Festivalle 2025
7 DE AGOSTO DE 2025
Valle dei Templi
Sobre mí.
OrigenUnited Kingdom
BPM60 - 120 BPM
Géneros
HouseElectronica
Biografía
Electronic music producer Bradley Zero, located in London, is renowned for his distinctive fusion of many house music subgenres. By fusing traditional house components with contemporary electronic sounds, he has established himself as a leading figure in the UK music industry. His work is distinguished by its layered soundscapes, intricate rhythms, and expressive tones. I can speak from experience when I say that Bradley Zero's music reflects his love of electronic music. He has established himself as a key player in the UK electronic music scene, and a new wave of house music producers have been influenced by his music. Bradley Zero has established himself as one of the most interesting electronic music musicians in the UK thanks to his creative approach to music production and his capacity to produce soundscapes that evoke strong emotions. Any listener of electronic music will be enthralled by his distinctive fusion of vintage and contemporary house sounds.
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RA Live: Moxie B2B Bradley Zero @ Waterworks 2022
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Artículos de prensa.
Bradley Zero: "My personal style is a reflection of my DJing style
20 ago 2018
Mixmag
I never used to buy nice sunglasses because I always lose them, but since I got my man bag I’ve managed to keep hold of them. I got these in Paris; they’re by a Japanese company called Eyevan which makes beautiful, precision-made metal-framed sunglasses using some kind of Samurai sword technique, kind of high-end machined metal. My personal style is a reflection of my DJing style. When I DJ I turn up to a gig like, am I going to play house, am I going to play r’n’b, am I going to play some techno, am I going to play jazz? So sometimes I wear jogging bottoms and trainers, sometimes I wear a suit and shoes, sometimes I wear a string vest and fancy sunglasses, sometimes I wear a cape from Kazakhstan. Nicholas Daley is a relatively up-and-coming menswear designer who I met a few years ago when he was at St Martin’s. His ethos is a cross between British – especially Scottish – identity, and Afro-Caribbean. So when you asked me to do this I thought ,‘This is a chance to wear some of Nicholas’s clothes!’. So the hat, shirt and shorts [right] are by Nicholas Daley. When I was 15 my mum shaved my hair off. I remember looking in the mirror, shedding a tear, and saying to myself, ‘I am never cutting it again’. I never looked back. The hat is a prototype,and is literally the only hat I’ve ever found that fits on my head. It’s not just big hair I have, it’s an extraordinarily large head too! The first year I was at uni, nu-rave was massive. I would have been 18 or 19 and we went to a big rave in Bournemouth fire station and I remember using fluorescent pens and writing ‘R A V E !’ on my T-shirt about 200 times from top to bottom in different colours. The picture still exists on the internet! I also got my girlfriend at the time to make me a hoodie with a horrible neon print with lots of stars and lightning bolts in black and purple and neon yellow. I admire men who wear skirts and dresses. I’ve always thought it a shame that a whole piece of clothing has been gendered for so long. Women broke those boundaries by wearing trousers in the 1920s and 30s – at the time it was a huge taboo. There’s too much toxic masculinity around for it to be OK to see a man walking around in a skirt, and I am not ready to carry the torch of gender neutrality when it comes to clothing, but I really would love it to be normal and accepted for everyone to wear whatever style of clothes they want. The watch I got for my 30th birthday is from my mum. I’ve never worn watches because I’ve lost every one I’ve had, but with this 30th birthday treat I thought maybe it would be special enough for me to keep hold of. It’s a Swiss brand called Mido, which is’t that well known in the UK. It’s a certified chronometer, a proper Swiss thing, but very much budget compared to how much some chronometer watches cost. It’s certainly not a Rolex! I’m not generally a fan but god damn, I got a plain white Kanye West T-shirt from APC a couple of years ago and nothing has ever come close. It’s like a margarita pizza: if you can do that right you can do anything. If I ever go to an Italian place I always try the margarita. Kanye nailed the white tee. Rhythm Section Presents takes place at The Jazz Cafe, London on September 20
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Bradley Zero: State of rhythm
24 may 2024
DJ Mag
