Listen to Me, Meds & Des’s unpredictable Face Mix

In the UK club world, it’s a well-known fact that Wigflex has been holding it down for the Nottingham scene for ages. Since it was launched 15 years ago, Lukas Wigflex has been throwing the East Midlands city’s best parties, while also running a label and co-founding the arts and event space Fisher Gate Point.

Having released EP Play Monotonous by local artist Son of Philip (real name Tom Smith) on the Wigflex imprint, the two mates teamed up for the recently-released Me & Meds EP, a tripped-out three-tracker of chugging club music laced with surreal humour and punk grit. The third track, Godstruth, features delirious vocals from Charlie Morris, AKA Des Hagenasty, who is also the hungover star of the profoundly sleazy music video (fans of Welsh designer Adam Jones might recognise that Tetley’s jumper).

For their Face Mix, the trio have united under the name Me, Meds & Des to share their wide-ranging influences. Listen to the mix, and check out a Q&A and tracklisting below.

What’s the vibe and direction of your Face Mix?

Lukas: We wanted to stay away from a dancefloor-focused DJ mix and create more of a mixtape-style thing of our influences, like a radio show, but without any waffle.

What drew you together to collaborate?

Tom: A huge part of my musical influence comes from Lukas, even before we became mates. I think it’s pretty similar for Charlie. I’ve had a studio with Lukas the past few years and we’ve wanted to get Charlie on something for ages. There’s so much crossover between us all it feels like it just makes sense.

Tell us about the inspiration for the Godstruth video…

Charlie: Well there’s some pretty stand-out creative cues from other videos that we’re all fans of. The Streets’ Original Pirate Material, for example, or Baxter Dury’s Slumlord video. But the predominant influence and driving force for the project in general is our shared Viz-like, off-key sense of humour. It basically acted as a visual expression of in-jokes that we share about some of the incredible oddbody-bastards you see dotted about the pubs in the darker corners of Nottingham.

If you could bring one closed-down venue back from the dead, which would it be?

Lukas: The Bomb, all day long. I was lucky enough to have some of my first partying experiences in that place. It was a seminal little basement club with low ceilings and a good system. It was bang in the centre of Notts and it would have the world’s best DJs passing through every week. Craig [Richards] had a residency there before his Fabric days, which says it all.

Charlie: Gotta be Blueprint for me. Absolute shit’ole! The seemingly infinite free party. Smack bang in the centre of Radford (which is a bit of a no-go zone to those that don’t know, or it was at the time) on the outskirts of Nottingham’s town centre. It’s my choice mainly for a gabber and breakcore night called Labotomy, which given the current hardcore and gabber resurgence, would boot off at the minute. Anyway, it was the only place we could get into before we were old enough to have ID. It was as bad as it sounds, an absolute free for all. It was the place I heard pretty much all styles of dance music that I love for the first time. You could do whatever you liked and everyone did. Real freedom!

Which Nottingham up-and-comers should THE FACE’s readers check out?

Tom: Big Tobes X10.

Lukas: There’s loads of great artists up here at the moment. I’m feeling Frost, Outsider, Scoobs and Running Circle Records at the moment.