“Faster tempos ‘til I die”: SHERELLE in conversation with Tim Reaper

With their own distinctive spins on high BPM club music, Sherelle and Tim Reaper are at the forefront of a younger generation of DJs reframing jungle in their own image. After both playing a Nia Archives-curated event at The Warehouse Project this month, the pair connect to discuss the responsibility of being labelled scene leaders, rejecting the idea of genres as trends, and the future of the hardcore continuum.

Since the early days of SHERELLE’s residency on Reprezent Radio, she has regularly played Tim Reaper tracks on rotation in her sets. She was originally drawn in by his boundaryless take on jungle, which drew influences from sounds far and wide – grime, techno, ambient and much more – yet remained rooted in the genre’s fast breaks and raw energy.

But for years, she had no idea what he looked like. A decade ago, the clean-cut style of drum’n’bass was the default for music at higher BPMs in clubs and among producers, with its jungle cousin often remaining an afterthought. At the time, Reaper was working as a web programmer and avoided posting images of his face online, choosing instead to channel his personality into the music. With his prolific rate of releases, it was easy to imagine the mysterious breakbeat wizard as someone who had been doing it for decades, since the genre’s original emergence.

Of course, Reaper and SHERELLE are contemporaries and nowadays collaborators – having first shared decks during a lockdown livestream – and the pair are highly visible, leading figures among a younger wave of artists who are reframing jungle and faster tempo music in their own images. Reaper’s Future Retro London label is currently gearing up for its 50th release, while SHERELLE continues to push the limits of jungle, footwork and hardcore via her DJ sets and Hooversound Recordings releases with NAINA.

They also shared a bill at Up Ya Archives – a recent sold-out jungle showcase at The Warehouse Project curated by Nia Archives, which was both huge in scale and a marker for how far the scene has developed. We sat down with the pair to chat about why we should stop calling jungle a “renaissance”, the responsibility that comes with their positions, and what’s next for the UK’s much-vaunted hardcore continuum.

How did you first come across each other’s music?

SHERELLE: I first came across Tim on Bandcamp when I found your tune All Right during the early days of my Reprezent show. I would play your music, Sully’s, Coco Bryce’s, and mix it all with footwork. But when I listened to that song, I didn’t realise you were you – I thought it was an old-school guy who had been in the scene from the 90s making this really ethereal jungle track. You kept out of the public sphere for a long time and I couldn’t find a picture of you. The first time I saw Tim was when I was reading my DJ Mag cover feature, and he was in it. I was like: “Wait, what the fuck? He’s young, he’s my age!”

Tim Reaper: The way I found out about SHERELLE, funnily enough, was your viral Boiler Room moment. I saw all the 6 Figure Gang behind you hyping up the selection. I was thinking: “I’ve never heard of this person, but they’re playing jungle and it seems to be going well, so I’ll keep tabs on what they’re doing.” I saw you were doing the show on Reprezent and you’d had Rupture, Repertoire, Coco on there previously. Then a bit later down the line, our old agent tried to make a move to get me onto his old agency – how he got me on was by getting me to do a back-to-back with you for fabric’s London Unlocked series, where they were doing unconventional sets during the pandemic. That was the first time we actually met in person, so that was good fun, and after that we got more back-to-back sets.

S: Yeah, it was really strange to me that we hadn’t crossed over. Everyone knows with Tim’s tunes that, even in the early days, he was and is very prolific. You couldn’t not have one of Tim’s tunes in your set, so it was strange not to be able to work out or find out who Tim was or see his face. It was as if he was a ghost – a ghost of jungle who could just drop these tunes and be in the distance.

Was it a deliberate thing to be mysterious?

TR: I wasn’t really interested in putting my personality into the music world. I’d just release my music and live my life separately to what was going on. I still get it now, where people don’t know that I’m not an old white guy who started making jungle back in the day. I’m Black and in my 30s; a lot of people still get surprised by that. I’m trying to do more press now, because [I want better] representation in the music industry. People often don’t know that much about me, or that my real name’s not even Tim.

S: Literally, the big shock is when you realise: “Wait, your name’s Ed?”

How was The Warehouse Project gig, and how was it being part of a Nia Archives led jungle showcase?

TR: It was cool, I played back-to-back with Dwarde and Sully, and it was their first time ever going to The Warehouse Project. They were completely baffled by how big a space it was, how many people there were and how long it takes to get from place to place. It’s almost like a city in itself, the scale of it is insane. Also, the idea that Nia has got to this point now where she can headline The Warehouse Project, curate a whole line-up and sell it out is pretty impressive.

