Part One: 4 Years of Ruffnek Diskotek w/ Atki2 and Dub Boy - FREE TUNE!
September 10
Bristol's Ruffnek Diskotek recently celebrated 4 years of throwing rowdy bashments, across a variety of bass-heavy genres. They've just launched a new night, Karnival, which has a sister night in Montreal run by Ghislain Poirier. And they've started a record label, Steak House Records, which has already attracted attention from Toddla T (who used Monkey Steak's Tigris Riddim on his recent Fabric Live CD), and which will be putting out some of my raggastep stuff. So all in all the time was ripe to sit down with Tim Dub Boy and Sam Atki2 and chew the ragga-cud, over a couple of pints and touch on the history and ethos of the night, finding yourself liking U2 by accident, vocals in dance music, vinyl vs CDs and all sorts of other good stuff... Plus, Atki2 has blessed us with a free tune inna Ruffnek stylie:
"A dancehall beat I made back in 2006, with General Levy "Tru Yu Body Good" acapella on top. Been a big favourite at Ruffnek Diskotek over the years, this one!"
(download)
Binga: So, 4 years of Ruffnek Diskotek... How did it get started? Is it both of you running it?
Dub Boy: I started it on my 25th birthday cos I fancied a party and no one was playing the music I wanted to hear, so I thought I'd do it myself. I booked Sam Atki2 to play cos I'd met him a few months perviously at Toxic Dancehall at the Black Swan - Sam and Pinch played the first one and Sam just got invovled from there.
Atki2: I'd just moved back to Bristol - I'd been living in london for 4 years - and I moved back knowing I wanted to get involved in the music scene, cos I had started producing as well. I got involved from the first Ruffneck - it was a good night! I really liked what Tim was pushing - at the time it was more dubstep oriented, and there weren't that many people playing dubstep, but he was mixing it with the dancehall, which particularly atrracted me.
Dub Boy: So you were one of the few people that actually got what we were doing! There was only a small handful of people that kind of got it...
Binga: How so?
Dub Boy: Well with the dubstep, everyone was going 'what's this stuff its too slow, play some drum and bass!' - and we were like, 'no no, drum and bass is crap, this is much more exciting!'
Binga: Has the style of the night shifted over the years?
Dub Boy: Yeah it's definitely evolved over time - cos nothing ever stands still - but the consistent thing is that it's always been sound system music. We're all into sound system music, whether we listened to reggae when we were younger, or jungle, or whatever, but it all comes from sound system vibes. We've just used different strains of music - dance, reggae - and pieced it all together to achieve that vibe.
Binga: Something I like about what you guys do is that there's a focus on dancehall. I love roots reggae and dub but there's a danger it can get a but 'tame'..
Dub Boy: Trustafarian...
Binga: Yeah, in a way I think dancehall kind of got overlooked for a bit, which is daft cos there's so many good riddims.
Atki2: Absolutely. It's got a lot more raw energy, particularly for a prime-time club night. I mean dub is fantastic -I heard Channel One system at the weekend at carnival and you just can't argue with that bass, it's enormous, but if you're playing 1-2 in the morning, people want to hear something a bit tuffer and faster and more rowdy, and dancehall fits that bracket perfectly.
Binga: It kind of reminds of a lot of some UK hip hop fans who seem to feel that good hip hop stopped being made in 94 and everything after that was an aberration...
Dub Boy: But you can't live in the past, you know, you've always got to keep up with what's going on, otherwise you end up encapsulating yourself in this little cocoon and you don't see what's happening, and you don't see the world around you. The thing behind Ruffnek, and us as DJs and as the label Steakhouse - it's always about pushing forwards. Not being new just for the sake of it, but always wanting to explore new ground, cos if you stand still then you're going nowhere.
Binga: That's logic!
Dub Boy: (laughs) Yeah it's true though innit! With Ruffnek, it would be all too easy to put some dubstep on and then have some dub reggae - that works, it's great but...
