It’s always pleasure to welcome Spliff Monk, AKA Hammer Damage, to HCBXCast. A pivotal figure in the UK hardcore underground, both as producer, DJ and through his influential label Sensory Violation. His latest set is fully 1994 released Dutch Gabber tracks (a golden period for this sound) and is a proper trip down memory lane. The man himself was kind enough to answer some questions.
HCBX: Alright Mike, thanks for coming back on HCBXCast - how the hell are you?
SM: Not too bad...
HCBX: You’ve been involved in hardcore techno for a long time. Can you tell us how it all started — what got you into the music, and how did the Spliff Monk / Hammer Damage aliases come about?
SM: When at school in Bristol I was really into music, it was a good way to escape from the bullshit. I used to go and see indie bands at the Studio and the Bierkeller, so my love of loud music was born. In 1989 went to Reading Festival to see New Order, amongst others, was also lucky enough to see the Stone Roses at Alexandra Palace in the same year. I started to buy more records to add to my collection. In 1990 the electronic stuff was starting to break through, Sweet Exorcist and Tricky Disco on Warp, 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald, (who I saw live in New York that year with the Happy Mondays when the Hacienda took over a club for the New Music Seminar), The KLF, The Orb, Renegade Soundwave and the Shamen released "Entact", I liked the sound, it wasn't like the band music, even though at the time I was still listening to both, have a lot of records from the Manchester scene at the time and also was still seeing bands like the Pixies, Jesus Jones, Ned's, New FADs, My Bloody Valentine and the Inspiral Carpets. I went to Glastonbury that year too, and after the Cure on the main stage what was going down in the travellers' field was certainly an eye opener... The repetitive beats and non-stop attitude was infectious...
The following year started going to free parties, I loved the vibe, I am fairly inept socially, I normally just keep to myself, but this was different, that collective energy, it felt like home... More and more techno was filling out my collection with the UK pressings of R&S Records and UK labels like XL, Kickin, Network and Warp being of particular interest to me. Whilst at Art College in Hereford I used to play DJ sets at indie nights and make mix tapes, mixing all sorts really and in 1992 played my first techno set at a party in Ludlow, playing new stuff like Urban Shakedown, Orbital and Messiah with the tracks I had been collecting like Energy Flash, Mentasm and Dominator... By the Summer of 1993, after I had finished at Art College, some friends and I got together to put on small free parties in our local area, we did parties on and off for the next seven years, including a few club nights at the Niteowl in Cheltenham, barns, tunnels, the occasional forgetting of leads, a few too many fun (and not so fun) encounters with the old bill and a great time had with a farmer and his shotgun!!! We are still friends, we last connected in April, where I got to play a techno set (Spliff Monk - Carry On Up The Lode), it's always good to see everyone and re-connect...
At the end of 1993 I was definitely focusing my record buying exclusively on the electronic stuff, I used to listen to tapes of Colin Dale and Colin Faver nights on Kiss FM, scribbling down the names of the records I liked, recognizing certain tracks from mixtapes we had... It was from one of these tapes that I heard 100% by Total Output and Conquest by LSD Psychology, and after buying the records, I decided for some reason to call the number on the record, where I spoke to Hanni, who invited me up to visit, and it all snowballed from there...
Spliff Monk was a name that came from Art College after shaving my hair off, so I looked like a Buddhist Monk... It may also have had something to do with the almost religious rituals of preparing the spliff, but I can't possibly comment... Hammer Damage came about later, when I started producing, by extracting words from the letters in my name and it had a nice ring to it. It was only years later that I found a 70's punk band from Akron, Ohio, with the same name, so I put the (UK) in brackets so there is no confusion, although as a sign of respect, or to create more confusion, I named SV 011 The Noise Pollution EP after one of their tracks, I thought it was appropriate...
HCBX: Can you call out 5 tracks that have influenced you and got you into harder styles of electronic music?
SM: Instead of tracks I have chosen five records that definitely pushed me towards the harder styles of Electronic Music. All of these EPs were something new and fresh at the time, the distortion and tempos in Alles Naar De Kl-te were like nothing I had heard up to that point, External by Zekt, Acid Relevance by Total Output and Electro Comp by DX-13 had acid lines to die for with some monstrous kicks and there is just something about Psychotic Break by Critical Mass that does it for me, doesn't matter which mix, it's something about the sample, I can't really explain it...
