When thinking about the ideal qualities a record label should have, the discerning musical adventurer will always look for an eclectic spirit of discovery and surprise. Coupled with visual impact and variety of release, it also needs to have an underlying ethos or thread that keeps the punter coming back for more. You may know what they’re going to get in some sense, but when it arrives it can still be unexpected.

Isle of Jura has consistently met those criteria with a string of reissues (Escape from New York, Harry Mosco, The Pearls) along with new work from the likes of Ambient Warrior and Kyoto Connection. Since its inception in 2014, Kevin Griffiths has been the main man behind the label, as well as producing under the Jura Soundsystem name.

The Transmission series of compilations have been go to benchmarks of quality when it comes to selection. The latest (and last) installment, Transmission 3, has continued that tradition. With that release just escaping into the wild, it seemed a good time to catch up with Kevin and see where the Isle of Jura is at now. The conversation was a broad one, taking in the label, his musical history, future plans and schemes, some of his favourite records and reads, plus more besides.

Test Pressing
So a bit of background about you then. Where are you from? I know where you are now (Adelaide), but how did you get there?

Kevin Griffiths
Yeah, I'm English, grew up in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, met a girl from Adelaide and we moved here in 2014. Palm trees in the garden, weather is pretty good. It's just a long way from England. You can't just pop back, but apart from that, it's good. And, I started Isle of Jura from here as well. It’s definitely influenced by the environment, I would say, so I probably wouldn't have started it if I hadn’t moved here. Who knows, maybe I would have done, but I've got a feeling I wouldn't have done it if I wasn’t here.

Test Pressing
Did you have a label or were you doing much stuff before the move?

Kevin Griffiths
Yeah, I had a label called Tsuba. That ran from 2006 until about 2014. So when we moved here, I started to wind it down. There were a few releases, actually between ‘14 and ‘19, but I was DJing quite a lot in Europe and on a more sort of house tip. So, yeah, I did Tsuba Nights in Room Three at Fabric and things like that. I had quite a lot of experience in running a busy record label before starting Isle of Jura, and I've managed record labels for years even before that. That's what I did for a living. I worked for Amato Distribution, which was the largest distributor of vinyl in the early 2000s. So, I had experience of record labels and what you need to do.

Test Pressing
What was that like growing up in Tunbridge Wells?

Kevin Griffiths
I mean, it's a pretty mellow place, but it's also an hour from London, so it's quite easy to go to gigs and things like that, or go to clubs. As soon as acid house started, my brother moved to Shepherd's Bush, so I'd stay at his. We used to go to the Milk Bar on a Monday, which was Nicky Holloway's place. This would be I reckon ‘95, ‘96, something like that. That was always a lot of fun. It was called the Recession Session, so it was a quid to get in and the drinks were cheap, but you'd get Darren Emerson playing and really good guests down there. But prior to that, I was more into kind of indie, I suppose you'd call it. Real People before Oasis. And from that scene, Primal Scream, Mondays, Stone Roses. They'd have dance mixes on those records. There was a shop, Long Player, so I'd buy all my records from there. And then slowly got into acid house as a result of that - actually, it probably wasn't slowly. I think it was pretty much overnight! I'm like, wow, I have to get some decks and started to explore nightlife and things like that. So that was the sort of gateway, and I've stayed in that area ever since.

Test Pressing
So any kind of records that stick out for you from that time that you either go back to or just were turning points?

Kevin Griffiths
Underworld, “Cowgirl”. I remember that was pretty mind blowing at the time. The Underworld remix of Bjork “Human Behaviour” as well is just phenomenal. And it actually still is, it sounds great today. I really got into The Orb and that's kind of how I got into dub and reggae actually. The Orb supported Primal Scream, and I saw them a few times after that. So that kind of sound system, dub sound, really got me into that. So it all kind of weaves together quite nicely. I still listen to band music quite a lot now. But with Isle of Jura, it's quite eclectic. So I can hop around and do different things in different genres, which was the idea. That was the point of starting it. I wanted to go from Tsuba, which was more house based. I can do whatever I like with i really which is how it should be. It shouldn't be pigeonholed! I mean, that's kind of what drew me to it. there's no boundaries, in what you put out on it. So, yeah, it's great!

Test Pressing
Let’s fast forward to where we are now? What's on your radar? Any recent favourites?

