Dave Campbell - Mad About Sound

You won’t find much about me on the Internet because most of my career was pre-Internet really... I put out my first record in 1989.        

A raver from London during the 80s acid house movement, Dave Campbell was already revelling in rave culture when he partnered up with best friend Viv Beeton as Ubik. Releasing "Techno Prisoners" on Camden's Zoom Records, they kickstarted the bass generation. The big British sound of 1990 had been made possible through the accessibility of computer-based home studio set-ups and programs like Cubase propelling a "Do it yourself" revolution - rather reminiscent of punk and accompanied by the explosion of independent labels (Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture). The Ubik duo were unstoppable, supplying dance tunes and playing live sets that were very firsts in UK history.

Since 1989, Dave's delivered music under varying brilliant guises: whether it be the raw physicality of Ubik or the 'hi-fi' cerebral sound of Hi-Ryze, along the way injecting new technologies and hardware which today come together under his own namesake.

Dave continued producing under the Hi-Ryze moniker following Viv's retirement in 1993 but soon started to feel as though he’d exhausted his context. The emergence of D&B however ignited a new passion within him reviving his direction. This time he partnered up with another Ipswich talent: Tom Withers. Together as 'Phume' they released on drum n bass label Selector in 1996, their tracks also appearing on CDs such as Otis' 'Junglized - Jazzy Funky Drum'n'Bass', Stacey Pullen's DJ-Kicks, 'Breakbeat Science' on Volume, on "avant dance" label Language, as well as on compilations together with 4hero, Goldie, Mixmaster Morris and Kruder & Dorfmeister.

By the turn of the millennium, Dave was in the midst of creating new sounds. ‘62nd Cell’ heralded the start of 2000 and a musical framework that would be more melodic, personal and emotional. He’d been partying hard for 15 years though. “It’s quite a hedonistic lifestyle. I was burnt out; running out of ideas too. To be honest you’re never in it for the money - unless you’re a superstar DJ and I’ve never DJed so that’s handpicked my career... I’m a producer. Styles change and people look for other things and my sound wasn’t in vogue anymore". Dave decided to focus on his daytime gig as sound engineer working on gospel, soul, country, rock, grime, hip hop, you name it. He continued to make music at home but for himself. For many years that was Dave Campbell, in obscurity.

Then two years ago he started his own label Yozmaz with his partner Marie Claire Patin, issuing a number of represses and unreleased tracks from the 90s ahead of the 62nd Cell album debut 'The Wood For The Trees' (the artwork featuring the infamous Houghton backdrop). New EPs followed and 2020 signalled the birth of a new moniker: Nine-tails.                 

Dave Campbell talks to us about his return to music, the safe haven of 'Dave’s Pad' and his studio life for the past 35 years. How has his creative approach changed and his sound evolved via prevailing themes of escapism. He recollects the 90s both as producer and raver and tells us about the latest addition to his studio - the Arturia MatrixBrute. Together with Viv Beeton he pioneered a sound; he talks about the revolution in music that ensued and the sheer gratitude to his fans for his continuing role in music today.

Dave shares a podcast spanning the journey from 1990 to 2020.                           

So what pulled you out of obscurity Dave.

In 2015/2016, I realised that people were still playing my records. “Some of your records are going for £200 on Discogs - Nicolas Lutz, Craig Richards, Ricardo, they’re all playing your music”. Blimey, people are still listening to my old stuff… I couldn’t believe it. Then my neighbour Oli Silva mentioned to a friend of his that I was ‘Dave Hi-Ryze’ and they asked if I’d fancy making a four-on-the-floor record for In Therapy Records. I thought ok why not. I had a go – and people really liked it. Then Giovanni from Sleepers Records asked if I’d make a record for them. When I finally went on to FB (something that I had resisted for many years as I wasn’t into social media or networking), I couldn’t believe the reception I got.

When you first started your fan club would have been out there with you in the clubs, not on your ‘digital’ doorstep per se

Back then you’d make records in your studio – they’d go out into the world and you’d never really know what'd happen to them or what people thought about them. A few times you’d be in a club and your record would come on, that’d always be a great feeling (it still is actually). You feel a real sense of accomplishment having made something, it doesn't mean as much with a digital file/MP3 especially with the file sharing etc. but having said that, one of the great benefits of the digital revolution is that people these days can contact me directly. You could never do that in the past. If there was an artist or producer you liked, you wouldn’t be able to talk to them but FB for example makes it direct and that’s amazing.

So social media didn’t bite after all…

People talk to me from all over the world all the time. I was talking to someone from Uruguay the other day.

