T. Williams may be a new name to most of us, a seemingly tender musician after just a few releases on labels Local Action and Pattern in the last 48 months. All is not as it seems though for the 28 year old Londoner who at just 17, was signed to Jon E Cash’s Black Op’s Collective as Dread D; proceeding to sell thousands of records within the UK grime scene. After a ten year reign, Williams found himself veering towards the world of house music and has since forged a sound signature that blends his grime days, dubstep, bass music and what he says was a natural evolution into house. With a style that undoubtedly impacts, T.Williams crossover sound has been the catalyst for his success. Disparate and alluring amidst typical house vibes, his Uk funky sound strikes a note that immediately draws you’re ear. Fascinated by how and what caused the crossover, Meoko caught up with the man who was once a school teacher, admits to thinking Ashley Beedle was a girl and at one point hated house music...

Excuse the cliché question, but how did you first get into music and DJ’ing?

I was really young when I first got into music and started learning how to mix. One of my friends at school had a deck for sale and he asked me if I wanted to buy it for £20? So I went and asked my Dad if I could have it and he said yeah, so I bought this one deck and that was the start of it.

Hang on – how were you learning to mix with one deck?

I had the one turntable I had bought and my Dad’s one which was the house turntable but had no pitch on it! I was only about 12 or 13, it’s quite funny because I was just messing around and I actually thought that I’d stumbled across something new! Hahaha! When I first started mixing I didn’t realise what DJ’s did, or that people were mixing records because I came from a household full of reggae and dub which of course didn’t involve mixing. In those genres you just change the record from one to another as quickly as possible. Then a bit later I started getting into jungle and seeing what a DJ actually did. Production wise I was about the same age, they had a studio room at school and I had a PC at home. A friend of mine who was a bit of a computer geek got me a copy of Cubase. I was messing around, doing things but I don’t think I realized at that point I was ever gonna make any use of in the long term...

So the realisation that this was something worth pursuing came about when?

I went to college with another DJ called DJ Dice and we were, and still are really good friends. He knew Jon E Cash (who started the Black Ops Collective) and had a show on Lush fm. I used to go and cut dubs for thirty quid a pop and give them to him to play. Via the show Jon E must have heard him play one of my dubs and ‘Invasion’ under my Dread D name went from there.

‘Invasion’ was your debut grime track which went on to sell thousands didn’t it?

Yeah it did, I still haven’t topped it to this day, sales wise anyway. It would take a lot to top that!

That must have been pretty amazing to sell that many records at what, 17 years old?

Do you know what, this is funny but I thought it was the other way around. I thought that that was how it goes – you put out a record, it sells and you make loads of money!

Ha!ha! - Eeeerrr no.

Even travelling and all that - I thought it was a given! Even though it was grime, very niche in its little box I still got to go to the USA and all over Europe. I never realised that it doesn’t always work like that. It’s only now that I truly understand and appreciate it. Being so young and inexperienced I just thought that if you put out a record that’s what happened to you!

And Jon E Cash was the man behind the collective you were part of called Black Ops...

Yeah, Jon E Cash formed a group of West London producers, DJ’s and artists called The Black Op’s Collective – we all released on the same label and did club nights together. It’s not round any more though due to the disappearance of the scene in general. Some people are still trying to do their thing in grime. DJ Dice is still doing radio and he’s also playing house now. Pretty much everyone’s either gone the dubstep route and or house though. No one is really creating grime anymore.

Why not, what happened?

Grime is still around but in very small pockets. It’s a very small scene now, very niche; but that’s because any artist who does well to any degree goes on to get signed to a major. That’s what happens in grime. I got asked to do the same but I never wanted any of that because at the time I had such strong beliefs about not selling out. I said no to stuff because I didn’t want major labels diluting the sound that I was trying to create – whether it was grime or sublow or eski; all the top artists got taken by major labels...that’s my feelings on the what happened to the whole genre anyway. You get big, you get signed and then you have to start making pop.

Do you think there’s a danger of that happening in house music - if artists begin swing a little more towards the commercial side do you think the same decline could happen to house?

House is so diverse, there are so many different styles of it. There are people who make house music that reaches a bigger audience and they do it well...but there are people who are totally not doing it in a cool way too! The house genre is so big that no one needs to sell out. If you’re at the top of the game and unknown to the wider public you can still be making a decent living whereas in grime, if you were at the top you’d barely be making a penny so you had to “sell out”. I don’t think there’s any danger of that in house no, it shouldn’t happen anyway.

Is it because the grime scene declined that you veered towards house or was it something you’d always wanted to do?

No, not at all, as a teenager I hated house music actually. I can honestly say if you had of told me ten years ago where I’d be today...pfff, no way! I just didn’t understand it, I was a kid and I wanted music that was instantaneous - bang, fast, in my face. As I got older I went back to my routes of when I was in my teens - drum and bass, garage, a lot of the tracks I bought during that time were actually produced by big house producers. So when there was nothing around to listen anymore I started exploring, listening and beginning to understand that in fact, there was so many types of house music – it wasn’t all that happy clap, Hed Kandi style stuff. There was soulful stuff, afrobeat, broken beat going on and I realised this was interesting. If you aren’t really inside the genre it can appear quite one dimensional from the outside – just that 4x4 kick. It was a natural progression that came with age.

“I’ve always been a strong believer in finding and questioning what makes you unique, what makes you different from the next guy. If you’re just gonna come along and play the same songs as the next guy then what’s the point – he or she might as well just play a longer set!”

Do you try to bring your experience outside of house into your sets now?

