This week’s mix of the week comes in the shape of Submotive and Total Science for the Metalheadz show on Rinse FM.
Submotive (James Davidson) is a drum & bass DJ, producer and engineer from Bournemouth on the UK’s south coast. Previously one half of the recently separated duo Ulterior Motive and co-founder of the Guidance record label, James is also Goldie’s engineer and production partner in the faultless project, Subjective, with a new LP due to land very soon. Over the last 10 years he has carved out a well-respected reputation for futuristic, high production beats with plenty of funk and soul for a large number of top record labels. Touring the world with high energy DJ sets. This new chapter sees James ramping up rather than slowing down, pushing forward with an impressive lineup of forthcoming releases over the next 12 months. With solo releases and collaborations with the scene’s best producers and labels.
Total Science is made up of Jason Greenhalgh and Paul Smith who first met in 1987 in and around the Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford. They were brought together through a mutual love of hip-hop. Greenhalgh was the first into the studio, with ‘Freestyle Fanatic’ launching his career in 1991. However, it was the establishment of the Legend imprint and specifically Greenhalgh’s ‘Champion Sound’, which really took their profile above and beyond the slew of anonymous white labels that were dominating the music at the time.
At the end of 1997, with help from Brilo from Timeless, Greenhalgh and Smith established the CIA label and changed their name to the now synonymous Total Science. The release of their ‘Silent Reign’ EP for Goldie’s Metalheadz breathed a new lease of life into the project, and the pair achieved a further boost with a well-timed Bad Company remix of ‘Champion Sound’ which conjured further interest in what they were doing with their own label. Their debut album Advance exposed a further field of interest, with downtempo experiments logged as a series of ‘Breaks’ on the majority of their early EP’s extended to some superb deep house, this breadth was taken a step further with their ‘Skin Deep’ imprint which has forged broken beat to considerable acclaim. The pair’s pioneering of a revival in old-school sounds and arrangements, together with Digital and Reinforced, dominated drum & bass throughout 2001. After this followed releases on high-profile labels such as 31 Records, True Playaz, Reinforced and Soul:r.
If we fast forward to today, the pair continue to release a consistently high level of quality drum & bass with their latest release alongside Break, “Blame You / Aardvark” available now on Triii Audio.
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