Tell me about “Dave’s Pad”

That’s been a long-standing name for my studio – I’ve always loved the name because my studio has always been my safe haven. I bought my first equipment in 1987: Atari computer running Hybrid Arts sequencing software and Akai 900 sampler. I also had Korg Monopoly and Tascam Portastudio 244, which I'd been keeping on loan because I was living in Ipswich.

When Viv joined in, he brought a lot of equipment with him - DX27, Roland 909, Sequential Drumtrax, sh101 and soon added Sequential Pro-1, Oscar, Chase Bit One and Alpha Juno 2. I then moved into our shared coop, as did 'Dave's Pad' and all our equipment was in one space. But after Viv left in ’93, I had to wait for the Sodium LP advance before I could afford to buy anything else. Then it was Yamaha SY85 workstation, Yamaha RM50 drum module and Roland SRV2000 reverb. I supplemented it a year later with Yamaha Pro Mix 01 digital mixing desk. I was also borrowing a friends' Sequential Six-trax. As the years passed by and I hustled a publishing deal, I bought a new EMU E5000 sampler, Apple MacG4 and CD burner.

Today Dave’s Pad studio is based around my Mac Pro running Ableton. I used Cubase for many years and I still have it on my computer but I really like Ableton’s workflow. I use RME Fireface800 digital converter with Audient ASP 800 and Behringer Ultragain, which provides inputs for my synths via ADAT. But the MatrixBrute is currently my favourite thing – it’s so flexible, you get lost in this thing for weeks. I wanted something with a steep learning curve, something deep that would keep me learning for years. I’m still very much scratching the surface.

Another current mainstay is the iPad. One of the real attractions with the iPad (and apps) is how cheap it all is... techno music was originally made using very cheap equipment. Things like the acid machine Roland TB303 started off as an abandoned bass playing box – in the late 80s you’d find them in junk shops for very little money, nobody wanted them until the Chicago acid boys got their hands on them and twisted all these new perhaps never intended sounds! Then one of the best drum machines I’ve used is an iPad app ‘Patterning’ (it cost me £20). These days there's apps that have the capability to twist sound beyond all measure (Fieldscaper anyone…?). I’ll often make a few passes on tracks to add some sounds I'm generating from the iPad.

So yeah I made the move to the modern era with hard disk audio recording, plug-in effects and virtual instruments. This new system was a game changer – being able to save the music I’m working on and recall it at any time, it always coming back in the form that I’d saved it in. I'd been craving this for  years. As a Sound Engineer, I'd always been tasked with noting every setting on equipment and the mixing desk. It could take up to two three hours and you had to be spot on because if the session was recalled at a later date and  it didn’t sound how it should have, you'd be in the firing line! But it meant that I developed an ability to perfectly recall tracks - it's at the center of my working process. 

My studio’s now in the top floor of my house. I was living in London for years but I’m back in my home town Ipswich.

So you’ve gone back home…

Yes, which I never thought would happen… but there’s a strong musical history here. I like that, makes it even better to come home.

Being in London though would have no doubt stimulated you.

Definitely. London was a totally happening place – there was so much going on – it was an exciting place for music, the rave scene, the squat scene… I was a squatter too. Back then you’d go out every night of the week and you could even walk to wherever it was you wanted to go. I was a bit anxious actually when I moved back to Ipswich; wondering if I’d start to make ambient music...

You've released a lot of new material though. 

I’m kinda driven… actually I’m obsessed. I have all these puzzles on the go  – it’s like a Sudoku and I can’t wait to get into them. I’m lucky because there’s not much else to do in Ipswich but I’ve always been a studio person. In fact I’ve been in the studio for the last 35 years and there’s nothing better than the sound coming out of the speakers and getting a good vibe going. It’s just vibration man.

These days I’m totally going with the flow, even down to the music that I release. I start tracks all the time - that's why the computer sequencer/ digital audio workstation is essential (because I'm working on so many tracks at any time). It’s my favourite thing to start something new, you never really know where it’s going to go... at some point I tend to get stuck so I save what I've done and come back to it in a couple of months. I probably have up to 70 tracks on the go. I’ll eventually end up rotating through them all and the tracks start to finish themselves (or some of them do). But there’s no real direction, it comes down to whatever’s happening in that moment. I find a real advantage with this recall process because it means that I just choose a piece that I’m in the mood for and work on that. Of course we’re all influenced by what’s happening around us - our choices are an outlet for our emotions - but I don’t set out to make concept records, it’s just whatever comes out.

