Bad Company....
Well .. here are the answers to some of the questions, you nutters sent us ; ) ... we have tried to pick good examples of common questions, so sorry if we haven't answered you're question, you may find an answer to it in here somewhere. On a news tip; our website should be open in February ...www.BadCompanyRecordings.com. The sampler for our album - 'Inside the Machine' is coming out in January - it features a very phat moving fusion remix of 'four days' and a track called 'Hunted' on the flip, which is one of the ten tracks on the vinyl version of the album. The cd features nine tracks, plus a downbeat experiment, and will come with a bad company mix cd featuring unreleased tracks, plus the nine, four days and others as well as all the tracks on the album. The vinyl album will feature Nitrous (BC and Trace), Colonies, Brain-Scan, Dead-Side, Silicon Dawn, Trick of the Light, Oxygen (The Drilla Killa), Hunted, Sentient and Forgotten. The album should hit in the first week of Feb .. we wanted to get it out earlier, but it was difficult cos' of all the millenial maddness a'goan (!). Wishing every one a Bad Christmas, and an even worse new year ; )
peace, da Bad Kru'
Trust( Philadelphia, USA ) Question:How do you approach a new track? With four people involved, do you all have defined duties or is it more random?
Bad Company:
It just depends who's in the mood to write a tune, sometimes one of us, sometimes four .. it's good that way because no one has to feel pressured, they can sit out if they're not feeling inspired. We all know how to engineer, and we just take it in turns to play different roles, depending on the tune.
Russell(Yeovil, England) Question: Drum and bass is the razors edge of dance music at the mo. How long with such gaining popularity will it remain in the "underground", before it is exposed to the mainstream industry. And when it is do you think that we will endure the pollution of low quality tracks, produced by people looking for fast money, targetted at the ignorant audiences that control the crap I have to listen to everytime I tune in the radio and listen to the charts. Or is this new breed of breakbeat safe for ever?
Bad Company:
I think we're experiencing it already, every scene does, and it's a shame because it's bad for the image of drum and bass, and doesn't help newcomers to get into it .. the proliferation of tacky drum and bass has become what drum and bass is known for, but luckily there's a few good producers out there (Ed Rush and Optical, Andy C's Kru, Grooverider, The V Guys, Trace, Matrix etc.) who care about what they release, but it would be good if that was a more common trend, everybody can help by refusing to put out shit tunes ; ) .. unfortunatley, due to it's exposure over the past couple of years, a lot of people from outside the scene who have more press coverage have experimented with it and are missing the soul of it .. this leads to hybrid crap that throws outsiders off what it's all about.
Ashley Manders(Broxbourne,England) Question: What do you do when your not creating drum'n'bass?
Bad Company:
Answer questions from people on the net about creating drum & bass? ; )
Instigator(Brighton,UK) Question: How do ya make bookings for events with you guys ???Also do you know when the champion sound remix is due for release ????
Bad Company:
We are currently taking bookings through Unique Artists which has been acting as our agency for about six months now; to book us ring them on +44 (0)171 381 2098.
We just got some copies of the remix on test-press last week. Can't answer this one accurately, but probably January 2000.
Seth(California,US) Question: What do you use to produce most of your music? hardware/software list? any pointers and tips?
Bad Company:
Our sampler is the heart of our studio - we use an emu 6400 which is fully expanded, although i don't think we've ever used the effects card as is limiting compared to outboard effects; a lot of the outboard equiptment we use is fairly inexpensive which is good because it adds grit .. ie. some of the fx units we use are just zoom fx which cost around £120 a rack, but they have a really lo-fi sound. We use a lot of old analogue gear, and a soundcraft studio desk. We got a mackie recently but stopped using it in favour of our old desk which is a lot cheaper and less dynamic but it adds a really warm feel to our mixes .. expensive and new is not always good, a lot of the new keyboards limit the sounds you can make with them by providing you with only a few good presets that you can only use in a couple of tunes. We use mackie hr824 monitors which are good becuase they have a totally flat frequency response so you don't have to bear in mind that you're speakers are a bit trebly or bassy etc. The rest, we could tell you, but we'd have to maim you afterwards ..!!
Matt Mason(Manchester, England) Question: What Bad Company release/forthcoming release are you most proud of and why?
Bad Company:
So far, our album, because it encompasses many different spokes of the bad company wheel .. different styles, but it is all bad company, there's something for everybody's set.
Marc(L.A. California) Question: Where can I get a Bad Company hooded sweatshirt?
Bad Company:
Well, funnily enough there's actually an italian clothing label called bad company, which we're thinking about setting on fire one cold night (cunts) .. but hopefully we're going to set up a label called 'Bad Cloth' next year which will deal with very limited edition good quality garms that you would actually want to buy even if it wasn't anything to do with drum and bass (we hope!) ... we're a bit bored with the proliferation of tack merchandise, and refuse to associate that with out label. Watch out !!!
