The Night Slugs imprint seems to have spent the year pushing boundaries that might have seemed imperceptible to unknowing eyes. As soon as these margins are crossed, however, it’s clear to see the magic formula label boss Bok Bok and his contemporaries share, and how they are applying it in their mission to take over gloomy, enigmatic dance floors worldwide. It’s an enormously innovative feat, which bodes well in a time in the UK when people are fervently dedicating their attention and curiosity to the new concepts and sounds that are changing the face of British electronic music. With over two years success on the party scene, an impressive roster of releases and the label’s first LP set for release in a couple of weeks, Night Slugs are at the heart of dance music influence right now. While the label’s mainstays share various inspirations when it comes to their sound – the intricate beat building from the likes of Bok Bok, L-Vis 1990, Girl Unit and Kingdom often comprise strong 808 driven rhythms, dazzling neon synths, catchy melodic riffs and ridiculously contorted vocal samples – their tracks stand apart from one another, each with a unique sense of mystery which makes them addictive to dance floor residents.
Touching on everything from favourite club spaces to archaic philosophies on aesthetics, solidarity within the British scene to the guiltless pleasures of RnB, Bok Bok gives Data Transmission an insight into the mind of a night slug. Can I get a wut wut?!
Do you think your crowd has changed since Night Slugs started a couple of years ago? I speak to DJs who say they’re sometimes disheartened by newer crowds, and that they’re not actually listening...
I can’t really complain about our lot. Definitely new people have come and we’ve definitely grown since we started out, but at the same time from day one, people who come down to Night Slugs have always been about the music first and foremost. There are a lot of people who really closely follow mixes and they’re on the ball with releases and stuff like that. Without wanting to blow our own horn too much, I think what Night Slugs has achieved is a really nice balance between those who are kind of heads for the music and come and spot tunes with people who are just kind of a party crowd. It’s a great balance because it’s not a kind of trainspotter, boring, standing around night because the vibe is really powerful and tangible. The music makes people happy and they respond to it. The people are really open-minded as well; we can play all sorts of different genres to them and as long as we keep it cohesive, it works.
What is your ideal kind of rave space? It must be quite important to you when constructing a specifically “night time” music genre.
Me and the others have been talking about what our ideal club would look like, after having played in Amsterdam in this club called Trouw. It’s a really cool club, it’s my new favourite club actually. It’s got some really cool minimal neon lights in it and that’s it. They don’t have your normal cheesy looking lights which I hate. If you can’t have designer lighting I prefer complete darkness. In fact I think sometimes complete darkness works really well. So yeah, me and the others were talking about this, we came up with a few concepts. I don’t know if it’s installation art but it’s certainly really creative lighting.
It seems like a huge emphasis is placed on light and colour when it comes to Night Slugs music. You’ve talked about the idea of synesthesia with regard to your sound before - where music conjures up vivid images and vice versa. Is this quite a serious idea for you?
It’s not a particularly developed theory or anything. But I do all the artwork for the label and I try to illustrate how the music makes me feel, try to give the music a visual context. A lot of that is inspired by the bright, synthy neon sounds going on in there – so partially that’s the inspiration. Also our name, the music is made for night – it’s nocturnal music, it’s club music. I try to create an atmosphere with the visual side of the project.
Girl Unit’s Wut could be described as a sensory overload. Does it feel good to finally get that track out? People have been listening to that radio rip on YouTube for months.
It’s such a relief to get that tune out. For months before it came out I was being inundated with requests for it and questions about when it was coming. People knew we were going to release it on Night Slugs but they didn’t know when or how. Wut’s a religious experience of a tune; it’s like gospel or something. Really, it is. It’s just built to make people go crazy in raves, in the most emotional way possible. Not in the way that some tracks try to at the moment, with brutal impact and sheer force. It’s not doing that, it’s looking to do something completely different. It’s looking to really touch you and I think it does.
The influences of RnB on the track give it that emotional edge I think. It seems like the unspeakable genre has become cool again, and I for one am pleased about that!
