words: Frank Dubya

A vintage black Range Rover effortlessly breezes across Edinburgh’s Royal Mile to the leafier cobbled streets on the south-west of the city, with the curious topics of bio fuels, LPG conversions and the outdoor pursuit of fishing holding court. Minutes later, I’m sitting drinking tea in the bright airy living room of fellow Scot Neil Landstrumm.

A stark contrast to what you might perceive if you’re familiar with Neil’s career dating back to Peacefrog’s techno infused house heyday of the mid 90’s, his sci-fi themed workouts for Tresor or the deviant tech-plorations of his Scandinavia imprint. He’s just released his third album for Planet Mu ‘Bambaataa Eats His Breakfast’, which continues to see a whole new generation of musical youth evolving with his bad trip clubscapes where dub, electronics and bass collide.

The new album explores a manifold of scenes across it’s 8 tracks, somehow emanating to a less strict architecture than the previous ‘Lord For £39’; more experimental and new direction seeking. “I think that’s fair. What I find when doing music is that I’ll do a track that’s kinda getting on the way, but it’s not quite right. Then I’ll do another one that’s “oh yeah that’s not bad” and then I’ll maybe do a third one that nails it”.

The emotive title of the album also gets me wondering if there is a link between content and a conscious pooling from the past; a possible rekindling of the spirit found in Bambaataa’s lo-fi adventures. “Yeah, I think so. I’ve always liked to go back to Bambaataa and the New York freestyle thing, which was melodic, routed in melody and key signatures. Quite poppy sounds, but with quite simple stark beats”.

This idea of lending from pop influences is certainly not something Neil is at odds with, “I’ve always had leanings to do pop music, I like pop music…I’ve never said underground music is it. I’ve done so many records that a 1000 people in East Germany like, why not do something that’s maybe a bit more accessible”.

Whilst there are moments of foreboding darked out club tension and blistering acid-attack scales aplenty, lighter more optimistic refrains are also evident posing the questions is this dark tech overlord now mellowing? Laughter ensues before Neil agrees “I default to dark. If I go to a keyboard I play dark, so why not try and do something different cause I can always do that”.

This warmer heartbeat is evident across tracks like ‘Coconut Kestrel’, ‘Eva’ and the joyous reggae bubbler ‘SK1- The Damager’,“It’s a really warm track I think. Having Eva my daughter [8 months ago] did change something in me. I can be quite a dark individual” and “when I’m working I’m very solitary. Having a baby does give you a different positivity. A lot of the Bambaataa period was looking forward to this, done when Liza was still pregnant…So there is a certain positivity to it”.

With the historical baggage that comes with a 15 year career, Neil is all too familiar with generalised aspersions easily cast on a seasoned artists new yarns, something he’s brushes off as par for the course. “I think I’ve always used the same palette of sounds right from the start till now. I don’t really see a difference between the stuff I was doing in 1994 and now…It’s the same thing to me. Its just what’s coming out, you know?”

Sentiments unconsciously echoed when Neil comments on the emergence of dubstep, whereby the work of producers like himself in many ways paved the road for the new vanguard, “I think in a way it was a half new [idea], it wasn’t a new new. I think it was basically a point at which disparate electronica producers met. Techno people, electro people, dub, drum ‘n’ bass, hip hop; a kind of interim change” and a key point that motivated Landtsrumm to “put my own stamp on it”.

Winding back to his first album for Planet Mu ‘The Restaurant Of Assassins’ Neil’s roots fervour frames that mark in no uncertain terms “That was me trying to regurgitate my early influences. That was the point of it. I’ve always loved 90-91, the British stuff, drum ‘n’ bass, rave, the jungle thing, so much of the dubstep and [it's subsequent offshoots] owe so much to those foundations….It’s all bass lines, breaks and darkness”.

Re-collating in the present Neil’s focus is still clearly fixed on evolutions, “You have to make yourself relevant, you can’t lye on your laurels in electronic music or just music in general. You’ve always got to be going forward”. Ideals mirrored when discussing the ghetto-tek neoteric of the ‘Empire For A Fiver’ EP recently released on Glasgow’s Stuff Records.“There are a couple of tracks on that that are heading in the right direction, they get it right but they’re still quite underground and dark. I feel like maybe the next crop I do will nail it”.

With Neil’s long standing career it would have been easy to trawl through past works and anecdotal stories (which we did). However, post-interview it seemed much more obvious to just focus on what is at it’s essence his intuitive ability to take stock, reinterpret and contribute with his own distinctly progressive hallmarks. Hallmarks that made him relevant back in ‘94 and equally see him revered today by the next generation of artist and listeners alike. On the basis of his latest offerings, Landstrumm isn’t someone just ‘keeping up’, he’s actually out front ‘pushing the pace’ and it’s clear there is still ‘plenty of gas in the tank’. So, grab yer breakfast with Bam, cause here comes your future!