This Noodles interview on FACT is well worth a look > “Go back to go forward”: Underground legend Noodles on UK garage, acid house and the benefits of dog-loaning

Noodles’ influence on music in London runs deep:

“Well, the scene was built around us in the shop in some ways, because like I say, we were the filter. If it didn’t get past us – and this was true for all record shops really – then you wouldn’t find it anyway, so it didn’t get played. Literally, we were the catalyst for it. All of us were DJs’ DJs – DJing TO the DJs – from City Sounds to Rhythm Division to Record Village to Black Market to Zoom to Uptown: all of us. All of us played the role, because that was our job. Our job was to pick quality music, so we provided the building blocks.”

I also thought it was pretty cool to hear about my new neighborhood Camberwell in Noodles’ backstory (I’m moving to St. Giles Road in two weeks!):

“I’d say about the age of 14, maybe 15 – local discos in the Camberwell, Walworth Road area. There was a thing called St Giles’s club, which I think is on the Brandon Estate over by Kennington. A couple of guys from the estate would bring their records down there and play eighties soul in this club, all the girls on one side, all the boys on the other, a few people in the middle but all the cool people round the edges listening to Shalamar and all that stuff. Those who could mix, mixed, those who couldn’t just did it dad style, drop the needle on the groove.”