CHECK ON YOUR MATES
The launch of this blog probably couldn’t have gone better in my eyes. Over 1000 visitors from 32 different countries dropped by to check it out in the first 24 hours and some of the feedback from friends, peers, role models and random strangers was truly, truly humbling. Despite this fact, I was finding it hard to just enjoy the moment. Instead, the anxiety of keeping up momentum and the all too familiar imposter syndrome kicked in, I struggled to finish my Carnival posts, completely missing out the finale (which is still coming, just with the time and thought that it deserves). Tiredness kicked in, some bad news caught me off guard and before you know it I was heading on a downward spiral towards an all too familiar dark place.
Thankfully, I think I might have got off relatively lightly this time. Today I took a time out, cooked myself some good food and by early evening had enough energy to get myself to the park for a run. I’m very lucky but you never know what’s around the next corner. I’m fairly certain most of you will be able to relate, I don’t need to remind you of the extra stresses and strains people are under right now and this winter lockdown seems to have hit everyone hard at some point, at least judging by my social media.
Of course a lot of people won’t put their real feelings on display, hell I rarely do and I consider myself to be a relatively open and honest person. Which is why I wanted to post up this wonderful musical reminder to check on your friends and family now and then to say wassup. In fact, I’m about to do that right now.
If you don’t know this little bunch of legends I should probably give you a quick introduction.
I was first introduced to Gardna’s music back in 2012 when my mate Tom Swindell sent me this video he’d recorded. Since then he’s become one of Bristol’s most exciting artists, working with the likes of The Black Seeds, Mungo’s Hi-fi, Omar, Dreadsquad, DRS, Born On Road, Scratch Bandits Crew, Illbilly Hitec, The Nextmen and Gentleman’s Dub Club, speaking of which they have a killer new collaboration coming on Easy Star Records real soon. His positive vibes are infectious and he easily straddles the worlds of Hip-hop, Reggae and DNB. It’s not surprising that he’s a regular with us at Boomtown and he also performed as part of my AAA Badboy takeover at Glastonbury’s Shangri La a few years back.
Selecta J-Man is one of the Born On Road family, an absolute super group of underground DNB dons. Like the rest of his crew he has a penchant for mixing up solid Drum N Bass beats with a strong Reggae flavour, and has a killer set of dubplates. When he first sent me his Super Sharp Mixtape a couple of years back I literally played it non-stop for weeks. This track is perhaps a little different than usual but you can still feel all of the same influences in his production. Make sure you check out his forthcoming Born On Road release ‘Couple Guiness’ with Jamaican Dancehall favourite Suku from Ward 21.
Tom Spirals is a Reggae vocalist out of bonny Scotland, second only to Soom T perhaps from that neck of the woods. He’s the main host for Mungo’s Hi-Fi’s ‘Walk N Skank’ night but has played with a whole bunch of DJs, Producers and Sound Systems around the world. He also has his own well established band called Skayaman and always has a smile on his face whenever I bump into him at festivals.
Charli Brix is the only one out of the crew I’ve never actually met outside of emails and social media but I only ever hear positive things said about her and she has certainly been making a name for herself recently, making some killer tracks with the likes of Biometrix, Enei, QZB and DJ Marky.
All proceeds from this single go to Tonic Music For Mental Health so please do pick up a copy if you can!
