Chase and Status: 'What Came Before', What's Happening Now, And What's Coming Next [Interview]

Saul Milton and Will Kennard, better known by their DJ duo alias, Chase and Status, are arguably one of the best British acts of the last twenty years. Widely regarded as trailblazers in the industry for constantly remaining ahead of their time through incredible projects, whilst also regularly dominating each sub-genre of electronic music they delve into, the London-based duo burst on to the scene in 2003, and have never looked back since.

Having partied through the evolution of electronic music in the UK, inspired through the sensation that was pirate radio, the duo, who formed during their time at Manchester University used these past experience to comprehend what partygoers and ravers want and ultimately crave from the scene. As a result of these experiences, each body of work they produced has been created with the same exceptional level of consistency that has proved pivotal in ensuring they always remained at the very top of the music game.

Now back with their 6th studio album ‘What Came Before’, scheduled to be launched with a special event at London’s famous KOKO Camden venue, Chase and Status talk to New Wave Magazine about how they got to where they are now, their special connection with the fans, working with the likes of Pip Millett, Backroad Gee, and Unknown T on the new album, and what they have planned going forward:

So, you guys met at Manchester University in 2003, when you started, did you ever think you would go on to achieve what you have or was it just two mates hanging out and making music for fun?

Yeah, we actually met in London before Manchester, it's a common mistake. I mean, we sort of became friends in 97/98, we met each other in London through mutual raving friends, bedroom DJ friends, and bumping into each other in clubs, and then lost touch a little bit and ended up coincidentally in Manchester together, bumped into each other again and thought, ‘Oh right, you know, we're still completely obsessed with drum and bass and dance music and DJing’, and so then used Manchester as a place to start taking things seriously, it was always just about following our passion, there was nothing strategic or thought out, it was just that we were so obsessed, massively into the different scenes of Drum and Bass, and then there was the kind of early breakbeat stuff that was happening, which turned into Dubstep and that kind of exciting era as well. We were just trying to get into the scene that we loved, and we were just doing anything to make that happen. We began promoting nights, we were trying to befriend people in record shops who might be bigger DJs, we were trying to hang out backstage at little clubs to give people CDs, but then we realised that none of that was working, so we started making music because it's not enough to be a DJ, everyone's a good DJ, we needed our own beats to get a name, and that's why we started making music really, just to be able to play our own tunes and not just everyone else's, and then just bit by bit, one door opens and you kind of push through it, and then you find a whole bunch of new people and another challenge comes up. So yeah, it was a fun journey, and it still is, but it was really exciting because it was all completely new.

So, actually going back to dubstep, obviously, one of the pioneers of Dubstep was Skream. I recently saw he tweeted that the first 10 years of your career are actually the easiest, it's how you go about the next 10 that really sort of define you, what do you think about this statement?

Yeah, definitely remaining relevant is difficult in today's age, and just generally. Electronic music is predominantly a young scene, there's raving, clubbing and festivals, and the crowd is normally younger, so the first 10 years, you are probably the same age, you carry the same mindset as a lot of your fans, and then hopefully you bring new fans on board, but suddenly you find yourself maybe not in the same mindset as some of those fans, so, I get what he's saying. Someone actually asked a friend of mine this recently, and he's a big rapper, he gave a great answer - He said the way you stay relevant is by not being a hater, and it's so true. All these young people will start coming through, and you might feel threatened by these new DJs or producers or artists and you think ‘Nah, you know, I'm not really into this new thing that's happening’, because it sort of threatens your thing or you feel you don't understand it, or maybe it's actually better than you, and just having the opposite view and embracing new generations of people coming through and reaching out and wanting to work with them, and acknowledging that there will always be new people doing different things and better things than you, I just love that answer. Just don't be a hater for one you know, don't get bitter, don't get old, and love the new flex, you know what I mean? Even if you don't understand all of it, be positive and try and understand it. I think that has helped us a little bit, we've always tried to embrace the new things that are coming through and the new people in the scene.

