DAMIAN HARRIS

All right, welcome to another A DJ's Journey. My name is Deckard, and today I am here with Skint Records founder Damian Harris, AKA Midfield General. Hello again, Damian.

Hello. Sorry, I raised my hand but I couldn't actually see it in the shot. So I'm not sure if you saw it. Hello. Nice to see you again.

So for people who maybe don't know Skint Records — I'm sure they've heard the records, they've heard yours or Fatboy's or many other artists, especially back in the Big Beat days. For framing, I'm going to play a clip from the episode with Norman Cook. This episode is not out yet, so nobody's heard this clip. We'll start from here and I'm going to get your reaction in real time.

[Listens to Norman Cook clip]

Not true.

Bastard. Bless him. “Amiable but useless” was the slightly nicer way I tell that story. Yeah, it's all true. I do sometimes look back and go, I wish I could remember that conversation and how...

It's quite complimentary as well.

...what sort of magic I performed to get myself out of that spot and get them to give me a label. Yeah. What a touch.

All right, so we'll get back up there, but we're going to go back to the beginning. Norman described your story as starting with punk, then hip hop, then acid house — and that's what fed into Big Beat. Maybe walk me through that. What was the first music that really grabbed you that you can remember?

Well, I'm the youngest of five by quite a long way. When it was 1977 and punk was happening, I was six, seven, eight, around that age. My brothers were in a punk band called The Ignorance. My oldest brother Christopher used to listen to John Peel all the time. So incredibly lucky to be surrounded by music. They were always buying new stuff, always slightly different, left of centre. It was a very exciting time just as I was starting to take it in.

Punk was happening. I remember them coming back from the Ramones — they all went to see the Ramones play in London in sort of 1976. Just very vivid memories of that. And then of course I got into listening to John Peel as well. John played my brother's band's record.

I remember waking up my brother, just going crazy in the house because John Peel was playing his record. It was a late-night show, sort of 10 to midnight. So yeah, we grew up in that sort of environment.

That's huge.

The first thing that I felt was mine was through the Clash and the Clash's work with Futura 2000. I sort of started to get into hip hop and discovered it through that little route.

How old were you at that time?

So that would have been... when did Combat Rock come out? I think it was sort of '81, '82, '83. I remember seeing the art first — graffiti art really appealed to me. There was a book called Subway Art, which was huge over here in England. And then a film called Style Wars, which is a film about graffiti by Henry Chalfont. Yeah, so that imagery, that very early imagery coming over... Buffalo Girls was probably '82, around then.

Yeah. Malcolm McLaren, right?

Yeah. So it was just really intriguing, and I just loved those Sugar Hill Gang records. Hip hop was the first thing that was sort of mine, that my brothers didn't quite understand, which is always quite nice. And then I learned how to play guitar and drums, tried being in bands, and then when DJing came along, none of my friends were any good at being in bands. So I kind of got into DJing because it was a lot easier. And you could do it on your own — you didn't have to rely on anyone else.

I had a very similar thought about that too. It's a lot easier to take your headphones and music than it is to have four or five people in a band.

Yes, exactly. But also — so I used to, again because of my brothers and their friends being that bit older, and I was the fifth one. By the time your parents get to the fifth one, they don't really give a shit. It's like, yeah, you want to go juggle some knives? Sure, you'll be fine.

So I used to go to the pub my brothers went to and go to parties. Because I still felt weird at 15, 16 talking to proper students, I used to start playing records there. There was a DJ called John De Silva who used to play at the Hacienda — he lived in Whitstable and he taught me a lot about DJing. He used to do student squat parties, and yeah, it sort of started like that.

Do you remember the first records you bought? Was it hip hop? Was acid house down the road from when you started?

No, acid house was a way down the road yet. My first actual record was Oliver's Army by Elvis Costello. There's a big horse race in England called the Grand National, and I'd won some money on it and went and bought Oliver's Army by Elvis Costello.

I then worked in record shops. Around 15 I started working in our local record shop in Canterbury. Very soon into that — consuming music, selling it, and starting to collect things. Rare groove was the dominant thing at that time. This was just before or just as acid house was coming in, around '85, '86, '87.

OK.

Getting excited about Across the Tracks and lots of James Brown. Yeah, rare groove — they called it that in the UK.

And then is it — when you moved to Brighton to study art, is that right?

Yeah, I was 19 when I moved to Brighton. I had started DJing quite a bit at local clubs. Well, there was only one in Canterbury — I used to do the student night, which was the only night you could get in without wearing smart shoes in the whole of Canterbury.

The other DJs could never understand why I didn't talk on the mic. They would send up requests like “Would the person with the yellow Ford Cortina please move it,” just to take the mickey out of me.

And then — just while I remember — this was quite a good story. We sort of planned to do the first acid house night in Whitstable-Canterbury. We were doing it at the art college. We hadn't actually been to one, me and my friend, but we'd read about it and knew some of the records. So we put on this night.

And then suddenly in October — I was serving in the record shop — the local cheesy DJ said, “You got some of that acid house shit? I've got to do a night.” And Studio Three put on an acid house night and it broke my heart, because we couldn't say we were going to do it properly. That's a little window into pre-art college days.

And then when you were studying art, did you have a direction in mind at that point?

