Terror Danjah

Rodney Joseph Pryce (17 August 1979 – 10 February 2025), better known by his stage name Terror Danjah, was an English record producer, DJ, songwriter and label manager from Forest Gate, London. As the co-founder of the grime record label and musical collective Aftershock, he hosted BBC Radio 1Xtra's UKG M1X Show on a fortnightly basis between 2004 and 2006 alongside the likes of Scratcha DVA and Bruza, and was an early mentor to Tinie Tempah and Mz. Bratt. Over the course of his career he produced songs of various genres including grime, jungle and hip-hop, and collaborated with many charting artists including Wiley, Chip, Kano and Kelela. As he was among the first grime producers to work with a multitude of singers, many cultural commentators consider him a pioneer of the rhythm and grime style. Pryce was born to Jamaican parents. He started DJing around the age of eleven, and attended St Bonaventure's secondary school in Forest Gate alongside fellow Nasty Crew members including D Double E. He attended the same sixth form college as Bruza in 1996 and went on to study a course in sound engineering. Pryce was raised on soca, ska, reggae, rare groove, R&B, soul and early deep house, and developed a taste for hip-hop, dancehall and jungle music as he got older, citing Buju Banton, Timbaland, Roni Size and sound system culture among the formative influences on his own sound. Specific sounds and pirate radio stations that "heavily influenced" him included Saxon, Coxsone Sound, Station FM, Ragga FM, and Kool FM. In drum and bass, his inspirations included the productions of Dillinja, Shy FX and Krust. His producer tag was a distorted sound effect known as the "gremlin" laugh, taken from a drum and bass sample CD, which later became the namesake of his 2009 compilation album Gremlinz. He produced music using various digital audio workstations over the course of his career including Cubase, Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Multiple music journalists have commended Pryce's spatial arrangements in his music; he credited his intuition in "layering sounds and placing sounds" to being a close listener of Roni Size and Andy C. Reviewing his 2004 EP Industry Standard for The Wire, Simon Reynolds also observed Pryce's use of "intricate syncopation [and] texturised beats" combined with an "atmosphere of domineering darkness." For Rip It Up, Martyn Pepperell noted how in Pryce's 2010 debut album Undeniable, "crunchy eight-bit noises orbit around G-funk referencing melodies, incidental sounds fade in and out of existence, and a rare balance between experimentalism and accessibility is achieved." Writing for the Guardian in 2012, Sam Richards described Pryce's sound as "plush post-grime". In the same vein, The Quietus writer Rory Gibb contrasted Pryce's style with "the relatively simple, blocky construction of many grime instrumentals", praising how his "beats are slippery and difficult to predict, each drum hit splintering outwards into a series of secondary fragments" and "melodies [...] arise from the interactions of many much smaller slivers of synth." He also noted Pryce's fusion of jungle's "penchant for perpetual motion" with "the slinky melodies and pop nous of late 90s/early 00s R&B". Pitchfork writer Jazz Monroe summarised his sound as "tactile beats and cartoonish, neon-lined flourishes", and Resident Advisor editor Andrew Ryce similarly noted his music's "taut balance between cartoonish and violent", while Hyperdub founder Kode9 remembered him as a "a musical trickster", whose songs were "always twisting and turning, wriggling around, setting little decoys, only to switch direction while leaving a little trap door open for you to fall through". Music editors at The Guardian described Pryce in an obituary as "much admired for his lush, playful and propulsive style of production". In his youth, Pryce would DJ at house parties and youth clubs, where he would participate in impromptu sound clashes against other DJs. He initially played ragga music, and began listening to jungle in late 1992; by the mid-1990s, he was performing as a member of the crew Bass Inject alongside D Double E (then known as DJ Dan) and DJ Tempo. Their early pirate radio appearances, starting in 1996, included stints on Raw FM (later known as Raw Mission) and Future FM. Pryce began producing his own instrumentals because he wanted to be able to play unreleased drum and bass songs in his sets and was unable to procure many dubplates from well-known artists. Early champions of his music included DJ Zinc and, according to Sian Anderson, his earliest known song was an untitled jungle collaboration with Prizna in 1997. In 1998, he formed the group Reckless Crew, joined by D Double E, Bruza (then known as Chigga D), Hitman Hyper, Funsta, Triple Threat (then known as MC Lethal), DJ Interlude, and Mayhem. The crew later secured a residency on Rinse FM, which aided them in attracting nightclub bookings. He began playing at One Nation events around 1999, and considered playing a set alongside Skibadee and Shabba D to be a defining moment in his early career. During the rise of UK garage in the British mainstream at the turn of the millennium, Pryce did not consider himself a fan of the genre, but was convinced by a musical friend called Looney to try producing garage on the side due to a perceived decline in jungle's popularity. These efforts immediately proved more fruitful than his drum and bass songs: in 2001, he remixed his own song "We Told U" into a garage track and pitched it to Dreem Teem's record label in hopes of a record deal. Timmi Magic chose not to sign the song, but it was nonetheless played "for twelve weeks straight" on the group's daytime BBC Radio 1 show. The first two garage songs he ever produced were both played by Rinse FM co-founder DJ Slimzee, and the third, 2002's "Highly Flammable", was signed to Teebone's label Solid City, associated with the output of prominent crew Pay As U Go. This inspired the formation of a short-lived garage crew also named Highly Flammable. Pryce was simultaneously invited into pioneering local collective Nasty Crew, and released the instrumental single "We Are the Worst" via East Iz East in 2002, credited to both crews. While frequenting cutting plant Music House to press his records to vinyl, Pryce was mentored by Paul Chue, a staff member, roots reggae producer, and the father of Wookie. Chue advised Pryce to team up with aspiring music businessman and East Iz East label executive Flash to advance their careers together, due to their mutual interest in a sound branching off from garage which would later become known as grime. The pair established Aftershock Records in late 2002, which initially served solely as a record label and primary released music via the medium of vinyl. The first release was "We Told U" in 2002, with a limited run of 100 white label records. Pryce executive produced some of the label's first records, successfully convincing MCs to vocal instrumentals produced by childhood friends like D.O.K. He also headed up the label's PR. Pryce produced Nasty Crew's September 2003 single "Cock Back", released via Aftershock, which saw Hitman Hyper and D Double E joined by guests Crazy Titch and Riko Dan. Created in January 2003, the instrumental sampled the Jamaican cult classic film Shottas. The vocal version was picked as the 'Power Play' on Deja Vu FM and topped the sales chart at specialist London record store Rhythm Division; Pryce has claimed it sold around 10,000 copies in total. Other underground hits he produced around this time included Bruza's "Bruzin" (featuring Footsie, Triple Threat and Shizzle) and various pioneering songs within the rhythm and grime style, including Sadie Ama's "So Sure" (featuring Kano), his remix of Shaznay Lewis's "You" alongside Scratcha DVA and Klashnekoff, and his own single "Love Is Here to Stay" (featuring Katie Pearl and Kano), which was remixed by Skepta. Pryce also doubled up as a songwriter,