Influences: Cedric Maison

I grew up on a rather large estate in Oxford called Blackbird Leys (so did Q Project/ Total Science if you’re interested to know!?). My mate Aaron’s uncle was a DJ in a soundsystem called ‘Street Level’ and they used to play most weekends at the local pub and would play a mixture of UK soul, Hip Hop, UK rave and house music, obviously I was too young to go into pubs, but my Dad worked behind the bar here so I was allowed in. I was fascinated by the big speakers and ‘bass’. This tune made a huge musical imprint on me, I remember my mum’s friend Anna used to have this blasting out of her front room endlessly whilst me and my mates were out on the road playing curby!!

Huge cliché I know, but it probably is my favourite track of all time due to the memories and feelings it evokes, the mix of classical music…those strings and piano with Hip Hop beats sound as fresh still now, as they did back then. I have very fond memories of hearing this being blasted out of cars, ghetto blasters and peoples houses during that summer, and this was back when we had proper summers here in the UK. Hosepipe ban vibes!

Evenson Allen and Lipmaster Mark aka Ratpack changd my life! 12 yr old me’s mind was totally blown after being handed a tape of this from my Dad!! it gave me an understanding of how much fun I was missing out on! if only I was was 5/6 yrs older I used to always think! tracks like 2 Bad Mice ‘Bombscare’, DJ Rap’s ‘Divine Rhythm’, Elevation ‘Can You Feel It’, Awesome 3 ‘Don’t Go’ and Felix ‘Don’t You Want Me’, Bodysnatch’s ‘Euphony’ (Just 4 U London) are still straight up percy’s! it sent me off in a completely different direction as I was listening to that UK soul stuff like Massive, Smith & Mighty and Soul II Soul as well as cool Hip Hop like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice at the time(!!) so you could say it saved me? all future paper round money was then spent on Fantazia, Dreamscape, Universe and Helter Skelter tape packs as a consequence!! I still get goosebumps listening to this now, even the overpowering MC style of Evenson Allen doesn’t put me off! Straight up, full on ‘E’ music that doesn’t take itself very seriously, and I love the fact they played about 3 last tunes…”one more!? oh yeah you got loads more..”

I remember watching this on MTV at my nans house (cos she had cable!), and being instantly blown way by it. Those oooh-ohoo-ah-ah-ha-yeah’s just rang round and round my head. It’s an obvious stone cold classic but still sounds as delightful now as it did back then, I recently purchased a copy of the Optimo remix of the Jeremy Deller steel band version which is equally as brilliant.

Those opening chords get me every time. THE perfect record!

Another CD purchase from Woolworths! I remember it having so many versions on the CD. This is not a peak time rave record at all, but again evokes big memories for me. That bassline and piano lead…with the female vocal..still gives me the chills.

Sheffield Bleep anthem. From the golden era of Warp Records. Still gets rinsed out in my sets to this day. Not much more I can say on this, so i’ve taken these from the best of the Youtube comments
– ‘Dark as a miners arse’
– ‘I once saw a cigarette spontaneously light from the back room pressure of an LFO gig’ !!!

I picked up my copy of this in 1999 from Massive Records in Oxford, so was a bit late to the party on it. But it was an important record that connected everything that I was listening to at the time, to where my tastes were heading. This album totally stands the test of time, tracks like Xtal and Heliosphan still blow me away, and opened up the door to an ongoing Aphex obsession.

UK hardcore became Jungle, Jungle became Drum ‘n’ Bass and there were crossover records like Goldie’s ‘Inner City Life’ that infiltrated the national charts, but this for me was the record that really stood out. I wasn’t a DJ at this point and CDs were the new cool format, I remember buying this in Woolworths!

First time I did a ‘Gary Ablett’ was in 1998. I went to a party at a riverside pub just outside of Oxford called Splash (which I later went on to help promote…well I was their skivvy to be fair!). Local DJ Tony ‘Naked’ Nanton was playing in the 2nd room and as I entered this was playing. I didn’t really pay much attention to disco at the time as I was too absorbed in UK dance music, so it’s fair to say that this set me off on a whole new path of discovery years later when I went back to find this record, and realised disco wasn’t a dirty word.