Happy New Year! Just a quick one to take a look back on 2015, say thanks to everyone who helped along the way and lift the lid on a couple of things for 2016.
Biggest achievement for the year was to release my second album ‘All Night’ for BBE Records. A big thanks to all the artists and labels who featured, in particular Bilal and Maylight. The Maylight album ‘Almighty’ will be out in early 2016 on BBE Records (details coming soon). Also featured was new material with Pugs Atomz from Chicago. We’re close to completing a full length album together – I hope to bring you some news on that soon.
Aside from the album I released remixes for Renegade Brass Band and The Impellers among others, and on the mixtape front I released the final 3 parts of the ‘Funky Drummers’ series and put out guest mixes for a bunch of folks including Bonafide Magazine, Wax Poetics and of course WhoSampled, among them half a dozen or so Mixcloud #1s. Thanks all who listened!
I was lucky to work on a number of great projects during the year, including releasing music from the Samplethon event via Boosey & Hawkes and hosting the second installment of the event which produced another great batch of music due for release this year via Bruton / Universal Music. I also interviewed a number of great people of the WhoSampled interview series from DJ Format to the Isley Brothers’ Ernie Isley.
There were gigs too of course at various cities and festivals around the UK and further afield from Glastonbury to Moscow.
Last but not least Nick Armitage and I completed another year of Funk & Soul recommendations for 22Tracks and Classic Material club nights at the world famous Jazz Cafe bringing some world class performers to the stage. Thanks all who listened / attended respectively.
Onwards and upwards for 2016.