#junk hardcore

I first heard about you back in 92 through your Junk Hardcore series. You produced this very distinctive and long running collection of mix tapes that are known for their graffiti covers and for featuring white label obscurities along side some of the bigger tracks from the time. Can you tell us about these tapes? How did you record and distribute them? The Junk tapes kind of started by accident, in 1991 I was buying rave records quite a lot and mixing them up on the decks. I made a tape, ran off some copies and gave them to the local record shop to sell… not really expecting them to. A few weeks later I bumped into the shop owner who said that all the tapes had sold and could he have more. This was a surprise so I gave him more and they kept selling. I looked for other shops to sell them through and built it up into a business, by 1992 the tapes were everywhere on the South Coast, in loads of shops from Bridport and Bristol all the way through to Brighton and Romford. I had other people doing the tape runs as well as myself, it was a full on operation. I would drive or get the train to the shops, pick up the money for the ones that had sold and re-stock. They sold loads until the big rave tape packs came out but I was before these. The money I made would go towards buying more tunes, I’d then make more volumes and buy more tape decks to copy them with, it was all done at home. I also sold the tapes outside raves at the end of the night. I got my tunes at the same time as travelling doing the tapes. I would go to London every Saturday selling tapes in Oxford Street and Carnaby Street dodging the police then afterwards I’d go record shopping. I would get loads of underground white labels.