| Gilles Peterson | |
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Gilles Peterson. |
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| Background information | |
| Origin | France / Switzerland |
| Genres | Disc jockey |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Website | Official website |
Gilles Peterson (born 28 September[1] c.1964[2] in Caen, France, to a mother from Paris and a father from Zürich), is a DJ, record collector and record label owner from London, UK. Through his labels Acid Jazz, Talkin' Loud, and latterly Brownswood Recordings, he has been associated with the careers of well-known artists of the 1990s such as Erykah Badu, Roni Size and Jamiroquai. He is also well known as a radio DJ.
After starting out on pirate radio, and having shows on various legal London-based radio stations, most noticeably including Kiss FM dance music station, he was recruited to the BBC's youth-oriented Radio 1 in 1998. Peterson is known for his eclectic musical selections, and has even been occasionally mentioned as the new John Peel. However whilst the late John Peel had an "anything goes" range of tastes displayed on his show, Peterson's focus has always been Jazz music, generally Modern Jazz, with a strong emphasis on its translation to a club environment, mixed with associated music styles.
Widely acclaimed as a musical tastemaker, he spreads his influence on music listeners around the world mostly through his Worldwide radio show on BBC Radio 1 which is also broadcast live on the Radio 1 website and available for audio streaming online for seven days from broadcast.[3] He also does another international version of the show which gets syndicated to radio stations all over the world, such as FM4 in Austria, Radio Nova in France, B92 in Serbia and Radio Helsinki in Finland. He broadcasts his WW15 show at drivetime on Japan's largest commercial radio station J-Wave. Parallel to this, his frequent DJing gigs around the world also have cemented a worldwide following.
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Attending The John Fisher School in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Gilles Peterson was already known on the London circuit as a DJ specialising in the new breed of "acid jazz", drawing on the jazz, funk and Latin fusions of the 1970s. First heard as a DJ on the London pirate radio station Solar, he went on to host the show 'Mad On Jazz' on BBC Radio London between 1986 and 1987, then ran a notable club night in Camden.
That notable club, and one of Gilles Peterson's best remembered club sessions, was Talkin' Loud Sayin' Something at the old Dingwalls club in Camden, North West London which ran from the late 1980s until March 1991. The sessions were characterised by jazz dancers in suits hats and spats, heavyweight jazz dance classics including tracks from Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Airto and Herbie Hancock and the anthemic 'n the fast lane' by Jean-Luc Ponty; but the jazz was fused with hip-hop and the more experimental tracks. Gilles played alongside fellow London DJ Patrick Forge at most of the Dingwalls' sessions, as well as separately at many other underground club nights and music weekenders. Every year, Peterson and Patrick Forge return to Dingwalls for a sell-out reunion session.
On 8 October 2006, both Peterson Patrick played at a one-off show at the old site of Dingwalls (now a Jongleurs comedy club). A compilation album of popular songs from the club was also released at the same time, titled Sunday Afternoon At Dingwalls.
In March 1990 Peterson became a disc jockey on London's first ever dedicated jazz station 102.2 Jazz FM. The three hour show was stripped into sections including the 'Samba 60' and the 'Vibrazone' and artists as diverse as Justin Warfield, Sérgio Mendes and Leon Thomas would all appear on the same playlist. He was forced to leave the station after making anti-war comments during the 1st Gulf War.[4]
September 1990 saw London pirate dance music station Kiss 100 FM become legal when it acquired a licence and started to broadcast from Holloway Road in North London. Patrick Forge was then given the space to create his own show, with the two DJs continuing to work together at Dingwalls until the 'last dance' on 3 March 1991.
Gilles then moved over to Kiss FM himself, having been fired by Jazz FM. In his shows on Kiss FM he played acts as diverse as Josh Wink, Gang Starr and Horace Silver in the space of a single programme. He was then hired by BBC Radio 1 in 1998 and still takes great pride in the show's concept of 'joining the dots' between different styles of music.
From 1998 to the present, through his BBC show Worldwide - which was originally produced by long time collaborator Benji B, Karen P (Folded Wing), Beccy Grierson and currently Alex Kenning - Peterson has continued to present a wide range of music that may be new to its young audiences. The show has always presented a combination of new, older and often very rare records from the late 1950s to 1980s. Every three months or so, Peterson dedicates a whole show to older vinyl releases in a special version of his show he subtitles as Brownswood Basement; two associated compilation albums with the same name containing older personal classics have been released on the United States label Ubiquity Records's offshoot Luv N' Haight. He has been associated with two Brownswood labels - the name comes from the road in north London where his house was located. This building is now primarily a place Peterson uses to store his huge record collection, and where he compiles releases drawn from his collection in the basement.
