Suze Webb, aka The Large, is a perfect example of the sort of figure we want to talk about on No Tags.
She’s been a savvy behind-the-scenes operator for over 15 years, coming of age in London’s late ‘00s DIY clubbing era as a promoter, DJ, radio host and blogger (sadly, her blog Shimmy Shimmy is lost to the sands of time) with an eye for sharp merch design.
It was in the early part of the next decade, however, that she came into her own at Mixpak, the New York-based label that did more than any to connect the dots between the Caribbean, the UK and US in the 2010s. As label manager, Suze worked with Vybz Kartel, Murlo, Jubilee, Palmistry and more – but no act made as seismic an impact as Popcaan, whose first two albums Where We Come From and Forever had Suze at the helm.
Her crowning glory came in the summer of 2016 when Mixpak (and a weighty extended crew) triumphed in London’s Wembley Arena at Red Bull’s flagship Culture Clash event, to a global viewing audience of millions. As we find out in this episode, Suze was at the heart of that success, organising hundreds of exclusive dubplates and guest appearances to leverage their soundclash victory, including Spice, Popcaan, J Hus, Tony Matterhorn, Sneakbo, Kranium and Drake.
Suze left Mixpak at the start of 2020 and currently works freelance across high-level projects in marketing, digital strategy, artist development and more. She runs a superb newsletter, Sound + Vision, where she frequently writes with the sort of global scope and viewpoint that puts bigger publications to shame – recent editions have focused on Korean garage, Chinese amapiano and Palestinian drill. She also DJs regularly and has an excellent monthly show on NTS radio – big recommend.
We spoke to Suze about her decade in New York City, the mechanics of releasing music in 2024, the inside scoop on Culture Clash (where are those coffins?!), dancehall’s historical relationship with the US-UK press machine, the emergence of Latin America and Korea as global pop music forces, the difference between drunk crowds and ketamine crowds, and much more.
A little housekeeping first, though: we realised after recording last week’s episode that we made a grave factual error! John Twells may have been responsible for making the track ‘Avril 1’, but it was actually Joseph Morpurgo who came up with the idea and penned the post. Important to set the record straight there. We also regrettably didn’t get a chance to shout out as many former FACT crew as we’d have liked due to time constraints when recording the episode – but basically, the biggest of big ups to all the staffers and contributors who made the magazine what it was. Now on with the show.
To accompany this interview, Suze has made us a playlist of 10 artists that she’s tipping for 2024.
Tom Lea: So you were based in Bristol, then you moved to London for university right?
The Large: I did, I grew up in Bristol then I went to King’s [College, London].
Chal Ravens: Oh, so did I. What did you study?
The Large: I studied French.
Chal Ravens: I did War Studies.
The Large: That’s in the same building. I went to Goldsmith’s [University] after that.
Chal Ravens: So did I! What did you study?
The Large: Cultural Studies.
Chal Ravens: So did I!
The Large: No, come on?
Chal Ravens: Yeah, with John Hutnyk teaching all of Capital over one term.
The Large: Yeah. A few years after I left I think most of the people who taught me got done for sexual harassment. But yes, I started DJing while I was at university, and promoting things here and there. I also had a blog, it was the blog era. I was writing about music, I was making T-shirts, I had a zine, I was promoting parties. I graduated in 2010, so this was around 2008 when I was doing that. I got a residency at [long-running London dancehall club night] The Heatwave's Hot Wuk, which was at The Big Chill [Bar].1
Tom Lea: I remember The Big Chill very well.
The Large: At that point I was mostly playing vinyl 45s that I bought. Then I met Hipsters Don't Dance2. They had a monthly at Camp, which was a venue just off Old Street, and then they moved to The Shacklewell Arms. So it was them DJing alongside a series of residents, one of which was me, one was Murlo, there was a guy called Illanja... am I forgetting someone? I'm not sure. But yes, I did that every month. They [Hipsters Don't Dance] were early on a lot of stuff. They were playing all the Nigerian and African stuff before most people [in London] knew what that was. It was a great party, you could kind of play whatever you wanted and the crowd would trust that you might be playing Baltimore club or funky or grime or dancehall. That was was the early days of my DJing, playing those monthlies, and then I moved to New York in 2013.
