Bucky’s new LP Come Back couldn’t be about anywhere but home—the roots which, in his own words, call “like a light house in the distance.”
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When representing their city, artists from London seem to focus on the nights more than the days. Why is this?
I guess the city of London has two faces. There's the 9-5 hustle and bustle of the daytime life, all the industry and tourism etc.—the London eye that no-one local’s ever been up. A bit like a hive. Full of people who roll in for the day, do their job, and leave again; rush in and rush out, trying to conserve as much of their time as possible. The rat race.
Then you have locals who actually live in London full-time and put up with the noise and living in the ends. London at night is kind of out-of-hours after 7ish. The darkness descends and the pace slows down a bit, and things take on a different vibe. I tried to make Come Back about the more real life behind the city: the gang culture, knife crime epidemic, what is actually going on in the boroughs of the city—but also covering some of the lighter moments and places of South London, which feels like no other place in the world.
Garage has always felt nostalgic to me. What is contemporary garage nostalgic for?
Well, for me, contemporary garage is nostalgic for an era long since past in the UK. For me it's like the Nokia brick era of times before facebook, social media and the internet. Back in the early 2000s it was more UK—a bit more geeza, you know—collar up, slap on a bit of Brut, few squirts of Lynx Africa, a chain and a sovereign and off you go. I remember you had to wear smart shoes to get into Wetherspoon's on a Friday night or you weren't getting in. You couldn't even finesse it with all-black Reebok classics and claim they were your work shoes. Like you weren't getting in anywhere at all, and you'd have to go home and change them. Mike Skinner kind of put the cherry on top of that era for me with his LPs, especially the early ones.
It's probably me, but I think I’m stuck in that era a bit. I just felt more connection to a culture or an identity than I do now. I felt like we had a bit more a thriving underground scene; people had more awareness about underground UK-based music. Everyone knew what the underground genres were. We liked what we liked, and we were doing our own UK sound and just enjoying it. Not in a pride way, just in a genuine “this is what we’re into” way.
It's really a bit mad when you think about it, just having tunes with a melody and bass that people know and love, without all this marketing and other shit that’s part of the package these days. If you go watch some earlier rave videos of that kind of era on youtube, it’s mad—not one person looking at a phone, or filming the set with their phone, anything, just people raving there for the music. It was more pure. That’s what I’m nostalgic for.
I made a track on the LP called ‘Pirates’ which I think you literally gotta have come up in the times I described to understand it. It's a nod to Pirate radio times. I’ve still got about five pirate radio mixes on my phone at any one time. Again, something pure about it. Told you I was stuck in the past.
London is the ground zero for so many electronic genres. The internet has made things global. Has this affected the way genres appear in electronic music and if so, how?
I think the internet has helped form actual scenes of like-minded people. If you’re into darker or more emotive music at around 120 -140bpm you can find it, but you have to dig online. I think you could say I was a “future garage” artist, but the genre is very much an underground one in the UK, as it has hardly any coverage at all. It's a very diverse genre, and structurally it can take on multiple different variants (for example, the more chillstep/dubstep-related stuff vs. the garage-based 2step tracks) which I think has attracted artists from all over the world, and created an online scene, so to speak.
I think the online thing is both healthy and unhealthy. On the one hand, it allows people to connect and listen to things instantly, but on the other, people seem to rarely go out and support things physically with their presence. I know there's been people calling for shows to be livestreamed but I'm really against that. Like back in the day, you had to tie your shoes and go out and support it, not just sit in front of your laptop and listen to it in crap quality on shit speakers. It's a whole different experience live in a club. I think people spend far too much time online now it can't hurt to go out a bit more in the world and experience things and meet people.
Russia is leading the way in terms of live future garage events, where you can get shows of up to 1000 people. Last year I went out there with Vacant and Sorrow to do shows in Moscow and St Petersburg and its mad the fans out there, the sound systems, venues and shows they put on for this music. They also have a ton of great artists in the scene. Something about Russia and darker music goes hand in hand. But meanwhile in the streets of the UK, if you ask 100 people what the genre is I don't think most people would know what you were talking about. It’s a shame, as the genre has attracted some hugely talented artists worth listening to.
For international readers: what's different about South London than North, East or West?
Unless it's for work, most people never travel to other parts of the city. At least for me and the people I know, you don't tend to leave and go to a different part at weekends. You just stay in your area. Each part of London feels different and has a different vibe and energy to it, with everyone claiming their wing is the best. I lived in Stockwell Gardens Estate for years. It's actually between Vauxhall and Brixton; you can walk to either in about 10 mins. It used to be a bit rough but it's calm now.