Doesn’t that tie in with the breadth (and depth) of experience that you’ve been exposed to over the years

That’s it. If I want to have an electric guitar in a track (not that I have yet), I’ll have it. You shouldn’t not be able to do something because it doesn’t fit into a supposed genre… there’s a lot of genres in dance music, people like to put things in boxes. I don’t even know which genre I’d fit into, perhaps techno but then some people tell me that my music isn't techno. Does it matter though? Producers want to be played by certain DJs so I think it comes down to is figuring out styles or genres to get played by the right person.

I still listen to a lot of jazz but my inspiration tends to come from the latest sounds, for example I love Spotify for discovering music. I believe that we’re in a golden age for music. I’m both inspired and daunted by the sheer amount of good music that’s being made today. I’m also very influenced by technology. In the late 80s it was samplers and drum machines, now it’s the iPad – IOS music making has moved forward in leaps and bounds and there’s some incredible apps available to mangle sound and make beats.

All in all I’m influenced and inspired by so much that everything comes out in my music. People tell me that they find that quite liberating, especially people who are making music – they tell me it takes the pressure off, makes it more open.

Over the years how would you say your creative approach has changed? Would you say that you’re more cognisant of certain rules and definitions (aside from genres) so that your music functions 'better'.

I’ve got more tools (helpers if you like)... so computer equipment, iPad gizmos, more technology, AI. Also, some synthesisers sit there just generating their own stuff – I record it and pick the bits I like. I use the iPad to generate musical midi patterns. There’s an app called Riffer where you choose how many notes you want, what scale and key you want and then you press the dice button in the middle and it generates a pattern according to your spec. A lot of times the pattern's rubbish so you keep pressing the dice until it comes out with something you like. That's the first part done.

Then I follow the process, adding more layers. I have lots of other generative apps on the iPad: Rozetta, Thesys, Gesturement, Refraktions and FugueMachine - each one plays the role of the different musicians in the 'band. I'll run the track and have one of these apps send out midi data, which triggers the synth or sampler. I then sit back and play engineer. In a typical multitrack recording session the musicians come in one at a time and lay down their parts. One of the things I love about engineering is that I often won’t know the track being built but as each musician adds their part, it starts to grow and take shape with hopefully a beautiful piece of music emerging.

The next fun part comes when I send the recorded midi triggers to different synthesisers or when I change the sound in the synth I'm using. It's incredible how different the same midi part can sound playing a different patch or synth.

To be honest, I have very little music theory education. Most people in my situation would take a course but there’s definitely a lazy side to me that can’t be arsed! There’s also a lot of help on the Internet for us ‘unqualified’ musicians, for example www.scales-chords.com lets you play any selection of notes, then you look up what scales your notes fit in or which chords fit in with your scale and notes. It’s incredible knowledge and it's all automated, which sums me up perfectly. I guess I prefer stumbling around in the dark with just lots of dedication and using my ears for guidance.

And I agree with your point about musical rules, more than I would have done in the past. That’s been a definite change for me - realizing that there are certain rules - the rules of harmony are what I'm grappling with at the moment. I can’t listen to some of my earlier stuff because it sounds horribly out of tune but then again some people don’t mind that. Having this freedom to experiment means that sometimes my music feels out of character. For example, my latest track 'City Fox': I followed a path taking it off tangent and then suddenly everything fit.

But those out of character moments can also represent real genius

That’s right. There’s an interesting clip of David Bowie giving advice to artists to never stick in their comfort zone. If you feel that you’re out of your depth then you’re probably in the right place. I thought that was really good advice.

Your sound has had its own evolution. Have you found it hard to show off this evolved sound?

The idea is that you get better. It’s going to evolve just because of the length of time I’ve been doing it. Plus I’m always looking for new things to try out - there’s a lot of variety in the music I make. It's not all one format. One day I might something quite sinister with no drums, then the next day I start an electro track which morphs into 100 bpm downtempo. It’s just about having fun! I mess with the scales, I tweak sounds in the machines and I use the same midi part to trigger different sounds on different machines. Basslines for example: I want them to be wicked and highly sequenced but most basslines played by hand by me sound so boring! In the past, the Atari version of Cubase had this function called Interactive Phrase Synthesizer (IPS) where you'd be able to play a fairly 'pedestrian' bassline into Cubase and then paste it into IPS (to cut a very long story short!) and all kinds of crazy wicked patterns would be generated. This was a game changer for me! 

When you work on your own, it’s up to you to be the whole 'band'. Eventually a piece emerges that I am happy with. The people that like my music are very enthusiastic about it but it’s a relatively small group. We’re only pressing 300 vinyls each time so on it’s rather niche but what I love is that my fans are up for anything and that’s what's been constant throughout. I still remember Wayne Archbold (owner of GPR) telling me to just make him a fantastic album - 'Sodium’. No instructions and no conditions, that’s a wonderful thing for any artist to be told!

