Neon Diffraction - Stay a While

“Stay a While” combines the fast, rolling drums of liquid drum & bass with the warmth of blues and soul. There's plenty of movement, but Fenton King's soulful vocals also give the song a relaxed feeling. I particularly enjoy the idea of building the music around the vocals. Rupert Goddard clearly wants the deep bass, atmospheric sounds, and blues influences and that makes for a very interesting combination! It's nice to hear drum & bass that makes room for something more personal.

Interview with Oscar

What brought you and Fenton King together for “Stay a While”?

I'd been developing the idea for Neon Diffraction for a while, trying to bring together drum and bass with the feel and songwriting of blues and soul. I'd made some early tracks, but it became increasingly obvious that I needed the right vocalist to really make the idea work. I wanted someone with a distinctive voice, a bit of grit and character, rather than a more conventional electronic music vocal.

I actually came across Fenton on Instagram. I'd been looking around for singers and something about his voice immediately stood out. He had exactly the sort of raw, soulful quality I was imagining, and his background with Sick as Thieves made him an interesting fit. I got in touch, we started talking, and it turned out we were both interested in exploring something a bit different. Stay a While was the first track to come out of that collaboration, and it really helped establish the direction for the whole project.

Did the song begin with a vocal melody, a guitar part or a drum and bass rhythm?

It really began with the song and the atmosphere rather than with the drum and bass side of it. I tend to get the musical idea working first and then build the rhythm around it. With Stay a While, I wanted something quite warm and intimate, almost bluesy or Americana in feeling, and then put that into a 174 BPM framework. The rolling drums came later and gave it the momentum without changing the mood of the original idea.

Fenton comes from a blues and soul background. How much did his vocal style influence the production?

Massively. Once Fenton's vocal was there, quite a lot of the production became about making room for him rather than adding more things. His voice has a lot of character and natural movement, so I didn't want to over-produce it or make everything too pristine. It also pushed the track further towards blues and soul. The electronic side is still there, but I wanted the vocal to feel like it belonged at the centre of the record rather than being treated as another texture.

The guitar melodies bring an almost Americana character into the arrangement. Where did that influence come from?

That was quite deliberate. I'm interested in what happens when you take musical language that doesn't normally belong in drum and bass and put it into that environment. Blues, Americana and Southern soul have these very simple melodic phrases that can carry a huge amount of emotion. I liked the contrast of those guitar lines against very modern, fast electronic drums. It gives the track a sense of place without trying to turn it into a pastiche of traditional blues.

How did you approach the relationship between the rolling breakbeats and the bassline?

I wanted them to feel connected rather than having a huge bassline fighting against the drums. The drums provide most of the forward motion, so the bass is there to underpin that movement and give it weight. It's quite restrained by drum and bass standards. I'm much more interested in groove and atmosphere with this project than making every element demand attention. When the drums, bass and vocal are all sitting properly together, the track should feel like it's rolling almost effortlessly.

Fenton's vocals have a very natural, almost improvised quality. How much freedom did he have during the recording?

A lot. That's one of the main reasons I wanted to work with him. I might have a clear idea of the song and the shape of a vocal, but I'm not interested in directing every inflection. Fenton has his own phrasing, and some of the little changes in timing and delivery are what give the performance its character. With this kind of music, leaving some looseness in the vocal is especially important because the drums underneath it are so precise. That tension between a very human performance and a tightly programmed rhythm is part of what I like about it.

What was the biggest challenge in bringing traditional blues songwriting into a liquid drum and bass production?

Probably not losing the simplicity of the song. Drum and bass gives you an enormous amount of energy and it's very easy to keep adding production until the songwriting disappears underneath it. Blues often works for exactly the opposite reason. It's repetitive, spacious and very direct. So the challenge was getting enough detail and movement into the production to make it work at 174 BPM while still allowing the vocal, guitar and lyric to breathe. That's really the balance I'm trying to find with Neon Diffraction.

You've also released a Downtempo Mix. Which musical elements did you want to bring forward in that version?

The Downtempo Mix was actually Fenton's idea. He felt that taking the track in a half-time direction would give it a completely different character, with more of a live eel. Rather than simply stripping things back, we wanted to explore what happened when we gave the rhythm more weight and space. The drums are quite heavy in this version, but in a different way to the rolling breaks of the original. It brings out more of the blues and soul influences, and gives Fenton's vocal and the guitars a different setting. I really like that the two versions have quite distinct personalities, even though they're built around exactly the same song.

Your earlier single “Iron River” explored a similar combination of electronic rhythms and blues. What did you want to develop further with “Stay a While”?

Iron River was really part of the process of discovering what Neon Diffraction could be. I was experimenting with combining blues influences and drum and bass, but I hadn't quite worked out how all the elements should fit together. With Stay a While, and particularly with Fenton coming on board, I felt I could take the songwriting much further. I wanted it to feel less like a drum and bass track incorporating blues elements and more like a proper song that happened to be produced in a drum and bass style. It's a subtle distinction, but I think it's quite important to the direction of the project. We will be rereleasing a version of Iron River with Fenton’s vocal soon.

You've spent years producing house music as Neon Transmission. What has working in drum and bass taught you about rhythm and arrangement?

It's been quite a learning curve! With house music, you're generally working with a very consistent rhythmic foundation, and a lot of the interest comes from the way things develop gradually over time. Drum and bass is much more intricate rhythmically, and at 174 BPM there's an enormous amount happening in a relatively short space of time. What's been interesting is learning how to create that sense of movement without making everything sound too busy. I've also found that some of the principles are exactly the same. It's still about groove, dynamics and knowing when to leave things out. I think coming from house music has probably influenced my approach to drum and bass, particularly the emphasis on atmosphere and longer musical phrases.

“Stay a While” begins a series of four collaborations with Fenton. Were the songs written together, or did they develop from separate ideas?

The songs developed from ideas I'd been working on for Neon Diffraction, with the intention of bringing a stronger songwriting element into the music. Once Fenton became involved, the tracks started to take on much more of an identity. His voice and phrasing bring something that you can't really anticipate when you're working on an instrumental. It's been a collaborative process of finding the right balance between the original musical ideas and what Fenton naturally brings to them. The four songs are quite different in mood, but there's a common thread running through them, which is that combination of blues and soul with electronic production.

As this collaboration continues, are you interested in exploring other traditional instruments and musical influences?

Absolutely. That's probably the most exciting part of the project for me. I'm interested in the contrast between traditional, organic sounds and electronic production, particularly when the combination is a little unexpected. Blues and soul are the starting point, but there's no reason to stop there. I'd love to explore more live instrumentation and different musical traditions, provided they fit naturally with the songwriting. I don't want Neon Diffraction to become a project where every track follows the same formula. The idea is to keep experimenting while maintaining a recognisable sound, with Fenton's voice providing that continuity. We’ve got some ideas developing with a more James Brown funk feel that we’re hoping to explore shortly.

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