Suburban Base

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Suburban Base Records was a jungle record label based in Romford. It was established by Danny Donnelly.

Dan's love of all things dance began in the mid 1980s when he worked behind the counter of East London's Sounds Right Records.

The flavour of the day was the slickly produced Soul and RnB that was mainly being exported from the USA and it was with this style that Dan found a passion. Towards the end of the Eighties underground parties were beginning to spring up around the London area,and Danny soon found himself immersed in this new sound called House.

It was around this time that Dan sewed the seeds for his career in the industry, it was 1989 and at only 18 years old and with the help of a bank loan^[1], he opened a record shop, Boogie Times^[2] in Romford, specialising in dance music. The shop quickly gained an excellent reputation among the record buying cognoscenti and the growing legion of DJs across London.

Word of mouth was the shops' only form of advertising, but on a Saturday morning the queue to get in would sometimes stretch around the block,filled with eager fledgling DJs desperate to buy a copy of the latest import from the States, or more importantly the latest hard to find 'white label' by emerging British producer talent, Dan's store had more than it fair share of these rarities because they had started producing their own tracks, initially as a way of attracting custom to the shop, but quickly evolving into the Suburban Base label.

Early in 1991 the label had its first proper release, which was received with critical acclaim from DJs and ravers alike.

Over the course of the next year the label released seven singles all of which charted and were played at every rave and house party in the country.

Within a year Suburban Base had its first Top 40 entry - Sonz of a Loop Da Loop Eras' 'Far Out', which became an anthem for the summer of '92 and is still one of the most requested and sought after tunes in the Suburban Base catalogue. By the end of 1992 the label had clocked up an unbelievable twelve Top 75 hits and had experienced the highest charted debut from an independent record company since the charts began.

The Smart E's 'Sesames Treet' which reached the dizzy heights of number two, at a time when a then 20 year old Dan was still running the label single handed from a room above the shop. On the back of this success Danny developed a Publishing Company (Suburban Base Music Ltd) a recording studio and most significantly a range of label clothing and merchandise (Suburban Base was a true pioneer in this field) all of which were very successful.

Over the course of the next couple of years Suburban Base broke new artists into the scene and many have gone on to become household names,people such as DJ Hype, Krome and Time, DJ Dextrous/ Da Kings of the Jungle, DJ Zinc and DJ Rap were regularly releasing material and touring with the Subbase crew. Throughout this period Danny remained the sole figurehead for the company and it was his energy and enthusiasm that kept the vibe alive at Suburban Base.

Around the mid 1990s Dan launched Breakdown Records, for which he devised and compiled an entire range of albums covering all genres of dance,which were heavily TV advertised, also, he developed the 'Drum and Bass Selection' series which sold in excess of 300,000 copies and was the first TV advertised Jungle compilation.

The label toured The USA on numerous occasions, sometimes with pop star style fervor following them, and the need to open an office in the States was becoming a necessity rather than a dream and in 1994 Dan opened an office in Los Angeles. Suburban Base was the first UK Drum and Bass label to tap into the US's homegrown talent and in 1997 achieved North America's best selling Drum and Bass album whilst simultaneously gaining the UK's best selling Drum and Bass compilation with the nationally TV advertised 'Max Bass'. Distribution deals were now set up in virtually every territory on the planet and these deals paved the way for future dance music to be exposed everywhere.

Towards the end of 1997 Danny took the brave decision to close Suburban Base down^[3] whilst still at the height of its popularity. This was to allow him to pursue other new challenges in business and he felt it would be a great injustice to continue running Suburban Base without his full attention.

By 2000, the Subbase website was receiving thousands of hits from around the world and demand for the label is as strong today as it was ten years ago. Suburban Base still regularly licences tracks from its back catalogue for compilation use and has recently allowed some of its biggest tracks to be remixed by some of the Drum and Bass scene's biggest players.