Shy Cookie on Three Decades of UK Garage and the Next Chapter of The House & Garage Orchestra

UK garage has always thrived on movement. Sounds mutate, generations change and underground ideas find their way into the mainstream before disappearing back beneath the surface and emerging somewhere else. However, the relationship between the music's history and its future is less complicated than it might appear for DJ and producer, Shy Cookie. "For me, respecting the past and pushing forward aren't opposing ideas," he says. "You need both."

It’s a philosophy that neatly encapsulates a career spanning more than three decades. Shy Cookie, producer, DJ and longtime collaborator of DJ Luck & MC Neat, was there as UK garage was finding its identity, helping create records including Troublesome, Poison and Burning. More recently, he has spent over a decade building The House & Garage Orchestra into a formidable live proposition, taking the music from its underground foundations to the Roundhouse, Palladium and major festival stages.

Now that journey is entering another phase. Shy Cookie and The House & Garage Orchestra release Take Care, featuring Grammy-nominated US soul and R&B vocalist Syleena Johnson. Crucially, rather than another reinterpretation of the music’s past, it represents the beginning of THGO’s own original catalogue.

“You have to acknowledge where the music came from and celebrate the artists, DJs, producers, clubs, promoters, record shops and distributors who built the foundations of the scene,” he says. “But I think honouring that history also means making sure the next generation gets their opportunity. There are some incredible young producers and artists coming through, and we have a responsibility to give them space, support their records and bring them into the scene rather than allowing UK Garage to become purely nostalgic.”

There was little consideration of legacy when Shy Cookie was first making his mark. Like many producers responsible for defining UK garage, he was creating the music while its rules were still being written. “I've always been very task-focused,” he explains. “Make the record, finish the mix, get onto the next thing. I've probably been guilty over the years of not stopping long enough to take in what was actually happening around me.”

Only with hindsight has its significance become clearer. “Looking back now, I can appreciate that some of the things I was doing were significant. Making what I believe was the first 2-step garage record with full Ragga vocals, producing my records without relying on samples and eventually helping build an orchestra dedicated to this music, there is a thread running through all of it. I've always been fascinated by creating something from a blank page. At the time, though, you're not sitting in a studio thinking about cultural impact. You're trying to make the best record you possibly can.”

The records he made during those formative years have endured, but Shy Cookie remembers something more immediate than historical significance. “What I remember most is the energy,” he says. “We were young, experimenting and making music instinctively. There wasn't a blueprint telling us what UK Garage was supposed to sound like because the sound itself was still evolving. Those sessions had a real vibe to them and I think somehow that got captured in the recordings. When people still react to those records today, I think they're responding to that feeling as much as the production itself. We managed to catch a bit of lightning in a bottle.”

Despite being central to that process, Shy Cookie was rarely concerned with becoming its public face. At just 17, making music already carried responsibilities beyond artistic ambition. “I came from a household where money was tight and at 17 I found myself in the studio making beats for Luck & Neat,” he recalls. “Suddenly something I loved doing could also help me contribute at home, so I took the work very seriously. While other people were becoming the faces of records, I was very comfortable being the person behind them. Looking back, that probably shaped my whole career. I've never really chased the spotlight. I've chased the next piece of work.”

His relationship with DJ Luck & MC Neat became one of the defining creative partnerships of his career. “Luck and I had a great chemistry in the studio and we still do,” he says. “What those sessions reinforced for me was the importance of chemistry. When you're working with people who understand each other's instincts, ideas move quickly and you create things none of you would necessarily have arrived at alone. Luck brought his own musical instincts, Neat brought his energy and personality, and I brought what I did as a producer. That combination just worked. And when it works, you don't overthink it. You keep making records.”

More than two decades later, Shy Cookie remains energised by UK garage, particularly the producers taking it somewhere new. A spell broadcasting on Flex FM playing only new house and garage reignited his passion for discovering contemporary UKG and reinforced his belief that greater connection is needed between generations. “It doesn't have to be old school or new school,” he argues. “Why can't a flyer have established DJs, MCs and artists alongside the best of the new generation? Why can't the classics sit next to brilliant original records being made today? The people who built this scene should absolutely be celebrated, but the healthiest version of UK Garage is one that keeps creating new stories. I'd like to play whatever is good, whether it was made in 1998 or last Tuesday.”

