HISTORY

My musical journey started in the 1980s.

I blame Tenniel Garwes. When I was 13, He lived around the corner and he had a microphone and an echobox. We experimented, we made noise, and we blew it up. It was fun. There was no turning back after that.

Then there was the vain attempt to impress girls by remixing pop songs using only a record player and a cassette deck .Those were the days when I would travel miles to pick up U.S imports of hip-hop records.

Then there was the Roland SH101 synth that I spent an entire summer messing about and recording with in the spare room. I loved it. And it had a strap on pitch bender so I could give guitarists stiff competition. Ahh great days.

Then there was the DJ-ing at university, which is where I learned that you’ve got to keep the dancefloor active and the punters entertained. I was, (and still am) a social butterfly, a chameleon built on honesty. I loved all forms of music. I remember going from an Indie disco where they had been playing the Smiths and the Cure all night and then heading straight to an RnB/Hiphop night where I walked in to find people were grooving on tables to Sugar bear’s ‘Don’t scandalize mine’ (great use of a talking heads sample by the way for you sample spotters) If that wasn’t going to keep me on a musical path then nothing was.

Farley Jackmaster funk and Troublefunk came to London in the same year and had a big effect on my musical direction.

Then Soul2soul happened and at last we had our own UK black soul music to rival the Americans. Every weekend there was a party with their first album on constant rotation and every weekend the speakers and amplifiers in those summer parties would blow up.

And in between all this, there was my electronic love affair with synths, drum machines and sequencers – the SH101, the Korg Poly 800, the Oscar, the MSQ 700 sequencer all came and went.

I sold everything and went to the Caribbean and South America and all the disparate musical flavours in my head coalesced and made sense.

London: Fronting bands, gigs in obscure places, changing group names every week, one great drummer and five shit ones.

Thank God, Akai and E-mu for the sampler.

‘Playing with Fire LP (1997)’ was born out of those times.

I was the MC for a live Drum n Bass band called J-Force in 1999 / 2000 which was the most fun I have had Gigwise. I also ran a DJ agency and a beat-heavy club night in the North East called Beats Rendezvous where I occasionally played my electronic dance tracks live as Tribal Vybes. These tunes formed the basis of my Afro-Electro series of LPs.

Then it all becomes a bit of a blur: Wife, kids, moving house, mortgages, digital and analog gear that cost as much as houses, productions, songwriting, record labels, companies, contracts, Africa, Cuba, the highs, the lows, the distractions like remixing the winners of ‘Canadian Pop Idol’ to break into the U.K market (they split up before the official release), managing artists and the EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer in a suitcase whose Dr Who sounds scared my wife every time I turned it on.

‘Afro Electro LP (2000)’

Invisible Headphones LP (2002)

‘Back To My Future Compilation LP (1995-2005)’

I still blame my friend Tenniel for kickstarting it all.

In 2011, I started composing for film so I set up Good Voodoo Music to facilitate that. Two things happened – The first film I was making music for took ages to make and the second release on the label did really well in South Africa. This led to my Afro-House trilogy of LPs (Good Voodoo Afro House vol 1 -3) as well as my more eclectic music as the Tru Roots Project.

Good Voodoo Afro House Vol 1 LP (2012)

Beats Without Borders LP (2014)

Rapture and Lightning LP (2016)

Good Voodoo Afro House Vol 3 LP (2017)

High-profile DJs like Vinny Da Vinci played my Afro House tunes. Soweto was the springboard for over 100 singles released on the Good Voodoo Label as well as my music being licensed to TV, film and more than 50 compilation albums for other record labels.

Sound of Good Voodoo 2020 LP

Dominion – Domineeky Singles Collection, Vol 3 (2023)