I was doing a very pretentious fine art course in Brighton. The plan was that I would do an MA in illustration, go to Central St. Martin's, which was in Covent Garden in London, and then get a job at The Face. That was always the vision. I'd also started doing record covers — I did a Beats International cover for Norman. So yeah, I always thought I would be a graphic designer.

And music was just going to be a passion? Something you did because you loved it?

Yeah. As career options go, DJ was never one where you thought, well, you could actually get paid for that. I'd been in studios a bit. If the opportunity came along... One of the great things about the time I was in was that samplers came along and suddenly that ability to go in on your own and make something presented itself to me.

Between 16 and 22 those weren't really options. Then by the time I had left college and got a job with Loaded, they had a studio set up — an S1000 and an Atari. It was only then that I started playing around with music.

Before Loaded, were you at a record store? Is that where you met Norman?

Yeah. People often say that — maybe this is where Norman thinks I'm a schemer — I planned getting that job quite thoroughly. I had worked in the shop in Brighton. Brighton and Whitstable-Canterbury is about an hour and a half, two hours away from each other. I knew that when I got to Brighton, I wanted a job in a record shop because it is the perfect place to meet everyone, to immerse yourself in a scene.

I was quite calculated about it, which is not something many people accuse me of. We used to have reps from record companies that would visit and many would cover the southeast of England — so many who did Canterbury also did Brighton. In the summer before I went, I got three of them to take me on a day trip, bring me to Brighton, and I got to meet everyone in the shop. I was setting the ground early on. Within about two or three months I had got the job. Quite a power move, which I'm not really known for.

Well strategised, well planned out. It makes me think back to my first job — I went to work at a movie theater, one of my loves. But it has me thinking, why did I never try to work at Tower Records? I missed my early calling. Tell me — for myself and people in the US who aren't quite as familiar — I've only lately watched the documentary Right Here Right Now that went into depth about Big Beach Boutique and showed more of Brighton. What was Brighton like at the time, musically or for clubs? It seems like a little outpost in England for music.

[Brief pause — cat using litter box in recording room. Approximately 2 minutes.]

Yeah. So Brighton is probably... San Francisco is the closest reference. Maybe sort of Portland. But yeah, it's a big gay community. Like many British towns, it suffered a bit from the cheap air travel of the 1960s, when going abroad became much easier and a lot of British seaside towns declined. They had all the infrastructure for parties and events.

The Prince Regent had historically used it as a party town and built an amazing building called the Pavilion. So it's always had that feel — it's an hour from London, sort of like the dirty weekend destination. And then I still get blamed for helping gentrify Brighton, because the cost of a house is... I was doing some teaching at a local music college and the guy introduced me by saying, “Here's the reason why you can't afford a house in Brighton.” So yeah.

As I say, the gay scene really affects how a town is, I feel. Very liberal, a liberal little bubble in a conservative country. So that's kind of what Brighton was like.

Right. And in towns like that — like San Francisco — it's just part of the fabric. You get so many different types of art and music. So when you and Norman met and you ended up being his tenant, right?

Not quite his tenant. He was my evil landlord — for quite a few years, though not that evil, because basically he was a rubbish landlord in the sense that he forgot to ask me for the money. And so I would just not forget to not pay him his rent. We got to a point where I owed him a fair bit. And his house was his old fan club address as well — when he was in Beats International. We used to get Beats International fan letters arriving at the house. I was in that place for quite a while, about six years, I think.

And you said you did art for one of the Beats International albums?

Yes. The Sun Doesn't Shine — it's got “sun” in the title. So the second album. And yeah, that was in the days before everything was done digitally. I had to draw it up and then get it done properly on old artwork boards. For older listeners that might be vaguely interesting, but anyone under 50 probably won't know what I mean.

I still have both those Beats International records. For me, UK music at that time was so interesting because it was so different from what I was hearing from America. Even talking to Norman about Dub Be Good to Me — it felt so fresh, even though it was sampling the Clash. Something about it was definitely pointing toward a new future with music. And he was recording as Pizzaman at the time. Going back to the clip we first played — how did you get from working at the record store to Loaded Records?

So it must be early '93. I was working in another record shop, doing some writing for DJ Magazine, and DJing quite a lot in clubs in town. I got asked by Tim and JC who ran Loaded if I would work for them, because Roger Wildchild McKenzie had been making music and his music had got to a stage where he could leave the job. So his job came available and I took it. That all happened in early '93. And they had just started doing Pizzaman as well. But also the House of Love had begun — and that's a very key component to this whole story.

Don't tell me more — tell me more.

OK. So Norman had had some slightly difficult times. His marriage broke up and he was finding it a bit difficult, a bit unsure of where he was going. And then he had a road-to-Damascus experience — he took ecstasy for the first time, which was something he hadn't really been into. And it really did change him. It just opened his eyes — or rather his ears — to a lot of different music. He certainly got a bit more psychedelic. He started making house records, started doing Pizzaman, started doing Mighty Dub Katz. So it just took him a while to get that stuff, I think.

And when it finally did... there was a famous one — he went to see Richie Hawtin play in Bristol. That really changed his life and opened him up musically.

So we started ending up going back to Norman's on a Saturday night. There was a smallish group of us that would always end up there. We'd usually been at clubs — either DJing; I used to play at the Zap Club, he was usually at the Escape Club, which is about a mile down the road. A group of about 10 to 15 of us that would always end up there, and sometimes it would gradually increase. We would just party and listen to his record collection, play records.

