Delta Heavy have waved the drum & bass flag for 15 years. Their ongoing global tour features the largest North American stretch of their career, and it seems the world is picking up on the same contagious rhythm that’s captivated them since youth.
“Nightlife, going out, clubbing, raving, going to a festival. It’s the perfect way to escape—a bit of a cliché but—from day-to-day life,” Delta Heavy’s Ben Hall tells EDM.com.
Hall and Simon James recently celebrated the 15th anniversary of their first record deal. Coincidentally, the former was 15 years old when he first discovered drum & bass. The sheer scale and technological marvels of modern electronic dance music festivals dominate social media in 2024, but the scene was quite stripped back in Hall’s youth.
“I went to this quite old, posh boarding school in the UK,” he recalls. “A bunch of us went to a tiny club called Bar Rumba… It’s not around anymore. It hasn’t been for years. You’re right in the center of London in the West End, in the theater district. Maybe 250-person capacity. You go down the steps to the sweaty little basement. We saw Bryan Gee, Shy FX and it was DJ Marky’s first-ever show in the UK.”
Equipped with patch-job fake IDs and can-do attitudes, Hall and friends found themselves in the center of London’s underground rave scene.
“We got in with these really ropey fake IDs,” he continues. “The bouncer kept grabbing us from the crowd and peeling the IDs open. Somehow mine passed the test. I don’t know how. Also, we all looked really young. There’s no way we looked 18.”
It’s unclear how many holes Hall had in his rave-punched card by this point, but he was already an electronic music enthusiast. Hall had been spinning vinyl on his Technics 1210 turntables since he was 12 or 13. Still, no amount of adolescent DJing could prepare him for the breakdance pace of drum & bass.
“I’d got into electronic music through trance, progressive house and new school breakbeat which was really popular in the UK at that time,” Hall said. “But then we went to this night and the energy and rawness blew me away. I never really looked back after that.”
Delta Heavy released their third studio album on August 23rd, their highest charting LP to date. Their love letter to the genre, Midnight Forever is a “cathartic” trip down memory lane and a deeply personal project that bottles their youth and presents it through a modern lens.
It’s the same philosophy that drives Delta Heavy’s visuals. Their global tour debuts a new visual experience intended to bridge the gap between different generations of ravers.
“When we first started going out, it wasn’t really a visual experience. It was very much dark, sweaty, smoky and underground,” Hall explains. “We wanted to capture a little bit of that feel and vibe in the album while also creating a little visual world.”
Drum & bass is now rapidly becoming destination viewing on lineups in North America. Acts like Delta Heavy and Chase & Status regularly fill out festival stages and venues. Hall sees the lightbulbs going off, much like it once did for him.
“It certainly feels in the last 18 months or so, a wider audience is listening to it and getting used to the rhythmic identity of the music,” he says. “I think the main difference a lot of people have found is that in the past when you’d hear drum & bass at a big festival, people didn’t really know what to do.
“I think in terms of the BPM, something like dubstep or trap has a lot of synergy tempo-wise with rap music,” Hall adds. “Drum & bass at 172, 174 or 175 beats per minute, it’s completely unique in electronic music. I think people were quite confused in the US initially. ‘How do I dance to this? What do I do?’ You can’t really head-bang at that tempo. But it’s honestly one of the most, most energetic music to dance to. People are getting that here finally.”
Watch the full interview below and purchase tickets to Delta Heavy’s remaining 2024 tour dates here.
Follow Delta Heavy:
X: x.com/deltaheavyukInstagram: instagram.com/deltaheavyukFacebook: facebook.com/deltaheavyukSpotify: spoti.fi/35MUGJv
