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SPREAD THE SEED, SPREAD THE CULTURE

ISSUE 001 - JUNE 2010

SUBCULTURE MUSICCHOOKNOCTURNALBAD COMPANYCOUNTERSTRIKEGUEST MIX BY OPTIV - C4C

Is a free, interactive online magazine, a new, fresh, indipendent project to cover throughout interviews with famous and new talents, what is moving in the electronic scene, with a special attention to drum’n’bass, breakbeat and dubstep, and a spe-cial interest in connections with vi-sual and performing arts.Spread Mag will monthly drive you into the scene with feedbacks or bits about productions, labels, releases, hosting special guestmixes just for for us Spread Mag is based in Italy, but has an International vision of the scene, run by a small selected team who has no hardened any pol-icy of exclusion, but stands open to external contributions.We aim to serve an International readership onvestigating among the most original, inspiring, fresh, and representative producers and labels.Any issue will be a real experience

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contacts / Enquiry:

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Subscriptions:

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Layout:

Davide Rovere, Davide Santicchia

Writers:

Marco Perini, Filippo Conti, Chiara Sestili,

Andrea Valesini

Music Selection:

Andrea Valesini, Davide Rovere

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MUSIC FROM ANOTHER PLANET...

Proheximal EP - SUBCULTDIG029

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Funk me hard / Swoop - SUBCULT003


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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, con-sectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean fermentum ipsum eu sapien. Mauris pretium, elit sed scelerisque blandit, mauris diam fermentum nisl, quis vulputate odio quam id lacus. Mauris pretium, elit sed scelerisque blandit, mauris diam fermentum nisl, quis vulputate odio quam id

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, con-sectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean fermentum ipsum eu sapien. Mauris pretium, elit sed scelerisque blandit, mauris diam fermentum nisl, quis vulputate odio quam id lacus. Ves-tibulum tellus. Suspendisse dictum elementum nisi. Quisque placerat varius nisl. Maecenas laoreet nibh sed nisi. In quis eros. Donec erat.lacus. Donec erat.lacus.

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12Xmark spot / Eclipse - SUBCULT004

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We are looking for your talent to do the Spreadmag t-shirts, send us your artwork, no restriction to your crativity, the best work will be printed and become the official spreadmag t-shirt! The winner will be also interviewed on the magazine.

File type: jpgDimensions: A3resolution: 72dpi at: [email protected]: 1st September

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Hi Dylan, speaking about your mu-sical path, how did you discover the D’nB’? What push you to start the Nocturnal project?

Hi! I guess i discovered Drum n Bass music in the mid 90’s. My fa-ther used to run some big night-clubs across London, and he used to bring me tape packs from some of the nights they had. It was more Jungle back then and hadn’t evolved into the darker sound it be-came yet. I didn’t listen to the tapes for about a year as i was deep into heavy metal, bands like Pantera, Slayer and Sepultura. Then one day i had a listen to the tape packs while cleaning my room and i kind of got hooked. I had an old Darren J mixtape that my brother gave me also and i would listen to it over and over again wondering how the hell these sounds were made. When i first bought decks i would go record shopping and just buy pretty much everything i listened to in the shop because it all sounded so good to me back then. Over time i slowly started developing some kind of taste in the music and started buy-ing a lot of Virus and Ram Records tunes, also every Konflict record i could get my hands on. I still think that Konflict had something that will never be outdone or repeated, ever. After mixing records for a few years at parties and at home, i start-words:Andrea Valesini

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ed going to squat parties in London (around 1999) and i became even more obsessed with the music, i de-cided that this was it, Drum n Bass is what i wanted to do. I went to Australia in 2001 with the arrogant intention of taking the mu-sic i listened to over there. I took all my best records and my decks etc and wanted to try and show them what was going on in the UK, little did i know that they already had a strong scene, although i got a few gigs and met some great people. One of those people was my old production partner Alex, after intro-ducing him to the music he also be-came obsessed. So there we were, two obsessed guys, with all this en-ergy, wondering what the fuck we were going to do.

The next step was to buy a comput-er to make music with, i never

thought anything we would make would be any good or get any re-leases. The purpose of buying the computer was so that we could at least pretend we were cool enough to make tunes and hopefully if we pretended hard enough, it may just happen. We started using reason and making possibly the worst mu-sic you could imagine, i think our first “tune” was called Poo Jab-ber, and it sucked. But actually we thought it was good, and when we played it to people, they pretended that they liked it so we got a bit of confidence. So we carried on mak-ing all sorts of rip off Dillinja tunes for a few years and messing around until we finished two tunes called “Late Night” & “Violet Sky”. We put these tunes up on the now defunct Place2Be website. They ac-cepted the tunes and put them up which was amazing for us, as all

Guerrilla Warfare - Renegade Hardware

Welcome to shanktown - RH

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our heroes had tunes up there, and it was a place a lot of people went to to listen to new talent and unre-leased dubs that never came out. We got a lot of exposure from those tunes being on there and it was our first stepping stone into DNB as a profession. We had to then think of a name and i always wanted to call myself Nocturnal, so we adopted the name and started doing things with a bit more vigour and focus.

