Search - Craig Richards, Lee Burridge :: Tyrant 2: No Shoes / No Cake

Welcome to the world of echo. Welcome to the world of Tyrant. What is Tyrant? Tyrant is Craig Richards (visual artist, player of records) and Lee Burridge (dapper don, disc jockey). It's a soundsystem that doesn't actually own a sound system. It's a night that moves where the mood takes it. It's whatever you want it to be. What's the plan? Well, what usually happens with affairs like this is each DJ gets a CD each, but Burridge and Richards - being the awkward bastards they are - eschew all of that in favour of combining heads for both CDs. The resultant signature sound, which sounds like neither of them yet somehow sounds like both, is as good a manifesto as any Situationist could muster. Flitting idly and nimbly between house and breaks, deep and dub, cool-out and peak-hour, Tyrant take us where - if James T. Kirk will forgive us - no man has gone before. This is house, Jim, but not as we know it.Although their heart is in house, Tyrant's music is as much influenced by dub as it is Chicago and is nearer to King Tubby than King Unique. It¹s got that wobble of uncertainty that makes you wonder whether you've taken drugs. (In fact you haven't. The music's supposed to sound that way.) Do you want to know the difference between those DJs who feel it and those wouldn't know what it was even if it came round to their house and ran off with their girlfriend? It's to do with basslines. Listen to the myriad of crap house records and it's like sitting on a particularly bad fairground ride. They shouldn't sit on the beat, but ride and slide off it. It's what gives movement and funk to music and it's what makes girls wiggle their hips. It's sexy. The tracks you're listening to here are so full of it, we've had to use two CDs to fit it all on. There's "it"-ness for you. We're not going to fill you with dreary biographical details, because you probably already know that Craig plays weekly at Fabric in London and Lee plays all over the place (though he cut his chops in Hong Kong) as befits a DJ of his calibre. Together they are Tyrant, the soundsystem that doesn't own a sound system. Tyrant the sound system without much hair. Welcome to their world.