Common Underground is the combination of Loophole Recordings label heads FLIP3000 and Jimmy le Mac. Having run the label for many years and collaborated on tracks previously under various monikers, ‘Common Underground’ is a journey through of all the different shades of underground electronic music that brought them together, and continues to breath energy into their musical exploits.
Over a beer, and in the Rescue Rooms behind Stealth, in Nottingham, where Annie Mac was pumping out electro & breaks on a Tuesday night, was where Jimmy & Flip first met. Both fresh faced uni students, they talked exuberantly about the music that inspired Flip to relocate to the UK, basically to frequent record stores between classes, and clubs between the weeks. A week later – the pair were misbehaving together at Fabric, London. Jimmy soon introduced Flip to Reason, and the pair starting making breakbeats and techno together. Quickly, they were in Nottingham bars and clubs, road testing tunes in between the vinyls they’d haul on the weekend with their weekly food budget. Before the boys could really pick up any momentum with their new found musical collaborations, their time together in Nottingham came to a halt, as Flip went back to Melbourne, and Jimmy stayed in Nottingham, to both finish off their studies.
For the next few years after university, Jimmy moved back to London, and worked in a music store, building his knowledge of music technology and hardware, whilst continuing ti make tunes by himself. Flip dabbled with production, but focused more on DJing, touring artists from overseas to Melbourne clubs and warming up for them, building residencies across Melbourne, and making interstate guest spots. The two would talk frequently, and Flip would constantly hassle Jimmy to come and visit him down under. Eventually, Jimmy was convinced to come visit, and made a decent go of it by getting a working holiday visa, and staying for a few years.
Jimmy moved in with Flip in North Melbourne, and the two set up a studio to write tunes in. They also started working together for a digital distributor, and the next few years would see them learn about the music industry as a career and not just a hobby. As their productions improved, their knowledge of the industry grew, and the two decided to implement what they had learnt by starting their own label. Their time spent doing shows with touring musicians and other local acts, put them in good steed to start sourcing other musicians to join them, and by 2011, Loophole Recordings was born.
The journey between the two in the past 5 years with Loophole has been a slow burn, with many unplanned interruptions along the way. Although the pair had been separated and tested many times in this period, they never strayed from their focus to work together to bring the best music they could produce and find, to the forefront of people’s mind. In 2015 they made a conscious effort to reignite this slow burn with some dynamite, and have since accelerated the output of Loophole dramatically. Since late 2015, the pair have curated 6 Eps from Melbourne producers, and a 10 track LP released in January of 2016.
From these releases, they have composed 2 remixes, and one original track, and have a range of unreleased tunes sitting in their war chest. Their debut EP ‘GO!’ was released in April 2016, with a range of techno and house remixes to back this club techno weapon. They have followed this release up with ’27 Calibre’ which is due to be released on the Stanton Warriors label Punks on 25th July.
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