One-on-One With Calyx & TeeBee
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly four years since their chart-topping All or Nothing LP dropped on Ram Records, as the ever-prolific Calyx & TeeBee continue to simply churn out hit after hit with seeming ease. As we close in on the imminent release of their aptly titled 1 X 1 album, the anticipation continues to build as bits like “A Day That Never Comes,” “Long Gone,” and “Where We Go” (featuring Doctor) continue to smash their way to the dancefloor while fresh audio from tracks such as “Ghostwriter,” “Big Tune Again” and “The Fall” (which we’re premiering below) ramp up the tension even higher.
With the album due to drop on April 22 and the heads still reeling from the duo tearing the roof off Bassrush’s Funktion night last month, we thought we’d check in for a wide-ranging chat that carries us through the early days of navigating drum & bass culture to the ways they continue to collectively push the sound into the future. Representing the very best the scene and the genre have to offer, Calyx & TeeBee offer not only an unprecedented look into the creation of their latest album project, but also a feel for the philosophy and passion that continue to drive them to new heights.
When did you guys first meet, and were you each aware of who the other was at that time?
TeeBee: We had both signed records to a label called Rugged Vinyl and met randomly in the office around 1997. That’s the first time I heard the name Calyx. They were two people at the time; it was Larry and Chris Rush. They were really nice guys, and we stayed in touch. I started checking out their tunes, and they had some good bits going. [Larry and I] just formed a friendship, and every time I’d come through the UK, I’d stay at his place the majority of the time.
Calyx: We were both forging our own paths as solo artists, and it was many years before we even thought about writing music together; straightaway, we knew we were onto a good thing.
T: The first tune we finished was “Follow the Leader.” It went down so well that one thing led to another, and after we’d done the Anatomy album, we decided to be exclusive. Here we are, three albums later.
Both of you came to drum & bass in quite different ways. I’m fascinated by this idea of TeeBee the B-boy linking up with Calyx the jazz guitarist. In high school, it would’ve been an impossible gap to bridge, and yet it’s that same mix of influences that no doubt contributes to the success of the Calyx & TeeBee sound.
C: Isn’t that the beauty of drum & bass? Especially in the early days, it was such a melting pot of genres that in one, set you’d hear the influence of classical music, a jazzy tune, alongside a thing that was just apocalyptically dark—sometimes all in the same tune! I think what’s special about drum & bass is that it continues to be a melting pot for so many styles and genres, united by tempo and a love of bass.
It takes a bit more than a shared love of music to have a successful collaborative relationship, I imagine.
C: There’s definitely an element of brotherhood, but also, it’s our work ethic. We’re both really motivated, we never rest on our laurels, and we’ve got OCD for attention to detail. We’re driven people and always so hungry to get on with the next thing. Ultimately, people that have a long-term career in music are people that really work hard. For us, it’s not a job; it’s a passion and obsession—an addiction, really.
T: There are a few key rules to our friendship and working relationship, and one of them is that we will never sit together on a plane. That’s our downtime. We don’t even speak; it’s like we respect each other’s privacy whenever we’re traveling.
C: (laughs) I’m 6’6”, so straight off the bat, you know there’s going to be some armrest politics going down. But more than that, we love traveling and visiting different places, but the process of being in transit can really eat away at your soul. There are just so many endless hours spent in airports or cars or planes or queues, and you want to switch your brain off. I weirdly learned how to almost meditate and slightly disengage when I’m on a long flight.
T: I think another factor for our success is that we still try and impress each other. It’s all about that feeling when one of us starts something and sends it to the other for approval. You’re waiting for that moment—“Fuck, that’s sick!”—you know? That’s what it’s all about, and that keeps us on our toes; it’s like a friendly competition. But I would say one thing as well: We were both solo artists, and one of the reasons this album is called 1X1 is because most of the work that went into the album occurred separately, in our own individual studios. Part of this is due to logistics, but another part is due to the nature of how we work.
Usually when you’re locked up in a room with someone and you’re collaborating, you tend to go for the obvious option because you’re on a limited amount of time. But when you’re by yourself, you can walk down a path for weeks that might not end up anywhere, but then again might deliver you to a beautiful place.
Speaking of which, we’re closing in on four years since All or Nothing. At what point after the dust had settled on that album did you consciously move into working on 1 X 1?
C: When you start an album, you don’t really start out consciously working on an album; you just get on with new music. We’re always writing new tracks and starting new ideas, so once a handful start to come together, you get a feel for a body of work starting to take shape.
T: This is album #8 for me, and you’d think it would get easier; it doesn’t. When those tunes do start to come together, you try to build something that represents where you’re at musically, but also mentally. I come from an era where an album made or broke an artist, and today I feel that the medium has been overlooked a bit in terms of how people just sort of tear everything apart and compile their own playlists on Apple Music or Spotify. For me, albums have always been an event. So, a lot of the tracks on there have got a bit more of a song structure, and each track has got to tell a story in itself; there’s got to be things that grab you on the second, fourth, fifth listen that you didn’t really discover first.
