The Ellis Dee Experience

Back in the day, there was hardly a rave that didn’t have the name Ellis Dee at the very top of the flyer. Nowadays, with an entire generation weaned on either happy hardcore or drum ‘n’ bass, where exactly does he fit in?

In the old days it didn’t matter if you had Grooverider, Carl Cox and Jumpin’ Jack Frost on the same line up, DJ Ellis Dee was still the main man. His brand of house, melodic hardcore and sheer unadulterated energy was the climax to many a rave, and bootleg tapes of his sets were hottest property around. His band and label Rhythm Section were highly regarded, and their ‘Comin’ On Strong’ track is without doubt an all time classic.

But things move on: with police crackdowns in 1992, the rave scene got shoved rudely back into the clubs. Suddenly the hardcore found that they didn’t know the score after all.

“I used to be hardcore, yeah. But then I nearly gave up DJing completely at one point, because of the changes. The music, what everyone was calling jungle, started to go really dark – and I couldn’t fucking hack it at all. And then, at the same time, the happy hardcore was getting too cheesy for me, what with all the speeded up vocals. We couldn’t work out which way to go”. Life for Ellis Dee, aka Roy Collins, suddenly changed completely. The band split, the label ended and he was no longer the headlining DJ. “But I think you can only hold on to that for so long really, I mean everyone gets their turn at the top for a while”, he says, freely admitting that he had got stuck in a rut. “There was one point where I was just pulling records out of my bag, and I didn’t know what the hell was what, except that they were all as bad as each other. And then all the credible jungle came along, and I thought, ‘Right, I can get into this”.

Originally a soul DJ, his conversion came in time-honoured fashion when a mate took him to an acid-house party in late ’87, and gave him an E. From there, putting on and playing at his own parties was a natural progression, and the name was stolen from an American DJ of the time. (Trainspotter fact: it was actually Junior Vasquez’s first pseudonym!). His soul roots explain why both his DJing and producing have always had a melodic side to them, and why the arrival of the dark stuff left him directionless.

Honest, enthusiastic and easy going, he chats openly in his East End studio, and is unduly modest about the fact that he’s beginning to re-establish himself again.

Recent releases include the ruff hardstepper, ‘Lockdown’ towards the end of last year – on Collusion, the label he runs with Swan-E – and he’s just licensed the electro-influenced, smooth-groove of ‘Atmosphere’, to ‘Total Science’, a compilation due on Black Market Records. There’s also a new track set for release, called ‘My Style’, that he’s just recorded with MC Fearless (who has no hesitation in naming Ellis Dee as his favourite DJ to work with).

Ellis’ band Rhythm Section have just started up again, doing Pas as far away as Florida, and the new mixes of some of their oldies come across fresh and funky with their breakbeat acid blend. The DJing is also back on track: it’s generally agreed that Ellis Dee played the set of the night at the recent United Dance party in Stevenage.

Checking Hype, Zinc, Mickey Finn, SS and Aphrodite as his current influences, his music has a hardstep feel to it, but still the melodies come shining through. He manages to incorporate both the soulful grooves of Bukem, and the ruffer edge of Hype, and it is only a matter of time before the wheel turns full circle, and the name at the top of your flyer belongs to a man like Ellis Dee.