It was really, really good fun and quite an experience for all of us. It probably went on for a couple of years. I always remember Creep by Radiohead — we used to play that a lot. And of course Smells Like Teen Spirit was around at the time as well. That loud-quiet-loud element was always something that fed into what Big Beat became.

Norman's record collection was great — you could find strange psychedelic records, bits of hip hop, bits of house. It became this pot in which many different elements of what Skint would become and what Big Beat came.

Right. Norman called it the four-ingredient recipe for Big Beat: pop hooks of the Beatles, mixed with the attitude and DIY spirit of punk rock, then the breakbeats of hip hop and funk, with the energy of acid house. And he said in my conversation with him that you were a big help in fusing those together.

Yeah. He's being slightly modest, because he had already — he was in Freak Power at the time and he did something called the Fried Funk Food EPs, two volumes, and they were brilliant. At the time my DJing...

I used to do the warm-up for the Coco Club, which was the biggest club night in Brighton. I would play for nearly a couple of hours — from when people were walking in, playing reggae and soul and dub and things like that, gradually building. And I was always on the lookout for records around 105 to 115 BPM that you could play — things like Wax the Van and Lola, that Arthur Russell kind of disco-but-slightly-punky disco. Always on the search for records of that ilk, and if they mixed a bit of hip hop in, brilliant.

Norman made a couple of those on the Fried Funk Food EPs and they were superb. He was so prolific at the time. He would often just knock out a B-side thing that just had an acid line and a hip hop break and you'd go, my God, that's amazing. He'd shown me what he could do, and it helped solidify that image in my head of what this should be.

But also Tom and Ed — the Chemical Brothers — who I'd known back in the day, they had started to do that. Song for the Siren, some of those Weatherall mixes like his James — Come Home mix. My Bloody Valentine. There were a few people mixing breakbeats and acid house and club elements. It was there.

The Chemical Brothers was the Heavenly Social days.

Yeah. I can never quite remember whether that's '93 — I think it was maybe '94. They started the Social. I never went to the first one, which still annoys me because I was always working. But yeah, that was quite a big turning point for Norman as well — going and hearing that Tom and Ed were playing his records.

And a bit of history here that's sort of important: around '92, '93 was the first time you had superstar DJs and the sort of deifying of DJs. There was a famous Sasha on the cover of Mixmag — something like “as good as a DJ gets” — this very early-nineties idea. The idea that clubbing was meant to be glamorous and silky and smooth. To some people that wasn't so much fun. So you were reacting against that by going, well, let's play in a grotty pub, or in the basement of a club like the Social, or with us at the Boutique — let's do it here because it's the exact opposite of big super clubs with linen hanging down. Yeah, that was quite important as well.

So speaking of history — tell me if I have this wrong. Here's today in history: on April 24th, 1993, Skint Records was co-founded by Damian Harris in Brighton. Is that correct? That's what I came up with.

Really? Wow. Possibly. So we actually put out the first record in '94, but we had test pressings of Santa Cruz a long time before — which could very well have been the day we got Santa Cruz and The Weekend Starts Here cut. That might be where that date comes from, because when they gave me the label and said it's OK to do the label, we had the infrastructure — accounts with pressing plants, in contact with all the distributors. Tim, who was one of the partners, said: make sure you get your first three releases ready, because you want to do a good run of them rather than doing one and then six months later doing another one. And he was right. So we waited a little while. But wow, if it is the 24th of April — that's quite nuts.

Yeah, quite a coincidence. Quite cool, though. Let's talk about that moment — you said you couldn't quite remember the conversation where you walk away having your own label. You go from being on the way out to now having Skint. How did it come about?

33 years ago today.

Still a great sound to this day. Norman's first Fatboy Slim record — absolute bangers. You obviously were saying these elements were in the air. How did you go from being an employee at Loaded to now making the decisions? Putting on the A&R hat — what did life look like being on the other side?

Yeah. I have never worked so hard in my life as from the moment they said, all right, you can have a label. And I've had a little bit of that with Vicious Charm as well — it's like, if you know, there's just so much I wanted to do. So many years of following record labels. There's a logo to design, god damn it. What are the house bags going to look like? What are the sleeves going to look like? All of that came very naturally.

I was very lucky that JC — JC Reid, our friend — had the business skills. He sort of wrote the cheques and things like that. So I was very lucky to have that side of the business covered, because I'm useless at it, as I'm discovering with my own label. People still ask me today, so what's the dealer price on that? And I'm just like, I dunno, probably just enough.

So it was never the business side that inspired me. It was always just making sure everything was really good. And obviously myself as Midfield General — I never wanted anyone to A&R me. I didn't want that rejection. So I set up my own label so I was doing my own Midfield General records as well. And we were DJing more and more. It was all going on.

I want to jump back to something you said earlier. You mentioned having the three releases lined up — so you were testing Santa Cruz, which sold pretty well as a first release. What did you have lined up for the second and third?

Yeah. So our second release was Arthur, which was a Brighton band — I did a remix of them. They were a slightly baggy Brighton band and I did one of my first ever remixes for them, which was a sort of bit of a rip-off of early Chems — big breakbeat, chuggy type thing. So that was second. And then the third one was Hip Hop Optimist, which was Andy Barlow who went on to be Lamb. The track was called Anna Faye, and it had some vague Mo' Wax connections there as well. So those were the first three, and then I was fourth with Worlds In Motion. So yeah, those were the first four.

