For a DJ, I dont do many mixes...But I'm working on it

So my life is pretty hectic in my crazy little mind. It's like I'm too busy to do anything but in reality... my flat is comfortable and I enjoy the silence.

But the other day, after my consignment of new CDs I thought id make a mix for practice.

Uploaded to the ever growing mixcloud site, you can stream and tell all your buddies about me

Uk Garage Todd Edwards/Tuff Jam/New Horizons Mix by Rayjuss on Mixcloud

Hit that play button!!

Dubplate Drama - Season 1, Episode 5 - Team Sports

Side A - B4 Its Ova produced by Ray Juss

This was another track I made on a Saturday afternoon. I had the parts of this knocking around for a while. The vocal came from an RnB acapella record someone had left round my house. Interested in finding it to see what it sounds like now. The other obvious sample of you ever followed UK Garage is the 'Wookie' Organ on top of the bass line. Later found out it was a stock sound from the Roland JV sound module. I spent a lot of time working the vocal chops into a whole new song. Works for me.



Side B1 - Slugger produced by Greedykid

Slugger is one of those tracks that if I ever lost it, I would be deeply upset. My ears dont really tollerate rubbish music and I try to stay impartial to all the music we have made. I wasnt one for cutting crap tunes. Hence the reason only a few other tracks make it into dubplate drama. But to think, this track was made by a 15 year old almost a decade ago is scary. The break downs, sparse drums, atmospheric element to the track. It could be early dubstep, it could be a branch of UK Garage. You could even get wanky and throw IDM at it. Whatever you want, Slugger (and its better never to cut remix Slugger Unleashed) will remain a Brokenhomes classic.



Side B2 - Who's Next? produced by Greedykid

You are probably aware of Benga's track 26 Bass lines. Where the tracks bass riff changes every 8 bars?? Well this was of the same ilk, but for MCs. The MCing element was just becoming prevalent in UK Garage with the likes of The Heartless Crew from North London, The Pay As You Go Crew from East and North West's very own BVC (Black Vinyl Crew). Every 16 bars, a new MC gets called in and given a different bass line. An almost hip hop/grime/garage track.

Dubplate Drama - Season 1, Episode 4 - The toy that spoke the future?

Side A - Intro Vol 2 produced by Ray Juss

Intro dub plates were made very very famous in garage by DJ EZ, this record alone could make 2000 people scream very loudly. As these stories are not in chronological order (obviously, this is vol 2) my second intro dub plate was much different from my first. The track spells out my DJ name at the time, which was Outraygeous. I sampled the letters from an actual Speak and Spell that a friend lent me. Some of those letter have been dropped from my name now. DJ names sound like super hero names to me so I tried to get one as close to day job name of a super hero.. Tony Starks, Clark Kent, Bruce Banner... you get my drift.
Intro 2 took a 4x4 route again and was more of a pumping track. If you listen really carefully you can hear a camera shutter sound inside the beat. Yeah, I had a lot of time on my hands back then. There was also an acapella of the spelling of my name at the end of the track which I used as a DJ tool now and again.



Side B - Impossible to Belive (sp) produced by Ray Juss

Impossible to Belive or Believe as its meant to be was probably a bit out there once again. Big tracks around this time was like Sweet Female Attitude - Flowers and soft 'girly garage' as it was known on the pirates. I, wasn't into that... at all. So, I made a track with the sound of someone walking alone and the sickest most droniest bass line I could find. I once played this at a pub and the bass was so loud from the track, the speaker stack fell over. Wobbly bass lines are all the rage now.

Creation date of this track? End of 2001 early 2002, maybe I could see the future?

Dubplate Drama - Season 1, Episode 3 - Like a 4x4 Truck

Side A - Roofer produced by Philosopha

This weeks episode is a single sided affair. The deal with cutting dubs at Music House (where this one was done) was if you paid your £25, you were paying for the actual plate so you could come back and get the other side cut when you needed to. I never got anything cut on the other side...

Before Louis came up with the name Greedykid, he was making tracks under the moniker Philosipha. I cannot for the life of me remember where this name came from but, it didn't stick.

This is a rare excursion into the 4x4 sound for Louis, heavily shuffled beats made once again on the decrepit laptop that is now languishing in the top shed under all of Mom's junk. This track got its first spin on Lush FM 107.6 when I had Laze Breaks hosting the show. I'm sure my brother told his friends whilst he was at school that his music was going to be played.
This one is tricky to mix because of the potential 'over shuffle' but still a classic in every way.

Dubplate Drama - Season 1, Episode 2 - Bring 'em in

Side A - Jeopardy produced by Greedykid

Louis/Greedykid/Brokenhomes V2.0 or whatever name he goes by now features for the first time here. He was about 14/15 when he made this track using an old laptop that was given to my mom by our family friend Tommy. The laptop was so old that it only had a 6GB hard drive. That's retro! When this track was only a few tracks coming out that used a distorted 808 as a bass line. Also the use of 'live' drums was just coming into the garage scene with the likes of DJ Zinc starting the whole 'breakbeat garage' sound and the Bingo Label. As you can tell from the start of this track, I've played it a good few times. One of my favourite Greedykid beats.



Side B1 - Slimey produced by V2G

Now Slimey was made by one of the best MCs out of North West London, Versa. Not only did Vers now how to command a dance, he was pretty nifty on the beats. We would spend hours making stuff on my MPC back in the day. He would bring round cassettes of samples we had found and we would create proto grime tracks. Its a shame that Serato and CDJs were not around back then. Slimey wasn't made at my studio but when Versa played me that track it was like..'I'm cutting that!' The drums bang, just a shame the bass line didn't hold up to well on the dubplate.



Side B2 - Musical produced by Ray Juss

Round this time there was a fad for beat less tracks. It all stemmed from the 'devils mix' of Eskimo by Wiley, where a strong riff could stand out and be a tool for the MCs to really go in on a track. My personal favourite was the creeper bass mix. A friend of mine had it on plate but only because the guy at the cutting house let him cut a copy. You see the person cutting the tunes would sometimes be left the CDs of 'masters' and it was down to him if he wanted to share them. More times, they would. The sample for Musical was picked up off a library music CD I picked up in my local cash converters. Its just a quick loop and I used it as a tool for switching between tracks. Its pretty effective.