Hey Ken, thanks for taking the time to chat.

No problem, thanks for having me on.

When did music start for you?

Growing up in a small town in North Wales, I used to want to be a metal guitarist, but there wasn’t a community for that genre in my school, I wanted to do this hypertechnical heavy music, but nobody ever wanted to / couldn't make it with me. I always liked the electronic music my mum would play in the car, but I had never thought about producing on a computer.

As a young man, I spent a lot of time on the Internet and on online forums. I used to be really into stick figure animation, and I was on a page for that when I saw a sub-forum for music production. I remember finding Drum & Bass and thinking it was cool, so I downloaded FL Studio when I was about 14 or 15. I listened to a lot of Deadmau5 and began making progressive House and Drum & Bass around then.

That was probably around 2008, so I was 14 or 15 when I started making electronic music. I still have my first Drum & Bass tune on my SoundCloud at the very bottom. I moved to London when I was 18 and went to university there, then worked in sound design for moving images and advertising. Then I moved out to America after the pandemic in 2022 and I am based in Portland, Oregon today.

Since you couldn't get the people together for a metal band, you had to become your own one-man band.

That was basically it. I wanted to be able to do everything myself because I didn't want to rely on anyone. So I was like, “Fuck it, I'll just do it myself.”

When did you first come to America?

I first visited America in 2017-18. Combine used to be two people and my best friend Mersen was the other half. He's my oldest and goldest friend who has since gone on to produce garage and hard groove techno whereas I’ve moved into 140 and you can expect to see some B2Bs with Mersen when he moves back to America.

We met at university, and he was from Oregon. We both were in a situation where our jobs sucked and wanted to do something with ourselves. After university, he suggested I come out to America for six months and travel around, making music, using his mom’s house in Oregon as a base - it was a fun time and we made a lot of music together.

Where did the name Combine come from?

Mersen and I were both huge fans of Half-Life, and the alien race in Half-Life is called the Combine. We took it from there, and we also took the double entendre of two minds creating something together, which doesn't really make sense now that it's a solo project. But yeah, mainly the alien thing.

Have you enjoyed being in the US these last couple of years? How does it compare with your expectations?

In a way, I had America in my veins before I moved out here. But now that I live here, it's a bit different. I love living in America, to be honest. I still miss some things about the UK of course, like sound system culture and the vibe at events sometimes. It's a lot more rowdy and it's good fun. But ultimately, I wouldn't trade it. I love it here. People out here are way more open-minded and friendly than I expected from growing up, especially in the PNW. There were a lot of false preconceptions of Americans from my parent's generation in the UK but since I've lived here, it's wiped out my inherent biases, and I think that's a really important thing about traveling, most people on the planet are more like you than they are different. You just need to talk to them.

It's more common in the UK and Europe for youths to have access to Ableton in school at a young age and get feedback from actual producers. It's certainly more accessible out there. I feel like we look to you for guidance.

My course title at University was Commercial Music. It included some music production and sound design. I went to university thinking I was going to learn how to do all this cool stuff that I wanted to do, like I was going to be able to show them this Noisia tune and ask “How do you make that noise?” But I was saddened to find that no one in academics knew how to make drum and bass because it was a niche underground dance music thing. All the techniques that I was taught were how to record bands and stuff, which I didn't care about at the time.

I used the time when I was in university just to learn online. This was back when YouTube was simpler. There wasn't the culture online of selling sample packs and having a YouTube account dedicated to tutorials on bass music production. It was just trawling Dogsonacid.com, a webpage that supported drum & bass, trying to find interviews with Noisia or Phace and other people of the old school drum & bass scene and trying to figure out stuff. I miss that sometimes.

Yeah, those are the pivotal memories when you're trying to find the answer, and you really have to dig for it. Then, when you discover something, it feels more special and earned, almost a secret.

The music felt more special when people didn't know how to make it in a way. There’s a legendary screencap from that Dogsonacid page where there was a thread about reece bass and the Noisia guys commented “What’s a reece bass?” This was screenshotted and shared all over online because the idea of Noisia not knowing what a reece bass is was kind of mind-blowing, but that just goes to show how the information wasn’t universally available like how it is today.

That's pretty hilarious. I miss the forum days.