“I’m just pulling onto Rye Lane,” says Bradley Zero, as he drives from his flat in Peckham to his office and studio. It’s usually a bustling and vibrant high street, a rat-run of entrances and exits, fried chicken takeouts, delivery vans parking on double yellow lines, Halal butchers, cyclists weaving in and out of traffic and multi-cultural markets spilling out onto the pavement. But today, it’s “grey and miserable and feels a little quiet”, not least because rolling sections of the street will be closed until 2020 for major gas works. This populous and popular area of south-east London has been Bradley’s neighbourhood for 10 years. In that time, he’s established his Rhythm Section empire with what he strictly calls “dances”— rather than events or parties — at Canavan’s pool club. It’s also here that the lively Rye Wax has popped up with a record shop, DJs and a relaxed bar and cafe all serving the artistic community. But, as is the way with similar enclaves everywhere from Brooklyn to Berlin, the people who breathe new life into formerly neglected communities are the first to have to leave when rents begin to rise. “You would not believe how much money places in Peckham are rented for,” says Bradley, who moved to London from his native Leeds in 2006 to study at the Slade School Of Fine Art at UCL. “Not luxury flats with penthouse views, high-end fittings and under-floor heating. People are literally renting a mouldy bedsit for £1,600 a month.” “For me, Rhythm Section is about small venues outside the centre, doing things a little differently, so XOYO is a departure from the core foundational principles of the dance, but it’s not a strict end. That’s why I was careful not to make it a Rhythm Section residency” COMMUNITY When he first arrived, he lived in Peckham and Camden, but felt there was no real community, which is something clearly very dear to him in the way he runs his party and label. Alas, he says he is now starting to feel the losses in Peckham, with friends moving and places shutting down. “It still has its heart,” he says. “It is still the same place, but the change is palpable, and it’s hard to see where it goes next. In maybe 15 years I can’t see there would be a place for Rhythm Section.” Importantly, he recognises his own role in all this. “Let’s be real, I enabled a whole generational exodus to Peckham,” he says. “I put on a party and it got popular, so it’s easy for me to complain, but the people who are the agents of change are the first victims. Art school kids in search of cheap rent can no longer afford it, they are the ones who move further and further out, and as this path of gentrification deepens, the things that cause it in the first place suffer.” With that in mind, Bradley allows himself “a sense of achievement” for having set up the South East London Housemate Co-op. It’s a Facebook group that connects people looking for rooms in the area, and cuts out the middle man. It has more than 45,000 members, and he hopes to somehow mobilise them all with some direct action, protests and pleas for some form of rent control, “to counteract the greed of estate agents”. The first shift in Peckham came when Canavan’s pool club changed the way it operated, and Bradley ended his long-running dances there. It was a small place down a grotty little alleyway, with a bunch of pool tables used by locals and students. But on its small dancefloor and behind soundproofed walls, magic happened every fortnight for a number of years. An absolute anthesis to many high-end and identikit clubbing experiences in the capital, the focus was on the music and community rather than the guests or anything else. It was an unwritten rule, but photography was banned, and dancing was essential. Set times were never published. It was all very impromptu and instinctive and, before long and with minimal promo, it was full each and every time. Guests like Andrew Ashong, Andy Blake and FunkinEven did play, but were decidedly choice, low-key names rather than guaranteed ticket-sellers. “There was no pressure to book a name to bring people in,” says Bradley on his hands-free phone. “People came whoever was on. We just made a vibe. It could be Pender Street Steppers one week, and me and my housemate Miles another week, but you always got the same crowd.” The dancefloor was always as mixed as any you might find on the London circuit. “It’s arbitrary to try and encourage that diversity,” he says. “You can’t create it. It happens from the way you do things, the way you engage.” Rather than shouting about it, he believes the best way to address the issue is with direct action. “The imbalance won’t be fixed overnight. The root cause goes deep, and that’s why we set up the Rhythm Section studio — to get people