Playgroup

Pay attention class, it's time for PLAYGROUP. PLAYGROUP is the result of two decades spent absorbing underground club culture and cutting edge popular music. It's the fantasy album of a master producer running amok through his phone book and record collection, rediscovering cult heroes and forgotten legends from the worlds of punk, funk, reggae, new wave, house and rap. It's Screamdelica meets Blue Lines for a new century, a celebration of past and future music, taking the best of the past to create a vital new soundtrack to modern urban life.

It's the brainchild of Trevor Jackson - the producer /remixer better known to hip hop heads as the Underdog, the man who reshaped British hip hop with the urban psychedelic soundscapes he crafted for North London rap outfit The Brotherhood, and the man responsible for over sixty remixes for the likes of U2, Massive Attack, UNKLE and Death In Vegas. Now, after years of experimentalism for his Output label (home of post-rock heroes, Fridge), we have the culmination of a musical career that began designing sleeves for acid house and early hip hop records as a clubbing graphic design student.

Trevor has taken everything he loved about music while growing up, flipped it on its head and turned it into something very special. The result is a sound that is vaguely familiar yet totally original. PLAYGROUP features a whole host of musical mavericks. Leila collaborator Luca Santucci, sings on the first single, ‘Number One’, acid house era hip house poet KC Flightt adds some old school warehouse party vibes, while fellow New Yorker Shinehead brings the dancehall pressure on a reggae cover of Paul Simon's ‘50 Ways To Leave Your Lover'. Scottish indie pioneers Edwyn Collins (Orange Juice) and Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera) are there, alongside Blurt saxophonist Ted Milton and punk reggae producer Dennis Bovell. Singer Kathleen Hannah from original riot grrrls Bikini Kill & now of Le Tigre kicks up some post punk dust on “Bring It On”. Add to that, Kyra (Billy Childish collaborator and ex-Headcoatees member), Happy Mondays stalwart Rowetta, Dallas Austin cohort and Lucy Pearl vocalist Joi, newcomer Sola and finally the man himself singing on the deliciously sleazy dubelectro opus 'Overflow' and you have a scorching hotbed of seriously individual talent...listen and love.

Playgroup is a studio party/rumpus-room collective orchestrated by Trevor Jackson, a graphic designer (sleeves by Eric B. & Rakim, Stereo MCs, and the Jungle Brothers), producer, and remixer (Massive Attack, U2) who has worked under the Underdog and Skull pseudonyms. Jackson also runs his own Output label. A melting pot of disco, funk, hip-hop, dub, new wave, and electronica, 2001's Playgroup, released on the Source label, featured contributions from Roddy Frame (Aztec Camera), Edwyn Collins (Orange Juice, solo), reggae veteran Shinehead, Kathleen Hanna (Le Tigre, Bikini Kill), and Rowetta (Happy Mondays). Astralwerks picked the record up for release in the U.S. in March of 2002. By the end of that year, Jackson released a pair of mix albums: his own contribution to the DJ Kicks series and a title called Partymix, Vol. 1. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide