Fink gets his fix

>> The obsession confession of a Ninja Tune nutter

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

It's impossible to chat up a DJ/producer type without a dramatic, AA-style "my name is so-and-so and I am a vinylholic." The mischievous, talkative Bristolian Fink, AKA Finian Greenall, is no exception. In fact, his track "Ever Since I Was a Kid It Seemed I Collected Something" amounts to a direct confession.

Hailing from a musical family, he started out as a guitar plucker. "I really got into vinyl when I got into hip hop," he says, "through things like breakdancing and just trying to be cool as a teenager. Don't ask me why I was spinning on the floor for no reason. Anyway, through the music I accessed this really amazing radio show this guy over here named John Peel did every night. He'd play anything from thrash metal to electro and early hip hop. His taste never fails. Anyway, through that I got more into hip hop, which you could only get on 12" back then. Before I knew it, I found myself comfortable in record shops, and that was the end of that. But I don't have a massive collection. I go through mad phases. Every six months or so, my tastes change radically."

That's reflected in the tunes on his debut album Fresh Produce, a sonic salad which draws on R&B, D&B, exotica, rare groove and, in no small part, dub. "It's so simple. It's not about production or anything. Some dub sounds really terrible, but it's the vibe you get from it. Bass, the rhythm pattern and maybe some silly noises, but it sounds really wicked. And it's 40 years old! And so low-budget. I related, because I haven't got a massive, plush, fancy studio either. You can get the best out of what you got, you just have to persevere, be patient.

"Fresh Produce took me a long time to make-- 18 months. By the time I was finished, my equipment was completely exhausted. I had to throw away my computer, it was simply worthless. I'd squeezed every last drop of life out of it."

And every last "silly noise," judging by his fascinating use of found sounds and samples, which avoids the obvious soundbite approach favoured by many producers. "I try to create textures so that sometimes even the melody has to almost be imagined, like a 3-D interactive experience. The only track I ever did with a lot of dialogue, used in an obvious way, was 'Ever Since I Was a Kid.'

"The story's just so obvious, so in the track, I was trying to build a subtext about moving from phase to phase, collector to DJ to producer back to collector, so on and so on. But I think a lot of people who collect records are really sad. It just becomes really obsessive--although they do have wicked collections. I am signed to Ninja Tune, maybe the home of the obsessive, what with Coldcut's technology obsession, Koala's scratching obsession and so on. We're all a little obsessed."