Low End Activist takes us back to Blackbird Leys in the gritty semi-autobiographical ‘Municipal Dreams’.
If you want to dig into the complex world of British artist Low End Activist, you must first figure out where to begin. LEA (we use an abbreviation here), aka Jamie Russell, aka Patrick Conway, aka Pat Ca$h, aka Panoraman, aka Helium III, aka one half of Trinity Carbon, has a history that is as interesting and multifaceted as his productions. He has been involved with almost as many labels as he has aliases’, and has brought more hardcore-loving, bass-pumping producers through his imprints than the average punter has time to dig through – although Tokyo-based Grime and Bass producers Musha & Mars 89 are good places to start.
In 2015, he started Black Orpheus to focus on his deep, atmospheric house and techno side as Patrick Conway, and in 2011 he founded his current muse, Sneaker Social Club. The label, inspired by his love for sneakers (obviously), has a knack for attracting multidimensional artists who can produce albums that make your average genre-categorising algorithm sweat 1s and 0s. Just look at some of their standout releases, like Hostile Utopia, Ups & Downs, and Dragon Under, and try to classify them under a specific genre or sub-genre. It can’t be done.
It’s hard to determine whether he has an innate ability to find exciting music or if his enigmatic aura influences the artists he encounters. Who knows. What is known, however, is that Sneaker Social Club is a champion of contemporary underground bass music in all its forms and abbreviations. Despite all the good he has done with underground labels though, his work as an artist is most interesting, and out of his many aliases, Low End Activist is by far the most nuanced. Since his first release, ‘Low End Activism’ back in 2019, Russell has taken an innovative approach to music production, and his Raygun-esque way of throwing elements from different UK genres together into a gritty sonic collage is something that should get any serious music fan’s attention – and that’s not even mentioning the modern realist undertones that he weaves throughout his work.
‘Municipal Dreams’ has a unique touch. It ebbs and flows and is filled with piercing lead synths and sparse but powerful percussion lines that leave lots of space in the mix while pulling you in. Its sound design and composition sound new and fresh but also familiar at the same time. Tracks like ‘Wrong Turn, Dead End’ blur the line between Dubstep and Grime and are complex enough to keep you hooked. And the naming of tracks like ‘Violence’, ‘Broke’, and ‘TWOC’ have a sense of rawness that adds to the murky and dangerous world he is illustrating. His previous full-length Hostile Utopia featured a slew of MCs, but the tracks of Municipal Dreams don’t need any. In fact, they would ruin it.
By chronicling life on the Blackbird Leys council estate and expanding in his liner notes on the cause of life there, Low End Activist places himself in the same vein as artists such as Burial and Autechre, who are willing to encapsulate the mood and feeling of those British politics left behind. No words are in any of these songs, but you can hear what he is saying loud and clear.
In this interview, however, they are words, and throughout, Russell unpacks ‘Municipal Dreams’ and gives us a window into the future of Low End Activist.
What was the core motivation behind the project?
To be honest, there was no strong idea behind the project to begin with. I had been putting out records under various other pseudonyms prior to this, but I recall that I had created a batch of tracks that sounded unlike anything else I had made before. This was the ‘Low-End Activism’ 12″ I self-released on Sneaker. I had recently purchased the Korg Triton rack module from my good friend Haider (aka DS1) and was obsessively playing around the gliding squares preset. On this record, I also exclusively sampled from an old video I found uploaded to YouTube that was shot at home back in 1990; it was the Muzikon sound system rolling out their tunes on a warm sunny day at the local summer fête. The video is pure nostalgia for me and brings up fond memories of growing up. I think what excited me most whilst making that record was honing in on this idea of a concept; it felt like I was making something honest, and everything flowed naturally. This set off a lightbulb moment for me in terms of how I approach making music and how I could potentially treat this like an actual art project.
This album revisits the Blackbird Leys estate, albeit from a different viewpoint. In what ways does this record differ from ‘Hostile Utopia’?