in who haven’t got the chance to jam, or can’t afford the set-up.” DEPARTURE Over the last year or so, Rhythm Section has rolled up to a range of homely venues from Five Miles to Copeland Gallery, Corsica Studios to The Jazz Cafe and Rye Wax. Since Friday 5th April, though, Rhythm Section dances have been on pause, as Bradley has stepped up to a 12-week residency at XOYO. It marks another chapter in his story, that has slowly but surely developed from his first residency in a local bar to the first parties at the pool hall, via early squat raves in The Bussey Building, to a busy international tour diary. But he is adamant that this bigger platform changes nothing in terms of Rhythm Section. “For me, Rhythm Section is about small venues outside the centre, doing things a little differently,” he says, “so XOYO is a departure from the core foundational principles of the dance, but it’s not a strict end. That’s why I was careful not to make it a Rhythm Section residency. It’s just me, but me getting to do things I couldn’t otherwise do in a small pool hall.” “Finding new ways to transcend borders and cultures is what drives the discovery, not just doing the same thing over and over again” Of course, Bradley is all about new music – on his label, in his DJ sets (most of the time) and on his radio shows on NTS and the In New Music We Trust residency on the BBC. But the XOYO gigs have seen him play differently to normal, while giving a bigger platform to many of the fledgling artists he is so invested in. “There are two versions of me,” he says. “The Rhythm Section resident, playing what I want in a small venue to a home crowd, where I feel so free I can literally play anything and it’s liberating and really comfortable. But on the other side, that almost got too easy. It wasn’t really a challenge to think about what I had to play, ‘cause I had total freedom. XOYO will be another side of me, the ‘on tour me’, playing to different crowds who won’t necessarily get how I play at home, so this is an exercise to play in London in a way that I haven’t had much opportunity to before, which is quite exciting.” Musically, ‘Rhythm Section Bradley’ takes in disco, jazz, soul, funk, dub and R&B with a smattering of more club-ready sounds, while ‘on tour Bradley’ is slightly more dancefloor orientated, featuring house and techno of the sort that he releases on Rhythm Section sub-label International Black. Either way, though, new music is always a main priority. For that reason, he explains that his Radio 1 shows were “a real challenge” to cram in so much new music, and “represent who you want to represent” in such a short space of time, and still make the hour flow. Rather than going after established producers with Rhythm Section International, which he feels “other labels do well”, Bradley says, “finding new ways to transcend borders and cultures is what drives the discovery, not just doing the same thing over and over again”. To date, that MO has led to deep house, broken beat and jazz-funk discoveries such as Chaos In The CBD, Al Dobson Jr and Henry Wu aka Kamaal Williams, all of whom are now relatively well-known after putting out what went on to be breakout records on Rhythm Section. “Rhythm Section doesn’t have a sound but a purpose, and that is to discover and nurture new talent,” says Bradley, whose latest projects have seen him work with London garage man MC Pinty, Australian soul collective 30/70 and French jazz, hip-hop and house producer Neue Grafik. “We get so caught up in old music, but to me it’s more to do with claiming stuff, proving you got there first or that you are more deeply connected to this, or that your digging skills are better than anyone else’s. It also often has a weird colonial thing to it — no one is reissuing European folk music, it’s always South African or West African or Indonesian music, and it’s mainly done by white men. It’s weird, people are reissuing archival things. Just play it on the radio. Put it on your Spotify playlist. Just share it. It’s this strange sense of ownership over things that have already been released that I don’t understand.” MAGIC HAPPENS On a constant mission to share, Bradley has, “without ever planning it” and over a long period ended up at the centre of a multi-faceted empire that takes in A&R, DJing and broadcasting. He is not some overnight success story who broke through off the back of a big production or two. The obvious but watertight comparison is with Gilles Peterson, someone he looks up to and still gets shivers when remembering the time Peterson played a Rhythm Section track (from Al Dobson Jr’s 2014 album ‘Rye Lane Volume One’) on the radio for the first time. He feels that having so many