It's about as likely as England winning a major sporting event, but if Shy FX did suddenly find his music no longer in demand we'd respectfully recommend a new career in the diplomatic service. Because interviewing him is like being given a master class in being highly opinionated and getting away with it. During the course of our meeting, on one of those rare sweltering May afternoons, he'll lay waste to significant parts of the drum & bass scene, all without actually upsetting anyone. It's like one half of him is actually dying to dish the real dirt. Like naming the DJ who saw Shy's name on the DAT of the colossal hit 'Bambaata' down at Music House and disdainfully tossed it aside, refusing to listen. Or telling us exactly how jungle's self-appointed committee went about excommunicating the SOUR Records crew from the scene. But the other half somehow always knows better.

In his time he's been on the receiving end of some fairly savage dissing, basically being held up as the scapegoat for all the excesses and crass cash-ins of the jump-up fraternity. Since 'Bambaata' became such a big tune no DJ could possibly ignore it, he now has the upper hand again and he isn't about to start sending the bad vibes back out again. And anyway, he'll be needing all that pent up rage in the studio. "The best tunes always seem to happen when I'm very angry or very happy," he says. "When I made 'Bambaata' I was very angry. But I'm not as angry about it all as I used to be. I still make a lot of dark tunes in the studio that I never release." Why ever not? "They're not the sort of thing that I want people to associate me with. I've got support from people and they expect a certain sound from me. There's more than enough people doing that already. I make everything in the studio, just to exercise the brain. I make ragga beats in the studio, anything different, a pop tune or whatever. I just get bored doing the same thing all the time."

He admits, keeping the details somewhat shady, that he's doing a handful of r&b and hip hop projects for various majors. He admits he's lucky, at the grand old age of 24, not to have to throw out a 12" a month to pay the rent on his riverside flat in Rotherhithe, in the shadow of Canary Wharf. Shy has come a long way from his first job as SOUR Records' 18-year-old YTS boy, inevitably being drawn into production and then quickly scoring huge underground successes with ragga-edged classics 'Gangsta Kid' and 'Original Nuttah'. It was a probably a combination of his youth, SOUR's status as relative newcomers and the sheer speed of his rise that sparked off the jealousy that would linger on for years to come. "Everyone had their camps," recalls Shy, "and unfortunately we were locked in the Sour camp. SOUR was a label with visions way ahead of where everyone else was. They didn't like this guy [Dave Stone] coming in and getting all the deals. But he got a lot of players interested in the scene, so I think it was pure jealousy."

SOUR is now sadly defunct but its legacy stretches way beyond drum & bass - probably only right for a label with such a wide reaching vision. Shoreditch studio complex Trinity, where Shy produces, is also home to T-Power, Freq Nasty and B.L.I.M., all of whom have found acclaim in the breaks world after the label collapsed. MJ Cole, whose Top 10 single 'Crazy Love' was recorded with yet another SOUR crew member, Elizabeth Troy, is just down the corridor too. Somewhere along the line, in other words, the YTS kids and penniless hopefuls have evolved into the class of 2000. "Yeah, I feel like a right old veteran now," Shy laughs, looking back on the old skool selection included on 'Deja Vu,' his current mix CD. "I got used to being the youngest and the newest member in drum & bass. But then I was playing out with John B and he asked me about this new tune I'd done called 'Original Nuttah'. It's like a lot of old tunes - you put them on at a rave and people think they're new."

Originally meant to come out last year but held up by licensing problems, Shy's been slightly horrified by the rash of old tunes resurfacing in remixed form. "Anyway," he says, as if suddenly remembering that such things don't really matter, "it's not like those tunes are going to go out of date." 'Deja Vu' is a fairly different kettle of fish from the 'French Kiss' remakes and regurgitated Amen breaks so in vogue at the moment with a clutch of older Shy classics including 'Original Nuttah' alongside the kind of all-embracing selection, from Trace to T-Power, that you just don't see on mix CDs anymore. This is where you'll hear Shy's views on the scene's hypocrisies speak loudest. Listen to the supposedly super experimental T-Power's soothing 'Horny Mutant Jazz' snake so naturally into Trace's lord of the dark side remix of the same tune and it suddenly brings home exactly how splintered this scene has become since 1994.

