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Interviews: Jehst, Kahn, Juk JukLabel Profile: One-Handed MusicStore Profile: Vinyl PimpCrate Digging: Pinch

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Photo here and cover: Elliot HolbrowPhoto over: Alice Gilfillan

stay paid Editor/Art DirectorAlice Gilfillan

Editorial ContributorsJosh Thomas, Seb Merhej

Contributing PhotographersTom Carter, Elliot Holbrow, Rebecca Naen, Joshua Gordon, Chris Cummins, Jason Ev-ans, Richard Gaston

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Firstly let’s talk about your new record, The Dragon Of An Ordinary Family, in-teresting title. How’d this come about?

I was just playing with it as a title. The al-bum had to evoke the same kind of things that the title gave to me. It comes from an old kids’ picture book. Someone asked me about it and afterwards, I was thinking ‘Yeah, what is the deal with this title?’ and I started thinking part of it is the juxtaposition of ‘Dragon’ with ‘Ordinary Family’. You’ve got references to everyday mundane shit that everyone can relate to, but at the same time there’s something otherworldly about it and something that’s kind of fantastical and peo-ple can’t quite put their finger on. It’s that mixture of the everyday with the surreal.

When did you begin work on the record?

2004. There’s one or two tracks that were done when I was doing Nuke Proof Suit. I knew I wanted this to be entirely self-pro-duced and I had an idea of what I wanted that to sound like. Again, I based it around the title. Everything on that record had to be tough and sound hard and the lyrics are predominantly battle-orientated. Nuke Proof Suit is about the survival of the fittest, or the survival of the best-equipped. If you’ve got a nuke proof suit, then you can survive any-thing. Nuke Proof Suit itself was a metaphor for your state of mind: you’ve gotta have such strength of mind that you’re impervi-ous, nothing can break you.

So, ‘cos that was a specific, concept idea, I didn’t want certain tracks like ‘Poison’ that I had started writing. I was like, ‘Nah, this shit’s getting saved for the next album’ and that was kind of when the title of Dragon came up. So yeah, it’s a funny album, it hasn’t been made with any set process or set amount of time because I’ve been doing so much other stuff. I’d I’d get distracted then

Jehst: “I’m still in that vinyl men-tality – you put the needle on the groove and you let it play through to the end and you do the same again.”

Text: Alice GilfillanImages: Tom Carter

Does the track ‘Starting Over’ mark a new beginning for you as an MC?

Maybe – I mean not so much as an MC, I guess just as a person. In some ways it reflects what I’ve been saying about the whole album being stop/start and being revisited over time. Every time you start over, your intentions are dif-ferent and interpretations of things are different. I was in the studio trying to knuckle down and say ‘Right, you’ve finally got a bit of space. Put the al-bum together, just draw a line under it.’ I knew I wanted to add a couple new things and I had beats that I want-ed to work with. I found the lyric in the pad and it was like ‘Oh shit, this is actually really good’. I think when I had written it I had dismissed it as not being complicated enough but when I came back to it, I was like, ‘Yo, this is kinda ill!’ it just developed from that.

The true heads that follow all the un-derground shit know that I’m still here and I’m still doing stuff but there’s a lot of people who bought my albums in the past who may have have been thinking, ‘I don’t know what hap-pened to that guy’, ‘cos I haven’t been visible in that way.

The track ‘England’ couldn’t be a better representation of the atmos-phere in South London after the murders some years ago. Can you talk us through how this track came about?

Totally of its own accord. The beat was by Beat Butcha and sounded like it was saying ‘England.’ I started writ-ing it on the train with the beat in my headphones. It wasn’t like ‘Oh, I’m

gonna write now.’ The first couple of lines came to me and then it just wrote itself. The thing that sticks in my mind, I remember changing trains at London Bridge or whatever, but I was still writing it in my head. I was stop-ping, carrying on, jotting a bit more down. It was recorded as a demo.

I just did a quick one take and that was it. The intention was to re-record it but whenever I came back to it, it never had the same energy and the same vibe. Maybe being recorded on a fucked up mic in a fucked up situation added to the rawness of it. But, yeah, I’m really happy that it’s actually on the album cos there were points where it was gonna get left off. It provokes such a response from people – it’s making people think, I guess. Making people sit up and listen – with a lot of rap you just switch off, now.

There’s definitely a gap in the mar-ket for real UK Hip Hop at the mo-ment. You’re one of the few cover-ing it. Where’s everyone gone?

To the Job Centre.

It was when the Lowlife label went, wasn’t it? Everything went down-hill.

