ED RUSH
"I want to hurt people with my beats"

Rotterdam, 5 september 2002.
Alex de Jong en Marc Schuilenburg

The man Ed Rush (real name Ben Settle) is sitting in a brown-red leather sofa in the basement of the club Off Corso in Rotterdam. While he is drinking a lemon Bacardi Breezer, his head is moving to the dim drum & bass sounds that are coming through the ceiling of the basement. He is regarded as the pioneer of the dark-side of jungle on account of his classics 'Bludclot Artattack' (1993), 'The Mutant' (1995) and the groundbreaking Skylab EP (1996) that includes the masterpiece 'The Raven'. He co-operated with Nico and Trace on the No U Turn label. Their tracks were defined by their apocalyptic sound and industrial, distorted bass-riffs created by running the synthesizers through a guitar distortion pedal. While we listen to the sounds vibrating from the main-hall, we talk about the urban side of drum & bass music ("an unfriendly society"), the social reality of his (sound-)world and the co-operation with his partner Optical on their Virus label.

If you look at the titles of your tracks like 'Guncheck' and 'Gangsta Hardstep', but also at tracks such as 'Metrosound' from Adam F, the samples used and the sound of the actual drum & bass music seems very much connected to the city. Can you explain the role the city plays in your music?
The city plays a big role in my work. I never play in a countryside town. Not because I don't want to, but it just doesn't seem natural. The music needs a setting of urbanity. I live in the city, sleep in the city, eat in the city, and so on. Music is what you do with the stuff you see and hear around you in your direct surroundings. I think that drum & bass expresses the different rhythms that each city has. It shows the different paces you experience in the city. In that way I hope that my music is very visual: colourful and urban. I think the role the city plays in drum & bass is the same as in Hip-Hop. Like gangsta rap, it is an urban form of music. As a kid in a big city it's just a thing you get into instead of drugs or crime. It's great that kids are just getting into the sounds and the beats. The same has happened to me.

You are talking about the visual aspect of drum & bass. Movies like 'Blade Runner' and 'The Matrix' are among the best genre movies ever made. But they don't have a drum & bass soundtrack. We think drum & bass is very suitable as a soundtrack to movies. Why aren't there any drum & bass soundtracks?
Well, I don't know. You do see more and more commercials using our breaks and loops. For instance in car ads it is common to use a drum & bass tune. But they do not involve us. They just nick stuff and use the cheesiest loops. You mentioned 'Guncheck', that's a very old song but the samples in there were just taken from films I liked. I guess I much rather work with someone I know, someone I have had some beers and laughs with, than with someone I don't know. It all depends upon the people you like on a human level. The best movies are made in the United States, but I have no connections there. In the music scene there is nobody yet who connects both scenes. I think it would be great to do a drum & bass soundtrack for a movie like 'Blade Runner', 'The Matrix' or 'Crash'. My music will have your hairs stand up in the cinema. Especially nowadays when even in cinemas they are getting great sound systems.

Drum & bass fully incorporates technology. It is the most digitalized and sampladelic music because it totally relies upon the production and the effects. To that extent sound systems at home never give you the full sonic experience of a track. Besides, different sound systems in various clubs give different vibes. How do you deal with that? And what is your opinion on the Valve sound system of Dillinja and Lemon D.?
More than in any other genre we rely upon our technical equipment. But you have to start with an idea. In that sense it doesn't start with a machine. It is also about finding out how equipment can be used in ways that were previously unthinkable. Production-wise I am still learning: new machines, new ideas. In this respect I can't say that for instance 'The Raven' was where I peaked as a drum & bass artist. I still like 'The Raven', but I think that it's too digital. In clubs I always test the sound for the first 20 minutes and then use it to the maximum. The Valve is the loudest thing I have ever heard. The first time I was playing on it my eyeballs were vibrating so intensely that I could just feel my eyes shake. The sound of this system is so massive; it is definitely the future.

The Valve Sound System is created by drum & bass artists Dillinja (Karl Francis) and Lemon D (Kevin King). It is the biggest drum & bass sound system in the world. The Valve rolls in at 100K, stands at 18 ft wide and 10 ft high with six speaker boxes and 60 bass bins. It takes three 7 ½ tonne lorries to transport it and twelve men two hours to set up. Sound systems that inspired the Valve were the dub systems of King Tubby and Jah Shakka. (Knowledge, vol. 2 issue 31)

When you see old sci-fi tv-series like Buck Rogers you saw people dancing on very old-fashioned sounding house beats. Do you ever wonder what music is going to be like in ten or fifteen years? What are we listening to in the future?
I think that the concept of clubbing with standing in line to get in to hear a DJ, is over. In the future we will each plug into a club in an individual box with a headphone. We will plug into a machine that combines the sound and the visual much more effectively. In this respect we are going to see sounds as well. The new sound is marked to have a bodily experience. It will be a fully audio-visual experience in which each record has a 'cause-in-effect'. The new sound is going to be sadomasochistic.

Your co-operation with sidekick Optical is about combining your sneering basslines and his mental sounds. How do you co-operate together?
We know each other very well. It is a very close relationship. So we don't negotiate. It is quite relaxed; there are no set rules. You can compare it to the 50/50 relation with a MC during a set in a club. Optical is great on the buttons. When I have an idea for a sound I just need a few words to tell him what and a couple minutes later he delivers the sound. He is truly a wizard.

In the early days the dubplates and pirate broadcasters were very important to drum & bass because the dubs were the only thing around. While being popular on the dance floor, they were played by the pirate radios. Is that still going on? And what kind of role does the Internet play in your music?
Nowadays drum & bass still depends on dubplates. Yesterday I had my friend J. Majik on the phone. When I told him I had to play in Rotterdam he invited me to come over to listen to his new dubs before leaving for the Netherlands. I hope my girlfriend understood because I had to leave immediately. But producing a dubplate is also risky. Optical and I had for instance the strings of a Gary Numan song sampled for a new drum & bass track. Two weeks later it was also on the latest Sugababes number one hit 'Freak Like Me'. You understand, we couldn't use the dubplate anymore. As for the pirates, they are still around but they are doing their thing on the Internet. In that way Internet is a great medium to get tunes from. It is great for nicking software, less great if your tracks are nicked. A couple weeks ago two new tracks of us were stolen from our computer over the net. But it's the way it is, I guess. I also steal some of my tunes from the Internet.

Selected discography:
Ed Rush - Bludclot Artattack (1993)
Ed Rush - Guncheck (1995)
Ed Rush - The Skylab EP (1996)
Ed Rush - Technology (1997)
Ed Rush & Optical - Wormhole CD (1998)
Ed Rush & Optical - The Creeps CD (2000)