When we first had the idea to start (yet another) music BLOG, possibly the fastest decision we made in the development process was who to devote our first post to. And in order to make it a proper first post, I have two exclusive tracks, an exclusivo mix and an interview with the one called Drop The Lime. Since December, roughly, Drop The Lime has been my (and our) favorite producer. Literally every DTL track that crosses my path has the ability to pound dancefloors into submission through his gargantuan beats and eye-wiggling bass.

The guy gained a lot of notoriety a couple years ago in the breakcore scene with a bunch of big hits and has since moved on to a more party-friendly sound. He’s about to blow up huge with his upcoming release on Institubes under the pseudonym Curses! (sorry, we can’t give you guys that one) and catapult him to the upper eschelon of dance music. His music somehow manages to incorporate elements of just about every EDM genre since 1982 and not in a gimmicky or tacky sort of way. One track will have a b-more drum line with with a dub-step bass line and a distorted new electro lead with a house/oldskool chipmunk vocal overtop, but all you notice, though, is the fact that it just knocked your pancreas out the back of your ribcage and your roll just kicked back in from about 3 years ago.

Production aside, DTL is a brilliant DJ and the head honcho of Trouble & Bass, which throws one of the finest monthly parties (of the same name) in the whole of the good ol’ U.S. of A. Go to the crews blog (troubleandbass.blogspot.com) to see pictures of clearly is a wall-sweating, sign-making, bass-facing good time. Trouble & bass’s other residents, Mathhead, Shadetek, and Star Eyes will definitely be receiving some hype from us in the near future so watch out.

“I Want 2 Know” is def a signature DTL banger. Featuring a straight forward housey beat and a woobly bassline that will satisfy the grumpiest of junglists as well as a nice, choppy vocal and a rough, distorted lead. This one has been a major part of my sets in the past month and really lends itself to keeping the energy going after a big build.

DTL - I Want 2 Know

For those of you who lean towards the housier, techier side of the spectrum, “Good Inside” will fit well in your sets. Due to its rawness and endless energy, this tune will find itself comfortably resting next to Green Velvet or T. Raumschmiere (off the top of my head) as well as a lot of the more mainstream electro house. Don’t let me tell you how to use it though, because this one is a fantastically versatile utility track.

Drop The Lime - Good Inside

We cant stop there! So here’s a fantastic mix made exclusively for the TM crew made by the man hisself, Drop The Lime, complete with more exclusorama tunes from DTL as well as the likes of Surkin. Also, it has plenty of old-skool hardcore classics (at my request, I’m a dork for that stuff) which will make the yoots wish they were 10 years older.

photo by evancampisi.net

JUST PUMP IT

• (0:00) Intro
• (0:21) Bass Construction - Dance With Power
• (4:04) Cirez D - Knockout (John Dahlbäck Remix)
• (5:18) C.L.A.W.S - Claws Theme (Curses! Remix)
• (6:55) Drop The Lime - I Want 2 Know
• (9:24) Auto Riot - Fight The Pigs (Acid Jacks Mix)
• (12:53) K.A.O.S - I Can’t Stop (Hardcore Mix)
• (14:52) Voodoo Chilli VS. Trevor Loveys - Look What You’ve Done To Me
• (16:52) Infants - Firetruk Theme (Drop The Lime Remix)
• (19:21) The Bulgarian - Listen Man
• (21:13) Curses! - Like Thunder
• (24:00) EJ - U.F.O
• (26:00) Kick Squad - Champion Sound
• (26:45) Drop The Lime - Hold On
• (28:44) Intellect - Throw Your Hands Up (Remix)
• (30:33) Jem 77 - Never Felt This Way
• (32:32) Surkin - J-Hood
• (33:54) Farley ‘ Jackmaster’ Funk Feat. Darryl Pandy - Love Can’t Turn Around
• (37:32) Curses! - What I Need

Drop The Lime - Exclusive Mix for Trash Menagerie

Be sure to keep an out for DTL’s upcoming on Institubes as well as Trouble & Bass records. If you’re ever in New York, be sure to swing by a Trouble & Bass party. And for all our Chicago readers, Drop The Lime will be playing Friday, March 30th at base 10 and Trash Menagerie’s party, Algorhythm @ Lava Lounge.