Tom Lea: So when you moved to New York, you were already working with Mixpak right, running their blog?
The Large: I was living in London and DJing and doing all this stuff. Mixpak had maybe had one record out of the time, it was this [Mixpak owner] Dre Skull and Sizzla record [2009’s ‘Gone Too Far’]. But they also had a blog. I felt very sonically interested in it and we had a lot in common, so I just hit Dre Skull up and we started talking. I started editing the blog from there, bringing on other writers and building that out, and then that kind of morphed into label work. I had a hot desk in the same place that NTS had their office, on Kingsland Road, upstairs from The Alibi3. Alexander Nut had a desk in there, and some other Rinse DJs as well. But in 2012 Popcaan signed a multi-album deal with Mixpak, so at that point, it was like, okay, maybe time to take things seriously. And so I moved to New York, we set up a studio and I started working on the label full time from there.
Chal Ravens: Bring us up to date. What do you do right now?
The Large: Right now I operate independently, still working with artists. I work with brands on strategy and marketing. Sometimes I'm working with Amazon Music or Red Bull, but then I'm also in the weeds with a new artist who's trying to develop and I get their first EP out or something. I'm in and out of different teams – freelance essentially. I spent some months of this year working with [Drake’s label] OVO, I had a period working with [Interscope Records co-founder] Jimmy Iovine's skate rink, Flipper’s. I've been working with this Jamaican artist called Skeng. So yeah, broadly speaking I'm doing marketing in the music space, but that can mean different things.
Chal Ravens: I wanted to ask – why dancehall? What is the thing that has brought you to dancehall more often than any other genre? Was there a sort of epiphany moment behind it?
The Large: I think it's just where life took me. I don't just like dancehall, I'm super interested in so many things and I've been involved in a lot of different genres over the years. But I think obviously, because most of the success that I've had has been with dancehall acts, that’s where people lean the most. That makes a lot of sense, and I do love it and have collected dancehall records for a long time. To be honest, I attribute pretty much all of my musical history to growing up in Bristol.
Chal Ravens: So what sort of things were you doing as a kid, as a teenager?
The Large: I mean, listening to things like Massive Attack and Portishead, as a kid that had a huge impact on me. I started digging into the samples – that's probably how I would discover something like Isaac Hayes or Horace Andy. I got big into that and that sent me off into a whole rabbit hole of buying reggae. So Massive Attack and Bristol, that's like the gateway drug for me. It incorporated hip-hop and soul and reggae, and post-punk and stuff, and then also things like Soul II Soul or Coldcut, that kind of thing. There was also Roni Size and Krust and Full Cycle and all of that jungle and drum and bass stuff. You couldn't really avoid that if you were living in Bristol.
There were free festivals – there's this thing called Ashton Court Festival4 that doesn't happen anymore, but it was probably Europe's biggest free festival. I got to see Portishead playing there for free. But all of that, the record stores – there was a crazy amount of record stores with people working there who were super influential, you'd just go in and get their recommendations. I don't know what it is about Bristol but there's something in the water there that makes it an extremely creative place.
There's also a heavy Jamaican population compared to a lot of the UK5. So you're very aware of reggae and dancehall and sound systems [through] St. Paul's carnival and things like that. It's kind of in the air, you know? But obviously not everybody gets obsessed with it in the way that I did.
Tom Lea: Where did the name The Large come from?
The Large: That’s actually a nickname that I've had from when I was a teenager. A friend of mine's little sister gave it to me when we were a group of friends sitting around in the living room. Her sister was going around saying to each of us what we were in the group, like "you're the funnest", "you're the tallest". And then she got to me, and she was gonna say "you're the largest". But she realised mid-sentence that I wasn't, and so she just stopped and said "you're the large". And then they just started calling me The Large. I was like 16 or 17.
Chal Ravens: I would say from the visual accompaniment I've got, you don't seem in any way large. Not that that would matter. Just factchecking.
Tom Lea: It’s funny, I went back and watched when you played our [Local Action’s] Keep Hush, whenever that was, like four or five years ago. And one of the comments is like: “She’s not that large!”
The Large: Sometimes I've thought over the years: is this a good name? And then I'm like, hey, someone with the name Rob Da Bank was on the BBC. So it's all good. And then a few years ago, Total Freedom sent out a tweet that was like, “I think The Large is a really good DJ name.” I felt so vindicated.
