Beta Hector

As a bass player, he formed the deep funk & soul band Baby Charles. Their debut album received rave reviews in the music press, and they went on to tour Europe and rocked some major festivals including Glastonbury. Nowadays, he plays upright bass in vintage soul / blues and rhythm band Derriere. He has just formed the Beta Hector Band, featuring members of Baby Charles and his other old band Kalakuta Millionaires. Hill has also deejayed since the late nineties and has collected vinyl since his late teens. His sets (at hot spots including The Big Chill Bar) include a flowing mixture of raw vintage soul, rhythm ‘n’ blues and heavy funk 45s and classic hiphop 12s, with some tropical and other eclectic grooves thrown in for good measure. As a producer and multi-instrumentalist, Hill has been making beats and loops since the late nineties, but got a real taste of producing when he co-mixed the Baby Charles Album in 2008. It wasn’t long before Beta Hector was born out of experimenting with heavy drum loops, bass lines, analogue synths, guitars, vintage tape machines, and a range of talented vocalists. Tru Thoughts released the debut Beta Hector 45 Payback in April 2010, and also included it in their Tru Thoughts Funk compilation. It went down a storm with DJs including DJ Format, DJ FOOD and music lovers all over. Beta Hector’s debut solo album Sunbeam Insulin was released in September 2011 and combines a mixture of heavy drums and psychedelic electronic sonics; the album brings a diverse selection of soulful, bittersweet songs and soundtracks, with five vocalists including UK soul queen Dionne Charles and LA MC Shane Hunter. The first single from the album, Jupiter Mission, is a disco-inflected sci-fi track voiced by Hill’s sister Jo and uses software synths, bass guitar and percussion to depict an intergalactic incident.