Kevin Griffiths
I:Cube, his new album, I’ve been playing that on repeat. That's brilliant. There's a tune on there called Infinite Melodies that I seem to be able to listen to endlessly. The other thing that I picked up last week was by a guy called Bernandino Feminelli, which is like a sort of (cover of) “Sign of the Times”, like a Balearic version, which he, I think, recorded in 2020 or something. But that's awesome. I love stuff like that. Different takes on classics. The other thing I've been listening to a lot is the Ramzi album on Music From Memory.

Kevin Griffiths
That’s the newer stuff but then in terms of old things. Aphex Twin, “Selected Ambient Works”. That's almost religious. It's on repeat still, so I listen to the whole thing probably twice a week. I never tire of that, but I think it probably reminds me of a certain period in time as well.

Test Pressing
Yeah, but that's what music is about, isn't it? Bringing back those memories of certain times and places, but things like that, where you can go back to it and find different things that you missed, maybe, first time around, and get different context, all that kind of thing. It's great.

Kevin Griffiths
Aphex Twin is doing things in certain scales and just musically quite advanced, really, for the time. Whereas now in Ableton you have scale mode, which I need, by the way, that's been quite handy. So, yeah, I think that's why Aphex Twin, clearly, is quite unique. It's just that sort of musical ability with the technical ability and taking synths apart, to create his own unique sound.

Backatcha is a label I absolutely love as well. I don't even need to listen to it, really. Just everything, especially the recent brit funk things, and obviously the reggae stuff is awesome. And just the attention to detail. The mastering is brilliant. The artwork is great.

Test Pressing
Isn’t Sean P involved with that?

Kevin Griffiths
He was involved in Visions, I think.They got the stems and then he mixed it. Which is just so difficult. It's hard enough to get masters a lot of the time, let alone the stems. I don't think stems have been available on anything. I always ask, but, normally you just get the master.

And there's been a couple that have had magnetic tapes, like a two track master tape, which then you have to bake. That was the Stinger J, actually, and then the tape disintegrated if something had happened to it, so we couldn't use it. But I still went through the process. That's part of being in the reissue business. You sort of know that is the case really.

Test Pressing
So what made you want to start the label, then? You've done it before. You obviously have gone again, but in a different direction.

Kevin Griffiths
I mean, Tsuba was great whilst I was DJing a lot. It made a lot of sense signing club records, but as soon as we moved here, I didn't really want to do those gigs. We had our second child by that point, and just being away a lot, it just didn't really work. The two worlds colliding. So, yes, I wanted to start another label and I wanted it to be broader in scope so I could release more song based stuff from different genres. So there were a few records that I didn't own that I wanted, “Escape From New York” being one of them. I thought I'll just try and find them and see if they would licence it to me. I managed to find them and they said “yes”. No one had asked them before, actually. Incredibly, that's what was really amazing about it. So I think I just kind of got lucky. Beginner's luck or something.

Test Pressing
So how did you find them?

Kevin Griffiths
So, Tim Cox, I found him on Facebook. There was a period when Facebook was really good. That's how I would find people. Not so much now, but a few years ago, people were more active on there. Then he spoke to the other main writer and we've had a great relationship ever since. The record is just a mystical one.

To start the label with something like that. I actually do think that the vibe of that has laid the foundation for all of it. I think if I started with something else, I don't think it would be quite so good. I think the universe was very kind to me with that. They did two singles. The other one, 'Save Our Love', which was released by Polydor, which is part of Universal. So I tried to licence that for a long, long time and didn't get anywhere. But, from the guys we've worked it out, there's some legal stuff. I won't go into it, but yes, that will be out this year as well. So that's quite exciting to have the other single.

Test Pressing
You said the scope of the label is pretty broad. Is there any one release in particular that sticks out, or that you felt like the effort that you had to go through to get to it was worth it in the end?

Kevin Griffiths
They're all a bit difficult. There's not been an easy one. I think it's like picking a favourite child, almost!

But with reissues, there's a lot more work involved in terms of the research, finding the right people to licence it from and getting the master. The process is longer. Having done Tsuba and then Temples of Jura releasing new music it's a different process. It's harder and it's more expensive as well. But it's really rewarding when they get released into the world and people go nuts for some of them, and you get loads of messages. “Thank you so much for making it available at an affordable price!”. It really is genuinely making people happy, and I do take quite a lot of pleasure in that.

