Fliptrix Interview: From Coldharbour Lane to an off-grid Portuguese farm

We caught up with the rapper and High Focus Records founder to talk about his album ‘Elevation’ and upcoming tour, his Peruvian pilgrimage and living off-grid in the Portuguese mountains.

Date published: 15th May 2026

The year is 2007 and DJ Snuff is running a monthly night at Brixton Jamm called Speaker’s Corner. Zander, better known as Fliptrix, lived down the road from Jamm at the time and never missed the event, “The first place I ever rapped live was there” he tells me via a crackly Google Meet connecting Manchester to an off-grid farm in the Portuguese mountains, where he’s lived since 2020, “I would go down for the open mic and later you’d have artists like Skinnyman, Chester P and Klashnekoff doing the shows.”

It was at a Speaker’s Corner when Fliptrix first crossed paths with David L. G. Webb, then known as Chemo, who lived locally and always found himself on Brixton Road when an event was on. “He was producing tracks for other people so we just connected that way. I’d heard some of the stuff he’d mixed and mastered, so I hit him up. He’s mixed and mastered the majority of High Focus’ catalogue as well, so he’s been a big part of the sound and the journey.”

Nearly two decades later, Webb, now known as Forest DLG, is producing a full record with Fliptrix for the first time, having mixed and mastered most of Fliptrix’s career. The new record, Elevation, is an ambitious 19-track concept album tackling many subjects surrounding the overall theme of elevation including personal transformation, generational trauma, energy and healing, the current state of the world and spiritual awakening, and was released on digital streaming platforms on 26th March, a month on from its physical release via Fliptrix’s own High Focus Records.

Cover art for Fliptrix's 11th solo album 'Elevation'

Elevation, his 11th solo album, is just the latest link-up with Forest DLG, who has remained an ever-present figure in the rapper’s career, ever since he mastered Fliptrix’s debut album Force Fed Imagery 19 years earlier. “He produced a track on my second album in 2010, so that’s sixteen years since our first tune. I had messaged a handful of my favourite producers asking them to send over beats for a new album, but Forest replied saying we should make an album together along with a pack of 70+ beats. He’s a wizard behind the boards.”

Wholly produced by Forest DLG, Elevation brings together standouts from the High Focus catalogue and heavy-hitters from the worlds of grime, jungle and the wider UK hip hop scene. The physical launch coincided with the release of ‘Visionaries’, a single featuring grime legend Frisco from Boy Better Know that pays tribute to a corner of music that has influenced Fliptrix for some time. When it came to taking on the project, the pair wanted to make something different, aiming to bring on artists from other genres who inspired them. Frisco on ‘Visionaries’ aside, the project boasts names like jungle legend General Levy on lead single ‘Energy! Energy! Energy!’, Jordanian singer-songwriter Ayah Marar on ‘Transform’, more traditional boom bap often on ‘Freedom’ with Coops, and a weighty 20-man posse on the mic for ‘Dangerous’. “I’ve been in the UK hip hop scene for a long time and worked with the greats of the genre, so I ticked those boxes as I was going up,” he says, “But grime has always been a big inspiration for me, I was always inspired by the emceeing side of it; grabbing the mic, the ciphers, the sets, the shows, the bars, the rewind, I love that kind of stuff.”

Musically, the record is one of Fliptrix’s most cohesive projects to date and a particularly personal one for the South London rapper. “The whole overarching theme is about elevating your mind, body, spirit, and soul, the tracks on the album are all about personal transformation.” He cites ‘The Divine Feminine’, a track which casts a lens towards the male-dominated genre he operates in as a highlight, and includes an account of Fliptrix delivering the birth of his daughter, unassisted, on his off-grid farm. “I wanted to make a tune to show love to women, whether it’s a mum, a daughter, sister, auntie, grandma, I want to make stuff that other rappers aren’t really talking about.” 

When it came to Elevation, self-discovery and progression was the rapper’s main intent. “I’m really into numerology and with this being my 11th album, ‘eleven’ and ‘elevation’ are very similar words. My music has always followed a journey, a lot of it is self-therapy or documenting my journey as a human being.” Across his eleven solo records — the first releasing when he was 21 — he has switched postcodes and grown up, spurred on by a spiritual awakening he experienced in 2012. “Since then, I’ve continued that journey of self-discovery and knowledge, looking into human consciousness and all the elements of being a human, trying to be the best person I can be.”

"I’ve continued that journey of self-discovery and knowledge, looking into human consciousness and all the elements of being a human, trying to be the best person I can be.”

A notable episode in the years following was his visit to the Peruvian rainforest in 2014. “I went to do Ayahuasca, but I didn’t want to do it in the UK with some random guy not connected properly to the medicine. I knew that if I was going to do it, I was going to do it properly.” He and his girlfriend flew on a small plane into the port city of Iquitos, the gateway to the Peruvian Amazon and the largest city in the world not accessible by road, followed by a 40-minute motorbike ride and an hour-long walk to a healing centre in the middle of the jungle. “We stayed there for a week. No reception, no WiFi, nothing like that. We did three ceremonies with a native shaman who was heralded in the area as a master healer, so that was incredibly life-changing. You can hear and see the progression in my music and the artwork and what I talk about, it was a very profound life experience for me.”

The experience has found its way into his music in multiple forms, most recently the album artwork for Elevation depicting a deity inspired by the pictures crafted by the indigenous Shipibo-Conibo people along the Ucayali River. “If you look at the Shipibo’s artwork, they depict the visions they see on Ayahuasca in these incredible tapestries. That was the inspiration for the album cover and some of the single artwork, which I gave Forest DLG art direction on. The cover is a deity that represents the album. Every album I’ve made since Third Eye of the Storm — when I had my awakening — has a symbol.”