You mentioned in our Crate Digging interview — if I get it right — you said you would listen to a song and if it lasted past three days, if you got to day four and still loved the track, then it was something to consider. Did that hold true at that time? Did you already have that idea about how you were going to decide what to sign?

That was more something I noticed later on. But you really have to question how much you love a record, how much you want to get involved. Do I want to commit to releasing this? Do I get on with these people? All things you have to consider. So no, in those early couple of years it all felt very instinctive.

I don't know whether we talked about the Lo-Fidelity Allstars, but I knew two or three minutes in that I wanted to sign them. I went to see them at the Dublin Castle, which is a pub in Camden with quite a name — that was where you played, where all the A&R men would go. If you could get a gig at the Dublin Castle with a bit of excitement around you as a band, you'd get a lot of people in. So it was often seen as quite a coup to get in there.

I went to see the Lo-Fidelity Allstars in there, and all of the major A&R people were there. And yeah, I just knew. In those early days I didn't have to think about marketing budgets or what are we going to do here. I just knew I loved it. Instinct has to be there. If you get doubts — and I've had this before, there are records you get that you've got doubts about — that's not good. And that has happened to me before and it's very hard to get out of. I'm not going to tell you any of them — I can see your face. But no.

Well below the belt... I want to go back because you mentioned the Lo-Fidelity Allstars and it was almost like the one that really could have been. You mentioned that one of the members broke off shortly after one of those first gigs, and it was almost a mixture of frustration and sadness that they didn't quite get to where the promise you saw suggested they could.

Yeah. It was actually after... there are all these sort of milestone points in a band's career, and playing at the Dublin Castle is one of those. Then someone writing about you in the NME or Melody Maker. The Lo-Fidelity Allstars had covers on NME and Melody Maker, and they had just played at the Astoria, which is a big 3,000-capacity venue in London — one of those notches where you go, right, if we can get there. Next is playing at Glastonbury, which they did as well. He left just after they had played at the Astoria. Just before America took notice with Battle Flag, which still sounds brilliant today. Anyway, I digress.

So the Big Beat Boutique ends up at the Concorde 2. What's the origin of coming up with the name Big Beat? Was that from you? Where did it come from — did the club name it, or was the genre name first?

I had always put on clubs with people who were as bad at selling themselves as I was. They rarely did very well. Then we met Gareth Hanson, who was Norman's friend. He was looking to do a club and he helped me. So we joined forces. He'd been to the Heavenly Social. He'd been hanging out with Oasis and what have you. He was just really good at selling — happy to go and stand outside clubs and give out flyers and tell people you have to come to this night.

We had been trying to find a name for it for a while. One name we were going to go with was Kung Fu Jim Jams — “Jim Jams” being pyjamas, the night attire. That kind of fit into a sort of cheeky seaside, slightly ironic idea. There'd been a lot of clubs previously in the Balearic network that had that sort of saucy seaside humour and slightly surreal vibe. A couple of people were going, I'm not sure, sounds a bit silly. And then Gareth came up with the name. He said, what about the Big Beat Boutique? He'd seen something — I think maybe a '60s film or event — that said “Big Beat,” and it was like, yeah, that sounds great.

We didn't name Big Beat the genre. I'd also been doing some journalism — DJ Magazine and a bit for i-D — writing about clubs. And there's that idea of a scene that's been identified but no one quite knows what to call it. Trip hop, for example — everyone who was involved with trip hop at the time didn't like the label. But because if you say “well, it's sort of down-tempo and it's got these sort of quirky cinematic references,” it's word soup. And then someone says “trip hop” and you go, yeah, that stuff.

We were very much in the same situation. There were all these terms — Brit Hop and Animal House — for what this thing was. And then someone, I believe it was Bowman at the NME, called it Big Beat. And everyone went, yeah, that fits. Which also meant you could play Oasis and certain other records. So yeah, it was liberating.

Brit Hop and Animal House, yeah.

We weren't blessed with MCs — apart from Massive Attack, for example, who had people who could sing or be on these records. They weren't easy to find. So you always had to find other stuff to put on, and that's why sample culture happened.

[Recording break — cat feeding interruption. Approximately 5 minutes. Recording resumes at 1:01:08.]

Hello, sorry about that.

Don't you love how cats just treat the house like you're part of their landscape, and we are here to run — the cats are running the show.

Absolutely. I love the quote: if you feed a dog, they think you're God. If you feed a cat, they think they are God. Which is very true. Anyway, sorry about that. Where were we?

Let's move on. Tell me more about the Big Beat Boutique era.

OK. The thing with the Boutique was — and again, this is something you only really realise years later — that it was an extension of the House of Love at Norman's, that same eclectic idea that you are at a house party and we've got lots of records. That was very much the ethos that went with the club. But also it's what was happening up in London at The Social — it was very liberating that you could play whatever you liked.

Norman in particular, I think it was the first time he'd had a crowd like that where you could go, my God, you could get away with playing this, I wonder if this would work. And as a DJ, that's some of the most exciting stuff. You're prepping your set for that night and you go, I wonder if they'd go with this. And sure enough, they did. That was famously when Norman played a rough cut of what would become Rockafeller Skank — he just sort of dropped that after a Seline Dion house banger, or whatever, and you could slot in Oasis or certain other records. So it was definitely liberating. And the Concorde 2 was perfect for it.