You have produce timeless tunes With Prolix and Vicious Circle , How did you know them? Did you know each other previously or did you meet the first time in studio?

In regards to the VC guys, we all grew up in the same area in South-West London. Me and Dan went to school with each other and i had crossed paths with the others pretty regularly as youngsters. We were all into the same thing, taking drugs, doing graffiti, stealing paint from shops and getting into fights, and most importantly, music. We were all pretty naughty back then, from broken homes with struggling mothers and not much positive male influence around to guide us. All of things we used to do, were the things that helped us bond with each other, and gladly, music is what we carried on doing, and lov-ing. We have left most of the other

activities behind Me and Simon work very well in the studio, we have an understanding and neither of us sit on the fence when it comes to ideas. Its quite natural, and we have the same kind of taste except Simon’s love for Boyzone.Prolix is someone who i met through an old friend called Luke Envoy, he produces dubtup now, but used to be an excellent drum n bass DJ. He was making a DNB tune with some guy from Brighton called Chris, and gave us some of the bounces that he had done with him and we thought they were great, so we sent him a tune we had been working on for a little while called “Crater” and asked if he wanted to collabo-rate on it, and he said yes. The tune took about 3 months to complete, we went down to his house about 4 times and finally finished the tune. In this time we became very good friends, and to this day we still are. We did a few more tunes that got signed but i think Crater is still to this day my favourite one.

After being published by some of the most important labels in the drum & bass scene such as Ren-egade Hardware, Syndrome Audio e Revolution Rec, what are the next challenges that you will be facing?

Im currently working on a lot of solo material, as well as a side project

with another well known dnb art-ist. i wont tell you the name of the project but we have some tunes out there to watch out for. This project is strictly just about the music, no egos, no money problems, no fame hunger, just music. Me and Simon have also just completed a 12” for Commercial Suicide which is some-thing we are both very happy about, Klute is someone i have always had respect for in terms of the quality of music he releases.

Recently you played in Rome and some years ago in the north of Italy, what do you think about the Italian dnb movement?

Italy rocks! Both times i have played in Venice were crazy!And more recently Rome which was also great. The crowds there are definitely not half hearted.

What will be the evolution of dnb in the next years, it’s a genre that has still things to tell or you think that’s all over?

I think drum n bass will always have a story to tell. You have to remem-ber that music is subjective, there are still people getting into the mu-sic that have never heard of the people that influenced us. They are all going out there and buying CdJ decks as we speak, and buying their first

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tunes on Beatport. 174 breakbeat will always have a home. Im really happy with some of the music i am hearing out there at the moment, people like Jubei and S.P.Y etc are really making the same music that i got into when i first heard it, except with more up to date production quality. Drum n Bass will keep on going round in circles, but changing a little bit every time it comes back around, its the same as most mu-sic really. Im always excited to hear new artists breaking through and how it progresses year to year, i still have so much love for the music so i wont give up on it quite yet.

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Also known as Animal Chin and 500 Mills, have been active drumnbass dj’s and producers since the mid nineties.

Collectively producing since 1998, they’ve had over 50 vinyl releases on various high profile labels such as Moving Shadow, Human and Ob-

scene.. words: Marco Perini

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is the sea, I struggle to be without it. There are so many good scenes in Europe it’s really hard to say. Every place offers something different. To me it is not the size of the party that matters (that’s what she said lol), but how much the people are enjoy-ing themselves. That in turn makes me enjoy myself.

New tecnologies had provided a lot of electronic music on the internet a lot of big tunes and a lot of shit too, what do you think about that? suggest something to the newcom-ers

I prefer there being more people be-ing able to make electronic music. 10 years ago it was only people with some money that could afford to make electronic music. Now almost everyone can. That means not so many talent is lost as there would

Introduce yourself, where do you come from, where are you going, why counterstrike, when did you started?

I am Justin Scholtemeyer AKA Ani-mal Chin and also half of Counter-strike. I come from Cape Town, South Africa. I am going into the fu-ture at the speed of sound. Around 2000 we chose Counterstrike, be-cause we were pressurised to come up with a better name than Animal Chin & 500 Mills when it was time for our first release. 500 Mills was playing a lot of Counterstrike at the time. We had no idea the game would become so famous. There is nothing we can do about it now... we are stuck with it.

