“If people hear a slight mistake, it doesn’t matter because they know you’re there doing it”: Nero’s Dan Stephens on live setsDan Stephens of Nero has been speaking to MusicTech about the trio’s upcoming US tour, on which they’ll be without vocalist Alana Watson – Stephens’ partner – as she’s opted to stay at home with their baby.
Some fans were sceptical about the announcement, with Stephens explaining that “people were like ‘Oh, great, it’s just you two pressing buttons then’,” adding, “But I guess that’s probably how people feel about all electronic music, unless you are there very obviously…. It’s always difficult calling an electronic act a live show, because how live is it really? Unless you’ve got instrumentalists on stage really playing a part, it feels more like a hyped-up DJ set.”

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He then brings up Fred Again..’s massive headline set at Reading Festival last month as an exception, saying: “That’s how you’ve got to do it if you’re going to bill something as really live. It’s about thinking if you want it to sound tight like the recorded version, or do you mind if there are a few missed beats? If people hear a slight mistake, it doesn’t matter because they know you’re there doing it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Stephens discusses the resurgence of dubstep in recent years. The genre exploded in the late 2000s and early 2010s thanks to the likes of Nero, Skrillex and Skream, with major pop and R&B artists like Britney Spears (Hold It Against Me), Rihanna (Wait Your Turn) and Taylor Swift (I Knew You Were Trouble) taking influence from the sound too.

“It always felt like it was going to come round at some point,” says Stephens of the revival, as he considers Skream & Benga’s fabric set the catalyst, while there are younger artists like Hamdi, based in Germany, and Texas-born Ace Aura flying the flag for the genre now too.
“Hamdi has got a very UK, original dubstep sound and reminds me of the 2009/2010 era,” Stephens says, while he also mentions that he included Nero’s 2007 track This Way in his DJ set: “It was fun to see these kids hearing it for the first time.”
Meanwhile, in February Nero – who released their first album in nine years, Into The Unknown, in September – discovered an old stack of CD-Rs in an attic that feature the original WAVs of their early music, as well as some unreleased tracks from the time period too. At the time, they said they hadn’t decided what to do with the music.
You can find tickets for Nero’s upcoming live dates on their website.
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