Interview – DJ Krust

Unbeknownst to his fans, and possibly even to himself, Full Cycles DJ Krust has the heart of a philosopher. Having achieved respect and admiration for his various solo projects, as well as being a part of the seminal Reprezent crew, Krust speaks with the soul of a man who has been able to see beyond the music to that which it represents.

“After the Comanche project I did, I thought I needed to do something else,” Krust explains laconically. “I went into the studio and tried to put together bits and pieces and experiment again. I was also reading a lot of books at the time about consciousness about human awareness about the universe and ancient civilizations and I came across this one singular thing – the inner power of the human being and the spirit and the soul and consciousness and awareness. I’ve been into this stuff for as long as I can remember and I really started to find some really good solid information that I could digest and that I could re-interpret into music.”

For someone who has been a part of the dnb scene since the very beginning, it is no wonder that Krust has taken his experiences and weaved his own mythos. His solo career has been filled with experimental, musically driven work that has consistently pushed the envelope in terms of what dnb, as a genre, strives for. These reflective thought processes are evident in his new body of work, “Hidden Knowledge.”

“The main focus of the album, was to put in some human awareness and consciousness, and to really push that side of it. As far as the music was concerned, it’s a progressed sound of what I’m about and what Full Cycle is about. It’s a futuristic sound as far as dnb is concerned. It’s wide screen cinematic music. I really tried to delve back in myself as an artist and where I came from. I listened to my old music and I thought this is the essence of what I’m about, I do this really well and this is what i should be concentrating on. I based my album on that, and pushed the boundaries – within myself, so I could say this is me, this is what I’m about.”

Over the years, Krust has seen the birth and maturation of a genre of music that he, along with others, has helped guide. At its earliest inception, Krust is struck by a definitive turning point whereby the genre was born.

“When we started doing this, it wasn’t called anything. We were just making music that didn’t have any name or title. We didn’t really have any idea of what direction it was going in – we were doing something that sounded good, so we kept doing it,” says Krust, reminiscing. “We carried on with that for a few years, and a scene emerged. There was a definite split between rave and jungle – it had a big reggae influence but it had a flat beat – boom boom boom – and breaks. The change came when they took the flat beat and the ravey stab out of it, and jungle was born. It was a real pure form of music.”

Krusts drive to take advantage of his years of experience is nothing more than a way of placing his history within a forge of new ideas, and directly acknowledging what has come before. His at times grandiose tracks have hidden echoes of his former self, yet also hint at an encompassing future for the genre.

“I think that what some of us have become now because we have been involved in the music for so long – is that we naturally dnb people. We have grown into this music now, so we are naturally capable of making dnb from a musical point of view – and we can start putting our history and our influences in there. If part of that is consciousness and part of that is philosophy, then it should be a natural progression and it should be something that you do – if you are what you are, then it naturally comes out in the music. That’s what you are, that what you are about. I think that’s what’s happening now. There’s definitely a place for philosophy in this music. Damn right there is.”