Concrete Junglists goes back in the day, I mean, back in the day. We just missed the first wave, the crossover from hardcore to jungle, but we were out and about doing our thing from around ’96 ’97 onwards. Myself & High Contrast were begging decks, carrying sound systems down into basements, photocopying flyers at our parents work, taking over venues basements as we worked the bar, walking miles to wheat paste posters, DJ’ed the early and graveyard shifts, photographed events. We lived the hustle, cut our teeth, earned our stripes, repped the culture.
We come from Cardiff, Wales. Still to this day seen as a backwater, we live in a shadow of Bristol and the wrong end of the motorway to London. But we would travel every weekend we weren’t promoting or DJing; Fabric, The End, Herbal, Heaven, Bar Rhumba in London, Lakota, Trinity, Thekla, Blue Mountain, Black Swan in Bristol. Detonate in Nottingham. The Junction, Corn Exchange, The Fez Club in Cambridge. Brunel Rooms in Swindon. The Custard Factory, The Q Club, The medicine Bar, Birmingham. The Volks, Concorde in Brighton. The Arches in Sheffield. No sat Nav, Nokia 3310’s and the motorway, that was our school and what we learn’t we brought back home, to replicate, experiment with and create something our own.
We settled on our final form, a club night called Aperture. We reigned supreme in the early 2000’s and ran for a full decade, concentrating on the more headsy, forward thinking, experimental drum and bass. The bi-weekly showcased dj’s like Goldie, Noisia, Calibre, Alex Perez, Lenzman, Black Sun Empire, Marky, Patife, Fabio, Grooverider, Lynx, Icicle, D:Bridge, Marcus Intalex, Klute, Makoto, Randall, John B, Spectrasoul, Technimatic, Doc Scott, Break, Deeizm, Phace, Nu:tone, Logistics, London Elektricity, Danny Byrd, Seba, Commix, Flight, Subfocus, Cyantific, LTJ Bukem, Roni Size, Breakage, SPY, Fierce, Dillinja etc etc. But outsmarting the headline deejays every time was the locals whose calibre included; High Contrast, Rockwell, Dan Marshall, Quartz, XL, Don Leisure, Ransom, Kooley, Kallista, 23DJ, Specific, Gemuffle into the hundreds. We would pride ourselves in bringing new blood into every event. We went from 100 capacity rooms to 3000 cap halls.
Every week, designing flyer posters and every week we’d walk the loops of the city getting them up through any means necessary; wheat paste, blu-tac, drawing pins, sellotape, stickers we had every hall, venue, residence, avenue, phone box, lamp post covered. When Friday came the buzz would be worth it, no pre tickets, tiny guestlist, just a snaking queue going down the street with ravers hoping to get in, rain or shine. It would be a sweat box from early, curated local deejays ready to take the audience on a journey, crafted specifically for the headliner. It was a small sanctuary, a little Mecca, a place people could come every other week, let their hair down, be themselves, meet like-minded people and know the world was good.
I never learn’t design, in-fact I wasn’t allowed to do art in school as I wasn’t good enough. But lack of money and a need for flyers lead me to pick up a cracked copy of illustrator and give it a go. Slowly the artwork got better and more recognisable. The flyers, turned to album covers, turned to t-shirts, turned to full branded clothing. Other brands came calling Hospital Records, Ram Records, Metalheadz, Space Cadet, Viper, Incursion, Redbull & Stüssy. I created a side brand called DroneBoy (A little traffic cone with shelltoe shoes) as a character, who led me to open three different streetwear shops in Cardiff. I learn’t the trade, made mistakes, had a great time. Then my son came along and I knew I wanted to spend all my time with him so I closed them all down, but the jungle called again.
I took all the skills I learnt over the last decade and a half and carved out a new brand, Concrete Junglists. I designed it all, and still design it all from my kitchen table. I’ve watched my boy grow, taught him walking, riding, swimming, reading, football, drawing, skating all whilst teaching myself drawing, design and business. I’m nowhere near the best at any of the disciplines but I sit down at my kitchen table every day and try. The music, the culture, the people I fell in love with as a youth, I try to represent now, back then I knew I wasn’t cut from the cloth of a musician or deejay, I loved those arts to still be wrapped in mysticism and magic, but design and art I could pick up the bat and swing. And so this is Concrete Junglists, my love letter to the Inner City Bass Committee.