Depends how you look at it. Musically and in terms of creativity and specific artists and their careers – yeah, you could definitely say it’s gone down-hill. But then from another point of view, there’s the whole commercial market that’s emerged and the fact that UK rap is fully accepted within the mainstream. It was kind of ghettoised , the way it was. I think the issue now is, do artists wanna make Hip Hop that has a bit of imagination and lyri-cal content and take advantage of the fact that rap is part of the mainstream. It was kind of ghettoised , the way it

hearing Run DMC, getting into graffiti, graffiti books like Subway Art, Spraycan Art. All that appealed to me, even when I was that age. I started to get into the music and a friend of mine, he was getting stuff passed down to him from older kids and he’d pass stuff onto me and then it just developed naturally. I grew up in that era of early Def Jam,Cold Chillin’, BDP through to UK stuff like Blade and Demon Boyz, London Posse, all that old stuff. Even though it wasn’t that visible to the mainstream, there was a lot of UK stuff in the early 90′s and late 80′s. It just quietened down a lot in the mid 90′s and then shit didn’t re-ally start again until the late 90′s, with people like Lewis Parker, and Roots Manuva. I’m still a fan of all that stuff, so there’s a natural pro-gression.

Hip Hop’s been such a big part of my life. Commercialisation is inev-itable but there will always be real shit and it will always have its time and it will always have its place within the mainstream as well. If you look at America, some of the biggest commercial artists that have had staying power are ones that are also accepted by the underground, they’re artists who also have a lot of credibility and authenticity. Big-gie, Tupac, Jay Z, Kanye West, these are all people that have come from actual roots. People talk about Reggae and then Roots Reggae. I’m starting to see Hip Hop like that, [Laughs] like Roots Hip Hop. I’m always starting over, always starting again. Right now I’m feel-ing really refreshed, like I just

What we did discredited that myth. You’ve had this whole commer-cial thing that popped off the back of that and also off the back of the whole Grime movement. It’s always gonna be a creative springboard for like some commercial shit..

Personally, I feel positive with where things are gonna go and just interested in seeing how things are gonna develop. It’s like yeah, things will evolve, there’s still a lot of room, and as you said, there’s a big gap for Hip Hop that is actually Hip Hop, not just rap music. But most of the UK Hip Hop isn’t really Hip Hop. They didn’t even call it that before, but now they do. Before, they didn’t wanna call it UK Hip Hop, but now they do. I think that’s really interesting in itself – I think it marks a milestone because what’s happened now it that is whatsaid that a few years ago. But now it’s safe to say that if you wanna know what UK Hip Hop is today, it’s not me [laughs]. It’s commer-cial, dance orientated, radio orien-tated, that’s the dominant thing. It appealsto a very narrow demographic. A lot of it is pop music for teenagers… or younger. It’s interesting though, I’m hoping to see certain younger cats come up and flip it but, you know, we’ll see how it develops.

You were just a kid of 19 when you released your debut, Premo-nitions, back in ’99? Since then you’ve been changing the face of the UK hip hop scene. What got you into Hip Hop in the begin-ning?

I’ve been into Hip Hop since I was seven or eight years old, when I was

wanna get in the studio ‘cos I’ve got the weight of the new record off my back but I’ve got ideas and I’ve got a fresh take on things. Sometimes I get bored with Hip Hop and Rap, ‘cos it seems like a limited format, but then it’s not, it’s actually a limitless format, you’ve just gotta remember to use it in that way. A lot of times people forget to use it in the right way. The beauty of it is that it’s open to anything, anything you wanna bring into the mix. It’s still Hip Hop.

What you listening to right now?

Right now? My mind goes blank whenever I get asked this. Danny Brown. The new Fatima EP on Eglo, that’s real nice. This question always throws me, then later on I’m always like ‘Why didn’t I say this? Why didn’t I mention that?’ I’m still listening to that Pharoahe Monch, the ‘W.A.R’ album. There’s that new DJ Premiere ‘Beats That Collected Dust’, a couple of tunes on there that are just ill. I’ve been listening to vibraphone versions of Bach [laughs], The Telemachus al-bum. I just listen to anything, all kinds of shit. I’ve been listening to Shafiq Husayn, an old one, called The Fre-quency Clash.

It’s just mental. I’d never heard it be-fore but I picked that up recently, that’s ill.

In the beginning, how’d it all kick off?

I was into it from when I was young, always dabbling with it. Obviously when you’re a pre-teen, you’re only taking things so seriously. The main thing I did as a kid was draw, but I was always creating stuff. As a teenager I started getting more into the music and then it developed naturally. Doing Pre-monitions was the first attempt to try and do it, you know, go in the studio and actually try and make a record.

We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing We’d had some studio experi-ence and done demos before, some lit-tle shows and whatever but I was like 17 or 18 making that record. It’s a lot more technically advanced now. My computer was an Atari ST, purely for sequencing, I couldn’t record sounds into it.

Doing Premonitions was just like, ‘I wanna do this to say that I’ve done it’, it wasn’t a career move, it was a

statement: this is what I’m into and I wanna do it. I was studying illustra-tion, that’s what I was actually doing at that time in terms of trying to make careers moves and shit. I was doing a degree in illustration but the music was so well received that it just took over and that was it.

