Imagine the last thing you'd ever expect a badboy producer of rough urban beats to say, and it would probably be: "my favourite key is either A minor or C minor right now." But spend time with 18-year-old west London dubstep producer D1 and that's exactly what you'll hear.
Dubstep, like grime, is a dark hybrid to evolve out of UK garage, and it's lucky to have hot new producers like D1. On one hand he makes dark, edgy music that's heard on London pirate radio stations like Rinse FM - home to Roll Deep, Plasticman and Kode 9, amongst others. This love of music "killed off my GCSE's" he says. "I made too many beats."
On the other hand he's an only child who learnt piano at 7, is grade 9 music theory and can play tenor sax too. Like many people, he grew up around musicÉ except his dad made jungle, techno and recorded with the late underground mic legend Stevie Hyper D.
It was his dad that first bought him decks and showed him London's hidden musical hubs: it's record shops. At 13 D1 and his mates got into garage, looking up to DJs like grime godfather Slimzee. But around the age of 15 he began hanging around Blackmarket records (now BM Soho), where future dubstep don DJ Youngsta had started working. There he discovered lush early dubstep anthems like Hatcha v Horsepowers' "Highland Spring," and although some his mates weren't into it, he stubbornly ploughed on, knowing he'd found his calling.
He'd also found his future mentor, though it would take two whole years before Youngsta's legendarily acute ears would find enough in D1's production to begin cutting them to dubplate. His first rewind at dubstep nerve centre Forward>> was his tune 'Crackbong' which went onto become his first release - on the second Tempa Allstars doublepack. Since then he's had a 12" on Soulja, before his drops his second release proper 'Identify' on Tempa late in 2005.
It's fitting he should call his single 'Identify'. The sound D1 is currently incubating, with it's relentless sub bass, trippy melodies and phased post-Bladerunner textures, is distinctive and unmistakable. And the biggest DJs in dubstep - Youngsta, Kode 9, Mala Digital Mystikz, and Distance - are all right behind it. The thing is, to speak to D1, he's convinced this is only part of his sound: there's so much more to come. We'll all have to wait and see.
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