Of the 19-song tracklist, eyes dart immediately to ‘Dangerous’, the 20-posse track including Renelle 893, Jman, Harry Shotta, Ramson Badbonez, Sparkz, Farma G, Verbz, Dabbla, TrueMendous, Coops, Leaf Dog, Jazz T, BVA, Verb T, King Kashmere, Kemastry, Vitamin G, Cracker Jon, and Babylon Dead. Made to mark 15 years of Fliptrix’s High Focus label and to shatter the record for biggest posse in UK hip-hop history — narrowly missing out to Leaf Dog’s 22-person track ‘Legendary’ — it’s the biggest High Focus crew to be assembled on a single track to date.

This May, Fliptrix kicks off his album tour, an eleven-date run beginning on the 21st at Brixton Jamm, 19 years on from the artist and producer first meeting. The tour continues across a series of intimate venues like The Four Horsemen in Bournemouth, Stage & Radio in Manchester, and Thelka in Bristol.

Playing the new material live offers a different sound to his recent live ventures, mixed in with classic tracks and cuts from his work with cult quartet the Four Owls, who recently played to a sold-out crowd in Athens, where some of Fliptrix’s new material was played for the first time. 

The Four Owls

Shortly after releasing his debut album Force Fed Imagery in 2007, Fliptrix had an album launch in Brighton. At this point, the likes of Jam Baxter, Dirty Dike and Mr Key all resided on the Sussex coast and were friends with Leaf Dog. Fliptrix had heard some of Leaf’s work on MySpace and invited him to the album launch, leading to a fruitful and ongoing creative partnership.

In 2011, a year on from High Focus’ founding, Fliptrix helped put out Leaf Dog’s solo album, From a Scarecrow’s Perspective, and invited him to stay at his Camberwell flat after Leaf made the journey from Glastonbury to London to shoot some videos and press shots. Leaf Dog brought his friend BVA along and the trio ended up crafting six songs while holed up in Fliptrix’s South London flat. “We were listening to the Cypress Hill song ‘Spark Another Owl’, and that inspired us to name the original group ‘The Owl Trinity’. I started working with Verb T and decided to get him on a couple of tracks and it didn’t take long before I asked if we wanted to be on the whole project. Now we’re The Four Owls, and we made the first album for fun in, like, two weeks.”

Fliptrix came up with the idea of the owl masks and aliases: “Big Owl, Rusty Takeoff, Deformed Wing, Bird T, while Forest DLG’s mixing credit back then was Shitty Claw”. For a project that took little time to put together, the quartet — who changed from Owl Trinity to The Owls, then finally The Four Owls after an indie group with the same name came to their attention — couldn’t have predicted their future cultural impact. “We put it out and the internet went nuts, loads of people started trying to book us. After that, we made two other albums and there is a new one that’s coming. But yeah, good things come to those who wait. It always takes a while with The Owls. But I think that's kind of the charm, really. It's special when it comes around. When it happens, it happens.”

“It always takes a while with The Owls, but I think that’s kind of the charm, really. It’s special when it comes around. When it happens, it happens.”

Since its founding, High Focus’ catalogue took its cues from 90s US hip-hop and boom bap, and has embraced alternative rap in recent releases. “I think it was a natural progression with an artist wanting to do different things and work with different sounds,” Fliptrix recalls, “when Jam Baxter started working with Forest, his sound was always a bit different. Then there was Dead Players with Jam Baxter, Dabbla, and Ghosttown, whose production can’t really be put into a box, it’s certainly not boom-bap. There’s still a core essence of boom-bap running through the label, but we experiment and dabble in other sounds and offshoots and sub-genres from that, which keeps things interesting.”

With Elevation, High Focus, and another Four Owls record hoping to hit shelves this year, it’s easy to forget that Fliptrix no longer resides in Brighton or Camberwell, but in the Portuguese mountains for over five years. Looking back on his flat in South London, he had a pivotal moment. “I used to look out of my window to see people getting robbed. Guns being shot down the road, all that kind of stuff. I had a realisation where I thought I could live anywhere in the world. Why did I choose to live at the end of Coldharbour Lane in Camberwell? A very high crime area. I moved back to Brighton and two years later moved to Portugal … I knew someone living in a community over there, who I became really good friends with. They messaged me, and I bought a motorhome and packed up all of my stuff. Within twelve days we were gone.”

For several months, the pair drove around rural areas in Portugal, searching for like-minded people, and eventually, Fliptrix invested his savings in a farm. Now he lives fully off-grid in the mountains, growing his own food with over a hundred fruit and nut trees on his land, using solar panels for electricity and fires to heat his radiators, and sourcing his water from a well. His unusual setup has its perks, as seen when a power cut hit the country several months ago. “I landed in Lisbon Airport, no phones were working, no wifi, no GPS, no water coming out of any taps, no tills working, no shops could sell food. I just jumped in my car and went home. I've got electricity, I've got water, I've got heating. I've got food, and it's cool.”

The months and years ahead for Fliptrix are a mile a minute. With his new album rollout fully underway and with a tour on the horizon, the South Londoner is looking ahead for himself and his label. “We are playing a few festivals, we’re doing a big High Focus takeover at Boomtown, and the next musical stuff you should hear from me after this solo album will hopefully be the new Four Owls album, then we’ll see what the future holds.” He says his goodbyes and returns to off-grid life, where the boom-bap and cyphers can wait while he grows his own food and generates his own power. 

The days living at the end of Coldharbour Lane in Camberwell remain a distant memory.

Grab tickets to Fliptrix's opening tour show with DJ Jazz T at Brixton Jamm here.

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