Slugs. The word could mean unsightly garden pests or lazy dudes, but in the case of London’s Night Slugs imprint, it clearly refers to bullets. Each release on the label is a deadly, precision-crafted thing, whether a swift, blunt grime rhythm or a crisp and carefully sculpted garage riff. A similarly detailed approach is given to Night Slugs’ artwork, under the direction of Bok Bok (a.k.a. Alex Sushon), a DJ/producer and the label’s owner alongside partner L-Vis 1990 (a.k.a. James Connolly). Since the dawn of the Night Slugs label in January 2010, Sushon has designed nearly everything the imprint has put out, from over 20 record sleeves to its iconic logo, a blueprint-like font composed of 3-D building blocks. Somehow, in between making music, hosting shows on Rinse FM, and traveling the globe to DJ, Bok Bok finds time to sit down with his favorite basic tools—a sketchpad and Adobe Illustrator—and knock out the magic. When he’s in London, this means long hours spent working at home in a rambling, three-story house in Camberwell, where he lives with three others (including Night Slugs artist Girl Unit) and a neighborhood cat that can open doors on its own and likes to play analog keyboards.
When we caught up with Bok Bok, he had just finished breakfast and was continuing work on a remix of Parris Mitchell’s “All Night Long,” a dirty Chicago house classic on Dance Mania, that’s being reissued by a Ukranian label. We talked at length about computer-generated environments, grime, simplicity, and the vibes of the virtual world.
Tags: Grime, Post Dubstep, Post Funky, UK Funky, UK Garage, UK House