After all this, are you still craving more of that DTL? Well we are too, so I decided to do a little (or not) interview with the man and see what hes all about.

Interview with Drop The Lime

Local Hero: So lets kick it off with the basics. When did you get started in electronic music and what got you going?

Drop The Lime: Really, What got me going was jungle music and then after jungle then I got into early hardcore and hardcore breakbeat stuff and I was probably about 14; I’m young, I’m 26 now. That kind of stuff just got me so hyped. I was always into music. I had been playing guitar since I was 7 and recording stuff even around then. Then when I heard these pirate radio tapes of, like, DJ Hype and Andy C and stuff. Friends from London imported them and gave me the tapes, they said check out this shit and I said, “Oh my God this stuff is amazing! Like what the hell is this?” It made me angry. It made me jealous and want to be making it myself.
So, yeah and at the time, I didn’t realize that I was going to rave parties. I went and saw Chemical Brothers when I was like fifteen at some party that I went to just see Chemical Brothers, and my friends were like, “Let’s check out Chemical Brothers. They’re cool. They’re electronic music.” I thought, OK cool. And we go and there’s like all these other DJs. It’s in a warehouse and they’re playing a surprise show in Queens. And I was like, “Wow! What is this? This scene’s fucked up. This scene’s like scary. Are people allowed to be here? Is this supposed to be happening right now?” And then as I met more friends and people would be like, “Do you go to parties? Do you go to parties?’ And I’d be like, “Parties? Yeah I go to parties. What?” And then slowly I realized that this was a whole scene. This is a rave. This is a rave party. (Laughs)

LH: So, I’m not too caught up on when things happened in New York. Were these like those Sonic Groove parties or was this after that whole scene?

DTL: Were these, like, the storm parties, you mean? Are you saying, like, Frankie Bones and that stuff?

LH: All those guys, right.

DTL: Yeah, No this wasn’t. This was definitely after that. Like, right after that, though. I wasnt around for those parties. Because these parties started to get shut down and moved away from Brooklyn and more towards Queens. And, yeah, that’s where I was going. And there was still a lot of stuff in Brooklyn. Kids would be like, “Yeah. Those were the good old days.” Like Frankie Bones would have his parties down at the Brooklyn Banks and stuff and we would go to like this spot called the anchor. It was under the Brooklyn Banks. People were like, “This shit is played out now” Even though this warehouse was bangin. It was crazy. But, people were saying that the storm days were over.

LH: There’s always people hating on what’s new because they were there before.

DTL: Yeah, right!

LH: When did Trouble & Bass begin then?

DTL: Trouble & Bass began, actually, when I was in college. I was in upstate New York. That’s where I started to get into house and techno because I left New York City. I was chilling with, like, housey jungle people and kids like the Old Raw Kuts, which is a Rawkus Records sub-label, the drum and bass part, with kids like DJ Seen, Pish Posh and Wally. Those were the guys. I was just a kid, but I was around them. But when I went up to upstate New York people listened to house and techno up there more and I opened up to a whole scene of raves in Albany that was the shit that was gone in Manhattan was still going on in the warehouses of upstate New York. Like Poukipsee. Oh shit!This is going on! Lets play at these. So we started a crew with other college buddies and we called it. Trouble in Bass.

LH: Interesting. Who’d you start Trouble & Bass with?

DTL: I don’t keep in touch with them anymore. Who knows what happened to them.
Yeah and I just carried that name to New York because it really was what got me focused on DJing. I brought in people like Math Head, Shadetek, Star Eyes and Starky and we pushed it to a more serious level.