Even so, you guys are known for your notorious mixdown sessions. I’m sure you are ready to move on at this point.
C: Oh, we’ve absolutely overdosed on these tunes time and time again, and people hear tracks as a single entity. But for us, some of these tracks have had so many incarnations, so many reinventions, and yes, a million mixdowns.
T: That’s also why it took so long. I’m not kidding you: Certain tracks on the album have been mixed down well over a hundred times.
What makes you keep going and not just throw your hands up and say, “Fuck it!” when a tune isn’t sounding right?
T: One, because I don’t have a choice. This is what I do; all my eggs are in one basket. It’s either this or I’m out in the street. This is how I make my living. Also, I’m highly competitive. I honestly think if there’s a will, there’s a way. Those five–six months struggling with a mixdown—once you get it right, it’s the greatest thing ever. But if you were to interview someone who’s really gone through the motions, it’s my missus, because she’s had to deal with me when I’m doing this. If I can’t get shit sounding tight, I’m unpleasant, man. But the day I nail it, I’m the best guy in the world to be around.
Do you listen to the final versions now and still feel like there’s more you could’ve done?
T: Definitely, and you always favor the ones you finished last because you keep developing as a producer, as an artist and as a human being. The reality of it is that a track is never finished; you just let it go. That’s kind of what happened with the album, as well; we just kind of had to let it go.
C: Related to that, I think we’re also always trying to push ourselves to evolve and step outside our comfort zone. If we just kept recreating the same sounds using the same template, we would’ve gotten bored creatively a long time ago. With this album, we’ve definitely enjoyed getting into some more organic vibes and some more songwriting-type music, as well as obviously classic Calyx & TeeBee stuff. It’s way more rewarding, especially using the album format, to come up with something unexpected rather than just making another textbook screwface riddim.
You can hear that especially on “Long Gone.”
T: That track sort of sums up what we tried to do on this album. I mean, after we did “Elevate This Sound,” because it was so successful, we didn’t want to make 15 clones of it, so we made a conscious effort not to.
“Pathfinder” is another one that feels very conscious of being part of a larger narrative.
T: Yes, that one reflects creativity and just having fun. I come from the school of the Orb, Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, and Future Sound of London. That’s the sort of stuff I grew up on; that’s the stuff I really love. So, “Pathfinder” is a quest for something within, rather than trying to smash someone’s face up in a club, you know? It’s more of a proper journey and just experimentation with sound and being free without the constraints of getting on the radio, or how it’s going to go down at a headline set at Fabric. I think it’s actually my favorite thing on the whole album.
You’re also hitting us with an exclusive first listen to “The Fall.” Tell us the story behind this one.
T: “The Fall” is jungle. It’s jungle with a 2016 format. It’s got everything that got us into the genre in the first place. It’s got a proper old-school vibe to the beat; it’s got a naughty bassline and those sort of Goldie-esque horns and pads in the intro. The track originally didn’t have a vocal. We’d been speaking to Ayah Mahrar for years, and she was originally going to write a guide vocal and some lyrics. But her guide vocal was so good, it fit so perfectly, that we just ended up using it as is. Goldie was the first one to get the track, and he actually rung me up and told me he really, really liked it. It’s always nice to get a phone call like that, because you know, Goldie’s Goldie. We do pop shit as well, so Goldie’s going to tell me equally how much that sucks, but it was nice to get a compliment in there, as well.
Before we snatch up our own copy of the album, where do you see drum & bass headed in the future, and where do Calyx & TeeBee go from here?
C: One thing is for sure: There’s no end in sight for drum & bass. We’ve seen so many genres come into the spotlight and blow up and then fade away to extinction, but drum & bass—even though it’s always going to have this cyclical relationship to the spotlight of the mainstream—will never go away. As for me and TeeBee, we’re already getting on with the next set of tracks. The moment we finish a track, we’re just hungry and more excited for the next thing. The remix requests have started rolling in, so we’re not taking our foot off the gas, and just trying to stay productive and get as much time in the studio as possible.
T: Drum & bass has always been about rebellion; it was obnoxious, it was fast, it was a place where we could go and fucking forget about everything and just get our screwface on. That’s still a large part of why people like it. It’s still too fast for your mum, it’s still too loud for your dad, and that’s the reason it’s still so underground. It isn’t there to please anyone, man; it’s there to knock down boundaries and push people sonically and to be inventive. Sure, there’s loads of pop stuff, and we do big remixes for mainstream pop acts and we follow a template, but that’s business. Drum & bass and the core of what we do is still out of love—it always will be, and we love it when someone puts us in our place. We love it when some young kid raises the bar musically or sonically. We may also cuss people out who we don’t think are living up to the standards of what the culture is about, but it’s all out of love. That’s why we’re still in it, that’s why it’s still exciting to us, because there’s always some young kid sitting in his mom’s kitchen with a laptop and headphones on, but no one told him that sounding like Noisia was hard, so he found a way. That’s the beauty of this music, man.
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