Having had releases out on some of the dubstep scene’s most respected labels, including Punch Drunk, Skull Disco and Soul Jazz, Gatekeeper has already more than earned his stripes. After a bit of a quiet patch he's now got another trio of releases lined up, with the first two having just dropped this week. He also appeared on the Bristol Rise Up show on Radio 1 a few months ago and the audio for that is well worth checking out for an idea of what he’s been up to lately (download here). It seemed like a good time to catch up with him for a chat and as usual the transcript is below, edited to include as little of my ramblings as possible…

It’s been a little while since your last releases, what have you been up to since then?

I did a teacher training course, a post-graduate thing, which was full time. That slowed down what I was able to do musically quite a lot. I was making a lot of stuff but I wasn’t giving a lot of it out. I guess I wasn’t sure if I wanted any of it to be released, or if it was good enough. Now I’m able to look back with some perspective and I can pick out a few alright tunes which I think I can start passing out. That’s how the upcoming releases have come together really, with the exception of the Immerse one. The Rise Up show on Radio 1 was a massive boost for me as well.

That must have been quite an experience…

More than anything it was just really nice to be asked, I just couldn’t believe it, it seemed mad. I wanted to grab the opportunity with both hands and it was a really good inspiration to get writing. All the tunes on there were new and I wanted to make them all quite different. That forced me to push the boundaries a bit and try out some new things. I’m still kind of tuning in to where I was before I think.

So are you happy with the music that you’re writing now then?

I write for myself initially, I don’t generally finish something if I don’t like it. I start a lot of things that are just dead end roads really, but all the ones I finish I like. It’s a buzz making tunes, getting to the end of it. In terms of am I where I want to be, I think I’m still finding out where that is. Every time I make a tune, to me at least they sound quite different. I don’t really know if there is a thread between them or not. Some people will say that they can hear that I’ve got certain things that I do, but I try to make each track different. That’s where I want to be, that’s what keeps me moving forward, I’m trying to better myself each time. I want to improve, I don’t want to stop trying to get better; I don’t think complacency is the way forward. There’s some serious competition out there, there’s some amazing music coming out at the moment. That, more than anything reminds me that I’ve still got a lot of work to do.

So what are the upcoming releases that you have lined up?

The first one’s on M4. One track’s instrumental (‘Which Way’) and the other track is with Grilza - it’s one of the first ones we made which sounded like a finished tune and we’re both really pleased that it’s coming out. The second release is on Immerse for Kidkut and is made up of two older tracks: ‘Hades’ and a re-lick of ‘Tomb’ that I did just after it came out. Wedge is also starting up a label called If Symptoms Persist which I have a 12” release lined up on. One side is an experimental dance track that I don’t actually have a title for yet and the other side is my remix of ‘Vansan’ by Appleblim. Obviously now that Skull Disco has come to a natural end the only way to release something like that is on another label. Me, Wedge and Appleblim are all good friends so Appleblim was happy for it to come out like that and we spoke to Shackleton and he was cool with it too. It was the same for the Immerse release as well actually.

You live with Appleblim and Wedge, does this have a big influence on the music that you produce?

I think it has a big influence definitely. Naturally between us, on different levels, there is that element of friendly competition, it’s the same with most Bristol producers though really, we all know each other and there is that element to it. When you’re in the same house though and you can hear the bass coming from upstairs, you start thinking ‘What’s he doing there? I might have to up my game a bit!’ Also it’s cool to be able to tap on someone’s door and ask if they’ve got five minutes to listen to something to see what they think of it, so we help each other in that way as well. We listen to a lot of music together as well so we are always sharing our influences with each other. There are always other people from the scene coming round as well, so it’s a good place to be.

How did you first meet them?

We met at university, doing a music tech degree in Bath. Wedge was one of the first people I met, going up to the fresher’s ‘evening’ at the student union. I met Appleblim on the first day of actual lectures – he introduced me and Wedge to dubstep really. I was listening to a lot of drum & bass at the time and back where I was from in the south-east garage was popular at the end of the nineties. I'd kind of followed that from a distance and then got into d&b, so I didn’t really follow garage as it came into underground garage and that particular strain of dubstep. When Laurie first introduced me to dubstep I wasn’t too sure about it at first, but I could see some of the links with 2step and stuff.

Gatekeeper was originally a duo made up of you and Appleblim. What’s the story behind that?

