Legendary Status #01- Shodan (UK)

Welcome to the birth of ‘Legendary Status’. This is the very first in what we hope will become a regular feature on those we consider to have ‘Legendary Status’ within the drum and bass movement.

This could mean longevity within the scene, a ground breaking artist or producer, or someone who has influenced the scene in a way that has altered it’s course in some way. Massive props to man like SHODAN for stepping up to be our very first!

Newport, Wales resident Shodan first burst into prominence way back in 2004, after collaborating with veteran DNB pioneer DJ Phantasy and Fatman D on Phantasy’s Easy Records imprint. The tracks in question were ‘Atomic Age’ and ‘No Liars’ and they heralded the start of a fruitful partnership between the two producers.

That same year the two created ‘Gimme Da Gal’, subsequently picked up by DJ Hype and the Ganja Records stable, and Shodan had made his mark. This turned out to be the start of a highly productive period for the English producer and remixes and production work started to flood in. Shodan became a household name in drum and bass.

This wave of success within the sphere of drum and bass continued to crash through the scene and then suddenly in 2008, as abruptly as it had started, it came to an end.

Until 2018 that is, when this innovative producer made a DNB comeback. One of our main objectives here at INSIDE DNB is to preserve the heritage of the DNB movement by talking to producers who have really left their mark on the scene. That objective starts here, and for this, the very first in our Legendary Status series, we bring you the one and only Shodan!

Shodan! Welcome aboard! We give full gratitude for agreeing to be the first in our Legendary Status series.

Thanks for having me! I’m absolutely honoured although I’m also a bit dubious about the “legendary” label, flattering though it is! (Take it mate! It’s yours! Ed)

Firstly, your producer moniker Shodan, where did it come from? It sounds like it might be oriental in origin? It kind of gives off a martial arts vibe?

I got it from the protagonist of the System Shock series of computer games. Shodan is this rogue AI and is quite an interesting character.

It’s also a martial arts term but I didn’t know that until later.

You’re from Newport, Wales. We are based in Wales too, so it’s wicked to be supporting a Welsh artist. 

I’m actually an English immigrant! I grew up in Southend-on-Sea in Essex and didn’t move to Wales until 2013.

The scene in Southend-on-Sea was okay. A few people were trying to put on events with varying levels of success. The Energy events back in the early 1990’s were wicked and later there were a few decent DNB nights, but I also went to (and DJ’d at!) plenty of half empty venues. It was a real mixed bag to be honest.

Thankfully, London isn’t far away and I went to plenty of wicked nights up in town. I was lucky enough to rave at some iconic venues like The Sanctuary, Bagleys, The End, Scala, Fabric, Herbal etc. Many of which are sadly no longer standing.

I remember my first taste of Jungle was a 1994 Darren Jay AWOL set that I pinched off someone. I played that tape to death and knew every tune inside out. I was a hip-hop kid really, but the ragga and R&B samples struck a chord with me and tunes like Jo – R Type were like nothing I’d ever heard before.

Was there much of an artist/producer collective active in the area back in 2004 when you first came to prominence?

Not really. The most notable producer from the area at that time was Danny Breaks (big up Danny!) and the biggest DJ was probably Frenzic, who used to run ATM (formally Atmosphere) magazine.

You obviously had to cut your teeth in the studio prior to meeting Phantasy. How did you even get into producing?

My Dad had a pretty amazing record collection full of Jazz Funk, rare groove, early hip hop and electro. I started finding samples from some of the hip hop tracks I loved in those records and that got me into crate-digging at my local record shops.

In the early 90s, I was making hip hop with some local mates and initially was working with trackers like Octamed on the Amiga. It was pretty rudimentary stuff but I think I had a decent ear for a sample even then. Later I moved on to making Jungle, again using tracker programs alongside my old friend DJ Escher.

We had some really early tracks cut to dubplate at Music House in London which was an education in itself. They were pretty awful quality but they had a bit of a vibe about them and we enjoyed playing them on local pirate radio station, Sub Zero FM.

I also met the Nu Breed guys around this time and started working on tracks with Fatman D, Shortston and Rekle$$. We later went on to form the group “Da Firm” and had a few releases on the likes of Trouble on Vinyl.

