We talk garage, dubplates and Game of Thrones...
A lengthy production career, beginning in garage and grime and evolving into house, has given Tesfa Williams the perfect musical background with which to excel in London's thriving bass music scene.
Back in 2010 Williams had a crossover hit with the UK Funky influenced 'Heartbeat', which crept onto mainstream radio playlists while maintaining underground cult status. Since then his releases on labels such as Local Action, as well as his own Deep Teknologi, have revealed a mature, versatile artist with a strong influence on his contemporaries.
We caught up with him ahead of his Rinse FM compilation release.
You’re known these days for your house productions, but I’d like to start by talking about your earlier garage days. When did you first become aware of ‘garage’ as a movement or a distinguishable sound?
Funnily enough I went to a youth centre party that happened in our area, I would’ve been about 12, 13, and to be honest I didn’t even like it when I first heard it. I was fully a jungle head, and I was like ‘this is not hard enough!’ (laughs) but there was so many people around me that were into it. People like EZ, Tuff Jam, they seemed like Gods at the time.
If your experiences growing up around London at that time were similar to mine, garage was everywhere - in people’s cars, on pirate radio, playing in shops, but you rarely ever heard house. Was that the same where you were?
Definitely. In my world, house just wasn’t around. Even the ‘house’ that was around, people like Arman Van Helden, to me it was still garage. It just didn’t really exist like that. It seemed like we were so dead set on that [garage] sound innit?
Yeh, definitely. Do you think even now in ‘urban’ culture, house still doesn’t really register?
Slowly but surely it’s changing. People like Jamie Jones and the Hot Natured lot, they’ve struck a chord with the urban circuit. There’s a lot more people from that circuit that are into house now.
So when did you start getting into it?
It was about 2004, 2005, garage had evolved into grime, and grime really wasn’t me. I’ve come from the circuit where it was like nice loafers, you know what I mean? You’d get your best shirt and that, and all these kids were wearing hoodies and stuff (laughs).
Yeh I know what you mean. It lost the soul a little bit.
Completely lost it. And I was like, this is not me. But then I found that house kind of went back to that, putting on your nice shoes to go out and party and have a good night. First and foremost that’s what really did it for me – the fact that there were females at the parties and I could put on my best and enjoy myself.
What parties were you going to at that time?
I was at Martin Larner raves, Liberty, at Hidden, and in the morning there’d be a house afterparty called Big. So me and my boys, we’d stay, unwind, listen to a few tunes, then every time we’d stay for a little bit longer, then a little bit longer, then in the end we were just going for the after party. Then I’d just go on the record hunt, trying to get everything I could. That’s how I really got into house.
What are the main differences you find between house and garage from a DJing perspective?
Stylistically it’s ridiculously different. In terms of how you mix it and how you build a set, it’s completely different. In the garage / grime scene you’ve got MCs, and you had to have the latest dubplates, and also you’d just drop things in, you wouldn’t be doing lost lasting mixes. There’s more focus on the MCs, not so much on the DJs.
You did the latest Rinse FM mix. How did you put the tracklist together for that?
Not only is it the music that I like, it’s music from people I feel are on the same wavelength as me. So there’s people like Bashmore in there. I had to throw in a Tuff Jam tune in there - that tune is 13 years old, but it still sounds as fresh today. It really shows the line that runs through.
What else are you into at the moment?
Musically, there’s a couple of people like Shadow Child, this girl called Hannah Wants, really loving her stuff at the moment, Jay Bevan has got some new stuff that I’m really loving. There’s a few cats around, Breach as well, loving his stuff. That’s definitely my cuppa tea. I’m a big 'Game of Thrones' fan too, so I’m waiting for that to come back on!
Rinse 21: T Williams is out now.
Click here to listen to our latest Spoonfed mix.
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