INSIDE THE GUTS.. A BRIEF HISTORY

Back in mid to late 80's i was hell bent on bombing the london underground, i truely was mad for it, and during that period i would often go down to kent and hang out with top graffiti writer and knowledgable kat SKORE. .....................
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Skore is now a true legend, working with adidas and having his own trainer and is probably one of the true graffiti writers that has lived.


Me and him formed the crew The Troubled Children, which is still going strong today!!
Skores home town was a hip hop caldraun waiting to overflow, there were writers, dj's, breakers and mc's around every corner, not like my hometown and i was loving hanging out down in kent.
i didnt have a job and bunked the train almost every weekend to paint and listen to Westwood or whatever dope '12 were coming out of the u.s and u.k. ....Everyday was the B-boy lifestyle.
One summer night around local lad Dj Blobs house (NOW Dj First rate) of Scratch perverts, More Cheeba fame, me and Cel one tried to loop half a bar of Alvin Cash "were having a party" for about 3 hours!! Alas it didnt work but a love for making our own brand of music had begun. A few months later Cel had a '12 deal with Famous u.k hip hop label Kold sweat under the name of MOST DOMINANT
The members were Cel one vocals,Dj Blob (1st Rate) and Dj Renegade on production.The outcome was a superb ep full of crisp rhymes and jazzy but banging beats.


I rememer going down to the kold sweat studios with Most Dominant and if you listen carefully you can hear a young Sigher the Gutter Snype wailing in one of the choruses!! The engineer for all these sessions down in West londonds Shepard Bush was a certain Angelo Starr, yes Edwin Starrs son....if only i was into edwin back then i would have tried to prize some 45's from Angleos hands!!....I remember meeting the fellas at the studio one day with my very very first expensive record in my hand. I had just forked out £60 for MIKE JAMES KIRKLAND lp "Hang on in there" .....That was some serious dough for a youngster to pay back in the early 90's.

"Got any breaks on it" yelled Renegade...."nope" was my reply, damn he was shocked, but i knew i was buying it for the heart drenched emotion in the title track...Funny but i did sample this in the end on one of my tapes, then later on it got used by UGLY DUCKLING for "i did it like this".

Me, cel and first rate carried on being pals and hanging out, me and cel were making beats on a shitty commodore amiga, just consisting of a few loops layered over eachother, man it was real basic, lol! It still is i guess, but there was such a personal feeling with these beats i was making as a teenager. The breaks that i had been collecting since the 80's were now getting chopped and looped up for real, no more just saying "this has been used by Jungle Brothers" etc.....Now it was about me, not other people.
Heres a few early ones i dug of a cruddy old tape from the late 80's or very early 90'???

I had plenty of beats milling around for a long time, and we had our dreams of cutting wax, especially me as i had ever released anything..One night at a concert at the Brixton acadamy, cant remember who was playing, Cel got chatting to a guy called Johnny F......"come down to the shop" he said, there are always dj's and mc's hanging out all the time, letting of lyrics and spinning....so we all got ourselves down to Liberty grooves shop in Tooting Broadway...Behind the counter was larger than life character Big Ted. He would often mimick the latest u.s rap stars flow for fun and his knowledge of hip hop was spot on. Johnny camped out the back, this was where he actually lived, and he had collection of rare hip hop gems stacked up on shelves in the back to. Shorty Blitz, before he was known used to hang out, as did Cutmaster Swift, Pogo and many many other u.k heads. As i recall we had a New Years eve Jam where i brought along my Commodore Amiga, ha! ha! its almost laughable nowfays at the low-fi of it all, and i played beats upon beats and mc's got up and let of....even Little Rodney C of WildStyle film was there letting of......man i was coming of age, this was what it was all about. Johnny recorded the whole night, dont know what ever happened to those recordings? Maybe they will appear one day. From all of this and Johnny and Ted hearing Cel on the mic they decided that our crew The Gutter Snypes should be there next release.