The significant milestones were put-ting out Premonitions, hooking up with Low Life, and Lewis Parker. Low Life came to represent a vocal point for those artists and fans of those artists but actually it’s much bigger than that, people were doing their own things independently. That was a big thing. High Plains Drifter was a big turning point. I knew from the response that it was changing shit, not just for me, but for Hip Hop and Rap in this country. I knew that at the time. I knew I was making my contribution and I knew that I had something to offer.

I’m fully grateful for all the love that I get. I’ve heard some pretty wild claims [laughs] about how good I am, which I don’t necessarily agree with, but I take it as a massive compliment but at the same time. I feel like there’s a lot more to do, much more to establish. I don’t wanna preach to the converted, there’s more people out there to reach out to. It’s not a fame thing – it’s empower-ment. The more recognition you get, then the more doors are open to you in terms of creative opportunities. I just love to get creative and work with dif-ferent people.

I don’t wanna preach to the converted, there’s more people out there to reach out to. It’s not a fame thing – it’s em-powerment. The more recognition you

get, then the more doors are open to you in terms of creative opportunities. I just love to get creative and work with differ-ent people.

A lot of the mad talented people people I work with aren’t having the opportunity to work professionally and it limits their ability. The more established you are, the easier it is to work with another artist – you can make that happen. I’m trying to work on this project with M-Phazes. He’s really established himself. Whenever I pick up an American album he seems to have a beat on it He reached out to work with me some time ago – it’d be great right now if I could just say ‘Right, fuck it, I’m hopping on a plane and going back out to Australia and carrying on the work’. Right now, I wanna make up for lost time. I wanna bang out the Phazes record, bang out another record of my own. I’m trying to do some work with Paul White. He’s got a project coming out soon on One-Handed Music. I’m just still hungry, I’m hungry like I’m 16 again.

What have you got planned for the coming months?

Desperately trying to get in the studio. Ob-viously I’ve got to do shows and promote the album. It’s a big mistake for artists to make to think ‘Right my album’s out now, work done’. That’s when the work starts. The minute it becomes available to the public, all the work you did leading up to that point is a different thing. Once the record’s out there you gotta work to keep it visible. You can’t just assume people know about it ‘cos it’s out. To me, a new album is something that’s come out in the last year, I think it takes that long now. It’s changed a lot from going to your local re-cord shop seeing what was new in

that week. Sometimes it’ll take peo-ple six months to catch on to a re-cord. You gotta plug it relentlessly – so I’ll be doing that.

I’ll be at Outlook festival in Septem-ber, I think we’re playing the Big Chill actually.

How was the launch party?

Yeah, good.

Did you have a say in who you were playing with?

I didn’t get to pick who was there but Stretch Armstrong and Rob Swift were there, both legends in their own rights. I felt kind of hon-oured to say it was billed for my album launch. In the mid 90′s, they were like infamous for freestyle ses-sions on their radio show. There was a dude in the UK who had a label and a shop called Liberty Grooves. I think it was straight bootleg, but he pressed a bunch of this shit up on wax. We’re talking about Nas, Bootcamp, Or-ganized Konfusion, Big L, Large Professor and people bringing their own beats. Those freestyle tapes were a major influence.

Yeah that was dope, so shout out to Spin Doctor for putting that on. It was good, really good. It was nice to be doing the main room in what is probably the biggest club in Lon-don on a Friday night. I think that says a lot for Hip Hop now, in terms of it being accepted as being com-mercially viable. There was a time when it would have been unheard of to say ‘There’s gonna be Hip Hop in the main room’ and this straight Dance music in Room 2 and 3.

One last question, what was the last track you listened to?

Beautiful Music, the last track on Action Bronson’s Dr. Lector album. I like to listen to albums all the way through. If I’m happy to flick, then that shit’s disposable. I’m still in that vinyl mentality – you put the needle on the groove and you let it play through to the end and you do the same again. None of this trigger-happy iPod shuffle shit. But yeah, it’s a good album, it’s pretty dope. He’s definitely a sick MC.

I’ll have a listen to that one then.

Yeah, if you’re into raw New York shit, which there ain’t a lot of nowa-days, check it out.

Label ProfileOne-Handed Music

Since their formation in 2007, One-Handed Music has carved out a unique position within the UK’s electronic music scene. Playing a pivotal role in the break-through of now renowned artists such as Paul White and Bullion, they’ve gained a reputation for having some of the more forward thinking, diverse and innovative releases of the past few years.

They’re debut release came in the form of Paul White’s ‘The Dragon Fly’. Since then they’ve had a streamlined aesthetic con-taining a cherry-picked roster of artists that have all provided high-notes of origi-nality, whether it’s Mo Kolours drum-laced poetic melodies, down tempo soul of Ahu or the sprawling euphoria of Bul-lion.

Having recently released the highly ac-claimed ‘Rapping With Paul White’ and given away it’s Remix EP, label head Alex Chase was kind enough to say a few words about One-Handed Music, including it’s history, his humble beginnings with Itch FM, the discoveries of Paul White and Bullion and what lies in store for the fu-ture.

What were the beginnings of One-Handed Music?

