5 
Tony Thorpe

TONY Thorpe is the most deadpan man you'll ever meet. His Moody Boys (or Moody Boyz) name isn't unearned: his demeanour is dour and Eeyore-ish at all times – but it doesn't take long talking to him to realise that behind that are a ready sense of humour and the kind of delirious passion about new and obscure music you'd more expect from someone a third his age. On first meeting him I got his back up telling him I'd loved his remixes of The KLF's biggest tracks ‘What Time is Love’ and ‘3am Eternal’ – he immediately bristled, protesting that he wasn't interested in raking over past achievements. But I quickly discovered that he doesn't cling onto offence, and also that he was perfectly willing to go back through the labyrinth of his musical history.

The KLF work alone is enough to make Thorpe a memorable producer. Not only did he do gloriously weird and whacked-out remixes for them, but he co- produced The White Room album (credited as “breaks, beats and samples”) and the chart-topping ‘Stadium House’ reworks of their singles, still some of the most glorious and disruptive moments in 20th century pop culture. With The KLF's backing and occasional co-production from Jimmy Cauty, he also cemented the Moody Boys alias that he'd by then been using for a couple of years, releasing on the then-brand-new XL Recordings and Dave Dorrell's Polydor offshoot L.O.V.E. His first XL EP Journey into Dubland still stands as a classic of acid house era drug-dub; I remember vividly lying on my back on the grass at Glastonbury 1990 as the sound engineer tested the system on the Pyramid Stage by playing it over and over, the repetitions of the opera vocal sample and super-simple bassline never getting tired.

But this was just one episode from a career in which he's never rested on his laurels. From his early days in post-punk band 400 Blows through releasing the UK's first ever acid house compilation in 1987, to running multiple labels, doing beautiful dubstep remixes of Amy Winehouse and Erykah Badu, up to his current mission – to bring the still-extant The Last Poets together with the heaviest British bass wranglers – he's hustled, he's built an implausibly huge discography and network of collaborators, and he's never once settled into any one groove. This interview was done in two sessions early and late on in the process of putting this book together, both in the office in Shoreditch he's run the Studio Rockers label from since the early 2000s. This isn't the now-standard open-plan shared space generic “creative industries” spot full of interns, it's old- school, full of vinyl shelves and old rave posters, and is clearly Tony's own habitat. His conversation is as rambling and tangential as his career, but it's also as full of gems.

When someone asks what you do, do you say musician, producer, A&R or label boss?

Musician, really. Producer? I don't know. I don't go round saying I'm anything. I'm a music lover that got lucky – and that's why I'm still doing it after all these years. That's why I went beyond ‘What Time Is Love’. That's why I've still got enthusiasm for it, and why I'll still be doing it until I end up in whatever old people's home or nuthouse they stick me in.

You grew up in Croydon, right?

Yep, that's my hometown, the grimy streets of Croydon [laughs]. It started in a place called the Old Barn in South Croydon. I grew up with a West Indian background, soundsystems, heavy all-night parties, always music in the background, soundsystem in our front room. I remember just being really into the equipment, getting my first gramophone, my first single, all that. It was just the culture of the time, following whatever was around. The first record I bought was bloody T. Rex, I was just like any other kid born and bred in Croydon. After that I was a punk, I was a rasta, bloody new romantic, skinhead – I've been through the lot. I followed Pete Tong and Chris Hill, went the Caister weekenders, northern soul gigs, Wigan Casino, Goldmine – we were the South London Soul Patrol crew, and we were heavily into dancing in those days, places like the Horseshoe with Paul Murphy on Tottenham Court Road where they'd have absolutely amazing dancers every night, mate. Like ballet dancers, twisting, spinning, bending, always really original in their moves. It was great going around challenging people to dance-offs, go down to Sutton Scamps on a Tuesday night and have a dance-off with all the Sutton lot, another night we'd go down to Caister. It was a constant “Waheyy!” fun thing, but also releasing your aggression on the dancefloor, challenging each other with dancing where these days you'd do it with a knife. So yeah I was into black music, all the American stuff of the time.

What about electro? Was that part of it?

In the late 70s, early 80s it was funk, then rap came. I remember someone on the radio when ‘Rapper's Delight’ came out going “This is never gonna go anywhere.” We were sat there going “No! This is the future!” If you knew what you were talking about, you knew that in the Bronx this stuff was there for real, it was a lifestyle? I think I've always been open-minded, but that really started to open out was when I got into 400 Blows.

How did that come about?