The Ambient Warrior was a really great one to do because that was an album released in ‘92 and then they had a flood and then the label stopped. But they carried on making music. The main guy is a guy called Ronnie Lion, who's such a lovely guy, and he has a boat in Cornwall and he used to live in Brixton, but he now has a studio on his boat and he moves his boat around and he's continued since the early ‘90s.

Test Pressing
One of the things that draws you to Jura releases is the package, the artwork that goes with it. Can you talk a bit about that? How did all that come about?

Kevin Griffiths
Yeah, a friend of mine in Melbourne introduced me to Bradley Pinkerton who is the designer since the start. I was looking for someone to do artwork and ouldn't find anyone in Adelaide. So I asked him if he knew anyone, and then Brad was designing a lot of flyers and club night posters and things like that. Clearly he had a real eye for design and had a style. He did the first one, “Escape from New York”, and then he's done everything ever since. I send him the music, and give him a little summary of what it's about and who the producer is and all that stuff, then I just let him get on with it. Sometimes we tweak it a little bit, but it's totally down to him. And I think that's why it all has such nice continuity, because it's one person doing it. And he now does Harry Styles and P!nk! But obviously he loves doing the label stuff for me fortunately and that's great because that's such an important part of a label.... How it looks.

Test Pressing
Anything we should be keeping an eye out for this year?

Kevin Griffiths
The next single is actually more of a disco thing, by a producer called Shiva. And one of the songs features Leon Ware and the other one features someone called Joanne Harris, who was a backing singer for Bob Dylan. They were produced by a guy called Ira Newborn, who, if you're into movies, this guy was the soundtrack guy in the 80’s.

He did the music score for The Blues Brothers, Naked Gun, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science... Basically, my favourite movies. He got involved in a project writing some disco tunes for an aerobics video, called “Aerobicise”. And yeah, there are instrumentals and vocal versions. Leon Ware sang on them. He was just a session guy at the time. and then Joanne Harris does the warm down track, which is a slow sort of balearic disco number. So I got the soundtrack for that. And that has never really had a widespread vinyl release, so then I had to find Ira Newborn, and that was quite challenging because he's quite a big Hollywood cheese.

I kept revisiting it over a couple of years and then eventually I found his brother on Facebook and eventually we got chatting and he gave me Ira's email. So, I've licenced the music from him, but he's hilarious. He must be fairly elderly now, but he was living the dream. Mad Hollywood parties. He sends me pictures of him and Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Michael Jackson. And I'm like, 'wow!'. I've done an edit of one of the tunes, so that'll be like a single sided thing. I've not really done a sort of out and out disco sort of thing before.

There's also another Kaito Connection album to complete the trilogy. I think I'll do that this year. And then there's an ambient new age project. I'm just finalising the licence for that. But one of the tunes is about 26 minutes long!

I've gotten into new age tapes recently, so I start my day with listening to a couple of hours a day, light the incense, getting the vibes. Yeah, I thought, I want to do a tape of that stuff. So I found some music that is really good, so I just need to sign it off.

Test Pressing
You don't DJ so much anymore, but when you do, what's your sound like these days?

Kevin Griffiths
What you get if you book me to DJ in a nightclub, you get the Kevin Griffith Tsuba House - to a degree, anyway. I played in Perth recently, and if you're playing to a dance floor, I can't play a load of reggae, or Kyoto Connection. People are there to dance. So there's a lot of old house records I used to play back in the day that I still play, and then there's a lot of sort of dubby house things that have a little bit of disco to them.

Test Pressing
Any particular tunes you want to call out?

Kevin Griffiths
Wuf Ticket, “The Key”. That kind of sums it up, really. That kind of housey stuff but it's a bit disco as well. So I play an hour of that because that tends to really turn the heat up a bit. And then I do play some more up-tempo, reggae, disco things. I'd say some left and right turns that I wouldn't do if I was just doing like a straight up house set. I also love playing italo piano house, that kind of stuff. That always goes down really well but with the classics, what was it? Style never goes out of fashion. And I do think that’s the case for records, if you pick the right ones.

Test Pressing
So if you've ended the night and the lights have gone up but you've got one more, what are you going to put on?

Kevin Griffiths
Probably I'll put on West Bam “Old School baby”. Or I'll put on Tony Leone “Found a place”, that kind of stuff. Pianos, hands in the air, job done. I love those too.

Test Pressing
What about you? What gets you on the dance floor?

