Music to make girls dance

The Nextmen, performing at Splore today, play at the same time on four turntables.

When British hip-hop duo the Nextmen play Splore this weekend, it will be their third trip to New Zealand in a year. But as Brad Baloo (Brad Ellis) explains, it's never an effort. He's married to an Aussie and makes the voyage from London to her home turf every year.

In London, Baloo used to live with Breaks Co-Op's Zane Lowe and Hamish Clark, "the silent third member of the Nextmen". And he finds it a "happy coincidence" that his baby son, Ernie, shares his name with a song by Fat Freddy's Drop.

But the real reason he and fellow producer/DJ Dom Search (Dominic Betmead) keep coming back is the music.

"We're not hip-hop DJs," he says, on the line from Melbourne, baby bottle in hand. "We've always played right across the board from hip-hop to soul to reggae to rock to broken beat. That's why we really appreciate the music that comes out of New Zealand [from] Manuel Bundy and people like that who have that eclectic sound.

"People are fed up with nights that just concentrate on a single genre of music."

Putting their money where their mouth is, the Nextmen recently hosted a gig in Melbourne - on the eve of Australia Day, what's more - called I Love New Zealand, inviting their Kiwi mates Downtown Brown, King Kapisi and Fat Freddy's Drop. The latter two they have also remixed, along with Del Ray System.

"My favourite stuff is Open Souls, Fat Freddy's Drop and 50 Hertz," says Baloo. "It's more song-based. There's a massive influence from reggae, a really soulful, laidback island thing we associate with. I'm also quite a big Neil Finn fan. I found World Where You Live, [by Crowded House] in a bin in Cambridge where I grew up in England, and I've been into him ever since."

Reggae is so ingrained in Britain's music scene, he says, you can't get away from it. Which helps to explain why the Nextmen are one of the hip-hop acts around who acknowledge the genre's Jamaican roots. So when they were offered the entire Trojan back catalogue to produce their own Blunted compilation - a sort of Back to Mine for reggae fans - they were like kids in a candy store. Aside from two blazing originals featuring Dynamite MC and Demolition Man, Blunted in the Backroom features 30 tracks by the likes of Upsetters, Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Toots & the Maytals.

"It was a really massive honour but, because we could choose whatever we wanted, it was hard to narrow it down. We didn't want to go too noodly and underground, we wanted to pick songs people knew, and songs that we grew up listening to. It was about making it accessible."

The Nextmen's Splore set won't necessarily be so steeped in reggae if their repertoire is anything to go by. The duo have worked with British hip-hop MCs Rodney P, Dynamite and remixed Americans Blackalicious, the Pharcyde and Public Enemy. They've even been known to drop David Bowie tunes.

"We really like making music for the clubs to play that hopefully people will try and dance to. We play at the same time on four turntables with two mixers. The idea is to bring in little elements of different tracks and do bits of scratching over the top. We try and keep it tasteful and neat, so it's more to do with people dancing and having a good time than watching some kind of weird DJ demonstration.

"To keep it interesting we play a lot of bootlegs and do a lot of live mixes where we find a tune. We've been DJing for a long time so we're good at scratching and mixing, and we try and do everything as well as possible.

"But basically, we just like to make girls dance."

Performance

* Who: The Nextmen
* Where and when: Splore festival DJ Zone, 7pm tonight