It was a very low ceiling — like a sort of grotty... an American equivalent might be like an Elks Club or similar. This sort of seaside social club, a bit less plush. Especially when everything else was super club and Renaissance and all those things, we loved that we were the antithesis of that. It was funny and free, and you might hear something really strange.

And were you helping book? Were you playing there? Were you part of running the Big Beat Boutique?

Yeah. I was part of running it in those first year or two. Gareth would come and say, we've got this person, should we get them? For the first couple of years it was always me and Norman as the residents, and then we would find someone to play alongside us. So we had a lot of people that were on the circuit — John Carter, the Chemical Brothers, Death in Vegas. Most people who were making music in that zone.

So at that time you're DJing, you're making your own artist album, you've got the label hat on. What was that like? You mentioned a lot of it felt pretty organic, felt pretty natural, and you were just working your ass off. Is that how you look back at it?

Yeah, it did really. I do look back at that time and go, how the hell did I have time for anything else? Because with success, suddenly you're being asked to DJ in other places. We were doing the Boutique every other week, usually playing in London as well, doing Skint on Fridays. We played at the End. A couple of other clubs. The Heavenly Social at Turnmills was the first thing we used to do — once every couple of months.

I don't know how I managed to do anything else, but somehow I did. Mix it with suddenly travel as well — coming over to the States moderately regularly, three or four visits a year, going to Japan and Europe. It was quite insane. Everything that drove me... I've never thought of myself as someone with a lot of drive necessarily, but you're just doing it because it's not a job you can clock off from. Every night I would be in the studio till three or four in the morning, just making stuff or listening to stuff. I reiterate how very lucky I was to have JC doing the business side. That was very important.

So you signed the Lo-Fidelity Allstars, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Freak Nasty, Lee Cutler, X-Press 2. Was there a Skint A&R pipeline or was a lot of this just you being out there, meeting people in clubs, and handshakes?

They would all come from sort of different things. Lee Cutler, for example — Lee kind of came with the office, with the studio really. He was a very good scratch DJ and he used to work with Roger Wildchild, so he would just make stuff in the studio. He'd use the studio and one in five would be like, that's really good, can we put that out?

There was a concerted effort for two of the people you mentioned — X-Press 2, Freak Nasty and Dave Clarke. Those were rare in that they were a deliberate effort to expand the gene pool. We'd obviously done well with Norman's album and it was like, right, who's your favourite house producer? Who's your favourite techno producer? And that was Dave Clarke, X-Press 2 and Freak Nasty. So we went and asked if they would do something. I'd known Dave and X-Press 2 for a long time as well. And of course we were doing very well — there was money around and we could offer good advances. Sometimes it's a mate of a mate who hands you a tape. And people started sending in demos as well. People worked out what kind of label we were and found us.

And — I don't know what your relationship is like, but Martin, Krafty Kuts, talked about wanting to play at the Big Beat Boutique and having difficulty getting booked. In the Crate Digging episode I mentioned Krafty and you said something. He didn't speak about it with any bitterness, and Norman obviously signed his record to Southern Fried. What was your curation like as far as who to book at the Boutique?

Bless him. So Martin had a shop at the time in Brighton — I can't remember the name — and he used to get some really good breakbeat stuff in, as you would expect from him. And I hope I can be candid. I do love Martin. He had instant vibes, it's true. He would sort of start telling me what trip hop was, or start telling me what certain things were, which I always found quite funny. He was just really keen. A little bit too keen sometimes. He never quite made the record that I would have gone, yeah, that's really, really good, I'll sign that. It became a bit of a thing.

I've got absolutely no problem with Martin at all. He just didn't quite feel right for the Boutique — that was our feeling. But it plays an interesting part because he was part of that next wave of where breakbeat would go. We probably got to a stage of feeling like breakbeats had sort of — not run their course, but were going somewhere slightly cheesy. There were a lot of Big Beat opportunists going around, which is what you always get with any sound. So I probably reacted against that and went more house, because I had always been a house DJ when I started. We kind of dropped the breakbeats and they ran with them — Martin and people like that. Yeah.

Right, because then you had Finger Lickin', Lot 49...

Yeah, yeah.

And I think Justin said in listening to the Freestylers' Essential Mix, and Aston said the term — he talked about how it was quite urban, conscious that he's a white guy. And Norman said the same thing about how the sampler democratised that sound. All of a sudden...

Yeah. You don't have to be a singer. You just sample. And you can pull in those influences — all those of us who were kids listening to that music when we were young, of course the influences come out.

I talked to Simon Shackleton as well. It seems like there were different alignments — Lot 49 had their own sound, Elite Force had that grindy sound at times. Was there competition, collaboration? Did you think about what Finger Lickin' was doing, or were you just concentrated on your own sound and direction?

I would always have a few of their records in my box. I do just need to say that I invented new school breaks with my track Go Off — I'm still waiting for the blue plaque to come back about that.

I wanted to ask you about new school breaks. What year was that?

Go Off was about '99, maybe. It was sort of my attempt — there's a bit of Kevin Saunderson in there, there's a bit of breakbeat. I mainly say this to annoy Tayo Popoola, who is my friend who had Mob Records. He used to play at quite a seminal breaks night — typically I can't remember the name right now. But yeah, so it was definitely a bit of a split.

