There are artists who help shape a scene, and then there are artists who quietly anchor it- usually while interesting they’re “just muddling along” and definitely not doing anything historic. BCee sits firmly in the latter camp: the reluctant icon, the man who’ll sign era-defining records in the morning and then apologise for interrupting your dinner in the evening.

I sat down with him fresh off the back of a Supper Club soirée where drum & bass met fine dining, because of course it did…

What unfolded was a conversation that wandered from bath-bomb-related glitter incidents to the emotional architecture behind Life As We Know It, via church prophecies, boat-party trauma and comedy-school encounters. Through it all, one thing cut through clearly: BCee’s genuine love for people, for the music, and for the messy, miraculous community that has grown around Spearhead for two decades.

This isn’t an interview about milestones—though there are plenty. It’s about the roots, the randomness, the razor-sharp instincts, and the relationships that have shaped one of liquid drum & bass’ most quietly influential forces. And naturally, it comes with a side of dry humour, because if you can’t laugh at yourself in this scene, someone else will happily do it for you.

We recently enjoyed your Dinner and Dancing evening, where a chef created a bespoke menu inspired by Spearhead records chosen by you, did you enjoy the night? 

I did, but the thing is I didn’t really enjoy any of the food, I can’t even remember what it tasted like because I was so all over the place mentally and physically. I would like to go back, blend in and just enjoy it, especially because the whole menu was basically my favorite food.

To go back slightly further, the whole thing came together because of Sam from Signature Brew. Coming out of lockdown, I did something I’ve always wanted to do- attend the comedy school in London. In the same class was Sam- he was actually pretty funny.

In a routine I’d mentioned being a DJ, he then said to me, “What sort of music do you play?” I said, “drum and bass.” He said, “Oh, do you know of Hospital Records? I just made this beer called ‘Playing in the Dark’ for Dynamite and DRS’s album launch.”

Well, as The Vanguard Project, me and Drew produced the track ‘Playing in the Dark’- that’s weird, isn’t it?

How did you decide what tracks to pair with what food?

They were like “You must have some tracks inspired by food!” I don’t normally sit down in the studio and think what do crisps sound like? I went through the catalog purely looking at names first of all. I wrote down a list of about 50 names that I thought might somehow vaguely be related to food. And then some names I just thought were funny. – Like ‘Glitter Balls’ which we ended up using. The track was named after the sight of my nuts after using a lush bath bomb. And then everybody’s eating them. I thought that’s funny.

Seba’s track, ‘Smoke’ seemed appropriate, but essentially I wrote down the list of all the things that sounded a bit food-like. And then the problem was how do I come up with food to match them? I wrote down my favorite foods like sticky toffee pudding, nachos and cheese, pork belly. I sent them to Paul the Supper Club chef, his mind as a chef obviously works a bit differently, and he came back with complete reinterpretations.

It was a great vibe, the way it was broken up with you talking and then a little bit of DJing at the end…

I asked friends that are DJs if anyone’s up for doing anything. The first person I asked was Makoto. I was like, “Mate, I’ll give you some food if you come down.” And he was like, “Yep, cool. See you there”

I did find it more overwhelming than I expected. When I got there everybody was talking like you would when you go out for a night out. But then there was a real silence like, “Oh, BCee’s here”. It felt weird. I’m used to going behind the decks, so when they gave me a mic and said, “Just speak about the food”, nothing was prepped. I had to get up and talk, but everyone’s in conversation. So it felt really rude to interrupt.

Everyone loved it. People were cheering and clapping. Everyone was there to celebrate you and the label. You had a real core group of fans there…

I recognised so many faces from people I’ve DJed for as promoters. There was a couple there called Matt and Zoe who I did a crowdfunder with for my album North Point in 2014. After that they paid for me to go and do a private party for them, they put on an event in a field, which was a wicked day out. They introduced me to their friend Piper, also known as Dilemma, who had just started making some tunes. And then here we are 11 years later, celebrating.

Dilemma had come down with a load of people from Leeds, and didn’t tell me she was coming down. She’s finished an album which is coming out on Spearhead next year, which came from the seed that was planted from Matt and Zoe’s field event. I could probably tell you a bunch more stories like that of different people who came down. We always talk about family in D&B, but it really did feel like that.

Let’s go back to the very beginning, why is Spearhead here? 

