London 1990

Picture the scene if you will, London 1990, the Acid House scene is all conquering, mobile phones are still a rarity and faxing is all the rage. In a parallel universe (Soho mainly) a few brave souls have been busy creating their own alternate reality under the nom de guerre of Acid Jazz.

The scene is underground but thriving, the Acid Jazzual look is beginning to seep in to the zeitgeist but commercial success for the artists still feels like a distant dream, none of them can get arrested and it’s a noble yet tough existence, until that is…

Late afternoon in the Acid Jazz Records Hackney office (a long long time before Hackney became a desirable location) and the phone rings, it’s Mike Ross owner of Delicious Vinyl records in LA, Delicious Vinyl at the time when Tone Loc had just been #1 around the world with Funky Cold Medina. Mike has been given a copy of The Brand New Heavies’ debut album and wants to license it for the US… no one saw this one coming but praise the fucking lord, there’s only so much being broke yet cool a person can take.

Long story short, fast forward a few months, the band and label find themselves at LAX being picked up by limo and at the start of a journey that would take them to the upper echelons of the US charts and beyond, it was gonna be one hell of a ride…

But more importantly and for the purposes of relevance to ANB, one of the Acid Jazz guys accompanying The Heavies on their adventure is also a founder of ANB and his downtime while the band sound checked, did interviews and other stuff he didn’t need to be around for was spent trawling thrift stores from east to west coast, unearthing killer garms for $10 and under that you could only dream of finding in London at the time, little did he know that this would be his inspiration for a clothing brand 30 down the line… but it was and here we are.