Richard: It was 1990 at a place called Metropolis. This was my first exposure to electronic music. It was mostly bad techno and even worse house, but it was played by DJ A-One. Right then and there, I knew this was what I wanted to do. I spent weekend after weekend bothering Arnold about the mechanics of DJing. He showed me some stuff and told me some secrets. In 1991 I got a set of decks and practiced non stop. There weren't many sub-genres so you had your choice of techno or house. I played a little bit of both. I started frequenting a lot of parties and fell in love with house music. In 1992 I became really involved in the party movement. It was around this time that I met Jeff who seemed like the only one at my school that would get it. We spent most of our time together, schoolmates by day and bedroom DJs by night. After graduation I moved to Austin where I played house music at a local bar, Proteus on 6th St. A couple years later I had my fill of drugs & hippies and decided to take a trip to London. It was one of those discover yourself while wearing a heavy backpack trips. That's where I discovered drum & bass. Like magic, when I arrived back to Dallas Jeff had also started playing drum & bass. We went from gig to gig playing wherever we could, pushing the housey side of drum & bass.
Jeff: Years ago, I remember meeting Richard in high school and was riding around in his car one night. He had something playing on the stereo that caught my attention. "What is this shit?" I said. He said "It's techno man, don't you know". I didn't know, but I wanted to know more. Richard took me to my first party, "A Rave New World" in 1992. The line up was Prodigy, Moby and Cybersonic. The experience was x-citing!!! It was a life changing experience for me. At this moment I knew this was going to be my life. As time progressed I attended more parties as well as helped Richard in an intelligent lighting business. That business opened the door to meeting many new people in the scene as well as getting into a lot of parties for free. When I wasn't at parties, I was hanging out at Richard's house playing records until I bought my own pair of decks. That was it. No one could get me out of my house. I was constantly trying to better my skills by making mixed tape after mixed tape. At this point we were both playing house music and then Richard moved to Austin. When he moved back, we had both discovered drum & bass. We moved in together and eventually got our first gig at a little place called the Cavern. We didn't make squat, made little money, but were happy to be there. We loved what we did. After that, more and more gigs followed as Richard & I became true partners. Since then we have never looked back and have always stayed loyal to the style we love.
Back in 1997 no one was representing the atmospheric side of drum & bass in Dallas. We decided to take it upon ourselves to create a scene based on atmosphere and soul. The name was pretty simple. A secret society made up of like-minded individuals whose mission was to uphold the standards of the future sounds of music. Anyone who wanted to participate in the progression of our sound was and is a member of the society.
We try not to stick with one kind of style. You'll always get that atmospheric feel from our music, but you never know what to expect. Even our production shows that. I guess it all depends on our mood. Sometimes when playing at Mick's, people expect to hear this smooth, chill style of drum & bass and when they least expect it we play the hardest shit we can get our hands on. We love diversity. It's one thing to play or make one style of music, but to be good at all of it is where it counts in our book. We hope that people always come out to hear us or buy our records never knowing what to expect.
