Following on from yesterday’s free download release Mission Through Hell (which was signed through our Demo Drop sessions), today we have a similar situation…
Say hello to Soul.Crew. A rising duo from the south coast who came from hip-hop and are now cultivating a fine line of weighty, dancefloor-minded D&B, often with a strong focus on MCs. So far they’ve released on M Ocean, DeVice and now Grand Theft Audio a label we have close links with and release a collab EP with every year.
So far Soul.Crew (AKA Dan & Dev) have released a track called Filth on the label. A high-grizzled, heavyweight slammer fronted by Genesis Elijah, Filth landed on GTA’s recent mega-VA Full Spectrum Drum & Bass 2025. It came with an amazing video filmed at a rage rooms where Elijah even had axes thrown at him!
Next week the label will be releasing a new track by Soul.Crew called Poison Ivy. Featuring more vocal titans, both Dread MC and Exo USG front this one and it was first played publicly on Demo Drop! Check the very moment Grand Theft Audio co-boss James Sola hears it for the first time…
That was back in November. Three months later, it’s out on release. That’s how quick things can happen when a label is into your music! Even one with such an intense release schedule as Grand Theft Audio!
We’re so proud of the small role we played in this. As this interview reveals, we also boosted their previous GTA release Filth on an earlier Demo Drop session. That’s awesome and a very fulfilling feeling. To mark this moment, highlight the release and also tenuously reference Valentine’s Day (because any act with Soul in their name must be a hopeless romantic, right?) we asked the gents to make us a mix.
Have a listen to it while you get your demos together for our next session. Email demos@1-more-thing.co.uk – our next session will be Tuesday Feb 25, 6pm UK time.
Soul.Crew! Besides what I’ve heard on Demo Drop and the info you give on your bio, I know very little about you. Now is the time to make yourselves known… What is the Soul.Crew origin story? Might we know you from any previous projects or aliases?
Dan: We have been around working away for a while but we haven’t had many releases yet, so not surprised you don’t know much about us. Hopefully that is about to change in 2025! Soul.Crew started out as a project with Joe, a friend from Southampton Solent Uni Solent. The name is derived from Solent (Sol – Soul – Soul.Crew)… very clever, right? Unfortunately, Joe was struggling to juggle the music with his work commitments so Dev joined the crew in late 2023. Dev and I have known each other for around 15 years, ever since Dev was looking for someone to help him out in his recording studio. We became good friends and were working on bits and pieces of music together, so it was only natural that we started to produce music together officially as Soul.Crew. I used to make hip hop/UK rap before our D&B days, my alias wasn’t very imaginative… it was just my name; Dan Kent.
Dev: I started out as a DJ and was really into buying records from around 13 and got completely obsessed with underground music from the UK. I think there is a natural progression from DJing to music production so it wasn’t long before I was trying to make my own beats on a terrible PC and definitely legal software. I met Dan years ago when I got my first decent studio and we became good friends. We would share ideas and talk about music so it was inevitable we would start a project together.
You’ve clearly got a love for proper MC culture. You’ve barely started up this project and already we’re talking heavyweights like T.R.A.C and Genesis Elijah.
Dan: Hip-hop was my first music love, it has always been my favourite genre and whenever we can get an MC involved in our tunes we will! When we make a new track, my first thought is always “which MC would smash this?” When it comes to the recording side of things, I’m much more used to producing an MC, helping them tweak lyrics, suggesting ad libs or whatever to help get the most of their verses or hooks. With singers, I find it a lot more challenging. We do love working with singers too, and we do have a lot of tunes ready to drop without any MCs…
Dev: I think that is where we are a little bit different to some other D&B artists in that we always prefer to work with rappers / MCs that you might not expect. They usually bring such a great energy that makes us feel like we are making proper songs rather than just beats. Also MC culture is so important to D&B it’s nice to give it a little nod in our productions.
Gotta ask about Mr Noun speaking of MCs. Had to look him up but he’s a household name in Sweden. How did that one come about?
Dan: Mr Noun is part of a Swedish hip-hop super group called Supersci, I absolutely love their stuff and find it fascinating how well they write and perform in English, their second language. I definitely recommend checking out their stuff if you are unfamiliar. Back in my hip-hop days, I asked Mr Noun if he wanted to feature on a track with me. He recorded some great verses but the tune didn’t end up getting finished. Years later, instead of leaving it to gather dust, we decided to re-imagine the tune. We sped things up a little bit and turn it into a d&b banger. Thankfully Mr Noun was still feeling the track after our changes and we were lucky enough to get another verse from the legend T.R.A.C. to add to it.
Also gotta ask about Filth. That video! Tell us everything. Have fun smashing stuff?
Dan: This was such fun to film! We had the idea for a rage room as that pretty much suited the vibe of the track with Genesis Elijah’s incredible vocals. We found a place called Urban Xtreme in Colchester which had some really cool looking rage rooms. When we got there, the staff were so accommodating, telling us we had free range to do whatever we wanted and we made full use of their facilities. It was a lot of fun smashing stuff, I think everyone would benefit from having the freedom of “letting it all out” like that.
