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 “TCR has always been something that eats up money, so it’s always been pretty scary in that you’re putting a lot of work into something that actually doesn’t make money; in fact, running the label probably loses money.”
Chatting down the line from his London headquarters, breaks pioneer Rennie Pilgrim is the first to admit sustaining his acclaimed breaks label TCR has always been about passion rather than profit, though 100 releases down the line, he’s as committed and as solvent as ever.
“My costs are less than for someone else running a label, because as well as owning it, I’m TCR’s main artist and I also DJ,“ he explains, “But really it’s been my DJing that’s always supported the label financially, if you took away DJing from the equation the label wouldn’t exist.”
Twelve years on, both Rennie’s DJing career and the label itself very much exist, with TCR celebrating its hundredth release this month, in the shape of a double CD ‘Greatest Hit’s compilation album; Volume 1, comprising carefully selected TCR releases.
“Originally we thought ‘This is impossible’ because how do you choose which are the best or most important tracks? But then we thought, actually we’ll do a Volume Two, so it’s not quite so crucial for Volume 1,” says Rennie.
“So the selection on Volume 1 is a mixture of tracks that are hard to find now combined with our favourites since the label started. We were conscious that lots of new people have got into breaks in the last few years, so we were definitely thinking ‘if you were new to breaks, you’d probably really like these and you can’t get them’, but with a view to us doing Volume two, Volume three and Volume four.
“I also hate to admit it but there were quite a few tunes for which we couldn’t find the masters for in the time we had available,” he confesses, “because keeping of vital production masters wasn’t quite so diligent a few years ago, shall we say?”
Cutting his musical teeth in the 80s playing saxophone and keyboards at studio sessions arranged by his jazz trumpeter father, Rennie dived headlong into acid house early on, teaming up with DJ Ellis Dee to form hardcore band Rhythm Section in the early 90s. At the time, rave’s second big wave was sweeping across the UK and Rhythm Section rapidly found themselves at the forefront of the trend, headlining parties alongside fellow up and coming bands including The Prodigy, Bizarre Inc and Moby. And with Rene funding himself from his music, full time, he received the whole-hearted and enthusiastic backing from his Dad.
“He would have loved to have earned a living doing music, and I think for him, doing jazz full time was not something he could do,” says Rennie. “In fact, 99.9% of people couldn’t survive just through jazz, so when he saw me start to make a living out of it, he thought that was great.”
“He died before things took off more for me, but he found it highly amusing in the rave days that part of our PA would consist of me triggering a sample of people cheering, which would then make the crowd cheer,” he recalled. “It was a Pavlovian kind of thing. He found that funny. It was great.”
Nowadays, Rennie’s own kids listen to his stuff following TCR releases with interest, he says,
“I think they do, anyway,” he chuckles, “Rather like clubbers on drugs, I think they like stupid noises, so it’s obviously not an age thing.”
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): How significant a milestone is this new release for TCR?
Rennie Pilgrem: “I suppose it is fairly significant because I don’t think any other breaks labels reached that number of releases, so it’s twelve years of twelve inch stuff, so it does feel like quite a milestone.”
Skrufff: Did you expect the label to go this far when you started?
Rennie Pilgrem: “No. Not at all. It originally started as a vehicle for me to put out my own stuff and then I was in another band called ‘Philadelphia Blunts’ and we got signed to a major and then I started getting other people’s stuff in there as well, but originally it was just my own pet thing, so obviously it’s grown into doing one release a month pretty much every month. So no, it definitely wasn’t something I thought about at the time.”
Skrufff: The compilation CD is being packaged as a ‘Greatest Hits’, how did you decide which tracks went on there?
Rennie Pilgrem: “Our first though was that it was impossible because how do you choose which are the best or most important tracks? but then we thought, actually we’ll do a volume two, so it’s not quite so crucial. The selection is a mixture of the more obvious releases plus one that are hard to get now. A lot of new people have got into breaks in the last few years, so we were thinking about them, but also about what can go on volume two, volume three and volume four – because we’ve got so much material.
