A natural bond: Chaos In The CBD’s free-spirited way of life blooms within their music

Louis and Ben Helliker-Hales come bounding into a café garden just down the street from their home in Peckham, where they live together and make the bulk of their music as Chaos In The CBD. For the past 13 years, the New Zealand-born duo have honed their sound here, swapping crystal shores for the lively vibrations of South London. Opting for smoothies and coffee over beers after a heavy week spent partying and performing in Japan, they joke about feeling fragile, but appear in good spirits. This is common practice for the brothers after all, with a weekly routine consisting of travelling, socialising, and performing, they’ve mastered the art of the comedown. Ben, or Beans as he’s known by many, is younger than Louis by two years and seems slightly more introspective of the pair, though both talk at pace and with a level of excitement about the shows they’ve just completed. Almost as if telepathically connected, they complete each other’s sentences or pick up where the last one left off in conversation – like two different parts of the same brain. “We know each other so well,” beams Louis. “We live together, we travel together. We’re best friends.”

It was only in their teenage years that Louis and Beans became this close, they tell me, after merging their friendship groups and joining the same band aged 18 and 16 respectively. Growing up together on a peninsula overlooking Auckland, New Zealand, to music-fanatic parents who they credit as key tastemakers in their early life, both Louis and Beans remember the bohemian lifestyle that they were introduced to in their younger years, and the music that soundtracked it. “Our parents were New Romantics,” Beans recalls. “There was a lot of that new wave sound — The Cure, New Order,” interjects Louis. “They would have dinner parties and listen to that music, drinking and running around. Mum studied horticulture and has this beautiful garden with outdoor speakers. Even now, when we go home, they're showing us new music. Mum puts me on to some crazy stuff.”

Informed by the free-spirited way of life that they led when coming of age in an idyllic coastal suburb (they note that they would often wander around barefoot as children, later getting stoned and succumbing to “island lifestyle”), Louis and Beans fell headfirst into the local music scene, though narrowly missing an era of dance music that they now pay their debts to. “It was such an exciting time, but in terms of what we like now, we missed the golden era where Chicago and Detroit house legends would pass through,” Louis remembers. “We would go to this little club called Ink Bar, it was almost like an afters spot, a Disneyland for adults,” he says. “We were the youngest there by a long shot,” Beans chips in. “We were pretty boisterous and wanted to be part of that world,” Louis explains. “You almost had to prove yourself, but at the time, the dance music scene felt more gatekept. It wasn’t as easy to access as it is now.”

Soon after this particular musical awakening, which, for Louis, involved taking his first ecstasy and hearing fidget house on a night out in Melbourne, the pair decided to have a crack at learning to DJ. It was in 2009 when they played their first set – Louis remembers printing out an exact tracklist with timestamps to mix in each track, not realising you had to actually touch the CDJs to cue them up – but their efforts were well spent. They’d soon land shows, mostly support slots for the likes of Ben UFO, Jackmaster, and Fantastic Man, and felt like they’d conquered something big. It wasn’t long until they secured a string of gigs in Paris for ClekClekBoom, the first label to sign the duo. “We played seven or eight shows over there and people knew our music, which was shocking to us,” says Beans. “We realised we might actually have a career in it.”

An impulsive move halfway across the world to South London ensued in 2012 when the brothers, marred by the cease of their growth back at home but enticed by their prospects overseas in Europe, took two rooms at the home of a family friend in Nunhead. “It was a shock when we moved here,” says Louis. “You could go out on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, which was something we only dreamed of. We indulged,” he laughs. “But we thought it would be easy. We went from being big fish in a small pond to the opposite.” Chaos In The CBD became just a drop in an inundated pool of DJs and producers in London, until a coincidental encounter with Rhythm Section founder Bradley Zero helped them get a shot at securing a worthy place in the scene.

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“We spotted Bradley on a train, and went up to him to introduce ourselves,” Beans says. “I told him who we are, and he actually knew us and had some of our music. He was like, ‘I have a Rhythm Section party on tonight’, and invited us down. We went to pretty much every single event after that,” he laughs, before Louis adds: “It was quite similar to what we were used to in New Zealand, where when you went out, you knew everyone. It felt like we became part of the scene. Even Bradley letting us play there, I remember that being huge,” he recalls. “He created such beautiful evenings, some of the best times of my life. Most of those parties were just us playing pool, going out, meeting new people. Bradley created a community down here – there was a real South London movement, and it felt exciting to be part of it.”

With the trust of Bradley Zero, the duo released their first record on Rhythm Section in the label’s fledgling days in 2015, titled ‘Midnight In Peckham’, an ode to the scene where they’d nested. The five-track EP, packed with lush jazz instrumentals and textured samples in their distinguishable ‘dusty house’ sound, became a hallmark release for the imprint. Even today, the record’s Bandcamp page is littered with affirming, profound messaging as it remains a relative cult classic for deep house fans (“This EP has to be one of the top most influential projects in house music for me,” “A must in my collection”, and so on.) Despite its sure success today, the EP was actually dropped by another label at the eleventh hour before it was due for release. “We thought, if they don’t want to sign it, we must have done something wrong. But when it came out on Rhythm Section and we saw the reception it got, we were amazed,” Louis recalls.

