We need to talk about DJ Jackum

Fan of UK Garage? Then there’s a 90% chance you’ve already heard of DJ Jackum. Dressed in a pink balaclava and huge yellow glasses, he’s making serious waves in the electronic scene. He’s taking us back to ten years ago, to the heydays of 140, dubstep, and grime. With his aggressive and energetic garage, he wants to bring this big energy back to the rave. 

If you’re going to a DJ Jackum set, you can expect “big tunes, dubs, and rowdiness”, as he explains it. “People come to these nights knowing that we’re going to go mad, you know. We’re going to sweat. We’re going to go mental.” And that’s exactly what he’s doing at his UK shows at the moment. Time to talk to him! 

Hi DJ Jackum! How are you doing?

I’ve been doing well! I’m starting to feel like everything’s really coming together. The shows have been getting better and better. The Jackum name is getting a bit more well-known, and people are starting to get the sound and what I’m trying to do. I’m here for it! It’s all been really positive. 

Nice to hear! How can you tell that your sound is catching on?

The biggest thing for me was when fans would start showing up with balaclavas on. I even played a show in Paris where four people in the crowd were wearing the pink balaclavas. I think that’s wicked. It shows that people all around the world are starting to get it. At first I was a bit worried how my more high energy and aggressive style of garage was going to be perceived, but to see that there’s people reacting that well to it, that’s nice to see. 

I originally got into the scene through 140 dubstep, grime, and bassline. Coming from the North of England, bassline has always been prominent in the underground music scene. It’s those genres where you get that high energy. You would go to the rave and when the tunes dropped you were jumping around, you were going crazy, you were calling for wheel ups… The energy was through the roof. There are probably a lot of contributing factors but energy seemed to go

slightly down in the rave, especially after covid. Everything almost got reset. My whole vibe is that I want to get the rave back to where people were jumping around screaming and losing their minds. That’s my happy place.

When did you realise that there were a lot of people wanting that same feeling back?

Parklife was a big moment for me. This year I got to go back to back with Badger and PJ Bridger. It was super interesting because it felt like the triangle of garage. You had Badger bringing the uplifting and happy side of garage, PJ brought the underground vibe, and then you’ve got my high energy. Playing out in front of all those people was amazing, the reactions were sick. That’s when I felt like, yes, let’s do it. 

You’re on quite a busy schedule at the moment, with a headline tour coming up next year… 

It’s great. At the start of this year I had a full-time job which I didn’t like very much. To be in a position where I’m busy enough to do music full-time now, it’s literally a dream come true and I’m super grateful for it. To be looking forward to playing the UKF15 Drumsheds show is insane. UKF was our introduction to electronic music back in the day, so to get shows like that coming in is unreal. 

With my upcoming headline tour, we want to go smaller again. Small venues, they’re the bread and butter of the UK dance scene. Playing huge festivals and clubs is wicked, but smaller 200 to 400 cap venues… they just have a totally different feeling. Everyone’s in a dark sweaty room together and dancing. It’s the best feeling in the world. The idea behind this headline tour is to create shows with this tight-knit feeling. It’s going to be six dates full of pink balaclavas. My dream vision for this tour is that I want to be at the ticket office. I want to be the one putting the wristbands on people, and give them the balaclava. I want to look every fan in the eye and say, “Thank you for coming. Let’s go mental in half an hour’s time.”  

A big part of the tour is that we’re going to be working with specific promoters that we love. In Leeds you’ve got Airspace, in Manchester there’s Ghosts of Garage, in the Midlands you’ve got Psyked…  These are all promoters that I hold near and dear to my heart. You always hear about DJs, and about venues but no one sings the praises of promoters. Without the promoters, there’s nowhere for people to go and party and so we’re going to be working closely alongside some of those promoters that I’ve mentioned. 

You’re known as this guy with the pink balaclava and big glasses. How did you come up with this look? 

I’ve been wearing the pink bally for over a year and a half now. I wish I had some insane story about when I started wearing it, but I never really thought about it at the time. Me and my partner, we have a dress-up box at home for house parties. We have this box full of stupid hats and glasses, and we make everyone put a hat on out of the box. We had this pink balaclava sitting in there and one day I just put it on, not thinking anything of it. The reaction to it from people was wicked, and it got me thinking. I’ve always loved the idea of anonymity. Daft Punk for example, their faces are hidden. MF Doom, the rapper he wears a mask, Slipknot even. So, when the reaction to the balaclava was good, I  used that as a go-ahead to lean into it.

