At its best, Bristol's scene has been marked out by the artists with an independent spirit. Not just the self-reliant DIY approach to getting the music out there, but a unique, inventive slant on emergent sounds which feed into the city's storied reputation. Flynn & Flora embody that idea, having come up in the nascent Bristol jungle scene while offering something wholly different to their peers in fabled crews like Full Cycle and More Rockers. The duo were absolutely connected to the wider community, but they followed their own path, and the records reflect that. They're not as widely name checked as the likes of Roni Size, Krust, or Smith & Mighty, but their legacy is just as rich with personality and flair, offering that indefinable twist which sets West Country rhythms apart from the sounds in London or elsewhere. City Road wanted to recognise that fact with a modest 12" which cherry picks four crucial early cuts from Flynn & Flora's archives, before they went on to produce three LPs and a series of 12"s up to the mid 00s. "We knew as much as anyone else at that particular time," recalls Flynn. "Samples, hip-hop breaks, bass lines. You've got your synth, your drum machine. It's all you needed. So that's what we did." More

City Road is proud to present two unearthed garage productions from Ratman. They originate from around the turn of the millennium, when UKG was hitting its stride but hadn’t quite found a footing in Bristol.

Ratty and a friend were at St Paul’s Carnival somewhere around 1996 when they happened upon a small soundsystem playing out of the back of someone’s car. The minimal, swung 2-step rhythms sounded completely alien to them, and set them off on a quest into the burgeoning garage sound, resulting in Rat producing a bootleg of an evergreen pop classic of the era.

Rat was a well established part of Bristol’s underground music community with a smattering of jungle-oriented singles behind him and the odd remix commission. Around the same time he made the bootleg, he was approached about remixing a track on a major label. While it went down a storm amongst his peers, Ratty's’bass-heavy version wasn’t a match for the label’s vision and so the remix sat gathering dust for some 20 years.

Now both these misfit, quintessentially Bristolian twists on the UKG sound get a fresh airing on a label based just round the corner from where that car soundsystem was rinsing out mystery garage rollers all those years before. More

City Road Records is a new label from UK based record shop Idle Hands. Whilst the shops in-house label has become known for deeper sounds this new label is aimed squarely at DJs and the dancefloor. It will releasing the type of music we like to hear in the rave, dance, pub or wherever we can turn it up in this post pandemic world.

The first release comes from production duo SPEKTRALSOUND. Here they tackle UK Garage with fresh ears, a timeless record built in 2021 which wouldn’t sound out of place at any point in the past 20 years. Mixing the rough with the smooth ‘Big Up’ takes the best parts of UK Garage ‘2-step swinging drums, lush chords and melodies, vocal samples and flips them into certified dancefloor groovers’. On the flip the VIP mix adds in some nostalgic samples combining the past with the future.

a1. SPEKTRALSOUND - Big Up

b1. SPEKTRALSOUND - Big Up (VIP) More