Chal Ravens: Can you remember the first post that you wrote for the Mixpak blog? And did you pitch things?
The Large: I probably did pitch things in the beginning... we did some interviews. I remember there being an Nguzunguzu interview, I interviewed Om Unit at one point. It was in that great era where you would just put up an mp3 and people would…
Chal Ravens: Lose their shit.
The Large: Yeah, Hype Machine6, that kind of time. So it was fun. And I made a lot of friends through that period as well, just from being on the blogs.
Tom Lea: I wanted to ask about this era. A lot of people from our generation made a lot of their friends, a lot of their connections and developed a lot of their musical tastes through blogs. It's this really interesting historical moment that I think is... I mean, look, I tried to find [The Large’s former blog] Shimmy Shimmy, and it's not online anymore.
The Large: Thank God.
Tom Lea: But I think that's sad, in a way. All this stuff is one unpaid hosting charge away from disappearing. And I fear for that era, because I think it's super important, and it's in danger of being historically wiped out just because of how online it is.
The Large: Totally. And maybe this skips forward to something that you want to talk about at a different point but like, with the death of the press and all of that, what worth does having these things on the internet have [now], outside of just being part of someone's rollout strategy? There's so much worth in things that don't necessarily move the needle, but are part of a really important archive or discovery platform, or are just documenting cultural moments. I think we miss out on on a lot of that, if those things disappear. Someone like Blackdown, or those kinds of blogs that would be doing extensive writing and then making a mix about the scene that they were looking at, does that exist anymore? I doubt it.
Chal Ravens: Even if it does exist on Discord, for instance, then that's a private conversation. You can't Google it, you can't find out later. And I think that's part of the sadness of all of these blogs disappearing, when you go to look up something that you remember reading at the time and it's gone. It’s a real erasure of a lot of people's hard work.
But we mentioned Popcaan briefly there – so you were working on his first album immediately after moving to New York?
The Large: Yeah, his first album [Where We Come From], that ended up coming out in 2014. I think he was known, but only within certain circles, if you knew about Jamaican music. Maybe you knew ‘Clarks’ with Vybz Kartel. I think ‘Only Man She Want’ had come out at that point, but that was basically it. He hadn't put an album out. And, you know, albums weren't really the thing in dancehall, they're not considered as important [in dancehall], but Popcaan really wanted to make a statement. Part of the way that we wanted to help him grow was to make these cultural statements that felt like he was, you know, an artist of his generation and an important figure.
To be honest, it was and is still hard to get people to pay attention if you don't pander to the album cycle. How do you get entry into that world which is quite western-focused and America-focused without doing some of that stuff? It's pretty hard. So there was that element to it too, like, this is how you make a statement as an act, this is how you tour, this is how you grow, this is how you get reviews, this is how you build. So there was a lot of thinking around why he wanted to do an album.
At the time it was hard to promote some of that stuff. This is even pre-Spotify and [other streaming services] being a big deal, but those platforms weren't even available in Jamaica for years, so you really had to pound the pavement to get gatekeepers interested in things that didn't have the [visible] numbers behind them to back it up. Because we knew, and a lot of other people knew, that this was culturally a very important thing, but you couldn't see it in the data. That's what a lot of these people are looking for. And I think that's true to this day, really, in the way that A&Rs operate – they're just looking at numbers. But there's a lot of other stuff that plays into why someone is culturally important, and we knew that. That helped us to grow him in that way.
Tom Lea: What are some of your Mixpak highlights from that era? I guess Culture Clash7 is probably an obvious one.
The Large: Culture Clash is a big one. There was an obvious before and after effect. I think 2016 was a huge moment [in general]. Partly because of Culture Clash, but also because of what was going on in culture at the time. Rihanna’s ‘Work’ had come out, Drake’s ‘One Dance’ had come out and Wizkid was on that. Dancehall and Afro records were moving into the mainstream in a different way. I remember when I was working at Mixpak back in the early days, I'd say I worked with an artist called Popcaan and people would be like, “Nope, never heard of that.” And then at a certain point, people were like, “Oh, yeah, I know who he is.” That happened at some point around 2016, just because of the way culture was moving. And then Culture Clash did have a big impact on on Mixpak as a label and a name.
