RK Bass – Brighton

RK Bass is an independent shop specialised in drum n’ bass, jungle and old school hardcore, placed on the first floor of Rarekind Records in Brighton. In the last two years RK Bass has become a reference in the U.K’s south east coast for its rare original records, attracting visitors from main cities in the country and abroad who seek to complete their own collection. Icrates spoke with Leanne, the first lady of rave n’ bass on the sunny side of the U.K., telling us how she manages to keep up the high standards of her shop and being active in the scene.

Can you please introduce yourself.

I’m Leanne, the owner of RK Bass, a record shop in Brighton. We specialise in drum n’ bass, jungle, old school hardcore.
I am also DJ As If, a hiphop and reggae DJ

can you tell us a bit about RK Bass, how and when did it start and who are guilty ones? how did it start your association with Ewan – RK Records?

RK Bass has been open now for two years, it was our second year birthday in February. I used to work in another record shop and they were winding down their record sales, i decided that vinyl wasn’t yet dead yet and done with, so decided to open my own shop.

I’ ve know Ewan from Rarekind Records for many years, because he’s also quite a big player in the Brighton hip hop scene, and i’ve been djing hip hop for many years in Brighton as well so obviously our paths have crossed at many nights and parties.
Ewan’s shop was upstairs from Rarekind Gallery, a graffiti related shop, when they moved out he took on the downstairs floor and the top floor became available, so i found that was my opportunity to start my own shop, and it’s been working out quite well.

Why did you decide to deal with records? is it love that became business?

My love for records came from DJing. I started DJing when I was about 16, much to my parents disappointment.I started playing old school hardcore, later techno, and then drum n bass and hip hop. Then I really got into turntablism, scratching and beat juggling. That really connects you with records. Being a turntablist, records is your life! The result is that I’ve got a massive record collection.,and after working in record shops for 7 years, it just seems like a natural progression to having my own shop.

Leanne holds Prodigy’s Charlie 12′ – It was one of the first records that i bought. It first came out in 1991. I also went to secondary school with Liam Howlett, who is the producer of The Prodigy. We come from the same sad little town in Essex, Braintree. We grew up to same sort of raves and the rave scene was quite big in the 90s, that’s really what started my passion for music, records and dance music in general.

Prodigy – Charly

Which music styles do you sell? From this depends a very specific filling, how does it work your archive and filing system?

Mainly We are specialised in drum n bass and all it’s outlets. The raves started with jungle, also before that, the raves started with old school hardcore, so that was my port of call. In Brighton there is no one else that specialises in that type of music,at the time there was a niche that i could fit into, being also my music speciality.

From the original hardcore came jungle and drum n bass, so it just seemed like a natural thing to have those things grouped together. So in our shop we have our records sectioned into years, we start with the original hardcore which is early 90′s, and then when hardcore started to change and going to happy-hardcore and drum n bass, around about 93 to 95 jungle started so that was again another section, because the genre fitted into those years.

The genre started to change again in 96, between 96 and 2000 it went through another period of change, described as the jump-up era. So we have a section for old school hardcore, a section for jungle 93 to 95, and then we have two sections from 96 to 99, one is the jump up section, and the other is the dark section, because the scene started to split in that way at the time. From 2000 i group all those records together because the scene merged back together into one. Even though there are so many different types of drum n bass that it’s impossible to split it into sections anymore, there’s dark, tech, minimal, jump up, modern jungle, liquid, vocal, there’s every type. For the classics we keep them in years, because of the way that the scene progressed. The customers seem to find their way around the shop a lot better because of that sectioning. if you know what year was your favourite year in the scene, so you know which box you can go and look for those tunes that you wanted from that time.

how many records you got in store?

I think we probably got over a thousand records in this shop at any time. We have brand new released records four times a week and we have second hand classics dropped twice a week.

I also have an office which generally speaking is full, but we do turn over stock quite quickly. If i buy some classic jungle records on the wednesday, by Saturday it’s all gone, because we have that many sort of collectors, that know that we regularly get stuff that they check on a weekly basis.

how do you recognise a valuable and interesting record?

Generally through my knowledge of a particular genre that I’m specialised in. But there is a few tell tale signs, that we always look out for. Any records that have been stamped by hand are always worth investigating. Both Ewan and i always use Discogs, to find out about the year and artist even if it’s a white label you can find out the information on that. Using my experience as well, we’re always looking out for records that look like their labels have been hand drawn, you can always kind of tell the age of a record. Because of the way the records are now, with a computer graphic sleeve and also the label on the the middle, you can tell when something modern from when something old.

