Exclusive Interview with Eveson

Siam2nite had the opportunity to have an exclusive interview with Eveson, shortly before his performance alongside the PHATFUNK crew at Glow Nightclub on 6th March.

You are a DJ, Producer, Visual Artist & Amateur Stuntman from the UK. You grew up in Glastonbury, with famous Glastonbury Festival at your doorstep. How did you get in touch with electronic dance music – especially Drum&Bass - in the first place and how did you get into DJing and music production?

I discovered rave music in the early 90s as a kid, finding the underground stuff by way of the prodigy in 93, then dove head first into the underground and within the year was collecting and swapping fantazia/dreamscape tape packs and compiling 'rave tapes' for other kids at school. Having the Glastonbury Festival on my doorstep, as well as other smaller festivals and parties going on in the area, meant i was hitting up the rave tents and throwing shapes from the age of 12/13. Although throughout the 90s i had a pretty broad taste, covering all kinds of electronica, trip hop and dance music, i'd always been drawn to tracks with breakbeats as the driving force, so it was only natural my focus would shift towards D&B…

In 99 i learned how to DJ at a small dj workshop/tent hidden away in the woods at a festival in plymouth. A couple of months later i'd bought a cheap pair of starter decks and was completely hooked. I'd been making music on my Playstation for a year or so, but had no idea how to do it properly, and it wasn't until i went to uni to study graphic design that a classmate introduced me to Reason and i could finally start the process of becoming a part of the scene i'd been infatuated with for so many years.

You play and produce ”soulful and groove driven” Drum&Bass. How would you describe your own music in just a few words?

Breaks, bass and vibes sums it up pretty well i'd say.

What tracks, remixes or mix-sets would you recommend to someone that is not yet familiar with your music?

'Get Your Swerve On' epitomises the raw liquid funk sound i championed for so many years. This, i wrote as an homage to Fabio's 'Swerve' club night which were some of the first gigs i played when i started releasing records. I took the CD up to him at one swerve event, told him the story and he had enough faith to drop it mid set, to a packed floor without even hearing it first. The crowd went off and called for a reload which was a pretty special moment for me.

Numbers seems to be the firm favourite of those that really know my back catalogue and is me going in on a deeper more meditative tip. I've got a more dance floor orientated VIP that i've been sitting on for a while that's been a handy little weapon in my DJ set for the last couple of years...

Bluebirds And Powder marks a period where i started to experiment, merging all my musical influences together in an attempt to try and create a true sound of my own which culminated in my album on V Records.

Set wise, the live recording of my album launch recorded at Fire in London with Stamina MC is up there with the favourite live sets of my career. As i mentioned previously, i was in an experimental phase with my own productions and i was writing at various tempos, meaning i couldn't really mix my tunes into the standard D&B type set i was getting booked for, so for the album launch i decided to do an all vinyl set of my favourite ever liquid classics that helped sculpt my sound. Stamina is on fire over the whole set as well, he really adds to the vibe.

Your debut album “The Last Summer Of Love” was released in 2012. What have you been up to since then and what are you currently focusing and working on?

I stepped back for a little while release wise, only putting out the odd record here and there, while i figured out where i wanted to go next with my music. After progressing my sound with the album, i didn't feel inspired enough to go back to churning out the same kind of tunes i'd been writing prior to 'The Last Summer Of Love', and after a year or two of trying out different things, i had a creative breakthrough when i decided to look back to my roots and write music based on the nostalgic memories of the early 90s rave tapes of my youth, where the arrangements are more chaotic and disparate elements are all thrown together in the mix, all masked by the muffled and dusty quality of a well used cassette. I was unsure if this personal experiment would be well received or who'd be up for releasing it, as tempo wise it's a lot slower than most modern D&B, but Ingredients were keen to take on and push the project, which i'm releasing under the alias 'Dead Man's Chest'. The first EP (Dreamscapes) dropped at the end of last year, and thankfully, was incredibly well received. i'm currently working on the follow up, which should be release in June.

What were the most memorable and the worst gigs you ever played and what was the funniest thing ever occurred during any of your performances?

DJing on the deck of a boat on the river Danube in Belgrade as the sun came up over the city was a pretty special moment… A crowd absolutely giving it their all, amidst a perfect location against the backdrop of a balmy midsummer sunrise. The worst, or i should say, 'most difficult' in terms of how i was feeling when i started my set, has got to be when i played Glastonbury Festival in 2009. It was a Sunday afternoon set, i'd been on site since the previous Tuesday and i'd only slept twice for a couple of hours at a time since i'd arrived. I've sometimes ended a set slightly worse for wear, but at this point i felt like death warmed up before i'd even started. Luckily the sun was out, people had their groove on and the combination of vibes and tunes brought me back to life, music can be a great medicine! The funniest? i arrived to play at a club in bristol, and was doing an early set, hardly anybody had arrived yet and the dance floor was completely empty. I decided as nobody was around, to play out some of the mid-tempo trippy musical stuff i'd been writing around the time of my album, and this one guy in his 50s came in, and out of nowhere just started leaping around the entire dance floor, throwing wizard shapes and dancing like a fairy on hallucinogenics. For a good half hour, it was just me and him in this dingy underground cellar type room, he didn't stop once for breath. People started to drift in so i started playing D&B and that's the last i ever saw of him…

On 6th March you will perform live here in Bangkok at Glow Nightclub, alongside the PHATFUNK crew. Have you visited Thailand before? Will it be your Bangkok debut? What can Bangkok expect of your upcoming performance?

This is my first time in Asia actually, i've been wanting to come for a long time! I'll be staying an extra couple of days after the gig to check it out, i'm looking forward to the food as much as anything, Thai is without doubt one of my favourite cuisines. As for the set, since the Dead Man's Chest stuff started dropping, i've been playing sets where i take things back to the early 90s, dropping the tempo to 160 and mixing some of my favourite tunes from back in the day alongside the brand new DMC material i've been working on. At first wasn't sure how this'd go down with the new school heads in the club who weren't a part of the Rave/Jungle thing the first time around, but the sets have been seriously going off, so i'll definitely be bringing this vibe out with me to BK and look forward to seeing the kinda damage it does to a dance floor half a world away from it's origins.