Scene photographer Eddie Otchere gives us the inside story on his legendary archive
Just like certain tracks or songs might instantly transport you back to the middle of a sweaty, heaving dancefloor, junglist documentor Eddie Otchere’s photography can take you there in a flash. Even if you never went to Metalheadz’s Blue Note Sessions during their seismic 90s run, his work as in-house photographer conjures such a strong sense of place that you can almost feel the speaker-destroying bass and smell sweet smoke in the air as you protect your can of Red Stripe from the sweat dripping off the ceiling. It’s made all the more special by being pre-social media and pre-camera phones – an analogue time capsule in a digital world.
Otchere spent his formative years behind the shutters. If his name doesn’t instantly trigger off an instant salute, one look at his website and socials will. He captured practically every leading player in the mid-90s jungle/D&B scene and immortalised hip-hop royalty Jay Z, the Wu-Tang Clan and Biggie Smalls as they changed the face of music forever.
With his photography currently part of the V&A East’s most excellent Music is Black exhibition and books featuring his work, ‘Spirit Behind the Lens: The Making of a Hip-Hop Photographer’ and ‘Who Say Reload’, continuing to win him new fans, we revisited the south Londoner’s archive. From Blackmarket Records in Soho to Brixton, it’s the story of a scene that changed the world. Take it away, Eddie…
Then
Goldie Calling for the Reload
This is at Blue Note. Grooverider is on the decks. Goldie screaming for the reload.
I had to find a camera that could work in darkness, and there was always water dripping from the ceiling. I bought a Canon EOS 10 because it had infrared autofocus. I couldn’t see Goldie, but you could hear Goldie screaming and running. You pressed the shutter and it focused and flashed at the same time.
You could get in and get out very quickly – the flash would go up and go back down very quickly. The camera was very much of its time. It meant I could allow things to happen.
Kemistry & Storm
An amazing partnership, a positive force in the music. They were very encouraging to me, encouraging to Goldie, and everyone involved with Metalheadz.
It was very tragic what happened (with the sad death of Kemistry in a car accident). It took something away from the scene. A force was lost. We were very lucky in the scene to have people who cared.
Grooverider @ Metalheadz
The follow-up shot (to Goldie’s one above). Everyone crowding around Grooverider calling for the rewind, and it may well have been ‘Your Sound’ playing (LOTI: you can see the buzzing, fresh-faced producer J Majik to the right). Sometimes I think about that – what tune was playing when I shot that photo? When their bodies are contorted and twisted, almost in time to the bassline.
Goldie, Randall and Trenton
Goldie was staying at Gus’s (Gus Lawrence, Reinforced Records) flat in Camden. Trenton was Goldie’s manager at the time, and Randall (RIP) was one of Goldie’s closest friends
I think this was a Tuesday afternoon, and I went round to get a couple of portraits of Goldie.
Goldie always worked that bit harder. He was always at industry parties, drum and bass parties, scene events. He’d put in his time. His work was featured in the seminal book, ‘SubWay Art’. He’d contributed to the evolution of graf, and we were always aware of his contribution and what he had to say. He already had status through that. We all knew him as a painter before a producer.
He was still pushing the envelope when he made ‘Terminator’, still pushing the envelope when he worked at Metalheadz with Kemi and Storm.
Gus, who was his flatmate at the time, was a photographer from the 60s so he was quite intriguing. I might have gone round there to see Gus more than Goldie. I remember playing chess with his (Goldie’s) brother a lot. I remember hanging out there a lot, sitting on the floor.
DJ Rap
Everyone was young, everyone was just starting out. DJ Rap’s amazing; she worked really hard, turning nothing into something. We were coming from a very DIY place. It was a bastard DIY culture, and the closest thing to punk we’ll ever have.
From its inception, it was always a mix. Different races, different sexes; it was a balance. And even as drum and bass progressed and it became a sausage fest, all the labels and all the office managers had a maternal aspect behind the scenes. Yoko Speechley (Trouble on Vinyl and Renegade Hardware label manager) was like a therapist.
Bryan Gee & Jumping Jack Frost
Always loved these guys ‘cos they’re from where I grew up; Frost is from Brixton. These guys were always between Oval, Brixton and Stockwell.
It was a spring day with clean light. I went to the studio and shot them outside. I don’t overproduce my shoots. Just a 35mm camera and, to quote a cliche, try to keep it real.
Junglists as a whole are quite stylish; they care about their cars, their telephone numbers, their style and how they present themselves. Everyone is how they are. It’s always been easy for me to simply represent them how they were, without having to do any more than that.
Bryan and Frost’s aesthetic reveals a lot about where they came from. In the 90s everyone had their own thing. Bristol had their sound and their own look; South London had its own sound and look; Manchester had its own sound and look. South London had more of a hip-hop influence. Maurice Malone, Tommy Hilfiger – so 90s.
Lemon D & Dillinja
This was at Brixton Mass. Wonderful memories of those guys bringing their soundsystem to Brixton and everyone having to be given earplugs. It was a beast. I remember they wanted to test it and set it up in a warehouse in Woolwich and it set off car alarms for a mile around. So much bass.
When you think about the first soundsystems being built in this country in the 50s to these guys, the 3rd or 4th generation soundboys, bringing with them all the digital tech and the valve tech, who cut their own Heathmans dubplates. Who goes that far? They do.
They were doing things I’d never seen been done before. They knew the limits of sounds and they exploited that. They pushed the machines to the limits, to the death, to the point they were husks. You would go around their house and you’d see an EMU Emulator in the corner, just burnt out, all the circuits had gone.
Ray Keith @ Blackmarket Records
Ray contributed so much to the scene. He had an ear to the ground.
On a Saturday afternoon (at Blackmarket Records, Soho), everyone would be wearing black MA2 jackets, some would be Dreamscape, Metalheadz, Reinforced, everyone had the same merch with different logos on it. If someone’s being cheeky, someone lit one up in there. You just wanted to hear music and get high.
It was a bidding war. Tunes would get played and people would raise their hands if they wanted it. I absolutely adored it. If you wanted to be further up the food chain you would go to Music House to get your dubplates.
Now
Being an analogue film producer, you have to do the work. You’ve got to put the negatives into new bags, you’ve got to number them, you’ve got to put them into a catalogue and digitise it. Once I did the hip-hop stuff, I moved onto jungle.
We need to celebrate things. We all danced together, we created our own culture. We’re not going to get any support from the government; we just have to do our own thing. We have to have the spaces to figure it out. Create and be creative.
England needs to remind itself about how important that is, because of Brexit, because of Covid. We need to double down on our creativity.
Key Information
Dates | Music is Black: A British Story runs until 3 Jan 2027
Address | V&A East | 2 Parkes Street, London E20 3AX
For more information | Follow Eddie on socials
You can find more of Eddie’s work in Spirit Behind the Lens and Who Say Reload
