Grace Jones +
Art Of Noise/Boards of Canada/Chris Frantz/Danielle Moore/Decius Hifi Sean/Jamz Supernova/Leftfield/Luke Solomon/Native Tongues Ralph Lawson/Róisín Murphy/Twisted Nerve/Underground Resistance
+
Art Of Noise/Boards of Canada/Chris Frantz/Danielle Moore/Decius Grace Jones/Hifi Sean/Jamz Supernova/Leftfield/Luke Solomon Native Tongues/Ralph Lawson/Twisted Nerve/Underground Resistance
Viva Acid House
This issue is dedicated to the memory of Shaun Roberts, 1975-2022 Lifelong supporter of musicians, DJs, artists and friends
ISSUE 3 / 2023
CONTENTS 4 Editors’ Letter
34 Jamz Supernova
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome.
Music and food? Play on.
8 First Person
Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?
Damian Harris analyses the vexed joy of communal digital grieving.
10 First Listen
Everything Gemma Samways thought she knew about Underworld was wrong.
12 First Person
38 Two Shell
42 The Art of Noise
46 How To… Book a Festival
144 Last Night Changed It All
14 islandman
52 Network Records
Belfast techno don goes classical.
22 Decius
They’re not Roman Emperors, they’re very naughty boys.
26 Eyes of Others
Psychedelic dub and haunted pop make for pleasant bedfellows.
30 Pitchblack Playback
Everything’s better with the lights off.
130 Twisted Nerve
When Badly Drawn Boy and Andy Votel got together amazing things happened.
Expert words from Noah Ball, one of the best in the business.
18 Phil Kieran
124 Yacht Rock
Hey, you, what’s that smooth, soul sound that’s going down?
Hey! How the sonic theorists paved a way for Boards of Canada, The Chemical Brothers and Aphex Twin…
Man Power passionately sticks up for the north-east.
No man is an island. Apart from Hugh Grant. He’s Ibiza.
114 Luke Solomon
One of house music’s greatest advocates gets his dues.
From Detroit techno to bleep and rave and…
64 Native Tongues
The incredible story of how De La Soul and co showed hip hop a new way of being.
72 Róisín Murphy
From winning poetry competitions to the Royal Albert Hall, Róisín Murphy has come a long way…
84 Printworks
Dance music stars reveal their lightbulb night-out moment.
150 Hifi Sean
Sean Dickson gets his ‘Happy Ending’.
158 Leftfield
Neil Barnes opens up.
169 The Archive
Boards of Canada, Underground Resistance, Top 10 Faceless Artists.
186 How We Made… ‘Hayling’ by FC Kahuna.
192 Cratedigging
We say adios to the London clubbing institution by way of photos.
The DJs' DJ, Ralph Lawson, knows his musical onions.
94 Grace Jones
200 My House Is Your House
This is Grace Jones’ world. We just live in it.
Crazy P’s Danielle Moore invites us into her Todmorden abode.
208 Where Are They Now?
Been thinking about Howie B? So have we.
212 Have You Ever Ridden A Horse?
Chris Frantz remains in light and in love.
216 Parting Shot
DJ Shadow. In the National Sound Archive.
Editors’ Letter Despite his untimely passing three years ago Andrew Weatherall remains a constant presence in our lives. As we went to press, commemorative events were taking place up and down the country marking what would have been his 60th birthday, reminding us about music’s seemingly endless capacity to thrill, comfort and, most importantly, bring people together. For Weatherall, music – and the noble pleasure of getting down on the dancefloor – was a serious business. In one of our last interviews with him he told us: “It’s about secular transcendence. And heresy. It’s
would like, this has given rise to the thorny issue of how we should reflect upon their passing. It’s a subject Damian Harris ponders as he looks at the art of digital grieving. Thankfully, it’s not all a self-help manual though! As Andy Votel and Badly Drawn Boy remind us, as they look back upon 25 years of their ‘accidental label’ Twisted Nerve, it’s also about saluting friendship and the extended families that music helps shape. And when it comes to music’s rousing ability to delight and inspire, our cover stars deliver in spades. Grace Jones continues to belie her
Gnosticism. Direct contact with the divine without the middleman and that’s what I’m aiming for.” Crucially, he was also quick to recognise the inherent ridiculousness in the world of DJing and clubbing in particular, often stating that it was, after all: “Just a disco.” This mix of reverence and irreverence is – hopefully – central to the latest issue of Disco Pogo. Putting together this publication requires careful planning, but given the number of moving parts themes don’t often reveal themselves until we’re well into the production process. This issue is no different. As well as Weatherall’s enduring influence (he’s honourably mentioned in several features), other subjects have come to the fore. Mortality, age, illness, breakdowns and sobriety among them. Reading about the struggles the likes of Luke Solomon, Leftfield’s Neil Barnes and Sean ‘Hifi Sean’ Dickson have faced, and the wisdom they impart having thankfully come through the other side, is humbling. Alas, death, of course, comes for us all. While writing our celebratory piece on the Native Tongues tribe, De La Soul’s David Jolicoeur, aka Trugoy the Dove, tragically succumbed to the health issues he suffered from. Angus Batey’s excellent feature on the influence the Native Tongues had on both sides of the Atlantic, hopefully goes some way to honouring his memory. With so many of the musical stars that shaped our formative years – and beyond – departing the stage sooner than any of us
age – talk of a new album certainly tantalises – as she strides our world like a colossus. And while the equally singular Róisín Murphy determinedly follows her own path, if there’s anyone out there who can be described as Jones’ natural heir, it’s the disco doyenne from Arklow. Both Jones and Murphy transform pop into art and create art as pop. We’re lucky to live among them. There are other serendipitous moments. Jones is mentioned by both Danielle Moore and Chris Frantz. The Art of Noise and ZTT’s conceptual scheming has a place in Jones’ mesmeric story. The same Super Furry Animals track - ‘Some Things Come From Nothing’ – is discussed in our Boards of Canada and FC Kahuna features. Luke Solomon was the brains behind Hifi Sean licensing his ‘Testify’ track to Defected. The wheels keep turning, friendships keep forming and we all come together. It’s not all musicians of a certain dotage, either. Eyes of Others, Jamz Supernova and the mysterious Two Shell bring us up to date with the sounds of tomorrow. Elsewhere, we analyse the persistent influence of the sound known as yacht rock, the colourful history of Network Records is revealed and Terry Farley, Lottie, Etienne de Crécy and Nabihah Iqbal tell us about the night (or nights) that changed their lives. In other words, we hope we’ve covered all bases. Enjoy the issue. Viva acid house!
4_DISCO_POGO
Jim, Johnno and Paul
ISSUE 3 / 2023
Editors In Chief Paul Benney & John Burgess Editor Jim Butler Art Director Chris Jones Print & Production Harriet Jones Writers Luke Bainbridge, Angus Batey, Anna Cafolla, Brian Coney, Paul Flynn, Sean Griffiths, Damian Harris, Robert Harris, Andrew Harrison, Harold Heath, Mark Hooper, Tara Joshi, Tracy Kawalik, Geoff Kirkwood, Felicity Martin, Craig McLean, Balearic Mike, Jacob Munday, Alexis Petridis, Gemma Samways, Andy Thomas, Frank Tope Photography Chazz Adnitt, Janette Beckman/Getty Images, Mark Benney, Adrian Boot/Camera Press, Peter Iain Campbell, Carrie Davenport, Jake Davis, Chris Davison, Daisy Denham, Bruno Destombes, Jim Dyson, Chris Fernandez, Jessica Glick, Vanessa Goldschmidt, Steve Gullick, David Holmes, Lou Jasmine, Rob Jones, Douglas Kirkland/Corbis/Getty Images, Alex Lambert, Ganesh Lockhart, Dan Medhurst, Rich Mulhearn, Ming De Nasty, Normski, Marc Sethi, Jon Shard, Ross Silcocks, Silver, Lisa Wormsley Thanks Mark Archer, Ed Cartwright, Chris Cuff, Carla Rollock Kieran, Ian Peel, Jon Tattersall, Steve Yates Cover photos Róisín Murphy by Vanessa Goldschmidt Grace Jones by Douglas Kirkland/Corbis/Getty Images Design Jones Design Create Published twice per year by Disco Pogo Ltd Distributed by MMS London and Above Board All distribution and stockist enquiries: info@discopogo.co All advertising enquiries: ads@discopogo.co discopogo.co instagram.com/discopogo.co facebook.com/discopogo.co twitter.com/discoxpogo
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the publisher. Printed by Spectrum Printing, Cardiff. ISO 9001 Certified (Management), ISO 14001 Certified (Environmental). The paper used for this book is FSC Certified from sustainable sources and Chlorine Free.
6_DISCO_POGO
T I M E LES S
T HE REM IX ES
Perplexed about the issue of digital grieving? Damian Harris has some thoughts… instantly connected to like-minded souls seeking solace in collective grief. Trawling through tributes, wiping your eyes while dishing out broken heart emojis left right and centre. Social media actually becomes quite a nice place. Everyone stops bitching for a few hours and starts kicking the
FIRST PERSON
My friend and I have a running joke. Whenever a musician passes away we will suggest that ‘they’re probably up there now, jamming away with…’ and spend the next 20 minutes forming the most inappropriate celestial supergroup. Like a tragic version of ‘I went to the shop and bought’ it’s getting difficult to keep up… Many believe 2016 marked a downturn in the world’s fortunes. Basically it’s all been shit since George Michael, Prince and Bowie died – it’s hard to argue. At the time of writing we have just lost Steve Mackey, Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul and Ryuichi Sakamoto. No doubt there will be more by the time you read this. Sadly the pop stars that shaped our lives are leaving us with alarming regularity. I am aware that musicians passed away before 2016, but it feels like losing those heavyweights heralded a new era of social media mourning. Grieving in the digital age is a different experience. In the analogue era you would stick on an album and maybe light a candle if you were feeling particularly bereft. The radio might offer some solace if the programming was sympathetic but there was rarely a place to congregate. John Peel’s passing in 2004 preceded social media but 6 Music stepped up as a place to gather in grief. Today you have an artist’s entire catalogue at your fingertips. You can lose yourself exploring every album, B-sides, TV performances and interviews – full deep cuts business. You’re 8_DISCO_POGO
proverbial football of loss around – a bit like that Paul McCartney ‘Pipes of Peace’ video. When Terry Hall died, for all the sadness, it was a really nice day. I discovered so much about him – the Timmy Mallet interview, the folding bicycle story – it was a celebration of a wonderful man and to use another football analogy it was like substituting the star striker with a couple minutes to go so they get the standing ovation their performance deserves. The heartbreak was the fact it was at least 20 years too early. Digital grieving does bring another issue. The pressure to write a fitting tribute. Which photo do you use? Which song do you pick? It’s not easy to succinctly articulate your grief. Of course this does depend on your social media personality. Personally I overthink everything I post. It took me three days to find the right words for Andrew Weatherall. This wasn’t a case of posting a picture and a black heart, there was a lot I needed to say. Us British clearly like a good mourn, but lurking under the surface is that threat that you’d better be mourning right. The algorithms mean there’s good numbers in grief and of course it’s very easy to find people to make you bristle: ‘How can I make this about me?’ And as for anyone who says ‘never really a fan’ just shut up, please remember saying nothing is always an option. But rather than finish on a negative I was heartened by a Twitter post from the author John Niven. He recounted a brilliant story about an evening he spent with Terry Hall and Suggs. It was warm and funny and set me off for the nth time that day. He ended with this: “I know that when someone as beloved as Terry dies I like reading things like this because it gives you another tiny piece of them. And I feel very lucky to have had a couple of nights out with the man back then. Bye Terry. Sail on, Sailor.” Nicely put…
Gemma Samways was a child when Underworld’s ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’ came out. Nearly 30 years on, will she like it? ‘Mmm… Skyscraper I Love You’ is bolder still. A fever dream stretched out over 13-odd minutes, it builds from brooding techno into a prog house opus, embellished with shards of strangulated guitar at around the six-and-a-half minute mark,
FIRST LISTEN
As someone who’s always worn music knowledge as a sort of social armour, there’s something very exposing about verbalising an area of ignorance. Committing that blind spot to print feels like speaking your imposter syndrome into existence. I’m half expecting to have my (modest-to-nonexistent) journalistic privileges revoked. But it’s true: ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’ passed me by. I mean, I had an excuse, being 10 years old when it came out in January 1994. Undermining my alibi is the fact I’ve retrospectively fallen for loads of other mid-90s classics. So why did I make the effort with ‘The White Room’, ‘Selected Ambient Works 85-92’, ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ etc. and not with Underworld’s magnum opus? The answer is, I think I had a skewed idea of what Underworld were. Thanks to the ubiquity of ‘Born Slippy .NUXX’, the then-trio were pretty much inescapable for the latter half of the 90s, almost to the point of irritation. I remember seeing clips of Karl Hyde pogoing to ‘King of Snake’ at Glastonbury ‘99, and snippets of the PR around ‘Beaucoup Fish’, and in my head, Underworld were just a bit austere, a bit intense, a bit aggy. Within seconds of hitting play on ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’, I realise – not for the first time – that past me is an idiot. Underpinned by arpeggiated synths, ‘Dark and Long’ unfurls at 120bpm, its crepuscular colour palette and percussive muscle a powerful portent for what is to follow. 10_DISCO_POGO
while playful synths dance in a minute later. Hyde sounds unsettlingly soulful crooning his surreal stream of consciousness, which features hallucinations of God, Elvis and ‘porn dogs sniffing the wind’. Then – just when you think you’ve got the song figured out – the band flip it on its head for a three-minute-long chillout outro, complete with rippling harpsichord. This is what really surprises me most about ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’: the sheer scope of music explored. You could say such variety is an inevitable consequence of Hyde and Rick Smith’s art-rock background colliding with Darren Emerson’s dance knowledge, but the fact they pull it off so convincingly is by no means a given. To serve up the Spiritualized-esque psychedelia of ‘Tongue’ next to the acid-tinged squelch of ‘Spoonman’ takes some chutzpah. ‘Dirty Epic’ is the track I regret missing out on most. Boasting an almost euphoric air of melancholy, you can trace its lineage back to New Order, layering chugging synths, dive bombing guitar and Hyde’s calls to ‘ride the sainted rhythms on the midnight train to Romford’. ‘Cowgirl’ remains an irresistible rave anthem foregrounding Hyde’s inimitably queasy intonation and, as such, acts as a powerful precursor to ‘Born Slippy .NUXX’. By contrast, ‘River of Bass’ pairs a mellow mix of funk and dub with a meandering organ line. For me, the album’s only skip comes via closing track ‘M.E.’. With its ‘Baywatch’ keys, shimmying rhythm and eco-conscious messaging it’s all a little bit too ‘Return to Innocence’ for my liking – though it probably would have worked well with the tie-dye and incense aesthetic I was exploring back in 1994. Thank God there’s no photo evidence. Seedy and paranoid and playful, it’s fair to say ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’ surpassed my expectations and then some. Now, excuse me while I go back in – I’ve got some lost time to make up.
We ignore the regions at our peril says Geoff Kirkwood (Man Power/ Bed Wetter)…
In fact one reason why many of those aren’t known for their north-east roots is because they feel the need to leave the region when starting out in order to become successful.
FIRST PERSON
The north-east is often marginalised as an English region. This is done by the media, the government, large organisations and individuals. I’m sure it happens to other areas in the country, but I’m from the north-east and I care most keenly about the future of the people here. You can see this happening specifically in dance music. Whether it’s Boiler Room throwing ticketed events here without broadcasting them (in effect taking money out of the hands of local promoters), RA overlooking regionally occurring cultural events of the type they would otherwise fawn over in London or Manchester, NTS advertising for ‘northern’ broadcasters without appearing to realise there are northern cities outside of the north-west, or the dance music press at large often only choosing to support something as being northeastern if it’s an exotically tracksuited stereotype that provides some othered voyeuristic titillation. To explain why this bothers me so much, it’s all to do with the cultural drain we experience in our region. When you mention you’re from the north-east people usually find it hilarious to mention Gazza, Jimmy Nail or Ant & Dec but, while the word count prevents me from listing them all, the region has produced more major music stars, Grammy winners, experimental music pioneers, alt pop legends and underground sensations than its comparatively low population should have any right to lay claim to. 12_DISCO_POGO
If you look at a heatmap of Tory cuts to the arts you’ll see the north-east is one of the most whitehot locations for cultural austerity. If the north-east wants to keep its talent and build further infrastructure to support them and those that follow, then it needs to be supported by the media, showing that it’s possible to be a success if you remain here, and that you’re not required to move to London/Berlin/Manchester/Glasgow et al. The north-east is an under-privileged area with relative poverty. The funding organisations created to balance this situation still show a notable southern bias and because nightlife is ‘edgy’ enough to be funded by those organisations in their core areas like London, the north-east’s support often tends to become a box ticking exercise to allow funders to fulfil their regional statistical obligations. It’s also true to say that regional DJs and producers often already have an uphill struggle to find support from the big UK clubs and festivals if they’re not connected to one of the London DJ cliques (even in my own career it’s notable that booking me appeared a lot more ‘sexy’ to southern bookers when I lived in Mexico instead of North Tyneside). I’ve legitimately taken part in this culture all around the world, and I can truthfully state that the north-east is an area with its own voice. It’s creating unique and worthy contributions to dance music and the arts. It’s also facing some unique challenges. If you work in the media then come here and find out first-hand what we’re doing. If you haven’t bothered to visit and learn about us then please don’t pretend you know anything about the region. Stop using lazy stereotypes. Stop using us for your regional diversity metric. Help us shout authentically about the amazing things that we’re already doing here, so that we can continue to build on them and further reverse the fortunes of our region.
03 – 08 AUGUST 2023 / THE GARDEN RESORT, TISNO A-trak / Alex Mills / Alex Virgo / Aline Rocha / Anna Collecta Archie Hamilton / Arielle Free / Aroop Roy / Ash Lauryn / Bklava Boys Noize / Bradley Zero / Breakbot & Irfane / Byron The Aquarius Carl Craig / Catz ‘N Dogz / Chaos in the CBD / Chloe Caillet / Cinthie Cody Currie / Conducta / Dan Shake / Darius Syrossian / Dave Jarvis Dave Lee ZR / David Penn / Deetron / Dennis Quin / Derrick Carter DOC Desiree / Dirty Channels / DJ Bone AS CIROC / DJ Holographic / DJ Minx DJ Spen / Dunmore Brothers / Eats everything / Erol Alkan Fat Tony / Ferreck Dawn / Floorplan / Folamour / Gina Breeze Girls of the Internet DJ SET / Grant Nelson / Hannah Wants Harry Romero / Honey DijoN / Honeyluv / Horse Meat Disco Inda Jani /Jamie 3:26 / Jayda G / Jeff Mills / Jellybean Benitez Jitwam /John Morales / Jovonn / Juliet Mendoza / Katie Goodman Kellie Allen / Kenny Larkin / KiNK LIVE / Kid Fonque / Kiddy Smile Kitty Amor / Krystal Klear / Kyle Hall / LP Giobbi / Louise Chen Low Steppa / Luke Solomon / M-High / MakÈz / Mason Collective Melle Brown / Melon Bomb / Melvo Baptiste / MelÉ / Mike Dunn Millie Watts / Monki / Mousse T. / Mr Scruff / Myd DJ SET / Natasha Diggs Nightmares on Wax / Oden & Fatzo LIVE / Olive F / PEZNT / Paige Tomlinson Prunk / Rap Saunders / Rimarkable / Rio Tashan / Riton / Riva Starr Roger Sanchez / SG Lewis DJ SET / Salute / Sam Divine / Sammy Virji Seamus Haji / Sef Kombo / Shimza / Smokin Jo / Sophie Lloyd Stanley Hood / Stuart Patterson / TSHA / Terry Farley The Brothers Macklovitch / The Duke / The Shapeshifters Todd Edwards / Tyson O’Brien / Vintage Culture / Yasmin
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Turkish Delight Psychedelic rhythms, dancefloor grooves, shamanic ceremonies… what’s not to like about islandman?
14_DISCO_POGO
It’s the dovetailing of traditional
“I was feeling lonely in the city.
details that makes Turkish trio
This made me feel like an island… so
islandman’s music so interesting.
islandman,” he explains. “It felt good
The use of voices, rhythms and
to collect the music under this
strange, ancient instruments from
name, even if it didn’t mean much to
follow-up, 2018’s ‘Kaybola’. The
all over the globe. It’s tempting to
other people. For me it created an
pieces coming across as chunkier,
see this blurring of geographical
energy field.”
chugging, and more electronic.
and cultural boundaries as an
The trio’s first recordings under
Reminiscent of the music played
attempt to show that we all share a
the islandman moniker happened in
and made by Italian DJ Daniele
common root.
2015. The band decamped to a
Baldelli.
Band leader Tolga Böyük agrees,
friend’s house near the sea in
“Rather than Baldelli, though, I
to a point: “In a way yes. I’m not sure
southern Turkey. There they
was more influenced by festivals like
about the same roots, but different
recorded long hypnotic jams. “We
Fusion, in Lärz, Germany, where I
roots moving in harmony, I think
sort of lived in the music we were
heard amazing sets,” he states.
that’s the message.”
making,” Böyük smiles.
Flanked by drummer Eralp Güven
The track ‘Ağit’ brought
Samples are integral to islandman. Böyük has collected an
and guitarist Erdem Başer, the
islandman to the attention of
armoury of them on his many
multi-instrumentalist/producer
Kenneth Bager, founder of
travels, stopping wherever he can to
Böyük is the core of islandman. Born
Copenhagen-based imprint, Music
record local musicians. There’s an
and raised in Istanbul, he began
For Dreams. The connection has
episode of the Red Bull TV series
learning the Anatolian stringed
resulted in three albums to date,
‘Searching for Sound’, that charts
instrument, the saz, aged seven. He
and mapped islandman’s ever-
the journey of Böyük, and fellow
began performing when he went to
evolving sound. Their MFD debut,
artist VeYasin, as they drive across
college in Ankara.
‘Rest in Space’, was a gentle, largely
Turkey, to Kemerburgaz in the north
“There were so many clubs and
organic affair, informed by the folk
and Burdur in the south, attempting
bars that I used to play somewhere
songs of their homeland, and 70s
to trace the country’s music back to
almost every night,” he recalls.
German rock.
its source.
“Ankara was such a small place,
“I was a big Barış Manço fan when
Along the way they jam with Cahit
with lots of local bands. I’d bump
I was a kid,” he reveals. “Then, later
Berkay, of groundbreaking 70s
into both Eralp and Erdem all the
on, Can became an important
psychedelic rockers Moğollar, and
time."
influence. That krautrock-era was a
traditional bards, the Ashiks, who in
huge mind-opener in my 20s.”
song refer to the duo as “the tongue
After college he moved back to Istanbul, but life had changed. Many
The album received dancefloor-
of his childhood friends had moved
friendly remixes from MFD
on. Recording music in his room was
labelmates, and these reworks
his escape.
appeared to impact on islandman’s
of tomorrow.” It’s a trip that eventually takes Böyük and VeYasin DISCO_POGO_15
“It was like playing Russian roulette, and you have to shoot for hours without killing any lathes... but this tension provided an incredible focus.”
“It was a huge challenge for me as a producer, who usually sits at a computer for days erasing and re-doing ideas,” he replies. “It was like playing Russian roulette, and you have to shoot for hours without killing any lathes (laughs)… but this tension provided an incredible focus. “We had only a small time to rehearse, and we recorded the LP in two days. In the end I can say that it’s one of the most fun things, to listen to the album and accept it, because all the mixing and mastering is finished too when you to Tuva, in Central Asia, where they
celebrated shindigs such as Boom,
finish the recording. You can’t re-do
witness, and capture, a shamanic
The Great Escape, Sonar, and The
it. That’s why it’s so special, why it
healing ceremony. Voices that are
Montreux Jazz Festival – where, in
sounds so alive.”
prominent on several tracks found
2018, they won the Shure Award.
on ‘Kaybola’. These field recordings
Gigs at Ibiza’s La Granja and
Night Dreamer album, plus Böyük’s
suffusing the record with a spirit
London’s Cafe OTO prompted
collaboration with Bager, East of
and soul centuries old.
‘direct-to-disc’ label, Night Dreamer,
North (“After watching these
to get in touch. This resulted in a
Tangerine Dream-soundtracked
Ceremony’ opens with Böyük’s own
session where islandman improvised
movies we suddenly found ourselves
harmonies (“Kenneth was a big
with young virtuoso sax-player
making track after track at
supporter of me singing”). As a
Muhlis Berberoglu, and veteran
Kenneth’s dinner table,” he smiles),
result, the album, sounds more pop.
Turkish jazzman, percussionist,
the trio have now started work on a
Okay Temiz.
fourth islandman longplayer that
In contrast, 2021’s ‘Godless
“We didn’t purposely move in a pop direction, but I consciously
“Okay is such a great musician,
Following the recently-released
should see the light of day on Music
wanted to make something more in
and so brave in the recording
For Dreams early next year. This will
the present, very firmly ‘here and
process, experimenting with the
be preceded by a set of remixes for
now’,” he explains. “We’d been there,
sound, and the patterns he plays.
the label this autumn.
revisiting the past, on ‘Kaybola’, and
We learnt a lot from him. He has
it keeps us alive to not repeat
years of jazz experience, with
that we are really excited about,”
things, to set our sights on new
legendary musicians like Don
he finishes. “This is why we make
oceans. The title refers to the power
Cherry. He is a big musical hero of
music. To manifest the changes,
of the simple things in life."
mine. His 70s albums were
the movement, that we see around
something very unique in Turkish
us. The memories and moments.
music.”
It’s all about collecting these
The trio’s wild live performances have made them festival favourites, with appearances at a long list of 16_DISCO_POGO
Was Night Dreamer’s ‘one-take-
“We always have lots of ideas
experiences and finding a way to
cut-straight-to-lathe’ process
incorporate them.”
nerve-racking?
ROBERT HARRIS
islandman Godless Ceremony (Digital, Double Vinyl & CD)
Kaybola
(Digital, Double Vinyl)
Rest in Space (Digital)
Available now!
Santino Surfers new album
Out Now
Do The Strand Techno veteran Phil Kieran has created his own cinematic orchestra…
The worlds of classical and
with that. I think it goes back to
electronic music might seem like
being honest about the work you do.
contradictory bedfellows – one
You feel a sense of contentment and
futuristic, the other couched in a
achievement, not because of a
canon founded centuries ago – but
million YouTube plays, but by
modern electronica has long had a
knowing in your heart that what
love affair with its more established
you’ve done is honest. Over the years,
forefather. Back in the 90s, as clubs
I’ve realised that’s the thing I get the
briefly blissed out to William Orbit’s
most long-term satisfaction from.” At the heart of Kieran’s journey is
Phil Kieran was setting out on a
a fiercely collaborative spirit, and
path that’s seen him underscore his
it’s recently entered thrilling new
status both as a techno trailblazer
territory. A couple of years shy of
and one of Northern Ireland’s most
the pandemic, he began life as
shapeshifting artists. Across two
artist-in-residence at The Strand,
decades filling out venues globally,
a striking Art Deco cinema in the
and a catalogue spanning six studio
heart of east Belfast. Without
about the day-to-day creative
albums and over 80 singles and EPs,
planning for it, his 12-month stint
process where you’re usually
he’s conspired with everyone from
has recently hit year five. Tucked
thinking about the end user or the
Roman Flügel and Depeche Mode to
away with an array of synths and
end result. Working in the studio
fellow Belfast pacesetter David
controllers, he embraced a passion
during lockdown, I felt like that
Holmes.
that’s become his latest calling card:
consideration was at 0% for the first
soundtracking for theatre, radio and
time. I was just going to make
success isn’t measurable by
film (last year, his masterfully tense
something that was a genuine
prestige. “I’m generally quite hard
score for ‘Nightride’ on Netflix
expression of something that was in
on myself and I always feel like I’m
received a well-earned nod at the
my head. I’ve sort of come close to it
just getting started,” he says. “We’re
Northern Ireland Music Prize). It
in the past, but I just let go. It felt
all told that we have to be the best
cued a breakthrough that’s always
like how it should be all the time.”
at something, but I believe in just
been knocking on his door.
It’s a hefty CV but for Kieran,
doing your best and being content 18_DISCO_POGO
“I don't think I've ever felt so
Not so much a creative leap as a natural pivot, the residency has
genuinely creatively free in my life,”
directly led to Kieran’s most
says Kieran. “There’s something
ambitious project to date. Doubling
Photo: Carrie Davenport
riff on ‘Barber’s Adagio for Strings’,
up as a love letter to cinema and the
artistry isn’t just the songs - it’s how
commissioned films as a backdrop
beautiful, neon-lit building from
it looks and feels, and how we
– strikes a rare midpoint between
which it was conjured, ‘The Strand
experience these things.”
intimate and full-blown. It takes
Cinema’ blurs expansive electronic
It’s hard to dispute contemporary
centre-stage on ‘Last Words’.
production and classical
orchestral reworkings by the likes of
Featuring an audio recording of a
instrumentation to reveal several
Goldie and Carl Craig have their
man known to Kieran calmly
new strings to the producer’s bow.
place but Kieran - much like, say,
reflecting on his imminent death,
Alongside the world-beating Ulster
Clark and Afrodeutsche in recent
the opener’s Harold Budd-like
Orchestra and 11 visual artists
years - is less concerned with
ambience sees low-key
commissioned to create a bespoke
reconstructing old worlds on ‘The
orchestration and synth arpeggios
film for each of its nine tracks,
Strand Cinema’ than he is dreaming
meld as one. It revealed some other
Kieran levels up.
up new ones. From its 180-seat
magic, too.
“I find making techno and dance
second screen on a Saturday night,
music to be the most rewarding
the project’s launch at the Strand
when I’m trying new things,” he says.
– featuring Kieran, ten members of
“It’s all about branching out. Real
the Ulster Orchestra and the
“I had that recording and always wanted to find a piece of music to DISCO_POGO_19
go together with it,” says Kieran. “When he was dying his last words were: 'I'm getting on the train now to
“It's about playing with the idea of things being imperfect and layered in order to create something else.That's the Holy Grail for me trying to get an orchestra to bend stuff and mimic machines.”
Berlin, I'm OK.' At the launch, I was chatting with his wife. She said: "Phil, the next film (‘Grand Central Terminal’) featured trains in Berlin.’ I
outright peak. Synced with a film
it dispels the low-lying myth that
never realised. I just randomly
featuring award-winning
there’s some sort of intrinsic
slotted that video in it, so it was an
choreographer and dancer Oona
conflict in uniting electronic and
incredible thing to happen. I wanted
Doherty, its icy synth phrases and
classical soundworlds.
to see how things fell, thinking
sustained orchestral motifs hit like
something interesting would come
a long-lost Giallo theme by
album where we get some of the
from it, and it did.”
Tangerine Dream.
orchestra to play deliberately out of
Ahead of its release, Kieran made
tune,” he adds. “It’s a little
percussionists, a bass clarinettist,
the point that ‘The Strand Cinema’
dangerous but it’s trying to get
an oboist and more commanding
was “created from organic sound
them to replicate the sound of an
from the screen’s stage, Kieran is a
and manipulated by machines”. Live,
LFO on a synthesizer. It’s about
casual yet compelling presence on
that detail comes into sharp focus
playing with the idea of things being
the cinema floor. Locked into a
on 'Light Through Trees,’ a high point
imperfect and layered in order to
streamlined set-up of Prophet-5,
of luminous kosmiche that sees a
create something else. That’s the
Moog Sub 37 and an effects unit, it’s
double bassist provide a steady
Holy Grail for me – trying to get an
a choice that speaks to his
rhythmic beat by hitting the top of
orchestra to bend stuff and mimic
legendary humility. Where early
his instrument. As a producer best
machines. When things are slightly
highlight ‘Grand Central Terminal’
known for searing techno cuts,
off, your ears can get more vibrancy
calls to mind the taut dance of Philip
Kieran’s decision to focus on the
from it. Your brain then creatively
Glass’ more foreboding soundtrack
humanity behind the music is
makes something up because it’s
work, ‘Elephant in Castle’ is an
significant. As well as revealing the
not perfect. Where’s the fun in
pure-cut power of collaboration in
perfection anyway?”
the pursuit of breaking new ground,
BRIAN CONEY
20_DISCO_POGO
Photo: David Holmes
With a string section, two
“There’s a couple of songs on the
Photos: Ian Bourne, Lily Burgess
The Last Days Of Disco
Decius are here to save us from the hell of modern nightclubs…
“What more can you do in a world where you feel so impotent and helpless, that the only reasonable response is to be completely ridiculous and delusional about it?” Sat in the studio he shares with his brother Luke, and Liam May is
high-profile day jobs. The May
Lias chuckles at the memory: “It
explaining some of the motivations
brothers had previously found
was a welcome break from working
behind their transformative
success in 00s dance duo Medicine
with bands, especially bands where
electronic quartet, Decius. It soon
8 before founding the infamous
really degenerate in-fighting was
becomes apparent that their sound
label Trashmouth (home at one
forever the flavour of choice. I’d call
– in fact, their entire aesthetic – is
time or another to such debauched
Liam up from time to time and tell
no accident. Musically, it’s pure acid
wastrels as Fat White Family and
him straight: ‘I need to get my gimp
house hedonism, a majestic slice of
Warmduscher). The brothers had a
on.’ And he’d oblige. All I’d have to do
boompty boomp Chicago house and
long history with the latter’s Quinn
was get on a train to New Malden
decadent New York disco all
Whalley, also one-half of Paranoid
and I could gimp out for as long as I
refracted through a very punk filter.
London, and after producing the Fat
like. Was a life saver really.”
While visually, onstage at least, a
White’s first album, ‘Champagne
vampiric performance poet leads
Holocaust’ they were now in the orbit
released furtively, with little
the charge into an orgy of illicit
of one Lias Saoudi.
fanfare. Thanks to his involvement
The group’s initial 12-inches were
excess. You’d describe the whole
“Lias had this experience in
thing as timely, if it wasn’t for the
Berghain and he began talking
in Paranoid London, Quinn was still firmly ensconced in the world of
fact that many of the songs that
about dance music,” Liam explains.
seedy nightclubs and he would
comprise the band’s wonderful
“Meanwhile we’d started getting
come back raving about the havoc
debut album, ‘Decius Vol. 1’ have
back into it [dance/electronic
the ‘Come To Me Villa’ and ‘Rupture
been around for the last few years.
music] for fun with Quinn. Lias said
Boutique’ EPs were causing on the
No matter, it still feels like what
he wanted to get involved, he came
dancefloor.
we’ve all been waiting for.
down, did a vocal in one take and
“We wanted to be anonymous,”
Originally, the group came
that became ‘Come To Me Villa’. At
says Liam. “We didn’t really want to
together as a means of blessed
that point it was like: ‘OK, here’s the
relief from the members’ more
new thing, then.’”
DISCO_POGO_23
explain anything too much. We didn’t want it to be this thing between these guys…” Luke: “Quinn was saying everyone loves this. Which obviously we liked. And then he’d come back again: ‘They really love it. Everyone’s really into it.’ So it just got gradually… it was like this is silly if we don’t do something properly. We’re wasting creativity otherwise. We sort of drifted into it I suppose.” The sound of Decius is at once instantly familiar and otherworldly. There’s an obvious homage to Chicago house, European panelbeating techno and the deviant disco that would have been played at New York’s bathhouses. There’s even a slo-mo Balearic chugger. But it’s all played through a decidedly British lens. “The way we experienced that
“I don’t want a conversation on the dancefloor! I like the dirty, dark, sweaty warehousey thing, where you can’t have a conversation.”
music when we were younger,” explains Luke, “was when it was played on tapes that had been
One of their first gigs was at
visceral sound. Liam acknowledges
copied a thousand times, and
Glastonbury’s Block9 bacchanal,
that you couldn’t just put anyone’s
records that had been played a
NYC Downlow, in 2019. Liam recalls
voice on top of the music – but Lias’
million times, so it had that dirty,
the organisers were probably
“slightly fragile, slightly quivering
crusty sort of sound. When we listen
thinking Paradise Garage with this
torrent of sexual frustration with
to a lot of those Trax records on
diva coming on to open proceedings.
music that’s quite muscular” is
Spotify we don’t recognise them as
“We get on and it was absolutely
being the same thing, so I think part
heaving,” he laughs. “Steamy. Loads
perfect. “It feels like the world’s quite like
of that has bled into the sound
of really mad people. These tall drag
that as well, right now,” Liam says.
we’re making. We want to sound
queens. The real deal. It was full-on.
As for Lias’ relationship with dance
how we experienced it. We’re not
Lias started puking everywhere as
music, a sound he knows little about,
going for hi-fi.”
soon as he began to sing.”
he admits: “If I am on the pleasure
Liam adds: “We want to sound
“Mushroom lady no show, did a
dirty because there are two types
load of gak out of fear instead. Gak
quest, dance music is ideal.”
of nightclubs. There’s the clean,
and performance are like oil and
Titled after a tyrannical Roman
modern, air-conditioned ones with
water. It was very shameful,”
emperor, it certainly chimes with
hi-tech sound systems. ‘Oh, you can
blushes Lias, recoiling at the
the band’s ‘last days of Rome’
have a conversation on the
memory. “A few people at the front
artistic vision.
dancefloor.’ Why do you fucking
grimaced. They weren’t into it.
want to do that? I don’t want a
Others were keen.”
As is Decius’ evocative name.
“Oh yeah, it’s kind of like that,” concedes Liam. “Bathhouses and
“Lias is a performance in himself,”
decadence. But we’re also having
like the dirty, dark, sweaty
laughs Liam. “He’s not a singer in a
fun with those pompous delusions
warehousey thing, where you can’t
structured or trained way. It’s
of grandeur – that we’re this
have a conversation.”
about building up this tension, and
conquering army, when obviously
he just psyches himself up and then
we’re not.”
conversation on the dancefloor! I
This raw chaos has purposefully fed into Decius’ acclaimed live show.
releases it.” This conflict between the music
24_DISCO_POGO
and the vocals is key to Decius’
Bring on ‘Decius Vol. 2’. It’s coming soon. JIM BUTLER
The Eyes Have It Eyes of Others’ post-pub, dub pop finds beauty in the mundane…
As introductions go, the description
NTS radio show,” says Bryden. “It
synth, ‘Stimulus’ contained the kind
used by the always-reliable Heavenly
was bizarre because the next thing
of chuggy synth pop you would hear
Recordings to unveil the first EP on
Andrew had messaged back to ask:
on Weatherall’s NTS show,
the label by its new signing Eyes of
‘Weatherall remix?’”
sandwiched between a Yabby You
Others was certainly evocative. “It’s
Prior to Eyes of Others, Bryden
The Blue Nile lost on the dancefloor
had spent over 10 years in various
kosmische record. Which makes
at an Optimo night; John Martyn
bands before retreating to his
sense when you discover the impact
working magic with drum loops and
bedroom trying to find his own
Weatherall had on Bryden as he
Logic; a copy of the first Suicide LP
sound. “I put the guitars away and
began to make his own electronic
washed up on the shores of
started to muck around with these
music. “Hearing The Asphodells
Portobello Beach. It’s drawn curtains
old synths trying to make dance
record (Weatherall and Tim Fairplay’s
and an overheating stereo in your
music, but to start with I was a bit
2012 LP ‘Ruled by Passion, Destroyed
friend’s living room after the rest of
formulaic,” he recalls. “Then I
by Lust’) really sealed it – the way he
town has called it a night, it’s hours
started to make it more song-
used all those dub influences with
spent watching the windows before
based, in the way New Order did
dance music. I was all over that and
sunrise in a slumbering city,” it
with ‘Power, Corruption & Lies’
became a real fan,” says Bryden.
teased ahead of the release of
which was a big influence on me.”
end of last summer.
He soon connected to the creative
While other influences ranged from King Tubby to The Beta Band,
community around Green Door
Bryden found his own sonic space
Studios in Glasgow (where groups
that was warmly familiar, yet
Edinburgh’s John M. Bryden, whose
like Golden Teacher and Happy
disconcertingly strange. Mixed by
woozy ‘post-pub couldn’t get in the
Meals had emerged) working with
Evans at Green Door Studios,
club music’ first reached our ears
studio engineer Stuart Evans,
‘Stimulus’ was released on the
thanks to the 2018 Andrew
known for his dubby sonic signature
Edinburgh label Paradise Palms,
Weatherall remix of ‘I See You in the
and love of Space Echo. “I was really
managed by Miller and home to
Shrubs’. “Weatherall had remixed
into the sound of Stu’s Sordid
fellow DIY electronic dissidents
my manager Davey’s (Miller) band
Sound System for the Invisible Inc.
Donald Dust, Jacuzzi General,
Finitribe back in the 90s so they’ve
label,” says Bryden. “He was also a
Hausfra, Happy Meals and Total
been pals since then. Davey sent
huge Weatherall fan so introduced
Leatherette. “Paradise Palms really
him the record just to play on his
me to lots of his music.”
helped me and others out and
Eyes of Others is the work of
Recorded in 2017, on an old drum 26_DISCO_POGO
machine and broken Yamaha CS01
Edinburgh really needed something like that,” says Bryden.
Photos: Chris Fernandez
‘Bewitched by the Flames’ at the tail
dub plate and some obscure
DISCO_POGO_27
“I am drawn to that bittersweet quality... I love the way Ivor Cutler wrote in this child-like whimsical way - the vulnerability and that kind of homely feeling really appeals to me.”
