We had to have Sherelle Thomas for this thing. She was top of the want-list from the minute we came up with the idea for expanding Bass, Mids, Tops. Indeed, had Bass, Mids, Tops itself been finished a year or even six months after it was, we would have moved the Earth to get her as the final chapter, because as we were wrapping up the book in 2019, she was almost single-handedly enabling a new shift in UK rave music: one which embodied our motto, “BASS CULTURE IS FOLK CULTURE”.
Her DJ sets took very old British jungle and hardcore rave, very fresh new Chicagoan footworking, and turned it all into a coherent vibe thanks to encyclopaedic knowledge and precision mixing. At the same time she she was rewiring the “culture” part of DJ culture itself, rising fast through the international ranks as an out and proud Black, queer, masculine-presenting, young woman – not so much demanding equal opportunities, as kicking down doors and making them herself, and bringing her friends with her. That in turn has turned to a determined activism, showcasing and providing opportunities for new talent in ways that never let worthiness eclipse the musical, cultural and fun aspects of what she’s doing and enabling. The Hooversound label she runs with fellow DJ Naina is pure funtimes high-velocity music, and her ongoing BEAUTIFUL project designed to provide opportunities to LGBTQ+ and Black musical creators - with a community studio and workshops underwritten by headphone manufacturer AIAIAI - created a wildly varied compilation in 2021 which remains one of the best electronic albums of this decade so far. It’s worth noting that she is extremely evangelical about straight, white, male musicians too - just see her enthusiasm for Machinedrum, Lone and Luke Vibert here, and look at the Hooversound catalogue - but when it comes to building structures, she goes the extra mile for those traditionally denied opportunity.
I’d interviewed her quite a few times before, but this – conducted outside a café in Dalston, with Brian coming and going having just photographed Sherelle, and also taking pics of another upcoming subject for this publication – was the first time in the flesh. And without wanting to gush too much, she was staggeringly charismatic. Where she’d previously tended to the bright colours of old rave wear, here she was in super sharp black and white, her beret, bomber jacket and chain looking back not just to the jungle years of the early 90s but the late 80s hip hop style which allowed the likes of Neneh Cherry and Salt N Pepa to forge new gender norms.
Sherelle talks of having considered professional football, and studying photography and acting - and she's one of those people you can imagine being as successful in whatever she turned her hand at as she is now. Indeed as she makes constant eye contact, strikes thoughtful poses, defuses any threat of earnestness with moments of whimsy or enthusiasm, you could very easily imagine her as CEO or political leader. She can switch from old-school rhetorician to enthusiastic schoolkid and back in a paragraph. Like many DJs her hands are constantly in motion, but it’s very consciously controlled - she uses specific gestures like a born performer, and when she’s trying to remember a particular tune from the past (which is often) she’ll close her eyes and they’ll tap and swipe on the table as if accessing some inner spreadsheet. And as you’ll see from Brian’s wealth of pics, she really knows how to strike a pose, too. Spending time with her is a blast, and we hope you enjoy this one as much as we did.
Sherelle, thinking at 160BPM+
So we had to have you in this, because you embody what we’re about in terms of looking at how subculture replicates and transmits down the years. You’ve taken generations worth of bass culture and folded them all into what you do. In 2023, how do you define your style and that kind of historical telescoping together of sounds. Or do you?
I don’t think I can. I think that what you said about intergenerational… well, the word intergenerational I think works perfectly for me. There’s a lot of different things that I embody and champion – since, I guess, my rise and when it started in 2019. Though what I played then is weirdly very different to now. I still embody jungle but I’ve found myself actually constantly questioning a lot of the things that I do, and questioning a lot of, you know: I play all of this stuff, maybe I should think about this. I find myself constantly questioning and thinking, am I representing all that I can represent,everything possibly known to man and everything that I’m influenced by. So yeah, can I define what I do at the moment? Probably not. But if you like rave…. ing then you will enjoy coming to see me play. With regards to the BPMs, that still hasn’t changed and won’t any time soon, still representing the amazing sounds of 160 and above. That’s basically the main skeleton or heartbeat of everything that I do. It is actually the 160 and above element. It’s been quite nice to take that around the world. A lot has changed and that’s what I’m taking in at the moment, being actually quite happy about it. I don’t feel so alone in my mindset or at least what I play. And a lot of the people I have been playing for years, prior to blowing up in the way that I did now, actually are out there playing alongside me. So that feels really lovely.