S: For all of us involved and for Nia herself, you’re not thinking about the marketability of all this stuff. You’re here for the music, and the music alone. But it is mad to see how far she’s been able to take the sound. As a fan of hers, being able to watch her go from producing her tunes to having now amassed a mass following [is great because] she’s a genuinely nice person who does actually care about the scene. Thank God that it’s someone like that. She’s making sure she’s getting people down to play who she’s actually a fan of – Tim, Goldie, Special Request and all the people she’s curated this line-up for, so it doesn’t feel disingenuous.

Sometimes people can be disingenuous because they want that skrilla, they want that money, and I think that’s what kills scenes or stops them from seeing this amazing growth that we’re having at the moment. Tim’s able to make all the tunes in the world, to utilise his label to put out and collaborate with so many artists. Nia’s thing is about collaboration, and at least on my end, I want to work with people and collaborate with them to champion the many different spaces within faster sounds. I think we’re in a really good place at the moment.

Tim, your label is called Future Retro and your music is very rooted in history while being forward-thinking. SHERELLE, you’ve been known for blending jungle with footwork and other sounds – why is it so important to look both forwards and backwards with your music?

TR: I think it keeps it interesting. You can reference stuff that people might not have heard, but you can also bring in stuff that’s culturally relevant now. I feel that naturally, people will bring in influences from music they grew up with. Art is something that can encompass a lot of different ideas. It gives you ideas as well – maybe you think about how to flip a sample you just heard on the radio, or you’re digging through old records and you start thinking about how you can make that sound make sense.

S: I agree with that. I struggle sometimes with finding new music, because I can be caught up with getting legacy across to people when I’m playing a set. For instance, at Bangface, if I want to have a more Dutch hardcore influence. Telling that story makes me happy. You have to be able to look back to be able to understand what you’ve got in front of you.

Equally, there’s a balance to it – I think that sometimes when people write about our scene, specifically jungle and drum’n’bass, they call it “a renaissance”. But they aren’t asking whether it’s a renaissance to the people who are putting out the music. It’s like saying you can’t have new versions of jungle, or a new feeling of jungle. The scene and music has moved on so much to the point where it’s not “coming back”. It’s just found a moment, because the world is not the best and it’s fast-paced. We need this fast-paced music to get us through a very grim point in our time. So when we’re talking about looking back and legacy, I want to pay homage to people like Kemistry and Storm, and everything Storm is doing now. But then if you call it a renaissance, it implies that it’s going to be a moment that’s going to pass again. When I play sets and when I listen to Ed’s sets, that shit could be timeless – it could be from 1994, 2004 or 2024 – and that’s the aim when playing music.

TR: I get why some people would think it’s a “resurgence”. If you were in 2005 and looking for an event that played jungle, your chances of finding it would be very slim. Nowadays, you can walk into any venue on the weekend and there will be a jungle DJ that night, someone playing jungle in a multi-genre set, or a whole jungle event, so it’s a bit more available. There are more labels putting that stuff out, more artists making it, and you’ve got Bandcamp, which means even if you don’t have vinyl you can still be a jungle DJ. So I guess you can call it a resurgence in terms of the amount of activity that’s going on. But if you’re talking about jungle as a spirit or an energy, that’s something that’s always been there and has never really died down. It’s maybe been something that hasn’t been as prevalent. Obviously drum’n’bass evolved out of jungle and became the default for a while, but Rupture has been going for 18 years. Distant Planet’s been going for 12. Then you have labels like Paradox Music, who have been doing breaky stuff for like 30 years now. There’s been a lot of people who have been doing it for a long time, but if you were to plot on a line graph of the amount of events and releases that would label themselves as jungle, you would see a definite gulf from the late 90s to early 2010s, then it start to build up with SHERELLE and Nia being able to translate the enthusiasm of jungle to a younger demographic. I remember when I first started going out, there were like three promoters doing events that were jungle. There wasn’t really the ecosystem for new people doing the old school stuff. But I get what SHERELLE means: it diminishes what the new thing is if you label it as a trend, or to retread old stuff.

S: You’ve smashed that there, because the idea that it’s a trend? Faster tempos ‘til I die. I’m not going to stop DJing it because festivals and clubs have decided they don’t want to book it anymore. That’s what I have an issue with – the idea of it being a trend. It makes it seem like people are being forced to listen to something they don’t necessarily like, rather than be genuine music fans. Our scene and community really love this music until death.

