WEN
On Big Dada
BIOGRAPHY
Owen Darby, otherwise known by his producer alias WEN, grew up in Ramsgate, a town roughly an hour away from London, and he always looked to the capital — and it’s bustling pirate radio scene of the late 2000s — for inspiration. Equally though, he remained far away enough to never feel the need to conform to its urban, concrete narrative. His first foray into producing came at the back end of 2008 when he was just 16, and his outsider takes on grime — h...
Owen Darby, otherwise known by his producer alias WEN, grew up in Ramsgate, a town roughly an hour away from London, and he always looked to the capital — and it’s bustling pirate radio scene of the late 2000s — for inspiration. Equally though, he remained far away enough to never feel the need to conform to its urban, concrete narrative.
His first foray into producing came at the back end of 2008 when he was just 16, and his outsider takes on grime — his favourite pirate genre — saw him develop a sound that, for many, tapped into the spirit of early dubstep. Operating in-and-around 130bpm, then a far cry from grime’s more familiar 140bpm template, he re-imagined the genre’s iconic sounds within colder, darker, murkier settings. Classic grime vocals were condensed into seconds-long snippets that he’d loop too, each acting as a primer to the incoming beat — a producer quip that’d quickly become his calling card.
After a debut 12” for Maribor’s Badimup label, it was Keysound who offered WEN the space he needed to flourish alongside other like-minded producers like Parris, Beneath and Logos, releasing debut EP proper, “Commotion”, in 2013. It proved to be the launchpad for his critically-acclaimed debut album, “Signals”, which would follow in 2014 under the guidance and tutelage of Keysound boss Blackdown, who remains one of his most passionate supporters to this day. “Blackdown fully got what I was trying to do”, Darby enthuses, “and knew exactly how I could run with it. He made sure I was the one playing my stuff on Rinse, that I had presence in London clubs and really enabled me to fix my music there and be rooted in a movement.”
Sandwiched in between “Signals” — an album Resident Advisor described as “danceable as hell, but also relentlessly dark” — was another 12” for Keysound, this time a white label cut of his remarkable flip of Dizzee Rascal’s “Strings Hoe”, and split records for Tempa and Facta’s sought-after imprint, Wisdom Teeth.
After such a hectic run of releases, 2015 would spark a change in WEN’s outlook. Although still informed by his love of grime vocals and the instant hype generated by his club records, his focus switched to building thoughtful, more challenging bodies of work — a shift amplified by his brooding, 11-minute long remix of Royal-T’s “Shotta” for grime label, Butterz, in April. “When Elijah approached me for that remix he tasked me to use the format to my advantage”, explains Darby, “He said “take a whole side if you want?”. It was a welcome shift to move my music out of the context of pitch black low ceiling clubs.” Tectonic, the Bristol label helmed by Pinch, then released three-track EP “Finesse” shortly after to add to an already impressive back catalog, before WEN linked up with long-time friend and mentor, Parris, on six-tracker “Senary Cycles” — his most recent and arguably best work to date. “Parris believed in letting the beats and sonics I was working on sprawl as far as they could”, WEN affirms, “he kept saying ‘we got time’ and I took a year moulding those tracks into something wide but still coherent.”
Aside from switching up his beat patterns and introducing lighter, more delicate sounds to his arsenal, “Senary Cycles” also saw WEN write original music from a place of self-discovery; as much as he loved what he’d released before, tracks like “She Giv” and the anthemic “Pace Yourself” nodded firmly to the future, rather than the past.
In the months that followed, WEN would remain an active DJ, although he spent much time working on forthcoming music for Big Dada. The “CARVE + GAZE“ EP, released in July 2017 served as his intro to the label and a primer to more material. The EP suggested that Darby has entered a new stage of development and a willingness to move away from established genres into his own field, “The EP is a handbook of brash sonic studies born out of rainy night drives," explains WEN, "revealing the crux of my sound moving forward.” Darby’s LP “EPHEM:ERA”, also via Big Dada, continues these themes.
