The 90s Underground

Through the 1990s I wrote, produced and released music across the London and Brighton underground — progressive house, darkside jungle, Goa trance. I lost my entire vinyl collection in a house fire at the end of that decade, and with it much of my own memory of the catalogue. What’s below was reconstructed in 2026 from Discogs, the collectors, and the uploads that never stopped circulating.

After helping assemble one of the first-ever sample CDs, I answered a Musicians Wanted ad in Melody Maker for a keyboard and synth player. At the first jam the amp blew a fuse; I fixed it with a paperclip and was told “you’re in”. That band was Wildmind, and our 12“ Uptime came out on Fruit Records in 1993 — three mixes, with a remix by React 2 Rhythm — the Gridlock Mix later landing on Music Man’s At The Villa Laurence compilation.

It was a Wildmind demo that changed everything: the owner of London Studios in Leytonstone heard it being made and offered me the house-engineer chair, specialising in computer-based production. Through that door came Cape Fear — the darkside hardcore 12“ by DJ Harry & Point Blank on Tone Def Records, which I mixed and produced in 1993, and which collectors still rate among the era’s best. I spent the following years helping out at Point Blank’s East London project studio, engineering across everything from jungle to acid jazz — and, via Denovo, programming an interactive kiosk for David Bowie.

Then came Brighton, and Goa trance. With my old friend DJ Dara Lee — who went on to run Koyote Records — and Simon, I was a third of Stanley Shanti & The Chillum Wallahs. Our Placid 12“ on Symbiosis Records travelled further than we ever did: Distance To Goa 2, ID&T’s Digital Overdose, Sub Terranean’s Pulse, and a stack of other compilations across Europe. The B-side’s “Koyote Clean Room Mix” was mine too, made under my early-90s outfit The Clean Room; and Risc, our 1996 closer, I wrote and produced alone.

Most of what I made in that decade went out uncredited or under names long forgotten — that was the culture, and computing paid the rent. But the records the collectors kept alive tell the story well enough. In 2025, thirty years after Placid, Dara Lee played it again in Koyote’s anniversary mix — and at Ruunda, the thread picks up from exactly there.