Yeah, of course. And so, strongly regarded as pioneers in the modern-day Drum and Bass scene and essentially the UK music scene altogether, who were your musical influences growing up?

Well, we grew up on a bunch of different stuff, which is probably evident in some of our music. Growing up the Hip-Hop scene in America was massive, so I was a massive Hip-Hop head and turntablists, wanting to be a scratch DJ and go into DMC competitions, I had to have every record, and I was obsessed with the East Coast Hip-Hop movement in America. Saul was more of a Grunge fan when I met him, big into Nirvana and bands like that, and he's a really good guitarist to be fair. Originally when I met him there was a big kind of Grunge scene so that was a big influence but also undoubtedly living in London, you just couldn't escape the kind of pirate radio scene and the kind of early sounds of Jungle, Hardcore and ravey weird music happening on a really underground level, and I just almost stumbled across it accidentally from literally hearing stuff on the radio at maybe 14 or 15 and thinking, ‘Wow, what’s this, this isn't Radio 1 or Capital’, and then, obviously coming across acts like the Prodigy, and the music videos on MTV and cable and just being like, ‘What the actual fuck is this’, they encapsulated the Grunge scene that we love, they encapsulated the Hip-Hop scene, but then they just took it to this whole other place of mixing that with Rave, and Warehouse, and Dance, and, it's just unbelievably original and incredible, so probably the most influential artists, for us are the Prodigy like almost everyone else.

That's really interesting, because with the two of you fusing together, you can sort of feel the Grunge and the Hip-Hop together in Chase and Status, so that's really interesting to hear. And so, in regard to the artists that you worked with, you know, the acts are just incredible. I can see the Rihanna plaque behind you, the list is almost endless in terms of who you've worked with, but is there anyone that you've worked with that actually really surprised you in terms of how talented they are?

Well, I mean, kind of not surprised because I'd like to think most of the people we work with, we already think they're awesome, right? So, it's not like we're in a room with people that we think aren't great, and then they are great, and we get surprised. But I mean, just thinking recently because there's so many names and stories, but in recent times, we did a track on our new album with a young female British singer called Pip Millett, who's coming through quite massively, we loved a couple of her tracks, so we asked if she would be up for collaborating, and she was – so, she came down, and she just blew us away. Her whole kind of work process, we're in this big studio in London, and she just rolled in on her own, got the train down, and we made these two beats that we thought might suit her, and luckily, she liked them. Lots of people work in different ways in terms writing songs, so she hadn't prepared anything, and she just said, ‘Yeah, okay, I've got them. Can you just give me half an hour’ sort of thing - she got her notepad out and just sat there quietly listening, and we were thinking, ‘Oh God, is she bored’ and then just popped up half an hour later, ‘Okay, ready to record’ and we thought maybe she's just written a couple of lines and just wants to try them out, and she just jumped in the booth and sang these two songs basically one after the other. She recorded both, one of them that made our album, the other made it on hers, but they're both absolutely ridiculous and just the humility and classiness of it just to be able to sort of quietly go, ‘Oh, you know, I think I've got something’, and for it to be that good after such a short space of time, especially as we’d never met, you know, sometimes that's awkward, you don't know someone and you’re in a new session… we were really blown away by her talent, and I'm so proud that she's on our record, and I think she's gonna go on to become a superstar, which is great.

That’s amazing. Is there anyone you've yet to work with that you really want to?

Yeah, there is, there's so many British artists coming through now who are just so sick, particularly in the rap scene. I mean, Dave is someone who just oozes class and talent, and I think we've managed to work with a lot of rappers, some young ones, and a lot of the established ones and grime MCs, but Dave, he really is someone I'd love to chat with one day, definitely.

Wow, that is exciting. And there's so many occasions where you have collaborated with up-and-coming global talents who are on the verge of breaking it big and just giving them a lift up, is that something that you sort of pride yourself and doing?