We also look out for specific labels, again because of our experience, we know if certain labels from certain places are valuable or desirable in some way. White labels as well. Customers often ask me when i’m looking strangely at a record, what i’m actually looking at. On the run-out groove on every record is a scratched catalogue number and that information can completely tell me what a record is. It’s absolutely ridiculous but i’ve got a memory for catalogue numbers i can remember a hundred catalogue numbers from the 90s, so you can find out what any record is by that.

Do you sell used records and how do get them?

We sell pre-owned records of all types, we’ve got a quite high quality control so i only take records that are in good condition and only sell records that are in good condition wether it’s £1 or £60, it has to be in good condition.

I think that’s quite important for your reputation, there’s no point in selling scratched records. I source from just about anywhere and everywhere and also from the internet. My main bulk of sourcing, the pre owned stuff, is from people coming in of the street with their collections to sell. People are digitising they’r vinyl and then selling it once they’ve copied it all. I think it’s mainly due to the use of space, people loose their collections because they’re downsizing.

I also go around charity shops and we also use our contacts, a lot of people that are becoming ex-djs and want to shift their old records. I’ve also got a couple of guys who i work with for sourcing records, so they’re out there looking on all the internet sites, looking through the newspapers for ads of people selling their records, so there’s three sets of eyes always looking.

Do you dig for yourself?

I do dig for myself as well but these days the shop overtakes my own personal digging. Because my shop is above another shop which specialises in the music that i want to dig for myself personally, i kind of got it all under one roof. If i go downstairs to talk to Ewan about something i’ll see a reggae album and two hiphop singles that i’ve wanted for 10 years. And i’ve got them over there on my doorstep, so it’s really handy for that and dangerous for my wallet.

Are any other shops with the same identity as RKBass in Brighton/ south east UK? Are you connected with them in any way and if so do you exchange goods?

Brighton is really well known for record shops. Over the last five years we’ve lost a lot of quite important record shops due to the way people buy their music now, with the digital age. In Brighton there was 33 record shops, and now there are only maybe 10 in all, and including all the second hand only record shops. There are 3 main record shops that sell drum n bass in town. What i’ve done specifically is started gearing my shop to something slightly different to what they’re doing. So the other record shops in town might only do new records whereas i do quite a large portion of pre-owned music, so people come for new records as well as classic records. We also have a really good relationship with a record shop in the same area as us called Edgeworld Records, which is very similar to my shop, specialising in electronic music, anything that we don’t have we direct people to them and anything that they don’t have they direct people to us. And their guys shop in our shop and we shop in their shop so we’ve got a really nice relationship with them.

There’s another small second hand record shop in town which we have a good relationship with them and they sometimes help us, they point us onto a collection that they’re not interested in that we maybe be interested in and vice-versa. We know quite a lot of people who work around the other shops, so we’re constantly in touch with each other. Some other shops we don’t have any direct contact with, but what i’ve always tried to do is something slightly different to everyone else to make us kind of stand out from the crowd.

Do also you promote events?

We used to promote an event a few years ago called 5 elements & Tydirium a night of hiphop and drum n bass. We’d normally do it in a club where there were 2 rooms, so we started the night with hiphop in the main room and drum n bass on the second room and then at 1 o’clock we’d change the whole thing around and turn the main room into drum n bass and put hiphop in the back room. So there was always a room that you could go in if you would like one music or the other, or if you liked both you could have a bit of both.

These days i don’t promote events anymore but i do support a lot of local events, for example, there’s a regular drum n bass event called Devotion, which i support and they’re very good old friends of mine, we also support the events on Shogun Audio, but there’s also many many other events probably too many for me to mention which we support, sponsor, hand out their flyers and just generally let people know about them as best as possible. We also put the djs and customers from our shop in touch with promoters, because it’s quite a difficult thing to do when you’re just first starting out djing to approach promoters and get noticed by a promoter. So anyone who we think is good enough to mention to promoters we do that as well.

Do you take any regular action of preservation for the records? if so, any tips for cleaning a dusty old record?

We’ve quite a high standard of condition and quality of records that we sell. First of all we don’t take any records that are in a bad condition at all. But any records that are still in need of some attention, we recommend a few ways of looking after them. Lukewarm soaped water, a very very soft cloth and even then just a little bit of a wash, paying attention not to get the centre label wet in any way, and then let them dry. Then use a high alcohol solution called isopropyl, which you can buy from the chemist, apply that with an anti static cloth and that evaporates quite quickly. It generally takes of grease and any dirt that is stuck on there and also it will take of all the dust as well. We go through litres of that a month.

Storage wise, we keep all our records in poly-plastic sleeves because we find that keeps the sleeves in really good condition and in a dry room, temperature environment.Always out of direct sunlight,even just the slightest hint of sunshine on a record can warp it and warping is not good.

What is your oldest record?

