If you’ve been following Night Bass religiously like we have, the news of AC Slater’s illustrious label locking in a Kry Wolf EP should have turned those eyes into leaky faucets. It’s been a long time coming, of course—with the UK duo supporting the cause since it started and having been a huge draw on previous NB tour dates—so this release was an inevitable one that had us hounding our feeds, waiting for news to break. You heard it here first: Temper was entirely worth the wait.
While Bill Francis and Lewis Darvill are notorious for pushing the four-on-the-floor limits for the most part, they’ve taken cues from drum & bass across these three tunes. The connection is extremely evident on the titular cut (maybe not as much as the broken business they get into on “Waavves,” but still). They throw a low-frequency fit on the bit with slabs of bass stomping out in between whirring synths and drum fills that’ll make your blood boil.
The premiere is ripe for the pickin’ below, so keep your mouse hovered over that sideways triangle. On top of that, we had a nice chat with the Kry Wolf gents, so don’t waste any more time.
You’ve been running with the Night Bass crew for a minute now, having gone on tours and such. What made you wait this long for this EP to come to fruition?
We wanted to wait until we had three tracks that matched the Night Bass vibe and that worked well together. We also make a lot of straighter house music, which we love, but I don’t think is really the Night Bass vibe. I think we had two of the tracks ready a while back, but only recently finished the title track, which really finished off the EP for us.
Can you give us some context behind the creation of “Temper”?
We’ve played a few sets with an MC recently, just to switch things up a bit, and we found that tracks like “Temper,” which have a more tough UK bass sound, were sitting much better in sets with an MC, as opposed to straighter house bits. So, I suppose we were inspired by the experience of playing with an MC and wanted to make a track that we could hear an MC over.
The release sees you riding on three vastly different vectors, which is a feat you’re known for accomplishing on the regular. What would you say is the glue holding all of your influences together?
I think it’s a very UK energy that holds the tracks together, mostly a drum & bass influence, which is where the inspiration for the sounds on this release come from—especially “Temper” and “Wavvves.” “Flashlight” is a bit of a wild-card track, but I think energy-wise, it fits in nicely. And the buildups with the big drum rolls, etc., are kind of like something Noisia would do—going back to the D&B influence.
How did you determine all three would bode well with the Night Bass brand? What would you say are the qualifiers of a record getting picked up by the label?
I think AC and the gang are quite open-minded with their signings, but when we’d finished “Temper,” we instantly thought of Night Bass and how the track could work in one of AC’s sets, for example. If you want your record to be picked up by Night Bass, I think you need to have that aggressive kind of energy in your tracks—something that gets a big reaction. I mean, they’re not exactly a deep house label!
Obviously, the Bristol sound has seeped over into the States, but has the opposite happened very much? What have been the overall reactions to the Americanized version of bass house?
I think labels like Night Bass are doing a lot to show people in the UK how much the US appreciates their music—especially when AC bigs us up so much and talks a lot about his love for the UK sound. I think the two sounds are merging together more every day, so people in the UK are just open to hearing the full spectrum of bass music, no matter where it’s from.
What excites you most about the genre, and is there anything you wish would change or progress?
We’re really feeling that sound that takes influence from techno and combines it with the more UK bass side of things in a clever way. So like, you’ll have those booming techno drums, but merged with heavy bass sounds... It’s a really interesting vibe that we want to hear more of and are trying to perfect in some of our own tracks right now.
In regard to your own decisions as label heads, how do you efficiently juggle SoS and Food? Do you look at music with a different lens when listening to demos for each?
I think because we have a good team of people working on the labels, it’s never too much work, and it’s always a joy to put out good music. I think when signing tracks, you have to look beyond just signing tracks that you’d play out in a set, so it’s different from selecting tracks to bring to the club. Sometimes, a track may be a bit too experimental or maybe even too minimal for a Kry Wolf set, but it’s tracks like those that make a release interesting—something to play out, something to listen to at home—all in one release, maybe.
Do you remember the last time you had a good cry? Happy tears are okay, too.
Tax bills usually make us cry.
Follow Kry Wolf on Facebook | Twitter | SoundCloud
Follow Night Bass Records on Facebook | Twitter | SoundCloud
