PLAYLIST SUBS - https://mrsilkyslofibeats.com Upbeat grooves, jazzy chops, and head-nodding boom bap—perfect for vibing, working, or just flexin’ in chill mode. Smooth but lively, with a funky twist

Funky Flex Chill Vibes - (Instrumental/LoFi/Chillhop/Boombap/Funk/HipHop)

03 Planing

01 Give Me A Minute

07 Centre

04 Healing Love

09 Homegrown

02 Maroon

05 Funkin' Fun

08 Lament

06 Forest

Groovy

Ticket to Paradise

Analog Love

Phat Kat Kut

Funkin' Fun

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I was born in a small village in North East England, where my father was the local vicar. I went to St Andrews University in Scotland and did two and a half years of an astronomy degree before I got glandular fever. As a result I took what was intended to be a year break, and went down to London. It was the ‘70s and there was lots of music and change. Lots of pub bands. Punk was just starting. I ended up getting a job as a recording engineer. It was just a demo studio but we did demos for bands like Thin Lizzy and The Nice. I played a lot of sessions, and I met Marianne Faithful, Tim Hardin and quite a few other talented musicians. 

A couple of years later I was helping run a jazz club in Munich while tour managing for American artists. It was quite an interesting time. Shortly afterwards, in 1981, I moved to Australia and started teaching music and studying classical guitar at NRCAE. 

There was a thriving music scene back then, which would have been ‘82 to ‘86. I started playing with Barry Ferrier, who is better known as Dr Baz. We had a rock band called Innerspring and we used to play at the Italo Club and the Commercial Tavern, which were the only two venues that allowed original music; every other venue you had to be a cover band. 

In the mid ‘90s I met Aquarius Festival organiser Graham Dunstan who asked me to do the music for one of his events in North Lismore. They built an enormous papier mache giant and set fire to it with the participant's hopes and dreams written on pieces of paper and placed in the giant's belly. It was the first local solstice celebration - this was before the first Lantern festival started - and I wrote all the music. I remember the sound delivery system was a ghetto blaster, which I carried around on my shoulder, but that got me interested in making music for large scale events. 

I think ‘97 was the first time I actually wrote specific music for the Lantern Parade fire event and I did that for 15 years in a row. The years I enjoyed the most were when I was given a theme, a script and a little bit of a budget. Most years there was no money, because it's run on the smell of an oily rag. At the time I thought it best that the money went into production, so the music sounded good. The best year was probably 2005, "The Sound of Colour”. That was one of my best shows, and there were over 20,000 people in the audience down by the river.

When Lyndon Terracini came to town to lecture in theatre performance at NRCAE, and he and his wife Liz founded Norpa, I started writing the music and collaborating with him on shows such as ‘The Cars That Ate Paris’ (which we toured to the Perth Festival and the Adelaide Come Out Festival), ‘Faces in the Street’ and ‘Conversations at the Ryan Hotel’. He is now the head honcho at Opera Australia!

In the mid '90s I played with a soul funk band called Hip Pocket for 5 years, with Greg Lyon, Steve Hopes, Ned Sutherland (and later Jim Kelly), Tony Buchanan and Jo Jo Smith. I also toured in the backing bands for international artists such as Eartha Kitt.

I then took three years off live performance work while I completed my PhD in compositional techniques in Australian Electronica. During this period I collaborated with DJ Paul Chambers on a few electronica tracks.

After this I played in the 18 piece ‘Big Band at the End of the Universe’ for a year or two, and when this ended I formed a jazz trio with Hans Lovejoy and Ben Cox, and we still play the occasional live gig around the area as ‘Cole Cox Lovejoy’.

More recently I've been writing music for 'Sprung', a dance ensemble with choreographer Michael Hennessy, and found that inspirational because the majority of the performers are mixed ability. I have 12 albums on all streaming services and a YouTube Channel, as well as 30 or 40 tracks of my various albums on n1m.com that people can listen to, review, leave comments and subscribe.

Funkin' Fun

Dr Fred Cole

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