SUBLOW by jon e cash

Music never exists in a vacuum — every scene and sound evolves from the non-stop exchange of ideas between different groups and cultures. Traditions get passed down from one generation to the next, and then individual heads take influence from their own unique perspective. Sometimes, certain people strike upon fusions that spark massive new movements, but even those rarest innovations came from somewhere.

Jon E Cash knows this more than most — the legendary beats he started putting out at the turn of the millennium had their own disparate roots and influences which he had the motivation to put together into a sound he called sublow. There wasn't any other reference point for this music — when he took the first white labels of 'Drop Top Bimmer Kid' into Blackmarket Records in Soho, London, he had to describe it to a puzzled Nicky Blackmarket and J Da Flex as being, "between garage and hip-hop."

Playing catch-up in 2004, Rephlex Records nodded to sublow when trying to introduce a wider audience to the sounds which had been tearing up the London underground. "Grime. Sublow. Dubstep... It's Music. Different people call it different things depending on when they discovered it." But Jon E Cash's sound was rooted in more than the UK garage that had dominated the clubs through the late 90s, reaching way back to his pre-teen days when the first waves of hip-hop culture crossed the Atlantic and broke in the UK.

By 14 Cash had already peaked in graffiti. Writing as Rich, he and Rage, State of Art and Cane linked up to create one of the most legendary pieces in UK street art history. Over 10 days in August 1987, their two crews Non Stop and No Limits battled to paint The Earth's Edge, a sprawling mural at iconic London spot Trellick Tower. The front cover of this compilation shows Cash hanging off the wall after the piece was finished. Having topped the competition in the graffiti scene, they needed to look elsewhere for a new challenge.

"I was hanging out with older guys and they would take me to the original breaks and funk raves, Jams Brown and all that, in these warehouses in West London," Cash recalls. "There's no lights in there — the only light you see is on the turntable — but your ears are tingling because there's no distraction. I just loved all the breakbeats and the bass, so that's how I sort of changed and chose the music."

A life-changing trip to New York in 1988 sealed the deal, and Cash came back to London and formed rap group Construction with Rage and State of Art. Construction belonged to a bigger collective of acts known as Power Pack, headed up by The Powerlords who sought to unify the emergent community of hip-hop artists in Cash's native West London. Power Pack also featured other local legends like MCD, who Cash holds up high as "the first woke MC, until the government silenced him." This was a part of the city that had a long-standing tradition of bass heavy music reaching back to the early days of UK soundsystem culture around Ladbroke Grove, which left its mark on Cash when he was even younger.

"When I was a kid I just remember the speakers," he says. "Big bass speakers in Ladbroke Grove, and the bass made you feel good."

It wasn't easy for UK hip-hop artists in the 90s to step out of the shadows of their US counterparts and get recognised on their own terms, but Power Pack's collective impact (rolling like an early Wu Tang Clan) saw them achieve serious status in the UK, rivalled only by the Hardnoise-rooted Son Of Noise. Ultimately, Cash got fed up of a scene that relied too heavily on the endorsement of a few influential figures and he started looking for a creative outlet elsewhere. At the same time UK garage was blowing up, and Cash found himself raving seven nights a week at clubs like Liberty at Club Colosseum in Vauxhall, South London, helmed by the influential DJ Martin 'Liberty' Larner. It was there he heard 'Life's What You Make It' by Groove Chronicles, which captured the emergent dark garage sound and sparked a flicker of inspiration in Cash's mind.

At the same time, Cash travelled to Florida with his girlfriend for a tourist holiday and found himself in the car park of Destiny's nightclub in Orlando, drawn to the heavy rumble of bass coming from inside the building. Decked out in his Moschino chinos and Gucci shoes, Cash didn't exactly blend in and the door checkers took him for a fed, but he managed to get into the club to be confronted with a sound he could barely describe.

"The first impression I got is something I'd never heard before," Cash recalls, "rolling 808s and massive bass. It was like [2 Live Crew's] Luke Skyywalker but harder. It was faster than hip hop instrumentals." The next day he went to a record store to buy some CDs of this revelatory sound to bring back to the UK. What he envisioned was a gritty fusion of garage's warped, rave-rooted basslines and hard-hitting hip-hop drums, so he put together some necessary tools and got to work.

