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Commitment issues, a 10-year age gap and different taste in music - sounds like a doomed marriage from the start. But for Mex Thompson, the end of his working relationship with music partner Carl Faure hasn't stopped him performing and recording as Black Grass. He plays a solo DJ set at Coherent on K Rd tonight.
"I'm more than happy working on my own," he says, on the phone from his Brighton studio. "But you do miss the ability to throw ideas off each other and have that instant reaction to what you're doing personally. But that's life."
Thompson and Faure's seemed a musical marriage made in heaven when Black Grass released their self-titled debut album in 2004. Thompson, who is a decade older, had already released several breaks albums and a few singles as the Mexican (a nickname he's had since his teens when he spent two months getting a "fierce tan" in Australia).
The first Black Grass album featured hip-hop MCs Blak Twang, Maylay Sparks and combined Thompson's love of hip-hop culture with Faure's passion for beats.
If the sound of Brighton was previously consigned to the big beat era of Fatboy Slim, Black Grass' brew of hip-hop, jazz and funk seemed to emanate from post-trip-hop Bristol.
They even headlined the Ashton Court Festival in Bristol, and went on to support acts including De La Soul and Miguel Migs.
Then tensions rose in the studio. "That's putting it mildly," says Thompson, who no longer speaks to Faure. "To be quite honest he just wasn't really committed enough to carry on with the project. I think he just wanted to do other things. He's off doing some minimal house music at the moment. I don't see him anymore. It wasn't that amicable of a break-up."
Afterwards, Thompson put his head down and created the second Black Grass album, A Hundred Days in One, that has found fans in Roots Manuva, Massive Attack and Groove Armada.
Despite the lonely recording process, it's a little more upbeat.
"It's a bit more funky, a bit more lively. Maybe a little bit more hip-hoppy than the last one."
There's also a Portishead-like version of the R&B classic Don't Leave Me This Way, a soul-drenched Floating Wizard and a bouncing reggae track in Oh Jah.
"I'm not defined by one sound. For me it's all about music with some feeling and some kind of longevity. People always say to me, 'Why don't you just make some good old party music?' In England you get bombarded with mass-marketed, overly hyped stuff that is just around for the moment. And I do try and make music people can listen to in a couple of years' time. I don't really follow musical fashions."
No surprises then that Thompson is a vinyl junkie, his last purchase an old Booker T and the MGs album that he replaced after wearing it out. His interest in diverse music comes from his early fascination with hip-hop.
"It got me into a lot of different forms of music, whether it was soul or funk or Latin, it all stems from that."
The Black Grass sound is also inspired by Brighton itself, although it's more to do with the community than the scenery.
"The good thing about Brighton is there's a lot of other producers and DJs living here. It's good in that respect because you can constantly hear what they're doing so you bounce off each other in that way, more than surroundings. Especially if you see someone being quite prolific and banging out lots of records, it inspires you to be on the ball and keep going."
Performance
Who: Black Grass, aka Mex Thompson
Where and when: Tonight at Coherent, K Rd, with Tom Middleton
