“Having carried on with an instrument after childhood recorder classes, it is almost a musician’s duty to declare that they were surrounded by music growing up. It is here, like many others that I admit I did not pack my musical suitcase myself, it was of course my parents and older siblings that did the duty.”
“Growing up, I was lucky enough to have music serving a soundtrack to most of my younger life. Queen, Greatest Hits One on an early trip to France, Womack and Womack battling for airspace against the hoover and Alanis Morissette enticing a guilty snigger in the back of the car for me and a host of other late ’80s kids. We were stood firmly in the lobby of the digital age and my first solo expedition into a record shop saw me leaving with a CD in hand, Big Willie Style no less.
At home however, my older brother had already been out and about on the Manchester DJ scene before I was even thought about. Accordingly, it was through him that I first came into contact with the physical vinyl and it was to remain in his hands until I was old enough to buy my own. Early on, in my presence, the record was solely an item to be fetishised and collected by DJs, to be blended, mixed and occasionally scratched but it was the CD, easy enough to drop into my school blazer pocket, that became the weapon of choice in forming musical allegiances in my early teens.
