L Double is a man responsible for many of jungle and drum & bass’ undercover classics such as ‘The Shit’, ‘The Rider’, ‘The Mad Phunk’ and the Jungle Mania favorite ‘Little Rollers Volume One’.
It’s surprising how little L Double released considering the quality of his output was always high, in some respects his production style was quite similar to Ray Keith. His Label, Flex Records, had an impressive number of releases over time, my personal favourite being ‘Listen Dis’ by Deady D.
‘Hail Him’, released in 1996 was the B side to ‘Dubplate Special’ featuring MC Det. Although the A side was a weighty release it was the flip that really captures a certain nod to the previous year. This was 1996, a time when jump up drum & bass was dominating the scene to a certain extent so seeing new releases still being produced in a ‘95 style was always a bonus at the time.
Flex is a label certainly worth checking out on Discogs if you don’t own any, or are missing the vast majority in your collection. The only release that you need to probably avoid is the repress of ‘The Shit’ on the Flex Classics series, this was the dubplate L Double used during DJ mixes and is littered with vocal samples containing his DJ name. Very bizarre to release such a track unless he wanted people to imitate him behind the decks?.