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So here is my advice to you, whoever you are, reading this in a library or a basement or a bus station: Start a folder. Record the hum of your worst memory. Then find one person—just one—who will listen without flinching. That is your Celavie. That is your patch.
But the real win was not the numbers. The real win was the emails. Kids who had grown up in basements, in libraries, in silence—they wrote to say they had started their own voice memo folders. They had started their own patch crews. Some of them even asked Celavie Group for permission to use the term “patched” in their own collectives.
To the outside world, “Celavie” might look like just another collective—a handful of producers, visual artists, and streetwear designers orbiting a singular aesthetic. But to me, Celavie was a patch kit. They didn’t erase the holes in my history; they stitched them shut with basslines, broken chords, and late-night honesty. This is the story of how my early life, an EP, and a crew got patched together into something that finally made sense. Before the pads and the 808s, there was silence. I grew up in a household where music was a weapon. My mother played classical piano to drown out arguments. My stepfather smashed speakers when he lost his temper. By the time I was fourteen, I had learned two things: sound can heal, and sound can break. my early life ep celavie group patched
When you are into Celavie Group, you are not given a title. You are given a task. You are asked to identify one broken thing in your past that you have been trying to hide. Then, you are asked to make that broken thing the loudest part of your art.
I dropped out of high school at sixteen. Not because I was stupid, but because I was tired. Tired of being the kid with the wrong shoes, the wrong haircut, the wrong answers. I spent my days in the public library, haunting the CD section like a ghost. I discovered DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing..... and suddenly understood that you could build entire cathedrals out of other people’s discarded records. That was my first patch: sampling. Taking broken, forgotten sounds and weaving them into a new shelter. So here is my advice to you, whoever
If you or someone you know is working on an EP about their early life, Celavie Group hosts a free “Patch Session” every last Tuesday of the month at the Queens Night Market. Bring a voice memo. Leave with a song.
For me, it was the silence after my father left. For Té, it was the year he lost his hearing in one ear. For Maya, it was a stutter she developed after a car accident. We don’t fix these things. We sample them. We loop them. We turn the volume up until the cracks become the chorus. That is your Celavie
Maya’s response was always the same: “The patch is not a brand. It’s a verb. You don’t need our permission. You just need a needle and something to say.”