Certain people preferred it bassier and dubbier and less event-filled, which was very much what Norman did — trebly and quite gnarly in the sound. And if you listen to a lot of that other stuff, especially stuff that mutated from drum and bass, it was deeper and smoother. And I think that was one of the elements of Big Beat — for some people, Big Beat meant zany. And you can't do that for long. That sort of music, that intensity can get a bit tiresome.

Mm-hmm.

People start looking for other things. My favourite breakbeat track is probably the Comber and Bones mix of Smoke Machine by X-Press 2 — a stunning record. And as that was going on, I think there was a slight parting of the waves. I remember doing my first tour in Australia and a couple of times I'd be picked up from the airport and they'd go, “So you're going to play some breaks, yeah?” And I'd say, well yeah. “But it is all right to play some house, isn't it?” And there would just be this silence. Maybe one or two. And it's like, oh crikey.

There was a part of that breakbeat crowd that got quite militant. And I always felt that was... you know, we'd got used to not having to hear one type of sound all the way through, but they were like, right, it's breakbeat from doors open to doors closed.

I have a little regional feedback on this. When I lived in Seattle going through this very same thing myself, being equally influenced by the Sasha-Digweed style and Fatboy style, me and my mate playing in the basement — we might start off with softer build-up music, Sasha-Digweed style, then get into atmospheric breaks, then full-on big beat breaks. To us this was just a normal night.

And I still run into this literally to this day in San Francisco in 2026. I'll be playing some bass house or just good energetic house and someone will come up with a smile on their face and say “breaks?” And the breaks heads are still out there.

Let me go back to around 2003 or 2004 — I experienced this in Whistler. All these guys who looked cool, younger snowboard dudes, tats. They'd play smooth deep house. And then literally between one year and the next, this wave of breakbeat hit. The next ski season we'd go up there and every single one of these DJs is now playing breaks. I thought that was so interesting.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Which ones are cool with, hey, I love the variety, you can play whatever you want? Those party DJs in Whistler — I thought of it as a slight insult at the time, like “you guys are just playing whatever.” But years later I came back around and went, no, those guys were killing it. They're in a ski town, they're playing for people from Australia and England and all over the place, and they're mixing genres fluidly. So what was it like for you coming up with Skint Records, putting so much of yourself into the visual aspect — the logos, the record sleeves — and watching Fatboy Slim turn into one of the biggest DJs on the planet?

Well, it was amazing. It was amazing. And it's funny — rewind to me being the youngest of five, and showing off had been beaten out of me by quite a way. So I was very much of that: I'm quite happy for no one to look at me when I'm DJing.

Norman has always been a performer. He loves being up on stage. What made those early sets so special was that he was more into it than the crowd, and the connection with them was like, are you coming with me on this journey because it's going to be great? And they were going, fuck yeah, I'm in. He was amazing at that.

The set I've probably done the most in my life is warming up for Norman. I'd love it. I always enjoyed taking it to a point and then going, there you go, Norman. I did have this joke that sometimes I'd be playing and doing a mix and it would be going quite well and you'd hear this enormous cheering and go, great, yeah, they're loving this. And then of course Norman had just come on stage behind me.

So yeah, it was great. It was great. It all helped with the records as well. And I love the fact that what he can still do is just ludicrous. It's brilliant.

Yeah. Coachella — he absolutely slayed it. Brilliant.

Did he? Right, yeah. I could imagine.

Showing a lot of younger DJs how to really do it — not just the drops and the big bass, but the whole fusing it all together. So you started off with 800 copies of Santa Cruz sold. You've Come a Long Way, Baby — actually, was that the first one or the second one? It goes to number one. Is that the second?

Better Living Through Chemistry was the first.

Right, OK. So You've Come a Long Way, Baby goes to number one. What was that like for you behind the desk as Skint Records owner?

It was a bit insane. I was speaking to Andy Mack, who used to work with us at the label — one of the first people we got in. And he reminded me there was a time when we were in one of the big planning meetings up in London where Norman's management were — people from the distributors, people from Sony, people from press, everyone involved, probably about 25 people around the table. And they were going, okay, so we've sold 70,000 albums this week. We're repressing again, going to press another 200,000. And apparently Gary had to stop them and just laugh and go, this is amazing, this is incredible. What a joyous time it was.

I sometimes look back and think, I just wish I could have enjoyed it more. Sometimes you're so caught up in, right, what's next? What are we doing here? Are we doing this right? That you don't... Yeah. I found an old notebook with a bit of diary and you go, did I really do that and then go to that and then do that? The Brits, award shows, playing in Tokyo, all these things you were just so lucky to have the opportunity to do.

There is a big amount of stress that comes when a label is suddenly, oh my God, look what we've become. That was never the intention. It wasn't why I got into it, but we were into it, so we had to deal with it.

So you talked a little already about your own recognition of moving on with the sound. And Jem Stone, in our episode with him, said that by about 2005-2006, breaks had become too genre-specific — the thing that gave them freedom had become a cage. And you left Skint around that time, I believe 2006. Were you having that same feeling?

