Where did you grow up and what can you tell me about your formative introduction to music?

I grew up in Woodford which is a nice green suburb that's kind of on the border of East London and Essex. My dad brought me up on 70s soul and he used to take me to shows. I remember going to see Gil Scott Heron, Maze and the Isley Brothers. That lead to me getting into the Acid Jazz scene when that was around, bands like Incognito. I was quite close to the city and was able to get in to go to the clubs in the West End and the record shops in Soho from quite early on. I used to go to the Blue Note in Shoreditch quite a lot in the mid to late 90s, particularly the Metalheadz night because it had such an amazing vibe. Even though it wasn't really the music I was getting into we used to go down quite a bit on Sundays because it just felt so exciting. I got into house music clubbing a bit later on and into DJing later still. I didn't really have any interest in DJing until I got my job at Flying Records.

Were there particular artists that you became interested in during your time at Flying? Did the same names keep cropping up for you?

Definitely MAW. When I was at Flying it was during what I consider to be there peak, when everything they released was just unbelievable. They were going through a period where everything was 'live' sounding – the Nu Yorican stuff and the later 12's using the Nu Yorican band and musicians. Blaze and Mood II Swing were favourites too. We seemed to sell more of their records than anybody else's and it's not surprising because they were the best.

What were your first experiences as a DJ like?

I'd done a few bar gigs previously but it was during my time at Flying that I started to get a few more serious gigs, using the shop name and playing at Flying parties. My first real experience of playing to a large audience wasn't until 2000. I had some good fun, there were some great nights, but really what I remember most about it now was the time I spent watching the other DJs. I knew I had a good selection, that's my real strength as a DJ, but I was still quite inexperienced, so I still had to learn to play properly. I never wanted to get too technical, but I did want to express myself in a certain way and I learned how to do that through watching people like Phil Asher, Lofty from Chilli Funk and Glyne Braithwaite from Rude Awakenings.

What's your style like as a DJ?

I'm not super technical as a DJ, and I don't want to be. I'm not one of those people who wanted to be a DJ from an early age, although I do enjoy doing it. I just want to play good records and people tell me I'm good at getting things going. My personal taste is so eclectic and I think that comes across in my DJing. Sometimes people just want you to play house sets, or just broken beat sets, but I'd much rather play everything. That's what I'd rather be hearing myself if I were on the dancefloor.

How did the production side of your career develop?

Towards the end of my time at Flying I wanted to experiment and go into the studio. I met a couple of people and got the opportunity to do just that. One of the people I met was an engineer called Tom Davidson and we started working on a few things, one of which went on to become the first Reel People single 'Spiritual'. It was an instrumental for a long time, and I'd played it to a few people and got some interest, but I really didn't know what to do with it. I was doing quite a bit of work for Chilli Funk, the sister label to Flying, at the time. I'd approached them and told them I was ready to scale back my shop work and would like to work for the label full time, but unfortunately there wasn't a full time vacancy. So I thought 'why don't I set up my own label and do it myself?' At the scale I wanted to achieve at that time it didn't seem impossible to do it myself. I was lucky that an old school friend was able to back me financially, giving me enough to get Papa Records started.

Listening to that first single 'Spiritual' it appears to be influenced by the West London sound, broken beat, it really doesn't sound like the sort of debut you'd expect from someone who's just spent three years working in a specialist soulful house record store.

Well Phil Asher is one of the forefathers of that sound and he was a great help to me, as was Nathan Haines who appears on the record. My history isn't really only about house music. When we go in the studio we've always had an idea of where we wanted to go, but at the same time we're quite happy to let things develop naturally – what comes out comes out, to a certain extent. With 'Spiritual' we didn't have a fixed end goal, like always, we just wanted to make the best record that we could.

Did you always have the ambition to make Reel People a fully rounded live band, rather than just a studio-based project?

Yes. I almost never believed that it could happen, but right from the start that was the preferred goal. One thing about me is that I'm always planning, looking at our musical direction, questioning what things will work for us. With Reel People I honestly felt that if we could get it to this stage, there was a big gap in the market that we could exploit. The band is very song based and I didn't think there was an act out there doing this sort of music who could go an play a knockout live performance, but at the same time have DJs using their tracks to rock a club. To me there were two distinct camps – people like Masters At Work on one hand, who are studio based producers and don't really go out live and people like Incognito on the other, who are an amazing live band but whose records don't really get much exposure in clubs unless they've been remixed.

Check out www.reelpeoplemusic.co.uk for more info...