El-B - unedited transcript

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Can we have a quick recap of how you got to the point of releasing records? Were you London born and bred?

Yeah, South London born and bred. My dad's an old muso: he was a saxophonist for many a band, the most famous one being Incognito but he played with all sorts, with Ginger Baker's Air Force - we'd hear some crazystories about that, man... Now, one time he'd done a gig and the promoter had run out of money, so he'd got paid in studio equipment, and he said to me "alright, you've got chucked out of school, you're doing fuck all with yourself, bumming around, get on that equipment and see if you can turn anything out of that" 'cause he knew I was mad creative - and that was it, game over. I was 15.

For the next couple of years I knocked around with the Dale brothers, Colin, Mark and Trevor - they were all radio DJs, Techno DJs, promoters and producers, Colin was on Kiss FM and they raised me really, gave me my first schooling into that kind of world. After that I moved into Drum & Bass where I was still unheard of - I was giving those guys demo tapes, and it wasn't going further beyond that. Then, suddenly, in 1996 I met Noodles, he got one of my demos, thought there was some potential, got me in the studio, and just like that our first three releases were proper hits, underground club hits. We had status but also notoriety because these tracks like 'Stone Cold', 'Angel Body', the Myron 'Get Down' remix were so out there compared to anything the Garage scene had heard before - we were pushing the kind of jazzy boundaries, taking the jazz and the soulfulness as far as we could.

But also the heaviness, the Jungle bass?

Yep, and that was the next metamorphosis, to bring that to the fore. When me and Noodles split up I took that heaviness back into my own corner, 'cause I was a loner now, and I perfected it. I perfected this new sound, and I stamped it with a name and a Pacman ghost logo just to save it from being another white label, to give it some identity, 'cause I knew there'd be a series of them - red one, green one, yellow one, all that - so people could go "oh it's them guys again"... basic marketing, you know. And boom, it went through the roof, and it started a whole b-line cult movement thing. [Later] when out of curiosity I went back to the beginning, to the first example of a bassline being put into a garage tune in a really vicious way, which was "Reflex Action LIke A Snake" [a remix by Zed Bias of ES Dubs' "Standard Hoodlum Issue"]. When I finally got to meet him and question him about the tracks, he said the only reason he made them tracks was because he heard 'Stone Cold' which was the first bassline tune I ever played around with. Before that he'd been a jungle producer and he said "I'd never realised you could do garage like that" but he made the switch and started putting his energy into that and, that was it, between him and me that was the beginning of the bass style that's lasted to this day.

And were you involved with the Croydon scene that took those basslines into Dubstep and therefore made that sound global?

Hatcha and them, they're my family. I knew all them before all of this, I used to go into that shop [Big Apple] when I was just getting into computers. Not the younger ones, Skream and Benga, I didn't know them guys - they're kids who came into the shop later, and started bringing their tunes in, really fucking talented youngsters. But the original crew were the lot that bought the shop, that did it up and started it in the first place, which is Arthur [Artwork], Hatcha, who was the first main employee in the shop, and this short guy John who was the owner, and this other guy who used to sit upstairs and work with Hatcha.

With the younger kids, it's a weird thing, I've never really met 'em properly, although they know everybody, they know my people, I know their people, but when it comes to meeting properly there's something to do with the reputation, the facade that comes with the name, the sort of psychological starstruck-isms that you might get. So one time we're in the club, I'm with my boy Roxy, and I'd said to Roxy "look, Oris Jay's over there, go and say hello", and he's "naaaaah! I couldn't!It's Oris Jay man!" and a bit later I'm talking to Oris and I go "yeah I'm here with Roxy, you should meet him" and he's all [mock bashful, looking away] "yeah in a minute, in a minute... ". And they're nervous of each other because of the hype, because of the gas as we call it, they've been gassed up. And same type of thing we have when, say, there'll be [FWD/Rinse/Tempa supremo] Sarah Lockhart in the middle, Benga on one side, me on the other and we'll both be just like [diffident voice] "hi!" "hi!" and leave it at that. It's not like there's any trouble, I've heard from plenty of people that we've both placed our respects as it were, but that's just how it is sometimes. All it'd take is one call, one "alright man how's it going, we've been meaning to talk for a long time!" and it all gets squashed, but so often on the scene nobody's talked to each other, nobody's broken the ice yet.

And what about the social networks of the old Garage scene? You've said before that faces from Garage pop up in Funky clubs...

Yeah - they are behind the whole works of it. I've got a little girlfriend or two around town, and they like to listen to a bit of Funky - well, a lot of it, actually - and to cut a long story short and say it quite bluntly, I've been fucking to that "the whole night... the whole night... " tune [Crazy Cousinz' "Do You Mind"], I'd fucked to it a few times before I found out that it was Pale [Paleface] who used to hang around that the Ghost studios way back, which is quite ironic. And then I went clubbing, I didn't know where I was going, my friends just took me to any old Funky rave in Brixton. We walked in there, the party was live, it was kicking, loads of women in there, going off - and I was brand new, I was like "wow", this is refreshing coming from the Dubstep scene where everyone looks like they fell out of Glastonbury, plus I was the old guy in the dance. I'd been in there five minutes when I heard the MC go "shout to Unknown!" - now MC Unknown is one of the members from Hijack, the original UK hip-hop group and also one of the goons in the video for [sings the Pied Piper song] "do you really like it, is it is it wicked", so he's back - I mean he's always been on the circuit doing any bloody thing he can, but I hadn't seen him for years and already out of this we're now going to do a project together. Then you had PSG, just jumped up behind the box with a microphone in his hand, don't know where he came from, aint seen him in years. And the DJ was a big old guy, can't remember his name now but he's a friend [from Garage days] too, and it went on like that til it got to the point where I hadn't announced my arrival or anything, I've got my little glass of drink and I'm dancing with a girl back here - but they've spotted me and they're shouting out and they're playing all the old stuff. And it's cool, it's nice, it's like being back at home again in a weird way: I'm in a new house but all my family's back in there. And the club that I was in turns out to be [Garage producer / DJ since 1993] Martin Larner's and so it goes on, there's just names and names from your past, every conversation's like "oh hello, what's going on here then, yeah we'll have to link up inna studio, yeah it's business on again, OK!"