“We were kind of just making one style of hip hop more or less, really sampled bass, old school hip hop,” Mamid explains from his Toronto studio. “Then it just got to a point where we started listening to all sorts of different types of music. We were huge hip hop heads but then we started getting into drum and bass and electro house and wanted to start doing different electronic stuff that was so different to the hip hop stuff that we’d been doing that we thought we’d create a group that could use all of those different sounds.”
This change in direction has seen the duo dropping some twisted, heavy bass, messing with glitchy sounds and turning up the BPMs in a way that would most easily referred to as being dubstep but to Mamid, the idea of genre is redundant. “We are definitely most often classed as dubstep and we are definitely lumped in with the dubstep scene and culture and that makes sense,” he concurs. “Our first tracks that were really big and popular were dubstep but for us, it just happened to be one place along the way where we were just happening to make dubstep. And obviously we still make it but when we started Zeds Dead, we never had the intention of just making dubstep. It’s kinda just a musically journey, we keep moving. And it’s funny because we started the group because we wanted to be a group that did different stuff, not just one style of hip hop, and now it’s like we are almost coming back to making hip hop as Zeds Dead with the skills that we have learned through becoming electronic music producers and the maturity that’s come along with it.”
Another thing the pair have developed since forming Zeds Dead in 2008 is Bassmentality, a club they founded with The Killabits that started as a string of underground parties, which later turned into a force to be reckoned with.
“We had just started DJing and were just starting to get a buzz around Toronto and wanted a place to play where we didn’t have to play dirt cheap for promoters at shitty parties where we could control the environment and hone our skills. We made it free – we just wanted to have a good party, it wasn’t about wanting to be promoter and make money, we just wanted to become comfortable with rocking crowds. And it sort of just grew along with the scene – and as Zeds Dead grew, so did Bassmentality. It was cool and before we knew it, it got super crazy.”
‘Super crazy’ is a term that could easily be referred to their new instrumental EP Hot Sauce, out on last week on Mad Decent, full to the brim with jarring breaks and electro-disco vibe.
“It’s the most experimental EP that we’ve done so far. We almost called it The Experiment In Bass because there’s different kind of sounds that we’re messing with. Three of the five tracks in there, I wouldn’t know how to classify or put a genre name on. Some of it is somewhat similar to our last EP, particularly Rumble in the Jungle. There’s some 135BPMs and weird sort of house inspired tracks, but apart from that I can’t really classify it.”
Zeds Dead are coming to Australia for the Future Music Festival tour, where Mamid says he and his partner in crime will be getting hard and dark with their live set. “It’s really intense with lots of energy. It definitely errs on the harder side of things, we like to mix it up a lot and throw as many different genres in there and basically just rock out and have a party.”
BY JO CAMPBELL
