INTERVIEW: Drum & Bass Pioneer Roni Size on 20 Years of ‘New Forms’

Originally published Dec. 11, 2017 via Salute Magazine

Since its release in 1997, New Forms, the debut album from Roni Size and UK drum and bass collective Reprazent, has been regarded as a trailblazer for the electronic music sub-genre. To celebrate the expansive 20th-anniversary reissue of the Mercury Music Prize-winning debut album, Roni Size has returned to the U.S. for his first-ever solo tour, featuring live instrumentation and new hardware.

“This is the first time I’ve done this in America by myself,” Size tells Salute Magazine. “I’ve just come back from Australia, and that’s been great. That was a real experience. A lot of criticism, a lot of positive stuff and some negative stuff. People… they like emcees, they like the full band, they like the drummer. They like this, they like that, some people like a lot of everything. As much as I like textures and layers, this isn’t about textures and layers, this is about 20 years of New Forms and finding the most efficient way of celebrating it. That’s what this is about. For me, I haven’t even got my visuals with me tonight, all I’ve got is the music. So the music really has to stand up by itself.”

Salute Magazine caught up with the drum and bass pioneer prior to his performance at Output in Brooklyn, New York, on December 7th…