Mystery Slang has been played on NTS shows including Soup To Nuts w/ John Gómez, with The Dark Archer first played on 3 February 2025.

The creative force behind Mystery Slang is one Latif Gardez.

Picking up a guitar aged 15, greatly influenced by Rory Gallagher, Gardez wanted to be in a band. He realised his ambition in the late seventies, releasing a few singles as the Bristol-based band Gardez Darkx.

Gardez made good use of his spare time by devouring books, learning to play a variety of musical instruments and generally catching up on a lost education. The words of Rimbaud, Samuel R Delaney, Baudelaire, Bukowski and T S Eliot; the films of Orson Welles, Wim Wenders and Alan Parker; the "blue period" music of Scott Walker, Miles Davis and Sinatra; all these, combined with his people-watching in bars through the bottom of a whisky glass, will give you an inkling of the influences and inspiration behind his creative talents of poetry, prose and song-writing.

With his mind’s eye focused on a major record deal, Gardez relocated to London where he stepped into the recently-vacated role of vocalist in King Trigger. However, where Gardez leaned towards darkness and intensity, the pre-Gardez King Trigger leaned more towards pop. They were not comfortable bedfellows.

Following the inevitable break-up, Gardez’ personal life took a turn for the worse, until finally he found himself living at the Venus Hotel in Westbourne Grove with some rather malodorous fellow hostellers. The six months he stayed there were to become the main source of inspiration for his first Mystery Slang album "Venus Grove" - as dark blue as the one suit he wore, day in, day out, the lyrics were intense and soaked with extremes and excesses, documenting some of those wild times.

His talents were rewarded by a contract with Virgin Records, and the album was released in 1991, successfully charting in several European territories. Gardez was fortunate enough to complete the follow-up album “River Towns” the subsequent year just before falling victim to the axe wielded by EMI in the course of their turbulent Virgin Records take-over.

There followed a number of years in the hinterland of the music scene during which time Gardez, far from resting on his laurels, merely channelled his creative talents into other artistic endeavours - paintings, a novel, a play, poems…

…but with so much of his music still to be heard, Gardez has turned his attention back to Mystery Slang, releasing the re-mastered versions of “Venus Grove” and “River Towns” through Digitdoc Records while assembling a new line-up for his forthcoming third album.