Yeah, I think so. In 2005 I'd moved to Paris and was having a sort of sabbatical there. More of my friends were making what became — and this was quite a good thing for me when my friends got an equally bad name — they were sort of classed as Electroclash. That was more musically where I felt comfortable.

When I went and lived in Paris and was hanging out with the Ed Banger crew, I was very lucky to be there in their golden period at the beginning of their journey. The first two years of Skint and the Boutique were brilliant because every night, all of us went, all of us played, and it was a collective feeling. And the same happened at Ed Banger — they would do a party, all the crew turned up, and then when success comes and someone has to play somewhere else... I find that bit early on where nothing's defined the most exciting.

I turned up and you'd have Mehdi, Gaspard, Xavier, Pedro as well, SebastiAn — they would all play different stuff, a few French hip-hop records, house, disco. That liberated feeling of play what you like. There was this underlying sound — that distorted, Justice gnarly sound. That was more where I was leaning towards.

I do remember we got Justice to remix Fatboy Slim for the difficult fourth album, Palookaville, and there was a track and they delivered a remix. I played it to JC and we were in my office and just had it on really, really loud. We both went: Jesus Christ. This is so exciting. This is the future. These two French kids have just changed it all. And it was brilliant.

I also had that moment of seeing those times... I remember when Losing My Edge came out by LCD Soundsystem and I'd missed it. I heard it on the radio. It used to be that I was on top of everything. And obviously the lyrics to Losing My Edge — he's talking about cooler kids coming in, better dressed. That was what we were going through. I'd met Dave and Steph of Solid Groove, I'd been hanging out with Errol Alkan a lot, I'd been going to Trash, and I found all those things really exciting and where I would have liked to have steered the label. But we couldn't really do it.

You mentioned your second Midfield General album as a difficult one, and now you've mentioned Fatboy's fourth. What were the difficulties you were facing?

Well, with Norman's — and he addresses this in his book, It Ain't Over Till the Fat Boy Sings...

I tried to buy one and it's totally sold out, as far as I can find, by the way.

Right, OK. Well, he talks about it. It was the first time — because we're men, we never sort of spoke about these things. The fourth album was really hard work and there was a lot of pressure. It wasn't just us anymore — it was Sony worldwide going, right, when's the next one, what's the next big hit?

I had always had this thing that Norman sometimes struggled with second albums because it was hard to chase himself. Norman is better just going, right, I've made this. You look back at his career — Freak Power with Turn On Tune In Cop Out. There's a brilliant record that I think went to number one in the UK. And then they go to do the second one and he goes, God, how did I do it that first time? It was all instinct.

I always think Norman works so much better instinctively when he's not trying to make a record for radio, not trying to make a hit. That golden period when he was making stuff for us — it was all stuff he wanted to play at the Boutique. Right Here, Right Now, Praise You, Rockafeller Skank — they're all records he would play at the Boutique and that's what he made them for. He would go in on a Sunday after a heavy night and just make — sorry to put this so bluntly — shit gold. Basically.

So we deliberately didn't suggest to him that Better Living Through Chemistry was an album — just a collection of stuff. Then we had You've Come a Long Way, Baby, which was just golden. Then Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars — I actually think is a better album. In hindsight, we shouldn't have gone with Bird of Prey as the first single; we should have gone with Star 69 and not cared about the radio. So we got to four and he was playing all over the world. For the first time it didn't come naturally. For the first time I was having to send tracks back and go, no, I'm not feeling this. I think I'd maybe turned down one track in all the previous years. This was the first time it was a struggle.

Norman was struggling. He had his own demons to deal with, with his drinking. It was hard and it did get to us a bit. I didn't like that album, and that was hard because we had always come from being really good friends, having a laugh, going, my God, can you believe we're getting away with this? And then the fourth album... yeah, it just wasn't so much fun.

How difficult was it to walk away from essentially what was your baby?

Very difficult. Letting go was always quite difficult. I wasn't a tyrant, but sometimes you just have to let things go. And then I went to France and it was quite liberating again — I don't know how many times I've said liberating. But that's what it felt like. You don't have to worry.

Liberating does seem to be the running theme. After Skint, correct me if I'm wrong on any of these: you were involved in a Michelin-starred restaurant with your brothers, a Channel 4 cartoon about a hip-hop-obsessed zebra, an Arsenal podcast with Alan Davies, wine writing for Noble Rot, and a Vice film.

Yes. Yep, yep, yeah. And I tried to write scripts as well. Taught myself — TV, comedy dramas — which I wasn't pushy enough about. I got quite close with things but never quite that last bit to actually make something happen. Ironically, I sent a script for one of my things to someone just this last week and they really like it. So we'll see if that side of me ever comes out.

Also, it was the first time I wasn't on top of everything in dance music. I got into Van Morrison, I got into Joni Mitchell. Anyone with punk connections in their musical history is told that 1968 to '75 was just hippies playing guitar. I hadn't realised Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison were making stunning records. It was the Rolling Stones' best period as well, in my opinion. So I was doing a lot of that, getting better at playing guitar. I was very lucky to have that opportunity to just do what I wanted.

And BMG bought Skint in 2014 and you came back as creative director in 2019, and you said you felt revived, refreshed, and free of cynicism. What was the cynicism about?

The business side of it. The way you listen to music — or the way I did listen to music — was different. You would go, OK, what would we do with this? How many would we press? Who would we get to send it out? Who could we get to remix it? Rather than going, oh my God, have you heard this? This is wonderful. That business side of it does take over, I feel, and overwhelm you.

