Charlie Dark tells the story behind his foundational Blacktronica events.

“I’ve just come out of a record deal with an independent label called Mo' Wax. I have this band called Attica Blues. We’re trying to fuse our love of hip-hop with out African heritage and the fact we’ve grown up in London with a fascination for Jamaican and American culture, especially what’s coming out of New York.

Essentially what happens is, in the period of music making, we are fusing the dots between lots of different types of music and bringing them together. It’s perfectly understandable to myself having grown up in a household where you were find country and western records and reggae records and soul records and hip hop records all together in the same collection.

It wasn’t divided by genre. It was just called good Black music. So, to kick off this chain of events, I get asked to DJ a club called the Bluenote, in Hoxton square. At that time Shoreditch was still this alien planet on the right hand side of London that people didn’t really dare to go but the Bluenote was there and various other clubs had popped up. I get asked to play to Blue Note and I may have cleared the floor.”

Following a poor review of his eclectic set at Notting Hill Carnival, an early encounter with Dizzee Rascal’s debut album and a young producer making beats on his PlayStation, the early ‘00s led Charlie Dark to explore the foundations of Blacktronica – the idea that London is a melting pot of mutual cultural and musical influences, where sounds aren’t restricted by genres and there’s interconnectedness to be found everywhere between Black music.

This led to the foundation of the Blacktronica Collective where Charlie Dark held monthly nights at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) to bring Black musicians, DJs and poets together to share Black electronic music across scenes including house, hip-hop, reggae, drum and bass and much more, in a visionary event that facilitated collaboration and innovation in the London scene.

In the latest Listening Room session at 180 Studios, Charlie Dark shares and in-depth look at the music and experiences that inspired his Blacktronica school of thought.

Watch it now above.

‍

More from The Listening Room

The Listening Room at 180 Studios, a new podcast from The Vinyl Factory

Charlie Dark on Theo Parrish

Haseeb Iqbal on spiritual jazz