Son of a jazz trumpeter, Rennie Pilgrem started life playing tenor saxophone and sitting with his Father’s various bands around Southern England. Later after getting heavily into ‘black’ music he formed various funk bands playing sax and keyboards. Rennie's musical infatuation took a big twist when he heard the sounds coming out of Detroit in the late ‘80s. After making rudimentary House music on the wrong kind of drum machines with soon to be Rhythm Section members Ellis Dee, Richard Thake and Nick ‘Newton Scott, they had interest from (amongst others) the new British house label Guerrilla. Preferring to release their own material they formed Rhythm Section Recordings and became part of the wave of breakbeat house that went on to become known as Hardcore in the early ‘90’s.
Their third release ‘Comin’ On Strong’ was a anthem and would have charted top 40 if they’d known about ‘bar codes’ on records. With Ellis Dee the crowned king of rave DJs, Rhythm Section played at pretty much every main party between ’90-92’. On the same bill as The Prodigy, Moby, Altern 8, Shades Of Rhythm and Bizzare Inc. Their music was very big with pretty much every major DJ at the time, Fabio, Grooverider, Ray Keith, and Carl Cox etc. As the drugs sped up, so did the music. When the BPMs reached a ridiculous 150, Rhythm Section decided to call it a day and separately went back to making music at House tempo.
In 1993 Rennie founded Thursday Club Recordings (TCR) as a medium for putting out his own material. His first few releases were funky house with a smattering of breaks lurking in the background. Recording now as ‘Thursday Club’ he had a big tune with ‘Thursday Theme’, which was chased by Virgin.
A chance PA in Florida was another turning point in 1994. Hearing a thriving breaks scene at its original tempo galvanized Rennie into going back to pure breaks.
'A Place Called Acid' (1995) was one of the biggest breakbeat tunes around. With his pedigree as a member of the legendary Rhythm Section in the rave days Rennie's remixing skills are much in demand. He also set up 'Friction' with Adam Freeland, Tayo and Ian Williams which pretty much kick-started the whole 'Nu Skool' scene. He also coined the term 'Nu Skool' along with his fellow Friction partners as a way of describing their music.
He's released records on Whole9yards, City Of Angels, Chrysalis/EMI, Mob and China Records to name but a few. He's collaborated with many top producers including legend Arthur Baker (on 'Like No Other', 'Hey Funky People' and ‘Face It’), BLIM (on that massive 'Eskimo' track and the equally huge ‘2Freaks’) and with Meat Katie (on 'Rubba' and 'Atmosphere'). Following on from the huge ‘Black Widow’, Rennie also decided it was time to go back into the studio with Uberzone and their follow-up ‘Cous Cous’ received support from the likes of everyone from the Plump DJ’s to Pete Tong and Sasha!
He continues to DJ all over the world and wow audiences with his dancefloor-friendly funk-infused breaks sets. He is resident at Rome’s premier night, Agatha and runs a hugely successful club night, 'Hum', with Meat Katie, which takes place in London (the last one had 1400 people pack through the doors!). He is also part of the team responsible for the ‘Breaksday’ concept – so far 2parties have been held, one at WMC in Miami, which was one of the most talked about parties of the conference, and more recently at The Glade Festival, which was a huge success.
He has been voted ‘Most Valuable Person’ at The International Breaks Awards two years running and this year also picked up awards for Best Single (2Freaks) and Best Remix (for Emit/Collect which has just been signed to Universal).
Rennie released a mix album on Perfecto ‘Perfecto Breaks’ which received huge support across the board and his latest remix, of Ferry Corsten's ‘Rock Your Body’ got caned by all the top jocks. He has just finished his artist album for TCR (due out Sept 2004) as well as new collaborations with the likes of Lee Coombs and is set to mix the next in the ‘Y4K’ series– and of course he continues to be chairman of the local ‘Dwarf-Hurling’ association.
2003 saw his label TCR reach its 10year anniversary - an incredible feat for any independent label.