Carlos(Miami, Florida) Question: Andy C Vs Bad Company.......When when when when?!?!?
Bad Company:
Presumably in some sort of studio (!!?) ... i'm sure that will be something worth the wait .. Andy is one of our mentors, and has supported our shit from day one, we'll be looking forward to it. In the meantime, we have collaborated with Moving Fusion on a track which might be released on the Ram Raiders album (forthcoming), watch out for that.
Andreas Leandro Valliani(London) Question: My question is that i personally think youre one off the most coolest drum and bass producers that are on the market at the moment and i would like to ask that if you are going to produce and new records if that you could inform me first.
Bad Company:
No problem man, send us you're email and we'll be sure to check with you before we release anything !! ; P (you see, there were some funny questions in there!!!)
Daniel Ferguson (Boston, U.S.) Question: Will you be coming out with ant tunes that are focused more on melodies rather than tear out tracks? A lot of your tracks start of with beautiful intros and then take off with serious power. Will you ever just stay melodic and drop the energy?
Bad Company:
Check out the album, coming out in Feb (sorry if it sounds like we're plugging it! but we are!!) there's a lot of diversity, although it is a bad company album .. tracks like colonies, trick of the light, forgotten, silicon dawn, the flood etc, show us on a different tip. those that would dispute our diversity should sigh a breath of relief.
Henry(Ashwell, England) Question: why did you break away from Renegade Hardware?
You are definatley some of the best d&b producers I have ever heard, i cant wait for you album
Bad Company:
Basically, we wanted more control of the whole process; Clayton (Hardware) is essentially a businessman and has a label to run, he would release tunes that we might not want to release ... we figured if we had our own label we could afford to be more picky and maintain a higher standard for our label; plus we could co-ordinate all the aspects of the label in order to promote ourselves as WE see ourselves; ie. the vibe of our tunes could become consistent and enhanced with/by the artwork, who we give our tunes to etc.
Jerome Rawls(Atlanta, GA USA) Question: Will Drum and Bass Producers (Especially YOU) put forth more effort to release material (eps and singles) in CD form? For those of us who aren't DJs or just plain vinyl collectors, its kind of hard to enjoy your music on a daily basis!!!!! BC rocks the spot!!!!!! peace.
Bad Company:
This is a really good point; before we decided to do the album we were going to release a cd compilation of our releases so far, and license our material from other labels, just for cd ... the 15,000 people that buy drum and bass on vinyl are not the whole scene and we know that, i geuss we'll be testing the cd market with our album and we'll see how it goes. We are working on an mp3 site ... drump3.com, with some other major players on the scene, this should make it easier for those that don't have access to good vinyl stores to get hold of tunes which they can burn onto cd etc. we're quite excited about it - Watch this space.
Jamie Anderson(London, England) Question: Are there any plans to use vocalists in the future? (Cos the 'Stranger' remix was absolutely firin'!)
Bad Company:
We are going into the studio with our drummer (Paul Kodesh - Prodigy/Apollo 440) in January/February to develop our live project, which we promise will not feature any instruments we would not use or sample in the studio (ie.no double basses!) .. we are looking for a front man .. more of a performer than an mc, and that will mark the start of our experimentation with vocals; we are perfectionists, we want to do something different, and so we are waiting to find the right person.
Bug Nyne(West London, England) Question: Are you recruiting any artists for bad company recordings at the moment, if not will be looking for in the future and when.
Bad Company:
We have not yet found anyone with that special spark to them that we're looking for, although we carry on searching, and we know our search will bring us to them. We believe there is a right time for every single thing, we are great believers in destiny ... time will tell. Email us and help speed up our search (Nextlevelz@badcompanyrecordings.com)
Iain Waugh(Bristol, England) Question: Why 'The Nine'?
Bad Company:
The answer is out there, although we will not tell you so easily; there are clues .. look at the logo, study the covers, when the time is right people will understand the links.
Kinetic(B'ham,England) Question:Recently it came to my attention that a certain so called producer namely Aphrodite stated that those individuals that listen to dark drum and bass are boring and basically musically narrow minded.Ironic isn't that such a dillusional statement can come from someone who's idea of progressive music includes a cheesy ripped off hip hop style intro followed by a brass band type drum roll and for the grand finale an annoying warbling sound trying to disguise itself as a bassline.For the bad company boys, what are you're thoughts on this outrageous comment?
Bad Company:
Anybody who names themselves after a female goddess shouldn't really be making statements about much .... ?? .. on a more serious note it's funny how people think they can pigeon hole 'dark' drum and bass, maybe everything such people would exclude from this category would be considered cheesy by anyone even remotely clued-up? ; )
Footnote
Answering many questions at once ie ... when are we coming to brazil, spain, turkey etc.
Bad Company:
We would like to be invited to all the corners of this scene, and see for ourselves the many wayz and wants of drum and bass headz from all over; if you want to see us, badger the promoters!! it's their call.
