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Ill Logic & Raf met at the age of fifteen
at school in London. Both sharing a love of Drum
& Bass (and music of all genres) they focussed
on DJ-ing and went out record shopping together.
Ill Logic’s passion for Jazz rubbed off on
Raf, who was in a punk band when he was 12, and
they began to broaden their musical tastes. Avid
followers of the Bristol sound, both of them made
sure they owned every Full Cycle release and were
huge fans of Krust, Roni Size and the early sounds
of Photek and Lemon D. Ill Logic cites Reprazent’s
“New Forms” as a major changing point
in the way he perceived the boundaries of the
sound. At the age of 17, Raf went out and bought
a sampler and they began sampling everything from
Miles Davis and Marvin Gaye to Indie and Punk.
At
the age of 19 Raf & Ill Logic pooled their
resources to create a combined studio. This was
the point where their production began to take
shape, incorporating their diverse influences
and producing tracks that they were keen to play
out. At the time Raf was a regular on Rude FM,
Ill Logic played on Rude Awakening, and they had
both won sets in the Movement bar.
The
boys spent much of their time going out to London’s
legendary Metalheadz nights at the Blue Note,
and regularly went to Movement, where they got
their first break. Whilst Djing there, they played
one of their own tracks “Spacewalk”,
which immediately caught the ear of Martin from
Botchit Breaks, the promoter of Movement. Martin
loved the track and was determined to release
it on his eMotif imprint. In 2000 “Spacewalk”
was released, catching the attention of many DJs
and producers in the scene, including Fabio and
Flight. Their next release, “Water Torture”
on Double Zero was a deep, soulful groove that
set the standard for these boys to follow. Not
content with producing only one style of music,
the duo released two breakbeat singles on Botchit
Breaks, one under their Chameleon moniker and
one Raf solo project.
Largely
inspired by US nu-soul and hip hop producers like
Jay Dee, The Neptunes and The Soulaqaurians, the
producers are keen to experiment with different
tempos, styles and live musicians. With three
releases forthcoming on Shy FX’s Ebony imprint,
they are blown away by the support and encouragement
they have received from some of the pioneers of
the scene. They developed a friendship with Shy
FX, seeing him regularly at clubs, and whilst
at Swerve one night Shy heard Flight play one
of their remixes. Loving what he heard, he was
quick to encourage them and put out some of their
tracks on his label, the first of which was “Could
It Be”.
Ill
Logic and Raf are currently busy working on new
projects in the Future Proof Studios “Electrozan”,
the first release on the newly relaunched DZR
imprint, released in Summer 2003, was recently
championed on “The Sounds of Movement 3”
mixed by Bryan G. This has also prompted a forthcoming
release on Movements very own label later this
year.
Fusing
elements of Jazz, Soul, Broken Beats and whatever
they are feeling at any particular time. Ill Logic
and Raf have developed a unique sound that stands
out from the rest. At only 22, this partnership
is still young, and given the superb quality of
what they have released to date, it can only go
from strength to strength…
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