For me South London is easily the best hands down; I wouldn't live in another part. It's hard to explain why, it just feels like home to me and has the most vibes. I feel relaxed there, and not on edge like I do walking around the rest of London. Also South London has a heritage of garage and jungle, and loads of nights are still going on down there at places like Brixton Jamm. I remember seeing EL-B down there, it was a madness—but there’s always tons of old-school jungle artists I used to listen to back in the day going there every week. Mickey Finn's there this week.
You talk about London "calling you back". Where are you at now? Any plans to return?
I'm moving to a place in the middle of nowhere near Swindon called Highworth. Then I’m going to Canada for a bit, then who knows. Probably up north where its cheaper. It's true that it has been calling me back—I've been going up to London regularly, like every weekend since moving in 2019—but that’s going to slow down now.
I'm not coming back, not unless I win the lottery.
Does it feel different writing about London from outside than from within?
It was really easy—I went back quite often, but I know it like the back of my hand. With this LP, I've made so many tracks about places in South London but also emotions around them. ‘South Bank’, ‘Estate’, ‘Burgess Park’, ‘Jake's House’, ‘Angel’, ‘Corner Shop’ are all places I know really well, and tried to describe with music.
I got the idea for ‘Uber Home’ when I took a Uber back from my mate Jake’s. All the Ubers seem to be playing bass-heavy Bashment on the radio in South London, and I'm always sitting there a bit waved looking out the window enjoying it, so it's kind of influenced that tune—especially the vox.
I also wanted to write about the knife crime epidemic and the madness that’s going on with that. ‘Knives & Daggers’, ‘Street Level’ and ‘Truth’ are about that, with ‘Truth’ being about how people in the area know who killed and stabbed who—but won't say, due to a no-snitch culture. The other tracks, for the most part, describe my living situation and my emotions between these places basically.
Recent years have seen a lot of locals migrate away from the city. Do you know why this might be?
The problem is, to live in London you gotta pay the price of admission and sell all your time. Prices on living and everything go up every year. What it boils down to is that you have to sell your soul to the devil in Zone 1; five days a week realistically, 7am to 7pm door to door. When you do get home, it’s stuff a ready-meal down, go to bed and do it again.
I used to work on building sites in London for years, lifting scaffold towers up flights of stairs, and loading vans and picking things up and dropping them off. After a while, I managed to somehow bullshit my way into a assistant project manager role in Zone 1 in corporate London. Still don't know how I got the job. I had submitted my brother’s CV by accident, and they still hired me. Anyway, that profession is really is just 50% chasing contractors up and 50% waffle. I hated it.
I did try for years to find balance in my life—do music, and try to work and survive there—but I couldn't. Someone at work once told me that you need to go find your own bouncy castle. I always remembered that. After a few years of working and coming home with zero time and energy, I had a few things happen to me and I decided to quit my job and leave in order to give music a final go. It wasn't as if I was doing particularly well with it either. I remember I'd been bricking it for so long, but I think sometimes you “gotta go there to come back” as they say, and allow yourself to chase after your heart’s desires in life—if only to know that you tried. I'd much rather try something and fail than live a life of regret and what ifs. There are some risks you can't afford not to take.
Leaving a job and money is a risk, but so is not doing something you want to do in life because it damages you, both mentally and physically, and literally changes your life outcomes. Obviously it's really hard making a living from music, so I knew I couldn't afford to have both. I had to leave London.
I think for most people the alarm goes off after 30, and we realise we don't have all the time in the world. Once you've lived several London cycles, year in year out, you start to realise the pattern to the game, and that your pay rise you might have got this year means jack-shit because all your bills have gone up just as much. It just becomes a grind.
The only other choice you have is to commute, but I always thought people who did that were a mad. Adding 4 hours on your working day, and losing all that time. It's like walking on one of those mechanical walkways at Heathrow, metaphorically speaking. One minute you’re 25 at one end, and you walk a bit and before you know it you’re 30 years old at the other end, wondering how you got there so fast. Life's too short. Sometimes life begins when you realise you only have one.
I think this is why in the end a lot of people end up moving to another city entirely. I'm not suggesting that people leave to chase their dreams, but maybe they just want to spend more time with family, or have a garden or have their own space or move to Cornwall and work in a bakery or whatever—it doesn't matter.
For whatever reason, some people decide that all the time they give up and work, for the life they get back, is just not worth the candle. I can't say I blame them—because that's what I did.
Any artists you want to shout out?
Wanna shout out to Man Like Vacant and Sorrow, Tir at Insight Music, Prkls, Dark Heart Recordings, The Games We Play and everyone else who knows me. Love Back x
Come Back is available for purchase and streaming here.
Interview: Andrew O’Keefe