Chill Pilgrims

Just spotted a comment on here from my old mate Mel, or Melt, as he used to be known in the music world (I think he’s called Soundcard now). Brought back all sorts of memories from my time in Brighton; I bumped into him on a drunken Saturday night; he was handing out flyers for Cafe Expose; a regular chill-out sunday session at the (now no more) Concorde. We had a quick chat about music, and he invited me over to his flat the next day.

Despite not remembering me when I came over next (he’d been pretty drunk that night!) he invited me in and we played each other our stuff, and before we knew it we had christened ourselves The Chill Pilgrims and were drawing a regular crowd down at Cafe Expose. It was always fun to play; we’d do solos sets first, then top it off with a combined effort, sometimes accompanied by my mate Sanj (the Indian Ropeman), who was just finalising his deal with Skint, while Neil rocked it on the Didgeridoo.

Together, we made quite a mental combination of downtempo drum ‘n’ bass, hip hop, techno and dub, with Mel’s knowledge of world music and mine of DnB making an interesting mix, culminating in our live set at the 2nd Big Chill.

We haven’t really been in touch since I moved away from Brighton, apart from when I came down to play a set at one of the last Cafe Expose’s; we’ve both had kids and I’m 4 hours’ drive away, but my memories of the Chill Pilgrims project are fond ones, so big up Mel, and shout out to Cup Of Tea!

I’ll see if I can dig out a tape of one of our sets and put a stream up here sometime…

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