- The story of a bedroom producer who united UK funky, house and grime heads, then disappeared for a decade.
- Back in 2009, music technology student Fisayo Ajilore (AKA Fis-T) was messing around with the Fruity Loops software at a friend's house in North London. They were learning their chops, attempting to make bashment and house, when they had the idea to make an evil build up but leave people hanging.
Fis cooked up the "Night Hunter" intro, complete with the unmistakable Loon sample and "Night Hunter" vocal, then cut it off before the drop. He uploaded the clip to Facebook and, within an hour, Fis had DJs messaging him asking what it was. "People were going crazy for it. I hadn't even finished the track!"
DJ Footloose asked to play the mystery demo on 1Xtra radio that weekend, so Fis had a couple of days to finish it. He called his friend Julie Adenuga for some feedback. She said, "I think you should flip it." Julie's brother, Skepta, was in the room too and added, "You should make the bass come in and then switch it up to be really calm."
If the intro to "Night Hunter" alone was enough to get DJs hyped, what came next would send them into overdrive. Fis took a popular, Deadmau5-created preset called Depthcore and processed it to make that wobble bass. As "Night Hunter" drops, the bassline rips through the mid-range to devastating, borderline comical effect. Then, on Skepta's advice, it settles back into a funky house rhythm. In Fis's own words: "I'm African, so it has to have swing, innit."
Last year, a decade on from the original "Night Hunter" release, surprise recognition of that bassline's power came in the form of drum & bass artist Serum's single, "Chop House," which appears to recreate the wobble straight out of "Night Hunter." "Chop House" became the second D&B track ever to make it to Beatport #1, but Fis isn't bothered. "You know what? I think that's amazing. The sound doesn't belong to me. It would have been nice to make a dollar, but it is what it is."
With "Night Hunter" finished, Fis repurposed a media company he had started with friends, Boom Ents, to upload the track to Juno Download. It went straight to the top of Juno's funky and garage charts, and was finding its way into the radio and club sets of tastemaker DJs in the London underground. Before long, Fis had a message from Steve Bishop (AKA Oneman) asking him to take the release down, instead offering a vinyl release through his to-be-launched 502 Recordings.
The pair got the record pressed, with some help from Loefah, and ready for release in 2010. By this point, it was a highly sought-after dub, having been spun regularly by Rinse FM-affiliated DJs like Boy Better Know's Maximum, Marcus Nasty and JJ, as well as Oneman himself. Three days after the release, Night Hunter / Deep Mover was sold out.
"When we released it, Wiley was spitting on it, Aphex Twin was playing it at a festival. I was like 'What is going on?' It was a shock, mainly because it made funky, grime, dubstep and house people all step to the same tune."
The effect continued for a few years, and "Night Hunter" became synonymous with an era of lightning-speed cross-contamination between genres. It was the perfect bridge track between stepping garage or funky numbers and a low-end dubstep workout. Every time it was played, which was a lot, it went off. MCs went in on it, DJs wheeled it.
Off the back of that release alone, and an added boost in the form of Martelo's "Down On My Night Hunter" bootleg, Fis found himself on some of London's most forward-thinking lineups.
Years without a follow-up record only added to the notoriety of "Night Hunter." Fis had a few more releases lined up, but due to some behind-the-scenes business issues, they got pulled and he didn't have the funds or industry knowledge to release them himself. Fis became this mysterious artist who had exploded out of nowhere then vanished—leaving people hanging like the "Night Hunter" build-up clip.
"I had to rebuild myself in a scene I'd literally just been dropped into," Fis says about the ten-year journey to releasing music again. Now, since last year, he is among a crew of foundational UK funky artists (including Lil Silva and Apple) uploading long lost dubs and new music to Bandcamp. Welcome back to the original Night Hunter!