Bad Company: The Resurrection Men

These sentiments are approved by the remaining members. DBridge, the self-proclaimed cynic of Bad Company, is the largest and most serious-looking member of the crew. He may look grave and stern but is prone warm grins and dirty chuckles when he agrees with something or a joke is made. Maldini is usually the man behind these jokes. His Cheshire cat grin doesn’t budge throughout the interview as he shoots out wisecracks and offers side-stories of Bad Company past: how they once headlined mainstage Miami’s Ultra festival over Paul van Dyk, while Miami Vice star Don Johnson was raving behind them. Or how they used to give their tracks to Marky and Andy C before anyone else because they knew how to mix them like no other DJs.

Four very distinctive personalities: their make-up, like their music, is a delicate dynamic. To understand this dynamic is to understand what they’ve achieved since Bad Company went their separate ways...

Vegas and Maldini run Bad Taste, one of the most influential labels in thoroughbred underground d’n’b where the careers of Billain, Teddy Killerz, Prolix, Royalston, Urbandawn and many more began. Prior to pioneering the poppier side of bass music Fresh made outrageous d’n’b bangers like ‘Heavyweight’ and ‘Signal’ and launched Breakbeat Kaos with Adam F, igniting the careers of Pendulum, Brookes Brothers, Nero and Sigma.

DBridge, meanwhile, runs Exit, one of the most respected imprints on the leftfield frontier that joins previously unchartered dots between d’n’b, electronica and techno. A driving force in the autonomic/half-time movement, he’s involved in acts such as Heartdrive and Binary Collective, projects that are so musically far-out they’re genre-unclassifiable. While Vegas and Maldini have stayed true to Bad Company’s original spirit, the extreme polar positions of Fresh and DBridge creates the contrast and diversity the band thrives on.

“I’m always fascinated by what Darren [DBridge] thinks; he has a knowledge base I simply don’t have,” explains Fresh – and it’s clear the feeling is mutual. “I like doing new, exciting stuff and for me the pop stuff isn’t exciting any more. People are coming out of the woodwork saying ‘Oh I’ve got a drum ’n’ bass crossover song’. I don’t want to say ‘bandwagon’, but...”

He trails off. But let’s be real: Fresh, alongside Chase And Status, drove the bandwagon for everyone to jump on in the first place. But no matter how mainstream he’s gone, Fresh has always been respected by his peers because, as his name suggests, he has always innovated. Now that pop drum ’n’ bass is being jumped on by people with less genuine intentions, it’s no longer fresh territory. The band shares his frustration.

“The same happens on the underground,” says Vegas. “You make tunes that come from the heart. Then you hear the copies... and copies... and copies. You can really hear when it’s coming from the right place, and you can really hear the rinsers.”

“In any genre or scene if you’ve been doing it for a long time you’ll start hearing it,” agrees DBridge. “You start doubting yourself, you start thinking you sound like a bad copy of yourself! That’s one of the reasons we went off and did our own thing and why reuniting is relevant now; we can revisit that original ethos and apply today’s mixing techniques and bring in all our various sides of the scene. It’s about remaining interested and keeping ourselves excited.”

It’s the crux of this tale that validates their reunion and makes it all the more exciting: as individuals, and as a collective, they have nothing to prove. There’s nothing contrived or cynical about this comeback and the only air of nostalgia is their love for real analogue machines (which they’ve spent the last nine months re-amassing) and pushing drum ’n’ bass away from its current obsession with chart hits and clinical button-pressing, crystalline-produced minutiae back to its raw, rugged, gut-punching heavyweight roots.

They’re pushing hard, too. After the two comeback shows over Easter, the foursome will – just like they did previously – split into pairs to tour and keep up with their studio duties. “We want to keep the flow of music coming,” says Fresh. “But we have to be realistic and give each other time for our individual projects; letting us breathe our own personal music vibes in our own way but then come together to unleash our shared musical aggression. We didn’t let that happen last time.”

Their last incarnation was so accelerated, intense and prolific, the split was inevitable. This time, though, they’re not rushing things. And while they allude to a “Very well known label in d’n’b” signing their new material, they’re happy to sit on it for the foreseeable. In fact, the only way to hear what they have in store is to see them live this summer...

And so we find ourselves back in Motion. Iconic track ‘The Nine’ causes reactions so raucous you can’t hear the bassline for a second. The grimy ‘Mo Fire’ creates instant mosh mania. ‘Ladies Of Spain’ has those of us lucky to be beside a wall melting into it. Moments later DBridge and Vegas’s distinctive ‘True Romance’ oozes through the system causing 1.21GW of goosebumps, before the planet-aligning synth intro of Fresh’s ‘Signal’ stops every one of us dead in our tracks.

It’s perhaps the most exciting realisation of their reunion show: the new Bad Company performances aren’t nostalgia-rooted exercises in past success muscle flexing, but a celebration of each individual’s benchmark-setting output, how it’s influenced the wider d’n’b picture and, most importantly, how the new material will move the genre forward.

One of the most exhilarating hours of d’n’b you’ll hear this summer climaxes with the machine purrs of ‘Equilibrium’ and an epic, unnamed studio-fresh dispatch that floors the crowd. Eleven years and four lifetimes of experiments and successes after they split, Bad Company still have something serious to say. History has been made... here comes the future.