You’re both often seen as leaders of the new school of jungle. How does that make you feel?

S: I got that quite a lot when I first had the Boiler Room. While I’m obviously appreciative of it and make it very clear that I love playing jungle, footwork and 160, I always worried that maybe it would be diminishing other people’s achievements and what they’ve done for the scene too. We’re sometimes the only people who are mentioned, and there’s a great responsibility with being a leader of that space. In my early interviews, I would always reference the boys, and all the other people who had been part of it and say very clearly that there was a whole scene out there. If you take Nia as an example, there will be a lot of people internationally that would have found her, and would hopefully then do their research to be able to look into the scene a lot more, rather than just the apparent leaders.

TR: I absolutely agree with what SHERELLE is saying. I’ll be playing at a festival and someone will come up to me and say: “I really love what you, Coco, Sully, Nia and SHERELLE are doing.” In my head, I’m like “keep going”, and they never keep going. So I’ve been trying to put people on to other acts. By the end of the year I think I will have released music by 100 different artists.

S: You’re absolutely sick in the head, I love it.

TR: I try to be a good jump-off point for people, whether they want it or not. You can argue whether they do – it’s a mixed bag whether people should do the research or not. I remember when I was into grime, people only cared about Wiley and Dizzee Rascal and didn’t look that much into the actual scene. I like to be invested in things, but some people’s interests might be a bit more skin deep. It can be frustrating when you meet so many people that like jungle but don’t really know many people beyond the big names. All I can do is continue to try and be whatever to people if they want to find out more.

Can you talk about this new school and how it’s different? I feel like there’s more people bringing it back to the early days of rave culture with it being from the margins – jungle of course evolved out of Black soundsystem culture. There’s a new movement of queer artists putting their own spin on dubstep, for example.

S: I think UK bass music – garage, jungle – has always been a safe space for a lot of people. The people listening to the music are very much music nerds, so no one’s really asking you how you identify. I find this with footwork lot – there are a plethora of people, all genders, that are producing footwork and are also amazing DJs. Everyone is brought together by the love of music and there is no judgement.

TR: Yeah, there has always been some level of presence of marginalised communities. Nowadays there’s a bit more openness to be more openly queer or racially present, because you may have had to downplay it in the past, or not having the space to make it a thing. So now there’s more freedom to be like: “This is me, this is who I am going to be unapologetically.” There’s whole nights dedicated to queer people playing jungle, which is a very new thing.

S: I agree with that. I will also say, I am open about my sexuality, but only on the basis that many people within the scene haven’t been able to. I understand my privilege in the sense of when I was born to be able to discuss this. And I say this wanting to see more types of people in the scene. But recently I feel like I’ve been discovering where, as DJs and producers, we’re in a culture that can commodify a lot of this as well. When it comes down to identity, there are some people that are maybe not genuine to the cause when talking about something like that – they know it will sell if there’s something about them that’s marginally different. Everyone wants to be different, you know? There’s a bit of gamification of DJ culture going on, and in turn, we lose the authenticity in music. I think you have to be true to yourself, and genuine to you. What’s beautiful about our scene is that anyone can really be in it.

What do you think comes next in the hardcore continuum?

TR: I guess based on some of SHERELLE’s sets, four-to-the-floor donks.

S: Well, if I’m judging by your sets Tim, we’re on track for a big jungle techno shelling. Drill jungle. Is Tim going to make a drill jungle tune for an established drill artist?

TR: Put me in touch with Central Cee, please. I think, through your sets and younger DJs coming into jungle now, hardcore is becoming more known. As much as there has been the revival of jungle, it was very much the ragga jungle, atmospheric jungle style, but not really the ravey, four-to-the-floor happy hardcore stuff. That’s becoming a lot more popular now – still very breakbeat-oriented, but with techno stabs, rave pianos and hands-in-the-air moments.

S: We’re lucky that all of us are questioning what the rules of a genre, say jungle, can be. These are good things because it expands what you can possibly do with the music. I think there will be more exploration of the sound. Going back to Nia, her album is not a straight jungle album – there are elements that sound like Amy Winehouse, with proper songwriting. I was in the studio with Clipz, and he said it was like “Country & Bass”. I think, as a community, we’re going to take it into a place where we can do whatever we want.