Well I started off as a DJ, we did this club in Croydon called the Swamp club, and [laughs, looks disbelieving] it was a rockabilly thing. But in them days you could play anything – I'd be playing Animal Nightlife with King Kurt, mixed in with James Brown and Kraftwerk! All over the fucking place – and all these people in quiffs and suits having a good time. Bauhaus, B52s, James Chance, Bob Marley – that's when I used to really enjoy DJing because it would just be “Right, what am I going to play today?” and it could be anything. And you drop the right classic and people just go fucking nuts. I did Dr Jims, a classic old jazz-funk venue where all the soul guys played, Sunday night jazz-funk fusion-type place, teamed up with my mates Rob and Andreos, who was [laughs] George Michael's cousin. He was in Croydon too, the whole bloody Wham! thing had its seed in Croydon, we used to play them and Animal Nightlife, all that kind of soul pop of the time. Haha I'm a bit embarrassed, this ain't doing my bass music credibility any good!

But George was a proper soulboy too, wasn't he?

Oh mate, you can't knock him! He's someone who loved his music, and I love the way he constructed his whole success without trying to rip anyone off and developed his own style, which is what it's all about in any kind of music. No, George was a wicked guy. A mate of mine, Mick Maguire, started this thing called the Forum in the Whitgift Centre – just a pub right in the middle, and we'd hire it out. And his dad did HP [i.e. hire purchase] with us to buy a soundsystem, so we'd pay him every month to buy the soundsystem, which was top-of-the-range, the sound was like phwoooarrr! Everyone else was on these silly little mobile disco things, flashing traffic lights and the lot, but we had decent Citronics turntables and proper bassbins. We called ourselves Midnight Groove.

That is such an 80s name!

Yeah [cheesy grin and wink] “Midnight Groooooove!” We had t-shirts made and everything, “Midnight Groove” with stars and glitter. This was the early 80s, era of bad perms, horrible, mate! But the music was fucking brilliant, so who cares? And all sorts: hip hop, soul, rare groove, jazz, jazz-fusion funk.

Was there any DJ mixing as we now know it?

It was probably lot more just about song selection, with the odd terrible mix, but we tried our best! I mean there was an appreciation of that culture but things take time to filter through. British people were still rapping in American accents too, not quite getting it right. But hip hop was just another musical element in my life that taught me about being open and trying new things. So anyway, I was DJing and that was going good, then someone came up to me and went “Oh you should meet this guy called Andrew Beer, he's got a record out.” And he gave me this 7” single, white label, ‘Beat The Devil’ and I thought “Oh this looks interesting.” I took it home, put it on and was just like “Nah mate!” It was like it was actual devil music, some white voodoo thing with backwards loops and trumpet solos. But I could tell there was something going on, even if I wasn't into it.

I'd see him around, he'd come to gigs I was playing at, him and his partner in the band put out their first record, ‘Keep On Fighting’, on a label called Illuminated. Then they had a tiff and the other guy left, and for some reason Andrew rang me up and said “Do you want to help us out on a tune?” I'd never been in a studio, I wasn't a musician at all, but I was like [nervous chuckle] “OK…” The nearest I'd been was with mates at school who had a band, I pawned my stereo to get them in a studio, we didn't know what we were doing, made some stupid track, just clueless. But there was always the mysticism of listening to records and going [hushed tones] “How the fuck do they do that? Wowwww.” When I first heard Kraftwerk, I was like [jaw drops, dumbstruck expression]. I had no idea how that had been done.

So I went with Andrew to the record company and the guy there, Keith Bagley, was like “Alright Tony – who would you like to work with?” So I said “Mad Professor!” – he was just like a god to me – and Keith just went “Alright, we'll get him in.” I had no clue you could do that! But we got him in the studio in South Croydon, and we did a track called ‘Declaration Of Intent’. Mad record, I listen to it now and wonder how the fuck I did half the things on it. And it's got me singing on it too, terrible! But yeah, it's some nuts stuff, off the wall. That was end of 1983, beginning of 1984.

And we went on to make two albums, something like 20 12”s, I dunno. It was like school days, two mischievous boys playing with toys in the studio – who weren't really musicians, but tried to make music by any means necessary. I remember doing tracks one snare drum at a time, one bassdrum at a time, and just making this mad thing. Tape loops, too – I know this sounds prehistoric but get a reel-to- reel tape, record the beat on two-inch tape, transfer it onto the reel-to-reel, pull it out with a massive broomstick so you've got a big loop going through the machine, that'd be your loop, that's your break.

Did you know about previous electronic music when you were doing this, like the Radiophonic Workshop at the BBC?

When I got together with Andrew, I was the soulboy, the jazz funk boy, the reggae boy – that was my roots. Andrew came from more rock, punk, the post-punk mentality of anything-goes. So I was learning from him and he was learning from me – we were exchanging our musical heritages. These days you'd probably get a sampler to do that for you, but listening to our first album now, it's pretty all over the place, pretty mad. But that was all the musical knowledge we had.

