Lost And Sound
Lost and Sound is a podcast exploring the most exciting and innovative voices in underground, electronic, and leftfield music worldwide. Hosted by Berlin-based writer Paul Hanford, each episode features in-depth, free-flowing conversations with artists, producers, and pioneers who push music forward in their own unique way.
From legendary innovators to emerging mavericks, Paul dives into the intersection of music, creativity, and life, uncovering deep insights into the artistic process. His relaxed, open-ended approach allows guests to express themselves fully, offering an intimate perspective on the minds shaping contemporary sound.
Originally launched with support from Arts Council England, Lost and Sound has featured groundbreaking artists including Suzanne Ciani, Peaches, Laurent Garnier, Chilly Gonzales, Sleaford Mods, Nightmares On Wax, Graham Coxon, Saint Etienne, Ellen Allien, A Guy Called Gerald, Jean Michel Jarre, Liars, Blixa Bargeld, Hania Rani, Roman Flügel, Róisín Murphy, Jim O’Rourke, Yann Tiersen, Thurston Moore, Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family), Caterina Barbieri, Rudy Tambala (A.R. Kane), more eaze, Tesfa Williams, Slikback, NikNak, and Alva Noto.
Paul Hanford is a writer, broadcaster, and storyteller whose work bridges music, culture, and human connection. His debut book, Coming to Berlin, is available in all good bookshops.
Lost and Sound is for listeners passionate about electronic music, experimental sound, and the people redefining what music can be.
Lost And Sound
Tesfa Williams
Tesfa Williams has been shaping the sound of UK underground music for over two decades. From his early days as Dread D in the Black Ops crew—helping define the sublow sound that fed into grime—to becoming a key figure in UK funky, his journey has always been about pushing bass culture forward.
In this episode of Lost and Sound, Tesfa breaks down the evolution of UK club music, from jungle and garage to grime and beyond. We talk about his early days in West London’s underground scene, the impact of pirate radio, and the industry challenges facing electronic artists today. He also shares the motivations behind his recent name change and how it connects to identity, culture, and artistic evolution.
We also get deep into his latest album, Raves of Future Past—a record that bridges the past and future of UK bass with Tesfa’s signature blend of raw energy and deep musicality. Plus, we explore the fragmentation of today’s music landscape, the struggle for meaningful connection in a digital world, and the importance of community and reclaiming spaces for underground music.
This is an essential listen for anyone passionate about UK club culture, sound system lineage, and the future of bass-driven music.
If you’re enjoying Lost and Sound, please do subscribe and leave a rating or review on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you listen. It really helps to spread the word and support Lost and Sound.
Tesfa Williams on Instagram
Beyond Today EP by Tesfa Williams is available now on Heist Recordings, Bandcamp.
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Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica
My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.
My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more.
Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins
Hey, this is Paul and this is Lost in Sound, the podcast where we delve into the stories of the innovators, the legends, the underground stalwarts and the game changers shaping music and culture. And today I'm speaking with someone who's been at the very core of UK bass culture for several decades Tesfa Williams. But before we get going, shout to the sponsor, audio-technica, global but family-run company that make the headphones that I'm wearing right now and whose mic you hear me do every interview through. They make studio quality yet affordable products because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to Audio-Technicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. Okay, so this is. You're going to hear a really, really what I think is a really great conversation coming up in a few minutes. It's with tesla williams. We go into everything about, like the origins of grime to what does music culture even mean in the current times, in the future where no one pays for music anymore is? I really enjoyed having this chat and you're about to hear it. This is lost in sound. Thank you, hello, and welcome to episode 161 of Lost in Sound.
Speaker 1:I'm Paul Hanford, I'm your host, I'm an author, broadcaster and a lecturer, and Lost in Sound is the weekly podcast where I chat with an artist who works outside the box, from global icons to trailblazing outsiders and emerging innovators. We talk about music, creativity and perhaps that most daunting part of being an artist the praxis of life. Previous guests on the show have included Peaches, suzanne Chiani, jim O'Rourke, cozy, funny Tootie, mickey Blanco and, first and more, and last week's episode where I spoke with Ezra Feinberg. Thanks if you listened to that, if you commented in or sent DMs about that episode, and if you've ever got any thoughtsms about that episode, and if you've ever you got any thoughts about the show, about what you've heard, do get in touch. It's always really nice to have that kind of loop of communication between what I do, what I share with the guests, what the guests tell me and and what you think of it yourself. I'm always really, really up for hearing that, and so, yeah, anyway, I'm sat on a bench right now in neukölln in berlin, and this wednesday is going to be my berliniversary. I'll I'd have been here for seven years.
Speaker 1:I moved here seven years ago, um, on march the 4th 2018, and yeah, it's been. God, it's been a bunch of eras, hasn't it? I don't know if I'm going to celebrate anything on Wednesday it doesn't seven years doesn't really feel like a particularly notable occasion. But I do feel like I've travelled through a bunch of eras since I've been here, since I left London, living full-time in London, to move to Berlin and, I don't know, maybe I'll have a cheeky Reza chicken. If you don't know what a Reza is, if you don't live in Berlin, and you don't know what a Reza is if you live somewhere else in the world and you're listening, this is a good reason to come to Berlin. I'd say Berghain is over, but Reza is here.
Speaker 1:Anyway, today on the show you're going to hear a conversation I had with Tesfa Williams, british producer and DJ and a real stalwart of UK's electronic music and bass culture over the last few decades now, and he's a really interesting guy. He's someone whose own personal music history has given him a really unique and informed perspective, not just on the past but on the future, philosophically, on the future of music itself. When it comes to his past, he's got a real insight on the evolution of jungle into the strand that becomes garage, then on into grime, into funky, into house and beyond, and he's someone has been there, evolved and adapted through through different eras from the early 2000s under the moniker dread d. He was a pivotal member of black ops, the west london production crew and label that pioneered sublo, basically a darker bass, heavy precursor to grime. Sublo was, it could be argued, grime before grime. In east london there was esky and in west london there was sublo and these things mutated into grime. Now I'm not a grime scholar. I learned from listening to test for a lot here. So please do hit me up in the comments if I've got something wrong in how I'm and how I'm describing that. But also if you're new to finding out about sublo, you've got to do a little bit of youtubing to find some of the early sounds. But if you're not familiar I'd go and check out.
