Eeyun Delroy Purkins of Waggle Dance Records (Interview August 2024)

Waggle Dance Records has been releasing hand-crafted reggae music since 2018.

The emphasis is on quality, rather than quantity and they have collaborated with some of the best contemporary artists on the roots-reggae scene to release, as I type, twenty cool slices of the finest 21st century reggae, with a 70s vibe.

We are not talking digi-dub, psy-dub or even ska-punk here, we are talking old school. Although they do have a very 21st century outlet, with their back catalogue being available on Bandcamp – Music | Waggle Dance Records

At last year’s Green Gathering (2024) we sat down with Eeyun Delroy Purkins, the driving force behind Waggle Dance Records and Waggle Dance Studio.

So, let’s start at the beginning, what’s Waggle Dance Records when it’s at home?

We are a small studio based in between Bristol and Bath. We specialise in a more traditional approach to recording music, drawing influence from the classic studios of the 60s and 70s and early 80s, plus some of the soul studios in America. That tradition of having a studio band within the studio, rather than the studio being rented out to be recorded in by other people. There’s a house band which provides the music for different singers and instrumentalists to play over.

And that house band is The Co-operators?

That’s correct. The Co-operators is the studio band. Waggle Dance is the movement that the bees do to find pollen. Because the studio started in Manchester, where the symbol of the city is the bee, we thought it was appropriate to represent the working people. It was just a bit silly sounding, which we quite liked, having a sense of humour, Waggle Dance.

I’ve listened to the latest album with The Co-operators, it’s brilliant. Can you tell us a bit about some of the collaborators and things you have on there?

We’ve got Joe Yorke, who I work with a lot, Kitmar, who I work with a lot, and Perkie, who I work with a lot. We’ve also got Papa Jim, who’s a French singer who is most famous for working with Stand High Patrol. Graham Smith, a saxophonist who plays with a Bristol-based band, Count Boba. Then Dennis and Joseph, who are the bass player and singer from Talisman, a really popular reggae group from Bristol, who started in the early 80s, late 70s.

I know you used to be in the Autonomads, but I take it they’re not performing anymore?

We sort of perform occasionally. We’ve got a gig on the 31st of August in Manchester (2024, sorry readers, you have missed it), which is a Palestine Solidarity gig. We’re just doing gigs like that now, really.

Maybe we’ll do one or two a year, or one or two every few years, because we’re all busy and involved in other projects and have families and that sort of stuff. We’ve toured heavily for years. We started in 2007, so we’ll be seventeen years old this September.

Listen to the Autonomads bellow

The Autonomads were based in Manchester, presumably you lived in Manchester at one point. What prompted you to come and live down in Bristol?

I’d been in Manchester since 2007. I guess when you’ve lived in a place for a long time, people start to drift to the outer layers of the city. I think I just needed a fresh injection of life, personally.

Joe and Beanie had already moved down to Bristol, and I just thought the time was right in 2017 to come to Bristol. We’d been coming to Bristol for so many years to play with Autonomads. It’s always been ‘happening’, in Bristol.

I have noticed with some of these Bandcamp type labels, some artists seem to appear on different labels. Do you do anything like that with Waggle Dance? Or is it all stuff just recorded in your studio?

Yeah, with my label, I’m only releasing my productions, but I do stuff for other labels as well. We specialise in vinyl, so everything that’s released is always in a physical form.

It is obviously available digitally as well, but we don’t release anything just digitally. It’s all in the physical form that we specialise in.

Obviously, we’re here now at Green Gathering sat in the Campaigns Area. There’s a lot of radical politics being discussed. Looking at the Waggle Dance roster, a lot of the artists that are on Waggle Dance appear to be of a certain mindset. Do you just purely work with people on the same political wavelength as you?

I think that there’s definitely a political undercurrent. The Autonomads was a project that was purely political, dealing with social issues. Similarly, we’re dealing largely with social issues. A lot of it is on the same plane as Autonomads, in the sense that we specialised in a ‘kitchen sink’ approach to politics. We wanted it to be relatable, rather than discussing the issues in the macro. We were looking at things more in the micro, relatable to everyday life.

I guess that’s where the name for the first Co-Operators album, ‘Rhythms from the Kitchen Sink’, came from. It was talking about things on a relatable level, a bit more consumable for people, in terms of understanding what’s being spoken about. That sort of thing.

You can listen to, ‘Rhythms From the Kitchen Sink’ Below

You say you’ve put everything out on vinyl. Have you got your own set-up to cut the vinyl yourself, or do you have to go to some major pressing plant?

Yeah, we go to a pressing plant. Prior to Brexit, a lot of the industry was in Europe, in Czech Republic and in Poland. But as a result of Brexit, that became untenable, really. Fortunately, after the Brexit crisis, things changed, because there suddenly became a huge number of plants in the UK.

After Covid there was a huge queue for the pressing plant, nobody pressed anything for about a year during lockdown, because they weren’t able to sell it.

