Sonic Router

SR Mix #111: Danny Drive Thru [Fat City/Mind On Fire]

Posted in Sonic Router Mixes   

I’m the first person to admit it, when I first heard the computer voice emceeing on Danny Drive Thru’s ‘Virtua Ante Up’, I fucking loved it. That knowingly primitive beat combined with the tongue in cheek digs at producers not needing emcees (which was probably a little bit more relevant at the time) and the interplay between the male and female voices was kitsch, funny and pretty damn awesome. For a long time it was the only bit of his I had – I’m pretty sure it was the very first song I ever played on our Hivemind.fm session, the one that never got archived because I’d never done it before and frankly it was the kind of shambolic affair you try and forget about – and the notion that it might have just been a cheap trick deployed by some really stoned guy who was laughing at me every time I played it to someone, started to seep in.

What it in fact was, was probably just that; a joke. But it was a pretty pertinent gateway joke; one of those beautifully made almost-novelty beats that leads one onto other much harder, dustier stuff. The Manchester based producer’s work seems to have much of a kinship to his geography and those producers around him. Influenced by the cities labels like Fat City and Grand Central he works more with organic breaks than drum machine samples, joining an array of producers whose craft has been a little under considered throughout the whole rise of synthetic beat music as we now know it. And with us being incredulously vocal fans of the instrumental hip hop made by artists associated with labels like Anticon, Galapagos 4 and Bully Records we figured to start a dialogue.

With the vinyl release of ‘Virtua Ante Up’ and his track ‘Eclipsemoonsun’ finally announced through Fat City and their Producer Series (it featured on the Producer#2 CD compilation back when) and Danny’s recent 7” outing on Mind on Fire, it conspired to be the perfect time to ask him to make a mixtape for our series. What follows is #111 in the series, an in depth installment that captures Danny’s level of immersion and wide ranging musical tastes.

Sonic Router: From delving into your blog and into your heritage a bit it feels like you’re a proper DJ; a digger. I know it’s probably a dumb as shit statement to open with but there it is…. How deep do you go really?

Danny Drive Thru: Thanks very much! I loath to call myself a digger though, as I don’t do the whole vinyl hunting thing as much as I’d like. I love getting hold of stuff I’ve never heard, but I feel a bit weird about records costing £20, £40, £100 and up… Having heard all the arguments against people who sample, I rarely hear the same arguments leveled at second-hand dealers. I’ve been known to be tempted, though… Most of my weirdest musical tastes have come from digging for samples; I’ll find something that looks like it’ll have a few bits on it, realise it’s dope as it is and go and find some more like it. Then being surrounded by people like Mr Scruff, Unabombers, Jon K & Kelvin Brown, and more recently Jonny Dub & Illum Sphere, Mind On Fire and so on, you can’t help but search far and wide for dope music just to keep up!

Do you spend more time on beats or on Djing? I mean your mixes seem to be quite thought out and purposeful…

I tend to go in cycles where I’ll be just checking new music, going through old stuff for sampling, putting rough sets together, doing a mix or whatever; then I’ll spend a couple of months making beats; just all of a sudden I can’t help but make loads of beats. Mix-wise, the direction tends to come from having a few particular tunes I really want to play, and everything else has to slot into place around them; the only problem being I like loads of different types of music, so it can get a bit stressful making things work… hence some of the clangers! Even though I spend so much time doing a mix, I’m not mega fussed about dropping a couple of blends; just proves I’m doing it live!

Well… I say I’m not mega fussed; I am. It burns my head out afterwards… “why did I leave that mix in there?!”

I first heard of you with ‘Virtua Ante Up’ and at the same time as I loved it and wanted to hear a bunch more tracks in that vein, I was interested in what else you had going on. So for those who haven’t really heard it, can you explain it a bit? I mean, it’s pretty obvious it started as a joke thing but (and this probably says a lot about my tastes) I really dig the beat…

Yeah, it was a pissed-up idea that came up in conversation a couple of times over the years; wouldn’t it be funny to get a Stephen Hawking voice to do ‘Rapper’s Delight’, and one day I just decided to do it but thought it’d be funnier to do something really thuggy, just make it really cartoony… ‘Ante Up’ fitted the bill, as everyone knows it pretty much, and it’s dope despite its thuggishness! And because I was computer generating the voice, it seemed natural to make the whole thing computer generated so I sampled a ZX Spectrum, chose some old-school drum machine sounds and went the whole hog; then the idea of it being a shot at emcees popped in! On the subject of more, there is another called ‘Virtua Rap’, which is a medley of ‘Simon Says’, ‘Full Clip’ and ‘Shook Ones’… and there maybe possibly a third in the works, but perhaps not…

Your debut on Mind of Fire is pretty different. Outside of the Virtua stuff you seem to be a bit more… organic, more dusty. I mean to me it sounds like it could be something on Bully Records (RIP) or that vein of instrumental hip hop producers. Can you tell us a bit more about those tunes?