Alles Naar De Kl-te - Euromasters (RSN 44)
Senseless - Zekt (Adam 014)
Clip-Lite EP - Total Output (Hanni 007)
Power Surge - DX-13 (IS 020)
Critical Mass EP - Critical Mass (INT 021)
HCBX: What prompted you to start DJing and producing? I know you've said in the past that Total Output has been a big influence.
SM: The DJing is pretty much covered in the earlier question... But after contacting the Clan, I went up to London and we got on well, I started drawing covers and doing ads for the ITAH zine that they were producing, at New Years 93/94 we took five or six cars up to London for The Institute of Goa New Years bash with PAs from Sean and Hanni. We met loads of great people and partied hard together... I got to play out in London at The Institute of Goa in April of 1994 and World War 4, New Years Eve 1994/95, what a party that was, DJ Freak's set was immense, as was Total Output's PA, I played the first set so had plenty of time to enjoy myself after I had finished... I was also playing out more back home as we put on more parties.
It wasn't until 1996 that I started doing tracks with Sean (Total Output), I would book studio time, turn up with my MC303 and Remix 16 with a bunch of sounds and samples and we would just spend time trying to work out what it was I wanted... Some tracks were finished in a day; others took a little longer. All the tracks I made there between 1996 and 1998 are here, some you will recognize, others probably not...
Hammer Damage - The Early Daze (1996-1998)
I was always learning from Sean, and it set me up for when I went out on my own to produce.
HCBX: What kind of gear did you use in the beginning to produce tracks and mix? Has your set up evolved over time, or do you stick to tried and tested methods?
SM: The first tracks I produced were with Sean, so I can't really give you a list of what we used but by 1998/1999, when I was working at Underground Music, Simon let me use his TR-909 and TB-303, I was running Cubase on an Atari ST with a dodgy Casio CZ-101 keyboard for midi controller. I had already got some bits and pieces, an MC303, a spectral audio protone, a couple of Peavey PMEs, a second hand Akai S950, a Deep Bass 9 (303 emulator), some effects units, pedals and an Akai Remix 16 that I had bought in 1996, which was ideal for collecting my samples, all going through a Behringer 2642 Mixer. Yes it has evolved, the MC 303 went first as it was a real pain in the ass when midi was involved, I have a much better keyboard a Korg Z1, a Nord2 rack, an Akai S5000 from Sean, a second hand MC202, I bought Simon's TB303 off him, a Jomox Airbase 99 (909/808 analog drum machine emulator), a Lexicon Vortex, other FX units, valve Parametric EQ, a bigger mixer and more recently I have got the Behringer 303 and 909 clones... The majority is still analog. I am also well behind the times, running Cubase 5 on a Windows 7 laptop, but it was the most stable it had ever been...
HCBX: Sensory Violation was a flippin' brilliant label that really pushed limits of hardcore (in my humble opinion). It's thrown out some amazing tracks (mostly your own - I've probably told you at some point that Help Us and No More (with Nevermind and Tyrant) are a couple of my favourite tracks of all time). How did you get it off the ground, and would you ever go back to it?
SB: Thank you, I appreciate the love, makes it all worth while... I was working at Underground Music at the end of 1998, into 1999. Was pretty hectic at the time, Luke was starting Rebel Scum, Matt was starting Corrupt, Freak was starting Boneheddz, so with Simons help I put together The Acid Casualty EP, which was a collection of tracks I had made with Sean in 1996/97 that hadn't seen the light of day, and Sensory Violation was born... Was a hell of a ride... It gave me the opportunity to put my stuff out there, and also the music of people I liked in the scene. I just love the fact that John Peel played a track off the first EP, and it wasn't The Demons!!! (Hammer Damage - Psycho (John Peel Radio Show)) As for going back, I don't think so, but never say never. I started a new label, Bass Line Disorder, a couple of years back with a release by Total Output, and I'm still trying to sell them
(Bassline Disorder on Bandcamp)! Nowadays you have to do a low press run and charge too much, it's a vicious cycle and sort of a little dis-heartening... Hopefully there will still be Hammer Damage stuff coming out on vinyl, it just will be on other labels, fingers crossed...
HCBX: Running a label in such an underground scene can’t have been easy. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced trying to keep things going — especially in and before social media and the likes of Bandcamp came along?
SM: Simon at Underground Music does a fantastic job for our scene in this country, and credit must go to him, with his contacts in the UK, Europe, Australia and America distribution was not an issue, promotion was done through postcards and the Underground Datafile, which was a zine that I helped out on at the time and we sent out the releases to many DJs, including John Peel, which really is the best promotion. The challenges were really just getting the music done, I am restricted really to one track at a time, because of the way I work, and some took much longer than others, I had many, many different versions before I got to the final track... And I'm not really good at chasing people up, so the SV010 release took quite some time to sort out, but was definitely worth the wait...
