The Sect INTERVIEW

Questions By: Kritical Kay

EverydayJunglist: So first off, one cant but help notice the name "the sect", a group in regards to the name, tell us a little about who the sect is, and how you came about the name?

The Sect: The Sect is made up of Blade and Virtua, aka Dave and Ben. The name came about when we had to think up a name for our first release on DJ Red’s ‘Distance Recordings’. He wanted something a little more memorable than just our DJ names, so after a lot of thought and some really shocking suggestions, we decided on ‘The Sect’. We were after something a little mysterious and slightly dark and that seemed to fit the bill...

EverydayJunglist: How long have you been involved in music? What was the "jump off" point for you that decided this was what you were going to do as a collective?

Sect: We’ve been involved in music in various ways for pretty much as long as we can remember. We started making Drum & Bass together in 1998/9. We were introduced through mutual friends at a rave and the next time we met, we wrote a tune together. It was quickly apparent that we had the same outlook and musical aspirations and more importantly, writing tracks together was fun. Ben finished uni a year before I did and moved down to Southampton where I was studying, so we could write as many tunes as possible. We knew making D&B was what we wanted to do and I think by the time I graduated we’d both decided that we’d invested too much time and effort to ever give up.

EverydayJunglist: What members play what roles as being apart of,"the sect"?

Sect: Broadly speaking, we make all of the tunes together. Once a month or so we meet up in Bristol and write a track, often with elements that we’ve done separately at home beforehand. As we live in different cities, we also make tracks by sending parts across aim. Ben is the main engineer and spends most of the time in the hot seat when we’re in the studio together, but it’s a collaborative effort and we both get to have our input on how the tunes shape up. It’s worked out well so far anyway! Both of us mix tunes down and this is usually done separately at a later date. Dave takes care of the DJing. Ultimately it’s a team effort and we make all the decisions together. Luckily, most of the time we agree…

EverydayJunglist: What are your influences in the DnB Realm, and what direction are you hoping to see DnB move into with in the next couple of years?

Sect: We’ve been influenced by far too many tunes and artists over the years to list them all here – but off the top of our heads the major stand out influences would probably be Konflict and Stakka & Skynet. Their tunes were full of energy and futuristic, sci-fi soundscapes that captured our imaginations. And every track had something in that made you think ‘I wish I’d thought of that…’

With regards to the direction we’d like to see Drum & Bass move in, that’s a little more difficult… It’s not really up to anyone to impose their views and try and decide what should happen in this music and we don’t want to constrain ourselves to a rigid approach. For us, part of the charm and excitement of D&B comes from suddenly hearing something totally new and unexpected - there shouldn’t be any rules. It’s better to ensure that you always have fun and enthusiasm for what you’re doing and so yeah, I guess we’ll just see what happens…

EverydayJunglist: Do you have influences outside of the DnB world?

Sect: We’re both fans of music across many genres – again to try and list all our influences would be futile… Elements of techno, hip hop, rock and anything with cool beats or bleeps interests us. Both of us were really into The Prodigy and The Experience LP was definitely a major influence on us in our formative years. Particular favourites at the moment are Hybrid (Ben) and Burial (Dave), but basically anything that can grab you or convey emotion is a winner.

EverydayJunglist: Tell us about some of your releases, and how you came to formulate some of your unique sounds?

Sect: We both have the same favourite releases – Voices is cool because it’s got all the elements that we try to put into a The Sect tune, but at the same time we got to do something a bit musical and different from normal and it seemed to work. And of course The Sect EP on Offkey will always have a special place in our hearts, because the tunes on there were the first of ours to really get peoples’ attention and give us a bit of recognition.

As for formulating the sounds, well there are no set rules or processes we go through – and we really do take samples from anywhere. A good example is the little techy loop that runs through the whole of Voices, which was made from a couple of cow noises. Our sounds are more often than not a product of a weird sense of humour and time spent messing around with LFOs and VST FX.

EverydayJunglist: What labels are you currently working with?

Sect: At the time of writing in March ’10, we’ve just had a backlog of tunes released on: KSS Black, Utopia Music, Surround Sound, TDP and Perkussiv. We’ve got tracks coming on C4C Ltd, Position Chrome, Subsistenz, Freak and probably some others that we’ve forgotten (sorry)!

EverydayJunglist: When it comes to making a tune, what steps do you take in creating that next tech monster?

Sect: We both make sounds and loops at home and collect samples in advance of meeting up – as studio time together is generally limited to one weekend a month, this saves a lot of time and helps to get some ideas going from the off. When we’re here in the studio we decide what sort of a tune we want to make (i.e. hard/techy/dark/whatever) and then just see what happens. Normally we’ll start with some beats and build everything up from there. We’ve worked together for so long now that we pretty much know the best way to each get our ideas across and end up with something we’re both happy with. As long as making tunes remains fun and we keep learning, we’re pretty much on course. We also try to make something different from other tunes we’ve done before, otherwise it’d get boring very quickly.

EverydayJunglist: What artists do you work with, in and out of the studio? For the remix of "Destroyed", tell us how it felt to do a remix, and have "Caesium 137" remixed remix done by the one and only "Audio"?

Sect: We’ve worked with a number of artists in the studio here – for example Raiden, Audio and Cooh have all passed through. We’ve also worked on tracks remotely, swapping parts for tunes via AIM with artists such as Axiom, Pyro, Lethal and Proket.

The Destroyed remix wasn’t actually the first remix we’d done, but it was by far the most painful... We completed a version which needed some minor changes and we’d spoken to Audio and Dylan about what had to be done. Unfortunately the studio PC then had a major meltdown, killing a lot of our samples and pretty much all of our projects. We ended up spending an entire weekend trying to recreate the ‘finished’ remix from scratch, without a lot of the samples we’d used and just some of the arrangement (minus the sounds) for reference. Aside from that, it was a challenge anyway as it was by far the biggest remix we’d done at the time. It’s good fun but daunting to try and put your own spin on such a big track, because you really want to do it justice.

