back in the day...

1996. lanark. a small rural scottish town.

It’s a Saturday afternoon. Somewhere at a desk an awkward dweeby bespectacled teen sits listening to the radio while studying for exams. Midway through a dull afternoon Jo Wiley (remember, it used to be ok to listen to her show) randomly chooses to play a tune by an obscure San Franciscan DJ/Producer. It catches the ear of the teen, they put down their workbook and scrabble frantically for the post-it notes kept handy for such occasions. Scrawling “Shadow Stem” onto a tacky scrap of dull yellow paper and slapping it up with the mosaic of other song notes on the wall beside the desk, they return to study…

Elsewhere in the same small town there’s Andrew. Living life with surgically attached headphones providing a constant stream of unadulterated Beastie Boys. Little did they know that a shared love of the record label which released DJ Shadow would stimulate a friendship that lasted decades and spanned the airwaves.

This week on Build and Destroy we celebrate musical exploration at the age of 15 and the joy of the late, formerly great, Mo’wax Records.

Posted at 11:25, 16th December 2009