Skrufff: I read in an interview that you had big commercial success in the early 90s with Coming On Strong, but failed to go Top 40 because you didn’t know about bar codes, does it get easier with experience?
Rennie Pilgrem: “No, not at all. We are at a massively crucial point now businesswise, where music has never changed so much. You’ve got the whole download thing starting to happen, whereas for the last ten years, people who were dancing to this music in clubs have had no way of actually getting the music. Up until recently, the only people getting it full length 12 inch versions were DJs, because most of the mixes didn’t end up on artist albums or if they were on DJ compilations, you’d only hear 3 minutes of the mix.
Then another factor is that dance music is no longer flavour of the month, whereas in many ways it was the flavour of the whole of the last decade. Then on the upside, labels are now able to make tunes put them up on sites within days and be very flexible on pricing and all kinds of other things. These are exciting times but we’re going through massive changes for sure.”
Skrufff: How much has the breaks scene genuinely transformed in the last two years?
Rennie Pilgrem: “It has changed a lot in that there are a lot more clubs playing it and the genre has come out of the backroom and is main room material. There are a lot of big DJs from the house world who will play breaks in their sets these days and some who aren’t known for breaks but genuinely like DJing it. I’ve seen Lisa Lashes play a DJ set in Holland at Dance Valley recently and she loved it and she was great as well.
Skrufff: how does it compare to when that Nu Skool breaks thing kicked off in the mid 90s?
Rennie Pilgrem: “When we started with that nu skool thing, we had loads of media coverage but at the time it was tiny scene that was a bit blokey and a bit techy. In reality that was all hype, whereas today the scene has been steadily growing and there are so many different flavours that breaks is now a genre that encompasses almost any style of dance music you can think of. You’ve got trancey stuff, electro -y stuff, funky stuff, stuff that’s more drum and bassy. It’s such a mixture that it genuinely has started to attract a lot of clubbers, and they are very clued up as well. Breaks audiences tend to know about house, techno and drum & bass and are often older and more knowledgable. It genuinely has become the biggest it’s been for probably ten years, or since big beat.”
Skrufff: How did you first get involved in rave culture in the early 90s?
Rennie Pilgrem: “Really out of the band that I was in, Rhythm Section. We were performing most weekends at the raves, and so I went from really not knowing anything about the club scene and doing demos that were fairly average house tunes, to getting into the early breaks scene and then us becoming a main player in band terms, as Rhythm Section. I saw the rave transform from being an underground amazing thing, to coming full circle to being commercial with shit sounds and shit drugs and pretty much saw the whole circle. For me it was fantastic, because it was the big explosion of this underground dance, I suppose it was the second wave after acid house when it exploded even more, so it was obviously an amazing experience with incredible crowds and, well, fucked up drugs experiences really.”
Skrufff: Before that had you set out to make a living as a musician?
Rennie Pilgrem: “I was doing music before the rave thing, mainly as a hobby, though a fairly serious hobby. I met a DJ called LSD and he encouraged me to make that jump from recording demos and sending them to record companies, to cutting and pressing our own copies and selling them ourselves. Once you do that you become a semi-professional musician effectively and that’s how it started.”
Skrufff: Has it been an easy path to stay in music all this time?
Rennie Pilgrem: “No. I think it’s a struggle, you’ve got to be pretty dedicated and diligent to stay on top of what’s going on in music. I think if you opted out of dance music for a couple of years, you’d be very out of touch because it moves so fast. For me DJing is the way you keep on top of what’s going on musically. If you’re running a label and making dance music, even though you want to do your own thing you have to know what else is out there, apart from anything else, the good stuff will influence you..”
Skrufff: Your old collaborator Adam Freeland was talking about the need for showboating as a DJ these days, how much would you agree?
Rennie Pilgrem: “Adam’s right and he’s also very good at showboating though for me it’s not something that comes naturally and my way round that is to either work with Chickaboo who is an MC who then becomes the focal point for the crowd. I don’t know whether you need to showboat but if you do, the crowds like it, otherwise all they see is someone putting on records, or someone just standing in front of an unidentified lap top or black boxes and not doing a lot.
