This latest 1 More Mix comes courtesy of an infectious human being. DJ, producer, MC, streamer, podcast host and mental health advocate, Diligent Fingers.
This deep interview sheds light on the simple fact that Diligent Fingers was destined to get into music. Hailing from Moss Side, Manchester, his surroundings growing up in a Windrush hub ensured that his path led only one way.
From attending free parties in his younger years to celebrating three years of running his successful multi-genre label, Spynal Records, Dili has come a long way on his journey. His mix is also a journey that covers all ends of the drum & bass spectrum.
Finding inspiration from his family, his city and his life experiences, Diligent Fingers breaks boundaries in his productions by speaking about them in his tracks. Most notably, Cabin Fever, where he touches on his mental health.
Also the host of the Forward Motion Podcast, Dili champions an array of artists on his Twitch streams and provides sound advice for artists beginning their journey into the scene in this chat. He declares his admiration for the platform and how it has helped him, the running of his label and how important the platform is for fans who are unable to attend physical events.
The chat takes many heartfelt and wonderful twists and turns in which he talks about his inspirational mother, the musical marvel of Manchester, the importance of music for your mental health and so much more.
So buckle up tight, listen in and read on below, as we delve deep into the mind of Manchester’s finest, Diligent Fingers…
How did your journey into music begin?
I had no choice when it came to music. As soon as my mum realised I was drawn to bass and rhythm, she nurtured that interest. She took me to my first carnival at 4 years old. One minute I’m next to her and the next minute, I’ve disappeared. I would disappear at Leeds Carnival, she’d be running around trying to find me and I’d be in the dub tent with all of the Rastas trying to copy all the dance moves. When I was 7 or 8 years old, she got me involved in African drumming, that led me on to doing a performance at the Royal Northern College of Music which was aired on BBC 2 at the time. I was surrounded by musicians growing up, being taught to dance by Mr Zip in Moss Side from Britain’s Got Talent. He taught myself and MC Trigga when he was running the youth clubs. I lived up the road from the Cleopatra sisters, who went on to be the girl group. My mum was a radio DJ and I have all of her music collection, vinyl records, CDs and cassette tapes, and my stepdad used to build sound systems. My brothers and sisters used to sing and my brothers also rapped. Nobody let me stray, even if I wanted to, as soon as I got into school I started learning how to produce music electronically. After leaving school I was making music on Music Generator 2000 on Playstation One. I managed to cobble myself a PC together from my friends old discarded parts and I managed to get a copy of Cubase SX, cracked. From there it was just love for music, especially drum & bass, reggae, soul, Motown and I wouldn’t have that strong love for it if it wasn’t for my mum. When I started living on my own at 17, I was surrounded by nerds who loved drum & bass but didn’t make it, they loved going to free parties and they would take me to the free parties in the woods. From there I got into the Manchester music scene and that’s where things took off.
Wow! You could say you were destined to get into music! Did you feel any pressure from that?
I didn’t have any of those kind of pressures at all but I think it was because I come from a musical community in Moss Side. I think the only pressure that I’ll honestly say I had, was the pressure of just making sure I make music that my mum would like and be proud of. That ended up shaping a lot when it comes to what I talk about. I don’t talk about derogatory stuff when it comes to women, I don’t talk about the streets because I may be from that but I’m not about that. I touch on social issues, I try and be as conscious as I possibly can but still be as authentically me as I can. When it comes to writing down lyrics and really telling my story through music, I just can’t talk about what I haven’t lived, so it’s all about being creative with the experiences that I’ve had.
Love that! Your experiences come from home, Manchester. What makes Manchester such a musical city?