I started it because I got a demo from Paul White while I was working for a company called PIAF, while I was working with Stones Throw. I think I was the first person he ever sent a demo to. And we just stayed in touch, and I was trying to share his music and help him develop it and just to try and build a little name. People started off putting his record outs, and every time they did I just got this gut feeling that it wasn’t the right thing to do and we could do it better ourselves, so basically I set the label up for that reason just to release his music and to see where we could take it, and I guess its grown organically from there.

How long ago was that?

First record was 2007. The First year we put out one 7”, second year was one 7” so for the first couple of years it was slow, slow progress, but the second 7” we did which was Bul-lions ‘Get Familiar’. That put the label on the map a little bit because that turned out to be a hit record for a small niche if you know what I mean.

Was the aim to always focus on a left-field beat orientated area, or did it evolve in that fashion?

Its been an accident to an extent, I think that partly because Paul and other people have come to me who work in a similar kind of area, and I guess it’s a world I know well through my day job. I think its taken quite a while to establish that kind of char-acter of the label, especially when we were first coming out there was loads of that kind of beat scene music, just a ton of stuff in the aftermath of Dilla,

and for a long time I think we were just lumped in with all of that stuff that people called wonky or what-ever, which has never really been our thing. I think over time people kind of see we’ve had a bit more of an old school aesthetic, being into music from the 60s and 70s, and pysch stuff, rock and soul, and I think a lot of our peers are more straight, electronically inclined, while we’re maybe bringing a bit more of a weirder and more jazz and pysch and world influence to our music.

But there isn’t a plan as such to de-velop within that left field electron-ic beats niche. Actually one of the things I’m working on for next year is kind of a rock-steady thing which I can’t really talk too much about, but has nothing to do with beat music at all, and I’m hoping to stick to that. We’re small enough that we could to-tally change direction, and its not like we’ve got an army of fans around the world who’ll be burning our records in the street or anything.

How did the likes of Paul White and Bullion get involved?

[I got in touch with Paul] because he worked at a community studio where his boss was one of my ex-colleagues husbands. It was one of those round-about things where his boss would say ‘You should send some music to Alex because he works with the Stone Throw guys, and I know you like that stuff and he could be a pair of ears who could give you some feedback’. I remember getting the demo and putting it on and realising halfway through it was amazing, and calling him up ‘cos it’s the only good…its not the only good demo I’ve ever re-ceived, but its one of maybe five.

Bullion I knew because he worked at Sky in the music library and he hit me up to try and blag music from me, and he sent me this first project he did which was this comic book with a soundtrack. I didn’t think it was very good and I think I told him it wasn’t that good (laughs). And then while he was working on the Beach Boys thing he was sending me stuff – I guess this was a year before he started getting played on Benji B and Gilles Peterson and stuff, he was just sending me works in progress and I was playing them on my pirate radio show. I remember hearing ‘Get Fa-miliar’ and giving him a shout and to me, this was 10 times more exciting than what he’d been doing up to this point. We just rolled with it.

You mentioned you were involved with Pirate Radio, when did you start that up?

I was on Itch FM. It was a big hip-hop pirate station that people like MK and DJ IQ were on back in the day, and I guess I was part of it in its kind of death roes. So when I moved to London I got a show, this is like 2004. I was doing 12-2 from a tow-er block in Mile End on a Monday night, proper like the worst show you could get, then getting up and going to work in the morning. It was pre-dominantly a hip-hop station and I would play Latin jazz and some soul records as well as hip-hop, and I re-membered the station managers re-ferring to my show as a world music show, and me just being totally baf-fled, I thought I was doing a hip-hop thing. I moved on just before the sta-tion shut down, it never really got up to speed with the Internet era.

Obviously the aforementioned art-ists are very well known, but what’s the story behind Seagull Mansion or Fulgeance, for example?

Well, Seagull Mansion, can’t talk to you about Seagull Mansion, that’s top secret, and whether Seagull Man-sion ever emerges we will see. Fulge-ance is a French dude who’s got his own label, his new albums coming out on Melting Pot, a German label. He’s just an MPC wizard. I really liked his attitude and approach, we just hit it off and we did a record to-gether, it was good. He’s not a One-Handed Music artist; he’s got other things that he’s doing, but we just did a little collaborative together that was really fun.

So far you’ve got quite a tight-knit group of artists, all promoting a similar aesthetic. Would you like to branch out in the future, or are you happy with the direction your currently heading in?

I’m hoping to branch out. There are definitely ideas for future projects that are outside of our circle, but I think putting out records the way we do it is really labour intensive, and a lot of it just conversations with the artists and developing the record. A lot of it goes through many iterations before we’re happy with the final se-quence and the way the tracks devel-op, and I guess sometimes the A & R side is quite hands on. Other times someone could just hand me a record and I’d just put it out but most of the time there’s a lot of back and forth for something that, really, there isn’t any money in.

