8 Tracks: Of Graffiti Meets Music With Luca Lozano

Sons Of The Subway is from the same people that brought you Bandulu, the ’90s UK Techno outfit that flirted with dubby textures and reggae vibrations. They released one album in 1997 on Infonet, a collection of jazzy breakbeats and radio sample cut ups. With names like ‘Da Tunnelz’ and ‘Down The Line’ it’s pretty easy to see the project was influenced a lot by Graffiti and the surrounding culture, judging from the sleeve and its photos of train panels I imagine most members of Bandulu were pretty active writers back in the day. This track is pretty minimal in its construction but I think its strength is in its simplicity and the great choice of samples.

Futuristic conceptual maniac genius graffiti writer Rammellzee and relative unknown rapper K-Rob feature on this track whilst Basqiuat supplies the sleeve artwork, making for graffiti-music holy grail. I bit the cover hard for my album of trip hop stuff back in 2013. The track is a really loose concoction of sloppy funk and crazy abstract rhymes, delivered with a nice organic flow. This heavily reverbed and echoed out anthem was also used in the 1983 graffiti documentary Style Wars, adding to its legendary status.

This track featured on the third episode in my Graffiti Tapes series, Osynlig Fetma is made up of my good pal Your Planet Is Next and Växer. The vocals describe the outlandish and ridiculous needs and demands of a fictional asshole artist, the mix of sinister growling synths and good humour make it one of my favourite tracks we released. I also used the track as the opening to my first Boiler Room set, where I played only music I had released previously on my labels.

I met the Sex Tags guys via graffiti here in Berlin, we visited some spots on the outskirts of town and spent some days doing pieces in the sun. After that came the idea to make a series of releases surrounding graffiti, each track being titled after a certain spray paint colour. Electric Blue was the name of a particularly good Turquoise from a brand called CarPlan, even writing the name now brings back many memories of being a teenager, racking cans of paint and travelling to awkward locations around the UK. The title Hands of Doom is taken from the famous whole car painted by Seen in New York back in the ’80s.

Lune TNS came from the album ‘Funcrusher Plus’, one of my all time favourites as a youngster, somehow I lost or gave away my copy which is incredibly sad and upsetting to me now as I refuse to pay the prices on Discogs for a new one. This track involved basically just naming a load of old NY writers, sometimes it doesn’t even rhyme and probably sounds strange to most people but I’m a man of simple tastes and it’s right up my street. Company Flow were part of the whole Rawkus/Independent Hip Hop movement in the early ’90s and are responsible for some of the most deranged and raw productions I have ever heard.

Like Basquiat, Futura 2000 was both a graffiti writer and a luminary of the New York underground club scene, often providing backdrop paintings for venues like the Mudd Club. Futura flirted a little with music, the collaboration with The Clash being his best know. I really prefer this weird dub version… mumbly raps, echo-y claps and funk guitars make for a perfect soundtrack to what I imagine was an incredible time in both music and art.

Joey Semz was a member of NYC’s infamous IRAK crew, the IRAK guys are as well known for their lifestyles as they were their graffiti. Stories of hard drinking, drugs, stealing and Saddam Hussein tattoos elevated their cult status to legendary. Sadly Semz died recently, but before he did he started to forge a career and identity through folk music, playing with an acoustic guitar he sang songs of sadness and tough times.

I’ve been buying and playing Richard’s music for a long time now, caning this track a few years back. When I discovered Richard was also ‘Coma’, one of London’s first and most prolific train writers I flipped out! I grew up in London and remember being so hyper-aware of the train and trackside graffiti… even at an age before I really knew what it was I knew I enjoyed looking at it. I’ve been hassling Richard to do something on Graffiti Tapes for a while now and would still love to have him part of the project. 😉