If you chose Mad Professor to mix you, then older dub like King Tubby and those original producers must have been an influence?

Oh yes, I had my soundsystem, and I knew about soundsystem music. But Croydon wasn't the dub centre of the world, and the UK side was still in its infancy. For me the post-punk thing really opened people up, to dub, reggae, funk – The Clash, Cabaret Voltaire, they drew from all that stuff. It was an amazing period, some of that type of crossover stuff was amazing. I still play it out now, and people go “What the fuck's this?!” That was a time of just trying ideas and seeing what worked.

Did you tour?

No stadium tours, it was more of an arty thing. We weren't really a performing band, we weren't into touring or seeing our faces anywhere, the limelight – we were trying to make music that we couldn't hear anywhere else. And when Illuminated gave us a platform – like “There's a studio, go in there and do what you want” – I wasn't thinking about business or fame or money, it was just “Wow!” Doing something I've always wanted to do. I've always done it for the love of music, bruv, that'll probably be on my grave. It's great I can make a living from it, but that's not the motivation. A lot of my so-called peers get to a point where they say, “I stop here, I can't go any further, I don't want to go further.” But personally I feel I'm still trying to find something different, to search, to experiment, to evolve.

So what was the next step? How did you jump from a post-punk band to purely electronic music?

It wasn't a jump, it was more of a crawl. It was a long slog! We had our albums out, and we decided to start our own little labels up, Warrior Records and Concrete Productions. At the time the Streetsounds compilations were everywhere, Morgan Khan was killing it man. I had this idea of “Why don't we get all this post-punk music and package it really colourful like the hip hop street stuff, and see what happens?” So I approached Morgan Khan, and at the time Andreos – George Michael's cousin – was working for him, so I had an easy way in, but he was umm- ing and ah-ing, so in the end we put it out ourselves and that turned out to be the Funky Alternatives.

And that was brilliant, we got to meet lots of people we were really into, like New Order did a track for us, an exclusive thing. I did two of those, then left – we had this horrible thing where we became like two leaders, when there's not enough room for two leaders. I was always the one who went out to all the clubs, giving out records to DJs. I gave Pete Tong a copy of ‘Declaration Of Intent’. Was he ever going to play it? No – but it was just “Here man, here's my first record” ’cause I felt I had to! So yeah I went off and started my own label, BPM Records, just when that massive UK surge of underground music was happening, Bomb The Bass , the Rough Trade period, Rhythm King, Coldcut, all that British, sample-based electronic dance music. Dave Lee – Joey Negro – was in charge at Rough Trade distribution, and he said “I'll give you a distribution deal” so I was just “Oh bloody Norah, yeah mate!” So I started BPM, knocking out hip hop, acid house, anything I liked, and I did my first Moody Boys track on there, ‘Boogie Woogie Music’, I put it on some compilation album. It had a sample from some fitness programme, just stupid; but I always had that mentality, where I can be really childish then become very serious again straight away.

And this was pre-1990, before the dance music industry had set its rules and formulae in stone

Yeah, that's right. So at Rough Trade, around that time, before I left 400 Blows in fact, I was listening to John Peel, and he had this fucking record on that sampled the Beatles. It was all samples, totally mad, and I just thought “Who the FUCK could be idiotic enough to get these crappy Beatles records and chop them all up?” ²⁹ And Peel said “Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu” at the end, so I thought “I have GOT to find out who these people are.” Not because the record was any good – it wasn't – but how could they have the idea to sample crap records. I mean at the time I was sampling James Brown, Muhammad Ali, cool funky shit, you know, so I thought “I've got to find out who these idiots are.” At the time we were doing Funky Alternatives 2, and they had this track ‘Don't Take 5, Take What You Want’ – so I said I wanted to do a remix of it for the compilation. They were like “Yeah OK sure wicked,” and I did a mix, thought it was great, lovely, gave it to them, they said it was shit. I think Jim actually threw it in the dustbin in front of me, like “This is shit!”. I was really “Rmrrrmrrrmrrr” [scowls] about it, but it was funny.

What did you think of Cauty and Drummond?

