One of the founding fathers of the jungle and drum ‘n’ bass movements, Ray Keith, has been a mainstay of the dance circuit since the formative days of acid house, and an inspirational artist long unafraid of pushing the boundaries.
Best known for tracks such as Terrorist, The Chopper and Dark Soldier – not to mention remixes for the likes of Orbital, Moby and Shades of Rhythm – the Dread Recordings founder’s latest project is a new live concept which sees him perform tracks old and new, backed by a full band. This includes a forthcoming March 2025 performance at London‘s Steel Yard, more details of which can be found here.
909originals caught up with him to discuss his new live show, and his take on the current electronic music scene.
Hi Ray, thanks for chatting to us. Let’s start by talking about your recent gigs; what has the experience of working with a live band been like?
Yeah, the live band has just gone from strength to strength. We sold out the Jazz Café earlier this year. I think they were shocked—they sold it out in two weeks. They actually oversold it.
Every man and his dog came to see us, bro. I think there were about 650 or 700 people in there.
How does it work, exactly – is it a live reinterpretation of ‘the best of Ray Keith’, or what exactly is it that you do?
It’s also about new material. We don’t live in the past. Of course, we play our hits, but when I was putting the band back together, I’d forgotten just how many tracks I’ve done.
Over the course of 30 years, as an independent artist, you don’t always keep track. I haven’t been signed to a major, but I’ve done a lot of work for majors, like remixes and stuff. Independently, I’ve released over 45 albums, which is a lot.
When you’re an underground artist with integrity, you don’t always get that love, if you know what I mean. With how the music has changed, I’ve realised I want my testimonial years now to be about being a musician.
When you’re a producer, you’re kind of in the background, standing behind something else. But when you’re live… oh my god, it’s next level. So, the band is both analog and digital—I’ve got a drummer, a bass player, I play keyboards, I sing, and there’s another keyboard player. We also have guests and a resident singer. She’s my singing coach, actually. The whole band is organic, made up of people I’ve known for at least 10 years.
I did some live gigs about ten years ago, with Tenor Fly, when he was still alive. It’s different now, though, because those were full-on renditions of the tunes, whereas with this, we trigger some breaks, and some of the breaks are played live. Obviously, no one can play at 175 BPM for two hours straight.
There are some talented drummers out there, though?
Well, you’d need a lot of Red Bull, and a lot of energy. And it’s fantastic. It’s something I’ve wanted to build and do for a long time. The energy is amazing, and that music—it’s our heritage. It’s just nice to be able to bring my records to life, really.
I like to mix it up. There’s a chance for me to perform some new stuff. I’ve done a new tune called Rockstar. I can’t tell you the sample we’re using, but it’s next-level sh*t. Seriously, you’ve got to come and see it.
I played in Manchester recently, and was amazed by all these young kids that love jungle and wanted to come out and experience it. And it really is an experience, you know? It’s about reliving those moments, like the first time you heard Dark Soldier, Terrorist, or Sing Time.
The first gig was at Lost Horizon in Bristol, and people have just been going crazy for it. The band’s been out for about 18 months now, and we’re trying to curate and play some heritage venues while getting ready for festival season.
It’s nice to do something different, because, to tell you the truth, some of the wonky DnB and f**king karaoke plastic jungle that’s going on right now is not what we brought through, bro. I get that things get distorted and commercialised, but we stand by our integrity and what we love. Sometimes integrity doesn’t always pay the bills, as you know. But that’s just how it is.
Yeah, you kind of have to find that balance between staying true to your roots and appealing to a wider audience. A lot of artists now are very commercially driven, and sometimes you have to reign them back a little bit.
Well, take that poor guy from One Direction, for example. He’s at the top of his game, doing what he’s doing, then gets dropped. They all split up, and he tries to find himself. There’s a lot of pressure put on young people now.
At the same time, you need to ask, are they any good? Some of these kids out there playing—nah, not really. They can’t even play for an hour, let alone longer, and what they’re playing… I mean, I was at Boomtown, and I had a good listen all weekend, and there was no outstanding DJ for me. I was thinking, ‘What the f**k’s happened to the art of DJing?’
But you know, everything changes. It becomes expendable, commercially viable. You don’t even have to sign to a major anymore—you can have a million streams and make a decent living out of what you’re doing. But that’s the power of digital, you know? These guys are on Spotify, earning lots of money, while we get 0.3% of f**k all.
It would also be great to see people move on from the drug culture around at the moment. I just saw an announcement from Fabric, that there’s this mad MDMA stuff going around where people are having seizures.
People really need to be educated—’mate, have a smoke, have a drink—within reason—and then go out and listen to the music’, instead of falling into this culture of get drunk, be rude, be loud, and take as many drugs as we can and get as wasted as we can, not even knowing where we are. That culture, in itself, is so dangerous. And many DJs don’t seem to give a f**k, because they’re all about ego, you know?
We have to be honest about DJ culture and clubbing culture—it doesn’t have to be about drugs and rock and roll. It can be about going out and having a good time, but people need to be educated about that. I do yoga twice a week. I’m clean and green.
When people go to our gigs, we want them to feel the music. If you were there back in the day, you’re going to love it. That’s your heritage. And if you weren’t, you’re going to come out of that experience thinking, ‘wow’. I saw so many young people coming up to me saying, ‘That just fu**ing blew me away.’