different things on the go actually relieves the pressure. “If one record isn’t a massive hit, it doesn’t diminish the overall story. Plus the radio gives me a lot of structure, picking things out for that, gauging the reactions, then packing a record bag off the back of it.” Despite being a vinyl lover, more and more these days, poor set-ups around the world mean he often plays off USBs. “DJing is a spiritual thing, it’s about being connected with yourself,” he says. “When you’re in a flow state, it’s almost just happening. It’s not easy to get there, you have to work at it and nurture it, but when you get in a transcendental state is when the magic happens.” Despite graduating from art school, that chapter of Bradley’s life is over. He paints, to his chagrin, only occasionally, but feels the way things are taught and the way that art is approached and discussed “strips it of all majesty and meaning. It’s demystifying”. He agrees that may be why he has never got into production: knowing the ins and outs might somehow lessen the enjoyment. “The best art, film or painting, you don’t feel the need to have it explained. It is a connection that hits you really hard, and that is enough, you can’t really put it into words. But when you take art in an academic institution, suddenly everything has to be justified and examined, every brushstroke or word has to be a reference to a philosopher or critical theorist, and it just drains it. What I found with music is that it is always so immediate and beautiful that you don’t need to explain it. You feel it or you don’t. If it’s good, people will like it. If it’s not, they won’t.” After a long and bureaucratic process a while ago, Bradley’s passport states his citizenship as Dominican, which comes from his father. He’s proud of his roots, and put out a charity compilation to help the island after Hurricane Maria devastated it in 2017. He also has thick, heavy dreadlocks going half the way down his back. They haven’t been cut since his mum shaved his head as a teenager and he vowed never again, but his relationship with her remains strong. She was the first person he called when he got asked to host early Boiler Room shows, and when he got the news of his BBC Radio 1 residency. “You can say you’re playing Berghain and they really wouldn’t understand, but even my gran listened to my first Radio 1 show.” He takes on a Caribbean accent to repeat her review. “Oh yes, I enjoyed it, but I didn’t make it all the way through.” It was Bradley’s father — a jobbing DJ and record store owner — who gave him his first introduction to music by letting him play records at DJ gigs while he nipped to the toilet. His mum, meanwhile, worked a job in First Direct to send him to a selective private school in Wakefield. “She was probably concerned how I might turn out if I went to the local state school. If you look at the stats of young Caribbean boys, the outlook isn’t good.” Bradley was “the only brown person” in his year at school and also lived in a place in Leeds where he never saw anyone remotely like him or his sister. “That was just normal, that was just life, I didn’t feel like an outsider because I lived on the outside my whole life.” It was moving to London for art school that suddenly opened his eyes. “It wasn’t like I saw this beacon and thought, ‘I must move there, these are my people, this is my place,’ but when I arrived it was just a whole level of community that was open to me that I didn’t know existed. If you’re in school from the age of seven, you don’t realise how much you are indoctrinated. We were walking round with plaques on our blazers with a Latin motto, ‘it is a disgrace to be ignorant’, whilst also being very sheltered from the real world.” His escape during school years was music: The Prodigy’s ‘Experience’ off his dad, and minimal by Richie Hawtin and Heartthrob from a school friend. He would go to the parochial clubs in town mainly to dance, but never really connected with the commercial R&B, pop and metal music that was played. “I hadn’t really joined the dots between this underground world of music, that I appreciated but didn’t know how it worked or where it happened,” he tells DJ Mag. He had always gone to Leeds’ famous Carnival with his family, so soon got wind of the notorious Sub Dub at the West Indian Centre, and credits going there as his real introducing to proper music. Around the same time, even before he was old enough, he got a job in a bar, and aged 16 he went to the notoriously intense Mint Club on New Year’s Eve 2004 and wondered, “what the hell was going on”. Now sat in his parked car outside the busy Rhythm Section office, he’s 200 miles from home, but right where he feels he most belongs.