To have Caesium 137 remixed by Audio was wicked. He’s one of our closest friends in the scene and he’d already done an amazing job remixing Axon. It’s great to hear other artists’ take on your tunes and the Caesium remix is no exception. It’s always exciting to listen to what the remixer has changed and to see how they’ve developed your original ideas.

EverydayJunglist: Hardware vs Software, I'm sure some of the people are dying to know what you got in that studio behind your sound,(i know i am), could you give us a run down on some of the hardware and software you currently using?

Sect:  Our set up is pretty simple really. It’s all software based, running on a fairly powerful, but wildly temperamental PC. The only piece of hardware we use is an Oxygen 8 midi keyboard. Software-wise, we’re running Cubase SX3, with Kontakt 2 and quite a few VST instruments and FX. Our most frequently used VSTIs are probably Massive, Z3ta and FM8. We use a lot of FX, but our favourites are Arts Acoustic Reverb, Dubstation, Quadrafuzz distortion, the Sonalksis EQs and filters and the Ohmforce plug-ins - all of which get used in the majority of our tracks. Everything else is just used sparingly when the need arises (or more likely when we remember we’ve got them installed).

EverydayJunglist: More and more people seem to be turning ear from DnB to the Dubstep world, do you have a view on the "brotherhood" of the 2 genres?

Sect: Well we can certainly see the link between the two scenes and understand why a lot of D&B artists make dubstep. Having said that, it’s not really our thing and as neither of us is particularly interested in making or listening to it, we’re probably not best qualified to talk about it either. I (Dave) really like Burial’s music, but more for the atmosphere and emotion he creates than for the basslines. I’m not even sure if that counts as dubstep…

EverydayJunglist: What is the local scene like in your area like, does the sound match the location?

Sect: We live in fairly major cities, so the scene in both locations is decent. Bristol (Dave) has a healthy scene with lots of events across all sub-genres of Drum & Bass, albeit weighted towards the more minimal and jump up sounds. I suppose the laid-back nature of the place is matched by the music to some extent, although it does have some sick nights for the darker, techier heads, with Agro being the primary example.

London (Ben) doesn’t really need any explanation - suffice it to say that the busy and hectic nature of the city matches the broad spectrum of music on offer. We’re both lucky that we live in cities with lots of variety, where we can hear the music we love. We don’t go to that many D&B nights anymore unless we’re on the bill though…

EverydayJunglist: Do you have any artists that you currently have an eye on?

Sect: Although not typical of the sound we’re associated with, keep an eye on Bristol-based Mute and Mako, who are good friends of ours. We’ve just remixed their track ‘Connexion’ for Mako’s Utopia Music imprint and they’re developing their own, unique sound. The rate they write tunes at is scary too and they’re getting a lot of support from Break, Squire, Bailey, Survival, etc… Expect them to blow up soon.

EverydayJunglist: Current projects? What can we expect to see in the coming months ahead?

Sect: We’re pretty busy right now, with a number of remix projects and collaborations on the go, plus a few signed tracks that are about to get a full release. Our 12” on Position Chrome (‘Exhibit A’/’Everything Is Waves’) should be next, as well as ‘Oxidize’ on Venom Inc, an EP including the ‘Destroyed’ and ‘Axon’ remixes on Freak, ‘Slimer’ for Cause 4 Concern and our collab with Cooh (‘Danger Nation’) on PRSPCT. We’re also in the middle of collabs with Pyro and Axiom and have a whole host of others in the pipeline. Hopefully 2010 will also see the launch of our own label, which we’ve been planning for a while. We feel we’re finally in a position to realise that, so fingers crossed

EverydayJunglist: Radio, Podcast, Mixes, Content Content Content, where can we find some of your works, are you currently doing any live feeds?

Sect: Live feeds aren’t something that we’ve really looked at, but we recently had the opportunity to be part of the live video broadcast for the C4C show on Drum & Bass Arena TV and that was a lot of fun. We do regular mixes that can be found online and intend to do more in the coming months. We’re also thinking of doing our own podcast, but haven’t decided what the format will be yet, as we’d like to do something a bit more interesting than just a mix of our latest tunes…

EverydayJunglist: Top track you find yourself playing more and more?

Sect: To be honest, there are too many great tracks right now to single just one out, so have a top ten instead

Raiden - Alpha Centauri
The Sect - Deep Freeze
Replicator - Kemikal (Dean Rodell Remix)
Current Value - Circuit
The Sect - Entheogen
Cause 4 Concern - Bedlam
Current Value & Nanotek - Code of Chaos
Raiden - M82 (Spirit Remix)
The Sect - Mind As Machine
Current Value - This World

EverydayJunglist:Any advice for some of the up and coming producers and DJs out there?

Sect: Be polite to people you want to help you, have patience and make sure you’re really happy with your tracks before you send them out to DJs and record labels. Ultimately, be prepared to put in the time in the studio – it’s amazing how many people expect to achieve immediate success. If you enjoy it, write as much as possible, learn your equipment and try and do something a bit different that will make you stand out from the crowd. One of the fundamental elements of Drum & Bass that we enjoy is the fact that it’s constantly evolving and surprising us.

EverydayJunglist: Shout outs, or last words for the masses?

Sect: Massive thanks to all the labels and artists we work with and to the people who support us at gigs and buy our tracks. It means a lot, big ups…

The Sect audio clips, tour dates, merchandise and more info:
www.myspace.com/thesectdnb
http://www.facebook.com/TheSect