Lee Coombs has paid his dues. A pioneer of the UK’s breakbeat movement, he began DJing at acid house parties in London and Cambridge in the 80s, having grown up digging electro.
“I used to go to these acid house parties – illegal warehouse parties – in the late 80s and, as soon as I heard the music and I just saw the DJ and what he was doing, I was absolutely besotted by it,” he reminisces. “I bought a set of decks and started buying the records straight away, and I’ve been following it ever since then. I got my first gig in 1989.”
Combs became a regular fixture at the Eclipse raves. In 1991 he diversified into production under the alias The Invisible Men on Orbital Records. “I first went into the studio in 1990, the first time ever, so that was a year after I’d started to buy records. I mean, you don’t just say, ‘I’m gonna be a DJ’, and all of a sudden you’ve got loads of work, obviously it takes years of pushing at it and making people believe in what you’re doing, and I’ve kinda been doing both the whole time,” he says. “I wanted to do this, and that was it, so all of my effort was pushed into playing records, making ‘em if I could, just hanging with people who were already doing it, and just wanting to be a part of the scene.”
Today Coombs, a prolific producer, oversees his own stable of labels – Paradise Recordings, Pumpin’ Vinyl, Void and Thrust. He is likewise aligned with Finger Lickin’ (home to Soul Of Man), issuing his definitive track ‘Future Sound Of Retro’, which was championed by Pete Tong. (Tong subsequently made Coomb’s remix of Quivver’s trance anthem ‘One Last Time’ an ‘Essential Selection’.)
Coombs not only happily associates himself with the British breakbeat scene that has introduced widely publicised acts like Adam Freeland, Rennie Pilgrem and Freq Nasty, but he also regards himself as one of its founders. “I’ve been making breaks records since day one. The stuff that I was making back in ‘91 was pure breakbeat as well, so I could probably stand there and say that I’ve been making breaks records as long as anyone.”
Coombs juggles a day gig at Intergroove Distribution with his DJing and production. Lee has DJed at Home and Fabric and with the Finger Lickin’ crew and is now making his first trek Down Under. In fact, Lee gives a taste of his style – electro, breaks and house – on a new mix compilation, Future Sound Of Retro. The tracklisting primarily encompasses Lee’s own material, from the new ‘Tribal Tension ’(with The Drumattic Twins) to his remixes of Arthur Baker’s ‘Put The Needle To The Record’ and Sister Bliss’ ‘Deliver Me’. “That’s my sound,” he states, “On the CD, that’s purely my stuff, but when I play out I’ve got other people’s records, so it changes quite a lot, but that is generally the vibe of what I do. You have to hear it in the club really to get the full impact.”
The title Future Sound Of Retro comes from Lee’s partiality for all things retro. “I’ve always been into retro things. I was right into 70s theme tunes and 70s TV. I’m really into The Six Million Dollar Man. I’ve got all the toys – that sort of thing. I really love all the retro sounds, analogue, which is electro and all the funk sounds. But I wanted to push all of that, take all those elements of music, and push it forward to make it futuristic as well – just take the best of everything, really.”
Coombs continues to keep himself occupied in the studio, just lately remixing tracks by the likes of New Order (“that’s probably the best thing I’ve done!”) and Seb Fontaine. Lee has also finished a “slower” track for a PlayStation snowboarding game, SSX2, “which has gone down quite well,” he says. In future Coombs wants to focus more on original productions than remixes so as to not burn out. “I don’t wanna do any more mixes for a little while, ‘cause, as I say, I’ve done a lot and I don’t wanna water the sound down at all,” he says. “A lot of people would carry on mixing ‘cause you get good money for it, but if you’re in a position to not do that, then it’s better to wait a little bit and then carry on later when you have more inspiration.”
This Saturday Lee Coombs plays Spring Break in Sydney at the Bohem Nightclub alongside Jonathan Wall, Kid Kenobi, Q45 and Young Jase. Future Sound Of Retro is out through Stomp.