Quite hippie for me, but really nice people. That rejection really got me, though. But we kept in touch as mates, I went to some of their mad warehouse parties in Stockwell [at the infamous Trancentral squat / studio]. Those were the days when people were partying man, 1987-88, the whole thing was starting to move, the whole acid house bollocks. So we became friends, and at some point they approached me to do a mix again, I think it was ‘Kylie Said To Jason’ ³⁰ for some house compilation… Now that record wasn't a big hit, although they meant it as a pop single – by that time I was meeting up with them a lot, Jimmy and Bill, Alex Patterson and Youth, this whole Brixton, South London thing going on. [He is lost in acid house memories for a minute] where was I? Yeah, then we did “‘3am Eternal”’ with a Moody Boys mix and an Orb mix, then suddenly they had a hit with ‘Doctorin’ The Tardis’.³¹ I remember them playing that to me, “diddy-di-dum diddy-di-dum” [Dr Who theme]. I went “This ain’t very funky is it? This is rubbish, this isn't going to do anything” – and of course it went to number one, so I was just “Oh fair enough then!” I can't remember how it went after that exactly, but I ended up doing the mix on their new version of ‘What Time Is Love’, the first of that batch, and somehow it just became like a day job. They'd had the Pure Trance ‘What Time Is Love’ but this was the Stadium House version,³² and from there it just became a well-oiled machinery. A really interesting way of working. They had their mad concepts of how these records should be, and we had this slick machine for making them and getting them into the charts.

Going into the 90s, the studio work with the KLF was your main output

Yeah, the White Room album, ‘What Time Is Love’, the Tammy Wynette thing,³³ doing videos with them, Top Of The Pops. That was the perfect mixture of what I was talking about, being really serious in the studio but being totally childish with it. And I had studio time for myself in Jimmy's studio, in Trancentral. Which was just a 12-track studio. I did all that on 12 tracks, playing the basslines all the way through with one hand: 12 tracks is crap, bruv, know what I'm saying! But at the time we thought it was – ooh – quality. So ‘What Time Is Love’ gave me a platform for myself, I was able to take the whole remix idea and evolve it into something else. It didn't just earn me money, it gave me more freedom, ’cause Jim and Bill went “Do what you want” and meant it. It's not often someone says “Do what you want” and pays you, trust me!

So you made Journey Into Dubland with Jimmy and that came out on XL, which was starting to be known as a big rave label

I was signed to them already – to City Beat, their subsidiary – for ‘First National Rapper’ and ‘Acid Rappin’ in the acid days, before rave and hardcore came along.

Where did the Moody Boys name come from?

All I can say is that people used to accuse me of being a really, really moody git, “Ah-ah-ahhh you're a moody boy!” Pretty tacky and cheesy but I got the name and it's never gone away. And it's always been my one platform that I'll be able to twist and alter and experiment with to do what I want.

It's rare for someone to stick to a project name or identity for than 20 years!

I've had millions of pseudonyms in that time – but that's always been the main thrust, the thing that had an identity, that more dubbier direction. You get people now who just sound like a mixture of everything, and I wanted to make sure that I had something that was flexible but also had a quite specific identity, just me and my funky, hip hoppy, reggae side.

Did you find kindred spirits? There was some rave with dub influences, and obviously The Orb and Andrew Weatherall were taking dub influences into the mainstream

I was talking to Andrew not long ago, and he said 400 Blows records were really important in inspiring him to make music, so I was like “Wow!” ³⁴ But obviously there were people at the time, like Smith & Mighty and the Bristol lot – but I've never been much of a socialiser out with musical buddies. I've always been a lonesome cowboy. A moody boy. Hidden away from everybody in a dungeon, mate.

You didn't feel the need to play to a scene or fit into an emerging sound?

I've always had one foot in any scene and one foot out. Obviously I've always had a love for drum’n’bass and jungle, I've always promoted it and pushed it. I was making prototypes: there was that point when it was always 4/4 with breakbeats behind it, and people began to chop up the breaks to support the 4/4, and out of that you had hardcore, rave, then jungle, then drum’n’bass. And it goes on and on and on. What I love about music in this country is that in five years it'll be somewhere else!

When that change was happening, how did you feel about the change in atmosphere in the raves?

There was a point when you had that Spectrum, the acid house thing, it wasn't black or white, you couldn't tell who the people were behind the music. Those gigs were really multicultural in a really good way. Then something happened, it all became very European and the soul was taken out, or just got smaller and smaller and smaller. And then there was a point where I thought that kind of music – I don't want to say trance – was going to take over the world, and I just don't find it very soulful. Trance, progressive, tribal, they called it, but it was just monotonous. Music by numbers, you don't need any imagination to do that. I did one track you could call trance, with Steve Hillage, ‘7:7 Expansion’, it got to number 20 in the charts, bruv! We did that, me and Youth and Steve, and I didn't feel too bad – but as soon as I see people wearing tights in clubs, I'm out of here, that's IT! I mean I was playing breakbeat at trance clubs, at the Butterfly parties, Youth's thing in his garden, I played breakbeat just to get away from that European… thing.

