The Ballistic Brothers

The Ballistic Brothers embody a classic London collective formed in the wake of acid house. Drawing together production expertise from leading lights across the progressive house and acid jazz landscapes—Ashley Beedle of Black Science Orchestra, Dave Hill of Nuphonic Records, and the house-tech pair Rocky and Diesel—the group crafts a hip-hop/house/jazz/soul fusion that consistently signals celebration wherever it surfaces. After issuing the bulk of their early output through the London club mainstay Junior Boys Own, among them the 1994 debut London Hooligan Soul, the outfit launched its own Soundboy imprint in 1996 to deliver the successor album Rude System. Dave Hill’s journey to Jamaica immediately before those sessions prompted the record’s linguistic and sonic pivot, an influence that also prompted the collective to undertake a remix endeavor—modeled on Mad Professor’s reworking of Massive Attack’s 1995 album Protection—at Bob Marley’s Kingston studio. Separate endeavors by the members encompass X-Press 2, Free Soul, Low Pressing Records, Blacker, Ill Sun Records, Yellow Sox, and the Uschi Classen band.