Tom Lea: From what I understand, you were very integral [to the Culture Clash win], sourcing and organising the dubs and all that stuff. As someone who was there, I'd like to say: I called it! I said at the time I thought Mixpak will win because they get soundclash culture and they will have access to some really great dubs and understand how to play them. I wasn't sure anyone else was necessarily going to have that.
The Large: We were definitely the underdogs. Also they called us about five weeks before it happened – like an insanely short amount of time before. Someone else dropped out, I forget who, but somebody dropped out, we got the call and it was like, oh my god, I guess we have to do this. We put everything else basically on pause and it was a full-on five weeks of preparing. We had hundreds of dubplates by the end, most of them we didn't even use. Serocee, the MC who hosted for us and is an amazing all-around guy, I worked with him on collecting the dubplates and that was just an intense amount of work, chasing that stuff. And then we had to book the special guests. We broke J Hus out of jail. We got Big Narstie to come out in a wig and no one knew who he was until he took it off.
Chal Ravens: Sorry, a wig disguised Big Narstie?!
The Large: Yeah, he was completely unrecognisable in dreads. [Laughter]
Chal Ravens: Who else did you have on board?
The Large: We had Sneakbo, we had Spice, we had Kranium. We had these coffins that I'd hired from a stage company come out with the other teams' names written on them. The coffins went missing! They got lost. I have no idea what happened. We rented them from a place where productions rent theatrical stuff. At the end of the night they came to pick them up and they'd gone.
Tom Lea: That's a pretty big thing to lose – three coffins?
The Large: Yeah, how do you walk out of somewhere with a coffin?!
Chal Ravens: Did you lose your deposit?
The Large: Oh yeah, thousands of dollars. But we'd won so we were like, who cares, man? I'm off to the VIP with David Rodigan.
Chal Ravens: How did that win affect Mixpak?
The Large: I think it affected it a lot. I think over a million people watched it live. It had a huge audience, there were 25,000 people in person but millions of people watched it. And I think in the UK especially, that just did so much for name recognition. It was great. But you know, we did release other stuff that wasn't dancehall, and I think to an extent [Culture Clash] boxed us in further than we perhaps wanted to. But you know, that's fine. It is what it is.
Chal Ravens: Mixpak was also, in this time period, one of the labels that we were covering a lot on FACT. We were thinking, especially as you are a writer as well and have blogged and still do, what’s your relationship with the music press now? Obviously it's changed a lot, but how does it fit into your picture of the industry now? Do you actually read very much of it?
The Large: Well, I think I'm probably an outlier because yes, I do. And I still think it's really valuable. But as I was saying earlier, I think it's valuable in ways that aren't just around a press cycle for an act. In terms of working with an artist, do I think that press is going to move the needle anymore? Probably not. Are people actually going to go and listen to your record because you got a feature in, you know, even the New York Times or something? I don't know, probably not. But it does give you a cultural co-sign that I think is still pretty important, if you get the right things. You still need press to get a visa, you need press for people to understand... I mean, I've experienced this even in my own career, people don't really get what you're doing and then it's like, “I did a mix for the BBC.” And they're like, “Oh, okay, cool.” You know, someone else thinks you're good enough to be in The Guardian or New York Times or something, then that's kind of an “a-ha, I can take this seriously” kind of moment. And I still think that is important for artists.
Tom Lea: As somebody who's worked with a lot of dancehall artists, do you think dancehall is misrepresented by press in the UK and the US?
The Large: I’m gonna say underrepresented. Misrepresented... I mean, I guess it depends what you mean.
Tom Lea: I was having this conversation with Marvin Sparks8 about his book, and he was talking about how hard he'd found it as a journalist focusing on Jamaican music to have pitches accepted. He's crunched the numbers to really back this up in terms of the general underrepresentation of it. But I also wonder if it's misrepresented in certain ways. I think journalists have found it harder to properly represent and canonise dancehall because it's not an album-focused genre, and you can't tie its history down to a handful of albums. You can loosely tie a decade of post-punk into 10 essential albums and create this bite-sized thing that Guardian readers or whoever can easily absorb, whereas because dancehall is so single-driven, and more than that, its history is charted through the evolution of certain riddims, it just can't be tied down to that.
