An open letter to my biggest inspiration.
Dear Mary Anne Hobbs,
Please excuse my direct approach, but I wanted to pull out all the stops.
You must be sick and tired of people telling you how much Dubstep Warz meant to them, but I am here to tell you that show and your career has truly affected the entire trajectory of my life.
I was studying Music Tech as a Metalhead and singer of a Death Metal band when my good friend Beans invited me to see N-Type play in Sydney back in 2008. This night changed my life, and it led me to finding you and your show.
After this gig I saw everyone that came to Sydney including Goth Trad, Zed Bias, Loefah, Kito, Skream + Benga, Breakage, Joker, the list goes on and on and I became obsessed with UK bass music, but one of my biggest takeaways was how much of a catalyst you were pushing the sound into the mainstream and what it taught me was the value of Radio as a medium.
I took up DJing and buying records and supported Silkie, Kryptic Minds, Kenny Ken and a whole bunch of others. It was a bloody good time and I enjoyed the hell out of it!
I’m 34 now but how I mainly got music was through CD’s, word of mouth and P2P tools like iMesh, Limewire, torrenting, Napster (obviously) - and you taught me how much of an impact you can have working in Radio.
https://soundcloud.com/helmoreradio/kieran-2gb-farewell/s-Vn121wL7YOP?si=fccc13d200704e778824edb3b4440614&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
I then went through numerous radio jobs working at places like FBi, Eastside and 2GB before finally making the move to London to work at Rinse FM and attempted to get into the BBC like you.
Long story short - that never happened, but what I am doing now is building my own radio station style thing online. I work in Cybersecurity to fund these adventures and I am far from perfect, polished or anything - but you are without a doubt the reason that I have made all these choices. Obviously the music you were playing and documenting is amazing as well, but it was you and who you are and what you do that lives rent free in my head 24/7.
I now live in West London and run an online passion project called Helmore Radio where I play music every Saturday on Mixcloud and run a YouTube channel speaking to music producers as I learn how to make music of my own, and my home studio which I have built over the last 3-4 years is now at a place where I can be pretty damn creative.
The Flashbulb (USA): Full Interview
I say all this firstly to let you know just how much of an enormous impact you have had on the trajectory of my life and secondly to extend an open invitation to you to come on the show.
I would be overjoyed to speak with you about your start in radio, John Peel, music and where you see the future of the industry going.
Your insight would be one that I value above all others.
I hope to hear from you.
Sincerely yours,
Kieran Helmore