Undoubtedly, there is a crossover of themes between the last two records. ‘Hostile Utopia’ highlights the chapters to read and points out general themes, and with ‘Municipal Dreams’ there’s an opaque attempt at storytelling here. It could be viewed as going a bit deeper into the chapters and is definitely a lot more personal, often citing actual lived experiences (violence, drugs/climbing the walls, prison, etc). I believe the new record feels a bit more introspective; it’s still moody but a little bit sad, too, at times. It’s an interesting experience to take yourself back, but I moved away from home in 2001, and apart from family, making these records is my only connection to home now. It can be cathartic, but it can also drag up a lot of shit too.
Can you talk to us about the production? How did you approach it this time, and what were your main tools during its creation?
I knew I wanted to follow up on Hostile Utopia because there was still loads of source material there re: sampling. I knew stylistically, I wanted to take it in a slightly different direction. I started journaling a bit and put together a timeline of events and memories. This often led me down a path of research and seeking out news stories and evidence of these events, especially the riots that happened on the estate in 1991.
I was able to start to piece together various topics relative to me and probably any kid still growing up on a council estate. I was scratching around a bit, finding samples for certain topics I wanted to cover on the record. Still, the one thing I learnt is to not write off any piece of audio as unusable. Some of the best results were achieved from media that I thought wouldn’t work. I wanted there to be a cohesive feel across the entire record and settled on the same distortion pedal in its varying degrees of pressure. I was really happy with the results. Other than that, I was using my UDO Super 6 again for synth and bass sounds.
Are you still based in Berlin? We ask as your music still seems heavily inspired by the UK, both conceptually and stylistically. What influence is the city having on your current creative output?
Yeah, still here! I think the city’s only influence on my music might be those cold winters; I tend to spend a lot more time writing music at this point of the year. I’ve spent the best part of 20 years in nightclubs, so I don’t tend to go out so much these days; my weekends are now spent with my wife and daughter, going to markets, cooking and going out on the bikes. There are definitely some inspiring crew members who live here and influence me in one way or another, shouts Laurie Blim, Jan Christoph (De Babalon), Sam Shack, Nik Nowak, and Haider.
The project’s name, ‘Municipal Dreams, ’ mirrors John Boughton’s seminal account of public housing. Is there any connection between the two?
Well spotted! Yes, I read the book; it’s quite dry! However, I was interested in reading how Blackbird Leys sits in the context of the history of social housing built across the UK. I liked the title and was reading it while I was about midway through working on the album, so it seemed quite fitting to borrow his handy titling work for my album. Thanks John! =)
An activist is someone who endeavours to bring about change. What change are you hoping to bring with your music?
The project name was never intended to have any direct links to any actual activism. It had more to do with being a cheerleader for sound system music, but, coincidentally, it has started to steer me down a path of wanting the music to say something. I’ve been deep in the trenches of nocturnal dance music for nearly 2 decades now, and you see trends come and go. 90% of dance music is entirely disposable, so perhaps it’s me getting older, having children, and seeing how the world is. It hasn’t changed, and it’s still a dark, cold place. For me personally, it feels more meaningful to be able to project some kind of voice outwards with this, and at the very least, to remind people of the type of society we still live in and hopefully raise the question – is this the kind of world you want to live in?
What’s next for Low End Activist?
I’ve started planning this idea I had for an installation. There are a few different versions of it at the moment, from a fully immersive room-sized AV experience to a table-sized singular artefact. I’ve mapped out the audio collage and will get to work on that throughout this winter’s studio hibernation. I won’t go into too much detail here, but it feels like a natural path to follow and fits where my head is at with everything. I’m always recording in between, and I’ve got folders of instrumentals in the 140 regions. There are a few collabs with MCs waiting to be released and a collaborative 4 tracker with the legends Seekersinternational. I started working on a film score during the pandemic, too. I wrote loads of music for it, but the project is sadly held up due to financing. Hopefully, that might still come to fruition.