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Cover Story: Bradley Zero’s "No Limits" Ethos Has Carried Him to the Top
18 oct 2021
Beatportal
As the affable man behind Rhythm Section, Bradley Zero has permanently altered the UK’s musical landscape. Ben Murphy hears his story so far, and discovers why Zero’s intense focus on quality, eclecticism, family, and diversity has made him so successful. It’s just after midnight on a Friday in Corsica Studios and heat is emanating from the assembled dancers. Bathed in the crimson-purple glow of the club lights, a stuffed dance floor sways and grooves. Smiles light up the faces of a young crowd, as K-Lone plays everything from abstract, bass-heavy beats to dancehall and trap. After a blistering jungle track drops to cheers of approval, K-Lone rewinds it back. And standing on the club’s small stage, Bradley Zero leans over the house mic. “That doesn’t happen very often at Rhythm Section,” he smiles. “Only when it’s absolutely called for!” Taking to the decks afterwards, playing a back-to-back set with Manchester’s crate-digging Ruf Dug, Bradley Zero leads the dancers on an odyssey that encapsulates so much of his eclectic musical taste. Twisted, chugging acid melts into metallic New Beat; disco meets Roy Ayers-infused piano house. There’s even an appearance from the Happy Mondays, in the form of a stripped-down version of “Step On” — and the crowd is 100% here for it. Rhythm Section is Bradley Zero’s club night, but it feels like more than that. When he talks to the crowd, announces the next DJ or thanks the previous one, there’s no artificial barriers up. We’re all along for the same ride: part of an extended musical family. This family ethos applies to Bradley Zero’s Rhythm Section International label too. Born in Peckham in 2014 as an expansion of the events he ran at Rye Lane’s Canavan’s Pool Club, what started as a small localised imprint dedicated to showcasing the area’s creative talent has blossomed into one of the UK’s finest labels — a worldwide enterprise with releases from artists in Australia, America, Ecuador and Poland. Musically varied, encompassing everything from the left-field house of classics by Chaos In The CBD to the synth-driven indie rock of Retiree and the electronic jazz-funk of The Colours That Rise, there’s a through-line in the warmth, invention and emotion of the releases, and the way that each artist is nurtured as a part of the larger Rhythm Section collective. The eclecticism of Bradley Zero’s own sets — which he plays all around the world and on NTS Radio — and who he books for the parties, is reflected in the label’s wide-ranging, but always on-point sound. The following Monday, I met Bradley at the Rhythm Section headquarters. The office has recently moved to a new location above a pub in Camberwell, and he greets us outside with a smile before a whistle-stop tour. There’s a breakout meeting area arrayed with freshly delivered boxes of vinyl, a sofa, a table, and chairs. A store room is stacked with records, and next door, a large space with a shiny wooden console accommodates record decks and CDJs. Behind are the beginnings of a small production suite, which will house modular synth gear in the near future. On the top floor, the main office space is flooded with light from the windows, with colourful art prints that look down from the walls onto the desks. We take a seat in the meeting room, and Bradley treats us to lunch — sandwiches from the pub that he insists are the best in London (they’re pretty damn good). Sitting across from us dressed casually in a T-shirt with his long dreadlocks tied back, he’s a warm interviewee who answers our questions with consideration, occasional humorous asides, and at length, with an admission that he’s “a rambler!” He chats to the rest of the Rhythm Section team as they wander in and out, introducing us, and that sense of it being a family affair is again emphasised. “Communication is a really key aspect,” Bradley says, as we ask about the convivial atmosphere at the Rhythm Section event. “It makes you feel at home — someone having a relaxed demeanour, introducing themselves and saying hello, having a little natter about whatever. It’s one of these… not a routine, but a ritual. I feel when I’ve broken down that barrier and removed that invisible line between me and the audience, things start to ease into more of a welcome place where you feel part of something, rather than just observing it.” Rhythm Section has become a vital part of the UK clubbing landscape, and one much-missed during the pandemic. Since venues reopened after the Covid imposed lockdowns, Bradley has hosted six events, some of them on a large scale. On 25th July, he brought a huge lineup to London’s E1 club, with everyone from Tash LC to Adam Pits throwing down on a weighty sound system, just as government restrictions were lifted. After 18 months of closed clubs, it was an overwhelming experience for Bradley. “That first gig back was pure joy,” he says. “It’s hard to describe it, because it’s not something everyone gets to do. What I realised having not performed for so long, is just what a privilege it is to have this sense of controlling hundreds, or thousands of people’s emotions. It’s such a buzz. Having that connection in a room… it’s like having