Music
Meet Conducta, the West London producer spearheading UK garage 2.0
In this wide-ranging interview, Collins Nemi talks his new mixtape Kiwi Kuts, dream collaborations, and why it's important to get a bit of grit in your melody.
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UK garage is on the rise again, but this new wave isn’t about lazy reworks of ‘golden era’ classics. The next gen of UKG are putting a fresh spin on the genre, some giving classic 4x4 and 2-step a grime edge, while others inject R&B and soul. Leading this resurgence is Conducta whose latest drop showcases his skill for combining the classic and the contemporary. You'll find him sampling old Aaliyah vocals, or remixing new artists like Jorja Smith; making music as inspired by Skepta as it is by So Solid Crew.
He may now be dubbed the Prince of UK Garage, but Conducta’s music career actually began with grime. Born Collins Nemi, he grew up in Bristol, where he and his cousins made music as a crew called Sophisticated Sounds. They would watch channels like Channel U and MTV Bass, analyse the beats, and study the technical process of creating tunes. "We all used to rap but I wasn't good,” the producer laughs during a chat at his West London studio. “So I moved to producing."
Listen to Conducta's Kiwi Kuts mixtape below
The first track he made for the crew – a grime tune – wound up being played by MistaJam on BBC 1Xtra. At just 15 years old, it was something of a milestone for the young artist. "That was my first marker, like: 'Boom!',” he remembers. “I realised I could do this to a high standard. So I was like, 'OK, I might as well take this forward'."
He did, and it’s already paid off. In 2016 The Guardian called him a “production wunderkind”, lauding his “music for lonely late-night driving round British cities”. Now, he’s dropped a mixtape, Kiwi Kuts – 30 minutes of previously unheard material that represents the young producer at his club-smashing best, and demonstrates his box-fresh take on garage, bringing in a 2018 flavour while retaining roots firmly in the traditions of UKG.
Also in that tradition, is Conducta’s new party brand Klub Kiwi. The first, taking place October 5 at new London club UNDR, celebrates the launch of Kiwi Kuts, allowing fans to hear its tracks the way they were supposed to be enjoyed: on the dancefloor. The producer will be digging deep into his back catalogue and welcoming a stellar line-up on stage, from UKG scene veterans Heartless Crew, to eclectic selectors Jossy Mitsu and Tiffany Calver – not to mention some very special guests.
BACK TO THE GARAGE
It took a lot of work to get here though. First off, the 15-year-old Conducta had to teach himself how to make UKG at a time when the sound had slipped out of fashion. “It was a weird one with garage because I always listened to it but never knew how to make it,” he remembers, of the early days in Bristol. “I knew how to make hip-hop and grime and dubstep... but I never knew how to make garage the way I wanted to make it.” Early on, he'd make tracks by copying a tune, dropping it into FruityLoops – the program favoured by young grime producers – and analyse the waveform, watching the kicks and snares and dragging around his samples til they matched.
Conducta grew up a music obsessive. He remembers walking to school just so he could pocket the bus fare and use it to buy grime mixtapes and CDs. But even then he leaned towards garage. “I always liked dark stuff, but I also really liked uplifting, soulful stuff, more grooves,” he says. “Even when I listened to dubstep it was swing dubstep, more melodic kind of stuff. So learning to make garage was like a quest. I was probably more gassed learning how to make 2-step than anything else. It was a big moment, it unlocked everything – it was the key. I knew what I wanted to do, it was a matter of just figuring out literally how to do it. Now you can find it all on YouTube but, before you just had to work it out for yourself – ‘DIY garage!’”
Conducta
© Pooneh Ghana/Fanatic
I always liked dark stuff, but I also really liked uplifting, soulful stuff, more grooves
He also discovered the legendary Sidewinder via tapepacks nicked off his godbrother, featuring the likes of Slimzee, Gods Gift, Wiley – each one instrumental in the evolution of garage into grime. From here Conducta described himself as a sort of teenage historian, digging deeper into UKG’s roots, discovering La Cosa Nostra, Garage Nation and Sun City, staying up until 5am watching videos and listening to tunes. Someone asked him recently whether he prefers producing or DJing and he went with the latter: "Listening to those tapes, the ambience of the crowd when a reload happens... there's something completely nuts about it. I can't explain it."
His own work reflects these years of musical study, and he is careful to do UKG justice. "Obviously I can't be a part of that time [the late 1990s and early 2000s] but in music you always have to have a grasp of the culture and an in-depth knowledge of the music,” he says. “I could have been 19 and come to London, heard Disclosure and just started doing what they were doing. But I had a root in what came before – there was a root, there was a reason, and there was a meaning. Hopefully people can hear in the music where it stems from."
He says the new mixtape reflects this too: "It's almost like a massive exam paper or an essay – touching on everything that I think has to do with garage back then, and what it means to me now. It's about exploring that whole breadth of what garage can be – 4x4 tracks, 2-2, grimier stuff, slower tracks, soul samples, more intense speed garage tunes.
"I’d forgotten about 15-year-old me and how I loved making experimental stuff. This is a return to that. With remixing, I always want to make it sound like the artist originally made a garage tune. I don't want it to sound like a remix. I always hear things and can imagine them on a garage palette. Somehow I can flip it. It's a radar – I can hear it."
Conducta's favourite tracks on Kiwi Kuts include the high-tempo, uplifting Todd Chandler, a club-ready tune called Steezing with Sheffield MC Coco, and the twinkling, bassy LDN Girl. "With those tunes I think you can hear the melody combined with grittiness, the rough and bump – that old garage groove," he says. He also rates the tape’s Jorja Smith tune, Goodbyes Remix. (It's not the first time he's worked with her vocals – he turned out a remix of Jorja's Preditah collaboration, Finally Found, earlier this year).
The Klub Kiwi name came to be after Conducta ate a golden kiwi for the first time. Impressed by its zesty vibrancy, Conducta decided to bring a bit of that spirit to his party too. "The Golden Kiwi sounds like an old Bristol garage club that you'd hear about on radio,” he laughs. ”I wanted something that had a sort of cult feel. When I'm in the shower I have like 60 million ideas, 99.9% of them don't make any sense, but this one was a gem."
He’s got big ideas for the future, too. Already with plenty of big names attached to his work – like his childhood hero, Bristolian producer Joker taking on one of his own tracks with Only U. "That was a big moment for me personally," says Conducta. Next, he says, he'd like to make music with American R&B star ("I'd do a Craig David, Born To Do It kind of thing with him, an album that'd be fully R&B"). That, or a collaboration with Skepta. “That would pop,” he says, confidently. “I feel as if something I’ve learned how to do is really be a producer – see an artist and make something that would work for them, but also be garage. I can see where they could fit on the spectrum, like tailoring a suit."
This might sound ambitious, but Conducta’s never been one to dream small – quite the opposite. In fact, he’s on a one-man mission to bring back UK garage to the masses, and update it for a modern audience. “I want garage to be garage in its own right, and not get diluted by everything else that’s going on,” he says. “When people called drill ‘grime’, or trap ‘grime’, or rap ‘grime’, people get annoyed. And I feel the same when people call something UK garage when it isn’t UK garage. It's about staying true to it.
“That’s what I’ve tried to do with all my records: even though I've taken influence from other things I've always kept things on the garage palette. The filling might be R&B or grime… but the sandwich is always garage."
Conducta's Klub Kiwi comes to London's UNDR on October 5. Buy tickets.
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