Exploring ‘Shadow Theories’ With Amoss
Having earned their stripes with a series of high-profile releases on imprints like Cyclone, Renegade Hardware, Horizons, Flexout Audio, Proximity and Dispatch, the duo are able to conjure up bits that float between the atmospheric and aggressive edges of the genre with inimitable ease.
With their Shadow Theories EP for Dispatch Recordings running it red in the clubs, we thought we’d touch base with the duo for a wide-ranging look back at how far they’ve come and where they hope to be in the near future. As if that weren’t enough to sweeten the pot, Amoss have hit us with an exclusive guest mix showcasing the sound that has heads like Spectrasoul, Doc Scott, Ulterior Motive, London Elektricity, BTK and Nymfo begging for more.
Introduce yourselves to the Insomniac masses.
James: Me and Andy go way back to high school together, when we were around 15-16 years old, usually meeting at parties and sipping on stolen booze from our parents’ cupboard.
Andy: We pretty much instantly started playing in bands together. I was a drummer, and James was a guitarist. We both loved metal music, so we bonded through that and then went on to form other various bands, writing a huge amount of music together. We later found drum & bass, which was a sound that became our biggest collaborative work.
James: In terms of our influences, we are drawing heavily on everything from hip-hop and funk to ambient and more experimental music, which we peruse in our own work, especially in terms of creating intricate sound design.
For those who don’t know, describe what kind of a place Herefordshire is and how drum & bass came to enter your lives there.
James: For once, someone got our hometown right! Usually we get labeled with being from Hertfordshire, a completely different part of the UK. Herefordshire is a beautiful county out in the West Midlands; me and Andy lived even deeper in the countryside than that, though. I grew up in a hamlet with only five houses surrounding ours, which gave us a lot of freedom as kids, and no noise restrictions at parties as we grew older. I first heard drum & bass at around 3 in the morning in a friend’s garden shed, when his brother walked in with a Drum & Bass Arena CD. After purchasing a shitty MP3 player and listening to Greg Packer mixes, I moved into the darker and techier side of drum & bass, which led me to getting some of my own turntables and spending around £40–50 on records every week. Redeye Records’ “Friday shipping for Monday delivery” tag on all the new releases was all I wanted to read.
Andy: My story is similar. I lived in the middle of nowhere, so I didn’t go out much and actually spent the majority of my weekends writing music. It took me a lot longer to get into drum & bass, but it really came down to James playing me Noisia’s “Concussion.” I remember just being like, “Yeah, I think this might be something I want to learn to make.”
“I still have nightmares thinking about some of the rubbish we would do with EQ and compression.”
At what point does Amoss proper get born, and when do you feel like you came into your own, production-wise? Speaking of which, what’s the story/meaning behind the name?
James: The name “Amoss” was born shortly after we both started using production software. I was round at Andy’s house trying to sort out this sample from Saving Private Ryan, worrying about copyright issues (not that this track would ever see the light of day), and I was bored and scanning through books on the shelf. Halfway skipping through the Bible, I stopped at a prophet called “Amos”—we thought the name sounded cool and put another “s” on it.
Andy: We really started using Ableton to make music around 2007, I think it was, maybe a bit before. We absolutely sucked at it. I remember being so frustrated with it. It wasn’t like picking up a guitar and writing a riff; this involved everything to do with everything. I still have nightmares thinking about some of the rubbish we would do with EQ and compression.
James: We wrote some pretty awful music.
Andy: James did, anyway—you should hear his panpipes tune! But we plugged away at it and really pushed forward. I’d say we came into our own in 2008.
James: Around that time, Tony Coleman (London Elektricity) played one of our bits in the Hospital Records’ Democast. We then realized we were progressing with our skills, and that gave us the push to keep going with it.
From your early releases on Cyclone and Renegade Hardware to your ongoing relationship with Horizons, you seem to have built a steady catalog of tunes that represent the entire spectrum of the genre. Talk a bit about your approach to genre in general, and what it is about D&B that seems to be able to allow for such freedom on your part.
James: Early on in our production, we were happy to write whatever came out—whatever felt natural to us.
Andy: We started writing liquid, and then we went in with this ambient/minimal thing that boomed around 2009/2010. There was a really cool community of us on SoundCloud that pushed each other, and there was a great dub-sharing scene between about 30 producers, so we were exposed to a massive range of different styles within 170-BPM early on. I don’t think we’ve ever purposefully gone about writing in a certain style of 170 music; we just happen to have a huge amount of influences; there’s a lot of drum & bass inspired by a lot of drum & bass nowadays. That’s not a bad thing, but I do think that’s why our sound hasn’t ever stayed in one place.
I imagine this is part of what attracts you to the genre in general?
Andy: This is absolutely what drew us to drum & bass. You have people like Black Sun Empire doing this twisted trance, Clarity making deep groove techno, dBridge doing almost ‘80s pop music! It varies so much. I don’t see that within house music.
“We meant to get in the studio, but we were a bit too hungover. Instead we just chilled, played Grand Theft Auto 5, and talked about all sorts.”
