Steven James Pratt a.k.a Fly Agaric 23 (Steve Fly) Biography
Born April 15th 1976 in Wordsley,
England, and grew up as a competitive swimmer into his teens when he
came across Jazz music, speed Metal, hip-hop, drum and bass, and playing
drums in a school band. This led to Steven developing his drumming and
DJ skills over the next 20 years.
Steve Fly’s first ‘live’ gig was
drumming with ‘Surgery’ at Thorns School in 1991, and went on to play
with local Stourbridge garage punk band ‘Indigo Jane’ at such venues as
J.B’s Dudley, The ‘Source’, ‘The Mitre’ in Stourbridge, and support for
Babylon Zoo and Fret Blanket in Kidderminster.
In 1993 Steven briefly played with
Kinver based band ‘Taxi’ and recorded and album together and supported
vocalist ‘Sam Brown’ at the Robin Hood R n’B club. In 1994 Steve played
drums for a short time with the Birmingham based ‘live’ drum & bass
band ‘Plutonik’, featuring vocalist Chrissy Van Dyke.
In 1994 fly bought his first pair of
turntables, and was instantly attracted to scratching and spinning
vinyl, and began buying and playing a mixture of old Jazz, new
electronica, drum & bass, break-beats and other soul/funk/jazz
oddities. This led to him playing records with local DJ crew’s ‘Lowlife’
and ‘Lifted’ (94-2001) and by 1998 starting a successful
‘soul/jazz/funk/breaks’ night in and around Stourbridge called ‘Pass the
peas’. Other gigs included dj slots with Craig Fields and the
‘Nazareth’ DJ crew, and gigs at the Q-club Birmingham, Wolverhampton,
Dudley, Wales, and the Glastonbury festival 2000.
In 1998 Fly Agaric was billed with Fuzz
Townsend on the bill for Graffiti Bastards 2, an art and music
exhibition featuring and produced by CHU. This collaboration led to fly
travelling up to York, and Finsbury Park studio’s to record a ‘live’
drum track for the first full album from UK left-field hip-hop crew New
Flesh. (Part2, Toastie Taylor, Juice Aleem, DJ Weston) The resulting
track ‘Quantum Mechanix’ turned out to be fly’s first release, launched
in 1999 on Big Dada Records 0013, and stands as a testament to
alternative UK hip hop at the turn of the millennium.
In 1999, together with Indian composer
Surrinder Sandhu, Steve played drums and turntables on three tracks
recorded at Birmingham’s D.E.P international studios and that were
subsequently pressed onto 200 10” vinyl discs, all of which were stamped
with a rubber ink stamp depicting the ‘Mayan Tzolkin’. Out of 200
records I probably sold 2, but it has made 2000 people smile since.
On April 10th 2000 Fly travelled to
America to hear Dr Robert Anton Wilson lecture, while on his visit he
had a synchronistic meeting at ‘The Planetwork’ conference with virtuoso
bassist and composer Kai Eckhardt. This led to a steady flow of
collaborations and gigs across the US during the next 5 years, most
notably with Jazz Funk Jam band ‘Garaj Mahal’ featuring Kai, Fareed
Haque, Eric Levy and Alan Hertz, since replaced by drummer Sean Rickman.
Steve Fly can be heard playing turntables on 3 cuts from their album
‘Mondo Garaj (2001) and 3 cuts from ‘Blueberry Cave’ (2005). He
performed over 30 live shows in more than 10 different states including
the cities New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, Portland, Oakland, L.A,
Saint Louis and Santa Cruz. The band have received worldwide acclaim,
reviews, and praise from fellow musicians and fans alike. (see
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondo_Garaj www.kaizone.com/Garajmahal/pages/storyoftheband.html)
Fly also performed as DJ with the
Gregory James Band, and can be heard on the albums ‘Reincarnation’ and
‘Come to me’ the latter with Bassist Benny Rietveld (Miles Davis, Carlos
Santana) and a large cast of heavyweight players: Deszon Claiborne,
Celia Malheiros, Tom Coster, Rasaki Aladokun, Karl Perazzo, Rita Theis
and poet Craig Easley. Steven performed with Gregory at Yoshi’s Jazz
club in Oakland, and other venues in San Francisco (2000-2005).
