From Russia with groove - DJ Vadim

Unlike the legion of DJs who started off in bands - Norman Cook being the obvious example - Vadim developed an affiliation for decks at a young age, opting for turntables rather than an electric guitar. "A friend had a set of turntables back in 1989/90 and I used to go around to his house on Sunday afternoons to practice so I suppose that's where the whole DJ thing kicked off," he says. "I've never had a big magic secret about how I got into music; I just did what I did. You read a lot in magazines about a DJ who claims they turned their calculator into a synthesizer when they were two or something but I've never been like that. I listened to Spoonie G, Kurtis Blow, New Order and the Beastie Boys 'round 1984/1985 and that's where the whole thing started."

Setting up his own label Jazz Fudge - "which wasn't too difficult to do" - with the aim of releasing his own music, Vadim later attracted the attention of Ninja Tune. "I was actually recording my second single at the Herbaliser (a NT funky hip-hop collective) studio who live just around the corner from me. One day DJ Food just showed up, we got talking and he said he really liked my first single and was impressed with the new one. He told Peter (Quicke, head of Ninja Tune A&R) to check it out, and he liked it so he signed me."

One of Vadim's best tracks is a mellow reworking of the Gil Scott Heron classic 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised'. Entitled 'Your Revolution', it features the sassy recitations of US political poet Sarah Jones. A competent DJ and music-maker, Vadim is as happy composing instrumentals as working with vocalists or poets. "The way I approach music really depends on what I want to do with a song; each song takes its own little journey. Sometimes I can't achieve what I want from a piece of music if it's just instrumental, sometimes I don't need a vocalist, I need to keep it instrumental. It's like a story that I don't know the ending of, I just start somewhere and then it finds itself and takes its own direction."

Contemporaries like Luke Vibert and DJ Food who produce sizable chunks of eclectic music with alarming frequency also lean heavily on the hip-hop pedal, as does Vadim himself. "For me it comes down to the fact that it was through hip-hop that the first sampling came about - people like Public Enemy, The Bomb Squad and their producers really utilised samples and loops to give us the definition of sampling as we know it today," says Vadim. "Even if you turn on a TV chart show you can't escape the influence of hip-hop, whether it's scratching or graffiti or break-dancing, it's everywhere from a Christina Aguilera song to Madonna."

"Hip-hop is based on loops from jazz, funk, rock so it's a like a big circle. All the music we listen to is connected and inter-related," says Vadim. "So much music is pigeon-holed, and because it is, some people are afraid to cross those boundaries" - something this DJ definitely cannot be accused of. His mystic brew of jazz-infused hip-hop defies catagorisation and marks a unique approach to politically tinged music with a rare groove.

Sinéad Gleeson