Monologues.

Tracklist:

Behling & Simpson - Salsa Verde

Behling & Simpson - Never Knew

Behling & Simpson - Muted

Kerri Chandler - Peace Of My Mind (Behling & Simpson remix)

Seka - Hot (Behling & Simpson remix)

Behling & Simpson - In The Sky

Behling & Simpson ft Tita Lau - Can’t Find Love

Behling & Simpson - Don’t Give Up

Behling & Simpson - Kalypso

Behling & Simpson - All Night Long

Behling & Simpson ft Danni Moore - What Did I Do

Behling & Simpson - Lucin

Behling & Simpson - Livin’

Behling & Simpson - Soportando

With a background in what some might term ‘bass music’, prolific Bristol duo Behling & Simpson have infused the city’s house sound with a hefty dose of the local music heritage. Hear trip-hop and hip-hop in their fat, break-heavy percussion section; reggae soundsystem and jungle in their low end; and indeed the disco vein that local types like their frequent benefactors Futureboogie have helped to make a sonic character of the city in recent years. Theirs is a truly British take on house music, slowed-down, chugging and laden with lashings of sub and bass weight. Their ridiculous work rate has seen their distinctive sound grace Exploited, 2020 Midnight Visions, Apple Pips and Tru Thoughts, not to mention extensive work under other monikers. This truly exclusive Monologues. mix is wall-to-wall unreleased material, clearly showing that they’ve got plenty more sumptuous grooves up their sleeve.

*How would you describe your sound?*

Probably as drum-heavy house music, influenced by disco, techno, R&B and soul.  Slowish.

*What and who inspires you and influences your sound?*

Our biggest influences over the years have tended to be things with great drums; jungle, garage, breakstep, New York house, Neptunes beats, crunchy old funk records from back in the day.  Our biggest inspirations would be people like Kenny Dope and DJ Zinc - people who have managed to combine originality with the perseverance required to stay relevant for 20 years or more.  

And the search for the perfect groove.  Which sounds cheesy but we both believe that a good drum track should ’sing’, and be perfectly listenable for 6 minutes on its own.  If we ever write that groove I hope we’d have the confidence to just roll it out for as long as possible.

*Can you tell us a little about this mix and what it means to you?*

This mix is actually kind of significant (for us) in a few ways.  It’s comprised entirely of unreleased tracks, and to an extent spans the full B&S canon - the first track we ever wrote as B&S is in there, as is a tune we wrote for an ultimately shelved Behling & Simpson album a few years back.   There’s one of our Kerri Chandler remixes (due out September on Madhouse, plug plug), of which we are inordinately proud, and a few tracks we’ve written over the last few months which we’ve road-tested in clubs but not used in any mixes.  

Some of these beats stray somewhat from the R&B inflected stuff that has been most popular for us, but they’re still generally loose and percussive and disco-tinged.  We were really excited to discover the vocal talents of Tita Lau (on ‘Can’t Find Love’) and chuffed to work with Danni Moore from Crazy P (on ‘What Did I Do’), so it’s been really interesting to piece all this stuff together into one slightly narcissistic whole, and we’d like to think it’s pretty coherent.

It also reflects our DJ sets in a way; obviously tracks like ‘Salsa Verde’ wouldn’t get played in a club, but in general we’ve always been writing stuff that we wanted to hear and couldn’t find anywhere.  And our DJ sets are frequently an extension of that - we want to give an exposition of where our heads are at, and if we can’t find enough tunes by other people then we’ll just write our own and play those instead.  So our sets are usually full of new and unreleased stuff.