Rowland the Bastard

Rowland the Bastard started DJing back in 1993. He could be found playing at many free parties in the south west of England, hosted by crews such as Lazy House, One Family and the infamous Sign On Crew.

This led Rowland to start his own club night called Fun Factory. Out of which emerged a fuck-off sound system, co-run by the legendary Pigfarmer. Together they were renowned for putting their 30k sound assault in any field, beach or squat, at anytime, anywhere.

After a three-year affair, the Fun Factory disbanded. Pigfarmer and Rowland joined forces with Bristol based party crew Sunnyside, and went on to organize some of the best parties Bristol had ever seen.

Working with Sunnyside introduced Rowland to London based crews UN Sound and the Big Sexy Festy organisation. Back in 1997 he could be seen and heard playing at many underground party venues, including Parkway Cinema, North London Uni, The Rocket and Hackney Marshes.

Around the same time Rowland started working for Plymouth based record shop Urban Collective, in their Exeter. A chance meeting with hip-hop fanatic Simon Franklin encouraged Rowland to establish his own label - Bionic Orange. The first release was a double A side which featured Rowland with ‘Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It’ (Bio-001) and saw Simon responsible for the AA track. Bionic Orange was born!

Rowland started a residency for Urban Collective at Dreamscape, where he caused total mayhem in the house room on New Years Eve, whilst playing a mix of Acid with a dash of Hard House, and just a hint of Techno. The Techno Terrorist was about to be born.

By this time, Rowland was losing interest in Hard House and was getting strongly into a new sound : Acid Techno.

Still resident in Devon at this point, he was making frequent jaunts to London to meet up with Smitten’s head honcho Steve Smitten. While supping a few cold ones, Steve put the offer to Rowland to remix Geezer’s ‘Prozac’ (Smtr-002) engineered by the man himself, Guy McAffer.

The pair forged a strong friendship. In early 1998 Rowland decided that it was high time to spread his wings and move to London. During his early days here, he focused mainly on running his now renowned underground label Bionic Orange, and working and producing in Geezer studios on new projects, including the ‘Intent To Supply EP’ (Bio-004) This particular release gave Rowland much global acclaim.

Geezer and Rowland decided it was time to join forces, and due to there extreme smoking habits in the studio, Tarball & Lungbutter were conceived, and the awesome release,’Sonic Eruptor’ (Bio-005) became celebrated by the likes of Chris Liberator and D.A.V.E. the Drummer.

Tarball & Lungbutter were rapidly becoming household names in the Acid Techno scene.

More recently Rowland has begun a new label – Victim, with the second release by none other than Mark Hawkins, who as it happened cemented the deal with Rowland in Dom’s living room, shortly after Rowland had played a corking set at Filth.

Finally, have no idea where that photo was taken, but it looks awfully like it’s at a wargaming convention, or some sort of comic swap-meet (you know about such things? - Ed).