Jumping Jack Frost — Nigel Thompson — came into DJ culture through Brixton sound systems before rave existed. Growing up around soul, funk, reggae and early hip hop, he paid his dues with the local Frontline sound first as a box boy and later on the mic. Then came one of those stories too strange to invent: while briefly working in removals he was given roughly 3,000 unwanted records. He already knew the music; now he had the raw material. In 1987, Jumpin Jack Frost the DJ came into existence, just in time for acid house and rave to blow the doors off British club culture.

Before V, Frost was already embedded in the rave circuit. Alongside Fabio, Grooverider and Bryan Gee he became one of the founding residents of the Carwash raves, then joined the Dynamix agency as the bookings expanded beyond Britain. That route matters because V did not begin as a label dreamed up away from the dancefloor; it grew from DJs already testing records in front of ravers.

A defining partnership was formed with Bryan Gee. In 1993 they established V Recordings, creating a label that became closely associated with jungle and drum & bass. The following year they launched the rawer sister imprint Philly Blunt, and its first release was Frost’s Leviticus — Burial. That distinction matters: V and Philly Blunt were connected parts of the same operation, but Burial belongs to Philly Blunt’s 1994 launch rather than being a 1993 V release. Rather than operating only as homes for their own material, the labels became platforms for producers whose records were reshaping the dancefloor.

The Bristol connection became particularly important. Through artists including Roni Size and Krust, V helped create a working bridge between Bristol’s emerging jungle sound and London’s clubs, record shops and raves. That relationship fed into a broader family of labels and artists and helped ensure that drum & bass developed through several regional scenes rather than a single London narrative.

Frost remained a working rave DJ throughout that development. The Rave Archive’s own 1998 recording with Stevie Hyper D at Desire/Rezerection in Bagleys catches the music in its MC-led late-1990s form. The surviving Helter Skelter recording from November 1994 reaches back into jungle’s explosive mid-decade phase, while the later fabric promo mix demonstrates the continuity of Frost’s DJ identity beyond the original tape-pack era.

His historical role therefore sits at the intersection of DJing and infrastructure. The rave bookings matter, but so does the machinery behind them: finding artists, releasing records and building a label through which new jungle and drum & bass could circulate. V Recordings became one of the durable institutions created by that process.