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BIOGRAPHY
Owen Darby, otherwise known by his producer alias WEN, grew up in Ramsgate, a town roughly an hour away from London, and he always looked to the capital — and it’s bustling pirate radio scene of the late 2000s — for inspiration. Equally though, he remained far away enough to never feel the need to conform to its urban, concrete narrative. His first foray into producing came at the back end of 2008 when he was just 16, and his outsider takes on grime — his favourite pirate ...
Owen Darby, otherwise known by his producer alias WEN, grew up in Ramsgate, a town roughly an hour away from London, and he always looked to the capital — and it’s bustling pirate radio scene of the late 2000s — for inspiration. Equally though, he remained far away enough to never feel the need to conform to its urban, concrete narrative.
His first foray into producing came at the back end of 2008 when he was just 16, and his outsider takes on grime — his favourite pirate genre — saw him develop a sound that, for many, tapped into the spirit of early dubstep. Operating in-and-around 130bpm, then a far cry from grime’s more familiar 140bpm template, he re-imagined the genre’s iconic sounds within colder, darker, murkier settings. Classic grime vocals were condensed into seconds-long snippets that he’d loop too, each acting as a primer to the incoming beat — a producer quip that’d quickly become his calling card.
After a debut 12” for Maribor’s Badimup label, it was Keysound who offered WEN the space he needed to flourish alongside other like-minded producers like Parris, Beneath and Logos, releasing debut EP proper, “Commotion”, in 2013. It proved to be the launchpad for his critically-acclaimed debut album, “Signals”, which would follow in 2014 under the guidance and tutelage of Keysound boss Blackdown, who remains one of his most passionate supporters to this day. “Blackdown fully got what I was trying to do”, Darby enthuses, “and knew exactly how I could run with it. He made sure I was the one playing my stuff on Rinse, that I had presence in London clubs and really enabled me to fix my music there and be rooted in a movement.”
Sandwiched in between “Signals” — an album Resident Advisor described as “danceable as hell, but also relentlessly dark” — was another 12” for Keysound, this time a white label cut of his remarkable flip of Dizzee Rascal’s “Strings Hoe”, and split records for Tempa and Facta’s sought-after imprint, Wisdom Teeth.
After such a hectic run of releases, 2015 would spark a change in WEN’s outlook. Although still informed by his love of grime vocals and the instant hype generated by his club records, his focus switched to building thoughtful, more challenging bodies of work — a shift amplified by his brooding, 11-minute long remix of Royal-T’s “Shotta” for grime label, Butterz, in April. “When Elijah approached me for that remix he tasked me to use the format to my advantage”, explains Darby, “He said “take a whole side if you want?”. It was a welcome shift to move my music out of the context of pitch black low ceiling clubs.” Tectonic, the Bristol label helmed by Pinch, then released three-track EP “Finesse” shortly after to add to an already impressive back catalog, before WEN linked up with long-time friend and mentor, Parris, on six-tracker “Senary Cycles” — his most recent and arguably best work to date. “Parris believed in letting the beats and sonics I was working on sprawl as far as they could”, WEN affirms, “he kept saying ‘we got time’ and I took a year moulding those tracks into something wide but still coherent.”
Aside from switching up his beat patterns and introducing lighter, more delicate sounds to his arsenal, “Senary Cycles” also saw WEN write original music from a place of self-discovery; as much as he loved what he’d released before, tracks like “She Giv” and the anthemic “Pace Yourself” nodded firmly to the future, rather than the past.
In the months that followed, WEN would remain an active DJ, although he spent much time working on forthcoming music for Big Dada. The “CARVE + GAZE“ EP, released in July 2017 served as his intro to the label and a primer to more material. The EP suggested that Darby has entered a new stage of development and a willingness to move away from established genres into his own field, “The EP is a handbook of brash sonic studies born out of rainy night drives," explains WEN, "revealing the crux of my sound moving forward.” Darby’s LP “EPHEM:ERA”, also via Big Dada, continues these themes.