Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's X-Press 2 at Betterdays

Queen's Birthday long weekend will see Betterdays pay tribute to grand old England and present X-Press 2, the UK's own legends of dance music, on Sunday 13th June. In conjunction with Wrangler and Triple-J's 'Mix Up', Betterdays will be continuing the first-class clubbing action at The Prince as X-Press 2 hit the stage for a totally live experience featuring Ashley Beedle, Rocky and Diesel.

Rocky and Diesel, friends since 1986, met Ashley Beedle, all of them DJs since the year dot, through the usual circles. This led to them getting together in the studio a few years later to produce their debut 'Muzik X-Press' single for the Junior Boys Own Label. It went on to be huge and set the guys' career into overdrive.

In 1993 they followed up with 'London X-Press', a raucous party-starter laden with jittery go-go bells and a bassline plundered from Funk Central. "Raise your hands," it asked, and dancefloors around the world obliged. Soon after, the trilogy was completed with the goofy and entirely daft 'Say What!'.

Despite the international acclaim X-Press 2 received in the early '90s, they still remained touchingly committed to the suburban party scene from whence they sprung. By this time dance music was in the first full flush of commercialisation and house had fragmented into 101 sub-scenes. Similarly, the X-Press 2 lads busied themselves with other projects, producing under names like The Ballistic Brothers, Beedle's Black Science Orchestra and Rocky's Problem Kids.

Then X-Press 2 returned once more with their 'ACDC' track, a return to form comeback single that had all the classic X-Press 2 ingredients such as oven-fired beats, demented breakdowns, and hooks galore, confirming X-Press 2's status as one of dance music's seminal acts.

Joining the live X-press 2 trio of Ashley Beedle, Rocky and Diesel on the Betterdays stage will be John Course and Grant Smillie in a live mix-up, along with Kaz James. Meanwhile, Angela Maison and Matt Wilko will be out back doing the Betterdays backroom boogie.
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• betterdays
• x-press 2