LH: What is the story behind your name? Where did “Drop the Lime” come from?

DTL: Everyone always asks this question.

LH: Right. I figured.

DTL: And it really means anything that you want it to mean. It started from old,…old friends of mine, in the Rave days, when I’d like clench up, we don’t need to talk about why, with a clenched up face , like chewing your jaw. It comes from taking shots of tequila and like trying to be tough and throwing the lime and it comes from bass lines, the face you make when the bassline is really heavy you just like squeeze up your face.

LH: The bassface.

DTL: Right now though my favorite meaning for the name comes from Mary Ann Hobbs of Breeze Block on BBC Radio One. She told me that in India she goes dirt bike racing and they bless the bike before they race so they don’t die in a crash. And they take a lime, drop it in front of the front tire and ride over the lime and it blesses the bike.

LH: Really!

DTL: Yeah, so that is sick! That’s amazing right there.

LH: So, it didn’t come from that meaning, but it should’ve. Huh?

DTL: It should’ve, yeah.

LH: Nice one!

DTL: Yeah, right now, it’s lost all context. The way that any name kinda does. When I think of “Drop the Lime” I just think of music.

LH: You were making breakcore for quite a while. What made you swing towards, for lack of a better word, more club music these days?

DTL: What happened was. I’ve always been into that. Into every style of music, really. It’s just by chance that what caught on was the more breakbeat hardcore stuff. It’s not like I necessarily thought it would. I started making really fucked up drum and bass or whatever people call it-breakcore. I didn’t even know that breakcore existed ya know? This label heard my tunes from posting them online, posting them on forums and shit. And they were like “We gotta sign this.” And there was this label called Ambush which was a big label, a label that people admired. This guy DJ Scud ran it and I released on it. My first release was on that and then people were just like, labels like Peace Off, labels like Broklyn Beats out of New York were just callin at me.

LH: So you just went with that because that was what was bringing in the notoriety, right? Were you still making other stuff?

DTL: I wasn’t even making that stuff anymore. I had a bunch of that shit lying around that I experimented with, so I gave it to all these labels. I was already by then getting into grime and more like the fucked up kind of two step stuff, like Horsepower Records stuff which slowly became dubstep, and house and techno but like Aerosmith(?) techno and like fully tweaked out. I don’t know why the hardcore, breakcore stuff caught on but that’s what caught on and I toured around with that but when I played a show I would play techno and grime.

LH: What is Curses!? What is that going to be? Why did you decide to come up with a new name?

DTL: Curses! is basically like an alter ego of Drop the Lime.

LH: But, why did you feel that you had to have an alter ego?

DTL: I don’t even know who Curses! is. (Laughs.) It’s like this part of me that comes out. It’s strictly, like, crooked, cursed disco music, is how I see it. It’s just like horror music.

LH: You’re still going to be making music under Drop the Lime, I assume?

DTL: Oh, definitely. I’ll definitely never let Drop The Lime go. Drop the Lime is my main project; that is my focus. It’s like bass heavy breaks. I dip into the four-four and stuff but it’s always going to be what I do as my main thing. I’m going to let these little side projects branch off that.

LH: I’ve notice that you’ve been heading over to England quite a bit lately. What’s been your favorite party over there?

DTL: Whew. Man. I mean. It depends. I’ve dipped into to every scene now. I’ve dipped into the indie crowd, the grime crowd, the dubstep crowd, the, whatever, crazy party crowd… I have to say the Bang Face party that happens every month is really nuts because they have every single kind of style and they somehow make it work. To push everything in one room together and it just goes off. The first time I played was with Shut Up and Dance, for example. It was me, Shut Up and Dance, Kid 606, Ceephax Acid Crew and someone else.

LH: Nice! I would’ve liked to have been there!

DTL: It’s was nuts though. It was so nutty because everyone was getting crazy and it was every kind of style of music, every genre. And then this year when I played in June, it was me, Altern-8, Knife Hand Chop, Rotator and DMX crew.

