Having always loved music of all flavours, I fell in love with the House & Garage sound around 1996/97.
I began collecting house and garage records in 1998 because I was fed up with wanting to hear my favourite tracks but only getting 1 or 2 minutes of them on a crackly radio setup. I took the records to friends houses who had turntables to play and learnt to mix them until eventually getting my own ‘decks’ and realising I loved the artform. Soon I was DJing at friends events and I found myself on stage at Notting Hill Carnival 1999.
Mister E was born and the love affair with playing music to people had well and truly begun. After bouncing around a few pirate-radio stations and eventually joining a crew (as we did!) I played with them (NAP Syndicate) on Dream Teem presents on Radio 1 in 2001. As garage music was starting to change into Grime, I found myself raving to House music where I preferred the vibe, and quickly fell in love with the sounds of producers like Masters At Work, and songs like Jon Cutler – Its Yours & Dina Vass – The Love I Have, tracks I still play in my sets to this day.
I carried on playing House and Garage or ‘Old Skool Garage’ as it had become but felt that so much of the quality Garage music was underplayed or forgotten about so I began my ‘Education’ radio shows and started up local events where we showed listeners and ravers that they could still enjoy forgotten about and
unearthed gems of House and Garage alongside the classics we all knew and loved.
Our infamous King William parties in Pimlico followed, setting us up to host a series of nights in the 2nd room at Victoria’s Pacha nightclub in 2011, where we still held the bar spend record until they closed in 2014.
Amongst all of this I’d fallen into Youth Work and by 2010 was running a music studio in a Youth Club, where a teenager introduced me to Deep House music. A love affair with another music genre began, and I soon teamed up with Spencer Martin (Spenny M) to form ‘Two Of Us’ under my AKA Eamonn James.
By 2011/2012 we released our ‘Into Deep’ Mix Series which became the staple at house parties across London, and from running our own events at Pacha and at various venues in West London secured a residency at the infamous ‘Avaword’ events amongst others.
Fast Forward to today and years of playing clubland and radio I find myself enjoying the music more than ever, and hope that shows on my weekly Playback Uk ‘Education’ show, currently running 6-8pm on Tuesdays.