Speaker 1:A track tesla did as dread d called. Invasion is really really raw. By the late 2000s tesla had embraced house and made the classic uk funky track, heartbeat, which became emblematic of that era, and since then he's put out a really solid body of work and last year all of this in some way consolidated into the album raves of future past, which isn't just a really great name for an album. It's something there's a lot more to it and we talk about that in the conversation you're about to hear, and one of the things that really fascinated me about chatting with tesla is how, through his own personal reflections, I got a sense of how his evolution as an artist tells a story about big cultural and stylistic shifts of the last several decades. Whether producing club anthems, running his label, mentoring emerging artists, there's a deep knowledge and love for black british dance music at the core of his work and it felt like a really crucial time in his practice that we had this chat too. He's just changed his artist name from t williams to his full, real name, test for williams, and in the conversation you're going to hear why that is so.
Speaker 1:There we go a little bit of housekeeping, as always lost and sound is a one-person operation. I'm super lucky to have the support of audio technica as sponsors. That helped me to do this. But all of the work, all of the, the research, the editing, the interviews, the, the putting it out, that's all me on my own, so your support does mean a lot. I don't ask for any money at the moment, anyway, for doing this, but if you, if you enjoy what I do, please do leave a review, leave a rating on on the your podcast platform of choice. Really, really, really, really does help. If you haven't subscribed yet, do subscribe. If there's a friend of yours that you think you might like this episode or any of the others, please send them a link. It really, really, really does help. That's my little preachy bit. Back now to Tess, for Williams. So we had this conversation about a month ago. It was the beginning of february. Let's get into it. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:you're right yeah, I'm great, I'm great, I'm great, actually fantastic great, good stuff.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for speaking with me today. Thank you having me. One of the big burning questions, just to kind of address it first, if that's all right is is about the name change. Really, you know, going from t williams to tesla. I mean, what was the motivation behind that decision and and how does that connect with you?
Speaker 2:like you know your personality and your your artisticness yeah, so the main reason why the change happened was because of the decisions that I took to have that name t williams in the first place. So I have to rewind back to my early days in music where I was making grime and doing pirate radio and just things like the form 696 as well in london, which was, like you know, parties from happening and and black music from like thriving in the city in itself. Um, and so all of those things kind of wrapped into one made me take a decision when I kind of when I transitioned into house music, to take a name that was either a more palatable, be less connected to like actually me, like personally, like like directly, but then also, yeah, just just the kind of palatableness of it, like it was like, okay, well, I'll use this, of course that for me that was like a decision that was based on all the external factors that were going on in london in the uk at the time, right for black musician. So at this point in time I'm no longer on pirate radio, you know. Thankfully, the pirate radio station that I was on was rinse fm, so now that's a legal community radio station. I'm no longer having those kind of like.
Speaker 2:I guess those challenges of like people understanding that I'm now making house music again, rewinding back to the early noughties when people didn't respect grime the way they should have, you know, and see it as a genre that was really going to kind of like take hold and stay around and stick around.
Speaker 2:So even that in itself kind of meant that you you had to navigate things carefully with people kind of like knowing that you had a grime history or grime past and so on and so forth, because Cause they just didn't respect it. You know, it just was even at school, at college, where that college there was loads of kids doing like dubstep, there was loads of kids doing drum and bass, which those two genres kind of felt like people respected the production values of those those genres, but grime just didn't have have that kind of like ring on it at that time. You know, um, so with all those changes and with the landscape kind of changing and and especially with seeing my white counterparts in the industry changing their names when george ford got murdered, um, like this was, like you know, a poignant time for me to kind of like move forward and step into the new name, got lots of music coming on lots of great labels as well, um so now's the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a really lovely answer as well, and I want to dig in a little bit more, and a bit into these early days as well, because you were there from right, from probably the before the beginning of grime really yeah, yeah, yeah and then the album. I mean because I want to talk a little bit about Raised From Future Past as well, which, by the way, is such a fucking great title for an album.
Speaker 2:I have to give that up for me and Matt sitting down with that one and speaking about X-Men and all the rest of it and he was like, oh, Raised From Future Past would be dope. So I give it up to Matt Bayfield from Purple Sea Records.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that feels like I mean because that came out last year, but it feels so like apt for the name change as well, because I don't know if I'm reading much into it, but it does feel like. It feels like an album is very now but it's got a lot of the past in in terms of maybe like styles of music and transitions of like culture and scenes that maybe you've been through or have been going through in the last 20, 25 years and I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that, about why that came together on the album the way it did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that album came together. Basically, I got an opportunity during 2020 to really reconnect with my record collection. I haven't seen a lot of the music in one place at one time, so I really got a great opportunity in 2020 to sit down and really get intimate with my record collection, which, of course, is a record collection that spans from the nineties you know the early nineties to you know present day. And, that being said, those records are.
Speaker 2:They are my influences, they are the things that kind of like really resonated with me because I mean, mean, when I'm talking to students and lecturing and stuff like that, I kind of speak to them about the things that you pay money for, the things that you'll hand money over for, and, of course, it's a lot of music that I listen to on spotify and youtube and so on and so forth, but this is the music that I I've handed my money over for, this is the music that I've stood beside in that respect and I got really influenced by it and sat down with it and, um, I also, the end of 2019, bought a digitakt electron, yes, or electron, digitakt, sorry, should I say and that, between the two things so having my record collection and having this new piece of equipment that really connected me to my youth. So imagine, I'm connected to my youth via the records'm connected to my youth via the records I'm connecting my youth via this drum machine and step sequencer and the. The album just started kind of like writing itself. It was just like happening. You know, there was nothing more than that I had. I also bought a cork triton as well.
Speaker 2:In that period. I had my cork m1 as well. I was using the emu, the proteus, emu, proteus as well on this. So these are all like sound modules, synths, so and so forth, but this is all stuff from my, my childhood, all the stuff from my youth I would have wanted to have when I was like a pre-teen teenager, but the, the workflow, was exactly the workflow that I had when I first started making music, which was using the step sequencer. So, all in all, that basically is the album.
