“When it began, I was in Philadelphia with King Britt, sitting at his kitchen table. We were talking about
how frustrating it was to be making this music that was influenced by so many things, but didn’t have a place"
Charlie Dark is the man behind the bi-monthly ‘Blacktronica’ club night at London’s ICA, a
pigeon-hole-trashing exploration of black British music and culture. With the club night and his remix work,
he’s a key player on the ‘broken beat’ scene, the underground musical movement typified by the inspirational
fusion of soulful jazz with staccato electronic polyrhythms. Charlie’s also something of a veteran of the
British music scene, with the scars to prove it; as part of Attica Blues he released albums on (and was
subsequently dropped from) Mo’ Wax and Sony. Passionate about his music, he’s not afraid to tell it how it
is when it comes to the ins and outs of the industry.
When we caught up with Charlie, he was in the middle of a 5-date Blacktronica tour around England. We talked
to him about Blacktronica, the broken beat scene, the state of the music industry, the influence of the media,
and - whilst we’re at it - get the down-low on some of his favourite clubs and recording artists.
What’s the ethos behind Blacktronica?
Blacktronica is all about trying to broaden the boundaries of how black music is perceived in this country - currently hip
hop, RnB, and garage. If you’re a musician making black music that doesn’t fit within those remits, then you generally find
yourself overlooked, with no real public space to air your work, because it’s not being played on the radio, it’s not
really being played in the clubs - no one gets to hear it. With Blacktronica we just wanted to have a place where people
could come down and hear this music. It’s not in a traditional club environment. When you got here you can actually see the
person that you’re talking to, and it’s nice because there’s a kind of community now - people are linking up.
What kind of music gets played?
It was originally promoting the new black electronic music that was coming out of England, like the broken beats stuff, and
some of the new house beats and hip hop beats. It was the place you went to if you wanted hear the new stuff that wouldn’t
come out for ages. It’s now evolved to a point where we play everything from Carl Craig to John Coltrane. Like if you’ve
been into hip hop all your life, and you never heard of who Theo Parrish is, this is a place where you can come down and
check the music out. As well as the new stuff, the DJs are bringing down the old things that have influenced the stuff
they’re making now. It’s turning into a celebration of undiscovered gems - not the most obvious stuff, but it’s the stuff
that has a special place in people’s hearts. You’re like: “do you remember when you first heard that record?” and “I didn’t
know that you knew about that record!”. It’s that kind of thing.
You’ve brought out the ‘Osmosis’ fanzine, giving it away on the night. What’s the thinking behind that?
I wanted to conceive a media publication myself, and get the writers involved who I know, and some people who don’t write
at all, and give them an opportunity to express their opinions. I wanted to celebrate black British culture, not in a
flag-waving way, but in the slightly eccentric way that it exists in this country, the weird stuff that people don’t really
talk about. Not the MTV definition of what black culture is, but the real definition according to anyone who’s spent time
within black culture and really understands it. In any culture, you get that – you get fed up of being told that, you know,
“oh you’re a white guy from Essex, so you must drive a Ford XR3i, and wear blah di blah”. Anyone who knows those guys
knows it’s completely different. You don’t want to wait for the institution to define you. You want to define yourself, and
let them catch up.
Tell us about the tour.
We’ve done 2 dates now, and it’s been really well received. We’ve done London and Manchester, and then this week we’ve got
Huddersfield, Bristol and Birmingham. [Part of the thinking behind the tour was that we’re] trying to make it not so
London-centric - I think a lot of the clubs are London-centric. Trying to take it out so that people can see it and hear
it. Next year we’re doing some international stuff.
And you have different performing artists at each one?
I have a pool of people that I pull from and for the next set of dates we’ve got Vikter Duplaix, Seiji, Orin Walters from
Bugz in the Attic. We’ve got a collective of poets aswell (Jacob Sam La-Rose, Roger Robinson, Nolan Weekes), plus Zena Edwards.
We’re doing workshops aswell, which are being run by Daz I-Cue from Bugz In The Attic.
You were DJing over in New York in August - how do you find the scene over there, compared to England?
If anything I find that people over there are more anoraky than they are in England.
