Interview by stevene

Total Science is the stage name of drum and bass producers Jason Greenhalgh and Paul Smith.

The pair first met in 1987, both living on Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford, England and brought together through a mutual love of hip hop and school girls. Distracted by the arrival of hardcore in the early nineties, record collecting was quickly followed by DJing and eventually production. Greenhalgh was the first into the studio, with "Freestyle Fanatic" launching his career in 1991.

However it was the establishment of the Legend imprint and specifically Greenhalgh's "Champion Sound", which took their profile beyond the slew of anonymous white labels that were dominating the music at the time. In 1994, the pair started recording together, with "Got to Believe" the first in a series of records which pushed the label away from the darkside movement and more towards the epic string sections and rolling beats which started to appear on labels like Lucky Spin, Basement and Good Looking.

After six years of recording singles for others, the pair established the CIA label in the closing months of 1997 with the help of Brillo from Timeless. The release of their Silent Reign EP for Goldie's Metalheadz breathed a new lease of life into the project, and the pair achieved a further boost with a well-timed Bad Company remix of "Champion Sound" which conjured further interest in what they were doing at their own label. Their debut album Advance exposed a further field of interest, with downtempo experiments logged as a series of "Breaks" on the majority of their early EP's extended to some deep house, this breadth taken a step further with their Skin Deep imprint which has forged brokenbeat to considerable acclaim. Their pioneering of a revival in old school sounds and arrangements, together with Digital and Reinforced, dominated drum & bass throughout 2001.

You guys met on your mutal love for electro & hip hop, what sort of artists come to mind when you think back to those days?
Captain rock, Aleem, Big Daddy Kane, KRS1 and Scott Le Roc and too many more to mention

Your Australian tour is to launch the release the album "Mars Needs Total Science", can you tell us a bit about the style of the album, how long you've been working on it, and does it include any clownstep? (joking!)
The album is a lot more musical and features more vocal tracks than previous and a number of highly acclaimed artists such as Grand Agent, Bugz etc. We had been working on tracks on this album for the last couple of years and it's full of clownstep(cock!)

For the Australia tour, apart from your own tunes, what are a few tunes that we could expect to hear you play?
We’ll be playing all our favorites from the full spectrum of drum & bass styles from artist such as , Bungle, Marky, State Of Mind, TC, G Dub, Gridlok, Danny Byrd , Calibre ...the list goes on...

Apart from your Album, have you guys been up to much else lately, touring, collaborations, remixes etc?
Loads. Infact, the next big thing for us is the Soul Patrol 12" which features MC Conrad and has remixes from MJ Cole on it. Aside from that, there's a lot in the pipeline, more EPs , collaborations with Marky , artist LPs etc etc but there's also a lot we don't want to speak about at this point so best just keep an eye out!

Aside from the Soul Patrol release we have an EP from Bungle, which is a precursor for a Bungle LP on CIA. There's also going to be a EP from Laura Pacheco, who is a vocalist that featured on the track 'I know' off 'Mars Needs...'. This EP will feature production from State of Mind, Bungle, Q Project and Total Science. Of course, this is just for CIA.

On Advanced we have 12"s from Zero Tolerance, Danny Byrd, Baby Origami, Funky Technicians and Tactile and on Fix we have some tunes coming from Tropic, Rawtee and Splittin' Atoms.

For the CIA Ltd imprint Taxman has been on the case and has done a remix of Splittin' Atom's "Bulletproof Monk". Other remixes are being done as we speak by artists such as Tactile and Atlantic Connection.  

Also we are sub-dividing CIA into CIA Deep Kut which will be an outlet for the deeper side of the music we sign with 12"s from Calibre, Atlantic Connection and ourselves.

Mention Total Science around the Perth DNB scene, and one gig comes to mind, Grooverider & Total Science @ Drum Club here in Perth. This gig featured the likes of Greg Packer and Elhornet, back in the early stages of the Perth DNB scene and also the starts of the careers of lots of other local Perth DJ's. Do you guys recall this event?
We remember the gig well because it was the third gig in 24 hours that we did. We started in Sydney, then played the Grooverider after party in Adelaide and then this gig. We were both totally fucked!

Have you guys been following what’s been happening in the DNB scene in Australia (Perth and Pendulum in particular) and New Zealand, and got any comments on it?
Of course. We would have had to of locked ourselves away not to have heard about it. Pendulum have done alot for the dnb scene in Australia especially Perth which is a good thing for everyone. As for New Zealand, we have been putting out music from the State Of Mind guys for the last year or so , they are really on top of their game at the moment. In our opinion some of the best drum & Bass in the world comes from down here.

Globally it seems drum and bass is heading main stream, with remixes of big name tunes, featuring in movies and TV show's, and breaks and dnb artists working together on remixes, what’s your thoughts on this? Where do you see your music heading?
We don't think that dnb is becoming more  global it's just we didn't have such a big media machine back in the early 90s as we do now in which to hear and see music such as dnb. So it just seems like dnb is more in our face but its always been there. Where ever on the planet we seam to travel there are like minded people like us who have been fighting the cause since day one , that’s what drum & bass is about and regardless how big or small it gets its that love  that we will always have for it .

Finally, When you’re not in the studio or touring, what else do you guys enjoy doing? or maybe a funny story that you would like to share?
We've always enjoyed a spot of arm wrestling down the local pub - The Man Arms. We also like to dress up in women's clothes and go punting around Oxford . for a funny tale come and see us and we’ll tell you everything !!!

For more info on Total Science, check out www.myspace.com/totalscience and www.cia-records.com

Catch Total Science in Perth Saturday 12 August 2006 @ Rise