When we ran Warm & Glad, the café, we played good music. There were regular DJ mixes on rotation. The music was hip hop, jazz, downtempo, broken beat, afrobeat, some house, some dub, and some electronic flavours. One set of mixes kept a steady sound in the place and was the soundtrack to many hours of people working, drinking coffee, meeting friends, eating a sandwich or a salad, and generally just hanging out. The mixes were Wax Da Box.
George Evelyn, or DJ E.A.S.E, is otherwise known as Nightmares on Wax. He started out in the mid-80s as a bedroom DJ, and his sound was funk, soul, hip hop, reggae and electro. In 1988, Nightmares on Wax began life as a group. Their first release was the single Dextrous, and their debut album, A Word of Science, came out in 1991 on Warp Records. Starting with the now famous Nights Interlude, it moved from stoner-tinged tunes to early-90's electronic and breaks.
In 1995, the album Smokers Delight was released. It was a slow, warm, sample-heavy and massively influential record at the time. It moved gently along with beats, breaks and dub basses, and the most chilled, smoke-filled and soulful vibes made it perfect for chill-out sessions. It is, to this day, a certifiable, stone-cold classic.
Then there were the mixes. Wax Da Box was a radio show by DJ E.A.S.E on Ibiza Sonica radio and was meant to be a slow, groovy build-up or pre-party to nights out in Ibiza. (Likely also post-party or come-down sessions.) We played Wax Da Box daily in the café. It was a perfect soundtrack to the atmosphere we were trying to create. Respite from the city. Solidly deep but life-affirming tunes. Full of soul. Just how we liked it. Wax Da Box ran as a radio show until the mid-2010s and lined up perfectly as the official sound of Warm & Glad at the time.
Without it being stated front and centre, the music of Warm & Glad was the core of the café. Its secret sauce.
DJ E.A.S.E is still at it. Under the name of his now solo project, Nightmares on Wax, in 2025 he put out Echo45 Sound System, a mixtape named after the old speaker box he bought as a kid in Leeds for a fiver his mum gave him. Referencing his sound system roots, it has Yasiin Bey, Greentea Peng and Liam Bailey on it. This year, 2026, saw the release of In a Space Outta Dub alongside dub legend, Adrian Sherwood. Forty years in, he’s still bringing the good vibes.
This is how Warm & Glad sounded.
Some links to classic Wax Da Box sessions.