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Rebooting the beats >>
With the new Big Love monthly, Double A
Mirror: Tell
me about the night itself. I notice that the bill is, and will continue
to be, strictly locals. Double A: It’s
about inclusiveness, an opportunity to get everyone involved—people
who are starting out, people who’ve been paying their dues for
the last couple of years and guys like Jordan Dare and I, who’ve
been doing this for almost 10 years. It’s once a month, so it’s
pretty obvious that we’re not doing it to make money. If we wanted
that, we’d look for a weekly residency where the club pays us.
This is just a get-together for everyone. It sounds corny, but it’s
true. We’re actually quite sincere about it. M: It’s
interesting that you mention inclusiveness—from jump-up to the
hard, abstract stuff. Do you think that the divisiveness in drum &
bass, between the different sub-genres, was a problem for a couple of
years? AA: It was, because a lot of the kids who first got into drum & bass were attracted to the elements that were easier to identify with, like really obvious hip hop samples—what I considered the cheesier stuff. But then again, I was looking at it through the lens of experience. I’d already been doing it for four or five years, so I was done with that. I thought it was stupid, I couldn’t relate to it, but I can totally see why people would identify with that—at first. The problem was, people were identifying with that exclusively. There was a big chasm between us—we were musical snobs to them and they thought we were elitists. It was a waste of time, but we’ve gotten around that. Also, a lot of the kids have matured, musically. They’re a lot more open to more musical stuff. As well, for a while, there was a constant turnover of kids getting sick of drum & bass and moving on to hip hop or house. Now there’s more of a core group who’ve stuck with it and grown with the music.
Logical refreshin’ M: That
sounds like proof against these exaggerated rumours of the death of
drum & bass—which is more about the spotlight being stolen
by electro. I mean, I’ll give it a limited lifespan, because the
’80s did suck, after all. AA: Yeah,
it’s not fine wine—but people dig it. I’ll be the first
to say, I’m just not into it, but that’s just me being super-subjective.
I gotta say, though, I can’t get bummed about them stealing the
spotlight, because they’re just getting exactly what we got. We
had the same opportunities. There must have been loads of people who
thought drum & bass was stupid and couldn’t believe it was
in the spotlight. So who am I to say that it’s unfair that electro
gets all this attention? M: For some
time, I’d noticed drum & bass getting more and more insular
and self-referential, ultimately making a logical progression right
up its own ass. AA: Yeah, that was a big problem. I loved that stuff, LTJ Bukem and so on, but it started to dominate the medium and began feeding on itself. Everyone wanted to be Bad Company or Ed Rush, so all the songs coming out were trying to be just like that. When drum & bass first started, it was so interesting because it took from dub, hip hop, house and soul and built it all into this new, exciting thing. When it started to refer to itself too much, it got sooooper boring. But that’s changing again—it’s incorporating elements of soul, techno and trance, even. It polices itself, too, which is the best things about it, in that whenever one sound starts to dominate, producers automatically search for something new and different. Whenever anything gets too popular, there’s a movement away from it. It always evolves. : With Jordan
Dare, Stabba, Corey K and Spinal at Stereobar on Wednesday, Feb. 27,
10pm, $5
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Clearly
a godfather of drum & bass in Montreal, the Dune label’s Aaron
“Double A” Seigner isn’t about to stand by as haters
piss on the corpse of the music to which he’s devoted a decade
of his life. Especially since it’s not actually dead—a fact
Double A intends to confirm with a new monthly called Big Love, at Stereobar,
showcasing the full spectrum of D&B talent in town. By the same
token, the admittedly irascible Double A, watching the buzz around D&B
die down, has become increasingly humble and insightful about his music.
He’s asking hard questions and admitting the mistakes of the past,
and as a result, giving the genre more love than ever.