Vince Robson (DMC / Out of Orda / Bribe ) Interview

If you read this blog regularly, you’ve heard a number of great tracks by Vince Robson under various aliases: the Out of Orda EPs, the Bribe EP, and the Suburban Base Megamix he did for DMC. I’ve reposted all of these tracks below, as well as a track from another of his EPs (the Power Struggle EP from 1993), and several other tracks of his including a never-released live PA… enjoy!!

The Beginning

I started going to underground raves in 1989 and it soon became my favourite thing to do, like it did for so many others. We spent hours on motorways and service stations waiting on the word from the secret mobile numbers directing everyone to the venues, a great time for raves that was. At the time I was part of a ‘pop group’ that was trying different avenues of breaking into the music business, unsuccessfully, and I’d hooked up with Les Spaine who was a great guy (he was one of the big movers with Island records and Motown, he’d handled 5-Star and at the time was managing Aswad and a host of others), and as a favour to me he had gotten one of Aswad’s Akai S900 samplers for me to work with. Essentially this is what got me started because I would come back from raves with the beats and breaks pounding in my head and it wasn’t long before I started to experiment with the same kinds of breaks and loops and hardcore noises that I danced the nights away to.

Out of Orda – “Overdose” EP

“Overdose” on the OutOfOrda e.p . is quite literally my first ever rave track and it was never actually intended for a release, hell it was made in my bedroom with a Tascam 4track cassette tape mixer and an Akai s900! The second track on the ep was ‘Talking Head’ and an old friend of mine Jake Horton and his partner in ‘the lyric factory’ Ian Campbell spent an afternoon with me smoking and drinking whiskey and laying a vocal track on top which became ‘Tekin Callie’. Les Spaine heard the tracks, and although he knew absolutely nothing of the rave scene, he took the demo and got me publishing on it with Polygram (which I still find frankly shocking to this day) and got it pressed for release. It’s a funny old ep, full of bad production and inexperience, but it got me started and I still love to hear it. I had to distribute it myself too, which I was a bit unprepared for, driving all over London and the south with boxes and boxes of tracks.


Out Of Orda – Overdose EP
Overdose
Zone 7

Renegade EP

We only sold a few thousand [of the “Overdose EP”], but it generated a meeting between myself and a producer called Brian Butler who was working for DMC doing remixes and megamixes, and he was looking for a partner for his record labelSir Spence ep, and wanted to do something harder, ravier. So we went into it together. He provided the studio time, the equipment and his production expertise and I created the tracks. I put the second Out Of Orda EP together in a week and Brain polished it and fairy-dusted it and mixed it down. The production on the ep was much better than my first ep, and this is down to Brain and the studio. The EP has an unusual feel to it. I had wanted it to be a lot more dark and hardcore, but Brian was happier to keep it more shiny, more melodic. We got a distributor involved and moved about 4000 copies.

Out of Orda – Renegade EP:
Plimpy Ed
Zone 8

Working for DMC

Because Brian Butler was working for DMC too, producing remixes and megamixes each month to deadline he asked me to get involved. There was some good stuff that we did, but a lot of that work was mainly pop music, and I always had trouble dealing with pop music! We also worked on other stuff through DMC, including a bunch of Village people remixes that PWL never honoured the royalty payments on, and a Thunderbirds track we were commissioned by Arista to make but was never released due to sample copyright issues.

v/a – Suburban Base: Sound of the Future (Megamix by the Berzerker)

The Bribe EP

The Bribe ep and XTC ep were darker, they were more reflective of what I wanted to release, and the Bribe ep especially is my favourite of the four releases. ‘MD’s in a playpen’ is Brian, I never found out why exactly he wanted to call himself this on the ep, maybe it was because I’d changed the release name from out of orda to bribe. (…and the illegal stash was hoarded by Mystery!)

Bribe – Goldseal

The Power Struggle EP

The power struggle ep was also quite dark, and the name power struggle reflects the difference in opinion, that being I wanted to do dark and fast hardcore, and Brian like more melodic pop style dance tracks. We released this ep under a different label name and artist/production names purely because Brain was very worried about getting sued for the use of the “I can see clearly now” samples. He had taken legal advice from a source at PPL and was convinced we would get sued if we released as ourselves, so we pressed as XTC and covered our tracks!


Power Struggle – Thai Reed

Playing live

I did three live PA’s at raves during the releases, and at one point I distinctly recall Easygroove (or maybe it was Loftgroover? Not sure now!) asking me on stage whether I would like to work with him on producing a couple of the tracks I had performed in the PA, but I was off it at the time on some particularly heady pink-new-yorkers and didn’t take him up on the offer. I recall thinking that if a top DJ wanted to produce the choon, then it must be good and I should release it myself. Retrospectively that was a bad move, and I should have worked with him on the track.
BlimBurn – Live PA 1991
An Out Of Orda live p.a. played at the limelight club (now rhythm station) in 1991

Post-rave day tunage

I carried on making dance and other music right up until 2000, doing various trip-hop and dance material including a bunch of tracks I released on a cd called “Attack of the Killer Brains”. After that however, I changed direction a bit, and since 2000 I’ve been writing books and doing other creative stuff, but not so much of the rave choons, although I did make an awesome oldskool 80minute megamix not too long ago.
Dopefreak – Invasion
from Attack of the Killer Brains CD 2002

Smiles EP 1 – Tease Me
This is from 1997, a trancier tip, but listen through because it has a beautiful oldskool hardcore-esque riff for the last few mins of the track i love.

Favorite rave tunes

I really liked New Decade “Get the Message” on Out of Romford and “dreamfinder” by Sound Corp, but back in the early 90’s there were just too many good tracks to wave a stick at. The whole hardcore scene back then inspired me, and to be honest, it still does.

New music is always a mixed bag, but I think the rave scene changed too much for me, I didn’t like happy hardcore at all, but I like the drum and bass scene of the late 90’s, in particular Aphrodite and similar.

Thanks to Vince for doing the interview, any questions for him can be left below in the comments