Rewind back to 1994, The start of school and the start of my interest in music, having been brought up on 60’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, Blues and Jazz, the start of life at Fulford school in York introduced me to a world of music I never knew existed.
The Prodigy has to be where it all started, thanks to Chris Morton, and Chris Bell, (aka Grinny Grandad). These two showed me the early 90’s rave scene, to which I instantly got hooked. through my school years I obsessed with the prodigy and others such as altern 8, Ellis Dee, dj Slipmat, dj sly etc etc. I remember going to depth charge records in York looking for various Destruction, Fantasia, and Uprising tape packs, (all of which have now suffered the test of time, and are lost forever).
Roll on to ’97/’98 and the influence of the good old skateboard showed me the ways of hip hop, with thanks to Rich ( aka Munga), I especially took interest in the more underground side of hip hop, like Taskforce, People under the stairs, the Herbillizer, Deckwrecker, Mark B and Blade, the Ninja Tune record label, Dj Vadim, Q-Bert, and many others to name but a few. It wasn’t until the end of 99 that the concept of djing occupied my mind, I got my first pair of decks at the turn of the new year (a lovely pair of Citronic PD1’s) and I spent the first year playing hip hop but was slowly getting more and more frustrated by it.
It wasn’t until 2000 when Brown had his 18th b'day bash at NYSushi at the unit in Sheffield, It was that day, that night, in fact I can properly remember the exact moment the world of drum and bass hit me smack in the face, and come my 18th b'day bash, when we descended on NYSushi in Sheffield once again that djing dnb became my new found obsession.
Over night my hip-hop vinyl collection became redundant, and In fact hasn’t been added to since.
The Drum and bass scene was a lot smaller back then, compared to what it is today, and we were lucky if we got one dnb event a month, compared to one a week now!! But still I went to as many events as was possible and still retain a flyer from every event I’ve ever been to, give or take a couple no doubt!!!
Come 2002, I descended on Leeds, to start uni (what a waste of time that was, from an educational stance) for the next two years my love of djing became the main aspect of my life, many of my friends around me gave it up, and I resided to playing at home alone for the next 2 years after uni, keeping my love and obsession to my self.
Come 2006 everything changed, Brown returned from his travels around the world and we descended on what was to be a life changing evening at certificate 18 in York, Ed (aka El mundo) informed me of a dnb night taking place in York, The Herbal Mafia, in which he had a guest dj set. That night showed us that York was starting to open up from the commercial hell that dominates the city, we bumped into Tom (aka Redeye) and the 4 of us decided it was time to start a dnb night in York.
TINNITUS was born, 5 months of planning later, TINNITUS launched on Thursday 17th August 2006 at Certificate 18 in York, and my life hasn’t been the same since.
Only after a few months we were offered a show on Leeds based radio station Frequency 88.1Fm, and big up to management for making that station what it is (seriously tho, that really is a well run and well established station that can only go on to great things), and big up to all the Frequency family.
and a couple of months after that DJ Signus approached me to help set up a dubstep night in York alongside Pix (of Rudeboylogic) 3 months of planning later and Uprooted was born, launching on Saturday 13th January 2007 at the Junction, York.
Many things have changes since that Thursday night in August, and music has become the sole and heart of my life, the music scene in York is now something to be proud of and many other events across the music spectrum have sprung up in this city (a note to all promoters in York, I support what your doing all the way)
For me production is the next step, and having played around with it for the past couple of years, experimenting and educating myself, I feel 2007 is the year I can get some serious time in the studio, and hopefully write something half decent.
