Patrick Forge has been synonymous with London dance music since the birth of the rare groove and Kiss FM in the 80s. Forge would navigate this way through the London jazz and rare groove scenes to be a presenter on London's covetted station, Kiss FM and work with Gilles Peterson to create legendary parties at Dingwalls on Sunday afternoons in Camden. Releasing numerous acclaimed compilations and DJ Mixes, Patrick continues to be a driving force on the London dance scene.

How did you come to be a DJ? Were there any DJs who inspired you?

My first experiences as a DJ were in Ipswich around 1980. We had a session on a Thursday night in the basement of a pub, that ironically operated mainly as a jazz club. They had one of those really old-school dj consoles with belt-driven decks that they played their jazz records on between sets. This was in Ipswich where I grew up. We had a pretty crazy post-punk scene going on. We were playing everything from A Certain Ratio, and NYC avant-garde funksters Material, to Gwen Guthrie and Change, to Heaven 17 and yes I have to admit it Culture Club. It never seemed like a career option back then. I really wanted to be a musician, playing records seemed like drawing the short straw, getting stuck behind the decks when all your mates had all the fun! Later after I move to to London around '82. It was the original warehouse party scene that first fired my imagination, Dave Dorrell and Jonathan More were big influences. I can remember being at these really underground parties with the whole place going nuts and thinking,"mmm, I want to do that". By this time musically I was getting more and more into jazz and Latin but I never really connected with the scene that was playing that music aside from buying records in Paul Murphy's shop.

How did you get involved with Dingwalls? What was the music scene like in London at that time? When did the scene change form being “rare groove” to “acid jazz?”

Truly my big break came around '86 when I landed a job in Soho's Reckless Records, working alongside Jonathan More and an unsung hero of pirate radio and the London scene of those days Trevor SF. My knowledge of music and contacts grew at a phenomenal rate, and through Jonathan I managed to hustle an interview with Gordon Mac with a view to getting a slot on the increasingly influential pirate station Kiss. I turned up for the interview having just procured a spare copy of Johnny Hammond's "Gears" album from the Camden branch of Record and Tape Exchange. Being able to sell Gordon an in-demand album probably did me a big favour! I landed a show on Kiss which only broadcast at the weekends. I had the last slot on Sunday night from 11pm -1am. it was my job to turn all the equipment off, but as there was no-one coming on after me sometimes I just carried on playing music.

I knew Gilles on head-nodding terms only. I think I had a couple of chats with him in record shops. Everyone on the (pretty small) scene back then was hunting down music. Shops were buying huge batches of cut-out albums from the States and they were generally quite cheap, only later as the cut-outs disappeared did the same titles become "rare grooves" and the price would start shooting up. Anyway, I was pretty shocked when Gilles invited me to be his warm-up dj @ Dingwalls on a Sunday afternoon. Initially it seemed like a fairly forlorn prospect, a dingy rock'n'roll venue on a Sunday afternoon with
a handful of Jazz dancers and enthusiasts, but gradually it grew and within a few months the session was buzzing!

So this was '87, and "rare groove" (almost as nebulous a term as acid jazz) had enjoyed it's heyday, but the scene was changing and house music was about to transform clubland from underground to mainstream. It all happened so quickly, I remember seeing Judge Jules at the closing down sale of Groove Records in Soho. He was buying a Jimmy Ponder album on Muse and telling me how he was getting into more jazzy stuff(alongside Norman Jay, Jules had hosted some of the biggest rare groove parties). The next time I saw him was at club MFI banging out early acid (Bam Bam's "Give It To Me" etc) to a dry ice filled room full of trendies on E.

So I think as house took over a lot of refugess still into their funky music ended up at Dingwalls, and for many the funky side of jazz from the early seventies came to represent the genre becoming known as Acid Jazz. However I think it's fair to say that for Gilles and myself acid jazz meant something really quite different.

Can you give us some of the playlists from that period? Can you describe for us what it was like to be at Dingwalls on a Sunday afternoon? How did this scene evolve into “Acid Jazz” with new music being produced?