So you’ve got to work with people that you like, and you’ve got to work with people that you enjoy spending time with and that your inspired by and who are a pleasure to deal with, because I cant imagine doing this with artists that I didn’t feel part of the family with, and who didn’t re-spect the rest of the label. So far I’m lucky that Paul White and Mo Kol-ours are super close friends and so is Bullion and Tranquill, they’re all part of the same group, and it’s a re-ally nice feeling when we all come together and I think that’s important and it’s a big motivation. That sense of being in it together, even though Bullion has moved on in terms of his career in some ways, he’s still part of our crew.

I still very much associate Bullion with One-Handed Music.

Yeah, I hope he’ll do something with us again, we still talk about it, just has to be the right thing. His new mate-rial is very different, he’s singing and playing live and with a guitar, he’s in a big stage of development and got other irons in the fire. He worked on the new Florence and the Machine record, he did some post-production, So he’s doing all kinds of stuff, but you’d have to talk to him to get the full low-down.

OHM is run pretty much by you alone. Could you tell us a little about the every day happenings inside the label?

Well I run record labels for my day job, so OHM has become part of that stable, and its by no means the main thing, I kind of think of it as a hobby that’s gone out of control. There’s ac-tually a label called Full Time Hobby, I’ve always thought that was a good name because that’s what it actually feels like.

What upcoming releases have you got in the pipeline?

Well we just did the Paul White Re-mix EP. Mo Kolours second EP is pretty much done we’re just wait-ing on a remix. I’m working on this rock-steady record that’s really cool. That could take ages. Everything else is kind of in development. Seagull Mansion could come through and surprise everyone. Tranquill played me an incredible track recently; I’m hoping to do something with that. There’s also Tightface, whose Mo Kolours younger brother. He makes beat tapes and circulates them amongst a little group of friends and that’s it really. But he and I are talking about doing something a lit-tle more official, and trying to get a concept and music together for that. If it happens it’ll be in the first half of next year.

Text: Seb Merhej

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Photography: Rebecca NaenStyling: Hayley McCarthy

Hair & Makeup: Violet ZengModel: Joanna Halpin

Photographer: Joshua GordonStyling: Hayley McCarthy

Hair & Makeup: Violet ZengModel: Joanna Halpin

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http://vinylpimp.co.uk/Meet Man Hon Luk, more commonly known as the Vinyl Pimp. Hon moved to London in the early noughties to find work after he finished university in his native Hong Kong. Following a stint of trying to find his feet with various jobs in the capital, he accidentally found himself in the business of flogging sec-ond hand vinyl records on Discogs – the international online marketplace for those with a penchant for collecting wax. By 2008 he was operating out of a warehouse space in East London and considered to be the go-to-guy if you needed to shift some records.

In the time since, he’s helped world-renowned DJs such as Phil Asher, d-Bridge, Doc Scott and Ben Sims lighten their collections and counts the main reasons for them making the move as “the wife nagging about room” or “hav-ing babies”. He finds it highly amus-ing that some people have offloaded £20,000 worth of music to him free-of-charge because they have simply “lost the passion” … and they say pimpin’ ain’t easy?

Words: Josh ThomasPhotography: James Clothier

As eclectic as Bristol’s music scene is – and always has been for that matter – one com-mon thread tying it all together is its roots – Jamaican music and its sound system culture. You’ll find this phrase peppering interviews with reputable Bristol natives. The BS postal code is now inextricably en-twined with new developments in dubstep.

With one of the strongest rosters of influen-tial UK artists – a list that includes trip-hop artists Massive Attack and Portishead as well as post-rock bands Maximum Joy and Glaxo Babies – the Bristol sound can now boast three highly reputable labels. First up is Tectonic Recordings, run by Pinch and now nurturing the raw talents of Photek, Loefah, Pursuit Grooves and, more recent-ly, Jack Sparrow and Ruckspin’s brain-child, Author. Then there’s Peverelist’s Punch Drunk imprint, and the new Livity Sound. And, the label behind the record store, Idle Hands. These labels are pres-ently home to some of the most talented producers to come out of the UK.

Among these producer/artists is Joe Mc-Gann, aka Kahn, who’s quickly establish-ing a name for himself among Bristolian producers. A hugely versatile producer himself, Kahn has cultivated a unique sound that has an ethereal quality which defies description. Skating about undefined edges, never quite moving in a straight line. The genre-defying native has been build-ing new styles and sounds onto dubstep foundations since the beginning. Deftly he’s cultivated a unique production quality that was bound to be latched onto by Punch Drunk boss, Peverelist.

We caught up with the young Bristolian – ahead of his set at our launch party this De-cember – to talk about dubplates, influenc-es and the growth of Bristol’s music scene.

Kahn: “I’ve got this fear that generations to come will never actu-ally have a physical record collection”

Let’s start from the beginning. Can you tell me how you discovered the bass music scene over there?

My parent’s love of music seems to be the clearest prerequisite to me, I’ve grown up with all kinds of music around me and each style has affected me in someway.