‘Midnight In Peckham’ was flying off the shelves, and Beans, who was then working at Rye Lane’s YAM Records after securing a job through his Rhythm Section circles, was even selling his own record over the counter. “It would sell out, and then Bradley would bring down another stack. It just kept coming back in stock,” he recalls. “I remember having to physically learn to mix vinyl for a vinyl-only party at Canavan’s,” says Louis. “I played the title-track, and it was something special. It still feels like a little bit of a conversation, I hear people talking about it even today. It’s cool that it’s stood the test of time.”

Around the same time, the duo noticed that they were often being pigeonholed into the fleeting ‘lo-fi house’ sound that first emerged in the mid-2010s and became associated with artists like DJ Seinfeld, Ross From Friends and DJ Boring. “We got stuck in that,” Louis says. “I didn’t like being associated with that moniker, it was very similar stylistically to what we were doing, but we also felt removed from it. We were conscious that we wanted to have our own sound, where someone could listen and go, ‘Oh, that sounds like Chaos In The CBD’,” he adds. With Beans ingesting so much music each day at the record store, and Louis making efforts to hunt the web for mostly classic house jewels, they whet an appetite for old skool music. “For me, I’m so passionate about house music that I don’t think it needs to change any more,” says Beans. “I think it’s been perfected, and I just want to keep that sound moving.”

“We’re just carrying the torch for the people who did the same thing before us,” Louis says contemplatively. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s cheesy, but the whole ‘house music will never die’ thing, it really is true. It’s like a church,” he says. “It’s about losing your inhibitions.”

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“These trends, like lo-fi house, they come and go. But deep house, classic house music, those sounds are always relevant,” Beans adds.

“Our music would get put into that niche before,” says Louis. “Like the whole ‘lo-fi beats to study to’ thing. Do you know how many people have been like, ‘Bro, your music helped me get my degree’? I actually signed someone’s university diploma once!”

Carving their own place in house music is a mission accomplished – with a signature sound that straddles textural jazz and deep grooves while honouring house’s roots. You could quite easily pick out one of their own releases from a line-up of music today. Early outings on labels like Amadeus Records, Needwant, Mule Musiq and Hot Haus felt like an introduction to that sound, while a more recent landmark opportunity curating a fabric Presents compilation gave them free rein to explore their tastes and put their curatorial skills to the test by digging up rare house gems spanning 1990 to 2007.

When it comes to production, Beans takes the lead, with Louis acting as a sort of executive producer, they tell me. But sometimes it goes beyond words – there’s a consciousness that they share. “We almost don’t have to say a lot,” Louis explains. “I know him so well, but if we don’t agree on something, it’s not coming out. I think there’s this mutual understanding”. On stage, the same connection guides them through their DJ sets. “We don't plan our sets a lot, but sometimes Beans will give me a look, or he’ll sternly say: ‘Okay, I've got the next three tracks’, and I'll be like, ‘Do your thing’,” he jokes. “It’s just about having that respect, and a little banter on stage.”

Behind the booth, the brothers often choose to ditch their refined, jazz-inflected sound for a selection of dancefloor-focused genres – minimal, UK bass, early tech-house, the works. They want to capture that feeling of “headlessness” that comes with a higher BPM, they explain, with the knowledge that a crowd is there to lose themselves to the music. With a jam-packed schedule that takes them from country to country each weekend, they joke that it feels like they’re on a “never-ending tour”. Over the years, they’ve become fan favourites and pick up annual invitations to play at festivals like Albania’s ION and Japan’s Rainbow Disco Club, and religiously sell out headline shows back at home in London, from all-day parties at The Cause to all-night events at Electric Brixton.

On their forthcoming debut album, ‘A Deeper Life’, the brothers are returning to their roots. 14 tracks spanning deep house and jazz converge with new experiments in bossa nova and Balearic, with a narrative that they feel was “perfectly executed”. Taking it back to where they began, ‘A Deeper Life’ is an elegy to their time growing up in New Zealand, inspired by the utopian surroundings of their youth: lush rainforests, glistening waterfalls, golden beaches. Throughout its playtime, Louis and Beans hope to transport you to that place, a journey from the beach club to after-hours sunrise sessions. The record’s artwork evokes that feeling of home with a painting by their childhood friend, depicting a beach close to where they grew up. Dover, and its striking white cliffs and coastline, was chosen as the setting for their Mixmag cover shoot for this natural link, as well as a familial connection with their grandfather stationed there while in the Merchant Navy.

Now more than a decade into their career, particularly since the release of their momentous Rhythm Section debut, it felt like the right time to stamp the seal on a full-length project and deliver it into the world. “It's kind of mad to only be releasing our first album now,” says Louis. “But it felt very honest and organic”. Years of hard work and meticulous adjustments went into its production, with Beans explaining that he would go on “crazy long walks” and listen to the album over and over again, fine-tuning the little details.