Yeah, a little bit. I mean those people go on and do their thing and become successful because of who they are, and it's awesome to be part of that journey, and to see it grow from the start. Someone like Tom Grennan's a nice example, the session we did with him was almost one of the first studio sessions he’d done, and he was very young, and I guess more inexperienced in big studios, and it's so cool to have just had a piece in his journey, and now see him on massive stages everywhere with a huge fan base and that’s just lovely, you know, bumping into him at parties or backstage somewhere, it’s just lovely, and all the people that we work with, we’re very thankful. But for us, it's a selfish thing as well man, you know, finding new talent to work with is exciting, we want to work with new voices that have never been heard before, because we want to make stuff that sounds fresh. So, it's almost a selfish thing as well as we're not just trying to help everyone launch a career and say, ‘We did that!’, you know, when we hear a voice, and it's different, and it has something about it, it doesn't matter if they've never released anything or if they have made it, we just want to work with that person, and I think that's what sort of connects the people we try and work with is just the uniqueness in their voice.

That's amazing. And so, back in November, you invited 1,000 Chase and Status fans down to Oval Space, with those present forming the cover for your upcoming album. How important are your fans, and how does it feel to have such a special connection with them like that?

Oh, well, I mean, obviously, our fans are the reason we do what we do and why we're able to, and so like all artists, you'd be nothing without your fan base. I think we were also lucky to have fans that are kind of cross generations now, you know, the fact that age range in the crowd now can be quite varied is awesome. You often hear about it when we meet younger fans, they say, ‘Oh, my dad, or my older brother are huge fans of yours’, and that's a real compliment to have that. So yeah, that was a great moment that show, and the artwork that resulted in it, you know, nearly every one of those people in the room is going to be on that artwork, and it's probably my favourite artwork ever done, and it was a wonderful moment to be able to do that. The night itself was electric because everyone knew why they were there and that there was a chance to put this moment down in history, and we sort of said can you not bring phones and stuff just to keep the night as pure as possible, so it really was electric. The photo that we've ended up using really sums it up I think and yeah, for me I'm I feel very humbled and privileged to have people like that who want to be part of our journey, and I hope it's actually a sight to them when they see it.

That must have been a seriously special night?

Yeah, it was it was proper electrical.

So, you've had some really incredible bodies of work, you know, RTRN II JUNGLE, your Grime project London Bars, and now with the upcoming album, you've kind of gone full circle back to your Drum and Bass roots, is there quite a nostalgic feeling returning to where it all started?

Yeah, I think this project was definitely about that, we took some time out during the pandemic, just like everyone did, and we kind of just reflected on our career really, thinking how lucky we are, and how many amazing experiences we've had, whether that's every show we've done, every collaboration, every song we've released, every studio session, every interaction with someone, every row, every hug, literally all of these moments, and it kind of started to feel like we've come full circle through all those moments and got to a point where we thought, let's lean on that, let's use that, all of that energy to start something new and something fresh, and that's where the title, ‘What Came Before’ came from. It was everything that came before and what comes next kind of thing, and we just we love the way it resonated. I think musically, as well, we got to a point where we were making music, almost like it was our first album again, without really a care in the world, and just not thinking too much about what people are thinking, or what the label thinks, or just pure unadulterated kind of passion of making music again, which is sometimes hard, you can lose that along the way, like Skream said, it's not easy to always have that, that feeling of newness in your energy, you know what I mean? When you've been doing it a long time, and I think we've suddenly felt that energy come back a lot. It was kind of because of what happened before sort of gave us this chance to do something new, and yeah, it's so naturally strong. There’s a lot of a lot of talent base there, but there's other stars as well that I think will be really exciting. When we play live again, we're bringing back the live band which we haven't done for like three or four years now - we sort of took a pause from that, because we'd done that a lot and we felt it might get stale if we just keep doing festivals and stuff, so we stopped that in 2018. And now we've made this album very much with that kind of thought, you know, not just Club/DJ culture, but just trying to be a bit bigger, like you talked about the Grunge and the band thing as well, and so I think this album would translate in that realm. So, we are bringing the live band back with the new show this year, and doing some festivals and touring, so that will be really, really exciting too.