So you’re from south africa and now you live in czech rep. wich are the differences between the 2 scenes? is there anything that you would import from your country?(exept the sun) you crawled around all europe dur-ing the years, which is your pre-ferred scene and which are the ele-ments that makes you say that?

The scene in Czech Republic is much bigger and way more spread out throughout the whole country. In South African we basically just have scenes in 3 cities. The thing I miss the most from South Africa is Sever / Project 2501 - ALGO007

21 The Collaboration pt.1 - CSRECS 001

have been 10 years ago. Unfortu-nately this means we have to go through a lot of shit music to find good stuff, but you know, I think really good music always shines through it in the end. Newcomers should be honest with themselves, never send out music until you are absolutely sure that it is of profes-sional quality, no matter how much you are burning for people to hear it. From my own experience, once

someone sends me a shit song, I rarely give them a second chance.

On the internet we can find even a lot of “free music”, pirate websites provides everything you want total-ly free, are you agree with the idea that a product of the human mind is property of the humankind or of the artist who generate that? are you agree with free music distribution?

should earn money from produc-tions, shows or both of them?

There are a lot of arguments that musicians should find other ways to make money than selling records, like touring & merchandise. But you know, I think that is a load of shit. I don’t mind people checking out my stuff via pirate websites, but if you like it buy it... The thing that pisses me off most are the crazy, almost psychotic dub leakers out there. wtf?! I don’t see why they have to make the already struggling artists and record labels live’s harder by sharing illegal dubs.

What do you think about this new wave of electronic music coming from east europe? do you think that those famous new technologies which we talked be-fore are helping in that? how?

Well I think that the talent has al-ways been there but there were communication problems and until a few years ago, drumnbass was still very much centralised around the Uk. You had to know someone in the Uk dnb scene, if you didn’t, you were pretty much fucked.

You started a label called Algorythm, then another one, Counterstrike,, which is the purpose in having two labels? is something about

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the sound? which are the guide-lines/differences of the two labels?

There aren’t any differences be-tween the labels. We just got frus-trated because vinyl takes so long to come out. We were receiving so many good demos, we figured that if we had two labels we would be able to put out more music, quick-er.

Darkside and light, these are the two spheres in which dnb is grow-ing say something about that? are you a jedi knight or a sith lord? may the force be with you anyway... what do you think about evolution of that extreme side of drumnbass? wich are your favourite newcomers producers, are you following some-one? about the past, wich have been, if there are, the artists that in-fluenced you more, did you get in-spired by someone in particular ?

I am just someone that enjoys en-ergetic music, It does not necessar-ily have to be dark. There is a big difference between energetic and just plain noise though... and this is what a lot of people do not under-stand. To me, the sound i am into to this day started with the tech step sound of 1995 - 1997. They made so many classics during that period, Mutant Revisited, Locust etc, those tunes still inspire me. There are so

many good new producers out there it’s hard to pick a favourite... Check out one of my recent mixes, that should tell you...

In the last few years we saw a lot of contamination from drumnbass to other more commercial music genres, do you think this is the be-ginning of something, do you think that dnb is becoming concrete? is it already?

At the moment D&B is bigger than it’s ever been... I don’t think D&B will become bigger than what it is unless more big artists like Pendu-lum come through. I don’t think D&B will die anytime soon... it will just stick around and go through waves of popularity, like most genres do.

The Collaboration pt.2 - CSRECS 002

Q: Hi Chook,Speaking about your path as dj and producer, how long have you been working in this field ?

A: I got my first decks in 95. I was mainly into hip hop back then. In 2001 I started making my own beats.

Starting out in 2004, Chook launched Full Force Recordings as an output for the fierce and disturbing side of european techno influenced drum & bass.The label garnered support right from the off with djs as diverse as Roni Size, J Majik and Calyx & Teebee all queuing up to work Full Force’s releases into their sets. Chook, alongside friends such as Phace, State of Mind and Mayhem put the label firmly on the map with tracks from some of the world’s finest breakbeat artists, keeping the music policy as credible, long-lasting dnb.Now, five years since he started Full Force, Chook delves deeper into his influences, spreading his wings as a producer without resorting to cheap tricks and sheep-like trend following.

Words: Filippo Conti

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Q: Along with Radic you created Full Force Recordings, a label which has released tunes by high profile artists through the years, what brought you to start this experience?

It was Radic who really pushed the thought of starting up a label back in 2004. I didn’t feel ready yet but after a few weeks of pestering me I got into the idea and a few months later we released FF001. We just wanted to release music we liked and that’s what we did ever since.

