- Pushing things forward with a true don.
- Drum & bass deities don't come much more respected than dBridge. Yet the man born Darren White has done as much as anyone to explode our idea of what the genre can be. The evolution of his label Exit and that of his own productions distilled drum & bass into something amorphous and hard to pin down, even as other exponents of the style were becoming more blinkered following the turn of the millennium.
While he made his fair share of classicist drum & bass during the '90s and later notably in the Bad Company crew, White's current vision is unconstrained by tempo, instrumentation and arrangement. He fluidly builds connections with genetically related styles, building a mutable but instantly recognisable sound in the process, which is crystallised on his first LP in a decade, A Love I Can't Explain.
It was a suitable occasion to bring in White for a conversation with veteran music journalist Joe Muggs. Together, they trace White's life from his small-town roots, through the breakneck evolution of jungle, whose sound developed week-by-week, and his transition into new territories following the founding of Exit.
TracklistdBridge - Average Echo
dBridge - The Dim Light