Blak was born Christopher Lloyd Thomas and raised my his mum who hailed from Brown town Jamaica, “My Mum & Dad are both from Yard, and moved to Bradford in the early sixties & started a new life as hard working class people.†It was made clear from an early age that I could not pursue tax-free income on the streets or spend any time behind bars.
So education education was my path, and I found out that it was my musical education that was my release from all things good or bad. I am the youngest of five: two sisters & two brothers & like most children in the inner city at a young age I sought to understand the poverty and death of my environment & all this became clear in dub poetry with Linton Kwesi John topping the list with his loose narratives & nothing quite structured in his delivery or lyrics.
This seemed to scream out to me but it was the dub producer that had the most influence on me, with the likes of Prince Jammy, Scientist, King Tubby - this is where my love of the studio & mixing came from. I went to every sound clash I was able to go to & listened to every dub tune possible & although I was part of the Hip Hop generation this also had a big influence on me, Rappers & Soul & Jazz came into my life.I never had the courage to do any thing about it for several years then just because I had a large record collection plus vast music knowledge I stared DJing & got around more & more muso’s everybody started telling me to get in the studio.
Life & Times of SOULFUNKTION
Soul-Funk-Tion was born in the early nineties and was the brainchild of Lee Wright And Blak, who started DJing together in and around Leeds in Acid jazz clubs universities etc, and soon built a reputation for themselves.
By the mid nineties with a big music change Lee Wright went on to have great DJing Career in the Garage scene working in clubs from Back 2 Basics to Garage City, meanwhile Blak was still Djing and with a strong base in Jazz he was leaning towards the Soul and Hip Hop scene running nights in Leeds & Bradford plus Djing around the North of England. Both guys stayed friends and still work together on many occasions.
Blak focused on his Productions and remixing working with singers, rappers and other Producers like N-A-P (Nubian Armony Productions) and VSI (Visual Sounds Interactive) and remixing for Back 2 Basics and Shawn Benson, Stanley James, Imani Hekima, Dj-Ten-four, Vixxen, Joy Broox’s. EtcNow Blak is working on his Soulful House Project for Shrine Records as well as his record label Soulsonic Records and extending the S-F-T team to release a real force in BLAK music.
