As always, the drum and bass scene is brimming with releases left right and centre and is healthier than ever in our opinion. Each respective label dishing out the goods for the supporters quenching the constant thirst of the keen dnb listener. This year has seen some amazing output from many labels but one that has been insanely consistent is the mighty, Dispatch Recordings.
This year, Dispatch and sister label Dispatch LTD have released a huge amount of music from the likes of Kyrist, SCAR, Sustance, Nymfo, Mikal, Xtrah, Pennygiles, Survival, Gerra & Stone, Hybris, DLR and even more! Yeah I know, a lot!
Staying true to their trademark sound and pushing the best in techy, rolling goodness, Dispatch for me have really shown they aren’t messing about this year, and confirm they are up there with the best in drum and bass.
Their next offering is from Belgian duo, M-Zine and Scepticz. For the avid drum and bass fan this should already be a household name for you by now with solo releases spanning back to 2011 and features with plenty of big name outfits.
The release, entitled ‘Fleeting EP’ is full of all the right ingredients and features collabs with some of the freshest names in the scene from the likes of Mystic State, Survey, Gusto and Schmoe. Fitting perfectly into the Dispatch flavour this EP is sure to please the heads and get dances moving!
We thought it best to catch up with the guys themselves and get some insight into what they’re about!
Yo M-Zine and Scepticz, thanks for taking the time to chat to us here at In-Reach!
Firstly let’s get a little background on you both, where abouts do you come from and how did you coin your respective artist names?
We’re both Belgian, and our artist names are remnants of when we used to be very much & heavily into gaming, before the beats drew us in & totally consumed all of our free time.
You’ve been on the dnb circuit for a little while now amassing releases on some pretty reputable labels, ‘Fleeting EP’ being your second solo offering for Dispatch this year, what spurred on the relationship with the label?
It’s actually the 5th one we done for Dispatch now. We met Ant for the first time in Leeds, back when he was running the “Momentum” nights at “The Wire”, first time hearing a UK soundsystem in our life, which was an amazing experience. Also we had a nice chat that night, and it sort of naturally evolved into sending him some tunes.
Hailing from Belgium, you’ve got a pretty busy dnb scene over there, we are aware that ‘jump up’ is very popular with Belgians, how is it for the techy side of things?
There’s still plenty of parties for the deep & tech heads, jumpup is indeed a big scene here, especially in Antwerp, Liège, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing, if anything, it helps other promotors to establish themselves more as wicked deep/techy nights, like for instance Star Warz in Ghent, Mentality in Brussels, the Bredren guys doing awesome things in a legendary club in Brussels called “Fuse”, there’s enough dnb events to do the rounds in BE in any subgenre to be fair.
What is a typical day in the M-Zine and Scepticz studio, do you both work together or is it mostly online? Any rituals you have at all?
We work together a couple of times a week, but we do things separately aswell, which may, or may not result in a finished tune, but we try to keep it this way, to have plenty of vibes lying around, be it to finish, or use elements from. A typical day in the studio is cloudy & hazey, good food is available all the time, coffee, laughs & banter
You’ve got a few collaborators on the EP, how did you go about choosing who you wanted to work with?
Basically the collabs on here are all 1st time online collabs we did with any of the collaborators, except for the tune with Gus. All these collabs came about through sending stems back & forth, and I think you can really feel all the influences of all the different artists in there. There’s not really a choosing process to be fair, we pretty much all rolled with it hahaha.
How long has the release been in the works?
About 4 months.
What influences do you have, fans of other genres aside from dnb at all?
You can’t limit yourself to listening to 1 genre constantly so yeah, there’s a couple of influences: Bill Evans, Tool, Nicolas Jaar, Binkbeats, Black Star, Troy Pierce, Trentemoeller, Steve Spacek, Moderat, Trevino, Degrees Of Freedom, Zed Bias
If you could collab with anyone, who would it be and why?
Skeptical, Alix Perez, Monty, because they are on some different level at the moment.
Who else are you feeling in the drum and bass scene?
Black Barrel, Dub Head, Nami, Gamma, War, Kolectiv crew, Bredren.
What can we expect from the both of you over the next 6 months, any other releases in the pipeline, shows etc?
There’s several EP’s sent off for mastering, still can’t really give away which labels, but we can honestly say we’re pretty chuffed to release music on some of these labels.
Any final words, upcoming radio, gigs etc?
There’s several EP’s sent off for mastering, still can’t really give away which labels, but we can honestly say we’re pretty chuffed to release music on some of these labels.
Bigup to all the people that have supported us in the past, and continue to support us on this epic journey !
Thanks again for taking the time to chat to us!
Big up!!
The Fleeting EP is available in all good digital outlets now!
Dispatch Bandcamp
Beatport