Yeah, it was a cool time because you couldn't just go on YouTube and see how to make sounds like so and so. It bred people who enjoyed experimenting and doing weirder things. I wrote my university thesis on the misuse of technology within Neurofunk drum & bass, which is the nerdiest thing.

I’ll say. Wow, what a topic for a thesis. *laughs*

Thanks *laughs* I was just equating how the misuse of technology by people who didn't understand it but messed around with it in a unique way was the basis of a lot of really cool things in music. If you think about how the Roland 808 and 303s were made to work in a band setting, people bought them and sold them into pawn shops in places like Detroit. Then people who didn't know what they were were like, “What's this thing?” and went ahead and made house music out of it. That's a massive simplification of how it all went down. But in drum and bass as well, I remember Phace using vocoders to layer vocals over a mid-bass line and figuring that out and putting that in my thesis and being like, This is really cool.

Someone's taken this tool that was designed to do one specific task, but others found a creative use for it, and that in turn, created this cool sound, and that became a part of the culture. I always thought that element of things was really cool. The misuse of technology always shaped the sound of the cutting edge of music. People experimenting with things and trying to find new ground. Samplers originally were meant for composers who wanted to write with strings or other instruments in a track, but you didn't have a musician on hand for it, so you just used a sampler. Everyone hated it. Everyone wanted real strings. But then people thought, what happens if I run a bass sample through it and put filters on it and clip the outboard converters, then suddenly you get Ed Rush and Optical.

Another example is Goldie utilizing time stretching on breaks. Back in the 90s, when people heard that sound in clubs, it sounded like the future. Drums warped up in a really weird way with unnatural tonality. The experimental mentality in music sonically drove the medium forward and stuck in the minds of listeners and consumers.

I used to imagine going to the Blue Note in London back in the day and then you heard that sound, you'd go home and be “What the fuck was that music last night? I've never heard anything like that.” That was always what interested me about this music, like sound design focused, drum, bass, and dubstep. It was always like, “What the fuck is that? How did you do that?” People who did cool sound design or did things in a way that was really interesting always stood out to me, like Amon Tobin, Noisia, Phace, Kemal & Rob Data. Yeah, things like that.

Who are some of your inspirations and influences in music?

Noisia, Kursa, Amon Tobin, Phace, Misanthrop, Konflict which was Kemal and Rob Data, and also Bad Company. More recently, I love what Ternion Sound are doing. They were a big reason why I started making 140. Their track, ‘Ukandu Ikandu’ really did me in. Their take on the medium was really interesting, and I really liked it. The track that actually pushed me to start making dubstep was Chef Boyarbeatz tune ‘Steady Slurkin’. That tune specifically reminded me of a drum and bass roller. The structure/tension and release is fantastic. I love that tune. Shouts out to Joey, he’s a great producer and friend,

Nowadays does it feel like all the secrets to production are out? With YouTube and Patreon and whatnot?

Although many things have been done, people still surprise me with new ones. It's very easy to think we've hit the limit and that nothing new can be done, but people thought that 20 years ago, and now we're somewhere completely different. Even though we can't conceptualize what's next, it doesn't prevent it from happening anyway. Technology will progress, and people will abuse it, opening up new opportunities for innovation.

Most of the time I'm making music, I will start with a sound design session and then once I'm inspired by a sound or a rhythmic part, I'll make a tune based around that. 90% Of the tunes I make are based on a sound or a rhythm that I come up with. When I surprise myself, I come up with stuff where I'm like, “Wow, I don't think I've heard anyone do that before.” That is when I know I’m onto something that may be novel.

There's no point resigning to the idea that “All the sounds have been used” because someone will do something else and it will be cool, you just haven’t heard it yet.

If the information is out there, it becomes more evident who is simply replicating what they've heard or who's actually taking it further.

People who just turn up and replicate what's going on will never have the staying power of people who create something new in my opinion, unless it's a really nostalgic thing. I love the bootleg scene that's going on right now, and I play a lot of bootlegs. I don't think in 15 years, people are going to be saying, “Damn, you remember that bootleg?” It's going to It's a very transient thing but it can still be enjoyed.

But in terms of the context of the conversation, I think that things will move forward, and we'll do cool things. Everything's about moving forward and new stuff coming through.

What’s something you keep in mind when making music?

It's purely whether I like it or not that guides my process. If I vibe on it, then I vibe on it. I'm happy about it.

