Yeah.
Right. Club cable. The night's not done yet. Upstepping Elijah and
DJ Pioneer. Yeah. Yeah. Who knows this? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Right. Club cable.
Grime is very lucky to have someone like Elijah doing what he's doing because without butters, I think Grime would be very, very boring at the moment.
Yeah. The open source thing. That idea is ingenious. If I'd done that, I'd be like, I ain't doing that. But Elijah, let's do it.
I don't know. What other label can you holler at and just say kind of remix this? There ain't really nothing like that. There certainly wasn't anything like that when I was growing up.
You get people from even around the world, even around the UK, around the world. You're up everywhere. Like just sort of tapping into what you're doing.
Yeah. What happened is like, there's 17 that Vince having a kind of producing Academy where they bring in young people and a guy that's about 17.
He came up to us and he's like, oh, man, I really respect what you do. I really enjoy the show and stuff. I was like, shit. I'm like, when I was 17, the DJs that I lacked, most of them are still on Vince now.
So it's something that I would have said to my favorite DJ. And I thought he's 17, say next year he's 18. The first kind of raves you'll go to are butters raves.
And that's going to set out his whole expectation of what Raven is and what he wants to get out of clubbing. And I didn't want...
I want to put on something that people want to pay £10 for or want to pay £13 for. And then when they go somewhere else, they'll be like,
I thought Raven was supposed to be like how it was at Butters. And then it's not. And then...
Come here.
Anyone that's listened to us over the last year, I'd like to think that they've had an involvement in deciding the releases.
The reason why certain tunes come out is because of the feedback from them.
Like with I Am, it was on Trim's mixtape in March. And the feedback was really good. We gave him a beat in November or something.
And it came out on his mixtape in March. And it was still getting good feedback, still getting good plays.
People were asking about it still. And then it was like, let's just package this up, get out on vinyl.
We're all the same family, because in the day when I'm allowed to start a label, I was like, you sure, vinyl? Crazy.
But yeah, let's do it. And then look where we are. And he was right, because when I started leaving the country,
people were like, I can't wait for you to release some Butters and Harja and I put on... OK, vinyl does sell.
With TRC, he hadn't been kind of exposed before in the Grams scene. So it was like, alright, let's give it a try.
And on that EP has the track that eventually became Boo You Here and one of the tracks that eventually became I Am.
So it's probably one of our best signings, because we've used it in so many different ways.
And I always thought that I wanted the releases to kind of be open, maybe never ending.
Not to say you want to rinse your kind of sound out, but I never wanted to think, you know, it's closed once you've released something, it's done.
It's done and dusted. I always kind of had that, you know, like how Beyonce's song, she's got the song over Major Lazer's song.
That could easily happen. Like, Yasmin or KTB could vocal, orangeade.
Yeah, like, reversion. You laugh, but that's what's happening in a commercial world.
Not even just in the dance world, like, it's happened in a commercial world.
Like, it's happened with Kanye West and Jay-Z's vocal, like a Flux Pavilion beat that's been reversion.
You'd have a tune and the MCs would hear it on the radio, the DJ would play it and they would say, look, I want that tune, I want to vocal it.
And that's how most of the vocals came about, because they were hearing the tunes on the sets and they would vocal the big beats.
And then that kind of stopped happening when people did mixtapes, producers started making things specifically for them.
So it hadn't been tried and tested with the radio and the clubs and that kind of stuff.
But with BUYU, the instrumental was tried and tested, you know, it was space for six, seven months.
And it was kind of just crying out for vocal. And then when it happened, it was like, yeah, it makes complete sense.
It's like, it kind of got planned all along.
Yeah, the open-source thing. That idea is ingenious. If I'd done that, I'd have been like, nah, I ain't doing that.
But Elijah was like, let's do it. You know what, cool, because music's kind of more or less free.
I don't know anyone that's really bored unless they really support any artists.
So it's like, it's changed from buying an album, then going to see the artist free to getting the music free, which he shouldn't do, to come to the events and supporting.
So, you know, it's a brilliant move. Big for Elijah. That's what he's here for.
I'm just being forced to make the music, make sure the quality of the music is good.
So anytime Elijah's got tunes, and he's signing them, see, I work for his label as well.
