25/04/11
Where are you at the moment Will?
I’m in my house and just about to set off for the tour bus, which is round the corner from my house, luckily, then we’re off to Hatfield tonight for another leg of the tour.
Is it a live performance tonight, or a DJ set?
Yeah, it’s a live performance; we’re in the middle of the first live tour we’ve done and we’ve just been up and down the country and in and out of Europe yesterday and we had one day off yesterday, now we’re back on a 7 day stint of gigs in a row, so it’s pretty bonkers, but yeah, bit excited as well…
And how have your live performances been going?
Incredible! Better than expected really - everything’s been sold out and it’s been absolute carnage in the clubs. The response has been great and better than expected really, so all good. We’ve got a big team around us, like, we’ve got a team of fourteen people on the tour bus traveling around with us and we’ve been really fortunate to get some of the top guys in the business to help; we’ve got an incredible drummer called Andy James in to help, who’s renowned as one of the best in the business…
Is he the guy in the middle of the photo?
No, he’s our MC – he’s the front guy on the mic hyping up the crowd – MC Rage is his name and he’s sort of part of the band now, but yeah, Andy’s not in any of those pics.
Is nice going round with all these people, having a big team to work with?
It’s brilliant, yeah, I mean having fourteen lads on the tour bus can get a bit smelly at times – filthy is the word I’m looking for – but yeah, it’s brilliant, everyone’s great. Some of the sound guys and roadies that are with us have done everything from Eminem to The Beatles and stuff like that, so it’s inspiring. It’s got a real live feeling, the tour has, so we’re learning loads from how different it is from the world of DJing.
You said the experience is inspiring and you previously found inspiration from your clubbing days – I’m assuming your schedule means you don’t get to go clubbing much anymore? Where do you get your inspiration from now?
Yeah, we’re very rarely ever in a club actually dancing now – I think the last time I danced was probably about two years ago, but I guess still we draw inspiration from the fact we’re still at these clubs doing the nights and seeing what works and what people are responding to as a crowd. That really is our inspiration for sitting down in the studio again and writing new music and being lucky enough to write new music then test it out in front of people; it really gives you ideas on what’s working and what doesn’t. Really just being right out there day-in, day-out amongst these ravers and clubbers and mad people is what does it.
Looking back a little bit, how did you and Chase first come together?
Er, we came together just through mutual friends and a common love of dance music, of going out raving and going to clubs before we were eighteen. We were both kinda bedroom DJs, you know, we both had decks set up and thought we were amazing DJs and avid vinyl collectors! We’d start meeting up through some friends and making mixtapes, then we both ended up in Manchester, by coincidence – we both went up there for uni to study and stuff, which kind of fell through, but we both stayed in Manchester because it’s such a great city; it’s so easy to live up there and such a great vibe that we decided to try and open up a studio and just learn how to write music. We spent the next five years just buried writing music and stuff and learnt our trade a bit and got more and more in to the scene… and here we are!
What’s the dynamic like between you? How do you go about writing together?
It varies really, I mean, it can be just us two literally sitting in the studio just messing around and thinking, ‘yeah, that sounds cool’, or we can go off on an angle and start something together, or someone will have started something and then get stuck and leave it, only for the other person to say, ‘oh, that’s pretty cool – let me try something...’ and they have their own angle, so something gets developed like that. It really sort of varies – it can be any way; we really don’t have a formula to the way we work.
There are minimal Drum ‘n’ Bass acts that have released full length LPs, so do you think you’ve really outgrown the genre in that way?
I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to say we’ve outgrown it, because it’s almost kind of arrogant to say that, but I think it’ll always be a massive part of what we do and an inspiration to us, but yeah, after releasing an album and writing an album, you realise it’s a lot more satisfying than releasing a load of 12” singles, which is what we did for a few years previously, or a random few singles on different labels. It becomes a lot more serious; an album brings about a lot wider press and it opens you up to people other than those who just buy vinyl. It becomes more exciting as well, you know, you appeal to more people and play to more people and it’s great. I guess with an album as well, it lets you be a bit more musical, you know, not everything has to be a club banger – you can express yourself a bit more.
You’ve been working together since way before Dubstep even existed, but you’re seen as big exponents of the genre; was it that the genre came about first, then you incorporated that sound, or was it a gradual evolution?
Yeah, well we were kind of around and involved with that scene before it even existed, I mean, I remember we’d just really started to learn how to produce when the whole world of grime and So Solid was sort of dying and fizzling out, then this kind of music took its place, which was kind of like UK garage-meets-grime, but without any vocals. No-one really knew what the genre was even called, but we were very involved with labels like Tempa and the whole Ammunition Stables, which are essentially credited for inventing Dubstep, so we were there from the start really. Then we moved more into DnB releases and got noticed in that world a bit more, but we’ve always really followed it closely. It just felt natural when we were writing the album to mix up the styles; we weren’t consciously trying to write a Dubstep track, it just felt kinda right.
Is your move from DnB specialist RAM Records to Mercury Records indicative of your plans to expand beyond the genre?
I think yeah, it’s just a gradual progression really, I mean, it was just a dream to be asked by a major label to join them, because it shows that they believe we have real potential to be successful and that’s great, but we were always conscious that we never really wanted to lose our relationship with the underground because we never really intended to write music to sell records and make money.
On the remixing side of things, your predominantly use well known artists to the British music scene, but the huge tune of the Summer ‘Heartbeat’ by Nneka that you remixed didn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar before – how did the remix come about?
We hadn’t heard of it, but they approached us – I think it was Sony BMG in Germany at the time, because she lives in Germany I think, but is originally from Nigeria. We get a lot of requests for remixes that we can’t always do because we don’t have the time, but they said that they’d already released the song over there, but they needed something that’d work in the UK market, like, they really wanted to bring it over here, but didn’t know what to do, so when we heard that magical vocal, we instantly thought ‘right, we can really do something with this’. It fell together really quickly; we’d just bought an electric guitar and we were excited about that – we plugged it in and thought ‘Wow, electric guitars sound good’, so we went a bit crazy with that! It turned out as that mad, rocky track which didn’t really sound like a lot of other tracks, but it got a great response.
You’re bringing your DJ set to Norwich this month, but do you play your own tracks, or do you have a completely Chase and Status-free night?
No, well with DJing we very much play a lot of our stuff, because obviously there are some people that want to hear our stuff, but we’re not selfish DJs, we play very much to the crowd and what they want; we very much mix it up and throw a few surprises in there…
Emma Roberts
For all those surprises and more, catch Chase and Status when EZ Rollers bring them to Media Nightclub, on Rose Lane, Norwich on Saturday 21st November. For the uncut version of this interview, go to Outlineonline.co.uk