Classic Album: Blame, Into the Void

Good Looking Records, 2002

In the early ’00s, a messy exit from the legendary Good Looking label meant that drum & bass producer Blame was looking at having to take a leap into the unknown. But before he could sever ties, he’d have to turn in a final, contractually obliged, album. Unlike Prince, he didn’t mope about with symbols on his face. He did what he did best, and made a swansong collection of his deepest, and most invested, beats yet. If he was gonna go, he’d jump, and certainly not be pushed.

“There was a lot of label BS,” says Blame. “No one really knows that. And I didn’t know what I’d be facing. That’s why I called it Into The Void.

“I had to give them an album so I could walk away, but I put everything I had into it. I wasn’t gonna short change the music, just because I was leaving the label, basically.”

Over the course of the album he’d wrestle with insanely complicated beat chopping, straight-ahead jazz-fusion, live players, and concept-heavy music.

“It was very experimental,” he says. “I was going deep into different influences. It wasn’t just like, ‘There’s a regular break. Add bass. Get a little flute sound’. No! I was there, recording musicians, going, ‘What would it be like if I was on another planet, and a robot was coming alive?’ It’s probably the deepest I’ve ever gone into being conceptual on a project.”

He would lose days programming, chopping bass, and struggling with a tiny E-Mu sampler screen and temperamental Zip disks.

A Yamaha 02R desk let him recall sessions, allowing him to work on all the tracks at once – a mixed blessing, as spinning all those plates could take its toll, mentally. But he wanted to push the music, and himself.

But did he go too far? Where was the limit, now he had no one to answer to?

“I did go too far on this album. I know this now. Looking back, I’m pleased that I did push the envelope as far as I could, though. I wanted to see what would happen when you took a drum & bass record to its limits.”