After more than two decades of friendship, collaboration, and shared sonic mischief, bass music pioneers Doctor P and Flux Pavilion have finally joined forces for a full-length, self-titled collaborative album—out now via their own Circus Records. A project over 20 years in the making, the 15-track release is a wild, genre-defying ride that captures the duo’s chemistry, creativity, and unrelenting energy. We caught up with the pair following their Ultra Miami set to talk about the evolution of their sound, the state of dubstep around the world, and how the LP came to be.
You have been friends since childhood. How has your friendship grown over time as you have come up in the industry together?
Doctor P: It was strange at first being friends and business partners. They say don’t mix business and pleasure. It can be difficult, but over the years we’ve found a really good working relationship. Being friends has actually helped our business connection.
Flux Pavilion: We didn’t talk for about six years, from around 2016 to two years ago. We had no contact. I think we just got burnt out on each other. This album comes from that history and reconnection. We’ve come back refreshed. All the sludge from touring together is gone, and now we can just meet in the studio as teenage friends again and write wild music. That’s felt really special.
Of the many records you have made together, which are your favourites?
Doctor P: I’m a fan of ‘Party Drink Smoke’, but I really like the new album we’ve just finished. On the album, ‘Rubber Dub’ is my favourite track. It came together effortlessly and it’s my favourite to listen to.
Flux Pavilion: One of my favourites is ‘Fuckers’, from the same EP as ‘Party Drink Smoke’. But this album channels that same energy. I’d probably pick ‘Hot Piss’ or ‘I Love It’; they’re the most unfiltered moments of bizarre creativity, which is what I enjoy the most.
Speaking of these tracks, some names are always notable. Are there any funny stories of how a track got its title?
Flux Pavilion: The label asked us to list funny stories behind the names, but most of them weren’t actually that funny. ‘Hot Piss’ came from a moment where I made some tea and brought it into the studio. Shaun [Doctor P] looked at it and said, “What’s that, hot piss?” and I said, “Yeah, it is.” He replied, “Lovely, can’t wait to drink that.” So we saved the session as ‘Hot Piss’, and it stuck. A lot of our tracks are named after whatever the project file is saved as. We have a demo called ‘The Last Breakfast’ that has nothing to do with breakfast, we just needed a name in the moment. That ends up becoming the title.
‘Hot Piss’ also had a concept behind it. Each drop had a different “flavour”—we used tags like “chocolate,” “strawberry,” and “vanilla” to signal different sections. Then, when we were working on Water, we needed a hook. I pulled “vanilla” from Hot Piss and used an AI to say it. That was the first version of the hook. Shaun didn’t think it was strong enough. We’d been using these Brian Eno-created cards called Oblique Strategies. When you’re stuck, you pull a card and follow what it says. I pulled one and it just said “water.” So I said, “There’s our hook.” Shaun still wasn’t convinced, but I said, “It doesn’t matter—it’s what the card says.” The card made the decision for us. At the end of ‘Water’, the last second includes the AI voice saying “vanilla.” I didn’t want to lose that bit – it’s one of my favourites.
How do you approach a collaborative album? Is it tough to end up with productions that you are both pleased with?
Doctor P: The album came together smoothly because we’ve both learned how to compromise. If we’d tried to make this album 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have worked. We both had bigger egos back then. We’ve grown up a lot. Now we’re comfortable letting the other person make half the decisions. Writing the album was much more seamless than I expected. We were happy to do our thing and give each other space to do theirs.
You’ve been label owners for a while now, how has that journey been?
Flux Pavilion: The label has been an amazing space for us to do whatever we want—and to offer that freedom to other people too. But honestly, I kind of hated running it. For a while, we didn’t have the right team, and it was just us trying to manage everything. I eventually realised—maybe not right away, but definitely over time—that it wasn’t for me.As A&R, we were meant to give people feedback and direction, but I hated telling people what to do. That’s not how I work. Just give me the song, and if there’s something wrong, I’ll fix it myself. I’ve never been the type to offer verbal feedback, I just want to get the stems and dive in. But then I found myself doing that on every record, and I realised, “What am I doing?” It was taking too much time, and worse, I was telling people their music wasn’t good enough. That goes completely against what the label is about. Our whole philosophy is: it doesn’t matter if it’s ‘good enough’—if it’s your music and it feels true to you, then it belongs with us. So yeah, I never liked running the label. But being an artist on Circus Records—that’s the best possible thing. The label lets me be myself, and that’s what this scene is really about.
Doctor P: I think I always wanted my own label, so when the opportunity came up to start one, I jumped at it. But I quickly realised it’s a lot of work.
Trying to be an artist, release your own music, and run a label at the same time—it’s very difficult.We were lucky that our business partners were really experienced. They helped build a team that now runs the label day to day. It’s become self-sufficient, which is amazing. Without that team, I don’t think we’d have been able to keep it going.
Flux Pavilion: They’re just better at it than we are. That was the realisation—we’re not business people. I’m good at making noises and making people feel something from them. But the industry side? That’s not where we thrive. The people running the label now were born to do this, and they’re amazing at it. Without them, Circus Records 100% wouldn’t exist anymore.
With your own label, when is it the right decision to release your music elsewhere?
