“John Denver’s got some bangers” - an interview with Sully
Remember when jungle was fun? Norwich producer Sully does and that is one of the reasons why he is among the best artists in the modern-day jungle game. Of course, Sully - aka Jack Stevens - also has incredible production skills, a knee-jangling precision to his beats and a brilliant melodic edge. But it is the sense of amused possibility that makes tracks like Werk, Model Collapse and 5ives really sing.
In April Sully released a Basic Rhythm remix of Model Collapse - a song that made the actual UK charts - on FABRICLIVE and I was offered the chance to interview him via email. Initially, I wasn’t that keen as I don’t really like email interviews. But I went for a run with a Sully playlist and, before I knew it, I had composed 29 answers for him, in my sweaty head. He replied and here we are.
As with most journalists, I prefer face-to-face interviews and a few of these questions, when written down, look a little bit silly, in a way that would have worked a bit better on the Line Noise podcast. There’s a lot about Norwich, for example, a city in the East of England that I’m not really from but where I spent the influential teenage years. I couldn’t resist.
But, in the end, I’m really pleased with the interview and I have to thank Sully for taking the time to properly engage with my questions, even when going on about Norwich record shops and EZ Rollers. I think the results are fascinating and I hope you enjoy them.
Ben Cardew: How old are you?
Sully: 40.
Ben Cardew: How did you discover jungle / drum & Bass?
Sully: I’ve told the story a dozen times in interviews now so won’t repeat myself too much but the earliest tune I can distinctly remember is Zinc’s Ready or Not bootleg. Enya samples, massive beats. Blew me away. And there were loads of tunes along the way but I really started digging back into the history through dubstep, when I realised where a lot of these influences came from. This was at the same time I was doing nights with a crew called Amen-tal and they’d be booking people like Remarc and Bizzy B so I heard a lot more of the earlier stuff I’d not fully engaged with as a kid.
Ben Cardew: What, for you, is the difference between jungle and drum & Bass? I tend to use the words interchangeably.
Sully: Yeah I wouldn’t differentiate. I know people do and I can usually pick out what they mean but I don’t think any good comes of it. You can mix all styles of drum & bass in a set - picking one and siloing it seems bonkers to me.
Ben Cardew: Who are your biggest musical influences?
Sully: Right this minute I’m fascinated Joy Division and the Martin Hannett production on those albums - all the tight delays and space. And a British electronic musician called Trevor Wishart who's a master of sound manipulation, especially the later digital stuff where a fairly focused sound set gets turned completely inside out. Like painting with samples. And then more directly I’m listening to a lot of late 90s dnb like Krust, Usual Suspects, Digital… That’s just a snapshot of today, though it morphs all the time.
Ben Cardew: I hear a lot of Photek in your music. Are you a fan? What is your favourite Photek tune?
Sully: Love Photek’s work, yes. Does the Studio Pressure stuff count? One of the Jumps or The Water Margin would be my top pick. Or Ichi Ten N Ryu otherwise. If I’m honest I wouldn’t say Photek stuff is a major influence. He was obviously very jazz influenced and that’s not something I think I’ve leaned into much. There’s a certain sophistication to his chops and I wouldn’t say my approach is that classy.
Ben Cardew: In your extreme drums, I also hear the influence of Squarepusher. Do you like that kind of music? Drill & Bass we used to call it.
Sully: Yeah that’s the other end of the scale. The opposite of Photek’s restraint. Obviously I use a lot of the same techniques as Squarepusher but it’s probably more shared influence than direct. I’ve spent a lot more time listening to producers like DCruz, Remarc and Aphrodite and I’d put money on that era and world being the starting point for Squarepusher.
Ben Cardew: How extreme do you go in your drum programming? Do you ever worry about the dance floor?
Sully: My tunes are probably simpler than they seem. There’s usually a pretty standard drum pattern as the basis then a load of development. It’s almost always in a standard 4/4 time and the accents never go too far off the beaten path. You can DJ all of it and I’m definitely conscious of that. Dancing is different though it really depends on the crowd. People like all sorts don’t they? I’ve seen people go nuts to tunes with no beat and rooms stood still to really functional stuff. I reckon it’s a fools errand trying to second guess that sort of thing.
Ben Cardew: Do you have even more extreme work in your unreleased archive?
