It happened around February of last year. It was the day after a big snowfall, and I was at a young friend of mine's apartment. Later in the evening, another friend (a guy) of his stopped by for a visit. Some way or another, they then proceeded to start working on their evil musical plan. My friend would play a record very slowy and say, "This is good for the rythm track," then switch to a different turntable and play a completely different type of music. "And on top of that this would be good for a melody, maybe playing a guitar live on top or something . . ." By mixing these two different kinds of music together it seemed they were trying to create a new style of music. While I sat smoking cigarettes watching all of this, I thought dreamily, "Man, this must of bee what the coversation was like between Jersey B and Nelly Hooper " Now when I think of that moment, I realize I had already taken the first steps to making 2102.
About a year after that I had a single cassette tape demo in my hand. I couldn't believe that that conversation between these two cloudy individuals could have acutally produced the kinds of sounds I heard in the demo. "This is like a year 2000 Rock Steady," I thought. The rythm was fat and tough, but the melody sad but beautiful. I felt one with the magic of this down to earth music that I seemed unable to stop loving. No matter the place or time or psychological state, it always seemed to touch me somewhere deep inside. It was music that cheered me up and healed me.
My young friend had many different names for the music he made, but the one I liked the best was "It's music that people whose thoughts and tastes are hard and crumbly, as if glued together tightly with exposy resin, would never understand." With the wide range of tastes in 2102's group of musician-clubbers, I'm sure they'll be a force in the music world for years to come. Of course, that's easy for me to say being one of them. By Tehe