 I wanted to do something like a record label since a very young age. I was always fascinated with records. I’d get my dad’s record collection out and just play whatever he had. I didn’t really know anything about making music. I just knew I liked records. 

I got into the Prodigy and different rave tracks back in the early 90s. I always thought DJs were doing some crazy, cool, amazing stuff. Obviously, we are, but I used to think it was live. For example when you’d hear a track that had been remixed into a happy hardcore tune or something, I was like, “How do they do it?” And then I went to a record shop one day and discovered the tracks were just already like that on a record.

From then I knew I’d like to put things like that on records. I found a track a long time ago, I was at an event, and this guy played a track that he made himself which I thought was pretty cool- maybe we could put that on a record and do something with it.

The guy was Adam Mills, he had made it with his brother Tom Mills who’s sadly not with us anymore. Shortly after that Adam became A.Skillz, he has had a really successful career in the breaks industry. We pressed up 250 white labels and had no idea about distributors or selling stuff. I literally drove around in my car to record shops asking owners if they wanted to buy some. Soon we sold the 250 and that pretty much just covered the costs and that was that.

I was trying to write music with a guy called Doug who used to release music as Kubiks and we were trying to do all sorts, but it was one of his drum and bass tracks that got signed to John B’s Tangent Recordings. We thought as this drum and bass track got signed, let’s have a crack at more drum and bass. We started a label called Rubik Records. We did about 12 releases together, he was running a night in Bristol. I was focused more on the actual running of the label.

Then Tobie (one half of Serial Killaz) from New Urban Music rang me and said, “We’ll give you a shot.”. But I had this vision of wanting to get big artists involved. I wanted to be a well-known label. I wanted Ed Rush and Optical on a remix or someone massive. Doug wanted to have it as like one string to his bow doing just the odd cool release. I was moving to Ibiza anyway, so I decided it was time to do my own thing.

I was trying to make drum and bass and no one was particularly interested, I was hearing stuff I liked, very chilled, liquid stuff. No one was signing stuff and I thought, I’ll do my own thing and we’ll just see where it goes.”My philosophy was I want to sign stuff which I think in 10 years time there’ll be something memorable about this track, the melody, vocal hook, whatever.

That’s a nice way to choose your tracks. Where did the name come from?

This will sound weird, I don’t know if I’ve ever told anybody the truth about this story before.

I’ve been a Christian and involved in church for many, many years. And it was in a church service, three people came up to me and they said, “We just feel like God has given us a word for you-  Spearhead we just see this word spearhead for you.” And I was like, “All right, cool. Whatever.” I didn’t really think any more about it except every time I wanted to do something I thought “I like that word. It’s quite cool, isn’t it?”  I went away and looked it up and I really liked what it meant. Being at the front, making a difference, doing something people haven’t done before. As soon as it came to doing my own label it was called Spearhead.

Wow. Was that all in the same service?

Yeah. I was visiting this church conference thing.Three people came up to me and said this, who I didn’t even know. It could have been a big conspiracy to get me to launch a label. I don’t know. Maybe that’s a cooler story.

When the second person said to me, “I just feel like I got the word Spearhead for you.” I was like, who’s that? Who’s put you up to that? When the third person said it, I can remember just laughing thinking this is a bit mental, but it’s only when you look back you realise the significance.

You spoke about record shops and finding D&B, what were you listening to in the early 90’s…

Growing up I listened to a lot of metal, very commercial metal I guess; Metallica, Guns and Roses, Aerosmith. I’ve got an Aerosmith t-shirt that I like to wear sometimes when I’m doing gigs and a few times people have said, “Are you wearing that ironically?” And I’m like, “I don’t even know at this point.”

I was given a copy of The Prodigy Experience and also Slipmat and Lime and DJ Seduction, and a few of those early tapes, I thought what the heck is this? And that was it, as soon as I heard rave music, I was away. I used to go to HMV, you could only really buy the more underground stuff based off the cover. I found Fantazia and Twice As Nice. I soon discovered you could buy Helter Skelter tape packs, dance paradise and I started just buying them in bucket loads. I used to walk around college constantly with headphones on playing what was really considered hardcore. When it split off into being the happy hardcore and the more jungle stuff I’d listen to LTJ Bukem and fall asleep on the bus. I’ve been into it for quite a long time, I liked a lot of Allister Whitehead’s vocal house stuff and Jeremy Healey and artists like that.