The Large: I think that Jamaican music has an oversized impact on pop music, especially in the UK. It definitely does in the US, but perhaps not as much as in the UK. I don't really know what getting its dues would mean, but it hasn't really had that and that hasn't allowed for a lot of people to come through. But at the same time, perhaps that's just because of who those artists were, and timing. Personally in my experience it's been a challenge to overcome what I think is probably snobbery. But I'm not entirely sure. I think [dancehall is] just fundamentally outside of people's culture [when it comes to] gatekeepers. They don't understand or they don't care for that kind of music. It doesn't make sense to them and, to be fair, some of it is complicated. Riddim culture is not something that most people would perhaps naturally understand, you know? And so you do have to have quite a knowledge of it to go there. I mean, that doesn't exist anymore really – contemporary dancehall doesn't use riddim culture, but I'm talking about in the past. There’s not really been a foundation of that to build upon for these new acts.
But a lot of the most interesting music out there right now is not being covered. [Even] outside of dancehall, a lot of music is outside of the traditional UK and US conversation. To an extent that's always been the case, but at this point the biggest music in the world is Latin music, or regional Mexican music, or afrobeats or K-pop. And where do you go to find out about other stuff? Maybe I'm just not tapped in, but it feels like it's all underrepresented in a way. And dancehall is a sliver of that. It's a much smaller slice of that pie because there are only three million people living in Jamaica compared to the population of Latin America.
Chal Ravens: We thought we should briefly touch on the biggest music news of the past week [note: this episode was recorded in November 2023], which is that Bandcamp, which was owned by Epic Games, has been sold to Songtradr and 50% of its staff have been laid off. What are your thoughts on this situation?
The Large: Yeah, I mean it's a bummer isn't it? It's always a bummer when big money interest comes in the way. I'm very pro-Bandcamp. I spend a lot of time and money on there, that's where I find a lot of music these days. So it will be a huge loss I think if that goes. At the same time, I do think that there is space for a new model, and I don't know if Bandcamp is the best model out there. Sometimes I think taking 15% plus the extra fees on top is a lot, and perhaps there will be something more along the lines of [self-distribution platform] DistroKid, a flat-fee model that could emerge that would feel better. Psychologically, I understand that it's easier for people to give away a percentage than a flat fee because you don't have to pay to play. And I don't know the true economics behind it, but I do think that perhaps something else will rise from the ashes and it will be better.
Tom Lea: I know with Mixpak, you always had a DTC [direct-to-consumer] store, which seemed like a pretty prominent part of your business.
The Large: We definitely wanted to have DTC from the beginning where we very carefully wanted to own not only the channel, but the relationships with people. Even just things like getting their email addresses, because that's a lot of the problem. This is a problem with major labels too – you don't own your data. And when the label goes, you're like, “Oh my god, my audience is actually owned by someone else.” That's something I will always advocate for with artists: if you can build your own channels then that's the best thing to do, because you're not gonna be beholden to anything like this happening, which does happen, all the time.
Do you find the landmark Spotify playlists are having less impact than they were?
The Large: Yes. Big time. I think there are a couple of them that will always have impact – you know, if you get on New Music Friday or something then that will give you a big jump probably. But I actually don't think playlisting is very impactful these days. And it certainly isn't a strategy.
Tom Lea: Why do you why do you think that is? Less on the strategy side, more in terms of the pure popularity of these playlists.
The Large: I mean, if I think about my own personal usage, I'm not checking those playlists all the time. I can't picture that there are people who are like, “Cool, I'm listening to [Spotify playlist] Pollen.” Well, maybe they are listening to Pollen, it's probably the wrong example because it's kind of a niche playlist in some ways. But I just wonder if people are going to these editorialised playlists in the same way that they were five years ago? Checking them all the time? For instance, if you go on Spotify it doesn't even tell you that the playlist has been updated. There's no way of being like, “Oh cool, new stuff.” It's not really geared towards that.
Chal Ravens: I can't tell whether that means that people have gone somewhere else, or if people just aren't listening to music as much, bottom line. Sometimes I feel it's the latter, that younger generations haven't been onboarded in the same way and just aren't looking for new music like that. But I don't think that it's simply that people have gone somewhere else to look for something, I also think it's a habit that's sort of fading out somehow.