Speaker 1:The album was the music that's influenced me, coming together in a kind of present day format, which was raves of future past yeah, and you mentioned that, but this sort of came really came together in the beginning of 2020, you know, was there something to do with lockdown going on there as well that allowed you to reflect on stuff, or was that just by the by?
Speaker 2:no, no from. You know, as artists, we go through this period like, well, you know, when you get a period of success right in your career which, of course, I've been lucky enough to experience this, you know, you, you kind of almost creatively get swallowed up as well, like the kind of creative juices get sucked out of you. Yeah, again, if you're not prepared for it or if you haven't got the tools to kind of like manage that and I didn't have the tools at the time, like so, um 2013, 2014, like you know, I've gone full throttle into the industry. You know, signed to pmr records universal, which was an amazing thing. That happened. Um island records, you know. So signed into a, like a major.
Speaker 2:At that point in time in my career, my point in time, my life, was amazing. But then you got you, you know, then you're touring heavy and you're doing all of this kind of stuff and that's all great. But what did I get into it for? I'm, you know, I'm a music lover. I'm a music fan at heart, first and foremost. I'm not I'm not someone that wants fame, I'm not someone that cares about all of that per se.
Speaker 2:So the lockdown really gave me an opportunity to reflect on that it gave me. It gave me an opportunity to stop feeling like I was running a sprint. You know, we now got an opportunity to like, take a second from the sprint, be like, okay, what is really going on here? What's really happening, what do you, what do you love? Like, how does this really, how is this inspiring you, you know, and what it is inspiring you. And if nothing's inspiring, you start trying to find things that do inspire you, and so and so forth. So the lockdown really gave me an opportunity to stop and, yeah, stop is just as, just as important as go right you know, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned about sprinting, and I think when you're sprinting it's really hard to see what's going on either side of you. And you know, I think that that trajectory of like getting some fame and success and the momentum of the industry, it's like you know, it's like you know it's amazing. But I think it's very easy for artists to sort of only see start, seeing goals, rather than feeling what they're connected to all of the time.
Speaker 2:Well, this is it. It was that. I mean, people talk about staying present, right, and that was what it was. I was never present. I was always looking for the next release. I was always looking for the next release. I was always looking for the next gig. I was always looking. I was always looking like, oh, what's the next, the next, the next, but never being like present, what's going on right here, right now, what's making me happy, and in 2020, obviously, I think we all had to kind of like look at what was going on right here, right now and what is making us happy and what's gonna make us happy right here, right right now. So it was definitely a great, like you know, it was a positive. It was hard, but it was a positive in and out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and there's something else about the album but it sort of feels really and I mean this in the best possible way, but it doesn't feel polished at all. It feels like, you know, you could have gone and taken like this music and kind of really glossed it up, you know, and uh, tick, tocked it. But this, this feels really like it's in the best possible way. It reminds me of like the dirtiness and the uncertainty and the unpolishedness of like rave mixtapes. In a way, you know, it's got that sort of authentic like yes, you're back there no, and there's no, literally.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you making that comment because, um, and that observation, because that's what I was going for, in the sense that I can make a record that is commercially viable. I can make a record that can stream millions so and so and so all of this stuff, like you know that, all these meters of success, these measurements of success that we have currently and this was me really going back to channeling my youth and just looking at it from a perspective of does this feel good? Does this connect with me? Yes, okay, end of stop there. Next one Does this feel good?
Speaker 2:Does you know, a lot of them are just jams that I've done live as well, so I haven't actually polished it, I haven't gone in and been fine-tuning and so on and so forth, so I might have only just had a drum track, so I have to mix that drum track. There's no separation there, so it's rough and ready and all of that, and that is exactly what I was going for is the reason, the kind of not overthinkinginking. Yeah, so not overthinking it, um, also using techniques that I would have used when I was younger, which you know if I didn't. I know all these extra techniques. I have all these extra tools at my disposal, but kind of like stripping that all back and going back just down to like the simpleness, like EQ compression done.
Speaker 2:There's no, like you know, no need to kind of like go even further, even with the way that some of the drums are really dry and there's not enough, lots of reverb and all this kind of stuff. It's just, you know, cause those back in the nineties, when I first started, you had to have money to get a reverb unit, you had to have money to get, you had to have money to get um, and I didn't have the money. So it was just like, you know, you use what was around you and you just created what felt good and that's what this album was. It was like rough and ready and just doing things that felt good yeah, yeah, because I back in like the early days of grime.
Speaker 1:I guess that sort of rawness of sound is partially coming out of like maybe not having the resources to buy like a kind of a fancy stack unit of reverbs that just do one thing, but do it well, you know literally, but that's, that's the point of this.
Speaker 2:It's like you're being very, like being resourceful, right, and that's what I felt, like the limitation, I guess, is part of the art, part of the process, part of the thought process in it. So it was like limiting myself, to be like, okay, well, these limitations are, these parameters are what you're going to create, because we have got everything at our fingertips in this day and age. So I was going back to that early like grime freeness and yeah, and it was just, yeah, it was just about resources. We didn't, I just didn't have, you know, it's just. This is what it is. But the music was amazing and the music was lovely and people enjoyed it and I enjoyed making it and that's what this was all about, like kind of going back to me enjoying making music and if people enjoy it, too great, if not, yeah all right, it's not for you.
Speaker 1:You know, that's right. Yeah, yeah, there's no point in making music for everyone at the same time as that. You know, and and um, I think, like conversely to that, like now as we're mentioning, like with ableton and with like a million different kinds of plugins, you know you can get the.
Speaker 1:We got the whole world of like every studio on someone's phone pretty much like it's like the opposite of restrictions, you know, and I think you know, obviously I'm not I don't want to be like a fuddy-duddy that doesn't think great things come out of that, because they do every day, you know, but at the same time as that I do feel, as you're talking about here, like restrictions do really do something, you know, and like what, what are your sort of reflections on that of like you know, how do you feel? Like I mean, obviously, with this album, restrictions really define the sound, but have you all, at the same time as that, have you ever sort of had times where you've got lost in just the choice of having everything available to you now?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, so that's what I would say at that kind of mid-10s era, 2015 onward, kind of like the tech house, kind of like techno scene really like started to take hold of like electronic music and really started to come to the forefront of the mainstream. Of course I could have made that music because I have all the tools, exactly the same as any of these people like right, so, but it breathes to like, stopping, like not doing, and that's what that's my experience, that's how I've my I as a person, as a human, I react to having no limitations is that I stop, I don't do like, and that's because there's too much choice, like so you, you haven't got the opportunity to kind of say, refine or distill what you're trying to say into that moment. So it's like and it becomes, and it becomes detached from myself, because I'm like, oh, am I trying to say what they're trying to say over there? Am I trying to say what I'm trying to say over there? You know, like you could look back through my discography, you'll see, like around that period just started to dry up, just started to like not put as much music.
