...written and compiled by spank.

LETS TAKE IT BACK OLD SKOOL
Deeply embedded in skateboard, hip-hop and rock culture brothers D-Ray and T-Ray both came together after working on separate projects. Older brother D-Ray fronted the band Herb fusing “NIN industrial type rock with West Coast funky shit”. Meanwhile T-Ray was banging out techno tunes in his bedroom including some samples that D-Ray took a bit of a fancy to. When T-Ray unwittingly found out that his samples were being used he was asked to help out with the live sets. Herb eventually split but not before the pair agreed to work together in the future.

IN LIMBO
The collaboration took longer to come together than anticipated. Due to a serious back injury D-Ray was forced to spend time in and out of hospital. During this period he was asked to play guitar for an old school friend’s band, Keith Flint of the Prodigy. The offer was declined, “Eventually I had to come clean, what with my back and the drugs I had to overcome the pain, I was in no state to tour. With hindsight it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I was such a creative force in Herb that it would have been frustrating just playing guitars and samples”.

A LIFE MORE ORDINARY
The brothers were eventually brought together when they were asked to do a soundtrack for a BBC2 programme on crack. At the launch party the verdict was “the film was shit but the music was good”. Drawbacks were born. A couple of soundtracks down the line they were asked by A&M to do the trailer for Danny Boyle’s ‘A Life Less Ordinary’. “It came at a time when A&M were offering us the world. The excerpt went all the way to the top but because we didn’t sign to them they weren’t prepared to take the risk. We were disappointed by the whole film in general. We thought it was going to be something akin to ‘True Romance’ or ‘Kalifornia’. Instead the supposedly groundbreaking Danny Boyle turns in this weak offering, more like a life more ordinary”.

SOUNDS LIKE.....
Matured Big Beat. Soundtrack and hip-hop influences come through but are offset by the rawness of live rock. T-Ray explains, “When we do live stuff we see ourselves playing the rock stage rather than the Skint tent. We differ from most big beat acts in that we can do it live”. Weary of producing the formulaic tunes that record companies seem so eager to put out Drawbacks have the experience to resist the temptation of the deals offered to them by the likes of Bolshi, Delancey Street and Freskanova. “Yes, small underground labels are good for getting yourself known but you have to balance that out with what you want. Most labels only see as far as the next twelve and are more worried about the sound of the label than letting their artists grow. We want to be releasing albums not collections of twelve inches with a few fillers”.