FADER Mix: Brood Ma

Brood Ma is a shape-shifting producer based in London (real name James B Stringer). His previous releases include 2012's bodily FISSION, and 2014's seething POPULOUS, released on vinyl by Untold's Hemlock Recordings. This year, he returns with a release that's at once his most club-friendly and his most utterly terrifying. Third album DAZE—out on Tri Angle, home of all things uncompromising, this March—looks at society's militaristic complex through a prism of relentless dance styles like hardcore and trance, shattered into fragments and pieced back together again with the edges glinting sharply.

To celebrate the record's release, Stringer took a deep dive into his library of disturbing samples and hardcore tracks for a FADER Mix that skulks through the darkest corners of your fantasies. Hit play and read on for his thoughts on the dystopian allure of video games, and why you should read 1980 sci-fi novel Riddley Walker.

Where are you right now? Please describe your surroundings.

BROOD MA: It’s late. I'm at Werkflow, the studio that I run with Tom Wandrag and Clifford Sage. There are cables and lights everywhere because we have been 3D-scanning a sculpture for an artist. It's going to be used in a VR sex scene.

Tell us a bit about this mix. What are you hoping people will do while listening to it?

They should listen to it walking home at 4 a.m., whilst suffering from severe sleep deprivation.

In the press release you describe your new album DAZE as a critique of our obsession with "survival playtime." What is "survival playtime" and why do you think we're obsessed with it?

When I made DAZE, I was exploring all these ideas about paranoid survivalism—how it's been turned into a leisure activity and an industry. The fantasies that people play out in games are sometimes terrifying. People are fascinated with dystopia too often because they want to inhabit its violence, rather than explore it critically.

What's your earliest musical memory?

Crickets I caught in the garden, clicking against the lid of a margarine tub.

What's the last book you read that had a lasting impact on you, and why?

Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban. You have to learn the language of the book to engage with it. It's written in a mixture of old English and modern-sounding phonetics. It's about a teenager struggling through a second dark age in Kent. Something I can relate to.

And finally, what's your favorite dish to cook and how do you make it?

Deviled kidneys. Loads of cayenne pepper.

Mr Moon, "The Execution of Georgie Boy & Gamerdoc"
David Arkenstone & Frank Klepacki, "Guardians"
Chris Watson, "The Laipach"
Laibach, "Francia"
The Evolution Control Committee, "The Fucking Moon"
Frank Klepacki - "Awakenings" (Blade Runner Game OST)
Bernard Herrmann, "The Prison"
The Durutti Column, favorite descending intervals
Colder, "Silicone Sexy"
Future Sounds of London, "Antique Toy"
P.v.Kerckhoven, "Wortelpiekwadraat"
Chris Watson, "Ol-olool"
Denis Smalley, "Clarinet Threads"
Electronic Eye, "X Scan"
Denis Smalley, "Darkness After Time's Colours"
Future Sounds of London, "A Glitch in Cellular Memory"
Tanochinjaii, "Fallen Angel"
Negativland, "It Ain't Legit"
Pantychrist, "Bitter Mommy"
Pinch & Mumdance, "Double Barrelled" (intro)
Drastik Plastik, "Untitled"
Sandoz, "Thousand Year Dread"
Bernard Herrmann, "The Dressing Room"
Senyawa, "Kayu"
Brood Ma, "Man of Law" (blueprint demo instrumental)
Magnetical Sky, "Jacked" (acid flush)
Naked Steel, "Vive Le France"
Dj Hype, "Weird Energy" (Hells Bells mix)
Locoide, "Ratio"
6-Pack, "Only When I'm Drunk"
Yves Deruyter, "Back To Earth" (rave mix)
Diamanda Galas, "The Litanies of Satan" (excerpt)
Push, "Universal Nation" (Tall Paul remix)
Sonic Species, "Zero" (Outsiders remix)
Strange Sounds Heard from the Sky Worldwide (Youtube rip)
Excerpt from movie Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
Excerpt from movie Crank