My mum used to work as a promoter in the rave scene of the 90s and we’d always be at festivals and be around music from a very young age, so dance music was always pretty acces-sible to me. My tastes developed as I started going out to clubs as a teen-ager in Bristol, and I think that’s the answer to the question really; being a kid in central Bristol at that period and being out all the time. It was dif-ficult not to become immersed in the music that was going on all around us.

What was your first encounter with UK bass, and what in particular were you listening to at the time?

I’m not quite sure exactly what ‘UK Bass’ constitutes to be honest, but I’d probably go back to the previous question and say that I’ve grown up with bass heavy music since I was a child and my music is influenced by many styles within that category.

My first encounter with Dubstep would be in 2006/7, I heard a Pinch tune playing in the second room of a club and went and sat down in there and just took it all in. That is one of the key moments for me that sent me on the journey I’m on now.

Were there any club nights pushing that sort of sound back then?

The main nights I was going to around that time were Dubloaded/Subloaded, The Sureskank Convention and Ruff-neck Diskotek, all of which are still running in some capacity.

Subloaded was founded by Pinch and Blazey and is essentially the Bristol equivalent of DMZ, and it’s still the best place in the city to hear the music in an authentic atmosphere.

Sureskank and Ruffneck started around the same time and represent the more ‘party’ vibe of the music I suppose, with anything from garage and grime to bashment and soundsys-tem reggae, and are still my favourite parties in Bristol.

Were you producing material be-fore releasing work under the name of Kahn?

I’ve been producing from home since late 2005, when I started sixth form. I’d been writing music since I was a kid and had been in bands and spend-ing my lunch times at school in the music department, it’s all I cared about at school really.

I’ve kept most of my production to date under the name Kahn, I can’t even remember how I chose the word, but it’s stuck.

What was influencing your sound in the beginning and what’s influenc-ing it now? Any particular records or artists that have stood out for you over time?

It’s a difficult question to answer in just a few lines. Jamaican music has had a big influence on me, I love ba-roque music, devotional music, Arab classical music, there’s many things and too many to mention really but it’s all stayed with me and influenced my creative output in some way.

Right now I feel influenced by Bris-tol, both as a city and the many artists working in it.

How did you hook up with Pever-elist’s Punch Drunk imprint? And what’s your relationship with the label itself?

I’d been following Punch Drunk since I was a teenager and have many memories attached to the music that’s come out on the label over the years. I was giving CDs of my beats to Tom (Peverelist) when I was going into Rooted Records and eventually he ap-proached me to put a record out

I’m proud to be a part of the label and I have a lot of respect for Tom and his passion for Bristol music culture.

Tell me about Rooted Records. It was obviously a massively influen-tial place on Bristol. What are your memories of it?

I was still at secondary school when

I first went there and it was the first record shop I’d properly explored on my own, at first just having to guess what I’d like looking at record sleeves and looking out for names I recog-nised. Tom and the other guys that worked there were helpful and would give me things to check out.

One of the memories for me was see-ing Pinch do an amazing in-store set in the evening before Subloaded VII, to launch the release of his album Un-derwater Dancehall. It was complete-ly packed.

Most of my memories are just of spending hours in the shop listening and learning. I was sad to see it go.

I don’t tend to ask what software or hardware an artist uses, but I was curi-ous to find out with you. Do you use any analogue equipment at all?When I’m doing Kahn stuff I write mostly on my laptop, I don’t really have much analog equipment but I play a few instruments and sing so I try to incorporate that into my music as much as possible.

You stated in an interview with Son-ic Router that you were very much into dubplate culture, and that a lot of your material wouldn’t ever see a release. Can you expand on this?

It took me a while to get enough mon-ey to cut my first batch of dubplates, as I had so much to cut, but now I’ve started I can’t see myself going back.

I think it’s an element of the music which has been lost largely due to all the new DJ technology around these days and possibly even people’s at-titude to music and DJing. I’ve got this fear that generations to come will never actually have a physical record collection and won’t have that rela-tionship with the music they buy.

I’ve been really influenced by the sound-system way of doing things, in that I have material which I’ve care-fully selected and got cut to vinyl spe-cifically to perform with. Each time I play a real dubplate, I know that it’s not being played anywhere else in the world and it’s the purest example of my sound, and everyone in attendance is experiencing that.

How do you go about producing a track? Do you have a set idea of how you want it to sound before you sit down to produce it, or is it more than that, something you sculpt over a period of time?

It works in different ways. The best tracks I’ve written have essentially written themselves.

I like to think that anyone who cre-ates carries with them all of the things they’ve ever been influenced by or heard or seen, and that in those mo-ments of real creativity, however sporadic or uncontrollable, the raw essence of those influences and your experience with them allow you to fully express yourself. The skill is in recognising and translating the inspi-ration that comes to you.

Do you feel uncomfortable with people putting a label on your mu-sic, putting it into one box?

I think people will always do it, no matter who the artist is and what they do. It doesn’t make me feel uncom-fortable, but it may be confusing to them when one record I put out is very different to another.

Tell me about how you came to re-mix M.I.K. For me, it’s some of my favourite of your work to date.