I think the heritage helps, Tony Wilson, The Hacienda and Factory Records. What they all did for Manchester, The Smiths, Joy division and New Order. Oasis, Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses, all of that all heritage really helped. I believe it was Tony Wilson that really kicked off the just do-it-yourself mindset in Manchester because everything that he had built, he’d done it himself, it was against what was popular. From what I’ve gathered, especially with Moss Side being a hub for the Windrush generation, we’ve always had that do-it-yourself attitude with our playschemes and youth clubs like Hideaway and Adventure Plaground. Manchester got to a point where it was just like, we don’t care about being in people’s shadows, we’re just going to crack on and do our thing. We live by the Mancunian way, and that’s what I’ve always loved. It’s being able and being unafraid to add these other influences to what we make in Manchester that helps us to stand out, it’s why we’re so collaborative. I love the fact that there’s so many of us that know about each other. We can all be in our own little pockets of what we’re doing, but we still big each other up and we support what we’re doing in Manchester because we know how mad and cut throat it can be elsewhere. Manchester is catching up to be fair, a lot of people are moving up here, but that melting pot feeling is still very prominent in Manchester and I love that.
Manchester fills me with inspiration every time I visit, where do you find your inspiration from?
From life, from the city, from experiences, Manchester is so fruitful and I’ve lived such a mad life within it. I’m never out of inspiration, if anything, it’s a pressure. Always doing something in a creative way, that’s always going to be the pressure. There’s trends, pop music and hip-hop, a lot of my business sense comes from what I learned from the hip-hop music industry and applying it to how we deal with things in drum & bass. If you find yourself in a rut and a bit of a dark space, it’s hard to find inspiration to write to, because everything is going to be coming from that dark space. That’s something I’m slowly but surely coming out of now. I’m not happy with everything I write because it’s quite dark and deep, but it’s still things that I can piece together when the time is right. After doing tracks like Cabin Fever, where I am breaking down my PTSD, my isolation, my mild agoraphobia, just feeling lonely with my depression and my mental health problems, it creates a completely different dynamic of what you can do. The fact that now more artists are being creative in drum & bass, like A Little Sound, Degs and Inja, where they are the MC, they are the vocalist, they are the producer and the DJ as well. Because that door is open for something like that to be appreciated, it’s all systems go now.
You say all systems go, let’s talk about this mix! Is this a typical representation of a Diligent Fingers mix?
The fact that it’s different, I love the fact that if you wanted to pigeonhole me, you just can’t. I love to explore all the different styles of drum & bass. When it came to this mix, it was a realisation that I’ve not played any of my really experimental, out there tracks for a while. So let’s get all of them together and let’s give these artists some shine. There’s a few artists from my own label Spynal Records, there’s tracks by Simula in there where he’s taken a new spin on jump up, his sound design is just second to none. Teddy Killerz coming through with their industrial madness when they come, there’s Trauma DBC in there with his new release. This was a chance to do something different, do something atypical with drum & bass mixes, but at the same time, I love a good blend. So being able to find those tracks that work, fuse and gel together, was quite lovely. Man had fun!
I had fun jamming to it! Can you tell us about Spynal Records?
Spynal Records began in 2009 and it was originally a way of releasing all of my projects. I had a Bandcamp initially to be able to just put those things out, free downloads or people could pay what they want for them. In 2021, I relaunched properly with worldwide distribution through Cygnus Music, after going through a couple of situations where the need to understand how labels and the music business truly works came to the forefront. I’ve now got to the point of releasing other artist’s music and it has been amazing. The love that BradyXK, Tripzilla, Vox, DJ Direkt and DR Gank have been getting for the Motion Gang Vol.2 EP has been wicked. The love that Krugah has been getting for his Divine EP has been amazing. Even The War Sampler that I put out at the end of last year, that really got some love and Stampede got played on VISION Radio. Things went quiet for a year in 2022 and I felt there was a time where I dropped the ball. I had a raver come up to me at a rave who said “yo, you’ve been quiet, man. You’ve not released anything for ages.” To know that the support is there and for people to listen at least is amazing. There’s a single coming out at the beginning of next month, and then at the end of next month, there’s the first official hip-hop EP that’s being released on the label from Big Gen Music called, Olber’s Paradox EP. This year is the start of letting people know that it’s a multi-genre label and hopefully all you’re going to hear on the label is good music, music that people are passionate about, music that doesn’t follow trends. I’m proud.