“We like musicianship within music, that's something we strive to portray,” Beans says. “Especially with this album, we started looking further”. Inside the record, track titles commemorate places from their childhood, such as ‘Tongariro Crossing’, a hiking route through New Zealand’s volcanic landscapes, and ‘Marlboro Sounds’, an ode to Marlborough Sands, a beach where they would holiday and skim stones together in their youth. On the album’s opening track, ‘Down By The Cove’, Louis and Beans took field recordings from a beach where they would drink together as teenagers, a fond memory for each of the brothers. “All the track titles are very special places,” Beans explains. “They’re all very meaningful to us.”

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With the sound of New Zealand deeply embedded into the record, ‘A Deeper Life’ wouldn’t be complete without collaborations from New Zealand-hailing artists, including their long-term collaborator, Isaac Aesili, who delivers weighty brass instrumentals on the record’s title-track, and Kiwi film producer and multi-instrumentalist Nathan Haines, who features several times across the record. “We wanted to credit everyone on those tracks, that was really important for us,” Beans says. “We also wanted to re-engage with our roots in New Zealand,” Louis chips in. “We’re very proud to be Kiwis, but sometimes there's this disconnect when it's a whole 24-hour flight away. This album tells our story, that feeling we grew up with, and I think it translates in the music. We listened to the project back home on a road trip, and it was like, ‘Wow’. It all made sense.”

‘A Deeper Life’ marks the latest release on their label, In Dust We Trust, minted in 2017 with their close friend and fellow Kiwi, Jon Sable. Originally founded as a way to independently release their own music, and home to the majority of their releases since its inception, In Dust We Trust is also growing into a way for the brothers to pay back to the place where they began. “Our brotherhood back home is called the ‘Dusty Bunch Crew’, which is where the name came from,” Louis says. “The ode is, ‘In The Crew We Trust’,” adds Beans. “We want to release other people’s music going forward, especially artists from New Zealand. We’re lucky enough to be in a position now where we can platform other people.”

The truth is, Louis and Beans are aptly fit being independent – they shy away from the big spotlights and business side of music. “I don’t like the tedium of the music business. I never made music for attention,” says Beans. “So, getting attention confuses me a little bit, I don’t really know how to deal with it. I’m quite an extroverted introvert.” With a quick glance at their Instagram, you’ll notice the less-than-serious tone they take on social media, often employing self-deprecating comedy in their posts, which they say is a way to counter the fear of posting online. “Since music became my job, all I want to do is be in my room building some LEGO,” Louis says. “We’re like big little kids. My backpack has Sonic the Hedgehog and Harry Potter pins on it,” he laughs. “We're not ashamed to like what we like – if you make fun of yourself, no one else really can.”

Louis and Beans’ reputation as happy-go-lucky, light-hearted characters has won them the hearts of the dance music community over the years, and their stamina for non-stop partying is nothing short of impressive. Despite the relentless hours travelling, rarely finding respite at home, the novelty has yet to wear off for the brothers. “We get so excited so easily,” Louis smiles. And it’s true, they’re enthused about so many things: children’s toys, rare records, nature (Louis even kissed a dead fish on the beach during their cover shoot). “We really don’t take things too seriously, but our music is super serious, and that’s sometimes confusing for people. But I think we’re quite fun to be around because we’re very loyal people. If we meet someone at a gig, we’re probably going to hang out, and then suddenly it’s eight in the morning and you have a flight in five hours,” says Beans. “You think you’ll be sweet, but then you’re crying on the flight home,” Louis jokes.

“There’s something to be said about how we are as people,” Louis says. “It’s something about our energy. All we can do is bring a little bit of joy, and if we can do that, then we’ve done our job”. Recognising the ‘one night stand friendships’ that they make through the intensity of their touring schedule, Louis and Beans are taking it all in their stride, and they’re grateful for the opportunities that they’re persistently given today. “We’re just DJs at the end of the day,” says Beans. “We’re not changing the world.”

On their Mixmag cover shoot, they prove themselves laid-back, no-nonsense individuals, ready to muck in at any given opportunity. They carry heavy bags up and down sheer cliffs with no questions asked, offer to climb high onto the rockface without any real fear of breaking a bone despite being in the midst of the busiest period of their career, and laugh their way through it all. “We’re low maintenance. I think that’s why we’ve had a steady DJ career,” says Louis.

“Even with the weekend rampages, we’re very diligent, punctual people,” Beans says. They showed up right on time to meet me here today after a lengthy session over in Asia, still surprisingly fresh.

These days, Louis and Beans are just as indebted to South London’s dance music scene as they are to the formative experiences they had with music in New Zealand, despite their busy schedules stopping them from spending long periods in either place. But even so, they’re hoping to spend less time on the road in the future. “I don’t think we can do this forever,” Louis says. Throughout their lives so far, they’ve split their time across two different sides of the world, but have been joint at the hip through it all. Best friends, brothers, companions, whatever you call it, Chaos In The CBD are each other’s biggest fans.

‘A Deeper Life’ comes out on May 9, pre-order it here

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Associate Digital Editor, follow her on Twitter