"When I stopped making hip-hop and moved over to garage I knew I needed a studio," Cash says. "Back then I was on road and this type of thing so I had income to get a studio, so I set one up with my partner 2 Real."

The staple instruments that formed the core of Cash's studio were essential tools in the pre-computer era which took cues from hip-hop as well as garage production craft — an Akai sampler for the drums, a Novation Bass Station for basslines and the Super Bass Station for subs, the EMU Planet Phatt synth module and one of the ubiquitous synths of the era, the Korg Triton. But Cash had a trick up his sleeve for the latter, which was the source of so many of the horn stabs associated with the emergence of grime.

"No one had the horns I had," Cash points out. "I had the Triton rack, which is a different thing. Everyone always asked, 'where you get those big horn sounds from?'"

With the tools at his disposal, he was primed to bring together the sonic elements that would end up defining sublow. As he describes it himself, "The basslines are from UK garage, but the drums are from hip-hop. Garage drums aren't so hard. I had to make my drums hard. You know, the hard snares, the hard kick drum, layering it up with the 808.

"My favourite act back in the days was Ultramagnetic MCs," he adds. "Their shit was HARD man. Marley Marl is another guy I looked up to as a producer, and I remember Digital Underground's 'The Humpty Dance' always stuck out at me when I was raving in the hip-hop days. With the hip-hop drums and the rave bass, that record is sublow."

The first track Cash rolled out of his studio and pressed up to white label in 1999 was 'Drop Top Bimmer Kid', which spelt out his vision for low down nasty rave music with a hip-hop swagger. At the same time he launched his Black Ops label with 'Hoes Don't Mean Shit', which sets out the blueprint of what grime would become in no uncertain terms. He pressed these tracks up with vocal versions that maintained his connection to his rap roots. 'Drop Top Bimmer Kid' featured longer flows at odds with the short and snappy hooks most garage MCs were dealing in around 2000. With its break downs and build ups, the structure of the track was more geared towards garage, though, splitting Cash's influences squarely down the middle. It was the production which caught attention when he brought his stock of white labels into Blackmarket.

"I remember J Da Flex was there," Cash recalls. "To be honest I didn't know who Nicky Blackmarket was at the time. Back then, if you wanted to sell them your tunes, they'd make you play it in the shop and see if it passed the test. So I put the record on, and when they heard the b-line come through the reaction was like, 'whoa, whoa, are we buying that now?' [Nicky] goes, 'Are you signed? You want to be signed?' I said, 'Nah, not really. I've got the tunes pressed up, I've done the hard work already.'"

From there, 'Drop Top Bimmer Kid' made waves. Wesley Jay was playing it every week at Club Colosseum, and then reigning UKG don DJ EZ dropped it on his massively influential show on Kiss FM — the kind of nod that was worth its weight in gold. The non-conformist, dark and hard style Cash was pushing stood out from most garage in 2000, but there were kindred spirits coming through whose productions paired well with his unique energy — DJ Dread D (better known these days as T. Williams) and DJ Charmzy in particular. Cash brought them into his circle along with 2 Real, MC Chapz, Sly Boogie, Capone, MC Strappa and DJ Dice to form Da Black Ops, pushing the sound of sublow further by drawing on the strength-in-numbers example set out by The Powerlords back in the hip-hop era.

The name Black Ops and the sample idents that went with it were taken from Oliver Stone's 1992 film JFK — Cash leaned into the imagery of stealth operatives working against the system, running a parallel with the hierarchy of the garage scene he had arrived to disrupt.

"I'd be going to the radio stations and they wouldn't give me a slot, saying 'We don't know how to place you, we don't know what this music is,'" says Cash. "Before anyone heard of grime they were hearing my music and saying, 'What is this?' There was no precedence."

