Runs through his entire life-in-music - early days growing up in Camberwell /Walworth Road area as a South London 80s soulboy.... the conversion to acid house ... working as in-store deejay at the twinned shops Zoom (prog house) and Mash (jungle tekno) back when the scene was still fluid..... a slightly hard to follow connection between Mash and Brixton pirate radio station Passion FM (later Lightning FM) .... then as the nuum branches itself off... a stint at Unity, working in their jungle basement... while also deejaying at Telepathy and similar raves... while also making tunes
And what gobsmacked me slightly was I'd never twigged that Noodles as in one-half of Groove Chronicles is the same Noodles as in Noodles & Wonder. Whose EP for Kickin' I actually reviewed in Melody Maker:
NOODLES & WONDER---"Drum Soup" EP (Kickin')
Serene wind-chimes and gamelan-tinkling bells float over a
turbo-charged battery of beats. Magical, despite a strange interlude of
swingbeat mid-track.
Not sure if this is the track I was talking about...
Then onto the storied UKG and 2step glory years, during the course of which Noodles got burned out and quit the scene.
Until now...
"Go Back To Go Forward", the title of the piece, comes from what he's currently doing, which is a sort of DJ-as-history-teacher approach. Recalling a recent gig:
"I was playing records that are 15, 20 years old, even more, nobody knew most of them, and all of them sounded good. I played Joey Beltram ‘Mentasm’ and that sounded IMMENSE, mate, as good as it ever did being played in Rage by Fabio or Grooverider... I played Winx, Goodmen, Italian house, bits of techno, all the good stuff, then I played this record ‘Acid Folk’ [by Perplexer], with bagpipes, at 140bpm and they didn’t know what had hit them.... I rewinded it as well.
"People still just want to book me to play garage, but weirdly this feels fresher to me. It feels like a change-up, and because people don’t know this music, it’s not a revival, it’s an education.... It feels new and like it’s something that’s totally me, instead of all this “you did this and that” with people talking about garage and ‘Stone Cold’ and all that....
"I realised that I’m a 44-year-old man, who’s been around in music quite a while, and certain points that I’ve been involved with are as relevant as they ever were.... I’m doing exactly what I ever was doing behind the counter of those shops. I’m just doing it with the tracks from back then now. No matter how big YouTube gets, how big the internet gets, you can’t find every great track from the past: they’re not uploaded because there was only 50 copies, and only 25 got sold, 15 got given away and the rest went in somebody’s dustbin… or they are on YouTube but it’s crap quality, or whatever.
"You still need those people acting as filters on it, just like in the record shop. So that’s why I’m doing this series of nights, New Generation Music, playing these old tracks like they’re new. And it’s interesting and relevant to go back to go forward, because people bring me stuff, new producers, and I can go “ahhh, hold on a minute, that sounds like… hang on a minute.. this” and grab something from my collection and put it on, and yeah, it’s not far off something from 1991. Not saying “mehhh it’s been done before”, just giving them connections, maybe inspiring something else....
"... Because I watched every single record going over the counter, what I did was narrowed it right down, to what were the records that changed things or sounded different... So I might not have all the records, but I’ve got the right records! I’ve got my bumpy F-Com, Irma, Night Grooves, Groove On Records and of course all the Strictly Rhythm and R&S and all these things – the signature stuff, the roots tracks of what is happening now.
"And same for the jungle, drum’n'bass, [UK garage]… I’ve got the tunes you can hear in the records made now."
Oh yeah, and apparently he's got a collaboration in the works with the subject of the previous post - S. Gurley
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