Contact
dub {at} kult.co.uk
ra100
south disco
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Biography
“There is an element of death in life, and I am astonished that one pretends to ignore it: death, whose unpitying presence we experience in each turn of fortune we survive because we must learn how to die slowly. We must learn to die: all of life is in that.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Letters
dub KULT doesn’t serve up an arid musical mono-culture, but a rich mix. The diversity of his music is a reflection of his background ? half-Indian, half-English, part-time member of both the cool crowd and the geek gaggle, neither definitively house nor techno. The music he makes is for both the head and the body. Even tunes that seem made for those moments when you’re lost on the dance-floor always have some latent, brooding meaning ? an intention. Like few DJs of his generation, dub KULT understands that at the centre of clubbing madness lies a still, reflective core.
It’s a special insight into party music that’s great for your soul. Dub KULT’s records and his label, Living, get props from everyone from Steve Bug and Richard Grey to Ricardo Villalobos and Andy Weatherall, even Sven Vath. He’s put out tunes through Warp’s off shoot, Arcola, influential German labels Traum and Raum…Musik, plus he’s already done the soundtrack for Channel 4’s Burning Man film, the Tomorrow’s World Live show, as well as for legendary fetish fashion show, The Torture Garden.
And the name? Kult has it’s roots in the infamous club nights Dub ran with the Kult collective, since 1997. Dancefloors were wiggled and grooved upon from everywhere from the ICA to dodgy Dalston warehouses and swank West London clubs. Guests have included Nathan Coles, Tyler T-Bone Stadius, Richard Grey, Cylob, Evil Eddie Richards and Brit underground legend Tom Churchill.
“There are no more taboos to break” (c) the art world
Oh really? Visual art, writing and music may think they’re free but today they’re even more hemmed in than ever. “They won’t buy that.” “This is what Beatport wants.” “That’s not minimal.” Spoken or unspoken, restrictions exist and music is poorer for them.
Where does that leave producers like dub KULT? A UK act with a European sensibility. Half Indian, half English, grew up in Zimbabwe. A perfectionist who loves messy experimentation. A raving minimalist; an old-school music geek; promoter, DJ, live act and VJ these days all at the same time.
The music is not house or techno. According to dub, it’s “party music for the mind”. dub KULT’s records and own label, Living, get props from everyone from Bug to Villalobos to Weatherall to Vath.
Why?
Clubs and parties are an arena for exploration. Even the idea of just getting fucked up is a quest to get into a state with spiritual connotations. Every good Buddhist aims to ‘cease the internal monologue’ and that state of bliss is not dissimilar to losing it on the dancefloor. What do explorers want to lose? The sense of self.
Music drives that exploration. I gave up drugs a long time ago because that avenue had totally run out of juice. They create an initial opening so you get a view into what’s on ‘the other side of the door’. But in the end, drugs make you a fixed and rigid person. There’s no capacity for further growth.
Music also busts through the rigidity of the way people think. It’s human nature to put things in boxes. It makes life more digestible, but few musicians want to be trapped within those boxes. If experimentation is what you want to do, why work the same way, with the same tools, in the same genre, every single time?
PAST
dub KULT’s music has been described as “demented, clever, delicate, dark” (the Fly EP, Veryverywrongindeed Recordings) and “really original” (DJ mag, for the Petit Mal EP on Living). He has released on Warp’s offshoot, Arcola, on the influential labels Traum and Raum…Musik, the infamous Veryverywrongindeed Records, on Belgium’s Curle. He’s remixed Efdemin, been remixed by Guido Schneider, written the soundtrack for a Burning Man documentary on the UK’s Channel 4, and one of his earliest records, Stop the World, sailed straight into Groove magazine’s top ten for that year.His name, meanwhile, has its roots in the Kult collective nights that ran in London in the late 90s, from dodgy warehouses to the Institute of Contemporary Art to dodgy Dalston warehouses and swanky West London clubs, with guests from Nathan Coles to Tyler T-Bone Stadius, Cylob, Evil Eddie Richards and Brit underground legend Tom Churchill.