Who is benga

Well, for some of you who might not know, when I play, the energy levels are crazy to the point where people are wheeling up my tunes for me, I don't even wheel them up myself anymore.

Tunes like "Spongebob". I would say, it's not just only new people getting into the music, but it's where the music's going, like really dancefloor and really ravey.

A burst of "Spongebob" would be the best way to illustrate what we're talking about. I thought it's a really uncontrolled bassline. It's mental. We talked a bit about the competitive energy that helped propel dubstep forward, and make it really interesting. There are some other records with that mad Coki energy in them. Are there some producers there that are engaged in what you might call a weird-off? Trying to out-weird each other? Yeah, I suppose there was one period where everyone was engaged in sort of a wobble-off.

Now they're in a weird-off. Which all makes sense looking at my appearance, ha ha! I think it's more about my appearance than the actual music. We're quite lucky because Benga's going to play us something from the new album. And I thought there's quite a few different styles. Sure, you might be the wobble king here and the weird-off king there, but at the same time, there's loads of other styles that are coming out on the album.

You've come up with some stuff that people wouldn't expect from you, basically, which I think is really hard when you're known for a particular sound. So we're going to listen to two tracks - first "26 Basslines", which is not what you'd expect in a negative way, but not in the vein of these records that you've already heard.

And then we're going to hear something else, which takes something of a beautiful swerve, but we'll see. So there we go, we've given the speakers a bit of a workout, getting them warmed up. How important is the sound system to a dubstep DJ? There's not loads of melodies going through the songs, it's more about the bassline, so it all makes sense to have a massive system.

It's probably two-thirds of the record, it's like an iceberg most of it's underwater and you're not going to get it unless you're hearing it properly. What sort of sound system do you really like to play on?

Well, I can tell you a few clubs that I think has the system correct. One of the walls on the side has turned into a big wall of bass. It's more that that system No matter how they've got it, it's just correct. Most of the music you hear inside there is perfect. But you do get that rattling wall. They've got a system at Mass in Brixton.

There's other systems like in Leeds, Iration Steppas. I was going to ask you about Iration Steppas. I walked past the speaker stack and thought if I was actually three stone lighter, I would have been knocked over by that.

It's very, very, very powerful. And you know that bass tone rattle you get underneath your ribcage? You also get it behind your cheekbones.

It's really incredibly powerful. What's it like to DJ there? But if you like that sort of thing, Leeds is your place, everyone. I was talking to someone who had gone to DMZ, and they had a bit of a problem with their knee, they had water on their knee, and they were on crutches.

But they really wanted to go, but they had to leave after ten minutes because it was wobbling all the water in their knee. Yeah, because if you look at the pint glasses, you can see the waves in the pint glasses. Wherever there's water, it's moving. The vibrations are nuts. Even your feet!

I think the bassline helps to get you dancing because you're just shaking from the bass. I dunno, it just starts off something. It definitely does seem to get people in the zone. I think at some point we should get some psychological acoustic person down to DMZ and get them to work out what it's doing to people because it really does seem to have quite a strong effect on people. Even myself, even the really slow half-step, you can tell it's 70 BPMs sort of thing.

The bassline just gets me moving because of the frequencies and the rattle in your body. Obviously, people are getting into that zone.

The internet is spreading it far and wide. Traditionally, when scenes have exploded like this, there's been a bit of a time lag, like something happening in New York or London or Berlin or wherever, and it sort of spreads rather slowly.

But this [spread] is happening pretty much at the same time as it's happening in London, hasn't it? When you've been traveling around and about, are you finding that people are having the same kind of responses to records as they are in London? The internet spreads things at like four times the speed and makes everything just so accessible. How about we listen to one of the other songs that show another side to what you're expressing? Can we do that?

There's nothing weasel-ish about saying from the heart. There's something heartfelt about it. I mean, when I first heard that, I thought it sounded really beautiful. People are so used to so much, like wobblers … they don't know that I do actually listen to music.

If you listen to all the stuff I played you before, there's nothing in it, nothing to say that I listen to music. It just sounds more like I'm in a science lab, mixing chemicals to make those basslines. No chords involved or keys or nothing.

