“It started off in 1994 at a club called Disobey, around the corner from where Richard lived. He would go down there to see all the weird and wonderful acts they had, and one time they asked him to DJ. First, he dropped a tone arm on a sheet of sandpaper, sending an ear-shattering roar of scratchy distortion through the shocked crowd. Next, he stuck a microphone inside a blender and flipped the power switch.
Disobey really got into it and invited him to go to America to do it again. It was only supposed to be a one-off, but they wanted to pay him and take his friends, so he did it. It was Blast First Records’ showcase in New York, and there were people there who danced to it; they thought it was death metal or something. He just mixed some sandpaper together for a bit and then played a food mixer and threw it at someone. Oops! It hit the bloke on the head. “I thought I would get sued for that,” Richard worried, “but he wanted me to sign it afterward. He said, ‘I will keep this food mixer forever.’”
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The one and many Richard D. James…