Four of the tracks that made up the hyper-limited ‘Bewitched by the Flames’ have now been followed by another six on what is Eyes of Others’ self-titled LP – a magical listen that jumps between leftfield synth pop, pastoral folk, pounding His next release, the aforementioned
still and this idea that your best
acid, sunshine pop and all the
‘I See You in the Shrubs’ – all
music comes from something you
spaces in between. Lyrically the
throbbing psychedelic dub and
don’t already know. And that opens
album continues Bryden’s knack of
haunted pop – was picked up by the
a new door.”
creating beauty from the mundane.
likes of Trevor Jackson and Ivan
‘I See You in the Shrubs’ was
“I guess I am drawn to that
Smagghe. It was tailor-made for
followed by his debut LP ‘Elevenses’ on
bittersweet quality and the
the mixing desk of Weatherall.
Global Warming Records. “I worked
ridiculousness of everything,” he
Sprawling over eight immaculately
very closely with Stu (Evans) on
says. “I love the way Ivor Cutler
stoned minutes, his ‘A Shrub from
co-production on that album, really
wrote in this child-like whimsical
Outer Space’ version was amongst
spending time over the songwriting
way – the vulnerability and that
the greatest of his latter-day mixes.
aspect,” he says. The result was a
kind of homely feeling really
“When the remix arrived I was
ghostly dub pop soundtrack to
appeals to me.”
really surprised,” says Bryden. “I was
“failed relationships while doing the
Today, Bryden has to confront his
expecting a four-to-the-floor, 808
dishes” all delivered through Bryden’s
fears as he takes his old synths on
kick and it was this weird, slowed
melancholic vocal that veers
the road. “When you’re in your room
down kraut-like thing with this
between singing and spoken word.
making a demo you learn things
beautiful and soft, broken-down
“I started doing the speaking
about yourself that can be quite
section in the middle.”
thing when I went to put a lyric into
daunting. And then you have to go
a melody but it sounded really
and play live and it’s definitely not
done to his record had a profound
cheesy or ham-fisted when sung,”
natural for me,” he says. “Before it
effect on Bryden. “It was like trying
he explains. “I also like using my
was just me playing for a few
to learn a new language,” he says.
voice and the syllables in a
friends but I’m really grateful for
“And that changed my approach of
percussive rhythmic way. I like the
the platform I now have through
how I made music myself – not to sit
lyrics to be like any other
Heavenly. It’s nice and feels like a
instrument and to experiment with
good home for my music.”
what the voice can do.”
ANDY THOMAS
Hearing what Weatherall had
28_DISCO_POGO
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark Pitchblack Playback: a distraction-free listening experience for audiophiles, not audio files…
The trouble with music is no-one really listens to it properly these days. OK, we know you do, because you’re the discerning type who reads Disco Pogo. But think about it: all those audio files compressed within an inch of their lives to be played through tinny smartphone or laptop speakers means that music is rarely experienced the way the artist intended anymore. “The last decade has been a depressing episode in audio history, where sound quality has played second fiddle to convenience,” states DJ and producer Ben Gomori, who conceived of and founded Pitchblack Playback as an antidote to this modern-day malaise.
The inspiration first came to him
the public, one of his sceptical
when, as a journalist, he was invited
friends finally helped him to hit on
by Ninja Tune to an Amon Tobin
the final part of the jigsaw. “He had
remove all distractions while
album preview in the Soho Hotel
just been to see a Samuel Beckett
listening to an album in full, in
cinema, listening to the playback in
play where the first act was in the
comfortable surroundings, on the
surround sound while sitting in
dark and he said: ‘I don’t get it – are
best sound system available. As you
comfy armchairs. “I was in the front
you going to do it in complete
may have guessed by the name,
row, so I could really feel the sub,
darkness like that play?’ I thought
Gomori decided to present these
and I remember thinking, this is
– that’s it! That’s the missing hook!”
playbacks in complete darkness, so
great – I really want to hear all my
But it was more than just a
that the audience’s sense of hearing
favourite music like this.”
marketing gimmick. “As soon as I
The idea is disarmingly simple:
is more fully engaged and focused. 30_DISCO_POGO
Having floated the concept of
tried it out for myself, I realised that
bringing the pre-release experience
it could be profoundly impactful. It’s
to select, ticket-buying members of
more than the sum of its parts… it all
comes together to make it
sessions, highlighting some of his
Avery for instance, with forthcoming
surprisingly intense and moving.”
favourite music and usually mixed
classic albums by Steve Reich and
Using a mixture of cinemas, clubs,
live. He tends to favour artists
Brian Eno planned. “We don’t tend to
live music venues, audio showrooms
whose work best showcases the
do many full-on dance records
and bespoke set-ups, Pitchblack
in-the-dark experience.
because they can be a bit
Playback aims to deliver the best
“It’s less about the genre and
overwhelming on the ear – and you
listening environment possible,
more about the energy and textures
being careful to pick the right room
and contrasts,” he explains. “We
and system for the right record. The
don’t really do things that are on
listening, Gomori has created his
original recording is then upmixed in
one level or without nuance – which
mix of Kate Bush songs, featuring
order to be played through the
could include albums that I love, but
deep cuts, B-sides and rare live
venue’s sound system, creating a
I know they’re just not right for the
tracks.
truly immersive experience. That’s
context. Straight-up, recorded-live-
“It’s mostly less obvious stuff –
the theory anyway. But the proof is
in-the-room indie doesn’t massively
there will probably be some very
in the listening – so we headed off to
benefit from what we do. It has to
disappointed people,” he says,
Riverside Studios in Hammersmith,
be something with a bit more
smirking. The beauty of picking less
London to experience it for
atmosphere, or something more
well-known tunes is you are
ourselves.
layered in the way it’s produced.”
encouraged to listen even more, and
The mixtapes reflect this, with
to fully lose yourself in the moment.
Alongside playbacks of entire albums – often timed to coincide
appearances from Aphex Twin,
with a significant anniversary or
Burial, Four Tet, James Blake,
re-release – Gomori also produces
Andrew Weatherall and Leftfield.
what he calls Pitchblack Mixtape
They’ve premiered albums by Daniel
want to dance to them!” For this evening’s intense
After some minor housekeeping – reminding the audience to put DISCO_POGO_31
their mobiles on Airplane mode, and the strictly no-talking, nowhispering, no-singing policy (“This
“It's less about the genre and more about the energy and textures and contrasts. We don't really do things that are on one level or without nuance.”
is not a sing-along event”), the lights are turned off (because low level fire
of Bush’s voice, gleaned from honest
through on her obscure single
escape lighting is required in the
interviews, are included). “Her ability
‘Experiment IV’ (about a secret
venues, a black-out eye-mask is
to inhabit characters and narrative,
musical weapon designed to kill
also included with the ticket), and
the elemental side of her work, can
through soundwaves, naturally). It’s
we are at the mercy of the
feel quite magical and spiritual,”
a genuinely moving experience –
soundtrack for an hour. The result is
Gomori notes. “There’s so much
with several audience members
a deep dive – a truly immersive
going on there, on an album like
lining up afterwards to tell Gomori
sensation, as if you are moving
‘Hounds of Love’ – the things that
how they cried at specific points,
through the sound as it swirls
work the very best for us are those
and to gush about his choice of
around you – sinking beneath the
that have that narrative going all
tracks.
waves, soaring with the ethereal
the way through, taking you on that
choral harmonies. Bush’s music is
incredible journey.”
ideal for this: cinematic, dramatic, dynamic, subtle and surprising.
While the quality of the recordings
“It’s great to see the different crowds that different albums bring in, and the range of ages,” he says.
differ wildly, this is cleverly worked
“The first time we did Kate Bush,
into the mix as the sound envelops
there were students there and
her enough credit for is what an
you. You feel the bass in your chest,
people in their 60s who’d seen her
amazing producer she is,” enthuses
disembodied cheering, voices
on her first tour.”
Gomori. “She’s been producing and
intertwining and disappearing as if
co-producing her stuff from the
into the fog. The deep rumble at the
experience, simultaneously draining
start, built her own studio, always
start of the live version of ‘Running
and elating. And a reminder in this
been fascinated by new technology.”
Up That Hill’ is a genuine goosebump
fast-paced world of streaming and
moment, but the more subtle details
‘convenience listening’, that
multilayered strings, synth chords,
are equally as startling, such as the
sometimes it’s good to take the time
samples and snippets of dialogue
way that the haunting ‘Under the
out to sit down, dim the lights and
(as well as those on record, snippets
Ivy’ (the B-side to ‘Running Up That
really try to hear your favourite
Hill’) segues perfectly into ‘This
music afresh – and feel touched like
Woman’s Work’, or the way the
the very first time.
disturbing, cut-up vocals cut
MARK HOOPER
“Something that people don’t give
This is apparent in the
32_DISCO_POGO
It’s a strangely physical
34_DISCO_POGO
Photos: Alex Lambert. Stylist: Abigail Hazard. Make-up: Lucinda Worth
Kick Out The Jamz No matter what Jamz Supernova does – broadcasting, promoting, running a record label – it has to be a family affair… Jamz Supernova has been thinking
one of the core voices spotlighting
never thought that I couldn’t do it,
about the future. Tendrils of hair
forward-thinking music talent in
coming from that specific
peeking out from beneath her
the UK today – but ‘then what?’ is a
environment – because they were
orange beanie, she’s pursing her lips
question befitting someone with as
doing it.”
thoughtfully: “You get to this stage
much drive and excitement for the
and it’s like... then what?”
space she works in, not to mention
rife when you are in some way
her warm self-assurance.
marginalised by existing systems. “I
The DJ, broadcaster and label-
Still, impostor syndrome can be
head is contemplating this via video
Jamz has always had a lot of
call from her sofa, where she’s doing
confidence in what she wants to do
sometimes I don’t feel confident in
a literal balancing act: her giddy
– the story goes that from aged 17
my ability,” she concedes. “But I am
toddler, Forest, is under one arm,
she wanted to be on the BBC; within
confident that I can get there, that I
and her dog, an adorable cavapoo
a few years she had interned and
can improve, so I try to lean into
called Ché, is under the other.
produced for them (alongside
that side.” She attributes this
Evidently, 32-year-old Jamz – real
learning the ropes on influential
mindset to her mum: “I think being a
name Jamilla Walters – has happily
youth station Reprezent). By 24, she
young mum and having Black
found herself in a new chapter of
had made her own, coveted show on
children, she was very much like ‘you
life, and so perhaps this
1Xtra happen. It’s something which
can do anything you want, the world
consideration of next steps is
she credits to her upbringing.
is gonna tell you this or that but you
somewhat inevitable.
Growing up in south-east London,
walk into a room with your head
she entered her teen years in the
held high.' It was really drilled into
Jamz to be resting on her laurels as
early 2000s just as grime was
us, it was almost annoying!” Jamz
it is. She’s already been presenting
coming up.
laughs. “But I think she just wanted
And yet, it would be very easy for
have a lot of self-doubt, and
on the BBC for over a decade, with
“I think there was a general kind
us to know, maybe the world isn’t
acclaimed shows across 1Xtra and
of excitement around Black culture
made for you, but you can make the
6 Music, respectively, known for
and what was possible,” she recalls,
world for yourself.”
shouting out a broad, bold array
namechecking So Solid Crew’s Top
of underground artistry from
of the Pops performance and Dizzee
love of music, and how her taste as
around the world; and that’s
Rascal’s game-changing debut
a selector doesn’t fit under any neat
alongside running Future Bounce,
album. “I think it made it more
tag (having grown-up with pirate
her tastemaking label that has
attainable, ‘cause this was a DIY
radio and SoundCloud-era R&B, her
put out work from the likes of
scene. In my school was P Money and
2018 Boiler Room goes from Ashanti
UNIIQU3, Bianca Oblivion, Scratch
Little Dee. They were quite a few
to Bad Gyal to Peggy Gou, by way of
DVA and more.
years older, but you’d see them in
Justin Timberlake). There’s a copy of
Even if she stayed put, Jamz Supernova would still be considered
Jamz’s family life is integral to her
school and go home and hear them on Kiss FM, it was mad. And so I
DISCO_POGO_35
Soul Jazz Records’ excellent ‘Life Between Islands’ propped up on a shelf behind her during our call, and its subtitle, 'Soundsystem Culture – Black Musical Expression 19732006', feels a fitting backdrop to her own story. “That kind of sound system culture was really embedded in my family and the way that we listened to music,” she explains. Her grandparents on her mum’s side met at a blues party in Birmingham – like something out of a movie, her nan was a white Irish woman who loved reggae, her grandad a Black Jamaican man in a reggae band. Decades later when Jamz was born, her young parents had house parties, her dad would buy the latest tapes and CDs from HMV before recording them and taking them back, her uncle taught her to play reggae 7-inches on his decks, and her aunt even took her to raves. She laughs fondly thinking back on it all: “Everybody in my family thinks they’re a DJ.” Now, having started her own family unit with her partner, producer Sam Interface, there’s a new layer of intentionality to her working life. Yes, her 'then what?' includes working on her DJing (“I feel confident now technically, so how can I challenge myself again?
because they’re mindful that with
cognisant that society has taught
How can I take my sets to a new
dwindling live venues, “it’s up to us,
mothers especially to feel guilty if
place, and give my audience the
when we are in positions to have
they’re not 100% focussed on their
best time?”); building her business
autonomy and ownership of these
child at all times. “I like my own
acumen around the label
spaces." Plus, it’s hard to argue with
space, I do love touring,” she says.
(“Development is important – how
“good wine, good food, good music,
“And people might say: ‘How can you
can I level up and give these artists
maybe you don’t know who the DJs
enjoy being away from your own
the exposure that they need, and
are but there’s a trapdoor and it’s
child?’ but we are multifaceted
also have a transparent business
Gilles Peterson down there for the
people, time to yourself and
behind that?”); trying her hand out
night."
nourishing yourself are really
at TV (“I have ideas, I don’t wanna
But through all these plans and
important things. And then I miss
just walk in and talk – how do I
ideas, she says, the thing that stays
her so much, and I can’t wait to
contribute to developing ideas from
on her mind is: “How can I do all
come home.”
the beginning?”); putting on more
those things and provide for my
nights; and maybe one day, if they
family, and create the best home,
new stage, but Jamz Supernova
have sufficient funds, running a pub
and make sure everyone’s feeling
knows the future is hers to make for
slash music venue with Sam,
loved and looked after?” Parenthood
herself. Here’s hoping it involves a
and the music industry do not make
space for roasts and raves.
the easiest pairing, and she’s
TARA JOSHI
36_DISCO_POGO
Maybe she’s still figuring out this
Faceless Techno B*llocks? Just who – or what – are electronic music superstarsin-waiting Two Shell?
From the very beginning, Two Shell
metaverse off the back of a series of
made it clear they wanted their
moves cementing their enigma: a
sonic aesthetic to take centre stage.
password-protected website called
They weren't interested in playing it
Shell.tech, complete with a hidden
safe or seeking industry approval.
chatroom, singular downloads, and
Instead, they wanted love and hype
a lockdown hotline for text chats
from their fans – dancers who sweat
with fans. In the real world, the duo
until dawn and fellow music heads
– we know that much – began
with incalculable curiosity.
featuring in DJ mixes from
Two Shell dropped their debut
electronic royalty, with plays from
‘Access EP’ in 2019 via Bristol techno
Ben UFO and Four Tet, while they
imprint Livity Sound. This was
featured in Jamie xx’s Radio 1
followed by a string of club-ready
Essential Mix.
joints primarily through their own
The best was yet to come. For
Mainframe Audio label. All set
their 2022 Boiler Room session at
dancefloors ablaze, merging
Primavera, Two Shell sent out two
saccharine hyperpop and glitchy
imposters – heavily styled in the
experimental electronica with
guise of hip hop’s masked master of
techno throbs and post-dubstep,
aliases, MF Doom – in mesh masks,
bass-heavy madness.
fingerless gloves, medieval
There were no names, no studio
chainmail, white fur hats, and
shots, no poetic prose from a PR
bug-eyed sunglasses reminiscent of
attempting to articulate who – or
a Cyberdog casualty. The two
what – Two Shell were. Instead,
interlopers mimed a pre-recorded
attention was garnered in the
set packed out with 00s edits of Sugababes, Justin Timberlake and
38_DISCO_POGO
Coors alongside their unreleased
productions. A heaving mass of
He wasn’t finished there: “The fans
and showmanship over the music
festivalgoers rushed the decks,
who understand this stuff; they
being played. I'm smirking right now
while the actual Two Shell pressed
have the intellectual capacity to
just imagining one of those
play and rocked out on the other
truly appreciate the chipmunk-style
addlepated Tech-House Bros
side of the booth.
vocals of the tunes, to realise that
scratching their heads in confusion
Their set sent the internet into a
they're not just bait pop samples –
as Two Shell's genius wit unfolds
frenzy. One excitable YouTube fan,
they say something deep about LIFE.
itself on their laptop screens."
who confessed to having a Hessle
As a consequence, people who
Audio tattoo, waxed lyrical in the
dislike Two Shell truly ARE idiots – of
retorted: "I genuinely think these
comments: ‘You have to have a very
course, they wouldn't appreciate the
guys are the biggest trolls in music
high IQ to understand Two Shell. The
humour in Two Shell's pre-recorded
ever!"
drops are extremely subtle, and
sets, often featuring pretend
With lines in the sand drawn, the
without a solid grasp of contemporary
imposter DJs, which itself is a
duo finally spoke up last summer to
bass music most of their selections
cryptic reference to the industry's
set the record straight. Well,
will go over a typical listener's head.”
obsession with DJ cult of personality
partially. In an online text interview
To which one naysayer simply
“We can use music to bring back spirits of dead people. We don't need to bring back the old days for our granddaddies to feel smooth and sexy. We love him just the way he is.”
collaborator Eternal USA, all while preparing to take to this summer’s festival circuit. On ‘‘Lil Spirits’, Two Shell lean into the internet-brained aesthetic they've developed through their extra-musical stunts, dialing up the
(their only one to date) with The
the globe swapping track IDs, set
helium-ballooned vocals,
Face, which in true Gonzo-style
lists, and encrypted links to
bubblegum basslines, and digital
self-destructed 12 hours after going
download unreleased bangers like
intimacy in their lyrics, with
live, they discussed the issues of
Sugababes edit ‘Round Round’.
notification pings and chatroom-
elitism in dance music.
Others speculate Two Shell’s
crush admissions that mimic the
“It's important for us to push the
identity to be Ben UFO or Four Tet.
dopamine hit of opening your phone
form and focus the attention on the
Possibly Disclosure. Some fans claim
to a flirty smiley face or "x". Are they
music,” they said, before adding
to be Two Shell, there are Two Shell
holding a mirror to our wretched
enigmatically: “We believe in letting
‘sightings’, others just beam with
ways or pushing us further into our
go of our music and not having a
accolades such as Two Shell being
screens?
hierarchy where the makers live up
the most hyped act since Overmono.
Of course, every artist, must log
in a big oak tree, and the villagers
Of course, Two Shell aren't the
off at some point. When questioned
can't get up to pick the berries. It's
first to test the theory of anonymity.
by The Face about what party they
like, let's shake this tree and let all
The list of enigmatic electronic
would visit if given access to a time
the tasty fruit come crashing down."
heavyweights who carved out their
machine, Two Shell kept their focus
Speaking about building their
own groove before them is lengthy.
on the future: "We're here to help
cyberspace community, Two Shell
From Daft Punk to SOPHIE; Aphex
peeps feel something in the now. We
said: “It’s so cool how everyone
Twin to Burial there are a litany of
can use music to bring back spirits
connected & can see & feel the same
musical geniuses who toyed with
of dead people, we don't need to
things. There’s a sort of soul and
ambiguity to push their art to the
bring back the old days for our
spirit that’s created from people
forefront.
granddaddies to feel smooth and
being able to express themselves in cyberspace.” Take a quick online dive into
Fast forward to the present, and they've got behind production for
sexy, we love him just the way he is.” Who are Two Shell? Wind-up
Caroline Polachek, dropped two
merchants or deep, critical
Reddit, comment sections and fan
more EPs – ‘Icons’ and the recent ‘‘Lil
thinkers? Maybe they’re both. Or
forums, and you'll find folks across
Spirits’ – turned out some mind-
neither. When the music sounds this
bending visuals across a string of
good, who cares?
music videos with frequent
TRACY KAWALIK
40_DISCO_POGO
ABOVEBOARDDIST.CO.UK : DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION / PHYSICAL DISTRIBUTION / LABEL & ARTIST DEVELOPMENT / DIGITAL MARKETING / SOCIAL MEDIA SERVICES / MANUFACTURING / ABOVE BOARD PROJECTS / D2C FULFILMENT / ACCOUNTING & ANALYTICS
Running from 1995 to 2002, ‘Space’ was a Wednesday night founded by Kenny Hawkes and Luke Solomon. It inhabited the underground world of Bar Rumba right in the heart of London’s West End and took place each and every week. Kenny and Luke had both been regular fixtures on infamous London Pirate Radio station ‘Girls FM’, and were seeking a suitable place to play the kind of music they supported on their respective radio shows. They were presented with a weekly opportunity at Bar Rumba and snapped it up. ‘Space’ was THE place for 7 solid years, hosting local and international guests from the house music community week in week out, to 200+ hardcore and dedicated followers. Regular guest bookings read like a ‘who’s who’ of the music scene with sets from Derrick Carter, Andrew Weatherall, DJ Harvey, Tom Middleton, A Man Called Adam, Ralph Lawson and Huggy, Francois Kevorkian, Carl Cox, Chez Damier and Ron Trent.... the list goes on and on and on! Music from seminal record labels such as Classic, Prescription, Cajual, Paper, Relief was played on rotation amongst a killer mix of Disco classics, alternative 80s music, leftfield B-sides and techno. As Soho changed beyond recognition and clubbing moved Eastwards, Kenny and Luke decided to call it a day. Sadly, Kenny Hawkes died in 2011, leaving a huge hole in the dance music community. Kenny was a legendary figure with an unmistakable sound and DJ style, he had a warped sense of humour and a huge personality and he continues to be dearly missed by all to this day.
SPACE
A TRIBUTE TO KENNY HAWKES, THE DARK LORD OF DEEP HOUSE TWO PART VINYL DOUBLE PACK COMPILATION
As a tribute to Kenny, his musical partner in crime Luke Solomon alongside ‘Space’ regular and DJ / Editor supreme Jonny Rock, and former Classic Records label boss Leon Oakey have joined forces to celebrate his life through music. 3 years of tweaking, pooling music and clearing tracks have culminated in 2 very special double albums and a digital compilation. All profits from the compilation will be donated to the British Liver Trust.
PART 1 OUT NOW, PART 2 RELEASED 7TH APRIL 2023 Future Jazzers, notorious experimentalists and outfield eccentrics stumble onto the dancefloor. In the 90s. In the UK. From an electronic music perspective, the period 1992 to 1996 in the UK that this compilation celebrates, was one of dizzying sonic diversification. It was also a particularly turbulent time in the UK, not only politically and economically, but also culturally too. Economic catastrophe in ‘92 was followed by widespread poverty, a cost of living crisis and countless political scandals. Meanwhile, John Major’s Tory government pandered to its political base via unpleasant, authoritarian legislation that seemingly sought to crush rave culture, alternative lifestyles, and traveller communities. The UK was not so much a ‘Happy Land’ – to quote the name of this compilation – as an angry and divided one. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Throughout, the music created by producers based across these Isles remained uniquely British, speeding up a process begun in the late 1980s through the emergence of street soul, bleep & bass and breakbeat hardcore – musical styles whose roots in multicultural inner-city communities made them distinctly different from the Black American sounds that had inspired their creators. It was here, rather than in the indie pubs of Camden, that real musical revolutions were taking place.
HAPPY LAND
A COMPENDIUM OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC FROM THE BRITISH ISLES 1992-1996 TWO PART VINYL DOUBLE PACK COMPILATION
This deep diving selection brings together some truly adventurous and original electronic music from this period, much of it very hard to find. Major label outings connect with white label oddities with ease. Perhaps it could even be argued that many of these unearthed gems fit more easily into DJ sets in 2023 than they ever did at the time. The off-kilter swing of Richard D James’ obscure and highly sought after Strider B outing, ‘Bradley’s Robot’ is joined by further rare cuts from Cabaret Voltaire and the Black Dog, and artists as diverse as Ultramarine, Herbert, Fretless AZM, and Radioactive Lamb, amongst others.
PART 1 OUT NOW, PART 2 RELEASED 14TH APRIL 2023 In 2021 Velocity Press published Who Say Reload: The Stories Behind the Classic Drum & Bass Records of the 90s, an oral history of the records that defined jungle/drum & bass straight from the original sources. The deluxe coffee table book has since sold thousands of copies and prompted many to comment that it should have an accompanying soundtrack. Now author Paul Terzulli has compiled a Who Say Reload album. However, where the book focused solely on classics and anthems, the compilation takes a different route and offers up a selection of top-quality tunes from some of the scene’s most respected artists and labels. Like the book, the album covers the genre’s nineties golden era, and the many styles of D&B are represented. Pioneering producers and crowd-pleasing favourites sit alongside a few sought-after obscurities by the unsung heroes of the scene. Most importantly, there are some absolute bangers! The 16 tracks are spread over two volumes of 2 x 12”s, and there is also a 13-track digital version, taking you on a journey through music forged from raw breakbeats and basslines that soundtracked a culture of all-night raves, specialist record shops and pirate radio stations. Jungle/drum & bass is approaching its 30th anniversary. Its sonic and cultural legacy is still being felt today. There’s still plenty of old music that might be “new” to some, and these tunes still pack as much of a punch as they did back in the day. That unique energy generated by a combination of breakbeats, bass and creativity never gets old.
WHO SAY RELOAD
ORIGINAL 90S JUNGLE AND DRUM & BASS COMPILED BY PAUL TERZULLI TWO PART VINYL DOUBLE PACK COMPILATION
Produced in conjunction with Above Board distribution. All tracks mastered from original sources and fully licensed. Mastering by Beau Thomas @ Ten Eight Seven Mastering. Liner notes from Who Say Reload author Paul Terzulli. Photography by Eddie Otchere. Artwork and design by Protean Productions.
PART 1 OUT NOW, PART 2 RELEASED 24TH MARCH 2023
BRING THE NOISE
In the early-80s an enigmatic outfit comprised of studio boffins, one real musician and a gobby cultural agitator combined mysterious philosophical meaningfulness with a lush, avant-garde and utterly artificial sound that predicted the future. Who’s afraid of the Art of Noise? Madonna and Sean Penn, possibly. But not Andrew Harrison…
The drums sounded like cannons. It’s late-1982/ early-1983 and one of the least likely collaborations in musical history – resurrected prog rock behemoths Yes plus Ballardian bubblegum pop act The Buggles – is about to bear strange fruit. Producer and former Buggle Trevor Horn and his team are trying to get the drums right for an electronically-inspired album that will relocate Yes from the muddy, organic 1970s to the fluorescent 1980s. They are about to create the signature sound of the new decade, a crunching, stomping, boomboom-tak that will rival ‘Funky Drummer’ and ‘When the Levee Breaks’ as the engine room of hip hop and more. But they don’t know it yet. “We were on like month eleven of this thing and we’d been in every studio across London,” recalls
American magazine’s award for Best Black Act of 1984. Another early track, the languorous 10-minute ‘Moments in Love’, would become a Balearic staple, a prototype for several chillout booms, and the soundtrack for Madonna’s wedding to Sean Penn. Their real legacy is in the successive waves of dance music prefigured in their early sampladelic experiments. You can hear echoes of the Art Of Noise in The Chemical Brothers’ own block rocking beatbox, in Coldcut and The Avalanches’ cut-andpaste jamborees, in Aphex and Autechre’s breezeblock collisions, in all the lineages of big beat and ambient house – Boards Of Canada’s woozy beauty is pure ‘Moments in Love’. And dance music knows this. The ‘Hey!’ that’s sampled on The Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ comes from ‘Close (To the Edit)’ by the Art of Noise,
Gary Langan, then Horn’s engineer. “We’d got Alan White’s drums up on a riser in the middle of Air Studio One and they sounded just fantastic, biggest drum sound I’d ever done. And then we got to the end of this incredible session and they said: ‘Yeah, we’re going to scrap it’.” Langan, agog, sneaked the drum tapes back to Horn’s Sarm Studios and his mate JJ Jeczalik, a non-musician who had become custodian of the studio’s latest, most expensive toy. The £18,000 Fairlight “computer music instrument” could ingest any sound and play it back across the complete scale. Horn’s team had already used it to reconstruct every note that ABC played into the machined perfection of their ‘Lexicon of Love’ album. But they’d often wondered what would happen if, instead of trying to emulate real instruments, they used it to warp, layer and abuse sounds – any sounds – in a modern spin on musique concrète, mid-century French composer Pierre Schaefer’s technique of building music from found noises. They threw White’s bass and snare into the Fairlight and stretched it as far as they could, looping it by ear. The beats became distorted and crushed. Without noticing they’d sampled it on the wrong beat, boom-boom-tak becoming tak-boomboom. “But it sounded spot on,” says Jeczalik. “I’ve redone it ‘properly’ since and it just doesn’t work.” Hours of modification and additions produced an unreal soundscape of beats, electronics… and the sound of a tennis match. This was ‘Beat Box’ and the beginning of the Art of Noise, in which Langan, Jeczalik, Horn’s keyboard player and string arranger Anne Dudley, plus the NME journalist Paul Morley, would form a group without a face – and make music for the future from pieces of the past. Represented only by images of theatre masks or spanners, the Art of Noise were usefully anonymous: when ‘Beat Box’ made No.1 on the US Dance Charts, the (all-white) band won one
‘Beat Box’’s nimbler cousin. All five Art Of Noisers get a writing credit on this multimillion seller. Surely it makes them more money than the originals did? “But I can tell you,” says Anne Dudley, “it is divided up into really tiny portions…” Some 40 years after Gary Langan and JJ Jeczalik created what is reputedly the first-ever looped break on a sampler, they’re talking (and, separately, to Anne Dudley) via another emergent technology with horribly low bit rate and potential for abuse: Zoom. Today the pair are basking in the satisfaction of finally playing two VJ-augmented Art Of Noise shows at London’s Jazz Café which were postponed – twice – during the pandemic. Because it was just the two of them, they had to go under the name Art Of Noise/Revision. The two rhapsodise over the quality of bass available to the modern live show. “We could never have done this back in the 80s,” says Langan. “The Fairlight’s bandwidth was about the size of a KitKat – long, long and skinny. No bottom end and no top end either. Now you can really wallop it.” Langan is geezerish and energetic, a Londoner from Wimbledon who started as a junior engineer at Sarm Studios in east London more or less straight from technical college. His father had been a musician who played on the BBC Light Programme at lunchtimes. “It was from hanging out with my dad that I knew what I wanted to be,” he says. “I wanted to be on the other side of the glass, in these things called recording studios.” JJ Jeczalik has the dry wit and laid-back demeanour you might associate with, say, an I.T. teacher at a progressive private school. That’s because he used to be an I.T. teacher at a progressive private school, after leaving music in the 2010s. Back in the early-80s, he had fallen into Trevor DISCO_POGO_43
Horn’s orbit almost by accident. When Horn’s fellow Buggle Geoff Downes bought a Fairlight with the royalties from ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’, it fell to Jeczalik to work out what to do with it. “I just looked at this thing,” he says, “And thought, wow, this is it. This is the future.” The real genesis of the Art of Noise was the string of gleaming, perfect pop albums that the Horn team – Gary, JJ, Anne Dudley, engineer-producer Steve Lipson and a select few others – created in and around Sarm Studios. For ABC’s ‘Lexicon of Love’ in 1982 they’d taken the then-radical step of using the Fairlight and drum machines to precision-engineer the tightest dance record then possible. But ‘Duck Rock’, the album they made with former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, took things even further. McLaren had the notion of assembling a travelogue of ‘folk dances of the world’ and enlisted Horn and the team to realise it. What could have been a dry exercise in anthropology turned into an ecstatic celebration which introduced British daytime radio to Sowetan township music, AfricanAmerican competitive rope-skipping (‘Double Dutch’ was an actual hit)… and the hip hop universe of pirate radio and scratching. “Malcolm, for all that he was a scoundrel and completely hopeless musically, he just had an attitude of mind that anything goes,” says Anne Dudley. “He broadened all of our minds. Malcolm’s brain worked at about twice the speed of sound. You couldn’t keep up with him.” Making it, however, was a nightmare. After days of structureless paralysis in New York, Jeczalik stumbled on a late-night radio show where DJs the World’s Famous Supreme Team would scratch, rap and throw out shouts over nascent hip hop records. “These guys were amazing,” he says, “and they paid for their slot by going pickpocketing on Times Square… I thought if we could approach Malcolm’s album like their radio show then it might make sense.” Jeczalik recorded Se’Devine The Mastermind and Just Allah The Superstar straight off the speaker into his Walkman. They are the shouts that set ‘Duck Rock’ alight: ‘all that scratchin’ is makin’ me itch… too much of that snow white.’ Later in London, Horn and his team cut all the world music they’d collected – Tennessee hillbilly fiddling, Dominican merengue, South African chants – onto acetates for the World’s Famous Supreme Team to scratch, then fed the results into the Fairlight. Dressed in Keith Haring illustrations, ‘Duck Rock’ became many a young B-Boy and B-Girl’s introduction to hip hop – even if it was crossbred with square-dance. But there were offcuts, bits of mangled sound that 44_DISCO_POGO
“I was doing a lot with Frankie Goes To Hollywood at the time and I saw their taxi bills. They were getting mobbed and we certainly didn’t want to be in the public eye. Then Morley goes: ‘Well, what about using this spanner for your photos instead?’ And that’s it. Perfect.”
didn’t have a home. “Trevor would go: ‘Ah, yeah, that’s an interesting racket, sort it out eh Gary?’” Jeczalik recalls. “And eventually we get the opportunity to pull out all these bits and do our own thing.” Dudley describes hours of free-range exploration. “Gary’s an absolute studio animal,” she says, “Whatever we did, Gary would do something to it and it would sound better. And JJ would be the first to admit that he’s not a musician. So, they’d play about all night with these rhythm sounds, and they didn’t really have anything to put on top – and I was happy to be the musical element of it.” One instance was an early obsession with an iconic sound of the 1980s, the Orchestra Stab. They had four stabs, repeated Philip Glass-style, but no clear direction. Then Paul Morley – who had joined Horn’s ZTT label as a sort of in-house PR man and provocateur – asked: “Why don’t you just call it ‘Moments in Love’?” That was what the four notes appeared to be saying. “We thought: ‘Oh, that’s perfect,” says Dudley, “and it immediately inspired us to get back to it and develop it into this huge ten-minute thing.” As well as selecting the fabulously pretentious quotes from Nietzsche, Baudrillard and Kierkegaard which adorned ZTT releases, Morley was also responsible for the band’s name, borrowed from a manifesto by the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo: The Art of Noises (Jeczalik suggested dropping the ‘s’) “We thought this name is so good, we have to be good to live up to it,” says Dudley. “All our tracks used to have really, really boring titles, like ‘Ruler’ (from the noise made by a twanged school ruler) and other dreadful things. We needed Morley to give it this sheen of mysterious philosophical meaningfulness.”
Morley was also the one behind the tactic of anonymity, which the band loved. “I was doing a lot with Frankie Goes To Hollywood at the time and I saw their taxi bills,” says Jeczalik. “They were getting mobbed and we certainly didn’t want to be in the public eye. Then Morley goes: ‘Well, what about using this spanner for your photos instead?’ And that’s it. Perfect.” After their relationship with ZTT fell apart – “the deal was crap,” says Langan succinctly – the Art of Noise moved on to China Records where they had hits including the ‘Beat Box’-a-like ‘Legs’, and were among the first to spot the potential in resurrecting the careers of neglected pop institutions. First came the prince of rock’n’roll guitar twang Duane Eddy. “He was very nervous,” says Jeczalik. “He thought we were going to sample him and make him sound horrible. But then he saw our piles of old analogue gear and relaxed somewhat.” Next came Tom Jones, then in the doldrums of Vegas cabaret, for whom they turned Prince’s stripped-down ‘Kiss’ into a booming worldwide hit. “We were in awe of him,” says Dudley, “but he was actually extraordinarily open to anything we wanted to do. He’d done a lot of country rock but his heart is in rock’n’roll, and he could see that ‘Kiss’ was just a great rock’n’roll song. And he just went for it.”
Bands are not designed to last forever. By the early-90s The Art of Noise had wound down. “There’s only so many instrumental tracks that you want to do, really,” says Dudley. “We just sort of ran out of steam.” Would she rejoin Langan and Jeczalik for this latest iteration of the Art of Noise? “Well, never say never,” she replies. Langan and Jeczalik, on the other hand, are preparing for three 80s Rewind festivals over the summer with the Revision/VJ set and toying with releasing one of the medleys from the show as a download. “But the thing is,” says Jeczalik, “Gary and I were so bowled over by the dynamics and the depth of the live sound. Do we really want to compress that down for the interwebs?” “I like the idea that it’s there and gone,” says Langan. “You have to be there the next time.” So, there you go. The most dedicatedly artificial band in pop are now concentrating on the sanctity of the live experience. Where will it end? You can even see their faces these days.
DISCO_POGO_45
DIVERSIFY AND BECOME KNOWN TO THE INDUSTRY “I started to know DJs and agents
Noah Ball had been putting on club
START OFF ON THE STREETS
well and I put on concerts with jazzy
“In ‘98 some friends in Manchester
acts, live hip hop and reggae. We
were putting on nights and I used to
used to book shows into Leeds
DJ and flyer for them. Sub Tub was a
University’s event spaces. So I learnt
hip hop and drum’n’bass night with
how to do gig sheets for live nights
a skate ramp inside the club. For
and working with agents. Then I
some bizarre reason, when you’re 18,
started working at Leeds Met as
handing out flyers at 4am is a job
their events coordinator so I looked
that you actively enjoy doing.”
after touring shows as a rep for the
nights for over 10 years before he
Live Nation, SJM and Metropolis shows.”
– by chance – in 2008. Originally
TRY LOTS OF DIFFERENT THINGS
starting with the Outlook festival in
“Getting a broad understanding of
Croatia, this was soon followed by
the industry can really help, running
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF A LUCKY BREAK
the equally revered Dimensions. In
the guest list, teaching yourself
“When I was living in Liverpool I DJed
2018, he began booking London’s
basic Photoshop or InDesign,
at a club called the Magnet which
funk and soul festival Cross The
wristbanding, doing shifts in
was owned by Eddie (O’Callaghan)
Tracks and also launched the
stewarding, security, car parks... It’s
who, alongside Nick (Colgan), went
weekend camping event We Out
all invaluable knowledge if you want
on to create The Garden Festival in
Here with Gilles Peterson. He talks
to really understand how festivals
Croatia. In 2008 I bought a ticket for
us through the highs of his career,
work. You might not think it at the
The Garden Festival and Eddie
but also reveals his battle scars
time.”
noticed my name on a PayPal
got involved in the festival scene
Photos: Noah Ball by Dan Medhurst, Rob Jones
when things can go wrong or you
receipt. He got in touch to see if it
end up with an eye-watering loss…
BECOME A SMALL FISH IN SOME BIG PONDS
was the same Noah who had DJed
BE PASSIONATE ABOUT MUSIC FROM YOUR VERY FIRST EVENT
“In my early 20s I lived at various
to extend the programme of events
points in Manchester, Liverpool and
in Croatia, they had a beautiful site
Leeds and tried to be involved in the
in Petrčane, a tiny fishing village. So
“I was at art college in Blackburn
scene wherever I was at the time.
one thing led to another and we put
and my first attempt at putting on
About 20 years ago in Leeds I
together the first Outlook as a
gigs was taking my home stereo
started a weekly Friday at the
concept very quickly. It was March
system to the local pub near my
Faversham called New Bohemia
2008 when they saw my PayPal and
college each Wednesday evening. I
which ran for five years. It probably
by the end of April we had pretty
was playing a pretty poor mish
only just broke-even over those
much launched the festival. We were
mash of UK hip hop and techno,
years but I also ran a student night
young, naive and full of youthful
picking up any unwanted records
on Wednesdays called JagerBomb
confidence which I guess is how a
from older friends. Jiggery Pokery
and that’s where the money came
lot of promoters start.”
was the name of one of these early
from… it paid for all the other
nights. I got better at names.”
endeavours.”
for him. Nick and Eddie were looking
DISCO_POGO_47
MAKE SURE YOUR FESTIVAL HAS A USP “This was just when dubstep was really coming into prominence. Leeds was big for dubstep and reggae and I’d been working there for six years, Simon Scott who ran Sub Dub and Exodus - the DMZ of the north - came on board and these elements were right for Outlook as a point of difference in Croatia. Dubstep, drum’n’bass and
“The village of Petrčane really didn’t like dubstep and drum’n’bass, they thought it was the devil’s music! We were told in no uncertain terms that we would not be allowed back, so we had to move on.”
live reggae gave it this good balance. We had 1,500 attend the fire in me to pursue working on
inspiring festival site. Our capacity
kit to Europe so wanted to utilise
festivals. The village of Petrčane
jumped from 2,000 in year two up to
this space and kit over two
however, really didn’t like dubstep
5,500 in year three. It went to 14,000
weekends. It was a £3.3m
and drum’n’bass, they thought it
in year four. We went from being a
investment each year to stage both
was the devil’s music! We were told
simple plug-and-play nightclub
and some years we’d land in profit
in no uncertain terms that we would
event-on-sea to multiple stages and
and others we’d fall a bit short of
not be allowed back, so we had to
live acts. Many problems and
break-even. With some events if you
move on.”
responsibilities also came in this
can see you are falling short of
wake. The following decade was
break-even there are a number of
FIND A KILLER LOCATION AND GROW
definitely a rollercoaster.”
things you can do to bring costs
“In 2009, we went to Zrće beach on right for the brand, it was too Ibizan
WHEN PROVIDING A SPACE FOR NEW MUSIC MEETS ECONOMIES OF SCALE
clubby. So our friend Vedran helped
“Outlook was profitable but very
us do some scouting around the
heavy on costs. We could’ve gone
country and took us to Fort Punta
bigger but rather than do that we
HOW YOU SURVIVE BEING £200K IN THE HOLE
Christo just outside Pula where we
decided to start a second event
“You always feel you need to do the
stayed for ten years. The Fort was
which is where Dimensions started
next event to get the money back,
just something else. Outlook grew
which was 4,000-8,000 capacity.
which is in itself another risk. We
monumentally, partly because of
There was a lot of music that didn’t
decided to throw ‘the last dance’, a
the growing popularity of dubstep
really fit within Outlook that we
final year of Outlook and
and partly because of this awe-
were massive fans of so we felt
Dimensions at the fort. That year
there was a space for that with
did well commercially and covered a
Dimensions. We also carted all this
couple of years of significant losses.”
the Island of Pag, but again it wasn’t
48_DISCO_POGO
down, but in Croatia it was difficult because we were committed to flights and hotels which were booked early on.”
