APHAFR001 by Fracture & Tim Reaper

I think this is probably the longest ever I've spent on any release for Future Retro London, clocking in at just over 3 years of back & forth between me & Fracture in the making of this. There's a lot of backstory behind this project, so excuse my ramblings below. 😅

The story starts with me hearing Sully playing a tune by Fracture called "Booyaka Style" which I really liked and thought would be great to release. I reached out to Fracture about it and found out later that he already made plans to include it on an album project (0860) that he was working on at the time which later came out on his label Astrophonica.

He asked if I would be up for sending him any tunes to be considered for release on Astrophonica, but in response to this, I suggested a joint label project that both of us would have tunes on & he seemed keen to do it, so I did 2 solo tracks for it that month which he wasn't too into (one ended up coming out on FR019 as Selectors Convention & the other one never came out). Because of how busy he was with the release of his album & other stuff in life, the project was put on hold for a bit.

Few months later, I got back in touch to ask if he had done any tracks for this release but he was still busy with other things and instead sent me a track he had been working on, with the suggestion of us collaborating on it. We finished a track together (https://www.youtube.com/live/vnfKxbvgeWM?si=Ffw9aIcRQe2bNxM6&t=2137) that we both liked & felt as if it was a good starting point for the release. We then got a few more collabs done with a fair bit of back & forth, but upon reflection, he felt as if they could be a lot better than what they currently were and so, the release started to change in format a bit.

He had started a solo tune with vocal samples from Blackeye (who is a regular host MC for the events that Rupture put on and has also hosted at some of my events) & then I started my own solo tune, with the plan of releasing these alongside each other's remixes of the tunes, similar to how the format was on my joint release with Circadian Rhythms. He was into the tune I had done & suggested that I should try and get the sample I used cleared for the release, which started a very longwinded process that held up this release even further.

First, I tried to get contact for the record label, which was going nowhere until I finally got a response from them months later from a different email address, to be told I had to speak directly to the producer of the original track, as he was the one who owned the sampling rights for the track and not them. It then took months of constantly chasing up and repeatedly contacting him to try and get a response, and when he finally got back to me, he asked me to make him an offer on the sample clearance fee. Having never done this before, we made him an offer which he declined, I asked him what he would be happy with, and never heard from him again since.

So at this point now, we've decided that we should maybe get someone to do a new vocal on the track instead of me using the vocal sample, and that became even more longwinded on top of the sample clearance process, as it involved a lot of back & forth between various different MCs, chasing up ones that weren't replying and weighing up which one we should go with from the ones that did reply. In the end, it didn't pan out with any success, due to the MC we decided on ended up having health problems on the week he was meant to record his vocals, so the tune was abandoned and at the same time, Fracture was no longer into his solo track and felt that it could be better.

At this point now, I am very much ready to give up on the idea of this release because it had taken so much time & effort & work over the past few years & yet, it was still nowhere near ready for release, with no actual music confirmed for it. But then earlier this year, Fracture suggested that we should meet up in his studio and work on some tunes together in person, with the aim of getting a few bits done over a bunch of sessions and getting it all sorted out in a much quicker timeline.

Thankfully, this actually worked, we managed to get some collabs done that both of us are very happy with (even managing to sample a recording of Blackeye from a set from a Future Retro London event!) and I can finally rid myself of this burden of a project. 😂

Thanks to Fracture for his co-operation & perseverance with this release, helping to see it through to the end & not allowing it to be anything less than the best possible version of itself, thanks to Mark at Sequence for his role in helping with the logistics/manufacture of this release, thanks to Utile for assisting on the design on this release and most importantly, a very special thanks to all the obstacles along the way that I faced in the making of this release, which helped me appreciate getting to this point so much more than I ever could have!

The Jungle Testing Grounds

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