Over in East London, the Pay As U Go Cartel were taking shape, with DJ Slimzee especially leading the way as one of the key tastemakers at the forefront of new developments in garage. His endorsement of tunes was pivotal to anyone looking to make an impression, and as Pay As U Go split and morphed into Roll Deep, Slimzee went his own way rivalling DJ EZ for influence over the scene and backing tracks from West London producers like Eastwood, DJ Virus, Zander Hardy, Musical Mob and Youngsta, DYE, Dynamite and Dom Perignon. Naturally he was repping Black Ops as well, not least an exclusive dubplate of Cash's seismic 'War'. Such was Slimzee's influence, when Cash came to play the tune on Delight FM people were phoning in asking where he'd gotten hold of one of Slimzee's tunes.

The 2003-2005 patch was a productive time for Black Ops, and the seminal tracks from Cash's studio kept landing from 'Kamikaze' to 'Kettle', 'Battle' and 'Evil'. Legend has it 'Battle' in fact was the first grime record bought by pioneering radio DJ John Peel. Cash was getting recognised for his contribution, scooping Best Underground Producer at the 2004 Urban Music Awards amongst other accolades. 'All About The Sex' proved sublow was about a sound rather than a genre, matching Cash's signature nasty basslines with a rowdy 4/4 stomp and Another Level's Wayne Williams on vocal duties. But in the wider scene, the culture was shifting as grime started to take shape in East London and the focus tipped more towards MCs. Cash's focus was still on producing tracks for the dancefloor, but the DJs were mixing quickly and focusing on simpler beats for people to spit their bars to.

"Before, the DJs would play rave music but by 2004 or 2005 the MCs had more power than the DJs, so the MCS were directing them what to play," says Cash. "Then it wasn't a rave culture no more. I said, 'Let me go make a tune designed strictly for the MC then.' That's why I made 'Hoods Up'. That became the bible beat for MCs."

Even if he could turn his hand to a tune like 'Hoods Up' (also referred to as 'Cash Beat') and make it a landmark in the emergent grime scene, the music was heading in a direction that didn't excite Cash in the same way.

"I stopped going to the grime raves when no one was raving," he says. "Then they start bootlegging on the music, and you got about 25 versions of [Youngsta's landmark 8-bar grime beat] 'Pulse X', and it felt like the quality had gone downhill."

At the same time, Cash's radio presence came to an abrupt halt with a rough turn of events at Ice Cold Radio. Cash was filling in for a friend's show on the popular pirate station when OFCOM located and raided the broadcast. Given the clandestine activities going on next door, Cash suggested the officers might have the wrong address. "They said, 'No, we're here for you!' And arrested me, gave me a big fine and took my records," he recalls. "I was told I couldn't go on radio ever again."

The last release Cash put out on Black Ops was 'Do It' in 2006, featuring his six-year-old daughter Natini dropping the vocal hook. He never stepped away from making music, and his studio today packs the same gear he was using in the late 90s and early 00s. Sublow continues to evolve on its own terms in the hands of the architect of the sound, open to all possibilities and versatile enough to lock into other styles.

"Sublow's not a beat," he repeats. "It's a sound. As long as I can make it your tempo, it's gonna fit in.

"Back in the hip-hop days, the old producers, Marley Marl, Erick Sermon with EPMD, they had their own sound," he adds. "All these producers had their own sound with a weight to it. All the producers down south with them proper digging in the sewers basslines, greased. That's where my bass line stuff come from. And all the reggae stuff as well, big bass. My dad's a bass player. I love bass."

25 years on, it's a fine time to reflect on the impact of the music Cash made at the turn of the millennium. History looks back favourably on what he and the Black Ops crew were doing with sublow in the early 00s. The timing meant it ran in parallel with what was happening over East with Pay As U Go, Roll Deep et al, and of course there was crossover. Every DJ and every MC was on the hunt for the best beats they could find. But there's a whole different swagger to sublow — a different web of influences, a different intention and so a different outcome. It's still there in the beats Cash is making more than 20 years later — his 3dom Music label is carrying upfront productions with that sublow DNA coursing through their veins. Whatever the beat or the tempo, the drums are still hard as nails, and the bass is tuned for maximum rave damage.

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