Subb-an Interview: Educate and inspire

Birmingham raised Ashique Subhan aka Subb-an was always one of those music obsessed kids. After trying to push himself as a DJ from an early age, he received the advice that he should go into music production and ended up on a sound engineering and multimedia course.

Somewhere around a decade ago he compiled some of his early, minimal house tracks and passed them to Adam Shelton from the then new Below night. Held in the city's now famous Rainbow Venues, Below was a high spirited Sunday day and night party with a dedicated following from much further afield than just Birmingham, and resident Shelton was suitably impressed with the music young Ashique had passed to him.

Shelton would go on to invite Ashique to perform his material live at the party, eventually leading to him becoming a live resident for Below. Shelton would also pass the material to several interested ears in the industry, leading to his first releases as Subb-an.

As Below gradually established itself as one of the truly great parties happening in the UK at that time, Shelton and Subb-an decided the next step would be to launch a record label. Their One Records debuted in 2009 with a co-production between the two called 'The Musik EP'. They have since gone on to release music by the likes of Alex Arnout, Jordan Peak, Samu.l, DJ W!ld and John Dimas, the label and their careers extending beyond the repute and lifespan of Below.

Subb-an has lived in Berlin now for some six years and has established himself as the DJ he was before emerging as a live performer. His music productions are his full time job and he has gone on to work with a series of vocalists and record for Crosstown rebels, 20:20 Vision, Silver Network, Visionquest and Cabinet plus remixes for Strictly Rhythm, Hot Creations and BPitch Control.

We spoke to the man himself about his early career, production, his hometown and much more before his date for in Birmingham for Blackdot presents Used & Abused.

Why did you choose to study sound engineering and multimedia and not music?

Because I come from more of a production background. I got into music first through turntables and that progressed into learning how to produce music.

There was never that musical element in my background growing up. No one in my family was a musician and I never had any formal musical training. It's not my background and at that time, at that age, I never thought how important that might be with the kind of music I was making.

So, I just went down the direction of sound engineering, the more technical side of music production. The course covered everything from doing foley, sound in film, sound programming – software, to the basics of setting up a studio, all of those different sorts of modules.

Are there any of the modules that you did that weren't necessarily applicable to making dance music that nevertheless you've drawn from in your music making since?

Yes. Doing the sound for film was great. Before I went to university I was never really aware of foley or creating sound for images and, in a way, that gave me something to think about as an alternative, if I didn't always want to work in the dance music industry.

When you have to score something, such as a short film or an advert, the arrangement of the music you make would be different to the formula that you would use for a dance track. Sometimes it's a really good idea to sit down with a bit of footage. Rather than just going in the studio and jamming, it's quite good sometimes to have a visual aid. Once you take that aid away and you're just left with the music, it can be very interesting. 

What were your clubbing experiences like before you went to Below?

I used to be in fabric every weekend. I would go there almost every week from being the age of 15 or 16. Once I discovered it, I was in there every Saturday. I would get the train down from Birmingham or friends would drive. It became a religious type thing, just being schooled by what Terry and Craig were playing. I did that for a good few years.

Aside from that it was events like The Warehouse Project. Those were my early rave days. 

How was Below different, if at all?

Below was different in the sense that, fabric is a club, The Warehouse Project is an event and Below was a party. I'm not saying that fabric and The Warehouse Project weren't parties, but Below was a very intimate event, very much a family, a group of people who liked to have a rave on a Sunday.

It was also different because it was a Sunday. That was something I'd never experienced before. I first went when I was 18. I guess Sunday parties are a bit of a thing now, but back then it was quite fresh. You only really had Secretsundaze who were doing anything at that time that was nationally recognised on a Sunday.

I think that, along with the people who actually went, was one of the big reasons of the success of the party. It was unique, to go raving on a Sunday, it was perfect. It wasn't like everyone was cracking on from the Saturday before, you'd get up fresh, get down and be charged, ready to go. Raving, outside, in the daytime, in Birmingham, it was fresh.

Do you miss those parties and what, if anything, has now taken up the reins in Birmingham?

I miss them hugely. I miss the banter. I used to live at The Rainbow. That was my life for years. We used to party from Sunday right through to Wednesday sometimes and we'd have free reign of the pub to do what we wanted, with all of our close mates from all across the country.

We'd have at least 100 cracking on in the pub after Below, in every single room. There'd be people in the courtyard, people upstairs, it was crazy. Just a group of really good mates. That was 10 years ago and obviously people get older, they move on and that was why Below finished really, because it was the people who made the party and who made the reason for the party. 

