London Elektricity

Riding high on the recent release of his seventh studio album, Yikes!, we begin by talking about the process that went into producing his latest offering. “Yikes! took a couple of years to put together. It takes me awhile to put together an album, juggling running Hospital Records with being a DJ, a producer and family man. Also because every time I make an album, I scrap all my sounds and start again. It’s my policy, so I never make a record that sounds like the last one.”

Yikes has been received well by the drum, and bass scene and beyond, described by many as an album with emotional resonance and a sense of narrative not often felt in dance music. Individually, the tracks are unique pieces in their own right – from the frantic pace and twisted, upbeat synths of title track Yikes!, to the moodiness and depth of Elektricity Will Keep Me Warm, one of the album’s biggest strengths is that it remains engaging throughout – undeniably fresh and original. It also plays host to a number of collaborations between Colman and Swedish-born singer-songwriter Elsa Esmeralda – many of the tracks feature her rich and powerful vocals blended perfectly with Colman’s deep and emotional production. “She wrote Just One Second, the track she sung on for Syncopated City – back in the day when people used MySpace, I had it there and Elsa hit me up, saying she really liked it. And I was a fan of her voice – she used to sing with a great Swedish outfit, and I had a brainwave. Sent her the instrumental, and that song has become a huge tune for me. I enjoyed that process so much that I thought, yeah, I want to get her in as the main vocalist for the album.”

Even the cover artwork for Yikes! exemplifies the kind of careful thought process that goes into creating such an album. Featuring a close-up photo of Colman on the cover with cute little doodles of cars driving over his glasses, the cover is a result of a collaboration with London graphic artist and designer Ricky Trickartt. Borne from his Something Creative Every Day project. “On his Flickr account – on top of all the work that he does for Hospital and the other labels – he manages to do something creative every day and photographs it. Fluffy toys that he’s made, gags, whatever – he did a photo of his girlfriend Lily with glasses on and traffic going across it. We redid it with me, and Ricky designed one vehicle to go with each track on the album, that represents the meaning one.”

Most would probably assume (like I did) that with experience, it might get easier as time passes to write and put out new material – but despite the number of hugely successful records to his name, Colman remains rather ambivalent about the production process. “I don’t think it gets easier – the more experience you have, you push the threshold higher and you expect more from yourself. When you start, it’s easier because you work in a simpler way, maybe. The more you know, the more you want to know more stuff and achieve new things.”

You’ll be glad to hear that he’s still very proud of Yikes! – “I’m really happy. It’s the first album I’ve ever made where I could listen to it and enjoy it straight away. All the other albums I’ve made, I haven’t been able to listen to for about a year or a year and a half. Not ’cause I hate them, but I suppose I passed the threshold where I could enjoy them and could be objective, but with Yikes!, I’ve been able to almost from day one – it’s a strange experience for me, it’s hard to explain.”

Hospital Records, like the original incarnation of London Elektricity, was the brainchild of Colman together with Chris Goss. The two established the label from their West London studio back in 1996, primarily as a vehicle for their own music – but it wasn’t long before their tunes were commanding the attention of audiences worldwide. Song In The Key of Knife, released in 1998 and the follow-up album, Pull the Plug were the records that propelled them to the forefront of the scene, stunning listeners with its diverse palette of influences (from jazz and Latin to soul) and intricate production. With that, the attention of drum and bass producers the world over was focused on them, and the amount of material they were receiving was of too high quality for the two to just pass over – hence, their first acts, the styled sounds of Bath-based Danny Byrd and Welsh-born High Contrast were first signed to the label. “When we started in 1996, we were no-one. Just me and Chris, two old jazzers who wanted to jump on the bandwagon. But the thing that marked us out was the sound, it was entirely different from what anyone else was making. We jokingly called it ‘lounge-core’ at the time and for quite awhile Hospital existed in this tiny little bubble on the periphery of things. I think people enjoyed the fact that we were eccentric, but no-one took us seriously. And gradually, without anybody realizing it was happening, our bubble kinda floated to the centre of drum and bass, and expanded. We didn’t make that happen, it just kind of… did. And now we’re one of the biggest labels in the genre.”

The notoriety of Hospital Records has become so great that the birth of a sister label, Med School, was an inevitability. Established in 2006, Colman describes it as host to the stranger, less dance floor-driven and more experimental oddities that get sent into the Hospital office. This year alone has seen Russian glitch experimentalist Bop release his debut album The Amazing Adventures of One Curious Pixel through the label, an EP from drum and bass experimenter Joe Syntax and another debut album from Unquote due to be released this month. Not to mention that the remix album for Yikes! features a roster of names from the label. “There’s a lot of Med School talent on there, which is really nice. In some ways, it’s my favourite project because it’s the most experimental and it is underground. I love Hospital and I’m extremely proud of it, but I’m also the kind who likes to support the underdog. It was great to pull in a lot of Med School on there – I really liked Royalston’s remix. He’s from Sydney, do you know him? He’s fantastic, he’s such a huge talent.”

Given his obvious affinity for the world of drum and bass, I’m kind of curious as to what kind of music he listens to in his downtime. Unfortunately for him, and probably quite obvious in retrospect: given the amount of work he’s got on these days and two young boys to come home to, he doesn’t actually have all that much time to himself to kick back and jam a few tunes. “It’s all about listening to music in the car! My iPod is full of very esoteric stuff – a lot of soundtracks, some lounge music, classical, some spoken-word, all sorts. There’s no drum and bass on it. During the week, I’m in the offices at Hospital or in the studio, and we’re listening to it all day long – which is great, I love it, so the rare times I listen to music otherwise, I’m listening to something else.”

Australia might be far-off from where the drum and bass phenomenon began back in the nineties, but throughout the years we’ve steadily established a reputation for being some of the world’s most vociferous consumers of the genre – not to mention total party animals. According to Colman, Perth is home to the highest rate of drum and bass fans per capita, and Australians are a rowdy bunch to get loose with. “Perth particularly, yeah. Sydney’s been getting better, too – a few years ago, it was a bit dead for drum and bass, but the last couple of times I’ve played there, it’s been immense. Melbourne’s always pretty solid, as well. Aussie crowds are very expressive.”