Jack Revill – our best friend, our brother, our DJ.
Where do we begin? Let’s start with celebrating some of our memories of the Jack we love. Jack co-founded this thing we call Numbers, and drove us all to do bigger and better – no matter whether that manifested in a massive party, 12” release or a conga line through the club, which he both started on the decks, and subsequently led from the front. He was serious about his hair and even more serious about his music.
At Numbers, Jack was absolutely instrumental in us signing and finishing records with SOPHIE, Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, two of his many heroes Lory D and DJ Deeon, Deadboy aka Al Wootton, Redinho, Jessie Ware & SBTRKT, Denis Sulta, Jamie xx, Mosca and Kornél Kovács. He played a major role in doing the groundwork to make those releases as great as they could be.
Even before we formed the Numbers label, members of our team were involved in a myriad of different labels and projects from 2002—he was integral to so many of them. These included Seismic, Wireblock, Dress 2 Sweat, Stuffrecords, Seldom Felt, and Point.One with Neil Arabi. Through these record labels, clubs and Numbers, Jack helped us bring music to the wider world.
Jack was key, doing everything he could to make sure we were releasing music that we believed in. He could spot a hook in a demo from a mile away and get to the core of the idea. From the cutting edge, to the Tweak-A-Holics to the club bangers, he wanted to do it all – listing Prince, Aphex Twin and Drexciya as his North Stars.
This is the man who was equally at home asking his pals to put him inside a suitcase and carry it down three flights of Glasgow tenement stairs, as he was experiencing fine art and design, or leading a musical expedition on a Manhattan rooftop. At our first London warehouse party, someone tweeted at him to turn the sound up. Jack, deep in the mix, sent back some patter and obliged.
At Rubadub Records, he and Calum aka Spencer, shared a Saturday job and were paid in records from the age of 15. Jack stood on the shoulders of many a giant, whether it was our pals from round the corner or the Teachers we revered from afar, further cementing Rubadub’s role as one of THE means of listening to underground dance music from Chi-town and the Motor City of Detroit, via Glasgow to mainland Europe and Around The World. His years of service evolved from making the tea, cataloguing and mopping the shop, to playing at Club 69 in Paisley. Eventually, he was at Rubadub Distribution, bringing forward artists and labels such as Marco Passarani, Fatima Yamaha, Objekt, Night Slugs, Huntleys & Palmers—including Jack’s work on SOPHIE’s very first record ‘Nothing More to Say’—Sunklo, Karenn, and Call Super, to name just a few.
People really gravitated towards Jack. He certainly wasn’t shy about himself, but he also wanted the world to know about his friends and the music he loved. He was the great connector – the Mastermixer – and if you have ever bumped into him anywhere from a dodgem to the previously mentioned conga lines you will know all about it.
There are many nights that stand out. A 17-year-old Jack – too young to be in the club – docking time from the set of first-signing, Sparky for showing up late to the debut Numbers party in 2003; or the nights in Stereo with Joker and Rustie where we had to form a human barrier to stop people diving into the booth. At Pleasure Principle, Cornwall in 2013, he hosted a ‘Kosmik Karaoke’ session with a demo version of karaoke software only allowing for 30 seconds to be played of each song – he and SDC had to get creative with the mic interludes. He later burst into a caravan full of strangers after a TV was being launched out of a window and got them all out on the dance floor chanting John Talabot’s name, in the presence of Aphex Twin who came along as a punter.
He loved Numbers parties and alongside the rest of us did everything as a team – from going out at night to guerrilla poster as a squad, to doing the door even when he was the headline act. He always put the work in and helped to foster a community purely for the love of the music, completely separate to any fame or attention or brand building. That approach is Jack and it’s also in the DNA of Glasgow.
It might surprise you but his 10,000 hours of practice DJing and sharpening his ear was already long-completed on belt drive turntables by the age of 17 with Spencer, his brother Sean, his dad Alan and a whole load of school-friends in Jack’s house.
As a DJ his capacity for booting us all off the decks was unparalleled. He had the gift. He knew what frequencies worked and was in service of the dancers. He heard energy and feeling in music, not genre.
The memories and the music will stay with us forever, as will Jack Revill.
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