Photos: Daisy Denham, Lou Jasmine, Rob Jones, Marc Sethi, Lisa Wormsley
first event and it definitely stoked a
BE FLEXIBLE WITH YOUR APPROACH TO BOOKING THE ACTS. “You need to be flexible to start from all sides. If you get a headliner locked in early that can then draw in everyone else. If you don’t have the luxury of time and you need to get something together then you
NAME, AESTHETIC, DATE, LOCATION ALL IMPACT THE SHOW
know how many stages you have and what budget you have for each so you don’t have to start from the top down. With a new event if you
destroy an event. When you find out
BE PREPARED FOR THINGS TO NOT ALWAYS GO TO PLAN
your event clashes with a World Cup
“With Sunfall festival in London in
lowest levels up that can then lure in
Final or something. If it happens to
2017, that was particularly
a big headliner like a Four Tet or
you once you check for major events
unfortunate as Andy (Peyton) and I
Anderson .Paak. They’ll look at it and
with a much keener eye. Doing a
had booked a fantastic line-up and
think that sitting at the top of that
funk and soul event like Cross The
our teams had collaborated so well
line-up places them in a
Tracks in Brixton was the right
and we’d sold all the tickets and
commendable way.”
name (after the Maceo & The Macks
then an operational problem
track) which is straight across the
outside of our control destroyed
train lines in Brixton, right place and
that two years of hard work. That
STOP, COLLABORATE AND LISTEN
right time in June. Some events have
can happen to so many events: not
“Obviously you need to work with
names that have an obvious ‘fit’ to
having enough toilets, litter picking
lots of people when delivering a
the product they are selling and
being terrible, internet going down
festival. I wouldn’t be able to deliver
others don’t. Some events you just
so you can’t buy food or drinks… so
such events without the teamwork
need a cool sounding name and
many things can happen. With
and hard work of a lot of amazing
then a great brand aesthetic that
Sunfall the queues built up very
people. When programming it’s
elevates it and gives it an identity.
early on until it became a real
great to work alongside other
The name may not need to mean
problem. Our marketing team on
people who listen to lots of music
anything like Cross The Tracks did,
that day were unaware how bad the
because there’s loads of music you
with Outlook we just thought it was
queue was outside and tweeted a
haven’t come across. Simon Scott
inoffensive and could be made to
picture of Theo Parrish starting his
who I work with on Outlook and
look cool. The bus that ran to the
set with the words: ‘Theo Parrish at
Dimensions is a bible. Working
festival was called The Sunshine
the beginning of a five-hour
alongside Gilles Peterson was like a
bus, though it wasn’t at all, it was 38
marathon’, which then got
lifelong dream coming true, I’ve
hours of hell driving to Croatia, that
disgruntled customers commenting:
been a fan of his show since I was a
got renamed by customers the
‘What has he just joined the queue
Outlook Express.”
as well…?’ #SunFAIL quickly trended.”
“If you get the date wrong it can
can book a great line-up from the
DISCO_POGO_49
teenager. Gilles played at my night New Bohemia 20-odd years ago. He then played at nearly every Dimensions. Six years ago I contacted his manager to see if he’d be interested in doing his own UK festival and at the time he had his Worldwide event in Sète and a ski
“Anyone who’s got into promoting professionally was probably the first person who threw house parties when their parents went away.”
festival in Switzerland and said no. “Then I booked him again to play programmed in 2018, just as the UK
THE BUZZ THAT KEEPS YOU DOING THIS
wonderful booking last year at We
jazz scene exploded. That Field Day
“Anyone who’s got into promoting
Out Here but really hard from a care
was the first time a big festival paid
professionally was probably the
point of view. It was so apparent
such a focus on UK jazz. Gilles saw
first person who threw house
from the moment he was met at the
there was a demand and response
parties when their parents went
airport that his health was not in a
for it so thought it was time to do
away, and they got the bug from
great shape and we had three
the UK event. We had some
that point. You like enabling other
medical professionals with him for
serendipity with Secret Garden
people to have a good time and
the entire stay. He’d never played
Party closing down and their site
connecting. I also love creating the
live with his son Tomoki before so
coming available so we had a site
tapestry of legends with the rising
this performance was one of his
for We Out Here. We throw ideas
stars who are influenced by them.
dying wishes. We weren’t certain he
back and forth but Gilles will call me
And supporting artists whose music
was able to perform until the
and say a lot of new names to me,
I love. The amphitheatre shows in
second he went on stage. But he dug
and sometimes I haven’t heard of
Croatia [the Pula Roman
deep. It was a very heavy thing for
half of them so I’ll do some research
Ampitheatre - built between 27BC
everyone to deal with but I felt
and tell him I’ve found a contact or
and AD68] were awe inspiring, you
privileged being a part of that.
if it’s an old band I may find they
couldn’t pick a more beautiful venue
“My standout moments? Erykah
haven’t played live for 20 years, but
and we were lucky enough to put on
Badu every time. Grace Jones, Mos
my email has ignited something in
acts such as Massive Attack, Four
Def when Pharoahe Monch joined
them to consider an offer.”
Tet, Kamasi Washington and
him onstage for ‘Oh No’, The Three
Kraftwerk. Having them in a place
Chairs all night long (Dimensions),
like that was fantastic.
Anderson .Paak.”
50_DISCO_POGO
“Pharoah Sanders was a
Photos: Chazz Adnitt, Bruno Destombes, Ross Silcocks
with Erykah Badu at a Field Day I
Gilles Peterson presents…
Ezra Collective · Knucks · Nia Archives Róisín Murphy · Black Star Plus special guests:
yasiin bey & Talib Kweli
black midi · Cymande · Galliano · Meshell Ndegeocello Sun Ra Arkestra · Gilles Peterson · DJ Jazzy Jeff · Nubya Garcia Mala & Joe Armon-Jones · Marcos Valle · Omar S · Eris Drew Josey Rebelle · Luke Una · Goldie · LTJ Bukem · Roni Size · DJ Storm DJ Koco · Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy and over 100 live artists & DJs Much much more to be announced alongside…
Family Activities · Wellness Area · Roller Rink · Wild Swimming Talks + Workshops · Record Fair · Dance Lessons & more
TICKETS OUT NOW · WEOUTHEREFESTIVAL.COM · PAYMENT PLAN FROM £25
OUT NOW BECOME A DISCO POGO SUPPORTER TO ACCESS
THE ARCHIVE ONLINE AT DISCOPOGO.CO
“Marvellously bounding electronic songs” – Bandcamp
THE NEW DANCE SOUND OF BIRMINGHAM 52_DISCO_POGO
Photo: Ming De Nasty
NETWORK!
Mark Archer (left) and Chris Peat, Nexus 21.
Network Records: An oral history By John Burgess
Neil Rushton: “I had a connection with Detroit because of my love of
Cast A-Z: John McCready: PR Mark Archer: Nexus 21/Altern 8 MC Crazy Clair: 3-year-old Altern 8 MC Neil Macey: Club promotions Neil Rushton: Managing director Trevor Jackson: Designer
soul music, also Pete Tong had the Chicago house scene sewn up with the ‘House Sound of Chicago’ compilations. I suggested to Virgin it could do an equivalent but with these techno artists. I was wondering what to call it, ‘The House Sound of Detroit’ would’ve been naff. I was with Chez Damier in Detroit, and he was the one who said we should call it techno. I think
This is the story of a northern soul DJ and newspaper reporter who helped popularise the term techno in the UK and released some of the most seminal records in the genre. Network Records not only licensed some of the first Detroit releases, but it was also at the vanguard of bleep techno and then, with Altern 8, it stumbled upon the biggest rave act in the UK. However, after scoring a number one hit in 1993, with a cover version of a poppy piano house track, things went sour. Neil Rushton was a promoter, DJ and journalist and had been a cornerstone of the northern soul scene putting on huge all-dayers in Manchester. This gave him the opportunity to license breaking soul tracks. With his label Inferno he brought the UK ‘Band of Gold’ by Freda Payne and Chairman of the Board’s ‘Give Me Just a Little More Time’. A lot of soul heads found parallels with house music – including the connection with pills and dancing – so Rushton set up Kool Kat in 1987, one of the first UK labels dedicated to the genre. Hearing what sounded like a European take on house music but coming from Detroit – a place which always had a strong connection for collectors of northern soul – Rushton decided to concentrate his efforts on the city. “I could not believe how amazing Rhythim Is Rhythim’s ‘The Dance’ sounded,” he remembers today. “It just blew me away. I decided to ring the phone number on the Transmat label and Derrick May answered himself. We instantly clicked. I licensed Derrick’s side project R-Tyme to Chrysalis and on Kool Kat we released 12-inches by Reese & Santonio (Kevin Saunderson) and Model 500 (Juan Atkins) and then put various Detroit tracks on a compilation for Virgin called ‘Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit’.”
it was the first time the word techno was used in the UK around that time, though there had been a track called ‘Techno City’ by Juan Atkins (as Cybotron in 1984).” Neil Macey: “Neil had the relationship with the Detroit artists, he’d spent so much time there looking for tracks, he had a double garage absolutely rammed full of 7-inch records. He didn’t have that music executive vibe, so I think the artists liked that.” John McCready: “He was there first, he was generous in his payments to the Detroit artists, and they sensed his lifelong devotion to the sound of Detroit from soul and Motown on. On that, he saw techno as no less than a continuation of those roots, and though they rejected that as absurd initially, they came to terms with the definite parallels and, eventually becoming media savvy, learned to talk about it.” NR: “I’d got all the tracks together for the Virgin compilation, but we needed a couple more. One of them became Rhythim Is Rhythim’s ‘It Is What It Is’. I was there when that was made and it’s one of the best techno tracks ever. But we still needed one more. Kev said he had more tracks, but he didn’t really like
54_DISCO_POGO
them. He gave me this tape that had
Photo: Ming De Nasty
Energize (Dave Lee)
Inner City ‘Big Fun’ written on it. It
near Birmingham wine bars often
‘LFO’ glasses were dropping off
was a vocal record and he didn’t
had to do.
these shelves.”
‘That’s a worldwide smash. It’s going
NM: “Neil Rushton lived in Burnwood
NM: “People started coming from all
to change your life. I know you’re at
in Staffordshire, a little town down
over the Midlands to my Thursday.
college, but you won’t be in six
the road from the little town that I
Mark Archer and his crew came
months’ time.’ He looked nonplussed.”
lived in. Pat Ward, an old northern
from Stoke. We were going to other
soul friend of Neil’s, had a record
peoples’ little nights and they were
NR: “We moved into John Mostyn’s
shop in Burnwood and a DJ residency
coming to ours.”
office – Stafford House – and bought
in the wine bar across the road: No.
the building with him. I stumbled
7s. I met Pat through buying records
NR: “I met Neil Macey at my local
into management with Inner City.
in his shop, I was 17 and wanted to
wine bar. I’d take white labels and
John was instrumental in Inner City
buy all the new dance music, early
acetates into him.”
getting a proper album deal. Virgin
house, hip hop and soul. Pat invited
had said no to an album initially. I
me to his wine bar on a Thursday
NM: “Neil comes down to my
think their album ’Paradise’ went on
night to play the stuff I’d been
Thursday - packed, sweaty, loads of
to sell about half a million copies.”
buying. It was a success and so Pat
smoke. We got chatting and he had
gave me every Thursday.”
brought a bag of records: Inner City,
know what to do with it. I just said:
In 1988, acid house started to take
Eddie Fowlkes, Rhythim is Rhythim,
hold across the UK, though Ritzy
Mark Archer: “These wine bars
clubs hadn’t caught on so DJs and
weren’t set up for raves. Behind the
early ravers had to put on parties
bars it was all mirrors with flimsy
Mark: “If I went to a new club I’d
wherever they could. In small towns
glass shelves so when Neil dropped
take the promo of Nexus 21’s ‘Still
Blake Baxter.”
Life’ with me. Neil flicked through his record box and pulled a copy up. ‘Oh my God, someone’s bought my Neil Rushton
record!’ So, I got talking to him each time I went down. One week he said: ‘You’ve heard of Kool Kat? They’re starting a new label. The bloke who runs it is over at the bar. Go and have a word.’ I stood there for ages waiting for a pause as Rushton and Pat Ward were chatting and then I butted in and said I was Nexus 21. They said: ‘We’ve got your music at the office we’ve been trying to get in contact with you.’” NR: “With Kool Kat we’d put some good records out but some of the artwork had been appalling. We needed to make a statement and start again. We had Neal Howard’s ‘Indulge’ and MK ‘Somebody New’ lined up as the first two releases which meant we would start with a bang.” NM: “Neil had this vision for the new label and had commissioned Trevor Jackson to do the artwork. He offered me a job which was mainly in charge of club promotions. It wasn’t a challenge working with the records; ‘Indulge’ and ‘Somebody New’ are both very serious records.”
Trevor Jackson: “My sleeves for Champion Music were fun and cartoony (Raze ‘Break 4 Love’, Royal House ‘Can You Party’). Network I purposely tried to make more austere and (Peter) Saville-esque.
“You had to invent stuff. Mark and Chris got it and ran with it, egged me on and enacted some of the nonsense with impressive enthusiasm. Conversely... Richard Kirk wasn’t impressed I’d referred to him as ‘Captain Kirk’ throughout a press release.”
Neil sent me music, so I would’ve been inspired by that. It was electronic future music. The whole
techno label. In the building there
As well as having an improbable
thing to me was about sound
was us on the ground floor, John
office the new team included
frequencies. That was my take on it
Mostyn on the first floor who
journalist John McCready who had
when I did the artwork.”
managed The Beat, Fine Young
been covering techno for The Face
Cannibals and Ocean Colour Scene
(famously taking Depeche Mode to
John: “Trevor’s artwork was
and on the top floor a bloke called
meet the main players in Detroit in
amazing, he totally got it. Created
Francois who made violins. It was so
1989). McCready wrote press
an identity that was big enough to
old the floor had big flag stones –
releases that were full of bizarre
explore over multiple releases.”
the techno mob didn’t fit at all.”
untruths and musical make believe
Trevor: “Everything was pre-digital,
John: “The office was a menagerie.
journalist listening to yet another
so I’d start with a piece of card and
There was a massive fuck off Hi-Fi
faceless techno record.
build up layers. I’d use Rotring pens
and that would be on full tilt if Neil
and inks and a photocopier. Cutting
Rushton was in. He always had
NM: “As a former journalist Neil
film out with scalpels. All the artwork
records or DATs he wanted to share
knew the importance of PR so he
would be black and white in layers
and enthuse about. Steve Craddock
targeted McCready who he’d always
with notes for repro. ‘I want this bit
from Ocean Colour Scene used to
respected from his writing in The Face.”
to be orange, I want this bit to be this
hear the music booming from
colour,’ marked up on tracing paper.
downstairs and come down: ‘This is
John: “I wanted to try something
The repro guys were like magicians
amazing, what the fuck is it?’
else – not do it the usual way – feed
turning what I did into artwork.”
Always leaving with new releases
and entertain journalists, no
and promos. I believed he was
pressure, just a flow of written
NM: “Someone doing that now would
listening to them all, but who knows,
content with the records. I thought
just boot up their computer. Trevor
he could have been trading them for
about the simple minded mithering
did it completely manually. I was
cash or scooter parts.”
I’d had to deal with as a writer – in
– very funny to read if you were a
amazed by it.”
terms of press officers trying to Mark: “You went in and there were
bully you sometimes into covering
NM: “Our office was at Stratford
loads of records on shelves and I’d
their charges and how annoying it
House in Birmingham which was
walk along and help myself to
was. So, when things actually
built in the early 17th century, a
anything I didn’t have. People like
started to break, we already had
Tudor stone and timber building. It
Renaat (Vandepapeliere) from R&S
was the most unsuitable place for a
would pop in to visit. Unreal.”
DISCO_POGO_57
them on side. I have to say I had no
in the way I wished I could have as a
some of the nonsense with impressive
idea it would work, a total punt, but
journalist. I’d been good at making
enthusiasm. Conversely, we did
Neil was playful and creative in how
stuff up, since childhood. Neil would
something with Richard Kirk and
he did things, and he gave me the
read the press releases and shake
word came back he wasn’t impressed
space to piss about.”
his head but laughing also and
I’d referred to him as ‘Captain’ Kirk
always signing them off. Some of
throughout a press release…”
NR: “I viewed press as important,
the people who made the records
and we didn’t have much money
were very one-dimensional. You
Mark: “John made up a tale of raves
to spend on advertising, so I knew
might speak to them initially and
in launderettes – because of the
from my old job that getting stories
put the phone down thinking: ‘I’ve
track ‘Washing Machine’ – a rave
was effective. John was such an
got nothing, this is someone who
with DJ Kid Persil and kids sitting on
amazing writer.”
hasn’t left his bedroom for four
washing machines to get the
years and lives on Pot Noodles while
vibrations to ‘take them away’.
John: “There are only so many ways
poring over an 808 drum machine
Every track had a mad little story
descriptively to talk about the
manual.’ So, you had to invent stuff.
around it.”
drums going bash and the hi-hats
Mark and Chris (Nexus 21) got it and
going tish. I just wanted to entertain
ran with it, egged me on and enacted
Trevor: “John gave it a personality and charm. Warp was almost faceless and cold. I was a massive Factory and ZTT fan, so his angle added to it. He was the Paul Morley of Network for me.” NM: “His press releases were just ridiculous, absolute nonsense. A lot of them weren’t even about the records. If he did mention the record or the artist, it was complete made-up fiction.” NR: “We had this great music from Detroit, incredible artwork and John doing the press, so we were very active compared to other labels.” Though Network’s early releases picked up where Kool Kat left off – with licensed tracks from Detroit – the label really cemented its name and reputation releasing homegrown talent. NR: “The first bleep record I heard was Unique 3 ‘The Theme’. Then the Warp thing was happening in Sheffield. I knew Mark Gamble who’d made ‘House Arrest’ as part of Krush so we asked him to make one.” NM: “Neil was probably a bit bitter that Warp was getting more attention in the press. ‘LFO’ had been a massive chart hit. So, he got Mark Gamble and Leroy Crawford in and played them lots of these
records. The front door of the office had this unique bleep sound so when they left the door went bleep, bleep, bleep and they thought: ‘That’ll do.’ They replayed the bleeps from the doorbell.” NM: “As Rhythmatic (Gamble and Crawford) was an attempt to capitalise on the Sheffield bleep sound the first promo was on a label called 0742 records which was the dialling code for Sheffield. They got that into the Warp shop and everyone was like: ‘Who the fuck is this? Who in Sheffield has made this record?’ Eventually it came out it wasn’t from Sheffield, and they (Warp) thought it was funny. Because Neil’s a journalist he tried to make a story about every record.” NR: “We didn’t take ourselves
Clockwise top left: Kevin Saunderson, Mark Archer and Anthony Shakir. Chez Damier. Chris Andrews. Marc Kinchin.
seriously, but we took the music very seriously. Brummie’s are NR: “The bleep thing faded away and
of Altern 8 arrived. All their fortunes
the rave thing started to come in.
turned around in the following
Trevor: “It felt like being part of a
But I was into serious techno. So, we
months.”
proper new scene. My roots are in
took Nexus 21 out to Detroit. I
Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode and
remember coming back on the
Mark: “Network had asked if we had
experimental electronic music, so I
plane thinking how well it had gone.”
any more material. We had nine
self-effacing.”
tracks that sounded like Nexus 21
loved the bleep stuff. NM: “Nexus 21 made a great record,
but had breakbeats and Belgian-
NM: “The UK thing started to get big
and we were convinced it was going
style noises. We couldn’t put it out
– Rhythmatic and Nexus 21 – and
to do really well but then it sold
as Nexus because all the purists
that changed people’s perception of
averagely. We were a bit
would say it didn’t sound Detroit
the label. They sold a lot more than
disheartened apart from Mark who
– so we came up with a different
the credible Detroit records.”
continued to go out to relevant
name.”
places like Entropy and Shelley’s Mark: “Neil put a mix on in his car
and heard this new ravey, breakbeat
NR: “I said Altern 8 as it was
that Kevin Saunderson had done,
sound and had seen the reaction to
supposed to be alternate to Nexus
and it had our ‘Still Life’ on with an
them. So, he went into the studio
21. It just took off.”
acapella from Paris Grey over the
and made about six tracks. I
top, I was like” ‘Oh My God!’ Then Neil
personally didn’t like it; it wasn’t
Trevor: “I’d stopped working for
told us we were going to work with
cool to my ears.”
them by then. I wasn’t a big fan of Altern 8 or that whole scene.”
Kevin in Detroit. We worked in Kevin’s studio with Marc Kinchin and
NM: “Before Altern 8 there was a
Anthony Shakir, all my musical
period of two years of massively
Mark: “Because of the success of the
heroes. We took some Atari discs
overspending on sales, promotion,
Altern 8 EP ‘Infiltrate’ our workload
with skeletal things worked out on
marketing, licensing of records that
changed from Nexus to that. We got
them. What we didn’t know was how
only sold about 2,000 copies each,
booked at the Eclipse for Altern 8 to
to do the programming so it
like Factory Records where you’d
do a live gig. Earlier in 1991 we’d
sounded like Detroit. So, Anthony
end up losing about 30p on every
performed as Nexus 21 at the same
Shakir was there to help and MK to
copy sold. I was being paid late as
venue so we covered ourselves up so
help with the percussion. We learnt
the money wasn’t there. So that’s
so much.”
when I left, just as the white label
DISCO_POGO_59
There was a trip to Stafford, with a photoshoot and hanging around with the robot, he was going around scaring people on the streets. I remember going to the ‘Top of the Pops’ studio and hanging round, but it was decided I wasn’t going to perform. They just used footage of me from the ‘Activ-8’ video.” Mark: “Chris stood as a Member of Parliament. The whole scene was anti-establishment, we had a manifesto to put sound systems on the corner of every high street, police were to wear bandanas. He didn’t come last; the Natural Law Party got less votes. We were going to give out Christmas puddings from a hot air balloon. Labelled ‘Brand-E Christmas Pudding: The Altern 8’s ‘Activ-8’ video featuring MC Crazy Clair (bottom left)
poor know the score’. Someone pointed out that if we launched Christmas puddings from a hot air
“Chris stood as a Member of Parliament. The whole scene was anti-establishment, we had a manifesto to put sound systems on the corner of every high street, police were to wear bandanas. He didn’t come last; the Natural Law Party got less votes.”
balloon, we could potentially kill someone. We went around Stafford trying to give them away on foot, the chemical warfare suits worried a few people.” Mark: “Inner City came to Stafford to record. Kevin said he’d tried to
people would think it’s a different
wind him up and off he went,
make hardcore, but he couldn’t get
group. My brother was in the RAF
making up so much stuff.”
it right and he asked how we did it?
and he had the chemical warfare
‘Kev, it’s easy, hear that bit? Rob
suits, we painted the masks day
John: “Altern 8 were a kind of Home
that bit. Find a breakbeat, rob that
glow and added an A on for Altern 8.
Bargains KLF, but way funnier at
bit, Bosh!’”
All very DIY.”
their most stupid.”
NR: “The rave thing got so over the
Mark: “MC Crazy Clair was three
and then we thought we’d move
top and surreal. We thought there
when she was on ‘Top of the Pops’
back on to Nexus 21. But Mark and
was an opportunity here and we
saying: ‘Top one, nice one, get
Chris fell out. Incredible shame.”
used our imagination to build
sorted.’ In other words, ‘go and find
something up. We’d make up stories
some gear’. I had a pot of Vicks on
Mark: “It got to a point where the
like they had picked up Elton John
my keyboard which everyone was
music wasn’t cool anymore. We
on the motorway on the way to a
using to enhance ecstasy. The track
thought we’d call it quits and return
rave. Anything we said was being
stops dead and Chris (Peat) shouts:
to Nexus 21 but my relationship with
used. We had a competition to see
‘Rushin’.’ But the BBC just didn’t get
Chris disintegrated.”
who could come up with the most
on to it.”
NR: “The Altern 8 album sold 60,000
NM: “I went back after three years. I
ridiculous story to be picked up by the tabloids.”
NR: “Clair is my daughter.”
Mark: “John McCready was like a
Clair: “The filming of the ‘Activ-8’
been doing some distribution and I
clockwork mouse with Altern 8; just
video at Trentham Gardens sticks in
said I can help with that.”
bumped into Rushton at some party in Birmingham and he told me he’d
my head – the old building, robot 60_DISCO_POGO
and the guys miming playing violin.
“It had reputation enough for Aphex Twin to send a demo cassette to just Warp and Network... It had a handwritten letter with a phone number. I called the landline number every day for weeks. It was never answered. [Warp] somehow got hold of him.”
THE LABEL’S LEGACY… NR: “We released some great records in a stylish way. We tried to look after the artists. We were very irreverent but reverential to the music. It was great to not be part of the London music establishment or the Manchester scene.”
Network was on a roll but then went
version out first. It was tabloid-level
Mark: “At the start it got compared
down a direction out of sync with its
hype. It went to number one in
to Warp when it was very bleep and
output. Gunning for a pop dance
about eight countries.”
klonk based. Network’s output was
track it did well short-term, but it
more varied with the Detroit stuff, John: “I hated the KWS record, and it
Italian stuff. The legend that started
was actually the reason why I left. I
round Network, all the stories, it got
NR: “I’d come back from New York on
was adamant that we didn’t have
this image. For various reasons it’s
a Friday night and I was upset
anything to do with it, but I now see
looked upon very fondly.”
because I couldn’t sign a Todd Terry
it was none of my business and was
record. I went to a club and Lee
in fact good business at the time.”
ultimately led to the label’s demise.
Fisher was DJing. My then wife Jane
Clair: “I get royalties which is pretty awesome, but it’s never been
was with me and when Lee played
Trevor: “I’ve never heard this record.
enough to pay the bills. I make
‘Please Don’t Go’ she said: ‘I don’t
I vividly remember when it got
tattoos for a living now.”
know why you’re upset about this
cheesy, I got out of 4/4 and house
Todd Terry record, this is the one.’”
completely. I found it moronic.”
NM: “The original was by an Italian
NR: “The guy behind ZYX was very
There were some records which
band called Double You. Big piano
wealthy and he just went after us in
changed the course of music,
tunes went down well and there was
the courts. We had paid the
without doubt, but also some
a huge reaction from the crowd.
publishing in the UK and done a
worker bee bedroom techno.”
Rushton came running over asking:
cover and the music world was full
‘What’s this?’ Lee had designs on
of cover versions. Before the court
NM: “Me and John would moan
licensing it himself so didn’t tell him.
case we went to see a musicologist
about Rushton foisting
Neil refused to be put off by this so
with a barrister who said we had a
inappropriate records on the
tracked the record down.”
problem because we’d done a cover
catalogue. There were a few that
of someone’s own arrangement. In
just didn’t fit and weren’t very good.
NR: “We found out it was on an
England that wouldn’t matter but
So, it wasn’t immaculately
Italian label. We got in quickly and
there was a peculiar law in Germany
manicured. But it had reputation
sent an offer in and got the heads of
regarding a new arrangement. We
enough for Aphex Twin to send a
agreement back all signed. Then we
went to court and lost. It was two
demo cassette to just Warp and
found out days later the Italians had
and half years of being mentally
Network. It contained more or less
licensed it for the whole of Europe
drained.”
what ended up on ‘Selected Ambient
John: “Fun and business can co-exist, at least for a short time.
to ZYX. We realised the record was
Works 85-92’. It had a handwritten
going to be huge and we were told
NM: “Things had been going well
letter with a phone number. I called
there were about four others
with the distribution side but
the landline number every day for
making cover versions. We did our
because of the legal problems with
weeks. It was never answered. Rob
cover which Mark Gamble produced.
KWS it started to fall apart again
(Mitchell) and Steve (Beckett) at
ZYX didn’t seem to have their shit
and I felt they were using the money
Warp somehow got hold of him.
together, so we went for it.”
being made by the distribution -
They both said to me that was the
which was all going into the same
turning point of their record label,
bank account - to pay off the debts.”
that cassette. It would have been
NM: “Neil went to the press with the promos saying this is the hottest
the turning point for Network if he’d
thing going – these two record
John: “My understanding, being
labels were competing to get their
gone by then, was that almost everything it generated was lost
62_DISCO_POGO
following the judgement.”
picked up the phone.”
At the beginning of 1989, three teenagers from New York state’s Long Island were about to finish their debut LP, and would have been feeling that tingle of excitement any artist experiences when their creative work is about to make its first contact with the outside world. The members of De La Soul couldn’t know that their melange of musical reference points – samples culled from their parents’ record collections, allied to a determination to add their own distinctive lyrical approach to the stylistic vocabulary of hip hop, the music they’d grown up loving – would be seized upon so comprehensively and so immediately that it would help change the art form they were just beginning to find their feet within. They didn’t think what they were doing was going to have an impact that would change everything for the growing global hip hop audience – indeed, that it would help take this still-new art form to places it hadn’t been able to reach before they made their first record. Neither did they have the merest inkling 64_DISCO_POGO
Photo: Janette Beckman/Getty Images
De La Soul led the charge, but it was the music made by their extended Native Tongues family that changed hip hop worldwide. Angus Batey speaks to artists on both sides of the pond and discovers what happened when this “new style of speak” hit Britain three and a half decades ago…
Left to right: Sammy B, Q-Tip, Ali-Shaheed (stooping), Mike G, Afrika, Monie (drums), Mase (partially obscured), Trugoy/Dave, Pos.
that others would soon see them as disruptors sent to overthrow what had become the established order of hardcore rap royalty – setting them in apparent opposition to artists whose records they loved and admired. But that’s what was about to happen. “It wasn’t like we thought to ourselves: ‘We’re gonna try our best and make sure we come out as different as possible from what’s out,’ it’s just that it was the natural way we were,” De La rapper Posdnous told me in the early 2000s. “We were the same kids who had every Kool G Rap album, every Rakim song, all the early Juice Crew stuff. We loved Run DMC, knew every lyric to (Boogie Down Productions’ debut) ‘Criminal Minded’. We were just fans of the music. Whatever was out at that time, that’s what we were on, hardcore or not. “But regardless of what we were into, we always were all about what we were gonna do when we ever got the chance to get out there,” he added. “We had the funk and soul from (group DJ Pacemaster) Mase’s side, the calypso and soul from (Trugoy the Dove, who tragically passed away earlier this year) Dave’s side, and my father’s jazz and blues and soul and gospel side, and we just put that all together with our own influences. We wouldn’t just sample James Brown – maybe I would sample my father’s old Hall & Oates record. Or when I’m working in Burger King at the time and I hear this old Chicago record on the radio, I’ll think: ‘Maybe I’ll put that to a beat.’ That’s just how we were thinking, so when we got equipment that’s what we started to do.”
It’s such an established interpretation that we tend to assume this is how hip hop was always seen, heard and considered. But by 1989, certain rough rules had emerged that meant hip hop was running the risk of no longer being an anything-goes form of music. For many of the still-new music’s biggest fans, beats had to be rough and rugged, and for most rappers, subject matter was generally confined to one of two main themes - the harsh realities of street life, or declamatory and ever-more
Photo: Normski
Today, as media around the world spend the year marking hip hop’s 50th birthday, and De La’s back catalogue reaches streaming services (and perhaps a new generation of listeners) for the first time, the conventional historical narratives appear to be in alignment. A musical movement based on DJ culture, where new songs were made out of fragments of old records, hip hop was always a magpie art form, always more a combination of sounds and styles than a sound or a style in itself.
De La Soul in Brixton, 1989
66_DISCO_POGO
outrageous boasts of their technical and lyrical prowess on the microphone. It might be a stretch to suggest hip hop was at risk of boxing itself into a corner, but there were enough signs to suggest that something might soon be needed to shake the art form up. And while they didn’t necessarily realise it themselves, this was exactly what De La were doing. As great as their debut – ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ – was and remains, its reputation rests in some significant part on the fact that it wasn’t just De La Soul who were moving the music in a subtly but significantly different direction. They had become friends with the Jungle Brothers, another New York-based hip hop trio who worked in the same Manhattan studio – Calliope – where ‘3 Feet...’ was put together. The JBs had already recorded with Q-Tip, a
I think we felt that closeness and openness from them.” A music industry veteran, today Pryce is a label manager at The Orchard, the distribution firm, based in London. But back in the late-1980s, she and her friend Susan Bamford were the Cookie Crew, a British rap duo whose first record, a one-off collaboration with house DJs The Beatmasters, had become a surprise hit. The Cookies had more connections with the Native Tongues than might at first be apparent. They were friends with Monie Love before the British emcee moved to New York and became a core member of the collective; large parts of their two albums were recorded in Calliope with producers including Daddy-O and DBX of Stetsasonic, whose membership also included ‘3 Feet High...’ producer
member of the Queens outfit A Tribe Called Quest, another like-minded group. Soon they’d be joined by Black Sheep, Chi Ali, Queen Latifah, Monie Love and others as part of a loose collective of musical fellow travellers dubbed the Native Tongues. What each Native Tongues artist did individually, the collective served to reinforce and to amplify. And while, around the world, it would be the DayGlo yellow of De La’s album sleeve and the title of one of its tracks (‘D.A.I.S.Y. Age’) that gave an image and a title for this new movement, it was the Native Tongues together who changed how hip hop evolved. And although those conventional histories will say that the impact was most keenly felt and the template most conspicuously built upon by American artists – first the Bay Area’s Hieroglyphics collective; then LA’s Jurassic 5 and Black Eyed Peas; in time, with the emergence of The Roots, Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli and others, the turn-of-thecentury independent/true-school movement – nowhere was the Native Tongues’ influence more keenly felt than in the UK.
Prince Paul; and they toured with De La Soul in the early 1990s. Often unfairly derided as a scene populated by Brits who wanted to emulate Americans, British rap’s first flowering of talent definitely drew inspiration and encouragement from their New York contemporaries. And while the likes of Public Enemy were powerful influences on the nascent UK rap scene, there was something about the Native Tongues’ approach that resonated very strongly in London. “Our connection with the sound at that time was very important,” Pryce says. “It wasn’t like any of us tried to mimic it, but it brought a sense of togetherness and happiness. I just felt that everything was colourful and everyone was in a good space. There was a certain imagery that we saw the US were doing that was playful. And it wasn’t the super-hardcore rap: some of those bands got a bit of stick from the press because it was called happy rap - but you can be happy and like rap. “We were absorbing this sound that was different and friendly,” she adds. “And although it was different, it was easily embraced. This was the coolest stuff on the planet – and the fact that a collective could come together as a joint force to create that energy, to create all these individual
“The Jungle Brothers spent a lot of time in the UK, touring, doing dates,” recalls Debbie “Cookie” Pryce. “They were very accepted by the British community, and
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“THE WHOLE NATIVE TONGUES MOVEMENT WAS THE BRINGING TOGETHER OF A PHILOSOPHY THAT BROKE DOWN THE IDENTITY OF RAP.” sounds and personalities and groups, where there was male and female...? That whole thing felt like a family connection, and it was beautiful for us to watch. It was needed. It kind of broke up the essence of some things that were a bit grim about hip hop or the way people saw hip hop as being about aggression and negativity, which it just wasn’t.” Another British outfit with similarly strong ties to the Native Tongues were the Stereo MCs. The group were based in London, though founder members Rob Birch and Nick Hallam were both natives of Nottingham. The pair had become turned on to hip hop’s liberating potential after a few years making electronic music, and following a sampleadelic debut LP - 1988’s ‘33 45 78’ - the Stereos began making a unique kind of hip hop-influenced dance music that was all their own. The chance to work with the Jungle Brothers came around during the making of their second LP, ‘Supernatural’, and the group headed to New York, and Calliope, right at the time that the Native Tongues were in their first flush of fame. “The whole Native Tongues movement - if you want to call it a movement - was the bringing together of a philosophy that broke down the identity of rap,” Birch explains over 30 years on. “They weren’t taking the piss out of it – they were just saying that you don’t have to adhere to a stereotype in order to be a hardcore musician involved in rap music.” The point may seem trivial today, but at the time, it needed to be made. Emerging in an era dominated by politically strident hip hop led by Public Enemy, and where artists from the braggadocios teen LL Cool J to the up-by-the-bootstraps street orator KRS-One all relied to a significant extent on an 68_DISCO_POGO
alpha-male element to their personal presentation and microphone presence, rappers ready to offer a different take on what it meant to be an emcee were taking a commercial and reputational risk. And then there was the Tongues’ approach to music, where melody and aural colour were given equal prominence as tough, rattly, kinetic breakbeats: this was music that sought to be involving and enveloping, not just impressive – these walls of sounds had open doorways and plenty of indication that their makers wanted to invite open-minded listeners in. And yet the NTs artists were still making hip hop in a way that the music’s core fan base needed it to be made: their innovations were adding to the template, never detracting from it. This meant they were able to appeal to outsiders who had found elements of earlier rap too extreme or too tough to digest; yet they did this without watering down hip hop’s true essence. As Pos said, they loved all the great hip hop records that had come before, and they tried to build on what those artists had taught them – they hadn’t come to tear anything down. “All of those crews were, if you want to call it, hardcore,” Birch says of the Tongues in general, but referring in particular to the JBs, De La and Tribe. “They were true to a certain mentality and way of being. They had a philosophy about music which was very earthy rather than using the usual stereotyped lyrics and adopting the stereotyped kind of identity that a lot of people had. It was a movement that was more about respecting people, respecting women, having a kind of spiritual respect without being too clichéd about it. “It was open-minded, so it included everybody,” he continues. “Although it was conscious of its roots and was speaking about inequality in our environment and our society, it was actually standing up much more than a lot of hardcore music, because it was eloquently and intelligently and un-aggressively saying: ‘This is how things are and we need to make things change, and we need to come together about this if we want things to change.’ It was all about positivity, and anybody could go to the dance. Any form of music that brings all people together has got to be a really good thing, right?” Working closely with the Native Tongues, and seeing first-hand how they approached the jobs of making and performing their music, would obviously have had an effect on any group. The inspiration the Cookie Crew and the Stereo MCs took from their time in the orbit of the collective went beyond the technical, and both bands appear to have benefitted from - and to have helped inculcate - a new type of thinking about hip hop, and how to market and promote it - and who should market and promote it.
Photos: Normski
Below: Monie Love. Right: Jungle Brothers at the Brixton Fridge, late-1980s. Below right: A Tribe Called Quest in the Holiday Inn, Swiss Cottage, London, 1989
British success for De La, Tribe and the JBs helped catalyse these developments. “Clearly, within labels, there weren’t people who looked like me,” Cookie recalls. “There weren’t Black and brown people in radio promotions, in press departments. Everyone around us were white executives. They were lovely-hearted people who had done their jobs very well – but did they understand the culture and the movement and the future of what we were doing? Probably not. “Everyone was in the moment, right?” she continues. “We got signed based off of an accidental hit. Internally, the infrastructure wasn’t set up to see things through for the long term. Groups have a hit, do one album, do the second album, then fall off, disappear. They either go and do something else, or they get out of the industry completely.” Up to early 1989, the hip hop that had been succeeding in the UK music marketplace was the politicised and hardcore style. It was marketed to people who already knew they liked it. Press coverage was limited; while a few publications may have looked at Public Enemy as a militant newschool version of The Clash, the same writers and titles were less keen to cover rap that did not deal in similarly strident and politically motivated material. That changed with the release of ‘3 Feet High...’. The records’ timing helped, too, as there were already a number of artists working at blending dance music with rock, and an audience emerging that was ready to feel the similarities and points of connection between hard beats and melodic guitars. There may not be many overt sonic similarities
between ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ and the self-titled debut album by The Stone Roses, yet both bore durably influential and brightly coloured sleeves, both drew from different aspects of 1960s pop for their sonic templates, and – by the time the Roses made the first post-LP single, ‘Fool’s Gold’ – both bands were happy to work with sampled breakbeats. Indie clubs began dropping Tribe and De La tunes alongside the Happy Mondays and Jesus Jones. It may only have happened around the edges, but the subcultures began to bleed in to one another. Perhaps part of the reason why this music found such a receptive audience in the UK was down to the inherent differences in the UK’s and US’s musical cultures. Rob suggests that London itself had an importantly different dynamic: “Living in London, the advantage was that life is compressed,” he says. “There’s no room for being segregated to the degree that it is in America, because rich people live next door to tower blocks DISCO_POGO_69
“I CAME TO EUROPE TO EXPLORE, AND THEN HAD THE SPACE TO KEEP WORKIN’ EVERY DAY LIKE A MACHINE... I DIDN’T HAVE THE PAST DISTRACTING ME.”