Kevin Griffiths
I'm not much of a dancer, really. I'm not rmuch of a DJ! I used to do a lot of bar gigs here, so I'd play every week, so I sort of stopped doing that. If I've got any spare time, I like to make music, Jura Soundsystem stuff. That's what I really love to do and that's why I've got an office with Transition, because when I'm in there, I have to do work. We're talking now from my home studio office. If I'm in here, I don't get any label work done, I just get pulled in to doing stuff... Turn on a synth or drum machine if I've got spare time. I come in here on a Saturday morning and I just want to listen to that for five minutes. Next thing you know, it's 4am, been in here all day!

Test Pressing
What gets you started on a tune? Is it a sample or are you just messing around with the bass line? How does it begin?

Kevin Griffiths
I start with the chord progression now, that's how I do it. It's a different way of writing stuff, actually. I used to always start with the drums and then write the bass line off the drums. Sometimes I'll start with a sample as well, just to get the vibes sort of going. But yeah, now I start with the chord progression and then that sort of informs the other musical elements and then the drums are kind of sometimes increasingly the last bit I do. I've got a groove box. The Roland MC 101, and I can work on the sofa with that.

I just read the Rick Rubin book called “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”. And, I loved Rick Rubin before this, but it's so useful. The practical advice it's given me has been just to mix things up a bit, because I didn't used to do that. I have a very set way of working now.

My achilles heel is finishing stuff and I know that's a universal problem. I think that's what actually separates good producers from truly great ones. The ones that can finish stuff quickly. I do think that, and I'm not one of those people, maybe I'll get better at it, but, yeah, just that bit is just the hardest bit.

Test Pressing
There’s a pretty well documented KLF connection to the label. What's your favourite MuMu moment?

Kevin Griffiths
Well, I mean, it has to be the burning of the million quid, which, if you buy the Transmission Three album, you'll get a bit of dialogue from.

Test Pressing
Yeah, I picked that up when I was listening to it. Where does that come from?

Kevin Griffiths
It was a BBC documentary, actually. There's lots of footage of them chucking the money in and they had the guy called Gimpo, who was their fixer/driver. You hear him say, “oh, it's not burning quick enough”. There's a bundle of 50s that just won't burn. And then they're throwing them in in different ways, Bill (Drummond) is scrunching them up in a ball and throwing them in and then Jimmy's throwing bundles in - so they actually fucking did it! And what an insane thing to do, even now, when you think about it.

Test Pressing
So, one more question. If you could see an act or a DJ or band or an artist that you've either missed or is no longer with us, who would that be?

Kevin Griffiths
Funny enough, we were just talking about the KLF, but the original incarnation of the KLF was Alex Patterson as well.

He used to DJ at the Land of Oz and they used to do the ambient room upstairs and it would be chill out, but kind of live. So I would love to have gone back in time and just check that out, because I bet that would have been quite something. Who else? Johnny Cash. I would have loved to have seen Johnny Cash.

The Doors. Even Elvis. Actually, I watched that movie recently. But it's just also so tragic. It's just so sad that he was basically imprisoned in Vegas because of his manager signing a deal with the hotel for him, so he sang, I think, five consecutive years, that's the only place he sang. And then by the end of it, he was dead because his manager had gambling debts and the only way that he could pay them off was to sing over and over. But, bringing it back, “In the Ghetto”, is obviously in The KLF's Chill Out.

Test Pressing
Anything you've read recently that’s stuck out?

Kevin Griffiths
I normally read about five books at once. There was a good Nick Cave one called 'Faith, Hope and Carnage'. Whenever he plays here, we always go and see him. 'Dreaming in Yellow', I really liked that book. That was the one on the DiY Soundsystem .

My mind has gone blank. Yeah. normally I've got five minutes before I nod off and then the book goes down. But the Rick Rubin one, I’d definitely recommend that if you're creative, or into any sort of creative endeavour, not just music making. It’s an inspiring book.

Test Pressing
That Def Jam story with Russell Simmonds in the early 80’s, it's amazing. Literally coming out of their bedrooms, not creating hip hop, but taking it to the global level that it is at now. Almost single handedly, I guess, with sound and the image of the label…

Kevin Griffiths
All that stuff, and they were just having fun with it. Follow your passion. What gets you excited. Which is an obvious thing to say, but I think some people forget that. It’s what gets you excited, that's what you got to go with. Whatever you're doing, isn't it? I think it's important to remember that.

Transmission 3 is out now on Isle of Jura and is available via Bandcamp and all good outlets. Thanks to Kevin for taking the time out to meet and talk about all things Jura.