When I last talked to Dom Betmead of the Nextmen, he told me he wasn’t really sure what inspired him to make music, apart from just listening to other music. Now they have their third album out it’s clear that what they listen to and what they play in their sets does have a big influence on them, as ‘This Was Supposed To Be The Future’ features an eclectic mix of songs that straddle genres from hiphop to reggae to soul.

“The title was just something that came into my head,” Betmead explains. “How when we were younger there was all this talk of the future, and how we’d have flying cars and jet packs and a meal in a pill and all that kind of stuff, and it just sounded like a nice concept for a record. Me and Brad (Ellis, the other half of the Nextmen) used to talk about it a lot, and about what the 1950s perception of the future might be different to now. So we gave the title to the artists and we worked together to get different interpretations of it.”

It has been a long time coming, with some songs such as Blood Fire written quite a few years ago and road tested on their numerous tours. “After the second album, ‘Get Over It’, we had some problems in terms of distribution – it wasn’t very well set up,” he says. “Once we had settled in though, we just concentrated on DJing a lot, touring around and getting mix tapes done. And although there was quite a lot of creativity going on there were a few things were weren’t sure of, mainly to do with labels, and it wasn’t until we did the ‘Blunted In The Backroom’ compilation for Antidote that we felt we were in a comfortable position with a label to move forward with our third artist album.”

Something I noticed with the album is that, although some tunes sound like typical cut-ups the Nextmen are famous for, there’s also some very good songwriting on the album, making the album feel coherent and whole. “I’m really happy you spotted that!” exclaims Betmead. “We were songwriting quite a long time before this album, but I was never confident enough to put it forward, and all of a sudden that changed. I was working with singers like Brigette Amofah and Zarif (both whom feature on the album) and we were just writing stuff and not necessarily putting it in a place; some of it worked towards their individual artist stuff and some of it came our way for the Nextmen.”

Another two excellent songs feature Dallas from Fat Freddy’s Drop, and the Nextmen have been friends with the band for a number of years now. The tune the Drop was originally an acoustic record recorded with Dallas. “It was the first song he ever wrote”, Betmead explains, “and I came up with the guitar for it, and we re-developed that track to the one that’s on the album.” The other song, Did No Wrong, came together over a few pints and was done in a couple of days. “When you’re working with exceptional talent like that things do tend to happen quite quickly,” he smiles.

As the Nextmen are usually so sample based, yet on this album there seems to be much more composition, I had to find out if the album was done with a band, or just expertly engineered. “I think the idea of just using samples to make a record now days is just impossible to do,” agrees Betmead. “If you’re thinking of selling any serious amount, you’re bound to get in trouble unless you do it properly. I’m a guitarist by trade, and we recorded ourselves playing keys and guitar and treated those recordings as if they were samples. So we sampled ourselves, but in doing that it allowed us to go anywhere musically – we’re not limited by the notes or the keys the sample was originally in because we can play what we want”.

The union with Antidote not only led to the excellent Trojan catalogue mix ‘Blunted in the Backroom’ but also afforded the Nextmen a lot more control over their music. “Sanctuary, who owns Antidote, also own the entire back catalogue of Trojan, so we suddenly had access to all this amazing reggae music that was totally clearable whether we wanted to put it on a mix tape or sample it; it was something we could do properly and clear all the samples. To be honest it was just a dream to have all that stuff to work with,” he grins.

Julian Cram

This Was Supposed To Be The Future is out now through Antidote.