5 Facts, 5 Tracks: Kove

James Rockhill aka Kove is back with brand new music on Drum & Bass Arena! His new track ‘Echoes’ which features Ben Duffy has been endorsed by Annie Mac, Friction and loads more. It’s been described as:

“So breezy and rush-fuelled it could whisk you off your feet yet arguably one of Kove’s most unhurried and subtle songs”

Kove has been releasing consistently good material for a number of years now and is a remixer in high demand having worked with some massive artists and not just in the drum and bass scene. He’s given us a bit of insight into his life with 5 Facts about himself and 5 Tracks he loves and why.

5 Facts

1. The name Kove came from the back of a Romanian lorry. So cheers to whoever was delivering to Lidl that day.
2. I was a guitarist long before I went anywhere near a DAW. I moved to London to study it but ended up finding my interests switching to electronic music very quickly.
3. My first time ever Dj’ing was Room 2 at fabric. Id played around with some vinyl the week before but had never used CDJ’s before. To call it a baptism of fire is an understatement!
4. My dog is one of my most important production tools. Since having him I’ve definitely seen the benefits of being forced away from the studio for a couple of hours a day, to get some fresh air and digest any work I’m doing. Quite often I find the best ideas come when I’m away from the studio.
5. I’m terrified of heights. Changing a lightbulb can feel like climbing Everest in my head!

5 Tracks

Commix – Be True

One of my all time favourite DnB tunes. I drop it in a fair chunk of my sets, and it gets such a big reaction every time. It’s so easy these days to get caught up in creating the craziest, most polished sound in serum for instance, and forget at the core of a great tune is the hook, so for me, Be True is the tune that always reminds me of that. It’s so simple, just a couple of samples, a great break and that deep rumbling reese line, but works so perfectly.

Buriel & Four Tet – Moth

I think this is one of the most sonically satisfying releases ever put out. Every sound is so warm and rounded, from the squelchy clap to the dusty sample. I remember hearing this just as I was getting into electronic music. I was going mad for the ’07 era Ed Banger releases such as Justice and Sebastian so my impression was that everything needed to be aggressive and to the point (not that theres anything wrong with that!). However hearing ‘Moth’ really opened my eyes to the subtleties of electronic music, and how a tune can slowly develop on a simple theme for an extended period of time. In the current musical landscape of trying to please an algorithm with short edits of your song, I think It’s important to be able to sit back and enjoy a tune for 9 minutes, just as the artist intended.

My Bloody Valentine – Soon

Growing up as a guitarist I was never that focused on ’shredding’, so to speak, instead I was much more interested in creating soundscapes and seeing how I could manipulate the instrument with effects, something I feel I’ve brought over into the production world. On my new tune Echoes for instance, I tried to emulate a lot of MBV’s sounds. All the vocals and instruments are multi-tracked to the extreme to create a wall of sound and that melancholy feel. The album ‘Soon’ is from – ‘Loveless’, really defined Shoegaze as a genre and was lauded as pushing the typical rock band sonics beyond what was considered standard at the time. Well worth a listen in its entirety.

Brookes Brothers – Not Just Yet

I’ve never been shy about the influence the Brookes Brothers had on me in my formative production years. Their mixture of melody and dance floor sensibilities really drew me into the genre back when I started out, and for me, ‘Not Just Yet’ is the perfect example of this. I remember having their first album on repeat when I drove across America at 21. I’d pretty much given up on DnB at the time, however whilst I was out there Futurebound hit me up and we sorted out my first release on Viper which really kickstarted my DnB journey. So this tune (and the album on the whole) holds a solid place in my memory.

High Contrast – Days Go By 2019 mix

I love this refix High Contrast has done. Just enough to bring it up to date and give it fresh life, but nothing to take away from this classic. Real euphoric liquid dance floor. Let’s hope there’s more of this style round the corner!

Check out ‘Echoes’ (feat. Ben Duffy) below and buy it here