The Large: I agree. I don't think music discovery is top of the list for a young person. It's like a furniture in the room situation. It's just there. But I don't know if they're going looking for things in the same way.
Chal Ravens: What are your insights on this from your work? Because I'm constantly curious about what I would be listening to or finding if I was 15, 16, 17 years old now. I really can't tell what I would be doing, what apps I'd be using. Is there a stream of dedicated younger fans?
The Large: I think there definitely are. I mean, if you look on TikTok there are still music nerds who are digging for stuff and doing things that we probably would have done when we were younger. I think there will always be people like that. But those are the ones who are the outliers. For a mainstream audience, I think music just doesn't have the same influence as it did 20 years ago, or perhaps even 10 years ago. It's not something that's culturally as impactful anymore, and that's painful to admit but I think it's true. I think gaming is more important.
Tom Lea: Yeah, I was just gonna say: gaming and streaming TV. It probably boils down to the fact that what people are doing on their device at home and what people have on around the home has just changed so much.
Chal Ravens: For many decades, one of the things that music could do for you as a young person is help give you a sense of identity, so that you can express yourself individually and stand apart from your family or your peers, and also join a tribe that kind of accepts you. It's a subcultural form of early expression, and people sometimes bop about between scenes, they wear different clothes, and all that can also be part of shaping their political subjectivity and so many other things that help you define your personality. And that’s the bit that's not happening anymore. I don't think that kids turn to music as a form of finding their own identity now, I think there are other other avenues for that.
The Large: Yeah, definitely. And I think music, or the recorded part of music, feels like a marketing play for the larger brand of the artist as influencer. Like, you're doing all of these things, and music is one of them. But it doesn't really matter if that music is this or that, you know, because people are sort of buying into personalities. I think that's to an extent been true for a while, but it seems more pronounced now.
Tom Lea: What do you think the role of an independent record label is in 2023?
The Large: Well, I think the kind of cult label thing that was big when I was growing up, that’s disappeared, or disappearing. I'm not sure people care about that too much anymore. When I first moved to New York it was definitely like labels were driving culture, and you would go to a Fool’s Gold night or a Mixpak party or, it's not exactly a label, but GHE20G0TH1K or something like that. But now I think the consumer is not paying attention to that, and this subculture vibe of affiliating yourself with something like a label, that doesn't seem to be vibrant at all.
But I still think they're very important, and perhaps even more important – because in terms of the actual work that you're doing, boutique labels or small independent labels are needed because it's so hard to break through and there's so much out there, so much to do, as I'm sure you know Tom, it's just an insane amount of stuff to do. You do need other people to help you. And if you don't have a really sturdy management team, you're going to need a label as well, or both. It really helps to have a co-sign and it helps to have some cash, and it helps to have people who know what they're doing. So I still think independent labels are really important. And curation-wise, I still think that is something people are looking for.
Chal Ravens: What’s actually making you feel good about music right now?
The Large: Actually, right now is quite exciting in a lot of ways because – and I spoke about this in a recent newsletter of mine – there's space for different kinds of music to come through and reach the top in a way that hasn't really been seen before, or understood before. And so, rap is on the wane in some ways – not that it's gone, it's thriving in a lot of regional ways – but commercially, reggaeton is huge, Bad Bunny is the biggest artist in the world. Burna Boy is massive. This K-pop garage song [Jung Kook’s ‘Seven’] being the biggest song in the world. All of this stuff I find to be exciting because for so long it's been a conversation dominated by the US and the UK, and it feels like that's not what's happening right now. So I like seeing that.
Chal Ravens: When we spoke to Nick Boyd and Tony G from Sorry Records we had a good chat about the New York scene in general. As someone who's been there for 10 years, it would be nice to know what you think is going on in New York right now. How does it feel as a music city?
The Large: Honestly, it's insane. There's so much going on every night. There's all of these venues, lots of different types of venues big and small. It does seem quite vibrant. There are a lot of New York-native DJs who are crushing it and you can see them out there. So I'm enjoying that. I think a lot of the stuff that I like is very community-minded, like Soul Summit, I don't know if you've heard of that? They do that in the park in Fort Greene in the summer, but they also DJ around different places. Or something like The Loft, which has obviously been going for a million years. Those things are very cross-generational.