That’s amazing and we will get into that in more depth. But in concrete practical terms what does your work consist of week to week? Obviously you’re gigging like crazy on weekends.
OK, from week to week I’m not going to lie to you Joe, I’m absolutely chaotic. It’s all based around the music side of things, around what I’m inspired by that week. Downloading music, listening to music, thinking what I’ve been inspired by, what I could also implement in either sets or radio shows, wondering why I haven’t heard certain sounds. I might be listening to Tim Reaper1’s show and I’m like: fuck, didn’t download that, haven’t come across that, why haven’t I come across that? I might go on a big download spree or research spree, I’m quite obsessive with what I do. It does really revolve around music. If I’m not listening to 6 I’m probably putting something together on Rekordbox. At the moment, in this current stage, I’m working on an album.
A solo album of you?
A solo album of me. It’s been quite nice because I’ve been able to retrace my steps almost of why I got into music in the first place. Because I’m by default a house head, a Chicago house head at that, it’s been nice revisiting a lot of tunes and people that I like, and almost building back the links that I remember so fondly as I started – but as you go through gigging it’s all about new music, new music, new music, I found myself forgetting about the old stuff that I know and loved. Bridging those two back again has been really nice.
I’ve just had a day or two of that solid listening to tunes and the way they connect because of DJ Deeon’s death2. And seeing people talk about individual little things like the 808 cowbells that run through his work and seeing where they come in everything from electrohouse to Night Slugs and seeing how those lines and legacies all go back.
I hope, it’s kind of apt that we would be talking at this time when obviously he’s just passed. Because he’s someone that got… well, everyone who knows, knows he’s a legend, I only wished that he was known more by people. In a similar way to, say, Rashad3 where their deaths are sad because of how innovative they have been and how much they changed the face of music. Especially for me. I found myself, over festival period actually, playing loads of DJ Deeon stuff. More so than I’ve maybe ever in my career. I’ve got my favourite one of his which is “Freak U Rite” – I first heard that song in, I believe, Machinedrum4’s mix for Mixmag… Yeah it is, it is. I remember hearing that the first time, and that blew my mind. This is the archetypal staple of how all my mixes should be. Those two I feel for me as a Black artist, I want to be like them in a sense of carrying a proper legacy and doing shit that’s super cool and changing the scene in that way. The way that they have. If I could have an ounce of that I would be really happy.
It makes me so happy that the world is coming round to house in a very serious cultural sense. Through the 90s and on, serious commentators would talk about Afrofuturism but would always lean on the stuff that told you it was futurist: Detroit, Metalheadz, all the stuff with robot faces, shiny metallic production. But I always felt house was building the future just as much. And now, through people who are like yourself historians musically or someone like Theo Parrish who likes to trace lines, that’s undeniable. And then, through house, going into places like South Africa and changing the way music is there. You realize yeah, house was building the future.
