The samples of Calibre

We continue to learn about the sources of inspiration of jungle and drum‘n’bass musicians. Without any words, requests or greetings, the YouTube channel Original Jungle Samples tells us what kind of instruments and voices we hear in our favourite tracks. Today—Calibre. “I grew up in South Belfast. It was pretty much what you’d expect Belfast to be like during the troubles: very grim, frightening and full of twats. It wasn’t a very nice place to grow up. I’d say the first music I ever really fell in love with as a style was ska music, 80s pop, punk, reggae, soul, blues, musique concrète and ambient. Reggae was really important for me. It sounds a bit cheesy today, but I loved that period of reggae, with bands like UB 40 and The Specials, while there was punk and a political element going on as well. This was sort of Belfast-like; it seems like ideologies worked for me. But I got into a lot of that sort of music and from there, alternative indie, punk rock, heavy metal… you name it, anything at all, I was interested in it. And if there was something that was telling the establishment to go fuck itself then that was interesting to me too. I don’t want to admit to it but I was a wee bit like that.

In terms of drum‘n’bass, brother would’ve been going into specialist shops in Belfast in the early 90s, probably about ‘93–’94, and bringing home these Shadow bits… y’know Section Five, oldschool stuff as it would be referred to now. I didn’t know what drum‘n’bass was and I didn’t like it when I first heard it. And then I think my brother had a CD version of Goldie’s Terminator that we took ecstasy to and listened to it a lot and that’s when I thought, Jesus, this is actually really fcking good, this stuff. Drum‘n’bass was that music everyone hated in Belfast. It wasn’t welcome I used to run club nights there but there was no interest in us. I remember seeing Bukem play in this fancy house club. It was really busy and I thought, Ah-ha, we’ve cracked it! Then the next drum‘n’bass night was empty. That’s the way it is. There’s a stigma that’s never gone away. I barely play in my home city, which is a shame.

We’d get the likes of LTJ Bukem coming through [Belfast] and the top guys like that and I’d give them a tape, but it was funny because some of the early guys ignored me and you had to be pretty determined to get heard. But I remember I did manage to get a tape through to Bukem and he called my parents—I was only about 20 at the time—and it felt like It was the big time, like Here it is! but the release never happened and it frustrated me to a large degree. But things like that are good because you realise how fucking annoying the music industry is from the start. You need to be annoyed a wee bit like that to learn a bit about it.

There was not much of a scene in Belfast. With the way politics are there and the geography, a lot of the energy of people went into that, it’s hard to find the perceptive ear in that environment, you’re gonna go for whatever’s coming to you. It was sort of like a prejudice to the music in Belfast whereas in Dublin they didn’t seem to have that. It had a big scene where you had two clubs which were massive and which were competing with each other at the time. There was a lad that came up from Dublin and invited us down, and they were running a label and didn’t tell us anything about the client’s hotel or it being U2’s label or anything like that, we found all that out afterwards. That was where I met Fabio actually… through those guys. That was where drum‘n’bass thing really came in.

First I was signed to Fabio’s label Creative Source. I remember the first gig I played in England was funny because it was in Nottingham at a club called The Bomb and we actually got lost and my mates were like, Ask that taxi driver. So I asked him like, Hey, do you know where The Bomb is? And that’s not a good thing to ask someone in a Belfast accent [laughs]. But this was my first gig and I remember I only had like three plates and Fabio had given me a bunch of things he wasn’t playing so I had to live off his scraps for a while. That’s how it was. The way I play music is I write for the sets so a lot of my sets have exclusive stuff, I mean maybe it’ll be a shit tune but at least you’re only gonna hear it once.

When I was with Creative Source, I didn’t have the freedom that I wanted and I suppose when I saw how Marcus and ST Files were running Soul:ution independently I leapt at the chance to run my own label, for me that was fantastic place to be because I didn’t want to have anybody being my boss. I just want to make my own significant contribution to the music industry. I wanted to have control of my own destiny and sculpt my own thing. I’m not concerned with media strategies, calculations and all of that. I just wanted to put out my own music. At the time, when I started the label it was quite different to the way other people did it. I think it is still quite unique to run a label primarily for your own material. But I still release on other labels, I’m not against it.”