Kirollus

Kirollus came to funk and boogie through hip-hop. DJ Quik and EPMD sent him to the bargain bins, looking for the records behind the samples.

“A lot of the stuff that was in that cheap bin was boogie and ’80s funk,” he told DJ Mag. Born in Dagenham in 1992 and raised between East London and Hove, he started at Uptight Records in Hove in 2014, the soul, funk and jazz shop where he trained his ear. By late 2018 he was playing the odd gig at Patterns in Brighton, putting super obscure ’80s funk in front of young crowds who just got down to it.

In the first lockdown he took a monthly slot on Balamii, started the Forty Minutes Of Funk mix series and streamed sets on Instagram. He went from 1,000 followers at the start of 2020 to more than 200,000 now. Today he hosts a monthly show on Defected Broadcasting House and plays all night long in clubs from Amsterdam to Madrid.

“The boogie artists were doing it for the passion, just the same way underground producers are making music for themselves today.”

Kirollus, to DJ Mag

Sources: DJ Mag, Electrofunkroots, DGTL, Astral People.