There is something to be said about anonymity. Does it feel like people focus more on the vibes and the music then? 

On one hand you’re removing your identity from the music, so that should in theory shift the focus onto the music and not the identity. But then again, by hiding your face and having this other identity, it becomes about the identity as well so it’s almost backwards. The number one benefit of the balaclava for me, it definitely has an effect on me when I’m performing. It’s like a plate of armour. You feel protected behind it and that takes some inhibitions away from you and brings out a confidence in you that you wouldn’t normally be able to tap in. I find DJing terrifying, I really do. I still get very, very scared before my sets, but putting on the pink balaclava has become a ritual. I’d be backstage and then five minutes to go, the mask comes on, the glasses go on… That’s when I get in the zone. It puts me in a frame of mind where it’s not Jack going up on stage, it’s Jackum, and Jackum goes mental, he goes crazy. 

You were saying how there’s people showing up in pink balaclavas to your sets. How does that feel? 

I recently played a set at BOG Bristol, where we handed loads of balaclavas out to the people behind the decks. It was probably one of my favourite sets I’ve ever played because everyone behind me was wearing the balaclavas. Their faces were hidden, and I think that that helped them to go mental and really get into the music. They all knew that they’re on camera and being filmed so normally you might be a bit worried about “do I look good,  do I look too drunk, my mum gonna see this or dad gonna see this…” But because everyone was in the masks, they felt how I felt. The balaclava plays a massive part in that because they feel how I feel, where they’re protected and they’re hidden, but in plain view at the same time. They can dance how they want, they can do whatever they want, and no one no one knows it’s them. It definitely has an effect on people. It gave me a lot more confidence as a DJ, and I think anything a more up and comer DJ  can do to try and put their nerves at ease that isn’t drinking a ridiculous amount of alcohol is positive. 

Your music has got quite a unique style to it as well. How did you get there? 

The vocals that I sample play a big part in it, that’s my grime influence coming in. Talking about everything that I love, high energy, people going mad, that’s grime, and grime demands that reaction out of people. It’s nearly the only place where I’ve ever found vocals that match the energy of my music. Another part is, when it comes to production, I’m absolutely not a perfectionist. It doesn’t have to be the most beautifully crafted, spent 100 hours on a thing for it to be enjoyable. Sometimes it’s okay if it’s a bit rough around the edges. I was massively into punk and heavy music when I was younger, and I still carry that whole aesthetic and mentality with me. All the music I love is rough around the edges, it’s got imperfections. In the music scene right now, there’s a massive emphasis on technical perfection and making sure the mix is perfect. To me, that is the most uninspiring thing about music, that’s so boring! I want to push a bass into a distortion and get the loudest, angriest sound possible and then run it.

I’ve been producing for about 10 years now. When I started out, I made the mistake of focusing on the technical details too much. I went down a rabbit hole, but then I reached a spot whereI realised that I hadn’t actually made a song and exported it in years. I was a producer, but I wasn’t producing any music. This realisation changed my whole approach to one where I absolutely had to finish every track by the end of the week. Whether I thought I could work on it more or whether I thought a section needed work… If I hit a week on a track, then that was it. I was forcing myself to be happy with unfinishedness. I teach 1-to-1 music production lessons, and I always tell people to aim for ‘80% finished’. If you can get your track 80% done, that’s good enough. It’s way better than a song being sitting on your hard drive unfinished for six months. 

You recently released ‘One More’ on UKF, a 160 bpm dubstep track. What’s the story behind this one? 

I normally make garage and 140, so this is much quicker than anything else I’ve done. This track is the epitome of what I’ve just been talking about, something being rough around the edges, full of layers. The whole track is based around this huge gnarly bass and when I play back the bass, it always seems to sound different. It crunches in different ways. ‘One More’ is the prime example of a loud, rowdy tune. UKF is a perfect place for it. 

Any last thoughts?

I want to shout out all of the promoters and everyone that we’ve worked with. Ghosts of Garage, Psyked, Airspace… There are too many for me to mention but all the promoters that have backed what I’m doing um and put me in those rooms with the fans. I’m super excited to see what comes next.