By Ben Marshall
Perth, Australia’s strongest drum and bass scene – a drum and bass night nearly every night of the week and no drum and bass international in the country misses it. The wave of drum and bass crews in that took the style and made it the number one sound in the city outside the cheesy clubs over 1998/1999 – Loaded Dice, Break and Enter and Optimum Records – all have one thing in common: Greg Packer got them into drum and bass.
With his own label, Interphase Recordings, releasing vinyl, and over 20 tracks signed up on UK and US labels like Good Looking, Tangent, Phuturo, Hard Leaders and Phuturistic Bluez among others, Greg is at the forefront in pushing Australia up the ladder with the Brazilians, Germans, Japanese, Norwegians and New Zealanders now getting heavy attention from the UK drum and bass kingmakers.
In 1993 LTJ Bukem was brought to Perth for a rave and was put up in Greg Packer’s place. Apparently Bukem was being given a bit of a runaround by the local promoter and stayed with Greg longer than expected. Greg heard Bukem practising in his room with early Good Looking releases and nearly wet himself at the sound, “At the time I was just buying records listening to them thinking – that’ll work, that won’t, that’ll work, that won’t… – and hearing that sound for the first time was just amazing.” Bukem left Greg a pile of Good Looking white labels and Greg stuffed hundreds of dollars into Bukem’s hands at the airport and pleaded with him to just send him more of that sound. Bukem did and Greg was sent swathes of amazing records that he couldn’t play out, as hardcore was still the dominant sound at parties.
Greg started doing mix tapes to get out the sound of these records – leading to the huge circulation of mix tapes that laid the groundwork for the rise of drum and bass in Perth. These days, with the rise of the more soulful, deeper style of drum and bass championed by Fabio, the music is now at its finest peak but with a degree of baggage still to be dealt with. “I’ve always liked my darkside and still like certain hard aggressive drum and bass tracks but I’m really leaning towards Fabio’s style these days, my favourite producers are the likes of Carlito and Addiction, Marcus Intallex, those that are making music with really strong beats but more soulful sounds, more groove, so it’s music you can either listen to or go out and dance hard to – I think that combination of sounds is brilliant.”
While his DJing set up Perth for the sound, it’s his recent production that has been catching international interest.
Having signed a track to John B after triggering John’s interest through dropping it on CD in his support set earlier last year, Greg says, “I got this email from Bukem saying sorry he hasn’t gotten back to me but he’s been on tour again, but there’s another track he wanted to take and unfortunately it was one of the ones John B got and I had to say no to him, which was hard as Bukem’s been a mate for so many years and wanted to do the right thing by him. But I said if you really like the track you’re welcome to cut yourself a dubplate and play it out.
Next thing I get a phonecall about a week later from his hotel room in Paris at 5am after a Progression Sessions gig to 1500 people saying he cut the tune and played it and it was the most responsive tune of the night – just pushing hard to have release of the track. I had to keep saying no, no, no. He was saying he liked it that much he wanted it on the next Progression Sessions. I was really gutted over that one but just had to say I’m always hard at work in the studio and given time there’ll be another.”
After 20 plus tracks to Bukem before he had the first track signed, persistency obviously pays. Being able to mix the pants off all comers in the mid 90s and selling mix tapes in Perth by the boxload every week, Greg tried his hand at the UK but from 30 demos only ended up with two gigs. “The response I was getting was ‘yeah it’s a wicked demo tape, the mixing’s really great, the scratching’s great but at the end of the day these tunes are six months old.’ But these were fresh off the shelf for me and only six months old to the dons who’ve been caning them on dubplate. To really get anywhere you had to be producing – the reason Andy C got accepted was his tunes, Bad Company through their tunes – if you had Grooverider and the heavyweights dropping your tunes you’re going to get noticed…”
Greg is also aware of the preconceptions drum and bass can be up against. “people hear the hard noisy stuff and think that’s it, that’s what drum and bass is, but there’s so much more to it and I think if everyone had the chance to be exposed to the right style of drum and bass in the right context it could be a lot bigger than it currently is. It’s important to have the harder sounds too, especially for the all ages gigs, it’s an introduction to the energy, it’s another place to start – I think radio would help, if there was more radio playing easier on the ears drum and bass, I’m sure it would do wonders for the music.”
Greg Packer plays at Moving Through Air in Sydney at the Hunter Bar, Thursday, December 19.
