Three middle-aged men - two clearly balding, one with cap on head - take to the stage at Hackney’s swanky (and slightly wanky) Studio 9294. The crowd, featuring a mix of finger-on-the-pulse 6 Music dads and younger, trendy London folk make an excitable cheer. The lights remain low as the men on stage position themselves behind one long, elongated stand. It's not entirely clear whether they all have decks, or whether any synthesisers or drum machines are present. Or any other mysterious musical machinery, for that matter.

After a brief delay, a jittery acid house beat begins, still finding its place in the live mix for a few bars. Another man stands at the side of the stage, face painted white with black eye make-up, clad in a vest emblazoned with a slightly incriminating German eagle, and leather hot pants. As the groove gradually sets in, this man slowly and meticulously moves to the centre stage, and begins singing a shrill falsetto refrain into the microphone. 

The men providing the beats are Trashmouth Records brothers Liam and Luke May (formerly acid house duo Medicine 8) and Paranoid London/Warmdsucher’s Quinn Whalley. The man at the microphone is Fat White Family and Moonlandingz frontman Lias Saoudi. Collectively they are Decius, a project best described as a bastard techno love-child of their respective members, creating sleazy and hypnotic electronic music. Saoudi provides vocals that bear familiarity to his other projects - wailed, shrieking falsetto and paranoid whispers, which are at their most captivating and transfixing when performed live.

Releasing music sporadically since 2013’s Come to Me Villa, Decius finally released their debut album Decius Vol. I in November, a heady concoction of acid house, heavier techno and warped disco. The release pays notable homage to the early house music of the gay clubs of 1980s Chicago and New York, from the likes of Lil Louis and Frankie Knuckles. The album highlight Show Me No Tears (featuring Maggie The Cat) channels the libidinal and unashamedly queer sound of this era - the genre in its most sensual and danceable. 

This also comes through on the aesthetic level, as is evident in the rhythmically charged music video below. It’s plainly a long way from the UK’s contemporary mainstream techno scene, where the likes of Bicep, Overmono and Fred Again dominate big stages with noticeably asexual crowd-pleasers. Decius provide a more stylised, unsettling alternative, one which feels infinitely less sterile.  

And so, with the obligatory background-info and uncalled-for-hot-take-on-the-current-scene complete, back to Studio 9294. The jittery beat and shrill refrain begins to transform into album opener Ain’t No Church, and the crowd begins to move, to warm up, a collective energy building among it. Even some of the 6 Music dads start to get in the groove, spurred on by an increasingly animated Saoudi, although some remain in the odd pocket of rigid resistance. Maybe they’re more of your Steve Lamacq IPA flavour.

This opener is followed by Look Like a Man and I Get Ov, as a tangibly more debauched show gets underway. Whistles and whoops come from the crowd as the Fat Whites frontman engages in some trademark shamanistic theatricality. The falsetto Look Like a Man refrain (“I may look like a man, I may walk like a man, I may talk like a man, oh but I’m not a man”) establishes an essential sexual ambiguity to the character Saoudi presents on stage: a confused contradiction in hot pants that is at once sexual and sexless, potent and pathetic, dominant of and submissive to its audience, a quivering techno gimp you might find getting loose in Berlin’s KitKat. It’s a compelling spectacle that accompanies the musical backdrop perfectly, as the dark, unrelenting synths and drum machines come into full motion, echoing the rolling, industrial sound of the German capital.

Though the transitions between the instrumentals prove a little stuttering (the group's live show is in its relatively early stages), this doesn’t halt the cumulative energy of a show that has less to do with precision and perfect execution as it does energy and atmosphere. Macbeth, Masculine Encounter II and the above mentioned Come To Me Villa work to galvanise the audience, save for the odd look of bewilderment at the more eccentric on-stage antics. Particular highlights are the album’s closing two tracks, the hypnotic and unnerving U Instead Of Thought, and healthy slice of sleazy Euro-disco Roberto’s Tumescence, the latter sounding like Giorgio Moroder’s sordid sauna fever dream with a kind of parallel-universe, sexually deviant Daft Punk, their stupid helmets the only thing kept on in the sweaty mélange. “Each of us must twist”...

In a set that feels like it could have gone on for far longer, Decius close with Show Me No Tears, joined on stage by Maggie the Cat, the fellow Trashmouth Records artist who features on this track as the dominatrix in the dynamic. It’s a pulsating, writhing acid house gem that sees Saoudi and the guest vocalist in a brilliantly wayward duet, like if Shane McGown and Kirsty MacColl had spent that year’s Boxing Day in New York’s seediest nightclub, full of turkey, amphetamines and poppers. Serving as a fitting conclusion to proceedings, the crowd at Studio 9294 are left wide-eyed and cheering at the energising and uncanny spectacle of Decius. With their next gig at London’s Village Underground on 9th June, I’d recommend anyone with adequate curiosity to go and check them out. With this in mind, as the group themselves often warn: “Bring a towel…” 

Decius Vol. I is on Spotify: Decius Vol. I

Photos kindly provided by Spela Cedilnik.

