Hooligan Soul

The Hooligan Soul boys Grif and Pab have been causing havoc around Adelaide for a number of years now, DJing around town at various venues with various amounts of success, as well as playing live with some of the most important drum and bass DJs to visit our shores. These bad boys of beats look like they’re about to take off both figuratively and literally, with the continued promise of a new album, a possible tour of Hong Kong, Singapore and South America and with Pab just coming back from a successful tour of Bali with Aphrodite and DJ Rap.

We caught up with them fresh from an exhaustive night at Mojo West at the surprisingly popular Hooligan Jam. “Yeah, it’s going pretty smooth, the last vibe was absolutely rocking!” Pab enthuses. “It’s the only place in Adelaide you’ll hear proper UK Garage, and the last one we kinda got a bit adventurous and dropped a bit of Grime and 8-Bar in there too, and the crowd dug it! Nice and busy, it was cool.” Their other gig, Wednesdays at the Cumby, is also going along strong, and both the boys hope that this will continue over the summer months.

The boys have been hard at work on the album, due out soon through 618 records, out soon. “We’ve been promising it would be out for god knows how long now, but we SWEAR this time we mean it when we say it’s almost ready”, they vow. “Other then that, we’ve been pretty busy with shows and what not. We got our Wednesday night thing at the Cumberland, Mojo, Rukkas as well as various shows at Traffic. On top of that, Pab’s just come back from Bali, and we’re both going back in a couple of weeks, and Griff’s just recorded the new Beat Smugglers album, and they’re on fire at the moment as well. We’ve remixed Mobin Master recently, and we’re also working out a remix for the Jungle Brothers. We’re in the process of sorting out shows in Hong Kong and Singapore too at the moment, PLUS Pab is sorting out some stuff in South America. So yeah, we’ve been pretty busy lately.”

The Hooligans describe they’re sound as “Our own”, to raucous laughter. “I guess it’s a kind of like the link between the smooth, rolling “Liquid” stuff and the harder, gutsy sound. I know it’s a cliché but we don’t want to be classified as one thing. Guys like Marky, Stamina MC, Moving Fusion, Grooverider, Marcus Intalex, and Calibre, they’ve all given us really cool feedback, saying our sound is really unique. And I don’t mean in a “um… yeah… wow guys, that’s really… umm… unique” way, when people just say that because it’s shit,” they laugh. “I think Marky’s been playing Runaway, and apparently Rider was battering a tune of ours we handed him at Winter Enchanted last year. To be honest they probably don’t play much of our stuff though cause we’re too slack to send them new stuff!” On the local front, it’s a little different. “Some play our stuff, some don’t. Skyver & D-Jon play our stuff, Mark 7, MPK and Patch play it a bit… but it’s kinda weird. We guess they got their own tunes they want to play, cause they complain we don’t give them our tunes, but when we do they play them fuck all!” they laugh.

Their sound, like most performers, has developed as they’ve grown, and now they even dabble in a little hiphop and 2-step. But the boys claim that the main thing to change “is the sound quality. Our first tunes were musically watertight, but they were mixed like utter poo. We’ve got the mixing part sorted now; it’s just so much cleaner! That’s the only real thing really, our style has probably changed in subtle ways, but we’re still the same team of village idiots making what we like to make.”

The boys, and Lexy, the lead female singer, are looking forward to playing interstate and overseas. “I just returned,” Pab states. “I had two shows in Bali which I found out were the best two shows Bali has ever had, and they’re up for Event of the Year awards there. I represented Hooligan Soul, and the entire Adelaide Massive”. But the boys won’t be lugging their equipment around, as was so common in the past. With CDDJs, it has become a thing of the past to see Grif lug in two mixers and a PC. “It’s too much of a headfuck, and to be quite honest, we both like DJing and MCing more.”