Headphone Highlights

MJ Cole

Prolific Recordings, London

Following a classical training at The Royal College of Music, MJ Cole's career began with a job as tape op with drum'n'bass label SOUR. After slogging his way up to the position of engineer, he fell in love with the UK garage sound in the middle of 1996 while working on Ramsey and Fen's 2-step remixes for Kym Mazelle. After some initial teething trouble, Cole's first solo manoeuvre, 'Sincere' finally found root with AM:PM and became one of the first garage records to crack the UK's Top 40. Two years after the single's success he had signed to Gilles Peterson's label Talkin' Loud and released 'Sincere' the album. This earned him significant notoriety with a prestigious Mercury Music Prize nomination and he started DJing all over the world and remixing everyone from Goldie to Incognito to TLC. Whilst his hits from the Talking Loud era are familiar to most if us, it's been a while since MJ Cole has dropped a full length and we're excited to hear that there is one in the pipeline. He's been working the dancefloors again recently and his new productions - a couple of which are showcased here - suggest more than a passing interest in the 'UK Funky' sound. This Headphone Highlights special sees MJ talk us through some of the tracks that influenced him in the early days, ad some of the tunes that are inspiring him in 2009...