Speaker 2:Wasn't like I wasn't making music, I just putting music out, like it was like one a year maybe during that time, and even then I was just feeling things out and just, you know, just keeping present with the scene, but I wasn't, I wasn't like, overly excited.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean I'm all overly inspired, and that was just because there was just too much choice, there was just too much option available. I could have made r&b, I could have gone into production, I could have gone here, I could have gone there, I could have just done all of this stuff. And again, you've got to remember as well, like we're constantly in this technology change as well, like so, even though I'm talking about ableton and all these things that are available to us today, um, let's just say, if we went back to 2010, lots of those things weren't available to me, like you know, and even if, even if they were, they weren't just in the box with one program. Maybe I would have to get someone to crack those programs and do this and do that. Now you might just get logic and you could just start making anything just in the box. Logic, you know, on one program, on one door. So that middle era, that the, the just having too much options, was just, it was terrible for me. It was absolutely terrible for me.
Speaker 1:I mean sorry to hear that, I don't mean to laugh like that but, just, I'm reflecting on it for myself as well, because I feel like it was the same in terms of, like consuming music. And, you know, suddenly, like I guess 2010, 2011 to 2012, it was like MySpace was probably already dead, but Facebook was big, instagram was coming through, like a lot of the, the resources which we'd listen to, music was sort of really pushing forward, and I think, in some ways, that really and Spotify as well, of course but like, in some ways, that really helped people, like you mentioned, like you could have gone and done an R&B track. You could have gone and done an R&B track, you could have gone and done like a tech house track, but and I think in a positive way, it did help people to free themselves up of being like.
Speaker 1:Back in the early nineties, when I started getting into music and everything was so tribal Like you know, I was, I was an indie kid and I started going to raves and I felt like I was betraying my indie kid friends from going to raves, you know, and then you get to like the noughties, late noughties, and all of that sort of starts to evaporate, you know, but at the same time as that, again, it's more choice, isn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, I was the same and I'd still believe it to be true. But I was the same. Like you know, I was in, I was into jungle in the early 90s and then when I started listening to garage, it was like, what are you doing? Like I felt so bad. Even when I started buying garage you got uk garage records like it was like, oh, I'm splitting my money between like this scene and that scene and this is crazy, this is not good or whatever. Um and one hand at the time I thought it was bad, like it felt bad, like you're saying, like you know, it's very tribal and it was very much like your friends like.
Speaker 2:For me I didn't. When I was, when I was playing jungle in the early 90s, all my friends like moved to garage and then I used to just go be going to the youth club my own playing jungle on my own when no one else was around, because no one really wanted to hear me playing jungle records at the youth club at this, you know, the late 90s, no one wanted to hear it. Everyone thought I was like the little weirdo kid that's still playing jungle. You're still doing that old thing, whatever, it's like 96, 97. But, that being said, like I feel like that almost the tribalness of it means you really have to love it, whereas I feel like people don't necessarily. You know, they, they, someone would say that they really love something right now. And this is just, this is maybe my, this is just my opinion and my take on it. Someone will say that they really like something right now. Or people, more than often than not, they'll say like, they like everything. That's what you do. Oh, what kind of music you into? Oh, I'm into everything. Come, you know. A bit of this, a bit of that. But it just means that no one's really passionate, passionate about things no more like. And and I feel like that's a sad place because that means that ultimately, you know, when someone says they have a favorite artist, they may consider the person's their favorite artist just because they stream their music a lot on spotify and the artist isn't really getting paid for that music and so and so forth, or getting paid a crazy amount of for that music and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So I feel like the tribalness could mean a lot more back in the day, because we would go, we would, you know, you'd link up people that were into the same thing as you, and then you guys would go and support that scene and that music and so on, so forth.
Speaker 2:So it became beyond um, the music or the, the thing that was kind of holding putting you together. Then you became dressing the same, then you became kind of like watching the same movies, then you became, you know, going to the same um restaurants and so like, so and so forth, and it all kind of like filtered down into other parts of your life. I miss that, I miss it, whereas now it feels like everyone's everything which, yeah, I don't know, I don't know how, yeah, how beneficial that is, where everything can, nothing at the same time, because really and truly like, even if you get it like that, then we have these other little tribes which are like I'm an apple kind of like person, or I'm a samsung, android person or whatever, and these tribes don't really, you know, they don't really matter.
Speaker 1:You're kind of eating the same thing yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think it probably has a detrimental effect on community. You know, like music communities you sort of mentioned in there about, like you know, going to the same restaurants, finding, finding your people, and then from that you sort of discover in there about, like you know, going to the same restaurants, finding your people and then from that you sort of discover more things through people, and obviously we're just still discovering lots of things. But I wonder how it affects, like, I think, particularly in artists that are reliant so much more and more on like grassroots to actually pay their way. You know, now Spotify and all of these grab your money. Um, I I wonder how much of an effect this sort of fragmentation has just on like the sort of tribal love of like just being wanting to sort of support artists and be in a group of people yeah, I do wonder, um, I mean, it's the big thing in it, like music's free.
Speaker 2:So that was probably the biggest shift in this. We can't really argue at this point, like no one really pays for music, like, yeah, music's free. So music being free means again, it just means you enter the kind of like game or the love for it or even your understanding of it. It's secondary, it's connected to another media or another medium, like so music and art, music and sport, music and games, music, and it's all music and music. And you know which means. I mean I'm sure there are people out there that are just music and they, they do still love it. Just in that respect.
Speaker 2:Um, but yeah, I do wonder, I do sometimes really like, ponder on it, like if they'll, they'll ever be that moment of it.