But I do miss that massively. Without wanting to sound pessimistic, I do feel like I've never experienced that kind of level of partying and cracking on since then. I guess it was just the age I was at, I didn't have anything to worry about. It was a really special time, which I didn't ever actually realise at the time. I do reminisce about it with friends, it was a great time, a great thing to be part of. 

Now The Rainbow is a very big venue, it has lots of different spots. Back then it was just a small Victorian boozer where we did parties. Now it's one of the UK's biggest venues. 

I do feel fortunate to still have a lot of friends in Birmingham who are still pushing good sounds. I've got friends who run a party called Cloak N Dagger, which is a Sunday party who bring down good artists. It's small, but it's people playing good music. There's another party called Evolve who've had people like Jan Krueger and Nicolas Lutz come and play. People like Lewis Oxley are doing really well and there's a lot of great record collectors there, so there are a lot of people bringing good music to the city. 

I think that sometimes, when a night in a city ends, it can have educated people and inspire them to go on to do their own things. I think since Below finished there are still some really good options in the city. 

You said at the start of that answer that you really missed the banter. What's the banter like in Berlin? I have German friends. They are not known for their banter. 

Banter's just there if you're with the right people at the right time. I've got a good group of friends here, so when we choose to go out it can get a bit silly. I guess the banter is slightly different.

Berlin's such a different place, it's so multicultural, so multi-ethnic. It's very diverse and there's always lots of tourists here. I always have a good laugh here and because there's always lots of tourists around, you'll always see a good group to latch onto if you're up for having some fun. 

Are you saying there'd be no laughter and fun in Berlin if it wasn't so international and full of tourists?

No, I'm not saying that! [laughs] I'm just saying it helps!

Isn't it inevitable that club nights and even club venues themselves have a limited shelf life? Isn't one of the best things about the clubbing scene that it is constantly rejuvenating itself and remains in the hands of passionate youth?

Yeah, totally. You've seen right down the timeline from everywhere like the Paradise Garage right up until clubs like The End or fabric that time and time again, stuff moves on and I think that continuous movement, whatever it is that's forced a club to shut or a party to finish, is what keeps things fresh and keeps things progressing. Otherwise it wouldn't be interesting.

Whether it's young people pushing new movements, or new projects or people being forced into doing something, I think without that things could possibly get stagnant. I think it's really important that you get a fresh injection of life every now and again. You can never draw on a negative with anything like that, I don't think. Cliched as it sounds, but everything happens for a reason, doesn't it?

What was the music like that you first passed to Adam Shelton?

They were slightly more minimal based. At the time I gave them to Adam, I remember somehow Matt Tolfrey got hold of them, Damian Lazarus got hold of them and I got a call from Damian to go down to the Crosstown Rebels offices in Shoreditch. I went to meet him and that started the relationship I have with him. I was very young and very surprised to get a call from him, it wasn't even on the agenda.

It was kinda that time when stuff would get passed about. I remember Paul Woolford called me and told me and said he'd been playing one of the tracks. It was an exciting time. Tolfrey asked if he could sign some of the tracks and he signed one called 'Italia'.

We got the test pressings through and I remember going to see Richie Hawtin play in Leeds at The Mint Club and I made a point of waiting round so that I could go up and give him a copy. I was waiting for him to finish playing and half way through the set he played the track, so afterwards I asked him how he got it. He just said someone had passed it down to him in Miami about three months ago and he'd played it in every set since. Things like that were such a surprise.

I think Tolfrey actually wants to re-release it. But it's very different to what I'm doing now. It was big room, kinda minimal stuff, just what I was feeling at the time. I kinda feel that with the music I was making back then, there really was no agenda. Now I'm a bit more reserved with what I'm doing and what I put out. I maybe now sometimes over think things. Back then it was just whatever came out. I have to try and remember back to that and still try and see if I can find that carefree approach. 

Had you always DJ'd as well as made music?

Yeah, I bought a really shit, second hand paid of Newmark belt drives when I was 12 for £100 when it was my birthday. My mum set them up for me which, when I look back, I'm pretty surprised she was able to do. I just taught myself and started to collect records, which became a bit of an unhealthy obsession.

I went from being a bit of a knob who was always out with his mates, to being on the decks every day. I did a few jobs just to make sure I could get as many records as I could. I was a kitchen porter, I had a glass collecting job and two paper rounds aged 13/14, just to get every penny I could for tunes. I'd go shopping on a Saturday and get what I could. 

What were the first tracks that you were buying?

It was all dance music. At the time I would listen to all the Essential Mixes. I didn't really know what I was looking for or what to buy, any artists. It could have been anything from a Defected release to something by Sasha, whatever. I wasn't playing hip hop or anything like that.

