https://echocentricrecords.bandcamp.com/album/new-reality-ep

Music has been my lifeblood since an early age. I was nurtured on my parents’ record collection: Motown, the Beatles, the Stones and Blondie. I remember I used to make my own ‘mixtapes’ when I was 7 years old by recording segments of songs off Radio 1, trying to know the right place to start and stop the record button. After early teens plugged into indie and new wave bands, it was when in 1991, at the age of 16, some friends took me to my first rave - Eclipse in Cambridge - that started a whole new obsession with a totally different kind of music.#

A lot has been said about that time, but rave and acid house was an extraordinary blending and mingling of Britain’s youth at that time.There were massive highs (and lows) and some crazy memories – convoys of vehicles scouring the countryside for a field, warehouse or barn to dance allnight long to a type of music which defied genre or description and which was really like nothing that had ever come before. It's funny to think that the weird brand of music played at underground clubs and raves in the late eighties / early nineties is now a huge, global behemoth, played in every corner of the globe. 
I started DJing with belt drive turntables when I was 17 with 5 records in my bedroom, one mate was the MC and another mate was ‘the crowd’! I’ve been hooked on buying records ever since. I started out playing hardcore breakbeat but soon moved to deep techno and house inspired by favourite DJs back in 1991/1992 – Eddie Richards, Mr C, Matthew Bushwacka! B and the like. At the age of 19 I went to university in Nottingham and got involved with the free party scene being championed by sound systems, such as DIY, Smokescreen, Quadrant, Babble, etc. I loved a lot of the parties they did – friendly, free and with great music. 

In the late 1990s I was living in London and got into the tech house sound that exploded in London and then beyond in subsequent years. Underground parties like Wiggle  and Clubs like The End  and Fabric with DJs / producers like Layo and Bushwacka, Mr C, Nathan Coles, Terry Francis, Eddie Richards, etc  were creating, mixing and broadcasting an underground sound that was both funky but tough at the sane time and went on to have a huge influence on today's house music. 

Those were the days when people were making tunes in a small studio and then getting the tunes pressed and sold in London record shops like Swag, Tag, Fat Cat, etc. It was a wonderful buzz being in thse places because everyone congregated here - it was part of the scene. I remember Roger Sanchez and me both nodding on to a tune - Primitive Urges 3 - and then me getting the last copy as I'd been first to say I wanted it. Of course he was cool with it.


I ran my own night sporadically for 2 years at a converted pub called the Plug in Stockwell, South London, before it was closed down. They were great days – always with a crazy, up for it crowd. DJs such as Inland Knights, Paul Arnold (Chew the Fat!), Asad Rizvi (Asadinho) and Matt Powell (Bleep District) all rocked it down there.

My clubbing days are long gone but I'm still DJing as much as ever. I still ove the deeper, darker, more unusual side to house music and creating mixes which is a 1 hour journey or song that should be an uninterrupted physical but also heady experience for the listener. The sounds I go for are often smaller, subtle sounds. I like to keep it interesting, but always dancefloor friendly. You listen and decide for yourself. 

I use Technics 1210s and Allen & Heath Xone 23 Mixer.

Those people who’ve helped and inspired me over the last 30 years: Nathan Coles (RIP), Evil Eddie Richards, Terry Francis, Matthew B, Colin Dale, Mr C, Fabio and Grooverider, Paul Wong, DJ Ace, Paul Arnold, Smokescreen Sound System, DIY, Bleep District, Matt Bleep, Matt Rivem, Quadrant Sound System, Panface Records, Tag Records.
Some of the places I’ve played:
Pre-election illegal rave:@the gasworks, Johannesburg / Power FM, Nottingham / Smokescreen Sound System, Glastonbury Festival / Wiggle, Woolwich, London /Cut a Rug @The Plug, Stockwell, London / Groovetech radio, London / Quadrant Free Party, Nottingham / Quadrant @ The Skyy Club, Nottingham / Chew the Fat @ The Bug Bar, London / Chew the fat@ the Camden Palais, London / Club Lisboa, Seville / Fluffed!, Bristol / kickradio.co.uk / Combo, Florence.
To those who share the love, keep listening..

Followers of Yok Yok