Soundtrack To My Life: Mumdance

Take time with Mumdance, as he shares his most loved tracks.

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For the latest edition of Soundtrack To My Life, we talked to Mumdance about awkward drum programming, break beats and listening to happy hardcore at the back of the bus. The ten tracks Mumdance has chosen for this list, chart his progression through listening to hardcore tapes through to garage, grime and, ultimately, experimental music, paralleling the progression of his own music. He often talks of having two phases in his career. The first being the club-friendly 8-bar grime bangers associated with what he calls his "Mad Decent era", through to the more melancholic, downbeat productions. 

One defining characteristic feature of Jack Adams' music is the desire to unite. Whether he's uniting disparate factions in a club, juxtaposing styles and genres in his music or simply juxtaposing ideas against one another – that motif remains a constant. What seems to pervade this interview, and much of Adams' thoughts, is the idea of uniting the high and low-brow without, as he puts it, "being a dickhead." Marrying up his hardcore and jungle roots with the effects-driven experimentalism of avant-garde, shoegaze and drone, is something he admits can be challenging at times, but an endeavour he's determined to master.

Despite the influx of the high-brow, Mumdance's music remains listenable and inviting without a hint of pretension. Scroll through below to see what music left a lasting impression on this future-thinking producer. (He releases his 1 Sec EP with Novelist on January 20 via XL Recordings).  

Interview by James Keith (@JamesMBKeith)


 

4 Hero – "The Elements (Fire & Water Mix)"

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"This really stuck out to me, because it was basically a breakbeat with rewinds in it. The drum programming on this track just blew my mind; the arrangement's so awkward! This was the first time I realised it was acceptable. I'd never heard that before. That's why grime caught my ear because it’s really awkward and 'start-stoppy.' It shouldn't work, but it does. I used to be into a lot of heavy metal and that sort of stuff, and a lot of that very technically-minded metal is very start-stoppy and very awkward. You might not like it on first listen, but you need to build a relationship with it. If you listen to it a few more times, you start to hear new things and appreciate different levels of it."

Bass Selective – "Blowout Part 2"

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"When the classic house trend came around, I hadn't heard of all these tunes. The only ones I had heard were the ones that hardcore producers had sampled. I think a lot of people my age, with my sorts of tastes, came to house through hardcore and jungle. I'd be like, 'Oh, I know that one! It's from Sweet Harmony (Liquid),' when it's actually "Sunday" by Ce Ce Rogers. I'd never heard of Ce Ce Rogers, but I'd heard of 'Liquid'. I actually bought an Korg M1 piano the other day. That was the synthesizer they used for all those classic hardcore tunes that gave it that classic piano sound. And that's used in all the classic house tunes and all the classic hardcore tunes. It's a sound that doesn't just resonate with me, but with a lot of people, so I just thought, 'Fuck it! I'm gonna buy one.'"

Todd Terry f/ Martha Walsh – "Something Going On (Loop Da Loop Downtown Mix)"

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"Speed garage was the big thing where I was living at the time. When I was at school, I used to DJ at the local youth club and I used to really hammer this record. I don't think anyone actually liked it apart from me and my mates, but I still played it. This one is actually one of the least popular of the mixes, but it's my favourite. It uses a Mentasm and a lot of hardcore-sound pads with this great speed garage beat. The way the bass comes in is kind of like a jungle bassline, and it drops in a really awkward manner. It's got this really odd time signature and, again, it's that awkwardness I really, really like. I like music that catches you out. Most of the music that connects with me is music that doesn't really sound correct."

187 Lockdown – "Kung Fu"

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"187 Lockdown did a tune called 'Gunman', which was absolutely massive and that's the tune a lot of people remember from them, but I always liked 'Kung Fu' more. It was the first song I'd come into contact with that had an Asian motif; I really like Oriental and Asian sounds, and this was the first time I'd come in contact with those sorts of sounds. I was lucky enough to actually go to Asia, so it was good to fully explore that sound and culture. This track was another one that sent me on my path, literally in this case."

