I'm 37, male, and live in Sheffield in the north of England (once famous for Steel and Electronic Pop).
I now play other people's records for a living, and make a few of my own. Once upon a time I studied English, with a view to becoming a teacher. I also studied - at great length - LSD, music and the art of the compilation tape (not necessarily at the same time). Eventually, music and LSD convinced me teaching was for elderly men, with beards, and an unusual passion for corduroy.
Despite being something of a dribbling participant in the biggest youth movement of the late 20th century, I actually must have learnt quite alot whilst staggering around northern Acid House institutions like the Hacienda, Kool Kat, Jive Turkey & Occasions.
So it was with a sense of confusion, a small record collection and even smaller amount of talent that I became a DJ. In 1989 I got my first residency, along with DJ buddy at the time, Richard Benson. I learnt the art of making people dance, and putting records together 'on the job', the crowd were very tolerant and enthusiastic about this (see: extremely high) we also had a successful pirate radio show (as Asterix and Space)
Rave band Altern8 sampled me from the radio show saying 'Watch Your Bass Bins, I'm Tellin' Ya' - I'll never live it down.
We rode the wave & played at a few raves for 12 - 15,000 people, for about 50 quid each - strange times.
So, I got a proper job in the
Warp record store, even made a few records for them (as
RAC) some of which were OK, I toured with the label throughout Europe and learnt much about club life outside the Northern English experience.
It was through warp that I met Richard Brown. We subsequently made lots of music together.
This fruitful exchange of skills led us to start a joint project called
Swag (due to the fact that we made every tune we did from samples - Swag being English slang for 'stolen goods'), since then we've done quite a few records, and even more remixes for other people, some of them are quite good.
I also ran a label called
Odori (which I killed before it became 40) for a while and one called
Primitive (which I killed before it became a teenager) - We did some nice things with those too, releasing our own curiously popular output as well as music from like-minded artists who chose to throw out the rule book in favour of more forward thinking sounds. In addition to these, I've also done quite a few anonymous releases, but I'll leave you to work those out for yourselves.
As we moved into the noughties, the age of record labels seemed to pass into a huge, pulsating blob of digital data, and with it my interest in running one evaporated.
I embarked on a more subversive and 'one-off' approach to productions, figuring that was the best way to maintain a relevant and reactive career as a producer which, incidentally has always felt less natural than my DJ one.
I still to this day struggle with the most basic audio software, have no knowledge of synthesis and basically just stumble from one loop to the next until something works...it's served me quite well.
More recently, and contrary to all common sense, I've set up a Vinyl distribution company called
All Ears with old friend and record peddlar extraordinaire Alec Greenhough (who also used to run Sheffield's Toko label in the 90's)
It's a boutique affair, with the emphasis on quality, limited edition labels, serving, what I can honestly say, is still a very strong, if somewhat shrunken market for the black stuff.
Apart from all that I started (contrary to everything I've just mentioned) a Digital label, with long-time compadre Timmy Stewart of the Jet Project, from Belfast. It's called
Extended Play and is all about immediate club music
Having been Djing for about two decades, I think I've just about got a handle on it. I spend ludicrous amounts of money on music, forsaking many material essentials such as settee's, soap, and food in order to quench my thirst.
I'm lucky enough to get booked to thundering cathedrals of rave like Fabric as well as such bastions of House Music as the Sub Club in Glasgow and Mad Racket in Sydney, not to mention temples of soulful sonic wizardry like The Electric Chair (RIP) and, well too many to mention here really, but you get the idea - all of which I love equally.
I occasionally write (badly) and do an even more occasional radio show and one-off parties called
Tonic with my extremely talented graphic designer buddy, Pipes - We also did a couple of books together. One called 'No Idea' about graphic design and the other a profile of Sheffield Graffiti artist, rapper and all round Hip Hop maverick, Edna / Kid Acne - No one batted an eyelid : ]
I DJ Most weekend's and am loving it more than ever, meeting lovely people and entertaining are addictive in the extreme - I'm also still having enormous fun making music, of whatever variety.....some of which you can hear above or better still on my
home page
Gluttons for punishment can also follow my deeply unimportant mind fluff on
Twitter. Amen
SHEFFIELD_WAREHOUSE PARTY_LIVE
SUBJECT_BIRTHDAY MIX
LIVE MIX FROM SIRUP_ZAGREB
LIVE MIX FROM DISCOLATED HIP
Online!
