Wise words from Ryan Heath of Shades Of Rhythm. Or are they? After all, we all know that Shades Of Rhythm were big business back in ’91 when we were all going crazy at raves such as Raindance and Sunrise listening to tracks like ‘Sound Of Eden’ and ‘Ecstasy’, but what about now? What the hell have Shades Of Rhythm been doing since the epic rave years of the early decade, and to be totally honest, can the boys actually step back into the limelight after five years?

The answer is most probably, yes. After all, Shades Of Rhythm have managed to stand firm in a highly disposable industry for longer than most and with a rave CV that details a wealth of dance music experience, it will be a pretty tough task to nudge Nick, Rayan and Lanx out of the scene easily.

“As far as music goes us boys have been involved in the scene for as long as we can remember”. Explained Rayan. “We honestly haven’t done anything else but music, it’s the only thing we are qualified to do. We’d all been in bands of some kind since we were at school, we’d actually been rivals to each other in the early years, so it wasn’t until we hit our teens that we started working together. We decided that with Nick and Lanx’s musical talent and my lyrics, we’d probably make a good team, so we joined our forces and created Shades Of Rhythm”.

From the moment that the band got together, a new form of dance music began to take shape. The boys used to meet every Sunday for secret ‘jam’ sessions in a local TV repair shop who agreed to lend them their sound equipment. In those days their creations were just for fun, but as the saying goes, ‘You can’t keep a good sound down’, and as soon as Rayan landed a job as resident DJ in a local Peterborough club called ‘The Attic’, the boys suddenly had a forum to test out their tracks.

As this point in time, they were playing live gigs to massive crowds, but as a band were still without a name, and were rapidly being christened as ‘The Band With No Name’. It soon became blatantly obvious that a band name had to be created. ‘Shades Of Rhythm’ was the obvious choice because of their skin colours being one black, one white and one brown, they felt they could reflect every shade of music imaginable.

“In those days, we had aspirations of being as important to dance music as The Rolling Stones were to rock. At the time there wasn’t an established dance act in the UK, it was simply a question of charging into the charts (if you were lucky), and then adding your name to a long list of one-hit wonders. We wanted more for Shades Or Rhythm, we wanted to be respected both on stage and on vinyl. Even in those early days at The Attic we knew that we had something that people could actually get into, so we went about things differently, We started putting records out in the shops on our own label, we did everything ourselves – the recording, the pressing, even the distribution – the whole damn lot!”

Amazingly, without any help at all from a record company, Shades Of Rhythm were creating their own exciting buzz on the underground circuit. Promoters, DJ’s and clubbers were drawn to the ‘Shade’ vibe like iron filings to a magnet, and within weeks of their first track hitting the shops, the sound of Shades were furiously cooking in the underground cook-pots. Suddenly the boys were bombarded by phone calls from record company talent scouts who were all eager to sign the Shades to their label. As a result, their first deal was struck with Beat Box Records in 1988, which was the label owned by the infamous Stevie V. Unfortunately, due to legal wrangling with the company, Shades Of Rhythms’ debut release ‘Just Feel It’, briskly became their last on Beat Box.

Once again Shades Of Rhythm found themselves hounded by record companies and eventually they signed their second deal with ZTT Records. A string of hits followed including ‘Homicide/Exorcist’, ‘Sweet Sensation’, ‘Sound Of Eden’, ‘Ecstasy’ and ‘Sweet Revival’, plus two further albums – ‘Shades Of Rhythm’ and ‘Shades’. They went on tour with The Prodigy and N-joi at the forefront of the Summer Of Love, playing major dance parties such as Technodrome, Fantazia, Amnesia House and Raindance, to name a few.

In 1994 the band set-up their own label entitled ‘Wandering Dragon’ and signed a subsidiary deal with Public Demand Records. In September of that year they released their first track under the new label called ‘My Love’ and followed-up with ‘Musical Freedom’ which shot to No 1 in all dance charts nationwide. In March 1995 Shades Of Rhythm signed an album deal with PWL Records and their first release is set for early ’96. But being a band that’s holding the helm of British dance music, why have they formed a union with the UK’s biggest pop label?

“Are PWL a pop label?” jokes Rayan. “I hadn’t noticed! No seriously, we think that PWL are a really good record label who have probably achieved more hits in their short history than any other label I can think of. Shades Or Rhythm have always aimed to be the best, and to get there we have to be with the winning team, and we think that PWL are best equipped to put us at the top”.

So what can we expect from the future album? Well, Rayan dismisses all rumours that there are plans for further remixes of ‘Sound Of Eden’ and ‘Ecstasy’ as he feels that past successes must be left simply as a memory of the time. However, the new album (as yet untitled) is set for release in mid ’96, with a single release scheduled for February. The first track from the album will be called ‘Raise The Feeling’, but it will only be a limited edition because the boys simply want to give the clubs a small taste of what’s to come in the future.

“The underground is where the music scene starts, without club support a record is nothing. As clubs and DJ’s have always been fully supportive of Shades Of Rhythm’, we’ve decided to give them this track as a thank you. ‘Raise The Feeling’ will be exclusive to the underground, with our next full commercial release coming out later on in the year. But for now we want to build new foundations, and we can’t do that without going back to our roots, which are the clubs. So this is our present to the underground really, we just hope they appreciate it. So Shades fans get out there and get clubbin’, you won’t hear this track anywhere but in the clubs, so keep the scene alive”.