It all began back in the 80s Colin recalls. “Around the time of rave culture, I played keyboards in a band called The Body Factory that were heavily influenced by bands like the Shamen, Psychic TV etc. We were into the idea of mixing live bands with club culture. We began a club night called Wibbly Wobbly World. Nights would include a live band, generally us and another band, House DJS and a reggae sound system. The soundsytem we used was Neil, who at that point had already been using the name Zion Train Sound System, with some friends from Oxford. Neil wanted to work in a studio and we were about to start in a studio with the band but we were very interested in putting these gigs on and having a reggae DJ playing. We did five or six of these nights, one of the first was with Mixmaster Morris, Dub The Earth played the very first one. The nights were put on in the George Robey, Finsbury Park. As a consequence of these nights the band dissolved and me and Dave, who had been in the band, joined forces with Neil and started a studio. We ran it commercially, all be it as a lo-fi affair, and began to develop our own music. Because Neil had not got around to recording any original music as Zion Train, we continued using that name. He lived in Harlsden and we lived in Haringey. I went up to his place and took my recording equipment. Neil is not a musician but he is a brilliant mixer and he knows what he wants. Effectively we sat and put stuff together. Over the course of about three weeks we had recorded probably half of Passage to Indica (first album) and we really enjoyed the experience so we carried on, eventually moving into premises in Seven Sisters where we did the rest of the album and along side it we did the first single, Power One. We went around London on busses selling the single to record shops, selling ten here, twenty there, our distribution was London Transport”.

Zion train were in the right place at the right time. “There was a culture, predominantly around the Shaka Soundsystem. They had previously played Jamaican roots and reggae, but there is a very specific UK steppers sound that Shaka played a lot, we used to call it the ‘monster mash sound’, with ridiculously heavy bass lines. Another key influence was The Disciples, they had their own sound system but they were very friendly with Shaka and he played a lot of their tunes. Alpha and Omega was another one, and Dub Judah. None of these people were putting out a lot of releases, they concentrated on the sound systems, but there were a few records getting out there that were absolute killers and Shaka was playing them”.

Zion Train, 'back in the day', Colin second from right

“So we were on a mission to get a record out, it was our ambition to be played by Shaka. We did ‘Power One’, then ‘Power Two’, which was the first record to have Molara on. Although the Power Two 12” was a 33rpm, Shaka loved playing it at 45rpm”.

Initially Zion train releases were put out on their own Zion Label, which was intended to be a dub label. “Because we weren’t strictly orthodox, in terms of a roots sound, what we tried to do was incorporate the disparate influences we had, so the first few releases were on Zion Records. Then we brought out two records at the same time, one was a single with Devon Russell, called ‘Jah Hold the Key’, that was a huge sound system hit. We also put out another single ‘Follow Like Wolves’ that was a mixture of house music and dub beats and everybody hated it, nobody understood it, so it fell between the cracks. We sold about 23 of them and we were left with boxes and boxes of them so we thought ‘what the fuck have we done here?’ But David Holmes in Dublin started playing it and it started getting played in Berlin and Amsterdam and all over Europe. All of a sudden it became popular, but it was months after we brought it out. So we had to decide if we stayed orthodox or tried to expand on what we were doing. I was madly into Acid House, so I was trying to mix things up. We couldn’t really release these new records on Zion, cos that was more a dub thing, so we came up with Universal Egg. Many cultures look at the egg as a starting place so we basically used that idea to say we were putting new things together”.

The whole thing started out as a DIY operation, but that could not last. “We loved the DIY approach, but we started doing things like a magazine called the Wobbler. Originally we just knocked out a thousand and gave them away for free but people loved it and expected us to keep doing it, so the last one we did was a run of seventeen thousand, which cost us a fortune. DIY was just killing us. We were running out of options, what ever we did would cost us money. So we signed with China in 1995, the label that put out the Levellers. We stayed DIY while we could, but the economy of scale meant when we got really popular we just could not manage, China are a subsidiary of Warners, so they had a reasonable budget. We still supported a lot of DIY stuff and we did some anti Criminal Justice Bill stuff”. Eventually Zion Train could afford to run their own label properly and went back to Universal Egg in 1999.

