The landscape of house music is peppered with legendary labels who have shaped the sounds of the scene. Back in the early days of late 80s Chicago, Detroit and New York, the main electronic music proponents were stables like DJ International, Strictly Rhythm, Trax and Transmat. Trailblazers, the lot of them. More recently, and on this side of the pond, if we were to find a parallel, there is one label that looms large, standing head and shoulders above the rest like a pulsating monolith belching four to the floor bangers with clockwork regularity: Toolroom Records. Few labels have had as much of an impact on the dance music scene over the last 20 years as Toolroom has. Whether you’re a crate-digging house nerd or a weekend crazy who doesn’t know your Laurent Garnier from your Laurent Perrier, chances are you’ve thrown manic shapes to more than one Toolroom track if you’ve been in a club in the last couple of decades.
Established in 2003, Toolroom’s origin story started when founder and DJ Mark Knight began his musical journey as an ankle-biter in Kent. “Pre-teenager, I was always obsessed with music. In the early 80s, it was boogie and soul and disco and early hip hop – I remember one kid moved into our area, and he had an electro tape with Afrika Bambaataa on it. I thought ‘what the fuck is this?!’ It just blew my head off.”
Somehow managing to survive the electro generated decapitation, the now headless Mark managed to feel his way through adolescent trawls through record shops, before finding himself at a crossroads. “The plan was to be a professional footballer. I was at Maidstone United, but it got to the point where I knew I wasn’t actually good enough for it to lead to something.” (I imagine the lack of a head didn’t help.) “I was getting 50 quid a week at Maidstone, and then on Saturday night I could get 200 quid playing records. I weighed it up – 50 quid, no drinking, no birds, or 200 quid, and all of the above. I got a set of decks and practiced every night.”
Having eschewed a career on the football field, Mark (head regrown) progressed through the DJ ranks via residencies at London’s Bar Rhumba for house legends Bobby and Steve, and then at Hanover Grand for Kiss FM – the latter of which led to his name being sprayed over the airwaves on the Capital’s pre-eminent, pre-internet jungle drum. A four-year residency at Ministry followed, and as Mark began producing as well, he and his brother Stuart decided to take their destiny into their own hands and birth an empire of their own. In a shed.
“I was releasing records on other labels and was getting really let down. I thought ‘these people couldn’t run a bath, let alone a record label’. If I wanted a serious career, I’d have to own it – the buck needs to stop at me,” says Mark. “This was the end of 2002 – my brother Stuart had just lost his job and my dad had just retired, so I said “look, I want to start a record label. Stu can do the business side with my dad, who was in a band when he was younger, and understood the music industry. I sold my house and used the money to build a studio in my mum and dads tool shed. I’d be outside in the studio making the music and my dad and brother would be in the office inside doing that side of it, and Toolroom Records began.”
The early 2000s was a time of great flux for the record industry – vinyl was on life support and CDs were nervously looking over their shoulder. Launching a record label with the four horsemen of the digital download apocalypse coming over the horizon was questionable. But as the new format and its distribution network coalesced, the industry evolved to keep up. And Toolroom were pioneers of this brave new world of 0s and 1s. “We put all our eggs in the basket of digital. Download stores were the new thing, and we were quick to get on board with Beatport, which was the first. We launched at the same time and we got very tight with them and both grew together.”
By embracing the new way and bypassing the lumbering physical market, Toolroom had instant access to the marketplace and the means to distribute, and they exploited it expertly. They have now racked up nearly 1000 releases as a label, and Toolroom is now home to heavy hitting artists from house music royalty like Armand Van Helden to the wonderfully mustachioed Friend Within, and from Chicago legend Green Velvet to Mark Knight himself – still the label’s best-selling artist with over 50 singles and many more production credits to his name.
It was Mark’s 2008 crossover collaboration with Funkagenda on their rerub of Man With The Red Face that introduced him to the mainstream. Back in the tail end of the noughties, it was everywhere. DJs considered it one of those get out jail free card records. Losing the dancefloor a bit? Put it on. The moment that jaunty synth hook bounces out of the speakers the effect of the crowd is palpable. You can almost hear the collective intake of breath as ears prick up and mojos get working.
“That term, ‘get out of jail’ – when we set up the label, that’s what our mantra was. We wanted to be the record label that when you’re struggling, you feel like you’re just losing the crowd a little bit, you put on a Toolroom record and it turns it back on again.”
Judging be the reactions on the dancefloor that have been witnessed over the last 20 years, I’d say that’s mission accomplished.
Rekindling an old love affair, Toolroom return to Ministry on 11th May with Mark Knight, Shadow Child and a host of other Toolroom artists. https://www.ministryofsound.com/club/events/2024/may/toolroom-mark-knight-shadow-child-more/
Rekindling another old love affair, Mark has returned to the world of football with his Ballerz football experience. He can sell it better than me so here you go:
“Basically it’s a football experience I’m doing with rio Ferdinand, bobby zamora, mark noble, Roberto carlos.. The first one’s at bluewater shopping centre in a huge dome on top of the car park. one half is a seven a side pitch, with a bar, changing rooms, two boxes, a Heineken lounge and bleachers. When you score, you get real time playback on the screen of the goal, and all your statistics and your highlights get mailed back. There’s all sound effects and lights – it’s like playing in a stadium. And then on the other side you’ve got the skill zone, with a robo-keeper, sprint lane, all these different football challenges. It a full-on football experience. It’s incredible.”
Ballerz launches on the 16th May - https://ballerz.co.uk/