Hello, my name is Jess and I’m one half of Hangry Records, the other being my partner Jay. We run a non profit label turning our love of Jungle and DnB music into something even better and giving back to some amazing causes.

We came up with the idea and concept of our label in 2019 and our first release in 2020. Our first two years we fundraised for Mind and Shelter (out of respect of one of our fallen soldiers, one of my best friends Jake Arnold, and his wishes were for us to donate to these two causes, and Jungle & DnB Volume.1 is dedicated to him)

Since then we have been fundraising for Crisis, The Forward Trust and Hunt Saboteurs Association. This to be the last year we fundraise for them, and are currently choosing the next for the next 2/3 years. We do this so we can try and help as many amazing causes as we can, with our efforts with our baby, our label Hangry Records

A bit of a backstory to why the GoFundMe to help raise funds . . .

Back in 2017 Jess’s life changed forever, one day not being able to move her left leg, she went to the doctors, was sent for an MRI scan, and got the words you dread to hear ‘we found something’. . . There was a benign tumour called a schwannoma as big as it could get before it started paralysing all my limbs. Luckily it was benign, but the location and surgery completely changed Jess’s life forever at the age of 27.

Due to complications of the surgery Jess came away with permanently damaged nerves and where they cut straight through her core muscle, and part of her spinal cord and put it back together, health strength was no longer as it once was, which caused great difficulty in things that were once easy, a nothing to complete. She developed fibromyalgia and couldn’t walk properly anymore and ever again since having the surgery. She also is in widespread all over body pain and suffers a painful life 24/7 with flare ups being caused by stress, weather change, slept poorly, and many other seemingly minor issues, turns into flare ups so painful she can not walk at all some days and sometimes can’t even stand.

Being a music lover since she can remember, and a Jungle lover and rave/event lover since early teens. Her life suddenly changed dramatically. She couldn’t get out of bed some days let alone go and let it all out on the dance floor infront of a tasty stack/soundsystem. Which was a big cathartic release that helped Jess’s diagnosed mental health conditions, which her now ‘new’ way of life, heavily hindered how she managed them. Before she could paint freely with no pain, not having to rest every half an hour, which with painting, will make take it forever. As she got more used to her new way of life, she decided to do something she said she would do when she finally knew what she wanted to do - Art! And create whilst getting myself a degree in the process. She managed to get herself a high 2:1 (was 1% off a first, but proud either way) and completely reignited her passion for creating and the good it does for people, cathartic expression, releasing it all into a piece you can then analyse afterwards. Her practice developed around how art functions as care and became what she wrote her dissertation about. Also now thriving to become an art therapist and use my technical and mindfulness skills of art and a life long dealing with mental health conditions and how to manage them, she has great knowledge of both, and hopes to start her masters in Sept 2026.

Artist website - https://jessicabakerartist.cargo.site/

We decided to start Hangry as a way to still be connected to the music we love, but from behind the scenes and bring joy to people from priding ourselves on finding underground artists and making life long friendships and partnerships through finding and working with some ultra talented producers in the scene, old and new.

Jay has been making music since he was 13 and electronic music, mainly Jungle, DnB and Breakcore since he was 16. Jess also makes music, since 2017, and is the resident artist and does all the release artwork and logo design, video edits whicu uses all her own original artwork and just anything art related to Hangry. She also runs the promotion, and all the social platforms.

We both have lived most of our lives with diagnosed mental health conditions and art and music was/and still is our solace, our happy place, our place to get out whatever emotion we needed to express out. Whenever we were in bad places mentally, music and art were the friends that were always there. So to now being the co-owner and running lead of a record label, is an absolute dream come true, one I never thought I’d have the motivation to do it. But once life shows you it can change in a second, it gave us the push we needed to get it all going.

So the reason for the GoFundMe is because we run Hangry Records purely the two of us, we are both signed off as Jess is disabled (fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis) and has diagnosed since a child, BPD and ADHD. Jay also has mental health conditions diagnosed Generalised Anxiety Disorder and Depression and recently diagnosed with Myclonic Epilepsy after a period of terrifying seizures, but finally on medication to control them.

But because of this, the cost of living crisis, living from payday to payday with big gaps between running out and reaching our next pay day. We run Hangry by giving most of the profit to the chosen charities and a small part back in to cover paying artists, paying for mastering engineers and other costs like social platform subscriptions, most of the time a lot comes out of our own pocket to cover all of that, leaving us even more in the lurch.

We noticed recently a lot of want for more vinyl from us, and trust me if we had the money to we would be doing a wax release ever week if we could!

Unfortunately when you can only just about afford to pay your bills (and not always) and food, and paying off debts that have happened since Jess became disabled and lost the ability to work. Luckily we don’t go out much anymore anyway, mainly because of Jess’s mobility and pain rating each day, we create inside and do our best to build our Hangry ‘empire’ from inside our humble HQ.

We thought if so many people (including us!) want more wax coming from us, then maybe we could get a a bit of help with our next one, which will

hopefully help us get more sales as vinyl always do so well, and help us catch up a bit with where we fell behind - all from mainly health reasons, and some horrible housing nightmares, so nightmare the state of the properties contributed to Jess suffering a pulmonary embolism in April this year (2025) and almost died from it. Luckily she didn’t and is on treatment and hopefully going to be given the all clear very soon. As Jess’s dad died from a heart attack (pulmonary embolism is a heart attack in the lungs) at the age of 44, and Jess was 34, we also took that as a sign to get to business and keep churning out killa release after killa release and have them all on wax and Hangry making as much funds it can for chosen charities and organisations.

So far since we started releasing Compilations and Solos of all very talented producers, we’ve managed to make almost £7000 for our chosen charities (and a small amount back into the label)

If we can reach this already, with 24 digital (atm, there’s many more coming!) and one vinyl release split into two parts. Imagine how much we will be able to make for them, and to go back into the label if we’re covering it from both avenues, digital and physical.

From all of this we realised even more so, anything can happen when you least expect it. Take a chance and it may help/change things for the better, so much better. So let’s go!!!

If you would like to help us with raising money for our next vinyl release which will then help us raise money for the next vinyl and so on and so on, whilst raising money for very good and deserving causes, then please donated or even just sharing this, could help so much!

So letshttps://hangryrecords.bandcamp.com/music do this!!

Big Love

Jess and Jay

Hangry Records

(each 4 track vinyl costs roughly £1200/300 for 200 to be made, so to get our next one done we would need twice that amount to get it done in full. That is why we’ve set our goal as that, just to be transparent with where the funds will go)