people in the palm of your hand, but in a positive way. In order to elevate their mood, their consciousness, press their buttons — to make people feel joy. The feeling that gives you back is, not to sound cheesy, but it’s a drug. It’s incredible. You can take that for granted a bit when you’re doing that every week. But having that massive amount of time off, to get back in that room and feel the elation, that topped me up for weeks.” Since his Rhythm Section events started in earnest in 2011, Bradley Zero has become much in-demand as a DJ across the world, famed for his rapport with crowds, encyclopaedic music knowledge, and skill at knitting together disparate styles from across the entire dance music spectrum (and beyond). Appearances on Boiler Room and a residency on Radio 1 have further broadened his appeal. A sense of connection and positive feedback have always driven Bradley’s love of DJing, but he admits that the early events post-lockdown came with a sense of nervousness about what would happen with Covid transmissions. With the world of dance music split in its perspective towards the club closures, he didn’t want to appear partisan. “People were scared. You could feel that,” he says. “The whole thing around vaccine passports, having to show proof of a test, it became quite political. It was stressing me out a bit, because it felt like you had to choose a side. Whichever side you chose, you were going to upset someone. You were either a puppet of the government, or you were a reckless capitalist endangering people’s lives for money. You try to find this balance, you want to do events, you want to restart the company, make up for lost time — but can you imagine knowing that you did an event that someone got ill from, and then went home to their granny and they died? That’s quite a heavy weight to think about, to bring people together.” Though E1 didn’t mandate clubbers to show proof of vaccination or a negative test, Rhythm Section requested this from attendees, in an effort to protect clubbers and give them a feeling of safety in the venue (as they also did at Corsica Studios). Without putting blame on either side of the argument, Bradley feels that clubbers feet more confident in going out post-lockdown if there was more unity in the approach to rules. “It’s very complicated, because you’ve got two or three conflicting viewpoints,” he says. “You have the nighttime industry, which is pushing for no clubbing passports, no checks, and no tests in order to prop up the night time economy — not to have draconian measures in place where other things don’t have to have it. Then you have another side of clubbing, which I guess is the corner of the industry we sit in, slightly left-of-centre, under the mainstream radar. There’s not a single voice. What would have been most effective is if there was a single voice that everyone aligned and agreed with, implemented that and fought for it, but it’s very fragmented.” During those uncertain 18 months when everything was turned upside down, Bradley and the Rhythm Section International crew worried about the prospects of the label. But any concerns they had during the restrictions were unfounded, with sales tripling and fans signing up to the label’s Patreon, investing in the future of something they felt connected to and a part of. The label also ramped up its output in 2020, releasing new albums from The Colours That Rise, Dan Kye and Vels Trio, an EP from Hiatt Db, and two volumes of its new series of SHOUTS compilations. “That was an unexpected consequence, because I was planning for the worst and hoping for the best,” Bradley says. “For the record label, it ended up being a really fruitful period, where not only did we get loads of music out, but made plans for the next couple of years, and found lots of new fans.” Meanwhile, Bradley also busied himself with other things, like studying for an MBA. “As the label grows and as I have a bigger role in curating things, I’m getting involved in different aspects of the music industry — from an advisory perspective, sitting on boards, having an input into what goes on behind the scenes,” he says. “At the beginning of Rhythm Section, I started out doing my own thing with a bunch of friends in a very diverse environment, which was exciting, and I felt very much at home. But as you climb up the ladder, all that diversity disappears, and you’re very quickly the only Black person in the room. To be able to enter those rooms and not only hold my own but to open the doors as well, in the future, is something I thought would be of use to arm myself with during the downtime.” Rhythm Section International’s latest release is SHOUTS 2021, a sprawling compilation that broadens the scope of the label’s already eclectic vision. The 20 tracks touch on everything from Liluzu’s downtempo acid and Sami‘s analogue house to Soso Tharpa’s metallic broken beat and Adam Pits’ techy UK garage, with an emphasis on mostly new artists from around the world, and plenty of surprises along the way. “Being able to work on a compilation meant we could engage with a lot of these artists we wanted to work with in a much more immediate way,” Bradley says. “That’s why we called it SHOUTS. It was kind of a nod to the pirate and internet radio culture, giving out shouts, but also a