Rob Tissera is the most affable
and gregarious DJ you'll ever meet, with a smile that starts
somewhere behind his eyes and then erupts across his entire face,
which usually precedes him grabbing you in the biggest bear hug
you've ever experienced.
Perhaps it's Rob's exotic ethnic
mix of a Sri Lankan, Portuguese and Irish heritage and an honest
devotion to music, that Rob learned from his father: "He
was always into recording LPs in a different order - he used to get
tape recorders and make compilation tapes, rather than listen to a
whole LP... then I started to do that." It's a strange
beast, music. While some people are prepared to merely sit back
and let it be the soundtrack to their lives, others have to get right
inside it, and that fascination in mixing and meddling with music has
become the essence Rob's life. At 13 he was playing bass
guitar, at 15 he was in a band and at 16 he was on the point of being
signed to Polydor, but was soon turned on to his disco destiny by the
early M25 raves, where he discovered what he had to offer the global
dancefloor. "I'd always been into all sorts of different
music," he enthuses, "but I really got into house music -
that harsh, electronic sound - stripped down and bear, but with some
kind of soul to it."
It almost seems there was a
day in the late 80s when everyone lay down their guitars and invested
in decks: "I just started to buy records again...
instead of spending my money on guitar strings and going down the
pub," Rob recalls. "We'd play records, mix tapes into
them, play things off CD - I didn't realise at the time but it all
came from seeing my Dad do the same thing." Like many
people finding their feet, Rob would play anywhere that would have
him - anywhere from weddings to warehouse parties - but even at the
dodgier gigs he would use the experience to sneak in some of the good
stuff, hits of the 70s followed by what Rob calls "all the house
music hits of the day. It became quite a thing - you'd have two
different crowds in the pub, the early evening drinkers and then the kids."
A chance visit to Manchester also
led to a night at the Haçienda - that was enough to persuade
Rob to move north, quickly finding his way to the early Blackburn
raves. Unlike the well organised parties in the south, full of
clipboards and speeches, these "acid-house parties" were
much less salubrious but jammed wall-to-wall with energy:
"The reason why everyone went at it so hard was because the
chances were you'd only be in that warehouse for two hours - at any
given second it was going to be over, so people partied as much as
they could. There was also that lawlessness - getting one over
on society - that heightened your excitement as well. And of
course the music was fucking awesome."
Rob sunk inevitably into the
northern scene, announcing the location of the illegal parties on the
amusingly entitled BBC (Blackburn Buzz Corporation) pirate station (a
love of radio that would ultimately lead to a show on Galaxy
radio). Indeed he was so involved, that when the police raided
one party where Rob was DJing, he felt compelled to grab a mic and
scream "if you want this fucking party to continue, you've got
to keep the bastards out!" At that point a drinks lorry
was pushed in front of the doors to seal everyone in... including
an undercover cop who filmed the entire thing. The biggest mass
arrest since the Peterloo riots saw Rob charged with section 2
violent conduct, one below incitement to riot, and a spell at Her
Majesty's pleasure. This was at a time when rave was a rage
against the machine, an attempt to change the world: "But
we did though. From doing that it actually did change clubbing
legislation - it did accelerate the process and change things quite dramatically."
Although dance culture may have
lost a little of that political edge, Rob's strength is that his
energy remains unchecked, his love for the scene undaunted.
"Throughout the years I've always moved with the times," he
agrees. "I'm not ashamed to say that because that is how
you stay fresh." Although he points out that some of the
people he plays to at Sundissential were seven when "Take Me
Away" originally came out, he wants to play to that new
generation of clubbers, rather than the people who are now in the
process of hanging up their dancing trousers and taking up
gardening. And those new clubbers will come out and see Rob
every weekend - at his residencies at Sundissential and Slinky and
every other club worth its Technics. That popularity derives
from a unique style - instead of going pneumatic for two hours, his
set builds - he may layer vocals over a trance bed, or go on
tangential journeys before returning to that tough
foundation. "I have got this style of contrasting
things, often by being dramatic in how much I change it," he
says, suggesting his style derives from the days when things were so
damn hard to mix, there was no option but to drop brutally between
one track and the next, using the space to create tension.
All of these factors contribute
to the reason why Rob is so often invited to finish a night, notably
at Sundissential, perhaps his spiritual home. This love affair
has also been cemented by the inclusion of one of his tracks on the
new Sundissential album, a track that will also form the soundtrack
to the TV advert. That track, Take Me Away by the RT Project,
is just the latest step in a long and successful recording career,
dating back to his teenage band. Tracks were released via
labels like Ark Recordings and Eastern Bloc before Rob really shook
things up with Kick Up The Volume and then the massive The Day Will
Come, as the earth-trembling Quake. "It was a brilliant
experience to have done that," says Rob, still warm with the
memory of it all, "because that was right at the birth of
trance." The track went top 40 and led to Quake
contributing four tracks to the Human Traffic soundtrack and to
remixing a host of big artists: "We became the remixers of
the trance era, really," Rob points out, "we were the
people the record companies called if they wanted a trance
hit." One detriment to hiding behind a pseudonym is that
many people didn't realise Quake was actually Rob Tissera, which has
now inspired the creation of the RT Project, and the establishment of
Rob's own label, Queue Records. Rob has re-released The Day
Will Come, and continues to feed the hungry beast that is the
dancefloor with a chunky selection of music.
In the end it's all down to that
talent and good humour: Rob Tissera is a DJ, a producer, a
remixer, and a permanently positive individual: "I don't
have many things I regret," he smiles. "I actually think
some of the best things are yet to come... "
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