I feel like you've always been present with the times, you know, when you did your London Bars, that was when Grime was really beginning to sort of emerge in the UK, and then you obviously did your RTRN II JUNGLE, that was when Jungle was becoming a big thing again in the UK, and now there’s so many great bands in the UK, is this something you consciously try and do?

We've never consciously sort of looked at what's happening, because I think by the time you've realised what's popping off, and then you do it and sort of jump on that bandwagon, you're basically going to be too late already. I think the RTRN II JUNGLE idea, again it wasn't because people are sort of making more Jungle stuff, if anything, I felt like people weren't making enough when we came up with that concept, and we missed that vibe in Drum and Bass, that kind of more Jungle influence that was slightly missing, so we started this project and that's why we called it that. But yeah, there are lots of wicked bands at the moment, but it was literally just something that we knew we wanted to bring back and the timing now felt right to kind of, like I said, look back at everything we've done before including building up this production of a live band. And then also you know, the RTRN II JUNGLE project was DJ culture, right? It was about DJing in clubs and that rawness and so, we didn't want to just do that again, and I think just make something that wasn’t just Drum and Bass, I think that was kind of was the reason why.

Ah, okay. And so, in one of your latest singles ‘Don't Be Scared’ I read the vocals were recorded back in 2010, and there’s a real tribal feel to them but obviously, your single ‘No Problem’ that was released in 2011 also had a serious tribal feel to it, were you going through a big tribal phase during this time?

Yeah, I think we always go through tribal phases, man. It's the same vocalist as well, Takura did both of those tracks, and around that time we were doing loads of awesome stuff with him, and we had that awesome vocal on ‘Don’t Be Scared’ and we just couldn't make it work on a beat, and it was such a good vocal, we didn’t want to waste it on some kind of shit beat so it was one of those nice examples of don't ever throw stuff away, and kind of keep your old hard drives, and keep your old demos and ideas and be organised as a producer because you never know when they're going to come up, so 12 years later that vocal has suddenly become a really important record on our next album and it kickstarted the whole sort of feeling for the record, so yeah, it was. But yeah, tribal music man, I mean just the energy you know, whether it's tribal House or African music or music from other parts of the world anything with a tribal kind of energy you know, which a lot of Drum and Bass has in the percussion and the drums and the energy and we're big into drums regardless, so yeah, I think it runs through a lot a lot of music.

And aside from as you said your collaboration with the Pip Millett, Takura and BackRoad Gee, are there any other collaborations on the album you can tell us about?

Yeah, so there is a big Jamaican artist called Popcaan who we did a record with which is really cool, another big young artist coming through who's pretty mega at the moment called Unknown T from the Rap and Drill scene doing super cool stuff, we did a record with him which doesn't sound like anything else really, which is super cool. I mean Takura has obviously been on there and IRAH as well, he's this amazing MC that we work with a lot and he wrote a song with us called ‘Program’, and he's on it a lot as well. Yeah, there's a nice mix, there's a really nice mix of some established names and a lot of really young up and coming names. But you know, nearly all British and that's what we love, we love working with other British artists because I guess we resonate really well with them, and there's always just a such a great energy. But yeah, proud of the features and I think everyone's bought something really a bit different. It's just so cool to be able to work with everyone from a Pip Millett to an Unknown T, to Popcaan and yeah, real variety there, so it's been really cool.

That is so exciting. Looking at the new music, I would say in ‘What Came Before’, you tried to capture the emotion and feelings of positive vibrations, catharsis, escapism and liberation, and these are the sort of feelings that you get when you're actually in the rave and dance floor, but how do you convey these feelings and actually translate them into music?

