At times brutal but more often beautiful, the work of Tom Withers, better known these days as Klute, is always recognisable from its peculiar sound. Fusing jungle’s past of rugged organic breaks with a love of techno and influenced by his history in punk bands, he creates music that is both intelligent and powerful. It’s music you can get lost in, whether you’re kicking back on a beanbag or brocking out the dance-floor.

A musician from an early age, Withers first came to prominence, and Australia, as guitarist for rebellious skater-punk act The Stupids, back in the 80s. After the band’s inevitable dissolution under the strain of success, Withers found himself wandering across the United States where he discovered a love for electronic music, particularly the sounds originating in Detroit. After moving back to his native Britain 1993, he got involved in the burgeoning jungle scene in the mid-90s and began releasing tunes through influential labels like Metalheadz and Certificate 18. His first two solo albums, Casual Bodies and Fear of People, were both experimental and deep and are now considered classics in the genre.

In 2001, as the era of Certificate 18 drew to a close, Withers started up his own label, Commercial Suicide, in order to have more control of his own creative output and also to provide an outlet for other drum ‘n’ bass that he felt needed to be heard, without any consideration to the amount of units likely to be sold. The label has become one of the several leading lights of modern, forward-thinking drum ‘n’ bass. Unafraid to take risks, Commercial Suicide has helped bring new artists like Break, Silent Witness, Amit, SKC and Tactile to light and brought brand much-needed new sounds to the dance floor.

In 2003 Withers released his first double-barrelled album Lie, Cheat and Steal/You Should Be Ashamed. The first CD showed Klute developing as drum ‘n’ bass producer over a range of emotional territory. From the gorgeously sweet and melancholy Ether to violent, driving Jamm Tha Boxx to the smashing amen monster Take a Breath and the almost poppy Now, Always and Forever, Withers worked with some more song-like structures and emphasis on melodies and hooks. The second CD was a pure techno.

His latest album, No One’s Listening Anymore, was released on red vinyl last year and is about to get a CD release.

“I think I just wanted to build on the last one,” he says. “I can’t say that with any album I do specifically, ‘this is what I’ve wanted to do’, they’re just building on the one before. I think that’s the way No One’s Listening Anymore is certainly. I’ve done a lot more concentrating on songs this time, which is what I said last time, but I’ve even more done it this time. There’s a lot more singing and there’s a lot more song-based structures.”

The second CD is also a lot more diverse than You Should be Ashamed. Rather than being an adjunct to the ‘main’ drum ‘n’ bass half, this time it’s a showpiece in itself.

“Basically it’s all over the place. It’s all electronic music but in a quite varied tempo-range. The first track is called Torrential Pain and it’s a very slow sort of brooding vocal track. It’s very beautiful with electronic beats, but it’s not dance music. And then it goes into a track called Give Me Faith, which is quite a dancey track, but it’s still a song, it’s got verses and choruses almost. Then there’s quite an electro track, quite similar to stuff I’ve done on my earlier album, and then it just sort of moves on. It does go into some pretty straight up house, and there’s quite an old style drum ‘n’ bass track in there that’s kind of 1994 style – quite ambient drum ‘n’ bass, with a vocal. It’s a very broad, eclectic, listening album.”

The album features several tracks between the CDs from a brand new vocalist by the name of Moocha, including the brilliantly moody Silently.

“She’s someone I discovered just coming to Klute gigs around England. She’d show up doing all this crazy dancing and we got talking at the end of gigs and stuff like that and then she told me: ‘Oh, I sing’. Quite a lot of the time you meet people that say they sing and, to be honest, you expect them to be dull or boring or sound like they’re a soul diva or something like that, but I eventually got a CD from her with her singing and I thought she was fantastic. She was different. I did Acid Rain from the acapella from that CD and then we went on to write about three tracks together which all appear on the non-drum ‘n’ bass CD. And Silently is made from out-take vocals from those sessions.”

One of the most memorable and unique tunes on the release is Saviour. In a way it encapsulates what Klute is all about with its superb drum edits and smashing bass combined with euphoric melody, tinged with melancholy, all based around an obscure vocal sample – the source of which Withers asks me not to reveal.

“I’d prefer it to remain a mystery,” he says. “It’s a bit of an odd vocal, especially for drum ‘n’ bass, and in some respects it’s a bit old school sounding but I liked the fact that it was odd and that’s why I went with it. It sounds out of place, in a way, with drum ‘n’ bass because it brings in a sound sort of similar, I don’t know, to maybe something like Jethro Tull.”

While probably best known as a producer, Withers is no slouch behind the decks either. When he visited Melbourne in 2003, his performance and the Hi Fi Bar was nothing short of sensational. He says DJing is probably these days as close as he gets to what it was like back in the day playing with The Stupids.

“To me it’s about maintaining an energy. Whether that’s a deep sort of off in a submarine, fathoms below the surface of the water or it’s full on aggressive punching your fists in the air sort of thing, to me it’s about conveying that energy so people have a good time.