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DJ Shuffle – Intense Records Biography

I was always into music as a kid, and when I was 15 my brother came back from Manchester Uni in 1993 and gave me an Old Skool Micky Finn mix tape, and that was it, I was hooked. In those days it was very rare for anyone to have decks or even know how to dj, so me & my mates began to hook up an old skool record player to my hi-fi through the headphone port and began playing about with mixing records, we didn’t have an actual mixer, merely the volume control on the headphone port to fade between the two vinyl. To say this was old skool mixing is putting it bluntly. That Christmas I persuaded my parents that a dj set up was the way forward, and got a cheap set up to practice on. After a few months I was confident enough to showcase my skills and with our 5th year (Year 11) end of School disco coming up, I used my already evident entrepreneurial skills and persuaded the school to allow me to dj the party and secured my first gig. With the help of my school friends MC Indica (my long time partner in crime) and Chris Watts, now the Lead singer of New Town Kings doing a live PA we pulled off our first party with great success. That summer of 2004 we had the bug for promoting and with the help of Mc Indica we put on our first independent event namely 'Midsummer’s Night Rave' at the YMCA in Chelmsford, armed with some black and white flyers, printed out on the computer we began to promote around the town. The event was a great success with people of all ages attending and partying in style. From there on I continued to practice and build up my name playing at house parties and any events I could, Drum & Bass parties back then were few and far between in Essex, so you had to grab what you could. In 1997 I went to University in Birmingham to study Business Management where I continued to dj and got my first gigs in actual night clubs at various student events, it was good experience and great to get my music heard. We then set up our own student night and came up with the name Intense, at the time it was purely the name of the event, but it looked so good on the flyers and I liked the sound of it so much, that I decided to name the shop after it. The rest, they say is history.

Intense was born in 1999 after 8 years of Djing and scouring record shops up and down the country, spending every bit of money I had on vinyl, I decided I wanted to set up my own shop, It was purely to fuel my vinyl addiction at first, and to get the best records before the other djs, To keep the account alive, I had to order more than 1 copy of each record, so began ordering a few and selling them to mates and local djs. The customers began to increase and I was regularly ordering vinyl to my uni house, it was like Christmas every week. Studying Business management was very handy as we had to pretend to set up a business on the course, but I was doing it for real, so all my coursework was based on setting up the shop, and I passed with flying colours. Over the next few years the internet took off in a big way and I noticed online record stores appearing, with the ability to listen and buy vinyl online without actually going to a shop. I thought this was the perfect solution for Intense as I had no actual premises, so I bought the name www.intenserecords.co.uk and proceeded to build the website where you can search and listen to all the tracks before your order and we will ship them to your door anywhere in the world.

During the next break from uni I came back to Chelmsford, and discovered a new record shop had opened, but wasn’t selling much Drum & Bass, which was my forte, so I struck up a deal and began supplying them with all the latest D&B vinyl, and would collect any profits when I returned the following holiday. This arrangement continued successfully until I graduated from uni and came back home and needed to find a job. I decided that selling vinyl was my passion and didn’t want a 9-5 office job, so persuaded the record shop owner to go into partnership with me, I would continue pushing my d&b while he concentrated on other genres of music. Shortly after and with the help of a few friends the intense website was born and we began to trade online as one of the worlds only drum & bass specialists. With the shop in Chelmsford and the website getting more hits, business was booming, so much so, that I outgrew the shared premises and needed to go my separate way and take Intense to the next level. In 2003 I set up the Intense Record shop in Viaduct Road, Chelmsford under the arches, selling strictly Drum & Bass, and related merchandise. Shortly after, the other shop ceased trading so I began to diversify into all other forms of dance music, such as breakz, dubstep, electro, funky house, garage, grime hip hop, old skool & hardcore to fill the gap in the market and cater for the growing demand. Now in 2010 and just over 10 years after setting up the shop I have seen the highs and lows of the record industry and the last few years have been very hard with the decline in record sales, throughout the country and especially in Essex where I have seen shop after shop close down. There used to be record shops in Chelmsford, Southend, Basildon, Colchester and Romford but they have all gone now except HMV, but they actually stopped selling vinyl a few years back, so I can safely say I am the only Record Shop left in town and one of a few throughout the whole of Essex and beyond.








The company was set up 10 years ago in my bedroom as a hobby, I never envisaged that a decade later I would have my own shop and a globally recognised brand. Over the last decade I have seen music styles change, genres of music split off, others fall by the wayside and then others come back full circle and reinvented for the next generation. It is not just the music that is changing, it is the way people dj as well, now you can mix cds as easy as you can a record, or on your laptop or ipod with mp3 and you can even mix on your mobile phone these days. With change there are challenges ahead for Intense, 2010 could be our hardest year to date, with the country in recession, vinyl sales down and more and more people switching to cds or laptop djing, it will be a struggle to survive, but I am as determined as ever to make intense succeed. However I can not do it alone, I need the support of the local community to keep the shop alive, so I encourage all you vinyl enthusiasts to come check out the shop. We have a little something for everyone so if you haven’t been to Intense get yourselves down there, if your not after vinyl we also sell dj clothing, dj merchandise & equipment, from slipmats to turntables and dare I say it CDJ’s for all those mp3 djs.

Selling vinyl wont keep intense alive on its own which is why we have diversified into other areas such as Intense Promotions an event management and promotion company, Intense Sound & Light, for dj equipment and pa system hire, Intense Djs, a mobile dj hire service for any type of party from birthdays and weddings to clubs nights, Intense Design & Print for production of flyers and other advertising material, and last but not least Intense Radio an online radio station for local djs and customers to showcase their skills, if you are an aspiring dj and want to air your skills get in touch with the shop you can play live in the shop or from your bedroom.

In 2010 with D&B going from strength to strength, plus the ever emerging Dubstep scene coming though, whilst embracing the digital age with our forthcoming download site, the future is bright, the future is intense!

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