Like his plans to re-release 'Bambaata' with the vocals from 'Original Nuttah' on top, a trick he's been pulling in his DJ sets since last winter, this is a case of music most definitely speaking louder than words. Which, essentially, is at the root of Shy's continued frustration with drum & bass. "It's like one minute it's 'take the vocals out of the music,' then it's 'put them back in'," Shy laughs with a hint of exasperation. "People have got to stop dictating and just do it." It's certainly not the case that he's bored with drum & bass - get him talking about Digital records and see him brimming with respect - but just the hype that surrounds it. "I guess I've just got a different way of approaching it. I've never really seen myself as a drum & bass producer - I make drum & bass, obviously, but like I say, I'm just a producer and I'm talented so I can do whatever I want."

While we're on the subject then, are the rumours that you've been dabbling in garage true? "I've done a couple of things," he admits, adding his respect to Jonny L for his Top 10 garage track 'Buggin.' "But I think I'll leave it to them boys. Occasionally I go to a garage rave with my girl or with my mates, but there's only a couple of producers or even tunes that I'm feeling. It's not really my favourite thing." The one garage producer he is blown away by is Wookie, who, as Shy points out, considered his music breakbeat before the scene picked up on it. As for most of the rest, well, Shy's not convinced. "To me personally, a lot of it's cheesy, with those speeded up vocals. But a quality tune is still a quality tune, you can't argue with it."

With the unofficial war of words between garage and drum & bass communities cooling off now, Shy's optimistic about the future, even if he believes people have practically been forced unwillingly to be open minded. "Now everyone's being supportive because they see that they nearly lost a good thing," he says. "You know, drum & bass is not garage. The garage boys took it somewhere else. And there's room for people to have proper chart success, do underground stuff, do reggae stuff or the dark stuff whatever. But that's not happened before because of the politics of the scene." He thinks we should wise up to the fact that there's a whole new load of people listening to drum & bass now, especially outside Britain, and ditch what calls, "all that lawnmower music. People are concentrating on the technical stuff, the filters and all that, instead of concentrating on the vibe. It should really be the other way around." Checking himself, he adds another disclaimer to drag himself out of negativity. "For me, that is...," he says, "I can't talk for anyone else."

And so our interview winds up. Shy prepares to head over to Shoreditch for another night in the studio. It's been a strange chat really. On the one hand, Shy is philosophical about the treatment he's received and clearly doesn't let it affect what has evidently already become a hugely successful career, if the Lotus Elise parked outside is anything to go on. But there's still a bit of rage, that same righteous anger that A Guy Called Gerald encapsulated in 'Voodoo Rage', lingering just beneath the surface. And if that fury keeps sparking tunes like 'Bambaata,' then we wouldn't have it any other way.

WORDS: Ben Willmott
PICTURE: Courtney Hamilton

THE GANGSTA KID DONE GOOD - FIVE SHY FX CLASSICS

Gangsta Kid (SOUR) Ska-driven and frantic, Shy's triumphant debut for SOUR was an instant underground classic and stands up today as one of ragga-jungle's most enduring pieces of vinyl.

Original Nuttah (SOUR) A 400mph vocal from UK Apachi, the Devil's own Amen break and earthquake basslines, '...Nuttah' reached the Top 50 and taught the world how jungle could be instantly accessible and ruthlessly tearing all at the same time.

Saturday Night Roller (Ebony) While he was still being written off as a jump-up loser by 1997, Shy was actually making floor packing rollers like this juicy, simple roll out. Two years later, everyone else was calling it 'liquid funk' and pretending it had just been invented.

Bambaata (Ebony) Another Top 75 notch on Shy's belt and, quite possibly, the single tune that's done more than any other to unite the drum & bass scene recently. If you need to know what it sounds like, you've obviously been living somewhere without electricity for the past few years.

Funksta (Ebony) The superfly flip side to 'Bambaata' that's inspired all manner of imitations since and no doubt sent the price of rare groove rarities soaring.