Absolutely, yeah. In 2023, it’s a bit strange for me because again, I feel as if people do understand lineages, and they do get certain stuff. Whether they go really really far back is a question that I’m always asking myself. Even with me, with my own thing of DJing and doing production bits. Am I always asking the questions of “in the beginning” [laughs as she realises she’s just referenced a classic house lyric], all that kind of stuff, am I asking that question enough? This year I’ve found myself going back to house roots and really retracing steps to see if I’ve missed anything. Because of all the people that I’ve played with all the time, I’ve got the ability to contextualize stuff a lot further than when I first started in the scene in 2014. That’s like nine years ago. So when I was 20. So it’s a case of, even further back to what I was looking at then. With Deeon, his death has made me very sad, but I’m very happy to be playing in the same lifetime as a musician and artist as him. Because I wasn’t necessarily doing that with DJ Rashad. When I actually started out properly, the Reprezent5 show came about in 2015/16 so it had been like a year or two after he’d passed – it was painful because he would have obviously been one of the first people to come in. I tried to get DJ Deeon onto a show actually, but I wasn’t able to do it logistically. It was sad but I’ve been able to watch him play and it’s made me super happy. I’ve got a picture of him somewhere, with Jaguar of Radio 1. Happy to be in the same lifetime where he was gigging, I was gigging, seeing him live was amazing.
Let’s go back to how you started charting all this stuff and joining the dots. A more traditional chronology. You grew up in Essex?
Grew up in Walthamstow, went to school in Essex.
What were you hearing around you at home or at school?
I used to live in the tower blocks for a short period of my life. Loads of dancehall, loads of R&B, dancehall from my mum, R&B from my sister, and the neighbours would join in in force and listen to maybe like dance hits. “Pump Up The Jam,” all that. We moved from one part of Walthamstow to another, in a council house, and from there, I remember that more vividly in the sense that they would just leave MTV or VH1 on when they weren’t watching ITV or Channel 4. I Would be watching loads of music videos. Main music videos I can think of are “Firestarter” which scared the shit out of me but I thought, OK this song is fucking sick… What else? Jamiroquai
Tyler, the Creator’s favourite band!
That’s fucking sick. Which makes sense actually because I fucking love Tyler, the Creator, he’s got a lot of moments in Scum Fuck Flower Boy that actually does sound quite Jamiroqui-y.
All the stuff Syd6 brought to that collective is so jazz funk, too.
Yeah! And I love that bitch as well. I look up to her a lot as she’s one of the first queer Black women you’d see out where she’s performing as herself. I feel seen [thumps chest], you know what I mean? Jamiroquai. Loads of Chemical Brothers, lots of Daft Punk. Before I realized it was a film I remember watching Interstella 55557: “Voyager,” “Digital Love,” “One More Time,” ...oh and what’s the other one? “High Life” – I did see the music video for that on VH1 I think. It was just a plethora of a lot of mainstream dance music that shouldn’t have been mainstream because it was just weird. I remember seeing Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” and being creeped out by that. It veered around what was around in the 90s at the time. These electronic bands, duos, they influence me today.
And that was my early music taste. Being built at the same time around the legacy of Aaliyah, Tupac, Biggie and stuff. Meanwhile my mum is obsessed with Beenie Man and Patra8. There’s a varied music taste but it feels very much like it’s in threes: Mum, myself, Charmaine – which is my sister. I carried that very much with me until the time that I was able to be on our [very formal voice] family computer. My sister worked very hard, she’s a bank manager, we didn’t have a computer in the house and she was like we’re going to purchase one. So she did. And I was on it, first time I’m on the internet. Everyone else around me was on the internet all the time and I wasn’t on it all. I was watching music videos and playing Playstation.
Even Playstation is intrinsic to my music taste because it was all drum and bass and jungle. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City had MSX 98’s radio station, the Moving Shadow9 one, that I did not realize until maybe two years ago that was an actual compilation that they had released. Had no idea, had no clue. I just clocked it and was like, you meant to tell me I could listen to the full, full version rather than the Grand Theft Auto version. This is where my favourite song of all time comes in – because I had no clue what it was called, it was “Renegade Snares”, the Foul Play VIP Mix10, but playing GTA I heard it for the first time ever since I last heard it when I was really, really young – like a toddler. Just stopping the game and going, what the actual fuck, this is the tune, this is the fucking tune! And the next one that comes on afterwards, it’s [Foul Play’s] “Finest Illusion” and I was like, what the fuck is this song?
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