Music
Redlight takes us back to his ‘90s rave roots
The UK producer helped to push bass music mainstream in the 2010s, but he was raised on Bristol’s thriving free-party scene. He tells his story from underground drum 'n' bass to chart domination.
If you've been clubbing in the UK any time since 2010, it's highly likely you will have danced to a Redlight tune. The British producer (Hugh Pescod to his family) broke into the mainstream in 2010 with What You Talking About!?, a woozy, low-slung track with fiery bars delivered by UK garage legend Ms Dynamite. By 2012, he'd become a crossover star thanks to the funky house banger Get Out My Head and its massive follow-up, Lost In Your Love, which hit Number 18 and five on the UK Singles Charts respectively.
Listen to Redlight's Fireside Chat below.
As bass music took hold in the UK, Redlight was at the front of the pack, harnessing the pace, dynamism and grit of all things 140bpm-plus in his bass-heavy house and club sounds. His music shows a clear affinity for the sounds that splintered off from rave scenes many years earlier – the music he was raised on.
In this Fireside Chat, Hugh takes us back to his roots in the rough-and-ready ‘90s scene and explains how hard basslines and even harder graft have propelled him through a 20-year-long career.
It's a Bristol thing
It all began in Bristol, south-west England, where illegal parties across the city were soundtracked by the heady rush of breakbeats and day-glo synths. It was these early clubbing experiences, when pioneering drum ’n’ bass and jungle DJs like Roni Size, DJ Die and Krust would jump on the decks, that started the Redlight story.
Redlight quickly learned how to mix and, by the age of 16, was already being invited by promoters to play. “It’s that drive,” he says of his determination to get involved. “You’re not good, you’ve just got a desire to do it. You just want to hear the music.”
Drum 'n' bass was his first love
Producing and DJing kept a self-proclaimed angry and rebellious kid “locked into a direction”. CLIPZ, his first production project and an alias he released under for nearly a decade, was the first outlet for his restlessness, channeling the energy of the underground scene into fierce and fast drum ’n’ bass.
Boisterous tracks like 2003’s Cuban Links and 2005's Cocoa blew up in Bristol and beyond, and CLIPZ became a key name on the jump-up scene. But as the years went on, he fell out of love with the drum 'n' bass he was making. “I was coming off the decks and I was driving home and I’d be pissed off, and I was like, nah, this ain’t for me no more. I’m not feeling what I used to feel from it… So I switched and became Redlight.”
Redlight
© Press
He's DIY to the core
Hugh’s creative leap into the dark paid off. Major labels came knocking and he released a slew of big tracks, including Lost In Your Love, for major labels. But he found the corporate world a “massive shock to the system” and has been doing things on his own terms ever since, heading up his own Lobster Boy imprint and restlessly producing across the full spectrum of bass music. It’s this DIY mentality that has kept him creating, even when Hugh found himself in some questionable living situations.
Rave music is in his heart
The sound and spirit of rave music, from classic, '90s hands-in-the-air piano house to drum 'n' bass, ragga and beyond, is central to the Redlight sound – as you can hear on his 9TS (90s Baby) smash. And his recent return to his CLIPZ project, with two heavyweight jungle tunes – Down 4 and a huge remix of Koffee’s Toast – suggests he's absolutely fine with that.
“With CLIPZ now, all I think about when I go in is the music of the ‘90s, the clubs that I used to go to that would make me go wild," he says. "I’m taking that energy, what I know, and I’m just putting it into that music.” It’s what’s fuelled him for all these years. “There’s too much to do in one lifespan; I need to create.”