Now i still only had my Amiga so how was we going to transfer what we had to take to the studio. Well Johnny had a AKAI 900 behind the counter of the shop, i started to go up there late at night and put the beats down, but man the sample memory was so damn short.........But alas we got on with it and was going to a home studio in South london somewhere for Graveyard shift every time....all right for the other boys but i lived about 40 miles away. But when you are so desperate for something you just dont care. I wanted this big time!!

Sadly after many nights recording the sessions never got to wax, and it was horrible to say but Dj First Rates cuts were so way out there and mad they just didnt fit with what we wanted to release as a record. Im made up that First Rate whent on to fullfill his ambitions and cut it up with the Scratch Perverts, More Cheeba and had dj at to many European cities to mention, hats of to you my man. ANYWAY HERES WHAT CAME OUT OF THOSE STUDIO SESSIONS THE GUTTER SNIPES "6FT & CHANGE"




We now as a group were one lighter, and we needed a dj who understood what path we wanted to take musically...in step Dj Prime Cuts. Cuts was from the Gravesend side and Cel had known him through local jams etc....Prime Cuts was at that time a drummer, producer and dj, boy had talent! He had his own release called Stone Risk but we persuaded him to come over to the Snypes, and what a good move it was.
I knew i had to move on regarding my sample set up so we heard of some dude up in Sawbridgeworth or around there who had a Akai 950 for sale, plus Atari etc....all i needed for a home set up.
We met some Kat called Dj Lacey (r.i.p) who was mad for the drumbreaks, faster the better, i remember i did a trade with him whilst i was up there, i got HILTON FELTON "MAN OF ALL SEASONS" lp, cant for the life of me remember what i traded.
Glad to see that another full on hip hop head like Lacey for all his hard work got mad props on the hip hop scene, until his accidental death, i know he touched a lot of people and left a indelible mark on the u.k b-boy scene.
Now we had everything in place we were moving like usain bolt to our hip hop goal.
Johnny gave us a budget and we decided through some good feedback from DEXTER of the BROTHERHOOD to use MONROE STUDIOS situated about 200 yards from KISS FM on the Holloway road in north london.
The session whent really well and as it wasnt cheap but we were firing on all cylinders to get our stuff on point.
Cel drafted in BIG TED, SNYPER, and THE PRINCIPLE for a line up track and we were almost there.
Johnny baffled us with numbers etc, and to be honest he did a bloody good job of getting the wax pressed and he also put some money and effort getting us some promotion in the black music magazines of the time.
Things really went well with WESTWOOD,KISS, CHOICE and the BBC all giving the ep some airplay. The "trials of life" track stood out for me, loved eveything about it, my kind of hip hop, story raps, and nice flowing beats, even got sampled for Madonnas "Inside of me" on her BEDTIME STORYS CD...which gained us a little bit of loot, but most of all some credits on the inside cover!!



Thats pretry much how it goes in a not so long winded way, the ep seem to hit a nerve with the u.k and europe heads and i guess is widely recognized as an important part of our underground scene, that if nothing else i am proud of, and it has made me meet many many b-boys no different from myslef, all out there looking for breaks and living the life. We as the Gutter Snypes did go on to recorded again in Monroe Studios and this un-issued "EGO TRIP"was the outcome.
Somewhere is another un-issued tack called "WHADYA MINDSAY" that cel went on to record on his own D.O.G label in the early part of this decade. Back to about late '94 we were asked to go down to RICHARD RUSSELLS XL office for a chat and also ISLAND records asked us in, but the sad death of Cel ones father meant he had more important matters to address and a family businees to run, sadly it all came to an end although we still do keep in touch...We had many dreams of hooking up in the studio again but it just never materialised.Of course PRIME CUTS had gone on to be a massive DJ in his own right, Cel has had a t-shirt company and released his own '12 as well as guesting on many '12, as for little old sigher? Well thanks to the good old hip hop fraternity egging me on i decided to start my own label and release my first record for 15 years called SIGHER THE GUTTER SNYPE "hitman harry"/"keep on pushing" elcal 001 you can find this on my other ELCAL RECORDS BLOG!