Gilles Peterson launched his own pirate radio station and played his first DJ set aged 15. He’s been DJ’ing and broadcasting ever since.
Journalist/publisher Paul Bradshaw began writing about music in the mid ’70s. In the summer of 1988 he, Neil Spencer and Kathryn Willgress launched “designer fanzine” Straight No Chaser. Rooted in the jazz-dance club scene the magazine traveled worldwide uniting a community of like minded souls. Under the art direction of Swifty the zine continued to evolve visually while the growing roster of young writers, photographers and illustrators negotiated the rapid evolution of club culture. After two decades of independent publishing, illuminating the music of the African diaspora, the magazine of ‘Interplanetary Sounds: Ancient To Future’ had to call it a day – an early victim of the internet. Over the next decade Bradshaw continued to write while curating exhibitions and live performances. In 2018, he picked up where they had left off with #SNC98 and re-launched Straight No Chaser. In 2019, he published #SNC100 Vol.1 feat. interviews with nu-skool artists alongside classics from the Chaser archive. As the pandemic kicked in #SNC100 Vol.2 was put on hold. During Lockdown Bradshaw retreated into the Daoist practices of the Ba Men Da Xuan school.
(Photo of Gilles Peterson by Rob Jones.)
