KLUTE Punk survivor turned DnB kingpin Tom Withers talks us through the making of Centre of the Crystal

Eclectic drum ’n’ bass legend Tom Withers deconstructs his production style

Watching the detective

Tom Withers has been releasing top notch drum ’n’ bass under his Klute moniker for over 20 years, racking up a discography that comprises nine albums and over 50 singles on labels including Certificate 18, Metalheadz, Hospital, Shogun and – since 2001 – his own Commercial Suicide imprint. Despite the electronic focus of his career since the early 90s, however, Tom’s musical life began in the 80s as drummer and songwriter Tommy Stupid in successful UK hardcore band The Stupids.

“The drums were my gateway into making music,” says Tom, talking to us from his Suffolk studio. “Probably Ringo Starr, although I don’t really care about Ringo Starr any more. At the time, I was massively into The Beatles and wanted to play drums. I couldn’t be bothered to learn, though, so I just got into punk and got really excited by the whole point being that you didn’t really have to learn. Punk was my gateway music, and pretty quickly I got quite interested in home recording.”

Tom’s sister happened to be sharing a squat with post-punk/funk/industrial band 23 Skidoo, who were working with maverick fashion designer and DJ Tim Soar at the time. “Tim taught me how to make multitrack recordings with two stereo cassette players, where you feed one channel into the other when the cassette is playing – you play live, you keep bouncing between the two, and you end up with a stacked take. He was coming out of this tape loop background, pre-industrial era, things like Throbbing Gristle. 23 Skidoo were coming out of that side of things, but with much more of a funk influence – real indie, experimental funk, punk stuff. It was a very arts background – they were mucking around with massive tape loops, editing cassette tape, playing things back at different speeds, but I loved that ingenuity, making do with what you’ve got!”

A few years later, Tascam revolutionised home recording with their first Portastudio four-track cassette tape machine. Tom quickly got hold of one, as well as a drum machine and “a cheap Alesis reverb”.

“Then, around ’91, ’92, I bought an Ensoniq sampler, which just blew my mind. It was all about being able to do it myself. I’d been in a punk band and it was always frustrating, because you had to wait until you could afford to go into a studio, and then for it to be mixed down. I wanted to do it myself, and tech was what eventually led me into computer music.”

Tom’s early influences were unsurprisingly diverse, ranging from Eno and Tangerine Dream to Chic. “Nile Rogers, Tony Thompson and Bernard Edwards did a lot of production work – they were behind David Bowie’s Let’s Dance album, The Power Station, all that kind of tight but human funk stuff. So I was into that late 70s, early 80s funk – a lot of British funk – but also stuff like Sex Pistols, The Stranglers and UK Subs.

“Then, I’d say the second big revolution in my life was rave culture,” he continues,

“so stuff like 808 State, Adamski, Happy

Mondays. Kind of crossing over from the indie punk side of things, where the lines were blurring. You had a lot of shoe-gazey stuff, and then on the other side of the tracks you had people experimenting with putting breakbeats in. Chapterhouse,

Lush… I was getting interested in that. And then techno, hardcore and jungle.

“And then, out of that, I’ve grown a completely different set of influences, because what started as me buying records to sample ended up becoming music I liked more. Now there’s a lot of soundtrack stuff and library music – music that wasn’t really made to be listened to, music that was there to serve a purpose and just be in the background and create a mood. There’s some quite wacky stuff out there, and all of that stuff ends up in the melting pot.”

“You had to wait until you could afford a studio. I wanted to do it myself”