Adventures In New Bohemia

Memoirs of a resident DJ...

Good morning from chilly South London,

I don’t know if it’s the time of year, or a hangover from spending a good deal of 2024 looking back at the last twenty years of my professional life with First Word, but I still seem to be in a nostalgic mood as 2025 starts to pick up steam. I’m currently culling my record collection (I’ve got to the ‘E’ section and if the current rate keeps up will most likely have around 1000 LPs to get rid of) which adds to this focus on the past. It’s the records that I clearly remember buying that I find hardest to cut - memories of record shops, friends I was with or digging trips across the pennines to Manchester from my days living in Leeds hold a special place, and I’m loathe to do anything that might further distance me from those memories.

Finding a flyer trapped between two records yesterday made me think of another milestone that for some reason I didn’t mark last year. First Word started alongside our clubnight New Bohemia that I ran for a few years with my friends Noah and Barry at The Faversham in Leeds. The Fav (as it was colloquially known) was on Leeds University’s campus - just across the road from the halls of residence I lived in when I first arrived in the city as a very green first year Philosophy student. From the outside it didn’t look like a club at all - it was as if a large country house had been dropped into a regular Leeds back-street. I remember driving my friend Al aka TM Juke to the venue the first time - as we pulled up into the carpark he remarked ‘I didn’t know we were playing at Byker Grove’.

I’d been a regular at The Fav in my first year, both for weekly nights D:Funked and Fresh Jive (probably the first hip hop nights I went to) and their legendary summer garden parties. As with a lot of venues it had it’s ups and downs: in 2000 it shut down abruptly, the day before a bunch of us were going to play a Love Parade after-party, and by 2004 it was a fairly standard party pub. The team behind the brilliant Hifi Club took it over and set about reframing it as a music-led venue. Along with a few other local DJs I was booked to play there with the goal of getting rid of the existing crowd at all costs. We were under strict instructions not to take any requests - in its previous guise the biggest tune of the night was the theme from Baywatch. I remember playing with a guy called John Peters, drinking tea and ‘beat-juggling’ the didgeridoo intro to Jamiroquai’s ‘When You Gonna Learn?’ for a solid 10 minutes, whilst a bemused clientele wandered in and straight out again.

Fast forward a few months and myself and Noah (who went on to run festivals Soundwave, Dimensions, Outlook and now We Out Here) put on the first New Bohemia as a one-off to celebrate the launch of our Two Syllables compilation on FW. This was also a ‘Love Music, Hate Racism’ fundraiser - I think Noah ran 30 gigs in 30 days as part of the campaign. The night went well and 6 months later, with Barry now brought in to join the crew, we made it a regular event. Initially we hosted 3 out of 4 Fridays, with Sheffield promoters Phonetics and Leeds legend Lubi taking the spare night. Within a few months we had every Friday, and so began an exhausting, wild ride that ultimately set me on the path to where I am today.

One thing to note here is our logo - an illustration of a picture of ‘Different Strokes’ star Gary Coleman. People loved this logo and our stickers were impossible to ignore in Leeds at the time (and were much coveted as a result). In retrospect it’s a kind of cultural appropriation that I wasn’t nuanced enough to notice back then. Not something I’d do now, and not the worst thing in the world but worth highlighting in any case.

One quirk of this era is that I have very few photos - this was pre-smartphone and whilst we did get photographers down relatively often it’s a very different archive to what the equivalent event would now produce. I know there’s a current move to stop people taking photos on the dance floor but I wish we did have a bit more to remember this era by. Fortunately the music can set the brain firing and take me back to days that I look on incredibly fondly.

When we started out I think I wasn’t even meant to be DJing - just promoting and running the night, but after a while I ended up playing most weeks, particularly in the 11-12.30 spot where the club would really start bumping. It’s a funny relationship that you have with music when you’re playing at a weekly night. You know exactly what effect a particular track will have at a particular time - to the point when you can’t help but tut silently to yourself when another DJ ‘goes too early’ with a big tune.

Without overthinking I set myself the task of picking the records that best summed up this era - here’s what I’ve got…

Let’s Ride - Q-Tip
This is a track I played in pretty much every set back then (as my battered 12” single will attest). It’s a good example of an underrated quality in club tunes: it’s incredibly easy to mix. 8 bars of drums, 8 bars of the hook and then the verse kicks in. In pre-seato/rekordbox times, with a varying quality of monitoring this was a godsend.

The Jellyfish - Danny Breaks
A bonafide speaker-destroyer! Danny Breaks tunes always went down well - the mix of hard hip hop drums and mind-altering baselines was a guaranteed winner.

Just - Mark Ronson
This came out on a white label that rapidly became unattainably expensive. A short-lived shop called Soul Alley had a bunch of them and sold them at an almost unfairly reasonable price. This is before the full Ronson covers album came out and it’s easy to see why it was so popular. When he eventually toured the record our very own Haggis Horns stepped in for the Dap-Kings with Tawiah (who we also worked with in later years) on vocals.

Sumthin Betta - Kidkanevil
This was from kidk’s first EP, which was one of the first releases of ours that got real pick up outside our own circle of friends. I hadn’t listened to this in years but it put a real smile on my face hearing it today.

