Dr Meaker

Dirt & Soul feat. Laurent John & Celestine.

Circus Records 2016

Over the past decade Bristol-based breakbeat merchants Dr Meaker have become one of the UK’s biggest live Dance acts, winning crowds over with their big bass, slammin’ D ’n’ B beats and soulful musical stylings. We caught up with Dr Meaker founder and producer Clive Meaker in his Easton studio to discover how he made the monumental title track from the band’s newly released second album Dirt & Soul.

“It was started in January 2014. I was just playing some piano chords,” begins Clive, who turns to his digital piano and casually bangs out an achingly soulful rendition of the track’s chord progression. “Originally I had an orchestral beat using EastWest Symphonic Orchestra, which was quite different for me. Later on I found it really difficult to mix; it wasn’t quite right. So I had this basic chord structure, then Lorna [King, Dr Meaker vocalist] wrote the bassline off of the chords. One day Laurent [John, featured vocalist] was over here working on something else, and I played it to him. He said he’d really like to do it, so he wrote a vocal and we put it down and recorded it all that day! It was really good, and I quickly did a mixdown and took that to band rehearsal that evening and played it on a big PA system, and we just knew it was good!”

But it took a while to become fully fleshed out?