platform to shout about what we’re excited about. Proclaiming it — that was the remit, really. We wanted to work with some relatively new artists, people who are bubbling up. There’s a couple of older names in there that we’ve known for longer, but haven’t had a chance to do something with. Me and Emily Hill, label manager, made a big list of people we’ve been playing on the radio, people who’ve been sending us promos that we really liked but couldn’t sign off and put out.” In addition to the dance tracks, like the spacey electro of Guava & Breaka’s “Hand It Over” and the lush Detroit techno synths of Kareem Ali’s “Black Futures”, there are slower tunes more in line with the downtempo sounds Bradley sometimes plays on his NTS show, and even some completely new directions for the label. In particular, Pookie’s “Beast Mode” is startling: a slamming trap track with distorted raps, elephantine bass warps and Auto-Tune interludes. “Pookie sent us two tracks, and the other one was a lot more upbeat, house vibes, with a Pinty, Channel Tres kind of feel,” Bradley says. “But then she sent us ‘Beast Mode’ and we were blown away by it.” Similarly refreshing is James Massiah’s “2010 Again”, a poignant spoken word piece from the Joy O collaborator and grime-inspired poet, and the compilation’s opening track. “James Massiah is an old friend, and he’s someone who used to come down to the party in the early days,” he adds. “I’d heard in his poetry allusions and references to Rhythm Section in the past. We hit him up for a tune, but he was working on a few projects, and didn’t have anything going. He said, ‘But I can record a poem for you’. He came and recorded it in the Rhythm Section studio, and it felt like a really nice way to introduce it. Much in the same way I discussed breaking that barrier and having a sense of introducing familiarity by saying hello on the mic, it’s having a spoken word piece to introduce the music. That’s why I put it on as the first track.” The broad remit of SHOUTS 2021 reflects the expansive nature of Rhythm Section International. Like Bradley’s DJ sets, the label can go in any direction. And though it may have been pigeonholed as a deep house label early on, it’s actually been musically diverse from the very beginning, releasing everything from the space-age soul of Neue Grafik & Wayne Snow’s “Inner Vision” to the spiky 303 electro of London Modular Alliance’s “Acid Lab” on sub-label International Black. “The first record on Rhythm Section literally had everything,” Bradley recalls. “Al Dobson Jr’s Rye Lane Volume One has peak-time cuts that you can drop at 130 BPM, it has a kind of electronic sample-based lullaby that is something you could fall asleep to, it has global rhythmical sounds and patterns, it has drum machines, guitars, voices. To me, it’s a work of art, and Al Dobson Jr is the J Dilla of London. It has all the elements that we then went on to explore. It was a great record to start with, in the sense that it set the scene for eclecticism with some kind of thread holding it all together.” Whether he’s DJing or selecting music for the label, Bradley doesn’t want to stick to one thing. When you see Rhythm Section’s unmistakable logo, at the party or on a record sleeve, it’s a stamp of quality rather than being associated with a particular genre. “As a DJ, sometimes I’d just love to have a sound that I can hone in on, and just nail every time,” he says. “But then I think that’s actually boring, and that would be so limiting in terms of how your taste really evolves and how you feel on a particular day. With the label, it exists as a mark of quality rather than a label that pigeonholes something.” Bradley Phillip (Zero is his middle name) grew up just outside of Leeds. His mum worked for First Direct bank and his dad was a DJ, playing corporate gigs and functions, and he would sometimes bring Bradley along. Getting on the mic at parties, Bradley reckons, actually came from hearing his dad do it. When he was 12, he found his dad’s copy of The Prodigy’s first album, Experience, and listened to it obsessively with friends. “I knew every single break, every single sample, every single word. That was the mind-blowing, ‘what-the-hell-is-this’ moment.” As he got a bit older, he’d go to Crash Records in Leeds, where Darius Syrossian would serve him up recommendations in the basement. Tunes on 20/20 Vision, Minus and the “minimal/electro-house sound that was dominant at that time” were his soundtrack for a while. Buying records, and playing them, became another obsession. “Throughout my life, I’ve always been involved in these hobbies where you’re collecting things and building up,” he says. “Whether it’s building an army in Warhammer or putting stickers in a Premier League book when I was even younger, or I used to ride BMX, and you’re putting together your tricks and different runs. Records were another hobby. It’s like Pokemon cards. Gotta catch ’em all! It’s this never-ending game which is, at times, as infuriating as it is pleasurable.” At the time, Bradley was also in love with reggae and dub, and at a certain point, had to choose his path as a DJ, finally making a decision to stick with uptempo sounds. Moving to London to study Fine Art at the Slade, he began to play at various house parties. When he got a job working