Dust - Recloose
I was a bit over-serious about music back then and a lot of my early days as a DJ were defined by being anti certain things, including basically all House music. This was a reaction to the ‘handbag-house’ scene which dominated Leeds for a while, but in hindsight I was just being a bit silly. It was broken beat that eventually opened my mind up to that seam of music, and this one from Recloose was definitely one of those cross-over moments. My copy still has blood from a paper cut from opening it too quickly in a club in Sheffield.

Follow Me - Red Astaire
We played a lot of bootlegs and edits in the club, most of which haven’t aged well. This one from the sadly departed Red Astaire is an outlier - an instantly catchy track that never failed.

Dirt Off Ya Hip Hop
Speaking of bootlegs, this mashup from The Nextmen was played to death - fusing Dirt Off Ya Shoulder and Dead Prez’s ‘Hip Hop’ in a so-simple-it-shouldn’t-work-but-really-does style. I can still hear the crowd reaction when the bassline drops.

Blood Fire/Roady - The Nextmen/Fat Freddy’s Drop
The Nextmen were a big part of our nights, DJing for us a bunch of times, and producing music that was perfect for our audience. These two tracks, their own ‘Blood Fire’ featuring Dynamite (who is now a renowned sommelier) and their remix of Fat Freddy’s Drop’s ‘Roady’ fit together perfectly. I would always play one after the other, to the point that I think my fellow promoters and resident DJs got a bit bored of it. Confession time - I stole the blend from my mate Chris Welch who I think put it on a mixtape that was circulating at the time. Thanks Welchy! ;)

When She Smiles She Lights The Sky (4Hero Mix) - Plantlife
Whatever happened to Plantlife eh? This track and the equally brilliant ‘We Can Get High’ were ubiquitous for a minute and seemed guaranteed to set Jack Splash on the road to stardom. A quick google reveals that he’s behind the boards rather than in front of the mic these days, which is surprising as he was apparently a natural performer too. This mix from 4Hero gave ‘When She Smiles’ a little extra club bounce with a Mizell-esque musicality to it.

Evil Vibrations - The Rebirth
Funk/soul cover versions were really on the rise at this point, and as with bootlegs, few still stand up today. The Rebirth were a great band, and whilst I’m more likely to play ‘This Journey In’ these days, their version of the Mighty Ryeders tune is a nice twist on a familiar classic.

Puerto Rico Mix - Los Hermanos Latinos
Another track that got played pretty much every week, this was produced by the ever-prolific Quantic (I think). I don’t know the original but my guess is that he’s just beefed up the drums and restructured it a little. Whatever he did, it worked and also did the great club trick of stopping the tune dead before coming back in again with the main riff. Tracks like this were what ensured our night wasn’t completely populated by nerdy hip hop dudes - the gender balance was notably different to a lot of nights at the time which made the vibe much friendlier.

Groovement - Ty
Ah man, I miss Ty. I originally met him at the first clubnight I ran, Funky Mule. He and Shortee Blitz played at the start of a dnb all-nighter with Fabio & Grooverider that was broadcast live on Radio One. I don’t think he ever played New Bo, but I saw him tour this record at The Hifi Club around this time and it remains one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I could have picked any one of 5 or 6 from this record, but Groovement edges it.

Booty La La - Bugz In The Attic
Whilst we started as a funk/soul/hiphop/reggae night, we ended up really leaning in to the bruk scene, booking the likes of Dego, Mark Pritchard, Domu, Bugz and IG Culture. I remember Bugz playing for us in December 2004 and this tune (which wasn’t even out at that time) getting 5 reloads. I genuinely believed they were on the path that Bassment Jaxx had ridden a few years before. It didn’t quite work out that way of course, but at the time, the excitement around it was palpable.

Fuck The Police - Jay Dee
This got played a lot - the siren at the beginning made it easy to drop if you weren’t sure what to mix and wanted to switch the vibe. One of our DJs was playing this when the actual West Yorkshire police dropped in on a routine venue check. I don’t think they noticed.

Roots Ragga - Macka B
This was on a 7” that came with Tru-Thoughts’ Phonic Hoop compilation and was a really good closer come 3am. I can only picture hearing this with the lights up and a handful of hardy/hammered souls determined to stay until the bitter end.

People Under The Weather - Jehst
We played a lot of UK Hip Hop, in fact the night’s name comes from the Jehst track ‘Adventures in New Bohemia’ - thanks to my mate Jez for suggesting we use it. This one was always popular, alongside Roots Manuva’s ‘Witness’, and a bunch of tracks from Skinnyman, Task Force and the rest.

Tika Toc - Skibadee
Another artist who has sadly passed away, Skibadee was better known for his DNB but this rare foray into bashment/hip hop was undeniable.

So there we have it - a random number of random tunes that I used to play a lot 20 years ago. There’s a mix from 2006 that we gave out at the club on my Mixcloud that features a bunch of these and much more besides. That’s just here. Any of you reading who came to New Bo back then - what have I missed? Reminders welcome, as are any other pictures and memories you may have from that era.

Till next time…

Aly x