I'm like, mmm, get him to mix that again, or give me the parts and I'll mix it.
You know, like, I don't know that record, but it could work.
You know what I mean? We're always each other's sick in ears, you know what I mean?
With Terry Danger, he was one of the first people that we spoke about when we wanted to start the label.
And, you know, one of the few people that I didn't think we were crazy.
And I said, you know, we want you to be first. And he said, all right, I'll make you some tunes over the phone.
And over the space of two days, he made the whole thing on the phone, literally.
The two tracks, bipolar and air bubble on the phone, which I thought was pretty cool.
And I thought, I always, I never kind of understood the kind of building process,
because I don't make beats myself. And that helped me understand so much.
He made them in November 2009, and they came out in March 2010.
People always, with Elijah and Skilliam, don't understand, like, what contribution ends where.
But, like, Skilliam was playing Wee Rhythm before I even clocked on to it.
Hello? Yeah. Yeah, I'm outside. I'm in inside.
Yeah, he clocked on to Wee Rhythm.
Yeah, but yeah, Skilliam, like, clocked on to Wee Rhythm probably nine months before I was even, like, phased by it.
You know, he's playing it in a set, and I'm like, okay, cool.
And I don't know what day I've got it, but I was like, oh, okay, I get it.
Main focus is always sort of grand, because I used to DJ with MCs, so it was a lot.
I had a lot of instrumentals already stacked up, because I had to sort of cater for them as well.
But it was tunes that I liked.
See, when it was sort of growing up, it was a London bass.
Even somebody in Midlands wouldn't know what's sort of going on in the grime scene at the time.
So, with Twitter and Facebook, even a blog, you get people from around the world tapping into what you're doing.
You don't even know who's listening, but when you get feedback, it's nice,
because you just know that we're touching those areas and stuff.
I'd always aim to be DJing.
Even though I was a producer, I always aimed to be DJing and doing this in clubs.
I saw, like I just explained to someone, I'd always seen, I think, actually, it was Joker.
I saw Joker on a big flyer in Southampton, and playing at one of the big clubs.
I was like, he's practically making grimes, so why can't I be that guy?
Let's get Serato, let's get some decks, and let's get started, let's do this.
Pick up the pieces and form something great again.
When I first started to speak to Elijah, I was just a guy from Southampton.
I just used to sit in his boxes at home making tunes on a dodgy PC.
But sending him tunes, him playing out in different countries,
playing across the UK, he obviously has the ear for what sounds good.
And he was able to, along with what I'm able to do,
he was able to give me the outsiders feedback that I needed.
It wasn't biased, it was telling me what I needed to do, what I didn't need to do.
Sometimes when you're so into what you do, you think it's big or everyone knows it.
And those kind of things, when we put out videos and promotion stuff,
and even the nights, you remember how small what we do is,
it's really niche, the internet makes things look a lot bigger than it is.
I'm still trying to keep all these things in place,
vinyl, club nights, t-shirts,
I'm still trying to make the physical aspect really important.
We could potentially do everything zeroes and ones,
but I don't have anything from not much, from my ear listening to music.
Five years of Graham, and I have a few CDs and records,
and scattered club nights, but hopefully when we get this thing going,
it can be regular releases and sick packaging, ridiculous.
We've only just stepped up out of the light of the last 18 months,
before there wasn't anyone, let me start again,
before there wasn't anyone that really did it from our scene,
set for all the dubstep producers.
All the Graham DJs, you don't really know them,
like your Logans, your Spirals, they're all coming up,
but there isn't much of, set for them, there isn't much personality,
so that's what we're bringing to the game,
but as an hard drive to get that personality, it helps anyway.
It's partly what I would want, if I was following butters,
so if I was listening to Radio, to Elijah and Skilliv on the Radio,
for two hours, and you hear these songs that are lost in time,
after a while, just having them, I don't think that's a big deal.
And other stuff that we do, if I was a producer,
I'd want to shot that remix in a trim song, why not?
Or remix in Royalty or TRC.
I don't know, that's what I would want if I was in their positions,
so I'm kind of stepping into the listener.
I always kind of do everything geared as me sitting behind the radio,
because I was that person three years ago.
