4. DJ Narrows
Now this was a powerful one. The first time I heard it was when EZ was playing it. But it turns out I actually had the tune in my house as a dubplate. I didn’t always used to open tunes up as I didn’t think they’d be any good. I mean, loads of people would send tunes every week and I was getting so many that mainly weren’t all that. They were just tunes trying to get airplay. So I didn’t realise I had the thing in my house the whole time! Next morning I went through my pile and there it was – and it was a dubplate they sent as well, so they’d cut that dub especially, which was not a cheap or easy thing to do back then.
So anyway, I’ve heard EZ playing this tune at Sidewinder and it was underground, man, it was dark. Now it doesn’t seem so dark at that time, man, it was grimy. Absolute killer tune; one of my personal killers. I mean, it’s a 4/4 wub wub, wub wub killer of a tune. It was unbelievable at the time. I’m quite a technical DJ. I like playing D&B stuff. Stuff that’s darker, that’s more DJ friendly. Tunes that you can mix for a long time. So when I heard that it was a proper ‘What is this?’ moment for me. Seriously, I thought, ‘This is some next level grime right here.’ So I started talking to Narrows, who’s from Reading and I was getting all his tunes first. This was important back then as without the internet not everyone had every tune, so getting the special tunes was a bigger part of being a DJ. But apparently he made that tune when his mate died in a car crash. So off the back of that tragedy he made this very heavy tune. People had to come with some good production after hearing that. This tune was benchmark for a new level people had to reach.