Top: Cookie Crew. Bottom: Stereo MCs
and people have no option but to live together. You become influenced just by walking down the street, where you’ll be hearing Bhangra, African music, music from different parts of the globe. It’s a melting pot, and whatever your state of mind or where you’re coming from, we’ll unavoidably mix it up.” The records Cookie Crew made in Calliope were a significant success, the group memorably appearing on ‘Top of the Pops’ with Edwin Starr when ‘Got to Keep On’ broke the UK Top 20. For the Stereos, their Calliope sessions provided a US top 20 hit – ‘Elevate My Mind’. That earned them the green light for a third LP, 1992’s ‘Connected’, which spawned a string of global hits and won them the first ever Brit Award given to a British rap group. There were other, overt and direct, homages from UK rappers to the Native Tongues’ first records, perhaps most notably when the hitherto hardcore duo Top Billin’ changed their name to Definition Of Sound and had a major hit in 1991 with ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven’, which combined a rattly breakbeat with a sample from the 70_DISCO_POGO
But the impact and influence of the Tongues on British music didn’t end in the fading afterglow of those 89-91 classics. By 1997, when the Jungle Brothers brought Pos, Dave and Tribe’s Q-Tip back together on the song ‘How Ya Want It We Got It (Native Tongues Remix)’, and hired Tongues offspring The Roots to produce the single ‘Brain’, the group were still looking to the UK to help them reach a new level of creativity. The song ‘Jungle Brother’ found its way to drum’n’bass remix crew Urban Takeover, aka Aphrodite and Mickey Finn, whose astonishing take on the tune practically coined a new sub-genre, the track going on to inform not just the late-90s phase of drum’n’bass but become an important record to the big beat scene of the turn of the century. In 1999, the JBs released the album ‘V.I.P.’, produced by Alex Gifford of British breakbeat band The Propellerheads. The group’s leader, Afrika Baby Bam, spent several years in the 2010s living in Ramsgate, Kent, where he collaborated with producer Nick De Carlo on the group’s most recent release, the 2021 LP ‘Keep It Jungle’. “I came to Europe to explore, and then had the space to keep workin’ every day, like a machine, where I didn’t have the past distracting me, tappin’ me on the shoulder, pullin’ me this way or that way,” Afrika told me in 2018. “The people that I’ve worked with here, who have allowed me to work that way, I’m grateful to. If you go in their dojo then you sharpen up: I walk out a better version of me. This is where I’ve chosen to do that, because in America, the general population wants things dumbed down and simple and easy.”
Photos: Normski
60s psychedelic pop track ‘Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)’ by one-hit wonders The Hombres. One of the versions released included a remix by Ultimatum - aka Nick and Rob from the Stereos. (The B-side contained a track called ‘I Don’t Know Nothin’ ‘bout Daisies’.)
WHeelUP
KUNA MAze Night Shift
Soul Glow
MelONYX
SlOWe
DIGITAl / VINYl
DIGITAl / VINYl
DIGITAl / CD
DIGITAl
Second album from producer and DJ WheelUP, aka West London’s Danny Wheeler. Built around concepts such as the law of attraction, humanitarianism, and spiritualism, ‘We Are The Magic’ adds to the broken beat canon. Featuring bruk legend Kaidi Tatham.
Brussels-based producer, multiinstrumentalist and DJ Kuna Maze, aka Edouard Gilbert, presents his debut album ‘Night Shift’, a concept record built around the journey into the night and an ode to the city after dark. Featuring creative polymath Steve Spacek.
Debut album from Georgia Copeland and Nadia Latoya AKA soul sister duo MELONYX shedding light on the high value, power and energy of Black women. The release draws influence from the worlds of Hip Hop, Neo Soul and Lovers Rock. Featuring production from Joe Buhdha and J-Felix.
The avant-soul, debut album from Bristol-based producer, multiinstrumentalist, artist and songwriter, Slowe (AKA Sophie Hawes). Each song reflects a different aspect of her inner world, complete with sparkling Rhodes, 90’s beats and silky vocals.
We Are The Magic
Plus, check albums and releases from Moonchild, Palm Skin Productions, Slowe, Fybe:One, Hint and more. Look on the Tru Thoughts Bandcamp page for up-front releases and exclusives, including instrumentals and acappellas.
www.tru-thoughts.co.uk
///
tru-thoughts.bandcamp.com
Digital Distribution & Music Publishing for over 20 years London - Maastricht - Nashville
epm-music.com
Where The Mind Wanders
Hair stylist: Eamonn Hughes. Thanks to Flippers Boogie Palace for hosting the shoot.
RÓISÍN
MURPHY
Photos: Vanessa Goldschmidt
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“That Ol’ Magic’s Back” And in the nick of time, Róisín Murphy returns. After conquering global dancefloors with ‘Róisín Machine’, the electronic wizard has her eyes on the glitterballs of the cosmos with the release of her new album. Felicity Martin hears how the album touches upon all of her past recordings to produce, once again, something new. “If you narrow down your options, you arrive somewhere,” Murphy proclaims…
Growing up in Arklow on the east coast of Ireland, Róisín Murphy never wanted to be on stage. She wanted to be a photographer or an artist, or even an interior designer – she didn’t know what exactly, but she knew it would be something creative. “The only thing I ever did as a kid that was performative, that I felt I was good at was poetry. There was a festival in town where all the kids would say poems, and it was a competition. I used to win that quite regularly, once a year. And then I sang a song for them all, ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’, when I was about 10. They all realised I could sing and it was the worst thing that ever happened because they wouldn’t leave me alone! Every time they had a couple of drinks, they were like: ‘Sing it!’ I used to run for the hills.” When we meet, Róisín Murphy is dodging bright lights. She’s shielding her eyes in one of the DJ’s green rooms at Flipper’s Roller Boogie Palace, a newly-unveiled roller disco in west London (an apt place to meet an artist whose music feels like it should be listened to while flying around on four tiny wheels). “Seriously, let’s go, ‘cause it’s so medical in here!” We swap the hospital-style lighting for a lounge area overlooking the vast rink, but as soon as she takes a seat, a spotlight switches on and shines directly into her face. Across a near 30-year stint in the music industry, Murphy has rarely stopped for much of a breather. The singer-songwriter, 49, has continually reinvented herself, compounding her stellar back catalogue as Moloko in the 90s with what is coming up to six solo studio albums. 2020’s ‘Róisín Machine’, joined the dots between sultry pop and the most hedonistic corners of the disco at a time when the dancefloor was firmly locked off, and somehow seeing her achieve the most critical and commercial acclaim yet. Although it’s something she’s well familiar with now, releasing new music is still “frightening, every time – no matter what you say,” Murphy admits. “I’ve been going around for a year or two just knowing I’ve got this record in me back pocket, and it’s been a lovely feeling to know I have this to come, because it’s been bubbling for a long time. But that lovely feeling’s going a little bit,” she laughs, “as I get closer to putting it out, because some of the more paranoid thoughts come into your head.” DISCO_POGO_75
“It mirrors the music, it mirrors the fact that the music’s almost like - it really tells the story... without even words or any singing on it.”
Her new album, the title of which leaked online earlier this year, but we’ve been asked by her new label Ninja Tune not to reveal, comes with a production partner in Stefan Kozalla aka DJ Koze, who she worked with on his ‘Knock Knock’ album, where he sliced up and warped her vocals, gently weaving them through wistful layers. She gave the German producer the green light from the get-go – he’d first sent her the single ‘Pick Up’, which she recorded and sent back to him. Overnight, it came back as ‘Scratch That’, a completely different track. “I thought: ‘Wow! He’s mental him, this guy, he’s mad for it!’,” she says. ‘CooCool’, her new album’s first single, is a romantic ode to uncomplicated love, with sweeping, groove-laden production that evokes Koze’s hip hop background. ‘That ol’ magic’s back,’ Murphy sings, both a nod to the addictive feeling of attraction and the idea that the Róisín machine is whirring back into gear. That easy-breezy, feelgood factor is at play in the production, with another album track – most song titles are, as-yet, unannounced – finding Murphy faking an American accent and breaking into something not dissimilar to an interpolation of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’. Another cut, an Amen breakfilled trip through golden-era nostalgia, is another instance of Koze’s DMC origins coming to the fore, given the Róisín touch with chipmunk soul vocals. Elsewhere, cosmic funk sets the tone for a perfect, hug-all-your-friends set closing track or, on ‘Can’t 76_DISCO_POGO
Replicate’, which soundtracked Chanel models stomping down the runway at Paris Fashion Week AW23, there’s a defiant kick with an undeniable nod to Lil Louis’ orgasmic 1989 track ‘French Kiss’. Working with previous collaborators Mark Brydon (in Moloko), Matthew Herbert (‘Ruby Blue’) and DJ Parrot (‘Róisín Machine’) meant being physically present in the studio with them, but the process was different with Koze. This is the record that’s caused her to embrace Ableton, after he encouraged her to get on the same software so the pair could send ideas back and forth. She started recording vocals in-between doing the hoovering and putting her kids to bed. “I write a lot before they even go to school, or they get up for school, sometimes, depending on how intense I am.” As well as making her more productive, it’s been great for capturing melodies. “Which are very, very fleeting, they’re more fleeting than words coming in and out of your head, and hard to hold on to,” she says. “The way you sing a melody can really sell it, you know, and oftentimes the very first time it comes out your gob is the best time!” Koze has deliberately included some of these sketchy, incomplete ideas that left her lips: “He’s left things in that aren’t quite formed – they’re there because of the intimate way I worked with myself vocally – but they have a vibe, you know?” This record had him starting out with what she calls “very much just a piece of stone, and then he has to chip away at it to find the sculpture inside.” Throughout the album, Koze’s tinkered and fiddled with her voice so there’s a warm, analogue feel to things, her voice whizzing and whirling like vinyl gently being slowed down, or a CD stuttering and skipping. Along with joyful romantic love, Murphy tackles themes like the large, unknowable cosmos lyrically – the physical one as much as the dance universe she’s created for herself. “My father was a very philosophical man,” she says about her fascination with outer space. “It mirrors the music, it mirrors the fact that the music’s almost like – it really tells the story, I think, orally without even words or any singing on it. But the capturing of little essences from all over the place perfectly, like they drift past yer ear, like they’re floating in space, these voices.” To take a technological advancement and fling yourself into it is very Róisín, and this extends to the artwork, which she’s typically hands-on with. Where many artists are deriding the AI boom – and for good reason, per recent news of David Guetta creating a fake Eminem edit using a deepfake of the rapper’s voice – Róisín is intrigued by its possibilities. For the album’s artwork, she’s placing herself inside a machine-generated world.
“I mean, I don’t know what I think about the explosion of AI art yet,” she says, pre-empting the question, “but I do feel like, in the beginning, things are always very exciting, and there are mistakes, and it’s all a bit wobbly. It’s not quite there yet. It’s a very exciting place to look at and observe.” To her, the millions of “outrageous” images that are being generated are “the sort of processing of our consciousness in a way. Like I’m jumping into somebody else’s dream in these images.” Not a nightmare, though? “It’s a bit of both – there’s all sorts going on. They’re not idealised pop star images, they’re like going into a fucking mad dream, down the rabbit hole.”
“People really knew how to have fun, they knew how to party. It was such a mix of people and class, from Irish travellers to lords and ladies.”
Even if she hated singing in front of an audience as a kid, Murphy has always been an exhibitionist, as shown by her various wild stage antics that can involve stalking about, crowd surfing, and even Irish dancing. She’s been bringing that theatricality onto the screen, recently making her acting debut in Netflix’s ‘Half Bad’, where she played a powerful, blood-collecting witch named Mercury. Her next role? She’d love to play Lady Macbeth, or nab a spot in cop drama ‘Happy Valley’. But another project she’s keen to dig her teeth into is a screen adaptation of the Ireland she knew while growing up, amid war and religious and political clashes. “It was a magical time – it was fooked as well, like – a terrible recession in the 80s but through me early childhood it felt like everything was on the up and up,” she says. Her father, Mickey Murphy, was a businessman and her mother an antiques dealer. Together they were wheeler-dealer types who did everything from pub fittings to laying roads. They once sold two paintings by Dutch masters at Christie’s, and the next day would be hawking a lorry load of scrap metal. “Everybody was big personalities and it was loads of singing, strong women and mad, fucked-up men,” she recalls. “It was quite glamorous in a way but in a scruffy sort of way. People really knew how to have fun, they knew how to party. It was such a mix of people and class, from Irish travellers to lords and ladies.” Aged 12, Murphy moved over to Manchester, becoming instantly enamoured with the strong Black culture there, with reggae and dub creating a cross pollination of sounds. She wasn’t so mad on The Haçienda – she was more into the clubs that played psychedelic, grungy stuff like Dinosaur Jr and The Stooges. At 14, she was in a noise/punk band, the confusingly-named And Turquoise Car Crash The in Stockport, who only played one gig, in which she screamed throughout. Her parents returned to Ireland after divorcing but she stayed in Manchester alone, moving to Sheffield aged 19.
It was there that she discovered a “cosy little music” scene that also felt futuristic to her, populated by people like Warp Records’ Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell who were some of the first people she met there. “I was so thoroughly satiated by a handful of DJs,” she says of her days partying there, “we were like a team – it was a gang.” Moloko formed in 1994, after a chance meeting in Sheffield with bassist Mark Brydon. Famously, Murphy asked him: “Do you like my tight sweater? See how it fits my body,” which would become their debut album’s title. On the first night they met, they went to the studio and recorded together, with Murphy saying words, not yet singing – and this setup earned them a six-album deal. “It was all talking and putting on stupid voices – a bit like on this [forthcoming] record!” she laughs. “After we got signed, this American A&R man was really pushy, and he heard a tiny bit of singing on the record, and sat us down. He was like…” – she affects a bolshy US accent – “‘She can fuckin’ sing, man!’ He shouted at Mark: ‘Get her to sing, that shit sounds like Nina Simone!’” That was good, Murphy admits, “because if it hadn’t been somebody fullon… one of the English guys would never have said it to us, they would’ve never shouted at Mark. After that it was just finding out about my voice all the way through.” The duo had immense success, and one of many high points, she says, was shooting the ‘Sing It Back’ video with her then-flatmate in Sheffield, Dawn Shadforth (who recently directed the excellent second series of the Billie Piper-featuring ‘I Hate Suzie’). They shot it “for fuck all money” but “it was just having a really fantastic clear idea, and [Dawn] executed it so beautifully.” Murphy recalls the satisfaction of transforming the music into a live DISCO_POGO_79
show – “it was amazing we achieved anything live considering where we’d come from as a duo in Sheffield, with no band. It became absolutely fookin’ phenomenal, and you have a better laugh on tour when you’re off stage when you know the gig’s solid.” When she and Brydon split up, both musically and romantically, Róisín moved to London, and kicked off her solo career. Writing her 2005 debut ‘Ruby Blue’ with Matthew Herbert was like “doing therapy,” she says. “I was speaking to him the other day, and said it took a good few weeks to write, but he said: ‘No, it took ten days to write.’ We just came in every day, wrote every day.” Previously, she’d had little A&R intervention, but now she did – and was dropped by her major label following 2007’s ‘Overpowered’ after saying a remix they’d commissioned was “shit”. She was never afraid to voice her opinions – in Moloko, “if I didn’t think [the label] were listening to me and hearing what I was saying... I’d cry and pound the table, go in hyperventilating.” It’s this, she thinks, that has enabled her to go through the industry pretty much doing what she wants. She took some time out – even though she doesn’t see it as a hiatus – to raise her children: Clodagh, now 13, and Tadhg, 10 (who she insists “don’t care” about her as an artist whatsoever). The suburban life she entered into around that time would come to feature aesthetically on the Mercury-nominated ‘Hairless Toys’ with its moody void of grey and unpredictable energy. 2016’s ‘Take Her Up to Monto’ portrayed Róisín in a steely worker look, the antithesis of her “Timotei ads” look in ‘The Time Is Now’ video. Then came her crowning glory to date, ‘Róisín Machine’, with its warm disco-funk seamlessly blending into countless dance genres. With a strong shock of blonde hair and a glint in her eye, Murphy has a magnetic, no-nonsense personality. She’s the kind of person you can imagine having the best night of your life with, but also someone you wouldn’t want to piss off. “I am a born gaffer, Mark Brydon used to say,” she explains. “And I think it’s true because nobody on either side of the family worked for anyone – they was either musicians or they had their own businesses.” On the cusp of hitting 50, Murphy seems unphased by the milestone, insisting that she doesn’t have any plans as she’s expecting to have a pretty packed summer with the record’s release, and has to be “impromptu”. In May, she’s set to bring the party to what is undoubtedly London’s grandest music venue. “Oh this is going to be so posh!” she wrote, promoting the event. “Imagine me, Mickey Murphy’s daughter at the Royal Albert Hall!” 80_DISCO_POGO
“If I didn’t think [the label] were listening to me... I’d cry and pound the table, go in hyperventilating.” Murphy is now based in Ibiza with her partner, the Italian producer Sebastiano Properzi, and frequently climbs mountains, breaking a sweat that way rather than staying out all night – although “in the summer we do go around a little bit here and there, to the nightclubs and that. We have a good laugh, but not too much.” Crucially, they also have a banging sound system at home. Murphy has never been one to pay much mind to fads or fashionable sounds that are picked up and dropped by the electronic music landscape. “I try to avoid current trends,” she nods. “I am a bit reactionary that way – I started out that way: Moloko was a reaction to dance music going really main room and losing us, at that point, in the early-90s. Ever since, I’ve always said: ‘I’m not doing this and I’m not doing that and I’m not doing the other.’ It does help – if you narrow down your options, you arrive somewhere.” As such, her forthcoming album filters in elements from all her past records, taking influence from her own canon rather than any outside sources. “It has a bit of that joy that’s in the very first (Moloko) record, ‘Do You Like My Tight Sweater?’, and of playing with characters and being extremely funky, and also having a really lovely sound. Then there’s a little bit of the ‘Ruby Blue’ record in there, in that my voice is very – although it’s much more fucked with than it is on ‘Ruby Blue’ – it’s still very sensual, when it’s there. And very in-your-face and sounds really good, you know? Then there’s the experimentation for me in playing with hooks, parts, things that I did in ‘Hairless Toys’ and ‘Take Her Up to Monto’.” There is also, she ventures intriguingly, a “convincing modernity that strikes, that feels like to me is the right time.” The defiance with which she approaches her music is there in how she presents herself – the anti-normcore and fashion-forward Murphy chose to style herself for her Disco Pogo cover shoot (although she refused to put on roller skates, saying her partner wouldn’t be too happy). She remains one
“If there becomes a point where I haven’t got anything to say, I will stop saying it. But right now there’s plenty of stories to tell.”
of music’s leading style stars – a sort of proto-Lady Gaga, since being clad in a disco ball-meets knight of the realm outfit in the ‘Sing It Back’ video, and her penchant for avant-garde headgear has seen her in everything from utilitarian hard hats to a sequined, long-nosed mask à la 17th century plague doctor. Her long love of cutting-edge chic drew her into the orbit of Vivienne Westwood, with whom she shared red carpet space and even the runway. When we chat, Murphy is getting ready to attend the late dame’s memorial service, and talks about the “weird, strange shock” of her passing, as “she just seemed like somebody who wouldn’t ever be gone.” “The clothes – ah!” she glows. “They were a big thing for us in the club scene, after punk and the new romantic [era], there was this other wave where people were wearing it in clubs. You just knew Vivienne Westwood – I think I might have known about it as a label before I knew any label.” When Murphy was in Sheffield, she’d pop over to Vivienne’s shop in Leeds to “buy the odd bit, you know, when you had some money.” “There was people who just rocked in that scene. It was very desirable for me as a teenager ‘cause it just always spoke so many things. It said: ‘I’m really somebody, I’m really an individual. I’m brave.’” Since the early days of Moloko, the industry has shape-shifted considerably – back then, “you made your record, your pop video, and you went on tour” – but Murphy’s prolificacy and resilience has allowed 82_DISCO_POGO
her to continually adapt and make things that sound “really fucking different from the last thing”. She’s now signed to Ninja Tune, the label that houses top shelf electronic acts such as Bicep, DJ Seinfeld and VTSS, and is always willing to roll with the industry’s developments, which she says is notably different three years on from her last album. “What’s lucky is that this record really suits that, suits snippets of music that draw you in, that have a story, and sound really modern, you know?” she says of the emphasis on platforms like TikTok. But she doesn’t have any problems in that department: her 2005 track ‘Ramalama (Bang Bang)’ recently took off and found a new audience there, gripped by its wonky weirdness. “There’s a lot for me to be able to feed into this machine,” she continues, that glint in her eye returning. “And it’s fine as long as the content is content. If there becomes a point where I haven’t got anything to say, I will stop saying it. But right now there’s plenty of stories to tell without me having to show you eating me porridge in the morning.” Murphy’s account is very much not breakfast food, though. It’s her delivering her “Hiya, y’alright?” catchphrase, showcasing the outfits of your strangest and best dreams, and stints behind the decks at Pikes in Ibiza. It’s a testament to her staying power that her gigs have always been intergenerational. “You meet a lot of parents with kids [at them], but actually once I met a grandparent with a kid and child, so three generations!” What’s great about her shows, she says, is that mix. “There’s an expectation of almost, like, the participatory nature of the audience. So everybody dresses up – it’s a party, you know, before they even get in there!”
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PRINTWORKS 2017 - 2023
ALL THE MUSIC THAT’S FIT TO PRINT Some things aren’t meant to last forever. Youth, pizza, the Sex Pistols… To that you can add nightclubs. The history of clubbing is littered with iconic venues that are no longer with us. The Twisted Wheel, Paradise Garage, Quadrant Park, Plastic People, The Arches… some expired prematurely, others pushed on possibly past their sell-by date. But all burned brightly helping shape the lives of millions. Something that can also be said of Printworks London. After nearly six-and-a-half years of pushing the boundaries of what a club can be, the imposing space in Rotherhithe, south London, has finally shut its foreboding doors with a closing party including Róisín Murphy, TSHA, HAAi, DJ Koze and SHERELLE & I. JORDAN. But then Printworks was always meant to be big. Once home to western Europe’s largest printing press – the Daily Mail and Evening Standard were printed here until 2012 – its 6,000-capacity meant there was nothing else comparable in the capital. “Opening Printworks was a unique right-time, right-place, right-people moment,” admit Ajay Jayaram and Matthew Johnston, Director of Music and Director of Entertainment respectively at Printworks’ parent company Broadwick Live. And while industrial chic has been apparent at many clubs, the scale of Printworks meant the club’s design – its bare-bones – was breath-taking from the get-go. “We kept as much as we could from the original equipment, retaining everything apart from what was needed to keep it as a safe space. You can still see many of the printing machines, signage and original features through the spaces.” And like its forebears Printworks has cultivated an identity all its own. “The incredible architecture and layout is vast and sprawling,” they state. “And the rectangular shape of the Press Halls is now one of the most easily identifiable club rooms in the world. It is a truly unique space and totally distinct, it’s irregular and packed with nooks and crannies, basements and balconies.” Having seen the venue grow into a space that is “culturally significant beyond the music” the pair aren’t minded to look back, preferring to focus on what comes next. But when pushed to mention a few highlights they point to the likes of Bicep, Nils Frahm, Aphex Twin, Ed Banger 20 and Gorillaz as memorable moments. A generation of music lovers will no doubt have their own memories, for that’s what the best club venues provide: a compelling space in which to create your own history. Printworks is dead. Long live Printworks. JIM BUTLER
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Photography: Robin Hughes
www.goodmeasure.co.uk
...HERE’S GRACE!
Words: Paul Flynn, Mark Hooper, Balearic Mike, Alexis Petridis & Frank Tope 94_DISCO_POGO
Photos: Courtesy of Grace Jones x Wolford SS23 ADV Campaign
For the last six decades Grace Beverly Jones has been nothing less than a towering – both literally and figuratively – presence in our lives. A cultural tour de force who transformed the worlds of art, fashion, film and, of course, music. Over the following 20 pages we pay homage to one of electronic music and club culture’s foremost totemic figures whose iconic influence is still being reassuringly felt today...
AMAZING GRACE In this comprehensive celebration of her life and times, Paul Flynn charts Grace Jones’ rise from Jamaica to New York to the world’s dancefloors and beyond…
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“Grace Jones came by with her Swedish boyfriend. And I gave her a speech about how she should look more normal, or no-one would hire her.” The Andy Warhol Diaries, Wednesday January 12, 1983 Two weeks before Christmas, 2007, I sat in the fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø’s cavernous, pared-back warehouse studio on the corner of Hoxton and Mundy Streets, east London, awaiting the arrival of Grace Jones. A recurring gripe in ‘The Andy Warhol Diaries’, the artist’s compendium of fabulous daily mundanities, including the specifications of his taxable till receipts, concerns Ms Jones’ timekeeping. Sometimes it’s two hours, often more. At an MTV Awards ceremony they’re both due to attend in 1986, Grace eventually shows up in a five ft. diameter hat, knocking two attendees over as she takes her seat, moments before she’s due to collect her award for ‘Slave to the Rhythm’. When Warhol hires a private plane to escort Jones to the Los Angeles wedding of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, she keeps the pilot hanging around well after scheduled take-off. She is notoriously late, even for Warhol. Because she is Grace Jones. Forewarned is forearmed. On that wintry day, precisely one hour after her call-time for hair and makeup, Grace Jones’ people carrier pulled up to the bumper outside. The significance was lost on nobody present. As if by instinct, we had all stood in line, forming a little greeting committee on the damp pavement, as if to meet the Queen. I tried to crack a funny about it, which nobody needed to hear. Jones seemed unusually flustered by the greeting party and darted inside. She was accompanied by the brilliant British milliner, Philip Treacy, whom she had met first at the instruction of her longest serving and most hallowed visual accomplice, the father of her only son, Jean-Paul Goude. Goude’s pictorial study of her, ‘Jungle Fever’, is one of those books without which international fashion colleges would collapse. The bespoke concert he fashioned for her, ‘Grace Jones: A One Man Show’ used to be handed out to every single female artist signing to a major label, alongside a VHS of Madonna’s ‘Truth or Dare’ documentary, both universally considered the benchmarks of what pop music can achieve when sound and vision peak at their highest conceptual rank. Goude’s art direction of Jones’ already physically sculptural lines formed a perfect counterbalance to the trio of records she recorded as the 80s first dawned, ‘Warm Leatherette’, ‘Nightclubbing’ and ‘Living My Life’, each recording a fresh, high
watermark of what happens when a pop star cannibalizes the recording process with the full assurance of their taste and stature. Recorded at the Bahamian Compass Point Studios in Nassau, these records set a precedent not just for Jones but her parent label Island, extending the reach of their work into the worlds of art and fashion. The consideration and poise in their creation frequently shifts gear, often in the space of a musical bar, pulling off a high-wire balancing act between complete control and wild abandon. This is Jones’ musical sweet spot, her meter, tracing a pop graph which finds the groove continuum between Bill Withers, Iggy Pop, Melvin Van Peebles, Roxy Music, The Normal, The Pretenders, Smokey Robinson, Tom Petty and Jacques Higelin. In Jones’ musical
two weeks of meeting, Jones had the hat. Furthermore, she had moved in with Treacy and his partner, uninvited. Because she’s Grace Jones. Sølve Sundsbø was shooting Grace for a 12-page editorial in the bumper twice-yearly fashion magazine, Pop. I was to write the accompanying words. The tight spring/summer seasonal deadline was near. This was Grace’s first sit down interview for over a decade. The photographer and his studio staff, an attendant makeup artist and her assistant, a stylist who had gathered the best of the season’s clothes for her approval, all remained calm. The sense that this might be our only chance to observe Grace Jones at close quarters hovered over the occasion, as the afternoon turned into the evening and dusk approached.
hemisphere, somebody else’s song turns from being not so much an interpretation to conclusive personal ownership. Every one of those songs sounded exactly like it was written for her and her alone. She had already test-driven the theory with Edith Piaf and the musical ‘Annie’. It worked. Under Goude’s introduction, Treacy was and still is one of the chosen acolytes charged with keeping the legend of Grace Jones in elite order, as she gracefully (natch) slides toward her ninth decade on earth; a place she inhabits while simultaneously appearing to float above any of its ordinary rules of engagement. That Warhol should’ve once invoked her to “look more normal” feels like an involuntary mix of mischief, jealousy and pragmatism.
For the staff of fashion magazines, there is a complicit agreement on certain figures, amid which Jones probably tops the pile. That without them, we simply wouldn’t be here; at least that the work we did would look and feel very different than it does if she had not taken the artistic risks she took, delivering them all with previously unseen taste levels. To be charged with a new set of pictures and words, in honour of a new record – her first since 1989’s career-derailing ‘Bulletproof Heart’ – hung heavy and silent on collective shoulders. As preparation for the interview, I’d gone down the whole sequential rabbit warren of her back catalogue, starting with the unequivocal ‘Jungle Fever’ and ‘One Man Show’, then fanning out in either direction. Back to the disco triptych, ‘Portfolio’, ‘Fame’ and ‘Muse’, she’d fashioned after the virtuoso Japanese designer Issey Miyake first told her to become a pop star. Miyake delivered his verdict after watching the model perform her unique render of The Three Degrees’ irrepressibly of-its-moment 1974 disco joint, ‘Dirty Ol’ Man’ on the tabletop of the Parisian gay bar, Club Sept. Forward to ‘Conan the Barbarian’, the Dolph Lundgren years, the lost, late-80s Clivillés & Coleproduced Northern club classic, ‘Love on Top Of Love’, her glossiest pop record, ‘Inside Story’ and an inevitable brush with the hem of one of James Bond’s spotless white tuxedos. I watched the Citroen Nouvelle CX2 advert she and Goude created together, a work of incomparable commercial art in which a new GTI Turbo model emerges at pace from a mechanically remodelled version of Jones’ mouth, over and over, before repeatedly listening to her dynamic read of Edith Piaf’s ‘La Vie en Rose’. Jones worked in a way that is common now, getting commercial brands to tend to her bank balance, thus essentially paying for her art, to free
From the moment she appeared in the public sphere, signed to Wilhelmina Model Agency, New York, the Jamaican-born, college-dropout 18-year-old from the conservative Upstate borough of Syracuse, Grace Jones has matched her exterior beauty with a search for interior artistic completion. In the proceeding 50-something years, she’s barely slipped up. Her recorded catalogue has been spare but, on occasion, touched a kind of pop perfection, rollerblading between the grandest arcs of art, fashion, nightclub culture and conceptual drama with ferocious good humour and a preposterously high-quality control. Her life has not looked easy. In return, it has appeared to be touched frequently by the gods. When they first met, Jones had asked to borrow the expertly crafted ship hat which forms the shop window centrepiece of Philip Treacy’s Elizabeth Street, Belgravia boutique, for a forthcoming engagement, singing at the 1998 anniversary concert commemorating the landing of the Windrush on British shores. Treacy had never lent the piece out. On this occasion, he agreed to fashion a second version of his signature headpiece. Within
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Grace Jones poses at Bond’s Disco, New York, June, 1980
Photo: Sonia Moskowitz/ Getty Images
them from commercial limitations. The grand life project of becoming Grace Jones moved at pace, unhindered. I tried, to no avail, to find Michael Musto’s Village Voice gossip column from the night she made her 4am appearance at Paradise Garage, naked but for the paintwork of the iconoclastic pop artist Keith Haring, three years before he died of Aids, just to see how that moment of perfect pop-cultural symbiosis had been received from its parochial mouthpiece. I engaged with her shot by Helmut Newton, illustrated by Antonio Lopez, produced by Tom Moulton, accompanied by Sly & Robbie, at the hip of Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager during Studio 54’s lawless nightlife supremacy and in The Crystal Hotel, Paris, next to fellow key-holder, Jessica Lange and
useful foothold for the importance of individual Grace Jones songs. The most mid-market famous thing she ever did in middle England is to clomp the affably camp Lancashire chat show host, Russell Harty round the head during a BBC teatime interview. So be it. Her songs inhabit a space so central to the ideas of sleek, beautiful, subversive 21st century taste, her flaunting disregard for the gender binary so ahead of its moment and her saturation into the blood and guts of music so complete that to spend days researching her felt like a gift. I looked her up in the ‘Warhol Diaries’ and found that strange quote, Andy telling her she should be “more normal” and remembered something Grace Jones said that evening, a little throwaway comment which
roommate, Jerry Hall. Every bit of it looked utterly perfect, a constructed story of a life designed to directly contravene the basic rubric of suburbia. I’d received a sample CD of three tracks from what would turn out to be the first new Grace Jones record in 19 years, ‘Hurricane’, released the following year. I marvelled at her continuingly precise core brand values – ‘rebellion’ is not quite the right word for Jones, for there is nothing rebellious about choosing your own path and hanging the consequences – most notable in its gospel-inflected standout, ‘Williams’ Blood’, a song that would surely become christened straight into her canon. It was later futureproofed for nightclub immortality by an indispensable Aeroplane remix and featured a diminuendo coda of her own mother (“a very normal mother”, Warhol) caterwauling the chorus of – what else? – ‘Amazing Grace’. For me, as for many gay men, Grace Jones is our line in the sand artist, a celestial, otherworldly and complexly human figure who carries one simple instruction for life throughout her musical, visual and philosophic catalogue. Embrace your strangeness, then make it your superpower. She is the Kate Bush you can move to. She forms a useful suitability test for incoming boyfriends, an exam which every single one seemed to magically pass in my youth, with flying colours, until I had to find some less fool-proof and unilateral LGBT+ approval gauge. She is an emblematic statue of artistic permanence, with an obdurate disregard for commercial compromise. She has no real hits to her name, in the chart-ascending metric of what is and isn’t fleetingly popular. When she did hit the British top 20, three times, it was first with ‘Private Life’ in 1980, then with a reissue of her fluid sex jam, ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’. And then ‘Slave to the Rhythm’, which she followed with an album comprising a suite of versions of the same song, an inveterate study by the producer Trevor Horn that forms a
stayed with me long after sitting next to her for my one and only audience with Grace Jones, watching her lipstick being applied in an east London makeup mirror. “I really hate that everybody has to be a role model now,” she said, after slowly warming into the conversation. Part of the muscle and flex of Grace Jones is to work at antagonistic angles to the mainstream culture, while utilising the services of the accomplices who most prominently define it. It’s probably the reason Andy Warhol would always wait for her, no matter what time the clock told. “I would hate to be anybody’s role model,” she repeated. “I don’t have to be. Sorry, I don’t want that. If I want to be bad on my own terms, I will be bad. I’ll just say: ‘Don’t do what I do.’” She continued, by now quietly diffident. “If you tell me to go right, then I will go left. If you tell me to grow my hair, then I will shave my head. I feel more comfortable with not doing whatever anybody else is doing.” That felt a little like Grace Jones explaining herself in a nutshell. In the last two years, rumours have gathered pace that a new Grace Jones record is almost complete [something her ‘Hurricane’ producer and musical director Ivor Guest confirms on page 110]. There have been tantalising whispers that she has been talking once again to Island Records about its release, the seat of most of her undisputed artistic greatness. Jones has slipped back into public view, with her customary, arbitrary power. A campaign for the hosiery brand, Wolford, tracing the same sculptural, monochromatic lines of her silhouette that JeanPaul Goude, Antonio Lopez, Richard Bernstein, Issey Miyake and Robert Mapplethorpe once immortalised, emerged earlier this year. Last year, she appeared on the jump-up party cut, ‘Move’, for Beyoncé’s critically raptured, house-adjacent DISCO_POGO_99
album, ‘Renaissance’, settling publicly, for once and all, her lingering beef with the younger artist. This summer, Jones will headline the electronic music festival, Bluedot, held in the shadow of the Jodrell Bank observatory telescope, making an oblique, fitting connection between Grace Jones and outer space. It all constitutes a more concentrated degree of public work that we’ve seen from Jones in the 15 years since ‘Hurricane’, lending levity to the gossip that she is about to add an album to her intermittent, mostly flawless catalogue. An autobiography, ‘I’ll Never Write My Memoirs’, was published in 2015 and fleshed out somewhat last year by Chris Blackwell’s book, ‘The Islander’, her Island Records boss during the legendary Compass
narrative for where Grace Jones’ artistry would face-off. On 1986’s ‘Inside Story’, she distils a little of the Jones meter on ‘Scary But Fun’ and brings her family into the picture on both the fabulously luxurious, ‘Victor Should Have Been a Jazz Musician’ and the biographical title tune. All the while working with Nile Rodgers, the very man who had been turned away from Jones’ party at Studio 54, only to return home that night and write ‘Le Freak’. The Grace Jones story is one of artistic tenacity, from flying to Luxembourg on an Icelandic Airlines flight then hitchhiking her way to Paris to find modelling fame, right up until deciding at which moment she will drop a new record, should she choose. Of the further musing on Jones in Warhol’s ‘Diaries’, I’ll leave you with this one, a favourite,
Point years, the man who facilitated her legend blossoming at its fullest and most startling potential. Sophie Fiennes’ biographical film, ‘Bloodlight and Bami’ (2017) traced Jones as she weaved through the backstreets of her native Jamaica, uncovering a crucially sombre undertone to her canon. Jones’ undeniable influence can be felt everywhere, most notably and successfully in the last decade on the sound of Rihanna’s louche last album, ‘Anti-’ and in the visual conception of Tyler, The Creator’s full dive into the sprawling avantgarde with ‘Igor’. There are two strands to the Grace Jones story. One comprises the things that she did, the splash she made, the volcano she erupted; the other what it all means. That her story feels likely to find a further footprint is tantalising not just for fans, but to a wider culture, one which has never quite managed to find another Grace Jones in her regular absences, leaving her own work to fill in the lengthy gaps, as and when they exist. No artist has been as canny at threading her own biography through her work, setting out a template of camp ferocity with her opening gay disco classic, ‘I Need a Man’, a song which dropped into 1977, the same year as ‘I Feel Love’, ‘Trans Europe Express’ and ‘Native New Yorker’, to some rich ruminations on her family tree in ‘Williams’ Blood’. Even on her most underrated records, there are moments so finessed in her storytelling skill that they become essential to colouring in the dots of a presence that is and has been, on occasion, easily redacted to a kind of glib cartoon. Her transition record out of the disco years, ‘Muse’, opens with a quartet of songs tracing the road to sacred redemption: ‘Sinning’, ‘Suffer’, ‘Repent (Forgive Me)’ and ‘Saved’. That her father was a clergyman and mother a seamstress fits an apt
which cuts to the core of fame and humanity at which Grace Jones has excelled throughout her extraordinary life. Next time, there might even be a new record to talk about. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Photo: Adrian Boot/Camera Press
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Thursday, February 3, 1983: “Went to Antonio’s show at Parson’s with Job (cab $4) – it was really crowded and I got mobbed for autographs and I was signing and Grace Jones was refusing to sign autographs, telling the boys and girls to get lost. But when she saw me signing I think she got embarrassed, so she came over and explained that her public liked it better when she treated them that way.”
