It’s a big weekend for Rudimental when MusicTech catches up with Piers Aggett, one-third of the world-renowned drum and bass group. The trio — completed by Kesi Dryden and Leon ‘Locksmith’ Rolle — have just dropped their fifth album, RUDIM3NTAL, and played a smashing set at Reading and Leeds festival. The sense of occasion — more than a decade into their career — is not lost on Aggett.
“It’s been the most amazing rollercoaster,” Aggett says. “We’ve been living our dreams for 13 years, but even before that, Rudimental was going for 10 years,” he recalls of the band officially starting around 2006, decades after the three met in preschool. “There’s that whole graft before you make it, and then there’s the graft when you make it.”
While many of the dance and electronic acts that broke out in the 2010s have since disbanded or faded away, Rudimental are still scoring huge hits. Their rave anthem Dancing Is Healing reached the top 10 of the UK Singles Chart last year, and the Skepsis-assisted Green & Gold became the second most-streamed d’n’b tune on Spotify in 2024. This summer, they played Boomtown, and Pukkelpop in Belgium, two of Aggett’s favourite festival shows to date. The trio’s decision to return to the sound they grew up on and first started out creating, then, was perfectly timed yet completely natural.
“We grew up around the corner from Kool FM and my dad was a big junglist, so I was brought up on a lot of those tunes,” Aggett says of his pirate-radio-immersed childhood in Hackney. “My dad and his raving friend, who was like an auntie to me, would almost try and force jungle on me,” Aggett recalls of his teenage years. “I was into it, but I wasn’t as into it as them,” he admits, having also been into grime and garage. This changed, however, as he grew older and began attending jungle raves with Rolle and Dryden.
Even more impactful was taking on an “incredible” collection of jungle vinyls from his aforementioned ‘auntie’ around a decade ago. “She was a collector rather than a DJ, so they were all untouched,” Aggett enthuses, having driven to Scotland to pick them up when he was 29 years old. “Ever since I inherited her records, I’ve always wanted to do a d’n’b/jungle album,” he says.
Fast forward to the 2020s and d’n’b is more popular than ever. Not only has it experienced a massive resurgence, but Rudimental has also played a huge part in its second coming. “The rave culture for d’n’b is so strong and always has been,” Aggett says of the renaissance, “but I really do think it’s the dads of the 90s who play it to their kids at home.
“It’s all passed on, and that’s what I love about drum and bass,” he considers. “While it’s always been a healthy scene, I do feel like it’s most vibrant right now,” he says of youngsters (re)discovering d’n’b via social media and new producers coming through all the time. “It’s never going to die. Like all good genres, they just keep going.”
All this has fed into the changing nature of the group’s live setup, which they stripped back from a full band to a visual-heavy DJ show last year. “It just costs too much to fly people around the world,” Aggett says candidly. “When you fly a 20-strong crew to Australia, it does half your take-home figure.”
Though financial implications have played a part, Aggett felt as though they had exhausted all options: “We’ve done the live show in every format, at every festival, and, creatively, we needed to have a break from that and make this d’n’b album, so it made sense to keep it as a DJ set.” That’s not to say they’ve skimped on the production element, though: “We really got quite tech-y,” he says of the screen-synced vocals that are triggered for specific songs within the mix. “It’s been really fun and I’m very proud of it.”
Similar to their behind-the-decks pivot, the idea of making a genre-specific album was also refreshingly new for Rudimental. Having always hopped between sounds within their records, deciding to stick to just d’n’b led them to return to the mindset they had when making their 2013 debut Home. “We’re well-known for our soulful drum’n’bass hits and we wanted to go back to the roots of that first album, but doing it the 2025 way,” Aggett explains. With this in mind, the trio “went back to the drawing board and made songs — and then added the drum’n’bass afterwards”.
Alongside working together in Major Tom’s — the band’s Hoxton recording studio since their inception — they “tried different things”, like recording in old school studios with vintage pianos, as they did on the first album. “It’s been fun to go back to that sound,” Aggett says, adding that experiencing different approaches to writing sessions (particularly with songwriter and vocalist Mike Needle) was eye-opening. “In the middle of the monitor in his studio, there’s a massive projector screen and we’d all be writing the song together, looking at the words as they appear.” This, he says, was a “really fun way to write a song because it keeps you all engaged rather than being on the phone and using it as a notepad.”
When he wasn’t in rooms with others, Aggett would work on tracks in his garden studio. Built several years ago with the idea of being more productive while staying at home due to having a family, the school hours enabled him to get things done. “I’ve got a code, so if I really want to lock myself in, then I can,” he laughs, before giving MusicTech a virtual tour of the gear-packed space.
