Dillinja Details

There are few producers on the drum’n’bass scene who are as respected and revered as Dillinja. With his trademark combination of dirty stomach-churning basslines and tighter than tight beats, his reputation has been secured as one of the most influential producers in drum’n’bass history, as well as one of the scene’s most called-upon remixers, having worked with everyone from David Bowie to Bjork and Basement Jaxx. A true connoisseur of sound, Dillinja’s mighty 96k Valve Sound System is recognised the world over as being second to none.

Dillinja was reared on a musical diet of funk, jazz, reggae and rare groove, genres which proved to influence him enormously, but it was the 1980s hip hop and electro explosion which really captured his heart. His hunger for hip-hop was well satisfied in South London, as local parks hosted free events where hip-hop, soul, rare groove and reggae could be consumed in vast quantities. The influence of these events on Dillinja, where the likes of King Tubby’s Hi Fi and Jah Shaka made their presence felt with their mighty earth-shaking reggae sound systems, was huge.

Dillinja began to shadow a local guy who had made Jah Shaka’s amps, and not long after, at the age of fifteen, he was making his own custom built amps and bass bins; a hobby that soon became obsession, with his teenage bedroom so full of audio equipment, he had no choice but to put his mattress atop the speaker cabinets and sleep there. However, when the infamous Criminal Justice Bill was introduced, seriously clamping down on sound systems and the events where they were played. Dillinja decided that rather than compromising his system, he would call it a day, sell of its components, and enter the heady world of music production.