When you think of neurofunk drum & bass producers and DJs, there is no doubt that Audio is up there with the greatest. His heavy and hard hitting sounds can usually be heard rumbling across many a packed out room or festival site at Virus events, Darkshire parties and Let It Roll festivals.
His 7th solo album, Where The Chaos Lies, was recently released on Blackout and was celebrated with it’s very own launch party in Utrecht on Friday 19th April, and it’s since hit some real heights by topping the Beatport D&B charts.
Featuring 14 ferocious tracks, Where The Chaos Lies is a masterclass in sound design, which makes perfect sense bearing the amount of dedication and time put into the project as outlined in the interview below.
A rave hardcore style collaboration with Burr Oak coupled with modern D&B, a partnership with Blackout bosses Black Sun Empire, plus a metal and neuro infusion with Austrian based band AENYGMA also feature on the album.
In this insightful conversation, Audio beams over the success of Where The Chaos Lies, he speaks of his delight at the resurgence of UK neurofunk, he talks about inspirational Blackout studio sessions and much more.
Keep your crash helmets on and be sure to read on below, as we take a look into the mind and creative process behind a massive album courtesy of Audio, a true drum & bass stalwart…
How does it feel to release your seventh solo album?
I’ve done seven solos and then I’ve done two Killbox, so it’s my ninth album that I’ve been involved with in total. It’s a lot and it’s a real blessing.
It’s been getting a serious amount of love, what’s it like seeing it being so well received?
It’s amazing to be honest, I’m not like the young, hip new guy that’s on the block. I’ve sort of been around a bit so with this scene, you almost have your moment in the sun and then you sort of go off into the sunset, and then the new crop come through. To have an album that’s been received like it has been from me being a bit of an older guy in the scene is lovely. The way the scene is at the moment with neuro kind of being pushed to the side a little bit, whereas it used to be a little bit more dominant, especially in Europe. It’s like a double hit for me personally, and just the way the scene is, it’s nice for it to be so well received and is hopefully helping to bring neuro back to the top of the pile.
Some would say that’s where it belongs…
Yeah well, I’m super biased but, neuro drum & bass is Bladerunner music. We’re the genre that’s dependent on technology. New technology comes out, there’s new stuff that happens in neurofunk and people are instantly using that stuff straight away and implement it, it just feels like it’s the future it feels like it’s at the cutting edge of what you can do sonically. Mixdown wise, especially, the best mixdowns are neuro mixdowns, without a shadow of a doubt. They’re just the best because there’s so much going on, it all has to hit you hard and be very clear.
You mentioned neuro has been pushed to the side a little bit, there’s been a UK resurgence in recent times. How does that make a pioneer like yourself feel?
It feels great. I would always DJ in England over the course of like a year, it’d be a couple of times in Bristol, maybe a couple of times in London, but it was always a handful of times. The majority of the neuro crowd, the want for that music was predominantly in Europe. We’ve always been on the back foot in the UK a bit, you’d have the big raves back in the day like Renegade Hardware, that was a special time and when that club went, a lot of things changed. We have the Virus nights, which are always good. But now obviously you’ve got the Neuroheadz guys that are coming up, you’ve got the BrainRave guys that are doing bits in Birmingham, so it’s nice to see it coming back. The last few years have been quiet for me in Bristol, when I did Neuroheadz x Virus, that was the first time I’ve been in Bristol in probably three or four years DJing, which is unheard of really. There’s enough room for everything, what I don’t like, is when everyone sort of runs to this new thing and everything else gets pushed to the side. There’s room for everything to exist and have its place, but I suppose it’s just how people digest music nowadays.
Where The Chaos Lies has a different vibe than Unsocial did. Can you talk to us about your creative process behind it?
I did Unsocial during COVID, which is a very different album, it was a very different time. I was back to building and working, so that was a representation of where I was musically and where I was in my life. COVID stopped and the clubs started opening again, but I was still a bit lost. When we came back, I didn’t quite know what to do. My last album was kind of quite a deep and kind of chilled, a very different vibe. I was starting to feel a bit old in the scene and feeling like I don’t want to fall off. Do you know what I mean? Then I played a party for Blackout in the January and they asked if I wanted to come over for a few days before and spend some days in the studio, do the party Friday and then go home Saturday. So we did that and I spent all week in the studio with them, different environment, different studio, talking about music constantly. Prolix, Counterstrike, Levela and DC Breaks were all there. So it was all of us in the studio at the same time chatting, chopping it up and messing around with tunes and little ideas. I did the party and I left there super inspired. They asked me what I was doing next and what my plan was and I didn’t really know so I chucked a throwaway statement at them saying I’ll do an album on Blackout, to which they agreed.
Wow! So straight back to the studio when you got home and the rest is history?
Yeah it all just made complete sense to me and the penny dropped. From that February, I started writing the album after I came back here, completely inspired with some new VSTs and new ways of working that I’d picked up from other people. It completely blitzed the whole vibe, I started spewing tunes out at a rate of knots, just writing, writing, writing loads of stuff. I think within a few months I’d sent them like five or six tune saying, this is kind of shaping up. Then it was just a continuation of that, it was like a snowball effect and I was writing loads right up until the end. I almost had a choice of stuff to put on there, it was really nice. There was a couple that I was chopping and changing, but I just spent the last sort of three or four months tweaking the mixes constantly, I must’ve mixed down every track like 50 times. Just tweaking a snare here, a kick drum or a hat there, I just wanted it to be as good as it can be. If I’m going to do it on Blackout, it needs to be at that level. The creative process was really easy, the whole AI thing just came out of using some samples and then started using AI in the writing process with doing some vocals and writing hip-hop style vocals using ChatGPT. And then. Yeah. So it just started with that theme and it was 14 months from start to finish.