Flux Pavilion: It usually only happens with collaborations. And for me, it comes down to one simple rule of thumb: whoever found the vocal owns the track. If I’m working on a song with Marshmello, for example, and I was the one who found the vocalist or co-wrote the vocal, then that’s my track—it goes on my label. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the law. But with the track I actually did with Marshmello, he came to me with the vocal and the initial idea. He asked, ‘Hey, do you want to work on this?’ So that was his song—I was just helping bring it to life. In that case, it’s his call what happens with the release, and it went out on another label. Vocals really define the ownership for me.
Doctor P: I just leave all that stuff to my managers really. There’s often a good business reason to go with a different label, and I try not to stress about it too much. I just focus on the music.
How do you stay true to your own sounds but also relate to what is working throughout the electronic music world?
Doctor P: An interesting thing with this album is that Josh encouraged me to stop thinking so much about the sound and focus more on the feeling of the songs. That’s not how I typically work—normally, I’m very focused on how things sound, whether it stacks up against other tracks, and so on. But this time, Josh pushed me to think emotionally first and let the sound evolve naturally. That was a really fun and different process for me.
Flux Pavilion: Bouncing off what Shaun said, for me it’s all about the feeling, not the sound. You can be inspired by someone else’s track purely based on how it makes you feel. I could try to “rip off” a Subtronics record, but what I’m really borrowing is the feeling it gives me—not the actual sound design. So, I might say, “I want my track to feel the way this Major Lazer track makes me feel.” And once you start approaching it that way, the actual sonic elements become secondary—until it’s time to produce. That’s where working with Shaun makes a big difference. He’s really dialed into modern production. Left to my own devices, I’d make what I call fun, creative garbage. Some of my solo tracks compared to what we’ve done on this album—there’s a real contrast. You can hear how much stronger it is when I collaborate with someone who knows how to properly engineer music. My skill set is in vibes. I feel music. I get a sense of how it’s supposed to make people feel, and I try to capture that. That’s how I’ve always made people dance—by chasing that feeling.
Speaking of the sounds, how have you seen dubstep and bass sounds change in different areas of the world?
Flux Pavilion: Well, what’s interesting is that since COVID, dubstep in general isn’t really a relevant scene in most countries outside of the US. Over here, it’s kind of gone into turbo drive—it’s changing, and loads of stuff is adapting. But that heavily informs what happens in the rest of the world, because there’s not as much of a thriving scene, say, in England, where loads of stuff is happening and developing its own kind of microculture. A lot of the shows happening in the UK now are things being exported from the US. So the US has kind of become the hub for what was originally UK music. It’s an interesting thing. It used to matter a lot more where you were from, but now, a lot of the time, it’s just that American sound that dominates. Which kind of highlights the importance of our album, really—because one of the big reasons for doing it was that we were thinking, we can’t let our sound disappear from the platter of things on offer.
Our sound isn’t really an American sound, and it’s not typically a British sound either—it’s our sound, the Circus Records sound. We developed our own thing. And while it’s great because no one else is really doing it, it also feels important to keep that sense of fun and experimentation alive in how we approach dubstep. It feels important that that still exists. It feels kind of shitty and arrogant to say, ‘Oh, my album is important,’ but I really do believe it is. For dubstep to keep growing and evolving, you need as many voices doing as many different things as possible. With the US dominating the scene, it feels a bit like a snake eating itself. I always want to promote as many new and interesting ideas into the scene as possible, so we can all have a great time—rather than just keep listening to the same thing over and over again. Not that the thing that’s happening is bad! The reason I wanted to do this album was because I felt like people need something else. So let’s give it to them.
Unfortunately, today’s Ultra set was cut short due to the rain. How big of a part did the album play in the set?
Doctor P: We had big plans for the Ultra set, but because it was cut down to just 30 minutes, we had to be really strategic. We focused on the highest-energy tracks from the album—basically the ones we knew would hit the hardest. It was all gas, no brakes. Anything that was even slightly lower energy, we just left out.
Flux Pavilion: We still managed to play five, maybe six, tracks from the album—the ones I was really excited about. There were a couple I would have loved to squeeze in, like ‘I Love It,’ but we just ran out of time.
How does it feel to be back at the iconic festival? How do your ultra performances stack up in the grand scheme of touring?
Flux Pavilion: Yeah, there’s something about it… like, doing dubstep at a house festival—you know? It just feels a bit irregular. Something like EDC feels pretty cross-genre, across the board, but Ultra feels like a house festival. Coming here to do dubstep, I’m always thinking, How is anyone going to like this? And then every time, it ends up being literally one of the best shows of the year.
So I think I need to change my perception of it being a house music festival. It’s just that whenever I see the lineup, they book the best house music. If I wanted to go and listen to house or EDM, I’d buy a ticket to Ultra—because their lineups are absolutely second to none. So yeah, there’s something about that where I’m like, Am I at home here? But the way the crowd responds to the music is just phenomenal every time.
Doctor P: I’ve played Ultra a few times, but it was over a decade ago. So it’s interesting to come back and revisit it – because it’s such a legendary festival. It’s also interesting to see that now they’re booking drum and bass and dubstep too. It feels like the world of electronic music has really relaxed around genre lines. And it’s cool to see a festival like Ultra relaxing on genre as well.
Dive into their 15-track LP below:
The pair are set to hit the road around North America this summer, tickets out now.
