Born in West Wickham, Bromley in London on 1 June 1986, Skream started making music at the age of 15. As a teenager he worked at Big Apple Records where he made connections including one with Hatcha, another dub-step pioneer. He would frequently skip school to work at Big Apple and much of his early production work was with older artists.
As dubstep started to pick up in popularity, Skream’s music started to develop more, away from darker, garage rock to more of dub, house and even jazz. He continued to record and released his song “Midnight Request Line” which was extremely well received. It has been praised as “dubstep’s most recognizable crossover hit” in 2005. Skream also released a number of records through various labels like Tempa, Tectonic and Big Apple; additionally he worked with Niall Henshaw as the duo named Spectrum. He released his first full-length, self titled album with Tempa in 2006.
Skream has performed all over the world, and in 2006 started to host a radio show called Stella Sessions. In 2009 he further grew in popularity and prominence when he released a remix for La Roux’s “In For the Kill” which peaked at number two on the charts and was featured on a television show called Skins.
Skream – real name Oliver Jones – is one of the pioneering forces of UK dubstep, having helped popularise the genre through massive remixes and regular club nights (including the infamous Forward>>). The Londoner’s debut album, Skream!, was considered a game changer at the time; it was certainly the record that opened my door to dubstep in all its original variations. Most people will have first encountered him via his incredible dubstep remix of La Roux’s ‘In For The Kill’, which was arguably the version that broke La Roux in the first place.
I’ve probably seen him live about twenty times; he seems to appear at every single festival in every single country, every single year. Most of the first few times I saw him live was while he was DJing B2B with fellow dubstep pioneer Benga; together, they would try to out-bass each other with the grittiest, heaviest dubstep. And, of course, they are (or were, as Benga has allegedly retired) both part of the ‘dubstep supergroup’ Magnetic Man with Artwork, who performed live with MCs and intense visuals – I saw them across a number of festival during 2011.
More recently, and since his emergence as a BBC DJ, Skream has turned his back on dubstep in favour of disco house. In 2013 I saw him and his epic ‘disco sets’ (often three to four hours long) at four separate festivals (including Worldwide in France, Dour in Belgium and Secret Garden Party in the UK), in which he would play oldschool Motown, ‘80s disco and cheesy house music fronted by oldschool dubstep MC (and Magnetic Man MC) SGT Pokes. Just this weekend, I saw him at Secret Garden Party 2014 for a garage and house orientated set! Whatever genre Skream turns his hands and eyes to next, he is sure to remain one of the UK’s best club DJs.
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