Batman and Robin, Laurel and Hardy, Bodger and Badger, Ant and Dec, Elijah and Skilliam – it seems that double acts are definitely the way forward…

And I like to think of the Butterz DJs, as Grime’s answer to all of these…kind of. And I also like to think of them as proof that some of ‘da man dem’ (and ting blud - get me - safe) involved in the Grime scene, really do have more than half a brain cell. If you cast your minds back to last August I had a menage-a-Butterz where we spoke about the finer things in life - chicken, women, music and their plans for world domination. I caught up with them last week as they prepare to smash it, headlining our Hotoneten room at The Bullet Train / Spam Fritter / Hotoneten Party this Saturday, to see what they’ve been up to…

So boys…it’s been a while. It’s been six months actually. What’s been going on?

S: What HAS been going on?! Everything init!
E: Well the football season started again.
S: Yeh man.
E: But seriously, everything changes so fast that we don’t even know what’s going on and what has happened. Init Skilliam - like I haven’t spoken to you in 2 hours and we’ve got another booking in that time.
S: It’s hard to say because things are changing so fast.

E: It’s nang. We’re having such a good time. It’s just nang.

And it’s probably down to the fact that what you guys do is completely different to what your Grime DJ peers do…How do you manage to stand out?
E: Well the fact that we do the instrumental thing for starters.
S: And also we work with producers and try to build them up instead of just playing the same things. There’s an element of quality control we will never play anything we don’t like just for the sake of it.
E: There are certain tunes that people will hear other DJs play and the chances are those tunes would’ve been played on our Rinse FM show first, or I would’ve named the beat or I would’ve been involved in the creative process in some way shape or form. It’s weird when I turn on Radio 1 and I hear Swindle’s beat Airmiles and I’m like, “Oh my god, I actually named that tune” and it’s playing on Radio 1 – that’s sick! And next week he’s coming out to Amsterdam with us for his first show – that’s dumb! You couldn’t really ask for more.

You lot have been playing out in Europe quite a lot since you last spoke to Hotoneten. What’s that like?
E: We’ve played in Holland a few times, and Prague. We’re going to Holland again next week and the Glasgow at the end of the month. Out of all of the grime lot, no one else does so it becomes a big deal when it’s not something everyone does.

And what are the crowds like over there do they understand grime?
S: It’s like we say all the time, if you have just a beat, more people can understand it. Like we might go to Holland for example – they’ll listen to an MC but they won’t necessarily understand what he’s saying or how he’s putting himself across, that’s not even an issue with instrumentals.
E: Let the music do the talking, init.
S: Exactly - if it’s hype, its hype; and it’s about picking your own way of doing things.
E: We cross the language barrier easily because we play 70 per cent instrumental stuff. If you can understand beats around 140bpm then you get it. There’s nothing much else to get.

And Butterz is now a label right?
E: Yes. Butterz is a vinyl and digital select label. The first release on there is Terror Danjah’s Bipolar. He’s been with us from the beginning and he can make tunes; good tunes, quickly and he’s not long. When it came to doing it we wanted something fresh. He phoned me one evening in November and he was like “I’m going to make the tune now” and he started…Four hours later he pretty much had the tune and the next day he sent it; he did the same thing with Airbubble.
S: It’s like I said earlier - we try and showcase new talent.
E: And another thing that has happened is that people who have featured on our shows have gone onto be signed by reputable indie labels. Even if we didn’t put it out, someone else has – they go on to get recognition elsewhere, which is sick.

So how do you decide what makes the cut?
S: It’s just apparent what’s good and what’s not init.
E: Sometimes a song might not be good alone but when you mix it, it becomes mind blowing.
S: It becomes a whole next experience.
E: And when we’re working, putting together our mixes or on radio, in raves this is what we try to create. We make synergy between tunes. No one else really does that. And if you think about that it goes back to how we work differently to other DJs in our field, you can’t really find mixes of them anywhere.
S: They don’t really put themselves out that way, there are platforms for them to do it but they don’t for some reason.

Elijah you’re a journalist as well do you think this has helped your DJing?
E: I just write init. I’m not a journalist. I don’t like the journalism industry at all. Like the other day there was an article about grime in a newspaper and they paid just anyone to do it when they could’ve asked me. If they’d done their research properly they could’ve had a good article. The whole industry is just annoying. For example someone might call me for information for something they’re writing and it’s like I’m doing their work for them. I’m one of the most knowledgeable people about grime and I still don’t really get brought in. It’s a par so I have to write under aliases and stuff. It’s not the actual writers’ fault – it’s more the editorial decisions, why get someone who doesn’t really know about it to write about it? It makes no sense and the funny thing is I thought it would be easier to get into writing than DJing.

So what are the long term plans then apart from world domination which I assume still stands?

E: Well we focus on new Grime and what we’re putting out is being played widely. The bookings keep coming because we’re so dedicated to what we do and every aspect of it from Radio to our mixes even to u-stream which is nang.

S: There’s not even a long-term plan or anything you know but its just weird that the outline of what we said has happened.

E: But you know what I keep thinking, when this is not new, and it’s just nang - not new, but nang still, what do we do then? Today I’ve been DJing for 22 months and three days. Everything I thought would happen, everything I said would happen, has happened so from this point I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Click here to download the latest Butterz mix and click here to watch a u-stream session of Elijah and Skilliam in action with some of the producers they work closely with.

So there you have it, 6 months later and it seems everything is running smoothly. So maybe, just maybe my dreams of a world ruled by rude boys might become a reality sooner than I had anticipated… *swoon*

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