Like, if I talk to someone, they’ll really know their stuff. You know, it’s not cool to talk about music in England - it’s
considered to be a bit nerdish. It’s almost like “it’s just entertainment, you play it, you get off your face, and then you
go to the next party”. But playing abroad, the music’s received really well, because there are a whole generation of people
there who are fed up of what they’re being force-fed. If you think it’s bad here, over there really you’re just hearing
Ja Rule, Ja Rule, Ja Rule, Nelly, Ja Rule, Ja Rule – all day. Which is cool, if you’re also hearing an alternative - but
you’re not. However, what I’ve also found from travelling around is that sometimes you go to places and play some broken
beat stuff, and people don’t understand the music, because they’re not understanding the cultural concept - where the music
is coming from. That’s what I find with a lot of music that has originated from England. With hip hop, you turn on MTV Base
and you hear the song, you see the video, you know the look, it’s all down. You can understand the culture of where it’s
coming from. With the stuff coming from England, really you’re just getting the records, you’re not getting any of the
cultural stuff that comes with it, the stuff that makes the music unique.
What’s your take on the state of the music industry at the moment?
The problem that I have with the state of the music industry at the moment is that you’re being fed one type of food, and
you’re not getting anything else. There’s all this music coming out from all around the world, that’s being overlooked, and
people aren’t concerned about, like the Dwele stuff. These people make these amazing albums, and yet get dropped. Though
with nights like Blacktronica and Co-Op it’s like, if everyone starts their little scene, eventually there are going to be
so many of them that they’re all going to link up. Even now, I’m getting A&R men coming down, and they freaking out, like
“My God, you have Sean Escoffery playing live!” and “Where did all these people come from?”. It’s like, hey we’re here man,
no one has asked our opinion. You know, I’ve learnt my lesson from doing Attica Blues; that the more of a well defined
picture that you can present to the people with the money, and the distribution, the stronger the position that you’re in.
Now I’m in a really strong position because I can go there and be like, “this is my night, this is the CD that goes with it,
Chris Ofili does my art work”. I’m getting my team together, and it’s cool.
Do you think one day broken beat will become a big genre like house, and do you think that it would be a good thing?
I think it would be good for it in it’s own time, when its ready, as a natural evolution, but the danger is that when the
attention comes you loose control of it really quickly. Will a mainstream person come out? I don’t know, but then you never
know, you never ever know. What’s really interesting is the power that the media have now. I think a lot of people get
caught by surprise, because they do this thing that’s really fresh and innovative, and then it blows up. But they’re not
prepared for it to blow up, so when the attention comes, they don’t know how to handle it, and they just take anything. You
saw it with drum ‘n’ bass, [starting out underground] and then suddenly you’re seeing it advertising Tampax - you’re like,
“whoa man, in the space of 2 years!”. But then suddenly the media decides it’s dead. And then people are like “yeah it’s
dead, lets get into garage now”. But drum ‘n’ bass wasn’t dead, it was still going, and now it’s come back.
Do you think broken beat is being heard much by other musicians outside the immediate scene?
Yeah, like if you talk to Kenny Dope [from Masters at Work], he’s checking what people like Dego, IG Culture, and Phil Asher are doing. The
Soulquarians - the production team of Vikter Duplaix and James Poyser, the guys that do the D’Angelo albums and Erykah
Badu - they’re heavily influenced by the music. They see the past, and the future and the present.
It’s interesting, because broken beat is such a disparate scene, and that’s part of its beauty. You’ve got the head-nods
to the soul jazz stuff and you’ve got the really much more electronic-sounding stuff.
You know of all the new forms of music that have come out, this kind of reminds me of when I got into hip hop, because it’s
really just you and a couple of hundred of your mates, in the club, dancing to it.
Yeah, I’d agree with you, you can really sense the excitement in the air at Blacktronica or Co-Op, and you get the feeling
that you’re at the beginning of a really strong scene. You can see it in the smiles on people’s faces.
Yeah, people leave happy, and that’s the best thing for me.
So how much of the music when you DJ, and when the Bugz in the Attic guys DJ, is dub plates?
