With an ever evolving sound, the Southampton born and based crew (fronted by Gavin Foord and Tyrone) initially took the UK bass scene by storm when they emerged in 2018, with their Friends Of FooR album smashing it to the Top 10 in the Official UK Dance Chart and featuring the likes of Jaguar Skills, Lisa Maffia, Majestic, Bassboy and more. Since then the FooR crew have toured across the UK and EU, playing major festivals and clubs whilst pushing their own popular garage labels, Garage Shared (sister label GS Dubs) and D&B and bass label Yosh.
Elsewhere, they have their talent development brand and label SO Movement where they sell merch with the profits going into helping upcoming artists (offering their recording studios to aspiring producers), creatives & athletes whilst sponsoring various teams by providing them with kits and buying equipment for boxing clubs as well as paying for kids who can’t afford the classes. Last year’s highlights include garage anthem 3 Words with Effie which amassed over 6M streams and support from Sarah Story on R1, See You In June with Ellie Evans (2M+ streams) and collab with Mollie Collins – Too Bad, earning them a total of 11M streams and 1.8M loyal listeners on Spotify. Show wise, they played huge sets at Boomtown, Ibiza Rocks, Creamfields, NASS and more. DMC dives in…
Hey guys, great to meet you! Let’s start with an introduction to your background. Where are you from and how did you all meet?
We are all from Southampton, me and John met many years ago working in a record shop. We met Aki as a customer of the same shop and then we met Tyrone a few years later through touring and gigs.
You have mastered a wide range of genres from garage to donk and now D&B with your most recent release, Nights Of Our Lives. What has been the most challenging sound to unlock?
Drum & Bass. It’s taken us years to get to a level where we’re really happy with how it sounds. It’s definitely the most challenging genre to produce and we still work weekly on improving our Drum & Bass production .
You run various labels together like SO, Garage Shared, GS Dubs, and YosH. What is your best advice to aspiring label owners? What’s your best advice for working as a team?
The best advice is to work as a team with like minded people who are as passionate as you but bring different skills to the table. For example, Tyrone is the king of social media and did a lot of the video editing early on, John mixes and masters most of the tracks released on the labels, Aki does A&R and hosts our weekly radio show and I do whatever’s left.
What is the best festival you’ve ever played?
Boomtown is crazy, one of the best festivals I’ve ever been to, but we have a soft spot for the Isle of Wight festival as we always get such a warm reception there.
Your development brand SO Movement has sponsored and provided kits to various sports teams in Southampton – what inspired you to be so active in your community?
We’re all from Southampton and we all promised to provide help and opportunities for people in the community because we didn’t have that when we were coming up so we always aspired to help others wherever, whenever and however we can.
Walk us through the process of a typical production session. Are there any specific roles you each naturally fall into?
Myself or Aki will start ideas and then we all come together to finish them. As I mentioned earlier, John is a mixing and mastering genius so that’s where he comes into his own.
What musicians, media, etc. do you draw your inspiration from when creating a new track?
At the moment we’re going into the studio with musicians/ artists that we love from worlds different to our own and we draw inspiration from their genres and styles and then go away and combine it with our sound to create something brand new
Where did the name FooR come from?
My surname is Foord and there are 4 of us – simple as that.
Have you always wanted to pursue music as a career or was there something else in your life before it took over?
All 4 of us have always wanted to do music, although Tyrone is also an undefeated amateur boxer.
Who is your dream collab and why?
We’ve already worked with so many people that we’d consider ‘dream’ collaborations. We love to work with artists who are in completely different worlds to us and try to make something unique. Personally, I’ve always wanted to work with Kano.
What are you looking forward to most in 2023?
We are most looking forward to sharing all of our new, unreleased music with you, loads more collaborations, new sounds and some huge projects planned for the end of the year. Wallop.
