The music industry is a gruelling place. Careers are made on chance encounters and broken on the corporate bottom line, with livelihoods and creativity thrown into turmoil with ease and without remorse.
Just ask Dan Le Sac, a DJ and producer who rose to prominence as one half of duo Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip. After working as a record buyer in HMV, Dan met spoken-word artist Pip, and remixed a handful of his songs. Soon, they made a tune together, with Pip delivering spoken word and rap over Dan’s electronic beats. Their creation broke into the charts in 2008, and off the back of ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’, the duo went worldwide, touring everywhere from London to Japan. Over the next five years they released a trio of albums, and ended their partnership in 2014 after their biggest and most successful tour to date.
“That was kind of it”, Dan says today. “A big draw with the band was Scroobius Pip, more than the Dan Le Sac part of it, which is just the nature of things. The frontman gets the accolades. I went into a bit of a no man’s land of that submerging artist era of your career, where your peak is behind you. You either quit, which is what I planned to do. Or you just keep plugging away and hoping that you survive.”
With Pip’s success after the duo split, their careers appeared to be going in wildly different directions. In 2016, when Dan released his album ‘Cherished, Overthrown’ it sold about 300 copies. “The industry’s changed,” he says. “I was like yeah, I’m out. I think I’m gonna go get a job.”
Dan had been into gaming from a young age, sneaking into his dad’s room to play Ultima VI, and during his time touring with Scroobius Pip, he got into it in a bigger way. From there, he dabbled with Twitch streaming, and began striking up conversation with folks in the online gaming sphere. On a whim, Dan got chatting with his acquaintance Mike Bithell, an indie game dev (and owner of Bithell Games) who was then best known for . Their chat turned into a discussion about pitching for video game soundtracks.