Speaker 2:You know, people kind of like sitting back and taking an album without having to do taking an album whilst playing games or taking an album watching telly or taking. You know, I mean that thing that yeah, I don't, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if we will ever get back there, but I'm just, I'm just, I'm just thinking on it, because that that also shifts your understanding of music because it's like it's free, so it's like it's like a thing that you do connected to something else, whereas I feel like things like books or movies and things like other entertainment. You still lock in, you still watch a movie or read a book like you. You do these things, um, and if you do do these things with anything else, then again you accompany it with the music, like so you'd be like with music, with music, yeah, yeah yeah, it's like you get those, those playlists for like best playlist, for like cooking sunday lunch too, and exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I know I wanted to kind of go back to the early days, you know. So you grew up in west london, yeah, yeah, yeah, and what was what was like? Did you have like any early experiences? Was there like a particularly experience of like music really coming into your life, or was it just there all the time?
Speaker 2:music was there all the time. Um, my, my mom and my dad listened to me all the time. My dad particularly it was a really big music fan. He collects record, collected records as well. He's singer in a band as well when I was young and um, so music was always around my like, my parents have music playing in their house all the time. It's always fun, it's always like something's always going on like roots, reggae um funk, soul, dub reggae, you know that. So car calypso, the caribbean, um my family of caribbean heritage. So, yeah, I just grew up around music. There was like not a time um my siblings play instruments. You know my eldest brother, singer um used to manage as well in music, in the music industry as well. Um, yeah, so music has been around me.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm number four out of six children, right, yeah, uh, we all grew up together as well, um, same mom and dad. It's just, you know there was. There's just a lot of music around us and we all play. You know we all do. My sister plays, my sister plays flute, one plays piano. You know everyone does music or has some kind of like musical creativity um at some point in time in their life, or still does it whatever, and for me I guess probably like the most poignant thing that happened was like the pivotal moment was was in like me here in jungle for the first, which basically was via a tape. So this is a crazy story, but my dad used to be a youth worker and he used to work at a youth center which dj stretch, who is Goldie's label.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Metalheads.
Speaker 2:Metalheads. So he's like really close to that scene. But he was at this youth centre right Just going to this youth centre. He's from London as well, from down the road from me. He gave my dad a tape and I got my hands on that tape and that was my first real jungle tape, dj Stretch, just coincidence of it. And yeah, I got a good education from that tape. To be honest with you, what was it about?
Speaker 1:jungle like hearing that tape that was so different to you from what you'd heard before.
Speaker 2:It was combining the roots, reggae, the rare groove, um, all the things I kind of grew up with, into a new like modern day british format which was rave. So it was the mixture of the two things. So it felt a bit, it just felt like me. It felt like I'm british, right, and this is my identity, but also I'm caribbean, and this is my identity, you know, and this was the amalgamation of the two worlds kind of colliding, and it just spoke to me so much, you know, on a deep level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the way of describing it. It's like the amalgamation of these things. You know, it's like, I think, a lot of genres like it's not like they were, like, created in a lab. They're the result of life happening. They're the result of just like that's a natural thing, that has happened because of the combination around it yeah, 100 um.
Speaker 2:you know again, growing up in london, growing up in west london, the area I grew up in, ealing, which is very multicultural, uh, quite a lot of um, indian, like communities around the area as well, and I grew up and I went to school, my school school was like predominantly Indian, either Hindu or Sikh, and you know, just this is that that was like. That's something that I still hold quite dear to my upbringing and my experience of London and being British is that is all of those kind of like other cultures, like kind of like the English culture, the Caribbean culture, the Asian culture and all of it kind of like just melting into one and you can't. It's almost like even if you tried to stop it, it would happen. It happens, it's just what happens, you know. And yeah, here we are with jungle music.
Speaker 1:you know the music that really spoke to my soul, yeah, yeah, I read somewhere that when you first heard Garage you thought it was like a little bit lame. Yeah read somewhere that when you first heard garage, you thought it was like a little bit lame.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't want to misquote you, no, no, no, like it's so.
Speaker 2:Do you know what it's so much about this tribe thing that you we spoke about before that you know, I was so deep in love in jungle and because it's the jungle had such a strong, you know, the identity of my identity, of caribbean and britishness and that those two things kind of like going together, um, this garage thing didn't feel like it was that, you know, for me, because it felt like it had more American influences, um, african-american influences, house, um influences, which wasn't the top of the list for me. You know, just being in black British it wasn't necessarily the top of the list for me. You know, just being in black british it wasn't necessarily the top of the list for me. So it didn't necessarily speak to me until we got people again, probably of the same percent as me. I didn't know this at the time, but you know, people like wookie and um steve girley and brass tooth these people, like you know caribbean descent as well that kind of like actually mixing the jungle into the garage.
Speaker 2:That's when I really started to fall in love with it, but prior to that I didn't. I just didn't feel like it spoke to me the same way that jungle did and I was quite, I was quite stern on that, like I'm a kid, I'm a teenager, I'm like a young teenager at this point, yeah, so stern on it. I was like and everyone was really like, trying to get into it or trying to be a part of it, whatever, we had this party in the local area called education in dance this is under 18 party in the local area in greenford and, um, I was adamant I wasn't going to this party. I was like education in dance.
Speaker 2:I was like you you're trying to educate me on what's good and what's not. I don't need an education, I know everything already. Me as a teenager, I'm in the jungle and I think I know everything already. So yeah, it really. But that education in dance was a garage party. It was a UK garage party, like Norris the Bossman, just EZ Martin. All these djs would roll through there and I just felt like it was like brainwashing people into liking garage again. That was just so I'm like I'm staying away from the masses, I'm just gonna go on this line and if I like. But when I recognized that I did like it or did I did enjoy it. I'm happy that I kind of wasn't pig-headed and kind of like didn't just like shift and move with where my heart was lying and because I never stopped liking jungle, it wasn't like I stopped liking both yeah, but that was the thing we're talking about, the tribalism earlier on, isn't it?
Speaker 1:but there's points where you feel like, if you like, open yourself up to something, like you're shutting away the other thing, you know, yeah oh man, I was really bad as a kid like that.
Speaker 2:I was that for years. It was a good amount of time that I didn't. I was like this music is lame, like yeah.
