Slipmatt on SL2, Hardcore and Old Skool

Alongside his East London childhood mate Lime, Matthew Nelson aka DJ Slipmatt was responsible for producing one of dance music's greatest, most groundbreaking anthems, SL2's On A Ragga Tip. Dominating the raves and charts of 1992, the dub based, sample heavy tune put SL2 on a par with XL labelmates of the time the Prodigy fhough musical disagreements saw the pair largely abandoning the SL2 name.

"John went into making darker drum & bass while I moved into making happy hardcore which John didn't like at all," said Slipmatt to Skrufff's Jonty Adderley.

"I liked drum & bass but not so much the darker side he got interested in."

Lime in fact, was sitting in the same Notting Hill pub flicking through a magazine as Slipmatt chatted, having just come from the same studio where the pair have been recorded. However, nowadays, the pair appea more interested in house.

"I'm on more of a hard trance tip, or making funky house," said Slipmatt. "I DJ a lot of funky house sets, for example on the Space Terrace (Ibiza) a couple of times a year. I played there at Tronic, for Alex P's birthday this summer." Which is all the more surprising given Slipmatt's other best known association which has seen him labelled as the Godfather of hardcore- or more specifically, happy hardcore.

"I stopped doing the happy hardcore thing properly in 1998, though I still do bits, for example at old skool events. But I do still know a lot of the original DJs and quite a few of them are telling me it's going through a revival but I'm not tempted."

Skrufff (Jonty Adderley): How do you view the state of today's club scene-

Slipmatt: "People seem to think it's scaling down, but I don't know really. From what I've seen over the last 13 years dance music is always changing and always fluctuating up and down. It's like the drum & bass scene, before you would hear it was losing it, then a couple of months later it comes up again. It depends on what's happening within each scene. For example, looking at the trance scene, you'll get a couple of good tunes coming out with something a bit different about them, which will start people going mad about them, then loads of other producers will copy them. That happens in every form of dance music, people jump on the bandwagon, the scene then gets a little bit boring until someone comes along with another big tune and so it continues."

Skrufff: Your SL2 tune 'On A Ragga Tip' was a massive tune in the early 90s, what happened with that project, why didn't you make an album, for example-

Slipmatt: "Nothing really happened, it was just the way the scene went. At the end of 1992 everything changed and evolved, the whole rave scene had finished as it was then, and the scene progressed down that darker route in 1993. SL2 wasn't really about that. So even though we were at number 2 in the (pop) charts for three weeks, we didn't think it was going to happen by making another tune that fast. So we decided to leave SL2 as it was. We were never tempted by the album route and were never really in that position then anyway. We've always gone with the flow rather than planning too much. At the moment, for example, we've just signed a single with Concept Music which they're going to market, so hopefully we can get a top 40 single with it. All our focus is on that, hopefully something comes from it, if it doesn't then it doesn't."

Skrufff: What was your original route into raving-

Slipmatt: "I played a few times in Camden alongside Coldcut in the mid 80s, they were a big inspiration, then in 1989 my brother started Raindance. We were into house music right from when the first Marshall Jefferson record came out. We were on it from then. I helped my brother put the first party together. The first one was in Barking (East London) in 1989, it was totally illegal and we got about a thousand people. It was in a marquee in a field in Barking. We started at midnight, the Old Bill (police) came down about 2am but the way the Tags

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