Grace Jones visits Studio 54, New York 1981
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER Disco Sucks? Not on Grace Jones’ first forays into music it didn’t… Words: Alexis Petridis
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There is a tendency to view Grace Jones’ first three albums as merely a foreword to her recording career: an inessential prelude you can happily skip. ‘Portfolio’, ‘Fame’ and ‘Muse’ don’t sound much like the albums on which her reputation rests, nor do they look like them: the photographer and designer Jean-Paul Goude was already her lover when they were made – ‘Muse’ is dedicated to him, “a true artist” – but he wasn’t yet her collaborator, conjuring up the image that’s the first thing you think of when Grace Jones comes to mind. They didn’t sell particularly well on release either, although ‘Portfolio’ briefly made the Top Ten in Italy and Holland, nor were they particularly acclaimed. They were out of print for most of the 90s and 00s; Jones’ greatest hits collections tended to skim through their contents very quickly before getting to the really important stuff: the implication being that listeners were advised to do the same. It’s a tendency to which Jones herself is prone. In her 2015 autobiography, ‘I’ll Never Write My Memoirs’, she spends more time talking about thumping Russell Harty on live TV than she does about their making, and what she does have to say is pretty dismissive. They were made to a formula by producer Tom Moulton, with whom she enjoyed a strained relationship (a state of affairs presumably not much helped by Jones’ insistence on trying to seduce him, oblivious to the fact that Moulton was gay), her input was minimal, her personality never really expressed through the music. It’s certainly true that if Grace Jones’ recording career had ended in 1979, she would be a more minor cult figure: beloved of disco collectors, evocative of a glitzy period in New York’s nightlife history, but nothing like the icon she is today. And yet, they’re more than a prelude. True, that’s partly as period pieces: with their covers designed by Richard Bernstein, best known as the cover artist for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, Moulton’s lush production and their high-camp covers of Broadway showtunes, they’re perfect snapshots of the Studio 54 era. But it’s mostly because their contents are vastly underrated. When Island brought in Moulton, initially to try and spruce up some singles Jones had made in France for US release, they knew what they were doing. It wasn’t just that Moulton had already changed the face of pop music, although he had – more or less singlehandedly inventing the remix and the 12-inch single. It was that Moulton was on fire when Island approached him, turning out one incredible remix after another: Al Dowling’s ‘I’ll Be Holding On’, Andrea True Connection’s ‘More, More, More’ and ORS’ ‘Moon-Boots’. He had already recorded the gorgeous drum machine-driven version of ‘La Vie
en Rose’ that became both Jones’ breakthrough hit and a perennial classic – finding a place everywhere from disco DJs’ early-morning sleaze sets to Balearic clubs and chillout compilations – with a singer called Teresa Wiater, who had refused to release it. Moreover, Moulton felt inspired by Jones. Initially critical of her voice (“she sounded like Bela Lugosi,” he told me in 2015, “she sang ‘I Need a Man’ and it sounded like ‘I vant to suck your blood’”), he quickly realised that her limitations and her aggressive determination to succeed made her something of a blank canvas: “You could get away with more than you thought you could, production-wise.” And so Moulton went to town. He employed lavish arrangements by Vincent Montana Jr, formerly of
Indeed, if anything, the disco albums present a more rounded emotional picture of Jones’ character than the more famous Compass Point recordings that followed them. You don’t get much softness or vulnerability on ‘Warm Leatherette’ and ‘Nightclubbing’, but it’s here, on ‘Fame’’s gorgeously melancholy ‘Am I Ever Gonna Fall in Love in New York City’ and ‘Muse’’s ‘Repentance (Forgive Me)’. There’s artistic development in evidence too, that gives the lie to the idea the albums were made to a formula: there’s a noticeable gulf between ‘Portfolio’’s cover versions and ‘Muse’, on which the material is noticeably deeper and darker, its opening set of songs – ‘Sinner’, ‘Suffer’, ‘Repentance (Forgive Me)’, ‘Saved’ – obviously thematically linked and apparently glancing towards Jones’ upbringing in
MFSB, latterly Salsoul’s arranger of choice – warpspeed disco, mid-tempo soul that bore the influence of Philadelphia International (the albums were taped at Philly’s Sigma Sound studio), off-kilter bossa nova – cut the tracks together into seamless mixes and pitched Jones’ voice at some improbable material – notably Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Send in the Clowns’ and the Great American Songbook standard ‘Autumn Leaves’. The latter approach wasn’t failsafe – the world could probably have struggled on without hearing Jones doing ‘Tomorrow’, from ‘Annie’ – but when it worked, the results were striking, the idea as experimental in its own way as the punk-funk-reggae hybrid Jones would go on to mint in the 80s. But to paint Grace Jones’ 70s albums as entirely Tom Moulton’s show would be wrong. Sung by a different vocalist, ‘I Need a Man’ or ‘Do or Die’ could have sounded like fluffy European pop-disco – distant relations of Baccara’s ‘Yes Sir, I Can Boogie’ and Penny McLean’s ‘Lady Bump’. It’s Jones that adds the edge and heft to them. And, despite her protestations to the contrary, Jones’ personality shines through her disco albums. The imagery might be more straightforwardly glamorous than the flat-top-sporting androgyne that Jean-Paul Goude summoned in the 80s, but Jones’ tough image is already in place on ‘Fame’’s ‘Below the Belt’, and the overwhelming theme of ‘Muse’ is at odds with the album’s passive title: ‘On Your Knees’, ‘Don’t Mess with the Messer’, ‘Suffer’ (‘Take that! And that!’). The same album’s ‘Atlantic City Gambler’, meanwhile, was inspired by Moulton’s observation of Jones’ steely determination: “I wanted songs that were believable, that people would hear and say: ‘Yeah, she really means that’,” he said. “That was the impression I always got of Grace: ‘Hey, I don’t give a damn what happens, I’m going to do it my way, and if you like it, good, and if you don’t like it, someone else will.’”
the Pentecostal church. You can see why Jones moved on: ‘Muse’ came out in the wake of the disco backlash; a new decade required a different approach. And yet, to dismiss her first three albums as juvenilia, the work of an artist who didn’t really know what they were doing, feels desperately wrong: they establish Jones’ persona, they encapsulate the scene from which they sprang, they’re packed with authentically great music. “I wanted to make records that sounded big, like New York, with all the razzle-dazzle and the bright lights and glitter, the cabs going by, everything moving fast, the excitement,” Moulton told me. “And I have a tendency to always try and bring out the emotion of something: the melody, the lyric, even a string line, a horn line, a piano part. I will find that and bring it to the surface and so people can relate to it. I don’t think of it as disco music, I think of it as emotional songs that you can dance to.” It’s a quote that might be the perfect summation of disco. It’s certainly the perfect summation of the albums Moulton and Jones made together.
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A POST-PUNK REGGAE PARTY In which Jones decamps to the Bahamas and creates her defining triptych… Words: Balearic Mike
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Some artists – not all – have what is often referred to as their ‘imperial phase’, a period when simultaneously at their creative and commercial peak. Well, it’s fair to say that for Grace Jones, this was the run of three albums she recorded at Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point Studio, just outside Nassau in the Bahamas between late-1979 and 1982. Blackwell had bought out Jones’ contract with the Beam Junction label after her debut single ‘I Need a Man’ was released, and although her career on Island had started well, there was a feeling that by 1979’s ‘Muse’ – and with the ‘disco sucks’ backlash in full swing – a new direction was required. Island Records already had a foot firmly in the downtown New York music and club scenes. Blackwell had commissioned Brian Eno to compile the now legendary ‘No New York’ compilation to document Manhattan’s No Wave scene, and there was a burgeoning partnership with Michael Zilkha and Michel Esteban’s incredible ZE Records, releasing music from a diverse range of artists such as James White, Material/Bill Laswell, Fonda Rae, Suicide, Was (Not Was) and August Darnell/Kid Creole. This immersion meant that both Jones and Blackwell found a new home away from the glitz of Studio 54. Touching upon the move away from Studio 54 in ‘I’ll Never Write My Memoirs’, she wrote: “There were other clubs where the music was still about change and forward movement… The Paradise Garage… built on the utopian blueprint of The Loft.” After passing the application process (“That was a bit strange, having to pass a test to prove how free-spirited you were, but it seemed to work”), both Jones and Blackwell became regulars. The pair became friends with resident DJ Larry Levan, and would often hang out in his DJ booth, the only place in the club where you could drink alcohol. The evenings spent being seduced by the musical tapestry woven by Levan inspired Jones and Blackwell to imagine a new sound and musical direction, and it would have Jamaican foundations. “I’m one for change,” she told The Face’s Chris Salewicz, on this significant shift in musical style. “I can feel it coming and I just let it happen naturally. The timing was right, and it all communicated and connected. I definitely wanted to search and experiment for a sound that was specifically Grace Jones rather than that of any producer. Of course, disco did always tend to emphasise the producer and not the artist.” Opened in 1978, the first band to record at Compass Point were Talking Heads who produced ‘More Songs About Buildings and Food’ with Brian Eno, quickly followed by The Rolling Stones and their ‘Emotional Rescue’ LP. Blackwell had been toying with the idea of forming a house band in the style of Muscle Shoals,
Motown or Stax, and he began putting it together. The rhythmical foundations were the twin pillars of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. Already signed to Island as members of Black Uhuru, Blackwell also signed them as a production duo. They were joined by fellow Jamaicans Mikey Chung on rhythm guitar and Uziah ‘Sticky’ Thompson on percussion. Brit Barry Reynolds had played guitar on Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Broken English’ album, also recorded at Compass Point, and Blackwell liked the punky/new wave sound, so he was also invited to join. The cherry on the cake’s icing was the recruitment of a keyboard wizard, someone to add contemporary electronics and synthesisers. Blackwell found the magic ingredient via a recommendation from producer Daniel Vangarde
suggested the track (which had been the first release on Mute), including Talking Heads’ Chris Frantz. The album was a critical success, and sold well on both sides of the Atlantic, with the single ‘Private Life’ (a Pretenders cover) going top 20 in the UK, in no small part aided by the inclusion of her stunning version of Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’ on the flip. One track Jones recorded for the ‘Warm Leatherette’ album, would end up being a highlight of not just the next LP, but her entire career. Initial attempts to record ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’ were disappointing, with the band unable to do it justice. Then something fortuitous occurred. Although assembled as The Compass Point All Stars, the band were almost never credited as such, instead being listed under their individual names.
(father of Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter). Wally Badarou was a Parisian with West African roots, and another musical genius amongst fine company. His solo LPs on Island ‘Echoes’ and ‘Words of a Mountain’ are now considered Balearic classics. The Compass Point All Stars were now complete, and their first gig was to provide a musical background that would represent Grace Jones. By now, Jones was involved in a relationship with Jean-Paul Goude – it would prove to be one of the most defining of her life. Goude had taken a photo of Grace in an Issey Miyake dress, which would later be used as the cover of the ‘Warm Leatherette’ LP, with Grace as part-samurai, part-warrior queen, partalien. Blackwell asked for a copy to be blown up, he pinned it up in the studio and said: “Make a record that sounds like that looks!” With chief engineer Alex Sadkin on board as co-producer, they duly got down to doing just that. With a sound firmly rooted in Jamaican music but absorbing the influences of the new post-disco soundtrack of New York – post-punk and new wave - the sounds of modern electronic pop which were just emerging, and that undefinable international element that was such a part of Jones’ persona, they quickly found a unique new sound. The sessions began in late-1979, a few weeks late as Jones had just given birth to her and Goude’s son, Paulo. The sessions quickly proved fruitful – so much so that most of Grace’s first two Compass Point albums were recorded in one block. Those two LPs are mostly comprised of cover versions or songs provided by other artists, with a couple of original compositions. The choice of which tracks to cover was obviously an important one, and the first song that came together would ultimately set the tone and become the title track. ‘Warm Leatherette’ was a piece of futuristic, dystopian, synth-pop from Mute Records founder Daniel Miller under the guise of The Normal. Several people
With one exception. In 1981, Island released a single by Junior Tucker called ‘The Kick (Rock On)’. On the B-side, completely unrelated to the A-side was an incredible slice of futuristic, dub-funk, ‘Peanut Butter’ (no relation to the Gwen Guthrie record) credited to The Compass Point All Stars. Upon hearing the track, Jones re-recorded ‘Pull Up to the Bumper’, utilising ‘Peanut Butter’ wholesale, and producing one of her most enduring songs. ‘Nightclubbing’ is widely regarded as Jones’ masterpiece, perfecting the sound they’d all been striving for. Among stunning covers of Iggy Pop, Bill Withers and Marianne Faithfull were the Jones and Reynolds co-written ‘Art Groupie’, and her own ‘Feel Up’, another of her perennial club classics. The LP was album of the year in both The Face and NME, and its status has remained a constant. A small gap ensued before she returned to Compass Point for one final album, ‘Living My Life’. This time the LP consisted of almost all original material, with Melvin Van Peebles’ ‘The Apple Stretching’ the only cover. The LP opens with another of those career-defining songs, ‘My Jamaican Guy’, and closes with one more, ‘Unlimited Capacity for Love’. And that was that for Jones and Compass Point – although her friendship with Blackwell, and members of the All Stars would be lifelong. As Blackwell says in his autobiography: “… the hybrid of machine and human, music and menace, reggae and dream had gone as far as it could – we’d completed a trilogy… we’d said it all; there was no need to keep repeating it.” Jones would now pit her strength against James Bond and Conan the Barbarian, but that’s another story…
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RHYTHM IS GONNA GET YOU Grace says goodbye to Island and hello to Capitol (via ZTT) as the second half of the 80s begins… Words: Frank Tope
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The year of 1985 found Grace Jones at a crossroads. After six albums with Island Records that had seen her transform from ingenue model to global superstar, her deal with Chris Blackwell’s label was coming to an end. The new wave dub priestess of the three albums recorded at Compass Point was better known now to the general public as the tabloidfriendly Amazon who appeared in James Bond and ‘Conan the Barbarian’ movies and assaulted a chat show host on live TV in a way that only previously Rod Hull had been able to get away with. American EMI label Capitol had come calling with an eye-wateringly lucrative record deal. Chris Blackwell himself acknowledged it was a great deal and that Grace should take it. So, ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ was both a swansong to the Island years and the first collaboration with Capitol. The two labels invented a jointly owned imprint just for this record: Island Manhattan. But the A&R direction came straight from a British Island-affiliated label: Zang Tumb Tuum. Paul Morley and Trevor Horn’s label were hot off the back of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the Art Of Noise. Their high concept combination of subversive but state-of-the-art design and sleevenotes erring on the pretentious side of gibberish encapsulated the best and worst of the peak 80s. Horn and Steve Lipson were natural choices as producers: not only was the former member of Yes and Buggles the maximalist genius behind some of the greatest ‘new pop’ records of the early-80s, but he also steered Malcolm McLaren’s hip hop/world music soundclash ‘Duck Rock’ and had as much of a finger on the pulse of underground club music as Grace herself. Together they would go on to create something remarkable. There was never any doubt that ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ was a masterpiece, a thoroughly modern record that employed all the hallmarks of the great records of the disco era. A sense of grandeur, an ambition enhanced by liberal use of huge string and horn sections, and finely worked over in the studio for weeks on end until it was the perfect fusion of organic and synthesised. The summer of 1985 saw underground clubs captivated by the loping percussive P-Funk gamelan groove of Washington DC go-go music and Island had gone all in, signing DC heavyweights Trouble Funk and Experience Unlimited. The latter percussion section were brought to the Power Station in New York where they duly freestyled the compulsive rhythm track and that took the song – originally intended as a Frankie Goes To Hollywood follow-up single – off into a hypnotic new direction. The album that followed this collaboration was purely conceptual: a very ZTT moment of bringing
the aesthetics of prog rock into the 80s, where that one song was endlessly respun, remixed and reinterpreted in different ways. According to her autobiography – which as its ghost-written by label chief Paul Morley you would tend to give it some credence – the single was so expensive to produce, clocking in with a bill of £300,000, that reinterpreting that one song through a hall of mirrors was as much a cost-saving exercise as anything else. If that’s the case, it’s the most far-out freethinking way to cut corners imaginable. The album’s biography is held together by excerpts of conversations between former NME journalist Morley and Jones, while British actor Ian McShane appears recurringly as a sonorous Richard Burton-esque narrator, his speech including
her friend Nile Rodgers. By this point the sensual grooves of Chic had given way to the heavily processed digital funk typified by Duran Duran’s ‘Notorious’. At a time when the most groundbreaking music was being forged out of studio limitations: cheap drum machines, synthesisers and samplers with a goldfish-like capacity for memory, Jones and Rodgers had an unlimited palate to play with. It’s a sound that has not aged terrifically well, but with ‘I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You)’ it still gave her a minor hit. Writing herself, together with ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ songwriter Bruce Wooley, the album is perhaps more autobiographical than its predecessor. The playful ‘Victor Should Have Been a Jazz Musician’ is a welcome return to the jazz-era
excerpts from Jones’ former lover and visual collaborator Jean-Paul Goude’s autobiography. As McShane himself dryly reported: “I was in a chip shop and Trevor Horn came in, who I’d known forever. He said: ‘Ian, what are you doing after supper?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, I need a voice and Orson Welles is dead.’” So, is the album a personal expression? Or is it the ultimate expression of Jones as a blank canvas on which men could project their vision of who, or what, she should be? In parts the album is incredible: ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ dubbed and flipped into endless permutations, a companion piece to the single in the same way reggae producers had been making dub albums reinterpreting one rhythm for years. ‘The Crossing’ is perfect: a practically graceless but exquisite ambient companion piece to the Art Of Noise’s ‘Moments in Love’. ‘The Frog and the Princess’ is almost queasily biographical: Jones’ life told through Goude’s perspective more than hers. ‘Jones the Rhythm’ on the other hand pitches the single’s sensual seduction into a muscular 80s pop metal romp that might be more at place on the kind of high concept 80s action movie she was being offered at the time. Perhaps Horn, Morley, Lipson et al were both embracing and mocking a world where fans increasingly bought albums for one or two singles – in many ways pointing a cynical finger towards the pop future. Or maybe they just needed to use the demos because Island and Capitol had turned off their considerable reserves of cash. Either way, it’s a remarkable document of Grace Jones, ZTT and the record industry at the high watermark of the 80s, and is still, in parts, an incredible collection of music. Not all the great ground-breaking artists of the early-80s flourished in the second half of the decade and Grace Jones was to be no exception. A year later and ‘Inside Story’ was her first album proper for Capitol, fulfilling a long-held ambition to work with
throwback of ‘La Vie en Rose’. But perhaps unsurprisingly, her biggest hits around this time were from her previous label’s ‘Island Life’ smash hits retrospective collection with its unforgettable if anatomically impossible cover art. Released in 1989, ‘Bulletproof Heart’ saw Jones writing and producing herself for the first time, together with her then partner Chris Stanley and with contributions from David Cole and Robert Clivillés – the New York clubland heroes soon to explode with C+C Music Factory. Again, it’s an album of its time; the one highlight is Clivillés & Cole being let loose to create the Killer Kisses version of first single ‘Love on Top of Love’. The song is no classic, but the remix is a broodingly darkside New York house groove with Jones sounding at her evil and exuberant best. A B-side at the time, it’s still available and is a sharp reminder that when Grace Jones is working with cutting-edge music that truly sums up a moment in time, she can always point the way into the future.
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Design & Art Direction: Hingston Studio. Photography: Jonathan de Villiers
LIKE A HURRICANE Ivor Guest, Grace Jones’ producer and musical director since 2008’s ‘Hurricane’, talks Mark Hooper through the making of that comeback album, her otherworldly power and how her new record is “rooted in Africa”…
“We met through Philip (Treacy, the milliner). I went around to Philip’s for dinner, and she was there too. He said don’t talk about music – and that’s all we talked about (laughs)! It was around the time that Warp records were really doing things. It must have been around 2003. We listened to a lot of that type of stuff. I showed her Chris Cunningham’s work, Basic Channel, dub-orientated stuff, Squarepusher. It was amazing actually. We watched a lot of films and just hung out for a long time. Sometimes with an artist like Grace, it takes a person from a different generation to really let her know how unbelievably important those records [of hers] were
to producers and musicians. She operates outside of time, she’s always relevant. She’s irreplaceable. Her vision and her voice are completely unique. “You can’t embark on a project with someone like Grace and put out any old shit! I think that’s why it’s worked for us over the years. My levels of militancy around quality control for her work is pretty damn high. Because for me, she can’t be mediocre at any point. The great thing about Grace is when it stopped working out for her, musically speaking, in the 90s, she just stopped. She didn’t make 10 shit albums between 1992 and 2008: she just stopped. That’s the nature of her: ‘If it’s not what I want, I don’t give a fuck.’ And that’s not where most artists are coming from. “With ‘Hurricane’, she had been writing for 19 years, so she’d written ‘Williams’ Blood’ with Wendy and Lisa, she’d written ‘Hurricane’ with Tricky, she’d written ‘This Is’ (with Mark van Eyck), she’d written ‘Well Well Well’ (with Barry Reynolds). And then we made ‘Devil in My Life’, ‘Corporate Cannibal’, ‘I’m Crying’. She’d already written ‘Love You to Life’ and ‘Sunset Sunrise’. So, we had some stuff. When I first heard the demo of ‘Williams’ Blood’ I thought: ‘OK, now we’re really onto something.’ “There was quite a lot of thought that went into ‘Hurricane’. It was instinctive too, but it was well thought through. My feeling was it’s got to sound like a Grace Jones record, it’s got to be rooted in her classic sound, and where we can we’ve got to move it forwards. You can’t just come in with some random sound with an artist like Grace. “If she doesn’t love it, she just won’t do it. People are freaked out by her. And often men – because they don’t know how to orientate themselves faced with such a power. You see it around her a lot, particularly in record labels and middle management men. They’re terrified of her! And I get it because she’ll break your balls if you aren’t careful (laughs). I was pretty frightened when I first met her. She was wearing this flying cap – to me it reminded me of Peanuts, Snoopy on top of his kennel in his flying hat! But I was overwhelmed to meet her, to see that this kind of otherworldly creature actually exists. “But we spoke about music very quickly, and after I met her, the next day I went into the studio and made a couple of things. I felt very inspired by her. One of them ended up being ‘Devil in My Life’ on ‘Hurricane’ - that was the first thing we did together. The next time she was in London, I went to her hotel, and I played her that. I forget exactly how well I’d got to know her, not particularly well, but I said: ‘We could make a record if you want’, and she went for it. On some level I guess she trusted me, DISCO_POGO_109
and she liked what she heard. It was an instinctive thing, more than anything else. We really come from crazy different worlds, but people are people at the end of the day. You can’t really choose who you have these mad connections with. “We could not get a deal for that record. It was incredible. Grace and I were both really down about it. But you know, I think Grace felt that she may have burnt some bridges in the music business, because she has this reputation of being kind of wild – and late! I know she made a decision: ‘Fuck it, I’m going to show them what I’m capable of.’ And she’s been doing it ever since. If it wasn’t for Mark Jones at Wall of Sound, it never would have come out. I love Mark, he’s a brilliant guy. He was bitten by ‘Williams’ Blood’. He absolutely loved that track.
“It was a real education putting the live show together. If there’s someone who knows that music in greater detail than me, I’d be very surprised. I forensically deconstructed it in order to get the live show sounding right. And that music is really fucking incredible. There’s no other word for it. The level of musicianship and the artistry and the production and the mixing – everything. It was my incredible privilege to work with all those guys on ‘Hurricane’. There was never a plan to reconstitute the Compass Point band and make a record like that, but I remember saying to Grace we really have to have Sly & Robbie. That has to be the rhythm section. But as it worked out, we did end up working with all of them. And ‘Well Well Well’, which sounds almost like a Compass Point recording, has all of
“There’s real power in Grace. She’s almost like a shaman. Like all great artists, she’s channelling the real thing. She’s powerful, and the power comes from beyond her. And people can feel that and that’s why they love her, and that’s why they are also a bit frightened of her. Because you don’t quite know what she’s going to do, but then you realise, she’s not going to do anything bad. Everything she does is provocative, and that’s because she’s the real deal. That’s why she’s such an incredible performer. With all the greats, it doesn’t all come from their own personalities. It’s utterly unique. And there is no accounting for it. It’s just what it is for Grace. She’s just riding this wave that she experiences, and if anything, it gets stronger. She can switch from everyday Grace into this mode where she becomes that kind of being that everybody thinks they know. She starts talking with wisdom and depth and real insight. And it can come out of the blue. And you just think, wow – look at that. That’s real, real talent. And that’s what I love about music. It’s all about identifying that flow, where is that taking us, and then going with it. “She just really trusted me. And that really was an amazing feeling. It’s almost like a kind of love. It’s quite an unusual thing to experience: for someone to overtly support you just because you’re you and you’re doing your thing. “‘Hurricane’ is having a bit of a renaissance, and it couldn’t come at a better time for us. In the live show, you’ve got the gender bending stuff, you’ve got the outsider stuff, there’s the music, the performance, the fashion – it’s just an endless list. It’s so nice to hear people say how ‘Hurricane’ has been an important record to them. I said to Grace: ‘Well you’re used to making classic albums, but I’m not!’ It’s really nice that it’s bedded itself into her classic discography in a way, and that people really love it. That’s all I wanted to do.
them. Grace wanted to do it as a tribute to Alex Sadkin who made those records. And Barry (Reynolds) wrote it, so we put all of them on that track. Sticky Thompson, the percussionist, said at the beginning of the track: ‘Compass Point style!’ and it all came together.”
Photo: Andrea Klarin
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What can you tell us about the new record? “This record is rooted in Africa. It’s essentially an African record. It doesn’t all sound uber-African, but it is very much based in that. I was almost annoyed that we thought of it, because then I knew we’d have to do it, and it would have to be a lot of hard work! I’m mixing the first four tracks next week, so we’re finishing it now. I’m really pleased with it. The two main collaborators on the record are Eska Mtungwazi and Dave Okumu from the band The Invisible. “Dave’s of Kenyan origin and Eska’s of Zimbabwean origin, they’re both close friends of mine and both fabulous musicians. So those two have been the core musical collaborators, but there’s no-one uber-famous on it. Grace’s roots are Ebo Nigerian, but we haven’t gone for a traditional Afrobeat sound, it’s more roots. We’ve tried to mesh African folk and ceremonial drumming with other things. “There’s one song that we recorded during the ‘Hurricane’ sessions with Tony Allen that we’re thinking about putting on this new record, because it kind of fits with everything else. We worked with Tony quite a lot. Grace adored Fela (Kuti). But we never would have tried to make a ‘Hurricane 2’. We couldn’t have done that. We don’t think like that. It has to evolve.”
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Photo: Douglas Kirkland/Corbis via Getty Images
Keith Haring applies body paint to Grace Jones during the filming of ‘Vamp’, California, 1986
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: MISS GRACE JONES From being offered a baby as a deposit to getting banned from Disney World, here’s ten of her iconic moments. It’s not just about whacking Russell Harty… Words: Mark Hooper
Slave to the Rhythm: After showing off her hula hooping skills at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee performance, Elizabeth II said she was disappointed that Grace changed out of her stage outfit, to which she replied: “I didn’t think it was appropriate to be introduced to the Queen with my legs all on show and my ass hanging out!” Pull Up to the Bumper: During her triumphant 2008 Meltdown comeback performance (curated by Massive Attack), she bounced down the onstage staircase on her backside, announcing: “This is how I walk down the stairs. It’s called a crawl.” The previous year she had performed ‘Trust in Me’ from ‘The Jungle Book’ at Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown – ironic, since she’s also banned for life from Disney World Florida for baring her breasts on stage. I’ve Seen That Face Before: Grace was considered for the title role in ‘Octopussy’ before appearing as Bond villain May Day in ‘A View to a Kill’. She also turned down a role as a replicant in ‘Blade Runner’ (at the prompting of then boyfriend Jean-Paul Goude, who didn’t want her working for other directors). What I Did For Love: Dolph Lundgren owes his movie career to Grace: he was her personal bodyguard (as well as boyfriend) while she was on the set of ‘A View to a Kill’ when the role of KGB agent Venz was written into the plot specifically for him. Below the Belt: Perhaps conscious of her famously frosty on-set relationship with Roger Moore, she wore a strap-on dildo during the filming of their sex scene together to break the ice.
Don’t Mess With the Messer: Her rider for gigs includes ‘two dozen Fine de Claire or Colchester oysters on ice’ – with the proviso ‘Grace does her own shucking’ because she doesn’t trust anyone else not to mess it up. Art Groupie: Keith Haring famously painted Grace’s body, originally for Andy Warhol’s ‘Interview’ magazine, photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe in 1985. Grace asked him to paint her again for her ‘I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You)’ video – and once more for her role in ‘Vamp’. Nightclubbing: Grace was indirectly responsible for the creation of Chic’s ‘Le Freak’. Nile Rodgers revealed that they wrote the hit (original words – ‘Ah Fuck Off!’) after being refused entry to Studio 54 – because Grace forgot to add them to the guest list. Nipple to the Bottle: Her unique approach to parenting included never using the word ‘No’ when speaking to her son Paulo. Interviewed by Jonathan Ross in 2017, she explained: “I’d just say: ‘If you want to go in the swimming pool, YOU’LL DROWN!’” Me! I Disconnect From You: Famously refusing to perform without being paid upfront, Grace cancelled a corporate gig when the sponsors didn’t come up with the cash – despite her generous offer: “Well, give us all your jewellery and watches, your Rolexes, as a deposit.” They called back with a suggestion: “We have an employee who has a baby she is prepared to offer as security. We have a baby! You can keep the baby until we bring you the money.” In her autobiography, she concludes: “I didn’t take the baby.” DISCO_POGO_113
THE HOUSE THAT LUKE BUILT PHOTOS: ROB JONES
His contributions to Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning ‘Renaissance’ album may have finally given Luke Solomon the recognition he believes he’s always deserved, but among the global house nation he’s long been cherished. Jacob Munday hears about the highs and lows of a 30-year-plus career chasing that Classic groove. “It hasn’t all been roses,” says Solomon. “It’s been tough…”
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Luke Solomon has been a pioneer of underground dance music for four decades and counting. As a DJ, producer, remixer, club promoter, record label founder and A&R, he has played a part in so many seminal moments in club culture that Andrew Weatherall, no less, once dubbed him house music’s “unsung hero”. Solomon co-founded one of 90s’ London’s legendary club nights, Space, and two of the UK’s leading deep house labels, Music for Freaks and Classic – the latter of which is still going strong releasing records by Honey Dijon, Sophie Lloyd, Crazy P and Horse Meat Disco. He has DJed in clubs all around the world and been involved in making more than 600 records – at least according to Discogs; Solomon himself lost count years ago. And
“weird conversations” in house music circles that “have kind of taken me by surprise. I mean, we’ve grown up with amazing vocalists – Martha Wash, Whitney… and there aren’t many people like that left who have come from church. So, the idea of making house records with Beyoncé… it’s like Loleatta Holloway still being alive. But we’re having these conversations and it’s, like: ‘I’m not really a Beyoncé fan.’ And I’m, like: ‘How can you not be a fan?’ That shit really threw me.” He’s just started: “The brief we were given was that she wanted to take Black dance music back to its roots, where it was coming from disco, or soul, or funk, or house. So it wasn’t definitively: ‘I’m making a house album.’ The first thing we did was build them a playlist – and then we presented a whole world of
this year he reached a very different sort of milestone: his first Grammy Awards. On 6 February at the Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles, he sat at a VIP table and watched Beyoncé Knowles win the gong for best dance/electronic music album for her disco and house-centric LP, ‘Renaissance’ – for which Solomon had co-produced two songs with his regular collaborators superstar DJ Honey Dijon and the multi-instrumentalist Chris Penny. Beyoncé subsequently won three more awards and ended the evening the most garlanded artist in Grammy history, with 32 wins. “The whole thing felt so surreal, almost out of body,” he reflects a month later at home in northwest London, still looking equal parts open-mouthed and overjoyed. “It was almost like I was watching myself celebrate. It took me three or four days to just come down off it all [Not like that – he’s been sober for 11 years]. That moment was just… holy shit. What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened? Even now it doesn’t feel real.” So how do you celebrate a Grammy win? If you are Honey Dijon, you go for dinner afterwards with Madonna and Sam Smith: “She did the whole celebrity thing.” Meanwhile, Solomon was jetlagged after flying from London for two DJ gigs in consecutive days in New York and San Francisco, and then on to LA with hardly any sleep. “So me, Chris and Sam (Holt, their manager) went to the In-N-Out Burger in Hollywood and just hung out. It was exactly what we wanted to do.” Beyoncé had been gracious in her acceptance speech, thanking the Queer community ‘for your love, and for inventing the genre [of dance music]’ – but some felt the award should have gone to a dance or electronic music act. “I tried to stay away from any drama,” he says, although he alludes to
samples, ideas and concepts to people who had never experienced a lot of those records. And she properly did her homework. That’s the reality of what happened – she went all the way in. If you listen to the album, that’s very much our DNA in those songs.” The unlikely collaboration was first mooted in March 2021 with the UK still in lockdown, when Holt received an email out of the blue from a company whose name he couldn’t quite place: Parkwood. He had to Google it before realising that it was Beyoncé’s label. Almost immediately there was a Zoom call then non-disclosure agreements three days later. “We were all just freaking out at home – but we couldn’t tell anyone else.” There was no direct contact with Queen Bee herself. “It was very cloak and dagger, like, she’s the producer but she works closely with her engineer, Stuart White, and the producer Mike Dean.” But there was a lot of “back and forth” with her A&R and her creative director. Over the course of 2021, Team Dijon submitted more than 20 tracks to Team Knowles. “It was sort of like the ‘X Factor’,” he says, laughing. “Ok, this track has got through to the next round… But interestingly the two she eventually chose were the very first thing we sent and the very last thing.” These tracks became the musical framework for the songs ‘Alien Superstar’ and ‘Cozy’. “We knew they needed to work in stadiums in front of huge audiences, so we had to slow them down to allow things more space. But really, it was like making house records and then just bringing the tempo down – and the final productions are not that far away from our versions, which is actually amazing.” So, what’s the significance of a Grammy win? His answer might surprise some. “On a personal level, I’ve spent a lot of my life being in the shadows and trying to prove myself while I’ve watched a lot of my peers go past me. For a long time I definitely didn’t get the recognition I felt I deserved.”
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“I’VE LIVED MY LIFE IN SMOKE AND MIRRORS. PEOPLE DON’T GET TO LOOK AT WHAT MY LIFE IS REALLY LIKE.” From the outside it looks as though he’s had an incredible career. “Ah, but I’ve always lived my life in smoke and mirrors. People don’t really get to look at what my life is really like. I’ve been very closed and guarded about that. It hasn’t all been roses. It’s been tough.” Originally from the West Country, Luke spent part of his childhood and early teens in Cyprus – his Greek-Cypriot father moved the family there for a few years to escape the UK recession in the 80s; Luke’s mum had died when he was a baby, which, he has said, “disrupted me for a long time... I just rebelled against everything”. His career in dance music began in 1993 when he dropped out of a degree at Middlesex University – in Psychology, Spanish and Third World Studies – for a job at a record shop in nearby Barnet called Stop on By. Even though Barnet is in Zone Five – the sticks to Londoners – the shop’s reputation for stocking hard-to-find records reeled in DJs from across the capital. Among them was a young DJ from Brighton, Kenny Hawkes. “We just hit it off,” says Luke. “And
after a few months Kenny said: ‘Look, I’ve been approached to run this pirate radio station that’s moving from Brighton to London called Girls FM – would you be interested in a show?’” Launching in the capital that same year, Girls FM’s impact was huge. At the time it was competing directly with the former pirate station turned legal broadcaster, Kiss FM, which, although grappling with the programming constraints of being a commercial station that would eventually render it unrecognisable from its former self, was still championing a lot of underground dance music. But Girls was pushing sounds rarely heard on Kiss, from textured, rolling deep house grooves to bolshy, skittery, proto UK garage. And for Luke and Kenny, it gave them a platform to showcase the music that excited them the most – in particular the wildly experimental, wigged-out disco-dub records made by an emerging ‘second generation’ of Chicago house producers including Ron Trent, Chez Damier, Iz & Diz, DISCO_POGO_117
Glenn Underground, DJ Sneak and Gemini on labels such as Prescription, Guidance, Cajual and Relief. Soon, he would get to meet his heroes in person after he began working in promotions for the UK house label Freetown, which began licensing tracks from Chicago. In 1994 he flew out to the Windy City to DJ and distribute vinyl promos, and during an “epic night out” befriended another of its rising stars, Derrick Carter. “He’s a freak. He’s a weirdo. We’re peas in a pod in that way. We were just immediately on the same wavelength,” he says. The following year, Carter relocated to London because he was getting so many bookings in Europe and moved into a room at Solomon’s house, setting up a home studio for them to get creative in. “It was never a case of ‘Oh, let’s work together,’ we were just
the vocal mix, he grabbed a microphone and sung the missing lyrics himself. It sums Space up: the music was revered but the atmosphere was irreverent; equal parts dance music industry hub and messy house party where nobody took themselves too seriously. Many of the records that filled the dancefloor back then still stand up today too – as proven by the deftly curated new two-part Space compilation on the Above Board label. By the turn of the millennium Space was still packing them in; Classic had lived up to its name, becoming one of the world’s premier labels; and he had formed another fruitful creative partnership with a mate from university, Justin Harris, recording as Freaks and launching the Music for Freaks label. Derrick was a superstar DJ; Luke and Kenny were
kids in our 20s who decided we wanted to have this record label, and it was going to be the best shit you’d ever heard – so we called it Classic.” Things were moving fast. In 1995 he and Hawkes launched their club night, Space, in a West End
gigging around the world too. Living the deep house dream. And then it all began to unravel. For the acid house generation who came of age in the 80s and 90s, the decade that followed often felt like the worst possible hangover after the mother of
“WE WANTED TO HAVE THIS RECORD LABEL, AND IT WAS GOING TO BE THE BEST SHIT YOU’D EVER HEARD - SO WE CALLED IT CLASSIC.” basement club called Bar Rumba. And even though Space was on Wednesday nights, it was soon pulling in hundreds of people every week. Part of its appeal was a starry roster of guest DJs that included Ron Trent and Chez Damier making their UK debuts, as well as sparkling sets by Derrick Carter, Gemini, John Acquaviva, François Kevorkian, Andrew Weatherall, Harvey and many more. Space was also the only London club of its time dedicated entirely to deep house. You could hear the music at other clubs, but rarely all night and never the way Solomon and Hawkes played it, throwing in Detroit techno records pitched down to a house tempo, UK and European productions by the likes of Matthew Herbert, Rob Mello, Isolée and the Idjut Boys, a smattering of New York vocals, even straight-up party records such as Pet Shop Boys’ ‘West End Girls’ or Hamilton Bohannon’s ‘Let’s Start the Dance’. One of his treasured memories is the night Derrick Carter got so vexed that there was an instrumental version of ‘Let’s Start the Dance’ playing instead of 120_DISCO_POGO
all parties. The musical landscape began to change with the rise of minimal and electro house, and by 2002 Space had come to an end. But even more devastating was the collapse of vinyl culture as the digital age took over. The surge in downloading led that same year to the liquidation of Ideal, the company that distributed both Classic and Music for Freaks, leaving the labels with a combined debt of £250,000. And as Luke was coming to terms with all of this, there came an unexpected plot twist: Freaks had a Top Ten hit. “It was a complete accident. We’d made a track called ‘The Creeps’ that got signed by Azuli, and unbeknown to us they’d got this electro-house remix done and put it on DJ Download, which was the first big digital website before Beatport. And it just blew up, the most downloaded track they’d ever had. So me and Justin were in a bit of a quandary because we hadn’t even approved the remix but then Ministry stepped in to sign it, so we just went: ‘OK, let’s go with it but we want to put a new vocal on it,’ and that’s the version that went Top Ten. And it was such a weird time for it to happen because we’d lost
“IT COULD HAVE BEEN ME. WHETHER IT WAS ROOTED IN ADDICTION OR BEING A FUCKING IDIOT.” Classic, we’d lost Space, we were in a lot of debt, trying to figure out where we all belonged… and then I became a dad (he has two sons, both now in their teens, with his wife, Kris), so you’re not going out as much, and then all of a sudden the gigs aren’t there anymore. I was playing catch-up for a long, long time after that.” In 2011 came the nadir. Hawkes died at the age of just 42 from liver failure as a result of alcohol abuse. “It was a reflection of everything a lot of us were going through in different ways,” he says. “It could have been me. So many times, it could have been me. Whether it was rooted in addiction or just being a fucking idiot. Those moments when I could have crashed that car or fallen off that roof, all the stupid things I’ve done because I was high. There were parties where I would fall over when I was DJing, and the promoters were talking to my agent the next day and saying: ‘Is Luke OK? What’s going on?’” He continues: “The whole culture revolved around 122_DISCO_POGO
enabling people. The drinks are on your rider. You drink on the plane, going out for dinner. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a quick livener?’ That whole thing of looking at you when you say no and they go: ‘What? Really?’ That stuff. I think kids today are more educated about being able to say yes or no; but I grew up at a time when if you weren’t hanging out with the promoter at the after-afterparty, you probably weren’t going to get booked again. By the end of it I was getting travel anxiety and I couldn’t get on a plane without drinking; I couldn’t DJ without drinking. “My moment of epiphany came after going to BPM in Mexico and being up for three or four days and having a panic attack on the plane home. And I got off the plane and I thought: ‘That’s it. I don’t want to be the embarrassing old drunk or high man at the party anymore.’” He has been sober ever since: “I’m an all or nothing guy.” With sobriety has come renewed focus, regained confidence and an exciting new chapter in his career, which began in the dark days of 2011 when he was thrown a lifeline in the form of an A&R
job at Defected by its CEO, Simon Dunmore. Defected had bought Classic and planned to relaunch the label. Who better to helm that operation than one of its founders? “I was at a point where it was either throw in the towel and do something completely different, which I don’t know how to do, or take the job and work my way up from the bottom all over again – which is what I did. And it was the best thing I could have done, because as an A&R (across all Defected’s labels including DFTD, Classic, Strictly Rhythm, Faith, Nu Groove and Glitterbox), I have to go out and meet all these new kids and understand new culture. We’re in a young person’s world, so it’s important to embrace change. The minute you become bitter and resentful, it’s game over.” At the same time, his experience has helped Defected to maintain a level of authenticity and connection with underground music, even as it has grown into a megabrand. “Every time we’ve picked up a [heritage] label like Nu Groove, we’ve gone: ‘OK, what should this feel like now?’ The originators still help in the background, whether it’s Rheji and Ronnie Burrell with Nu Groove or Stu (Patterson) and Terry (Farley) with Faith. I think early on a lot of my peers were saying: ‘Oh, you’ve sold out,’ – but I’m great at having something to prove and now I think people understand it’s still about the music, not about exploiting it.”