Some recommendations and referenced tracks:  

Pete Rock lived up to his legendary status and sent punters home warm and full of nostalgia, following a glorious night at The Blues Kitchen. 

I arrived to The Blues Kitchen in a battered North Face raincoat rather than a vintage Avirex, but the venue’s smoky aesthetic and neon gleam made it feel like Manchester’s answer to New York’s Latin Quarter. Discovering Joey Bada$$ and A$AP Rocky as a thirteen-year-old inspired an interest in East Coast hip-hop that would come to dominate the soundtrack of my adolescence. Working backwards, I became acquainted with the ‘Golden Age’ of early 90s hip-hop and proceeded, as so many others have, to trawl the internet, buy t-shirts and blast Mobb Deep, the Pharcyde and Q-Tip at every occasion. Despite the arctic conditions on the night, the venue was fit for a true hip-hop icon, and I was ready. 

Rock rose to fame in duo with CL Smooth, before embarking on an outstanding solo career, both as an MC and a producer. His talent as a producer, particularly in his choice and style of sampling, has rightfully placed him alongside J Dilla and DJ Premier. Rock is a true hip-hop pioneer, having produced for royalty such as Big L and Jay Z as well as a more contemporary elite in Kendrick Lamar and the Griselda Collective, a testament to his ability to evolve with the times.

The New York giant has sampled a myriad of genres, but his appreciation for the likes of James Brown, Curtis Mayfield and Dorothy Ashby reveals his ethos and that of ‘Golden Age’ hip-hop itself. Rock’s sampling of the soul and jazz records that he grew up listening to characterises his music. He is well aware of this inheritance and the debt he owes to his forebears. Rock said as much in a recent interview with VICE: “Everyone learns from somebody, you know? I’ve been inspired by other folks to do what I do, but it started with soul singers and jazz musicians…and then hip-hop came along, and we were able to show our respect and love by sampling”. 

For Rock, sampling not only pays homage to musical antecedents, but can resurrect them too. In an interview with Tracklib, Rock hailed the process of “reinvigorating an artist that I was sampling from…giving that same artist we're sampling from new life, because one day somebody is going to do it to our music”. The Blues Kitchen provided a perfect opportunity for Rock to champion his epoch of rap music and the generation he drew so much from. 

Stepping through the hefty brass doors into the noise and bustle, I scanned the room. Nina Simone and Ray Charles prints as well as other sporadic tributes to blues, soul and funk dotted the walls. The audience was relatively mixed but all were discernibly eager to experience a snapshot of hip-hop folklore. My pain at paying £6.20 for an Asahi disappeared when Rock strolled on stage wearing his signature aviators, bellowing “Pete Rrrockkk!!”, which would become something of a call-and-response through the night.

For the next hour Rock fired out classic after classic. He played an extended edit of Shook Ones, Part II, fading in Quincy Jones’ iconic piano loop to elated cheers. Every look over my shoulder found a screw-faced crowd, swaying in unison. If the energy threatened to settle, Rock would spark proceedings back to life with tireless scratching and ad-libbing. Though he kept to the decks, Rock’s infectious energy galvanised the Manchester faithful into bouncing, rapping, and chanting at every opportunity. Once an MC, always an MC. 

Rock turned from spinning classics on the decks to welcoming Amxxr, a rapper on Rock’s label Tru Soul, onstage. The two gave a quintessential MC-DJ performance. The fellow New Yorker had an orthodox spoken word flow, with which he meticulously delivered punchlines and metaphors over Rock’s colourful production. Amxxr flexed his cadence, rapping a song entirely a capella, and later Rock would sharply cut the track on each final syllable, triggering a head-bop in the crowd. The introduction of a rapper onstage upped the old-school energy, building on the nostalgia at the evening’s heart.

As I weaved back from the bar carefully shielding my second pint, Rock kicked off the last leg with a medley of 70s and 80s numbers. A selection of classics from Rick James to LL Cool J to Shuggie Otis sealed the feel-good factor created throughout the evening and Rock, hardly able to contain his own joy, couldn’t resist but geek-out to his DJing. Rock screamed “Wait for the drums on this one!” as he teased Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight’. He then declared “y’all ain’t ready!”, and we could certainly feel what was coming.

I left feeling that the night had been a real success. Rock’s exuberance in tandem with the joyous records which he spun made for a lively evening, which celebrated the aspects of hip-hop that the crowd had come to The Blues Kitchen to see. Rock’s set had been a feast of samples, scratching and 16-bars. Not to mention calls-and-response and, when the moment called for it, resounding cries of ‘F*** the Police!’, with a hint of irony, naturally.

Hearing hip-hop instrumentals through a sound system felt a treat, given that Q-Tip, Madlib and, of course, ‘Pete Rrrockkk’ don’t usually boom through club speakers in the Northern Quarter. Jeru the Damaja and Mighty Souls of Mischief are due to play at The Blues Kitchen in February and March. As a millennium baby who came to love 90s Hip-Hop as a teenager, I now feel a vicarious nostalgia for these greats. If Pete Rock in Manchester or, as the legend himself put it, “Pete Rrrockkk in Man-chest-errr!’ was anything to go by, then I’m in for a fun few months. Hip-hop’s not just a Grown Man Sport.

