How Adam F’s ‘Circles’ became one of drum & bass’ all-time anthems

In ‘Circles’, Fenton names these three as the aforementioned bass riff, the iconic “Check, check, check…” vocal sample, taken from the intro to 1994’s ‘Physical Thing’ by New York R&B group Blacksteet, and a delicate piano flick from Bob James’ 1976 jazz-funk cut ‘Westchester Lady’. As it happens, the addition of the latter was completely serendipitous.

“‘Circles’ was finished in my studio,” Fenton recalls. “I went down into the car, and I was either playing the CD and Jazz FM came on, or was playing Jazz FM and then the CD came on, and it just happened to be that ‘Westchester Lady’ was playing. Because it was in the same key, I thought, ‘That sounds good’. I stopped the other one and put it back, and I was just like, I wonder what that will sound like, even though they’re completely different speeds, and just took it up.” Fenton slowed down the piano sample, adding lashings of ping-pong delay so the notes bounced around the stereo field, creating an ethereal funk.

“It was literally the very last thing added on to it, and what a nightmare it turned out to be, because trying to get that sample cleared, he was just like, ‘Absolutely not’,” Fenton explains. “It took a lot of negotiating… I practically got nothing for ‘Circles’ just for the use of the sample.” In truth, there are far more than three instantly recognisable elements in ‘Circles’. The titular vocal, for example, sampled from 1992 track ‘Going In Circles’ by US singer Tameka Starr (who’d later join Livin’ Joy post-‘Dreamer’, singing on hit tracks like ‘Don’t Stop Movin’’ and ‘Follow The Rules’). Powered by Kurtis Blow’s skippy ‘Do The Do’ break, the track rolls out as if in a dream, introducing lush alien melodies that seem to drift off into the stratosphere, and a rubbery bassline that bumbles along cheerfully before suddenly ramping up in intensity around the halfway mark.