Before relaunching Classic, there was an “emotional” conversation with Derrick Carter – who ultimately decided not to re-join the label. “I think he just wanted to go off and be a wandering minstrel on his own terms with no one to worry or think about. It was sad, but he kind of passed the baton and entrusted me with it, and I think he’s happy with the way it’s panned out.” Solomon’s creative output has blossomed again too, a highlight coming in 2017 with Powerdance, a collective he assembled with the German producer Nick Maurer featuring musicians from LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip and Metro Area. Their debut album, ‘The Lost Art of Getting Down’, an homage to 1970s New York disco and post-punk, won a five-star review from The Guardian, who deemed it “an object lesson in how to take inspiration from the past and apply it to the present”. There is another Powerdance album in the works. But “the problem now, post-Beyoncé, is suddenly all these crazy opportunities are happening and I’ve got to put it to one side because so-and-so’s just called…” Who’s that, then? A Cheshire Cat grin. “Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to say anything…” Tantalising, but whatever lies in store this much is already abundantly clear: Luke Solomon has nothing left to prove. DISCO_POGO_123
Yacht’s Going On? The cyclical nature of pop time means music is never out of style for long. But when it comes to the provocative sound of yacht rock, maybe the music never went away. As a new breed of dancefloor producers fall under its superwarm, slo-mo spell, Jim Butler traces the music’s origins, discusses its dubious name and highlights its enduring and timely appeal…
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For James Alexander Bright, one-half of Bright & Findlay, it’s like a warm embrace: “An audio hug.” JIM, the new alter ego of Crazy P’s Jim Baron, describes it as “a joyful noise”. DJ Supermarkt says the sounds have repeatedly soothed him in times of trouble. “Every crisis I had, I survived with that music.” Benny Sings, the Dutch musician, calls it an identity thing. “It’s like saying this is who I am. I want sunshine, I want bright colours. I do live in a concrete, rainy environment but this is who I am.” Lou Hayter, meanwhile, spies it’s presence everywhere. “It’s in so many great records.” As for Ned Doheny, that classic Californian troubadour who was best friends with Jackson Browne, ran with The Eagles and Joni Mitchell, and whose music has arguably been best-served by the sound’s persistent resurgence, well, he can’t abide the term. “It sounds kind of dismissive,” he laments. “As if it’s a bunch of rich people disporting themselves. A lot of the music that was made was the by-product of lifetimes’ devotion and deserves a bit better call than that.” Welcome to the contentious world of yacht rock. A music which for the first 30-odd years of its existence was, if not the genre with no name, then certainly known by other descriptions: AOR (Adultoriented rock), smooth soul, soft rock, jazz pop… The name yacht rock only came into being on the back of a YouTube video series that began in 2005. An affectionate lampooning of the super-airbrushed, joyously self-indulgent and stylised studio sounds proffered by the likes of Steely Dan, Toto, Kenny Loggins, The Doobie Brothers, Bobby Caldwell, Christopher Cross, Hall & Oates and co, the ‘Yacht Rock’ show retrospectively gave a name to, and subsequently reawakened interest in, a music that had previously been scorned for its supposedly non-rebellious – square – properties. Although the creators of ‘Yacht Rock’ loosely defined the music’s time in the hot, hot Californian sun as between 1976 and 1984 – heralded by Michael McDonald and Loggins co-writing ‘What a Fool
Ned Doheny Believes’ – those musicians, DJs and producers that fell under its spell in the 00s stretched the timespan to incorporate the likes of Fleetwood Mac, America, Carly Simon, the Eagles, even Carole King, the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills and Nash. They also went the other way too, bringing modern acts like Phoenix and Zoot Woman to the party. Crucially, however, the cratediggers – as is their wont – went deeper. DJ Supermarkt discovered less-heralded – in some cases almost obscure – musicians such as the aforementioned Doheny, Browning Bryant (whose 1974 self-titled album was produced by the imperious Allen Toussaint) and Matthew Larkin Cassell. “I thought I’m not the only one that needs to know about Ned Doheny,” DJ Supermarkt (Marcus Liesenfeld) reflects today. “I’m not a musician, but I am pretty good at sharing things I find because I don’t keep them for myself. There were a few songs that really started the decision to make it a label (Too Slow To Disco) and Doheny’s ‘Get It Up For Love’ was one of them.” If yacht rock today has a creative linchpin, it is the Berlin-based DJ Supermarkt. His ‘Too Slow To Disco’ compilations – to date he’s released 10 albums (including the ‘Neo’, ‘The Ladies Of Too Slow To Disco’, ‘Brasil’ and ‘Yacht Soul’ off-shoots) – have helped legitimise and crystallise the sound. Significantly, it’s also highlighted a correlation between the music and the dancefloor – a sonic signpost that’s not lost on several modern artists as we shall soon see. DISCO_POGO_125
Back in the 90s, Liesenfeld was one of Berlin’s biggest electronic artists. Alongside Holger Beier he was one half of Le Hammond Inferno and the pair founded the Bungalow label. They would DJ on the main floor in clubs across the world. And while the highs of such a lifestyle were stratospheric, the lows were conversely deep. It was listening to the music broadly described as yacht rock that enabled him to reach some sort of equilibrium while stuck in another “shitty hotel or shitty airport”. He began noticing a pattern among other globe-trotting DJs. “Whenever I played it to someone, they either thought I was crazy, or they asked who it was,” he recalls. “But a lot of people admitted that they did the same. I met 2manydjs at that time, Peaches, Erol… those kinds of people, and it’s funny, they all
them in Rough Trade. The second mix was called Too Slow To Disco.” And then came the compilations. Tellingly, he didn’t use the term yacht rock. “I always thought yacht rock was the wrong word,” he explains. “There is no rock. It’s almost like an anti-rock movement. I think it was a good name for the ironic show, but it doesn’t really capture what I love about that music. It’s more pop. Actually, it’s more soul music. They have so much soul.” On the cover of the first TSTD compilation a sticker was attached which read: Late-70s, Early80s West Coast Yacht Pop You Can Almost Dance To. The description, while cumbersome, was perfect. Here was a music that was slow – sometimes really slow – but you could dance to it. Benny Sings is another who finds the insertion of
did the same. All of them.” After his discovery of Doheny (“I’d never heard of him. Even in the 70s nobody had heard of him”) and other music released on major labels (Doheny’s eponymous 1973 debut album came out on David Geffen’s Asylum, his follow-up, ‘Hard Candy’, on Columbia), Liesenfeld put together a mix of music from that period. He assembled it like a radio show from the 70s, replete with weather forecasts and adverts from the time. He uploaded it to a house blog he was involved in, and it just exploded. “It was the most downloaded thing we ever put on there. I ended up doing two more mixes and we sold
rock problematic. “The least-listened-to genre on my Spotify is rock,” he explains. “I’m not a big fan of the distorted guitar so I wish there was another term. But I love yacht rock [the sound], so let’s go.” Across eight albums – his latest, ‘Young Hearts’, came out this spring on Stones Throw – he’s indulged his love of this music, but his entry point wasn’t that original coterie of musicians, but the hip hop producers who sampled them. “I was a fan of Jay Dee (J Dilla), and he used Bobby Caldwell samples,” he says. “In those rap songs I always loved the choruses the most – which was generally the sample. So, my first idea was I want to make music that just consists of the choruses of the rap songs and then the verses I’ll sing as well. What I didn’t know I was doing was essentially recreating yacht rock.”
DJ Supermarkt
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Benny Sings
Lou Hayter JIM
After his first album, 2003’s ‘Champagne People’, journalists kept asking him if he was a fan of artists like Donald Fagen, Toto et al. He wasn’t aware of them, so he did some digging and he soon realised he’d found his calling. With one exception. “The production is hip hop, but yes, it’s from the school of yacht rock.” Self-proclaimed Steely Dan aficionado Lou Hayter believes that hip hop is key to the music’s sustained popularity. She points to Fagen and Walter Becker’s band being sampled by hip hop royalty including De La Soul, MF Doom, Ice Cube and Kanye West. “I grew up with De La Soul, so when I heard ‘Peg’ for the first time, I already knew it,” she says. “The more I listened to Steely Dan the more I was hearing things I already knew from hip hop. Then you’ve got Warren G’s ‘Regulate’ [featuring its Michael McDonald signature sample]. That sound is in so many great records. It’s very much woven into the fabric of popular music through hip hop and then people just tune into it.” This criss-crossing of music and the dialogue and exchange that’s embedded in popular culture also makes itself apparent in the fact that Toto – whose ‘Africa’ hit is either the apogee of this selfcongratulatory, cheery sound or its nadir, depending on how many Guilty Pleasures-themed nights you’ve experienced – were not only vital studio musicians for the likes of Steely Dan and Boz Scaggs, but wrote ‘Human Nature’ for Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ album.
“So, it’s been there all along,” says Hayter, whose superb 2021 debut album ‘Private Sunshine’ unapologetically paid homage to the breezy world of yacht rock. But it’s not just Hayter from the dance/electronic world who has gleefully embraced it. JIM, the infectious new project from Crazy P’s Jim Baron (aka Ron Basejam), wonderfully evokes wide-open Californian vistas and nautical (mis)adventures. “It’s an attachment I feel fits the music,” he happily concedes of his ‘Love Makes Magic’ album. “And it’s not because I’ve got any experience of being on huge yachts taking heavy amounts of cocaine. For me, it’s very uplifting. The production is so tight. The orchestration. The harmonic content. It’s a very specific sound built around those elements.” Baron is providing his take on yacht rock, but he could easily be talking about ‘Love Makes Magic’. Indeed, it’s one of those albums that effortlessly accrues instant classic status. Tracks like ‘Oxygen’ – which employs a fluid groove Doheny would applaud – ‘Still River Flow’ and the irresistible ‘Then We Do It Again’ merge Baron’s dancefloor savvy with classic songwriting licks. So why are so many electronic producers taking a holiday among yacht rock’s dusty boulevards? Baron has some thoughts. “If you’re looking back to disco there’s a direct comparison musically with what’s going on,” he DISCO_POGO_127
Bright & Findlay
suggests. “Maybe not stylistically, but in terms of what’s going on with the harmonies and how the songs are moving around. I’d probably say that if you’re into disco it’s a very short jump over to the yacht rock sound.” And when Steely Dan were supposedly employing 50 musicians and engineers to bring their ‘Gaucho’ album into existence, the sleek sophistication of that production mirrors disco’s ostentatious flamboyance. “Exactly right,” says Baron. “They spent a lot of money on string sections, on orchestration, making it sound as big as possible. And disco was the same. It was a cast of thousands on most of those records. There’s a link there definitely.” “Musicians today can’t believe how good those songs sound,” says DJ Supermarkt. “There’s no budget in the world nowadays. You can’t do it.” Although one could argue Daft Punk gave it a good go when employing their ‘cast of thousands’ on their final opus, ‘Random Access Memories’, another album on speaking terms with the sunshine-soaked possibilities of yacht rock, and, not coincidentally, also recorded in Los Angeles. Another explanation of yacht rock’s influence on contemporary dance music takes in the term slo-mo disco. Like ‘Too Slow To Disco’’s ‘pop you can almost dance to’ narrative, slo-mo disco couches the music in that familiar chuggy, almost-Balearic, dancefloor 128_DISCO_POGO
sound. It’s a description Bright & Findlay (James Alexander Bright and one-half of Groove Armada Tom Findlay) subscribe to on their excellent, and fittingly titled, debut album, ‘Everything is Slow’. ‘Slo-mo disco sounds like a nice space for us to be in,” admits Findlay. “I can lean into those grooves and it subsequently brings in a lot of crossover that you hear in dance music. So, if we get led down a New York Morgan Geist road for a day, that’s OK. It makes you realise how fluid that sound is.” Bright points to modern artists such as Bibio and Dâm-Funk as carrying on that “soulful, almost Balearic early hours-of-the-morning vibe”. He explains: “A lot of artists, whether it’s with plug ins or not, they like to create that hazy, almost like a snapshot – a Polaroid – which I guess we do with tape decks and old reel-to-reel recording, to regenerate a warmth and a yesteryear sound with modern production. It’s comforting and instantly puts a smile on my face.” Comforting aural hugs are something we could all do with right now. So maybe it’s no accident that the music seems to be in the spotlight once more. “When the music came to prominence in the 70s,” says Findlay, “I think it was to do with an existential unease in America at the time – Vietnam and things like that. I don’t want to get too meta about the whole thing, but I wonder, we’re going through difficult and challenging times right now and having something that feels like a big audio hug is something we need in our lives.” That today’s take on yacht rock is also everevolving and amorphous – much like its Balearic cousin – also speaks to modern dancefloors. As Baron says of his JIM alter ego: “If you’re DJing by the pool on a Sunday afternoon at Pikes it’s perfect tackle for that.” And if you’re looking for a closing – for now – chapter, DJ Supermarkt suggests finding it in the
booming sphere of re-edits. He points to edits by the likes of Luxxury, Late Nite Tuff Guy, Duff Disco and Flight Facilities helping keep the music relevant today. “I like stuff that is alive,” he states. Today, he doesn’t play the older artists he first discovered back at the fag end of the 00s. It’s all about musicians like Poolside, Kraak and Smaak, Roosevelt, L’Impératice, and Bertrand Burglat (the latter two both appearing on his TSTD ‘Neo – En France’ collection). “It’s important to find a new angle so I don’t become a jukebox.” In the UK, meanwhile, the re-edit duo Flying Mojito Brothers have given their own sun-baked take on “yacht-adjacent” sounds such as country rock, classic rock and swamp rock, arriving at a simpatico cosmic Americana disco. They’ve also collaborated with James Alexander Bright reworking – or what they term “refrito”-ing – some of his !K7 recordings. Of course, the pulsing heartbeat of the disco – the groove – is the link that ties this oftentimes unwieldy story together. J.D. Ryznar, one of the people behind the notorious ‘Yacht Rock’ series once described the base of the music as R&B. “There [are] jazz elements,” he told the Beyond Yacht Rock podcast. “There can be complex, challenging melodies; the solos are all cutting-edge and really interesting. There’s always something interesting about a true yacht rock song. It goes left when you expect it to go right.” Ned Doheny believes one of the reasons he might not have succeeded in the 70s and why he has been discovered at this later stage could have been because of this very cocktail in his songs. “There was a teeny bit of jazz there, there was some R&B, it was all rhythm-based, even the slow tunes, so I was kind of, I wouldn’t say uncategorisable, but a little more difficult to pinpoint in terms of style. And maybe that’s what this late date interest in my tunes stems from.” He continues: “A long time ago, Jackson (Browne) claims to have given me a compilation of ‘Motown’s Greatest Hits’. I dispute that. But let’s just say I’ve always loved rhythm. It seems if you engage someone’s body their mind is sure to follow.” Back in 2015, DJ Supermarkt promoted a Ned Doheny show in Berlin as part of a European tour. That tour saw DJ support come from the likes of Balearic stalwarts Paul (Claremont 56) Murphy, Jason Boardman and Moonboots. For Liesenfeld that Berlin show was both a revelation and vindication. “I’ve never seen so many people crying. I was one of them,” he happily admits. Since the mid-70s then, yacht rock has always been with us, you could say it’s just been hiding in plain sight. And if the name is troublesome, the sound is anything but.
Bugging out to smooth yacht rock! In 2008 I deviated from my public image - promoting Bugged Out! - to become better known for playing yacht rock. I had an unlikely hit DJ mix on my hands for Resident Advisor. I’d been running a Bugged Out! New Year’s Day party for years where I often dipped into smooth yacht tunes by the likes of Toto and Hall & Oates. I was approached by Richard Chinn from RA who commissioned their weekly mixes. He wanted me to do one, “a bit like your New Year’s Day parties.” They had recently featured Derrick Carter and Laurent Garnier which worried me as I couldn’t mix, so I decided to focus on selection and “creative segues”. My excuse?: “You can’t really mix the tracks unless you want Michael McDonald to sing in an even higher falsetto by pitching him up.” With a nod towards dance music, I included an Idjut Boys edit of Phil Collins and a Balearic version of Toto’s ‘Africa’; the French have always loved yacht so Phoenix’s ‘Too Young’ featured alongside The Paradise’s ’In Love With You’. The centre of any yacht Venn diagram – Michael McDonald – appeared across tracks by The Doobie Brothers, Christopher Cross and Steely Dan. After several attempts I sent it to Chinn. The following day I had second thoughts and called him to pull it. “What are you talking about? The office loves it.” So, on 1 December 2008 RA No. 131 loaded into subscribers’ inboxes with the opening ‘Hill St Blues (theme)’ turning heads who were expecting some boompty boomp. From there it took off with a few techno obsessives citing it “a joke” but countless supporters who were pleased with the change from deep house or triggered with happy FM radio memories. Even Time Out reported on it, saying I “was responsible for bringing yacht rock to the dance music masses.” It became a staple of afterparties and I started getting bookings. I played the bar of Ibiza’s Space and at Glastonbury and Bestival. I heard that DJ Sasha was a fan and when I ran club night, Sail On Sailor, he turned up to shake a leg to the Doobies. It’s had a pretty decent afterlife on Soundcloud with recent comments from Berlin, London and Los Angeles citing it their favourite RA mix. Except it’s not a mix, it’s a creatively segued selection.
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ONCE MORE AROUND THE BLOCK Andy Votel and Badly Drawn Boy’s Twisted Nerve label might have been accidentally conceived, but it went on to birth not only a different, more compelling, side of mid-to-late-90s Manchester, but a range of artists who produced musical gold. Speaking to both Votel and Damon ‘BDB’ Gough, Luke Bainbridge revisits the label’s origins, its halcyon days and its legacy. And in doing so discovers that maybe the label’s story has another chapter still to be written… All imagery courtesy of Andy Votel
It’s 25 years since Twisted Nerve first put Badly Drawn Boy and Andy Votel in the spotlight. It was only a short period of their multi-faceted creative careers – they’ve both led fascinating musical lives before and after – but it was the “short-lived dysfunctional family” (Votel’s description) of Twisted Nerve that first launched them into the national psyche. I meet Andy Votel in Manchester Piccadilly Station, near where he and Gough were once photographed for an early Twisted Nerve photoshoot, outside the long-gone subterranean barbers in the stinky underground public toilets. Gough picks us up and drives us back to his adopted home of Chorlton, where he’s lived since shortly before the birth of Twisted Nerve in 1997. It was Damon moving to Chorlton that sparked the fortuitous chain of events which led to him meeting Votel and the formation of the label, more of which later. 130_DISCO_POGO
I’ve known Votel and Gough since those halcyon days in the 90s, when they were first kicking around ideas that would mutate into Twisted Nerve. Manchester is a very different city now, and we’re all slightly different people, having lost hair (some of us more than others) and acquired children along the way. ‘As the fire smoulders, I never will get older’, Gough sang back then, ‘because I drink from waterfalls’. Maybe some of us didn’t drink from enough waterfalls. Does it feel like 25 years, or does it feel like yesterday? “It definitely feels a while ago,” says Votel. “Once you have kids, you tend to judge time against their lives. My daughter is 19 now, and Twisted Nerve feels like several lifetimes before her.” “It does freak me out a bit when you put it like that,” says Gough. “1997 was 25 years ago, so 25 years before that was the early-70s and The Beatles had just broken up.”
Votel was only 21 when they launched Twisted Nerve, but he’d already been once around the block. He was a very early starter, going to leftfield clubs before he’d had his first sip of beer. His dad took him to club nights at Parkers Hotel and Precinct 13 (at Votel’s behest) from the age of 15 (“I already had facial hair at that age”). Originally a whippersnapper battle rapper – his real surname is Shallcross, the adopted moniker comes from his early hip
(“the most important DJ from Manchester in the last 30 years, in my opinion”) and Barney Wynters (aka Barney Doodlebug). Originally from Bristol, Barney and his doodlebug flyers and posters were everywhere around Manchester at the time, instantly recognisable. As was Barney himself, more likely to be seen in a dapper tweed suit only he could pull off, than the staple Mancunian mid-90s cagoule and baggy jeans. While most of the city looked
hop outfit Violators of the English Language – when the teenage Votel mentioned to his dad one night that he was worried about missing Gang Starr on Leaky Fresh’s Out to Distress Rap Show on
like they were off to the match, Barney looked like he was sneaking off to the coolest late-night speakeasy you’d never heard of. “That Bristolian contingent were pretty important to Manchester,” says
“The psychology of that first record is important. You didn’t think it was ready, but I was like: ‘Nothing is ever ready. Nothing is ever really finished.’” Sunset, his dad drove him down to the pirate radio station and knocked on the door. Leaky Fresh said: “No problem, come upstairs.” And the 15-year-old Votel rapped his own lyrics for Guru and DJ Premier. Guru put him on the guest list for their gig the following night at International 2, met him outside and took him inside. As Votel watched Gang Starr perform from the side of the stage, he thought to himself: ‘You know what? I’m never going to get a real job. This is me from now on.’ The young Votel started DJing around Manchester, helped and inspired by people he’d met at Parkers Hotel. Unsung underground heroes like Caroline Maloney
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Votel. “People like Barney, Matt Triggs and Steve Smith, from Weston-Super-Mare, added another flavour.” This was the time Votel and Gough first met, shortly after Gough moved to Manchester. Originally from Bolton, Gough spent his early 20s working at his family’s printing press, while messing around making music with his then partner Janine in their spare time. “For six years we were kind of a couple,” he recalls. “But we were more like mates. We nearly formed a band, or tried to.” After they split up, Janine moved to Berlin, and fell in with a new crowd including Peaches, and a few years later
became the acclaimed electronic artist Planningtorock. Gough moved to Manchester but didn’t really know anyone either. Fortuitously, one of the first friends he met took him to an exhibition launch in a bar one night, where the young Votel happened to be DJing. The two got talking after an intrigued Gough plucked up courage to ask Votel about the records he was playing. “I was really down on my luck at that point,” says Gough, “and if I hadn’t
Through 1996, Gough and Votel grew closer. Gough started to play Votel his nascent solo recordings, although he was still self-conscious about his voice. He would play his demos in the car, but fast forward them when it came to the vocals. One day Gough stopped to get petrol, and as he went in to pay, Votel pressed play and was impressed by what he heard and suggested he put it out as it was. “The psychology of that first record is
moved to Chorlton and met those people I wouldn’t have gone that night and met Andy. The serendipity is amazing, but you still gotta make something of it. It’s not a given that something is going to happen…” “I said this on stage when we did the Twisted Nerve reunion in December,” he continues. “Andy was the person who made it all seem possible to me. Everyone needs a mate like that in their life.”
important,” says Votel. “You didn’t think it was ready, but I was like ‘Nothing is ever ready, nothing is ever really finished!’” “I loved the lo-fi idea, I didn’t need to be persuaded about that,” replies Gough, “I was just probably nervous about putting my ideas out there and needed you to persuade me it would work. Andy’s artwork made it all seem more real, and all a sudden it was like: ‘We’re doing it…’”
Votel got a job with Grand Central and quickly transitioned from playing hip hop to the obscure 60s and 70s records and film soundtracks that would prove the bedrock for what became Twisted Nerve (that’s a very truncated précis, Votel paints a fuller picture later). He was also producing most of the artwork for Grand Central, Fat City and Ear To The Ground, and like the sponge that young enthusiastic kids are, soaking up everything about how to make a record, from the actual recordings to how to send a record to manufacture, design and print artwork, get it into shops, and then promote it. “Andy was already a bit of a star,” says Gough, “I remember one of the first big nights we all went out with Doves. We bought a copy of The Face on the way home and there was a review of Andy’s ‘Spooky Driver’, and I was really impressed. So, I was kind of in awe of him, initially.” “Initially!” laughs Votel, at Gough’s unintended caveat.
A friend of Votel’s, Gerald at Jazzman Records, told him about a place in Nashville that pressed cheap 7-inches. “They were 26p each, which was cheaper than cassettes,” remembers Votel. “Then if you wanted an extra colour on the label it went up to 38p.” Even then, there was no plan further than releasing the first couple of EPs. “I can’t remember us sitting down and having a specific conversation saying: ‘Shall we start a record label?’” Gough says to Votel. “Did we?” Haven’t you called it an ‘accidental label’ before? “That’s exactly what it was.” says Votel. The name Twisted Nerve came from a Hayley Mills horror film and Votel came up with the accompanying rabbit logo for the artwork. It was around this time I first met Gough, when I was working at Manchester’s City Life magazine. Badly Drawn Boy was still just a rough sketch when he called me out of the blue one
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afternoon. “Is that Luke?” said the faltering voice. “My name’s Damon and I’ve started a record label with a friend of mine and we’re putting out my first EP and our friend Rick Myers said you might be able to help us…” We met in Atlas bar. Gough gave me a copy of ‘EP1’ and explained the name Badly Drawn Boy came from a cartoon his nephew had drawn. He talked about the sort of music he wanted to make, and influences from Broadcast to Beck to The
Manchester and got them national recognition, Badly Drawn Boy and Twisted Nerve quickly became slightly mythical figures. Gough recalls going to the toilets in Dry Bar and two blokes next to him discussing who this ‘Badly Drawn Boy’ was, with no idea he was stood next to them, “because no-one had any idea what we looked like…” The aesthetic was key to Twisted Nerve. Drawing on influences as varied as his
Beatles. He played his first solo gig, a ramshackle affair to 30 people at the Britons Protection pub. It was obvious he was a singular talent, if still rough around the edges. But despite that undoubted raw talent, I don’t think anyone at the BP that
teacher at Stockport college, the designs of Abram Ganes, library records, local peers like Barney Doodlebug, and the DIY aesthetic passed down from his dad, the lo-fi, cut’n’paste, less-is-more approach of Votel’s design reflected the music within. It
“It’s like: ‘This is broke before you get it, we’re making that clear.’ Don’t bring it back say it’s not quite finished! It’s ‘sold as seen’.” night thought he would go on to produce a debut album, ‘The Hour of Bewilderbeast’, of such timeless magnificence and win the Mercury only three years later. As Votel later said: “What none of us knew at that time, was that Damon was an absolutely brilliant songwriter.” The name ‘Badly Drawn Boy’ was another incident of accidental brilliance at the accidental label. Neither Votel or Gough realised at first just how apt ‘Badly Drawn Boy’ was. “It’s like: ‘This is broke before you get it, we’re making that clear’,” explains Votel now. “Don’t bring it back and say it’s not quite finished! It’s ‘sold as seen’.” As ‘EP1’ caused a buzz around
couldn’t have been further in look, budget and ideals from the excess-all-areas mainstream music industry approach of the time, which saw Oasis sleeve designers Microdot rent a country mansion and sink a Rolls Royce into the swimming pool for the cover shoot for their bloated opus ‘Be Here Now’. The accidental label became more of a real label once other artists and people in their orbit began to bring them music. Both Votel and Gough cite Dave Tyack joining the label as bit of a turning point. Suddenly, they had a responsibility to other artists. Twisted Nerve reflected that while the outside view might have been that the
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Photo: Rich Mulhearn. For key see page 142
Manchester music scene in the mid-90s was struggling to emerge from the long shadows of Oasis and The Haçienda, underneath the surface much more interesting things were happening. Quite literally underneath the surface a lot of the time, as a lot of these things were happening in basement clubs. Under the paving stones, Manchester had everything but a beach. From Luke and Justin Unabomber launching Electric Chair, to
in little danger of troubling the charts, that wasn’t the point. Most of their ‘bands’ (apart from Mum and Dad, Misty Dixon and Alfie) were one-man acts and didn’t really exist outside the bedroom. “People thought we were making the bands up,” says Votel, “which we were in a way. They were like: ‘Where are they signing them from? Where was the bidding war?’ because that’s how the major labels thought.” Although they did their best to avoid any
Sankeys Soap and Jockey Slut, to Grand Central, Fat City and beyond, the musical landscape of Manchester was being redrawn, the hangover of the Madchester years subsiding. Twisted Nerve, Gough and
comparisons with other record labels, if they were Factory, Badly Drawn Boy was Joy Division, the act the label initially coalesced around and surprised everyone by producing such an utterly timeless
“I remember going to meet him (Tony Wilson), and he spent about an hour and a half talking at us, and drawing diagrams on a board, showing the links from Motown to Factory to Twisted Nerve.” Votel cut across the Venn diagram of the Manchester underground, attracting people from different tribes. They were feted by the music and style press, every issue of The Face at the time seemed to feature Badly, Votel or an associated Twisted Nerve act. They signed more acts including Mum and Dad, Alfie, Misty Dixon (featuring Jane Weaver, who went on to carve a brilliant solo career for herself after Twisted Nerve, and also married Votel) and Aidan Smith. Gough and Votel were, for a short while, the bearded lo-fi answer to Damon Dash and Jay-Z. If most of the label’s acts were
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debut album, while Votel was Martin Hannett, Peter Saville and Rob Gretton in one, setting the sonic palette and design aesthetic for the label, and convincing others it was possible to do it on their terms. Neither of them wanted to be Tony Wilson, they’re just not made that way. Not the type to shout from the rooftops. Although after Twisted Nerve launched, they were invited to an audience with the late, great Wilson. “I remember going to meet him, and he just spent about an hour and a half talking at us, and drawing diagrams on this board, showing the links from Motown to Factory to Twisted Nerve,”
recalls Gough. “I just kept looking at Andy, and he was sat on this little stool, spinning round. Tony was talking and talking, and Andy was just spinning round, getting a glimpse of Tony every time he turned.” “I don’t remember that!” laughs Votel, “but I like the sound of it, I’m having it!” “We went to so many meetings around that time,” says Gough, “where Andy and I just turned to each other and were like: ‘Why are we here?’”
“The thing is,” Votel sums up. “We all built each other. We all made each other, and we didn’t realise what a family it was at the time. No matter what happens, you’re never going to meet people as important as that again. We share the same memories.” “When you see old friends again who are important to you, it’s like a piece of you coming back to you,” says Gough. “Even if you didn’t appreciate at the time how important they were.”
It seems the recent Twisted Nerve 25th anniversary gig at the Golden Lion in Todmorden has them thinking again, addressing the Twisted Nerve elephant in their room. What was the feeling like when the dysfunctional family came together for the first time in decades? “Euphoric,” says Votel with conviction, then reaffirms it when he sees me wondering how
In the nearly two decades since Twisted Nerve, Andy has concentrated on his Finders Keepers label with Doug Shipton and Dom Thomas. “Basically, I always had over ambitious dreams of having my own outernational psychedelic label… so I set up an imaginary one with Twisted Nerve. Eight years later I set up a real one in Finders Keepers, working with our heroes
serious he is. “No, I genuinely mean it. Euphoric. It really is, now. There was a cooling off period, initially, of about five years, and then there was a slightly apologetic feeling from some people who realised they had unrealistic expectations of the label.” Not every Twisted Nerve act was going to win the Mercury Music Prize, but a couple of them naively made the mistake of thinking they were set to follow in Gough’s footsteps simply by signing to the label. “It was a revelation,” says Gough, of the reunion. “I felt tearful. It just took me back to the good days.” “There was a fracture that we’ve not really talked about,” says Votel. “In the same way that Dave Tyack made Twisted Nerve a label when he joined, when he went missing and died, we lost a lot of focus, and that can’t be understated. The biggest fan of the label was Dave Tyack. After Tyack died, I didn’t know who I was trying to impress, and I didn’t know who our audience was. He was the barometer.”
on a daily basis. We had won the Eurovision Wrong Contest!!”. He’s also a hugely underrated DJ (not by everyone, he’s fully appreciated by many, but maybe not enough). One of my favourite DJ sets of the last decade was his brilliant psyche space rock set at Bluedot festival in 2017. I was stood with Jimi Goodwin from Doves. Both of us had seen Votel DJ many times but were both blown away by his set that night. In lockdown, Andy started rapping and rambling. He went back to his first love of hip hop and put out a new record as Violators of the English Language. He also started going out walking with a group of old heads, all appreciating the benefits of blowing away the mental cobwebs of lockdown and middle age. ‘Trek Your Head’, Votel hashtags it on Instagram. He now goes out most Thursdays, with a group that includes old Twisted Nerve heads and associates like Paul Vella and Stan Chow, and comedian Justin Moorhouse, and is
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hoping to tick off all the Ethels (peaks in the Peak District) by the end of the year. Gough seems happier, calmer, and more positive than he has been for a few years, if still a little bewildered, in the best possible way, about how he got here. How we all got here. He’s seven years sober (since Votel’s 40th birthday party in Marple), after a difficult period when there were a few high-profile on-stage meltdowns. A lot of his focus is on his second young family with
Gillingham, which ends up a drab 0-0, and Gough off home, to get ready for his imminent dates, Something to Tour About: 25 Years of Badly Drawn Boy, and possibly, to ponder something Votel suggested earlier that day. As we talked through and around Twisted Nerve’s legacy, the highs and lows, the years seemed to drop away. Votel was about to say something when Gough got up to go to the toilet and said, “carry on
new partner Leanne, and after his ninth studio album ‘Banana Skin Shoes’ came out at the start of the pandemic, he’s now currently on his own Badly Drawn Boy 25th anniversary tour. There’s clearly, thankfully, a lot of music still to come from Gough. He’s still searching for another pearl. After a few hours discussing Twisted Nerve’s long and winding road, Gough drives us to the home of Mum and Dad’s Ian Rainford, who has custody of the Twisted Nerve scrapbooks, and has kindly agreed to lend them to me. We leaf through the pages of press cuttings, memories and synapses triggered. “It’s unbelievable the amount of press coverage we got, really,” says Rainford. It’s a been a long day, and we’re tired and hungry, so Votel persuades Gough to drive us to Stockport, so he can show us how his hometown has changed in the last few years. Stockport, as Luke Una has proclaimed several times on Instagram, is apparently the new Berlin. Votel gives us a whistlestop tour of the new independent bars and record shops on the steep cobbled streets. There’s a definite vibe, albeit more early Northern Quarter than early Berlin. “There’s nothing like this in Bolton,” says Gough, impressed. We pop into SK1 the record shop, and bump into a few old faces, including Jason Boardman of Aficionado. Then we part ways, Andy off to meet his son Herbie to watch Stockport v
without me”, but Votel changed the subject and waited until Gough was back before he continued, wanting him to hear what he had to say. “Twisted Nerve was like this imaginary label, which was unachievable, so we made this fake label with names like Bimbo Quick and Gabriel Greenburg and all these fantastic names,” he sums up, “and its gestation allowed me to go and make the real label, which is Finders Keepers. So, I’ve been doing the real label for 18 years, but what I failed to realise is it’s actually the pantomime version that… that excites the most, because it’s creation. All this great stuff on Finders Keepers, we found all these amazing things ‘cause I’m a great archivist, it’s what I do, but I didn’t make that music. Twisted Nerve made this music. We created it from nothing… the most exciting thing that could possibly, possibly happen now, is for us to relaunch Twisted Nerve, and carry on where we left off. Nothing has happened since that has put Twisted Nerve out of context, because there was no context for Twisted Nerve. It’s an alternative universe that can exist anywhere and anytime. I remember a DJ reaction sheet from Norman Cook to a Dakota Oak record that said: ‘This doesn’t work on the dancefloor, but you also can’t chill out to it’. What? So, dancing and chilling out are the only two emotions music allows you to have? We spent all our time trying to fill in all the
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gaps in between, and in 20 years of being a record detective and travelling the world, I’ve found nothing quite like it…” The return of Twisted Nerve? Well, that’s the conversation old friends Andy Votel and Damon Gough need to have. As Andy said to Damon, 25 years ago: “Nothing’s ever really finished, Damon…” Watch this space.
ANDY VOTEL ON TWISTED NERVE’S ORIGINS “Unlike many Mancunian record labels, that were born out of successful club nights, Twisted Nerve was really born out of failed club nights. Myself, Stan Chow, Rick Myers, John Walsh and Dom Thomas ran a string of club nights such as Wandy’s World and Teen Tonic which were promoted under the Doodlebug/Hocus Pocus/Hoochie Coochie umbrella thanks to the confidence boost of Barney Wynters. You can’t overestimate the influence of Barney on Manchester in the mid-90s. I first met Barney at Parkers Hotel, and he definitely instigated/ authenticated or framed the early careers of myself, and other people like Dan ‘Black Lodge’ Dwayre and Mr Scruff. “Twisted Nerve’s aesthetic was born solely out of the records played at these events. My earlier tactic of playing hip hop records next to their original samples had won me favour with Fat City, but within a year in Grand Central’s company playing alongside other turntable-type DJs I had stopped playing hip hop altogether in favour of obscure 60s and 70s records. “The labels that were undeniably the blueprint for Twisted Nerve were all from the 1970s. Cadet Concept from Chicago was a definite hymn sheet for me, they released Rotary Connection, Dorothy Ashby, Terry Callier, Electric Mud, Archie Whitewater, John Klemmer’s ‘Blowin’ Gold’
and many more records that never left my DJ bag. Cadet Concept was a subsidiary of Chess Records, ran by Marshall Chess, the son of the Chess founder Leonard Chess, and the cast of totally unknown bands that adorned all the inner sleeves represented another unexplored universe. It was almost as if these bands were imaginary, because it wasn’t easy to find the records and you never knew what they were going to sound like, but thanks to Charles Stepney and Richard Rudolf (who married Minnie Riperton) they were all good. “This idea of a group of fantasy bands that didn’t really exist was hugely inspiring. It also helped everyone with their stage fright. Electronic pop records by Jean-Jacques Perrey, Pierre Henry, Dick Hyman, John Murtaugh, The Hellers and Walter Sear were 100% the EXACT sound I wanted for Twisted Nerve, and WE ALL bonded over these records and agreed that a label that made this kind of lost music would be amazing but also achievable. The label that united a lot of these artists in the late-60s was called Command and without question I wanted Twisted Nerve to be just like Command. The artwork was great too, very uniformed. “When I first heard tracks like ‘Bimbo Quick’ (Sirconical) ‘Riding with Gabriel Greenberg’ (BDB) and ‘The Man With No Name’ (Dakota Oak) they all ticked all these boxes, so it was absolutely plausible that we could make it happen as a multi-artist label… and this realisation was the most exciting moment. “Other artists that we were all into at the time included the American psych bands Silver Apples, The United States of America, Fifty Foot Hose and Elephant’s Memory, who all pioneered the use of electronics. When Broadcast emerged around the same time as Twisted Nerve, they sounded like The United States of America so I decided
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that Mum & Dad (called Christmas at the time) should sound like 50 Foot Hose. This was how I justified things in my head, a bizarre gameplan. Broadcast records came out on a label called Wurlitzer Jukebox alongside Pram, Plone and the first Mogwai record, among others. If Twisted Nerve had anything at all that resembled a contemporary it was Wurlitzer Jukebox. The artwork for the first Broadcast and Plone 7-inches inspired me how to achieve
economically in every sense. The mantra of famous designer Abram Ganes was ‘Maximum Message, Minimum Means’ which was also the label’s unpublished manifesto. Two other musical inspirations I should mention – the list of fake band names in the record shop in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (Rick Myers and I were obsessed) and library records, in a big way. Stockport College, where I studied graphics, had hundreds of deWolfe Library records, so I was a very
great minimal artwork with no money. “Unbeknown to me, there had been a label called Absurd Records in Manchester 15 years earlier, who totally achieved, via imaginary bands, the small M.O. of what I wanted to do with the label. If I had known Absurd Records back then, I might have never started Twisted Nerve. I never intended it to exist outside of ten records, a lot like the aforementioned imprints. “The Twisted Nerve artwork was the result of lessons taught at Stockport College by the very influential Ian Parkin who demonstrated to us how to communicate in just two colours,
early adopter of this vinyl phenomena. A vast majority of the music on DeWolfe (and others) was based on fake bands (often more famous bands in disguise to evade contractual obligations). I was fascinated by this, and fake bands that appeared on 60s and 70s film soundtracks were a direct extension of this very phenomena. “This all might sound niche and geeky, but this was the absolute unshakable blueprint of what the extended Twisted Nerve family were listening to. Nobody really asked us or explored this side of Twisted Nerve back then, but for me it’s the most exciting part of the story.”
See page 136. Twisted Nerve 25 Years Anniversary at The Golden Lion, Todmorden, Dec 2022.
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LAST NIGHT CHANGED IT ALL One moment your life is going in one direction, the next – and after a night, or nights, down the local rave-up – it’s travelling along a better, more creative, path. Well, that was the case for this lot…
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Many of us can pinpoint a certain night out, a gig or DJ set when we suddenly just ‘got it’: it’s like a personal disco-origin story, a party-year zero: the first time we truly understood the awesome power of a thumping kick drum, a strobe and a dark room packed with celebrating hedonists. When we first found our home on the dancefloor. All of which got us wondering if the same was true for our favourite artists. Did they have a particular night or moment that inspired them to leave their previous life behind?
ETIENNE DE CRÉCY BARGE RAVE, PARIS, 1992 “It’s two nights that changed my life. The first one was when I discovered techno music. I was with Philippe Zdar from Cassius, we were good friends, roommates in a big apartment in Paris. We were both sound engineers in a big studio in Paris, mostly working on hip hop. We heard about raves, and we’d heard that there was ecstasy there, so we said OK, let’s go to a rave, buy some ecstasy and then go back home: the plan was just to go and buy some drugs. “The rave was on a barge on the Seine, and this is the beginning of raves in Paris. It was a really small venue with maybe 300-400 people. And we arrived dressed in our hip hop clothes, with a bit of an attitude, but everyone was really friendly, sharing their drinks and for us as sound engineers, the sound quality on the barge was pretty amazing. The music was incredible, so futuristic and we’d never heard this kind of music before. So, we were like, OK, maybe we should stay. It was just after midnight when we arrived and we left the next day at noon – and it was an epiphany, a revelation. “After that, with Philippe and all our friends, we just went to raves around Paris for the next six months, every Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, we just partied for six months. So that first night was really important for us, getting into the scene and the second night came about six months later. “It took me a while to realise that there was a DJ involved because at the time the DJ was often hidden from the crowd, the main focus was always the people in the party. But this particular night I went to
“So as the breakdown finishes the whole
check out the DJs and I was really surprised to hear that such futuristic music was played on vinyl – because it was 1992 and CDs were everywhere. Philippe and I were really amazed by their mixing technique, it was really hypnotic, we were like: ‘Wow! It’s really amazing.’ And Philippe, he always used to have such a big energy for everything and I was just following him, he said afterwards, we should do the same. And so, the next day we went to the Hi-Fi shop, bought some turntables and a mixer, started playing records at home and we became bedroom DJs.”
SEAN JOHNSTON RICHIE HAWTIN, SABRESONIC, 1993(-ISH) “Andrew (Weatherall) had started Sabresonic in a club called Happy Jaxx, under a railway arch in London Bridge, and when it started it was Andrew’s usual eclecticism with wide and various guests. This particular night was the first time Richie Hawtin was booked and the thing that really blew my mind and blew everybody else’s mind was this. He’s playing ‘Circus Bells’ by Robert Armani, might well have been the Hardfloor remix – and there’s still debate among people who were there about what he actually did, whether he turned off the main sound system and was just playing on the monitors or if he was playing with the EQ - but essentially in the breakdown, all of the bass and pretty much everything apart from the top end disappears.
system comes back in full bandwidth and honestly, you’ve never seen anything like it, people were just going fucking apeshit. At this point not many London DJs knew that EQ trick. I’d been DJing for about maybe ten years and I thought I knew what I was doing, but I’d never heard anybody do anything like this before. And the reaction it provoked, I was like: ‘Oh my God, I need to completely and utterly rethink the way that I approach DJing.’ I could see Andrew was watching him intently too and it was kind of a pivotal moment because Andrew then moved on from this kind of European trancey techno into full-on, balls-deep, full-knacker, heavy Detroit techno –it changed the direction of Andrew’s DJing, the course of that nightclub, and of anybody else who was there that was a DJ too. It really was an absolute lightbulb moment, I was like: ‘I know nothing, and there’s so much more to learn, so much more you can do and so many different ways you can approach this.’”
