Roni Size & Reprazent — New Forms. Story behind the album. Track by track guide

“I was born Ryan Owen Granville Williams but, because I was lighter-skinned, everyone called me Roni, after the only white character in the film Babylon. I was quite short and if my mates were talking about a girl, they’d say: Oh, she’s Roni’s size. So that’s how I came up with the name Roni Size. Getting expelled from school in Bristol was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I started going to the city’s Sefton Park youth centre and they had a drum machine. Suddenly I had something that excited me. Then they got a sampler and I was in the basement all the time, making tunes.”

Roni Size

The 27-year-old Jamaican musician grew up in St. Pauls, in the darkest black suburb of Bristol, where he heard dub and reggae throughout his childhood. By his adolescence, the environment switched to hip-hop. In the nineties, everything changed because of the rave scene where he met DJs who later became his associates. “I brought in my sidekick Krust and a young lad by the name of DJ Die, who was already a pretty established DJ in Bristol,” says Size. “Then there was Suv, who was a friend of Krust’s as they were part of a crew called Fresh 4.”

Combining jungle and jazz, Roni and his friends quickly realised that there was no label in the area to release their music. They created Full Cycle. But, apparently, Roni also brought his tapes to Bryan Gee (Who was then leaving the half-jazz half-dance label Rhythm King at that time.) He kept them for his own new V Recordings. Jazzy thing was released there, Music Box was released on Roni and Krust’s label. Both are jewels of jazzstep. The records quickly attracted the attention of Giles Peterson, a passionate lover of jazz and modern electronics. Giles offered them a contract on his own label Talkin’ Loud, a division of Polygram at that time (and a future part of Universal Music).