Obviously, you play a lot of these retrospective gigs with the likes of Jumping Jack Frost, Kenny Ken, etc. To the layperson, that might just seem like a nostalgia trip for the older heads. But there’s education involved as well. When the kids come up to you and say, ‘That blew my mind,’ it’s because maybe they haven’t experienced that level of creativity, the musicianship, and everything that goes into those earlier tracks.
We’ve got soul—we’re soulful people. We’re going to touch you, you’re going to cry, you’re going to dance, you’re going to be happy. All those emotions are natural. And I think it’s important that we carry that message.
With a live band, though, it’s different. Look, f**k me, Oasis is back. I mean, what does that tell you? If Oasis is back, that tells you there’s a crying out for other bands to come along and do what they’re doing. Because a lot of DJing is fake, bro. The art of DJing has been lost. It’s quite a shambles, really.
I used to stand and watch Mr. C, Evil Eddie Richards, and Colin Hudd stoking up the place. I used to watch Pogo when he was in London Posse. Those were the DJs I could identify with. We all crossed paths at some point, and then we went off and did our own thing.
I was on the same circuit as Carl Cox in 1985, playing soul music. And then, when Jack Your Body and Farley Jackmaster Funk came out, we all became successful house DJs. So there’s been a lot of stuff that we built this heritage on.
I feel like now is the right time to bring out the band again. I see it almost like an exit plan. I’m not going to DJ for the rest of my life. I’m doing a lot of TV, film, and acting now. The live stuff is more intimate. I get to play an instrument, I get to be a musician.
I still push the boundaries. I mean, the bass is phenomenal—it will go right through you. But it’s built on soundsystem culture, so why wouldn’t we do it? I’m trying to coach more artists to come on board with us, doing their live thing with the orchestra. So it’s really exciting.
I’m also working on a new album with new material for Renegade. I’ve got a compilation coming out from the Jazz Café. On the live front, I want to do Ronnie Scott’s, then I want to do Blues Kitchen, which we’re negotiating the date for right now. I really want to do Koko. And next year, I’ve been asked to play a massive rave that’s coming back—for an hour, and I can’t believe it, in front of probably 15,000 to 20,000 people. It’s f**king nuts.
I can’t tell you who it is, but it’s one of the big ones from back in the day. These are pals I worked with all those years ago. I love it, brother. It’s part of my heritage, and it’s nice to be able to catch that second or third wave.
Since I was 12, I’ve been on the decks. Since I was 14, I’ve been a professional DJ. I had my first residency at 16. I went on to places like Oscars in Clacton-on-Sea, then I was a resident at Cinderella’s. I was resident in the house days in 1988 and 1989 at The Astoria. I was resident at the Laserdrome, resident at the Paradise—there were so many clubs I was blessed to be a part of. I just seemed to be at the right place at the right time.
I’ve had an incredible career, and I guess it’s nice to give back and see all those faces.
Actually, everywhere I go, people buy me dinner and say, ‘Mate, you changed my life in the ‘90s.’” I’m like, What the f**k, bro? And they’re like, “No, man, let me buy you dinner. You really made an impact.” Because there was no social media back then, you know? It’s mad, the love we get because we’re household names, and we’re so grateful for that.
And now we’re looking to pass that positive message onto the youngsters. Take care of what you’re doing. Love what you do, know your history. You can’t play hip hop without knowing the history of hip hop, you know? You have to know your roots—where it comes from.
With these live gigs, I guess, as well as being a celebration of your music, It’s also a celebration of the wider scene. It’s been a difficult year for drum ‘n’ bass in some ways because Randall passed away, Conrad passed away—so you really need that kind of spark to reignite the positivity a bit.
100%. We actually do tributes to everyone. That’s included in my show—giving them the nod they deserve. Their music lives with us forever.
We’ve dedicated our lives to black music, bro. That’s the beginning and end of it. Jungle and drum ‘n’ bass are now genres recognised all over the world, for good or bad. We put it on the map.
It’s like hip-hop—the originators of hip-hop haven’t really gotten what they deserve, but we’re still a work in progress. We haven’t finished yet. Mate, some of the tunes I’m making now, for my next album…we’re writing songs now, proper songs that we can perform.
I’ve got this one thing I’ve done—I can’t even talk about it yet, but I’m so gassed. I played it to some of my inner circle and they’re like, “Ray, we could hear this on Radio 1, but it hasn’t lost its integrity.” It’s got that magic dust of jungle and drum ‘n’ bass, but we’re doing it on our own terms.
That’s great to hear – take the best bits of what you do, and evolve it. Take the elements that defined the scene and keep pushing forward. I can imagine in those live gigs, you’re sitting at the keys, and the first few piano notes of Terrorist start playing, and the place just goes mental.
When we did a gig recently with the Ragga Twins, they went fucking nuts, bro. It was like being back in the 90s. You could hear the crowd getting louder and louder, until I had to pull the tune – “pull up that bomboclaat” – and then we played it again.
If you weren’t there in the 90s, we’re giving you that live experience now.
When’s the new album coming out?
Yeah, we’re probably going to have it ready by January or March next year. By the end of this year, we should be ready. We’ll have promos going out around December or January, and then we’re aiming for a March release. It’s really to support the band while we’re touring, so it’s 2024/25 material.
Thanks to Ray Keith for talking to us. Keep up to date with his latest releases and tour dates here.
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