HCBX: One thing that I'll forever dig about your Hammer Damage tracks is your samples. I've started doing sample source videos on the channel, and it would be good to do a Hammer Damage special but wouldn't know where you get half the samples from as there's a few obscure ones! How do you approach sampling when you are producing?
SM: I'm glad you like them, would love to see the Hammer Damage special, (I'll do you a list of the ones I can remember!) always wanted to do a visual thing with a live PA where the samples would be accompanied with their matching videos, just never got around to it... I normally start with the samples I am going to use, they are usually integral to the track, although that isn't always the case. I hugely enjoy films, especially UK stuff, horror and sci-fi, cartoons, comedy, documentaries and other weird TV stuff. Would also record comedy stuff and news reports from the TV, like Brass Eye, which pops up in Monumental Depression, then try and find more obscure stuff by the same person, so I found loads of good samples in Chris Morris's early radio work on GLR which ended up in They're All Cunts, with other samples from The Day Today (Radio 4 version), MC Hammer (from the single which I bought especially), The Carpenters (which was from a friends tape from his car. I took the front off the tape deck and manually fucked it up with my finger!!!), The Dead Kennedys (from a CD) and Derek & Clive (from my record collection) just to mix things up...
HCBX: Playing live - You've done this loads as a DJ and a producer - what's been a highlight for you? And have there been any interesting stories you want to share?
SM: I haven't really done that many compared to others, but I prefer doing live PAs as I'm more focused, when I started I used to take most of my kit out and run a track on Cubase that I would have written for the night, Help Us was the second half of my first PA in Rotterdam at Connected, the reason for the really long sample was to give me enough time to load the next track in to the Atari and the Remix 16, had got the samples from a bootleg video, and a couple came up to me after the PA and couldn't understand how I had sampled something they had just seen at the cinema before they came out! At Deliverance in Preston everything crashed half way through my set, so Jaseion had to play some tracks off his Amiga while I sorted everything out, but all was okay in the end. I love Live Evil London, I went to the first one as a punter and have been lucky enough to have played there many times, lots of great nights, got to meet lots of other producers, was an incredible time. I liked to go when I wasn't playing too, just to have a night out listening to the music that does it for me, surrounded by like-minded people, my hardcore family...
The parties in Scotland were always pretty good too, they certainly know how to party up there, and the after parties were always fun, such friendly people all round... And then there's the Geordie Gabba Mafia's Fuelled By Hate boat party... The only time I have played in the Toon but what a night that was... Three people fell in, the boat didn't go anywhere, it was very loud, the people who lived around the quay were definitely not too pleased about a 3 deck, oh no, make that 2 deck set from La Peste, as there wasn't enough room for the third deck, the speakers had to go back because they wouldn't fit through the doors, the ones they got in certainly made most things vibrate including your internal organs, was a cracking night though, met some great people and had a mental time... Had good times in France, Belgium, Holland and America too... Have also really enjoyed playing at the Unit recently, it has a really good underground vibe that brings back memories of early squat parties, the sound system is really loud for the size of the building it is in, just the way we like it, although it was pretty cold in February last year!!! Much more comfortable in the Summer!
HCBX: You've worked with a lot of great artists and some real influential hardcore heads, who have you enjoyed working with most, and is there someone you wish you'd worked with, but haven't?
SM: For enjoyment I guess it would have to be those early days with Sean in his studio under the stairs in Croydon... It was proper escapism for me. Apart from those tracks we haven't ever done anything together, which would be interesting. We had a little jam a couple of years back when he came up for a few days, 303 onslaught...
As for working with others, me and Matt Green were supposed to do a PA together at a Rebellion Christmas party at the Void in 1999, with the first UK appearance of a certain Micropoint PA, but alas, that never happened, I would have paid to see that!!!
HCBX: What are you most proud of out of all you have done in music?
SM: Well, being played on John Peel's show is pretty high up there and receiving copies of my first release on Outcast Clan, but a few years ago I got an email from a bod from the British Library, I think it was during Covid. So, after the lockdowns I went up to the library to give him copies of all of my UK releases, which you can now listen to in the British Library Listening Room... They're All Cunts, in the British Library... Priceless... They will be put safely in the Library vault with all the other records, mind blowing really... Legacy I guess...
