Ulster Says Geronimo

“We’re hoping to restage the Battle of The Boyne next year,” says a grinning Chris Murray, baggy-loving scamster and b-boy impresario, as he sits behind the counter at his Apache clothes shop in Belfast city centre.

“We’ve the rights to host the all-Ireland DJ championships and there’s a graffiti thing that runs every year in Drogheda, and next year it’s falling on the 12th. We think it’d be really cool to amalgamate them. Apparently there’s a GAA pitch nearby that will hold 4,000 people and we could just bus punters down. We’re gonna aim high for it – try to get Jurassic Five and DJ Shadow. Fuck it, we might even see if Ali G will host it.”

Chris is feeling flushed with success at the moment. Just a week ago, all manner of hip-hop fanatics – club promoters, DJs, designers, graffiti artists, skate-boarders, break-dancers, BMX kids – gathered together at St George’s Market for a day-long celebration of vinyl scratching, head spinning, and half-pipe tumbles. The shindig was thrown ostensibly to mark the launch of the second Apache Tribe CD – a free eighteen track collection showcasing much of the best Northern Irish electro talent. That it also highlighted the health and youthful vibrancy of local attitudes towards hip-hop is clearly something that Chris takes much encouragement from.

“I think this is a brilliant place and I’m not really surprised that hip-hop has taken root. There’ve always been people in this town absolutely fucking fanatical about it, and recently there’s just been more and more kids getting into it. As far as I’m concerned the best thing people could do here politically, would be open up a skate park for the kids. Have you any idea how much they spent on that fucking boxing? (Belfast recently hosted the World Amateur Boxing Championships)

“I went to it, cleared off to buy a beer, and there was a fucking full-on row in the corridors. Fuck boxing, man.

“The hip-hop scene and the electronic music scene in Belfast at the moment are as good as anywhere. And I think that’s worth celebrating. There’s a quality of act here as good as anything in London. I’m just off the phone to a guy in Los Angeles who owns the Twenty Five clothing label, and he’s torturing me to send over the CD. He’s keen on helping us distribute it over there.”

That the Apache enterprise finds itself in this position, shocks Chris as much as anyone else. Although, the idea of a clothes shop acting as creative outlet for musicians and artists initially struck him after a visit to Ark in Manchester, the factor that inspired him to steer Apache in that direction was very much economic.

“There was a time a few years back,” he says, “when the shop was two hundred and fifty grand in debt and we were only pulling in two grand a week. I’m not sure how we got out of it, but it made us learn how to do everything for nothing. We had to come up with an awful lot of ideas on the promotional side. If we’d had money I’m not sure we’d have been arsed. But thank God we did. The thing is, if you get the idea right, put some thought into it, honestly, there’s always someone out there who’ll give you some kind of backing. And on top of that, weird stuff just seems to happen around us. Like, at the thing on Saturday, I met a fella from Portadown who makes sweets. So, we’re going to make up our own sweets for the next CD – give one to people as we give them the record. It’s just cool running with mad ideas.”

That being the case, Chris is now preparing to put in some mileage regarding “a kinda T in The Park thing with Tennents in Belfast”, a potential kung-fu and kickboxing extravaganza with added breakdancers and trapeze artists, and, on the clothing side, a follow-up to the cheeky George Best/Che Guevara t-shirt (“the one that everyone just goes ‘Woooh’ when they see it for the first time”) that the shop put out at the start of the summer.

“We’ve actually designed our own tweed,” says Chris. “It’s going to be like a tweed bullet-proof jacket from Belfast. Fucking amazing, man.”

The Apache Tribe CD is out now. www.apache-tribe.com