“I’m always just creating all the time, it’s an addiction for me. I’m constantly searching for a feeling,” Joe Lenzie of Sigma tells Apple Music. “Usually you get a feeling for a certain sound, and then you’re drawn to that sound because of the feeling. That’s how this album came around—I was getting that feeling and I wanted to make more of it.” Lenzie and fellow Sigma member Cam Edwards both grew up in the surrounding areas of London during the ’90s. They met as students at Leeds University where a mutual appreciation for playing drum ’n’ bass records quickly evolved into a determination to produce beats of their own. As Lenzie explains, the DJ/producer duo’s third album, London Sound, is a celebration of their formative adolescent years. “I can only speak for myself, but with the experience of the pandemic and there not being many opportunities for people to get together and experience the unity of the rave, it definitely felt like there was a gap within my world,” he says. “I think because of that, and because of the nostalgic value of all those amazing times I had going out raving when I was younger, I just wanted to reignite that feeling again.” London Sound marks Sigma’s full-circle return to their drum ’n’ bass roots, 10 years almost to the day since the bootleg version of their breakout smash hit “Nobody to Love”—a remix of the 2013 Kanye West single “Bound 2”—was first released as a free download in January 2014. The career highs they enjoyed as a result of that track’s unprecedented success nudged them in the direction of a more mainstream pop sound on their debut album, 2015’s Life, and Hope, the 2022 follow-up. While London Sound leads in with the one-two punch of infectious Crystal Fighters collaboration “Someone to Hold Onto” and the anthemic “Adrenaline Rush,” the bulk of the record is composed of frantic breakbeats, choice samples, and commanding MCs—tracks more suited to the back room than the main club. “It’s just drawing on all of those elements from the music that we grew up listening to,” says Lenzie. ”We’re making music that’s authentic to us, that we enjoy. The way I feel, and the way that I’ve felt for the past 20 years—it’s an obsession. It’s just never going to fade.” Here, Lenzie takes us through the creation of London Sound, track by track. “Someone to Hold Onto” (with Crystal Fighters) “That track was probably created four years ago now, in my old house. I live on the same plot, but we basically built a completely new house. The studio was different as well. It was summertime and I think we actually wrote it outside on the grass, playing guitar. [Crystal Fighters] are very much guitar-based and I was getting really into learning guitar, I just wanted to play it all the time. I started playing guitar like a real hippie, man.” “Adrenaline Rush” (feat. Morgan) “Originally, I worked on the idea of using that [‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’] sample with a songwriter called Kamille in 2016, but the song we came up with just wasn’t right and I shelved it for a long time. Then when we were talking about the concept of the album and the throwback elements and stuff, that hook felt like it could be really used. We dug it out for the session with Morgan and a songwriter called Georgia Ku. Initially, it was quite funny because Georgia wasn’t really clicking with it. She writes a lot of house music and I feel like she wasn’t that comfortable working at a drum ’n’ bass tempo, but eventually she was humming what ended up being the chorus hook and I was like, ‘That’s it, right there.’ The rest is history.” “Care About Us” (feat. Ebenezer) “Ebenezer was up for a day. We tried one thing that was an original, and I had the idea for that sample and I just pulled it out. I used to be a hip-hop DJ in the noughties and [50 Cent’s 2003 hit] ‘21 Questions’ was my tune. I used to love it. And yeah, with a little bit of direction, it came out really good. I think Ebenezer is the perfect guy for it because he’s got such a great voice, and he was so versatile. There’s a version of the track where the verse is a bit more jungle-y dub. But we went for the drill flow because it felt like it suited more.” “The Corner” (feat. Joe Devlin) “To be honest, the sample wasn’t originally supposed to be there. I just sat in a session, played the bassline, and put some rough beats down. Then we spoke about what would make it stand out as a track—me and Cam, Joe Devlin, the guy who sings the record, and a songwriter called Joe Killington. He’s a fucking legend, by the way, an original ’90s East London geezer who is just amazing. Everyone needs to know about Joe Killington. If you strip back the chorus, the backing track is very simple—it’s just a four-note, jungle-y bassline and that hook felt like it worked really well with it. I don’t sit there and play tunes for my parents or anything, but they keep up with the socials. Funnily enough, when they heard that one, my dad was like, ‘all this stuff sounds like the stuff you used to listen to when you were growing up.’ [The DNA remix of ‘Tom’s Diner’] was one of my favorites from that era.” “Badman” (with B Live) “I made that mid-pandemic, actually. I had COVID in March 2020 and I got really ill, I didn’t recover for a year. Obviously now everyone says it’s long COVID, but it’s chronic fatigue—people can get it from the flu and stuff like that. It just suddenly becomes all-engulfing, it’s a bit mad. Anyway, I worked out a way to get better, which I’m very blessed to have done. But after that period of ill health, for some reason, I just started making these really grimy beats and this was one of them. We started playing it out when we were able to go and DJ, and then I sent to B Live. He was like, ‘Yo, this is nang. Let’s do it.’ His voice isn’t actually that low—the only time we could get a vocal take of him in that manner was really early in the morning. So he had to come to my studio at 8 am when he’d just woken up and his voice was all gruff.” “Going Out to the Ravers” (feat. Everyone You Know) “[Everyone You Know] kept getting pushed to me in my playlists. I think they’d done a tune with Joy Anonymous, who I love, and I just thought the style of his vocal could work really well and just fit perfectly with the project. They were going to some kind of award ceremony or something that day, so they couldn’t come to my house for long. Plus, I was building a house and they had to turn all the power off, so we spent an hour in the studio just talking crap about life. I think I had the idea about talking about ravers. Rhys, the singer, wrote the hook, but he didn’t want to show us that day, which I thought was quite unique. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a session where the singer doesn’t show you what they’ve written. I didn’t expect anything to come of it and then, three weeks later, he sent over that amazing a cappella. He’s got a real superstar energy about him. They both need a big spotlight shone on them, they’re really good.” “LSD” (feat. Harvey Whyte) “NAHLI, who sings in our live show, and Kay, a creative director who’s done quite a lot of our music videos, are really close with a circle of people—the only way I could describe them is fucking cool people in London—and Harvey is a fucking cool guy. He calls himself ‘the rap Kurt Cobain.’ We just had to do a tune for him, basically. It’s not what he would usually do. He actually went viral last year because he does piano rap. He plays really jazzy chords and does these gnarly drill lines over his piano. It’s just so cold. That was the main incentive for us to get him on a track. Just because he’s a sick guy.” “Trouble You” (with Watch the Ride & Doktor) “The hook is Yellowman’s ‘Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt.’ I did that track with the actual a cappella sample and then I ended up getting Doktor, who we’ve worked with quite a few times in the past, just to revocal that. Watch the Ride were popping in that jungle world around the time—and they still are, because they’re sick—so I just sent the idea over to them to see if they wanted to collab on it. Straight away they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re gassed.’ So we just did a few little tweaks and whatnot, and that was it. Voilà.” “London Sound” (feat. Josh Barry) “Me and Cam wrote that with Shakka in 2016, so that was quite an old one. It was just built off a simple jungle beat that I reworked with the ’90s rave piano. [Independent dance label] Moving Shadow, [drum ’n’ bass producer] Omni Trio—that was the kind of energy I was trying to go for with that. Shakka was originally going to stay on the record, but when we actually came to talk about releasing it, he wanted to move away from doing so much dance stuff and he respectfully declined. Josh is a wicked vocalist, so we asked him to do those parts.” “City Lights” (with Gardna) “Gardna is a lovely man and a very talented MC from Bristol. Before we worked with him he had mostly done garage, with small bits of jungle influence. We just had a convo online, started talking about making bits, he came to the studio, and it was basically a wrap in a few hours. There’s something about the MC element of drum ’n’ bass culture that can get overlooked. I feel like there aren’t that many records that have drum ’n’ bass MCs on them. That’s why I hit him up directly.” “Trigger Finger” (feat. Doktor) “Doktor’s part came from an old session that we did nothing with, but then I cut and pasted it with that Redman-influenced hook before the drop, which has been used in the ’90s. I think [DJ] Zinc used it, actually, in one his old remixes. Again, it’s a throwback to that era. It goes off when you play it. Hard.” “The Classics” “One of the biggest parties that I went to in my teens was a V Recordings takeover at…was it fabric? One of those big clubs had just opened anyway, and V were like the kings at the time. Roni Size, DJ Die, Bryan Gee, all those original UK legends. This track is essentially a nod to that.” “Every Song” (feat. Hannah Boleyn) “Hannah is great. I only met her that one day, our managers got us together, but I love that song. It’s kind of like a ballad. Definitely more of a pop tune. I forgot how much I like that one.” “Rave Generator” “Just rave shit. DJ tools. It’s more for the people who like to go out raving. It gives those people who have got that attachment to the music something to listen to. And it can also be a little bit like…if all you’ve released as an artist is vocal-led music and then people come and see you at a show and you’re playing something like that, they’re like ‘Whoa!’ So yeah, it’s the kind of thing you might hear us play in a DJ set.” “Run From You” (with Grace Grundy) “Grace works with our manager and we love her, she’s amazing. I think the piano thing in there was inspired by a TikTok video actually. They liked the sound of it so we linked up a session and that was it. A wrap. Done.”