Big shout for a crucial label

''Funnily enough, I didn't even consider that I would still be playing in clubs at my age,'' he says. Which is surprising. At only 36 years old, his career spinning records to the masses spans more than two decades. Starting out at the age of 15 broadcasting a pirate radio show from the shed outside his parents' house, his work encompasses an underground journey through ''acid jazz'', soul, hip-hop, drum'n'bass, house, and garage. Gilles Peterson's name is synonymous with the record label Talkin' Loud, club night That's How It Is, and Worldwide, the Radio 1 show transmitted from Japan to Nigeria, from Belgrade to New York.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Talkin' Loud, one of the most cutting-edge and progressive record labels in the country. The label, which produced 1997 Mercury Award-winner Roni Size and Reprazent, and 4 Hero and MJ Cole, nominated respectively in 1998 and 2000, has managed for the past 10 years to stay away from mainstream dance music while being a success. As Paul Martin, Peterson's co-partner at the label, says: ''The history of Talkin' Loud is the history of a kind of club culture that has not really been written about.''

The story has often been told of a scene that started in 1988 with the Second Summer of Love: raves, ecstasy, tie-dye T-shirts, and all. Yet at least half a decade earlier a musical trend galvanised around the sounds of ''rare groove'', which reintroduced seventies funk tracks to the original warehouse scene. Movers and shakers in addition to Peterson included now household names such as Pete Tong, Norman Jay, and Judge Jules. As Jules himself says: ''The rare groove scene was very much part of the growth of what became acid house. It involved the same people.''

One memorable night in 1987 while Gilles Peterson and Chris Bangs waited to play their regular set at a jazz club outside London, DJ Nicky Holloway who had been on a trip to Ibiza returned with a sound that was rumoured to be the next big thing. The acid house set which he played was completely different to anything they had heard before. ''Chris and I were looking at each other going: 'What are we going to do?''' Peterson remembers. ''This was a different vibe to what we were used to. So Chris took the mic and said: 'If that was acid house, this is acid jazz.''' They proceed to lay on an old school jazz track that sent the crowd wild with appreciation.

As Sheryl Garratt documents in her book Adventures in Wonderland - A Decade of Club Culture: ''Acid jazz started out as an April fool in iD magazine in 1988, in which a few friends from the jazz scene crowded together in the Wag club for a photo shoot of a spoof movement.''

''Acid jazz is bollocks,'' says Eddie Piller, who founded the eponymous label with Peterson in 1989. If anyone should know, he should. ''It's a record label, not a form of music.''

Record companies were keen to tap into this new and expanding music market. In 1990 Peterson was approached by Mercury Records to head an imprint label created to sign and develop artists coming out of club culture's alternative quarter. Reflecting stimuli such as the burgeoning UK jazz scene and Peterson's Sunday afternoon club at Dingwalls, it was based on a love of classic old labels and soul music.

Galliano, Incognito, and The Young Disciples - groups with a fresh take on quintessentially British funk - were the first three acts the label signed. The Disciples' debut album Road to Freedom made a huge impact in America, but at home the media categorised all three groups mistakenly as acid jazz acts.

Thus when the ''genre'' was no longer making headlines, the label appeared to be facing tough times. As Peterson says: ''It's very easy to be flavour of the month, and then jump ship. But there's too many people doing that. I believe in consistency. I believe in having difficult times. We stick at things. We have a responsibility.'' It was this responsibility, plus an ability to remain one step ahead of the zeitgeist, that enabled Talkin' Loud to reappear in the mid-nineties with a modern and relevant sound.

''If we could have had a music to go with acid jazz when we first came up with the idea, (drum'n'bass) would have been it. I loved the attitude, that it was really open, honest, and passionate about the music,' Peterson enthuses. He had featured drum'n'bass on his radio show and occasionally played in clubs in the days when it was still called ''jungle''.

Mixing in these circles, Peterson's attention was caught by Bristolian Roni Size. Roni Size and Reprazent went on to produce New Forms, one of the biggest-selling albums Talkin' Loud has released. Size puts his success and good working relationship with the pair down to the fact that ''they believe in you. Gilles and Paul never say: 'Yeah, we like it, but can you make it sound a bit more like Aqua?' They give you freedom. It's a happy home for me.''

Earlier this year Peterson won the Gold Sony Radio Award for his Radio 1 show and for the foreseeable future this is where he intends to invest most of his energy. But, not surprisingly, he has found managing all of his commitments to be hard work: ''At the moment I'm just taking a little more of a back seat. I think I actually function better that way. If you're too tired then it really affects your capability to do things well.'

So does this herald the end of Talkin' Loud records? Unlikely. This year their hottest new signing, MJ Cole, the godfather of UK garage, was nominated for a Mercury award, signifying that 10 years on Talkin' Loud's commitment to nurturing and developing new sounds continues to pay off.

As Peterson admits, the label's biggest challenge remains ''making the music business understand the quality of cutting edge music without having to rely on the press and radio telling them how wicked it is''. Their mission - of talking loud and saying something - is far from over and no-one knows that better than Gilles Peterson.