I used to go into music with specific intentions and reference tracks for what I wanted to do, but that never really worked out. I might write a tune that ends up cool, but at bottom, it's just a reference to something else. I find more motivation now to explore things. It’s always about exploring until you find the thing that works, and then use that and push it further.

When did you start putting together tracks for the DDD release? Did you put these tunes together with an EP in mind, or did you send them a bunch of tunes, and they picked these out?

It all started when I went to SXSW with Klippee to play the Silent Motion bus party.

At that point, I hadn’t finished any 140 tunes. I had some WIPs, but they were all a lot more minimal than what I'm doing now. I remember going out there, having a great time, and meeting a lot of really cool people. Shouts out OldGold & Hebbe. I played this bus party, had a great weekend, and went to LA with Klippee for his Critical show there.

Then I returned from that week, ready to make music from the experience. I don’t know; it just activated me and I wrote “Modelo Time” that next week. That was the first one. Then, the next week I wrote “Hardline”. The next week I wrote ‘Doorgunner Megamix”. Then I went to Seattle and wrote “Blue Speaker Riddim” with Klippee. All the tunes for this EP came together in a month. I finished them all and was really feeling this music collection so I sent them to a few labels. I sent them to Deep Dark and Dangerous first. In my email I said I'd love for my first foray into this music to be with DDD and I was really happy that they said yes. I couldn't believe it, to be honest.

Rebar is the only tune I haven’t mentioned yet. That one was actually a lot older than the others—it was four or five years old when I submitted it—but I always loved it, and I included it on the list of demos for them to pick through. I was really surprised that they picked it because I didn't think they'd sign a drum and bass tune. In any case, a huge shout for DDD signing some drum and bass.

It's not like your standard drum and bass track. It's 172, but just the way it swings feels almost garage-like.

It was very inspired by a Noisia tune called ‘The Hole pt I’. It was basically my take on that production style of everything being based around the drums and the rhythm of the drums. Everything is reactive to that pattern. It's an exploration in sound design and rhythm and taking bass lines out of it, and it just being purely about vibe and rhythm, which as I've started to make more tunes, that's always been the best ones for me. I used to just focus on cool bass lines and making a million different bass lines with bad drums *laughs* Nowadays I focus more on rhythm and vibe, and everything is there to support those two things. I still love a good sound design tune, don't get me wrong, but I try to make more simple music that works on a dance floor instead of just flexing sound design all the time.

Yeah, well, you still manage to flex it all the time. I'm sorry to break the news to you. *laughs*

It's just less focused on that *laughs* It's got to have a vibe.

Once I was in the club and it dawned on me that there are so many tunes that are just simple. Maybe I'm doing too much, and I'm trying to put too many ingredients in the soup. I wanted to break down what exactly it is that’s essential in a tune. I think it’s a good vibe that makes people excited and gets people moving. The mixdown of a tune doesn't really matter so much, If the idea is good, people will like it. Distinct Motive is a great case study for this; his music isn't crazy technical; it's very simple, and the mixdowns don't have crazy processing, but it really doesn't need that; in fact, it would probably take away from the magic of it. His strength is in the hooks and the memorability. Listen to ‘Radar,’ ‘‘Mellow Man,’ any of those big tunes of his - I couldn’t write a tune like he does. His mixdowns are very clean, but with his music the most important thing is the core idea of the tune - he never gets sidetracked with a weird section just to flex.

I'm a very technical producer, and I focus a lot on the mixdown and sound design, but I envy people who are good songwriters and can create good, simple ideas. Do you know what I mean? I envy those people who can just sit down and make a riff and be satisfied with it. I can't do that. I'll make 10 patches, and then I'll form a riff on the third session. You know what I mean? Ultimately, songwriting is a more important skill for the listener than being able to make cool baselines and drums that slap.

Was Klippee one of your first producer friends out here? You two got a bunch of tunes together, and you mentioned that you did that silent motion show with them. ‘Blue Speaker Riddim’ track is probably the one I've heard the most in clubs from your EP.

I met him back in 2018. Klippee is one of my best friends. He's a great guy. I love him dearly.