Definitely, I’ve always been a strong believer in finding and questioning what makes you unique, what makes you different from the next guy. If you’re just gonna come along and play the same songs as the next guy then what’s the point – he or she might as well just play a longer set! For me, that’s a huge thing and yeah, what I bring to the table that other house DJ’s can’t is my 15 odd years of experience in other genres. I know that house music isn’t one dimensional and that there’s room for experimentation.

Do you find that promoters and venues are open to that, allowing you to be free to transcend through all of those genres in one set?

NO! Not at all – you’ve got two styles – either bass or house and generally people want one or the other. I don’t get to stretch it as far as I want to in one place no. The longer set time I have the more I can stretch things and show people that the two can intertwine but that isn’t always the case.

Production wise did you encounter any difficulties when you went from bass music to house – with equipment or technique?

Well, I’m a perfectionist, or I try to be anyway. One of the first straight down deep house tracks that I ever produced got released three years later because I just wanted to get everything right. It took me those three years to literally re-educate myself and look at what makes a crowd tick when it comes to house music because it is totally different.

Did you have to go out and work, do something else to support yourself within that time?

Yeah I was an account manager for an IT company but got made redundant which was actually a god send as it was the turning point. I was also working at schools, teaching A-level music technology but also got made redundant from that because of budget cuts. All in all the recession was a massive positive for me – it was a real get up and go, get out and follow your dream type thing.

Local Action released you’re track ‘Heartbeat’ featuring Terri Walker shortly after you’re initial ‘house’ release in 2010 – how did that happen?

I was in the studio all day at that time, five days a week from nine in the morning until two the following morning or sometimes even straight through the night. It was a great time, a really creative period and ‘Heartbeat’ happened then. I was in the studio with my brother and J. Bevin and decided I wanted to do a vocal track. My brother knows Terri really well, he was managing her at the time and then a while later at his birthday party he was playing Heartbeat and Terri was there and heard it. She called me up and said “I’m singing on your track” so of course I said yes. She came to the studio the following week and two hours later – done. She’s such a professional, so on point and I couldn’t have asked for a better artist to work with for my first vocal release.

Paul Woolford remixing that for you must have been pretty epic too?

Paul approached me and asked if he could remix it so of course I said yes straightaway. He did it so quickly, just in a few days. I remember playing it at Plastic People for the first time and it totally went off – he’s such a nice guy, so down to earth I was like “why would you wanna remix my track?” I’ve been very lucky to have Paul and also Ashley Beedle approach me who I’ve learnt a lot from. Imagine this – I’ve gone to play at Plastic People one night and as I arrive, there’s a note at the door for me that said, “Ashley wants to meet you, come over to Bar Music Hall” and I was like eh? I thought it was a girl’s name...So I’ve read it, put my bags down and gone across to Bar Music Hall not even knowing what Ashley looks like. As I’ve walked in one of my tracks is playing from my ‘Chop and Screw’ EP on my own label. It was absolutely packed, I walk in and ask who Ashley is. Someone said he’s the guy behind the decks so I went over and said “Hi Ashley, I’m T. Williams” and Ashley Beedle’s pointed at the record and gone “Yeah yeah, this is T. Williams, he’s really good!” and I’m like “No, no, I’m T.Williams” and he was like “Nooo way!” Hahaha, he’d apparently been trying to reach out to me for a little while but we’d just never connected for some reason or another.

Unbelievable – what a story, that’s hilarious!

Isn’t it!? We hooked up from there, he’s been a bit of a mentor to me. If I’m feeling a bit jaded about things he always perks me up. We’re hoping to do some work together actually. He’s sent me loads of music and hopefully we’ll do something soon.

“I went over and said “Hi Ashley, I’m T. Williams” and Ashley Beedle’s pointed at the record and gone “Yeah yeah, this is T. Williams, he’s really good!” and I’m like “No, no, I’m T.Williams!”

You’ve done some big remixes – Maya Jane Coles, Ben Westbeech and Skream that have all been very contrasting sound wise?

Remixes are not the easiest thing to do, different genres, different tempos. But that’s one thing that I really took away from the grime scene actually, a lot of remixing was going on there so I’d had a lot of experience. Ben Westbeech and I have worked together a lot anyway so that felt really natural. Maya’s was a really slow, down tempo tune and then of course Skream is dubstep. When it’s a totally different genre it’s always the easiest task because you’ve got free range to make it your own. I rarely listen to the rhythm too much, just take the scale and muck around like that.

What does 2012 have in store for you?

I’ve got a release coming up on Enchufada, which is Buraka Som Sistema’s Portugese label and a Hypercolour release. I’ve actually just come from working on that in the studio today and I’m really buzzing about this new track! I can really feel a vibe with that – really excited. I’m still working on a Clone release for later in the year and also release on my own sub label that I’m starting through Deep Teknologi. Me and my partner from Deep Teknologi are both starting separate sub labels, the one I’m doing is called Twill which will be hosting the people that are really close around me so people like Jay Bevin, Zander Hardy, maybe even JTRP. I’m gonna kick start that off with a piece from myself around April, May time. I wanted to do it as a sub label because regardless of where I am now, having grown and matured I’ve got a lot of bass influence in me so I’m staying true to the Deep Teknologi side of myself. A lot of the artists who will be releasing on both Twill and on my partners Sub label have come from Deep Teknologi so it made sense to keep it connected. It’ll encompass everything from house to bass, anything around the 120,130 bpm vibe. I don’t want to be boxed into a genre, so doing Twill will hopefully allow me to be freer with the releases.