When it comes to drum and bass, DJ Heist has been running things for a few solid decades, releasing the full spectrum on pivotal labels like Metalheadz, V Recordings, Lown Down Deep and Playaz to name a few.
You might recognise his line-up of tastemaking imprints, Co-Lab Recordings, Sumo, Liquid Lab, and more, but what you may not realise is that Jim Muir, better known as DJ Heist, has been quietly steering the scene from his spaceship-like studio since long before the sync button was even a thing.
From strength to strength, his career has taken on a truly legendary trajectory — and the best part is, he’s only just getting started. Let’s delve into the story behind the man running the labels, his debut Flying Crane EP on Playaz, and his passion for teaching others the art of crafting proper drum and bass.
Hi! What ended up happening with your venue for your label night, Sumo Beatz?
It had been on the market, and they hadn’t told me. I thought, in the current climate of things going on in the world, who’s going to buy a club? It got sold to a development company, and our last show was Simula in April, which was pretty sad really, but we are like a phoenix rising up in a new club. So I’m building it.
Speaking of rebuilding, you played such a key role in bringing back the Duplate Killaz series — it was definitely something the scene needed. And getting DJ Hype on board and motivated to see it through makes it all the more special.
Thank you. I appreciate that. I am prepared to put the work in to get those kinds of results.
I need it. He needs it. We all need it, and I need to do my part, and that is working with Hype as best I can, to make the best tunes we can.
When did you and DJ Hype decide to start this new journey?
It started when I went down to the Playaz dungeon, and we had a really good meeting there. I liked the vibe down there. I was saying to him, we could perhaps start bringing my laptop down. Maybe I could… I think I did take my laptop down there at one point, but before we knew it, the shop was being sold, and there wasn’t going to be any Playaz dungeon anymore.
So Hype had to really emigrate to my studio. Which initially he didn’t like the idea of. He found it sterile here, it wasn’t like the dungeon where he had MC Daddy Earl upstairs doing the shop and people coming and going, and there was a vibe. Whereas here there was nothing. It was just me and the machines, and he didn’t initially like that, but obviously, when there was no dungeon anymore, he had no choice but to come here, and that’s how it all began.
He’d been working with Tyke, and he’d done some stuff with Xtrah, and he just wanted to see what it would be like if we went in together.
It was spearheaded by him, and he had an idea to remix this Yaya Bey track, and that was the first thing we ever did as a bit of a warm-up to see how we got on working together.
Now, bearing in mind I’d worked with Goldie for seven years. I have an understanding of how people have short attention spans and short tempers.
Working with Hype, it was a bit like switching that back on again to make sure I could facilitate and not get blown away by ego or even blown away that I am working with Hype, that’s quite a big deal.
It’s good you’re staying grounded…
You can let that kind of stuff cloud your vision and not deliver properly. So, yeah, it was quite a big deal. But at the same time, I don’t think Hype would have sought my skills if he didn’t think I was capable of delivering.
Speaking of delivering, can you tell us more about the artist Jungle Jim…
Absolutely, I’m helping him put music out on Pure Vibes, which is mine and Benny Co-Lab’s label. Jim’s a friend of mine that never really took to making music and just surprised me one day with some jungle. I’ve just been listening to it ever since and choosing stuff to show to Benny.
Ah, the labels — I was going to ask you more about those, as there are quite a few…
Right now, with all the labels that are in my repertoire, I’m focusing mainly on Co-Lab just because it’s the mother label. It’s the umbrella that all of them were formed beneath.
In the last few years, I’ve been putting some stuff out on Low Down Deep, V Recordings and a few other labels. But until a couple of years ago, it didn’t have enough content from me.
We’d been facilitating other artists, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you take Dillinja away from Valve and what is it? So I kind of looked at myself and said, “Hey, I need to get this ship sailing as well.”
I need to look at my own camp. So me and Benny decided to start focusing on that and, as you know, I work so much in the studio, I’ve accumulated an absolute armada of music that we can now just create little EPs and put them together. I think this year there’ll be three EPs on Co-Lab from Heist.
Wow, that’s an incredible amount of music!
And then you consider an EP on Calypso as well. Plus Sumo Beatz and the other labels have had quite a good seeing to. But yeah, Co-Lab, I would say, is my main focus at the moment.
How long have you been working with Benny?
We started Co-Lab Recordings in 2002, we celebrated 20 just last year (later than we had wanted), and honestly, I couldn’t have done it without him. He’s an amazing guy. He makes everything happen. I facilitate ideas and master stuff, help with artwork feedback, and help find tunes for the label. Without Benny, it just simply wouldn’t be able to happen, so I have to give him a big up.
Outside of the labels, we know you’re doing a lot of one-to-ones at the moment — that’s something you’ve been doing for quite some time now…
I’m in my ninth year of doing one-to-ones. It’s something that took hold after Goldie because when he emigrated to Thailand, I’d just had my first son.
And it was almost like the timing of those things was so important in life. He then got the new engineer, James Submotiv, and I was able to move away from Goldie without a problem. We still talk and we’re fine. I love Goldie, and I’m just pleased that I had that exit from him — and not a bad one or anything. You know, things come to an end.
