Representing Room One, the critically-acclaimed eccentric T.E.E.D aka Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and championing Room Two, the head honcho of pioneering drum & bass collective Metalheadz; the enigmatic Goldie. Separated by a generation, we wanted to understand more about their inspirations, motives, drive and creative philosophies
For T.E.E.D, a long-time admirer of the Metalheadz movement, it was his debut performance at the prestigious London club but it wasn’t the first time he’d been asked. The producer come DJ told i-D that on this occasion the timing just felt right and that all the elements were in place for a big night full of excitement.
“It wasn’t the first time I was offered but it’s the first time it’s felt right and amazing to have Metalheadz in Room Two as well – that’s dope for me. I said to Shaun could we do a jungle thing in Room Two and he was like ‘Well Metalheadz do their thing’ and I was like ‘Perfect!’ And now it’s just amazing!”
Goldie, on the other hand knows all to well about performing to the masses at Fabric and believes playing at the club has made a positive impact on music as a whole as well as his own career, because of their ability to cater for many different, genre-specific audiences of music lovers from across the globe.
“I think when Keith got together his whole thing he really went hell for leather on it. It was at a time when super-clubs were on everyone’s tongue. If you took Fabric out of the equation the question was where could we really go – in terms of laying down what you wanna lay down and play what you wanna play? Unless you were a fucking house DJ it was very difficult. I think it catered for a lot. I think they’ve done a lot for music generally. I go in there and I see Japanese, Koreans, Serbians, I see a lot of different people at Fabric and they’ve just come on holiday and they’re here. That’s really important for club culture because people forget. I think Fabric has catered for transient 360 of everyone. From Dirtybird to Mark Pritchard – just the maddest of shit. I mean what club covers that?”
In this digital age where art of the world is becoming ever more intangible both these artists place a great deal of importance on the value of creating art that really evokes soul and emotion. T.E.E.D mentions that what really pushes the creativity in his compositions is his desire to move himself to feel something when writing his tracks.
“The real inspiration for me when making music has always been feeling. Like if I listen to something or I hear something and I get a certain feeling and can then sometimes want to go away and recreate something myself to get back that feeling.”
It is a view shared and fleshed out further by the spiritual alchemist inside of Goldie.
“With alchemy you open pandora’s box and stuff comes out. Dark shit comes out and really creative and crazy shit comes out. The trick as an artist is how you manifest it and how to harness which ones to use. And then to keep the fucking dark ones out and make the positive ones come through. So in that respect, you’ve got to be a conduit. It took me fucking twenty years to harness that motherfucker! From rehab, to relife, to rebirth.”
There’s something I always say and something I always stand by. What are the three most important things in life? Love, time and memory. Because, for me, I lived on basing stuff on a moment. Like, could you remember something that happened on a Tuesday afternoon in 1993 when you were 9 years old? No you can’t. But if you and your friend built a camp somewhere on a railway you’d remember it. Because it’s the moment, it’s that memory and the love that you had. And it’s time, showing you where time is juxtaposed to where we are. And that’s really important to know when creating art and what those tracks do because, in a world that’s becoming more intangible, there’s something on record here. Art is that slow photograph of time.”
Both guys have demanding schedules and need to seamlessly switch between multiple roles within their creative personas. For Goldie it’s the juggling of being a record boss, producer, DJ, actor, painter, graffiti artist (the list goes on) and T.E.E.D also flips between recording artist and performer – which both require high levels of attention and the right head space to be executed precisely. So how do they reset themselves? For Goldie the answer is simple.
“Take up fucking Bikram Yoga and you can do it all. It’s all I do. I’m there between three and five days a week. A lot of my mates who do MMA fighting do Bikram Yoga to recondition. For me, it neutralises my wires, it restarts me. For people that are synthetic it really does recycle what’s in here. You get very creative. You ask where do you find the time? Well I make the time because I want to do things. It’s a necessity. I cannot keep still. So I occupy myself with different addictions. It used to be drugs, now I’m addicted to Bikram yoga and I’m addicted to creativity. It’s about feeding your soul with real life experiences.”
And while it may not be the same level of intensity to his restart process, T.E.E.D also feels the need to exercise as way of instilling focus into his mind but also finds just having some old-fashioned rest time or partying with his mates can help relieve some of the stresses and help ease the pressures he can sometimes feel.
“I run, I like to sleep and I get really drunk. It all helps me to release. The pressure can be released when I go out with friends when I’m not in a club and not working. But no, my time where I unwind is usually when I go for a run. I’m training for a half-marathon in January and hopefully I’m going to do a marathon next summer.”
With these two constantly pushing the boundaries of musical and art experiences it is no wonder they need to find the right refresh techniques to get their minds fully focused. But nothing is so pure as the live performance of their work. Giving the public something tangible to get their ears round.
Credits
Text Liam Tootill
Photography Piczo