Keep Up!

Keep Up! is a collective of DJs, Producers and general music lovers that has been releasing records and promoting parties in London since 2003. Its five members are Tom Central, Cosmo Lopez, Jus' Jules, Ave Blaste and Invisible A.

Over the last five years, Keep Up! has hosted some of the best names in the London music scene at its events, showcasing the broadest musical melange and inviting respected guest DJs. On the dancefloor you can expect to hear hip hop, funk, soul, disco, reggae, boogie, fidgit house, dubstep, old school jungle and all sorts of beats and breaks in between.

Keep Up!'s current residency is at The White Horse in Brixton, London with its DJs making recent appearances around London in venues such as Cargo, Herbal, Plastic People and The Social. In recent years, the collective has played supporting sets with top acts such as: Coldcut, Dangermouse, Edan, Bonobo, DJ Vadim and Prince Paul. It has also hosted the War On Vinyl room at Drum n Bass uber rave Hospitality.

Not content with hosting parties, Keep Up! launched Keep Up! Records in January 2008. Tom Central's The World Famous on Keep Up! 001 has become a Solid Steel staple for DJ Food and the Lopez flipside Donde has been spotted online on many a mixtape. Keep Up! 002 features music from Ave Blaste and Cosmo Lopez, was released in June and received massive radio and club support from Mr Scruff, Jazzanova, Toddla T, Nightmares on Wax, Hint, Simbad and many more. Keep Up! 003 featuring more music from Tom Central, Ave Blaste and Cosmo Lopez is expected to drop in Feb 2009.

Having been able to buy his first set of proper decks due to a Monopoly style "Bank error" in his favour, Alex "Invisible A" Wybraniec started his DJing life in the local pub, playing the highly desired slot of 3 till 8pm on a Sunday (the Full Fat Sunday Social). They were heady days, and sometimes the number of punters reached double figures.

Moving wide eyed to the steel city of Sheffield to further his knowledge of all things nerdy and electronic, Alex landed another weekly residency in a slightly better time slot and pinched the name from a visiting guitarist (Come To Where I'm From). Having built up a regular and dedicated following over a couple of years, the nights came to an end with a month of gallery shows, combining DJs, Artists, some odd food and a crazy man. It was here that Alex and Tom first DJ-ed together.

A couple of years later, when Alex moved to London, he hooked back up with Tom, and together with the rest of the Keep Up! gang set about doing big nights in small venues, and always aiming to please.

Like most DJ's of a certain era, Jules' interest in music was awoken by the sounds of hip hop as its looped breaks and controversial wordplay started to cross the Atlantic. A neighbour had put him on to the sound and it wasn't long before he was collecting the complete works of acts like 2 Live Crew, NWA & Public Enemy on cassette tape. When he found that samples on some of these albums had been taken from tunes in his dad's record collection he realised that vinyl was the way forward. Further musical epiphanies followed in different forms, from the complete works of the Cure to the emerging hardcore scene and everything in between. It is this openminded approach that informs Jules' dj sets. Nowadays he is just as likely to be found playing the deepest of underground hip hop, B-More or dubstep at a Keep Up! night as he is to be playing the latest house sounds as the resident dj at West End superclub Movida. The one thing that fuses these strands together is his overriding love of music in all forms and his desire to get this across to whoever is listening at the time.

I am a DJ, producer and musician currently living in London. My interest in all things musical stretch back to my childhood, playing Drums, Clarinet and Saxophone in various school bands and local groups. My sets are currently a mixture of Soul, Funk, Hip hop, Disco, Beats, Breaks and whatever I can dig up to move the crowd.

DJing crossed my path at university in Coventry where I became heavily into the Jungle scene. I bought some cheap turntables and started to DJ at local venues. In my graduation year, I was a resident on the often chaotic but well-followed Infinity FM, a drum n bass and UK Garage station - amazingly Coventry's only pirate radio station in 1998.