But those early hippie/trance rave nights like Megatripolis, they could have hardcore rave DJs or experimentalists like Autechre. And hippie bands like Eat Static could play at hardcore clubs like Rage!

Yep, totally – it's all relevant to where we are now, music is all shaped by those influences even if you don't want to admit them. But the rest of the scene was all starting to get a bit too corporate, too soulless, too music-by-numbers. It was really horrible, I don't care what anyone says. I thought it would never end, I was sat there thinking “Look at all these DJs making all this money and just milking, milking, milking this soulless music, this music that you make just to assist your drug high.” I find that just totally immoral. And it's still there now, I don't think it's ever really progressed at all. I've never heard anything from that scene that's made me go “Wow, yes, this is a new music”. It says “progressive house” but it's not progressing one bit. And I think that killed the togetherness, the cultural mix, it killed the unity, the family kind of thing, it really did, man.

People went with the money, that's the problem, went where the big bucks were and fuck everything else. It's like they forgot about black music and just went “Oh we're making money now, fuck that.”

So what did you do in the mid 90s to keep from stagnation? You started releasing on Guerilla, which was a big progressive house label?

I did techno stuff. I've always had love for techno, Detroit, wow, that's always inspired me. If you sat me down in the studio and said “Make a Detroit record” I couldn't, but I could straight away make something with the inspiration of Detroit in it. The point was definitely to make some techno.

A lot of the left-field techno producers in this country were moving towards jungle and breakbeat influences then – so it was almost perverse for you to go towards techno

Well no, because all of those sounds are all relevant to each other. Look at The Black Dog early on, say: they were messing with breakbeats, and to me that's prototype jungle. A lot of prototype jungle was just techno, and it went the other way: I heard Underground Resistance doing stuff that sounded jungle-influenced. Kenny Larkin: prototype jungle. If techno wasn't involved with the ongoing development of British underground music you wouldn't have any of them b-lines. ‘Mentasm’ ³⁵ isn't even the start of it, those b-lines are from techno. A lot of people who've grown as producers were a continuation of techno. Listen to early Andy C and late Andy C and it's insane – those people have developed and moved on as producers. To think it's separate – experimental and mainstream, techno and jungle – that's bollocks mate, it's all part of the same thing.

So what was your involvement in garage? Did you produce any music in that style?

A few little garage bits, nothing I want to talk about. A track called ‘Lift Your Fist’ remixed Guru garage-style, using breakbeat with the swing of a garage vibe. There was a thing Miss MC, kind of a heavy garage. I had distribution through a garage company, so I was knocking out these little whites.

Who were the producers that floated your boat in that scene?

Julian Jonah, 187 Lockdown, all that stuff, because it was so reggae, ragga. I loved Horsepower Productions for the same reason. El-B,'s bad, an amazing producer. I spent a lot of time in Big Apple in Croydon. That was dubstep right there, the first time it was something with reggae influences that wasn't jungle that you could play. And they could change tempo, I mean Horsepower could throw it down bwoy. Anyone who had the time or the inclination could join the dots between all those things. We're a small island, we live on top of each other, we're multi-racial, totally multicultural, it could really not be any other way. I didn't see any difference between Horsepower and the Black Dog in that way. I helped Black Dog get their first record out – Ken Downie was a friend of Jimmy Cauty's back in Stockwell, and Jimmy introduced us and said “Ken's got a few tracks, can you help him out with them?” That track “I stay in my room… and think of the future…” I got that out for him. Like Squarepusher when he did that first record on Spymania. I think I was the first person to play that on radio, on Coldcut's show, and they were like “what the fuck's that?”

People will be horrified to hear you mention Squarepusher in the same breath as UK garage

This is the problem you insist on pigeonholes, you get that artificial separation – you listen to “intelligent techno” so you must be intelligent, you listen to grime so you must be street. It doesn't work that way. I could never just be into one type of electronic music, I wouldn't be stimulated enough. And with kids now, the technology makes it so much easier to be into a whole range, and trace the connections between them.

There's a school of thought that says that's what went wrong with drum’n’bass at the end of the 90s, the scene started to only refer to itself and not to music outside it

Woah, don't be slagging off drum’n’bass to me! I will always slap down anyone who slags that off because I have so much love for that music. Obviously it became a formula like anything else, but you have to look at the growth of that music, particularly the production and the way that evolved.

What about the other thing going on around the turn of the millennium: broken beat? You did an amazing mix of it a couple of years ago, so it clearly left a mark.³⁶

I was doing A&R for Play it Again Sam, Wall of Sound and a label called Genuine Records. Play It Again was based was opposite the old Virgin building on Harrow Road, and Goya Distribution was over the road, I spent all of my time in there picking up white labels, talking to Gilles, talking to people coming through. Bugz In The Attic's studios was there, all in the same complex. Label and distribution, all in one place. It was like being in a sweet shop, just walking into people's studios and being like “oh this is coming in.” I used to go in and ask people to do remixes for me.

