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Who is Gilles Peterson?
Watching Gilles Peterson at his weekly London club residency
This! (formerly That's How It Is) at London's Bar Rumba nightspot,
you'd be forgiven for thinking he's just another guy rather
than a star DJ parading his home turf.
High fives and street talk are not on the agenda. Neither
are flash clothes. This unpretentious disposition has served
Peterson well: He's grown from a young teenager looking for
an avenue to indulge an awesome passion for music to his current
position as a record label boss, BBC National Radio One presenter,
internationally renowned club DJ—and now the creator
of his own Epic mix disc, INCredible Sound Of Gilles Peterson.
This is the way things happen with Peterson: It's an organic
business. Relaxed, down-to-earth and friendly, in a famously
bitchy industry, it's impossible to get anyone to say anything
bad about Gilles Peterson.
Peterson was born in Switzerland and grew up in South London.
His musical education began at 13, when a school friend introduced
him to soul music. Together they began scouring record shops
and going to hear DJs at daytime soul parties. Peterson became
obsessed with the soul scene and its DJs, flip-ping out over
records such as Candido's "Jingo" and being awestruck
by the acrobatics on the dance floor. "1979 was my 1988,"
Gilles says, with perceptible nostalgia in his voice.
Shortly thereafter, he began honing his DJ skills. Initially
his vinyl addiction inspired parental fury, forcing Gilles
to hide his new records in the garden until he could sneak
them passed his mum and up to his room. At age 15, he took
the first step towards emulating his idols by starting a weekly
14-and-under disco at a local Church.
Gilles was shocked to find he could earn more money playing
records by jazz-funk artists (Light Of The World, Maze, and
Level 42 among them) than from his weekend job on a fruit
and vegetable stall. By 1981, Peterson had formed his first
sou nd system with his friend Andrew—the imaginatively
titled G&A Disco—and begun an initial residency
at a local wine bar.
At this point, Gilles Peterson took up another hobby, one
that would have an equally important affect on his career.
Peterson also idolized radio DJs as well as dance floor DJs,
so he set up a DIY studio in his parent's garden shed where
he recorded tapes and transmitted them on the airwaves. Gilles'
parents were now supporting his activities: They'd help him
set up the illegal transmitter and then take Gilles and Andrew
to the local pub, where they1d tune into their own broadcasts
on a portable radio.
A phone box by the pub was used as an on-air office from which
to receive phone calls from listeners. "People would
call in to make dedications," says Peterson. "We
wanted people from funky soul tribes to call in, but we'd
get these calls from weird people!" At the time the pirate
radio community in the UK was tiny, and Peterson was soon
noticed by Invicta, then the largest pirate soul station in
London.
What Gilles calls the "nice little ego boost" of
becoming an Invicta DJ obscured the mundane tasks of formal
education, and he duly failed college. Meanwhile, he began
frequenting a record shop run by a DJ called Paul Murphy,
who had built a formidable reputation on London's jazz dance
scene.
"Paul Murphy was the number one DJ," says Gilles.
"He was doing the full-on dance bit, playing mad jazzy
shit. Murphy had a record shop stocking all these rare jazz
records. He was the only one with the knowledge. I was going
into the shop, making a nuisance of myself and being irri-tating.
It was by being an irritant that I got myself a gig."
That gig turned out to be a major break. Paul Murphy gave
Gilles his spot when the former was recruited by a more upscale
venue...where Murphy's crowd was soon decimated by an overly
restrictive dress code. This left the predominantly Black
elite of London's dance community, such as the IDJ (I Dance
Jazz) posse, to return to Murphy's former haunt to dance to
the music of Murphy's protigi, Gilles Peterson.
Gille s thus found himself at the hub of London's jazz dance
community, playing an ever more inventive and creative mix
of musical styles to dancers who—by combining jazz steps
with techniques from reggae, hip hop and even ballet—were
mapping out the future movements of Clubland.
In 1985, Peterson began to release records, inaugurating a
series of compilation records called "Jazz Juice"
and working with such seminal US labels as Blue Note, Prestige
and Riverside. He worked at another pirate radio stations
until he moved to BBC Radio London with a show called "Mad
On Jazz." Gilles left Radio London to found his own pirate
station, K Jazz, which he later shut down in the face of threats
from gangsters at a rival pirate.
In 1986 Peterson started a regular Sunday afternoon club at
Dingwalls, a dank corridor of a venue squeezed onto the corner
of Camden Lock in north London. This club became his most
successful venture to date: It ran for seven years and inspired
a succession of records, labels, DJs and bands—including
New York's Giant Step, who have now released INCredible Sound
Of Gilles Peterson through their deal with Epic Records.
In 1993 Peterson and James Lavelle (head of Mo Wax records)
launched a new club, dubbed "That's How It Is."
One of the club's first classics was "NuYorican Soul"
a/k/a "The Nervous Track," a bizarre but brilliant
mutation of jazz and Latin-inflected house by Masters At Work
(actually the duo of "Little" Louie Vega and Kenny
"Dope" Gonzalez). The success of this re-cording
led to a joint effort by Talkin' Loud in UK and Giant Step
Records in US to release the 1997 album NuYorican Soul, which
garnered critical acclaim worldwide and appealed as much to
house fans as to jazz enthusiasts.
In addition to running his record label, Gilles Peterson's
relentless schedule has included regu-lar club nights throughout
Europe and the rest of the world. His Spring 2000 tour of
the US drew enthusiastic crowds who were blown away by Gilles'
ability to blend diverse styles of music in a heady, addictive,
and emotional groove. His weekly show on BBC Radio One is
one of the most popular shows on the internet, and is also
broadcast on LA and Philadelphia airwaves. His Talkin' Loud
label has come to represent an alternative side of dance music,
offering everything from the more musical side of house (Masters
At Work) to drum 'n' bass (Roni Size & Reprazent) to two-step
(MJ Cole).
Peterson's ability to move and change with the times continues
to earn him wide respect: He's one of those DJs who can have
you constantly wondering "F**k me, where did that come
from?" As Felix Buxton of Basement Jaxx said: "A
lot of DJs think too safely. Gilles Peterson's always played
amazing music, from all corners of the globe, and he's always
finding the new music."
Horizon-broad and impossible to pigeon hole, INCredible Sound
of Gilles Peterson perfectly captures the intrepid DJ's spirit
of fun and musical mixture, taking listeners on a journey
by DJ of the most enthralling kind. Bounding from genre to
genre and generation to generation, Gilles Peterson has created
a remarkable musical document: a compilation of sounds and
moments that display little outward similarity, but, as you'll
discover, share the same soul. INCredible!
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