Your State of Suspension EP was one of our favorite releases in 2012—hard to believe it’s been three years since it was released. If we were to put these two Dispatch EPs side by side, how would they reflect larger shifts in your own approach to production and genre in general?
James: One of the biggest changes is that I’m not writing music using a Labtec computer system with only one working tweeter (although this rig is still alive in our kitchen and goes by the name “earbleed rig”). Another changing factor is the actual amount of time we have to sit down and work on music. We both work full-time jobs to pay our way in London, which doesn’t allow us to finish projects near as fast as we used to. Our State of Suspension EP came together so much faster, partly because we had the tunes almost already written, but also because we were able to mix it down and go to each other’s houses. Shadow Theories has been three years in the making because of jobs, location and social hurdles.
Andy: To add to that, creatively we were going through big changes. I personally always feel I have to better what we’ve done in the past, and the State of Suspension EP set the bar really high for us. This EP was the first time we found ourselves cutting tracks and saying they weren’t good enough. But also it was a time where our production was getting better, and it meant we kept going back and making changes. Most of the time they were detrimental changes, too. We were our own worst enemies a lot of the time on this EP. That hurdle is jumped now, though, and it’s been received really well. We’re moving on to the next projects, and we’re enthused.
One of the highlights on the Shadow Theories EP is “Vortice,” which you’ve done in collaboration with Fre4knc. This isn’t the first time you guys have collaborated together, so tell us how you met and what kind of strengths you see him bringing to the table.
Andy: James actually spoke to Bertran for a while before I was introduced. We chatted a lot online, and we all had mutual respect for each other’s tunes. We then met properly when he got us over to play at his night in Groningen: Break-Fast. We meant to get in the studio, but we were a bit too hungover. Instead we just chilled, played Grand Theft Auto 5, and talked about all sorts.
We’ve played a fair few gigs with him now, and it’s always really good fun. We’ve only physically sat in the studio together once, but it was ridiculously natural. There was a great openness, and we’re able to tell each other if we think an idea sucks or not. He’s got a great approach to simplicity that we lack sometimes, so he was really able to tell us when we were going in too ridiculous.
In general, we tend to find collaborating online to be a bit of a chore, as there’s a lot of back and forth and it most often [damages] the creative process. But with Bertran, it never feels like that. We’ve actually got about another four to five tracks almost finished, and I hope we keep writing music with him for a long time.
“We meant to get in the studio, but we were a bit too hungover. Instead we just chilled, played Grand Theft Auto 5, and talked about all sorts.”
“The Wayman Break” is not only an ill jam but seems to take us back to the days when the sampling of breaks defined the genre. How did this one come together, and what sort of advice can you give us on the art and science of chopping and cutting breaks?
James: The break for this was created in a different way than we normally approach this kind of beat. It’s mainly built up of single hits without relying on a top break to fill all the gaps. We did this to create a more unique style, and also so we weren’t relying on breaks that have been used on so many records before.
When it comes to chopping breaks, there really are no limitations; the only limitation is your creativity of how to use a certain break. Saying that, selecting the right break for the right track, fill or backing beat is very important. Don’t get too caught up in leveling and EQing straightaway, as this can be a lengthy process and can often kill the vibe.
“Stalling Theme” features a nice mix of Viv May’s vocals and C. Tivey on keyboard. How does the songwriting process differ when other artists get involved?
James: This one was not intentionally written for a vocalist. We started out with the basic bassline melody and drums, but it was lacking that extra bit of content. We sent it over to Ant [label head of Dispatch Recordings] for possible inclusion on the EP, and he suggested getting a vocalist over the top. A few names were brought up, but Ant hinted toward Viv and spoke about how she was very selective of the type of track she would sing on.
After agreeing to work with us on the track, we knew we were in for a treat and both got very excited when we first heard her harmony tracks. In terms of guidance for the vocals, we let her do her own thing, with just the track and title to draw inspiration from. We’ve worked in a similar way for label artists. We have done our part; now it’s time for the next person to be inspired by our work to create their own.
The whole EP is off the chain, and the title Shadow Theories is proper intriguing. Give us the story behind it, and if you have any conspiracy theories of your own that you think we ought to be taking seriously.
Andy: Shadow theories is actually the psychological concept that people have an underlying, hidden and often twisted psyche. The twist is that it’s believed that this is also where a huge amount of creativity comes from in humans. The ideas behind it kind of worked with the nature of how this EP was written, and it reflects how the whole creative process was challenging and dark at times.
Whatever it is, it seems like it’s working, so keep exploring that side of your own psyches! Before we go, give us a sense of what we should be looking out for next.
James: We have various works ongoing with Fre4knc, Fearful, Gerra & Stone, Incognito, Survey, Signal and Geode. We also have our next release on Horizons Music, which is a four-track EP featuring “Sinkhole” with Arkaik. Beyond that, there’s a lot of studio activity going on at the moment with more drum & bass tracks in the works, as well as us working toward a non-D&B collection; we’ll see what happens with that!
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