A lot of them had a background in the jungle, drum’n’bass scene – did you know Dego from then?

Dego didn't really share that facility, he had his own little studio in Dollis Hill. Those guys were already separate from everything else. Everyone else was in west London – Ladbroke Grove – doing their thing. When the broken beat thing was happening, the dubstep thing hadn't broken yet. I was telling Michael Goya [i.e. Mike Slocombe], “You've got to distribute dubstep.”

What period of dubstep would that have been?

Those 12”s Mala put out with the tiger on the label. He put them out with Soul Jazz records?³⁷

This is 2006, just as dubstep was breaking out

By then people said dubstep's already dead because there wasn't any hits. They were trying to kill it off already. Broken beat and dubstep were happening at the same time. I would play out and play broken beat and dubstep together and people couldn't tell the difference. The two scenes never really met though.

There were a couple of crossovers early on, like Artwork ‘Red’ ³⁸ and Zed Bias in the middle of it

Zed Bias was always in it anyway, part of garage, part of broken beat. He's a soulful producer, isn't he? He just likes music. Obviously the dubstep thing blew up. I must admit I'm listening to retro stuff from that scene now. A lot of the new stuff, it's just alright [frowns].

When did you turn your hand to it yourself? You made a few tracks that are more or less dubstep, 140bpm and bass heavy

At the time I was at Wall Of Sound, and the dubstep thing was happening and I was sitting there frustrated doing A&R seven days a week watching indie bands. I really wanted to make dubstep. I was getting Mala remixes, I got Scuba a remix when the label were saying “Who is Scuba?” People always wait for a sound to blow up before they want to work with it. I hear something and get on it straight away if I like it.

It's a mystery that the mainstream industry never understood dubstep. Look back at the Mercury shortlists: these artists were packing out raves, making great albums, but there's nothing

That's the problem when things come from Croydon! Well, number one it's about making what you make and not caring about all that. You're only as good as your last record. The amount of artists I've seen come through and win the Mercury prize and then only last a year. America damaged dubstep though, it made it popular and killed it off.

That's a whole other can of worms. Keeping this on track, you had that flush of remixes, you did Amy Winehouse…

At the time nobody was using full vocals in dubstep.³⁹ I thought, OK, I'm gonna use the basis of that music, I've always used bass and reggae and sonics in everything I've ever done, it's nothing new to me at all. I'm gonna go out there and do some remixes. I think the first dubstep thing I ever did was a remix of Mr Hudson. I liked the vibe of it. I started doing loads of vocal dubstep remixes.

How many did you do?

About five or six? It was just good to hear vocals in the context of that type of beat. It was a matter of balance and getting that right. Obviously everyone's on that now.

Aside from commissioning remixes, you were friendly with the dubstep lot then?

Like I say, I'm not really a famous-buddies kind of person. But I've always been friendly with everybody, from drum’n’bass to jungle, everything out of breakbeat culture I've always been somewhere in the background, plugging, pushing, playing their music. For me, DJing isn't some kind of superstar hobby. I love seeing people having a good dance. When I first started, a DJ wasn't a star, the music was. Then obviously everything changed. There's some DJs you think, “What are you playing? In 20 years time no one's going to play any of those records.”

Like with the acid house generation, Superstar DJ culture came along with all the cocaine, generation after generation

Acid house was colourless, I didn't know if the person making it was pink, purple, green or whatever. That's the only youth movement I can think of had that. But then dubstep had that too. You've got to thank drum’n’bass and dubstep for that. Without it [dubstep] coming partially out of the black ghetto thing…

…which people had been pushed into by the egos and economic privilege of the white acid house DJs, but which maintained something of that rave spirit…

Yeah that's right. The whole mentality, everything feeds off everything else. It's just going round in circles. To me it's how do you do something that's been done before and add an original twist to it. But maintaining what's been done before is important, right? I'm sitting there worried about the skills of songwriting because I'm from that period of time where I like songs. Are we just going to end up with loops and nothing else? That's why I was doing dubstep and adding vocals to it.

Where did Studio Rockers start? Did you give up A&R?

Like, when I first heard acid house and thought “Shit, I've got to get a 303!” I was overwhelmed. I forgot about all these types of music and was just in that alone, nothing else. It was the same with dubstep. I'm sitting there doing A&R at Play It Again Sam I just wanted to make some music! I'd already started Studio Rockers, got the name and all that, it was a matter of, “Oh one day I'll have some time.” It was when I got made redundant that it made a lot of sense to go, right, full pelt into Studio Rockers. Came over here [gestures around office] straight into the label, playing whatever I liked, talking to people, getting shit done. Just trying to build a sound and put things down!

