Shooting down anyone in their path
Call ’em what you like. Workaholic, punkaholic, metalholic, dubaholics – they don’t give a damn. South Central are the most exciting live band on stage at the moment with an incredible ability to turn their hands to any form of music in their production and DJ sets. They return with their brand new EP out on Dim Mak…
Words: Dan Prince
Rob, Keith welcome to DMCWORLD. Massive new ‘Weapons Of Mass Dubstortion’ EP coming out on Dim Mak this week, can you talk us through this release…
“Thank you ! We’re very excited to release our new EP on Dim Mak. Up until now we have released everything on our own label, but this time we felt it’s the right time to run with one of our favourite labels! Steve Aoki is a sound geeza! We get on very well. He really liked the ‘Pitfalls And Corridors’ EP, the ONE we released for free, before this one. We kept in touch and sent him the ‘Weapons of Mass Dubstortion’ EP and we signed it same day which was cool. We’ve been playing the trax loads and everyone of them smashes it. We really pleased to have a lot of support from other very established DJs too. We’re not gonna name drop!”
You once said in an interview…”We just do what we feel like, whenever we’re in the studio or on the stage, fuck it.” Is that the philosophy?
“We do what excites us most musically. We learn’t a lot and keep learning a lot about sound design and production. We want our trax to sound bigger and better all the time! But to get that the mixdown needs to be so clean! We know a lot about songwriting from having the band before, we use guitars still, so with all the production techniques we learnt now and the songwriting ideas we knew from before. We are at a good balance to achieve dance music that is banging on the dancefloors but still listenable in the kitchen. We like our fans to watch us evolve, we are never about one genre, we really do what we feel like and we like it like that.”
‘Crazy electro, dubstep punksters’ and ‘mental new school ravers’ are just two of the descriptions of you I was given by the crew in The Buzz Chart office when I said I was interviewing you. How would you describe South Central?
“South Central is definitely Metal, punk influenced. Even when we do a dubstep record Like ‘Beathoven’, if you notice there’s lots of metal guitars in there. We are about melodies too, we do love the mixture of nice and aggressive. We find that it always works. And it’s great because that’s how we personally like our records to be. Our nice parts are very classical orientated, so you can call it Metal-classical-punk-rocktronica! As for the crazy and the ravers…you’ll have to come hang with us ! Ha Ha!”
How do you choose the name of your tracks?
“The names of our trax always come after the track is finished. But when we write lyrics, usually the title is there before the track is done. Our names always have subliminal messages, but we won’t get into that, the fun is working it out…”
You famously toured with The Prodigy and then Pendulum. What did you learn from these two mighty bands?
“We get asked this quite a lot .We have big respect for the Prodigy, first because they are fukin wicked guys and secondly because their performances are amazing! We toured for ages with them around the world and we learnt loads about performance. We keep fit so we can fukin go nuts on stage! We are playing with them again at the Monegros festival in Spain. It’s a pity Pendulum are not anymore, anyway from Pendulum we learnt a lot about technical stuff. You know as a band they were tight as fuk ! We do rehearse our DJ sets a lot , every set is never the same! We do things on the fly and we love it like that! That’s what we learnt from Pendulum! Discipline. We learnt also that these mighty bands have members that are grounded, nice people! I think that is very important to succeed, We all have egos, but it’s good to know when to turn it down and listen to other peoples opinions too!”
Where have you enjoyed rocking around the world so far this year?
“We ve been in and out of Ibiza, France, Switzerland, Germany, Prague, eeehhhhmm! Jesus! I don’t know where else, it’s like one big life tour! Ha!”
How did the band form in the first place and develop from indie to dance?
“We always did electronic music, we used to fund our band with our productions and remixes. As we said before with the band we learnt about communicating to the crowds when we are on stage, it was a very important experience. We started to get obsessed with sound, the sound started getting bigger and bigger and sounding more dancey, I guess it was just a natural evolution. We still are in touch with our band members and we do still work together from time to time, As we said, we do what we feel like, we could start the band again one day…who knows! One thing is sure it will be a band with a fukin big dance sound!”
You were once quoted that one of the reasons you chose South Central as a band name “is not fit for family viewing”. Care to divulge? DMCWORLD is a strict no family zone?
“Well the name South Central has a lot of meanings! People think it’s LA related, others read or watch an interview where we are explaining that South Central the name derived from all the ancient and present important buildings and temples all have their main entrance in the south centre of the actual building. Others think it could be the south central of the female body, it is a very important entrance too! Without it there will be no life right!? I’ll leave it open to your imagination!”
Were you nervous at touring with The Prodigy – one of your influences?
“The Prodigy are one of our early influences for sure! We weren’t nervous to meet them, more excited! We were nervous when we saw the crowds we were playing too!
It was biiiig! We toured so much with them, it was a great crash course in getting used to play to big crowds!”
What key moment made you feel that the band had really made it?
“We never feel like that , we always want to achieve more ! Call us musically greedy! But we do love the feeling of the crowds going crazy to your trax , it’s like mutual respect! That is a great feeling for us.”
What Is the big 10 you are spinning?
South Central – Beathoven
South Central – Freak Party
Neoteric, Wax, Motif – Go Deep ( Torro Torro remix)
Knife Party – Rage Valley
Nicky Romero – WTF
South Central – Sex Pistol
Far Too Loud – Firestorm
Kill The Noise – Kill The Noise ( Alvin Risk Remix )
Steve Aoki ft Angerr Dimas – Steve Jobs ( South Central Remix )
Nero – Must Be The Feeling – ( South Central Remix )
What sort of bands are you digging at the moment?
“Aside from the stuff from artists we play, we have been listening to a lot of old stuff and new stuff. We just did a bootleg of Metalica Enter Sandman, the new Muse album looks like it’s gonna be interesting as well heard a couple of bits off that. We played after Sepultura on the weekend was really feeling them.”
What is coming next from the studio?
“We’re mixing the next EP at the moment! It will be finished this week! It will be another Dim Mak release. Really excited about that too! We’re working on some singles and collabs too!”
What are the big shows you are looking forward to this summer…
“Tomorrow Land, Dance Valley and obviously supporting Prodigy again at Monegros…it’s gonna be a crazy one that one!”
And finally, is it true you each have your own bed in the studio?
Yes we do! It’s crazy! You know what’s crazy too! Since laptops got so powerful, we work everywhere and we pass out with them on our laps with a loud loop blurring in the headphones – and trust me, that is a fright and a half to wake up to!”
www.facebook.com/southcentral
www.twitter.com/south_central
www.soundcloud.com/southcentralmusic
Buy links for the EP:
BP: http://s.beatport.com/N5pPEM
iTunes: http://bit.ly/P1jHn4