at Bar Story in Peckham Rye, his life was changed forever. “Peckham back then was very different to what it is now,” he recalls. “If you weren’t there, it’s hard to explain how it’s grown. There was nothing to do, it wasn’t a destination. Now, in terms of nightlife, it’s a rival to Shoreditch or Dalston or Hackney Wick. Back then, there was one bar that closed at 11 pm. This is before the Bussey Building, before Peckham Audio, before Canavans. You had a lot of creative people living in an area with pretty cheap rent, bad transport connections, there was no Overground. It was a bit of a pressure cooker, because people didn’t really leave, and people didn’t really come in very much from outside. It was a petri dish of creative talent. So many things were ready to happen on so many different scales.” Moving there in 2008, he began to DJ more regularly, in the bar and at local shindigs, hugely inspired by the art, music and culture in the area. “When I moved to Peckham, I felt what it was like to have a local community for the first time. It was great. That’s why this area is at the core; almost the tagline of what we do.” Rhythm Section was the name of his first radio show alongside Rose Dagul, which broadcast for only two episodes on South City Radio in 2009, before the station shut down. But Bradley was undeterred, and began throwing his own parties before starting a regular event series at Canavan’s Pool Club in 2011. The party quickly became one of London’s hottest tickets. With Bradley at the helm, Rhythm Section booked a mixture of local DJs and likeminded artists, helping to put Peckham on the map. The district is so central to the label’s identity that Rhythm Section International has ‘Peckham Strong’ embedded in its artwork. “When we put on the first party, it was just friends and family playing,” Bradley says. “But it was primed and ready to go. People were waiting for it. There was nothing regular at that point. I never made it about big headliners, or about stacked lineups, it was just stripped-back, one or maybe two guests, no frills, just focusing on the music. All the hard work had been put in by just being present in that space, and it was off to a running start.” Since then, Rhythm Section has expanded exponentially. What was once hyper localised has become an international operation, and the party is a moveable feast, popping up in multiple locations. In that time, Bradley believes, Peckham has changed immeasurably, and its vibrant and creative scene is becoming stifled by ongoing gentrification. “It’s sad that in London, an area can almost become a victim of its own success,” he says. “There’s just no safeguards in place for an area to maintain its soul, to maintain its original inhabitants, to an extent. There’s no rent control, and as soon as an area becomes popular because of its successes or movements that come out of the locale’s creativity, it gets commercialised, jumped on by estate agents, and becomes expensive. What that means is, the creative people who made that area interesting in the first place get forced out, and the area slowly becomes homogenous. And the people who were there before the creatives moved in are kind of left to struggle with not only increasing costs of accommodation, but a disappearing infrastructure, in terms of shops catering for immigrant communities and lower income families. They’re disappearing and being replaced by bougie organic stores and overpriced cafes. It’s sad to see this happen again and again, but it’s not the first time in London and it definitely won’t be the last time.” While that shift is evidently a negative one, Bradley is trying to enact positive change. He says that recently he’s endeavoured to make the label artists and event bookings more diverse.
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My Year in Sound | Bradley Zero’s 2014: From Boiler Room to Rhythm Section
13 nov 2024
Sound of Life
You may know Bradley Zero from Rhythm Section’s famed fortnightly club nights, as founder of the Rhythm Section International record label, or as co-founder of beloved London venues Jumbi and Moko celebrating Afro-Caribbean sounds. Bradley’s record bag is impossibly varied, covering everything from underground house treats to disco, indie and percussive sounds from far reaches. This week, we chat with Bradley about the year that set everything in motion: 2014. The end of his last-ever job growing Boiler Room with the original team, and the beginning of focusing on growing his own vibrant global community. "Over the next few years, it sort of became this accidental institution. People were coming from all over town, people were talking about it all over the world". In our new podcast My Year in Sound, DJ, broadcaster, curator and music journalist Tina Edwards sits down with creators in sound. In each episode, we're joined by a guest who’s brought along three items that represent their chosen year in music. Under the magnifying glass goes iconic releases, legendary live shows, music stories and other significant moments from that year, all intertwined with personal tales, experiences and memories from our guest.
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Rider técnico.
Pioneer
2 x Turntable
La imagen es solo de referencia y puede no ser totalmente representativa.