N-joi were the first band to play the circuit taking keyboards and equipment on the road and offering a professional performance, people like The Prodigy would come and watch them, perhaps searching for inspiration. We asked Mark how they first met up and got N-joi started. Well, we met up at school and became good mates, we used to have music lessons together. At parties we’d always play the piano or entertain by playing the guitar or just messing around. People always said we should get a band together and when we left school we met up and talked. When we had some spare cash we bought ourselves the equipment.

At first we didn’t know what the hell we were doing with it, but after around six months we had some music we’d done. This was around 1988 when Adamski was round performing at clubs, so we got a small act together and started playing at local clubs. Then we started to get a big interest in the music we were making, we managed to find the right people to help us, got into a studio and put out music from a state of mind. Our first 6 track. This and our other music started to generate interest from bigger labels, we were spotted by Deconstruction at the Astoria. They came up with the best deal so we signed up with them.

Nigel took up the story on their first P.A. We did a party in the East End and got a really good reaction, then moved on to doing local clubs. The first large event we did was the first World Dance, it was August 1989 and had acts like KLF, Adamski and The Easy Posse. We played there and it was real fuck up, it all went wrong. After this it was a case of giving up or come back with something better. Adamski blew us away which was real influence to us. For a while we laid low and did our homework got our sound together and came back in a big way. We got a big break at the Dioramma in London, a selective party with people like Fabio, Mr C, Eddie Richards, Mark Moore and Karl Craig from Detroit. We played well, the word spread and we started to get bookings all over the country. The rest is history.

How would you describe your music when you first started out?
Purely House and Techno, which is what was being played back in 89. It was a really good year to get started, there was a wide spread choice of music, which catered for all the people, you had all the people enjoying the same kind of music in one room.

When you made Anthem, were you not worried that you would not be able to follow it up with something as good?
No, not really, we do not think about what is going to happen afterwards. We think, people will like this, lets put it out and worry about it afterwards. Our main inspiration was playing live, we used to know the people will love this and we would get a real adrenaline rush. The thing about Anthem was, yeh, it was a good track but we didn’t try and put another similar track out afterwards which a lot of other artists have done and still do.

Who influenced you musically?
It was the DJ’s really, not the artists. Its basically the tunes, you find that with a lot of the dance acts today you get one good tune out of them and then you don’t really hear from them again whereas the DJ’s just get really good tunes.

Did you find it hard to get bookings when you first started out?
Initially people did not know what we were all about so we had to commit ourselves to a smaller fee, but one the word spread we were the only band on the circuit.

Do you do a different set every time?
Well not a different set every time, but if you saw us every week, you would notice a little change, but if you only saw us once every couple of months I think you would notice it had changed a lot. What we would really like to do is to play two sets, you cannot have a house track play at Awol, the scene is so segregated now. The same as when we get booked for House clubs you find that there might be some breakbeat in the set and it is not going down well, to the house people Breakbeat is ‘uncool’. Now we do want two sets. It is a shame that people are no longer open minded, so that they would enjoy the whole set, but our main aim is to cater for what people want, and at the same time please ourselves.

When you work on new material do you follow the trends, or do you stick to your own ideas?
Well the scene changes so much, so rapidly you don’t want to be playing old material which is dated. You want to come up with something that is really different and that is the best thing to come up with but you cannot do that all the time, so basically you have to keep up with the time and what you feel happy with at the moment.

When you are making music do you make it for yourselves to perform it or for the DJ’s to play?
Both, when it comes to vinyl you have to make something that mixes in well with the music that they have already got, but that also works that way for our own set.

What are your views on the music in the present day scene?
A lot of the Jungle stuff is moving forward and we like to listen to DJ’s like Fabio, Doc Scott and Grooverider.

How much time do you spend on making music?
Most of the time really, it is a 24hr job, especially if you have got deadlines to meet, plus you have a set or a show and you want to put some new stuff in there. But it is a job and also a hobby, and we are always trying to better ourselves, everything we try to do is original, we have always written our own lines.

Has it been easier getting your music accepted commercially?
Well that record has been out a while and we were going to back it up with another track, about a month later. We didn’t expect it to go into the charts, but it proves there are a lot of people our there that are interested in it, we didn’t do any PR work on it at all. So basically the track got there by itself, commercially it wasn’t really a problem.

Do you plan your music so that it is going to be accepted commercially or for the underground?
The ideal thing is to write tunes that will get into the charts because they are good tunes. There is some good House music around at the moment and we were planning to venture back into some House stuff, we do like Breakbeat as well but obviously if you can come up with a good House tune it will be more accessible to play on the radio, but we would not go out and write anything deliberately for that reason. We like a tune that has got a good kick to it, we will not put a load of vocals over some good music just for the reason for getting on Top Of The Pops.

Do the record company mind you doing that?
We went to them and said we wanted to do more House music, they were pleased because it worked well with their plans to concentrate on House music as Jungle was becoming such a specialist market. But if you get accepted by all those people for your House music and then you started to introduce Jungle, and you had got a big following, people might go with it, and you could be entertaining to a big mass. Well tend to do that anyway we have Jungle on the same track so yeh, they would be exposed to it, but hopefully they will like it for what it is, but it is difficult. Some of the House people get offended if you involve the Jungle, but yeh, it would be good if you could break some of the Jungle in.

What would you say to people that say you are too much of a commercial band?
If we were commercial we would just bang out tune after tune and not worry about the quality of what we were doing. We have been in the charts three times before with Anthem, Adrenalin and Live In Manchester and then we didn’t put anything out for a year, the scene was getting a bit mixed up. We were writing things that we were not really happy with, after being in the charts three times we had quite a following so could have put stuff out for the sake of it. Take the track that has just come out if we wanted to be commercial we would have given it a lot of hype and publicity, but we didn’t do any at all. Fortunately for us a lot of people out there bought it and that meant we had to play it in commercial places like Top Of The Pops. It would be silly to refuse to play in front of 8 million people, we went on just after 808 with Cubic, we came on with Adrenalin, which was quite a powerful tune, and it was the hardest record they have every had on TV. It just came across as being a total fuck off thing to be on Top Of The Pops, people were left with their jaws down, it was a really good thing to do it was like an education to the nation.

What are your views on sampling, and what do you think about people sampling your material?
If it wasn’t for sampling Jungle wouldn’t be where it is today, the Jungle scene thrives on sampling. With Jungle people are being quite clever with their sampling unlike with House, it is the clever samplist that is taking the Jungle music further, they twist and stretch it. It’s when people take a whole section from another record and put it on their own record, then expose that, people are sampling tunes from 1989, for example a whole piano piece, the kids that are about today assume that’s an original track, when it could have been written 4 years ago by a guy in New York. Kids at 16 didn’t buy records at 12. That’s when it gets exposed but the Jungle scene at the moment people only shift 1000 to 2000 records.