(See
www.gregoryjames.com/come-to-me)
Fly played in many other jams and
musical configurations during his 5 years in America, notably with Alan
Hertz and Friends, No Parking (Alan Hertz and Liam Hanrahan) A Modern
Fairy Tale (with Kai Eckhardt) Geo Trio (Eric Levy, Hertz and Bobby
Vega) The Fareed Haque Band. And DJ fly shared the stage at festivals
and shows with artists such as Ray White, Bernie Worrell, Leo
Nocentelli, Brian Jordan, Reggie Watts, Robert Walters, Tal Morris,
Carlos Washington, Al Howard, Rasaki Aladokun, Skerik, Benny Reitveld,
Peter Horvak, and many others.
(see:
www.archive.org/details/GarajMahal (Search DJ Fly Agaric 23)
In October 2005, Fly flew back to the UK
and temporarily put down his drum sticks and records in favour of
picking up his pen, partly due to the fact he had no drums or turntables
in the UK and no shows were on the horizon. By early 2006 fly had been
busy over the last year mixing, remixing and creating music using Reason
and sample based music on his Mac-book, his first computer since an
Atari 900, some samples of which can be heard at his soundcloud account
here:
In March 2007 Steve Fly moved to
Amsterdam where he settled into a new life there, writing and working
at the coffeeshop 420, that happens, by chance, to be the preferred
coffeeshop, and poets residence of Poet/activist John Sinclair. Over the
last six years John Sinclair has had a massive influence on Steve’s
musical directions and output, plus on his writing and avid reading
habits. Steve lived together ‘on and off’ for 3 years with John, and has
toured England, Holland, and Germany as John’s drummer and co-pilot,
featuring on several recordings and dozens of live shows with fellow
Amsterdam blues scholars such as: Mark Ritsema, Leslie Lopez, Vicente
Pino, and Tom Worrell from New Orleans.
Late August 2010, Steve Fly hosted some
of the band in who were travelling from the recent 101 runners tour of
Europe, including Tom Worrell, artist Frenchy, and John. Steve quickly
seized the chance to record a session while Tom and John were in town,
and with the help of some friends: Leslie Lopez, Larry Hayden, and Mau
we managed to get two days of recordings that turned into the album
‘Let’s Go Get Em’ on No Cover Records (2011) with artwork by CHU and
Frenchy.
On 1st March 2011 Fly visited John in
London to record drums along with Youth, George Butler, Brian James,
Angie Brown, Alan Clayton, for 3 cuts on the new Beatnik Youth album,
out on Track Records.
Since 2009 Steve fly has also been
jamming with guitarist Vicente Pino, and together they have performed
over 50 shows mostly in and around Amsterdam, but as far afield as
Ghent, Belgium, under the name Dr Marshmallow Cubicle. The duo now have
three unreleased albums, (Marshy, Sod The Rich, John Sinclair and the
Amsterdam Blues Scholars) they have over 50 ‘live’ videos available on
youtube (flyagaric23 – playliists). Their unique improvised guitar and
drum music has captured the imagination of many people, and they’ll
return to the stage in spring 2013.
Steven recently signed an album deal
with Iron Man Records to produce the latest John Sinclair album due for
release this summer. It features fly on drums, brushes, turntables,
Cello, and production along with his star engineer Tim Egmond (Senior
Modulator). The album titled ‘Mohawk’ is fly’s interpretation of John’s
poems that are all taken from a suite dedicated to Thelonious Monk, and
that feature tales of Be-Bop, Bird, Dizzy and Monk. The album will be
crafted and designed in collaboration with Graffiti legend CHU, and
together with Iron Man Records we are poised to release a total new
audio/visual experience, nicely tying together the John Sinclair/Steve
Fly synergy produced over the previous few years.
Filed Under
John Sinclair,
Steve FlyTagged:
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