My sister used to listen to hip hop and garage and I always remember her talking to my mum downstairs and hearing, “What are those records Ash has been buying? It's all that dance music stuff!” I got that a lot at that age. I was luckily always in the popular group at school and never had any problems, but a lot of people used to take the piss out of the fact I was into dance music. My mates would come up to me and do a rave dance. 

After a few years of messing around like that I sent a CD to a guy who worked at a DJ agency and I called him a week later and he said, “It's cool, you're obviously dedicated in what you want to do, but to get yourself noticed you need to be making music.” That was when I started to produce. And I hated it for years. But it was something that I dedicated time to and it's obviously paid off. It's one of those things that I look back at as a really crucial piece of advice someone gave me. 

If the producing initially was a means to an end to get yourself noticed as a DJ then why, after establishing yourself, did you choose to do your biggest, first global tour in 2014 as a live artist?

When Adam first booked me for The Rainbow he really liked the idea of having a resident who could play live. He thought that brought something new and fresh to the party and that seemed to work quite well over all my UK bookings. Promoters seemed to take to it quite a bit, so I did it for quite a while. It was a plus point to getting bookings.

After a while I remembered back to where I started and what it was I wanted to do, so before I got branded as being just a live artist I wanted to make sure people knew I DJ'd as well. A lot of people still think of me more as a producer, but actually I got into this by buying records. 

Essentially producing was a means to end in the very early stages but like collecting records it became an obsession, something I loved doing. It just took time before I understood it properly. Once I could get down something that I actually liked, I started to enjoy it hugely. In regards to doing the live tour, I simply had a lot of material at that time that I wanted to play and test out. 

What kinds of sounds were responsible for getting you into electronic music? Was it just the Essential Mixes?

They had a heavy influence on me, for sure. I used to listen to them most weeks. I couldn't got to clubs at that age, see? I used to get really frustrated every weekend just being at home, those horrible teen years where you're not young enough to not know what's going on, but you're too young to do the stuff you want to do.

That's when I just had to put the hours in, I realised I had this time in which I could be getting on with it, while I had to wait a few years. But, yeah, I guess it was all predominantly through the radio. 

Skiddle interviewed Adam Shelton this year and we said to him that there's less of an American house influence in the collaborations he does with you than in his solo stuff. Would you agree? Is American house much more of an influence on him than you?

It's definitely much more of Adam's background, from when he first started buying records. He's got an extensive record collection. But it's not something that I'm not into. I like it as well and I love working with Adam. We'd go through his whole collection and go through loads of his tracks for ideas.

But I would definitely say that comes more from Adam's side. He will add the creative side of that sound and I'll come in with more production techniques of how we can get the jam together. It's a good combination. 

What releases on One Records are you most proud of?

Obviously I'm proud of the whole label, but the latest release by Yamen & EDA I love. We've just redesigned the branding, made it a bit more simple, really changed the artwork and at the same time we launched our Instagram account.

There's a great release by Alex Arnout called 'Vanishing Point' that I love. The 'Lime And Pink' track by Wadsworth was great and the first release, by Adam and me, was a very proud moment. The John Dimas one.... there's a lot of great stuff on the label. But really I'm just proud of the whole thing.

I'm really happy we started it, I think we started it at the right time. I think it was a great extension to what we were doing then, a platform for our sound and for the crew we're hanging round with. 

Comparing the stuff you did at the start of your career to some of the later stuff, one element that seems to have come more into focus is a use of vocals and vocalists. 

I've always enjoyed working with vocalists. It's always nice to have someone else in the studio and I've been lucky enough to find some really great artists to work with. In fact I've just been working with two new ones I met in Berlin, one called Isis and one called Ahmed. They come from a different angle and it's so much fun.

You sit there, record a load of stuff and then just pick out what you like. I feel like maybe some other people struggle, I always get asked where do you find your vocalists? But you just keep your ears open and ask around. That's one of the best things about being in Berlin. I met these two just through people I know here. It's a great city to utilise like that.

So what's coming up for you?

The current release on One Records is 'Temporis' by Yamen & Eda and the next will be 'Smile' from Shaun Reeves & Tuccillo with a remix form The Mole. We also have something from Bobby O'Donnell from The Mint Club that has a really good remix by John Dimas.

Then there'll be another release by myself, featuring Isis, that has a remix by Adam. I just had my release on Cabinet, which was really great, very well received. I've got an EP coming on a label called Blind Box with a Dana Ruh remix, which is coming in October. Also a remix for 20:20 Vision.

I'm sitting on about 10 or 15 new tracks at the minute and I've just placed a few, but I can't say where until it's all sorted, but two different labels and both are exciting projects.

Subb-an plays Rainbow Venues' Blackdot for Used & Abused on Friday 9th December.

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