The oldest record in our shop has got to be a Prodigy remix of a record from 1987. It doesn’t seem that old in the scheme of things but it is old in the scheme of dance music. But i would say that we also do loads of records from the early 90s which are now 20 years old now.

What is your most valuable record?

Our most valuable record right at this moment is a Remarc jungle record from 1994, it’s on a rare english label called Dollar Records and as anyone into jungle will know, anything by Remarc goes for quite good money. That Remarc record at the moment is £25, which is not terrible. I think probably the most expensive record we’ve ever sold was a really rare Foul Play promo which i think sold for £70.

How do you set the prices for rare records?

We really price everything from Discogs, because not only can you sell records on that website, but you can also look up a history of sales, so you can see what that particular record you are looking for has sold for in the last 6 months, so you get a sort of average selling price. What we do is look at that average price and then we price it under that by a couple of pounds, to try and encourage people into the shop and off the internet.

Who are your customers and their average age? Any famous client?

Our customers are mainly, surprisingly, youngsters which is really encouraging. Because young people are still buying records and it does surprise people who aren’t into buying records anymore. They think that buying records is dying out which is not actually true at this moment in time. Sales in vinyl and records are actually increasing and have increased over the last couple of years. People are reverting back to vinyl as a format to listen to music, it’s still very collectable. Most of our customers are young people, averaging between 18 and 25 but we do also have customers as old as 65.

Generally speaking most of our customers are from the local area, but we do have people come from all the way along the south coast, coming down from London, we’ve had people from abroad. We have quite a large group who always come here especially when coming from France, which is great. Also well known local acts shop here quite regularly. We have the members from Spectrasoul, who are now a quite big drum n bass act, We also see Friction quite regularly who is a massive drum n bass DJ in this country. I have to mention his drum n’ bass label Shogun Audio who are a fantastic Brighton label who’s gone from strength to strength and they really are smashing it these days.

What will be the business like in the year 2030? Will there be just old and rare records or still new pressings?

I always believed that people will buy and collect records, because as a format, it’s a fantastic. They brought cds out, vinyl is dead, blah blah blah… But wasn’t the cause. Vinyl and records still got bought, sold and produced. Cds didn’t wipe it out as a format. We do believe that records will still be collected in 20 years time and that people will still use it as a format, but, the problem is, with the manufacturing of new records, they require a chemical which is only manufactured in a small amount of factories around the world now, and the problem is that those manufacturers might find they need to close. We wonder what will happen after those times. Whether a different type of chemical will be produced or a different way of producing vinyl will be discovered or made, we don’t know. But right at this moment in time, in the drum n bass scene, 60 new records a week come out, so there’s certainly no wind down in production of new recordds. In my experience i would say there’s actually more records selling now then there was 5 years ago as regarding to new releases. Those sales aren’t declining at all, so it’s really difficult to know what will happen with newly produced records due to the manufacturing of them. But as a format i think it will carry on and it will last.

Another point to make as well is that Technics, who produce the very classic Technics 1210 announced this year that they were stopping making Technics 1210 MKII which was a shock for everyone, they have been selling now for 25 years. Technics has maybe come to a point were they couldn’t really sell the product because there wasn’t a demand for it anymore. They still manufacture the Techniques 1210 MKV so there is still hope.

Are you a dealer, collector, DJ/producer?

.I’m a record dealer, I am also DJ As If and i’ve djing now for 20 years. I’m also a collector of just everything, i used to just collect one genre but now i like to collect everything. Anything at all. Anything that i just kind of like or remember from my youth or that’s really modern, anything at all that catches my attention, it has to be on record. I was also a partner on a record label many years ago, which has since ceased to exist, those records are actually quite collectable. The label was called Surgeon 16 Recordings, it’s on Discogs, which none of us actually put up ourselves. Those records are hardcore techno from the late 90s. , so that has revealed my age!

Leanne/DJ As If all time favourite LPs

Jehst ‘High plains drifter EP’

http://www.discogs.com/Jehst-High-Plains-Drifter-EP/release/243520

Jehst – High Plains Anthem

Prodigy ‘The Experience’

http://www.discogs.com/Prodigy-Experience/release/1482792

Prodigy – Wind it Up

Gravediggaz ’6 feet deep’

http://www.discogs.com/Gravediggaz-6-Feet-Deep/master/70050

Gravediggaz – 6 feet deep

Arovane ‘Tides’

http://www.discogs.com/Arovane-Tides/master/16370

Arovane – Tides

Kemet Crew ‘Champion Jungle sound’

http://www.discogs.com/Kemet-Crew-Champion-Jungle-Sound/release/109511

Kemet Crew – The Seed

RK Bass
First Floor
104 Trafalgar Street
Brighton
East Sussex
BN1 4ER

01273 818170
Mon – Sat: 11am – 6pm
Sun : 12 noon – 5pm