Because when you come to the end of a term with someone, quite often people get upset. It’s the end, but in this scenario, we had a good run and made some great music, and it just felt naturally right. So, I never knew how it was going to end. When I was working with him, I thought, how will we actually end up not doing this anymore? I was really pleased with how that transgressed, if you know what I mean.
Could you ever see yourself signing to Metalheadz again?
I don’t think I could ever see myself signing to anybody just purely because I’ve never been that guy. I’ve never wanted to put my hopes and dreams in somebody and have that pressure on them to deliver, and I think that because I’m that person. I’ve never tried to hold anybody down on my labels either – because it would be a bit hypocritical to do that when you don’t even do it yourself.
And I wouldn’t want to hold anybody back, and look at Simula, first releasing with us, now running things in regards to minimal jump-up and pushing the boundaries that everybody follows.
I’m proud that he went on to do what he’s done. You know, I like to see people going on to live their dreams because that’s what I did. And there’s something special about that. It’s not about being jealous of “that should be me..’ or whatever. You’ve got to look at those people who’ve got their own journey, and you should be happy for them.
That’s such a good mentality to have.
It’s much better than the jealous mentality. You know, people work hard, man, just because they’re doing better than you. Maybe they worked harder than you.
Speaking of success, can you tell us about your debut EP on Playaz, Flying Crane…
So the EP is done, it’s a four-tracker. It’s got a bit of old and a bit of new on there, really. It’s supposed to try and give something to everybody that likes D&B in some form or another.
Hype chose the tracks, and I’ve got to give him credit. He chose in a really good way. It’s so balanced. It shows the best of my current abilities, and I don’t think I could have put that together, as much as I hate to admit it. I literally had hundreds of tunes and I didn’t know what went with what. I had personal problems with certain tunes that wouldn’t go together and things like that.
Hazard is important here because Hazard supported two of the tunes heavily, every set, every time I heard him play. To talk about Hazard a little bit, that guy has been supporting me since my first ever tune, and I just want to give him a big up because without his support and his guidance, a lot of things may not have happened.
You know, like, if I hadn’t had that support in that first tune from him, maybe I wouldn’t have gone on to be able to make more. And he continues to support.
So yeah, he was instrumental in the support and the tracks that we chose for the project, for the EP, and then, yeah, Hype picked the tunes as well. It’s just two good heads helping to compile it.
I am blessed for that. The EP’s got ‘Flying Crane’ on there, which is very much a homage to what Tru Playaz and Ganja Records had. It’s got kung fu samples in it, stuff that Wu-Tang sounds almost like it would have been sampled from Wu-Tang.
I’ve got another one on there called ‘Fingers’. It’s just got an absolutely heinous bit-crush bass in it, which I’m known for. My last big tune on Frontline was ‘Sleep in Your Eyes’ – it was another bit-crusher sound, and I just thought it sounded good for Playaz.
So I gave it to Hype. He snapped it up straight away. Then the other two on there, you’ve got Meddlers, which is just a quick, heavy rinse-out, but again, it does the job, like it really has a nice impact, a bit of tension on the intro, good mixing.
Then Grifters is like a nod to old-school Bristol heads, you know, with nice big basslines and just warmth and just… yeah, what I’m known for traditionally is on that track there. So you get a nice mixture of old and new that way. I’m getting good feedback on it, actually. A lot of people are saying they’re playing this track, they’re playing that track, and I can’t ask for more than that.
If you’re playing one tune off the EP, I don’t really expect more. But some people have said they’re playing more. I’m just glad everybody’s liking it.
Yeah, it’s great that Hazard’s given it his stamp of approval too.
Yeah, like I say, I’m blessed. It helps you have belief in a project.
Can you give us a look into your music production lessons? When did you start that project?
I wanted to start doing one-to-ones with people because I’d done so much work with him and myself in close quarters.
I thought, I’m ready to help other people do what they want to do, and I started thinking, “What if I could do it on the computer? On the internet, is that going to be possible?”
Could I actually do this? No one had really done it. I spoke to a couple of people. One of them was Doug from Parallel Forces. He had been teaching people on Skype, and he’d been doing it with a rather odd way of using various different apps to get the audio to go from his computer to the client’s computer.
It wasn’t perfect, but we got it working between us. He showed me, and I was just like, “I’ve got to go for this. I’ve got to try this and see if I can make this stick.”
So I prepared for about six months. I prepared, tested, and got an academic idea of how I was going to help people.
What would help me if I was at the beginning again? I really thought about it, got a video done, and just went in before anybody drum and bass wise offered the online tuition. I was just like, “Wow, how am I going to facilitate this without anybody but me?”
Basically. I created a business that’s now nine years in. Still, I’m booking in April 2026 at the moment.
You have a lot of patience…
You’ve got to. You can either be that or you can’t. I’m a fisherman, so I’m used to waiting and being patient for things. Always have been.
People seem to get a lot from the feedback. I’m honest. I’ll tell you if it’s shit. I won’t let you think that you’re going down some sort of good path if it’s not going to end well.
I love teaching people. I love helping. I like seeing people progress. I like seeing people get excited about showing me music.
What do you have in store for the future?
The focus for the future is definitely keeping Playaz strong, being part of that journey, and creating as much quality music as possible for both Playaz and my own label. I’ll also continue working with Low Down Deep, those are the three main priorities for me moving forward.
