Heygate

Heygate came off the walkways of the estate they're named for — the long concrete decks of the Heygate, and the Aylesbury across the Walworth Road — four kids who grew up on the Brit-funk of the Southbank clubs and the reggae of their parents' front rooms and never saw a reason to choose. Pauline Osei played wah guitar like a Lambeth Cymande record; her brother-in-law Dennis Wint kept a Wurlitzer and a clavinet in a flat on Thurlow Street where the neighbours complained in shifts. Sandra Blissett on bass and Kofi Amadi on drums were the rhythm section from a soul band that had played the Pink Elephant shopping centre openings and wedding receptions in Burgess Park. In 1981 they took a funk riddim to a blues dance and let the sound man dub it. That was the record.

They never had a singer and never wanted one. What they had was a shout: the whole band, two men and two women, yelling one line into a single mic — an estate call, a bus number, a warning about the lifts — before the desk swallowed it in echo. Elephant Roundabout is the sound of that first dance; Old Kent Road Wah is Pauline's guitar at full stretch; Subway Under The Elephant is the record they cut about walking home through the roundabout tunnels at four in the morning, wet floor and one working light.