Sully: Nah. I’m a slow worker so don’t have the luxury of hoarding.
Ben Cardew: I sense a lot of play and fun in your music - do you agree? Is making music a playful thing for you?
Sully: Yeah that’s the whole motivation really. There’s usually a fair bit of graft too but any creativity I muster up come from playfulness. Not knowing outcomes and responding to the happy accidents, that’s the fun part as you say. I want to find surprises.
Ben Cardew: Do you consider your music retro? I don't but I know you sometimes get given that handle.
Sully: The stuff that is best known is definitely informed by the mid 90s, yeah. I don’t want to pastiche anything though or try and force some historic authenticity. I’d hope I add something new, even if it’s subtle.
Ben Cardew: Are there things that you do in your music - production wise - that would have been impossible 30 years ago? Can you give a specific example?
Sully: There’s not much that wasn’t possible 30 years ago. Obviously AI stuff. Maybe more in-depth spectral processing but even that was probably an option at the academic places like Ircam. But most synthesis and processing technologies have been around a long time now.
What’s changed is the accessibility, affordability and control. So you can achieve wildly more in-depth results and work into them over time, which was difficult, if not impossible, with a hardware set up. One more specific thing I can think of is re-synthesising drum hits in an additive synthesiser which lets you play them like a piano. Obviously you can do that with an old school sampler but it’s a different sound. Keeps me entertained anyway.
Ben Cardew: How do you think you have improved as a producer over your years of making music? Can you give an example?
Sully: I don’t think there’s any point making value judgements on this stuff. One door closes, another opens. There’s definitely change though that’s good enough for me. I feel pretty settled in a tempo range now but even then the palette and patterns are shifting over time I’ve always just followed my nose like that really.
Ben Cardew: You do something in your music that I don't think I have heard elsewhere - or maybe not to the same extent - “Pitching the drum hits, using phasing to make them sound like they’re notes” as you described it to DJ Mag. Eg on Werk. How did you come up with that idea? Is it hard to pull off?
Sully: There’s a Portishead track called Machine Gun that ends in this really high feedback delay on the drums and I bloody love that sound. So I started pissing around with the technique and realised you could control the pitch to create phrases and melodies. Phasing / flanging etc is just using another tool to do that job really. But yeah I’m pretty sure that tune was the start of the thought process. It’s not hard technically, no, but if you want to write melodies of any length it can be a bit finicky. It’s definitely time consuming haha.
Ben Cardew: Do you still work a day job? In the Post office? Have you given it up? Or would you like to give it up?
Sully: Yeah packed that in after Covid. It served me very well during that time when the rest of the world was locked away, I was one of the few people I knew with a half normal schedule. I enjoyed it in general really, the job was clear cut and we had a laugh. It’s changed a lot since privatisation though, more and more demanding now it’s about value for shareholders rather than a public service. If it hadn’t gone that way I’d have no issue going back.
Ben Cardew: Does / did having a day job keep you grounded?
Sully: Yeah definitely. I enjoyed life then as I do now. So I know I don’t need to be chasing dreams to be happy. I was around a much broader spectrum of opinions too. The conversations could get lively hahaa.
Ben Cardew: Does / did it help you knowing that you don't have to live off your music?
Sully: I still don’t as far as I’m concerned. There’s other work out there so I’m not chained to music but as long as I’ve got ideas and the bills are getting paid I’m not going anywhere.
Ben Cardew: You live in Norwich, right? What is Norwich like for music at the moment? Any producers / clubs you would recommend?
Sully: Norwich nightlife is healthy yeah. Club wise there’s Space doing the grass roots stuff but punching well above their weight - same with Gonzos. Gonzos has expanded recently but they were both 200-odd capacity before & bringing in people like Mia Koden, Djrum, Skream, Ben UFO, Bukem etc etc. Not many places you’d get to hear DJs like that in a room that size. We’ve had ups and downs over my time here but it’s definitely up at the moment.
Ben Cardew: Is Soundclash still open?
Sully: Yeah still going! Fair few second-hand shops dotted around too. Beatniks, Circular, Press To Play. I stopped buying vinyl a while back though I’m not good with organisation.
Ben Cardew: Who are your favourite Norwich producers of all time?
