DJ DB has been a fixture in dance music through every renaissance the style has experienced. His archive of DJ mixes and flyers from the 90s rave era are a time capsule of electronic music's first worldwide explosion, and in NO SCHOOL LIKE THE OLD SKOOL he shares some of these treasures. Get out your notepads…Although DJ'ing since he was a kid and through many styles in the 80's, Ray has been a soldering warrior in the front lines of the Jungle army since the early 90's. His 1994 track "The Terrorist" under his Renegade alias was one of the defining tracks of the Amen era of drum and bass and (proto techstep) featured a bass so devastating, that I actually "broke" more than one typically weak New York club system because of it.By 96 Ray had created 3 labels his various tastes, Penny Black, UFO and probably the most well known, Dread. Ray is the first DJ I've done a post on for the blog that I don't really know, but since I'm opening up for him at Output this Sunday for his new label DUBPLATE DREAD launch, I thought I'd shine the spotlight his way. Although I have only briefly met him a few times, he was also a solid part of my early record buying life. On every trip home to London to visit my folks, I would head to Black Market records in Soho.
There would be Ray with Nicky behind the counter, one on the decks, spinning and blaring snippets at club volume of every new release. The other handing out the 12's to the surrounding eager wanna be dj's raising their hands to indicate they wanted a copy of the one that was playing. What I leant over time was that these two were very skilled at knowing exactly which 30 seconds of a record to play to make the crowd go "gimee gimme!" and the trick was to then take them over to a listening station and actually spend the time going through the record a bit more. When I first shopped there, I'd come home with 10-20 records, only to find that a just a couple would have anything more than that great snippet.Thanks to my hardcore brethren Dara for the loan of his Live From Telepathy 94 tape.Ray Keith Discography Found some classic flyers from the 90's UK rave Hysteria.
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