Dingwalls was a very eclectic session, it took in hardcore jazz dance, latin music of a more accessible vibe and tempo, boogaloo, mambo, latin-jazz, fusion, soul,freakiness,hip-hop as it started to have a jazzy aesthetic, some house tunes, and modal jazz. For us it was that diversity and the energy and spirit of those times that was the real acid-jazz. It was about being in the dj box @ Dingwalls and witnessing this spectacle as this wonderfully mixed crowd let-off in the most joyful way. And maybe we'd be playing something like Terumasa Hino's "Merry-Go- Round" and realising that we were somehow on the same vibe as the crowd at Sunrise or any other of the big raves going on back then, just that we were playing more intense, more sophisticated music. I think the compilation we put together in '06 "Sunday Afternoon At Dingwalls" (unfortunately the label, Ether, went bust shortly after it's release) is a pretty good snapshot of what those sessions were like.

Acid Jazz became the monster that mangled the vibe, acid jazz was Dingwalls watered down to it's lowest common denominator, which was funky jazz and rare-groove. I've nothing against the bands that emerged from that side of the scene, James Taylor Quartet, Brand New Heavies, etc. However they give a very limited impression of what the scene was about. I think we were very conscious of the need to be progressive, that there should be some genuine "new" music coming out of the scene. That was the intention behind The Rebirth Of Cool series of compilations which I became involved in compiling for Island Records back then. If you check the first volume it had things like Gang Starr's "Jazz Thing" and Soho's "Hot Music". It was tracks like those that started to lay the foundations for what was to come.


How did you get involved with Brazilian music? How did you come to release “The Brazilian Funk Experience”? (It is my favorite Brazilian compilations, you know.) How did you pick through the millions of Brazilian tracks?

From my perspective you can't start to talk about the whole explosion of interest in Brazilian music in London and the U.K. without giving the utmost respect and credit to Joe Davis. Before Joe started Far-Out records he was doing great business selling Brazilian "rare-groove" to the likes of Gilles and myself. So much of that music had no or very minimal exposure in the UK, so it was like a whole new world opening up. I'd been fascinated by Brazilian rhythms and harmony for a long time but it was Joe who turned us on to artists like Joyce. I remember the first time I heard "Aldeia De Ogum", I was buzzing for a whole week on a natural high! It was that powerful for me. So gradually I've built up my collection, and then Nascente gave me the opportunity to do a compilation. It was pretty straightforward as they only had rights to release from the EMI/Odeon catalogue and they already had the title. So it was whatever was "funky" gleaned from the catalogue of a not particularly funky label!

Tell me more about Da Lata. What are your latest projects?

Da Lata is another story! Put it this way, I'm privileged to have worked alongside a very talented musician and producer in Chris Franck who really is the greater half of the partnership. Recently Chris has put his main energy into Zeep, his project with his missus, Nina Miranda, for Far-Out. However we recently did a remix of the "Zeep Dreams" track from that album, and we also have an afro-house tune with wicked vocals and Kora from Diabel Cissoko in the pipeline, whether we do another Da Lata album remains to be seen!


What is the climate of music in London like now? Are there still places to play “rare groove’ or retro styles of music or is every club about the latest sound coming out of London?

As ever in London you can hear most styles of music if you look hard enough and know where to go! These days electro/minimal house seems to be pretty ubiquitous, and of course dub-step is the flavour of the month genre for chin scratching males! The whole of our culture is changing so much now. As much as the internet is a liberating force, it's also a grim reaper. Record shops will soon be a thing of the past, and that culture , the humour-laced informal forums where I learnt so much will no longer have a natural home. Yes, everything is now available at the click of a mouse from the music itself to the knowledge and stories behind it. But knowledge so easily gained is also quickly forgotten.

Over the years what have been some of the best parties in your mind?

Obviously I'm going to say Dingwalls, and we just had a revival session last Sunday and the atmosphere and energy were incredible! However some of the best parties for me have been in Japan, nowhere more so than Shuya Okino's "The Room" in Shibya, Tokyo. It's a tiny space with an immense vibe. I usually end up playing until the early morning, by the end of the session it's like you're sharing this intense musical communion with all your new best friends.But there's been loads of sessions I've enjoyed as a punter. Particularly Norman Jay's High on Hope,(the original soulful house club, also at Dingwalls), Paul Anderson's Loft sessions. Fabio and Bukem @Speedm Co-op. And I feel privileged to have guested at some of those sessions, the early days at the Velvet Rooms were off the hook!


Where do you think the future of music and in particular DJing is headed?

Haven't a clue! I don't really approve of laptop djs even though it's obviously where it's all heading, particularly those using programmes like Ableton to time-stretch and mix for them. But I'm beginning to sound like a moaning old git. It's all good if there's taste and creativity at work. But I'd like to think there'll be a growing backlash against the kind of scenario where you're hearing a dj playing mp3s from a laptop through a crap sound system. People deserve better.