Introduction: We speak with veteran Grime producer J Sweet who takes us through his time with vinyl, working in and running a record shop. With so much to talk about we covered his production, UKG, grime and the record shop community. J Sweet shares his unique journey and once again reminds us of the varied way that people connect with vinyl. A great addition to the series ‘Living with Vinyl‘. Anyone interested in production and analog music equipment will appreciate exactly what he has to say about making music. Plenty of good memories and insight. Sit back and listen to the man share with us. Enjoy!

Audio interview is below, accompanied by photographs and selected quotes. Enjoy.

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05. Living with Vinyl – J Sweet – April 2015 by Hark1karan on Mixcloud

Interview Highlights

10 seconds: I’m J Sweet. Grime producer, also known as the Marxman because of Marxman Dubs my record label.

36 seconds: My first introduction into music was through an older brother of mine who was Dj-ing as a teenager.

55 seconds: I remember getting my first set of decks in the summer holidays before I started secondary school when I was 12 years old.

1:35min: Well, it was hip-hop I was buying at the time. I know most people at the time were probably into their jungle and their rave scene. But as a child obviously my influence and what I was bought up around was hip-hop. So I bought people like Black Sheep, Naughty by Nature that kind of vibe really.

2:20min: Probably Tupac. I Get Around was probably one of my earliest most memorable records I remember buying… Tupac was massive in my childhood, and I remember getting Notorious B.I.G’s Ready to Die album as well, when that first dropped… Getting Redman’s albums, that was some ground-breaking stuff and EPDM I was buying stuff like that.

3:10min: I used to go down to Tooting in South London. There used to be a store down there actually run by Shortee Blitz and Ted at the time… I’d go Red Records in Brixton, which I actually worked for afterwards… I used to go Wax City and Unity. Unity used to have a really good hip-hop section. I know that it’s well known for the drum-n-bass but they had a really good hip-hop section.  I actually used to go Blackmarket as well.

4:10min: I got my national insurance card like most people do when you’re fifteen years old and managed to get myself a job in red records. Used to finish school at half past three and start at four o’clock…. Alongside DJ Iron.

6 min: Tim Westwood (would come in), Dj Iron used to do guest slots on his show, believe it or not. Not many people know that.

6:50min: Production kinda came about by accident… when I was very much into hip-hop, I then got into scratching… the whole turntablism. As I got into that, then I wanted to pick up gadgets to tie things into my DJ sets… I kinda started getting into it that way…

7:42min: I met Noodles from Groove Chronicles and he used to take me up to El-B’s studio where they’d both be writing tracks. That really opened my eyes up a lot. I was really inspired by what they were doing at the time. They were making massive hits. The scene was really good and all these new sounds and I really got into it.

8:30min: I got a job at Uptown Records in the mail department. You think Drake started from the bottom. Literally I was in the mail department.

9 min: Noodles was the one to put out my first record. It was a unofficial remix.

9:34min: The official first would have been with Huckleberry Finn, who was very much a big brand name in the UK scene…. We made this track called Still Dancing. I wasn’t called J Sweet then. It was H and J. I don’t know if you can track this record down…. H and J – Bass Shy. It was on the official release of Kristine Blond – Love Shy…. This has got to be 1998/1999.

12:20min: Because I started making music using hardware, I still like hardware and I still use it…. I’m starting to pick up for more bits of hardware again simply because I miss it. I enjoyed making music more when made on hardware than I use do so on a mouse.

15:22min: Obviously it’s never just ever been a career. I enjoy it. Music is something that I do.

16:05min: Going to the record shop is a bit like a barber shop. People standing around talking, having a laugh and creating a community. It’s a shame cos that’s kinda of gone.

17:05min: I was in Uptown from the early days of UK Garage…

17:30min: People selling 500 copies of a record in one shop back then. It’s crazy that people used to sell that much in one store. These days’ people can manufacture 300 records to be distributed worldwide.

18:55min: Back then you would buy a vinyl to actively use it DJ-ing out. Whereas these days you buy a vinyl to collect it and keep it as collectable item. It’s not a useable format to take on aeroplane or a booking aboard.

22:15min: Dark 2-step stuff came about and that was when you could sort see that the scene was getting darker. It was changing from around that time and I don’t think anyone really knew what to call it. And obviously Wiley was making that song. EZ was very relevant at the time as well, just like he is now to be fair, but he was playing… EZ was never really scared to cross the boundaries and play the real darker garage stuff alongside the more normal stuff.

23:30min: You could say that grime was a bit like us putting hip-hop a little bit with garage almost.

24:18min: It’s kinda debatable what the first grime record was because we weren’t actually calling it grime yet. So it’s really difficult to say what really was the first one.

26:15min: I initially started with garage to be fair, but then, my garage was always like the dub mixes, it was always on the darker sort of edge stuff… Most people probably know me for doing the Kerb, as probably one of the earlier grime tunes.

28:16min: Most of my music I didn’t make it with an MC in mind. I’ve just kind of made it as a piece of music.

29:14min: Locked On was definitely a big one for me. Ice-Cream Records was good as well… There was a lot of white labels with garage. Most of the things that came through the store would be white label.

31 min: We just did what we did and found our own feet with it (Grime). Done our own thing.

32 min: It’s one the best experiences of my life. Having a record shop was an amazing time for me. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed all aspects of it. Ordering all the records in. Being the person that’s picking and choosing what to put on the shelf. What people are gonna like and stuff like that. Interesting job.

32:48min: I also did a lot there for up and coming MC’s, Dj’s I’d put on after hours, sort of mini kind of parties really. Get everybody in, get the mics on, let people just MC and DJ for the evening. We would do that, lock-ins and that sort of stuff all the time.  It was quite a frequent thing.

33:18min: Some really cool kids, who maybe were even doing kinda bad things on the streets were coming in. Were actually being well behaved and doing something constructive. We kinda done that bit for the community as well which is pretty cool.

33:50min: The Mixing Records DVD, which is actually quite an interesting DVD. If you can actually get your hands on one. There’s a lot of people on there who later became very big that you could sort of see them in their earlier days. We made it really silly.

35 min: (Why did the shop close down?) Simply because of vinyl sales. People were no longer buying vinyl and people don’t want a tangible item any more. We live in an age now that you visit most people’s houses and they don’t even have a stereo. You walk into most electronic shops and you want a stereo, you get a docking station. Most people don’t buy physical items any more. It’s just not like that now.

36 min: So many people will now rip music of Youtube and have these really poor, low quality versions and they’ll play it from their speaker-phone, on their phone as a stereo and stuff. It’s poor.

36:40min: I’ve got a serious passion for it, that’s why I will keep spending money buying more equipment and always reinvesting back into my music.

37 min: Me personally, I’m gonna keep doing what I do and making music…. 100% would release on vinyl for certain. I would expect a vinyl to come out from myself in the near future.

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