Ultimately I'm taking the ego out of what I’m doing.

So it’s not about you…

It’s about the sonics and instruments creating a picture in your mind and arousing certain feelings. At some point the music will start to take its own direction and you follow it. Otherwise what happens is that you try to impose something on the track and when it doesn't fit, you chuck it out.

Though if you’re a creative artist, you can’t escape putting your personality into your music (people can tell it’s me a mile off – it may be the abstract chords). And when you’re first starting to make music, it's something that you absolutely can’t escape. You have to express yourself even if you want to sound like someone else, quite often that can be difficult because you may not like what that expression looks or sounds like. Working with a community music project in West London, I’ve met some budding producers who want to emulate the sound of other artists but it rarely works... there’s no satisfaction in being someone else.

Whilst I'm not looking to sound like someone else, I do like to escape myself. I’m always using machines to add musical parts.

When you’ve been making music for so long, how do you make sure that you don’t end up going through the motions – how do you keep things fresh

That’s the hard thing. Especially if you have your own label, you can end up putting stuff out that's lost its edge. I try to leave a gap between finishing something and deciding what to do with it. When I come back to it, I ask myself if it still touches me, if it still moves me. That space is important.

The infamous ‘90s resurgence’ - it feels as though every ‘new’ concept today is very much geared towards how it was back then…

One thing’s clear, that it’s not as wild (which is not a critique). The thing about the raves in the late 80s early 90s was how wild it all was – the dancing, the frenzy, it was so much more mental. Different drugs too. Maybe with the K these days everyone’s mellowed out but back then it was much more physical. There were also thousands of people on the dancefloor. We went to this one rave at an airport (later dubbed ‘Ecstasy Airport’ by The Sun). It was outrageous, around ten thousand people at this big disused airport. Everyone there was so wasted but the vibe was just electric.

And back then it was all so new – people hadn’t heard this music before. So when we first started playing live, people didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on. They’d think we were DJing because it’d just be machines up on stage and they couldn’t see what we were doing so they’d come and talk to us whilst we were playing. “What you doing mate?” And they’d ask us about the synths. We’re playing live mate – that sound coming out of the speakers – we’re making it now. Then people would come up and make requests, asking us to play such and such because they thought we were DJs. And at some of the early gigs people would even be there with their mouths wide open.

I didn’t buy any equipment for years, not until 2017 when I splashed out on the Arturia MatrixBrute Analogue Synth. It came about after endless discussions with my mate Oli... “how come older records sound better than newer records; why do DJs these days want to buy records from the 90s.”

There might be many reasons for this, some cultural and stemming from the time and place we were in then. Possibly also a rosy nostalgia for a golden era. I think there's also technical reasons for it. Back in the day music was made using hardware boxes, before the introduction of digital audio computers. Each box did a separate job and had its own tone because it was made by a different manufacturer. These synths and drum machines were then plugged into a mixing desk and mixed down onto stereo DAT tape, or occasionally reel-to-reel tape. Something must have been achieved by the separate units all working together in the analog domain and blending the electricity to create an overall tone, something that's quite different to various elements being digitised in a computer. It's an idea which I resisted for a while, simply because for me it was more of a hassle to use external devices. I believed that you could get as good a sound from a purely computer-based system as you'd get from a more old-fashioned set-up. Whilst digital audio is a million times better than it was when it first started as computer processors have gotten more powerful, the addition of an analog synth to my set-up was an eye-opener. The MatrixBrute is a fantastic synth anyway but the richness and presence of tone is so much more than I'd ever be able to get from using computer software. I still use loads of soft synths but the analog has admittedly widened my tonal palate considerably. I've just bought a new Roland TR8S drum machine too and DeepMind12 analog poly synth.

How would you react to the statement that you’ve pioneered a sound.

We were there at the very beginning so yes, it makes us part of the ‘pioneers’. From the mid 80s onwards we were clubbing heavily. I remember the early Schoom acid parties in south London. I knew back then that this was a revolution in the making - I’d spotted immediately that it’d change electronic music - the rave thing was absolutely massive. I had already made music in the early 80s but had given it up. Then acid house came out and I started hassling Viv that we needed to start making music again.

But as your music reached the peak of its success in the 90s, wasn’t there a part of you that wanted to take it further.

