Sound System concept is “I Remember,” featuring Greentea Peng. “I hit her up and told her my story about being young around the sound systems and all that,” says Evelyn. “So I sent her some beats, and she came back and shared her youth club story. It all started to fall into place.” The album’s release arrived as Evelyn was preparing for his most ambitious live project to date: a full orchestral presentation of Smokers Delight and In a Space Outta Sound at London’s Royal Albert Hall in March 2026. “This is really a monumental moment for me, and I can really take this anywhere,” he says of the musical possibilities afforded by such a vast stage.“But I also understand the importance of respecting the records.They mean so much to me, and I know they do to other people.” Those albums were recorded just over thirty and twenty years ago, respectively. Yet, in Evelyn’s musical universe, they are still evolving. The next Nightmares on Wax release is a dub version of In a Space Outta Sound mixed by Adrian Sherwood, In a Space Outta Dub . The twenty-fifth anniversary of Smokers Delight was celebrated in 2020 with a companion EP, Smokers Delight: Sonic Buds . Fittingly, our conversation ends with Evelyn taking stock of how his music-making process has evolved through the years. “In the beginning, you have this power of naïveté, then you can get over observant and start questioning what you are doing and become a bit lost,” he shares. “You have to find yourself again. I feel like I now trust the process [and] allow the music to tell me what it is, rather than trying to fit it into somewhere.That is not how creation works.With all the experience I have, I have to trust in what I do.”
versions of loops that I would listen to, and allow the ideas to come. So things just fall into place.And it’s the same with my collaborations and how I meet and connect with people.That just happens. Every project that comes alive—once the music starts telling me what it is—I then share it with whoever I am working with.” With Evelyn having emerged from DJ and sampling culture, I wonder if his lack of formal training brought any advantages for him as a producer working with musicians. “To be honest, I struggled at times,” he replies. “I would often be in a room with next-level musicians, and wished I could speak their language. Chris Dawkins told me, ‘If you are taught something, you build a wall, and it’s very difficult to get past that—but you have no walls.’ And that was when the penny dropped. Having that freedom has been really important. Even though I am always learning from these great musicians I have around me.” - ECHO CHAMBER - For Echo45 Sound System , Evelyn called upon a broad list of collaborators, includingYasiin Bey, Greentea Peng, and Skratch Bastid, to help execute his most high-concept release since Smokers Delight. “After [2021’s] Shout Out! To Freedom..., I still had a load of music that I hadn’t done anything with. And then Kazim, my manager, had this idea for a mixtape,” he explains of the project’s origins.“That led me back to my younger days.And this idea to do something that’s in between a pirate radio show and a sound clash.” To tie everything together, he invited vocalist Liam Bailey to act as Echo45’s MC, toasting on the tracks in a Jamaican deejay style.“[After] I already had much of the music, [I] started to look for someone to present the sound clash side of me,” says Evelyn.“It was like,‘OK, he’s gonna be the presence throughout it all. He’s gonna be my deejay. Then I said, ‘Now it would be cool to get loads of shoutouts.’ So I started hitting people up for jingles.” Gilles Peterson, Louie Vega, and Goldie were among the many who answered the call. “Bang Bien,” the project’s heady lead single, features Bey, the former Mos Def, who works an otherworldly primal chant around lyrics that talk of finding “tomorrow in a fossil yesterday.” “I had already written that track with Yasiin when he came over to my house for three days,” says Evelyn.“[The] lyrics really connected with the whole concept of the album.” The single is supported by an animated video from Andy Baker based on Evelyn’s formative years around the sound systems and b-boy culture of Leeds.Together with the Greensleeves-inspired cover art and a comic-strip insert entitled “The Journey of the Speaker Box,” the album’s packaging paints an evocative picture of the early ’80s music culture that Evelyn pulled from in making the tape. One of the tracks that chimed most poignantly with the Echo45
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( opposite ) George Evelyn in 2025. Photo by Ollie Trenchard.
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