I was into everything but it was probably early Calibre, very early High Contrast, I used to like, but with the more uplifting vibe like some house music had because jungle had gone dark. The jungle I liked was quite rolling. It is all rolled into one.

I’d been playing around with production stuff like Cubase on an Atari ST and a very early version of Logic and stuff since I was about 12. I didn’t get anywhere, I didn’t have a track release until I was about 26. Our head teacher then, a guy called Mr. Dixon who sadly died quite young, was really into music production. So in the school we had cubase and an Atari ST with all rack mount stuff way before other schools.  

I remember we did a Wizard of Oz production at school and I was put onto computer duties to trigger all of the samples and all the MIDI files. I thought it was so sick. At home I had a ZX Spectrum with an interface you could plug in the back and it had a three second sampler- I used to mess about with that a lot.

It wasn’t until I was about 19 that I was a youth worker for South Norfolk and I got some funding to get a Mac laptop, some speakers, logic and some different bits. I didn’t really know what I was doing with them. I would do DJ and production workshops with kids that were about two years younger than me. They didn’t care. They just wanted to listen to ‘Addicted to Bass’ and ‘Body Rock’ at the time.

Talk to us about the first ever release…

The first spearhead release was ‘Misguided’ and that was with Lomax. We were spending a lot of time together and he came to live with me for a few months and taught me how to use Reason and we made a bunch of tracks together around that period, but then I moved off to Ibiza.

‘Life Changes’ came as a result of Nick teaching me how to sample stuff. Pretty much every element of that track, maybe not some drums, was made up of me going to charity shops, coming out with stacks of CDs and then ripping the whole lot into some software called Sony Sound Forge. Now with AI, you can strip out all of the parts, you can get rid of drums and stuff. Back then you had to find clean sections if you wanted to use anything. I would sample any clean piano, clean breaks, fills, little bits of vocal, absolutely everything.

Lomax taught me that if you get three or four hundred of these samples done, which is a really boring process, when you open up Reason and you start to drop these samples in, it brings the magic together. All of our first tracks were done like that, and Misguided was one of them.

Were you just going for absolutely anything clean or did you have something in mind when you were ripping each sample?

The stuff that sounds really weird on its own, when you build it up as a layer, put some effects on it, retune it, it starts to create this bed of sounds. I’ve still tended to try to do this, rather than take one big sample, we always used to use hundreds or at least tens of very small samples to make up a new bed of sound.

Partly because it was fun, partly because it’s almost impossible to recognise any of the samples. We even went through every single DVD we owned, sampled the DVD selection menus. We’d always be watching stuff, loads of little noises from Family Guy. We’d be watching the telly, you’d hear a little flute or something, we would look at each other and go sample, and that would be that. I’ve still got hundreds of them on the computer because I don’t quite work the same way now. Sample sample packs weren’t really a thing, you could get them, but they’d cost hundreds of pounds, so you had to make your own.

It sounds more personal to make your own suite of samples…

Oh yeah, definitely. It was much rarer that you’d suddenly hear the same vocal because two people had grabbed it off of Splice or whatever. I don’t have an issue with using stuff from Splice, but tracks were more unique before. But the opposite was also true, sometimes I’d be looking through stuff and I’d go, “Oh my gosh, this is that Calibre tune or that Spectrasoul tune.” I can remember finding the piano that they used in ‘Always’ and that gave me a bit more confidence as a producer.

Would you say that Spearhead has a sound or a vibe?

Weirdly the thing is, I’ve been involved in a bit of mentoring with other producers over the years, and one of the things often people say is, “Oh, no. I haven’t really found my sound because I like to make an uplifting track one day and then I like to make a roller another.” And the advice I always give on this to up and coming producers is don’t worry about what your sound is. Things will sound like you. They might sound totally different to you, but to other people they’ll sound like you because you develop certain sounds that you like, certain ways of producing stuff.

For Spearhead I have the only rule as “are you going to remember this track in the future, and also, do I like it?” If I like it and it’s a flop, I can cope with that. I don’t want to take stuff because it sounds like everything. There are some exceptions to this as a whole, but I’ve really tried to go for what I’ve always described as uplifting drum and bass, something with a bit of a vibe to it, something that hits in the feels. 

The biggest complaint I have on demos is if you’ve just sent me another generic roller. That’s the thing I’ve tried to avoid. If I wanted a nice twinkly roller that sounds like LSB, I’ll just ask LSB, who does it better than anybody else. We don’t need an Aldi middle bins version, you know.

