Hobzee remembers sending Goldie a folder of tracks, heading out shopping, and coming home to a request for his phone number. The music would become Things Are Different Now, but he hadn’t heard it as an EP until Goldie made his selection.

In our conversation, he traces the route from early demo CDs and Silent Dust to the collaborations behind the Metalheadz release. There are studio setbacks, live bass and saxophone parts, and a Nina Simone song heard in BoJack Horseman that brought him back to making music as Hobzee.

Thinking back to your earliest productions as Hobzee, what was the first tune you felt ready to put your name to, and what gave you the confidence to send it out?

I sent my first demo CD out whilst I was at college in the early 2000s. That CD was sent to Kasra when he was starting Critical. My personal lore on that is he called me as I walked out of my final A-Level exam to say he was interested in a few tracks. I’ve definitely embellished the timeline of that call over the years, but it was pretty exciting, so when that didn’t work out, it did knock me and it was then another five years or so before I had my first release. The tracks were quite rough, so I certainly don’t blame him for not wanting to put them out!

The first Silent Dust album began as a Hobzee and Zyon Base project, before Marcus Intalex suggested a new name. What was happening in the music that made Silent Dust feel like a better fit?

Silent Dust was the title of the album, but I remember Marcus just simply not liking “Hobzee & Zyon Base” as artist names, and comparing them to something out of World of Warcraft! Which is completely fair. I actually really dislike the name Hobzee too!

Those tracks on that album were mostly 160–170 tempo and were produced with the listener in mind, rather than clubs. Most of them are short and don’t have second drops. I think you can trace the “cinematic” feel back to some of our tracks like 1000 Paper Cranes and Rain on Lens, but we doubled down on that, without the constraints of writing tracks to be in DJ sets. A general rule of thumb, though: Silent Dust tracks don't use breakbeats and tend to be a bit more synthy, although there are some exceptions to that rule now.

After working as Silent Dust, what drew you back to releasing as Hobzee? Was there a particular tune that helped you decide to use the name again?

BoJack Horseman is actually responsible for that! There is a scene at the end of season three that uses Stars by Nina Simone, and it’s such a moving song and scene that I immediately messaged Dan (Zyon Base) and said we need to sample this. Listening back, I don’t think we did it justice at all, but it got me back to making music as Hobzee again.

Hobzee and Zyon Base’s resulting track, A Little While, is the record he refers to above.

Things Are Different Now marks your first release on Metalheadz, with Goldie getting in touch after hearing your work on 31 Recordings. What happened next, and was there a particular tune you were keen for him to hear?

I had sent a few tracks which he liked and fed back on, but there wasn’t any talk of Metalheadz at that point. My PC packed up on me quite soon after that 31 EP. Although it felt disastrous at the time, it meant I had to start over, and I upgraded a lot of my setup and, more importantly, it forced me to look at how I was making music and also how to get the sound I wanted.

I remember Revox feeling like a Metalheadz track and also Edge Of The Sea, the title being a not-so-subtle nod to Goldie’s Beachdrifta. I put together about eight or nine tracks in a demo folder one morning, emailed the link over, went out shopping, got home and there was a response from Goldie asking for my number… sometimes it's a matter of right place, right time. If I’d sent them on a different day or time, they may have got buried amongst hundreds of other demos!

The EP took shape from a selection of tracks rather than being written as one project. When Goldie chose the final five, did any of his choices surprise you or make you hear the tracks differently?

I don’t think so. I remember listening back to the tracks he chose and realising that they actually worked really well together and there was a theme running through them all, which hadn’t really occurred to me previously. I certainly wasn’t thinking there was a ready-made EP amongst them when I sent the demo. As with most great A&R, it makes perfect sense with hindsight.

Edge Of The Sea and Sound Of Surprise both feature Uneven. How has the way you work together developed? Can you walk us through how an idea passed between you on one of these tracks?

I think both of those were started by Uneven, but would probably be unrecognisable compared to the final versions. This is why collaborations can be so great. You can spend hours with a loop and think it’s fine, but you send to someone else, and they can cut some things out and get to the essence of what you were actually trying to get at! That used to happen a lot with the Hobzee & Zyon Base/Silent Dust tracks. A good collaboration is usually about having the confidence to cut out a few things and say, “This bit is great, let’s work round that.” The process itself with Uneven is very easy. We’ll send audio over, add something over the top, and it will go back and forth, and then with input from both, one of us will finish the track (usually me as I tend to obsess over mixdowns!)

On the title track, you’re joined by Response and bass guitarist Rob Le Plar. How did Rob’s playing become part of the tune, and how did you and Response work with it?

We already had the bassline, which is an 808, a simple but effective line. I’d played around with a few bass guitar plugins to try and get something that would augment the 808 and act as a call and response, but I couldn't get it close to how I was hearing it in my head. Having worked with Rob already with Justice on Revox, I sent Rob the track with my plugin bass guitar as a guide and asked him to replace and fill in the gaps with his bass playing. A day later, he recorded and sent it over, and it worked perfectly.

Revox brings together you, Justice, and Callum Connell on saxophone. What do you remember most about making that track? I’d love to hear about a decision or unexpected turn that shaped the finished version.

Revox was one of the first tracks I worked on with my new setup. There was a lot to work with when I came into it already, but when Callum sent his sax recording, I knew it was something special. I cut up the whole recording and then began placing and layering over the top of what we already had and dropping certain parts out and adding new sections too. It’s possibly the biggest production I’ve been involved in. Hopefully we get to do it again soon!

You’re stranded on a desert island with one turntable, a generator, and one record. What’s it going to be?

I saw the Oasis Don’t Look Back in Anger documentary today, and as much as I already knew that without them and their music, I would never have had any ambition to start creating music myself, and despite my music sounding nothing like Oasis, it made me realise just how important they are to me. There are easily thousands of albums I could choose, but if I am going for Oasis, my choice would be The Masterplan, as I don’t think I could live without Acquiesce, Listen Up and Talk Tonight, although each of those songs would be pretty heart-wrenching, stranded on my own!

Thanks to Hobzee for taking the time to talk us through the records and the decisions behind them.

Photography by def0cused