LH: You’re not kidding about mixing all styles.

DTL: They get nutty. They print out signs of old Rave tunes. All these kids hold signs that say shit like, “There’s a bomb in my brain! Call the police!” Or even like Swing Classics or like Sweet Harmony or “I’m raving,I’m raving!”

LH: That’s awesome.

DTL: Yeah, it’s dope.

LH: So you really love that old school stuff.

DTL: I love that stuff man. I can’t let it go. It’s like…I’ve always really been blown away by it. Not because how old it is and ahead of its time it was but it’s still really good, now. Some of this stuff now the new electro stuff, its good, but most of it can’t even touch that early hardcore breakbeat stuff and even the hardcore techno stuff. When I’m saying that, I even mean the US producers like [Human Resource’s] Dominator, the Chicago house stuff and Acid House stuff.

LH: What’s your favorite party in New York these days? You can’t say your own.

DTL: I can’t say my own. (laughs). ‘Cause I would say my own. I’d have to say that Fixed that JDH and Dave P do is my favorite party then. They brought Justice over and they’re bringing Optimo over. They mix bands, like Crystal Castles with Soulwax or something. They throw a banging party for that kind of scene. But I have to say that Cut is the next best party that’s going on. They mix everything.

LH: That seems to be the trend lately. Everyone’s just trying to put everything together rather than break it into genres like it has been in the recent years

DTL: And, thank God. It’s about time. I’ve seen DJs do that more too recently. That’s like what we do, Trouble with Bass, is like mix genres. We don’t stick to one sound all night long.

LH: Totally. That’s why I like you guys.

DTL: Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah. It’s about time, you know.

LH: For Real.

DTL: One style gets boring all night.

LH: What’s up next for Trouble in Bass and Drop the Lime?

DTL: A lot. A lot. Trouble in Bass is officially a label now. We did one 12” last summer and now we’re doing a lot of digital releases with the help of Seed Distribution. We’re going to do everything digitally first. A single or an EP a month. Which ever one pops off more then we’ll do a short run of vinyl like 500 pressings.

LH: That seems to be the trend amongst new labels these days.

DTL: It’s smarter too, because, first of all, you’re not going to lose any money. Because you’ll see the pattern and you can take a guess on how something will do when you do it digitally and you’ll get the word that DJs want it on vinyl. It’s nice to have a physical copy of something still though.

LH: Do you have any releases coming out outside of Trouble in Bass’ label?

DTL: Yeah, I do. I have a ting coming out on Tiger Bass which is a Tigerbeat6 dance label off-shoot that is fucked up B-more stuff, which I’m sure you know of.

LH: I heard that. I played that this weekend actually.

DTL: How’d that go?

LH: It went over well. Baltimore is catching on really big here in Chicago. My last question: What are your top 5 favorite tunes to close a set on?

DTL: Good question. I like that. That is a very good question.

LH: Thank you.

DTL: One of my favorite tunes to close a set on, believe it or not, is “Take my Breath Away” by Berlin. (Sings a bit.) and Underworld - Born slippy It’s a banger to close on

LH: Yeah. I’d have to say that’s it’s one of the greatest electronic music tunes ever.

DTL: Yeah. That might be the greatest. It might be. Yeah.

LH: Any others?

DTL: Hoo-Man. Off the top of my head. Sweet Harmony’s a good one. I forget who that’s by. It’s an old Rave tune.

LH: That’s Liquid, isn’t it?

DTL: Liquid, yeah, there we go. Liquid.

DTL: Another incredible one to end with, the one I started my mix with is Bass Construction - Dance With Power. That’s a good closer ‘cause you have the pianos but then it just gets dark as hell. It’s got that sound and people love it. Like there’re the pianos and now it’s getting dark! Yeah!

LH: Well excellent man. I appreciate you doing this with me.

DTL: Thank you!