“There are various toys — some of them I use a lot, some of them I rarely use, some need to go on eBay,” he concedes. Going on to highlight some of his treasured equipment (variations of which also feature in the band’s own studio), Aggett says the Minimoog Voyager is his “favourite synth by a country mile. It’s got some wacky bass sounds and, instead of going on Splice, you can make a better riser on it. The filter, he adds, is “really simple and not too tech-y” and the patches are “really easy to manipulate and sound like they are from outer space, hence the name.”
When it came to adding the varying styles of d’n’b production to this album, Aggett learned Serum “properly; I tweaked the presets, the LFO and got stuck into it a bit more”, he says, describing the self-education as “quite enlightening”. While he’s not sure if it’ll be Serum for the next album, he followed the advice that he would offer aspiring producers: “learn one thing and learn it well, because I would rather be good at one or two plug-ins than okay at 50.”
Unlike many artists, Aggett and co are bucking the trend by not using artificial intelligence during their creative process. “In some ways, we’ve been using AI for a long time, but if people feel like they need to use it to make music, that’s cool.” Aggett is “not anti-AI”, per se. He’s “just a bit old school. I love vinyl and can’t imagine making music outside of getting the instruments out and jamming.” He continues: “I don’t think I’m going to be in the studio with some AI chord progression generator, not because I’m not open to it, it’s just not my thing.”
Nonetheless, Aggett appreciates it’s here to stay. “With AI, you’ve got to go with it.” He’s confident, though that “as humans, we’ll just smell a rat”; the cancellation of AI-generated rapper FN Meka in 2022 is his music-based example. “We’ve still got to maintain our humanity and decide whether something is even worth listening to or not,” he considers.
“Some of the stuff AI will create will be awful, but you never know. If someone can make the most incredible song with that and it makes me feel good, I don’t give a fuck whether it’s AI or not. Music is subjective, at the end of the day.” He ponders: “It might even create a whole new genre”.
As has been the case with all their albums, RUDIM3NTAL is stacked with guests. Velvet-voiced Texan superstar Khalid brings real emotion to the stunning All I Know, while Rag’n’Bone Man’s unmistakable baritone drives the poignant Nights Like These into anthem territory. The sessions for the latter were particularly memorable, Aggett says. “It took several days and a number of ideas… and then eventually there was a piano moment with Rag’n’Bone Man and we thought ‘wow, that’s amazing’. Those chords didn’t even make the final song, but it then progressed into the hook while we were jamming.”
Getting Jess Glynne (who sang on Rudimental’s 2018 megahit These Days) to feature on Back To Me was a no-brainer: “she’s a friend and we’ve all stayed in touch, so it was easy getting her back in”. While Back To Me was “the one that really popped for this album”, Aggett teases that, having made “a few great tunes”, another song from those sessions might come out in 2026. “She’s got a great voice and really soulful tone. I really enjoy working with her.”
The trio have once again provided a stepping stone for the next generation, too. “There are some great pop singers, songwriters and young d’n’b producers who come through the studio,” Aggett says, adding that the “up-and-comers are always very important to us – that was the whole thing with the first album, there were a bunch of them.”
While 2012 chart-topper Feel the Love made then-unknown vocalist John Newman a household name, this time round there’s Liv Campbell (Thank You), Charlotte Plank (who Rudimental wrote top-10 hit Dancing Is Healing with) and rapper Peter Xan (“we love him so much that we flew him to Los Angeles”) who features on the protest-inspired track London Burning; “he’s good at making serious subjects like riots seem fun”, Aggett says of the track which also boasts a rapid-fire verse from Idris Elba.
As for the future, Rudimental are already busy working on what will follow RUDIM3NTAL. “Creatively and mentally, we’ve moved on from this album already,” Aggett teases, adding that they finished working on the record in 2024. “Being on a major label, things don’t move as quickly as you want them to — no disrespect, but that’s the way it is.”
While he says, “It’s nice to live in the moment of these songs for a bit, we are already planning the next album”. Teasing that “it’s probably one or two tracks from being finished”, Aggett is keen to drop something as early as possible in 2026. As for what it might sound like, he hints, they “really enjoyed exploring all the different types of d’n’b, but we might play around with some genres for the next record.
“… I just feel happy and grateful to still be here,” Aggett concludes. “It’s amazing that we’re still doing albums and having a connection with our fans.”
Ben is a freelance music journalist based in Cambridgeshire, UK, with 10 years of experience and an interest in all genres. He spends most of his time at gigs and festivals, and regularly writes features, profiles and reviews for MusicTech, Guitar.com, NME, Mixmag, Rolling Stone UK and Beatportal.