Fairly early on with the label, there was a world music angle, and complex beats. It was dubstep or post-dubstep or future garage or whatever you'd call it, but you had those distinct angles

A label can only reflect somebody's taste. Maybe people don't like it and don't want to buy it? Fair enough. I'm just expressing my musical taste. If somebody signs to Studio Rockers they're not just signing to a label, they're signing to me, my ideas, my input. From BMP records to Language to Studio Rockers it's always been the same ethos: just evolve, help producers evolve, show them how to make their music better.

I've witnessed the process up close: you'll send a track back 15 or 20 times for revisions

I'm better with other people's music than my own. I'm crap deciding with my own music whether it's good or bad. With other people's I can rip it to bits, refix it, rebuild it, rearrange it. My own stuff, I'm lost. I suppose I raise my bar too high sometimes, I can never reach that perfection point.

Were you listening to grime as well in the dubstep breakthrough years?

For me, grime was like techno, UK techno. That's the way I've always seen it. I've always been into the production. Some of the lyrical content, not 100% my cup of tea, but I can understand where it's coming from. If you're living in that kind of environment, brought up that way, talking about where you're from, I totally respect that and the culture around it. It's like NWA, look what they did when they came out. The grime and the drill stuff. I remember when British hip hop was a laugh, it was jokes. I remember being in the studio with some artists, asking why they were acting like they were from America – you gotta act English bruv! But London Posse, they did it right, Demon Boyz, you've got to pay those people respect, respect the roots of it. They think it's their own so they don't actually do the research. If some of these kids did their research they'd be better producers.

After dubstep and grime broke out, from 2010 onwards, you've had this thing of genres melting down, with no predominant club genre. There's Afrobeats, and drill in the way of vocalist-led sounds, but there's no one club genre like the new garage or the new dubstep

I've been saying this from day one, that you're never gonna get another new dance movement. Things can't build physically anymore. When it was vinyl and DJs travelling the world, it took years for it to build. Now, if I had a new sound and I stuck it on the internet, within two minutes everybody would know it. It's never gonna grow. The press would say it's a load of shit, and then it's the end. Nothing ever gets the chance to grow quietly, slowly, time to build.

The counterpoint is the new jazz movement, because people have to learn to play, to physically meet and play together, and that takes time

It's great to see youngsters picking up instruments, learning how to play, getting on stage and just performing, it's so refreshing. And you're right, it isn't just people in their bedrooms playing with a computer – you have to go see ’em, you have to perform, you have to play, back to the old ethos. For people from my generation, it's brilliant. I can go out in a crowd full of kids and really enjoy the music. I'm seeing parents going clubbing with their kids. I could never go clubbing with my mum! She'd say “Turn that horrible jungle music off! That's horrible!” It's so weird that our generation is still raving. It's brilliant, it's great.

Some band is gonna come along out of this current scene, some great singer writing great songs, and the majors will be on it eventually. But jazz is easy to sell. The majors should have supported grime and drum’n’bass. I can't understand why this country just never supports our own: it's that Loose Ends, Soul II Soul syndrome, the public loved it, but the industry didn't. We're never the first to applaud it or support it. That's why I love grime, they didn't need the record companies. Out there, you and your mic, make money, absolutely brilliant. Everything changes, grime isn't going to stay the same. You're going to get a grime De La Soul at one point.

Novelist's coming close. Like a grime parallel to Gang Starr or something

He is the closest. He talks a lot of sense, very intelligent lyrics. But it's almost like grime is pop music now. Or the mainstream of alternative, like Reading Festival music. And then everything else is underground.

Yet to be pop music, grime had to leave behind what the majors tried to do, all the fizzy dance beats, and go back to being more gritty. Even Skepta tried his hand at dance pop, but it took him going back to being pure grime to have hits

Yeah, but it can't be the street sound like it was when it was all kids doing it. Why do you think drill's evolved? Grime wasn't saying what the street wanted to say. Grime's part of the establishment, those guys all doing festival tours and that. Saying that, I do like Stormzy. He's an intelligent guy and you've got to take your hat off to him. I like the way he uses his power to change things.

With a tiny team as well

It's him and his mum! Taking over the world. Not every artist is like that, he's clever, and he's with his mum, he's grounded! Drill is just a reaction to grime being accessible to everybody. I was watching some documentary talking to drill MCs, “We can't get any gigs in London.” That's exactly what happened with grime! Abroad I bet they can play. Drill will become accessible at some point. give it another five, six years. Nothing stays underground, everything is now overground. Because of technology, because of the internet. Unless you're not on the internet doing DIY at home and selling records on your bike, then you're underground. If you're talking about entering the realms where you have to sell records and play the game, it ain't underground. Underground is a state of mind.

