Profiles!

On this page, there will be profiles I have written on artists and record labels

Artists

Leroy Small

Although his given name may not evoke much response on its own, Leroy Small is one of the hardest working men in the field of dance music. Born August 27th, 1970 in Leicester, England (the biggest city in the East Midlands), the highly prolific Small has released a vast amount of music in the related musical idioms of jungle, drum & bass, and breakbeat hardcore (as well as the microgenre of "darkside"). He has worked under a large number of pseudonyms, the best known of which is "DJ SS". This is not a nod to the Nazis who made up the Schutzstaffel but rather an abbreviation of "Scratchenstein", a spoof of Frankenstein which he called himself when he was working in hip hop. His aliases Tarzan and Amazon directly reference jungle music thematically but some of his most essential releases are the largely untitled tracks as DJ SS (the name under which he is best known including for his DJing not just production), and Black, White, Orange. Small has also released some 12" singles with the apt names of Crowd Pleasers and Hot Steppers which figure prominently in the mixes of a fair amount of his peers, though may not be counted by fans as his absolute strongest. A good deal of his best known material with named tracks are on his Formation record label under names such as MA1, MA2, and Rhythm for Reasons. Through the chronology of the record label, one can trace something of the history of breakbeat hardcore's evolution into darkside, darkside's subsequent move into jungle and from there, jungle's rise in popularity and a bit of its own change in sound. The sheer amount of 12"s and EPs Leroy Small released from '91-'96 is truly staggering and it feels impossible to imagine electronic music as we know it without his contributions. Almost 30 years after its initial publication, 1995's The Lighter is sure to get plenty of junglists calling for a rewind from any DJ who drops what is probably Small's best known tune.

Anthony Child

Born May 1st, 1971 in Kislingbury, England, Anthony Child is better known as Surgeon. In addition to founding the labels Dynamic Tension and Counterbalance, he has released a lot of music has been DJing steadily since about 1992, and is one of the pioneers of the so called "Birmingham sound" subgenre of techno. Long one of England's most important music cities, the techno scene there essentially started with Child and his friends opening the club with the rather ostentatious name of "House of God". What set apart Surgeon and others' in their productions which would prove so influential is an expanded list of influences, most notably including influence from industrial, postindustrial, and postpunk acts like Coil (which can be audible in some of the sonic textures), the repetition and psychedelia of krautrock (there is even, after all, a song of Surgeon's of that name), and others. However, despite the undeniable legacy of the toughness and tranceinducing sameness can be found in Berlin techno and elsewhere, Surgeon's drawing from psychedelia as well as Chicago house, electro, the dub production of King Tubby, as well as art outside of music can be seen to set him apart. His second full length album (from 1998), the first of which for Berlin's Tresor, is titled Basictonalvocabulary*, whose song "Scorn" is probably as much a nod to the emotion as it is to some of the industrial musical projects of former Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror drummer Mick Harris. Its album artwork is a nod to that of Faust's The Last LP and twenty years later, 2018's Luminosity Device has its design mimic that of David Bowie's Station to Station.

Record Labels