Is Spynal Records a solo project of yours or do you have a wider team?
The main bulk of it is, is me. Yeah. Is me running everything, scheduling and, you know, submitting to distribution and things like that. I’ve got Valiant MC from across the pond, he’s doing all of my press releases and write ups for the label. I’m getting help from Cabin Fever and Natty Dub Recordings in terms of promo. I’ve got to shout out Kellee B Design, she’s been dealing with the label identity and all of the artwork. I don’t know what I’d do without this girl, like seriously. I’ve got to shout out Epicentre Audio Research as well, he’s been dealing with all of the mastering.
You’re extremely active on Twitch, what makes the Twitch community so special?
First off, I will say if you are an artist that is trying to find ways to support yourself at the beginning of your career, if you have the capabilities to be able to stream, get on Twitch. There is a massive community that loves drum & bass on there. I’ve been on twitch for a long time, it’ll be three years of streaming in November. I brought my Forward Motion Podcast over to twitch two and a half years ago. I’m starting up the Viewpoint Podcast where we’re having conversations about music, life and mental health, that’s Wednesdays at 5pm. I do production streams where I go through tunes, making sound packs and recording vocals. It’s a way of being able to support yourself and bring in another revenue stream, it’s very easy to get yourself affiliated where you can start getting subscribers. If it wasn’t for Twitch, I don’t think I’d be able to do the things that I’m able to do with the label. I’m so grateful for all of the supporters that I have on Twitch. All the things that they’ve got built in for the community, like personalised emotes, shout outs and when you finish your stream, being able to send the people from your stream to another one, just drop them off as a raid.
There’s literally a world online that caters to fans who maybe wouldn’t attend physical events, what are your thoughts on this?
That was one of the things that I clocked straight away during lockdown, especially doing it on Facebook first and then moving over to Twitch in 2021. I realised there’s so many more people that are into drum & bass that just don’t go to raves or can’t go to raves, so streaming is their outlet. I recognised that like people like John B, he really tries to make it into a rave experience when he’s doing his streams. I started seeing the amount of effort that he puts into his streams to make it as interactive for as many people as possible. People like ETown Junlists and Guddah, who was on the Drum&BassArena Awards. It’s a godsend, the amount of those types of people that come from those walks of life that I’ve met, especially with being someone that suffers from mental health issues myself. Shout out to my Motion Gang every time.
Music and mental health go hand in hand right?
Music has been such an important part in helping with my mental health, there’s no way that it can be understated. I can say for a lot of people that deal with mental health issues, music is vital for them. There’s so many ups and downs just being a musician, but the release that music can give people that that deal with mental health issues I think is second to none. Some of my greatest inspirations are also people that deal with severe mental health issues. Some of the most emotive and thought-provoking music comes from troubled souls. As a form of expression for people with mental health problems, I think it goes hand in hand. Some of my greatest pieces of music that for me and many others are powerful, they’ve come from being in the darkest depths
Dili, you’re an inspiration, hats off! What can we expect from you in the future?
We’ve got the next single from Spynal Records which is Manchester reggae legend Sylvia Tella and myself, the Plastic Smile remix and that’s going to be coming out on 31 May. The end of June, we’ve got Olber’s Paradox, the official hip-hop EP being released on the label. 7 June, I’m going to be in Leeds for Neptune’s 360 D&B event going back to back with PCHY once again. On the 14th, I’m going to be in Rotterdam, bringing jungle to the Rotterdam massive. We’ve got Konfide aka Ballisticus with his Hot Rolled EP in July, the first of a two-part series of Eps, representing the steel city, Sheffield. We’ve got the second sampler from my album (War In Peace), The Peace Sampler, that’s going to be coming out in August and I’ll be hosting at the Natty Dub Recordings event in Hempsted Heath that month too. Forward Forward.
