Audio Bullys. The Voice of London's Streets

Audio Bullys members Simon Franks and Tom Dinsdale believe that modern pop music is too detached from real life. It was precisely in order to voice the problems and concerns of the millions of young inhabitants of the big cities that they took up music. Their mix of hip-hop with a fairly hard beat quickly became popular, and Audio Bullys were slapped with the label of creators of a new style, hooligan house. In the run-up to Creamfields Russia, 44100 managed to have a phone chat with Tom:

Ha-ha. We met in high school over music and being music lovers, and then we studied together at college, so we didn't fight. And we weren't hooligans either — far more than all the hanging out with shaved-headed lads, what fascinated us was making music.

Yeah, I suppose that's how it is. But we didn't do it deliberately. This street culture is simply close to us ourselves. Maybe it doesn't look as attractive as glamour, but there's a lot in it of what you'd call the truth of life.

As DJs. When we were starting out, it was incredibly fashionable. Perhaps now everything would be different.

Technics 1200s

That's true. I was lucky. But I got into DJing at a fairly mature age, when a bit of money started coming in.

That's right, we're trying to make more songs now. I'll tell you honestly, I don't much like what's happening in clubs at the moment, and it seems to me that the life is gradually draining out of them. So making club bangers, in my view, is fairly pointless.

Let's put it this way. I always liked that song. It has wonderful lyrics, and my favourite version of it is actually sung in French. And when we heard the Kill Bill soundtrack, we realised the cover had to be done either now or never.

Not particularly. I watch it on TV sometimes, but I don't go to the stadiums..

Not really anyone in particular either. As a kid I supported Chelsea.

Actually, it's not that I think all that much about it. But I reckon Chelsea is now your team, a Russian team. The money is Russian, expensive foreign players are bought with it, they win the championship. So you should be proud of them.

Well, not entirely true. We were only in Moscow for one night. So there was no time to do anything special, and we didn't really get to see or make sense of much. And I don't really have much to say about Moscow.

Yeah, quite. But in general I much prefer open-air events like Creamfields. I think this time everything is going to be much cooler.