Perhaps nothing demonstrates Shy Cookie’s willingness to reconsider what garage can be more dramatically than The House & Garage Orchestra. What eventually became a 15-piece live experience began as part of a proposal developed for his Master’s degree, incorporating the live project, his productions and a record label. After months developing the idea, he decided to make it happen. “We jumped in feet first,” he says. “We built a small studio and brought in some of my teaching colleagues and musicians for those first shows. What started as a rhythm section gradually grew into the full orchestra you see today.”

There was no established template. “Every stage brought something we'd never done before, producing an orchestral album, touring, marketing shows, building teams, developing the production, so we learned what we needed to learn and kept moving. We didn't start with a huge pot of funding or an established infrastructure behind us. We built with what we had, reinvested, learned and expanded. In some ways, I think that's become part of THGO's DNA.”

The project grew from its first show at Queen of Hoxton to sold-out national tours and major venues, while 2018 album Garage Classics demonstrated how differently familiar UKG records could be experienced through THGO’s orchestral framework. “We never approached it as simply putting classical instruments over Garage records,” Shy Cookie stresses. “That wasn't interesting enough to us. The rhythm still has to feel right. The bass has to feel right. The energy has to feel right. You're dealing with records people know intimately, so you have to respect what made them special while finding something new inside them.”

The orchestra also provided Shy Cookie with a much broader musical vocabulary. “I listen deeply to Motown, Soul, Funk, Reggae, Rock and lots of other music, so those influences inevitably find their way into how I arrange and produce,” he says. “The orchestra gives us another musical language to work with. After eleven years, I don't feel like we've reached the limit of what it can be.”

Having spent more than a decade bringing the history of house and garage to life, THGO is now preparing to create some history of its own. Shy Cookie insists the arrival of original material isn’t a reinvention. “Strangely enough, this isn't actually a change of direction,” he explains. “It's a return to the original vision. When the whole THGO concept was first developed, original music, the live project and the label were all supposed to exist together. The success of performing the classics took us on an incredible journey and gave THGO its own identity, but original music was always somewhere in the plan.”

“Now we've built the audience, developed the orchestra and learned an enormous amount over the last eleven years, it feels like the right moment to complete that circle. We're incredibly proud of the history of UK Garage. But THGO can't only be about looking backwards. The next chapter has to contribute something new.”

That next chapter begins with Take Care. Produced by Shy Cookie, the record connects THGO with Gemma Fox and Syleena Johnson. “Gemma Fox deserves the credit for making that connection happen,” he says. “I'd produced the backing track, Gemma wrote the song to it and recorded the guide vocal. She then reached out to Syleena's team with the demo. Syleena heard it, loved the record, and things moved from there. There's strength, soul and vulnerability in her voice, and that's exactly what the song needed. She's got one of those voices where you immediately know there's a real person and a real story behind it.”

Yet Shy Cookie wasn’t interested in manufacturing a deliberately retro garage record. “I didn't consciously sit down and say, ‘I'm going to make something that sounds like UK Garage,’” he explains. “After making this music for so long, some of that DNA is naturally part of the way I hear rhythm. I still start from a completely blank slate. Usually I'll build the hi-hat and percussion patterns first and let the groove start telling me where the record wants to go.”

What has changed is the scale of the palette around him, combining decades of underground production experience with everything learned from THGO, live musicians, writers, vocalists and a lifetime of musical influences. “I'm not particularly interested in trying to recreate 1999,” he says. “I'm interested in taking everything that period taught me and asking: What can we make now?”

It’s a question that will increasingly define The House & Garage Orchestra as more original releases arrive and the project prepares for its biggest headline tour yet in 2027. “We've got a new THGO show, a major headline tour ahead of us and, importantly, we're releasing original music,” Shy Cookie says. “For me personally, that means I can stand on stage with this orchestra we've spent eleven years building, play music we've created ourselves, and then later be behind the decks playing everything from the records that built the scene to brilliant new music being made right now.”

It brings his story back to the impulse that has driven him from those early studio sessions to THGO today: an enduring desire to create, discover and keep the music moving. “We've spent a lot of years celebrating where this music came from,” he says. “Now we get to help decide where it goes next.”

The House & Garage Orchestra – Take Care featuring Syleena Johnson is out now. Grab it on Beatport HERE.

Read the full in-depth interview with Shy Cookie on The Night Bazaar website HERE.