When I was 22, I set up On-U Sound. Our first release was a 7”: ‘Fade Away’ by New Age Steppers, with ‘Learn A Language’ by London Underground on the B-side. On-U was originally going to be a collective. There was myself, Pete Holdsworth from London Underground, Crucial Tony from Creation Rebel, guitar and bass player Martin Frederix — a few of us. We had all known each other for several years, we were friends, and I wanted to start a new venture. I also had some tapes from my previous project, Hit Run.

At the same time, I met Kishi Yamamoto (my partner and mother to my two children) and we became a couple. Kishi wrote for a magazine, ZIGZAG, in London and later she ran ZIGZAG EAST in Tokyo as an offshoot. She is also a very talented photographer.

With the label collective, we were all involved, really enthusiastic. It was Dennis Brady who came up with the name ‘On-U Sound’. The concept was that it was a play on the word ‘onus’ and also the idea of it being ‘on you’. As for the strapline ‘Disturbing the comfortable, comforting the disturbed’, this actually came a couple of decades later and it is a very old quote about art and how art should function in this way.

Running the collective was a big burden in terms of time and resources (e.g. hiring the studio for recording, mixing and mastering, etc.), and we realised we were being too idealistic and not practical enough as a business venture. It was very short-lived. At the time, I didn’t have the full support of the distributor either, so licensing parts of the early On-U Sound productions was not straightforward. After about a year (after the release of that first 7”), we dissolved the collective and I went my own way with Kishi. The two of us persevered from then on with running the label in considerable debt but it eventually paid off creatively and financially!

On-U is a label that releases my productions. I’ve always wanted to ensure that I have great people around me like Mark Stewart of the Pop Group writing lyrics, for example, and then I can concentrate on making instrumental music that is equally as stimulating. The music is always of a quality I am proud of and stands for our collective beliefs — i.e. both mine and those of the musicians/artists involved.