A lot of it is CD-R stuff. You know, unreleased, or stuff that’s on white label that’s in limited amounts. The CD-R
phenomenon is the new dub plate, no doubt. And that’s something that we explore in the workshops, where we do a track in a
day. It’s really funny, because, you get some people saying, “You can’t do a track in a day!” and I’m like “Of course you
can!”. I know people who do that all the time. It’s like they wake up, they do a track a day. It’s just like…Madlib’s just
done this new album - he put it together in a week. Some of the stuff that they come down and play, especially the Bugz guys,
its like, “What’s that?”, “Oh, it’s a one-off”. Or “When’s it coming out?”, “I don’t know” [laughs]. And that’s kind of
interesting, I like that feeling in the club when the DJ plays a record that’s so amazing and touches you in such a way. I
don’t even want to find out what it is, I’m just happy to hear it at that point in time. Tony’s [Nwachuku, formerly of
Attica Blues] night - Burnt Progress at the Embassy Room in Islington – is really interesting. It’s a really good concept -
CD-R’s all night and it’s all unreleased material. The premise of the night is that you bring down the tracks you’re
working on, and you put your name down in the book, and then it gets played during the night. It’s like, you hear something
and you’re like “that’s really cool, do you want me to put it out for you?”. It’s as simple as that. I don’t understand
why no one’s thought of it before.
Are you doing stuff with Earl Zinger – Rob Gallagher – still? I caught your set at Cargo, and that was a really funny
show.
Yeah, I’m still doing the Earl Zinger stuff. It’s just another extension, you know. I really like what he does, and I
really like that he was part of this really big band; Galliano were a big group, you know, and they toured the world.
And this guy, ten years on, is still doing music on his own terms, he has his own label, and he’s still doing it. I like
that kind of DIY ethic. And also the music’s got some humour in it. We get together and it’s just like a release of energy.
You can just go there and be bugged-out man. It’s cool, you know, I really enjoy doing that stuff with him.
How about your spoken word stuff? You did the ‘Modern Love’ event a while back. Are you still doing a lot of that kind
of thing?
Yeah, I’ve been doing that stuff on and off for ten years. I just have these two parallel careers, which again, we’re
bringing together now. Got another Modern Love tour coming up in Spain in the third week of December. It’s a release,
it’s a chance to get some opinions off my mind, you know. I’m also doing a spoken word project for next year. That’s
going to be phenomenal - it’s going to be the best poetic voices from around the world with the top production teams on our
scene. I’m really excited about putting that together. Look at ‘Loose Lips’ [Seiji featuring Lyric L]. I keep saying to
Seiji, “why are you not doing an album of this stuff?”, because the way that record came together was phenomenal, man. I
just remember being in Co-Op on a Sunday, and they played an instrumental, this girl comes down, gets on the mic, raps the
lyrics, and two weeks later the record’s out. It’s like, “what is going on?”. The turnaround was so quick.
Tell us about what happened with Attica Blues.
We got signed to Sony and we did an album which I thought was a good album, but they just didn’t understand it, really.
It was Christmas 2000, just bought a house, got the phat jeep sitting outside, and suddenly, I’m calling up Sony records
and they’re not returning my calls. And then you’re realising that you’re about to get the chop. And that really knocks
the wind out of you. That time was really a low point in my life. You get dropped, and you’re like “wow” - you’ve got this
amazing album that you’ve just spent the past year and a half of your life doing, and no one gets a chance to hear it,
and there’s nothing you can do. I got to the point where I took my studio apart. I didn’t do music for six or seven months.
Nothing, absolutely nothing. And having been through that twice, been through it with Mo' Wax, I’m at the point now where
you’d have to offer me a ridiculous amount of money for me to do a record deal with a major label. I’m at my happiest ever
in my musical career now, because I’m in control. I’ve got creative freedom.
You were involved in the Red Bull Music Academy recently?
Yeah, I’ve just come back from Brazil. Red Bull run this Music Academy in a different country of the world every year, and
it’s open to students from around the world. At the one I did we had Pepe Braddock, Osunlade, Robert Owens, Patrick
Pulsinger, and myself; all coming together to talk about what we do. We did some workshops with Gilberto Gil and loads of
scratch djs from America – it was just phenomenal. We hooked up a beat on the MPC, had Gilberto Gil playing guitar, and
we’re sampling him as he’s going along.
What do you think about Brazilian music – are you into that at all?
You know what, I’ve never really been into Brazilian music in the same way that a lot of the European DJs love it, because
I’ve never been exposed to that much of it. But now I’m kind of getting into it on a rhythmical level, especially having
been to Brazil.
What are you doing on the remix side of things?