Speaker 1:And then there's something really like I've had this a few times in my life where something I've previously hated or really objected to, like I find my way into it and it's really. It's like discovering a new type of dessert, you know like, wow, okay, yeah, yeah um, did you know what it is?
Speaker 2:though, like I tell you, where the creeper started to happen to me was when the the 10 inch of it's london thing came out, it's got garcia. Now you can imagine now like this is speaking to me, now, like it's the title, it's a london thing. The man said it's a london thing, like this was like okay, and it's, and it's someone kind of rapping, spitting, whatever. I'm like okay, okay, this is a this is a bit of a bit of me now, like you know, yeah I love that.
Speaker 1:And what was the sort of story from moving from VAR into the pirate radio to Black Ops, and you know this is before Grime, but this is like what led into Grime and you're calling it Sublo, or it was called Sublo at the time, yeah, so the early days of that is that I went to college.
Speaker 2:I met a young chap, ryan John, who's a friend from college and he's also a DJ Dice his name is and he I used to just give him dub, you know, because how else was he going to get your music out there at this time in life? Like so I should just give him dub plates, like I used to go to music house, cut dub plates was doing this since high school and then just give it to DJs. And he was like my main kind of like DJ and he was on a station called Lushef FM which was like really well known at the time, really like doing really big things. Two famous or famous duo that come off that station was Luck and Me. Ah, yes, yeah, lush FM was like really up there. Same, I think Genius Crew was on there as well who made Boom Selection for any garage heads. You know they were doing big things. Um, also, I think shy cookie as well, like there was a lot of cool djs on that and he was on the station. He actually had a show on the station.
Speaker 2:So I'd go cut dub plates up, give him the dub plate and he would play it on radio and he was connected to johnny cash because they lived in the local. He's from kensal rise, johnny cash was um from mozart state and yeah. So basically johnny ended up hearing one of my songs played on show and he said he wanted to meet me. I went to um dj dice's house and met johnny and then he was just like yeah, like you know, I want you to be a part of black ops, whatever, and this is maybe like night. This is like 99, like 1999. Garage is still like the main thing. We're still just playing, just playing garage, but I'm trying to make garage and I'm trying to share music that feels like my version of garage or what I could make with the equipment, with the resources that I had, um, which meant it wasn't really garage and yeah, so, so johnny came up with the terminology subload, that he was like let's call out, let's, let's call this thing which is merging, like our influences, which would be jungle hip-hop, all these influences into one, into the garage thing, and let's call our thing sublo. I was like, yeah, cool, like let's, you know, let's call it because it is different. So let's call it that. And I guess, like the east london lot you know, in the early 2000s, had their esky and all of that and everyone like calling their thing different, like names, um, and, like I said, this reminds me of like, kind of like why names are so important. Yeah, is that we was all calling our music different things.
Speaker 2:Obviously we was all feeding into the garage scene, but then I guess the media was starting to call it grime this is grimy term on it and lots of us didn't. We didn't like that. It really felt like derogatory. It really felt like it was like why does our music have to be grime? Why does our music have to be like, you know, from the dirt or whatever? Do you know what I mean? It really didn't feel good. Still to this day I still struggle with it. But like, that was the point of like understanding for me that they're not respecting the genre in the way that because they could have just called it sublo or they could have just called it esky and just and just that term could have been the blanket, it could have been the blanket. But um, yeah, media, the journalists at the time, started calling it grime and that term kind of stuck. And there's, there's interviews of even, like you know, your roll deep your page you go.
Speaker 1:These people not really enjoying that term just as much as I really enjoy it from the west london side of things, um, but here we are, the term stuck yeah, you see, because I I think if I thought about like music from that era that I would call, I would associate, without actually hearing it, you know, without I would sort of think more of like something like the libertines or like some sort of scuzzy indie stuff, they that, that that music sounds like it's people that live in grime right, you know and embrace it.
Speaker 1:I don't associate it with, but once you get used to a term, you just get used to it, don't you?
Speaker 2:that's it like once again, like there's something, and I feel like the strongest part about that was that the media was saying the term grime more than anything else. So, more than anything else, we could talk about it from our little pocket. They can talk about what they're doing from their little pocket. Everyone can talk about the terms, the names that they want to call this genre from their own little pocket. But if the media is blanketing the whole thing sublo, es, esky and all the others even if you go to Wiki right now, you'll see Sublo and Esky and all these other sub genres underneath it. But that's what happened is that the media wanted to kind of bulk it all together into one thing. I guess I'm dipping off. No, go for it. That was even a feeling.
Speaker 2:And again, as much as the youth right now might come to me and say, oh, grime, and I still have that trigger in me that we didn't call it, that we didn't give it that name, um, I didn't give my music that name. You know, someone else did and it was. It wasn't someone that I felt had a, had a, had a, had an understanding of of what we were trying to achieve, to put that terminology on it. Subloat for me felt fitting, you know. I mean yeah. So yeah, that's how that that subloat thing came about and that's how I got to meet johnny cash and become a part of black ops and how we transitioned from uk garage into what we now call grime.
Speaker 1:You know, and at the beginnings of of grime you know that early noughties, kind of like that period yeah, yeah, and then zooming ahead a little bit, like one of the eras I really love of your music is like a local action era, and we've zoomed ahead a bit. You mentioned a little bit before there when we were talking about, like your own personal name change and and kind of reclaiming that or certain that. But I was wondering about, like what was the thing that kind of prompted this sort of move into like more house sounds and more funky sounds, that that you started to explore, like you know, in the 2010s?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I'm really a product of my environment, right. So, um, around I would say 2005, grime became more mc focused and less producer led. Um, nothing wrong with it. We've got some amazing artists out of it, you know. But even when you look at people like, say, like scepter, who's one of the top mcs, at the time when I was doing grime he was just a producer like me. You know, we were just it wasn't, it wasn't mc. Same goes for like jam on, it was just that just a producer, was all just producers, and they figured out that they had to become mcs to kind of like take their music to the next level or continue to sell music and so on and so forth. Yeah, I just figured I'd have to leave the show to kind of right, continue, um, to kind of be satisfied within the musical landscape. And that was based on a few things, maybe like me, kind of like feeling like I was going maybe a little bit more nostalgic on the kind of like late 90s garage music that I still loved and I was looking and searching for that and and maybe searching for a bit of soulful in the music and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:Um, partially, you know, just not feeling connected to the events. And when the events happened there wasn't many of them. But when the events happened, not feeling as as connected, because it was less focused on djing and music production and focused on the mcs, kind of like doing a stage show and you know, them showing their lyrical skills um, it just didn't speak to me. That moment didn't speak to me. And then we used to go to this old school garage party called liberty and that would. That would happen in the nighttime at a club in vauxhall and then at six o'clock in the morning there would be like a little hour changeover, or sometimes there wasn't even change, it would just be going on. But then there was an after party called bigger. I think it was called, I think, if I remember. Um, that don't quote me on that.