At this stage you’d have been producing at home, right? 

Yeah, in my bedroom initially and then later I rented a basement room below Metro Records in Southend-on-Sea. I went through the usual selection of Akai Samplers (S950 and later an S2000) along with a basic mixing desk, Tannoy monitors, some Phatman compressors and a Roland sound module.

Eventually I got a copy of Cubase and ditched the Akai’s as by that point, you could do a lot more “in the box” and didn’t need so much outboard gear.

It was in that basement that I made the track that caught Phantasy’s ear and later we made Atomic Age, No Liar & Gimme Da Gal down there.

After that, I started sharing a house with DJ Escher and converted the garage there into a fully soundproofed studio where Phantasy & I went on to make pretty much all the rest of our collaborations.

The channels to share music productions were still relatively minor back in 2004, when you basically became the protégé of DJ Phantasy. What were the steps required to grab people’s attention and make yourself known back then?

I mean, there were none of the digital channels available back then that we know and love today? 

Around 2003, the internet was just starting to become a viable channel for sending out demos but more often than not  I used CDs as my primary demo medium. By the time I was established, AIM was pretty much the de facto comms channel in the drum and bass scene. You had to focus more on building good relationships and making contacts than on blindly sending demos to labels.

There was also more importance placed on getting your tracks to DJs as getting their support could generate interest from labels more effectively than blindly label spamming.

Tell us about your initial meeting with Phantasy then. I’m guessing it was a trip to London on your behalf? 

I knew Jay Frenzic from our local record shop, Vinyl Rhythm where he worked on a Saturday and we’d started hanging out. He was doing very well at the time and was playing out every weekend and knew a lot of people in the scene through the magazine. I was going out on road with him and meeting people and then one day, I met Phantasy at Jay’s flat.

I can’t remember why but I happened to have a demo CD with my latest track and my phone number scrawled on it so I gave it to him. He must have heard something he liked because he called me the next day!

Within a few months you’d collaborated in the studio and the result was ‘Atomic Age and ‘No Liars’. This was your first official release, and it was on vinyl too. I can only imagine the feeling of holding that record in your hand for the very first time!

It was a surreal feeling. The tracks got good support from DJs that I’d idolised and looked up to for so long. I remember the first time I heard someone (I think it was Andy C) play “Atomic Age” at Fabric and couldn’t believe it was really happening.

Looking back on it now, how do you feel about those early tracks? I’ve created a Spotify playlist for 2004 recently and those tracks really do typify the DNB sound of that era.

I’m pretty proud of them to be honest. I like a lot of my early stuff, although not necessarily the tracks that did well. The mixdowns don’t sound great now but at the time, they stood up pretty well. I was quite good at making my tracks loud which really helped as we were right in the middle of the “loudness wars” at that point.

This initial release led to a time of pretty intense activity for you as a producer. There were more collaborations with Phantasy, most notably ‘Gimme Da Gal’ which was (and still is) an absolute beast of a track. How did you handle the sudden notoriety as one of the scene’s hot new producers?

Hah! Not brilliantly to be honest. I was getting nominated for best newcomer producer awards on the same billing as Pendulum and Chase & Status and my ego blew up a bit. It took a friend taking me to one side and telling me to stop being a d*ckhead to deflate it again. Funnily enough I told that story to Phantasy the other day and he said he didn’t notice at the time!

Did you ever see this played out at events, or did you ever play it out yourself? Did you ever DJ?

Oh yeah, I saw quite a few of my tracks played out in various venues. I did DJ a bit and had some unreleased VIP versions of our tracks that I would play. I played on pirate radio a fair bit too, and often played on the Easy Records show on Origin FM.

I wasn’t a great DJ to be honest and I had a bad habit of drinking heavily to try and ease my anxiety before a show. As a result, the standard of my sets was “variable”, to say the least!

There was a lot of music made following this initial couple of releases. What are some of the stand out tracks from that era for you personally?

I’m most proud of our remix work. The “Living in Darkness” remix was probably my favourite but the remixes we did of Aphrodite’s “Dub Moods” and Dr S Gachet’s “Remember the Roller” are also personal favourites..