Talking about LSB, looking through your back catalog is a who’s who of the scene. How do you form these incredible relationships with these incredible artists?

I’m a question asker. If you come out to dinner with me, I’m going to ask how many kids you’ve got. What do you do when you’re not at a rave? I want to know about people.. I will also follow up on stuff too. If I say to somebody, “Are you all right?” And they’re like, “Mate, I’m struggling with this.” I’ll message them next week. When finding stuff to sign from day one, yes it’s about the music, but I’ve always looked for the people, I have wanted to work with people who I think are in this for the long haul.

Back when we used to all send each other tracks on AIM, you’d get chatting to people on there. Lenzman would send me stuff and I’d think this guy’s got tune after tune. So everybody’s just who I started with, LSB, Lenzman, Technimatic. We’ve been doing this for over 20 years, you just gradually get to know people and gradually you all grow up together. There was no plan to make all these good contacts because we’re all going to do well. We’re just still here and getting old and getting to know each other.

But you’re still keeping in touch with the new school, I saw you working with Vektah…  

I think that’s still an important thing. My approach to A&R has always been to not over A&R stuff. What I mean by that is if Vektah sends me a tune for argument’s sake, and I hear it, and I think something’s glaringly wrong. The vocal is out of tune, the delay is wrong in some way, shape or form or it’s just not hitting me. I will say “There are technical faults with this tune.” What I don’t want to do is change a sound that he clearly loves that he understands more than me because I’m nearly 50 years old, and he’s loving what he’s doing.

Lens, for example; Ellen came to work for clinic talent. She was my advancing person on the agency. And Chris BMT said to me, “She’s a wicked DJ, if you’ve got any warm-up slots.” So the first few nights she played were Spearhead nights. Then we hit the pandemic and it all went well for her. I told her to start making music. She didn’t think she was good enough yet. But, she sent me some ideas and they were full tracks, just needed a bit more polish.

I told her they were wicked and invited her down to the studio so I could help put some more work into them. Now, I wouldn’t have made tracks that sounded anything like that on my own, but she’s clearly capturing people’s imagination. Young people have got the ideas. I just want to take it a little bit further.

When you work with younger people, do you find some people just don’t want to listen, or don’t want to hear advice?

For sure, there’s a huge difference. Other than his own label I put out the first Polar and Bryson EP. Jack messaged me when he was at finishing uni to say he wanted to interview somebody that ran a record label. So I said to him, “If you will get yourself to me, I’ll give you all day.” And he went, “Yep, I’ll get the train. Oh, I make some tunes, by the way…” Making time for people pays off.”

But some younger guys, I’m not going to name them, well, you wouldn’t even know who they were cuz they’ve not got anywhere. But, I’ve had some who have come down to the studio and they weren’t interested in a single word I’ve got to say. They just wanted to tell me how good they are, why they do everything the way they do it, how they’re going to smash it.

I’m not going to ask your favorites, but what are your most memorable releases from the last 20 years?

I think most of them would be tied up in the organicness of how those releases came about. They’re not all necessarily big tunes, some of them are. Netsky’s ‘I Refuse’ became massive. I was talking to Boris at the time and asked if he wanted to do a bigger project for Spearhead. Then out of nowhere he was like, “I’ve signed to Hospital” And I could not believe it, to put it into context, Hospital at the time only had four or five artists. High Contrast, Cyantific, Danny Bird and maybe Nu:Tone and Logistics. But that track just landed so well.

S.P.Y’s ‘By Your Side’. Carlos sent me that track, then for about two years we couldn’t release it because of the samples. He rang me one day saying he really thinks we should release it, because it’s still going down so well. I rang Matt Logistics and said, “Mate, I know you love this track. Would you be up for doing a little sort of B-side newer remix because people have heard the original so much?” And that just went mad and became an anthem

Me and S.P.Y made ‘Is Anybody Out There’ partly because I was going up to his place so that he could teach me how to use Ableton, we both previously used Reason. We made it just while we were learning how to use Ableton. I wasn’t sure at first I thought it was a bit too chilled. I didn’t know if people would like it. It was him that convinced me not to give it to another label and to release it. And I did. And that went really well.

My favourite times have all just been linked into where I’ve personally been mentally I think, rather than the music. I really enjoyed doing the ‘Mood Swings’ series of releases. I called it that because I was mega depressed at the time and then feeling all right and then feeling depressed. I was going through a divorce and I thought this seems like a good title.

