Music lover, record collector, DJ, and broadcaster, Gilles Peterson is perhaps most famous for his much loved genre-exploding radio shows on BBC Radio 1 (and 17 other stations around the world including Japan’s leading commercial station J-Wave). Gilles’ insatiable appetite for new music undoubtedly lies at the heart of his success.
Gilles’ broadcasting roots reside in South London’s pirate radio movement of the early 1980s. Setting up his own station and then buying himself a slot elsewhere in return for a his fully-functioning transmitter he went on to secure himself a slot on the notorious Radio Invicta. His career reached across a string of pirate radio stations before he landed on BBC London with his show Mad ON Jazz, obviously heading into legal radio was a bit of a departure for Gilles:
“For a 19 year old accustomed to risking my life clambering around on the top of tower blocks to put up aerials, there was nothing more frightening than the days leading up to my first show on the BBC.”
Through meeting the likes of Paul Murphy, owner of Palladin Records and resident DJ at the Electric Ballroom and the opportuinites that arose in the late 1980s, Gilles honed his craft as a DJ. In 1985 he started taking his first steps into A&R, pulling together his ‘Jazz Juice’ compilation for Street Sounds, and he was soon working with Phonogram’s new acid jazz imprint Talkin’ Loud. Here he was releasing classic material by The Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai, Galliano and The Young Disciples.
It was 1998 that he joined BBC Radio 1 and is still going strong. Like John Peel, the formula for Gilles’ radio shows is a simple one: the finest new music he can lay his hands on… and that’s it. From Sun-Ra to Roy Hargrove to Theo Parrish to Flying Lotus – if it swings in the right places, it’s in.
He also now runs Brownswood Recordings which is an outlet for his favourite new discoveries. For example Gilles hasn’t been afraid of signing new, hitherto undiscovered talent such as Ben Westbeech, Jose James, Owiny Sigoma Band or Elan Mehler in addition to the face-melting Death Jazz stylings of Japanese sextet SOIL&”PIMP” SESSIONS.
10.3opm – ’til late, Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath.
Tickets: £10 + 50p booking fee
Please note: After party tickets are only available to those who have purchased a festival ticket for that day. After party wristbands will only be available to collect from the festival itself. They will not be available to purchase or collect from the Hare and Hounds. Tickets for the after parties can also be bought at the festival for that evening.
