FRIEDMYLITTLEBRAIN

Foreign Concept has just dropped ‘Affliction’ on Critical, so caught up and asked about that fantastic tune.

FC: Originally, I was given a brief to write a track for Riya’s album project (which later became a 12″ project). I saw the names of the other producers that would be featuring and I don’t mean this disrespectfully in any way, but I imagined what sort of tracks they would be, and made a conscious effort to not just create a typical female vocal-led D&B tune.

Riya is very professional and she sent back the vocals quickly after being sent the instrumental. I have to give her a lot of credit as well for the way the vocals sound, as they were expertly-recorded, which always makes treating them a lot easier.

DB: I have to say that a whole album of this mode, of this vibe would be incredible. It’s audio drugs. Is that wishful thinking? What’s in the works?

FC: It was definitely fun to make. I left it very raw-sounding, so it was refreshing to not have to scrutinise over small technical things that I often find myself endlessly doing when making more dancefloor-led stuff. This leads to more freedom to be creative, which I find can be lost sometimes in writing drum and bass.

In terms of writing more of this, I’m certainly not ruling it out, although to be honest an album’s worth might be pushing it!

DB: How did you come to record for Critical?

FC: A friend of mine James (Transit Mafia ) passed on two tracks of mine to Kasra, one of which was Mob Justice, which became my first single for Critical.

DB: Where can we hear you play live soon & do you fracture the set with downtempo or more leftfield stuff? Or, conversely, would you you go hard as nails D&B?

FC: The next few gigs are in Nottingham, Derby, Fabric (London) and Birmingham. My sets are made up of predominately the deeper end of drum and bass, though recently I have been playing a few 130 – 140 bpm tracks as well, as I’ve been making quite a lot of that stuff. It all depends on the situation really. If I was playing in a bar in East London, I’d probably try and play some more leftfield tracks, but if I was playing in a dark warehouse in Eastern Europe, it would most likely be slightly harder D&B.

DB: What are 5 fave D&B tunes over time?

FC: That’s a tough one. I’ve actually gone with 6 as I couldn’t narrow it down to 5 but these are the tracks that I think I will never tire of hearing:
D Bridge ‘True Romance’
Dillinja ‘The Angels Fell’
Perpetuum and Mutt ‘If Ever’
Calibre ‘Bullets’
Dr S Gatchet ‘Remember the Roller’
Marcus Intalex ‘Temperance’

DB: The album session question: which album of any genre would you have loved to have been present at?

FC: Nina Simone ‘Little Girl Blue’. For me she’s the greatest singer of all time, and to witness the recordings first hand would be unbeatable.

Injustice/Affliction

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