I did a remix of his track Duppy & Leave last year, the acapella of which he had given away on his soundcloud. He heard it and liked it and asked me to do an official remix of his track Do It. I’m happy with how it came out, I think it’s a sound he hadn’t really worked with before. Hopefully we’ll do some more work together in future.

Are you hoping to hook up with any more grime MCs?

Grime plays a big part in my sets at the moment, which I’ve found can some-times catch people off guard as they think I’m a post-something house DJ or something..

I’d love to work with more MCs as I love working with vocals, though in Grime there’s a specific sound I like and am experimenting with.

Talking of collaborations, do you have anymore in the pipeline?

There’s a few things coming out in the not too distant future so keep your eyes out..

Tell me about your side projects Gorgon Sound and Baba Yaga. Are they something you’d like to con-tinue working on?

Gorgon Sound is a project I’m a part of with a DJ from Bristol called Neek, who’s one of the founders of the Sures-kank crew. We mostly write our own style of sound-system dub and have been working with some vocalists in Bristol over the past few months. We should be getting our first record out sometime next year. Neek is one of the best selectors in my generation of Bristol DJs and some of my favourite sets have been playing alongside him.

Baba Yaga is me and Vessel (who has finally been getting some proper at-tention recently). We haven’t written much new material together recently as we’ve both been so busy with our solo projects but we’re hoping to get something together soon. We have a self-titled EP out on A Future Without which you can find on iTunes, Boom-kat etc..

You’re a member of the Sureskank collective over in Bristol. Tell me about it. Why was it started and what is its ‘philosophy’?

Sureskank started as a birthday party in 2006 and has gone on to be one of Bristol’s longest running ‘dubstep’ nights, as well as a series of parties in Brighton too. It’s made up of a host of residents including myself, Gemmy, Superisk, El Kid and Neek to name a few, and it’s a bit of an institution in the Bristol scene.

It’s philosophy is to give a platform for the talent in Bristol, though we’ve hosted many a debut set from big names down the years, but mostly it’s a big party. It’s still one of my favour-ite places to play and the crew’s still going strong.

What else have you got coming up in the next few months?

I’m currently in the studio writing new material, but I do have a num-ber of remixes coming out soon so do keep a look out..

Words: Alice Gilfillan

Caleb Waterman, better known by his alias Juk Juk, made an impressive debut this year with ‘Winter Turn Spring’ b/w ‘Frozen’, re-leased on Four Tet’s ever influential Text im-print- it’s worth noting that this is a label that has nurtured the talent of artists such as Rock-etnumbernine, Caribou, One Little Plane and Burial. The A-side of this release has found its way into some high-grade record bags, but that won’t surprise anyone who’s given this a listen and been struck by the warmth evoked by skipping drums, quick chops, and, half way through, a thick surge of guttery bass.

Skip forward a few months and I’m sitting with the producer on a cold London night on a bench outside Vibe Bar for a quick introduc-tory chat.

I don’t know a lot about you, so I’ll start with the obvious. Where are you from?

I’ve always lived in London. I’m from Walthamstow, which is East, verging on Essex.

What was it like growing up there?Walthamstow?

It was alright… Generally growing up I would just travel into central London because it’s so close to home. I had a good bunch of creative friends, we mostly skateboarded and listened to music.

What music nights were you coming to in the beginning?

Started off from a young age with All

Juk Juk: “I wanted to create something that starts gently, almost melancholic, but then takes you somewhere uplifting.”

Text: Alice GilfillanImages: Tom Carter

I’m preparing a live set at the moment, but I’m waiting until I’ve got a band sorted before I start pushing the live sets. At the moment I’m just DJing under the name of Juk Juk, playing mostly my own tracks.

You’ve got three or four on Sound-cloud…

Yeah, I’ve got my Text release up plus any current mixes or remix work.

How did you hook up with Four Tet for the release?

I’d met Kieran a couple of times through mutual friends over the last few years and had always been a fan of his label and music so thought it would be a good idea to send him a few tracks. He started playing out Winter Turn Spring and follow-ing its reception at Plastic People in Shoreditch back in June he asked me if he could release it.

Can you tell me about the individu-al tracks in the release, Winter Turn Spring and Frozen.

Winter Turn Spring, I wanted to cre-ate a track that was constantly mov-ing, taking elements of guitar and vo-cal and breaking them up into a dance format. The bass section in the middle is meant to keep the mood changing within the song. It’s a dance track that you can listen to outside of the dance space. Big on your way to work, as well as big on the dance floor.Frozen has a glitchy 2-step vibe. I wanted to create something that starts

Tomorrow’s Parties because I used to go there with family, which was a good early exposure to a wide spec-trum of music. It’s a bi-yearly indie festival at a holiday camp, with a whole range of acts like Portishead, Battles, The Field, Various Produc-tions, Dinosaur Junior, Sleep… So that’s what I was listening to in the beginning, a complete range of stuff really. Lots of old music mixed up with new: bands like Lightning Bolt were an amazing experience. Then when the dubstep scene picked up, I was going to all the early DMZ nights in Brixton, when the genre was still unsaturated. This really kicked off my love of dance music.