For me personally, if there’s a fantastic crowd you feed off each other and you can get really into it but can’t pretend that I’m having a great time if I’m not, even if it then looks like you are not putting on a show. It’s an odd one, because I know it’s an art form to DJing, but it’s not like you are playing an instrument or making music. At the end of the day you’re putting on other people’s tunes, so there’s only so much leaping around I think that’s valid before it becomes a bit like an act.”
Skrufff: DJs like Sasha and Paul Van Dyk are raving about Ableton over CDs and vinyl, are you a convert?
Rennie Pilgrem: “I use it for our live stuff but only for electronic parts that would be impossible to perform live and I also probably did the first ever mix album with it about four years ago, for Perfecto. I think it’s really important for people to still play vinyl- not just vinyl but in addition to CDs and whatever digital system it is. One of the reasons DJs are stopping using vinyl is because they don’t like lugging it around,which when you think how money higher echelon DJs get paid, isn’t a good enough excuse.
I think it’s vital to keep vinyl in there, because otherwise people will forget how important it is. It has the best sound without a doubt, because it’s analogue, it’s warmer, it’s got more of a bottom end. Ableton is fantastic, I write stuff with it, I’ll use it in the live shows and I’ve used it occasionally alongside dj’ing, but I think vinyl should absolutely be in the mix. I’ve just finished a tour of Australia and quite a lot of people and promoters told me they were pleased I hadn’t just been playing CDs because they would have felt a bit cheated. I can see what they mean- with CDs and digital you end up with someone standing there in front of a couple of black boxes.
Vinyl should be in there because physically it’s more exciting and it sounds better and I think it’s really important to keep it going. Otherwise we’ll be the generation of DJ that have killed off vinyl which is really nothing to be proud of.”
Skrufff: Changing tack, you told 3D World recently that you trod on Sting’s toes and didn’t apologise, what happened?
Rennie Pilgrem: “Yes. My wife was managing his guitarist and we were at a party and I was trying to extinguish either a cigarette or a spliff above a mantelpiece, and it was one of those situations where for some reason Sting was lying on the floor with his legs sort of up in the air. He was just lying there like that, I didn’t see him and I just became aware that while I was leaning up to get rid of my cigarette I was treading on something. I looked down and basically it was his foot. For some reason I just kept it there, I don’t know why, I guess I felt a bit embarrassed to go ‘Oh my God –you’re Sting’. I also thought it served him right, because I thought ‘Why are you lying on the floor at a party where everyone else is standing up?’.”
Skrufff: Did he just ignore you and you ignored him?
Rennie Pilgrem: “Yeah. We ignored each other. Probably the best way.”
Skrufff: In the same article you said breaks producer Blim is particularly good at making tea?
Rennie Pilgrem: “Yeah.”
Skrufff: What’s a good cup of tea to you?
Rennie Pilgrem: “Any cup of tea is good. I think it’s because he cracks first. If he’s round and we’re doing a tune then he’s got a lower threshold for waiting for it to happen. It’s quite nice having him as tea boy in the studio.”
Skrufff: you also said Uberzone is good at clearing up . . .
Rennie Pilgrem: “Uberzone is the Howard Hughes of breakbeat. He’s very, very keen about cleanliness and tidiness etc, so he’s very much into doing that.”
Skrufff: You grew up in the countryside I understand. There was a story last week about 50% of people in the countryside who grew up on farms have been sexually involved with animals…..
Rennie Pilgrem: “Ooh, God. I lived next door to a farm.”
Skrufff: Does that statistic surprise you?
Rennie Pilgrem: “The closest I came to doing that was when we were about eight or nine, we’d seen a western and we spent three or four hours heating up a huge metal pole till it was very, very hot, the plan being to try and brand the pigs next door, but that was the only rod they got out of me, I’m afraid. No, I didn’t notice much of that going on.”
Skrufff: Are you an animal lover generally?
Rennie Pilgrem: “Yes, but given what you were just talking about. . .”
Skrufff: Not in the biblical sense . . .
Rennie Pilgrem: “Oh absolutely, yes.”
Interview by Jonty Skrufff
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