NANCY NOISE AMNESIA, IBIZA, SUMMER 1986 “There have definitely been nights out, certain clubs and tracks that have really inspired me and my musical tastes but the whole Amnesia experience was I guess why I started DJing. Though it wasn’t just one night or one moment in Amnesia it was over a period of two summers. From the first night we ended up in there it changed everything, that was where I wanted to be as much as possible, so the journey started.
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“There was comfort and joy in the repetition of hearing the music again and again. We loved the music Leo and Alfredo played; they rocked our world.” “Summer 1986, Amnesia, Ibiza, the club was open every night through the summer season with the same resident DJs playing each night – Leo Mas followed by Alfredo. The first time we went there we arrived quite late. What I remember hitting me first was going in and realising there was no roof, it was an open-air club. There were quite a few of us out that night so we all bundled in as someone had got us in for free. I was behind a few people so at first I couldn’t see much but as we separated near the entrance, I can still picture it, it was getting near twilight so just starting to get a bit lighter, I liked what I saw, I
so special back then was obviously we didn’t have technology like today. We couldn’t Shazam a track and listen to it when we got home, but we knew we would hear it again the next night. “There was comfort and joy in the repetition of hearing the music again and again. We loved the music Leo and Alfredo played; they rocked our world. It felt like a home from home. It was our place, a playground, we were young, it was a time of discovery – London girls but now skipping around Amnesia dancing under the stars. “The moment of going into Amnesia was
really liked what I saw, all kinds of wonderful looking people, some dancing, some hanging out, sitting talking. I knew then I would certainly be coming back. “There were so many wow moments in Amnesia, nights when you would be lost in the music and moments of just being in there talking, messing around, plotting up, with the beautiful sounds playing in the background, making you feel alright. Night after night in there and then the next summer too. I always joke that I was Balearic brainwashed. Each summer having a soundtrack of new selections that would be played every night, basically the same music and sometimes a different track thrown in. I think what also made it
so special. I fell in love with the place and though it sounds dramatic it did change my life. It changed the path of my life, that place changed a lot of people’s lives. For me at the actual time though I wasn’t thinking of it like that at all. I was just loving it and enjoying every second, not knowing that it would affect me and my life in such a big way.”
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NABIHAH IQBAL GHE20G0TH1K, NEW YORK, 2010 “When I went to New York for the first time, which was in 2010, there was this night put on by Venus X, called GHE20G0TH1K. I went by myself because I went to New York by myself, and it just really blew my mind. There was nothing like it in London at that time. I had a lot of fun,
“The crowd was just so cool, so mixed, all different types of people, it was really young, it felt like quite a DIY event - it just felt like everyone was part of one big community.” just chatted to different people and was really inspired. I remember getting home after the night and sending a Facebook message to all my music and DJ friends in London, telling them how amazing it was and how we should try and recreate some of the same energy. It was definitely a formative experience; it was before I started DJing and was the inspiration for sure. “What struck me was the crowd, because although things are really different in London now, at the time, even with me growing up in London and always going to loads of gigs, the type of music that I was into, the crowds were never really that diverse. The crowd was just so cool, so mixed, all different types of people, it was really young, it felt like quite a DIY event - it just felt like everyone was part of one big community. It was nice to see so many Black and brown people in there, making really cool music and playing good sets and stuff, and there were lots of girls there too: Kelela, she was part of that whole thing, she was really inspiring and Asmara from Nguzunguzu, she’s also South Asian. Fatima Al Qadiri, she was there that night too. This was before all of them got really famous. “I was really into a lot of the footwork
and chopped and screwed stuff, all of those guys making weird remixes of pop songs like the Physical Therapy remix of Alicia Keys (‘Unthinkable’), which was a really formative track, and all of the Nguzunguzu mixes they put out, just sort of playing with different genres and taking tracks that might not be seen as cool at face value, but then playing around with them and subverting the whole idea of pop music. All those ideas really inspired me when I first started. “When I started DJing it went hand in hand with me putting on parties with my friends. So to go there and see the complete package – a group of friends in New York who are already into music, finding a cool space to put on an event, and just creating the whole experience for the evening – I think that’s what I took away as a really important thing: what does it mean to not only DJ but to create an experience for the entire night for people who are coming through, and how you can think about it in a well-rounded way.”
TERRY FARLEY MARK ROMAN AT CRACKERS, LONDON, LATE-70S. BUT NOT REALLY. “When I first started going out, we would go to a club in London called Crackers on a Tuesday night, which was import night. A guy called Mark Roman used to DJ there, the scene was really small and you’d get DISCO_POGO_147
“Growing up and getting into the whole soul, jazz, funk, disco thing, it wasn’t the DJs who were important to us, it was the best dancers: we were all basically obsessed by the best dancers.”
the very best dancers from all over London, all going to this one basement club in Soho, and all dancing to the latest music. Growing up and getting into the whole soul, jazz, funk, disco thing, it wasn’t the DJs who were important to us, it was the best dancers: we were all basically obsessed by the best dancers. “I was also obsessed with buying records. People would have a party and ask do you want to bring your records? I wasn’t DJing, I was just playing records for people to dance to. When I started getting paid to play records for people to dance to, it never covered the amount I would spend on records anyway. “There was a guy called Gary Haisman, who later made ‘We Call It Acieed’. He started a party in ‘86 called the Raid Club and asked me to be resident warm-up DJ which just meant I just played all the records I bought – there was no pressure on me to have any skill or even really make people dance. I was just happy doing my thing, buying records, playing records. Then once acid house kicked in, Oakie (Paul Oakenfold) asked me if I wanted to be resident every Thursday at Future. He paid me £100 a week. I couldn’t spend £100 a week on records, so it was like, this is a job now. “The decision to actually become a DJ was made for me when Oakie gave me the chance to be resident. So, there isn’t really one club that I could say made me want to be a DJ, because I didn’t want to be a DJ – I wanted to be a dancer, but I simply wasn’t good enough. People might say you weren’t good enough to be a DJ either, but I’ve managed to string it out!” 148_DISCO_POGO
LOTTIE THE HAÇIENDA, MANCHESTER, CIRCA 1989 “It was either 1989 or 1990 and I was 17. I was living in Chester and had a small, but very precious, record collection already, mostly of 7-inch and 12-inch dance mixes I’d heard on the radio. I was obsessed with dance music, but my only way of hearing house music was Stu Allen on a local radio station. “Everyone was talking about The Haçienda, so I cadged a lift to Manchester on a Friday night for Nude. I remember the long queue which, although initially off-putting, actually became all part of the joy of The Haç. The chats and friends made in that queue were marvellous. What will stay with me forever though is the feeling the moment I walked into the club. I felt the bass in the pit of my stomach, my mind was blown. It was easily the most excited I’d ever felt in my 17 years. The sound was just incredible and when I was dancing on that dancefloor I felt my life had now begun. About time. “I knew almost instantly that this was my world now and I belonged here, immersed in this sound. Graeme Park was DJing and I remember going mental to Nicole’s ‘Rock the House’ and the extraordinary bleepy weirdness of Sweet Exorcist’s ‘Testone’. I was the annoying person who had to find out the names of the tracks I liked so I
“What will stay with me forever though is the feeling the moment I walked into the club. I felt the bass in the pit of my stomach, my mind was blown. It was easily the most excited I’d ever felt in my 17 years.”
could get copies as soon as possible. I needed those records! I vaguely remember stopping at Manchester Airport on the way back to Chester (it was the only place open) and trying to find some way of writing the names of the tracks down so I wouldn’t forget them. I managed to transfer to the Manchester branch of Cafe Society in Afflecks Palace on Saturday the following week so that I was a stone’s throw away from Eastern Bloc records where I would go on to spend every penny of my wages on double packs. “Eastern Bloc was the most intimidating place I’d ever walked into but the only place I could get my records at the time. I remember my first foray into that candy shop. Standing behind a row of long-haired lads with Kickers on at the counter, finally managing to muster up the courage to ask for the records I’d fallen in love with on that dancefloor in Whitworth Street West. I bought Reese & Santonio’s ‘Rock to the Beat’, a white label of Nicole’s ‘Rock the House’ (obvs) with ‘Computer Madness’ on the flip, and Todd Terry’s ‘Weekend’. “Manchester 1989, that’s where it all started for me. I got my decks and a Numark mixer a year later and spent every opportunity learning to mix in my bedroom. I didn’t know then I could make a career out of it, but it was the only thing I wanted
to do. By the time I moved to London in 1992 I had a couple of flight cases of the best records I’d heard, and I could mix.”
MELVO BAPTISTE NORMAN JAY & JOEY JAY, GOOD TIMES SOUND SYSTEM, NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL, 2012 “My first experience of hearing music out and loud in a club environment was the family sound system Good Times. I was probably eight or nine years old when I first started going to Carnival. I went throughout my teens and all my early 20s and Norman’s 2012 Carnival set, it just peaked for me: that was when I learned what DJing is all about. You strip away all the seriousness, all the: ‘It’s gotta be this, it’s gotta be that, it’s gotta be fresh.’ It’s just about good times. It was just good vibes and playing the right records at the right times, records that connected well. It was about understanding a six- or sevenhour set as a journey, playing records that were fun, like Estelle’s ‘1980’ – it rocked the whole street. Playing records that had cultural importance like Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’, leaning on his Kiss FM rare groove days and playing James Brown, he just connected so many different musical dots of brand-new records and important and historic songs we love, great sing-alongs, dancefloor heat moments, he covered everything in six or seven hours: and it was just pure street corner vibes.” DISCO_POGO_149
Don’t Be Afraid Of Your
Freedom
Photos: Silver
Hifi Sean – Sean Dickson – has a lot to get off his chest. From being relentlessly criticised by the music press for having the temerity to experiment musically with his first band, to his life falling apart and his eventual return as a DJ and producer, he has stories for days. Jim Butler hears about his mercurial existence and is urged not to call his second life a rebirth. “That makes me sound like Gary Numan,” he jokes… 150_DISCO_POGO
It’s late-summer 1989 and four guys in their mid-20s are floundering across the shingle of Dungeness Beach. Sitting at the southernmost point of the Kent coastline, this wild and desolate outpost is never the easiest of beaches to navigate. Factor in industrialstrength ecstasy consumed in industrial-strength numbers and for the young men trying to film a video for their band’s forthcoming single, it becomes nigh-on impossible. “We partied on the way down here. Very, very strong ecstasy,” Sean Dickson, one of the bandmembers, alongside his companions in The Soup Dragons, recalls today. “One of our managers suggested the location. He knew Derek Jarman, who lived here. We met him. He wished us luck as we stumbled about the place.” Unfortunately, things didn’t go to plan. Whether it was the hedonistic spirit of the time or dubious late-80s camera technology that nixed things (“We can’t have been that bad?” he asks, somewhat rhetorically) the footage was deemed unusable, and the band were summoned to a studio in London the next day. The only film from Dungeness that did make the final cut is of seagulls flying overhead. The video was for the band’s breakthrough hit, their reimagining of the Rolling Stones’ – then – 152_DISCO_POGO
little-known B-side ‘I’m Free’. The incident on Dungeness Beach was the first time that song would seamlessly mix moments of euphoria and anguish. It wouldn’t be the last. Just over 30 years later and in the autumn of 2021, Dickson, now operating musically under the name Hifi Sean, would again experience a range of conflicting emotions on this surreal stretch of pebbles – sometimes, erroneously, referred to as Britain’s only desert – and weird vegetation. Armed with just a camera and a headful of ideas, he was here to shoot the cover for his latest album, the recently released ‘Happy Endings’, an unbelievable collection of modern electronic psychedelic soul, made with singer David McAlmont. One moment he was seemingly alone, taking pictures of the speaker stack that adorns the album’s sleeve, and the next the beach was awash with frightened and bewildered refugees clambering out of a boat before being confronted by a less-than-friendly welcoming committee in the form of UK Border Patrol. “A woman landed in the water with what looked like a few-weeks-old baby in her arms,” he remembers, visibly upset at recalling the scene. “I screamed at the officials that the woman needed help and asked: ‘Where are the medics?’”
“If I’m having a shit time, I’ll turn everything off and come down to Dungeness and look at nothing.”
Dickson, not a man given to hyperbole, as will soon become painfully clear, describes what happened next as the most disturbing few minutes he’s ever experienced. “I was told to get in my car and leave the area immediately - or else. Five minutes later I drove by, and they had them all lined up on their knees. It was brutal and harrowing to witness. I could see the whites of their eyes, the tears and the sheer look of fear, desperation and confusion.” He pauses slowly, his eyes welling up. “Something I’ll never unsee.” A year-and-a-half on from that second Dungeness experience and Dickson is sat comfortably in the Britannia Inn, 50 metres or so away from that very beach. He’s picking over the remnants of his cold fish and chips (“I’m talking too much aren’t I? I always do when I’m nervous, like now”), and recalling these two moments that are marked by such contrasting fortunes. Dungeness has changed incredibly in the years between the aborted video shoot of 1989 and today – the dilapidated wooden shacks that litter the beach are now joined by ‘Grand Designs’-approved feats of modern architecture – but for Dickson much is the same. He waxes lyrical about the nuclear power station, the abandoned Experimental Sound Stations that now abut stylish Airbnbs, the two lighthouses and the railway line that takes tourists across Romney Marsh to nearby Hythe 13 miles away. “I absolutely adore this place,” he says. “It’s equal parts beautiful and the end of the world. I suppose using that image on the cover sums up to me what this place is all about. There’s also something slightly futuristic about it because of the power station. You have that futuristic technology, a world that’s never changed, people experimenting with science and sound… it just fascinates me.” Although recorded in the city – in his flat on the 18th floor of an east London tower block – he mixed
‘Happy Endings’ up the road in Camber. Dickson spends an increasing amount of time on the border of East Sussex and Kent, staying at a friend’s place, where he’s working on his second album with McAlmont and more dancefloor-oriented tracks. “I’m really into safe spaces,” he explains. “It’s about protecting my feelings. If I’m having a shit time, I’ll turn everything off and come down to Dungeness and look at nothing.” Protecting his feelings is something Dickson has had to work on after an adult life spent being bruised by the music industry and battered by the double-edged sword of fame. His first brush with celebrity came as the lead singer and songwriter with The Soup Dragons, that archetypal C86 indie band who on a wide-eyed, creative journey fell under the spell of acid house’s alluring musical freedom and were subsequently castigated for daring to veer off the course of orthodox indiedom. A quarter of a century later and he re-emerged – don’t call it a rebirth (“That makes me sound like Gary Numan,” he jokes, “I’m not big enough to have had a rebirth”) – as Hifi Sean, a joyously unapologetic dance producer and DJ, who now collaborates with the likes of Yoko Ono, Crystal Waters, The Blessed Madonna and Bootsy Collins. Between then and now, though, is a tale of hurt, suffering, excess, guilt, regret, abandonment, love, survival and redemption. An abridged version reads something like this: his band split up (he was ousted, finding out en route to the Reading Festival to watch his pal Bootsy); he decamped to New York to live a wild few years clubbing and indulging heavily (“I partied everywhere. I used to go to the Limelight, Michael Alig’s parties. Club USA was insane. Ecstasy in America was insanely amazing”); formed a new band, The High Fidelity; was groomed online by a man; came out to his then-pregnant wife; lost everything; attempted suicide; was sectioned – “put away for my own safety” – for six days; before eventually meeting his now husband and moving to London in 2006, starting again as a DJ playing afterhours parties on the gay scene. It’s an incredible story and one that if it was rewritten as fiction by a Hollywood scriptwriter, would be instantly dismissed as too far-fetched. Sean Dickson always knew he was different. Growing up in the working class Scottish town of Belshill, ten miles outside Glasgow, he was surrounded by old school notions of masculinity. His dad was a football manager, while his uncles were boxers. Whenever there was a football match on TV, everyone would cram into the front room of his DISCO_POGO_153
parents’ council house. “I found all that stuff abhorrent – it was all very aggressive,” he remembers. “I’d be upstairs playing my Depeche Mode records really loud. I didn’t have any inclination of being gay back then, but I did know there was something different about me.” Back then, in the 70s, there was little attempt at understanding Dickson’s personality. He was often taken to his uncles’ boxing matches, where he was regaled with lines such as: ‘Come on, wee man, give us a punch.’ “Music was my safe place,” he explains. “It still is my safe place.” His parents were supportive of his earliest forays into music. They bought him a guitar when he was nine and he went for classical guitar lessons on the
“Speak to Bobby and he’ll tell you how having samplers was like having a psychedelic experience.”
same street where Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) lived. The pair eventually got speaking (“He used to walk about with tartan trousers on – I thought you’re obviously into the same kind of shit as me”) and through Blake he met Duglas Stewart (who would go onto form BMX Bandits). The trio became best mates, their own selfaffirming weirdo tribe. They’d swap records and rehearse at Blake’s parents’ house, which was part of a newsagents. “There was no-one in the house. We used to rehearse with keyboards, guitars, everything and yeah, free packets of crisps.” Aged 14, Dickson was seduced by the synth-pop sounds pioneered by the likes of the Human League, Depeche Mode and Soft Cell. Ironic then that the quote used by a bullying music press to beat the Soup Dragons with was Dickson’s claim that there had ‘always been a dance element to our records’. What he actually said was ‘… dance element to our record collections’. Persuading his parents to buy him a Roland SH-101 synth – he traded his guitar in to help with the cost – he immersed himself in the world of electronic pop. “I could air drum every beat on Human League’s ‘Dare’,” he laughs. He even made an album using the SH-101 and a drum machine borrowed from the music shop where Blake now worked, painstakingly assembling it on a double tape recorder. The album – which he recorded under the suitably austere Factory/Mute title Silent Industry – is being released by a small Greek label who contacted Dickson after he posted on Facebook about finding the original cassette. “Silent Industry,” he smiles. “That was my band! My fake bedroom band. It’s not bad actually, but it’s very of its time. The drum programming is shit hot. The basslines are not bad either. Some things I’d sample and turn into a dance record. There was something called ‘Dance Craze’ – I’d use that.”
coalesced around Glasgow’s psychedelic punk rock Splash One club – Bobby Gillespie was one of the eight-strong organising committee – which put on early shows by Primal Scream, The Pastels and gave The Soup Dragons their first gig. “We were gravitating towards Glasgow, where we were hanging out with The Pastels and The Shop Assistants – we’re still friends to this day. But we also put on parties in Belshill at the Hattonrigg Hotel. We had members of The Jesus and Mary Chain coming over.” Formed in 1985, The Soup Dragons’ first single, ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’, was recorded for the bass player Sushil K. Dade’s fanzine, Pure Popcorn, and released as a flexi disc. It was made Single of the Week in the NME and John Peel played it on his radio show, going on to become one of the band’s most vocal early champions, even lending Dickson £150 to ensure the band could get down to London to record their first Peel Session. “I tried paying him back several times, even leaving the money in his car one time. He wouldn’t take it.” After recording their debut album, ‘This Is Our Art’, the band’s original drummer, Ross Sinclair, went back to art school, which meant Dickson reverted to his 14-year-old self, using synthesisers and drum machines. This coincided with the emergence of acid house in Glasgow, in particular the club UFO where Dickson would hang out, falling under the spell of “all this complete psychedelic looseness”. Having signed to the dance label Big Life, the band began to capture the energy unleashed in UFO. “We were just a guitar band that messed about with psychedelia and machines,” he explains. “Speak to Bobby [Gillespie] and he’ll tell you how having samplers was like having a psychedelic experience. That’s how I felt. I could now make records that sounded like what I was hearing in my head.” The release of ‘I’m Free’ – it was originally called ‘Don’t Be Afraid of Your Freedom’ but the Stones’
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Upon leaving school, Dickson and his pals
lawyers insisted it was presented as a cover version – should have been the band’s crowning glory. The music press, once so supportive, thought otherwise and pivoted to a point of belligerent disdain. Dickson, in particular, became the punchline to a rather vicious joke. “We were bludgeoned to death,” he sighs. “As I’ve got older, I’ve realised there’s no point pretending it didn’t happen. It did happen and it was fucking horrible. It sent me over the edge.” There were highs though. Some not chemically assisted, and most of them in America, where the audiences weren’t concerned with the gripes of the inkies. From touring with Deee-Lite and INXS, playing David Letterman “umpteen times”, and Alice Cooper visiting them backstage, to Mick Jagger waving to them at the 1992 MTV Music Awards, where their ‘Divine Thing’ single was nominated for Best Alternative Video (Nirvana won with ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’) and hanging out with Neneh Cherry at the afterparty. “Watching 45,000 connect with a song [‘I’m Free’] that was my idea, I get tingles thinking about it. But to then go to the point where you have your shoelaces and your belt removed as you’re being sectioned because you’re a threat to yourself, that’s as low as you can go.” 156_DISCO_POGO
He can also claim to have duetted with Prince. The Soup Dragons twice played Prince’s club, Glam Slam, in Minneapolis, at the behest of the man himself. The second time, Prince sang along “at the top of his voice” to ‘Divine Thing’ at the soundcheck. “Nobody fucking told me,” he recollects, still beaming at the memory. “The guitar tech said: ‘Prince was singing your song with you.’ But he left. I never met him, but I was in the same room as him while he sang my song.” As a child Dickson used to fantasise about the year 2001. He was obsessed with Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and he’d daydream about what his life would be like in the future. Little did he realise that it would end up being the worst year of his life; the year that changed everything. His second act as The High Fidelity saw him create “the album of my dreams”, ‘Demonstration’, but the press still beat him with The Soup Dragons stick. John Peel persuaded him to make another record – ‘The Omnichord Album’ to which Peel contributed ‘Pig Might Fly’ – but in 2001, in the week of the album’s release, he had something to tell his wife. “I came out, over a toaster of all places. She knew there was something going on. I don’t know why I just blurted it out. ‘I think I’m gay.’ I stared at the toaster for half-an-hour afterwards. ‘Cause you can’t go back on that.”
“I’m not a straightforward artist. I confuse people. I’m so used to being fragmented I actually love it.” He’d been groomed online by someone posing – catfishing – as a married man who coaxed him “to have a bit of fun”. After his toaster bombshell, everything fell apart. “I lost all my friends. I lost all my family. I lost everything,” his voice quivers. “I left the family home, which was all I ever had after years of making records. I became homeless. The council gave me a flat that was fire damaged. They said if I did it up they would give it to me. I never did do it up. For a year I lived in a burned-out flat and spiralled ever downwards.” At his lowest point, he tried to kill himself and was briefly sectioned. He sang Yazz & The Plastic Population’s ‘The Only Way is Up’ as “a kind of joke to keep me up”. The joke being Yazz was a friend, as she was married to The Soup Dragons manager Jazz Summers. Thankfully, the only way was up. Having begun dipping his toes in London’s gay clubbing scene in 2002, he moved down to the capital after he met his now husband in 2006. He began DJing at afterhours parties, where he’d DJ from 5am to 9am. Thanks to his background in producing and manipulating sound, his DJing style – particularly his use of edits – suited this otherworldly slot. On one memorable occasion he took a deep house track and put bits of Hot Chocolate’s ‘Heaven Is in the Back Seat of My Cadillac’ over the top. “I thought it would be fun to play that at 8am when everyone was spangled.” No-one knew about his past and he was content. But in 2015, he realised it had been 14 years since he’d last made an album. He knew that if he didn’t make a record soon, he never would. The result was 2016’s ‘Ft.’, a stunning concept album that featured collaborations with Fred Schneider, Billie Ray Martin, Norman Blake and Alan Vega and saw him gain a number one hit on the Billboard Dance Chart with ‘Testify’ alongside Crystal Waters. “I think that’s when I started enjoying life again,” he reflects. “That album really helped me big time.”
The album also led to Dickson working with David McAlmont for the first time. The pair immediately hit it off. “He’s an incredibly mind-blowing person to work with because he always brings something to the table that excites me,” he says. Which brings us to ‘Happy Endings’ - an irrepressible collection of literate electronic pop and widescreen orchestral soul, buttressed by house, disco and even some breezy dub. It’s the best collaboration of its kind since Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr joined forces in Electronic, and sees Dickson recast as a kind of Charles Stepney for the 21st Century, his production savvy – honed over the last 40 years, since he was that imaginative teenager in his bedroom – shining joyously. But that’s not the end of Dickson’s redemption – his happy ending. Later this year the original line-up of The Soup Dragons will head back out on tour again. Over time fractured friendships have healed. Last year, a compilation of the group’s early years was released. Putting it together – Dickson remastered the songs – was cathartic. “That’s what I’m looking for,” he reveals. “Things that heal me for all the time that I’ve been hurting. It scares the living shit out of me [going onstage], but it also excites me because if you don’t face your demons you can’t move forward.” He recognises that satisfying so many creative endeavours, while a balm for his soul, makes him a nightmare for marketing people. “I’m not a straightforward DJ. I’m not a straightforward artist. I confuse people. I’m so used to being fragmented that I actually love it.” A case in point: in-between writing a new Soup Dragons song for the forthcoming tour, he’s created an absolute Italo disco stomper remix for S’Express. Meanwhile the writing of the second Hifi Sean and David McAlmont album continues (“We want to showcase this party-in-my-head album”). And then, suddenly, after an afternoon in one of his favourite safe spaces, he says something so instructive it immediately explains why his zest for music remains unbridled. Around the time he collaborated with John Peel on ‘The Omnichord Album’ he was sat in the presenter’s kitchen when he noticed a pile of promos on the table. He asked him why he still checked out so much music. “His reply has always stayed with me. It didn’t feel rehearsed. He looked up and said: ‘The next record I hear may be the best record I’ve ever heard.’” And that’s why Sean Dickson is still searching for the perfect beat.
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SONGS OF LIFE Photos: Steve Gullick
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Leftfield were one of dance music’s Fab Four in the 90s. And while their output might have been less prolific than some of their contemporaries, when they did release a record, or play live, it would usually change everything. Neil Barnes, now ably assisted by Adam Wren, looks back on the band’s career, and following a brush with mortality, what it all means. “I’m taking people on a journey emotionally with the sound,” he tells Craig McLean… Leftfield’s ‘Leftism’ (1995): the greatest dance album ever – discuss. “I’m not keen on ‘greatest’ and ‘best’ type of words. It’s not a top-of-the-table game of football. It’s a bit of art that had a window of time. And there was a period when neither of us wanted anything much to do with it, especially when we were writing ‘Rhythm and Stealth’. But I appreciate that ‘Leftism’ means a lot to people. And I enjoy playing bits of it live now – ‘Melt’ sounds like a modern bit of music still. A lot of it does. That’s because we put so much of ourselves into it. That’s how it came: hard work and a bit of talent.” Neil Barnes, London, March 2023 It’s the balmy, barmy summer of 1996. Today, Saturday 15 June, England are playing Scotland at Wembley in Euro 96.
Coachloads of Tartan Army foot soldiers are swarming into the stadium car park in north-west London. Fans, who’ve already had considerably more than their Weetabix, are hanging out of the bus windows and even, somehow, the orangey skylights. For the visitors, the party atmosphere continues inside the stadium – until, you know, the football gets going. Full-time: England 2 Scotland 0. Self-medicating their raging sense of injustice (as per…), remnants of the Scottish fans press onwards to south London. There, at Brixton Academy, Leftfield are finishing their UK tour with an all-nighter. Standing on the mockbaroque hall’s inclined floor, a bewildered Tartan Army irregular wobbles slightly. It’s that slope’s fault. The infernal heat isn’t helping. Nor is the fact that the sole stomach ballast in today’s liquid-only diet has been a disco biscuit for tea. Also, not to be discounted: the electronic boom blasting from Leftfield’s sound system. At the time, the sonically buffeted gig-goer doesn’t have the power of speech, far less the words, to convey the game-changing nature of this moment: dance music turned into an album that delivers as a body-of-work, turned into a stage experience that feels like a revolution in live music. The gig as rave, the rave as gig. Then the roof caves in. As Leftfield play, plaster tumbles down, dislodged by volumes reaching 137 decibels. According to the website of one university science faculty, that’s more than the 130 dB generated by “military jet aircraft take-off from aircraft carrier with afterburner at 50 ft”. Or the 108-114 dB of “live rock music”. In a very real sense: banging. Reader, I was that kilted, wilted, stilted fan. Saturday 15 June 1996 was one of the greatest days of my life. What a time to be a fan, even if the score was shit and the ceiling falls on your head.
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“The big difference between dance music then and now is that everybody took so many more drugs,” Barnes is saying as our pre-interview small talk about That Brixton Show (about which he has little memory) moves into the lengthy, recorded portion of our conversation. “I mean, I don’t know, because I’m not young and I don’t do drugs anymore for health reasons,” adds this fit-looking 62-year-old. “I never was an enormous [user]. But so much of what we did was fuelled and supported by the emergence of E culture.” Still, Barnes does have some memories of Leftfield’s epochal 1996 tour, when he and Paul Daley, then the other half of the electronic duo, first “played out” in a whole new way. “I do remember doing gigs to straight audiences. On that ‘96 tour, we did a gig in Belfast, in the Ulster
peers. But with a spring 2023 tour and a summer festival run, Leftfield – which now comprises Barnes and long-standing engineer/wingman Adam Wren – are very much back and buoyant. And so is Barnes, after a terrifying brush with mortality in 2021, when a bowel cancer diagnosis meant the removal of a five-inch tumour. He is, then, in the mood for a decades’ long overview of the left and right, right and wrong, of Leftfield. Well, he is once he’s comfy, relaxed on a sofa in a gear-crowded side-room at Leftfield’s studio on a grungy industrial estate in Acton, west London (turn right at the Triumph sports car pound). Initially, though, with shoe off (just the one) and Marks & Spencer’s custard creams to hand, Barnes tarries at the mouth of memory lane.
Hall. This was still during the Troubles, and all the security were massive [guys]. It was no alcohol – and it was really dead!” he says, laughing. “Everyone’s like: ‘Well, I’m not sure about that bit, and that’s a bit of a strange track to be playing...’ You could see the analytical minds working, rather than: “‘Hey, let your hair down!’”
“I have had those conversations with my kids, and I can’t help but be shocked,” he says, continuing our earlier theme. “My son will say something like: ‘Oh, yeah, I had a heavy weekend, I was up all night,’ and I know he’s been doing something,” he says of one of his two children with his ex-wife. The other is electronic artist Georgia, whose 2020 album ‘Seeking Thrills’ was, like ‘Leftism’, nominated for the Mercury Prize. “And of course, when I was his age,” continues Barnes, “I was doing magic mushrooms and God knows what. Terrible things. “You can put that in. I don’t care what you put in,” he adds – although for reasons professional and respectful, that will turn out to not be the case.
Leftfield have been helping – nay, encouraging, you might even say forcing – us to let our hair down for 33 years, on and off. Although to be honest, it’s been more “off” than “on”. Once they’d released first single ‘Not Forgotten’ in 1990, it would be the best part of five years before a debut album appeared. After ‘Leftism’ in January 1995, it was four-and-half years until the release of ‘Rhythm and Stealth’. There was an even longer, er, longueur between albums two and three, with ‘Alternative Light Source’ appearing 16 years later. Then, almost seven years before we were gifted, late last year, the thunderous, defiantly uplifting ‘This Is What We Do’. The news that there’s already a fifth(ish) album due, albeit “just” a Record Store Day-hooked dub version of ‘This Is What We Do’, might cause your own metaphorical sky to fall in. The reasons for those lengthy delays include but are not limited to: success, excess, drugs, perfectionism, soundtracks (‘Shallow Grave’, ‘Trainspotting’, ‘The Beach’ – a Danny Boyle trifecta), David Bowie, Guinness, musical divorce, actual divorce, cancer, therapy (both the receiving and the studying thereof), Covid obvs and did we mention perfectionism? Leftfield are one of The Big Four 90s dance outfits – alongside Orbital, The Chemical Brothers and Underworld, latterly duos all – with the catalogue and kudos to match. As intimated above, though, they’ve weathered more storms than any of their 160_DISCO_POGO
Neil Barnes grew up in suburban north London, the son of Marxist parents. Both, remarkably, fought at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, when the East End rose up against Oswald Mosley’s fascists. “My dad threw marbles to bring police horses down,” he says, proudly. Born in 1960, he was a “late baby”. His dad was a self-made man with an “absolute shithole of a childhood [but] he ended up running Islington Adult Education Institute”, a career his youngest would end up pursuing: across his 20s and into his early 30s, Neil Barnes had a proper job, as a teacher. Musically, a brief stint playing violin was usurped when Barnes became “a record-buying fanatic from the age of 13”. This was 1973, so it’s Glam O’Clock: “T Rex. David Bowie… and Electric Light Orchestra! And some real terrible prog stuff, like Yes.” But he was also the perfect age to be a punk, with Barnes getting his teenage kicks at gigs by Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and The Clash. As a wannabe musician, though, post-punk was his time. Elephant Stampede were “a bit like PiL”, formed with mates from a school-based friendship circle that also included the future Spandau Ballet, with whom he’s pals to this day.
Elephant Stampede weren’t a gigging group, but Barnes and one of his bandmates started DJing at house parties, playing “early-80s stuff like D Train and (London R&B outfit) Central Line. I’ve got hundreds of 12-inches from the 80s. Wonderful records.” A DJ gig at peak early-80s London nightspot The Wag followed. “But they didn’t like us, because we weren’t playing rare groove. So, we didn’t last long.” In 1982, though, an epiphany: he saw
“Paul was the same. He was a percussionist. We weren’t musicians. We weren’t keyboard players. That’s why Leftfield is what it is: we play instruments like they’re percussion. My sister says I was always sitting around, as a child, making mad noises and tapping.”
Afrika Bambaataa play in London, one of the UK’s earliest hip hop shows. Barnes’ revelation? That he should quit making music. “Because I couldn’t afford it.” Bambaataa used a Linn drum machine, which would have been a huge asset for Elephant Stampede. But at some £2,000, it was beyond the band’s reach. So, Barnes went back to concentrating on the day job. Another, parallel musical love, however, continued. After landing a cleaning job as a youngster at west London record shop institution Honest Jon’s, Barnes had been inducted into the church of jazz and Latin by owner Jon Clare. “Amazing bloke. He had 300 records, each one fantastic. From Jon’s inspiration I’ve about five or six records which sum up salsa.” The result was a passion that would colour everything he did thereafter. “I fell in love with the congas, Ray Barretto and people like that. And as you did in those days, I started to learn. But I realised that as a white guy, there’s only so far I can go – it’s not in my soul. If I forget my white frigid self, I can really play congas,” he clarifies. And, indeed, Barnes must have been some cop: he was a member of the London School of Samba in the late-80s. “I [do have] really good Latin technique. And I put that into Leftfield. It appears in all the tracks. It’s always there.” It literally is: Barnes’ congas are sitting behind me in the studio. To this day, he still sees himself as a conga player.
technological wizardry.” Barnes thinks now that might have been something to do with the fact that he was staring down the barrel of 30. “I was bored shitless as a teacher. No disrespect to teachers, but it wasn’t me. I felt like my life was drifting away. And I wanted to do something else.” After a bank loan, he bought an Akai S950 sampler “for about a grand”. He hooked it up to an Alesis MMT-8 sequencer and drum machine. “And I nicked my brother’s Juno-106 – which I’ve given to Georgia! I hope it’s on her new record,” he says of ‘Euphoric’, to be released this July. He had, too, a primitive mixer, the whole set-up: “Great fun! It was like magic! Fuck me!” And as if by that magic: ‘Not Forgotten’, inspired by New York house label Strictly Rhythm, featuring a Willem Dafoe sample from Alan Parker’s ‘Mississippi Burning’, the first single credited to Leftfield, then comprising Barnes only. Progressive house’s ground zero? Probably. Barnes’ first go at writing a tune? Pretty much – he had written one other demo as he learned how to use the gear. Congas? Definitely. Around the same time, he met Paul Daley in a club, the percussive pair quickly bonding. As a then-member of A Man Called Adam (“an amazing band live”), Barnes credits Daley as “far more advanced than me... a really good musician.” For the B-side of Leftfield’s second single, 1991’s ‘More Than I Know’, Daley did a do-over of ‘Not Forgotten’. It
In a Melody Maker interview in 1992, journalist Push writes how, in 1989: “(Barnes’) congas and cowbells were… traded in for a grand’s worth of
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was known as the Hard Hands Remix, its title taken from the 1968 Ray Barretto album. Now Leftfield were two, launching their own label – “no one would sign us because we were too alternative” – with the name Hard Hands. From the off, the pair were simpatico. It was the old Björk maths: two plus two equals five, something extra arising from their combination. They gave each other confidence and belief – and energy. “Paul was really driven. I was as well – I didn’t think I was, but I fucking was. We worked ridiculous hours.” In the early years, many of those hours were taken up as remixers for hire. They said yes to David Bowie, for 1993s ‘Jump They Say’, no to U2 (Barnes can’t remember the tune but it was likely something from 1993’s ‘Zooropa’). Eventually, though, by late1994 and now signed to Columbia, Leftfield had completed an album. ‘Leftism’ included older tracks like the Balearicgoes-dub-goes-trance anthem ‘Song of Life’, a tribute to a friend of Daley’s who had died in Ibiza, and ‘Release the Pressure’, featuring veteran Jamaican reggae singer Earl Daley. And then there was ‘Original’ and ‘Open Up’ with, respectively, Toni Halliday and John Lydon on vocals – pioneering examples of the “faceless dance blokes hire guest vocalist” trick, albeit (ahem) left-field, non-dance music choices. And with the latter track, Leftfield almost became chart-topping pop stars. “‘Open Up’ was a nailed-on Number One! It was killing everybody else in the charts!” exclaims Barnes of a song with a chorus that featured Lydon demanding ‘burn, Hollywood, burn!’ Unfortunately, wildfires were raging in southern California, resulting in the video being yanked from MTV and ‘The Chart Show’. “The song was about him not getting a part in a film. He’s not talking about burning down [the neighbourhood of] Hollywood at all!” Barnes shrugs. “But that’s typical Leftfield: things like that used to happen all the time. It’s yin and yang.” One incident that could also be filed into that good/bad category: the last instalment in the duo’s three-film relationship with Danny Boyle. That had begun when either the director or his producer Andrew Macdonald asked them to write the title tune to 1994’s ‘Shallow Grave’. Barnes isn’t sure which, nor whether the thrilling, high-speed opening titles were edited to the bpm of the track. (“Danny was the Leftfield fan,” Macdonald tells me. “We added the music to the opening late on, maybe even in the mix.”) But things got sticky for Leftfield when they wrote ‘Snake Blood’ for ‘The Beach’ soundtrack: Barnes forgot to remove (or replicate) an OMD sample. This meant “we had to pay them everything we earnt off
‘Open Up’ was a nailed-on Number One! It was killing everybody else in the charts! But that’s typical Leftfield. Things like that used to happen all the time.
the record… I wasn’t very popular,” he says wryly. “Paul was a bit disgruntled about it.” Another such incident: the first anyone heard of the long-awaited ‘Rhythm and Stealth’ was the song ‘Phat Planet’ – not as a single, but as a 60-second snippet on Jonathan Glazer’s now-iconic Guinness advert, ‘Surfer’, released a full six months before the actual first single, ‘Afrika Shox’, which featured cornerstone Barnes inspiration Bambaataa on vocals. “I can’t even remember how that process happened,” Barnes says, frowning. “Because it was about money – it was a lot of money for us,” he adds, then swearily lays into certain external parties involved in the commercial for “rip[ping] us off… by claiming all the [credit]”. The whole album, though: hard work, wasn’t it? Barnes, otherwise easy-going and forthcoming, now grunts and slumps. “Yeah. We both went mad. That’s one of the sad things. I just disappeared… My dad died… So it’s mainly a Paul Daley album... I do contribute, I definitely did. But I felt I wasn’t there.” The way he describes it, his musical other half was struggling in a different way. “Paul found it difficult to finish. Probably he never felt it was good enough… I’ll give you an example: we finished a version of ‘Afrika Shox’ a year before. And it was probably wicked. We even made a video to it. I was involved in that as well, listening to it, going: ‘Oh fuck, it’s not quite right…’ So we shelved the whole project, including the video.” In the end, he stepped up. “The album would never have happened if I hadn’t pushed it through radically at the end. That might be why Paul…” He stops. “I just threw my toys out the pram and got really stroppy about [the fact] that we had to finish it.” DISCO_POGO_165
Thirty months after ‘Rhythm and Stealth’ was, finally, released, they split. “After 12 years of sonic experimentation, Paul Daley and Neil Barnes have decided to pull the plug on Leftfield,” said a statement on 4 March 2002. “Both parties will be pursuing solo projects so Leftfield fans should not be downhearted. This should be seen as a new beginning in an ongoing process.” Barnes is wary of talking in detail on-the-record of what went down with him and Daley. This is partly out of respect – this is only his side of events. But in his memory, their manager Lisa Horan called: “Paul’s decided he doesn’t want to do Leftfield anymore.” And that, he says now, was it. “There was no discussion. No communication. I remember saying to Lisa: ‘Don’t you think we should talk about this?’ My memory might be wrong but it’s that the message came back that things had gone too far, and Paul didn’t want to talk about it. I remember him saying: ‘Leftfield is a 90s thing.’ Something like that. And I never saw him again.” To cut a long story short, Barnes now operates under the name Leftfield, with Adam Wren – who’d been an engineer on ‘Leftism’ – stepping up as his partner, starting with the 2010 comeback tour. Five years later, the new duo released ‘Alternative Light Source’. The process was, again, “difficult, just because it was coming after so long. I wasn’t sure what record to make…. Also, we were never in our own space. It suffered from being shunted to different studios.” Relatively quickly (for them), Leftfield started on a fourth album. What would become ‘This Is What We Do’ began life in 2019. “A lot of the demos were there, but it was rough.” Then, Covid. Then, in early summer 2021, Barnes’ diagnosis. “But the news of the cancer galvanised me, actually. It pulled things together. I don’t know why, but I got a real burst of creative energy.” The day before his operation, he called an A&R meeting with new label Virgin in this studio. “I cobbled together all the demos, worked on them in a rough way, because I’m not a mixer or an engineer… I knew there was something good in this record, but it was way off being finished. So I played it really loud!” The ceiling didn’t cave, but “the guys from Virgin loved it.” Barnes needed that. He also needed ‘This Is What We Do’ to speak to another trauma. Leftfield’s fourth album explores attachment theory and healing, part of a psychotherapeutic journey that the musician undertook at The Minster Centre in north-west London, which is where The Chemical Brothers’ Ed Simons also studied. Simons is now a 166_DISCO_POGO
qualified therapist, as is another figure from the electronic music world, Groove Armada’s Tom Findlay. “Tom’s my inspiration,” acknowledges Barnes of his own studies. “He interviewed me for his dissertation!” (“This is true,” Findlay tells me. “I was doing my Dissertation for my Psychology Masters on ‘Mental Health in the Music Industry’… and Neil very kindly gave me a few hours of his time.”) Barnes’ interest derives from long-buried trauma: aged seven or eight, he suffered “an instance of child abuse”. The experience is the beginning of his psychological journey in life. “It underpins who I am, unfortunately. It pops up every now and again when I lose confidence… Some of the stuff to do with the album is about healing that. And [about] my belief in the power of music. I’m taking people on a journey emotionally with the sound, rather than actually pinpointing it with lyrics.” He says that desire is most directly incarnated in the last track on ‘This Is What We Do’, ‘Power of Listening’. Its whole point “is the importance of being able to hear what other people say and really listen. I’m playing around with that. You’ve got to listen to this track really carefully because it goes in this prog direction. But give it a chance to breathe and you’ll see something that maybe you didn’t initially hear in it.” This is what he does, and that is what he’s done: over 33 years, Neil Barnes – aided by Paul Daley, and then Adam Wren – has taken electronic music in myriad interesting directions. And with Leftfield’s fourth album, he’s gone the furthest yet, all the way back to a terrible, inciting incident. But against the odds – professional, mental, mortal – he’s come out on top. Does he have a fifth Leftfield album in him? He doesn’t know. He jokes (I think) about a folk album (“Is it time to give up electronic music?”), then muses about returning to the source. “I thought I should go back to where it began, releasing quick tracks.” Get yer congas out, mate… “Yeah, they’re there, behind you! They’re coming on tour with us! They’re on (‘This Is What We Do’ track) ‘Accumulator’. That’s me playing congas... out of time, ha ha!”
