5 Facts / 5 Tracks: Deekline
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MADE Festival celebrates its 10-year milestone as the premier music and arts festival in the West Midlands. On Saturday, 3rd August, from midday to 11pm, a host of venues and outdoor spaces in The Digbeth Triangle in Birmingham, including one of the city’s most popular clubbing destinations, XOYO, will hold a spectacular birthday bash featuring a lineup that spans drum & bass, bass, UK rap, garage, house, disco, and more. Headliners include Bru-C, Dizzee Rascal, and Bou, supported by a diverse array of artists, including Ewan McVicar, K Motionz, Holy Goof B2B TS7, Jaguar Skills, Skepsis, A Little Sound, Window Kid, 24hr Garage Girls, 4AM Kru, Serum, La La, General Levy, Issey Cross, DJ Q and many more.
Weird Science, the independent promoters behind MADE, have grown the festival from its roots in Digbeth to a nationally recognised event, returning triumphantly to its spiritual home. Final release tickets are still available for MADE 2024 and can be purchased via www.made-festival.co.uk.
Ahead of his performance at MADE Festival this weekend, we welcome bass-heavy icon Deekline in this edition of 5 Facts / 5 Tracks.
Deekline is a renowned British producer and DJ who has contributed to breakbeat, breakstep, jungle, drum and bass, hardcore and garage music across decades. A leading light in the Hot Cakes/Jungle Cakes collective of producers, promoters and DJs, this bonafide bass music icon is currently experiencing a new lease of life as a legendary figure to a new generation of jungle, bass and garage artists.
5 Facts
Me and my friend Donna Dee got accused of stealing a car and kidnapped by a gangster in London around 1998/1999 when I was first having success with my garage tune “Don’t Smoke”. I had to talk him down – he had a gun and everything, it was terrifying.
Around the same time, I was DJing at the Marcus Garvey Centre in Nottingham, and one of the ravers threatened me with a knife to play my own tune (Don’t Smoke), clearly having no idea who I was and that I’d made it! That was one of the roughest raves I have ever been to.
I made “Don’t Smoke” aged just 17 after smoking an ounce of ganja. It’s a sample of a comedian called Marcus Brigstocke, who was doing a silly sketch for TV where he drops into a faux Jamaican accent – though everyone thinks it’s Jim Davison for some reason. The track changed my life, and we even made it onto Top of the Pops in the late 90s. There’s a scarily old YouTube video out there somewhere where I get introduced by Jamie Theakston. We linked up with Bradley from S Club 7 and got him so stoned he couldn’t perform properly.
I found out recently that Kurupt FM (People Just Do Nothing) were big Deekline fans and used to listen to me back in the early 2000s. I met up recently with DJ Steves at Glastonbury and we had a good chat.
Liam Howlett from The Prodigy once called me up about a bootleg I’d done of one of his tunes. I was prepared for a shellacking but he really liked the track and wanted to get in the studio. For some reason, we never quite made it happen, but you’d be surprised at people’s reactions to things.
5 Tracks
Bitin’ Back, aka Mickey Finn – She’s Breaking Up
This track was such an inspiration to me because it had this wicked, rolling break and an incredible, iconic sample from the Bionic Man TV show. It came out in the rave and hardcore era in 1991 but was so ahead of its time. It’s really a precursor to the whole breaks thing that happened in the late 90s and onwards. A seminal record.
Geto Boys – My Mind Playing Tricks on Me
This one’s all about the raw delivery of the vocals, the emotion. It’s a piece of storytelling in rap. At that time, again in 1991, they were really forward-thinking. The key sample is from Isaac Hayes’s ‘Hung Up on My Baby’, and it’s utilised so well. I would say it’s one of the greatest hip-hop songs ever written – I love the raw use of the sample, and when I was growing up in London in the 90s, it felt like you were a part of something underground and distinct when you listened to this music.
Silver Bullet – Bring Forth the Guillotine
The drum rhythm here is incredible, and I love the scratching. It’s that combination of hardcore and UK rap that does it – it’s just street music. I was just a little skateboarder in the late 80s when this came out and it opened up a new world for me of underground British music.
Studio 2 – Dirty Games
I’m not sure who made this (maybe early garage producers The Anthill Mob?) but it’s the perfect tipping point between hardcore and jungle, from 1993. I love that 150pm tempo, the jungly baseline and the samples. I used to play it at garage raves, slowed down to 140 and people would go berserk. A massive inspiration for our Hardcore Energy label.
Alex Reece – Basic Principles
This was the beginning of intelligent DNB in 1994. It was chilled but somehow worked on the dancefloor, engaging and captivating like nothing else from the time – and this was another time when some incredible music was coming out, and everything was moving so fast. Alex Reece never got the credit he deserved for building the early DNB scene.
Catch Deekline and many more, including Bru-C, Dizzee Rascal, and Bou, Ewan McVicar, K Motionz, Holy Goof B2B TS7, Jaguar Skills, Skepsis, A Little Sound, Window Kid, 24hr Garage Girls, 4AM Kru, Serum, La La, General Levy, Issey Cross and DJ Q at MADE Festival this weekend!
