Crispin J. Glover

Crispin J. Glover

Crispin J. Glover is a UK electronic and house producer whose work spans house, disco-tinged house, deep house, dubby house, r&b-influenced production and album-oriented electronic music. He is associated with the projects Boogie Buffet, Motif, Stryker and New Chapters in Funk. Although he is often linked with house music, he presents himself as a producer rather than a DJ.

Early life and first work in music

Glover grows up in Haywards Heath in Sussex and first becomes interested in music through The Osmonds. He is the oldest of five children and is the first in the family to use his parents’ record collection. He moves from his father’s jazz records to his mother’s Beatles albums, and the Beatles lead him to take up drums at school. He later finds post-punk more appealing than punk, especially the music of New Order and Depeche Mode.

He attends a strict Catholic comprehensive school, where he is often in trouble and is eventually expelled at 15 after graffitiing a toilet wall with an anti-Scargill slogan. He leaves home shortly before his 16th birthday, lives with a family friend in a nearby village and works on a building site.

Studio experience and move into production

In the early 1980s Glover works at Hastings Park Gate Residential Recording Studio in Brighton, starting by painting the outside of the building. He moves into studio work as a tea boy and then tape operator, living in lodgings connected to the studio. He sits in on sessions for Paul Young’s The Secret of Association, including much of the recording of I’m Going to Tear Your Playhouse Down, and also sees work by Level 42, Peter Frampton, China Crisis and King. He later moves to London at 18 and works as an assistant tape op at Trident Studios in Soho, but the studio closes three months later.

By 1988 he is working in a computer-based 16-track studio in south London, where he learns more about computers. His younger brother Dominic introduces him to imported house records and acid tracks from the US, but Glover initially prefers more melodic music. Hearing Ten City’s “Devotion” changes his view, and he sells his record collection, buys a computer, an Roland 808 drum machine and a synthesiser, and begins making house music full time.

House productions and labels

Through Dominic he works with DJ Rev of the Tonka Sound System, and they make “Happy”, which is signed to Blackmarket Records by Steve Jervier. Glover sets up his own studio in south London and later lives with that studio in his flat. He records a bootleg of Mariah Carey’s “Someday” under the name Master C; it sells 500 copies in one day and draws attention from Sony after a copy reaches Tommy Mottola.

After a period working in a restaurant, he sets up Matrix Records and releases “Northern Lights” as Caucasian Boy after buying a Roland 909. The track is taken up by Belgium’s R&S Records and then licensed by Strictly Rhythm Records, making him the first UK house producer to place a track on a US label. In 1997 he closes Matrix Records, and its final release is Expressions, an album collecting the label’s strongest material, issued at the same time by Dust II Dust.

Albums, collaborations and later work

Expressions also gives rise to a club night of the same name at The Junction in south London, a venue also linked with Basement Jaxx nights. After failed attempts to secure an album deal with MCA, JBO and Nuphonic, Glover continues recording and later works with two other London producers as Stryker. Under that name he makes disco-tinged house for Manchester label Paper Records, which leads to an album deal and Rhythm Graffiti. That album combines new material, reworks of older releases and previously issued tracks, and mixes soulful vocals with deeper, tougher productions and disco-oriented cuts.

In winter 2000 he travels to California and spends time in the desert on his horse-trainer sister’s ranch. Listening to local radio there shifts his focus toward r&b. Back in London he starts the Waterhouse And Glover Sessions club night with Richard Waterhouse, playing US and UK r&b at a Brixton venue each week. He also begins downloading music and rebuilding his collection, which leads him to explore artists such as Bowie, PIL, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Thin Lizzy and Guns N’ Roses.

This broadening of influences feeds into Which Way Is Up, an album that brings together rock, house, pop and r&b. Its first single is a cover of PIL’s “This Is Not a Love Song” with Princess Julia on vocals. Glover works on the album in his home studio, with many of the musicians involved living nearby.