Ages before Paul Nickerson and Francis Englehardt entered the phase of their life’s project involving the creation of Dope Jams and slow.to.speak, they were just like any two kids growing up in the suburban shadows of a formidable U.S. city: in their early teens, they became fanatically obsessed with underground house music. Attending early Boston deep house parties like “The Loft” and “The Paradise,” the two teenagers quickly immersed themselves in the then vibrant dance music community. This mixtape, recorded in 1995, is an aural testament to the early sounds of underground club music that shaped the unique and uncompromising vision that would eventually become slow.to.speak. The records on this mixtape are not experimental, difficult to understand, or even exceptionally complex or intelligent. What they are is obvious and DOPE, a sign of the times before house music was self-obsessed and principally insincere. The mixing is seamless, though certainly less concerned with technical precision than with the conveying of the artists’ authentic excitement with what they were doing, what they were involved in and what they were striving for. What this mixtape bears witness to is the youthful exuberance of individuals truly living their music in an atmosphere of genuine inspiration, raw energy and unabashed honesty, unconcerned with the past or the future, indeed an immersion solely in the present happenings of their environment.