Throughout that time, we still pressed records and got them back quite quickly, initially, because no one else was wanting to do it. But then there were huge delays, up to a year at some pressing plants to get things back. Fortunately, a few places in the UK set up to do it here again, which is useful.

I think that towards the end of the 90s, a lot of plants started to sell up, because no one was pressing vinyl anymore. But with reggae music, it’s always been on vinyl, so that industry never went away. And there were small-scale people, like Jah Tubbies in London, they had a press.

I think Music House had just bought a press from Jamaica. But yeah, we go to a plant called Press On at the moment.

And then Matt, who ran Pumpkin Records for years, he’s got a lathe, so he can cut records. Rather than the mass production of pressing them, he can cut them, which is like in real time, you are basically recording them onto a record with a lathe. So he does that, which we occasionally do a small run with, like that with him for tunes that might only sell a thousand copies or five hundred copies.

Do you make a point of going for the heavyweight, 180g vinyl and all that sort of thing?

No, I don’t. I just press onto black standard weight vinyl. I prefer black, really, I think. People always say it sounds better, I don’t really know about that, but I sort of like just black. We make a lot of effort with the presentation; we like it to look nice as well. I think that’s a lot of the thing with vinyl, you’re buying the artwork and that kind of thing.

So as well as having your own studio family, you have any artwork designers you work with?

I tend to do the artwork. I did an album with Joe, which came out before the last one, called ‘A Distant Beat’, which was all Joe’s songs, mine and Joe’s songs, and we got an artist called Maya to do the artwork. Other than that, I do the artwork.

What forthcoming releases can we look forward to?

I’ve got two albums that I’m working on, with two singers, and then I’ve also got a dub album, which is a collection of dub mixes of songs off ‘A Distant Beat’, Joe’s LP, and ‘Sounds From The Fridge’, which is the last album. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to call it yet.

Theoretically, anyone who could set up a studio, but you also need to know how to actually do it. Where did you learn your craft, if you like, running a studio?

Because I’ve been playing, I was always particularly interested in the studio, and I guess that with reggae, and specifically dub, the studio is the instrument in many ways.

I was always interested in the analogue recording process. Probably about ten years ago, I started making music on my own. I had a very basic bit of equipment that I started recording with, and then a friend of mine had a studio that I’d go and mix down at, a friend of ours, Mauro, he’s in the Caribbean now, but his studio was in Wally Range, and I’d go and mix down there, and I was kind of like, I don’t need to get the studio set up fully, because I can go and do it at Mauro’s, and maybe the first or second time I went there, I went there and did a mix, and just sort of taught myself really.

Made some records that didn’t sound so great, and learnt from them, I guess. Just through sort of watching and working things out, I’ve got no formal training.

I’m almost hesitant to ask this one, because it’s slightly controversial, but I noticed, well, I went to a reggae event in Bristol Harbour, or whatever they call it, and there weren’t that many black people around there.

Do you find that young black people are listening to reggae, or are they going off to listen to something else?

I don’t know, really. I think that there’s definitely still a sort of respect for that music. I think that the sort of music industry in Jamaica, you know, it moved a lot quicker than we did, you know, in terms of like, you look at the sort of transition from ska into rocksteady, into the early reggae, into roots, you know, into dancehall, rub-a-dub into dancehall, that was moving quickly, the music sort of evolved quite quickly, and maybe, the audience in the UK got caught up a bit on some of it, and stuck with some of it.

I think there’s a real revival of old-time music among the young and old, really, and it’s definitely a sort of fine line to tread as a white person, between cultural appreciation and appropriation. I feel like the music that I grew up listening to, that period of Jamaican music, it was my introduction, which was roots. I love it all, from ska to rocksteady, but my introduction was through roots music, which was, very socially conscious, and I guess that as a white person, I’ve never experienced the oppression that led to the creation of some of that music. I’m always going to be a student of that music, I’m never going to graduate as somebody who totally understands it and can make it with its absolute authenticity. I think it’s important to always pay respect to where it’s come from and not bastardise it too much, out of that respect.

I’m getting the feeling that we’re not likely to see any drum and bass remixes of what you’re doing in the studio.

I think broadly my musical taste is quite nostalgic, from sort of blues and jazz and reggae and punk – obviously. But, there is a big wave in Jamaica of young artists, you know, returning to that roots sound. There’s a great album that came out last year by a singer called Samori Ai, which was like a really brilliant roots album. Some singers like Mortimer, he’s a protégé, Lila Ike, and Chris, a great Jamaican artist who were kind of like carrying that flame.

If you are into old skool reggae, you really need to check these guys out, Visit them her on Bandcamp- Music | Waggle Dance Records

And low – just as we finish typing, a new Waggle Dance album drops

EARL SIXTEEN & THE CO-OPERATORS ‘CONCRETE ROCKERS’ SHOWCASE LP