That’s My Boy! was a trilogy of tapes I made when I lived in a house share in East Dulwich that were given out to friends and neighbours at the time around 30 years ago as my DJ career was just starting with Coldcut and Ninja Tune. There were three volumes of which this is the second and I was showcasing the tracks of the day whilst trying to find my style as the times shifted out of the ambient scene I had been playing in for the last few years. The first strands of what would become known as trip hop were mutating out of the hip hop, indie dance and acid jazz scenes and it was a fertile time for electronic music with Warp leading the pack with their Artificial Intelligence series. You can still hear the tendrils of the German kosmischer scene overlaid in places as well as the collaged soundscapes of the Orb and others of their ilk but this volume definitely ups the funk factor with cuts from the Beastie Boys’ then current Ill Communication album, the Ballistic Brothers vs the Eccentric Afros EPs and early Mo Wax and Ninja Tune releases.

I can still remember the excitement of these times, the rush to find the early MoWax 12″s, the Beasties playing in London and doing the instore at Rough Trade in Covent Garden. Ninja signing new artists like The Herbaliser and doing my first artwork for them including redesigning the logo and 9 Lazy 9’s second album cover. Warp and R&S putting out great records every month and doing Telepathic Fish parties around London and even abroad in Amsterdam with Matt Black, Mixmaster Morris and electronic acts of the day like Autechre, Higher Intelligence Agency and Pentatonik. Working at Ambient Soho at the weekends with Rockit and helping out with the graphic design on my first Apple Mac (shared with David Vallade), an LC475. First DJ gigs around the UK with Coldcut, seeing new cities for the first time like Bristol, Leeds and Manchester. Clubs like Megatripolis on a Thursday and squat parties like Tribal Energy at the weekends plus festivals in parks around London. In my mind it’s always sunny although that’s technically impossible in the UK. There was definitely something in the air, the music was shifting and my hip hop knowledge from my first 80s forays into DJing was informing my tastes. Despite the late 80s tip into gangsterism which had soured some of the genre for me, I was still listening to hip hop via Max & Dave’s show on KISS FM alongside Coldcut, Colin Dale and Colin Faver’s more electronic-based shows and finding more interesting material coming out of the west coast.

This mix was probably done live on three decks and a basic CD player – the two Technics were used to mix beats and another old Panasonic belt drive deck for adding ambience with the CD reserved for more ambience of the occasional spoken word segment. The 4-channel mixer had a basic at best ‘echo’ function but this is mostly kept at bay as it was awful. You’ll hear bits of Sheila Chandra, Orbital, The Woodentops, Pulsation, Blue Pearl and more over these tracks as I was always layering and keeping to the chilled end of the beats. This was also the first time I’d used a Ken Nordine track, having been turned on to him by Mixmaster Morris the year before and then hunted down the Rhino Records compilation of Word Jazz they’d issued. There’s not too much you could call dance floor here, more of a head nodder for the smokers, something that would change on vol. 3 I seem to recall.

Side B Track list:
Beastie Boys – Shambala
Ballistic Brothers vs the Eccentric Afros – Save The Children
Beastie Boys – Bodhisattva Vow
DJ Toolz – Rusty Goes Ga Ga
DJ Toolz – Readybrek
La Funk Mob – La Doctoresse
R.P.M. – 2000
Ballistic Brothers vs the Eccentric Afros – Anti-Gun Movement
Paul Weller – Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)
DJ Toolz – Electric Junk
The Radha Krona Temple – Baja Hure Mana
Beastie Boys – Transitions