Moving to London in 1999, I stayed with pirate radio, DJing on Abyss FM for a couple of years. I also had a regular internet show on Worldwide FM which lasted three years. My DJ sets began to sway more towards, Hip hop, downtempo beats and electronic music. I started a series of nights including Clinical Beats and Global TOMination at now defunct legendary London location The Clinic. Guests at these nights included members of Bugz in the Attic, Warp DJs and Lex Records DJs. When The Clinic closed down, Global TOMination continued, moving to The Embassy in Islington. In its year and a half residency, guests included Buddy Peace, Warp DJs, Lex Records DJs, Dr Rubberfunk, Kid Acne, Cartel Communique, Paul Arnold and loads more. When the Embassy changed hands, Global TOMination ground to a halt.

After DJing for Lex Records at Plastic People, The Premises, The Scala and The Camden Centre with acts such as Dangermouse, Edan and Prince Paul I started doing more local gigs. The seeds of Keep Up! were sown when I met Zac whilst we were DJing a gig in Tooting. We liked the same types of music and ended up DJing at the Canalside Bar, Lock 17 in Camden. Fast forward 6 months and Javier, Jules and Alex had joined us and Keep Up! was born. We started to stage parties and invite guests along to Camden. We've since brought Keep Up! to Brixton in South London for more dancefloor fun. Keep Up! Records is the next big step forward.

Production-wise my debut single The World Famous was released in Feb 08. I produce Hip-Hop and Beatsy music inspired by the latin, jazz, funk and soul from the 50s through to the present day.

Born and raised in Paraguay, Javier/Cosmo got the music bug when he was about 13 years old and his brother's mate lent him a cassette of The Ramones. This got him into American and British Punk Rock and the whole DIY attitude. He bought his first instrument, a £20 bass guitar that didn't stay in tune and weighted a quarter of his own body weight.

After weeks of practising to his favourite records he started his first band, a 3-piece. He then got into a few other bands, from indie rock to noise to black metal (!!!) and then decided that the death of rock n roll was nigh. This got him into soul, reggae, hip-hop and drum n? bass.

Javier moved to the UK in 2001 with the excuse of expanding his record collection and meeting like-minded people with the same interest (or borderline obsession) in music. He joined four other friends to form Keep up! and decided he found his spiritual home, the land where bass was king and music was far more eclectic.

DJing at different venues across London as part of Keep up! or supporting acts such as Coldcut, DJ Food and High Contrast, Javier spun tunes from his ever-expanding collection: from funk, soul and hip-hop to house, electro and disco with even sprinkles of drum n' bass and the odd post-punk record.

Taking from his previous experience as a musician and always interested in music making, Javier is now one third of Lopez (the other two being his Paraguayan buddies back home), constantly producing beats aimed at the dancefloor and taking influences from predominantly soul, jazz and latin music (check out www.myspace.com/lopezparaguay for a taster). Watch this space for more from Javier and Lopez in 09!

Originally from France, Zac Vibert has been collecting records from an early age.
Addicted to Hip Hop in the 90s, he got hooked with the New York boom bap and west coast p funk sounds. He soon discovered the old funk and soul records where the samples came from.
Zac started to get a urge to turn his hand onto production, got an MPC and started to make Hip Hop beats.
Since then Zac's discovered more eclectic sounds while in London such as drum and bass and more electronic sounds. He has worked with a live funk band and jazz singer Gwyneth Herbert. He is now working for Hospital Records and resident at Hospitality .
Zac's played alongside the Nextmen, London Elektricity, Herbaliser, J St*r amongst others and has released 2 tracks on Keep Up! alongside Cosmo lopez. He recently just finished tracks with the Lopez crew for their first EP, out in April 09. He released the track "Sega" as part of the Keep Up 45 series in december 09. Watch this space for more Ave Blaste in 2010!!

Xylo by aveblaste
Phone Me UP by aveblaste
Sega by aveblaste
Change The Channel by aveblaste
01-Ave Blaste & Lopez-Drakefield Soul by aveblaste