Little Spaces

Editors’ Notes “The title for this album came to me in a dream,” Nu:Tone, otherwise known as Dan Gresham, tells Apple Music. “And as I thought about it, it made perfect sense to make an album that was designed for little spaces. It was the beginning of lockdown so all of our worlds were being shrunk, and I also love to play smaller intimate clubs where you can really build a connection.” Across nearly two decades on the Hospital Records roster, the Cambridge-based DJ and producer built that connection. Pushing boundaries at the soulful end of drum & bass, Little Spaces is his sixth solo record, while there are the two Nu:Logic albums released with brother Matt (fellow drum & bass producer and Hospital signee Logistics). After spending the past five years focusing on A&R work for Hospital and engineering for several other labels and artists, Gresham was happy to deprioritize his own music until inspiration took hold. A few years and some patient waiting from fans later, it did. A sharp pivot from 2014’s jungle-heavy Future History, Little Spaces is like an intravenous injection of sunshine, soothing the soul and sparking daydreams of its tracks pumping out of car windows on hot summer days. Here, Gresham talks us through his album’s key tracks.

Sleepwalker (feat. Charlotte Haining)
“This features Charlotte Haining, who is one of the biggest vocalists in drum & bass. She has such a beautiful and delicate voice that I wanted a piece of music that was delicate, but also had a bit of weight to it too. Something with some more guts to it. That combination works so well with her voice.”

One Day At A Time (feat. Lalin St. Juste)
“This track has Lalin St. Juste from the band The Seshen on vocals. She’s based in San Francisco so we worked remotely, but the first demo she sent over for this just sounded fantastic. It just needed a few little tweaks. It works as a lovely little uplifting tune for people going through lockdown.”

Jonas
“I remade a sample for the intro to this and it’s really influenced by Roy Budd who wrote the score for the 1971 Michael Caine film Get Carter. It’s got that ’60s British crime film vibe about it, but then taken in a bit of a late-’90s Bristol jungle direction.”

Souled Out
“This is along the lines of some of my classic stuff, and reminds me of tunes on my [2007] second album Back of Beyond. It’s so easy to throw the kitchen sink at a tune, especially these days with the power of computers and the availability of plug-ins, but sometimes it’s important to just strip something back to the essential elements.”

Shift Break
“The title of this track is a reference to the old BBC computers that arrived at my school when I was a kid. ‘Shift break’ was how you exited a program. It’s a little nod to how far computers have come in my lifetime. Back then all I could do was fill the screen with a word so it’s crazy to think how far this stuff has come and the music I’ve been able to create through them. Musically it’s a really simple, stripped-back, break-beat pattern.”