Smuggled Sounds: The Stanton Warriors

Statton Warriors From the less than sleepy farms and fields of their native West Country, Dom and Mark have grown into one of the most prolific DJ acts in the world, burgeoning label bosses, and major producers on the global dance scene. They received their baptism in a burgeoning dance scene, at a 100 impromptu parties in the open air of the West Country where in the lost hours and days, they enjoyed a thriving deep house scene, laced with breaks, funk and hip hop, influences that were to play a huge part in characterising the direction of the boys own production. The focus of things centred on Bristol where Dom directed his efforts into a local record shop and promoting his own parties in the time between actually enjoying the parties, basically putting as many fingers into as many pies as were within reach. At the same time, Mark pursued his own dreams of following in the steps of hero, Prince, at least as far as his mastery of over 30 instruments goes but it is fair to say both had been soundly bitten by the music bug! It was the renowned ‘ Statton2 Bristol Scene’ that played a pivotal role in defining the sound and attitude Mark & Dom took to their music in these crucial formative years. Fresh from their outing on Radio 1’s Essential Mix the Stanton Warriors have succeeded in not only bucking musical definition but have picked it up by the collar and kicked it’s ass out of the music world. With their eclectic past and drawing on some traditional sounds of underground house, hip hop, electro and funk, they’ve mixed up the old and the new and come out with something bigger than the sum of its parts, namely the Stanton sound! Statton3 Not many can claim to have defined a sound but Mark Yardley and Dominic B should definitely be there if there’s ever a ruck on the subject. The Stanton Warriors have carefully honed a distinct sound that carves up dance floors through 4 corners of the world sounding fresh and bringing something new to the party. As Dom said at the start of it all when he first saw the reaction to one of their tracks at the Notting Hill Carnival ‘Everybody was dancing’. We’re a few years down the line but it’s still about ‘everybody’ and ‘dancing’ – there’s just more people at the party!