George Evelyn’s Nightmares on Wax Nightmares on Wax project has navigated the sonic crossroads between hip-hop, dub, jazz, soul, funk, and electronic music for over three decades. With his recent project, Echo45 Sound System , he’s delved deep into his roots to plot a course for the future.
BY ANDY THOMAS
“I n my neighborhood, I was very lucky because it was super multicultural,” says Nightmares on Wax founder George Evelyn.“But, once you stepped outside of that, you discovered shit wasn’t like that elsewhere.” Growing up in Hyde Park, in northwest Leeds, Evelyn—the son of a Caribbean father from St. Kitts and a British mother—spent his formative years in a melting pot where music bonded the community. But the Leeds of the 1970s was also a divided city where racial tensions were never far from the surface. On November 5, 1975, three hundred Black British youths clashed with police in the Chapeltown area, in a precursor to the broader 1981 riots that occurred there and in inner-city communities across England, from Toxteth, Liverpool, to St Paul’s, Bristol. The uprisings in Chapeltown followed years of stop-and-search tactics by the West Yorkshire Police, and attacks by far-right National Front skinheads. For the Black communities of Leeds, Huddersfield, Bradford, and Sheffield, a network of reggae sound systems provided both a sanctuary from inherent racism and a cultural hub of resistance. - FOUNDATION RHYTHMS - Most Leeds sound systems were based in Chapeltown, home to the city’s annual West Indian Carnival. Among these were Mavrick Internash, Count Johnny, Ras Sparta, Ambassador Emperor, Genesis, Jungle Warrior, and Sir Yank’s Heavy Disco, whose operator owned Sir Yank’s record shop on Gathorne Street, where local selectors bought their Jamaican imports. But George Evelyn’s Hyde Park neighborhood was also rich with reggae. The Belle Vue Youth Centre—the “anchor of the neighborhood,” according to Evelyn— regularly held sound clashes to compare with those across town at Chapeltown’s West Indian Centre. Beginning in the mid-’70s, two competing Hyde Park sound systems battled for neighborhood supremacy: Concrete Lion and Messiah.The latter was founded by Clifford Smith, the older brother of George Evelyn’s best friend at school, Dennis. “Across the road from the playground of our middle school was the lock-up [garage] where Messiah used to build and maintain the sound system,” Evelyn
recalls, speaking from his current homebase in Ibiza.“We used to go after school and sit in the basement of the lock-up and watch them build speaker boxes. I was brought up with this behind-the-scenes access to this culture. But I didn’t have access to the clashes because I was too young [to enter].” Awed by the bass he heard rattling through the windows of Belle VueYouth Centre—where Messiah battled with visiting sounds from London like Sir Coxsone, Saxon, and Jah Shaka—Evelyn became an avid collector of sound clash cassettes.“Because we couldn’t go to the dances, the mixtapes became very important to us,” he explains. The fact that sound-system culture was so close—yet tantalizingly out of reach—made it even more intriguing for Evelyn and his neighborhood friends. “These guys were like our superheroes,” he says.“You’d be hearing about this culture all the time:‘ This legendary sound system from London came to Leeds and had a clash with this sound.’ Or,‘ This sound dropped this dubplate.’ And, because we were just kids, it was all legend and myth.” Decades later, this early foundation would provide Evelyn with fodder and inspiration for 2025’s Echo45 Sound System , his latest full-length as Nightmares on Wax. “I had started reminiscing about mixtapes, which led me back to my younger days of growing up in sound systems,” he explains.“But I was like,‘Everyone does mixtapes. It would be better if I did something that was also a cross between a pirate radio show and a sound clash.’Then I remembered my mom lending me £5 to buy this speaker box from a jumble sale that I named Echo45.And that opened up all these other memories.” Inspired by watching the Messiah sound men in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Evelyn had pieced together his first rudimentary sound system before he even cracked his teens. “There was a shop in our neighborhood called [Domestic Electric Rentals] where they used to repair old rental TVs, and I worked out there were speakers in the back of them,” he recalls.“So I would take the speakers out, then get shoeboxes, cut holes in them, and wire them up to this old, direct- drive Fidelity turntable.That became my bedroom setup.” By this time, Evelyn was becoming a disciple of dub, namely the future-minded early ’80s output of engineer/producer Hopeton “Scientist” Brown. “I had this massive attraction to Scientist and those albums on Greensleeves,” he says. Founded in Shepherds Bush, West London in 1977, Greensleeves is perhaps best known as the first international label to champion dancehall. But its iconic red, gold, and green label was also stamped on records by one of dub’s most adventurous sonic auteurs.“When I discovered records through Clifford of Messiah, like Scientist Meets the Space Invaders and Scientist
62 WaxPoetics
( opening spread ) George Evelyn mixing Carboot Soul at Touchwood Studios, Leeds, in 1997. All photos courtesy of George Evelyn and Warp Records.
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting