Fred V & Grafix

Fred V & Grafix were an English drum and bass duo from Exeter, Devon, England. The pair consisted of Frederick “Fred V” Vahrman (born 12 January 1990) and Joshua “Grafix” Jackson (born 14 June 1991). Both acted as producers and DJs and worked across a wide palette of bass-led styles within drum and bass and jungle, including liquid funk, drumstep and other bass music crossover areas. They were signed to Hospital Records and were active roughly from 2009 until their split in December 2018.

The duo’s recorded output on Hospital Records includes three studio albums: Recognise (2014), Oxygen (2016) and Cinematic Party Music (2017). Those releases anchor the documented timeline of their partnership on a major drum and bass label and mark the main studio statements released under the Fred V & Grafix name. In December 2018 the pair announced they were splitting; both members have continued with solo careers since that announcement.

Musically, Fred V & Grafix combined melodic, harmonic elements with tight drum programming. Their work leans into liquid funk-style pads and piano motifs alongside cleanly edited breakbeats and solid sub-bass lines. Production hallmarks you can expect from their output include layered atmospherics, processed vocal hooks, and precise bass/synth sidechain to keep low-end weight clear under busy arrangements. Their palette spans softer, melodic rollers and tougher, bass-heavy tracks—reflecting the multiple subgenres listed under their banner.

On the beat side, their drums typically favour crisp snares, punchy kick-to-snare relationships, and edited breaks that sit forward in the mix; on the low end they balance rounded sub-bass with mid-bass movement rather than relying on a single hard wobble. Textural touches—reverbed pads, string or brass stabs, and clipped vocal samples—appear frequently across the albums, giving their productions a widescreen, mix-ready clarity suited to both club systems and headphone listening.

As DJs, both members translated their studio focus into sets that mixed liquid and more energetic rollers with occasional drumstep and dub-influenced tracks, using tempo-aware transitions and tight cueing to bridge styles. Their presence on Hospital’s roster and the three albums listed above are the clearest markers of their contribution to the scene: recorded statements that brought melodic, arrangement-forward drum and bass into the label’s catalogue between 2014 and 2017.

Publicly available, verifiable biographical detail beyond the names, birthdates, albums and label is limited. What is on record is concrete: Frederick Vahrman and Joshua Jackson created and released Recognise (2014), Oxygen (2016) and Cinematic Party Music (2017) on Hospital Records, worked together from about 2009 to 2018, announced their split in December 2018, and have pursued solo projects since then.