I like a lot of the parties that feel different from what I’d experienced in the UK. I also like when they have food, a chill-out area, and there's kids there and there's old people there, and it's good vibes, no one's aggy, no one's really messed up. I definitely enjoy going to more interesting club experiences that aren't just the [open-air venue] Brooklyn Mirage or something, that's not really my kind of thing. I like a smaller, intimate space most of the time, low ceiling, dark basements.
Tom Lea: Well, Brooklyn Mirage has no ceiling!
The Large: Exactly, my nightmare. There's loads of cool other other spots. I love Nowadays. My friend Andrew [Akanbi] runs this party called Groovy Groovy [there], it runs 'til 10am or something. It's very cool. I just played a 6am to 9am set there last month, which was insane but also very fun.
Tom Lea: Sometimes in London it feels like you can only really play techno at 6am because everyone is just so drunk at that point.
The Large: I think that's the difference. People don't really drink that much, in this corner of the club scene anyway. It's more psychedelics and stuff. So you're not really dealing with people being absolutely smashed.
Tom Lea: That was the main thing that I noticed the first time I went to Nowadays. I went at 4am and I was just like, I can't believe people are this sober here. In a good way, it was really refreshing.
The Large: Well, I don't think they're sober.
Tom Lea: Sure, but they're not sloppy and drunk. It was so nice to be in that kind of space at 5am and it not be just drunk people stumbling around.
The Large: Yeah, it's ketamine people stumbling around [laughter]. I think it does make a lot of difference though. I mean, I admittedly haven't been out clubbing that much in London recently so I don't know what it's like, but it does feel like a different vibe.
Chal Ravens: So, we always ask people for a film recommendation – this is because I recently joined Letterboxd. What should we watch?
The Large: A film that I've watched many, many times and love is Withnail and I. I would recommend that to anyone.
Chal Ravens: It’s a beautiful film. I think it's the film I've seen most in my life.
The Large: Yeah, it could be mine as well. Maybe they forced us to watch it at Goldsmith’s. I’ve been enjoying Richard E [Grant]'s resurgence the last couple of years.9
Chal Ravens: He’s gripped by beatific joy at all times, isn't he?
The Large: Good for him. He's made amends for Spice World at this point.
Recorded at: SRP Studios
Theme music: Jennifer Walton
Branding: All Purpose
A venue in London’s King’s Cross, The Big Chill Bar still exists but doesn’t run many events relevant to this podcast. However, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it was a regular fixture when it came to underground London club nights.
Long-standing London promoters and DJs with a superb monthly NTS show, Hipsters Don’t Dance are two of the city’s finest DJs. Get to know!
Legendary Dalston spot The Alibi was a fixture of grubby late night East London clubbing until its closure in 2018 – partially because of its solid free entry parties, partially because of its reliable late night closing times. R.I.P.
Ashton Court Festival was a free outdoor festival that ran just outside Bristol from 1974 to 2007. As well as Portishead, previous acts of note include The Fall, The Stranglers, Robert Plant, Mad Professor and Roni Size.
Quick factcheck on this: Bristol’s Black population stood at 6% in 2021, up from 2.3% in 2001, according to ONS data. Fair to say that the population’s cultural impact, particularly via St. Paul’s Carnival, is outsized!
We feel old having to explain this one, but Hype Machine is a website that aggregates mp3 uploads across the blogosphere, and was a crucial part of any music nerd’s online experience circa 2007-2012. If your upload was number one on Hype Machine in this period, that was a Huge Deal.
Mixpak won Red Bull’s flagship Culture Clash event at London’s Wembley Arena in 2016, beating off competition from Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang, Eskimo Dance and a UKG All-Stars team. The four teams competed across a four-round soundclash, and The Large was instrumental in sourcing exclusive dubplates and specials for Team Mixpak – who arrived on the night with Popcaan, Spice, Kranium and many more in tow. Their final record of the night? A personalised dub of Drake’s ‘One Dance’ that sealed their victory, though the moment of the night might have been a shock appearance by a fresh-from-jail J Hus.
Marvin Sparks is a London-based journalist specialising in Jamaican music, and author of the excellent book Run the Riddim: The Untold Story of ‘90s Dancehall to the World.
Recorded before any of us had seen his turn in Saltburn, but that’s another topic for another episode!
Share this post