Sully: Bladerunner & T>I. Bladerunner has moved elsewhere now but had a good stint here. And T>I has had a night called Rumble running for decades now. Both cracking producers I play their tunes in sets all the time. And both have a knack for keeping their own flavour but making their tunes sound massive at the same time.
Ben Cardew: Are EZ Rollers still around?
Sully: I met Jay & Alex a couple of years after moving here and they were still running a studio then. I’ve not seen them since then though!
Ben Cardew: You hit the top 40 with Model Collapse. How did that feel? Surreal?
Sully: It was the sales chart. So my mum was impressed but obviously the wider industry is streaming based so it’s not exactly a Top of the Pops situation. What strikes me is how committed people are to the less commercial areas of music. People want to invest in it, to the point where it rivals massive pop stars and that’s what keeps it all going.
Ben Cardew: You have done lots of tracks outside of jungle - 2 step, footwork etc. Do you have pretty wide taste?
Sully: Yeah I’d say so. There’s not many styles that I’ve not connected to a tune or two in. I used to think country but then I remembered there’s Johnny Cash. John Denver’s got some bangers. And Dolly Parton. And that’s just the entry level stuff, I’ve never even dug in so I bet there’s loads I’d love if I heard them. A much more accomplished musician than me told me he saw music he didn’t get as a challenge to expand his mind. I reckon that’s a good way of looking at it.
Ben Cardew: You have a history in metal music - how do you think that crosses over with jungle? Does it influence your work?
Sully: There’s probably an intersection with the more tear-out dnb stuff but it’s not really an area I know much about. It doesn’t have much crossover with my work outside of giving me experience of general arrangement or whatever. The one time I’ve felt some of those habits appear is in the delay melodies we mentioned earlier - in the note choices and the tremolo picking feel - I could feel my old guitar playing style coming through there.
Ben Cardew: What one Sully track would you play to someone to show them what you do? And why?
Sully: Am I trying to win them over or wig them out? The DJ in me would try and read the room a bit but failing that I’d go with Werk or 5ives. Or if it’s more the direction I’m heading in I’d go with Model Collapse ‘cos it’s a lot more open palette wise it feels like that’s the path I’m on now.
Ben Cardew: You have been in tour in the US, right? How has that been?
Sully: It really is the big country. Never mind a day job that place will humble you. Terms like East Anglia or drum & bass might as well be species of lichen to the general populace there. That said there are some great people out there who’ve built some tight scenes all over, there’s been some electric nights across the country. One thing that surprised me is the breadth of taste there - it’s a lot more open than I expected which is the best you can hope for when it comes to DJing.
Ben Cardew: Finally, what is next for you?
Sully: As much time playing around with synths as I can manage. So you can probably expect releases in future to reflect that. Taking a bit of a break from long haul trips but I’ll DJing up and down the country and Europe all year and running a night called Pressure with my mate Basic Rhythm.
Some listening
Slingshot, from Bristol veteran DJ Die, has a bass line so fantastic, silly, fun and joy-inducing, I want to crawl up into it and live there into my dotage. The bass reminds me of Micky Finn & Aphrodite’s Bad Ass in that it sounds like how the butterflies crawling around in your stomach at a rave feel.
Imagine water dripping off the roof of a deep, dark cave and you get in your canoe and follow it down the river, slightly apprehensively, and all is going well until you realise you’re in a giant whirlpool being sucked to your doom. That’s what Drift, the first fruits of an unexpected collaboration between Batu and Donato Dozzy (who has been on an absolute tear, of late), sounds like. Or perhaps I’ve been watching too much Yellowjackets.
gyrofield - Goat with the Red Tooth
OK I have definitely been watching too much Yellowjackets: gyrofield’s Goat with the Red Tooth, from the debut EP on their new label, Field Research, is a dance of death, drums spiralling around a sacrificial vocal sample as the blood rises in tribal fury. There’s a real dark percussive power to this tune and I will generously tip the first DJ I hear playing it.
Goat - Orin (Ricardo Villalobos remix)
At a mere nine minutes, Orin is basically a snack for Ricardo Villalobos, a producer who (to my mind) sometimes confuses length for depth. His remix for Goat is great though, jazzy, playful, weird, tight and with a fantastic vocal hook that you will be chanting all night. Villalobos for dancing to, rather than sitting down and zoning out on.
