The seaside town of Brighton, England, has a rich soul, jazz, and funk legacy, from Russ Dewbury’s parties at the Jazz Rooms in the late 1980s right back to jazz-funk and soul dos in the late ’70s with DJs like Paul Clark and Mick Fuller. Picking up the baton in the mid ’90s, DJ Robert Luis set up a party by the name of Shake Yer Wig. The genre-spanning Wednesday night session would become the foundation for Tru Thoughts, the Brighton-based label he co-founded with Paul Jonas, which celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this year.
Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Luis moved to East London with his family when he was four years old. He got the music bug before he reached his teens. “I was lucky to have older cousins so, when I was about eleven, I was introduced to electro and that just blew me away,” he explains. “Then I was getting to hear all the pirate radio stations, so it was a melting pot of music that wasn’t mainstream—from soul to hip-hop.”
He was soon collecting records and spreading the word. “I was like an evangelist for hip-hop, telling my friends you [need to] hear this amazing music on this tape I have from my cousins,” he says. Through DJs like Gilles Peterson, he learned about the original sources of much of the hip-hop he had been collecting. “I started really studying all the original samples so that is really where I got into the jazz, funk, Brazilian and all of that,” says Luis. “Then [I was] going record shopping at Mr Bongo [in Soho] and searching for the original breaks, so that was really the roots of what Tru Thoughts would be.”
By the time he arrived in Brighton to study at university in 1989, he had already been playing house parties around Essex, where his family then lived, armed with a pair of SoundLAB turntables and mixer. “I knew nothing about Brighton but as soon as I got here I loved it, and straight away I was playing bars across town,” he says. “I had started to go to Russ Dewbury’s parties at the Jazz Rooms [in the basement of Jazz Place on Ship Street] at the weekend and I asked the venue if I could book the Wednesday night there.”
And so, after bringing in DJ Mick Fuller’s sound system and printing up flyers, his long-running Shake Yer Wig parties were born. “That was where I really learned to DJ properly and how to work a crowd,” Luis says. He would go on to book guest DJs such as Gilles Peterson, Ross Allen, and Patrick Forge.
At the time, Brighton had two successful independent labels in the shape of Skint and Catskills but Luis thought there was room for another. “I had started making music myself, and there were a lot of new artists coming through, but many of them were waiting to be signed to Skint or Catskills,” he says. “So even though the clubs I was doing were successful, getting a new label started was a struggle.” Despite this, in 1999 Tru Thoughts released its first compilation, inspired by counterparts such as Ninja Tune in London and Manchester’s Grand Central.
The aptly-titled When Shapes Join Together featured tracks by Rob Luis under a range of aliases alongside homegrown Brighton producers. One of those was a young Shake Yer Wig regular by the name of Simon Green aka Bonobo, a pivotal figure in the Tru Thoughts story. “He put this cassette through my letter box and I loved it,” says Luis. “So I called him and said I wanted to put it on the compilation but have you got any more music? And he just came with a whole album’s worth.”
That album proved to be Bonobo’s Animal Magic. “With that record, I think we really captured a moment. And, in the first year, we sold twenty-thousand copies so it really fast tracked us in learning how the industry works,” says Luis. In many ways, Animal Magic set the template for Tru Thoughts. “It is quite lo-fi but has real personality and was recorded on four-track tape and Atari home computers so it was all about raw talent and a vibe,” says Luis. “It went to show that good music does not need to cost loads to make, and taught me that, as a label, you just need to trust the artist and be there to support their development.”
The focus on local talent continued with the signing of a young Brighton-based producer by the name of Will Holland, aka Quantic. “He came down to the office with this CD of music and, when I got home [and] put it on, it was like ‘This is the person I’ve been looking for,’” Luis recalls. “That was pretty much The 5th Exotic album. I just knew straight away that he was super talented and that he would go on to do interesting things like he did in Colombia [with Combo Bárbaro and other offshoots].”
