Sir Ruff (or Sir Sinister as his friends like to call him) was born into a large family of Romanian commune farmers in 1981. His earliest years, when not raking through pig muck, were spent in a single room schoolhouse where all grades were taught all at once. Times were rough, but the children were all eager to learn, as education was seen as the only possible salvation against an otherwise slave-like existence. Unfortunately, Ruff was forced to leave school at a young age to help work the combine harvester which supported his family, but this did not keep him from pursuing knowledge. His teacher happened to be the former head engineer of a defunct Russian synth factory, and now exiled from the Motherland, teaching was his only means of existence. He was eager to pass on his electronics knowledge to anyone who would listen, and Ruff in particular seemed to excel at building simple oscillator circuits.
Days off from the fields were often spent in the schoolhouse basement, where the teacher would describe in detail how Russian synth manufactuers used espionage to steal American synth secrets. One of Ruff's first completed projects was a simple theremin, built using parts raided from an old CCCP radio tower. On holidays, he would play this seemingly magical instrument to the delight of his family and fellow villagers, performing hearty renditions of traditional Romanian folk and classical music. Ruff's musical training came from his father, who had once been a well-known composer in the small Transylvanian town of Brasov. All of Papa Ruff's children were trained to read music and play the fiddle and the piano. Skip ahead to 1995: Communism had fallen across all the Eastern Bloc countries and while life had been no picnic under Ceaucescu, it actually became worse after he was gone. Criminals and mafia controlled the region where once the government had, and without the steadiness of commune work, Ruff's family were forced to leave. The only direction to go seemed to be west, like it had been for so many previous lost generations. Following a ride across Romania in old soviet cattle-style train cars, they found themselves at the Black Sea. A slow freighter with minimal passenger facilities bought them through the Balkans and into the Mediterranean Sea, towards their final destination, the UK, and the land of opportunity. In this new land, Ruff was was fostered on the burgeoning jungle, dnb and garage scene of london. His Romanian accent quickly became lost in the waves of the Thames, and Ruff became as he saw: a young tracksuit wearing "yoot", speaking a fierce dialect derived from English and Patois...a Rudeboy. Here in this place of hyper-internationality, his musical and electronic roots were used like a common language, to help intigrate him into the musical scene of the time. Ruff quickly became absorbed into a small collective of young artists and producers in West London where his family was living. Following the purchase of an Atari running Cubase, a TR-626 drum machine and a SCI Pro-1, Ruff was able to fulfill his old school teacher's dream of making it big in the west. Sir "Sinister" Ruff had arrived.