Further Reading and Media

*Pete Rock & CL Smooth - They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) (Official Video)*

*Nas - The World Is Yours (Official HD Video)

Legendary producer Pete Rock on working with Nas, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, Kanye West & more*

Pete Rock On The MPC

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jul/06/pete-rock-interview-hip-hop-producer

After being deprived of the opportunity to experience live music for over a year due to Covid restrictions, when the opportunity arose again this May under the condition you remain seated and socially distanced, I was not complaining. It had felt like an eternity since I had last enjoyed live music with a pint in hand. 

On top of this, I returned to none other than Dele Sosimi, the UK’s unofficial Afrobeat ambassador, playing Manchester’s Blues Kitchen. This was gladly not the unnerving experience of DBS ready-meal jump-up at Bristol’s Lakota to a sat down, socially distanced crowd. Having said that, once Dele and his fantastic quartet (consisting of the man himself on keyboard and vocals, a bass guitarist, percussionist and drummer) began their superb set of funk-laden afrobeat, it was hard to resist the temptation to get up and move to it. Mr Sosimi himself, in friendly and amusing form, even had to instruct the crowd to keep bums on seats, and simply move them on there. As a personal favourite genre of mine, afrobeat’s combination of danceable, intensely rhythmic grooves and wild, jazz-influenced experimentation make it a musical style of unparalleled joy and brilliance, and Dele’s set indeed lived up to my high expectations. 

Having played the keyboard for the Godfather of Afrobeat, Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80 band from 1979-1986, Dele provided jazzy brilliance and a progressive synth-led sound to Fela’s records during this period. He moved to London from Nigeria in 1995 and has since become the de facto ambassador of Afrobeat in the UK. His star has since risen even more, off the back of a number of exceptional solo records through the new millennium. Some of his most successful have been collaborations with Fela’s son Femi, as well as the legendary drummer Tony Allen. Many of Dele’s new records display his clear interest in house, techno and dub. The interplay of these electronic sounds with the jazz and funk-inspired afrobeat - which Sosimi has purveyed for so long - can be heard on 2007’s Identity and 2015’s You No Fit Touch Am, both superb LPs. 

Dele’s discography over the last 15 years features remixes from dub-legend Scientist, as well as Deep House DJs Pataki and Medlar. The ever-mercurial O’Flynn’s edit of E Go Betta is a recent highlight. As the epitome of a contemporary, UK house/techno artist whose love of African music defines the brilliance of his output, O’Flynn is the perfect example of a DJ inspired by the music of Sosimi’s heritage, as can be heard on excellent tunes of his such as Mesablanca, Desmond’s Empire and Talia.  This bridging of 70’s and 80’s afrobeat and more modern sounds, that enrich this music’s irresistible grooves, was a hallmark of Dele’s set. Fela Kuti classics such as Kalakuta Show, Opposite People, Water No Get Enemy and Lady were peppered among more recent material. Spoken word from young members of a local poetry society, who Dele had encountered earlier that day and invited to join him, was also delivered over various songs in the set. While I initially felt a level of scorn to what I imagined would be a slam-poetry wankfest of corny over-sincerity, I could not have been more wrong. The combination of the afrobeat quartet’s tight, percussive grooves and smooth spoken-word evoked hip hop with a sublime West African flavour. 

The lyrical content of this spoken word also provided a good indication of Dele’s appetite for social justice. Over Fela’s infectiously rhythmic Opposite People, the matriarch of the society spoke of female sexual empowerment and body positivity, as Sosimi, of course, ran riot on the keys. To Lady - one of Fela’s best - a young woman from the society delivered a powerful rebuttal to the misogynistic overtones of the song. Time-honoured call-and-response vocals were deployed to echo “fuck the patriarchy”; Dele enthusiastically chimed in, encouraging audience participation as he went. 

One could view Fela’s lyrics in songs such as Lady as isolated examples of misogyny from a complex individual, but they reflected a cultural environment in which such views were commonplace. Sosimi represents a progression from this milieu.  He repurposes ‘Lady’ to attack misogyny, rather than promote it. This is indicative of his approach to Afrobeat; one which still pays homage to the greats even if it recognises their flaws, striving for a genre which is, above all, modernised and more inclusive. 

 With the essential components of traditional afrobeat being its use of an intensely rhythmic, repetitive beat as the backdrop to grooving basslines, James Brown-esque horns and jazzy experimentation, its synthesis musically with modern dance music is not exactly far-fetched. As long as it still grooves in that funky, instantly recognisable, Tony Allen-indebted way, afrobeat can incorporate contemporary house and techno music, or celebrate progressive views of gender, or indeed do all of these things simultaneously. Seeing Dele Sosimi live is a must to fully experience this enriched modernisation of arguably the finest genre the world has heard, and would be something I’d thoroughly recommend to all.