With the FabricLive series impressively about to hit its seventy first mix in the form of UK stalwart DJ EZ, Notting Hill Carnival pictures still floating around on Facebook and September seemingly giving us our last blips of sunlight in exchange for rain, we’ve recently found ourselves drawn to the music of past FabricLive 12 mixers and fellow UK act Bugz In The Attic. Formed in 1997 and consisting of nine individuals comprised of producers, DJs and vocalists, which include Orin Walters (Afronaught), Paul Dolby (Seiji), Kaidi Tatham, Daz-I-Kue, Alex Phountzi, Cliff Scott, Mark Force, Matt Lord and Mikey Stirton, the collective were often cited as being one of the most prominent acts in the broken beat scene. Their influences however stretched further than the sounds the genre name might suggest and between all members they comfortably fused elements of garage, jazz, hip hop, reggae, funk and house. These mixture of sounds were met to great appeal, and official remixes for the likes of Amy Winehouse, Roisin Murphy and Basement Jaxx soon followed, as well as a position in the UK single charts with their track “Booty La La”. These days you can catch most of the original crew still djiing and doing their own thing, with Paul Dolby still going strong as Seiji and Matt Lord recently releasing a bunch of edits under the alias Lordamercy but we decided to delve back a bit for our sixth instalment of our One On One series.

The track we want to talk about today is from one of their earlier records titled the Bittersweet EP, which was the first release on their own label Bitasweet back in 1999. Consisting of three tracks, what especially draws us to this release is the strong four by four rhythm throughout the three tunes; a far cry to the more syncopated patterns that would comprise a lot of their future releases. The particular track we feel is the highlight is “We Made It“. Punchy garage house kicks and small vocal hits start off the proceedings for easy mixing before letting the bounciest four note bassline roll out for the duration of the track. Apart from the piano solo near the end of the track ‘We Made It’ is a reasonably stripped back affair yet still we feel it still holds its own next to some of their popular vocal party anthems. One of their most underrated tracks for sure and a track that in our opinion still has its place on dance floors today.

Stream: Bugz In The Attic – We Made It (Bitasweet) 

Photo by Riccardo Villella