With an imminent tour looming, Darren ‘D-Bridge’, of Drum n Bass heavyweight BC Recordings, had a brief chat with Melbourne DJ Fickuss about success, film shoots, the new album and touring Australia.

As one of the most dominant forces in Drum n Bass production over the last 5 years… how do you guys feel about the success that you’ve had with your releases and how they’ve been received by the Drum n Bass community worldwide?
I think at first we were all actually quite shocked by it. It was quite a hard time for us when we left Renegade Hardware, we were all a bit unsure of what we would do. We felt a little bit lost, and quite out in the open, so we made a commitment to start our own thing and just give it a go. Didn’t have very high expectations at the time; we just basically locked off for one summer and produced loads of tunes at the end of it we decided The Nine b/w The Bridge was gonna be our first release. We gave it out on dubplate to a lot of DJ’s and they weren’t really feeling it; we didn’t get a great deal of response but we decided to press it up anyway. We got a fat mailing list together and hit everybody. We just smothered the place in it. So it was the first test press which got people’s attention and we were quite shocked coz we had so much music as well, we had locked ourselves off and had made thirty or forty tracks, so when the first one was a hit we were instantly on a roll. At one stage, early on, there was twenty odd tunes out on the road. People kinda had to take notice.

We’ve ridden through quite a lot of the people who were trying to knock us down again even though we have kinda been responsible for changing the sound, or part of the sound, within the scene. Because of that you get people who wanna jump on and try and re-create that sound or feel as well. At some stages you kinda feel like a victim of your own music and success because you can’t make your tunes like that anymore because everyone else is making music like that. About two years in we had to decide where we were going to go with our music to try and keep ahead of the game.

Bad Company have quite a reputation for producing big badd tunes with rumbling basslines and earth shattering drops, Shot Down on Safari seems to have taken a new direction in many way… how would you explain this?
With Shot Down on Safari we got to a stage where we had so many tracks that we decided that we may as well do an album. Because make so much music people just tend to moan at us because we just don’t get enough time to release it all; so we get a lot of headz pressuring us about when’s it all coming out? By releasing an album people get it all at once and are forced to get off our back a little bit.

Because we’re DJing now the sound (on the latest album) is almost dictated by where we play. Because we’re playing for a certain audience tunes tend to go that way, that’s why everything’s big rave sounding tunes at the moment. They’re tunes that are gonna cause damage in all the raves. Shot Down on Safari has a lot of stuff on there where you can hear that influence, it has that kind of element which works in big raves, which is a good and bad thing you know. Personally I think tunes need to come back away from that a little bit because I keep feelin’ that something’s missing at the smaller more intimate parties where people are a little more daring with the music. A lot of DNB these days tends to be a little bit safe to the point being obvious. But everytime we do an album its kind of like a footnote of where we are at, at the time, so what we’ve been doing that last year gone kind of explains the latest album a little bit.

There have been some rumours flying around that Fresh is leaving )EIB(... is this permanent or is this just a side project?
No (laughs). No he’s not leaving, as such, he’s just doing his own thing. We’re all at this stage now where after 4 or 5 years we haven’t really got anything to prove anymore, but we realize that we’re in a position to do what we want. He wants do his own thing, his got his own personal agenda as well you know. He wants to do some stuff for his own label, and we’re all cool with that. That’s fine.

BC is still together; and at the end of the day BC was only ever any given combination of the four of us. Jason and Nick have just got loads of new stuff to come and its sort of gonna be a different sound as well, thats kinda like what we’re all about.

I’m doing a side project as well, which is a downbeat label run with my brother, I’ve got club nights happening. You know we’re all very different musically and in our aims, what we’re into and background. Its almost a little bit inevitable, we all deep within our hearts want to do other things as well, so we’re allowing ourselves to do that. If one of us wants to go and do something nobody’s going to say… you can’t do that, we’ve gotta keep the group together. But that’s life y’know, you can do what you want to do, and that’s no different here.

Do you guys ever get sick of playing ‘The Nine’, because, even now 5 years on, it constantly gets caned all over the place?
Nah, I’m really happy about it. Back in the day, Drum n Bass tunes had a really short shelf life and it was slightly annoying that tunes would get played for six months and then you couldn’t really play em again. With that tune, we made a point of just caning it constantly, it was like our anthem in a way or our BC signature tune. Any time we played, it would always get a rewind, and all the other DJ’s kinda realized that this particular tune, for some reason, just works every time. I’ll never get sick of it, y’know. When we found out that it was voted Drum n Bass’s No 1 tune of all time it was like RAH – wikid, it was a shock but I love it…. Keep on playing it!

For the Australian )EIB( tour what should we expect, is it gonna be all four of you guys or what?
Its just two of us. Its gonna be Jason (Maldini) and myself and you can expect to hear new choons and heavy music. We’re just gonna throw it down.

Is there much of a vibe coming back to the UK from the DJ’s who are touring?
Yeah, generally the DJ’s don’t wanna come back (to the UK), that’s the vibe I get. I know that Shimon, went missing for a while as did Loxy & Ink. Everyone seems to stay there longer than expected because the people are vibing over there!

Its all good over there in Australia man. I’m really looking forward to it.


How was it making that Rawhill Kru – MO FIRE filmclip?
It was good fun. (laughs) It was really funny actually because we had all these make-up artists and lighting and all that kinda thing and its all new to us. All I know is that I ended up looking orange on the day. When I look at the clip; you don’t really see much of me but when you do see me I do look a bit orange. I was thinking “I knew it! -damn!” (laughing) I had a bad day that day coz I had an incident trimming my beard with my mate’s electric razor the day before. Looking back on the filming, it was a first attempt and, if we went back we’d probably do a lot of things differently, but you know, its just a process of learning and you hope that each time you do it you get a bit better.

Everyone’s caning the tune at the moment… its being released on March 7th and its going to have the original (german version), the Andy C version, the Dillinja Nitrous remix and BC of course; it’s a double pack/EP.

Is the live Bad Company outfit ‘Digital Nation’ ever going to tour?
You know what, we are, eventually! We’ve talked about it for ages and realized that it is actually a viable option. We’ve got ourselves a manager and are in the process of getting some demo’s together and are basically trying to get a deal. Obviously we could release it on BC Recordings by ourselves but we’d really rather let someone else deal with the headache of releasing it. With Fresh doing his thing and me doing my thing its obviously just a case of getting everybody together. I’d say it should be in the bag by mid year at least.

The first of the Heavyweight Champions series was an absolute stormer, so with Bad Company playing Round II in Australia, this country is set to explode.

Tour Dates are as follows.

Melbourne: @ The Prince of Wales on February 21st

Adelaide: Stardust Summer Sound Festival @ The Shores on February 22nd