Man Of Contrasts

Signed to Hospital Records in 2000 based on just the strength of his mini-disc demos, Lincoln Barrett has gone on to dominate drum'n'bass dance floors with an uplifting yet melancholic anthemic style. Back then, the general atmosphere was on the darker side, with neurofunk and techstep leading the fray, but Barrett made a conscious attempt to lift the vibe, spearheading the paradigm shift that went on to be labelled 'liquid funk'.

“I try to make emotionally charged music, but I am also driven by the pursuit of contrast,” he explains. “I don't think there is a High Contrast sound that can be put into words.”

His latest album, The Agony & The Ecstasy, has seen a change in direction for the Cardiff-raised producer, employing collaborations with non-drum'n'bass producers Tiësto and Underworld. Die-hard Hospital fans will also recognise vocalist Liane Carrol from London Elektricity's previous live incarnation, while Chase & Status vocalist Claire Maguire and Kid Adrifts' Selah Corbin also feature with superbly yearning, vocal-led cuts. The finished product is a more organic and personal collection than his previous three albums, that hasn't strayed too far away from the sound that made him a revolution.

“I'd like to think of it as a work of art, but it's not really my place to say if it is or not, so I'll leave that up to the audience,” Barrett says. “I think the more personal nature of the album can be explained by the fact that I'm getting more philosophical and a bit more melancholic about life as I get older.”

A crate digger and sampler from way back, Barrett made a conscious decision to keep the feel more organic in the pursuit of keeping the creativity alive. “I made a rule not to use any samples as a personal challenge to myself and to keep things fresh, and that involved getting more people on board,” he explains. “It's been an interesting way of working for me, but it was a lot more time consuming.”

Although he somewhat shyly balked at being called a Renaissance man of drum'n'bass, Barrett's creativity is diverse, encompassing producing house tracks under the alias Two Fisted Tales, film directing and a recent involvement in the London Olympics opening ceremony. “I try to be influenced by everything other than drum'n'bass,” he says. “It's such a broad thing and has never really had a sound on its own, so you can make it what you want, dipping into any musical genre you like and turning it into a d'n'b track.” And, as the stage name suggests, contrasting disparate musical elements is something close to his art form. “When I came up with the name, it was basically because I had a thing for contrasting heavy drum beat percussion and powerful melodies. As my philosophical mind has expanded, it's become much more of a whole outlook on life – juxtapositions of contrasting views is a mental aspect of our world, and it always seems that beauty itself is generated through contrast. It's about recognising things from both angles, almost like a snake coiling into its own tail,” he explains poetically. “You can never really get to the beginning. It's only through joining with its opposite that the whole is made.”

Written, shot and directed by High Contrast himself, the video clip for The First Note Is Silent, a collaborative effort with the aforementioned techno icons Underworld and Tiësto, took six months to shoot due to its complexity. “It's definitely a lot of hard work and energy, but I've been making films since about ten years of age,” Barrett explains. “Hospital were cool with me doing the extra work, but they may have been somewhat nervous about how I was going to fit it into my schedule. Because there were so many different locations and actors, this film has been the most complex, but also the one I've had the best reaction to. When Tony Colman [head honcho at Hospital Records aka London Elektricity] saw it, he rang my up on the phone and started crying.”

Having come up the ranks playing sets to drug-fuelled dancefloors at super clubs across the world, Barrett has managed to remain drug and alcohol free, a decision he says he's never felt tempted to alter. “I've always been at odds with social norms; I don't drink alcohol, but I've always had a fascination with club culture. I've always hated pubs but I love clubs,” he says. “I like to keep that one mystery locked up in a box that I'll never know what's inside. Probably because I just find it easy to feel the music and dance without any chemical high. I think that if my music makes me feel strongly, then it will probably have a powerful effect on people that are on drugs.

“I like people in motion and imagining the music and what the club would look like if the music stopped – things you don't generally think about because they're so weird. Music is a very strange thing in how it affects us and why it makes people happy.”

Teaming up with Underworld to produce Scribble on their 2010 album Barking was another move in a not-solely drum'n'bass direction. “They'd been fans for a while and wanted to do an album where they were collaborating with different artists and thought they'd like to try some drum'n'bass,” Barrett says.  “I think they had a sort of '90s image of what a drum'n'bass producer would be like; that we were all gangsters, so they were slightly nervous at first.”

His connection with Underworld, who had joined up with Trainspotting director Danny Boyle to musically direct the London Olympics' opening ceremony, also landed him a gig writing for the momental event. “I couldn't say no [to Boyle] – he's a very cool guy, very inspirational and down to earth. They needed a track to open with, and the one they had in mind got pulled at the last minute. I had this track that I'd already been working on that they all loved, and so they used it to open the Olympics,” Barrett says.

High Contrast's The Road Goes On Forever EP, released following the Olympics, takes the tempo down to 120bpm, offers re-workings of tracks from The Agony & The Ecstasy, as well as some of the tracks used for the Olympics and is full of inspiring melodies and beats. “I'm not a patriotic kind of person, but it was great to be part of something where the usually cynical Brits could actually be proud of themselves for once,” he says.