When Mersen and I were out here in America in 2018, we were doing a show with Revaux up in Seattle. It was drum & bass Tuesdays in Seattle. Klippee met us there and he was like, “Oh, you guys are from the UK.” He just took us under his wing and looked after us during our visit. He went up and played before us and his set was really cool. This was back in the halftime era, and he played a bunch of wild tunes. I kept going up and asking him for IDs on the tracks, and they were all originals.

We made a lot of music back then, and I’m still making a lot of music with him. I play a lot of games with him online, and we remain connected—he is probably my best friend in America. I love him to pieces. Shouts out to Klippee. More people need to listen to him, and he needs to get booked more.

How have you been networking out here? Your stuff has to come up from the underground so fast. I saw you play once last year and it's been constant ever since.

I was very fortunate in that Oska, aka Kursa, was one of my best friends before I moved here. I've known him for over 10 years. He put me on to a lot of people and linked me up with Ternion Sound and Distinct Motive quite early. Once I started sending out music, he was really helpful in making sure it got around to some great producers who would play it out. So thank you, Oska. I really appreciate everything he's done for me.

From there, it just worked out. I reached out to a lot of people. For years, I’ve never sent my music out to anyone. I've been making music for over 15 years and released some stuff, but most of it never saw the light of day. No one ever heard it apart from me and my friends. It just hit a point where I was like, “You know what? I'm good at this now. I believe in myself. I like the music.” I felt confident in the music, and I started sharing it with people.

It's always a thing. Once it's legitimized in the scene, people will start to pay attention to your music and give you the time of day. Once Ternion Sound had played my music, it snowballed from there. I would like to thank Kursa, Ternion Sound, Distinct Motive, and Klippee for being essential in all that.

None of that would have been possible if you didn't put the legwork in first to learn how to make good music. It's easier to support your friends when their tunes bang! *laughs*

Yeah, 100%.

How many gigs have you played out here then?

Of proper shows, probably under 10. I played Blackbox twice. I just played Infrasound, which was fantastic.

How did that go over? Infrasound and Blackbox are good reflections of the US bass scene, so it's awesome that you’ve been able to connect with them already.

Amazing, to be honest. I really loved Infrasound. The vibe there was great, the people there were great, and the atmosphere and sound systems were fantastic. I have nothing bad to say at all about Infrasound. It's a great festival; I'd like to go back every year.

During my set at Infrasound, I played Modelo Time, and it got a rewind. As it built back up, someone came up to me and handed me a Modelo, and I skulled it. It was a surreal experience. The tune wasn’t even out yet, and people already knew what it was. That was a nice moment at the festival.

What's one of your favorite sets you saw out there?

Probably Joe Nice. Joe Nice was one of the first people who played out my music. I'd never seen him play until Infrasound, and I was blown away by how confident he was on stage. I was watching him mix, and he had three tunes in the mix. He had his headphones on his head, and he turned around to speak to the crowd. His stage presence was fantastic. He's an incredible DJ and very confident. That really inspired me. I want to be a better DJ now because of Joe Nice. Chef Boyarbeatz and Criso were some of the best sets of the weekend too.

They’re both crushing it right now here in the States. What do you think you bring to dubstep that's a little different?

Well, that's a hard question.

I feel like my sound is throwbacky to Rusko-y, tear-out stuff. Coki and Rusko in terms of the vibe, but I’m trying to do more stuff that's a bit weirder rhythms and that's where we differ. The Grey's Remix I’ve released is almost techno, but it has similarities to proto dubstep, I was trying to do more interesting rhythms in dubstep because while I love just a straight boom, kick, boom, kick, I think there's interesting rhythms to be explored within 140. The reason that I started making 140 is because I was like, there's a lot of really interesting ways of writing tunes being done in this medium right now, and I want to explore that. Drum and Bass have gotten a bit standardized in a way. I felt like there were five drum and bass tunes. There was the flanger vocal liquid tune, foghorn tune, blocky neuro tune the cold minimal roller, and big dance floor tune. It felt like most tunes were just those tunes or rehashes of those archetypes.

It upset me because I love drum and bass and always believed it was on the cutting edge of everything, but over time, it has become more saturated with repetitions of very similar ideas. I wasn't feeling very inspired by listening to what was coming out. At the same time, dubstep and 140 were really interesting. I thought those producers were doing some cool stuff, and that's why I started making 140.

Take a track like ‘Seek and Move’ by Yoofee. It's a super interesting tune. I heard that tune and was just crazy inspired.