Some people describe RnB as a guilty pleasure, I wouldn’t go there. There’s nothing guilty about it. It’s a great form of music and we make no secret of being great fans of RnB. All of Kingdom’s music samples a specific kind of RnB, and even when it doesn’t it still has that aesthetic. He just takes it as a massive influence. People like The-Dream and Timbaland, in terms of production in that world, have been massively influential and not even just to us. For example so many grime beats, from the era when I first got into grime, borrowed from Timbaland that it’s not even true. I don’t think anyone would question that he’s a brilliant artist. These days people like The-Dream are so inspirational to us, they’re so innovative. What’s great about playing that stuff is that we can put it in a new context. Because the beats are so brilliantly built, they sound fantastic in a club. You can really make it into a club genre and not just a home listening genre. Kingdom does that really well.
To me, Wut does more than your average club track because it doesn’t just try to bang, it does something else as well. It works on an emotional level which is what RnB does to. It’s got the big fat 808 kicks but it’s got some soul and emotion; a real human, female element to it. Fuck it, there’s absolutely no shame in it, we love RnB.
There seems to be a really special mood within the UK at the moment, a sense of camaraderie in the electronic world. Do you let this, and current artists, influence your own productions?
Really the last two years, there’s been a buzz of colour and creativity in our scene in the UK. It’s inspiring times – for one thing, the whole world is watching what we’re doing right now. We haven’t necessarily not been doing this for the last decade - we have - but I guess people weren’t really ready for it. Now there’s a massive audience where there pretty much wasn’t one. This in itself has created a whole energy in our scene which makes us think, “yes, someone is listening to what we’re doing.” We’re not just making this for each other or ourselves anymore. There are a lot of artists doing really cool things right now and I personally find that inspiring. Even more than that, people who are involved with Night Slugs and just outside of it – Ikonika and Optimum for example, are particularly inspiring. My friends are making my favourite music and I never thought I’d be able to say that, but it’s true.
I suppose being a part of Rinse FM feels like a kind of microcosm of that.
I’ve been listening to Rinse since I started getting into this music at the start of the ‘00s, and it’s just been a massive inspiration. The whole ethos of the station has always been: let’s not stay in one place, let’s move forward and keep looking for different things. The ethos itself has probably been one of the most inspiring things to me in music in general. The thing about Rinse is it’s so diverse. If you listen to it throughout the day you hear so many different styles on there, but at the same time Rinse as a brand is known for being quite concrete. People aren’t confused about what it is, it’s a specific thing routed in a certain culture. That in itself is really inspiring, and I’m sure a lot of the other Night Slugs artists feel the same way about it. I see it more as a cool thing to be a part of, because when I wasn’t doing this properly and was kind of a fan on the outside, Rinse was one of the bastions for me.
Rinse has certainly shaken up the grime scene. Do you see it as a more positive force since your first experiences with it in the early 00s?
Yeah, all the stuff they’re coming out with now is really bubbly and creative. There are definitely some great producers, and probably some great MCs although I’m not following that as much nowadays. Butterz are killing it. Terror Danjah is killing it – we kind of associate him with Night Slugs and we’ll probably do something with him in the future. I’ve been a big fan of his since way before his name was even around. Grime’s still killing it, but in a different way than it was when I was involved in around 2003.
What with all these Night Slugs collaborations with artists outside, will you ever find time to do your own NS release?
I do a lot of production; I just haven’t got it together this year to release anything for Night Slugs. I still do a lot of music myself and I put a bit of it out – but I’m starting to feel that it’s time to get on that, but that will be in the new year now. Mostly, I’ve concentrated on projects for other labels but that will change soon hopefully. It’s the most rewarding thing I could do though: use Night Slugs to facilitate my friends’ creativity.
Catch Bok Bok, L-Vis 1990, Jam City, Girl Unit, Kingdom, Lil Silva and Deep Teknologi down at Counter Culture in London on Friday 12th November.
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