LAST MANGO IN PARIS

I am a spoken word artist. I stand on stages and deliver spoken word. sometimes, my practice takes me into other fields; music (hence the Last Mango In Paris band), theatre, film, art and activism are some of these.

My first creative endeavours were published through a company called Iconoclasm, of which I was co-directed with David Goodman (now Silence) from 1991 – 1993.

In 1994, I was commissioned by BBC2’s youth strand Def 2 (then run by Janet Street Porter) to make a pilot for a series called Citizen Shane. The pilot was directed by Peter Cattaneo.

It was crap, so we never made a series.

After this, I helped an old hippy start a club called Megatripolis. Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, Timothy Leary and Terrence McKenna were some of the people who appeared at the club; it’s where I also met Matt Black, half of the duo Coldcut, most famously known for their remix of Eric B and Rakim’s ‘Paid In Full’ remix. The 1987 remix juxtaposed Rakim’s raps with Isreali songstress Ofra Hazar. It was one of the first cut-and-paste mainstream successes from the world of hip-hop. Black and his partner Jon More had just started an independent label called Ninja Tune when I met them. I began work for Matt, Jon, and label manager Peter Quicke, helping to birth the label into worldwide notoriety; you will find examples (eventually) of work I did for Ninja Tune in the ’stuff I’ve done’ section of this site.

I also met Talvin Singh at Megatripolis. Talvin produced my first record, which was released on the ‘Anokha’ compilation under my pseudonym ‘Milky Bar Kid’, on Island Records.

In 2004, I created the band D’Archetypes with Nikesh Shukla. We toured India with the British Council in 2006, mixing comedy, spoken word, hip hop and music.

In 2006, I started a new project called Last Mango in Paris – a similar blend of spoken word, music, comedy and theatre. Intially the project was a collaboration between myself and singer Sabira Jade. In 2008 we recorded our first album, provisionally titled ‘Broken English’, and began to tour a show under the same name.

Last Mango in Paris is now a fully fledged live band, incorporating elements of theatre. Current band members are Sabira Jade on vocals, Arthur Lea on keyboards, Bas Hankins on drums, Charlie Laffer on guitar and 2009 World Beatbox Champion Bellatrix on double bass.

I am director of a theatre company called ‘the Hanrahans’, which I co-direct with Chris Redmond. Our first show is called ‘The Girl Who Learnt To Beatbox From Her Arse’.