So UK: My Nu Leng

My Nu Leng’s Tommy Jackson and Jammo Irving have been mates for years: they’ve lived together, they produce together, they tour together, and they party together. And like all good mates, they’re currently taking the piss out of each other. A couple of years ago they got matching tattoos on their hands, and they’re comparing how they’ve held up. “Jammo’s looks shit, mine looks sick,” Tommy laughs. Jammo looks down at his hand forlornly. “It’s faded loads,” he sighs, “It’s the same design, but my skin didn’t take it.”

My Nu Leng emerged from Bristol around 2012 with a bass-heavy style of dance music that unifies garage, grime, dubstep and drum ’n’ bass. Since then the duo have racked up releases on crossover labels like Black Butter and the Chase And Status-helmed MTA Records, earned fans from A-listers like Rudimental to underground stars like Oneman to legends like Goldie, and toured Europe, North America, Asia, and India along the way. They’ve done it without ever compromising their sound: very dark, very UK, and very Bristol. “My Nu Leng always push the boundaries of dance music,” says Chase And Status’s Will Kennard. “The Horizons EP we put out on MTA Records was incredible. We’ve been fans for a long time.”

It’s a Saturday night in Brighton and Tommy and Jammo are sinking cans in their hotel room, gearing up for a headline show at The Arch on the seafront. Along for the ride is Gloucestershire’s Dread MC, who’s been hosting their recent parties and who Jammo describes as the “third member” of My Nu Leng. Jammo, 27, is the tallest of the pair and has a habit of gesturing a lot when he gets excited. Tommy, 29, is shorter, with a thin buzz of facial hair and more tattoos; he’s the more sarcastic of the two, but he can get serious when the topic calls for it.

Throughout the conversation they frequently go off on tangents, telling stories, dropping in-jokes, and filling in the gaps in each other’s memories. Tommy and Jammo met at a club night in High Wycombe, quickly bonding over a shared love of liquid drum ’n’ bass. When a spare room was going in Jammo’s house, he invited Tommy to move in, despite barely knowing him (“I think we’d met once,” he jokes). There they’d spend “all night, every night” mixing records, and soon started DJing together. Early My Nu Leng gigs saw them play to a handful of mates in the back of pubs around town; when they did play further afield they usually spent more money travelling to the venue than they were getting paid.

They both moved to Bristol within a couple of years of each other and immersed themselves in the city’s nightlife. They moved into a house with two other producers, Troy Gunner and Rowl, and partied pretty much non-stop, surviving mostly on takeaways. “Sometimes I look back at my Just Eat history and think, Jesus Christ,” Tommy groans, throwing his head back in despair. “I must’ve spent thousands of pounds. I’d have two kebabs a day.”

The hedonism might have been relentless, but it was disguising a much larger problem: Tommy and Jammo were in a rut. They’d both dropped out of uni, Jammo was stuck working a series of dead-end credit control jobs, and Tommy had been sacked from JD Sports for nicking trainers. To them, DJing and making music was just another way to avoid the real world. “It was probably a good thing that we got kicked out that house, because we needed to grow up,” Tommy says.

After putting out a few tracks with now-defunct underground labels like LNUK, a breakthrough came in 2012 with ‘The Grid’. The track demonstrates their approach to production: dark and heavy-hitting, but with a subtle emotional heft. “That whole bass/house thing wasn’t being done that much back then,” Tommy recalls, “We tapped into something.” It blew up seemingly overnight, with everyone from James Zabiela to DJ EZ to Eats Everything playing it, and My Nu Leng were soon picked up by Black Butter for anthems like ‘Contact’ and the gargantuan ‘Masterplan’ with Manchester MC Fox.

These tunes put My Nu Leng on radars, but it’s their DJ sets that sealed their reputation. Down at the club later that night, the bassline of Double 99’s speed garage classic ‘RIP Groove’ tears through the crowd’s collective ribcages. The audience is young – most look under 20 years old – and they’re all extremely enthusiastic. My Nu Leng have curated the line-up, bringing mates like Klose One and New York Transit Authority to play. At about 5am the lights come on but the music continues, with all of the DJs throwing an impromptu B2B session together. Dread MC jumps into the crowd and Jammo follows, each taking turns on the mic. It’s carnage, in the best possible way.

“Our focus since we started has been to have fun,” says Tommy. “We’re lucky to be doing what we’re doing, and we’re gonna have fun doing it.” That sense of fun is carried right down to their name (‘leng’ is slang for ‘gun’). The name caused a few issues – at first they had trouble getting producers they respected to take them seriously – but they have no regrets. “It worked in our favour,” says Jammo; “It showed we may be serious about our music, but we’re not serious about the image that comes with it.”

Last year Tommy and Jammo toured Asia (including a messy week on a cruise ship with members of the Black Butter family for It’s The Ship!), and they even shot a documentary while touring India. For a sound they both emphasise is “so UK”, My Nu Leng are amazed by just how much they’ve been accepted internationally. “The fact that we get played anywhere abroad shocks me,” Tommy says disbelievingly. “Let alone playing tours all over the world.” When Ed Sheeran and Rudimental went on a big US arena tour they took them along to play the afterparties.

“Taking My Nu Leng on our US tour was an amazing experience,” says Rudimental’s DJ Locksmith. “We had the opportunity to witness their creative and performance abilities first-hand. Mindblowing – and bass-blowing. We’re massive fans. I can’t wait to see what lies ahead for them.”

The tour was a strange experience: one day they’d be in Vegas, gambling at a private table with Ed Sheeran, the next they’d be playing at a club with a partition down the middle of the dancefloor to separate the under-21s. But it also opened their eyes to what’s possible when you put the work in. “It’s not all glitz and glamour,” says Jammo. “The Rudimental guys would be partying with us, then they’d be up at 9am for press commitments. They had a studio bus that toured with them where they’d be writing their second album. It was just mad.”

Back home, My Nu Leng get a different kind of thrill. When they first moved to Bristol six years ago they were intimidated by its musical heritage, from titans of trip hop and drum ’n’ bass like Massive Attack and Roni Size to pioneering dubstep labels like Tectonic. Now, they’re just as much a part of the city’s fabric, collaborating with heroes like new-school dubstep figurehead, Kahn. “That’s what we love about Bristol – everyone’s got each other’s backs,” Tommy says. Jammo nods in agreement. “It means so much for us to be accepted there.”

The duo’s latest project is their Fabriclive mix, a love letter to the UK club scene in which they made their name. Fabric means a lot to them: Jammo reminisces about his formative years in the club, “walking around in a daze, sitting on the stairs gassing to people,” while Tommy gushes over Fabriclive mixes by Andy C, DJ Hype, and Caspa & Rusko that shaped his own tastes. “That’s what it’s all about: defining moments in the UK underground,” Jammo says.

Though they live apart now, Tommy and Jammo still see each other almost every day, whether it’s to go to the studio or play a gig. But does that closeness ever cause friction? Tommy mulls the question over for a second. “You know what? We’ve known each other for so long now that if one of us is in a mood, you can tell.” Jammo concurs. “You properly can, so you don’t even go there. And when we see each other again, it’s not even a thing.”

That close friendship brings us back to those tattoos. Tommy drew them up one morning before the Love Saves The Day festival in Bristol, and they got them done later that day. They both read ‘My Nu Leng’. “It’s a length-of-life kind of vibe,” Jammo says. “If it doesn’t work out in five years’ time, at least we can look at them and say: yeah, those were fucking amazing years.”

Fabriclive 86 mixed by My Nu Leng is out now