[accordion-group title="Learn about Jack Beats"]Jack Beats have a plan. That plan involves taking the very best, most spectacularly effective pieces from a vast array of different musical genres and blending them together into an irrepressible force that detonates on contact. When you lay it out like that it all seems quite simple really, doesn’t it?
“It’s all in the influences,” says Niall Dailly, the Scottish half of the band. “There’s always room for a drum n bass breakbeat, or an old rave riff, or a vintage house sample.”
“It might be a hip hop loop, some unlikely, twisted up dubstep bassline or a more minimal techno feel,” says the other half of the band, Ben Geffin. “All these ideas are fed into what we do in the studio. And suddenly…”
“Suddenly it sort of works!” laughs Niall. “We just love hybrid music. So now we’re making our own brand of hybrid music and shaking it all up a bit.”
Niall and Ben describe the release of their mini albums as a “summing up” of everything they’ve experienced to this point. “They’re a showcase of everything that we’ve got going on,” says Niall. “We’ve really got the bit between our teeth here. We’re always trying to be original and do something different. That’s the hip hop side of us; because in that culture, if you weren’t being original, if you were biting other people’s ideas, you’d be out of a job.”
Through their six singles and a string of monstrous remixes for the likes of Skream, Beyoncé, Aloe Blacc, Big Boi, Florence & The Machine and La Roux they have formed a relationship with an increasingly hungry audience.
“We’re in a world of our own,” Ben says. “We’ve always made music that’s quite forward-thinking and different. So much so that, sometimes, we’re not sure whether anyone else is even into it. There’s a bit of fortune-telling going on in what we do, but we both have patience, we never release anything until we know it’s absolutely right.”
For Niall and Ben the joy in music is in the idea and its execution. They’re relentlessly moving forward and they’re intent on bringing us all with them.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than when we’ve done something that we think might go over everyone’s heads and six months later everyone loves it! It gives you more confidence in the weirdness of your ideas…”
It’s that weirdness of ideas that has propelled Niall and Ben since they put out their first Jack Beats track in 2007. They’re both multiple award winning DJs; in a previous life Niall was DJ Plus One from Scratch Perverts while Ben was a founder member of The Mixologists. Serious turntablists, the pair inhabited a world where endless hours were spent practising scratch routines.
“But we would mainly talk about music, get drunk and go to clubs,” admits Ben. “It’s such a nerdy boys’ thing, it becomes your whole world.”[/accordion-group]
[toggle header=”Learn about AC Slater:”]AC Slater has begun a lengthy career for himself by fusing elements of house music with the dirty basslines of UK garage and sprinkles of old-school rave synths and breaks.
AC Slater’s career kicked off with a bang in 2008, with his seminal remix of “Turn the Music Up” on Trouble & Bass becoming an instant anthem. Moby listed it as one of the best 10 tracks of the decade, declaring it a “perfect song.” AC has collaborated with influential underground artists such as Nina Sky all the way to chart toppers like Far East Movement, and has done official remixes for the likes of Big Sean, Moby, Robin S. and many more. A quick look at Slater’s Beatport page reveals well over 100 tracks and remixes over the last five years, including his best-selling Jack Got Jacked EP, a blatant declaration of the invasion of house music by all things bass (and the start of a lengthy friendship with Jack Beats).
Fast forward to the present, AC has toured the globe several times and his tunes have been played at every major festival and club in the world by DJs including Skrillex, Diplo, 12th Planet, Jack Beats, and so many more. Slater’s tunes and guest mixes can regularly be heard on major radio stations across the world, including the UK’s BBC Radio 1 and Rinse FM and Australia’s Triple J. His crew Trouble & Bass and his own record label Party Like Us continue to release some of the most groundbreaking and forward-thinking bass-heavy dance music in the underground.[/toggle]
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