2 Far Gone (Vocal Mix) - Moses Boyd feat. Katy B (2021)
A lively, jazz-inflected 2-step anthem by a London drummer whose music threads through an old friendship
During my fourth and final year as an undergraduate at the University of Bristol I lived with a friend called K.O in a first floor flat overlooking Whiteladies Road, the busy artery that flows downhill from the Downs between the student hubs of Clifton and Redland.
We didn’t have a television — just a set of CDJs, a mixing board and two Rokit speakers arranged on the dining table. Since first meeting during our first year in 2009, we had been in a constant dialogue about music. K.O wrote a blog, hosted events and introduced me to dubstep as the genre soared in Bristol’s clubs whilst crossing into global mainstream sound. I started to miss the grime and UK hip-hop scenes that I’d been immersed in at school back in London, and few others living in my halls-of-residence knew anything about them. Conversations and adventures with K.O let me tap back in and learn more.
I look back on that time with nostalgia and fondness. I wouldn’t be who I am today without it. I enjoyed my degree, partied hard and met friends — not least my wife, Yasmin — who I’ll have for life.
But by our fourth year both K.O and I were weathered by the overwhelmingly white, upper-middle-class and boarding school-educated social demographic of our student body.
So we retreated.
In contrast to the cycles of messy nightlife activity that dominated earlier university years, by the end we spent nights in the safer space of our flat listening to music, cooking food and debriefing life, with the odd episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or My Wife and Kids as background entertainment, or trip to the pub to drink Guinness.
I realise now how formative that year was. I started writing a blog and a personal diary, which sparked my aspiration to become a writer. K.O pursued the early stages of a career in the music industry.
Nearly a decade after graduating we met for lunch in central London. By then K.O had been managing the south east London-raised drumming extraordinaire Moses Boyd for a number of years. I’d watched him apply his passion and precision for musical taste to supporting Moses on his journey to becoming a torch-bearer for London’s thriving, experimental jazz scene.
I’d profiled Moses for British GQ in 2020, interviewing him over Zoom as the pandemic wore on about his Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Dark Matter (for which K.O designed the striking, blacked-out artwork with a fist holding a flaming British flag at its centre). My favourite track on the album was, as it remains, the shuffly, jazz-inflected 2-step epic of 2 Far Gone featuring Ezra Collective keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones.
Over steak, K.O mentioned that there would be a new vocal mix of the song coming out soon featuring dubstep legend and breakout star Katy B — a staple voice of bass music from our years at Bristol. He’d designed the new artwork, too, in which a collapsing, smudged Avirex jacket logo is just about discernible against a black background, an elusive nod to turn-of-the-millennium UK garage champagne dance fashion.
The song was released a few months later and has remained in my rotation ever since, a go-to for some spark and emotion. I look forward to Moses’s sophomore album, hopefully coming before long.
Big up the day ones.
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