Atki2: You can only book Rob Smith or Mungo's so many times though!
Dub Boy: With dancehall and bashment, it brings that rowdiness - and with the 140bpm stuff, we've always liked to have a lot of grime played, a lot of vocal music, cos again it brings that energy and rowdiness. Ruffnek always been as much about vocal music as instrumental, and as much about reggae as it is dance music.
Binga: So what are your musical backgrounds? Sam, I kinda have you in my head as 'weirdy electronica' - is that fair?
Atki2: Yeah - electronica, breakcore, jungle...
Dub Boy: IDM! (laughter)
Atki2: I've always had open ears, and I like to write in lots of different tempos. I've never written conventional dance music, so I don't try to do that, but I do like certain styles - dubstep of course, 5 years ago it was a very fresh sound to my ears, so I wanted to incorporate that into what I was doing, and dark 2 step and grime a couple of years before that... So I try to incorporate all these things. And now of course the new UK Funky - I can't resist having a go at that either!
Binga: What kind of producers are you feeling in that scene? The more vocally stuff, or the harder stuff like Emvee or Lil Silva?
Atki2: I dunno really... I like Roska, but then Roska's quite straightforward in a way - it's funny, when I'm listening I don't want so many glitches, I tend to save that for when I'm producing.
Binga: So you write music you don't like listening to?
Atki2: (laughs) Well by the time I've finished writing it I don't like listening to it at all!
Binga: Tim, I met you ages back at Pinch's old house...
Dub Boy: I guess that was about five years ago... It's a funny one, cos we lived next doot to each other for about a year without even realising it. I want to Context, one of his early nights, we got talking and realised - hang on, you're my neighbour! My musical background is very different to Sam's - I got into dancehall and pop reggae in the early 90s cos it was always all over the charts - that's how i got into reggae in all honesty. Then in my teens I played in a lot of shitty indie bands that went nowhere...
Binga: Didn't we all...
Dub Boy: Oh yes! Then later on in life started playing in lots of crap cod-funk bands and bad dub bands. I was living in Wales, there were loads of hippies and crusties and i ended up playing in those sorts of bands. I really lost interest in being musical to be honest. Then I started DJing about 5 years ago - I came to it really late.
Binga: What do you reckon brought you back to being interested in music again, and DJing in particular?
Dub Boy: It was a combination of my mates telling me I had an amazing collection of records and that I should start DJing, and also just reverting to reggae, after being into so many different things over the years... Guitar music, rock music, I got into big beat and then I got out of it pretty quickly!
(laughter)
I just kind of found myself at a crossroads. It got to the point where I was thinking, 'yeah U2 aren't so bad, this doesn't actively offend me' - it got really bad! So I dug out some of my old records, put on some dancehall from early 90s, and thought, why have i forgotten this for so long!
Binga: So who have been some of the notable people at Ruffnek Diskotek over the years?
Dub Boy: David Rodgian, Mungo's Hi-Fi, Digital Mystikz, The Bug, Kode 9...
Atki2: Kode9 was particularly good - a real highlight actually.
Dub Boy: We've had loads! I guess we've had all the big name 'interesting' dubstep acts, all the weird electronic techy-ragga type stuff, all the Bristol lot... We've had quite a few MCs come down - Skepta played at our first birthday.
Binga: How was he?
Dub Boy: Really good for about half an hour, until he got distracted by some groupies!
Binga: You can't really hold that against him!
Dub Boy: No, good on him!
Binga: Have you been at Cosies the whole time?
Dub Boy: Nah, its been about 18 months that we've been doing Cosies - it's somewhere we grew up going to, we've been going there for over 10 years, so to play down there is a big thing for us.
Binga: Do you get a very mixed crowd?
Atki2: Absolutely, it's a mixed crowd of all ages, there's lot of West Indians as it's in St Paul's, and we get a lot of nationalities and ethnicities down, its a very mixed place.
Dub Boy: One of the few.
