№ 112 - Coco Bryce

Active as a DJ since the mid-'90s, the Breda-based producer – as he puts it – “started out with hardcore, breakbeat and jungle, then for a while focused mainly on downtempo styles like hip-hop, Skweee and a bit of dubstep”.

Since 2009 he has dropped smashing jungle and downtempo tunes under his moniker Coco Bryce, becoming a mainstay in the contemporary scene, releasing music on labels like Fremdtunes from S Hertogenbosch and Fresh 86 from Ipswich, as well as his own labels like MYOR, MYOR Massiv, and Ill Behaviour.

For The EDWIN Music Channel, Coco Bryce has produced a mix that balances his own unreleased tracks, tunes by contemporary artists like Response & Pliskin and Paradox, and old bangers like The Originator Krew “BPM” from 1995.

A thrilling joyride of jungle, breakbeat, hardcore, and downbeat spheres, peppered with dreamy sounds, catchy vocal samples, and manic melodies, granting a deep insight into the versatile musical world of Coco Bryce.

To underscore his energetic musical trip with more info about his long-lasting career as a DJ and producer, we spoke with Coco Bryce about his early days as a hardcore DJ, his manifold pseudonyms, and his way of producing music in a variety of styles.

Q. Hello Coco, when and how did your love affair with music start? What was the first encounter that stuck in your memory?

A. The first one that springs to mind is me trying to sing the lyrics of a song I'd heard on the radio to my family sometime in the mid-1980s. Nobody seemed to know the name though, and for decades I thought it was something by the Eurythmics. It wasn't until about four years ago that I finally found out it was "We Just" by the band Moses. An 18-year-old skate homie of mine was playing it off his phone at the skatepark. I completely lost it.

Q. It’s said that your artist name is inspired by the character Coco from the 1998 movie "The Acid House". If so, how often did you switch your personality into different bodies/characters? And do your various aliases like Chavinski, Ill Behaviour and DJ Y? represent these different personalities?

A. That's correct yes. My first moniker was DJ Scine, back in 1995, then I started using the DJ-Y? one around the turn of the century. Coco Bryce was in 2009, followed by Chavinski a couple of years ago. I mainly use DJ-Y? for the hardcore stuff, Coco Bryce for most of the jungle and downtempo tunes, Chavinski for UKG and house. Ill Behaviour is the name of one of my labels, but not all releases are by me, even though someone added it as such on Discogs.

Q. You started as a hardcore and jungle DJ in 1995 and you have been a member of the influential ZMK Soundsystem party serial and label. How does your hardcore past influence your current work and what did you learn from those days?

A. Things basically just went full circle for me. I started out with hardcore, breakbeat, jungle etc, then for a while focused mainly on downtempo styles like hip hop, Skweee and a bit of dubstep, but I always kept playing and producing faster stuff as well. It's just that for the past seven or eight years my focus has been mostly on the uptempo vibes again. It still feels the same to me, except nowadays I've technically grown a bit better at producing.

Q. One of your latest DJ mixes for "The Ransom Note" features a haunting story arc that takes the listener from jungle and drum n bass to trance and techno. How do you see the relationship between those genres and how do you manage to unite them so fluently?

A. I was chatting to Billy Bunter the other day, and he described it as "it's all rave music to me". I couldn't have said it better myself. If you have a bit of a feel for the crowd you're playing to and can scope out which tunes to play at what points in your sets, genres become largely irrelevant in my opinion.

Q. On your various releases, you meld UK Garage, 2Step, trance, techno, drum n bass, breaks, hardcore, jungle, and hip hop. How do you decide which style to cater for with each new release?

A. It's mostly about how I feel certain tracks would work together on an EP or album, often regardless of the genre. Besides Chavinski being mostly 130/140 BPM stuff and DJ-Y? being just hardcore tunes, with my Coco Bryce releases I'll often put a downtempo track amongst the jungle and breakbeat bits. It's mostly about creating a certain vibe, more so than adhering to strict genre 'rules'.

Q. Your label MYOR was launched in 2005. What was the initial idea behind the startup and has it changed over the years?

A. Initially I started it with a friend of mine called Mart. That's also where the Myor name comes from: the M and R are from his name, whilst the Y and O are from mine (Yoël). Until then, most of our output had been tekno and hardcore, since we both cut our teeth producing the type of music that would typically be played at free parties. Both of us were heavily into more breakbeat-oriented stuff as well though, so we started Myor with that in mind. Unfortunately, we ran out of money after a run of test pressings of MYOR 01 haha, so there are only 40 white labels of that release in existence. And it's also why there's a four-year gap between that one and MYOR 02. By then I'd gotten heavily into the wonky hip hop stuff and Skweee, so I released mostly that for a couple of years. Then when I started getting back into jungle and breakbeat hardcore around 2015, I felt it would be more apt to start a separate sublabel for it, and that's how Myor Massiv came to be, the name of which was coined by another mate of mine btw, a fella named Vincent, who produces as Drvg Cvltvre and loads of other monikers.

Q. Did you have any role models or inspirational benchmarks when you launched MYOR?

A. Not really, or not for the label specifically at least. It was mostly that we wanted a label to release whatever we thought was cool on.

Q. MOYR has the sub-labels Diamond Life, Faces Of Bass, Ill Behaviour and Myor Massiv. What makes each sublabel unique, what does it represent?

A. Faces Of Bass is strictly 4x4 hardcore, in all its shapes and forms, be it acid, jungle techno or straight-up gabber. Myor Massiv is jungle and breakbeat hardcore. Diamond Life was meant to be mostly the more atmospherically side of jungle, but the lines between that label and Myor Massiv quite quickly blurred tbf. Ill Behaviour is all cheeky bootlegs.

Q. Does your Dutch residency town Breda influence your work as a producer or DJ, or could you operate from any place in the world?

A. I wouldn't say it does. I think if it did, I'd be producing trance and Dutch house. Most of my output leans heavily on UK dance music, although of course the hardcore bits undeniably prove I grew up in the Netherlands.

Q. On what future projects are you working on right now?

A. I usually just produce tunes without any specific release in mind, just stack them, and then when I want to do an EP or album or whatever, I'll go through my list of available tracks and see what would fit nicely together. So, in that sense, it never really feels like I'm working on a project. I have an album coming out soon on Fresh 86 though, which is all downtempo stuff, but I finished putting that together about a year ago already. And I've another album coming out early next year on Myor, which is more jungle oriented.

TRACKLIST

Coco Bryce - Blossom
Coco Bryce - Yumiko
DJ Sofa - Champion Lover
Coco Bryce - Dasia
Coco Bryce - Celestial Road
Coco Bryce - Computer Love
Coco Bryce - Bubble Metropolis
Flume & Caroline Polachek - Sirens (Coco Bryce Remix)
Bizzy B - Infatuation
The Originator Krew - BPM
Paradox - Street Beat
Response & Pliskin - Rescue Me
Coco Bryce - Want U
Suburban Soul - Witchcraft
Coco Bryce - Shadow Weaver
DJ Y - Just 4 U