Speaker 2:But after, in the same venue, after Liberty, and when we was leaving, we would be hearing like them playing like house music in the other room. I'd be like these people are enjoying themselves, it's like buzzard. And these characters like I was like these people are sound like they're enjoying. So every time you would kind of like think, oh, we should go to that, we should, and then we went and in an hour, you know, and then, oh, like before we know it was, we're there until, like you know whatever, enjoying ourselves in this after party. And it really was like the education in house music and it really wasn't just house music, it was like it was house but specifically like soulful house, afro house and broken beat as the kind of like. And then every now and again there'd be one or two like garage tunes thrown in, or there would be one or two kind of like masters at work or Todd Terry tracks that were from the night that we played in the garage circuit, anyways, that would be thrown into into those sets. So it felt familiar, same garage crowd, because they were all coming from liberty. Anyway, you know, I was with my friends, it was felt like home, so it was nice and it was. It just gave me that feeling that I had been missing from the late 90s when I was partying to garage. So, yeah, so kind of this is like all right. Well, johnny was like let's start figuring it out, and we was just like starting making music, start showing each other stuff that was made that's house connected with another West London DJ, gavin Peters.
Speaker 2:Also one of the kind of like newer DJs at that moment who, um was gaining popularity, was a DJ called wig man who again was part of black ops in the early days. He's very well known for him himself being a part of the kind of like early days of uk funky and being one of the early days for that. But yeah, he was part of black ops so again he would tell me about tunes that I should buy, and same with gavin peters. And it just kind of like started to take momentum and even like the uk funky moment after that kind of house moment. And that's where the uk funky scene came out of like of that garish moment. It was like it was right there front and center.
Speaker 2:I was throwing parties, I was doing all this and I was just trying to find my voice within that landscape of house music. And so and it just maybe took me between, let's say, 2006 to 2010, to those four years of just listening to house music, partying to house music, putting on parties, um, you know, just booking djs and connecting with people, and then 2010 was when it really come to light fruition. I'm running a record label, putting out records. I had a record label in that period, called deep technology as well, just doing everything I could bar putting out music and bar. I was just doing everything I could to support the london scene and putting chips in that london scene until I had something to say.
Speaker 1:And then, by 2010, when I met up, when tom lee reached out, and so on and so forth, that's when yeah, I love what you're saying about like not putting stuff out till you think you had something to say you know, but like supporting the surroundings and the infrastructure and the people. Do you feel like it's like a kind of principle that has always been very important to you to and also to sort of not quickly get something out you know, but to really feel comfortable with it?
Speaker 2:for me it's about. This is the thing about music is being a part of the conversation, like, and if I, if say me and you having a conversation and a third person wants to come here, they'll have to wait for their moment to get into the conversation. They can't just butt in, you know. So that's how I feel about music is when someone's people are already doing something, they're already in the conversation and I have to kind of like wait for my turn to become a part of that conversation. But whilst I'm waiting for my turn to become a part of that that said conversation, I can just support people and that's me by by maybe me, like what we're doing here is nodding, giving reassurance, yeah, like, that's good, that's good, oh yeah, great, like.
Speaker 2:So that was me kind of putting on parties and supporting those djs that were spreading that sound, having that conversation. That's how I'm supporting them, um, and how I'm like kind of giving them the reassurance I'm listening, you know, I'm here, I'm taking them, you. So that's how I feel about it and that's how that is pretty much how I always feel about it. I feel like maybe as a grumpy old guy now, like they are just biting into the conversation. Very much so, but that is how I've always been, is just, you know, I'll wait for my turn in the conversation and I'll always be a part of the conversation. I always attempt to try and be a part of the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really lovely philosophy to have, I think, and I wanted to ask as well about, like, your perspectives on where we're at now. You know, and there's been so many like club closures in the UK in the last few years and like even where I am in Berlin, like you know, clubs are under threat. There's a big motorway that's planning to be developed. This is going to like kick out a bunch of clubs if that happens. I mean, there's a lot of issues going on in club land, but what's your sort of vibe about where we're at at the moment?
Speaker 2:um, like it's sad, like, on one hand it's sad, but there's a lot of empty dance floors as well, a lot of parties that don't sell out as well. There's a lot of like not the community coming together, like we were talking about before, like the tribe and so forth, and although we need these spaces to, we do need these spaces and it is a governmental thing. We do need these spaces to host and hold parties and and the cult for the culture, to incubate and grow and so on, so forth. The younger generation is is really it's on them, if any. If on any is that, if you think about the late 80s, early 90s, summer of love and the warehouse parties and all these things, it was just young people coming together and just, whether you've given me a space or you haven't given me a space, I'm taking the space and we're going to take up space and really being passionate about taking up space and really being passionate about pushing. And it was again. It was a unification on music, but then it was also a political unification as well at the time and a social community, um, unification. So I know the youth are doing their bit in terms of, like, social justice and political justice and these things, and I can see that front and center. But also there's got to be kind of like an understanding of what's going on around you in your hometown, in your city, in your space as well, and what what that means to. Not only that we need to be going out there and holding people to account for things that are going on across the world, but also holding people account to things that are going on locally as well and standing up for that and really standing on that. Because the thing about music and the thing about those creative, um, those spaces, club spaces or creative spaces in itself is that they give us a little kind of like release, a little outlet. So if you are going and marching every weekend without fail or every other day, you're gonna need a little moment to let off that steam and the music community can let you do that. That's what music does, it's like healing, right. So I feel like that that kind of connection and understanding of the two things are how they run in tandem is important, but then also understanding and looking and saying, okay, well, that's the commercialisation of it's happening over there.