But my favourite thing I’ve ever worked on was definitely the Life as We Know It album with Charlotte Haining. It was our attempt at taking really deep, perhaps dark, more difficult situations in both of our own lives and putting them into drum and bass. She has the magic lyrically-  all of the tracks on Life As We Know It are very specific stories, but she made them wide enough that anybody could relate to them. I tried to keep it so that they were still all deep liquid tunes, but you could still play them in a set and they’d still work in a club.

I don’t know if I will ever do anything else I’m as happy with to be honest. Half of it ended up being made in lockdown. It was going to be an EP, it was lockdown that pushed it into being an album.

How did you complete it? 

The first couple of tracks we did here and her and Tempza came up. After that I would send her a really basic track. She’s really good at doing her own vocals and using logic so she could then use the loop to lay out how she felt the vocals would go.

I would send her what we affectionately called brain dumps, which would be me just pouring out what I want to write; about me and my wife arguing or about how much baggage people bring into relationships. And then she’d come back to me with it sung, every time I’d listen back to it and I’d think that’s my story. But whoa. You’ve made it into a beautiful song. 

Then because we were in lockdown and at the time the money was flowing- for a very brief window, it meant we could also afford to do full album remixes- probably the only time in history we could afford to do it.

Lockdown was a blessing and a curse for a lot of artists. And I remember watching Charlotte and Tempza’s rave streams.

Yeah, every Friday. And I did one every Saturday afternoon for the whole lockdown. I started it by accident. I thought I’m going to have a crack at this live streaming thing. I went to my old studio which is three minutes walk from the house, plugged everything in, went live at the time I happened to be there, which was like 2:00 in the afternoon. And then about 200 people went on it because we had nothing to do.

I said, “Oh, just drop me a DM if you want to do it next week.” Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. So I was like, “All right.” So I then did two o’clock till four o’clock every week for nearly two years purely because that happened to be when the first one was.

Do you think it helped you through the lockdowns?

Oh, definitely. It was the best time. I wrote so much music in that time because I just got into this routine. Kids education till lunchtime. I’d walk the dog, the long way to the studio, for an hour. Then that was it. Four, five, six hours. There’s nothing, no one else to bother me.

Getting vocals from people was easier because people couldn’t go, I don’t know when I can do this. They were like, cool, I’m at home. I’ve got a microphone. Let’s go. We had people in our family die of COVID, so its swings and roundabouts to put it mildly.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Talking about live streaming shows, over the last 20 years there’s been lots of Spearhead nights, any favorites?

Egg London, it was like a maze. 

In 2013 me and my wife ran a pupil referral unit which is essentially an independent school for kids that have been booted out of mainstream school. The day we adopted our daughters, we basically lost the business because the council had been taken to court by somebody over a funding issue. It was literally 30 minutes before our girls moved in and got this call to say we can’t give you any business.

The only other thing I know how to do is the label that I was going to wind down because we’re becoming parents. I thought I’d got to get a club night going in London. I’m not even sure how it came about, it might have just been things coming together at the right time. I would say God, others would say The Universe.

Christian Kakovic, got in touch with me and said, “I’m looking for brands to work with on a club night.” I arranged to do this night at what was Plan B, now Phonox. I’d never even met the geezer- there was a point where I’d booked about five grand’s worth of artists.

I turned up in hope that he’d be there, and he was, and it went really well. We sold out Plan B, did a few nights there and then we moved to Village Underground- they were really good as well. Jack from Pack London asked if I’d think about going for a bigger show at Egg. 2,000 capacity and five rooms is a leap. 11 till 6, so seven hours a room, 35 DJs plus all the MCs. We used to end up with 45 to 50 artists.

We did six or seven of them. After the first one, everyone wanted to play it. So, it became easier to book people. I’d sit there with these post-it notes trying to work out how we would run the rooms, who would play where. At one point I remember Randall was headlining room three! We didn’t put all the up and comers in a separate room. It was like, you know, Perez; room one, Nu:Tone; room two.

That was the peak. I didn’t realise at the time but when I look back now I haven’t played a lot of other shows like those. I looked back at some of the flyers, I did think to myself “That was pretty special.” 

Were they all fully spearhead branded?

