I came across Oldboy on Bandcamp two years ago while looking for tunes to play at an upcoming friends party. I came across his Grimey Ones series, which involved some edits on classic grime songs but also a mixture of UKG, Jungle and Grime instrumentals. Ever since, Oldboy has filled in a gap I’ve felt is missing, or at least, missing from my club experiences in Manchester. In the Summer, I got a chance to speak to Max, or otherwise known as Oldboy.

Jump to:

…background

…on creative processes

…Touring in America

…Oldboy’s recommendations

Let’s start with the name, Oldboy, what’s the meaning behind that? 

“It's just from a film that I was a big fan of back when I started to go in a certain direction with my production at university. I was just starting to establish and I hadn’t had an idea what my sound was. I think at the time there was like a film that I was watching, a Korean film called Old Boy, which was… Yeah, there wasn't any kind of deep meaning behind it. I just thought the name was kind of cool. Had a good ring to it.”

“I didn’t study it at university, no. I studied illustration and animation at Sheffield, so it was a creative course, but I think it was definitely at uni that I started to put time into production and take it more seriously. University helped me discover a lot more about dance music and culture, I mean I was like 18 when I went so that shaped my sound. A couple of years before that I wanted to be in the design world, which I still really like, love doing, illustration.”

Interesting you’re so orientated on UKG and Grime which is, obviously, not a sound you traditionally associate with Sheffield. 

“To be a Northerner or at a Northern uni, I feel like it’s such a different thing you hear for producers. I come from York, originally, which is more northern. I can’t put a date on when I first got into that music, but I do remember back when I was at school and listening to old Rinse FM mixes. I was also a bit of a YouTube kid and spent a lot of time on the internet and came across rap battles, which also got me into Lord Of The Mics, and that got me into grime. I just liked the sound, I did think it was funny though because my background isn’t growing up in London, where that music comes from. But there was definitely a part of me that resonated with it. Not that I came from a place where Grime was an active thing, but I just enjoyed the sound! The energy was great. 

I was just thinking, as there were plenty of producers before me that used acapellas, and I thought ‘what if I go towards sampling some of the tunes, the instrumentals that I like and put that into dance music?’”

“For my first Grimey Ones release, it was my final year I was meant to be doing uni work and…I was… but also been producing loads and making tunes all the time, and I just wanted to try something different out. I made four tunes in two days. my creative process is like, it's annoyingly like that. I sometimes can't just sit there and like force myself to write a tune. Sometimes I’ll have a couple of weeks without doing anything and then a full tune will come out in a couple hours and then it's like, okay, cool. That I know like people, like, it's like the opposite. Like they can sit down and they can just make a song like every time and like, whether it's like something they keep or not, it doesn't matter, but they'll finish a song. Whereas I struggle with that a lot, but everybody's got their creative processes.”

So you released Grimey Ones part III last year, is that a done project, or do you want to release more?

“The fourth one is ready to go. I’ve just to think a bit about timing. I want to also think about a move toward a legitimate release, I’m gonna do some vinyl pressings or something like that. But yeah, the tunes are ready to go.”

That sounds great, do you ever feel like you’d like to try and move grime being exclusive to London? Create your own vocals? See if anyone in Manchester, Sheffield, or the north would be interested in that.

“100%, a hundred percent. The way I see it, Grime obviously comes from London, but it’s so alive in cities like Birmingham, even northern cities, there are pockets of that sound there and it’s not as represented as much as the southern sound is. I’d look towards getting more northern MCs involved. But it’s not always about the MCs or making these grime flips! I wanted to start making Grimey Ones about the SOUND not just the genre grime. A grime tune is a dark tune, it’s a tune that causes a bit of disturbance in the club, and that’s what I’m associating it with. And I thought a lot about how the tunes in the next Grimey Ones fit, and they do fit in that zone of sound for sure.”

“Yeah, it was amazing! Well… I didn’t call it a tour but I guess it kind of was… It started in Chicago and then played down in New Orleans, Denver, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, New York, and Atlanta. It was just really me going over and playing the UK music sound to places that, except New York, hadn’t heard it before. There are plenty of places in America that play Garage, like big clubs in LA, but I was playing on Wednesday nights but they liked it so much! There are these small pockets and communities. 

I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know if I would go over there and I’d play garage music and everyone would be like, what the hell is this music? Which would have been a nightmare, as it’s [grime, UKG, Jungle] isn’t as well known out there as it is here, but the event organisers do which is why they’ve booked me but they bring all their friends and then there’s like a wider group of people that arrive that don’t know about it but they loved it.”

So this is something that has become a career for you recently?

“It wasn’t even a year ago that I was working full time and…. The best way that I can describe it… we kind of always just say it’s like a hobby that kind of got out of hand. A hobby we enjoy doing, it’s something we love and then all of a sudden people start to take interest, which is amazing. I still haven’t gotten used to it. ‘cause it's been quite an intense couple of months. I'm kind of like living in this weird, like, time now. I'm unemployed now, but I've also not got shows on all the time. But it’s all good!

I still haven’t gotten used to it yet, it’s been amazing just to be able to do what I love doing. There was, before I was in America, working part-time, a couple days a week, but then I quit my job and was in America.”

And Manchester. You moved here recently, how are you finding it? 

“The reason why I moved to Manchester was because there were more opportunities and being surrounded by more creatives. I love Sheffield and it’s a great place, but I was just finding that I wasn’t getting anywhere really. I was comfortable with what I was doing and it was perfect, balancing the odd gig with work… but I kind of just jumped on the boat with my friends who moved. The main thing for me that is always so important with this music scene is the friends that I've made and the connections that I've made on a friendship basis and just being able to have people all across the country and the world where I'm just chatting to them online. 'cause of Covid and then we left lockdown and if I need somewhere to stay out within different cities, there's always people there.”

“I could name three or four producers that I think are at the top level in my opinion, and I’d say quite underrated as well. so I'd say like, Fonzo, who's a producer from Bristol, Alfie's he's a friend of mine and he’s got a lot of releases that'll be coming out this year. He's an extremely talented producer, like, He makes super clean music and the epitome of like dark techno tracks but with super minimal drums. So… a big fan of him!"

Zero FG as well. He's like known quite well in the garage scene. Again, just for the same reason. It's just the originality of his music. And then Soul Mass Transit System. I think that would be quite a lot of people, uh, in the kind of like garage break scene. Definitely look up to them 'cause they're production is second to none. Then I'd probably have to say, I mean he's a good friend of mine, but SILVA BUMPA is making some great stuff. I've known him throughout this whole process and going from making more bootleg stuff and to his more recent kind of speed garage music. The music he's been showing me is super super original. He's been hustling so hard recently to just make a sound that's his own. It's been cool to be the studio and able to hear that process that come to fruition and yeah, that there's some cool stuff coming out from him.”

Oldboy on why he loves what he does.

“When it's like the time to play, I’m just having a good time. I love the concentration that it takes, but also the crowd involvement. I do like that a lot of my DJing is like never really planned. I never really planned what I was gonna play.

So a big part of it for me, and the main reason I love doing it, is that when you're kind of stood there and you go, okay, so they reacted like this to this tune… so they would maybe react well to this tune and, and just kind of, yeah, just like any DJ it does really, it's, it's just all about judging the crowd and thinking, okay, how, how are they liking this? 

It makes it more of a challenge. I'm not just a set that I've planned and I’m repeating it and repeating it. It's kind of like, I guess like that's a good way of putting it. It's kind of like a puzzle.”

Thanks for talking to Dance Policy, Max!

You can follow Max on instagram here and take a look at their bandcamp here.