You remained active within DNB up until 2008. What would you say were the main changes in technology during that time, and how did they make your life as a producer easier?

Computer processing power leapt forward in the early 2000s and as a result, audio plugin & DAW developers were able to do more “in the box”. Software synths became much more powerful and digital UIs meant visualising sound became a lot easier.

Increasingly fast home internet connections almost meant that software and samples became more readily available and it became much easier to send tracks to labels and DJs as long as you had the right AIM handles!

And what would you say were the main changes in the styles within DNB?

I think Pendulum’s emergence was a big turning point. The quality of their sound design and engineering was somewhat of a gold standard and made everyone up their game.

Overall, sound design became a lot more important and whereas before, the music had been almost entirely sample based, producers were able to create more complex, interesting and unique sounds, from scratch, all from within their computer.

As a musician/producer, it is cited that one of your main strengths is your ability to create effective basslines. These are obviously such a strong part of the essence of DNB. What’s your secret?

I don’t really know. Relatively early on, I figured out some key techniques like manipulating sounds with modulation and how to use distortion effectively. I had a decent ear for what sounded good, I guess. I spent a LOT of time messing with synths like Z3ta+ and Massive and worked out how to get the sounds I wanted.

This was before YouTube and producers at that time were very secretive and wouldn’t give too much away so it was all about patience and being inquisitive in the studio.

Aside from that, what else do you really love about creating DNB?

I think drum and bass is an incredibly expressive form of music. There’s so many different flavours with different vibes and you can incorporate elements from so many other genres of music. There’s a range of intensities and there seems to be a DNB track for every mood & feeling!

https://soundcloud.com/shodan_uk/top-buzz-living-in-darkness-phantasy-shodan-rmx-ver2-final

By 2006 you’d started to dabble with other styles and by 2008 you’d left DNB. What prompted the shift?

The music was changing rapidly at that stage and I wasn’t entirely feeling where dancefloor DNB was going. I was always very much into slightly harder, darker music with a bit of an edge, but I struggled to create solo tracks that reflected my tastes, whereas my partnership with Phantasy was very much about dancefloor and DJ friendly music.

The breakbeat stuff I made around that period was me trying to scratch that itch and I had some success alongside Offkey who himself was an ex-jungle producer.

I was interested in early “liquid” too and I loved everything on Soul:R stuff and High Contrast’s early stuff on Hospital. I obsessively tried to make those kinds of tracks but didn’t really have an outlet for them and I started to get a bit disillusioned that it seemed to be a dead end.

Apart from an EP in 2011, there was no production activity from 2008 until 2018. What happened? 

By this point, I’d realised that there was no money to be made from releasing music and I wasn’t getting enough DJ work to sustain me. I begrudgingly accepted that I probably wasn’t going to be a full time musician and started to focus on my non-music career.

At the same time, I met my wife and moved in with her in Southampton which pretty much killed off my in-person collaborations.

I didn’t entirely lose interest and was still dabbling but I found that the standard of production had gotten so much better that I was struggling to make anything that sounded comparable and felt left behind.

You had well and truly served your time by the time your reappearance in 2018. You might possibly have been classed as one of the ‘elders’ coming back in. What prompted the return, and how did you find it, what with so much new technology on offer and the shift in styles?

It was hard! I started to transition over from PC to Mac and from Cubase to Ableton and it took me a long time to get to grips with a new DAW and operating system. I was mainly listening to liquid at that point and that was reflected in what I made. I’d also moved into a bigger house and was able to set up a dedicated studio without worrying about annoying my neighbours.

The advent of YouTube and plenty of tutorials in the music tech press meant I was able to slowly get back up to speed with production techniques and finally things started to click. I’m grateful to my old mate, Rekle$$ (now Project Lando) who always had faith in me and put out some of the first bits I made once I started being able to finish tracks again.

While the main ethic of DNB survives, certain parts of the scene are almost unrecognisable when compared to 2004. I mean, it was still quite exclusively British at this point. New producers from new continents have bought much change to the scene.

