DJ Zinc: "I love technology but I wonder if we've lost something along the way"

Around the time I left school, aged 16, I fell in love with music. When I heard acid house and the early rave stuff I was completely hooked. Growing up in London meant I had pirates to listen to, and that world was something I wanted to be a part of. Back then you could only hear our music on pirate stations, in raves, in your friends’ bedrooms, and in record shops. I spent all my spare time in record shops (and worked in one for a few years) and the sense of community was great. Lots has been discussed about the near wipe-out of record shops, and the gap they’ve left, and the same can be said for the tape pack gangs: we didn’t Shazam a track then find it on YouTube or SoundCloud, we listened to tape packs if the pirates weren’t on, and often had to then go and sing basslines to bemused record shop staff for months until the track came out. I love so many things about how technology has moved forward (including not having to sing basslines to record shop staff), but I do wonder if we’ve lost something along the way.

One aspect of the jungle and drum ’n’ bass community that I saw change drastically was the now legendary Music House. Music House in Holloway had previously served the reggae scene, cutting exclusive tracks for the DJs, but for jungle DJs it was less about tracks with our names in and much more about cutting exclusive and up-front tracks to play. In the days of vinyl, if you made a track you’d have to wait a few weeks to get back the test presses, so dub[plates] meant we could get the tracks to play in the club straight away, and check that they sounded right before committing to vinyl.

Once I was established in the jungle and d’n’b scene, around 1995, I began cutting plates in earnest. When I was DJing every week and in the studio all the time I had the need for new tunes and a load of my own to cut too. So I’d spend the best part
of a day every week for around five years sitting in Music House waiting for my turn to cut my plates.

Given the option I doubt I’d have sat there for so long week after week, but there wasn’t an option – and the result was an unusually strong community within that scene. Nowadays I see my fellow DJs out and about, but there was something about the situation that made it have such an impact. For one, we were all listening to each other’s new tracks – not at a festival on a massive system, but on a big pair of good quality studio monitors – and I think it was pretty inspiring for many of us. And because of the forced proximity we all got to know each other quite well. We’d talk about production techniques and just general stuff. You can’t underestimate how beneficial being in the same space as other creative and talented people can be for you. They say you’re a product of your environment, and being around these people at Music House every week not only spurred me on, but was crucial in the rise of d’n’b as a whole, too. The closest I get nowadays to that kind of thing is when a group of us tour and travel together; close, but not the same…

Sometimes Grooverider or Frost would walk in and say, ‘I’m flying to Germany at six, I’ve gotta go in,’ and that meant another hour was added to your wait. At other times, as you’d be sitting there, one DJ would be cutting a track, someone in the waiting area would hear it and say, ‘Can I cut that too, please?’ Which was generally agreed to – and if a few of the bigger DJs were there, that may mean the track was cut five or six times. If it was a seven-minute track what with the setting-up and cutting in real time that may add another hour. If it was my track they were cutting I’d be really happy: for other DJs to spend £15 on your tune was a good sign. If it wasn’t my track I’d be less enthralled. But there was something brilliant about the sense of community that came with hanging around somewhere like Music House and chatting to the likes of Andy C or Grooverider or Shy FX, and what you could learn from it. New producers would come in and end up meeting their heroes there. I still speak to people these days who say they remember coming into Music House and meeting me years ago, which goes to show I wasn’t the only one to be influenced by being in that place and around those people. That proximity, that community, was key to the development of drum ’n’ bass. Anyone aspiring to create or nurture the next scene should look for something similar.

‘DJ Zinc Presents Full House’ is out now