In This Issue
Buy This Issue
Subscribe to Knowledge

 Email
 



 Section
 Keyword
 




D Kay
"Sometimes I feel like I'm in Barcelona / See, anytime I hear this tune I start drifting awwwaahaaayy / And all I want to do is go back."

You probably already know the new version of 'Barcelona', but soon there will be no escaping it. The grinning, Stamina vocalled monster that is d.kay & Epsilon's 'Barcelona' is going to be a big crossover hit: the sort of record 13 year old girls in Slough will buy on route to Top Shop on a Saturday afternoon. Mums and accountants will love it in equal measure. It's pop. It's fun. It's mass market. You can hate it all you want - 23-year-old Vienna based David Kulenkampff, aka d.kay, couldn't give a shit. He's having too much fun to concern himself with the internal politics of drum & bass.

"I make whatever music I feel like," he explains perched on the sofa that's doubling as his bed while he crashes at MC Verse's house on a rare UK visit. "I know if I was down some dead end just making one type of music I'd get so bored. A lot of people just make one type of drum & bass and they hate the rest and I don't understand that. That's sad. Everyone should try and make a different tune now and then - it sparks everyone's ears up."

d.kay's open-minded approach is perhaps unsurprising given his somewhat unusual path into the scene. Spending his time in teenage bands that "sounded a bit like the Smashing Pumpkins" and listening to Brahms and other classical music in the family home, it was actually those hardcore junglists, Nirvana, who switched him to breakbeat: "There was one Nirvana tune that had this weird breaks rhythm that I couldn't get out of my head for years," he laughs. "I'd be tapping it everywhere - some Dave Grohl nasty grunge business. When I first heard drum & bass in my last year at school it had that same weirdness and I was completely drawn to it."

A few bits of software later and d.kay was on the road with tunes appearing on such diverse imprints as Loxy's Cylon, Moving Shadow, Renegade and Dylan's Biotic stable. Each track released sounded different to the last. "I have to be having fun when I produce," he explains. "If I do two hard tunes the next has to be a musical one. I don't want to be serving one type of listener." To underline the point he darts out to the car and brings in a CDR of his latest productions. Of course there's drum & bass, but the presence of scuzzy hip-hop beats, breakbeat vocal garage and, er, acid trance is somewhat, well, surprising, especially given that the latter is a about as fashionable as a grey double-breasted suit from C&A.; "You don't find your limits unless you do something out of character," he explains. "I can listen to really horrible cheesy pop music and be fascinated by the production. A lot of people say: 'trance is shit', but I sat down for 12 hours and made a fucking trance tune with a friend. And it was fun. It was a good tune. If I'd been like: 'fuck trance, mate', that wouldn't of happened and I wouldn't have learned how something like that works."

It was a lesson well learnt. Last year's distinctly euphoric - dare we say trancey - feel of 'Be There 4 U', produced with Rawfull, pulled the sharp-eyed Austrian into focus as one to watch. Described by this very magazine as "an epic tune that will stand the test of time" it showed d.kay has no qualms about making big sounding, melody driven productions that discreetly stick two fingers up at po-faced notions of the 'underground'. The aforementioned 'Barcelona' does the same thing. Knocked together in eight hours because production partner Epsilon fancied using some funky guitar samples, it was made as a piece of pure fun: "When we'd done it we were like: 'let's send it off to a few people and get cussed for using guitars and being all cheesy'," d.kay recalls. "A few people that listen to dark music were all 'why did you do that? It sounds gay, that sounds shit' and I'm like: 'I don't care. Next thing we know Grooverider's playing it and it's turned into a big tune."

Very much an outsider - he doesn't drink, smoke, follow football or do anything you're supposed to do as an A list producer - commercial success is the last thing on d.kay's agenda. He refuses to be in any video for 'Barcelona'. He has no interest in fame, money, cars or other trinkets. Instead, there's a deep desire to get on with the music and remain as independent as possible. You're won't hear an identikit follow up to 'Barcelona' because d.kay won't sign an exclusive deal with any label. "I sign one tune at a time, always," he explains. "I will never sell 'd.kay' to some record label and be told to make music in a certain way. All I want is to put a smile on people's faces. Good music can't do any damage."

Drift awwwaahaaayy - you never know you might like it.

Words: Sean O'Connell
Photography: Cleveland Aaron
 


  <<Back to Features