The period of time we were in the business, we traversed that move from analogue to digital. The music industry went through this headless-chickens stage — it didn't know what to do about digital, didn't know what to do about Napster, about streaming piracy. The idea was, well, let's sue everyone. And one thing people rarely talk about is CD burners — before Napster came along, CD burners were bad for the industry because you'd have one person on a university campus burning 10 copies of a CD and selling them for a few quid.

It was a slightly turbulent time in the music industry. You have to play a lot of games. And some of them are shit games you don't want to play. That wide-eyed excitement — the first time you go to the Brit Awards or an award ceremony is great. But when it becomes a bit of a chore — which sounds ridiculous, I know. It just wasn't my be-all and end-all. I found myself not trapped, but... trapped is a bit overdramatic. Yeah, it just became a bit tiresome.

You mentioned wishing you could have enjoyed it a little bit more at the time. If you could hop back in the time machine, is there anything else you would have done differently as label head?

I would have bought a house in London. A London pied-à-terre and lived off that. Bought a lot more property.

For all the good bits, no. There's something about that weird making-it-up-as-we-go-along, we're-on-this-journey feeling that I liked. I liked the snotty little brother upstart image we had as a label. When you're trying to be a bit annoying to people — I enjoyed that we annoyed purists. There's only so long that can last until you're part of the establishment.

One thing I really wish we could have done: I look at XL and I look at Ninja Tune and what they both did. XL managed to change itself from Charly by the Prodigy being a rave label to putting out Badly Drawn Boy, the White Stripes, then Adele, Wiley and Dizzee Rascal. I wish we could have done that. I'm good friends with one of the A&R people from XL now at that time, and he would talk about their gradual change. Without Badly Drawn Boy, they wouldn't have got the White Stripes, for example. That is probably my biggest regret — that we needed to mutate and we needed to evolve. For whatever reason, it didn't quite happen.

I did try. We signed a couple of really good records — by the Ralph Band, this quirky... I still find it a struggle to describe what they are. And a band called Lucky Jim as well, that we all loved. But it didn't quite work on Fatboy Slim's label, because that's what we were always known for. So yeah, apart from property and not being able to change quite, those are the two regrets.

And being part of Skint still to this day — what does the future look like in that regard?

I'm not there anymore. So I went back, I redesigned the logo, I signed Róisín Murphy, I signed Lou Hayter, I signed Paranoia London. We did some really good things. We also signed Museum of Love, which was Pat — the drummer from LCD Soundsystem.

Then lockdown happened and COVID and all of that. For example, Róisín Murphy had a good lockdown — she was able to engage with people and was doing live streams. Museum of Love suffered because they were a really good live band. We got to a stage and after a few years it was becoming obvious that BMG wanted something else. I felt that I wanted to create a place where, if you're the next LCD Soundsystem or you're the next Justice, you would consider us as your label because we do left-field dance music very well. That was what I was trying to create. But we didn't quite get there.

I had always had Vicious Charm as a fallback. I'd always known that I would do my own label again and have complete autonomy. Yeah, so that's what I'm doing now. I'm running Vicious Charm.

And what's next — what do you see for the future there?

The tagline for Vicious Charm is “we'll know it when we hear it” — a deliberate attempt to not get too defined and classified. The future is really exciting. We've had the Crooked Man album out earlier this year, which has gone really, really well. Weird, quirky left-field, predominantly house but not exclusively. I just adore Crooked Man's records.

We've also done an album by ER Thorpe, a Nottingham folk singer who's made this great record. But the most exciting thing is Jim, whose second album we are just starting. Jim is part of Crazy P — he's Ron Bassjam. He was our first release, our first album. He's just finished his second one and it's beautiful. I really hope we sell some, because it's a very different game now. It's a very different world.

Right. Well, thank you, Damian. This has been a very illuminating interview. I did ask you at the end of Crate Digging for a referral — we have any news? I'd like to continue these stories. So who are you nominating for the next guest?

That's a tricky one. Only because he's probably my best friend — Tayo Popoola of Mob Records. I'll be seeing him tomorrow.

But if you could get Errol — Errol Alkan. So at the Big Beach Boutique, which was the event on Brighton beach for a quarter of a million people, it was 2002 in the summer. We had just come back from Japan — we'd done a tour out there for the World Cup. And we were playing on Brighton beach to 250,000 people. I was going, we can't go any bigger. This has to be it. We've reached the pinnacle. And that was the day.

I got off stage and in my dressing room were Dave and Steph — Solid Groove, who are Too Many DJs — and Errol. It was the first time I'd met Dave and Steph. They were playing at the official Boutique after-party at the Concorde 2. They had taken over. For me, that was the moment the baton was passed to the next generation. And I really felt it, because both Solid Groove and Errol Alkan are incredibly talented people who took the game on to other levels. I could listen to Errol and Dave and Steph talk about music for a very long time.

All right. Well, I might ask for some help in connecting with a well-made referral. Thank you, Damian. It's been a great interview and I'm looking forward to when this comes out.

Yes. Let me know. I hope I didn't ramble too much. OK, good. I'd better get back to my needy cat. So I'm going to bid you farewell — and sort your room out when you get a chance as well.

Just the right amount. I will, I will.