Signal and Noise: From Nightclub DJs to Studio Producers - Reflections from London's AVA Conference
Back in the early ’90s, Ben Wolff and I — The Boilerhouse Boys — were asked to remix "Can I Kick It?" by A Tribe Called Quest. At the time, we were regulars on the London club circuit, playing out at places like The Fridge in Brixton and Raw underneath the YMCA on Tottenham Court Road.
The original version, although iconic, didn’t quite hit the dancefloor the way we needed. So we stripped it back, introduced a syncopated bassline, and built a groove that could hold a packed room. Our job was to create a proper club 12”, but what we ended up with became the definitive 7” radio version.
The challenge was the intro. We wanted something memorable — a spoken word moment that would set the tone before the beat dropped. I had this old bootleg Rolling Stones coloured vinyl with a brilliant American announcer on it, but of course it introduced the Stones, not Tribe.
That’s when I had the cheeky idea to call my mate Pete Tong, who happened to be live on air. I asked him to give a shout-out to A Tribe Called Quest, and after a bit of persuasion (and a gig listing we found in the NME), he agreed. He read out the upcoming show at Brixton Academy, but we couldn’t isolate the band’s name cleanly from the rest of the sentence — so I rang him back and, laughing, asked if he could do it again.
We got the perfect take — Pete’s voice saying “A Tribe Called Quest” just the way we needed it. That snippet became the spoken-word intro to our remix. It was cheeky, totally DIY, and completely in the spirit of the era. That moment helped the track land not just in clubs but on the radio, and it became a calling card for the Boilerhouse sound — a blend of hip-hop sensibility, UK dancefloor instinct, and a bit of backroom blagging to get the job done.
That track wasn’t just a milestone for Ben and me — it was a real turning point. We went from being nightclub DJs to full-time studio producers. It marked the birth of The Boilerhouse Boys not just as selectors of other people’s music, but as creators of our own. The alchemy of beats, rhymes, and studio magic taught us early on what would become a lifelong lesson: sound matters.
The AVA Conference wove together humour, insight, and subtle truths about the DJ-to-producer journey.
When we made records in the early ’90s, the recording studio was a sacred space — packed with outboard gear, reel-to-reel tape machines, and engineers who were part magician, part technician. Access to this world was expensive and exclusive, and sound quality was a badge of honour. Artists would spend hours perfecting mixes on analogue desks, chasing the warmth of tape compression to hit the sweet spot between the kick and the bassline.
As the 2000s rolled in, the digital revolution took hold. Software like Pro Tools, Logic, and Ableton democratised production, giving rise to bedroom studios and a generation of self-taught creators. Laptops replaced tape machines, plugins emulated hardware, and the DAW became the new temple of sound. What didn’t change, however, was the obsession with quality — in fact, the standards got higher, as high-speed internet and MP3s made music much more accessible.
Fast forward to the present day: we live in a world where music is no longer only heard — it’s seen, shared, and shaped in real-time. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have become the new radio, driving discovery, fandom, and chart success. But just like radio in its heyday, it’s still sound that carries the emotional punch. A track with poor audio won’t travel far, no matter how strong the visuals are. In a feed full of content, it’s the crisp vocal, the punchy drop, the clarity of the mix that stops the scroll.
So while the tools have changed — from cassette tape to smartphone apps — the importance of sound quality hasn’t budged an inch. If anything, in this age of social media saturation and algorithmic gatekeepers, it matters more than ever. Social sound is now as culturally relevant as radio was in the ’90s. And for producers and DJs navigating this new terrain, mastering the art of sound isn’t just about audio fidelity — it’s about cutting through the noise.
And that brings me to something quietly groundbreaking that happened at the AVA.
For the first time, we deployed TagMix technology at an industry event — not in a nightclub, not at a festival, but at a conference. And the results were… revelatory.
TagMix, originally developed for the chaos and energy of live gigs, was used at AVA to capture high-quality audio of the spoken word at panels, interviews and casual chats — and match that clean, isolated sound to video snippets. The difference it made on social media was immediate. Suddenly, conference content cut through the noise online. The clips weren’t just watchable; they were shareable. And that’s no small feat in a scroll-happy world where most content is dead on arrival if the audio’s fuzzy.
What struck me most was the contrast: in the auditorium, attendees could hear every word clearly through proper mics and PA. But once those words hit Instagram or TikTok, they’d normally lose their punch — drowned in room noise, muffled by distance. With TagMix, we flipped that script. The clean feed followed the video, making even handheld audience clips sound like they’d been professionally produced.
That’s a small tweak with a big impact. Because social content is only as strong as the connection it makes — and connection depends on clarity. Whether you’re telling a story, launching a campaign, or delivering a message, if your sound isn’t right, your reach won't be either.
So what really makes a moment resonate?
Reflecting on both the AVA Conference and those early days in the studio, a question keeps surfacing: why do some moments resonate more deeply than others? It’s not just the beat or the visuals — it’s the clarity and feeling behind the words. Can I Kick It? connected because you didn’t just hear it; you felt it.
That emotional transmission, that connection, is fragile — especially in live or chaotic environments. But it’s reassuring to see that with tools like TagMix, we’re starting to preserve that clarity more consistently — whether it’s a lyric in a packed club or a keynote at a conference.
Sound still matters. Maybe now more than ever.
