‘#Back of the stack’, catching up with artists in the scene every 2 weeks reminiscing on some of their favourite tracks from back in the day. No real rules, just sharing some musical knowledge and reflecting on the past….
This week we caught up with Damon Kirkham AKA Kid Drama. He’s an artist I’ve always admired with his continued ability to excel himself as a producer, which we’ve seen not only in his work as Kid Drama, but also through his various aliases & collaborations including Instra:Mental, Jon Convex, Mikarma, Autonomic, Binary Collective & Heartdrive. Damon continues reinventing his sound and runs his own label CNVX which focuses on the deeper side of the of electronic music, ranging from 85 bpm right up to 170. He’s also continued to work as a collective with fellow Autonomic collaborator dBridge with their Heartdrive series. Kid Drama is by no means slowing down with an expected EP in the works on Metalheadz, a long awaited solo LP which fans worldwide will be extremely excited to hear, as well as a string of solo productions on his CNVX output. Here’s what Kid Drama selected when we caught up with him…
Persons Unknown – Assassin (Enter The Darkness Mix) (CAT-001)
I had this on tape from a pirate (no peg legs, just radio) that was really shitty reception back in 93 and it fuzzed out as they said the label and name.. all I got was “………Unknown………” I remember going into record shops asking for the track with the vaguest description and never finding out (pre-internet) I later went on to find the tune and that it was the first release on Omni Trio’s short lived label “Candidate”. This tune was way ahead of it’s time with its dirty reece-like tearing bass and production that would later be championed by Dom and the No-U-Turn camp etc.. This still sounds fresh to me now
Mystic – Moods Listen (MMOODS 1)
As much as I loved my dark stuff, I also adored the whole “intelligent” era, too many tunes to mention. A lot of them contained huge ripped riffs from old techno tunes and were driven with amens and hot pants breaks. I picked this as it really hit a nerve with the crisp production and played keys, lush from start to finish, these tunes inspire to this day.
Matrix – Sedation (MTRR-001)
Optical & Matrix changed things for me and I always thought you couldn’t touch Photeks beatwork but Matrix nails the drums in this, production is mindblowing (when you consider it was all hardware) and the little edits throughout this are sublime.