I do remixes all the time, it’s just that I’m off that remix treadmill. Whereas before you were getting paid loads of money
but you were doing these mixes for people, and they’re not understanding - they’re like “you did this for this person,
that did really well, we want more of that”. But you’re like “I’m a musician, it changes”. And I just said to myself “you
know what, I’m going to remix tracks which I like, for people I like, who understand what I’m trying to do. Otherwise I’m
not interested”. I don’t need to do it. So I’ve just done a remix for King Britt of ‘Bush Workout’ - I think it’s Japan
only at the moment, but it’s coming out in Europe next year. I did an interesting thing for Craig Richards from Fabric -
he got me in to do like this broken-trance tune - ‘brok-trance’ [laughter]. Done a thing for one of Jazzanova’s guys. I’m
talking to Saul Williams about doing some stuff for him. I’m doing my own stuff aswell.
Other than Co-Op and Burnt Progress, are there any other good club nights out there that you like checking out?
Yep, there’s a night called ‘Amplified’ - we had the DJs down from there at Blacktronica on Wednesday. It’s at Marketplace,
first Thursday of every month. It kind a reminds me of when I used to go to Soul II Soul things. They’re young guys,
the crowd is young, it’s got really good energy, it’s like people are respectful there, you go and you’re not going to
get any hassle, and it’s a nice mixed crowd. And the music’s really good, there’s an ethic in their music. I also like
‘Forward’ at Plastic People – that’s with Zed Bias and Oris Jay – they’re taking garage and doing their little twist on it.
I like things like that.
Do you have any favourite recording artists at the moment?
I like what Dwele’s doing. I like Common, because I think he’s quite innovative with what he does. I love the stuff that
my peers – the Bugz in the Attics, the IGs, the Degos of the world – do. I like Jay-Dee, I think the Missy/Timbaland
combination is kind of clever, in that the music’s quite wild, but the stuff on top of it is quite accessible. So you’re
dancing into it, but he’s just flipped the beat into 6/8, and then back to 4/4, and you didn’t even realise, because on top
of it they’re still singing ‘baby I love you, take your clothes off’. I like the stuff The Neptunes do, because they force
people to speak their language, just bombarding them with so many records that now, if it’s not sounding like them, you’re
in trouble. I like the stuff that Theo Parrish is doing, I like the stuff that Carl Craig does. I like Joseph Malik, on
Compost. I like the stuff that the Jazzanova guys are doing - I think the community aspect of their work is really
interesting. I think Jay-Z is a phenomenal lyricist, because when he’s telling you that he was walking in the club,
holding a bottle of champagne, with 3 models, and wearing the fifty thousand dollar bracelet, you feel like you’re there.
You may not like what he’s talking about, but he’s one of the few people who’s really chronicling what’s going on. He is
like the black CNN, right now. I like Nas. I think Eminem is phenomenal. But with all these guys, I don’t think people
are really listening to what they’re saying. The music’s being pushed at quite a superficial level, even though they
are saying some important stuff [albeit] in fragments. I like Def Jux, you know, El-P, Mr. Lif, and what’s interesting
about those guys is that they’re checking the stuff we’re doing - when we did the event in Manchester, they all came down.
Plans for the future?
There are disillusioned people from all genres of music, and all creative outlets, who are now gradually coming together.
I think the next 2 years are going to be really interesting. Basically there are going to be some really interesting
collaborations coming out. We’re also trying to sort out the radio stuff for Blacktronica. I just basically think up all
these mad ideas, and then put ‘em in a box and then wait for the right time to do them. It’s all part of the five-year
plan. It’s about not leaving anything to chance. I wish I’d done it years ago. It’s amazing you know, it’s all coming
together so organically - I’m happy, really happy.
You’ve got it locked down.
Yeah, locking it down. It’s the baby. I do believe you only get a certain amount of chances in life, and this is like
the last one, so three times lucky, man.
Blacktronica is 'Brought to you by Guinness® Foreign Extra Stout'
RELATED LINKS: blacktronica.com Blacktronica website ica.org.uk ICA website goyamusic.com Goya Music Distribution website (for information on Bugz In The Attic)
PUBLISHED: Friday 6th December 2002
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“When it began, I was in Philadelphia with King Britt, sitting at his kitchen table. We were talking about
how frustrating it was to be making this music that was influenced by so many things, but didn’t have a place"