Sub Focus Sub Focus RAM Records, 2009

FM | CLASSIC ALBUM

Steel sharpens steel, as they say. So, when the cream of the UK underground all started taking rooms in the same studio complex, they were bound to motivate another.

Such was the case for Sub Focus, who was holed up next to Chase & Status, Shy FX, Nero, Breakage, and Caspa, in 1980s hitmaker Pete Waterman’s County Hall site, on London’s South Bank.

It’s the early noughties. He’s buzzing off trips to Ibiza, and fully hooked on early Justice, Ed Banger, and minimal techno and house.

Bunkered down in this safe space, he’s inspired by the bold studio steps of his contemporaries and determined to find a new sound of his own.

“I was working in a proper studio for the first time,” he says. “It was quite surreal, surrounded by Kylie and Steps gold discs. But, it became a sort of hub for a few of us who were in a similar headspace to come to.

“We were all encouraging each other to take risks with the type of music we were making, expanding from DnB into making different tempo genres.”

The resulting music would become his self-titled debut album. Full of stadium synth riffs, right out of the Daft Punk playbook, as well as rewrites of old school jungle codes, tracks fully built on FX riffs, and fresh experiments with time signatures.

“Those were the influences running through the album,” says Sub Focus. “I was using triplets on some tracks – I’d never really heard that done before. And using risers for the hook of a song, which that was something that I’d borrowed from techno.