Most of them were Spearhead Presents. We did a couple where SunAndBass did one of the rooms, but that was it. I didn’t want to go down the route of separate rooms, because our vision for it was to put Spearhead on the map. I think they did, for a time there, Spearhead Presents held its own in that category.

And then, and then it ended just as quickly as it started. The last one was the night before the Meghan Markle wedding. And we didn’t know that when we booked everybody and everything. It coincided with Egg having some problems with the building and not being able to use the main room.

And it ended up that you couldn’t get anywhere to stay in London because of this wedding and nobody wanted to go into town. It was still a good night. I remember struggling because at the night punters were coming up to me going, “Oh, bro, you smashed it, man. You’re flipping, killing it.” But DJs were coming up to me going, “We’re out of beers backstage. We need some more rider.” And I was thinking, “Who do you think’s flipping paying for them?”

I’d just done my first ever big Australia tour. Earned quite good money- around the 10k mark. I had to hand the entire tour fee over to bail us out from the loss.

But I’m pretty proud of those nights. I did probably age myself a bit and I couldn’t have done it without Jack and Christian, they did all the promo side. We did three or four a year for a couple of years. In the grand scheme of things probably quite a short period of time. After Egg we never quite hit that magic again.

You run one off shows now, you have one coming up right…

You may know, Corsica has announced it’s closing in March, which is sad. So, I was really pleased that we picked that venue for our 20 Years Show.

This is like totally the opposite scale to Egg because it’s a small club, it’s a small budget. Everyone is just struggling in the event space right now. I can’t afford to take the risk. I want to do something that works.

So, it is going to be me in Corsica Studios and the rest of the lineup is not going to be announced at all.

Not even on the day…

No. You will have to get there and see the time slots. That’s how we’re doing it. And there’s two reasons for that. For one, it’s fun, but also it’s the only way to make it affordable with actually decent artists. It makes a massive difference because I can ask friends of mine, “Will you just come and play as a secret special guest at this and I’ll give you a couple hundred quid?”

And it doesn’t affect them being able to be booked the week before somewhere, the week after somewhere because their name’s not on the flyer. They’re not selling tickets for that. They’re doing it as a favour to me.

But trust me, I have got you. If you come to that night and you like Spearhead and liquid, you will not be disappointed with the lineup. And it’s a day party, sick for December.

We’re sure it’ll be a really really good night. 

You asked me about good times. I’ll tell you one bad time I can remember… boat parties. Every one of them’s been a nightmare. You work with these commercial boat companies that are used to having more commercial parties. They don’t care about anything but drink and money.
 
We had a boat party, I can’t remember who else was on it. Me and Tempza,  Dynamite was MCing and he brought Roni Size on with him as a guest. All of a sudden we’d sold out at 250 capacity and the boat goes off and I look at the shore and there’s 50 people still on the shore including the guys that are working with me who’ve got the riders, the drinks, tokens, everything else.

It turned out they’d sent a captain for the boat who only had a license for like 180 people, even though the boat cap was higher. So 180 people came on and he just left. 

I’m trying to hide on this boat, not hide from the situation, but I just needed a minute. I’ve got Dynamite and Ronnie asking for drinks that are on shore. It was the worst thing you can imagine.

Did you get the people back on the boat?

No, that was it. We lost loads of money because we had to refund everybody’s tickets and then we gave them all free tickets to the next Spearhead event. On the shore the company did manage to get them on to another drum and bass boat party. We did what we could, but the boat company couldn’t care less.

Speaking about the fans there, how important are your fans? How do you build your connection with them?

It’s mostly fans who send demos to the label, I always try to reply even if it’s “Thanks for sending. I’ve enjoyed listening to it but this one ain’t for me right now”. Also if people message me on Instagram or whatever I always try to respond.

I’ll tell you how I’ve approached this. I haven’t done this for a long time, but when I was younger, I’d go to a gig or something and you let your mind wander and you think, “Oh, I might see the band coming out of the venue afterwards, then I imagined the band have come up to me and they’ve given me like a free t-shirt and I’m now their best mate wow, that would be amazing and it never happens.”  I’ve always had this sort of thing where I want to create that little bit of magic for someone.

So, I’ve done stuff like taken my Spearhead cap off and just gave it to somebody in the front row or had a couple of CDs in my bag and signed them and given that to somebody. If you book me, I don’t see DJing as work. I see DJing as the fun part for me. If you book me and I’m going to spend a day with you, if you want to go out for dinner, I’m coming out for dinner, you want to go to some weird event with me, we’ll go to that event. We’re in a small scene where you want to get to know somebody as much as you like the music.

