Barry Christie

The relative ‘newbie’ in the team, joining us in 2017, Barry comes from the broadcast audio sector, previously installing and supporting turnkey radio stations and transmission systems in the UK, Africa & Middle East.

But Barry also has an alter ego – ‘Milton Jackson’ – renowned House Music producer for the likes of Freerange and Planet E recordings, and globetrotting DJ, famed for club nights in Australia, Japan and Brazil to name a few.

Outside of music Barry is a bit of a geek for Cosmology and anything Space-related.

Barry’s One LP is: John Fiddy / Jim Harbourg – Neutral Moods And Static Sounds Vol. 1

“I just really like library music, I’ve got hundreds of albums like this – it’s more a compilation of music. In the 70s and 80s library music was quite a big thing. Musicians would record various types of moods and sounds which were used as backing on TV shows and films, all that type of thing. So they would record hundreds of these things and they would all get licensed out all over Europe.

A famous library musician is Alan Hawkshaw who recently just passed away – so he wrote the theme to ‘Countdown’, ‘Grange Hill’ – millions of other things as well – ‘Grandstand’ music from the 80s – that’s all written by these types of guys. So they actually provided the soundtrack to 30 years worth of what you heard on TV.

I’ve got hundreds of these to be honest, I get really into them. Some of the music’s really amazing on it – you’ll get little nuggets that are just incredible, some of it’s just quite useless and throw away but there’s always something. There’s one in this – it’s got this beautiful string arrangement.

These were sort of real musicians – they all worked out of Denmark Street in London in the recording studio there – this is all they would do, day in day out, just create this type of music. Write it mix it, record it all in a day – then go to the pub!”

William Ellis – I wonder why you picked this particular one?

“I love the cover – I kind of like anonymous musicians. I’m not so into personality in music. And I just love the cover on that – it’s quite evocative – quite 70s . I like the colours on it, there’s just nothing to it but it’s quite interesting. I love that font – Sonoton’s a big library. There was Sonoton and all these guys were sort of huge in that field.

And I also sort of produce music myself. Sampled one of the tracks on it to make a new track – sort of  house music track – so it has a special meaning to me.”