Let’s talk about one of the collaborations, great to see you working with AKOV’s band AENYGMA! How was it working with them?
It was really cool, I watched a film at the end of it there was this old Black Sabbath tune, War Pigs it’s called, I think there’s a bootleg of it going around at the moment. I really wanted to do something like that, but for drum & bass. So I made the instrumental for this tune, and I was at a new year’s party and AKOV was there. I’d not really spoken to Alex a lot so it was nice to sort of chop it up with him, have a couple of beers and chat. I asked him “if I send you the tune, would you like to have a go?” I could see a guys voice on it, I just felt it needed a male voice and I wanted those real screamy vocals. I sent him the tune and no lie, 2 hours later, he sent me the vocal and a chord progression to go with it and that was the vocal that went in the tune, done, I didn’t get anything else from him. That was a collaboration in the purest way possible. I put it together and just loved it. I sent it to him, we chopped up a few things, changed it up for a couple of bits and sent it to Black Sun Empire. They liked it and had a couple of suggestions, we did those, it sounded great and that was the tune. It was one of those tunes that just came together within a few days and it was done and it turned out to be an absolute pleasure. It won’t be the last thing either, I’m sure I’ll do something else with Alex in some way.
Love that! How was it collaborating with Black Sun Empire and Burr Oak?
Black Sun Empire had to happen they are my boys, like if I’m going to do an album, I’m going to do a collab with them, and that came together pretty easy. We started it when I went over in that February, I had a little idea and we started messing around with it for the first few days. Then I came back home with it, progressed it, and then they added some more bits. The Burr Oak collaboration, they sent me a bit of an idea of a track, I changed the arrangement of it and it just came together. They had the core idea, the ravey kind of idea with the intro and it was just like, that’s my roots, I came up in like early jungle, happy hardcore kind of era. It was really nice to touch that vibe, but with modern drum & bass, that ravey hardcore vibe, but drum & bass.
You had a recent show in Utrecht to celebrate the launch. How was that?
It was epic and it was really nice to have a party on the actual day of the launch of the album for Blackout in Holland. I couldn’t have asked for it to be any better, really. It was just difficult staying sober until my set because I was playing after Andy C at 4, so I didn’t want to go too hard but at the same time, I was celebrating as well. It was good vibes though and a rammed full house.
What would you say the differences are between the harder scenes in Europe and the UK?
In Holland especially, they’re just used to more aggressive forms of music, like their national music is hardcore gabber. So the kids are used to hard industrial sounds at quite an early age. They also see a beauty in that music, the same way I do, the same way everyone that’s into hard drum & bass sees a beauty. They love that kind of that sound, that texture of hard, industrial, big, metallic sound, I think that’s the main difference. Whereas over here, our sound comes from the dub, the reggae, the dub plates, the rewinds, the awkward, you know, it comes from that sound clash era with acid house and them all meeting in the middle somewhere. That’s why I think neuro is so loved out there and I think the UK is constantly trying to search for the new thing, instead of appreciating what it’s got. Just like punk back in the day, it’s always trying to rewrite stuff and change things. I suppose that is good thing that drum & bass in the UK is getting a much wider audience nowadays, bigger than I’ve ever known it to have. Some of these guys have got 250,000 followers on Instagram, it’s madness. To come from like an underground music and now there’s people selling out Wembley, it’s great, what they’re doing is wicked. I respect everything, even if it’s not my bag, what I do is not their bag but it’s all good and there’s room for everyone. Do you know what I mean? That’s the beauty of drum & bass man, there’s artists that cater for everyone and there’s fans that love every different sub-genre, it’s great.
Absolutely! So where did the name Where The Chaos Lies come from?
It comes from the track, The Fang. There’s a spoken word sample through the track talking about snakes and the serpent, that’s Jordan Peterson. He’s a Canadian speaker and he speaks on how we live our lives, he’s quite opinionated he was a he was a university lecturer. He’s basically talking about why humans are afraid of snakes, serpents and things that wriggle on their bellies. It’s because they represent, the outside, the chaos. Things like that represent the unknown, the dark, the macabre, especially serpents. He basically finishes and says “it’s where the chaos is.” That’s where it started and that’s what I was going to originally call it, but Where The Chaos Lies just felt a lot better, especially when I’m using the artwork, which looks super realistic, but is AI generated. So it’s like a lie in itself, it’s fooling you and trying to be something that it’s actually not. It’s computers that put this all together mechanically, there’s no feeling involved in it. Someone’s typed something in that they want and it’s generated this, so it’s a lie.
Love it! This has been amazing, what have you got coming up that you can tell us about?
I’ve got the Screamarts remix of Coalesce coming on BrainRave this week. That’s been going off when I’ve been playing that and it’s come out really nice. It’s got my favourite kick drum that I’ve ever put in a tune to be fair, it’s got a massive kick drum, sorry, nerdy production talk. I’ve set up a Patreon with lots of exclusive material on there, so will be focusing on that for now. I’ve possibly got a couple more remixes, I’ve got something else that’s coming on Blackout. I’m already working on new tunes, some of them are already done. It doesn’t stop, man, it’s just a continual process, on to the next project.
