As far as Peckham twenty-something Wbeeza is concerned ‘house’ means where you live and ‘garage’ where your car lives. Here is a man who steadfastly refuses to be pigeon-holed and yet, in recent months, has been billed over and over again as the saviour of traditional, Yank-style house music.
That, of course, is to do him an injustice. Released next month, Wbeeza’s debut album Void should put paid to such assumptions. Here is an album anchored by weighty polyrhythms closely aligned to those original, classic Detroit and Chicago records, yes, and injected with deep, soulful US house sentiment, but one that also cleverly pivots on everything from funk, acid and techno to hip-hop, Latin and freeform jazz. Void is as void suggests – without boundaries.
Our boy – real name Warren Brown - has been busy far longer than 2010 too. Wbeeza – pronounced ‘double-U-beeza’ (the result of friends filtering his real name through local street speak) – started playing around with music at the age of 14, writing lyrics and beat-boxing with friends, before taking things more seriously in his late teens. A couple of well received tracks eventually arrived in 2007 – Purr, Runners – before the beginnings of an association with Guy McCreery’s respected Third Ear imprint. Third Ear would release the trio of EPs – Heavystuff, City Shuffle, New Skank – that firmly slammed Wbeeza onto the underground music map last year. Void comes next.
“I’m a believer in sticking with a record label” Wbeeza offers. “Having a steady relationship enables me to better develop my ideas, my sounds, my shit. I don’t want to be jumping all over the place on different labels; and Third Ear let me get on and create.”
It’s very difficult to get Wbeeza to say anything specific about what it is exactly he’s creating. “I deal in feelings, you get me?” he stresses. “My music has to have a feeling; if I play back anything I’ve made and don’t feel like skipping through any part of it then I’m done… happy. I soak up a wide variety of music y’know; I’m a versatile producer. I’m basically revealing myself on Void.”
That may be so, but there’s no juice flowing on Wbeeza’s long list of musical influences. “When I was growing up I didn’t have a radio in my bedroom; I banned it for several years. My friends were like ‘why ain’t you listening to this show or that track’ but I was working on my own ideas. And I had five brothers and three sisters feeding me a wide range of sounds the whole time. It was all kicking off.”
As unique and impressively independent as Wbeeza’s sound is, it is more than clear that ‘old-skool’ American house and techno are two of its major inspirations. Wbeeza has twisted, turned and re-worked those genres in line with his very distinct production ideas, but there they still stand as key influences. “Let’s just say that a lot of that early club stuff had a feeling” he mischievously answers. “My own music is taking it back to the raw… kicks, snares, raw elements, just feelings….”
Maybe he can tell us more about his current influences? It’s fair to say Wbeeza is a major influence to some pretty heavyweight club names – big fans include Ame, Dixon, Steve Bug, Stacey Pullen and Michel Cleis. “My brothers love pinning themselves to certain records” he laughs, “but I try hard to avoid that. There’s a lot of people out there making everything from house to hip-hop which I like, but you won’t get names from me. I want to be known for me and for the things I do next.”
It’s definitely a case of ‘so far, so good’, but surely there are challenges ahead? Wbeeza stands alone among his inner city London peers, whose sonic cocktail of choice remains, chaotically so, grime, dubstep and bumped-up urban garage. “It’s a good thing y’know, because I think it’s healthy to have to struggle” he ponders. “Even if I was making grime or whatever, there’d be a lot of fierce competition within that one scene. It makes no difference what I’m making; but then me having some artistic distance is a good thing. I’m making music that people of my generation don’t make or know much about. I enjoy that position.”
To Wbeeza’s mind, having a decent head-start on the music-making pack is vital. So much so that the music he creates is often a couple of years old before it finally arrives; the implication being that he’s already on to (and planning) the next big thing: “I like to be ahead of the game. A track I’m working on today probably won’t get released until late next year; the stuff on Void is the result of studio-time as far back as 06.”
Void isn’t a consciously-planned and constructed work; it is the result of over four years of producing standalone tracks, edits, performance tools and even random studio jams. “I think that this approach works” he comments. “It’s a bunch of tracks that I was particularly feeling; so I put them together. It adds an edge, but it’s still a window into my soul. Maybe I will properly map out my next album, who knows? I try not to bog myself down; I just want to concentrate on developing my sound and sharing it with more and more people.”
The current state of clubland hardly fills Wbeeza with confidence but he remains resolutely focussed on his own battleplan. He’s aware that this will involve more time away from the studio than, ideally, he’d like. “It’s terrible man, really terrible,” he claims. “There’s a lot of young kids, younger than me, who are trying to make stuff but they haven’t got a clue; it’s flat. Me, I want to be known as a real producer. But there will have to be a balance; I mean I’ll need to do more shows and put myself directly in front of people, if I’m to fuel the interest in the studio stuff.”
And when he does take to the stage, you can forget about a simple DJ set-up: “I am performing a bit more regularly now but I ain’t no DJ. It’s bigger than that; it’s an extension of what I do in Greenwich [where his studio is based.] It’s a proper live show, with original drums, and sounds; anyone can play other people’s records, this is a different platform bro. It’s some real shit when it’s all kicking off.”
Wbeeza’s debut album Void is released November 22 on Third Ear Recordings.