If you haven’t seen the video yet, I thoroughly recommend you check it out to see someone throw axes at Gen, purposely narrowly avoiding hitting his head… I still can’t believe Gen agreed to that, but it makes for amazing footage. He is a lot braver than me.
Dev: I have never hit anything as hard as I can but for the Filth video I smashed up an old CD player with a scaffolding pole. I really went for it and when I was finished there was an eerie silence in the room. Dan was the first one to speak he turned to me and said, ‘wow, that was hard to watch’. I recommend a rage room for anyone who might be battling some demons!
Haha. I’d love to do that. We played Filth on Demo Drop so let’s chat about that. You’ve been on the show a few times. It’s how we’ve linked. How’s your experience been?
Dan: It was great, so good to connect with you, other artists and some of the D&B community in general. We are pretty unknown in the D&B scene, so it was great to get the feedback from the established artists who were guests on the stream. We have actually submitted two tracks to the demo drop and both have ended up being signed. We have always struggled getting noticed by labels so it was really great to try something a bit different, like getting the direct feedback and that is what the show offers up and coming artists.
Dev: It’s fun being in the studio making music and working with other artists but the main goal is to finish tunes and try to make sure lots of people hear your hard work so having this kind of love from the demo drop has been amazing a really motivated us to keep pushing.
It’s all about the chat isn’t it? The stream would be very boring if I didn’t have people interacting constantly and sharing their own knowledge. It’s great to see supportive people all connecting in this way. Are either of you streamers anyway? How do you find the community vibe?
Dan: Exactly, it’s great to chat to like minded people about the scene and feel part of the community. I’m new to the streaming side of things, I signed up with Twitch just to join your demo drops! Obviously, I thoroughly recommend them to everyone; whether you are an artist, label or music fan.
Dev: I just started streaming from my studio. I’ll be honest it’s a lot of me staring wide eyed at my monitor listening to the same 8 bar loop for 2 hours but I want to get better at interacting with people and build a community of like-minded people.
Ah wicked. I’m really inspired by Twitch and how quickly communities can develop on there. So let’s chat about Poison Ivy. This was signed through Demo Drop, right?
Dan: James from Sola was one of your guests on the Demo Drop, he heard Poison Ivy and we got chatting after the stream and he said his label were interested in signing it. We said, “We also have another track with Genesis Elijah that you may like…”. So that’s how joining your stream has helped us get two tracks out there with Grand Theft Audio Recordings, thank you!
Ah that’s amazing to hear and exactly what I wanted from Demo Drop – either to boost people myself or get people under a spotlight so they get a boost. The system is working! Keeping with Poison Ivy a second, please big up Exo USG and Dread MC…
Dev: We are really excited about this one. It’s awesome to get two amazing artists like Exo and MC Dread on the same tune. It’s important for us starting out that we showcase our versatility I don’t want our sound to ever become stale or predictable. We spend a lot of time in the studio going over tiny details and trying to perfect everything so to hear people like what we are making is great.
Dan: Of course, it’s great to have those two on the track. Two different MCs from different musical backgrounds, but we think they compliment each other really well and that’s why we got them both on the track. I know Exo from my UK rap days, we never actually made a tune together but we kept in touch and Dev and I managed to persuade him to jump on the D&B vibe with us. Dread obviously needs no introduction to the scene and we are buzzing that he blessed us with such a classic Dread verse.
So this is gonna come out on Valentines Day… With a name like Soul.Crew I reckon you’re big romantics at heart. Is today a special day for you? Or is every day valentines day?
Dan: I am very single and very cynical about valentines day so it’s probably for the best if I “no comment” my way out of this question.
Haha. Dev?
Dev: I have an amazing girlfriend who is also an artist so we are both very busy. I definitely haven’t left things to the last minute trying to book a nice restaurant and order some flowers as I type this lol.
Give us a roses are red poem to show us how deep your love goes!
Dan: How about this for a little cringey brown nosing…
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Dave, I am so grateful,
For the Demo Drops with you
Bahahah. *Blushes in Welsh* Thank you and thanks for the mix. Tell us about it!
Dev: It’s always super tricky doing a mix because we are into so many different styles but we wanted have a mixture of stuff we love right now and have been influenced by over the years. There’s some of our own productions and remixes in there too. It’s Valentines Day so we went a little bit more mellow than we might usually but there’s a little something in there for everyone!
And now please tell us what is coming up for Soul.Crew in 2025!
Dan: We have lots of tunes ready to drop this year. We want to build our catalogue of releases whilst continuing to get the Soul.Crew name out there. We have some tunes with some really amazing artists that we are working with, in various D&B subgenres. Name dropping a few of them: Devon Braxton, Max Marshall, Kof, Koj and Good Health Good Wealth. We also have a D&B/ funk hybrid track with two of the biggest funk artists in Brazil which we are really excited about releasing.
Soul.Crew – Poison Ivy Feat Dread MC & Exo USG is out February 21 on Grand Theft Audio
Follow Soul.Crew and don’t miss a beat: Soundcloud / Instagram / Facebook
