Influences: Future Beat Alliance

I guess it’s the old cliche electro starting blocks! This record & sound is probably my earliest musical memory which stuck with me & had such an impact on me at the time. It still does today. To be honest, I’ve still got the cassette version which was mixed up with Planet Rock, Planet Patrol – “Play At Your Own Risk” & Jonzun Crew – “Pack Jam”. It was 11 years later in 1994 when i was digging back through my record collection & came across Africa Bambatta’s “Renegades of Funk” when me & old School friend Justin Winks (Void Records) noticed the small print on the Cover “Approved by” “Future Beat Alliance” That was the birth of FBA with my first release coming out on Void records.

This is a Documentary from 1987 about how American hip-hop culture was making it’s way over to the UK, with the main focus on a New York graffiti artist ‘Brim” coming to London & visiting all the subcultures in England & Wolverhampton! Also Showcasing the early graffiti talents of Goldie & 3D “Massive Attack” amazing video footage of 3D freestyling on the mic at early Wild Bunch warehouse parties, it was the one everyone was talking about on the playground the day after & a scene you just wanted to be apart of, I still have the VHS video recording, Amazing stuff!

Staying on on the 80’s hip-hop scene, this is such a beauty, produced & mixed by Todd Terry, I remember picking up the white label at “Red Records” on Beak Street, a time when the main guy behind the counter would be really intimidating but playing loads of crazy stuff to a packed shop & you had to put your hand up if you wanted a copy! God, i was so nervous but I did what it took to get hold of the tunes, scary stuff!

Moving into 1993 & being just old enough to live through & catch the back end of the Acid house explosion my musical taste buds had obviously changed at this point! The main Radio Dj who became my inspiration/obsession would be “Colin Dale” and his weekly radio show on “kiss FM” which was called “ The Abstract Dance” and more importantly the last hour of his show “The Outer Limits“. Incredible stuff & such an inspiration which drove me & many others to experiment & start contributing to this electronic scene , i could never find the records that he played which drove me mad & this was all pre-internet so you had to go on this big journey with your record list which was always written down wrong because of the bad radio reception of living in the countryside, probably my fondest time of discovering new music!

This is one of the obscure Industrial tracks which “Colin Dale” used to play on The Outer Limits show, such a killer hypnotic bass sequence, which gives you a small taste into the outer limits section of his show, I finally found this one on CD many years later when I discovered the world wide web!

So, finally there was a central London basement, meeting point shop which specialised in all things obscure, electronic, Detroit Techno Soul, dub , ambient , lock groove action, along with lots of other treats they used to bag up for me. I was still living in Oxford at the time & I would travel into London once a week to visit the shop to be greeted by Mr. Lee Grainge who would be sitting upstairs in the clothes shop hanging his head out the door smoking a fag. He would say “I’ll be down on a minute mate , I’ll sort you out . .” and he always did with fresh Drexciya records & loads of Detroit & UK electronica, amongst other obscure beauties , co-founders Dave Cawley & Alex Night continued with Fat cat (The record label) when the shop closed the doors in 1997, the Record label is still going strong with the same diverse vision today, fine memories & definitely my building blocks X

This still sounds like music from the future, absolutely mind-blowing piece of electronic music! I can’t say how much early Black Dog productions & Balil music had an influence on me when I was younger & I always go back to these moments just like the best scenes from certain films which have a similar impact for inspiration, timeless stuff… say no more!

I could go on forever with this kind of stuff, but I’ll finish with this one as a perfect example of what Techno /Electronic music means to me, raw stripped back elements & always maintaining the soul & emotional depth!