We were living together back when we were at uni and were at a loose end one afternoon so we decided to make a tune. We dug out some stuff to sample and just sat there for a couple of hours going through sounds and cutting them up. Laurie suggested we make it at 140bpm. I hadn’t really made “dubstep” before so I was like “yeah alright cool”. We started rolling something out and ended up doing it all in a day. We sequenced it out and then I mixed it down in the evening. So that was it, we had ‘Tomb’.

Wedge had just started his radio show on Dark.fm, so we wanted to get him to play it on his show. It was just a fun thing but we wanted it to be a bit mysterious. We had to come up with a name so that nobody would know it was us. We were in the pub one afternoon throwing some ideas around and ended up with Gatekeeper. It was originally going to be Gatekeepers, but we thought that sounded a bit too much like Park Wardens or something! We thought Gatekeeper was more mysterious as it sounded like one person even though there were two of us. The idea was that either of us could use the pseudonym – it could mean both of us, or just one or the other.

So Wedge played ‘Tomb’ on his show and amongst the group of listeners at the time, which probably wasn’t massive comparatively speaking, it created a minor stir. It then ended up coming out on Skull Disco and was quite well received, much to our surprise. By this point though Laurie was already building a good name for himself as Appleblim and nothing was happening with my old DJ name, so I said to Laurie that it seemed a shame to let the Gatekeeper name drop. We did try to run another track together but it never got finished for one reason and another, I think we were just following different musical paths. I asked if he minded if I continued using the name and he said to go for it, so then I became Gatekeeper.

Do you think your job teaching music affects your production?

I think it actually makes me write more. There’s nothing quite like having hardly any time on your hands for making you get things done. There’s a lot of paperwork that goes with the PGCE and the first year of teaching, so I’m getting home and having to do that in the evening. This means I’ve got to make time for the music. Not only have I got to make time though, but I’ve got to try and make sure that when I use it I make something good happen and not just faff around.

The wicked thing about teaching is that you’ve got a lot of young students who are energetic and wanting to learn. They’re full of ideas and they come in and work on Logic all day; they’re finding out things that I haven’t even seen yet you know? Then sometimes you get them making something that’s like, “woah, they’re actually getting pretty good, I'd better go home and brush up on my skills!” I feel like I have to stay ahead so that I have things to show them and that’s a really good inspiration to get home and make a tune. Even in a lesson when I’m making an example of how to make a drum beat or process a bassline etc, I’ll knock it up in the class in front of them without thinking about it, but then because I’ve done that I often end up with something that I think is actually alright, so when I get home I carry on with that initial idea.

You spoke earlier about how your tunes are all quite different; are there any particular elements that are always important to you?

I think rhythm is something that’s really important to me, the way I programme drums. It might be a different beat each time, but there’s definitely something that I’m looking for in the rhythm department, the way the sounds work with each other, not just harmonically but rhythmically, that’s something that interests me a lot. I think that is definitely something that I put into my tunes naturally because it’s one of the things that determines whether or not I like somebody else’s tune, it’s about that rhythm, about that groove. Some tunes you hear and the production is amazing, but if it hasn’t got that groove…

I’ve been playing musical instruments for a long time now. I learnt the old school route, playing in a couple of orchestras etc, so I think that side of things is always in the background. That theory and harmonic stuff is not something that I’m consciously thinking about when I’m making a tune, but I’m listening for it: ‘does that sound jar with that in a good way or is that clashing with that etc.’

You have been working with vocalists a lot recently in a way that not many other dubstep producers have been. How did this come about?

I’ve been working with Grilza for about three years now. We were just slowly building up a body of work and getting to a point where we were quite happy with what we were doing - pushing each other forward. Then I was introduced to Dread, he’s a wicked guy, loads of energy and enthusiasm for music. He came in one day when me and Grilza were working on ‘Ignite’. Me and Grilza both thought that it needed a hook and I think we both knew that it needed something other than just Grilza. Initially I thought about maybe using a reggae sample, but I don’t know enough about reggae to just go sampling any old thing, I’d want to know what it was I was sampling. Dread was round one day though and he listened to the beat and then wrote something for it so fast it was crazy. I’m going to be doing lots more with Grilza and Dread, both individually and also with them collaborating with each other.

The releases on Immerse and M4 should be in all good record shops now.