DRUMSOUND AND BASSLINE SMITH
The drum ’n’ bass titans reveal how they’ve distilled two decades of junglist supremacy into their bangin’ new bass instrument for Kontakt
The drum ’n’ bass trio explain how they came to design their new bass instrument for Kontakt
With 20 years atop the UK drum ’n’ bass scene, Derby-based DJ/producers and Technique Recordings bosses Drumsound (Andy Wright and Ben Wiggett) and Simon ‘Bassline’ Smith certainly know a thing or two about making bass music.
And as regular readers know, the trio are no strangers to ComputerMusic, having previously starred in 196’s ProducerMasterclass session. Get up to speed and check out Part 1 of their video over at bit.ly/ParallaxPM.
After creating a Loopmasters Artist Series sample pack, and preset packs for various pro plugins such as Sugar Bytes’ WOW2 filter, their next logical move was to head into the studio and work on a bigger soundware product. The result was Parallax (9/10,
263), a Kontakt “bass engine” designed and scripted entirely by Andy.
We sat down with Simon and Andy to discuss the current state of DnB, sampling in 2019, and find out how they created their new virtual instrument, which they’ve christened ‘Parallax’, as well as their latest EP, Booyaka.
Computer Music: What have you guys been up to since we last spoke? Simon ‘Bassline’ Smith:
“We’ve still got our label, Technique Recordings, with various artists signed and releasing music. Our last studio album came out at the end of November 2017. Then we’ve got a new EP ( Booyaka) coming out; we’re out on the road DJing; and, of course, we’re always making and releasing more music. And we’ve been building Parallax for the last two and a half years, which is now seeing the light of day.”
: What first made you decide to create a Kontakt instrument? SBS:“
It all came about a couple of years ago. Andy started messing around in his spare time. He’d come to me and say, “look at this”. He got more and more into the ‘mad professor’ zone and said, ‘we need to build our own synth’. And it snowballed from there.”
Andy Wright: “I’ve got two young kids. When they went to bed, I’d head to the studio and potter around. When Kontakt went from v5.6.8 – when they added the XY Pad – I jumped on it early. The next