By Ed Southgate, co-Editor in Chief
The DnB scene has just been hit by a new 'supergroup', Problem Central. With two DJs (Logan D and Majistrate), two MCs (Eksman and Evil B), and a new 60 minute mixtape with 36 tracks spanning all styles of drum and bass, they are sure to offer something for hardcore DnB heads as well as those new to the community. Ahead of their show at Motion later this week, one of Problem Central's two DJs, Logan D, had a chat with us to tell us a bit more.
Problem Central is a fairly new group, so how and why did the group form?
I've been working with Evil B since about 2007, so nearly 12 years. I've been working with Eksman since 2002, Majistrate has obviously been working with Eksman for a good seven/eight years - maybe even longer. So me and Evil have had a bit of a partnership and Eksman and Maji were. It's funny because, Majistrate was Evil B's first Dj around 96/97 and me and Eksman used to work alongside a lot around 2003 - 2008, so we have all had our sort of bonds. Every time that we come together, doing a load of back-to-backs with me and Majistrate and Eksman and Evil, they were always sets that we really liked listening back to and we were getting good responses from. I think it was the Westfest set of 2015 that, while we were doing it live, we came out after Andy C in the main arena, we just felt the vibes from it. We've been planning on putting it together for a good year, but we were all busy so it sort of just of got prolonged for a little bit - we're not even a year old, about ten months not even that I think.
So it seemed pretty natural to come together as you've been mates for ages - what's that like working alongside each other?
Yeah, it really does work the partnership that we've got. There's never any disagreements, we all respect each other as artists. Out of everyone that I've played back to back with, Maji is my favourite DJ that I work with. It's probably the same for Eksman and Evil, but I can't speak for them. Doing Problem Central, I think we're much better even more now - I know it's just the same as doing a back to back and an Evil B/ Eksman back to back but I definitely think that since doing the group and doing the rehearsals, I'm pretty sure everyone would say we are even better as a collective now.
What's the ambition for the group, and where do you want to take it?
The wider market, the wider audience, bigger festivals. The objective is to get a bigger audience listening to drum and bass and to get people who are not actually listening to it.
When you say 'wider audience' do you mean those who don't listen to it at all at the moment, or those who listen to it every now and then or?
Probably to get people who are not actually listening to it. It's a hard one because I feel like its from my point of view and not the whole of Problem Central's, but yeah I think making the underground of DnB and into the wider audience, giving them a flavour of what the underground of drum and bass is like.
What was it that first attracted you to DnB?
Probably the undergroundness of it to be honest, the non-commercial side of it. I have and always have loved the underground side, I do appreciate the commercialness of it and capturing that wider audience but I do like that no one knew about it, which probably goes against everything that I just said a minute ago! But yeah I think it is because it is a bit of a culture and a lifestyle that not everyone knew about. I started to go out and was even playing out at over 18s when I was 15, so to come in when all my school mates and classmates and they didn't have a clue and I knew a whole other world.
It was never about any of the drugs or anything like that for me. I smoked weed for a few years but I know that people get into things because of the drug sides of things as well, but it was literally the music that grabbed me.
Picking up on that quickly, people often associate the DnB world with drugs - what do you make of that?
I definitely think that people couldn't just associate that with drum and bass. It is with any music - house music, garage music, it's across the whole board really. I think it is really bad for someone to stereotype drum and bass with drugs - it's any rave scene. You go to Ibiza and you see every single club night they're doing drugs out and there ain't no drum and bass nights out there.
Moving onto Problem Central's new mixtape, there are a lot of different DnB styles going on in there so what were you trying to achieve and how would you describe it?
Just trying to cater for everyone that likes drum and bass really. There's a little bit of liquid in there, some jump up - not so much tech and really dark stuff but there is a few tune that are just different to our non Problem Central sets, just trying to cater for the wider audience as I said. There's some storytelling in there from the MCs too.
Yeah, that's what I really liked about it - you've got some light-hearted and jokey lyrics but then you also address some serious topics like depression. What was the intention there?
We just wanted to sort of standout from any other mixtape. Especially as an MC-dominated mixtape, we just wanted to standout and tell some stories. My dad is a jungle DJ and he's been doing it for yars and he's not really keen on the MCs. Back then from about 1993 to 1998, the DJs didn't really appreciate MCs at all - they were just told to host. There used to be no MCs, you'd just get a host. Then the MCing style started coming into it, and when it was brand new, people like my dad was just like 'shut up' it's all about the music, and I showed him a couple of story from the mixtape and he was like 'yes that is really good', whereas where he would usually listen to normal MCing he's just think 'what is this load of shit'. I think it has worked in capturing the ears of other people who would not usually listen to other people. I think that mixtape is to show that we can do other styles; we're all known as jump up artists so it was trying to touch on other subject matters and to show we are not just playing jump up and we are jumping out the box a little bit playing different styles of drum and bass.
Sick! And you're obviously coming to Bristol on 25th, and there is a big drum and bass scene here - are you excited? What is it like for you to play in Bristol?
Yeah, I mean Bristol is probably very very close to London in being my most popular place to play at throughout the year - it might have even been the most popular for the last few years. I love Bristol, probably more than anywhere in the world for drum and bass. It's our first gig of the year for Problem Central so to do it in Bristol is wicked. Motion is a great club to play at in Bristol. Since New Year's Eve we've had about three and a half weeks off so we're just going to be gagging to come down and put on a good show.
Problem Central will be playing at Motion on Friday 25th January. Epigram will be there, and you can end the exam season with a bang by bagging your tickets here. Hurry - they are on fourth release!
