DB's No School Like the Old Skool: Dara

A tale of dreadlocks, debauchery, and drum & bass. DB shares a 1995 jungle mix and classic tales about the Breakbeat Science don.

by DJ DB (aka DB Burkeman)

July 18, 2013, 7:30pm

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…

Goin Out For Da Loot, a classic Dara mixtape from 1995

Since starting this blog, I've tried not to use it to simply big-up my friends, or as a way to spotlight DJs on the roster of the agency I work with. I didn't want nepotism to be my m.o. However, some DJs are close friends and also happen to be more than noteworthy—this is one of them.

One afternoon in 1994—while I was working one day a week at 8 Ball Records as jungle buyer and sales guy—a scruffy, dreadlocked individual came in to the shop looking for me. Understanding he was fresh of the boat from Ireland, I resisted the urge to ask him where his dog on a string was. I told him that NASA, the club night he wanted to play at, had closed months ago.

He gave me a cassette with his number on it and said to call if I started something new. I was somewhat surprised the the mixtape was not half-bad—a mix of techno, British acid, and jungle. Consequently, I did call him and offered him a spot at a little night I was starting.

My idea for a new, small party was called Lite, Dark & Shade.

After one event, I dropped the Shade and just went simply Lite & Dark. Three flyers are shown below.

When Sm;)e Communications started to look for local artists to release records by, Dara got to release his first piece of vinyl. We later fully signed him as a artist to the label.

This is Dara's first single.

Through relationships I'd made at Sm:)e, I became partners with Khan & Walker of Air Liquide. They were some of the German techno mafia from Cologne and together we opened Temple Records, a store in the basement under the very infamous Liquid Sky shop. Dara and I used to work there together doing all the drum & bass buying and selling. Other than D&B, both Dara and I had gradually lost interest in all other genres of dance music… This was actually the impetus to us opening our own shop, Breakbeat Science. (I'll save that story for another post.)

This is the Temple Records logo.

Dara was also one of the very first people I knew involved with this new phenomenon called the internet. He hosted a really popular drum & bass broadcast called Velocity, interviewing and featuring live mixes of many of the stars of the scene.

In the mid-'90s when both our DJ careers started to really take off, we'd get a lot of bookings together. It's always much more fun to travel with a friend. We had many great adventures, but one of my fave memories is one of us being totally sleep deprived on the return flight and, for no particular reason, having an uncontrollable attack of the giggles, to the point where I was crying. The more people were looking at us, the more we just couldn't stop. It was like being a teenager trying acid for the first time… or thats what I imagine it would be like. ;)

This little story from the Dara himself: "I remember flying back from a gig with DB in the mid-'90s. He loved to bring his portable DVD player and, for some reason, he thought Caligula would be a good movie to watch on a crowded flight with children walking up and down the aisle. It was only after one toddler stopped by our seat and was confronted with Helen Mirren's nether regions and Malcolm McDowell's greasy fist that I convinced DB to turn it off. Good times."

I'm guessing one of his biggest thrills from those days (other than traveling with me and my DVD player) must have been getting to remix a true hip-hop legend and having his name on the sleeve…

In 1999, at the peak of when D&B was most popular in the U.S., Damian Higgins AKA Dieselboy was playing a gig in New Orleans with AK 1200 and Dara. He came up the idea of a tour with the three biggest American Jungle DJs all playing together. This virtual juggernaut of heavy sounds was called Planet Of The Drums and toured for a few years like a rock supergroup, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.

Dara had become an extremely in-demand DJ. This was very exciting to watch and I was happy for him but., if I'm honest, I also felt a tad of jealousy as he eclipsed me in popularity. The truth is, he is a better DJ than me though.

Here's a photo of Dieselboy, AK 1200, and Dara on the Planet of the Drums tour.

The three of them, I'm guessing at an airport.

Today, Dara and I still get booked to do shows together. If we're booked to do old-skool sets, then it's fun and easy, but with new music, Dara's taste in drum & bass has always been harder and faster than mine, making it tricky for us to tag-team. He's always shouting "Come on! speed it up!" at me over the blaring monitors as I struggle to keep up with his maniacal pace.

Dara is a machine and still one of the hardest working DJs I know. I don't simply mean he's in demand, playing out every week. I mean he still works at the craft. Practicing mixing new records at home, constantly looking for new tunes, working to make new beats, etcetera! (Side note: He's also the owner of the largest and most complete collection of old-skool hardcore and early jungle 12"s ever!)

Just a thought, but if we'd stayed with techno, house, electro or trance and not loved drum & bass—the genre that was always treated like the poor or retarded relation of the dance music family—we might be big rich and famous "EDM" stars now. Dara told me recently that kids will come up to him at big EDM-type events and ask, "What is that fast dubstep you're playing?"

Recent pics of us playing at underground events.