The Stool Pigeon

Funky pair Ill Blu hoping to paint London town red

Words: Kev Kharas

Ill Blu make their music for the club, but that’s not where it really exists. If you head out of London on a Sunday night, when all the other traffic’s filing glumly back in, you’ll find clues of the dying weekend littered in the city’s peripheries — luminous rave fliers bound to traffic lights, pirate radio chatter invading licensed frequencies, twenty-somethings trying to kick comedowns in gastro pubs. Even the lead-stained houses that line the A-roads seem suggestive of door-deadened house party bass throb, and if a man’s life were as infinite as the militant snare loops of ‘Bellion’, he’d eventually be invited to pre- and after-parties at every den on Western Avenue.

‘Bellion’ is the A-side of Def1 and Jreel’s new 12” and it’s pure Ill Blu: sinuous, driven rhythmic knits lit up by the sparest of melodies. Its B-side, ‘Dragon Pop’, initially recalls Karizma’s gauntlet-hurling ‘Drumz Nightmare’ before working itself into a groove resolutely its own. The duo hail from the transient North West London zones I pass through most Sunday nights, starting beneath the century-old Archway bridge whose span promises Finchley, then onto the North Circular through Golders Green, Brent Cross; navigating the Hanger Lane gyratory system for passage into Ealing and Hanwell.

Ill Blu is driving music and they are beyond driven. The first funky track the pair made together (they met initially via a mutual friend recording hip hop) is called ‘Frontline’ and it features the vocal talents of London’s Princess Nyah. Her lyrics suit the sense of mission the track’s sturdy, propulsive charge gives off. “Got me moving ’way from the morning to night / I’m holding the stash but I know it ain’t right / I’m in love with this boy / I’ma ride all night,” she promises, loyally and sultry, before repeating the phrase “ride or die” ad infinitum.

Vocals like Nyah’s and Shanique’s, who sings on the seductive, panpipe-and-piano-dappled ‘Say Yes’, are vital to Jreel and Def1.

“It’s important to have a strong, catchy vocal whether it be female or male,” they explain. “Vocals bring more scope. With them, you can attract the attentions of national daytime radio and music television.”

In a bass scene haunted by anonymous producers, Ill Blu are refreshingly open. The space in their tracks is there because “making dance music too complicated can confuse the club goers.”

“Funky has gotten faster and darker,” they add. “We need to bring the sun back in! Sometimes we do go into experimental mode. You try new things and people are like, ‘What the hell is this!?’ Then — BANG — it hits them and they’re on the dancefloor, pulsating.”

Ill Blu will be hoping that pulsating dancefloors aren’t the final destination for their music. They want it to chart; go televisual; invade daytime radio. I simply want to be able to find ‘Bellion’ while scrolling through the frequencies on dark nights in Ealing. You sense, though, that arrival’s not important. It’s in their movements, destined and determined, where Ill Blu come into their own.

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