The musical journey of U2R

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U2R came from the ashes of Nogozone and unintentionally became a solo project.

Apart from a couple of outings as an alias as remixer on the last Nogozone recordings, the first U2R track was ‘Hizee’, an experiment to megamix tracks seamlessly into an album. This was the pilot for it but the idea didn’t really come together but it had some good elements. This was followed by ‘More’, a C&C music factory inspired production feating vocal samples from a Rona vocal session. It still suffered from poor arrangement but it was heading in the right direction and was pretty much the last tracks recorded at the complex.

I had established a couple of DJ residencies in Colchester and Ipswich and hosted successful nights playing largely commercial dance, house and trance with famed soulful house warm-ups. These warm-ups were reflected in my music production which became far less commercial.

‘Groove me baby’ was the first Foundation Street recording, made in the new studio located 30ft underground within the foundations of a ruined monastery. I wasn’t making music for record companies any more, it was for my club audiences when DJing and for myself. My motivation was no longer a record deal and a meeting with head of A&R at BMG records gave me a clear understanding. Record companies weren’t ever interested in discovering new talent, they were only in it to buy out existing or regionally established talent. I was asked why I should be signed when I could go to the bank, get a loan and put the tunes out myself. This was meant as a sarcasm but made sense. 6 months later I had a pressing and distribution deal on the table with 500 white labels being sold via independents and HMV. Ironically I had to buy my first 12″ in HMV Ipswich as the distributor forgot to post me a copy and then disappeared with the proceeds.

Tracks like ‘Feel that groove’ were created overnight as a response to the vibe of a club night. On that track I kept using up all the available voices on the sampler which would then drop hi hats but it didn’t matter because I had to capture the moment while I was still buzzing (and/or drunk) and didn’t have time for the technicals. Rich was more into trance and didn’t really connect with house but did collaborate on ‘Don’t wanna hurt you’ and I only really did final mixdown on the ‘Just play the music’ remix which was based on a Hardfloor remix.

Acapellas were becoming more available and as I was producing tracks for club nights and not for release it was liberating not to have to spend hours pitching a dodgy vocal note by note, manually by sampler and Atari (You boys with autotune have no idea !). As it was never going to be performed live, sampling wasn’t an issue so tracks like ‘Don’t wanna hurt you’ were now possible.

UK Garage

Club DJ’ing brought me into contact with Danny J, a highly successful Garage DJ who’s day job was in a local underground record store. Danny was extremely in tune with the underground music scene and at the time, UK Garage was being dubbed Speed Garage. I was already producing quite skippy house music and loved the soulful and deep house from Strictly Rhythm and Subliminal Records and it wasn’t a giant leap into producing quality UK garage by U2R with the assistance of Danny as co-producer.

Influences were coming from places such as Peppermint Jam, Jazz and Groove, Grant Nelson and of course our UK underground garage peers such as Todd Edwards and Ramsey and Fen. We were creating the scene rather than jumping on a bandwagon. Dannys record shop contacts soon led to vinyl releases through underground distributors under our own label U2R Records.

Unfortunately, as is the norm, when pay day came around, our distributors did a runner with our money.

I still had a need to produce house music and Danny agreed to be involved with a new label set up for this purpose under the name ‘Pliable Records’. The first release was a complete mix package called ‘Make you feel’. For the first time external remixers were pressed into service including Conan Manchester now of Liquid People fame and Macca D who produced the original ‘Out of my head’ piano anthem which was stolen by a front act under the name Maradonna. Our distributor thought it was open season to push one of their acts under our label name and branding following the first strong release and our relationship came to an abrupt halt.

Potentially our biggest break was when we produced a 2 step garage remix/bootleg of Redhead Kingpin’s – Do the right thing. Although I say it myself, this was a master stroke and the distributors we were with at the time knew this. Many distributors had their own studios and agenda at that time as did ours and our bootleg release was put back 2 weeks without explanation. The reason was simple, they decided to steal our idea and produce their own bootleg version which they released whilst holding ours back. The buzz we had created and deserved was lost to a sub-standard waste of vinyl. The irony of it was that we had to pass the doorstep of Virgin Records, the owner of the record we were bootlegging, on the way to our distributor. If we’d knocked on their door they’d have probably poured the champagne for us there and then.

This was pretty much the final straw for me in 1998 having moved the studio yet again above a nearby drum and bass record store. With rent to pay and having been ripped off too many times I decided this wasn’t fun any more and remained DJ’ing for another year until finally falling victim to sobriety by having stop drinking Redbull and Vodkas by raging heartburn. When you’re sober, DJ’ing does boil down to no more than making 2 records play at the same speed.

There is of course much more detail between the lines of this story and I’ve left out the incriminating details. I will fire up Ableton at some point and produce a ‘blinder’ but it will only be for the fun of doing it and I’ll definitely miss playing my own music out to an ecstatic crowd on a huge sound sytem shouting at the top of my lungs ‘put your hands in the air !’

I might get my hands on a few more masters – if I do, they’ll get posted here.

All productions copyright Unique2Rhythm / Chris Woods, where applicable, Richard Kersey and or in the case of remixes, their respective copyright holders.