Albums followed by Nostalgia 77 (Ben Lamdin) and Alice Russell who, like Quantic, have taken a journey with Tru Thoughts for more than twenty years now. But Tru Thoughts was always a label with a broader vision. From Edinburgh’s Hidden Orchestra to Melbourne’s Lance Ferguson (of Bamboos and Lanu) to New Orleans’ Hot 8 Brass Band, Tru Thoughts became an eclectic platform for artists from across the world.
Whether discovering new British talent like soul singers Bryony Jarman-Pinto and Steven Bamidele or reaching across the world for acts like Texan hip-hop artist Sly 5th Ave, Tokyo MPC wizard Anchorsong, or electronic artist Sandunes from Mumbai, Rob Luis is fully navigating the waters of label ownership in the twenty-first century. “I think we are still trying to be creative all the time and do something different,” he says. “I have always felt that is what we are there for.”
Here, Luis picks out some highlights from the last twenty-five years of Tru Thoughts.
I always remember Will coming back from Colombia and he woke me up one day playing the accordion. I really didn't get it at the time. But he's really brilliant at making you understand things. He brought me all these cumbia records and was talking to me about the culture and scene and what it was all about. And I just trusted him to go and do what he did. When he created this album with Nidia, he explained what she was singing and why. That is where he gets his energy from. He wants to travel and shine a light on the real people and to get their story across. And for me, culturally, that is what the label is about.
I remember Ben [Lamdin] coming to me to say he wanted to do a jazz record. At that time, there wasn't this trendy U.K. jazz thing, so I asked him what exactly he wanted to do. And he said: “I want to make a really slow jazz record called Songs For My Funeral. He really was going against the grain. I have to give props to my business partner Paul [Jonas], as he was really supportive of it. The Garden was Ben's second jazz album, but I see this as the first album in which he really crafted his sound.
Alice Russell - My Favourite Letters (2005)
Although technically Alice's second album, this was actually the first recorded as an album rather than a compilation of tracks like the previous one. TM Juke produced the whole album and it got a lot of people paying attention to us as a label and finally got Alice to be viewed as a solo artist making new original songs, rather than a featured singer with other artists.
This is the second album from Flowdan for us. I mentioned we are up for him experimenting on production styles and, if he wanted to say anything political, we are always up for that. When he sent me “Welcome To London,” I thought it was amazing. Not overtly political but a brilliant window into life in a big city and the beat from Plastician was really different. It was surreal seeing Dua Lipa use a clip of it for her Glastonbury performance.
This is the group's second album, which features guest players like Yazz Ahmed, Deji Ijishakin, and Dan Gray. Although it's jazz, it takes in lots of influences—anything from trap and dub to post-punk and no-wave. I particularly enjoy seeing them live, as sometimes jazz gigs can feel a bit too safe. They can go mellow but also bring the noise and energy. They are an act that tries different styles and experiments but not just for the sake of experimenting, as they are also not afraid to make "proper" songs with singers.
Tara feels like someone in a very unique space. She has played with grime artists but is a musician and songwriter aiming to create something quite unique. I like how she reflects her South Asian heritage through her music and presentation, but she also does not want to make that the only defining aspect of her journey. Tara is up for making a song with a traditional structure as well as a left-of-center electronic drone track.
Steven Bamidele - Summing Up (2023)
Steven produces as well as writes his music and he has a style that seems to win fans organically. He is great live and every time I have seen him I always get lots of people coming up to me during and after his set enthusiastically saying how amazing they think he is. It is very real, not hype. He is currently working on his second album.
I have always loved broken beat since it first was developing, so I have always championed the sound over the years. I felt when we signed Danny [Wheeler, aka WheelUP] it really helped shine a light back on the genre. I love how he works with the original pioneers and new artists on his albums. He is about pushing the sound forward, not trying to just recreate another era.
On Gilles Peterson's show recently, IG Culture referenced this album as one that is both broken beat and bruk. I would put this in my all-time Top 10 broken beat album list for that reason. I feel Cian [McCann] really worked hard to rep that sound the pioneers were doing, and put it in a new context on one album. I love seeing the new younger generation of DJs dropping tracks from the album, like Rohan Rakhit (Daytimers), to the likes of Mr Scruff.
To find out more about Tru Thoughts, visit their site here.