Ace! This week Andy Kershaw played another track off our BGK02 compilation on his BBC World of Music show, with Audio-Wok’s “Fry2Stir” getting the honours. Audio-Wok is comprised of Christian “Dreamfish” Clague and Lee “Leif” Lamont, both legendary Isle of Man (Manx) DJs in their own right, who teamed up in Port St. Mary in the south of the island to produce this rather funky dance tune. They got themselves a website recently, you can find more information on them over at AtomikHotdog.com. Click here to listen again to Andy’s show (available online till next Sunday’s show)– this time it’s 43 minutes in.

Unfortunately we only produced a very limited edition of BGK02, we only got one box of bubblewrap and it was regrettably too expensive to get another, so as such it’s now sold out, sorry! Don’t fret, though, in keeping with the Ballagroove tradition where we try to promote the artists as best we can we’ll be making the entire compilation available as a free MP3 download within the next couple of days, so keep an eye on the download page or subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll let you know the minute it’s out. In the meantime you can check out BGK01, the first in the series, by downloading it here, please let us know what you think by leaving a comment or sending us an e-mail. Thanks!

It’d probably be a good idea to explain the ethos of the Black Label compilations: they’re a way for us to release music from Manx artists that normally wouldn’t get heard. People that make music in their bedrooms, folks that don’t gig, or artists that just don’t have an outlet, there’s a lot of talent hidden away on the island and we’d like it to be heard. So that’s how it works: if we like the music it goes on the compilation, simple as that. We then arrange this music in with tracks from the regular Ballagroove artists and compile the CD, then spend a little while assembling some special handmade packaging and put it out for a reasonable price — we just try to cover the material costs as we’re not in it for the money. This time it was black bubblewrap sleeves with a gold sticker and velcro seal, along with a pin-badge, tracklisting and two pieces of bespoke artwork by local artist David Maddrell (who’s part of Ballagroove). Oh, and the CD is black on both sides, which is kinda how the name evolved. (Or was it the other way around, I forget!) Then, once we’ve sold them all, we put the entire thing up on our website so it can be heard by as many people as possible and hopefully encourage the artists to make more amazing music 🙂