25 Years of Dispatch Recordings

Dispatch Recordings rolls into the Joshua Brooks basement on Princess Street for a 25 year landmark, with three architects of jungle and drum and bass alongside the wider Dispatch family. This is a return rather than a debut. The label last brought Doc Scott and Gerra & Stone to this basement in 2019, and now closes the loop with one of its most significant nights to date.

Established in Leeds in 2001 and now home to one of the most respected catalogues in deep, technical drum and bass, Dispatch has built its reputation across more than 400 releases on the main label and its sub-imprints Dispatch Limited, Dispatch Dubplate and Dispatch Blueprints. The roster history reads as a who's who of heads-down dancefloor music, from Marcus Intalex, Total Science and Klute through DLR, Mako, Survival, Skeptical, Break, Halogenix, Hyroglifics and Gerra & Stone. The label has been an Outlook Festival programming partner since 2010.

Grooverider is one of two names that essentially scaffolded this music into existence. The Rage residency at Heaven from 1988, the Kiss FM and BBC Radio 1 shows that broke a generation of jungle and drum and bass records, and the founding of Prototype Recordings in 1994 (a catalogue Music On Vinyl reissued the seminal Prototype Years compilation from in 2025) all sit on his ledger. He currently broadcasts on Rinse FM. Mysteries of Funk and FabricLive 06 still hold up two and a half decades on.

Ray Keith plays a career-spanning history set. Founder of Dread Recordings in 1994, the producer behind Renegade's "Terrorist" (a record DJ Mag credited with creating a blueprint for jungle), and the operator of aliases including Dark Soldier, London's Most Wanted and The Terrorist. His Renegade Live band project has sold out The Jazz Cafe twice in two years, his autobiography Dark Soldierdropped in 2021, and The Prophecy LP landed on Dread in 2024. Three decades deep and still pushing.

Ant TC1, Dispatch's long-time owner and label manager at Metalheadz under Goldie, plays a "'96 to '26" set. Three decades of selections from across the Dispatch story and beyond, with production credits stretching across Dispatch and Metalheadz alongside Stress Level, DLR, Mako, Survival and Villem.

NC-17 flies in from Toronto, where his Grindhou5e Audio imprint runs alongside a deep Dispatch catalogue including the Most Violent Year trilogy, the Enter The Violence LP and his recent Minimal or Lazy / Open Fire with Dub Head. Cinematic, upfront, dancefloor first.

MC Fokus holds the mic. The long-time Dispatch night host carries vocal credits across Sofa Sound, Renegade Hardware, Flexout Audio and 31 Recordings. Blesid (Dispatch's assistant label manager, Dread's label manager and a fixture of the Momentum crew at Leeds) joins on the decks alongside Mikee Rider.

The Joshua Brooks basement has form for this music. Void Acoustics under the brick arches, low ceilings, no light bleeding in from the street. The room has hosted Metalheadz, Symmetry, Jungle Cakes and Dispatch itself, and this is exactly the kind of space where a 25 year label story should be told.

See you at the front.