interview

"Progressive soulful music", he states, when I ask him to put Afronaught, and the Bugz In The Attic collective he is part of, in a nutshell. "Pushing ourselves, html ourselves", he continues, "hybridising new ideas, taking things to the next level, wherever it goes. Experimenting with new techniques of sampling, chord structures, and programming. Between us lot, it doesn’t matter what musical area people come from, the common bond is that rhythm is rhythm. It’s as simple as that. To captivate an audience, or rock a dancefloor, it doesn’t have to be boom, bap, or boof boof! It’s about feeling, if it’s got it, it’s got it."

It may sound like a hell of a mission statement to live up to, but Orin walks it like he talks it, and the confidence he shows in what he, and the Bugz, are doing springs from clearly having served your time, seeing a lot of water go under the bridge, and channelling it all into a debut album.

In many ways Shaping Fluid has taken the whole of Orin’s fourteen years in music to make, because you can hear evidence of all his exploits. From running sound systems in London at the age of seventeen, to sharing deck space with Derek Carter in Chicago, to touring Japan with Dego last year, it’s all in there in some shape or form, and ‘Shaping Fluid’ touches base with almost everything good about music through the last forty years or so. Try this for size. Cosmic funk, a la Lonnie Smith, spiritual soul a la Stevie Wonder, the kind of mind twisting polyrhythms that Ian O’Brien eats for breakfast, Detroit techno, Chicago house, New York disco, Jazz, Afro beat, Ragga. Confused? Me too. A happy, dancing loon? You will be.

The meandering three year route that Shaping Fluid has taken to it’s conclusion, seems in tune with almost everything else in Orin’s career. Ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving, his album was originally due to come out on R+S’s Satori offshoot, after his first Afronaught single appeared on Ashley Beadle’s Afro Art label. Satori got dropped, and three years later R+S picked up the trail again with the first single from the album, Transcend Me, sending discerning dancefloors completely batty for the last few months. It seems like a strange one for them, especially given Orin’s connections with the Bugz own label Bitasuite, and other fiercely creative UK underground labels related to the crew like Main Squeeze and People Records.

"I think I’m as surprised as anyone that it’s going to be on R+S", says Orin. "For us in general, as far as the Bugz go, it’s about getting our music over to a wider audience, because

"there are loads of other people who are equally as bored and tired, and are looking for something new."

"We know musically it might not be the most instantaneous thing that people can get on first time and it can go over people’s heads. And some of it is a bit head up the arse bollocks. At the end of the day though, it’s progressive and it’s pushing boundaries, and that’s what it’s about, that’s our common consensus.

"We are all prepared not to follow the set parallels of making music, but we do want it to reach a wider audience. If this LP did come out on People, or Main Squeeze, or Bitasuite, it’s only going to get to the same people, the same crew of 2000, the people who are already into it, and that doesn’t push it any further. By people like Dego hooking up with other labels, Tek 9 on R+S, 2000 Black with Planet E, or like IG Culture’s New Sector Movements on Virgin, it’s all about taking it to a wider audience.

"You know, all I’ve ever done, all I ever wanted to do since I stared DJing, was make music like the records I was buying, and without wishing to sound too vibed up and hippy man, get the same sort of experiences I got from other people’s records, and pass that on through my music".

Consider it done my friend.

(This article originally appeared in XLR8R Magazine, January 2002)