While parental support can help point a youngster in the correct direction, he admits that on top of having unflinching family belief, the old cliché ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’ is also pretty much rudimentary. “I had great links and influences around me. I just found my way into a crew of DJs and producers that brought me into the fold. It didn’t happen over night, not by a long shot, but it slowly became my career.”
“I was originally a drum and bass producer under the alias Eddy Woo. So I brought a lot of drum and bass production influence to dubstep. I like dark atmospheric mood setting music. Be it hard in your face or minimal and sinister. I think those attributes suit me far better as a producer in dubstep and bring out the best in me.” While his early work fitted into the drum and bass bracket, Berry found himself more than a little open to external influence. While his Eddy Woo was winning over followers and fulfilling his ambitions, his friends had different ideas. When asked about his genre transition, he states quite abjectly that its roots were founded within “Peer group pressure…”
Clearly far from bitter about the external forces, he explains the switch, “Youngsta is a close friend on mine. Around 2006 he asked me to make him a track to play in his sets. He played it everywhere and it became a turning point for me, a huge one.” Having only dabbled briefly with dubstep, Berry found that his initial effort was winning over more than his good pal. He states that as a direct result of the public response “I began writing more dubstep tracks and was having so much fun during the process. Dubstep lifted creative barriers for me and gave me more freedom to express my self through sound.”
“The switch was a logical progression. I saw a place for me to express that side of my production in a scene where it would be received the way it has been.” Having not really stopped to process his altering style, Berry simple followed public reaction. As with any artist there is a desire to be well-received and in demand and while Berry has far from sold his soul for success, he stumbled accidentally upon his own niche in the market. When probed about his appeal, Berry ponders briefly a response before defining it as follows, “I think it’s the overall theme and atmosphere to my tracks. You can really feel what I’m trying to express in them. My beats are very groove based too. I spent a lot of time on the drums so that listeners can really feel and hear the true tempo of the music.”
“People tell me that my sound is quite distinct and although each track varies massively from each one to the next, they all have my hallmark to them.” Though he is now widely regarded as a dubstep specialist, Berry finds it a lot harder to really label his sound, let alone his own musical taste. As a listener he takes in pretty much anything, “Drum and bass, house, techno, hip hop. I do have quite a broad taste in music to be honest. I listen to my own music the most I think.” While his statement may seem quite overloaded with ego, as he continues, it transpires that Berry is what might be termed a perfectionist.. “It’s a slow process getting everything just as it should be in a track, so I like to listen over and over to make sure I don’t miss a single thing. I’d hate to regret not changing something that needs changing before the track gets released to the public.”
“I don’t really get influenced by other producers for creative inspiration. Its never been that way for me.” Though he may listen to pretty much everything under the sun, his sound is never born out of respect for another artist’s work but rather experience. He explains, “I think experiences and life changes influence and effect my experimentation more. Deeper levels of concentration and zoning out. Decisions and choices about where I want to take things and what direction I am going to start that journey on. It all led me to the point I reached when I started my album. Its an evolving scene right now. So I evolved and evolve with it.”
BY JEREMY WILLIAMS
