Features

Elemental

Adam Wilson's productions as Elemental are a little inconspicuous. Without having really gained the attention his intricate textures deserve over the last four years, you'd be hard pushed to simply stumble across his work but his debut album release, Messages From The Void - due out on his own Runtime Records shortly, aims to change a lot of that anonymity and soak up all the different sound textures that make dubstep so current and vital.

Cross breeding the chunked out, reverberated breaks of drum and bass with the time frame and template of dubstep and the kind of sample splicing that made DJ Shadow type compositions so infuriatingly engulfing back when, Wilson manages to defiantly sound like ... well, like himself.

"I'd been bored with drum & bass for a few years," explains Wilson, "myself and a mate had done a bit of 'breakbeat garage' as Elemental & 3D [some of which is chronicled on the album's second disc] and I started getting interested in this new garage sound, stuff coming out on Bingo and Tempa, Sounds of Da Future, etc. I was checking FWD>> a bit, mainly to go and hear Slaughter Mob," he concedes, "but I would regularly check J Da Flex on 1Xtra to hear the new beats.

"I listened to pirate stations as hardcore was morphing into jungle, happy hardcore and drum & bass. It was a magical time for music," he recalls, "every Sunday I would wake up and put the radio on to Kool FM 94.5 with DJ Jynx, he would play the more mellow rolling jungle and I would listen to Kool or Pulse FM or Weekend Rush all the time.

"Then I came across Search & Destroy's show on Rinse one evening early in 2004, and realised that was the sound I was looking for ... off key breaky rhythms and gnarly bass. I went to see them play at a Rinse party at Plastic People and handed Lohan a CD. They seemed keen on my sound so I kept passing them beats and they released one of my tracks, Soul Fire, on their Destructive label in 2006. That was the track that seemed to catch people's attention."

Since that debut though, the Elemental 'sound' has evolved, paying close heritage to his intricate break heavy roots whilst incorporating the synthesized textures he was dipping into after opening his mind to a multitude of genres and slower tempos.

"I do feel that my sound has progressed, but it always has, regardless of scene or genre," he muses, "but for me dubstep has been a great scene to be involved in, to watch it grow, even with the politics that seems to go with it. As a producer it is quite freeing. I'm into a lot of styles, and I love my deep techno and house, so it is good to be able to go back to that kind of style and people still call it dubstep.

"I wanted to make a really flowing, seamless album but because the tracks are quite different stylistically, it wasn't that easy. I like my music to have a balance of body and soul, body being the drums and bass and soul being the higher registers, those morphing sounds and the stuff to tickle the imagination."

And Messages From The Void really does manage to provoke thought as much as it does inspire movement. The technicality of the drum programming screams of a producer schooled as much on the rhythm and bump movement of garage as the rolling, hi-hat trickles of drum & bass and the flashes of colour are a deft illustration of a flair for dance floor sonics.

"I always felt kind of outside the [dubstep] scene, but ever since I started making music I was always about doing something different, something original ... something that would grab the listener, make people go 'what the fuck!?' or take them to some other dimension," Wilson enthuses. "Although I do feel myself to be on the edge of the scene, it's still been a big influence on my sound. Dubstep will always be this big umbrella under which a lot of different sounds can be found, which I fully appreciate."

Messages From The Void is out 16th November on Runtime Records.

Words: Oli Marlow
Photography: Georgina Cook