This is definitely a breach of GDPR, but during the lockdown streams I’d see a couple of people who’d said. “Oh, we really wanted the Life As We Know It album, but they’d sold out and we’re gutted.” But they’d been on that live stream every single week and they bought a load of t-shirts and stuff and I had a few copies left, so I just posted them one and said, “Thanks for listening.”

I don’t do it for this reason but they’re the people who’ll then drive 300 miles to come to the dinner or whatever. The fans are really important to me. I’ve been to places and people have said to me “I used your track ‘Lost And Found’ for my wedding” or “I was going through a really hard time, I was feeling a bit suicidal and such and such a track got me through.”

I was feeling a bit down about my positioning on a Beatport chart and Harry from Hospital looked at me and said “I Bet they ain’t got stories like that though.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll take that.”

That connection is important and I try to write that into it as well. If you knew my life and the stories of a lot of the tracks of mine, you’d listen to the track in a very different way. For example, ‘Lost and Found’ is about finding a friend of mine dead one Easter.  We went round and knocked on his door, it opened and he was dead. The track basically came out of his life story.

There’s a version called ‘Chilled Mix’ with no beats and we walked his coffin out to that track. I’ve put the real personal stuff into my music. I don’t massively advertise that because I want people to attribute their own lives to the tracks. People have got married to that tune, emailed me and sent me pictures of them walking down the aisle. I haven’t dared tell them it’s actually about someone dying.

That’s the beauty of well-written lyrics. I haven’t written any really, but even if I haven’t, I’ve had a lot of input. Rocky made that story really accessible.

It’s like all good music, isn’t it? You pour your own soul into it, you hear what you need to hear from it and that’s what makes it special.

How did you choose what tracks to use for the big 20 years album?

I went to all my favorite artists that released stuff in the past on Spearhead and my current favorites just wanted to do a series of releases I felt showed the variety of sound. To my delight, Technimatic, LSB, Makoto, L- Side, Solah, and many others immediately went, “All right”.

20 Years… What’s changed?

Everything. When I started the only way to get music out there was to send it to a distributor or a label that had a distributor. So you had to get past a person. The only format people were playing was vinyl, then you had to burn CDs as well.

Then after that you didn’t have to, we started playing digital stuff but we shared over AIM, there were no streaming services. There wasn’t even a download service when we started. I remember going to meetings about “Downloads are coming, they’re going to kill everything!” People being terrified.

From the way people listen to music, to the way you get demos and every other aspect has changed. It was much easier when you put your record onto vinyl and if you could get it into shops- people bought it, once you’d sold them that was the end of it.

One of the biggest problems as a label now is you’re responsible to keep accounting for stuff forever and that’s quite a big task whereas it used to be I know I’ll sell this many vinyls here’s 500 quid job done. The hardest thing for me has been that there’s way less money, but actually more workload.

Socials have changed, spending all the time on socials. There weren’t any socials. Promo was you paid £300 and just had a page in a Knowledge Mag. It’s changed so much, it can be difficult for a rapidly increasing old man to keep up with.

I feel fortunate that I’ve been around a while. I know I can release my own music and it’ll get picked up and someone will listen to it, but for a new artist to stand out hard it can be tough but, I still love the music.

I guess the last thing to say is I’ve come to a place with the label really, where I’m now saying what does spearhead look like for year 21 and onwards. It took me a while to come to this conclusion but I made a very definite decision I could either sell out, commercialise, start to sign music that I don’t really like, but I know will stream well to keep the company in a big office and making money.

Or I could say, I’m going to scale the business back, but I’m going to keep making music I like. I’m going to keep signing music I like from people that understand where we’re at. So we can release music we like and how well it does commercially just doesn’t matter. We can keep doing what we like. And so I made that decision, I’m just going to keep making music I like whether anyone listens to it or not.

Hence I now work in another job and do this. But do you know what? I managed to do drum and bass for 12 years and nothing else. No other music income, just drum and bass. And not many people get to do that. So that’ll do.

Get Your Tickets 20 Years of Spearhead Show

XX – 20 years of Spearhead Records compilation is out on Friday Dec 5
 

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By: Whisky Kicks
Title: BCee Talks 20 years of Spearhead Records
Sourced From: ukf.com/read/114640/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=114640
Published Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

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