THE STORY OF GARLANDS · AUGUST 2025
THE RECORD THAT STARTED IT ALL
Some records begin with a melody. This one began with a memory.
In the summer of 2003, long before Benirrás Beach Club or Salt & Sand Records existed, Matt Capone was resident DJ at Capones in San Antonio, Ibiza.
Along the sunset strip at Kanya, not far from where the Golden Buddha stands today, the legendary Liverpool club Garlands held its pre-parties for the island's workers. Free to enter, gloriously hedonistic and packed with DJs, friends and familiar faces from across the island, they became one of those fixtures of an Ibiza summer that everyone seemed to look forward to.
And, being Ibiza in 2003, they weren't entirely conventional.
On arrival, workers would be offered a cup from a large communal punch. Its contents had a reputation of their own, with crushed ecstasy tablets settling towards the bottom of the bucket. Those hoping for something a little stronger would encourage whoever was serving to “dig deep.”
More than two decades later, those two words would resurface in an unexpected place.
WHEN MEMORIES BECOME LYRICS
The lyrics to Garlands (Made Us Do It) were written in August 2025, drawn almost entirely from Matt's memories of those parties and the people who made them what they were.
Some references are hidden in plain sight.
Judge Jules was among the guest DJs who played at Kanya. On one occasion, a disagreement between Matt and Jules over the calibre of DJs working in San Antonio's West End provided the memory behind the lyric “The Judge and me clashed on the floor.”
Another moment proved rather more magical.
DJ John Silver was playing Cassius' When the Sun Goes Down and somehow back-timed the record so perfectly that, just as the vocal announced the setting sun, the sun itself disappeared over the horizon. The whole place erupted.
Twenty-two years later, that moment became:
“John Silver played, the sky turned gold,
When the sun goes down, never gets old.”
These weren't lyrics written about an imagined Ibiza. They were fragments of one that had actually happened.
Matt had the words, an idea for the melody and a friend he thought might know what to do with them.
TEN YEARS, ONE CURRY AND A RECORD
That friend was Jay Benirrás, or Jason Hayward.
Matt and Jay had first connected around a decade earlier, when Jay was producing music as Cool Madina. Matt discovered his work on SoundCloud and contacted him about playing and promoting it on Bamboo Radio, the online station he was running at the time.
They stayed in touch for years.
There was just one slightly unusual detail.
They had never actually met.
After roughly ten years of messages and conversations, Matt sent Jay his idea for Garlands. The following day Jay got in touch and asked whose music it was.
Matt told him it was his.
Jay's response was essentially: "Can I produce it?"
And with that, the production house of Benirrás Beach Club began to take shape.
Jay spent weeks pulling the idea apart and rebuilding it: tweaking, changing, improving and obsessing over the details until the instrumental that would become the Beach Club Edit emerged.
One of its most recognisable features nearly didn't exist at all. The Spanish guitar, now woven through the identity of the record, arrived almost at the eleventh hour.
Eventually even Jay, a committed perfectionist, decided he was happy.
It was time to find a voice.
ENTER TOMMY JULES
Garlands had always sounded like a male vocal record to Matt and Jay. Who that voice belonged to was another matter entirely.
Through a recommendation from one of Jay's friends, a name appeared: Tommy Jules.
Neither of them initially knew much about him.
Jay made contact, Tommy was interested, and the instrumental and lyrics were sent over. Tommy asked for the weekend to think about it.
Naturally, Matt and Jay Googled him.
Jaws met floor!
Former lead male vocalist with Rudimental LIVE, touring DJ and vocalist with Professor Green, and a career involving artists from Ed Sheeran and Anne-Marie to Jessie J and 30 Seconds to Mars, Tommy's musical pedigree was considerably larger than either had realised when they sent the email.
He came back on board, subject to agreement with his Who We Are partner Simon Bass.
On December 8th 2025, Matt and Jay found themselves in Brighton, in the home studio of producer and vocal engineer Lawrence Lord, aka The Purist, watching Tommy Jules record the vocals to a song that had begun as a collection of memories.
Surreal enough.
More surreal still, this was only the second time Matt and Jay had actually been in one another's company.
And when Tommy arrived, he immediately recognised Matt.
Ibiza? No.
DJing in Newcastle? No.
Italy perhaps?
No.
Eventually they worked it out.
Tommy Jules, former Rudimental vocalist and Professor Green's touring DJ, recognised his new songwriter from...
Tommy Jules recording Garlands (Made Us Do It)
Brighton · December 2025
four episodes of a CBeebies television programme!
Superstar DJs come in many forms!
The vocals were completed in a day.
