Touching Bass: Context

Context has been popping in and out of my headphones with his arresting take on garage and grimy hits since one of my good friends introduced me back in uni. The Norwich-born wordsmith has come a long way since answering calls at some desolate call centre to become good pals with The Streets’ Mike Skinner and produce one of my fave videos – “Drowning” – while submerged under 10 ft. of water. He’s now preparing Stealing My Older Brother’s Tapes, a sentimental dive into the rave jams of the early 90s coated in his own modern day inklings. Peep this week’s themed Touching Bass, lovingly stringed together by Tom V, and ready yourself for the EP release on March 31st.

Noisey: Where are you at the moment and what are you up to?

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Context: I just got back from the local greasy spoon and there’s a Frasier re-run on the telly. Its a tough life.

Could be a lot worse mate. You’ve got to know the one and only Mike Skinner well over the last few years since you hooked up on the remix of “Small Town Lad Sentiments”. Is he a geezer?

He was safe when we linked up in Norwich to shoot the video. He seemed really enthusiastic about my stuff which was wicked. It was quite mad actually. We were shooting this one scene and some lads in some Max Power’d out motor pulled up at a red light blasting “Don’t Mug Yourself” and Mike kinda peered over but they were too busy chanting the hook to turn and see who was standing directly next to them.

I remember being in uni and listening to “Drowning” for the first time. I was tripped out by the quality of the video and wondered what it was like to spend so many hours under water?

It was terrifying. The video was shot 30ft underwater, and I only had 15 minutes to learn how to scuba dive before we started filming! I was actually tied to the bottom of the tank, had weights in my pockets and had two scuba divers giving me oxygen between takes. We were in the tank for about 10 hours and underwater for an hour at a time. Genuinely frightening because if you freak out you are too deep underwater to swim to the top in one breath – but the results were definitely worth it.

What’s been your favourite video to make?

“Drowning” will stay with me my whole life. It was incredible. I loved shooting “Off With Their Heads” actually. It was the first proper video I made entirely on my own (filmed, directed, edited, graded) and I got to meet loads of people who up until that time I’d only spoken to online, like Ed (Sheeran).

“Listening To Burial” is one of my favourites from you. Did you ever have any doubts about who Burial was? Was he Four Tet?

Thanks man. Yeah like everyone else I never knew who he was. I actually met Kode9 recently and showed him the track – no idea if he mentioned it to Burial or not! I didn’t really believe the Four Tet thing; it did make sense though I suppose. The bloke is such a trip; I remember reading a Guardian piece with him years back where he talks about the romanticism of some foregone era of suburban warehouse raves and the poetic bleakness of nightbuses. Wicked reading.

Burial will forever be my fave anonymous fellow. But keeping things moving, you’re preparing to release your next project, what’s the story behind the title?

It’s called Stealing My Older Brother’s Tapes, and each track on it is influenced by tracks I would hear coming from my older brother’s room growing up. So, the tunes are all modern takes on rave tracks which were released between around 1991 and 1995. So there’s “The System” which is up online now which flips an old Prodigy B-side, and the EP will have three more tunes in that vein.

What’s the best tape you nabbed?

2Pac’s Thug Life. I took it from my cousin’s room when he was about 18 and I was 10.

RIP Pac. I also heard that you went to one of the red brick unis. How was your uni experience? Mine was so so.

Well I went to Cambridge. I guess that’s Russell Group as opposed to Red Brick. But yeah, honestly I loved it. Obviously the place is full of prats of course but there are some safe people there and just experiencing that side of British culture is really special. Plus when I went there I had been working in a call centre for a year before that so I think I appreciated the way it protects you from reality.

Cool. So when you’re not making music, how do you keep yourself occupied?

Comedowns seem to take up a disproportionate amount of my weeks. Plus I’m actually still at uni now doing a PhD in music industry economics so that takes up a decent amount of time.

Oh right, I never knew! And finally, you’ve put together this awesome mix for us. Can you talk us through a couple of your choices?

I wanted to theme the mix. I’ve called it ‘We Used to Turn the Clocks Round’. It’s basically a homage to the period when I first discovered drum and bass, and every weekend me and my mates would go out raving and when we got back we’d turn all the clocks round in my flat to lose track of time. Some lush deep tracks on there like “Tomorrow” by Seba, and then just nutty tunes I heard out in raves a few years back. It was a really special time in my life and in drum and bass music generally.