Well, you know, you just have to put your mind in those moments, I think it's hard to do that if you've never been in the dance, or never experienced that moment in a club or a festival or rave or party or whatever, and you've never had, you know, the epiphany moment or many epiphany moments over the years when something's happened and a certain song has happened, these magical moments in nightlife, dance, music, things like that, and that's why we all kind of do what we do, because it's that memory deeply embedded into your soul, almost of all those words mentioned. And so when you're sitting at your computer, whether it's in your pants in your home setup or in a nice fancy recording studio, you're just always trying to search back to that to that feeling in that place. It was tough during lockdown making this record without being able to go out and test stuff out and see if what we were making was doing that, and that's what we use, we're very lucky as DJ’s, we can reach out when you make a little demo, test it out on Friday night and get an instant bit of feedback from the crowd, which is very honest, because it's not your friend telling you you're sick, you know. If the crowd don't feel that, they don't feel it, and you can go back and rethink, so that was the biggest challenge for this album, we didn't really have that kind of feedback loop to and so I guess that's really drawn down into those memories, those 15 years that we've had DJing and really remembering the spirit and the vibe of what we're trying to put out there, so that took a lot of focus. And I guess, without maybe all of that to lean back on, maybe we wouldn't have been able to sort of write this music that we did, so I'm grateful for that.

That's brilliant. And obviously, it's recently announced you’re headlining Parklife along with various other UK festivals and Monegros Desert festival in Spain. How excited are you to see how these huge audiences react to the new album?

Yeah, massively. I mean, that's why we do it and you're always nervous of new music because you know, your well-known music will probably go down pretty well, but it's always like ‘Okay, here we go, here's the new one everyone’ and you know when you're at a concert and the thing is like… right, we're gonna play a new one and everyone kind of goes ‘Oh, fucking hell. Play the hits’ because that's what you really want to see at a show, but yeah, I can't wait and as I said a lot of those festivals we're back with the bands, and that is exciting because I think DJing, we are DJs first and foremost really, but the energy that you get and the intensity from a live performance is unmatched really, and we're lucky to be able to do both, but as I said it's been a while since we've done live, and so just to get back out there, with the drums and singers in a proper production is going to be nuts, and I can't actually wait, it's going to be really special and I'm just very grateful to still be doing it.

How do you go about intertwining the new songs with the old?

Well, I mean, it just depends, man. We change the setlist a bit depending on the show and the country or the festival or whatever it is, but you know, we would rarely play a whole new album, you pick the moments that you think work and you curate a setlist, DJing is a bit more on the fly, so, you're feeling out the crowd, and it’s like ‘Okay, that's not working, let’s go down this route’, whereas live is a bit more like ‘Okay, this is the setlist… fingers crossed’, because we can’t change it that much on the day. But, you know, I think we we've done so many big live shows now, so I'm hoping we kind of have a sense of where the new stuff should fit in.

And obviously, having already accomplished so much, the first electronic act to headline the West Holt stage at Glastonbury, many performances at Reading and Leeds, I could go on, what's still left on the list to tick off?

Yeah, no, we've done that. We've done it. We really have done so much. I don't know, man.

Is that not really the way you like to think?

You know what, we start a new project or start something new, like bringing back the live show or releasing this album, and we have this kind of quite grounded feeling that we need to start again to prove ourselves and we're not going to get given anything and we're not owed anything by anyone, and we need to prove ourselves as if we're a brand-new act again. So, I'll be excited for any festival to play again, even though people think like ‘Of course you're going to headline a festival again’, I'm always still going to be like, ‘Really? we're headlining a festival, wow!’. But to me, it's the same with the music, I don't think anyone's just going to say, ‘Oh, you know, you guys are gonna smash it’, we don't think like that ever. So yeah, we have been blessed to have done a lot, and ticked a lot of boxes, but we're just hungry now to still show that, to show we've still got it and we're doing good stuff and we definitely believe in it, and we're excited to go and prove that once again to the world.