David L. G. Webb, formerly known as Chemo and formally called Dangerous Dave, and now is known as Forest DLG is an English music producer and DJ. He has also released several albums under the pseudonym ‘Telemachus’. As a sound engineer he has worked at the forefront of the

British Hip Hop British hip hop, also known as UK hip hop or UK rap, is a genre of music, and a culture that covers a variety of styles of hip hop music made in the United Kingdom. It is generally classified as one of a number of styles of R&B/Hip-Hop. Britis ...

scene, acting as chief engineer for

YNR Productions YNR Productions (Young N Restless Productions) is a British independent record label that was founded as a collective of artists. It was established as a record label in 1999 with the release of Jehst's ''Premonitions EP''. Artists *Jehst *Jon ...

and

High Focus Records High Focus Records is an independent British hip-hop record label founded by rapper Fliptrix in 2010, following the collapse of Low Life Records. History In 2008, Fliptrix was in the process of releasing his first album on Low Life Records t ...

. Chemo was recognised by the

Guardian newspaper ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

as a man who “has helped British music move along more than most people will ever know”.

Career

2004 – 2011

Named after a fictional DC Comics supervillain, Chemo first started as a producer and DJ for London Hip Hop group 'Frontline'. He helped found legendary Hip Hop night ‘Speakers Corner’ in

Brixton Brixton is a district in south London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton experienced a rapid rise in population during the 19th ce ...

. Off the back of Speakers Corner, Chemo worked on albums for

Verb T Thomas Conning (born 11 January 1981), better known by the stage name Verb T is a UK hip-hop artist based in London. Biography Verb T has released 10 albums and six EPs as well as numerous singles. His first release was the 12-track EP ''Ba ...

, Kyza, Kashmere, Manage,

Jehst William G. Shields (born 1979), better known by his stage name Jehst, is an English rapper and co-founder of hip hop label YNR Productions. Biography Born in Kent in 1979, Jehst spent his early childhood in Crowborough in Sussex before moving ...

, Triple Darkness and others. In 2007, Chemo produced a compilation album titled '' Squirrelz With Gunz'', alongside World DMC champion DJ Skully. A second compilation of his work between 2007-2011 entitled ''The Stomach of the Mountain'' was released in 2011.

2011 – present

Telemachus (born in 2011) is a pseudonym used for Webb’s solo projects and to allow him to be “a little more artful.”. The debut release was a

7" Vinyl In music, a single is a type of Art release#Music, release, typically a song Sound recording, recording of fewer tracks than an LP record or an album. One can be released for record sales, sale to the public in a variety of formats. In most ca ...

entitled ‘Scarecrows’ featuring

Roc Marciano Rahkeim Calief Meyer (born February 11, 1978), better known by his stage name Roc Marciano, is an American rapper, songwriter, and producer. Career Roc Marciano started his career in 1999 when he joined Busta Rhymes' collective the Flipmode S ...

. This was taken from the ‘In The Evening’ album which was awarded album of the month by

Q Magazine ''Q'' was a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1986 by broadcast journalists Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, who were presenters of the BBC television music series ''The Old Grey Whistle Test''. '' ...

and named one of the albums of the year by

The Quietus ''The Quietus'' is a British online music and pop culture magazine founded by John Doran and Luke Turner. The site is an editorially independent publication led by Doran with a group of freelance journalists and critics. Content ''The Quiet ...

. Telemachus followed up this album by travelling to

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

in 2014 to create his ‘In Morocco’ album. Chemo continued to produce for numerous vocalists and was lauded in particular for executive producing albums for Jam Baxter and Onoe Caponoe on

. In April 2020, Telemachus signed to

and soon after released his latest album ''Boring & Weird Historical Music'' on High Focus Records. At the start of 2021, he announced via

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

that he was retiring the pseudonym Chemo and would be known as Forest DLG going forward.

Style

Early productions often mirrored pioneers such as

Pete Rock Peter O. Phillips (born June 21, 1970), better known by his stage name Pete Rock, is an American record producer, DJ and rapping, rapper. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest hip hop producers of all time, and is often mentioned alongs ...

Havoc High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) is a set of crewed NASA mission concepts to the planet Venus. All human portions of the missions would be conducted from lighter-than-air craft or from orbit. Background Venus is a planet with a r ...

Alchemist Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscience, protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in Chinese alchemy, C ...

J Dilla J, or j, is the tenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is ''jay'' (pronounced ), with a now-uncommon varia ...

El-P Jaime Meline (born March 2, 1975), better known by the stage name El-P (shortened from his previous stage name El Producto), is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Starting his career as a member of Company Flow, he has been a ...

and Rza - eventually evolving into a more nuanced and varied style - “From beautifully shuffling jazz drums to sinister synths to delicately plucked strings, he displays a vast knowledge of music and an ear for off the wall styles.” The birth of Telemachus gave him the opportunity to call upon far wider influences (

psychedelic rock Psychedelic rock is a rock music Music genre, genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelia, psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound ...

dancehall Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially, dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s.Barrow, Steve & Dalton, Peter (2004) "The Rou ...

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

, West African

Highlife Highlife is a music genre that started in present-day Ghana in the 19th century, during its Gold Coast (British colony), history as a colony of the British Empire and through its trade routes in coastal areas. It describes multiple local fusions ...

) that led journalist Neil Kulkarni to describe Chemo as “an ancient, modern and unique voice in British Music”.

Discography

Studio albums

* 2007 - Chemo - '' Squirrelz With Gunz'' * 2010 - Chemo - ''The Stomach of the Mountain'' * 2011 - Telemachus - ''Scarecrows'' ft.

* 2013 - Telemachus - ''In the Evening'' * 2014 - Telemachus - ''In Morocco'' * 2020 - Telemachus - ''Boring & Weird Historical Music''

Collaborative

* 2008 - Triple Darkness - ''Anathema'' * 2014 - Jam Baxter - ''...so we ate them whole'' * 2015 - Onoe Caponoe - ''Tales from Planet Cattele'' * 2017 - Jam Baxter - ''Mansion 38'' * 2018 - Jam Baxter - ''Touching Scenes'' * 2021 - Dead Silk - ''Dead Silk I and II'' * 2022 - Jam Baxter - ''Fetch The Poison''

References

External links

KMJ45 Studios

Telemachus Soundcloud
{{Authority control English hip hop musicians English record producers Living people 1984 births Musicians from London