, she’ll help put that into something a wider audience can connect with. Really, she gave me the confidence to start writing as well. I’ve written more and more with other people since then. Charlotte helped me to get that confidence.

HIHF: On the topic of vocalists, on your upcoming record, you made a point to work with a bunch of different vocalists. What inspired that idea?

BCee: I didn’t know if I was going to be able to pull it off. So, I thought, I’m just going to keep writing until I’ve got at least 10-12 tracks where I feel like these capture what I wanted to go for. I didn’t know if I was going to get enough vocalists to do that. There are about 6 more tracks that have got samples in that aren’t on the album but are fully finished. I’m gonna do another bunch, and that’ll be another project. That’ll be the plan if I can pull off Plan A. I really wanted to write 12 tracks with 12 different vocalists all based around the ideas of “The time is now. One life.” So many things in there, in my mind. Everything you’ve done in the past connects you to who you are now. I could talk about it for ages. Everybody got on board with that, really captured it. I ended up with 13 tracks. The most difficult thing about this project is that there are 13 vocalists involved. When you do a track with samples, I write the track. I make all the decisions on the track. Boom, done, that’s it. When you got 13 people who then have to approve the mix, they wanna make a change, and we have to go back in and have management approve. And all these artists I work with have their own successful careers and projects, so then we have to fit in the release date among the timetables of 13 other artists. The headache of this has been the admin at the end. Writing the tracks felt like a different kind of issue. I wasn’t sure it would all come together. I’m really, really proud of this project, more so than anything else I’ve put out.

HIHF: What was the writing process like for this record? Did you actually get to work with any of these vocalists in-studio?

BCee: The one with Tempza was recorded in my studio. Degs came to the studio. I think all the others were remote. The track that has become the title track, “These Are The Days,” was written for SOLAH to write to. She got stuck with it, so I asked Zara Kershaw to have a go. SOLAH then said,”I wrote over this track with my friend Abby. Here’s the vocal.” And that vocal was really good, but I already had a vocal for the track! So that track is now called “Colors,” so then I wrote an entirely new track from scratch around the vocal for “Colors.” It was such a good song I had to make it work. There’s a couple similar on the album. It was written for something else, and I had to rework it. I love writing songs that are deep and emotional but also accessible for playing in a club where people can get their heads down and vibe out to them. Physically and emotionally. To me, that’s what gives tracks longevity. You can go for the instant gratification, a quick hit on Spotify, get half a million streams, and nobody ever listens to the track again. I’d like that to happen, don’t get me wrong. I always tried to write and sign tracks for the label with something about it that’s lasting. The label’s 20 years old now, in January, and there are tracks from the first few years that people come up to me and go, “That tune, that tune.” Mission accomplished. I was listening to a Daft Punk track from 1994 recently and realized it was 30 years old. 30 years before that was 1964. When you listen to tracks in 1994 from 1964, the tracks sounded old. Now, you listen to tracks from 30 years ago still sounds like it could’ve been made last week. The technology isn’t making anything clearer. It’s easier to make stuff that doesn’t date anymore. How much cleaner can a mixdown get?

HIHF: What is it about DJing that you love?

BCee: It goes back to the same I used to do when I was 10 years old. What I love is finding music that somebody might not have heard and going, “You need to hear this! Listen to this!” And I still love that now. I love finding ones that only have 500 or so, I love that. I’ve got an idea for an album. A friend of mine has a playlist that has several thousand tracks, some Arabic music, some downtempo, everything. Some of the artists only have 50 monthly listeners, and the music is so good. I thought, “What if I contacted 12 of these artists and ask if I can make drum & bass out of their tracks?” I want to give them a boost and get this music that’s sick and put my spin on it. I might do that next.

HIHF: Last and most important question, how do you like your coffee?

BCee: Oat milk mocha.

HIHF: My man! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me.

Be sure to keep an ear out for BCee’s upcoming album These Are The Days out October 11th. For now, enjoy his brand new single “Gamble” featuring Javeon and Abi Flynn, out now on Spearhead records.

Follow the HIHF team on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to keep up with news, fresh tunes, merch giveaways, exclusive mixes, interviews, and so much more!