Matt headed back to Newcastle. Jay returned to the production, now with Tommy's vocal stems in hand.
And 2026 began with another series of unlikely connections.
THE ORCHESTRA GROWS
Tommy knew mixing engineer Mitch Jones, who happened to owe him a favour.
Favour called in.
Mix engineer acquired.
Once Mitch had completed the mix, attention turned to mastering. Jay had been looking at Metropolis Studios and was convinced it was where the record should go. The only questions were whether two artists preparing their first release could afford that calibre of mastering and whether anyone there would be interested.
Then came another coincidence.
Tommy was the former brother-in-law of internationally renowned Metropolis mastering engineer Stuart Hawkes.
Five Grammy nominations, more than 25 years at the highest levels of the industry, and credits spanning Amy Winehouse, Ed Sheeran, Stormzy and countless others.
Boom.
The Beach Club Edit was complete.
But there was a problem.
ONE SONG WASN'T ENOUGH!
Summer 2026 was approaching and Matt and Jay wanted Garlands ready for Ibiza.
The Beach Club Edit captured the warmth and nostalgia they wanted, but it lived at the more laid-back end of the spectrum. Their idea for Benirrás Beach Club had always been broader: music capable of moving between chilled Balearic listening, soulful house and the dancefloor without losing its identity.
They had the first incarnation.
Now they needed the others.
Jay had long admired Richard Earnshaw, while Matt knew Richard through his earlier Hed Kandi work. After digging further into his more recent productions, the decision became obvious.
Jay approached him.
Richard listened to the Beach Club Edit and agreed to remix it.
A remix agreement followed and, notwithstanding a fairly catastrophic software crash along the way, Richard eventually delivered what became the Extended and Dub mixes.
They were everything Matt and Jay had hoped for: Tommy's vocal remained at the heart of the record, but Richard surrounded it with an edgier, soulful musicality that gave Garlands an entirely different life.
At the same time, Jay had been talking with another rapidly rising UK producer and remixer, SILAS (UK).
With releases through Toolroom and a growing reputation for powerful House and Tech House productions, SILAS represented another direction entirely.
The agreement was made.
Less than two weeks later, the remix arrived.
Jaws met floor..... again!
SILAS had cut into the original production and rebuilt it into something rawer and more explosive, completing the three-sided musical idea Matt and Jay had imagined.
And it needed a name.
Remember that bucket of punch at Kanya?
Matt had told Jay the story of the Ibiza workers asking the server to “dig deep” for what had settled at the bottom.
Jay remembered it.
The Dig Deep Remix had its name.
Twenty-three years after those words were being shouted across a party in San Antonio, they had found their way onto a record.
GARLANDS MADE US DO IT
There was now one final question.
Where did this record belong?
With Richard providing advice and mentorship, Matt and Jay considered approaching Soulfuric, a label they admired and one that might have provided a natural home for Richard's soulful interpretation.
But the very thing they loved about the finished package created a problem.
It didn't belong neatly in one box.
The Beach Club Edit, Richard Earnshaw mixes and SILAS Dig Deep Remix occupied different musical territory. Releasing individual versions through genre-specific labels could mean splitting one creative idea across several homes, with the possibility of conflicting interests along the way.
The alternative was considerably more complicated.
Start a record label.
A label where a record didn't have to become one genre simply because that was easier to market. Where a chilled original, soulful rework and club-focused remix could sit together because what connected them wasn't BPM or genre.
It was identity.
Salt & Sand Records was born.
Almost twelve months after Matt first sent Jay a set of lyrics and a melodic idea, Garlands (Made Us Do It) was released on 7 August 2026 as the label's first record.
What followed exceeded anything either had expected from a debut: BBC Introducing broadcasts, specialist and international radio support, editorial recognition, chart placements and support from respected DJs across house music.
Richard Earnshaw's interpretations found favour throughout the soulful-house world. SILAS's Dig Deep Remix travelled in another direction entirely, selected by Crystal Waters for I Am House Radio and finding its way onto the Glitterbox stage, played by Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy.
But perhaps the most important thing Garlands created wasn't a chart position, radio play or DJ endorsement.
A track written from memories of Ibiza's workers, conceived between two friends who had barely met, had brought together a vocalist, producers, engineers and remixers through a remarkable chain of friendships, recommendations, coincidences and shared belief in the music.
Along the way, it answered a question Matt and Jay hadn't originally intended to ask:
What kind of record label would allow them to keep making music this way?
The answer was Salt & Sand.
Garlands (Made Us Do It) became its first release.
In more ways than one, Garlands really did make us do it!