“I actually got my degree in Speed Garage” - CONCRETE interviews: DISTA
A month ago, we’ve hosted our last party at Flex Cafe and we were blessed by having a special guest all the way from Sheffield, England - Speed Garage Head and “Urban Sprawl” Boss Gavin “Dista” Douglas. Prior to his smashing set later that night, we sat down with him and had a little chat about his beginnings, his thoughts on the future of Garage and what it takes to establish a successful music label.
CONCRETE: Introduce yourself.
Dista: I’m Gavin „Dista“ Douglas, 34 years young, label executive for Urban Sprawl and Dyslexic Records, from Sheffield, England.
CONCRETE: How was your first experience with electronic music, especially Garage?
Dista: My first experience? I guess when it first started at school, I was into rock music and then somebody gave me a tape, a classic called „Dreadbass“. Some really, really classic jungle on there and after I heard that tape I never looked back. It totally changed me personally, I cut my hair, changed my clothes, got new friends and I think even know the style of music I produce is still heavily influenced by that very first tape.
CONCRETE: So you are producing Jungle influenced Garage is that correct?
CONCRETE: Right, so how has the genre Garage in your eyes evolved from when it first started in the 90s to now?
Dista: That‘s a long story. *laughs* Well when it started, that music that I fell in love with was called speed garage and that grew out of Jungle and D‘n‘B because originally, Garage was imported from the U.S. and it was a „sunday scene“ because nightclubs would have D’n‘B or rave parties on the weekends and garage was just a sunday place to go to come down after all the drugs you did on the weekend. So they tried to keep the vibe uplifting and keep everyone dancing. When UK producers started writing garage, it still sounded very similar to the stuff from the U.S such as Masters at Work, Todd Edwards and so on. But when the D’n‘B and Jungle producers started writing garage as well they took their influences with them by inducing reggae, the reggae basslines especially. That’s how Speed Garage was born.
CONCRETE: So it took two routes? One more leaned towards the US side of garage: chilled out vibes and a bit slower and the other one being more influenced by the UK sounds, a bit faster paced and rougher?
CONCRETE: So when did you decide to produce tunes yourself?
Dista: Let me think… Well, I was djing a lot since I was very young, 14 or 15. And a friend of mine had a playstation with that program [Codemasters Music Maker] on. He was my best mate so we would always DJ together. One time he would come round my house and show me tracks that he did himself on his playstation and I guess I was jealous and thought „What the fuck, man!“. We would always DJ together and now suddenly he’s better than me because he could produce as well and I didn‘t want him to get a lot better than me so I went ahead and enrolled in a college course to do music production. It was a 2 year course learning with an AKAI s5000 and ROLAND JV 1080, very basic equipment but I got obsessed with it. The lessons might have only been 2 hours a week but I went there 30 hours every week, every session I could get, but my music still wasn‘t very good.
CONCRETE: But you have found your passion!
Dista: Yeah, I did and it got me into university, where I got my degree in music production. I actually got my degree in speed garage (laughs). I remember going to the university and the teacher asking me: „What do you want to learn from the course?“And I said, „I just want to get my first vinyl release of good speed garage.““Well, you are not going to learn that here“, the teacher replied. But I enrolled anyway and I think a lot of the theory I learned at Uni wasn‘t helpful but learning to work with new programs to emulate certain sounds, especially the sounds of old garage and jungle records, as well as sound design helped me a lot. And my final thesis which I was graded upon to finish the course and find out how good you are was entitled: „How to release a successful speed garage record“. While everybody else handed in their final work on CD, I handed in a vinyl, which was 1 of 500 copies and it was the first record I ever made. It was my „I‘ve Got The Power“ Remix and it sold out in only 2 months so I felt like I did actually get my degree in speed garage and the teacher was wrong.
CONCRETE: You certainly proved him wrong. Coming out of university and putting out your first record yourself basically was the start. Did you already have your label at the time or did you put it out yourself out of your own pocket?
Dista: This was around 2005/2006, I don‘t think digital labels were a thing back then really.
CONCRETE: So you just went to a shop and asked them to put out your vinyl?
Dista: It actually happened because I would send my tracks to all the big speed garage labels like Nocturnal, Echo, Reflective,... and nobody was interested in releasing it for me so I had to find a way to release it myself so it was sort of finding out first of all where to get them pressed and how to file needed to be, tech specs, compression, etc., so it was quite a learning process and quite an investment as well. Because you couldn‘t press less than 500 records, that was the minimum amount. So if nobody would have bought it, it would have been a disaster for me.
CONCRETE: But everything turned out to be fine, right?
Dista: Yeah, there was a record shop in Sheffield called Reflex and in there they had a music studio upstairs and all the classic bass line house records coming out of Sheffield were all written at that record shop, people like Veteran for example. So I would go to the shop and show them my stuff like, „Hey listen to this, its my new thing“. And every few weeks I would go in there but they would always say something like „Nah it‘s not good enough“ and finally, after going in there probably a 100 times, he finally gave in and agreed to release a track for me, which was my second record, Dyslexic Dubs Vol. 2. but he didn‘t actually know that I had done my own press. When he agreed to release my song it took him a year from him saying he‘d release it to it actually coming into the shop because they had so many other releases coming out from his own label. So after a couple of months, I thought he‘s not going to release it at all, so I went ahead and pressed 2 different songs myself and when I went back in a year later and I gave him my vinyl record saying „This is my new one.“ He thought „Shit, has he pressed the same songs that I was going to release?“ So there was a moment when we thought we had just pressed a 1000 copies of the same song but luckily those were different tunes. And this is how my own label first started.
CONCRETE: How big is the Garage scene in sheffield or the UK in general? Here in Vienna, it is more of a niche thing. Could it compare to other genre parties like Dubstep or house or is it just a really something for the people who are into the underground scene?