I'm not saying I'm a specialist of chords or keys, but I do know a little bit. Right, this shout out is going out to my I can't think of the word, but I'm just gonna say his name: Michael Jackson. I think we've got to talk a minute about Michael Jackson. What are the songs coming into your mind? I even watched the film Moonwalker the other day. Quincy Jones, he's another producer who's wicked. It's inspiring to hear what they done with what they had back then.

Even before that. Yeah, Stevie Wonder. He's big. I feel blank. Maybe what we should do is perhaps listen to something on the album that's tapping into your more musical side. Can we have the last track that's on the album? Of course, I won't! Have you played that out? Yeah, it's normally my intro. I think you have that bit in the middle where it goes into the bassline part just for DJs. So I want to talk a bit about how you started making music. We should rewind a bit.

There is another thing that I wanted to play from the album, but we can talk about that in a bit. How did you first start? I was a DJ before I started producing.

And it's made me want to make my own music and have songs that other people couldn't have as well. I got home and it's taken a while to get what I could start making music with, and there was the solution of Music on the Playstation. That's Music I think they had one before that, but that was the one where I started putting things onto minidisc, and taking it down to the shop.

I think people used to think it was a joke, or not a real thing, that people making your kind of music did actually use the PlayStation to make their tunes, but you really did, didn't you? They released a few songs from their Playstation.

I'm not sure about "21 Seconds",but "Dilemma" [was], which is a So Solid record. Romeo done a song called "Oh No", which came out on There was so many other things around at that time. Like, even "Pulse X", which was a big grime record, that came off a Playstation. What can you do with those things? Do you have to push yourself to do anything good because you're making stuff on a PlayStation? Or does it make things easy, just because it's what you got, and you can do what you want with it?

Well, to come up with anything that could even be released was really hard. Obviously, the sound, and you have eight seconds sampling time, things like that where you have to put a CD into your PlayStation and hit record for eight seconds. But other than that, the sounds were just claps and basic things, so to come up with anything good meant loads of layering and stuff like that.

I guess using pretty shitty stuff like that makes you be good. It's like learning to DJ on really terrible equipment, it elevates your skill quite quickly. Hmmm, you almost learn little things like layering and how to make things sound a lot better.

When you get onto other programs, you obviously don't take a lot from the Music , but yeah, it does help. One thing that might not be clear to people is just quite how much experience you've got under your belt at only How old were you when you first started making dubstep or first started making music? And how old were you when you first went to FWD to heard Hatcha playing your record? So yeah, I was about So you're 14, you're getting your music being played out. You're almost being chaperoned to FWD so you can hear your record, and then you got to go home again.

What were you doing? Were you going to school and then going to the record shop after school? I hope none of my teachers sees this, but I just didn't turn up to school sometimes. I went into the record store - well, I'd take my clothes in a spare bag, and then change and go in there and act like I had a day off. I think when you're at that age, you have to make your own decisions. I'm not saying you have to be really responsible, people can't tell you what to do at that age, so you have to start making up your own mind.

So at that age, at 14, did you know that music was something that was for you? Did you know really strongly that this was something you wanted to follow full-on? Yeah, I made a decision. I did play football while I was making music and it was more I couldn't do both. Dirk Kuyt. Celebrities Born in United Kingdom. Lucy Hughes-Hallett Biographer. Fiona May Actor. Andy Sawford Politician. Jake Roche Pop Singer. David Spinx Soap Opera Actor. Martin Simpson English singer.

Famous Birthdays November Nic Mayhew Rugby Union Player. Luigi Zanda Politician. Why don't you join them. Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Connect with us. Music News Who Is Magnito - More Money. What helped him get through above all, he says, was a focus on making new material. I knew that I had to create this thing I called future funk — that was the only thing I could hold on to. A return to DJing is a slow and gentle process, however — a set at Bestival last month was his first in well over a year.

His illness has changed his perspective on his career for the better. I was a robot. Benga hopes that speaking out will help break the stigma around mental health problems, which affect one in six British adults at any given time. We think of mental patients in films; we need to see people like myself. He also thinks that it will help people recognise the symptoms more quickly in others.