Something that always fascinates me when coming across ‘new blood’ is their record collection.

The first records I bought came from Rough Trade when it was still in the basement underneath Slam in Cov-ent Garden, these were Leftfield and Atari Teenage Riot. So I would have been about 11? So I guess from an early age I was really into dance elec-tronic music. Currently, my collection is pretty diverse as not just listening to music for pleasure, also listening on a broader spectrum for inspiration or samples for my own work. Which means it ranges from folk to cosmic synth to hip hop. Currently listening to Dark Sky, Gold Panda, Burial’s re-cent stuff, Koreless, Martyn, Floating Points and lots of old hip hop.

I was listening to your Daily Street mix earlier – have you started play-ing live?

gently, almost melancholic, but then takes you somewhere uplifting.

How would you say the reaction has been to your debut on the whole?

Really positive, happy that people have taken such an interest.

Where there any records that stood out for you as being particularly in-fluential on you when you first be-gan producing?

To be honest there’s too much to list and anyway it’s more of a combina-tion of aesthetic than the influence of any individual records.

What’s next for you? Any forth-coming material or nights we can be looking forward to?

I’m putting out some releases in Feb-ruary and May through my own label, which I haven’t actually named yet. In the meantime besides remix work, I am DJing with Braiden at Way Back Here’s 1st birthday at Question Mark Bar in Dalston on 3rd Dec, and I have three or 4 other shows coming up in Dec/Jan, including Blessing Force on 15th Dec at Corsica Studios, Church and Selective Hearing in January, plus a gig in Stockholm at Debaser.

Text: Alice GilfillanPhoto: Jason Evans

Photographer: Richard GastonStyling: Glass Boutique

A seminal figure in the development of underground dance, Pinch’s influence has spread far and wide and it should be no surprise to hear that I was caught up in his extensive dragnet too. For me, Pinch’s productions, and in some cases his mixes, have been hugely influential, often to the point where they may have soundtracked a key period in my life. He’s the producer I’ve grown up listening to and I freely admit that his mixes and DJ sets helped mould my taste.

It’s not only through his successful Tec-tonic Recordings – a label which has nur-tured some of the genre’s most unprece-dented talents – that Pinch has carved his mark on the UK music scene. He’s also the founder of pioneering dubstep nights, Subloaded, and of course, the mind be-hind some of the most well received re-leases of the past five years.

In the run-up to our Bristol takeover here in London, I caught up with Pinch to ask him in particular about the Bristol tracks that have made the most impact on him.

Pinch: “I lost track with Massive Attack after ‘Mezzanine’ but they were a big influence on me in the earlier years.”

Words: Alice Gilfillan

Smith & Mighty – Closer“One of my all time favourite tracks ever! Soulful electronic dub music at it’s finest.. Simple as that. Smith & Mighty were responsible for so many good things musically that set a strong foundation upon which the likes of Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, Full Cycle were able to launch from and – ironically – leave Smith & Mighty behind. The very defini-tion of Bristol Legends in my opinion.”

Massive Attack – 5 Man Army“With so many classic tunes to pick from – this might not be one of their best known but it always struck a particular chord with me (and everyone already knows about ‘Unfinished Sympathy’!). Some-thing about the rolling dubby bassline perhaps? I lost track with Massive Attack after ‘Mezzanine’ but they were a big in-fluence on me in the earlier years.”

Portishead – The Rip“Absolutely everything on ‘Dummy’ is genius and I could have picked almost anything from it – but wanted to include this more recent title as it showed me that they still have the ‘magic’. This is an ab-solutely beautiful track, brim with honest hard feelings – melancholic and heart-warming.”

Henry & Louis – Answer“The remix I did of this track was to-tally unofficial and by chance it found it’s way to Andy Scholes, 2 Kings label boss, through Rob Smith – and ended up getting a release as a result! The whole ‘Time Will Tell’ LP from which this was taken is still, to this day, one of the most under-rated and unknown Bristol clas-sics.”

DJ Die – Reincarnations“Die was always one of my favourite pro-ducers from the Full Cycle camp. I loved his minimal approach that leaves no room for possible error. Perfectly executed in every way, this track is my favourite of his productions – tastefully defying the demands of big room dancefloors and in-stead, playing with a deep smokey vibe that conjures strange images from the darkness..”

Tricky – Hell Is Around The Corner“I remember Tricky and Portishead both used the same key sample that features in this track – slightly unclear who got to it first (though it’s strongly suggested it was Portishead if I remember right!), but both made excellent use of it (Portishead ‘Glo-ry Box’). Anyway – Maxinquaye was a great album all round.”

Peverelist – The Grind“Somewhat overlooked but excellent ‘dubstep’ track by my good friend Pe-verelist. With this one track I feel he set the path for what became unfortunately known as dubstep-techno crossover and has received little in the way of credit for doing so. Whatever you want to call it – it’s a great tune!”