No Pain In Pop

Swinging Jaw: FaltyDL

An interview with Drew ‘FaltyDL‘ Lustman, written for the next issue of Plan B magazine. His Love Is A Liability is one of the best albums of the year so far - it’s out through Planet Mu on the 8th of June and you simply must grab yourself a copy the second it becomes available to pre-order.


NYG. Not UKG, but NYG – as in ‘New York Garage’, as in ‘gar-ij’, as in a hybrid, as in an invader. Much chatter’s been had over Simon Reynolds’ idea of a ‘hardcore continuum’, a lineage that since 1990 has seen UK dance music distinguish itself from American House and Techno. Reynolds argues that some common and basic tenets – among them diasporic, Afro-Caribbean bass weight, MCs, breakbeats and a subculture of clubs, dubplates and pirate radio – have coursed through the blood of every non-spoddy British dance strain of the last 20 years. Back the bloodlines go, from Rave on to Jungle, then to Speed Garage and turn-of-the-century 2-Step, after which the ‘nuum seemed to see Darwin in the face of ageing ravers, went for trigamy and planted its sullen seed in Grime, Dubstep and Bassline House. You’ll have heard of others - ‘Wonky’? ‘UK Funky’? – but people are still a bit ‘Wot Do You Call It?’ about those, so the DNA tests can wait. NYG – we’re back – is the music that Andrew ‘FaltyDL’ Lustman started making when he first tumbled off the continuum in 1995 (Jungle becomes Drum’N’Bass), only to clamber back aboard in 1997 (Dem 2 release ‘Destiny’) and then again last summer. What’s important, though, is that all that tumbling and clambering only took Drew two years.

What? Reach over the decks and rewind, all the way back to year 00:00. Or 1996, when the FaltyDL story starts.

“That’s my background I guess,” Drew concludes enthusiastically. “Everyone had an amazing album that year – Drum ‘N’ Bass for Papa, Feed Me Weird Things, Richard D James Album.

“That’s where I’m coming from. That special time where with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water-mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back… it had nowhere to go from there, yet everywhere to be.”

The fact that Drew didn’t start making Jungle of his own until two years ago is interesting, as is his choice of cultural totems. All three of the albums he mentions – by Luke Vibert, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, respectively – dealt with Jungle or Drum’n’Bass but in the abstract; records that could reach in and screw around with the sound because they hadn’t been fostered by or have to answer to the community, evidenced in their makers’ eventual abandonment of the Jungle sound. Stunning new FaltyDL full-length Love Is A Liability is similar in its non-linear appropriation of British dance music - in fact, you could argue that the work of these dilettante auteurs constitutes a kind of in-law continuum - but the ‘nuum’s moved on since 1996, so Love Is… updates the template. ‘To New York’, like the majority of the record, skips along on a hyped 2-step bounce, while ‘Our Love’ is poised sublimely between that Dubstep bass which seems to swell up from the bowels of a great ship and the alien synth spools of Terrence Dixon (who, in tandem with Techno Godfather Juan Atkins, helped revise Detroit’s Minimal blueprint).

It’s poise that most characterises the alien sounds of FaltyDL (“Falty for short”, since he was 12). Tiring of the “awful jungle renditions” he was making two years ago, Drew “wanted to slow down, I needed to slow down. I dropped the bpm by about 40 and found this shuffle. It’s amazing.”

Secure in his shuffle and the low-centre of gravity UK bass traditions afford, Drew hopes FaltyDL “will eventually bring out this sound I have been hearing in my head forever.”

What is that sound?

“The groove, the rhythm in your step. You, yours! I watch you people all day long out my window.”

That’s FaltyDL – watching on with nowhere to go, yet everywhere to be.

Tags: andrew lustman, faltydl, planet mu

2 Comments to Swinging Jaw: FaltyDL

1. 

   Nice, I’ll have to check that issue out.
PBLKS on June 23rd, 2009
2. 

   A lot of crossover in the interviews, eh?

   Good read though - Drew’s the man.
Kev Kharas on June 23rd, 2009

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