Dista: That‘s a difficult one because the biggest sound in the UK at the moment is the Deep House sound but I think we all know that this actually garage sound so you could say that Garage is the number one sound thats getting played at the clubs right now, except it is not called Garage anymore, it is called Deep House or Jackin’ or all these other sub genres. And about 90% of all the clubs in the UK are playing this sound at the moment. All that organ bass, 4x4 drums and syncopated drums/melodies as well as funky garage swung drums. I think that is what separates garage from house: the drums.
CONCRETE: I personally think that Garage has a little bit more spice in it, concerning the hi-hats and fills, compared to House. Do you think that there is still a scene for the original UK Garage though?
Dista: Yeah I think so in London, definitely down south. There‘s are lot of producers that produce that old school sound but I don‘t think they are having anywhere near as much as exposure as the artists that are chasing in on the new sound like the Disclosure type Garage. Even all the old school producers like Artful Dodger, Grant Nelson, those are all legendary Garage producers but if you listen to stuff the produce now... Is it still Garage or is it Deep House? I don‘t know man...
CONCRETE: Speaking of Disclosure. The UK Bass scene has received quite as we all noticed and acts like disclosure are getting heavy radio support, playing headline acts at festivals all over the world. For example, you hear Skepta collaborating with Kanye West, which will put Grime on the world map sooner or later. How do you feel about this? Do you think that this will ruin it for the underground scene or that it will open the doors for a wider audience to listen and dig deeper into underground genres such as grime?
Dista: I guess there‘s two sides to the coin. Because the exposure is good in the way that it will introduce the sound to people who perhaps otherwise wouldn‘t have known about it and maybe when they hear it , it will encourage them to look back and find out about the origins of where these sounds come from and maybe take a deeper interest in the real sound of the underground. But then on the flip side I know from past experience e.g. with garage: It tends to be a vicious circle - starting off from the underground and when it becomes commercial the whole scene tends to implode and a new type of sound is born and it all starts over again from the underground so I guess thats another good thing really, it‘s just sad that when anything becomes commercial it loses all its credibility an as soon as something becomes „common knowledge“ it stops being „cool“ and if you try to keep a young audience they will move on to something else.
CONCRETE: So your label is trying to focus on young producers who are trying to come up in the scene?
Dista: Yes and no. I mean we are always looking for new talent but it is a very niche sound after all so it‘s difficult to find people who still write old school Speed Garage. But there are some and we just have to keep looking. We have producers from Russia writing some good stuff, Poland, Czech Republic, US, of course the UK and you guys (laughs).
CONCRETE: Are these producers younger people or are generally a bit older and more experienced?
Dista: Generally older, a lot of the people who were there the first time around.
CONCRETE: Who is your favorite artist to listen to right now?
Dista: I really like Special Request aka Paul Woolford at the moment. Really rough jungle garage cross over. Lots of distorted breaks, lots of amen breaks and reggae vocals, really good stuff.
CONCRETE: What were your top 3 favorite tracks of the last year?
Tessela - Hackney Parrot (Special Request Remix)
Mella Dee - Helter Skelta
CONCRETE: What‘s your favourite synth of all time?
Dista: Man I don’t really use much external equipment, to be honest I still really love the AKAI s5000 sampler. (laughs) Yeah I‘m a sample guy, I don‘t really use many VSTs or anything like that most of what I use are samples. I find it to be a much quicker way to work, you don’t get held up. I know people say „You are losing out on sound quality, you don‘t have the same range in the octaves, etc. but I think especially as I have seen with the AKAI s5000: The technology that restricts you, forces you to be more creative. And sampling obviously has a rich history in hip hop and obviously in dance music as well. I‘m not ashamed to say that I don‘t use very many synths or instruments, everything I do is a sample and if you don‘t like it....And the great thing about the AKAI as well was that you only had 10 seconds of sampling time so what producers would do is: Play the record at the wrong speed, playing it really fast and then slow it down in the sampler so they had 20 instead of 10 seconds, but of course the bit rate would be very low, making it sound very rough. Just imagine only having 10 seconds of sample time man, and having to put together a whole track with it.
CONCRETE: Who was your biggest inspiration music wise?
Dista: Jeremy Silvester, Wildcat, Dreadbass (tape), MJ Cole obviously. He’s (MJ) classically trained as well, won an award for his musical skills as well, so really can‘t fuck with his chord progressions, this guy is a genius.
CONCRETE: Are there any special VSTs you like to use or just everything that comes with your DAW?
Dista: Nothing special, I use everything that is already on board.
CONCRETE: What DAWs do you use?
CONCRETE: What advice do you have for young and upcoming artist/producers in general?
Dista: Don‘t be afraid to make mistakes. It is better to spend your time and maybe write one tune a week or if you can 2 tunes a week rather than spend 4 weeks on one track because that is the quicker way to learn in my opinion, so I would recommend not to become to focused on one element or one part for too long. Try to keep moving all the time. This is the style Garage was born out of. All those classic tracks that you know from the 90s were thrown together in just a few hours because back then we didn‘t really have home studios and studio time was expensive so these guys would go in and try and write a tune in 24 hours, or even better, 4 tunes, and that kind of gave Garage that minimal element and also it‘s roughness. It‘s not trying to be particularly excellent sound-wise but if it‘s got a vibe, it‘s got a certain flow and if you wanna write good garage or good music in general that‘s the best way to go in my opinion by just attacking it, throwing yourself in there and doing stuff that‘s experimental. And in the end these are the best tracks, aren‘t they. The ones that you remember have got something in them that‘s special, that‘s different and that you perhaps don‘t know how to do yourself.
Follow Dista and his imprint Urban Sprawl on Soundcloud.