HCBX: Your upcoming HCBXCast set is already shaping up to be a monster - previously you have played a full 1993 set. This one is the sequel! Can you tell us a bit about how you approached putting this one together and what made you focus on Dutch Gabber?
SM: I essentially open Discogs, where I have catalogued my collection, put the date in and see what there is, for 1994 I have over 100 records and I noticed 40 of them were from Dutch Labels, which at the time I was pretty into and I haven't really played them for ages, so I pulled them all out, had a few listening sessions to see what tracks I wanted to use off each EP, checked out their tempos, had a mix with certain tracks at certain tempos to see what goes well with each other, plan out roughly where I'm going to start and then commit to a mix, with a pretty firm idea where it's going to go.
HCBX: Further to these themed sets, your Sensory Violation sets on HardSound Radio were as good as you would imagine. You got any other themed sets you want to do?
SM: I really enjoyed doing the SV ones, sort of gave me a chance to reflect on what all the people involved did, including myself, and as a collection I am really proud of what we released. I also love the Drop Bass Network one I did during lockdown 2.0, it's such a good label and was good to spend the time listening through all the vinyl before the mix, you can find it here...
I Love Drop Bass Network : Mix for Hardsound Radio
I was thinking about doing an Outcast Clan one as I have the complete collection and Epiteth would be fun as well...
HCBX: What's your thoughts on Hardcore Techno and the scene these days? Anyone out there (DJ or Producers) that you are digging or taking inspiration from?
SM: Have been reading How Music Works by David Byrne (from Talking Heads) and in it he discusses how bands sounds change with the size of venues that they play in. I believe that this is the way Hardcore Techno has gone, as the parties got much bigger, the sound became more expansive, there was more clarity, and the sound fundamentally changed to fill the larger spaces, I personally prefer the dirtier sounds of the past, but I also prefer smaller, more intimate venues. So it's each to their own I guess... Not overly keen on the glossy photos of moody DJs either but I understand that it is part of it now, it used to be about the music, not image, not likes, not followers, just faceless techno bollox, I prefer the simpler times. As for artists, I don't really listen to too much new stuff, the Oraj tracks on Sodom 21 were pretty cool, am still loving Total Output's new stuff, always enjoy the hard acid so liked Sean and Crabby's releases on AVC and Agro's last release on Epsilon 4, also noticed a new release from Acidgun on Audio Riots, although it doesn't seem to be on vinyl, loved his track on EAR, but that was years ago now... Matt Green's new stuff always stands out, Lorra Laffz on Must Trust was an absolute belter, again shame no vinyl, but that is the way it is.. I am also partial to a little bit of Perc, especially the EAS acid stuff, it is a lot of fun mixing his tracks into some of the early techno stuff, it just sort of elevates it to another level...
HCBX: What's the plans for the future? Any releases or gigs planned?
SM: I haven't been very productive this year, I have a load of samples, just haven't found the drive to get going, although I did finish a track for Larry at Apocalypse Recordings, clocking in at 300bpm with vocals from Alex B from Inebrious Bastard/Leech Woman/Shitspitter, so that should see the light of day at some point in the future... Have also started compiling stuff for a book about the Outcast Clan, which will hopefully be a collection of stories, a chat with Sean and a compilation of the zines ITAH and UTR that I was involved with between 93 and 95, have just finished scanning over 200 pages and there is a huge amount of hardcore history that many have never seen, a good snap shot of what was going on back then... As for gigs, I don't really get out as much as I used to. I don't really do the digital thing and there isn't a huge demand for vinyl DJs... Any promoters out there want a brutal acidic hardcore live PA then I will happily oblige... Get in touch... sensoryviolation@hotmail.com
HCBX: Finally - anything else you want to get off your chest?
SM: Not without getting myself into trouble, so I'll pass on that one...
Although... Legalizing cannabis in this backwards thinking country would be a good start...
Until the next time... Enjoy the mix...
Links and stuff
HCBXCast Vol 71 - Spliff Monk 8th November 2025
Mashed up stuff for mashed up people... https://flamingpigs.co.uk/
Picture credits...
Bredon Hill, 1993 - Unknown
121, Railton Rd, 1996 - Nod
Deliverance, 2000 - Stef
Fuelled By Hate, 2001 - Mel (I think)
Live Evil 7, 2002 - Matt Wood
Class vs Trash, 2007 - Azil De Flous
Psicose, 2023 - Harm Veenstra
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