SILENT CODE consists of ALINA MAYES and DEAN PRATT AKA MISS REPRESENT AND DJ DAPZ. After DJing for the past 10 years at drum & bass events across the globe they finally decided to collab and start their great production in their own personal studio.
Their first release was ‘Tonight’ feat G’D UP and was signed to Flourish recordings. After this sucess they went onto produce their second release ‘Engaged’ which was featured on Viper Recordings Worldwide 001.
They began having more sucess with ‘Bang Bang Bang’ and ‘I Need Your Loving’ which reached 900 downloads on Soundcloud. They have now just signed a record deal with PHYSMATICS RECORDINGS, releasing ‘DUTTY GAL VIP’ and on the flip side ‘EAST STAR’ which sold out in the first week at BLACKMARKET RECORDS.
drum+basics got a quick Q&A with SILENT CODE.
How were you introduced into drum and bass?
Dean has been into dnb since his early teens from his elder brother playing tape packs, and i’ve been into drum and bass from my late teens from going to free parties and raves. It’s weird, as we have figured out we both started off loving Happy Hardcore, and our paths have crossed several times over the years at Jungle / Drum and Bass events.
We have shared the same favourite Drum & Bass tune Friday by Capone for over 15 years and both feel like we have known each other forever, Drum & Bass has been there for over half our lives with us just crossing paths almost on purpose it seems because of drum and bass.
What made you decide to get into production?
Both of us have been influenced by our parents as musicians, either by them working in the industry or having music lessons at an early age. I grew up around all kinds of music, mainly doing music grades and playing in brass band competitions and always listening to classical from doing ballet. I also did tap and modern dance, so all kinds of music was played. Deans dad was a radio Dj in the 60s and 70s so he has always had music surrounding him. From classical music to dance music, it’s been stamped into us from an early age, and music production is something that we both feel comes naturally. Dean and I both started making tunes on the playstation when we were growing up, and we even studied the same National Diploma in the exact same year of 2005 just miles apart before we even knew each other. Since gaining the qualifications we have both been producing but have both just had our first DnB vinyl release together, and we hope to continue our path on production together now as Silent Code.
How did your production name SILENT CODE come about ?
It’s a concept that I discussed with one of the Evilsound promoters in Rome, (Italy) as she was showing me round the city, I and always thought it would sound good for an album name. As Dean and I worked in the studio more together, we found that we had our own communication through sound, expressions and our own beliefs in life. Silent Codes exist in everyones lives from hand gestures, Geometric Codes, to Codes of Silence, so it has quite a deep and personal meaning to both of us which we thought sounded tidy. Maybe we can go on a complete deeper tip, but if you think about it, look up Cymatics or think about Silent Codes to the Police Blue Code of Silence, or how sound is a wave that creates Solfeggio Scales, music is today created by codes, or silent digital information which is converted into sound so you might get that Silent Code to us means a whole heap of things not just one.
What can we expect from you two in the future ?
We want to try and deliver a new cinematic sound that we can take overseas by dj-ing and by possibly encorporating our instrumental mixes with live vocals. We have a lot of current projects and exciting label signings coming up, we don’t know exactly what to expect, we have achieved more in the last 6 months than we could of imagined. Forthcoming we have a couple of other tracks that were started last year that we are going to sit and work on when we get time, but we have just been asked to do a 4 track EP for Easy Records and we have 2 more tunes Spellbound and Sanctum that’s just been signed to Viper Recordings. The project that we are working on at the moment is Don’t Give Up which will have vocals featuring from J Sonic, a Mc from Washington USA which we are really excited about. You can hear clips of projects we are working on on www.missrepresent.com
Is there any other producers which you two would like to collab with ?
It would be great to get into the studio with new people to learn new techniques and expand our knowledge. We are just taking it upon ourselves to progress and polish our sound. We know we still have a lot of work to do to get to where we want with our sound. We love the Ragga Twins, so we invited them up to record the vocals for Dutty Gal, the VIP has just sold out on vinyl in 3 record stores which was fantastic, but we really hope to work with Futurebound and Matrix one day in the studio. They’ve invited us, we just need to find time! The question of collaborating though, the list would be endless. We have ideas of wanting to work with other artists not just in drum and bass but from other genres as well.
Finally what other producers are you two feeling right now ?
We are feeling a lot of artists from past and present, Metrik, Futurebound, Matrix, Noisia, Sigma and not just drum and bass, we love Drake, Nicki Minaj, and Calvin Harris. I mean the list is really a lot bigger but we don’t want to bore you!
Don’t forget to check our Silent Code facebook page on Facebook or our forthcoming releases on MissRepresent
