The Mic's Faith Hussain chats to Duality following a hot and heavy set at Bar Eleven...
I sat down with Jack Hambleton aka Duality, a third year UoN student and talented DJ/producer to chat about mixing and jungle after his back to back set with HRY at Bar Eleven, the final UMS event of the year. The set was ecstatic and hyper and had us all bouncing on the dancefloor surrounded by an ungodly amount of fog and the cheapest £3 beers in hand. The DJs clearly all poured their heart into their sets and thus gained the same energy back from the audience which was very clearly observed in Bar Eleven from the vigour of everyone’s dancing and cheering.
After Jack's set, we ventured outside and were accompanied by the drunk millennials and locals of Nottingham around Bar Eleven in Lace Market, and a couple violently making out for the entirety of the interview nearby as we discussed Jack's set. Hilarious ambience to set the scene on the steps of a flat entrance nearby.
“Let’s start by delving into the genre of jungle. It’s an upcoming genre and definitely has had a resurgence lately. Why did you decide to also branch into this genre? What about it attracted you?” I asked.
“I actually used to play drum and bass until around 2 months ago when I started collecting Jungle records.” Jack explained that when he mixes in his bedroom he finds himself enjoying jungle more than DnB. “With DnB it’s fun mixing but it doesn’t get me as excited as jungle does.”
I would argue jungle is a lot more inclusive of a genre to most people and has the most danceable and catchy beats. In the words of Jack “at the end of the day new school jungle is a lot better than new school drum and bass.”
I asked “who is your biggest musical influence at the moment” to which Jack replied “Stekker is a massive influence. He’s recently come up with a plug in which is like a software emulation of an old school hard ware sampler…” (called the Amigo Sampler) “I also love Cheetah and Janaway from the Bristol lot on the scene.” Jack is also from Bristol and is the owner of the record label Intaception. He manages everything from social media to organising track releases, managing bookings, and planning every intricate detail such as organising transport for lineups of planned events. Jack also noted how important it was to balance the event lineups with bigger and smaller names of the scenes to introduce people to new artists.
“Can you walk me through the process of mixing. How do you create a track? How do you start? Do you start with a concept or a track and where do you go from there?”
Jack replied that a “massive thing for me is storytelling. If I’m mixing by myself, I like to start off downtempo, ambient and mysterious and then contour it so it gets heavier as it progresses. Mixing tonight for example where I did a back to back it very much depends on what the other guy is brining. If I’m starting I’ll do my own thing and see what they bring and base it on that.”
Back to back mixing seems very much like its bouncing back and forth; the set I’d just watched did feel very rhythmic in terms of reacting to each other’s music.
“So let’s go back to the genre of jungle. Very loaded question time. Jungle is quite a historically underground genre, it emerged from the marginalised Black British community that came from the EDM scene of the 90s and Soundsystem culture. I was wondering what are thoughts on the emergence of Jungle as something that’s becoming a bit more mainstream? Like you could say it is becoming slightly gentrified. Do you think the popularisation of Jungle now is a good or a bad thing for these communities?”
“Mad question haha!” urged Jack. “I think it’s great that white people like myself are showing appreciation for that culture because it started off from black communities. People like myself from a white background appreciate that and show influence from that culture in our music, which is a very good thing.” Jack does not however that he does think there are times where people take it too far, but he thinks it’s “appreciation not appropriation for people like myself. I’m trying to give the history of jungle music a good platform for the modern viewpoint of it”
I do see most modern white Junglists absolutely are bringing light to the Black communities that influenced Jungle with a fresh take and bringing new listeners to old jungle tracks that are gaining more recognition now.
"People like myself from a white background appreciate that and show influence from that culture in our music, which is a very good thing"
“I also wanted to ask bit more personal question, what direction do you see your future going in regarding mixing post Uni?”
“Post-Uni, gunna cause a lot of stir, but I do view the underground community as a bit of a dead end…” Said Jack. “I think the ceiling of that community is lower than the commercial side of things. I want to be a successful sound engineer and musician, I think if I’m going to do that I need to branch out of jungle/ DnB scenes etc and venture into more commercial things.” A very interesting take and insight into the reality of making a name for yourself in the underground scenes.
Jack went on to talk about the future. “I’d love to work in a studio and more commercial artists that more people are going to know and hear about rather than setting my limits in the underground community.”
"vinyl is just more fun to mix than digital music. The physical process is so fun and it does sound way better as well to be honest"
“Do you prefer digital or physical forms of music to mix with?”
“Can I say neither? I’m saying neither because I like mixing digital because I can play my unreleased tunes and own stuff however, if I play on vinyl, I have a way of playing music from 25/30 years ago that sounds good. The way vinyl is made makes it sound good even now.”
I replied in agreement, saying that there are so many records that aren’t on anything and are just physical and a few people I know are trying to digitalise vinyl and put it online which is super fun, to which Jack said that “vinyl is just more fun to mix than digital music. The physical process is so fun and it does sound way better as well to be honest.”
“Final question of the night: I have a question from a fan (Kerim Alkin): What's the worst venue you’ve played at and why?”
Jack pondered and confidently said Face Bar, Reading.
“It was fucking awful”. (sorry to name drop) “While I was playing my set two people were getting off in the dancefloor to darkside dnb. That was basically it.” Sorry to Pete- Jack says he loves you but never take him back there.
Big love to Jack Hambleton for chatting to me, Yasara Karunadhara for photography and Ammal Kamran for helping out with recording.
Faith Hussain
Edited by Alice Beard
In- article images courtesy of Jack Hambleton, Darci Charalambous and Yasara Karunadhara
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