Jonny L has undergone a bit of a metamorphosis over his musical career. From comparatively cheesy happy tracks to his latest brooding minimalist drum’n’bass on his debut album Sawtooth, he has crossed genres and as his cultural influences have shifted.

"It starts when I was 12 and hearing electro for the first time and loving the beats and the energy – that was the first ever dance music I heard. That led to early house, garage house, to acid house. Its at acid house that I start to lose it. You see I’m going clubbing and seriously knocking back everything that goes with it and I’m only 17 . . . . when you’re in the clubbing lifestyle – it’s a whole different way of living. Then I go to hardcore (rave) and I’m writing big hardcore tunes with the ‘girlie’ and the pianos – real vibe music. After that I’ve got so fucked from the rave scene that it took about three years to get my head together. In those three years the music went right down to the wire. I’d just signed a deal with XL and then rave died and I only knew how to make rave music – I could write songs but not properly – and the deal I signed meant that they wanted pretty ‘crossover’-type stuff – stuff that was going to sell . . . The easiest time to write music is when you want to do it not when someone’s pushing you. Its then that you don’t have to worry about whether its got vocals or if there a big fucking hands in the air piano breakdown". Curiously Jonny L remains on XL. He explains; "Right now I’ve got a good understanding with XL and they let me write what I want to. When Hurt You So came out I just got snapped up by the dollar signs but now I’ve got complete freedom and the pressure is a lot less."

"Experimentation is durm’n’bass’ selling point and its like ‘check this track out, man, its got this weird bit in it’ and I think that’s good because you can go to extremes and try crazy things that may or may not work rather than slapping down a 4/4 drum beat". As Jonny explains, part and parcel of this experimentation is the dubplate. "You’ve got people going into the studio in an afternoon and writing a track then going to the music house and putting it on a dub [plate] at 1 in the morning, then you go to the club and they’re friends with [Jumping Jack] Frost or Groove{rider] and they’ll stick it on the cans and go ‘yeah mate I’m busting this one in five tracks time’ and its been written only the night before. You think about that turnaround and you won’t hear of it in any other scene. They’re starting to copy it in the house and garage scenes a bit but the dub [plate] thing is really still just a drum’n’bass thing. Its what keeps the scene alive and interesting".

"The reason that ‘wishy-washy’ stuff came was because we all went raving and did so many pills that we all had really bad depressions after we stopped raving and we wanted to write music that was about how we felt – a sad kind of nice feeling. It was like we’d used up all the happy part of our brain so a lot of ‘stringy’ music came out then and it was good. But now when I go out I want to dance hard again and I can’t really jump up to loads of strings". Things have changed with darker sounds being revived from the ages of rave coupled with futuristic digital production. "London’s getting pretty dark y’know. When you go out its not as friendly as it was back in 89-91 and there’s a lot more tension there – the music is a direct mirror of what’s happening on the streets – its London’s hip hop . . . you’ve always got your guard up and you get pulled up by the Old bill a lot, you get searched a lot, strip searched on the street by a paddy wagon a couple times a week. I never used to have that – maybe its my car – I’ve got mad sounds in my car and they hear me a couple of blocks away . . . . that’s one thing, then you’ve got the technology leaping so far forward into the future. All the kids are going mad over computers – everyone wants Playstations and the kids think drum’n’bass sounds so computerised too – it’s a Blade Runner sort of thing . . . . the change of government has put a good vibe into older people but for everyone 14 to 30 nothings changed at all".

"Its house music that’s killing music. Its fucking up the charts. You’ve got people like Todd Terry, Mr Fingers, Carl Craig who know the score but then you’ve got stupid little record companies coming up with cheesy handbag tunes that are written because they know they’ll sell loads".