Talking about things going full cycle: The Last Poets. Is this your full cycle moment?

Obviously I was a massive fan of the Last Poets growing up as a young black kid. Hearing that for the first time [shakes head], totally blew my mind. I never heard that kind of [again lost for words].

Where were you hearing it?

You're talking about the 80s, when I was just starting 400 Blows. Post-punk, Rough Trade, everyone listened to the same thing. I went to go see the Last Poets, and there was 23 Skidoo, Cabaret Voltaire, all people like that in the crowd. Poetry transcends all types of music, and you get all types of people into spoken word. I remember when they did “Niggers are scared of revolution” and I had to turn it down, I was shocked, there’s a lot of swearing in there! I did say to the Poets, “Thank you for turning me into a militant young black person.” I said, “It's your fault!” They made me militant. They made me read books, look for knowledge, search for my blackness and where I was from. So obviously after buying all their stuff I could find, to have them on my label years later, it's an honour. One of the highest accolades someone could bestow on me. Also because the timing was right: Donald Trump, all this bullshit racism and crap that's happening – everything's relevant, they're relevant.

I mean, I was thinking of packing up doing Studio Rockers and calling it a day. Then I got a telephone call from Mike Pelanconi, Prince Fatty, who was like “We want to play you something.” He wanted my advice, so I went over to his house, his studio's there, pressed play and I was like, “Shit. That's Last Poets isn't it?” He played me two, three, four, five tracks. My hair was standing up, I'd never heard the Last Poets in that format: heavy reggae, jazz. It did my mind! He said, “What label do you think?”, and I gave them a list, Soul Jazz, Damon Albarn, massive list. He said cheers, I was walking down the road, and I thought “Wait a minute, the fuck? I should be doing this record! I should sign it.” I got on the phone and said “Mike, listen mate. That record ain't going anywhere, I want to do it.” He said “You know what Tony, I'm so glad you said that. Because you are the perfect person for this project.” A week later, I'm in Harlem drawing out thousands of pounds out of the cash machine to give the Poets cash-in-hand to sign contracts.

How have these older guys responded to dubstep and broken beat remixes?

They like the stuff, they trust in what I'm doing. They really loved the Mala mix, they said they loved the Dego & Kaidi downtempo mix. The hilarious thing is that to them, reggae is new, “Yeah man, we're a reggae band now!” I'm sitting in Harlem with all these yanks. They do this famous rap session on Sundays. This kid takes out his ghetto blaster and puts it down. hits the play button, rapping away, on to the next person, going around in circles like wow. I spoke to someone who was 35, he'd been going there since he was 18. You're bringing these kids into your front room for the last 20 years every Sunday to do these little bits. Incredible. I've heard about the sessions, but to actually be in the room, it was like spoken word rap, having a conversation, going all of a sudden an old dude would be rapping to this backing track. I just hope when I'm that age I've got the same amount of energy, knowledge and experience, and the same drive they've got for the youth. They're old men but inside they're kids, they're lovely. To me, The Last Poets is just a progression: people might say “What's he doing? This is crazy.” But reggae has always been the basis of what I do.

Nothing's changed since Mad Professor. Your ethos is still “Can we combine these things? Will this work?”

I've always been a melting-pot person, you throw everything in and see what you've got at the end. When I was doing African tribal house, people thought “Oh yeah whatever” – but everything I was doing 30 years ago is now normal. And now I've got all these new ideas, other artists I've been looking at, heroes from the 70s and wherever. If I can get my hands on them and reinvent them it's not rocket science: Gil Scott Heron, Bobby Womack, that new Chaka Khan album. Reinventing old artists is nothing new, but it's how you do it. If I'd put out that Last Poets album with a load of cheesy trance… doesn't work, does it?

Look at that Paul Simon remix album: they did a tech house Graceland

[Grimaces] But then sometimes it works. You've reminded me of that Kraftwerk remix album. It's Kraftwerk, cutting-edge, so you stick with cutting-edge artists. There’s a skill to remixing, blending two separate minds that complement each other. There's certain things you don't mix, certain things you do. The wonderful thing about this little island, we're so squashed together. Everything's on top of us, you just can't get away from it: all these different cultures, African, Indian, reggae, ska, the way that techno evolved in its own way here and made hardcore and jungle. We're forever reinventing old ideas. It's so great now that grime has a language that can sell across the world. It's just a matter of where do we go next? I've always been into new music, trying to find something different. It's hard.