Document One

Document One is an Oxford, England–based drum and bass duo. The project is composed of Joe Froud and Matt King. They work as producers and DJs, and within drum and bass their output most often sits in jazz-inflected liquid / bass-heavy territory.

Froud and King met on a music production course in Oxford. The pair began producing together while still students. They initially worked in dubstep before refocusing their output and live work on drum and bass, carrying elements of their earlier sound into their later productions.

Their production signature balances live instrumentation and electronic sound design. They record acoustic sources and layer those takes alongside programmed drums; the result pairs jazz-derived chord movement and live textures with hard low-end. On the bass side they favour a clear sub foundation with midrange distortion layers to give presence on club systems. On the drum side their tracks use edited breaks and tight programmed kicks to keep tempo-forward momentum while preserving swung, jazzy rhythmic accents.

As producers they emphasise interplay between organic and synthetic elements: recorded melodic or harmonic parts sit in the same space as processed synth basses and saturated mid-bass. Their mixes tend to leave headroom under the sub and apply parallel saturation and careful low-mid carving so live instruments remain audible against heavy bass. Those same elements carry into their DJ sets, where they select and sequence tracks to retain sub weight and harmonic movement — blending their own material with label mates and roots-leaning rollers.

Document One’s releases have appeared on Technique Recordings, Shogun Audio and Elevate. They tour and perform the material live as a duo and have toured extensively across five continents. That touring record and label presence are the concrete markers of their career to date.

Musically, the move from dubstep to drum and bass left a clear imprint: you can hear dubstep’s emphasis on sub and sound-design depth in their slower, half-time moments and in the way they sculpt bass harmonics. Their jazz influences show up as chord voicings, muted harmonic stabs and occasional live-flute/keyboard-style phrasing in arrangements rather than as purely sampled jazz loops.

Publicly available information about Document One is focused on their duo line-up (Joe Froud and Matt King), their Oxford origins, their start on a production course, the shift from dubstep to drum and bass, releases on Technique Recordings, Shogun Audio and Elevate, and extensive touring across five continents. Their work is defined by the blend of live instrumentation, jazz-influenced harmony and bass-heavy production that appears across those releases and performances.