From his beginnings in the chill out act
9 Lazy 9, to his work as a soundtrack artist for Italian TV, and on to his longest running project
Funki Porcini, James Braddell’s work really stands the rest of time. As one of the first acts signed to the infamous
Ninja Tunes label, he’s influenced many artists and has also branched into installation art with his awesome
CITY project. I recently had the pleasure of asking James some questions.
With the majority of your musical output being on Bandcamp now, are you finding it easier or harder to get your work out to your audience yourself than you did with an indie label behind you? Is it at all comforting to know you are in complete control of the process?
Loud And Quiet
How Brian d’Souza used the pandemic to launch Ambient Flo, a new kind of radio station
The Glasgow DJ and producer also known as Auntie Flo has found the space to innovate under isolation
Brian d’Souza never intended to create a radio station. Ambient Flo began its life as a series of impromptu livestreams filmed in his back garden. When the world shrunk into itself during the first lockdown, and we were all looking for ways to reach outwards, those livestreams offered connection and calm for its viewers.
As a maker of warm and richly textured dance music as Auntie Flo, as well as a killer DJ, it would be natural for him to create a virtual club space, as many others have. Instead, he curated ambient music sets; a welcoming place to breathe and filter out the noise.
Coldcut
Solid Steel show, recorded at the
Ahead Of Our Time studios inside
Ninja Tune HQ at Clink St, London and fans of the JDJ mix will recognise many of the tracks here. There’s no finesse of the finished mix and several inclusions that didn’t make the final version
(I seem to remember
Public Enemy was refused) but here are some of the building blocks. Apologies for the quality, this was recorded from the radio broadcast so it’s a little ‘fluffy’ around the top end, just on the edge of distortion.
The
Red Snapper was a huge tune at the time, here not yet embellished with the