From promoting his demos in club toilets to starting his own record label, Nooch knows how to play the game

Jack Kelly AKA Nooch is no stranger to the music industry. From running his own label for the past eight years, producing and releasing his own music and studying audio engineering and music production at dBs Institute, he’s well-versed in what it takes to make it in the industry.

Ransaked Records was founded in Jack’s hometown of Portsmouth and came about when he was consistently being turned down by promoters when trying to promote his music.

“There were only a few labels in Portsmouth. And I remember I was 16, and had been invited to this gig and I prepared a CD demo. I handed it to the promoter in the toilets and he straight up said to me, we’re not really looking for any more DJs right now.

“What was frustrating was that he hadn’t even listened to it. So I wanted to create a platform to give other people the opportunities that I wasn’t necessarily getting”, Jack tells Bristol24/7.

The record label features artists from around the UK and since moving to Bristol to study, the label is now based in the city. Focusing mainly on drum and bass, it is this genre of music which Jack has been passionate about from the beginning and is what drew him to Bristol.

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“My first set was when I was nine, at a party on the beach. My dad would come down with his bag of vinyl and just let me play on the decks. Then when I was about 12, my mum gave me this jungle mixtape by DJ Hype.

“It was a two CD album and I used to mix both together, it was mad. It was mad and I was like I really like this and then I started getting like single drum bass tunes to mix well and it went from there. It was inevitable that I came to Bristol,” he tells us.

His impression of the city since moving here? “It’s such a melting pot of creativity here. There are loads of good venues, my favourite has to be Loco Klub or The Island.”

Full Metal Packet is Jack’s most recent EP, released under the moniker Nooch. It hit number 1 on the Juno Download when it was released earlier this year and Jack likens the release to a nuclear bomb.

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“You’ve got your dance floor drum and bass, your four in the morning tracks, your strip back roller in there and some vocals, also your big choppy tune so there’s all kinds of stuff. So it’s a full metal packet of my sounds basically…and I’m coming in like a bomb.”

Currently working with different record labels to release own music as well as producing and releasing tracks from artists signed with Ransacked Records and sitting on top of over 1000 tracks he’s got ready and waiting, it’s safe to say we’ll be seeing a lot more of Jack Kelly in the months to come.

Keep up to date with what Jack’s getting up to via his Instagram and Linktree.

Main photo: courtesy of Jack Kelly

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