Digital – "Deadline"

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"Digital's 'Deadline' was one of the first anthems I heard when I started going out clubbing. I was around 17/18 and heard it at a night on the Brighton seafront called Meltdown; it was the first time I'd experienced club music how it was meant to be experienced. Experiencing it in a club made me appreciate it on a whole different level. I was hanging around with a lot of older people who taught me you can never fully understand it until you've walked through a club, opened that door to the main room and felt the sounds hit you like a wall. So it was a pivotal moment from me, getting hit in the face by that bass for the first time."

Nasty Habits – "Shadow Boxing"

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"'Shadow Boxing' was the first record, for me, that was really 'darkside.' At the time, I was listening to a lot of hardcore which was mainly happy, whereas this was really melancholic and is a side of hardcore that I loved exploring. There's a lot of silly, happy stuff, but the proto sort of stuff that came as it was morphing into jungle had a melancholic feel about it. When I heard it, I was like, "What the fuck is this?!" It just sounded so evil and, well, nasty but it just resonated with me so well. I've always followed Doc Scott, and everything he does."

Wiley – "Wot Do U Call It?"

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"Wiley was the first time I ever heard grime. I remember, I was sitting in a pub which would get DJs down and someone played this. I thought it sounded awful, at first [laughs]. I thought, 'He's just rapping but he's using the same words over and over again!' It made so little sense to me, that the next day, I went and found it because I don't like dismissing something. I really hate music snobs who refuse to get into something without having any sort of reason behind it. What's interesting about grime is that it's so different from American rapping. With American rapping, the rhyming structure rhymes the last word of every line, whereas with this tune, that's all flipped entirely on its head; the word at the end of each line is the same but it's put into different contexts. I just found that really fascinating. It follows on from the UK soundsystem/MC culture, where everyone knows the last word of each line so they can all sing along and shout it back at the MC so it can go off in a rave."

Oddz & Eastwood – "Champion VIP"

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"To this day, Oddz is one of my favourite producers. He doesn't make music anymore, though. I don't know the exact story but, I think it's something to do with him becoming a Muslim and deciding he didn't want to make music so he just chucked out all his hard-drives and all his music was lost. Recently, I went to visit Eastwood and he gave me some unreleased Oddz stuff because I was such a massive fan. Again, this track carries on this theme of very awkward music. It's led by this big, giant square wave that sounds really rough round the edges. It almost sounds like it's not even finished! It's very DIY, and I was into a lot of punk for that reason. Grime, to me, felt like punk in that sense too, and 'Champion VIP' was the first grime tune that I drew a lot of influence from."

Logos – "Cloudbursting"

"Logos is a man after my own heart. 'Cloudbursting was the first track of his that I heard, and it instantly grabbed my attention. After hearing the song, for the next couple of days, I got talking with Logos; I played him some stuff, he liked it, and that was that. That was about three years ago now. Then, in the first session when he came down, we wrote 'In Reverse' and 'Drum Boss' together and just kept banging out tunes. But if I hadn't heard this tune right here, I wouldn't have got in touch with him and I wouldn't be where I am today."

Shapednoise – "As Others See Us"

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"It was Logos who introduced me to that noise and industrial sound, which is my new infatuation. I was into shoegaze which runs along a very similar tangent, but this was the first tune that made me pay attention to noise and industrial sounds. I've always listened to experimental music but not so much of the high-brow stuff. The last couple of years, I've been reading books on how avant-garde and experimental music developed through the ages and that's where my head's at right now. I'm moving away from musicality and towards sonics and sounds, rather than melodies.

"I'm really intrigued by the highbrow stuff but, because I come from rave and hardcore, I really hate the pretentiousness of it. You've got all these arty kids and it's like they missed the memo where they said: 'Don't be a dickhead about it.' So what I try to do with my sets now, is bring the high-brow and the low-brow together. I won't do a whole two-hour drone set but I'll sneak some in there. I don't like pretentious people, but I do like a lot of high-brow stuff. And I just think there's a way of bringing everyone together without being a dick."

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