Outlaws Bio.
I thought it might be refreshing for me to write my own bio and not do it in the third person. So here’s some words about me and THE MUSIC MAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN...
It's long, so you might want to download one of the mixes here and listen to that while you're at it!
When I was 15 I went to the Prema Arts Centre in Uley to watch a film called “Watch The K Foundation Burn A Million Quid”. I loved The KLF and a thing like that coming to a little village in Gloucestershire near where I lived was a pretty big deal. I didn’t watch much of the film though. Instead, I sat in the bar talking to Jimmy Cauty from the band. He was kind enough to sit with me for a while, sharing things that’d he’d done with me. This was a pretty amazing thing for little me from countryside land and it had a big effect.
Much as I loved the KLF, I was young and I didn’t really understand what the whole dance music thing was about. I was from a tiny village and there weren’t exactly any clubs there! Then I started going out with this amazing girl from Bristol who took me down to Lakota. Here I was introduced to amazing music like The Liberators, Billy Nasty, and The Advent. I learnt about the power of parties and how amazingly fun it was to go out and have a wicked time with your friends listening to incredible music.
I wanted to get involved in this awesome adventure, so I saved up some cash form my job in a comic shop (geek!), and bought some decks and my first drum machine. Around this time I also discovered sound systems, warehouse parties and raves in fields (and Bill Hicks, but that’s a whole other story).
After I finished school I went to University in Leeds. It was a great time to be up North, Leeds had clubs like Basics and The Orbit. The Orbit. What an amazing place: Jeff Mills, Sven Vath, CJ Bolland, Dave Clarke, Aphex Twin all on permanent rotation, everyone nutted at 10pm when it opened, then catching the bus back to the city when it shut with a whole crew of loonies! Scruff was doing his night in Manchester too which was ace (and I even ended up doing a great party with him) although getting lost in Moss Side afterwards feeling slightly shaky was slightly less fun.
University was great, I enjoyed the use of a very well stocked library and boring people senseless talking about Situationist concepts was all well and good but it was about time I started putting on parties of my own with a group of friends. We called ourselves The Texas Outlaws after Bill Hick’s gang of comics in Austin, Texas because I liked Bill Hicks and it seemed to fit with our attitude of doing things in a different way. Not just for money but to try and do something crazy, interesting and lots and lots of fun.
I also gradually built a massive sound system with my dad in the holidays. This gave me a lot of pleasure, doing parties, meeting and working with other sound system crews and even taking it into clubs to rattle the walls. Unfortunately all good things come to an end and a good portion of the rig was stolen after a gig, along with my decks, CDJs, loads of records and all the amps. This was pretty heartbreaking so I moved back to Bristol to get back on track.
In Bristol I ended up managing The “World Famous” Blue Mountain Club, which was a good laugh. There I drank lots of Red Stripe, got to know the Blowpop crew and learned to love the city. Unfortunately my boss was bananas and tried to fit me up for a robbery, which made it seem like a natural time to leave.
Putting on parties was still fun, so I started an Outlaws residency at the legendary Arc venue in Bristol playing for 4+ hours and having a great time. This also saw the birth of Giant Robot (and Giant Lobster). Here the idea was to bring a massive sound system into a little club (see a pattern here yet?) and bang it out. This introduced a lot of Bristol kids to the power of rave (and probably lots of ecstasy). A personal highlight here was getting Jimmy Cauty from The KLF out of retirement to play at my birthday party. This was quite spectacularly awesome.
Again good things must come to an end, but this time not so tragically. I had to leave Bristol to become music editor of The Face magazine in London. This was pretty much dream job material. I had a great time and also started The Face Weekly with Neil from Popbitch. I met some smart people like Lisa Anthony and Tom Whitwell too (you’re not supposed to know who they are, but if they Google themselves they might find this and know I still love them!).
Then things had a slight hiccup when The Face shut down, so it was off back to Bristol. I made an album called “Too Many Fools Following Too Many Rules” which had some good reviews in places like The Guardian and The Times, which was nice. It also got me onto Kiss Fm doing a show on Friday nights, but my producer there wanted increasingly commercial music, which wasn’t cool, so that little number only lasted a couple of months. She’d shagged Brandon Block anyway so it wasn’t all bad vibes (no offence to either party intended, it’s just pretty funny).
Best of all putting out the record opened the door to do the Dance Tent at Glastonbury - more dream come true stuff. I’d being going to the festival since I was 15 and now I was playing at it (it was actually the second time playing down there, but the first time in the big, amazing dance tent). The place was packed with loonies on drugs having it like mad. One kind soul described the whole thing in print as “more like a punk gig than a DJ set”, which felt quite right. There’s also a nice photo of me doing a balloon of Nitrous Oxide behind the decks, good times! There was a lot of balloon action in Bristol around this time, in fact there was a lot of all kinds of action mainly based on having the best time possible.
Glastonbury has been such an important thing, the festival is incredible and run by an amazing bunch of people, it’s given me some wonderful memories – meeting John Peel, watching bands from the stage (thanks Emily!), the obvious but still completely awesome sunrises at the stone circle, going to a party at Joe Strummer’s campfire backstage and him taking the time to talk to me (a 17 year old guy looking a bit sheepish) and remembering me getting his signature at the signing tent earlier! It kind of inspired me and a few friends to put on our own festival too: “Jimmy Catholic’s 42 To Beat Summer Tyre Fire Birthday Massacre” with the awesome Ann Shenton from Add N to (x) and Chris Liberator, a bunch of cool bands and an incredible, inflatable world war two army tent.
Then came touring. This took me to Australia, mainly thanks to Mark Broadbent from We Love in Ibiza (cheers Mark!). He was kind enough to recommend me to the We Love crew in Australia who really looked after me. In Australia I met the Bang Gang and it was pretty much love at first sight: They liked good music, fucking about and good parties, they were also smart and liked good food. They were so fun I hung about in Australia for a while, played at their awesome club a few times then went back to England, mooked about for a bit, toured Oz again, thought “What am I doing? This is ace” and moved over.
So that’s where we are now. I’m lucky enough to be living in Australia (it’s the new Ibiza you know), sharing a studio with the awesome Jaime Doom, Gus The Hoodrat and Spruce Lee and doing a monthly residency at Sydney’s most consistent, mental party Starfuckers (Big Stereo reckoned it was the best thing last year behind the Daft Punk gig and I played at that too!). Since being unceremoniously kicked off Modular (as far as I’m aware it was for being too professional and generally rad?) things have never been better. I just hope I can play some more parties and maybe play some great music for some lovely people and keep enjoying this life here with everybody.
I just realised I missed a bit too – I’ve remixed some bands as well, from the brilliant Pink Grease to Tricky (A Bristol favourite). The mixes haven’t always been totally awesome, but I try, I do try, honestly.
Here it is, Clark Kunt's latest mix for you all to thrash to. Please download this hour-long shredder and play it very loud, it deserves it and so do you...
Old old mix, click to download innit...
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