Speaker 2:Looking at the bigger promoters, the promoters that are gobbling everything up, the bigger clubs that are gobbling everything up and holding them accountable to the things that are going on in the local area. We've seen it. I've seen it in London. I can see what that going on in the local area. You know, we've seen it, I've seen it. I've seen it in London. I can see what's going on in London. Bigger promoters are really intruding. You know, these smaller promoters can't. They can't match what they're doing. They can't match 10,000, 20,000 capacity venue. That's every weekend. They've taken 20,000 ravers. So there's one spot like how does a 200 capacity club compete with that? You?
Speaker 2:know yeah like it's yeah, it's difficult and it's sad but, like I said, there's so much hope because I can. I can just feel that the, the younger generation, they get impressed for it. It's by lots of different angles financially, you know, socially, everything. They get impressed by it. So I hope they fight back and I hope that this moment shows them that you know you need to take not only take a global stand, but a local stand as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and music can be the soundtrack to that, or music I mean, maybe the word soundtrack is even a bit too much of of like a commercial term for it but music can be. Music is a natural thing that people turn to. Or, you know, I'm reading this book a moment about like the first sounds, you know, like the first noises. And they're going on about like how you know, even as humans were evolving and animals were evolving, like you know, 500 million years ago, like what was the first point where people started to, you know, animals would communicate in sound. You know what was the first point where humans started singing, and like a lot of it is like no one really knows, but there's evidence that it goes way, way, way, way back.
Speaker 2:But there's just something in us that needs to do that well, man, like um, yeah, I had this conversation with um emma from movement is music and, um, she does like a whole um thing about movement and music and healing and so on, so forth. And it's just in us, right, it's just in us, like, and this is the thing, and that that comes back to, maybe, in the importance of music, right, that comes back to understanding that and why I said, music is free, which is great, whatever, like no one has to pay for it. It's out there in the ether. But, on the other hand, that that takes away its importance, that takes away its understanding of, and that also, that takes away how we can explain it to the government as well. Oh, this free thing, we want you to help us look after this free thing. That's there. You know what I mean. This free thing that everyone's going to do, whether you give it funding or not, whether you help make sure these spaces stay around, everyone's still going to do it, so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:There's so much around that and I think even understanding the history of club culture and rave culture in the uk, like right, and even understanding how we got clubs, how we got, like these bigger clubs, how, um, like maggie thatcher and these people, like their government, kind of like licensed the rave scene. That's how they did. They basically just licensed it and put it into these spaces. So they were like, well, well, we need to control this. Like, let's just license it and put it into these spaces. So they were like, well, we need to control this. Like, let's just license it and put it into these spaces. And then, 20 years later, minishia, sound Fabric all of them have had licensing problems across time, but these were the clubs that were the solution for the rave scene in the 90s. So you've got to think it's like, if they're thinking long-term, if the government's thinking long term and they're thinking about the long-term impacts of not giving those spaces. But they probably were like, oh, we've not given spaces at this point, but at some point we can close these spaces down, because now we've kind of like penned it in again. If you read the history, then kids should know or maybe if it's up to us to even give their history is that they should know that, like you know, you have to kind of like go with what feels right and what feels right to you. And that means if you need to put on a party at um.
Speaker 2:And again, this is about me, this is about music. This is about, if you read, not about you just wanted to be a promoter, or not just about you and your pals wanted to do the latest kind of fad thing. This is about you really understanding that you want to build culture and community. You really want to do that and you really want to unify that culture and community underneath music or a specific style of music. Then you have to be putting in as a part of the conversation. You have to be kind of like trying to do things that move the community forward.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, even me talking about club spaces might even be old hat. It might be more than the lines of streaming and things like that. And then those communities coming together and that I don't know, I'm just. I'm just going to say that they, that that needs to happen in terms of the tribe needs to kind of like band together and that band ever needs to look like don't get rid of those heritage things that came before us yeah, yeah like, look at it like you're like the club spaces are just as important as the museums, you know, in that, in that respect, you wouldn't just go in and kind of like get rid of a historic artifact.
Speaker 2:So why would we go in and get rid of, like, this thing that's built, this cult, all these cultures, all these amazing things that have happened outside, out of that?
Speaker 1:yeah, I remember during the pandemic here in berlin I live right by this park, hasassenheide Park, and like every weekend, like I mean, I know it's a bit dodgy, but if we take out the context of like Covid at the time, just we, if we look at the idea that, like every weekend, sometimes thousands of people would gather in that park and have like different parties, sometimes big parties, little parties, always illegal, but it was like everything was shut and people felt compelled to go out and connect with each other in a field, you know, regardless of whether it was like a good, healthy thing to do or not just, but just the impulse to do it, you know, is there.
Speaker 1:So I, I feel like, yeah, I mean that goes into the question you were talking about before is, like, you know, is music still a thing that can exist on its own or is it always like connected with? You know, now, music and shopping, music and video, music and books, music and kayaking, you know, I, I feel there is, I feel, when it comes down to it, there is well, there is, and it should be, because, um, all the other things that we're talking about is the commercialization of music.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's all the other things that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:You're being connected to something else the commercialization of music.
Speaker 2:But again, it's like the understanding that you're being sold to, the understanding like you speak, like, like, if you understand what is happening when you're listening to this music, why you're listening to it free on youtube, why you're listening to spotify, why you listen to free on soundcloud, so on, so forth, how your i't know 10.99 or whatever it is per month doesn't actually reach, maybe, the artists that you care about, and so on and so forth, if you really are thinking about it in that respect, even you know Bandcamp's great, but even Bandcamp as a tech company may end up in the gutter, just like the rest of them. It's doing great right now, but you know, know, really you have to really like, think about it. But again that I say that you don't have to I just feel like that's my opinion on it is that, as human beings, we should be thinking about at this point. You should be thinking about what you're doing, how you're spending your money and and what the impact is yeah, yeah, tesla, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for chatting with me. That was great. Thank you so much. Yeah, okay, so that was me, paul hamford, talking with tesla williams, and we had that conversation on february, the 4th 2025. So thank you so much, tesla, for your time and thoughts that. I really really enjoyed that conversation.
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