We never wanted those traditional notions of success... we did a UK tour with The Shamen but the whole rock 'n’ roll scene with its riders and various attachments was a turn-off. We were very consciously anti-music business. I guess we could have gone further with it but we were that generation (heavily influenced by the punk movement) that didn’t want to sell out. If someone had asked to use our music for some ad we’d have said no. We were sticking our fingers up at the establishment. For many years we were anti-guitar too – the guitar is dead – rock 'n' roll is dead. If you went to the raves you’d know about us, if you didn’t we didn’t care because we didn’t want to be written about.

The peak was with Viv – that’s when we were playing all these live sets up and down the country. We were making good money. More importantly, this was new music for us and it really felt that it was new music for our generation. We were doing stuff that ordinarily would never have been released and people were really into it. The more crazy and out there it was; the more people seemed to like it. The labels were giving a carte blanche to artists to make some mad music. I remember Wayne (GPR) telling me “I’ll put out anything you do Dave”. 

Would you say that Viv has been your most influential partnership to date?

Yes. Tom Klute too - we produced drum and bass records together as Phume.  Tom's originally from Ipswich and was living in the States. When he reached out to me, he’d just heard about techno, acid house and had bought a CD, coincidentally my Ubik album…

Viv is a trained musician and keyboard player. I met him growing up. He’d been in bands; I’d been in bands. I always really liked what he’d play. He was a good mate too so it was a chance to work together. I did the technical side whilst he did the musical side, getting us into tune etcetera. “That sounds terrible - it’s completely clashing... sounds alright to me!" I'd always reply. I learnt so much from him. It just worked. And when you're making live music, it’s always good to be with someone else. 

I remember we booked a studio for 'Non Stop Techno'. It took about a month to record it. We had the studio every night from midnight to 10AM (it was cheaper that way). And there was a general election halfway through – perhaps when Thatcher lost – it’s a sketchy memory. It was all recorded to tape (24 track). I don’t think anyone does that anymore as it’s all gone digital.

How do you feel about where you are now?

The stuff that I’m doing now is the best I’ve ever done, it’s more sophisticated (not as raw though – lots of music was ‘out of tune’ in the older days, without the technical wizardry that exists today). Where I am now is because I’ve always been mad about sound. My parents used to have a piano and instead of getting lessons, I used to mess around with dropping coins on the strings. My dad had bought me one of those cassette recorder things with a microphone. It was fantastic. I used to go around the house hitting stuff then recording it. I was totally mad about recording. I had a guitar too but it just felt like too much work. Then the synthesizer came along and I realized that turning a knob was so much more exciting than plucking a string.

Back then me and my mate Pete would listen to every new King Crimson album together. Pete’s dad even had a synthesizer. I was totally fascinated by it all. Every opportunity I had I’d go round there, he'd play on the drums and we'd jam. But I never thought that I'd become a “real” musician - my pleasure came just from making a noise. I was already listening to some free jazz and avant-guard improvisational stuff (which sounded like total noise), so I’d just pretend to be some serious avant-guard jazzer! That was it, from the age of 15.

My first ever record (going back to 1981 I think) was on a cassette compilation. I remember getting a letter from a guy in Germany saying that he really loved the track and asking if I had any other music. Turns out that he’s quite a famous German musician - Asmus Tietchens. He spotted the first thing I ever did.

Asmus Tietchens Postcard

So have you become the person and artist that you thought you'd be?

I never gave these things much thought. Perhaps that was a mistake but I never used to want to project into the future or think about where I wanted to be. It was just about having fun; no thought for the future (that’s what my generation we all have in common). I suppose it was an extension of that punk ethic... “No future No future”.

To have a younger generation of diggers embracing your music is absolutely wonderful, especially because the thing I enjoy most in the world is making music. If I can have an audience for that it’s amazing and if I can then make a living from it, even better. Otherwise, it can get very soul destroying. I’ve been very lucky in that people seem to like what I do. When you make music and you don’t get that positive affirmation, then nothing happens. The records that I made all those years ago have been treasured though and because of the scene - it's such a great a scene - people have kept the candle burning for my music. It’s a hardcore following that I’m so grateful for. Now I'm making new music and that's because of this genuine interest. I wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t for all the people who have contacted me in the recent years.

We were at Houghton a few years ago too and had a great time – really enjoyed it. I’m genuinely into a lot of the music that was played there and I really felt that there was a place for my music, which was a strong confirmation for me. I was writing the 62nd Cell LP around the time of Houghton.

I love sitting outside smoking a spliff and listening to some tunes. No walls, no echoes, it's more open. I identify with the ravers too, more than I've ever done with the DJs. You won't find me in the booth or backstage, I’m on the floor with everybody else. I guess I'm just one of the punters.