Relentless Energy Drink Boardmasters : Jaguar Skills : Features

Everyone’s favourite, elusive mash-up DJ gives us the lowdown

There was a time, not so long ago, when the majority of DJs were shunned for daring to think outside the box and crossing genre boundaries within their set. Indeed, this close-mindedness was directly opposed to the original spirit of the art of rocking a party, which was born of eclecticism and imaginative track selection. Fabled DJs of the pioneering years – New York disco-era hero Larry Levan and hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash to name just a couple – excelled in digging out unusual gems from across the board that shared the simple commonality of making people dance without thinking.

Variety is the spice of life, and that idiom was at the heart of what they did. The element of surprise, discovering something new, keeping the crowd on their toes and varied colour and texture were all key to the emerging art. But as new genres proliferated, defined and refined their identities, so too did crowds foster theirs, with prejudice and narrow-

"For many years, genres largely existed in vacuums"

mindedness the by-products. For many years, genres largely existed in vacuums. There were, of course, a few who successfully bucked the trend, but they were seen as kooky and curious, rarely spreading into wider appeal.

That all changed when two Belgian brothers known as 2manydjs burst into the global blogosphere in the mid-2000s. They showed that with skill, creativity and imagination, even the most disparate styles and records could be brought together in a beautiful synergy and harmony. The brothers played a key role in breaking down genre boundaries and limitations, and sowed the seeds for other similarly minded talents to blossom in their wake. The mysterious Jaguar Skills, who plays at this year’s Relentless Energy Drink Boardmasters, emerged as one such plucky contender, and in the space of a few years has rapidly grown to become the UK’s most popular proponent of what some term ‘mash-up’ DJing.

The young ninja

"My mixing obsessions began when I was a kid," the elusive one tells us when we finally manage to track him down in his secretive hideout. "My Pops was a DJ and radio producer in the 70s and 80s. He produced the first reggae radio shows in the UK. He started the career of David Rodigan. He also produced a load of disco records and country and western records. He was a huge record collector and we had around 80,000 records in the house. Every wall and every room had thousands of vinyls stacked up. He had whole areas for different styles and genres of music. He had a whole TV theme tune part. He had rare KPM records. Mad disco stuff. All the early hip-hop records. Jazz shit. Pop. Everything really. So I used to help him sort them out, and when record dealers came to the house, I would pull out the vinyls they asked for. I was only seven or eight years old then."

Some years later, he was bitten by the hip-hop bug and bought his first set of decks. By this point, his fate was sealed.

"My mixing obsessions began when I was a kid"

Progress thorough technology

It’s a real sign of the times that the concept of Jaguar Skills and his rapid-fire, quick-mixing, eclectic style was born of technological progress. A surprising one, too. When a rapidly rising DJ and producer friend (Mark Knight, one of the men behind the world’s biggest-selling house and techno label Toolroom Records) introduced him to the ground-breaking mixing, producing and sequencing software Ableton, a whole world of possibilities opened up. Combined with the possibilities to use the emerging Serato software to mix using a laptop and vinyl combined, his path was set.

"Before then, I was just DJing, hip-hop style, with two turntables and a mixer. But when I switched to Serato, I started using Ableton to do little re-edits and stuff for my DJ sets. I really wanted to rock the crowd, and I didn't want to piss the headliner off by spinning the same tunes as them, so I figured if I played a re-edit, then it'll be cool. Just being able to play things I made myself, was a real revolution in my DJ sets. People back then weren't used to hearing wild re-edit mash ups of stuff then, so it was a bug-out for all concerned. So I didn't plan ever to be known as a mash-up guy, it was just really, me learning about the technology available, and trying to use it the best way I could."

"I didn't plan ever to be known as a mash-up guy, it was just really, me learning about the technology available"

Cinematic synaesthesia and fleeting attention spans

Anyone who’s heard one of Jaguar Skills’ themed mixes for Radio 1 will know that he structures his sets with more than just mixing from A to Z in mind. He aims to tell a story behind his sequencing, colouring it with humour, knowing in-jokes and references for the keen listener. Unsurprisingly, it’s his love of film that plays a major part in this element of his work. "I'm a huge B-Movie fan. When a film gets so shit it's almost unwatchable, it becomes incredibly compelling to me. Like when a movie crosses the shit line, when it hits the other side, it becomes amazing. The dialogue becomes so sampler-able. And yes, it totally influences my DJ style in quite a profound way, I think. I really try and make my mixes as 'visual' as I can, if that makes any sense. They're almost like soundtracks to the movies in my head."

The musical attention deficit disorder that Jaguar Skills suffers from isn’t for everyone, but it’s an attitude that harks back to the aforementioned pioneers and how they created the blueprints for dance music and DJing in the first place. "When I DJ, I try and boil tunes down to their main blast-off points. It's like an old school hip-hop style but with electronic music. Back in the day, DJs like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash looped sections of old break beats. They flipped little sections of tunes. That's how hip-hop began. The cut-and-paste style isn't anything new at all. It's decades old. From Steinski to Spinbad to DJ Yoda, it's an old-school thing. That's all I'm really doing with my mixes and DJ sets. To me it makes things a little more exciting. I'm too fidgety to stand behind a record deck and play a tune for 10 minutes, you know?"

The resilience of a ninja

"I DJed for 10 years, before anyone ever really knew of me"

Things weren’t always this sweet for our plucky ninja, however. Like most people who get where they want to be, years of hard graft, scrimping and toil are behind his massive success and fan base. Years of couch-surfing, low-paid, demoralising jobs, dire early morning gigs... he’s done his fair share. "I once totally gave up and sold ALL my vinyl and my decks. Then re-started a couple of years later. I've been through some missions, I can tell you. I was really, really struggling at some points. But, I guess I don't think I can do anything else, so I kept trying to DJ. It's in my blood."

"I DJed for 10 years, before anyone ever really knew of me," he reveals, shedding some rare light on where he came from and how long he’s been in the proverbial game. "I'm truly thankful and never take any of this for granted. I worked super-hard for it, too. That's the thing. If you're doing something you love, and you're able to pay the rent, have a little food in the fridge, then you're 100 times more successful than someone earning a fortune doing something they hate every day. I was happy being able to DJ just paying the rent. All the 'fame' or whatever never occurred to me. It's bug out that I can sell out a big club in Japan now. It's mad, eh?"

He rounds off our clandestine interview by proffering his advice to any aspiring wannabe ninjas out there. "Just work hard and never stop doing it. Don't quit. It might take years. It will. If you're in a rush, then maybe it's not for you. Maybe you're not built for it. But if you don't mind waiting a few years, and training every day like a ninja would, then, maybe, if you're lucky..."