The Virtua stuff is what it is, but my other stuff can be whatever I want it to be… Or more accurately, whatever it decides to become while I’m making it… I like texture, and fuzz, and depth, so I think I try and cram as much in there as I can. Like if I’ve sampled something really hissy, other people might clean it up but to me it’s part of the sample so I’ll filter it out, put it on its own and use it in the beat, make it a feature… also, most of the music I like’s dead moody, so that’s a thing. Plus my life is pretty dusty and cluttered, so maybe it’s that.

Do you think, and I say this as a person who fucking adored it, that the Shadow type of beat producers have influenced you? I mean it’s not very in vogue at the moment…

Yeah, definitely. When I first discovered hip hop that kind of shit was right up my alley… I think because I knew what was going on with it, I could hear how it was put together… A lot of my influence comes from turntablism and jungle plus I’ve always preferred the sound of drum breaks as opposed to drum machines, which is why I mainly use breaks. And all that stuff was full of dope breaks… for me, when I listen to music it’s always beat first, then if… if I like that I check for lyrics, so the with Shadow/Mr Scruff/Rae & Christian/Aim kind of instrumental stuff, I barely noticed the lack of raps (I like Lack Of Raps, gonna call a song that…). Anyway, fuck vogue, if it’s dope, its dope!

What else have you got coming up?

The next 12” I’m on is the next installment of Fat City’s producer series which should be out Jan 16th-ish, and it’s got ‘Virtua Ante Up’ on it! It’s also got another of my tunes, ‘Eclipsemoonsun’ (with a remix from Trevino, Marcus Intalex’s new alias) and ‘Driftinoff’ by the mighty Mr Dibiase… I’m honoured to be sharing a 12 with those names… I’ve got a couple of really interesting collabo projects in the works, one being with Sneaky of Fingathing fame, and the other being with loads of dope producers (involved so far are Kelpe, Om Unit and Indigo), plus some other bits and bobs I’d better not talk about yet!

Oh yeah and there’s a podcast starting up soon dedicated to the stuff I love, but can’t really play out… you asked how deep I go, you’ll find out!

Can you tell us a bit about the mix?

Yeah it was a fucking nightmare! I like it though, loads of cracking stuff in there.

Got any pearls of wisdom for our readers?

He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools (I googled Confucius).

::

DOWNLOAD: Danny Drive Thru – Sonic Router Mix #111

Tracklist:

1. Dimlite – Can’t Get Used To Those
2. Danny Drive Thru – Eclipsemoonsun (Trevino’s Front Mix)
3. Eliphino – More Than Me
4. Slugabed – Whirlpool
5. Greymatter ft. Domu – Watch This
6. Azealia Banks – 212
7. Jon Phonics – Bruck (Naive Machine Remix)
8. J.Devious – Coin Op
9. Durrty Goodz – Keep Up
10. Danny Drive Thru – Violence Makes (Naive Machine Remix)
11. Ye Mighty – Fuse
12. Paper Tiger – Send Me (Live Band Version)
13. Stomu Yamash’ta’s Red Buddha Theatre – Awa Odori
14. The Beacon Street Union – The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
15. Kendrick Lamar – A.D.H.D.
16. Fancy Mike ft. Constrobuz – Goblin
17. Slugabed – Sun Too Bright Turn It Off
18. Com Truise – VHS Sex
19. Kromestar – Don’t Make Sense
20. Foreign Beggars – Prove It
21. Raphael Attar – Robot Bastard
22. Danny Brown – Radio Song
23. Eprom – Twerkul8 (with Sy & Unknown – Move Your Body)
24. Remarc – RIP (Philip D. Kick’s Footwork Jungle Edit)
25. Danny Drive Thru ft. L-Digz – Eclipsemoonsun VIP
26. B. Lewis – Moon Dancers
27. Figure Of Wax – Should Be Moving (Demo)
28. Celph Titled &Buckwild ft. Outerspace – Good Hell Hunting
29. Roni Size – Snapshot (Krust Snapped It Remix)
30. Calyx – Inner Distance
31. Fabio Frizzi – Voci Dal Nulla

Title photo: © Gary Brown