Kelela’s forthcoming third album, New Avatar, plays homage to her roots in the D.C. indie scene, roots I was entirely unaware of but was very glad to discover. linknb is a kind of shoegaze electronic R&B number that reminds me of Cocteau Twins being polluted with trace elements of Crazy Town’s Butterfly. That sounds like it should be utterly terrible but linknb is actually one of the best things I have heard this month and the rewind button has got an ethereal hammering.
Eyes Full comes from a similar place to Kelela’s linknb, in that it sees an artist - in this case Tennessee free jazz merchant Zoh Amba - dive head-long and unexpectedly into 90s indie noise, coming up for air in the sweet spot between My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything and Sonic Youth. Eyes Full is one of those songs I initially thought would be totally unlistenable and I slowly grew to love.
Boards of Canada - Prophecy at 1420 MHz
The obvious thing would have been to go darker; and most people thought that was what Boards of Canada would deliver on Inferno, their fifth (or perhaps ninth) studio album: something like Tomorrow’s Harvest but even gloomier and more apocalyptic.
They may still do so. But on the evidence of Introit and Prophecy at 1420 MHz - the first and second song to be officially released from Inferno, while we continue to wonder if Tape 05 really is Father and Son - they’ve gone somewhere altogether more unexpected, not darker than Tomorrow’s Harvest but not exactly lighter either.
Introit is a kind of palette cleanser / gullet opener, 36 seconds of swirling, woozy and very televisual synth, like the opening seconds of Gemini on Tomorrow’s Harvest, effectively announcing that BoC are back. It is a wonderful suggestion of a song without breaking any boundaries.
But Prophecy at 1420 MHz, the name a reference to the mysterious Wow! signal, feels like an immediate break, as a huge guitar and drum riff bursts over the song 100 seconds in. It’s not like Boards of Canada haven’t used these elements before - The Campfire Headphase was full of guitar, for example, while drum breaks are a staple in the Canadian diet - and the guitar melody is very typical of Boards of Canada in its displaced and yearning melancholy, But the elements sound extra clean, extra washed here.
Then the vocal arrives: a deep-toned, cosmic voice that reminds me of Zapp or early electro records, beamed through synthesiser technology to be given the tenderest musical edge. BoC have frequently used spoken-word samples to give texture to their songs; but this feels like an actual honest-to-goodness vocal, laid over the song with the suggestion of rhythm, lyrics about intellect, reality and consciousness delivered like an MC who is simultaneously messianic and incredibly shy.
The result is as unsettling as it is brilliant. This is music that gleams with an unreal and slightly discomfiting neon glow, more plastic-y and strange than anything else in the Boards of Canada catalogue and almost too real to be believed.
Beatrice M. feat. Jinnal & Kaba - In Touch
… in which Paris-born producer Beatrice M. takes the most British form of dance music(that’s classic dubstep*) puts velvet-voiced French MC Kaba over the top and makes some of the most brilliantly sensual, late-night-and-gentle bass music I have ever heard, like a Croydon Larry Heard. This is a gorgeous track.
OK it’s actually classic jungle but I needed to make a point…
Masal and Emma Anderson - Pause The Rain (Xylitol remix)
Oh come on! Emma Anderson from Lush, a harp and synth duo and a clattering prog jungle remix from Xylitol? If this isn’t all you’ve ever wanted in music, then you’re just not dreaming hard enough.
Things I’ve done
Line Noise podcast with Mike Pickering
On this week’s Line Noise podcast, I spoke to Mancunian extraordinaire Mike Pickering, a man whose musical history makes ordinary people quake. We spoke about Quando Quango, Factory Records (where Mike signed James), being the resident DJ at the Haçienda in the glory years of rave, making the first British house record (perhaps), forming M People and winning the Mercury Prize, A&Ring Calvin Harris and - most of all - Mike’s new book Manchester Must Dance: A Life of Music, Madness and Moving On Up. Is he the best connected man in Manchester?
Always wondered where to start with Stereolab? Or where to go deeper with one of the most mind-bogglingly adventurous bands of their generation? Johann Wald and I have you covered in this latest Tier List, which ranks the band’s eleven studio albums in order of utter essentialness.
The playlists
Apple Music: The newest and bestest 2026.
Spotify: the newest and bestest 2026.
Apple Music: The newest and the bestest
Spotify: The newest and the bestest.
