Underground electronic music maestro Silverlining on his new album

ASAD Rizvi, known in underground circles as Silverlining, has curated an exceptional long player.

Silverlining & Friends: Collaborations 1996 - 2001, features nine standout tracks that transport listeners back to a golden and influential era for modern music in the city of London, with tracks that stand the test of time and are proven with the re-issues across three vinyls.

The collection includes sought-after collaborations with heavy hitters like Impossible Beings, Appleheadz, Southern Comforters and Two Right Wrongans, Asad's partnership with the late, great legend Nathan Coles.

We caught up with Silverlining to find out more about the album in our in-depth interview with him below.

Silverlining & Friends: Collaborations 1996 - 2001 spans a period considered iconic for electronic music from London. Looking back, what do you think made the period from 1996 to 2001 so special for underground dance music in London, and how did the scene shape your sound?

London at that time was a giant, bubbling melting pot, rich with musical and cross-cultural interaction. People were less embedded in their genres as they are now, and I (for one) would regularly circulate between different scenes. For example, I'd often check out events in the Warp/Rephlex scene, Gilles Peterson’s eclectic Mondays, as well as seminal house, techno, and drum ‘n’ bass clubs like Final Frontier, Lost, Space, Megatripolis, Vapourspace, Metalheadz, and, of course, Wiggle. All I wanted to do was to make music that would work in these different spaces, which is why my early releases pulled from all these genres and tried in earnest to fuse between them.

Of course, all these genres are part of the same story and share a lot of similarities. But, in the end, the fusion of house and techno caught on the most, and the 90s music press and distributors started labelling everything we did as "tech-house" including the downtempo stuff. None of us really wanted our scene to have a name, least of that one. As much as I love most of that early music, this terminology placed a creative choke on what many London artists were actually doing. It's not really accurate to label electro, deep techno, deep house, and breakbeat as "tech-house", but our scene apparently needed some nomenclature and this was the tag chosen for us. But after it became a thing, the wider influences started to coagulate into a particular formula. 

The truth is that there was a much wider scope to what a lot of people were doing back then. My productions and sets, both then and now, definitely wouldn't be the same if were not for the colourful palette that 90s London offered. But this said, I'm still always on the hunt for new artists and styles, which in itself, is a habit that I picked up from that time.

The sound across the LP does indeed touch on deep house, breakbeat, and downtempo. Was there a conscious decision in the curation to explore multiple genres, or is this a natural reflection of your collaborations?

Both really. When we were making these tracks, we just went the wind blew us. So the inevitable result has been a catalogue that comprises a few different genres, rhythms, and tempos, but that was never planned. As most of the artists I worked with were bringing in different musical skillsets, we ended up with a broad range of results, most of which ended up on Reverberations or its associated projects.

Over the last decade, most of the interest from younger diggers and labels has been focused on dance-floor material, which is understandable, really. But it was a breath of fresh air when Ninih proposed an album that took a different and more eclectic approach to the older back catalogue.

With Ninih backing the release, how did this collaboration come about? What drew you to work with a Dutch label for such a London-centric project?

Pieter Jansen, who runs Ninih, first got in touch back in 2018, proposing the idea of a collaborations compilation. At first, I was a little weary, as I didn't want my collaborators' roles to be diminished and all the focus to be on me. But we agreed that everyone on the LP would be given substantial space on the sleeve art. I was impressed that Pieter, a hardcore crate-digger, was able to join the dots between all these releases, including the lesser known listening tracks. I actually think this concept could only have come from someone outside London seeing it from a fresh perspective, which made the process all the more enjoyable for me. It turned out well, and I'm truly grateful to have worked with him.

You’ve collaborated with many notable names on this LP, such as with Ravi McArthur (as Impossible Beings) and Nathan Coles (as Two Right Wrongans). What was the most memorable experience working with them, and in particular the late, great Nathan Coles?

Honestly, I feel I've learnt something from each and every one of the talented people I've been lucky enough to share the studio with. Charlie and Kester, from Appleheadz, are both accomplished jazz musicians; Ravi is well-versed in guitar and bass with a limitless musical imagination; and Tom Gillieron is a talented studio engineer with the most finely tuned ears I know; Richard Grey, one of the finest house DJs the capital has known. I've learnt and laughed with them all. But of course, our dear late friend Nathan should get a special mention. Producing with him was wild and unpredictable but full of hilarity. It's an experience I truly miss. 

The compilation includes unreleased material, like the track from Impossible Beings. What led you to revisit this unreleased gem for the LP?

'A Hundred to One' is a track that has been sitting around on tape for over 20 years. Despite it being close to all our hearts, it never came out until now. As the sleeve notes account, a classic broken romance within the band led to the whole project eventually being abandoned, but those times are long gone and everyone has been happy for it now to see the light of day. It started off as a slow jam between three of us at a log cabin retreat in the British Columbia mountains and evolved into a full-scale production with about 11 musicians performing, including vocals written and performed by Kirsty Hawkshaw, ex-Opus 3. I'm happy finally to have it on vinyl.

What was the process like going through your DAT archives? Did any particular track or memory surprise you during this journey?

As you might expect, I know many of these tracks well, but some were well and truly filed away in a dusty attic of my mind, and I never expected to revisit them. One of those was 'Tuesday Morning Milkman' that Ravi and I made in around 1996. Having made this as a pair of teens on a makeshift set-up at my parents' house while they were away, you can hear that the production standard was not our prime. But Pieter convinced me that it was worthy of inclusion as it has a certain magic about it. After Helmut Erler from Berlin mastered it to sit better with the other tracks, the sonics were resolved and it really fit the album well. We’re our own worst critics and sometimes it takes someone else to help you get past mental barriers with your own work.

How does it feel to see tracks from over 20 years ago still resonate with modern audiences?

It definitely warms the heart to see that music we created in our youth, in various small studios, still resonating with so many people across time and space. We made this music in the moment, for the moment, and never, did we imagine that people would be feeling it two decades later. It’s been a lovely surprise.

Finally, what's next for Silverlining after this release? Can we expect more archival projects, or are you focusing on creating new music for today’s scene?

Right now, my main thing is digging and playing. I’m constantly blown away by the places and crowds I get to experience around the world. But in terms of releases, I’m still focused on my two labels, Silverlining Dubs and Neotropiq. While both started with reissues, we’re now dedicated to releasing new material—both solo, by others and as part of some fresh collaborations. There’s also a remix package coming out for my 2020 album, Simulacra with some exciting names. It’s all new music, but I try to maintain an old-school approach. I guess we’ll only find out in another 20 years if this stuff sticks or not!