Q: Your last album “The Cocoon” in-cludes tracks which go from dnb to minimal techno through cross over and It definitely brought some fresh air to the dnb scene, would you like to tell us what were the inputs and the inspiration that helped your creativity?

A: The album is about the music that I’ve been feeling recently. I bought a lot of tech house in the past 3 yearsand therefore I didn’t want to write a strictly dnb album. People like Extrawelt and Lee Jones definitely were a big influence during that pe-riod. On the other hand I wanted to blend that sound with that of old ed rush & optical or matrix stuff from the nineties.

Q: Trough the internet, fans have

labelled your style as one of the forerunners of this new genre of dnb , “minimal funk”, do you feel represented by this definition ?

Well I got to admit that I never heard the term before. I don’t re-ally read the forums. Funk always sounds good to me though

Q: You recently have been touring in New Zealand and Australia ...what are the main differences be-tween the european dnb scene and the one down under ? You already have been twice to Italy, what do you think about the italian scene?

A: New Zealand has a huge scene. You can hear State of mind tunes on rotation on big radio stations. I guess you could almost compare it to the scene in the UK.

Chook’s last album “The Cocoon”

Italy seems to have an ever grow-ing scene. I was well surprised to see that people drove 200 km for the night in Padova. Respect.

Q: As a label owner, how do you see the future of vinyl as media support ? do you think it’s at risk of extinction? What do you reckon will be the new frontiers of the multimedia industry?

A: Vinyl sales have been drop-ping a lot and mp3 sales are in-creasing but not proportionally to the loss of vinyl units.I’m not sure vinyl will still be there in 5 years time. I don’t know what the solution for the future will be. I don’t think any-one knows it.Most artists nowadays are mak-ing there money with gigs. Pos-sibly there won’t even be a need for labels anymore as they don’t have the

money to promote artists any-more anyway.

Q: Would you like to reveal some preview about your forth-coming works and the one on Full Force?Having come such a long way, what still challenges you at the moment ?

A: Vicious Circle and Prolix have been working on some remixes for Full Force, more on that soon.Squash is my new challenge at the moment, really love it.

Phace & Chook - Frozen/Sculptured

Sara Basile aka Opticalsyndrome is grown in Bari (Italy), She had stud-ied photojournalism with Pierpaolo Cito (Associated Press) and is spe-cialized in still life and photo-report-age.During these years she made many reportage about musical and cul-tural events.Sara use a digital reflex Canon Eos 5D

For this first issue we have selected a cool photograper from Bologna...

Column by Davide Rovere

Good morning dear

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modaxi @ Cyberlab - Bari

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Evilbass [Aenimal] @ Amigdala - Bergamo

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Hands on mixer - Amigdala - Bergamo

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Aenimal @ Amigdala - Bergamo

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Kuzam [Aenimal] @ Fucinacontrovvento - Venezia

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Kuzam [Aenimal] @ Therapy sessions - Venezia

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Nk [Hallucinator] @ Kindergarten - Bologna

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Audio & Blade [the Sect] @Therapy sessions - Venezia

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Midihands - Showcase @ Kindergarten - Bologna

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Headphones

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The bridge outside Blogos - Casalecchio di Reno

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Spray cans

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Camera di commercio - Brindisi

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M-Atome

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from the beginning an integral part of Cause4Concern, Optiv had also built up a large selection of solo re-leases and in 2003 started his own imprint label ‘Redlight Records’ . The label was very well received from the start and has included col-laborations and remixes from the likes of Black Sun Empire, Concord Dawn, The Upbeats, Bulletproof, Mayhem, Psidream, Chris Su, Dose & Axiom. Redlight continues to grow strong as a label and the next offering on the label is a collabora-tion with MC Rymetyme called ‘Run It Red’.Recently reformed after a few years of inactivity, 2009 sees Cause 4

Concern return to wreak havoc with their first full length album. Spread over five separate 12”s to be fol-lowed by a double CD, Pandemic picks up right where the lads left off – the leading edge of electronic mu-sic. All of the elements that made them one of the most exciting and entertaining production posses in drum ‘n’ bass remain intact, and are both refined and reinforced.

54Optiv & MarkC4C - Under ForeverBorderline - Informed

Optiv, BTK & Presence Known - CrawlerProktah - Failure Notice

Optiv - Strange Ways - Zero Method RemixOptiv & BTK - Let It Hit Them

Audio - CollisionDom & Klute - Buy More Now

Ed Rush - River of TimeOptiv - Stereotype

Dose - Q & ANeonlight & Hackage - Nothing Is SafeOptiv - Kaos Therapy - Proktah Remix

Mindscape - UltrasonikOptiv & MarkC4C - Hammer House

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