What do you make of some of the new wave of DNB coming through right now? 

Diversity is always a good thing. Different people bring different things to the table and approach things from different angles. I think that’s healthy and positive. I do think the sheer volume of music being made is diluting some of what made the music so special to begin with. The shift from “art” to “content” isn’t entirely positive IMHO but time marches on whether we like it or not  and we have to grow  and adapt or get left behind.

As someone with a tangible heritage within the scene, where would you place yourself amongst the young producers out there now, like those from the Dutch or neuro scenes for example?

I think there are a lot of producers out there that are much better technicians than me. I try not to compare myself to others, if I can help it. I’m not sure it’s always healthy. I just try and do my thing and hope someone likes it!

You decided to come back on the liquid tip after so much activity across the harder end of the spectrum in your earlier days. Did you find it easier to connect with?

Yeah it was definitely more accessible at that time. It was what I was listening to at that moment and it made sense for me to try making the music that I was listening to.

Looking at your more recent output though, there is still some kick ass drum work on some of your work, particularly the releases on Detached Audio. You still have feelings for the darker end of drum and bass?

I’m very much going back to my roots. I was a huge Renegade Hardware fan back in the day and a jungle raver before that. I love funky drum breaks and I really enjoy chopping drums. I’m trying to blend those influences with modern production values and new school sound design.

I do seem to lurch from one style to another though. I like to make different styles and genres of music. Variety is the spice of life and all that!

To the here and now then, you’re back to producing full time? Or is it more of a creative outlet these days?

It’s a creative outlet nowadays. I have a full time career and young family so I have to grab chances to work on music whenever I can. I go through periods of being incredibly productive and then I’ll totally lose interest for 6 months. I need to work on my consistency!

How many releases are you looking to put out a year roughly these days? Do you have a set agenda in terms of output?

Nothing set in stone but I generally think little and often is the way forward. I’d prefer to put out individual tracks or 2 track singles where possible, as that allows me to spread out the music and associated promotion over a longer timeframe. Label’s still like the EP format though, so I have to roll with that sometimes.

What, if any major changes can you see coming in DNB over the next few years? Many of the sub-genres seem to have hit a steady groove. What would YOU like to be the next big change?

I’d like to see more labels taking a chance on unconventional or experimental artists. I’d also like to see less focus on social media and personalities and more focus on the music. That’s probably because I’m an old fart who struggles with social media though! (join the club! Ed)

Have you or did you ever consider starting a label of your own?

I’ve toyed with the idea a few times over the years and I still think about it now. I feel like I don’t have the profile, social media presence or network to make it work at the moment  though. If things keep going well and building like they have over the last year or so then I might consider it again in the future.

Given the strength of the re-press market at the moment and the huge following that the music from your early era still has, would you ever consider going back in to the studio to do some modern re-works or retro style tracks that represented the sound of the early 00’s?

Absolutely! There’s a number of my old releases that don’t exist digitally. It would be great to get them remastered and introduced to a new generation of listeners. I’m always up for revisiting old tracks and it’s something Phantasy and I have talked about.

The final question posed to all of those with Legendary Status is this: If you were in conversation with a young DNB head down the pub, how important would you say to them that knowing their history is? DNB is 30 years deep now. How relevant are (or should) the old days be to the new blood coming through? What does the heritage of the scene mean to you?

I think perspective is always important. It’s good to know your place in history and in the present. You can take inspiration and learn a lot from those who paved the way before you. It’s always important to be original but how are you going to achieve that if you have no awareness of what came before?

FIND OUT MORE HERE:

Shodan (Terry Morgan) (@shodan_uk) • Instagram photos and videos

Dig Deep by Shodan (soundcloud.com)

CHECK OUT SHODAN’S FUTURE RELEASES HERE:

Shodan – Take me Back to ’93 / The Hunger – Hyperactivity Music
https://cygnusmusic.link/ngndwob
Release date: 14th September 2022

Various Artists – Segments Vol. 2 – Detached Audio 
https://detachedaudio.fanlink.to/DA054
Release date: 23rd September 2022

Shodan – Lickin’ Toads EP – 4Corners Music
Release date: 10th October 2022