LTJ Bukem- I Don't Believe In Miracles

UK Drum & bass pioneer LTJ Bukem chatted to Skrufff this week and revealed that he attributes almost all of his success down to hard work rather than fate or particularly good fortune.

"I used to spend literally on average about 11 hours a day playing and mixing music. I used to get up and that was all I'd do; just mix my music. If I had a little part time job I would do that then get home and start mixing again," he recalled.

"I'm a sad geezer. I used to go out with a pen and paper, and write down tunes, then I would go to a record fair on Sunday morning and buy them all, with my only bit of wages that I had."

LTJ also admitted he applied to same dedication to landing gigs, pestering promoters of 10,000 capacity raves such as Raindance relentlessly until he eventually got booked.

"I don't believe so much in luck, I believe in hard work; I believe hard work creates that luck, to a certain extent," he said. "And obviously, you have to put yourself out there for that situation of when people say "right time, right place'.

"I remember in 1988, I was working in a restaurant and I used to nick all their tapes for the restaurant because I couldn't afford to buy blank tapes. I'd make mix tapes on them and send them to promoters constantly.

"So is it lucky that the Raindance guy called me to play in 1990/1991, or is the fact that I pestered him for two years prior, and gave him 36 tapes in two years, and kept phoning him every two weeks to say "what you saying-"

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