In August 2004 the show moved from Wednesday (midnight til 2am) to an earlier Sunday slot (11:00 to 01:00) with a spectacular live outside broadcast from The Big Chill at Eastnor Castle Herefordshire featuring Bugz In The Attic performing a DJ set, and interviews with house DJ Tom Middleton and Mr. Scruff.
One of the highlights of the new format BBC Radio 1 show was the special sessions from the BBC's Maida Vale Studios. These have included artists such as Roots Manuva, Bjork and the Floating Points Ensemble.
Radio shows and DJing gigs continue to fuse hip-hop, jazz and soul with the newer styles of broken beat and nu jazz alongside the odd dubstep and drum and bass track. He has also released numerous DJ mix and compilation albums. Peterson is a regular at the Southport Music Weekender, and even curates his own annual music festival in Sete, on France's Mediterranean coast.
In September 2006, Peterson's show on Radio 1 was moved from Sunday night to Wednesday night (more precisely the early hours of Thursday morning), 02:00 to 04:00 (GMT). The first show included a live appearance from Lupe Fiasco. The show is currently broadcast live between 2am-4am on Wednesday mornings.
In 2002 he released a compilation album titled "Impressed with Gilles Peterson," featuring rare and forgotten about British Jazz from the 1950-1960s, that Peterson had collected over the years. This was met with critical acclaim and led to many of the records being re-released to a new audience. This in turn led to a series of concerts featuring some of the artists, including Stan Tracey, and a documentary about the history of British Jazz - Jazz Britannia. This series was so successful it led to further Britannia projects on Soul and Folk.
Annually, Peterson picks his favourite records of the year, known as his Worldwide Winners, which listeners of his radio show can vote on via the Radio 1 website to get down to a final top 10 list of winners. In recent years, from 2004 onwards, this has been expanded into the Worldwide Winners Awards with an event held at a London club venue; Cargo in 2004 and onto the bigger Koko in Camden in 2005, with full outside broadcast coverage by Radio 1, and expanded sections like "Best Clubnight", "Best Record Shop", "Best Compilation Album", and a special award called "The John Peel 'Play More Jazz' Award" given to an artist, often newcomer, who has displayed special noteworthy work over the year.
Gilles Peterson has played an important role on three record labels. In 1988 he and Eddie Piller founded Acid Jazz Records, an influential label whose roster included the Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai, Corduroy, the James Taylor Quartet and Snowboy. After growing disillusioned with the scene that grew up around the label, he went on to run Talkin' Loud, enlisting the help of fellow DJ Norman Jay who formed his own Global Village label.
The label drew its name from the James Brown track Talkin' Loud & Sayin' Nothing that had inspired the name of his club at Dingwalls. The roster of Talkin' Loud included Nuyorican Soul (a side project of the producers Masters At Work), Courtney Pine, MJ Cole, Young Disciples, Incognito, Terry Callier, The Roots, Galliano and Roni Size's project Reprazent. Courtney Pine, Young Disciples, MJ Cole & 4 Hero all received nominations for the Mercury Prize, with Reprazent winning the award in 1997.
Peterson's most recent record label, Brownswood Recordings, was launched in 2006. It was named after the road in North London where the house he used to live is, though he has since had to move out of after his record collection became too big, and which now acts as a warehouse for his enormous collection of vinyl records. To date the label has released records by British singer/songwriter Ben Westbeech, 45 piece live act The Heritage Orchestra, Japanese punk jazz band Soil & "Pimp" Sessions, Brooklyn based pianist Elan Mehler, jazz vocalist José James, five volumes of a soulful compilation album series called Brownswood Bubblers, and a special Cuban project - Havana Cultura - which saw Gilles travel to Havana to record at Egrem Studios with gifted jazz pianist Roberto Fonseca and a host of new Cuban talent. Taking on the role of Executive Producer, he recorded an album of new material (plus a handful of covers) entitled 'Gilles Peterson presents Havana Cultura'. Incidentally, this label should not be confused with Talkin' Loud, the previous label he was involved with, or indeed another imprint called Brownswood Records (note: Records NOT Recordings) which was used to release music from the United Future Organization as well as other Japanese associated projects.
Peterson has made very many regular appearances at music festivals across the world including Lovebox in east London, The Big Chill in Hereford and the Southport Weekender [5] in the north west of England. Away from the UK he has appeared at the Exit Festival in Serbia and in 2005 the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Peterson and Freshly Cut, a French event production company from Montpellier, collaborated to create the Worldwide Festival.[6] This started out as a small intimate festival during the summertime in the coastal town of Sète in France in 2006. It was expanded to three festivals, in London, Shanghai and Sète in 2007.
Dipping his toe into the world of production, Peterson has collaborated with Switch (DJ) in the past, but currently works with his engineer Simbad, remixing the likes of Saona, Keziah Jones and Raphael Gualazzi to date.
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