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Kirk Barley, also known as Lenzman, passed away after a battle with cancer. The founder of the label The North Quarter and a figure of patient drum & bass leaves a void that is difficult to measure.
Mixmag and DJ Mag confirmed this Sunday: Kirk Barley - known to the scene as Lenzman - has passed away after a battle with cancer. He was one of the quiet pillars of a drum & bass that prefers depth to noise, and the founder of the label The North Quarter, which remained faithful to a deep, liquid, soul-informed line.
Lenzman first made his mark on Metalheadz, Goldie's label. It's probably from this training that he held his very particular way of composing: the inherited jungle speed, but tempered by a sense of groove that owes as much to soul as to breakbeat. In 2015, he founded The North Quarter, and the label quickly became an identifiable hub - that of a drum & bass that lets the voice breathe, that places the breaks with precision rather than stacking them, that refuses the excess of the drop.
We have been following this scene for a long time and we are having a hard time writing this editorial calmly. Lenzman was not a performance artist. He never sought to make the snare that breaks the room or the sub that hits hard. He did something else: he wrote tracks that breathe, that let the singing work, that place the breakbeat like a hand on a shoulder.
This vocabulary - neither raw jungle, nor liquid mièvre, something patient between the two - he defended it for twenty years. The lineage is readable: from Photek to Calibre, from Marcus Intalex to Lenzman himself, there is a line of deep drum & bass that prefers nuance to impact. The North Quarter will have been one of the most consistent contemporary hubs. The catalog remains, and it will speak for a long time.
To his family, to his loved ones, to his artists, to those who knew him elsewhere than in his tracks: our thoughts, sincerely.