That one's A tier for sure. Are you done producing drum and bass, then?

I'm still making drum and bass. I don't know if I'm going to release any of it for a while, though. I want to build up a catalog of authentic-sounding early 2000s tech stuff reminiscent of early Noisia. All the stuff that inspired me the most: Ed Rush and Optical, Kemal, and Rob Data. I will, at some point, release a bunch of dusty old rollers. I don't know if that will go under Combine, or I may create a separate alias for that.

Yeah, it might make sense in the future. See how this whole Combine thing goes.

Yeah, but I love that older stuff and will make some throwback music. If I got to DJ whatever I wanted, I mean, most of the time, I will play a bunch of old-school drum and bass just because it's my favorite. I feel like I want Americans to hear it. I mean, it was very big in America back in those days.

A big thing about American drum & bass, I find, is that there are the old-school people that were around in the early 2000s, and then there was nobody in the late 2000s and early '10s. Now, people are back into drum & bass, and many are starting to get into it during the resurgence. In a lot of ways, there was no middle generation, and it was never passed down, so there's a big disconnect between the older folks that are into drum & bass and the younger folk, and they don't really talk.

That’s a great point, and I’m guilty of being a member of the latter. I got into drum & bass around 2017 and don’t know much of the older stuff.

This is exactly it. There's a lot of really old drum and bass. I recommend anyone who reads this interview to go and listen to some old-school techstep. A lot of my music is like a techstep sound palette brought into 140. The first sound you hear in Modello time is a Claw pad, like an Ed Rush and Optical. Three notes really close together on a keyboard give that dissonant pad sound. That was in every drum and bass tune back then, and I love that sound.

Have you felt more inspired to make music since your tunes have been getting more attention?

Yes definitely. I'm putting way more time into it and focused on pushing this opportunity with music as far as it can go and seeing what I can do with this. Asking myself lately, “Does this benefit me in my life?” And if it doesn't, I'm not bothered about it. I go to work, I go home, I make music. I'm not going out so much, not playing video games so much. It's been such a huge opportunity to get my music signed and have it be enjoyed and well received by people. I feel that if I don’t seize this opportunity, I’m going to look back and regret my life. This is my moment. I've got to do it.

I've never been more excited about making music than I am right now. I'm having a great time. I wrote four tunes the week of Infrasound, which I played there. Normally, it would take me two weeks to finish a tune, and I got four out in a week because of all the creative energy I’m feeling. It's been leading me to make more music, and I'm trying different things. Those days when you walk into the studio and something hits instantly feel so great, better than going out and getting drunk at the pub.

Everything has its place. We spoke earlier off the mic about some of your upcoming releases. Do you want to mention anything that you have coming or any collaborations with people that might see the light of day?

Yeah, I've got the DDD release which has just dropped, my remix of “Real Sh” by The Greys, a collab with WAVHART on the 10 Years of DDD compilation and 2025 is already pretty booked up on releases, I'll keep those cards close to my chest for now :)

What is a piece of advice that you have for producers trying to make a name for themselves?

Sit on music and try to find your sound. Keep working and develop your own thing. Be your own person. When you start making music, use sample packs, go crazy, Try and get ideas down and get good at developing ideas. Then once you've got an ear for writing a tune quickly and you've got things under your belt like that, then branch more into sound design and create something that's more your sound.

Any labels or artists that you hope to work with one day?

Sleepnet is my dream collab, also Ternion Sound, Billian, MoodyGood, Annix & Mefjus.

What's something that influences or inspires your music that's not music?

Definitely video games. Old-school sci-fi. I've been on a real tip of rewatching Alien, Terminator, and all those '80s action movies. All that stuff has a big influence on me. Their sound design was very cool, super-textured, and organic. Stuff like that. Also, more modern stuff like the new Alien Romulus and the new Dune movie, great sound design on those. Anything with big spaceships in it and the different ways that that can be interpreted. Dune was very muted and precise. Everything sounds extremely futuristic and clean and very efficient. Whereas Alien Romulus, everything sounds broken and botched together and it reflects the world really well. And I love that. Storytelling through sound is a big thing of mine. I’d say I've got a lot of that from old-school sci-fi or sci-fi that references '80s stuff. I'm a big fan of that.