Atki2: And its tiny - the dancefloor holds about 50 people.
Binga: I love those kind of clubs.
Atki2: You learn some lessons as a DJ in a place like Cosies; I think we all have over the years...
Dub Boy: And if you want to play there you can't go through your agent cos we can't pay you enough money, you have to do it for the love of it!
Binga: So what's the vibe with your new night Karnival - I noticed Poirier starting a night of the same name in Montreal - was that planned?
Dub Boy: Very much so. We were chatting about that about 6 months ago cos we all sat down and thought, shit man, there's quite a few of us on a similar 'carnival' vibe - Poirier, The Heatwave, ourselves...
Binga: Poirier's only really come to attention in the UK over the last 18 months it seems...
Dub Boy: If that.
Binga: But he's been doing his thing in Canada for a while though...
Dub Boy: 10 years I think. I became aware of him about 4 years ago through Shock Out Records, a Tigerbeat offshoot - he had a few things on there.
Atki2: Kind of electronic dancehall-type things...
Dub Boy: But really leftfield and wonky.
Binga: I loved his soca set at glade - so much fun!
Dub Boy: Yeah it was nuts - about three quarters of the way through I got a massive stitch cos I was dancing too hard!
Binga: Speaking of which, how did you get the hook up with Glade?
Dub Boy: That was through our good friend Ed Punksy who did the Toxic Dancehall nights, which were pretty infamous in Bristol. We've known him for years, and though we like quite different music I think he really likes and respect what we do. Monkey Steak played at Glade a few years ago, there was always talk of them going back and playing again, and I think Ed is really into the Karnival idea...
Atki2: The Overkill stage originally had some really big names on the Saturday night, so they moved to a bigger stage and handed Overkill to three club nights, one of which was us. Ed basically gave us five hours to book artists that represented the kind of music we were interested in, and so the Karnival showcase was very much the stuff we're feeling at the moment, starting with the crossover between funky house and dancehall, but also the faster tempo stuff like kuduru, soca, juke / booty bass, dance music that runs at a faster tempo. It isn't polite but its good for dancing outdoors to!
Binga: Are you going to get any ghettotech acts down to Karnival?
Dub Boy: We've got Muderbot down soon, but its difficult cos no one really knows about that music i think - it's really hard to promote. We're going to get Heatwave down, maybe with a top MC...
Binga: Any names you can let loose?
Dub Boy: Maybe Lady Chann, Doctor...
Binga: Ms Dynamite? Stush???
Dub Boy: Well, we'd love to, but the problem with a lot of artists of that size is that their managers have got them doing strictly two-song PAs - whereas I want them to host for a couple of hours!
Binga: I saw Yolanda host a room somewhere a couple of years ago, it was wicked!
Dub Boy: Yeah Yolanda was doing all the ragga chat over a set by Octopussy at our second birthday...
Atki2: That was a Ruffnek highlight!
Dub Boy: But then straight after, we had a big name dubstep artist come on and clear the room with dull halfstep...
Atki2: Yeah completely non-party vibes, especially after Octopussy had been playing 2-step, boooty bass, just really fun stuff.
Dub Boy: Around that time we had a six month break; we came back and were booking all these really big dubstep DJs, but we suddenly realised dubstep had got really dull, really quickly.
Binga; Everyone figured the rules out i guess...
Dub Boy: Yeah, so I think it was from around that time we lost interest in promoting 'pure' dubstep nights and regained a bit more eclecticism.
Atki2: I still love dubstep and we continue to book it, but nearer the beginning the emphasis was more on dubstep cos it was a new and fresh sound and we were excited about it, but then as it grew and more promoters started doing nights we decided to be more selective about who we booked. For instance the October after the break we had Peverelist down, and I don't think I've ever heard Pev play such a blinder!
Dub Boy: I remember loads of people coming up to us and saying 'woah - that's the bloke who works in rooted - when did he get so good' - everyone was a bit shocked!
...continued in Part 2
Posted by bassmusic
