“Do you know what?” Darren White exclaims. “Trying to cook and answer questions is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done!” Even so, the drum and bass veteran better known as dBridge has handled the multitasking pretty well. Speaking from his Antwerp home, he’s prepared himself dinner whilst detailing his studio setup and musing on social media. But now he’s trying to bake while tackling a particularly tricky query about how things have changed over his 25-year career, and the dough has ended up on the kitchen floor.

Still, there’s something appropriate about White mixing his domestic and musical life in this way. His second album, A Love I Can’t Explain, is influenced by personal changes—marriage, kids, leaving the UK for Belgium—as much as musical ones. Stylistically, it covers the ranges from the drum and bass sound he’s long been at the forefront of, whether in the group Bad Company, as part of the Autonomic movement, or at the head of his label, Exit Records. Creepingly slow and colored with subtle soul, the album evokes quiet, homely spaces rather than the fury of a peaktime rave. Native Instruments caught up with White to hear about the album, and his longterm love affair with MASCHINE, with which he recently made a breakbeat-heavy Expansion, DECODED FORMS, alongside collaborator Kabuki.

I understand that a shift in your personal life influenced the album. Could you explain?

Yeah, these big things happened in my life. Leaving my home at the time, the UK. Getting married, having a kid. So I was using those experiences to guide my album. I’ve usually got a miserable side, but it’s a very happy stage in my life. So I was having to use positive influences rather than negative, shall we say [laughs]. But I managed to get some negative ones in there, [about] the state of the world we live in.

The spoken word bit in “Broadcast Pain” seems to have an anti social-media message: it tells this story about someone being in distress at a rave, and people filming rather than helping them.

It’s hard work, this whole social media thing. Having to be your own PR machine. I think a lot of people struggle with that, but maybe more people my age. I’ve come from a time where we paid people to do that. We used companies to get us into magazines and get people talking about us. Sometimes I get wound up by the lengths people go to get their name out there. There doesn’t seem to be a line that won’t be crossed any more. I think that’s been proven in the state of our politics now. The Overton Window has shifted, so what used to be really extreme isn’t any more. It feels like what people will do to get themselves noticed is getting more and more ridiculous. I have my standards of what part of myself I’m willing to give to the audience. But then it’s the struggle of: I may only be willing to give so much, but everyone else is willing to give so much more. And you can see that they’re getting a response from it. [On] “Broadcast Pain”, it was Damon [Kid Drama of Instra:Mental] telling the story. That’s the world we live in: rather than help someone, people would just broadcast it on Facebook Live. I’m not totally comfortable with it, but I suppose it’s no longer my world to be comfortable with, in some respects.