There he is look, hiding in the shadows while Molara does her thing out front (Ig Pic)

It was around this time that the band relocated to West Wales. “London was just horrible, it was like being under some kind of psychic attack. We were almost always in the studio together then one night when Molara was in there on her own these two guys broke in, it was a really traumatic and difficult experience for her. So we decided we wanted to go somewhere quieter and greener, as large a place as we could afford. And this was a place we could afford. I go back to London occasionally but I don’t like it. Since coming here we had a couple of children and it’s a much better place to bring them up.”

Stuck out on a limb you could be forgiven for thinking West Wales is a sleepy backwater. Nothing could be further from the truth. “The funny thing about here is that there are loads of people who have got a barn or a really big house. What happened is, loads of hippies moved here in the late sixties and early seventies. Many of them have really nice buildings, in remote areas; they could not afford to buy them now. It is the children of those hippies that have formed the scene that is here now, they have these remote places where they throw a party and a band will turn up and a culture has grown up where there is a party almost every weekend in an area of about forty square miles. You do get bands playing proper venues but a lot of the time they just play these parties.

Despite the happy vibes of West Wales, all was not well in the Zion train camp though. “Relationships deteriorated, but because were successful we stayed together. Eventually it deteriorated to the point where it just wasn’t tenable anymore. At that point Neil moved out and he took the name. There is acrimony and there is a difficulty in it, but Neil works incredibly hard and he does what he does. I would have preferred it if he had chosen another name, I would have preferred if Original Sounds of the Zion was closure. For me, the last two records we made were the best two records we made. Passage to Indica is this little bippy boppy album and I had this big dub album in my head but I did not have the means to make it. I never really intended to make minimal dub, I intended to make large, big dub, but I did not have the means or the skills to do it. By the time we get to Building Rome, for me it is the perfect Zion Train song. The process of trying to record the things I had in my head only got better and ended with Original Sounds of the Zion. Neil then carried on and made another record which to me does not sound like a Zion train album. I am quite happy that he gets on and does what he does, he works really hard and he deserves the credit that he gets, I just wish he used another name. I took the name Powersteppers, which was a side project of Zion Train, I just started again and I am very happy to have done that.”

Colin now gigs regularly with the Powersteppers. Sometimes the show is just him twiddling knobs, sometimes he is joined by Molara, and he is often joined by guest DJs and musicians. The whole thing is pretty organic. “While Zion train were around Powersteppers never gigged. We had a studio, so effectively the same three people, Dave Tench, Neil Perch and me, were three bands at the same time, Zion train, Powersteppers and the Tassilli Players. Zion Train was the commercial project with lots of dance stuff going on, Powersteppers was just rough arsed sound system music and the Tassilli Players was a much more dubby thing. It all came from the same three people. We would make tunes and decide which ones were Zion Train or Powersteppers or whatever. There were two Powersteppers albums and four Tassilli Players albums”.

Very tenuous link here. Pounding out heavy dub vibrations in dark corners makes photography of The Powerstepper a little diffiuclt. This photograph, which is a favourite of ours, is actually the Acid Mothers Temple at a gig promoted by Colin @ the Point in Cardiff (Ig Pic)

Colin keeps him self busy when not Powerstepping, he is manager of the up and coming local band OK, has done a lot of work with Tidy Like Records and Monkey Records (based around the club of the same name in Swansea). He promotes gigs across Wales and beyond, including introducing unsuspecting UK audiences to the awesome Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paradise UFO and putting on Wales first ever Dubstep night with Digital Mystikz. London’s loss is undoubtedly, West Wales gain.

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