About

Around 1990/91 I really discovered my true passion for dance music while listening to the local pirate radio stations in my hometown Sheffield pumping out breakbeat, bleep and house music. I would sit at home recording all the shows and then play them back over and over. I was only 15 years old when a chance meeting gave me a regular slot to broadcast on my favourite and most popular station at that time, fantasy FM 101.9. I will never forget the first night I performed high up in a high rise sheffield council flat with red lightbulbs glowing up the grotty room. I was terrified knowing how many people I knew personally had tuned in to listen to my first show, as soon as the first record began to spin the studio mobile phone for shout-outs began to ring off the hook and my nerves quickly settled and that was it then, I was off and running and continued doing a weekly show for a few years.

This was the start of trying to find the best most upfront sounds around to captivate the audience I built up .

At first I would go by train to nearby cities, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and London trawling through record shops and making connections with likeminded people along the way some of which I’m still in touch with on a regular basis.  Just a few years later and I was travelling across the pond to New York and Chicago back and forth wholesaling records to shops with what I had brought back in my crammed overweight suitcases.   Finding rare U.S house and techno records became addictive to bring back home so travelling to NY became a regular thing for me and my pals.

Almost 30 years since then have passed and I am still as dedicated as I was back then, luckily I have now had the pleasure of turning my passion into a business.  

Artisan Records now stock over 10,000 hand picked records on a regular basis and I am always on the lookout for collections to buy or just chew the fat and chat about records from that era. Drop me a line anytime.