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THE ARCHIVE IT'S TIME TO GO BACK - WAY BACK - AS WE REVISIT OUR SNOTTY-NOSED, FORMER SELVES WITH A SELECTION OF ARTICLES ORIGINALLY FEATURED IN JOCKEY SLUT...
THE ARCHIVE / BOARDS OF CANADA / ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DEC 2000
Boards of the Underground They’re the fire-starters, the rustic fire-starters, who’ve influenced everyone from Air to Radiohead. Boards of Canada invite Richard Southern to their secret den and share with him their bluffer’s guide to making the perfect bonfire and why they have little time for Leo DiCaprio… Photos: Peter Iain Campbell
“One time we were out in the woods on a really wet day,” remembers Boards of Canada’s Marcus Eoin. “My friend bet me I couldn’t start a fire using only one match. But I managed to get this meagre little flame going in this damp little patch of ground. Then when we were about a mile down the road, we looked back and it was like, ‘whoosh!’ - the whole wood was on fire!” Everybody’s favourite commune-dwelling creators of pastoral electronica, arsonists? Whatever next? Adverts for Shell oil? “I love the countryside,” Marcus protests, adding, “I hate the idea that animals or trees or anything might get hurt. I had dreams about it for months afterwards.” This isn’t the only fire that Boards of Canada have unwittingly started. Just over two years ago, their debut album ‘Music Has the Right to Children’, a muted, un-ostentatious collection of haunting, home-made melodies initially just seemed like one of electronic haven Warp’s more consistent releases. Then, slowly, word of mouth began to crackle like sparking kindling. Here was a record not only spotters and electronic obsessives could love – a hazily nostalgic record which snuck its way into your head and set up a commune. The album’s muttering voices seemed to speak in tongues; rumours of occult dabblings
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only added to the Boards of Canada enigma. Sales, while impressive for a leftfield release, were a meagre glow compared to the blaze ‘Music Has the Right...’ caused amongst Boards of Canada’s musical peers. Suddenly, those slo-mo, slightly melancholy synth-loops were everywhere. On Super Furry Animals’ ‘Guerrilla’ (see: ‘Some Things Come From Nothing’), on Danmass’ ‘Happy Here’ on the ‘Sunday Best’ compilation, on Air’s ‘Virgin Suicides’; even on the ever trend-tailing Texas’s new material. As if that wasn’t enough, Boards’ influence can also clearly be heard on new albums by both the barometer of all things buzzworthy, Madonna, and Radiohead, whose much puzzledover ‘Kid A’ sounds rather closer to ‘Music Has the Right...’ than it does to the stadium-conquering ‘OK Computer’. “We never expected to have anything like this kind of impact,” confesses Michael Sandison in the rather sterile confines of Warp’s new London offices. “We’ve had people ringing up wanting us to produce them and it’s been like (mimes covering the receiver while gesticulating excitedly): ‘Marcus, you’d never believe who’s on the phone!’” The pair are sprawled relaxedly on the purple sofa, Michael long-haired, Marcus shaven-headed, hooded-topped and baggy-trousered, gear simultaneously eterna-hip and, as is the way with country folk, strangely practical. “We don’t mind influencing people like Super Furry Animals,” continues Michael in his precise, (Miss Jean) Brodie-esque brogue. “We know they’re really into music. But we’ve got fed up with the magpies. The people who just pay minions to keep their ear to the ground and check out what’s hip.”
Boards of Canada’s tips on bonfires: Marcus: “For kindling the best way to ensure it catches is to get loads of pieces more or less the same length and lay them in a grid, then overlay them in a lattice.” Mike: “You don’t need matches or a lighter. If it’s wet or windy they often won’t work. But two twigs will. The trick is to tie string to either end of one twig, then you can rub them together faster than your hands ever could.”
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Things Boards Of Canada don’t like: Electronic gadgets that don’t work (Marcus: “It makes me sad to see things that have just been thrown away. I’ll pick it up and take it back home and try
Things Boards of Canada like:
and make it work. I’ve still got a
The wobble you get on an
the 70s and it works better than
off-centre record (“We even
my friends’ widescreen TVs”).
decide if it’s wobbling at 33 or
Meat (in Marcus’ case). Napster.
45rpm!”). The little bursts of
Marcus: “It’s not the big rich
music you get behind a logo.
artists who’ll suffer, it’s the
Things that are a little bit out of
smaller artists. Why should
tune: ‘Space Oddity’ by David
people buy their records when
Bowie, ‘God Only Knows’ by the
they can download them for
Beach Boys, ‘Wonderful World’
free? The issue of choice is
by Louis Armstrong, and
illusory. If lots of musicians go
‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by The
out of business, then there’s
Beatles (Marcus: “In modern
only going to be a small number
music everything is perfect,
of extremely commercial crap
rationalised, bland...”). “The
artists to choose from.”
sounds between notes.” Progressive rock. (Mike: “For at least trying to get somewhere no-one’s been”). Kung-fu. “Listening in increments.” Devo, Twins Cocteau and Aphex, Nitzer Ebb, acid folkies the Incredible String Band, the Wu-Tang Clan. “RZA,” it seems, “listens like we do.” A record Marcus found in America which featured a Christian robot that sang songs if you pressed a button in his stomach (“The scary part is that it was very Old Testament, slitting the throats of first born and stuff”). ‘Geno’ by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. “The sound when you’re at a fairground and you’re caught between two different sound systems and they combine to create something new and outlandish.”
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brown valve television set from
Like Radiohead? “No. We think they’re brilliant,” Michael demurs. “I think ‘Kid A”s the best thing they’ve ever done,” adds Marcus in his thicker Scots slur. So who are we talking about? “Bigger people than that.” Bigger? “Artists whose status is somewhere between Radiohead and God,” answers Marcus, mystifyingly. They won’t be drawn any further. Secretiveness is congenital to Boards of Canada. These, after all, are people who refuse to reveal the location of the commune they inhabit in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, who won’t give out their phone number or even, for the most part, give interviews. They’ve chosen Jockey Slut in favour of the covers of a number of major national publications, and, in person, they radiate a warmth and amiability that’s anything but enigmatic. They finish each other’s sentences, listen intently to questions, and in contrast to most ego-blinkered musicians, even ask questions themselves. “It’s one of the reasons we don’t like playing live,” says Marcus, still running with his theme. “You worry about who might be in the audience, scouting for ideas...” He pauses. “Then again, last time we played live, it was a disaster.” “The monitors exploded in the middle of the set,” Mike explains, laughing. “People were cheering because they thought it was deliberate pyrotechnics!” Marcus adds. “Yeah, well, shame it was out of time,” says Mike. While an EP, ‘In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country’, is issued this month (a BoC manifesto if ever there was one), the eagerly-anticipated second album is running more than a year behind schedule with no release date in sight. Hmm, three-year gaps between records: you’re proper Warp artists now then? Slightly embarrassed grins. “When you’ve got Aphex on your label, everyone else seems easy...” So did the impact of the first album just make it hard to follow? “No,” says Marcus thoughtfully, “I think we lost about a year just rebuilding our studio.” Less Stone Roses than My Bloody Valentine, then? “Well, we haven’t put sandbags around it yet!”
Equally, you don’t need a City & Guilds engineering diploma to deduce that the densely atmospheric, otherworldly aspects of the Boards’ music is painstakingly achieved. “We take such long, individual paths to get where we go, paths that nobody else could ever follow,” says Mike. “So it takes us ten times as long to finish things,” says Marcus. “Where some people will work on a track solidly for four days, we’ll spend that long just on a hi-hat sound,” Mike laughs. “It’d be funny if it wasn’t true,” Marcus chuckles. “Then again, if there was a way of doing it easily, by pushing a button, we’d do something else because it wouldn’t be special anymore,” says Michael. “We like to make thing hard for ourselves,” shrugs Marcus. Sequestered away in the Scottish hills, “getting it together in the country”, is a way of life for Boards of Canada. Even taking into account childhood sojourns in Canada, they’ve never known anything different. Hardly listening to contemporary music, keeping away from the backslapping musical backstage, rarely reading magazines, living in what was once a commune (Mike: “People had kids, or went off travelling. It’s down to a hardcore of four or five now”) but is now effectively a hill-bound artists’ colony – theirs is a deliberately rarefied world. “It’s the only way to do it,” says Mike. “Cut yourself off, pull the shutters down.” “The world’s getting smaller and smaller now,” continues Marcus. “We’re all sharing the same clothes, the same magazines and the same ideas: everyone’s got the same reference points...” He laughs. “It’s globalisation, man!” “It’s never people who are part of the general flow who make the amazing art,” says Mike. “Everyone’s collectively going down one particular branch of music. With the last album we were too affected by what was going on in that particular moment in history. But the new one is going to be in its own outlandish and unique universe. It’s like we’re inhabiting an alternative, parallel present where maybe someone in the past took a different branch to the way things actually went.”
DISCO_POGO_173
At times, the pair’s penchant for privacy can border on the paranoid. They’re so concerned about hackers that they’ve both got completely separate computers for using the net. “They can’t jump through thin air,” says Mike. “I’m really paranoid about security,” adds Marcus. “We’ve got all these tapes and discs going back 15 years or so. I’ve got this really complicated solar alarm on my house so that it’s impossible to switch it off without cutting five different wires in different places simultaneously.” Aware that their bunker mentality may be getting out of hand, the pair have made a conscious effort to get out more recently. “You have to remember you’ve got a body with two
anniversary album has been the music for, of all things, an advert for Telecom Italia. Not just any old advert, either, but one which also features Leonardo DiCaprio. Today Boards Of Canada are full of surprises. “It’s not the first one we’ve done either,” grins Mike. “We did one for Nissan last year. Then again, I drive a Nissan.” Always did, or do now? He laughs. “I’d have been more than happy to have been paid in cars, believe me!” The explanation is that both adverts were done with filmmaker du jour Chris Cunningham, “because he asked us and we respect him”. They’re not saying, but rather than heralding that Shell
legs,” says Michael. Before ‘Music…’ took off, theirs was a more leisurely isolation, their music simply soundtracks for the Red Moon events they and their friends would organise in the hills near the commune: “Just 50 people around a bonfire with a boom box.” These days, they still drive out into the country with their friends, set up camp and make bonfires. Bonfires, you will notice, figure large in the Boards of Canada world. You can almost hear the crackling twigs on many of their cuts. As the title indicates, the new EP is typically BoC. ‘Kid for Today’ sounds like what it is – a ‘Music Has the Right…’ contender, while ‘Amo Bishop Roden’ and ‘Zoetrope’ (named after Francis Ford Coppola’s San Francisco studio) go deeper into the hazy territory between sleep and waking. “It’s like when you glaze over when you’re listening to something,” says Marcus, “but you’re still there at the same time.” “There’s a sort of running theme of melancholy to it,” says Mike, “but it’s true, it’s not a great leap from ‘Music Has the Right…’ The nearest clue to where we’re going is on the title track. But a lot of it will be even more outlandish than that. If you could call the last album electronica, you definitely couldn’t call the new album that…” “We’ve split and gone in two directions,” continues Marcus. “There are some things which are just acoustic instruments playing acoustic music, while we’ve also done some even more electronic tracks. Some of the best ones manage to achieve both at the same time...” Apart from this EP, the only Boards of Canada music that’s emerged since their characteristically immaculate contribution to Warp’s tenth
advert, could it be that the Boards have their eye on Cunningham’s future feature work? It isn’t, after all, a big step from imaginary soundtracks to actual films, and it’d be hard to contemplate a more perfect union. “We actually gave him an hour and a half’s worth of music, of which he used one 20 second fragment. He was just really excited to have new Boards of Canada tracks that no one else has heard, that’s why he likes working with us. But we trust him. We know he wouldn’t do anything else with it.” Marcus grins: “He also knows we’d break both his legs if he did.” And no, they didn’t get to meet Leo. “He utters one word. God knows what he got paid. We wanted to record ‘Leonardo DiCaprio is a wanker’ and put it in the advert music backwards...” The future of music may be uncertain, but Boards of Canada seem very definite about their own future musical direction. “We’ve got a better notion now than we ever did of what Boards of Canada is,” says Mike. “Now we know that we’re supposed to be doing really psychedelic, organicsounding music. I think to some extent we’ve pandered to the electronic scene previously, putting elements in that we’re not necessarily into...” Marcus continues: “It’s going to be simultaneously more listenable and more out there... psychedelic, gorgeous and strange.” We may have a long cold wait on our hands, but it looks like there might be another blaze about to start crackling.
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DISCOGRAPHY ‘Acid Memories’ (Music 70, 1989)
Mira Calix ‘Sandsings’ (Boards of
Absurdly rare, cassette-only release
Canada remix) (Warp, 1997)
from the barely teen Boards, then
Boards render Warp’s press officer’s
six-strong. Guitars meet electronics
warblings intelligible.
in embryonic but recognisably Boards-ian melodicism.
Jack Dangers ‘Prime Audio Soup’ (Boards of Canada remix) (Play It
‘Play by Numbers’ (Music 70, 1994)
Again Sam, 1998)
Five-track CD from what was now a
Respectful to the Meat Beat
trio, boasting a My Bloody Valentine
Manifesto man, this is a curious,
influence in places, shifting further
slightly gothy hybrid.
into electronics in others. ‘Aquarius’ (seven-inch single) ‘Hooper Bay’ (Music 70, 1994)
(Skam, 1998)
Closer still: the use of kids’ voices
A different version to the one on
was a hint of what was to come.
‘Music...’. ‘Sesame Street’ meets
People pay small fortunes for
Kraftwerk meets the between-
copies.
scenes bits from ‘Seinfeld’.
‘Twoism’ (Music 70, 1995) . . .
Music Has the Right to Children’
The last record as a trio when
(Skam/Warp, 1998)
everything slipped into focus and
‘Music...’ claimed not just children
pricked up record company ears.
but grown adults of – shock! – both sexes.
‘BOC Maxima’ (Music 70, 1996) Twenty tracks: half of which would
Bubbah’s Tum ‘Dirty Great Mable’
appear on late EPs and albums; the
(III, 1998)
others remain an impossibly elusive
Unusually beat-heavy, balanced by
prospect (50 copies only).
their trademark use of kids’ voices and big, spooky chords. Their final
‘Hi Scores EP’ (Skam, 1996)
remix.
Essential for the Eno-esque ‘Everything You Do is a Balloon’ and
‘Orange Romeda’ (from ‘We Are
the spooky electro of ‘Nlogax’.
Reasonable People’ compilation) (Warp, 1999)
‘Korona’ (from ‘Mask 100’
Very much in the ‘Music...’ vein.
compilation) (Skam, 1996)
Children’s voices, bird’s wing
Darkness visible: slurring synths and
percussion and yearning, half-
an uneasy, off-kilter rhythm.
heard synth melodies.
‘Untitled’ (from ‘Mask 200’ as Hell
‘Peel Sessions’ (Strange Fruit, 1999)
Interface) (Skam, 1997)
Reworks of ‘Aquarius’ and ‘Olson’,
Even darker, harder, faster side of
plus newie ‘Happy Cycling’.
the Boards. ‘Who are Hell Interface?’ they ask.
‘In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country EP’ (Warp, 2000)
Michael Fakesch ‘Surfaise’ (Boards
OK, so it’s an EP not an album, and
of Canada Trade Winds mix) (Musik
it’s not exactly a revolutionary
Aus Strom, 1997)
departure, but when familiar
Spacious, dissonant, slightly
ground is this gorgeous, who’s
disembodied ambience.
complaining?
DISCO_POGO_175
THE ARCHIVE /'MAD' MIKE BANKS - UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE / ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUL/AUG 1994
“Nobody buys me!” ‘Mad’ Mike Banks, leader of Detroit’s techno terrorists Underground Resistance, rarely does interviews and ‘isn’t keen’ on having his photo taken to say the least. However, seeing as Jockey Slut is based in Manchester (which is “fucked up like Detroit”), and hasn’t yet sold its soul to The Man (i.e. IPC), Mike agreed to talk to us. In this exclusive interview Paul Benney dials Detroit and communicates tonally with a man on a mission about life, the universe, and everything. Trainspotting: Peter Walsh What first inspired you to
that’s like the State college station,
and they became very good at it. I
make music?
for years he was playing stuff like
think that’s why a lot of our techno
“I’d have to say my mother. My
Meat Beat Manifesto and Nine Inch
musicians and DJs, mix engineers
mother played guitar in her earlier
Nails, a lot of alternative stuff. He
and the guys who master the
days when she was at college. She
played a lot of interesting music and
records – they all do that and that’s
was kind of a hippy type – she
Jeff Mills was known as The Wizard.
all they do. There ain’t nothing else.
participated in the Martin Luther
He would play a lot of Chicago, a lot
No vacations, holidays, or shit like
King freedom march. She really liked
of Detroit techno and a lot of hip
that, that shit don’t happen. Only
that Joan Baez, peace, love and
hop coming out of New York and he’d
holiday I ever went on is when we
harmony music. So I would always
mix them all together. So at that time
had a gig or when I went to jail.”
hear her play guitar. I can’t say I was
we had Mojo and Jeff Mills on the
interested in it. She liked music from
radio and some heavyweight music
How did you end up in jail?
India like Ravi Shankar and she also
getting played. The state of affairs
“Gangs. They try and say I shot
liked a lot of soul and gospel music.
now is we got a little radio show that
someone.”
Her tastes were pretty varied so we
we’re trying to sponsor to educate
heard a lot of different stuff around
the kids, but it’s gonna cost a lot of
Did you do it?
the house – so I’d have to say it was
money so we’ll have to wait and see.”
“Nah. They just picked me at
my mother that inspired me.”
random.” What is it about Detroit and
What inspires you now?
good music?
Was that a long time ago?
“I would have to say Electrifying
“It’s just a city with a lot of soul.
“Nah, not really. Y’know, you get in
Mojo, a local DJ in Detroit. He plays
Nobody really has a lot here, people
trouble a lot but it’s fortunate for
anything he feels like playing and
aren’t absolutely poor here, they
me that I’m (goes into Yogi Bear-
the whole city is always with him
work hard for what they’ve got – it’s
style voice) smarter than the
man, he’s a cat. Mojo would play
a real working blue collar town. The
average bear.”
anything from James Brown and
few chances in life that people have
Jimi Hendrix to Alexander Robotnik
here to have a good time are very
You had a record called Riot EP. Do
and Tangerine Dream. We heard
much appreciated. I would say that
you think the LA riots changed
Kraftwerk, we heard YMO, and all
in combination with the fact that
anything?
this right in the middle of the inner
there is absolutely nothing to do
“Err. Nah. I just think the government
city, he’s been doing it for years.
here but to either get in trouble or
is just going to think of more
They kick him off the radio every
to do something positive. So just like
pacifiers to give poor people to
couple of years but he’s a true rebel,
with our boxers and our athletes
pacify them. More welfare programs
he’s like a leader to me. And then
and Motown, the whole reason that
– it’ll be a temporary fix. In order for
Jeff Mills had a radio show at WDET,
shit happened here is because those
somebody to be rich somebody’s
people chose not to be on the street
gotta be poor. That’s the way I look
and they focussed on what they did
at it. I’ve got kind of a dismal outlook
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on the way our country is run. I’d say 80% of the bums here are Vietnam veterans. You need to ask them what they think about America. I wish it could get better but I’ll believe it when I see it.” A lot of people say that Ice T is the most dangerous and subversive Black American. What do you think? “I’m very glad that Ice T is socially aware with his actions and words now. A lot of people give a lot of the rap artists a lot of credit for being independent but we’ve been doing that shit for years. We do our work quietly and efficiently and I’m glad Ice T is socially responsible, because his early records – I didn’t particularly care for them. To me, and I’ll say it in no uncertain terms, LA is soft, the whole fuckin’ place is
anybody else’s, but mine is designed
What message is your music
soft to me, that’s why I don’t play
to be subversive and mind
giving out?
there, it’s not my environment. The
awakening. There are definite
“The message I’m trying to give
people like our music and I don’t
messages there through tonal
people around the world is very
want to down them but it don’t get
communication and you can’t
simple; the way the programmers
cold there – there’s palm trees in
assess it – that’s why techno is
control the masses is through audio
that ghetto.”
deadlier than rap. With rap you have
and visual imagery. They play to you
to vocally communicate your point
the kind of music that they want
What do you mean by soft?
but with techno you don’t. I’m a big
you to hear; they show to you the
“The lifestyle. It’s laid-back, a lot of
fan of Public Enemy – to me
films that they want you to see and
people there are asleep. I’m glad
‘Prophets of Rage’ and ‘Burn
you act accordingly. Detroit is
they’re beginning to wake up. But
Hollywood Burn’ were all warning
coming up – we’re trying to get it
basically LA – the whole situation
signs of what was going to happen.
together but we’ve got a lot of
there, the gang thing – that’s 15
And the ‘Riot EP’ was too. ‘Riot’ is a
problems, we’ve got a lot of drugs, a
years old in Detroit, even the music
warning sign of what can happen
lot of guns and a lot of violence – we
they’re listening to – George Clinton
when people try to dominate other
don’t need a video to see it. They
and all that.”
people. The more you oppress
pour this shit down our throats –
someone the harder you make them
sex, violence, drugs; sex, violence,
Do you think a rough urban
– it’s just like making a diamond.
drugs – that’s what these kids grow
environment creates social
When they put the shit on the
up on and they act accordingly. If
awareness?
Vietnamese and they tried to force
we had more role models like
“Yeah. In Detroit we’ve been through
them into cheap labour and all that
Minister Farrakhan and men like
the brothers killing brothers and the
shit they became so hard that they
that then you would see a different
senseless violence. Although it still
couldn’t beat ‘em. They couldn’t
style of young Black male coming
occurs, people are a lot more aware
beat the motherfuckers ‘cause
from the inner city but our role
here. They’ve realised that that’s not
they’re so hard. They go to any
models are motherfuckers who hold
going to get us anywhere. To me,
lengths to win. That’s what the
their dicks for a living and tell
rioting won’t either. I understand
governments are going to create
stories about shit they never did. If
why they rioted but we’re silent and
out of the poor, the mismanaged
you came to Detroit you would see
deadly and that’s the best way. I like
and all that other part of society
the effects that some of these
Ice T now. I have high respect for
that they don’t like to deal with –
unwise rappers are having on
him now.”
they’ll create hardcore killers. I see it
society here.”
every day in the street ‘cause people Can techno be subversive?
out here don’t give a fuck about
“My techno is. I can’t speak for
nothing. You can’t control them.”
DISCO_POGO_177
Who are ‘they’?
Did you vote in the last presidential
Why is it so important to stay
“A lot of the ill-informed gangsta rap
elections?
underground?
– it’s bullshit. If you’re a gangsta
“Yeah I voted for Minister Farrakhan
“It’s important for me for
you’re in jail, you a hard
– he wasn’t on the ballot though.”
Underground Resistance to stay
motherfucker you in jail, you don’t
underground because I think it
have to brag about shit because
Do you think Bill Clinton has things
provides inspiration for others
there’s nothing to brag about.
under control?
around the world to start
‘Cause they don’t get paid it’s as
“I really couldn’t say man – I think
organisations and not be controlled
simple as that. They are inefficient
the military controls everything.”
by the programmers. I can hear in
– just totally inefficient to me and in
the music over the last three years
the machine they don’t fit. The same
Is America a democratic country?
that our music is influencing people
guys that would sell dope to a
“No. Like I said, I think the military
all over the world. I like to see the
brother would do a video and talk
runs everything. Military objectives
effects that our music is having – I
shit to a brother. I’ve got no emotion
rule the world. There is no such
think our listeners are very much
in my heart for none of them.”
thing as democracy.”
informed, and very much aware of
Gangsta rappers say they’re simply
Where does your fascination with
think for Underground Resistance to
rapping about their real-life
space come from?
go commercial would be like me
experiences?
“From wanting to escape from here.”
disrespecting all the people that
world events, nature, of respect. I
“That’s bullshit. For most people
have supported us over the years.”
here there is no ghetto. Yeah we got
Do you think there is life on other
poverty but it’s a lot worse in other
planets?
What signs of change have you seen
places of the world. I don’t think
“Definitely.”
over the years?
anybody should glorify being a poor,
“People are listening, people
broke, inefficient motherfucker. It’s
Bill Clinton has just slashed the
understand that they are being
nothing to be proud of.”
budget for searching for life on
programmed as I travel around and
other planets. How do you feel about
hear the musical styles that are
Gangsta rap has a very large white
that?
coming out of Europe now. You can
audience now. Why?
“They already know we’re here, he
hear more expression and people
“It’s totally a white audience. That’s
doesn’t have to look for them.”
are letting themselves go, they’re
the market they aim it at. Black
letting their emotions and efficiency
people don’t buy rap music. They
Why don’t they show themselves
meet and create projects that are
don’t buy albums because they don’t
to us?
unparalleled like Aphex Twin. There’s
have enough money. Like I say, they
“I think we’re a little too primitive to
really some good basic channels –
can see it if they walk outside so
communicate with them.”
people are starting to understand.
why should they have to buy it? I
Juan told me ten years ago the
mean if it’s a good song and it’s cool
Are we progressing?
whole point to techno, and Captain
then fine. But if it’s some bullshit
“Slowly but surely.”
Kirk says it at the beginning of every
people don’t buy it. The white
‘Star Trek’ – ‘Boldly going where no
audience to me is uninformed.
Is world peace a possibility?
man has gone before.’ If we all
Anybody that jumps up there and
“No. Before that can happen we
explore together we will find what
says they’re against ‘em, they take
would have to reach a point of
we’re looking for. We will find that
them as that, just like in society any
evolution where materialistic things
point of evolution where we respect
Black man walking down the street
like gold don’t mean anything. Right
ourselves more than paper money.”
is a criminal – they take it as that.
now we’re not at that point. We
Here in Detroit we are surrounded
can’t imagine it. Until we reach a
What do you think of Aphex Twin?
by suburbs just like George Clinton’s
point where our respect for our
“Well, like I said, people’s music is
record said ‘Chocolate City in the
fellow man outweighs our respect
one thing – the individual is another.
Vanilla Suburbs’ – that’s what
for the dollar we’re fucked.”
I judge people by their music and I’ve
Detroit is. And when we go out to
always liked Aphex Twin’s music but
the suburbs we are harassed
What does Underground Resistance
sometimes musicians don’t always
accordingly because we are all
stand for?
make the best business decisions
rappers and all criminals in the mind
“Revolution for Change. It stands for
‘cause they’re musicians not
of white society.”
the deprogramming of the
businessmen. For me I do street
programmed mind.”
business – if you come up here and
178_DISCO_POGO
try and take my record company
and control my shit you ain’t gonna
got two sides to him and sometimes
here with your vocal on it. We put
do it, it ain’t gonna happen, you
my dark side consumes me and so I
the song out as an acapella for
gonna get the fuck outta my place
have to try to appreciate positive
people to take a little snippet here
or you get hurt. That’s what
music – keep my head up man. This
and there. Not that we were looking
happens.”
is a rough business and a lot of
to legally pursue anybody but I
times I get discouraged and I feel
never imagined a guy would take
You'll never be bought out then?
like an extinct or dying-out breed.
the whole song and not only that
“It's impossible man – I'm an
I'm a Black American and I'm trying
but rewrite one of the verses and
American Indian. I'm an American
to make these techno records and
have another singer singing it. It
Indian and Black and I've got
uphold Detroit’s reputation and
became a bitter warfare for me and
warriors from both sides and
there's a lot of pressure. I try my
for once the little guys won. We
nobody buys me. Nobody buys me
best and sometimes I don't always
went in there with the help of KMS
– people would be disrespecting my
make the best record I wanna make
Records and Network’s legal team
forefathers if they bought me.”
but it's very difficult competing with
and got things sorted out. Our
people much better armed than me,
artists got recognised and our
You're part American Indian then?
with bigger promotion teams,
artists got paid, our writers got
“Yeah. A lot of Black people are here
bigger computers, and all that. But
paid, and I feel real good about
– it's something that's not talked
the Vietnamese were outnumbered
what happened. Right now I look at
about a lot. A lot of Black Americans
and outgunned and they won. And
it as a small victory for us. I'm going
from the south are interbred with
that Geronimo. He was outmanned
to put out some more acapella
American Indians. It's just not being
and outgunned and they never
records but I hope people use them
discovered but it's heavy in my
kicked his arse. Those are like my
as samplers should – don't take the
family. I've got pride – I love my
spiritual leaders. I respect Geronimo
whole lyric, it weren't made for that,
background. I love it. I'm proud of
and I like Bruce Lee – them
it was made for people to take little
what I am. I'm a goddam fool, a rebel
motherfuckers that were
pieces to make a track with. I won't
motherfucker who don't give a fuck.
underdogs. That's why I'm in the
come after them for that ‘cause
And society’s gonna have to deal
underground man. I know that I'll
they're my boys but if it's a major
with me for years to come. Just as
never be famous, and on the cover
record company and they try to rip
I’m a rebel with my music, I'm a rebel
of Billboard. You know what I'm
me off I'm coming after their arse.
with my business practices too. I
saying, I'm not gonna win no
And I did, I flew over there and we
love what I do right now. I feel like if I
Grammy. I know that this will never
got what was coming to us. And I
was to die tomorrow my life was
happen for me and I've accepted it.
hope Darlene [Lewis] gets a singing
worth it.”
To me it's just as much of an honour
career out of it. We did a follow-up
to be underground as to be a
record called ‘Soul Fly Free’ and
Should musicians be taking more
successful commercial artist. I don't
that’s out on KMS UK. I hope she gets
care with their business decisions?
want people to think that I'm
a career out of it but I don't want to
“Yes, they should. If they are
against all commercial music – I
make it no habit. I don't want people
intelligent enough to create
think there are some very gifted
thinking they can rip off Detroit. We
beautiful music then they should be
commercial artists. It's just the
have our head and arse wired
capable of handling their own
garbage that record companies will
together like my man in ‘Full Metal
business affairs. A lot of musicians
feed people to satisfy their
Jacket’ says. Just don't pick on us
are lazy motherfuckers that's why
monetary situation. Just being a
man – I'm a cool guy until people
they're musicians. They ought to
commercial artist doesn't mean
fuck with me.”
take enough energy to get their
you're a sell-out it's just when you
business affairs in order to the best
allow the company to use you to do
Do you feel indebted to the 303?
of their ability. As long as you do
something that you normally
“Yeah I really like the 303, sometimes
your best people respect you.”
wouldn't do and they make you into
I like it too much (laughs). I just like
something you're not.”
the sound it makes, man. It's just an
What other people's records do you
amazing instrument. Every time I
listen to?
What happened with the ‘Let the
turn it on it makes a different sound
“I like listening to Jeff Mills records. I
Music Lift You Up’ track?
and I really like it. I'm indebted more
think Jeff is exceptionally gifted. I
“Our vocal ended up on another
to the designers who made it. When
listen to Dave Angel, I listen to a lot
record and some of my underground
I was in Japan I wanted to meet
of Marshall Jefferson, I like Martha
comrades in England down at X313
them and I heard that I was maybe
Wash she always makes beautiful
in London dropped a dime and let
music. I mean every man has always
me know that there's a record out
DISCO_POGO_179
of my records have a mission and an objective. If the song sits inside of the mission then the song gets on the recording. There are a lot of complexities to techno that the European buyer doesn't understand.” Will you ever stop making music? “Nah, man. That's one of my purposes on this planet. If I get killed then I'm finished. That's the only thing that would take me out if I got killed out here on the street or in some plane crash when I'm flying somewhere. Nine times out of ten a hours away from where they were
aware to not be influenced by
guy ain't gonna get me – I'm hard to
but we never could hook up. It was
European standards – if I like the
get. They tried a lot of times. My
the guy that made the 909 and a lot
303 I'm going to play the
jungle awareness level is way up. I
of the early Roland stuff that we
motherfucker until my shit falls
have had some problems. My roof
depend on. Although I must admit I
apart. ‘Cause that's what they like
came through on my building and
use it a lot, it gets to you after you
in Detroit. And that's my
the rain got on my equipment, so I'm
hear so many records with it on. I
environment. If they don't like it in
in the process of trying to rebuild a
love the 303 though I try and think of
England then they don't like it in
lot of my ancient, ancient keyboards
creative ways of using it, like
England. There are a lot of records
and shit but the landlord never fixed
'Hi-Tech Jazz', I always like to include
that we make that you guys don't
the roof so that's what happened.”
it just like a musician in my hand. All
have ‘cause we don’t sell them over
my instruments I've got a personal
there. We sell them in the city. A lot
So only death and rain can stop you
electronic relationship with. ‘Cause I
of the early sounding Cybotron-
making music?
have electricity in my body too.
type of records people always liked
“Yeah. Natural elements can take
When we touch they recognise me
here and we still make them – we
me out but no regular guy will get
and I recognise them. I think ‘The
just don’t release them. Basically
me so I'm kind of happy with that.”
Terminator’ is definitely what's
because the distributors in Europe
happening man – machines have
say: ‘They don’t like that sound; they
How did you get the name Mad Mike?
emotions. They can become
like this sound.’ So I say okay cool,
“It was a gang tag at first and I used
intelligent and they will one day.”
we don’t sell it to them. No big deal, I
to drag race cars a lot so I used it
mean every time European guys
there and since then I kept it. It was
Do you think you'll ever become
come over here they like it. There’s
my battle name. To my close friends
bored of the 303 sounds?
less than 10 guys in the world that
I'm Mike but when I'm on a gig or I'm
“Nah. To me Europeans get bored
decide what you guys listen to over
making a record I'm on a mission, and
with things quickly. Here people still
there. There's nobody here that
when I'm on a mission I'm Mad Mike.”
listen to Cybotron. The pressure of
determines what we hear. We can
our society to be different and
play what we wanna play. Over
What's going to happen with techno
ever-changing is much less than you
there it's much more restricted.
in the future?
guys have. But here – it's mundane
There are so many categories of
“The majors will fuck up certain
man. It's the drone – y’know what
techno. I ain't never heard of
parts of it but techno is very similar
I'm saying. A mechanic’s a mechanic
‘intelligent techno', ‘ambient techno’
to AIDS, which I have high respect
and that's what he's going to be for
– I don't know the difference
for. AIDS is a very elusive disease,
the next 40 or 50 years. In Europe
between none of them. It's all
very intelligent, and its self-learning
people are not loyal to any one
underground music to me. All these
– the more and more medicines they
sound, they’re never satisfied and I
categories is just to make new
use to try and combat it the more
guess that's why you all spread all
markets to sell old products. That's
intelligent it becomes. Of course
over the world and colonised
why with my records I'll put out a
that's one way of looking at it, I
everywhere ‘cause you weren't
jazz record and any damn thing I feel
don't want people thinking I love
satisfied with home. I'm very much
like, it's just the way the song comes
AIDS I'm just looking at it from a
out. It's like a baby – it's gotta be
scientific standpoint where you
born. It's the mission I'm on and most
have to respect it. Anytime that
180_DISCO_POGO
death is involved that’s the one
Earth and they want to
like that man – because at the end
thing that all men respect. Death is
communicate – what are we going
of the day we all bleeding red blood.
a motherfucker. Death is the end of
to try to do? We are going to pull out
I know we talked about a lot of
this known existence. So I think
our little guns and we’re going to
racial issues but I’d really like to
techno – and again I have all
shoot them instead of
keep that shit away from techno. A
sympathy for all people with AIDS I
communicating. I’m hoping that
lot of people ask me what I feel
hope I haven’t got it – to me techno
techno music inspires a whole new
about all these white boys making
is like the birth of each new baby
generation of kids to approach
techno and I say to them: ‘What are
– techno lives on. Each mind is going
animals and future engagements
you talking about?’ The first techno
to hear a new sound, see a new
with life from outer space in an
I listened to was Kraftwerk and
colour, think of a different way to do
intelligent manner. I just hope it
they’re white. Techno to me is the
something. Techno to me runs
inspires them to do the right thing.
one music that is truly a global
parallel with life itself. To me it’s an
Don’t do what our forefathers have
music – I think it’s a galactic music.
obvious music that’s going to carry
done for hundreds and hundreds of
That’s why I name my shit ‘World to
us forth. Like I said, man is very
years before us – be scared, pull out
World’, ‘Galaxy to Galaxy’, ‘Universe
primitive, we’ve been here for
our little weapons and shoot
to Universe’.”
millions and millions of years but we
whatever the problem is. That’s not
have yet to communicate with our
the solution. Shooting and pointing
So you’ll be ready?
closest neighbours – animals. Why
a gun ain’t shit. Here we are in 1994
“I want to be ready man. I want to
the fuck are we going into outer
– you ask me are we going to have
prepare my brothers and sisters so
space when we can’t even talk to a
wars, and what do I think of the
that if we come into contact with
dog or cat yet. We are idiots.
government – what runs the fuckin’
intelligent lifeforms from another
Animals communicate through
world? Nuclear weapons. It’s the
planet we can talk on the same level.
tonal communication. When man
balance of power. It still shows that
I want to one day talk to my cat. I’ve
becomes smart enough not to shit
we’re cavemen – who has the
got cats and I like to watch them
in his own back yard, not to
biggest club? I don’t care if you’re
‘cause they react to different
disrespect his fellow neighbour we
white or I’m Black – when we get cut
frequencies. I feel stupid ‘cause I
will be moving forward. Techno is
we’ve all got red blood. Environment
can’t talk to them. It’s like how far
going to carry us there. Techno will
makes colours man. If you live in
have we really come? We got a long
be medicine. With so called primitive
Africa and you’ve got the sun
way to go, man.
man, when someone in the tribe got
beating down on you, you’re gonna
“I know what respect and pride
sick they’d sing a song or do a
be Black. If you live in the North Pole
means – it means that you keep
chant. Western medicine looks at
you need certain features to survive
your arsehole tight and if you don’t
that as bullshit: ‘You can’t fix
up there. That’s a scientific fact.
have no respect and you don’t have
somebody from singing a fuckin’
These motherfuckers with this
no pride you get fucked whether it
song.’ That song carries an emotion.
racial shit man – they’re cavemen. I
be in the arse in prison or in life.
It carries that emotion through
wish I could eliminate them
‘Cause the sharks are out there and
tonal communication. If that person
tomorrow with some kind of laser
they will definitely fuck you. So to all
feels that communication it might
gun but I don’t have it right now.”
the new upcoming techno musicians
trigger something in him that will
– tell them to stay underground –
repair whatever the fuck is wrong
There’s been a lot of racial problems
fuck selling out. What you and me
with him.
in Europe recently. Comment.
are doing is a mission. You are trying
“We disrespect things. Think
“Every time it gets tight over in
to inform the readers and I’m trying
about the old sci-fi flicks – all the
Europe the nationalists want to
to inform the listeners and that’s
Martians and ugly monsters and
come out and blame all the
what brought you and me here on
some bullshit from some silly
foreigners for all their problems. It’s
the phone. We don’t think of it as
motherfucker’s imagination. If you
been happening for centuries and
that but I might not ever speak to
want to talk science fiction get with
centuries. We’ve got to come
you again and we did a mission
‘Star Trek’ – they even know that
together as a human community.
together and it was planned long
even if someone looks like a monster
Now these same nationalists – if we
ago. That’s what deep – everything
they might be a beautiful person. It
were supposedly attacked by
in our life is planned. And now you
was an intelligent show and that’s
another race of beings from
and me have talked on the phone
why it lasted. The early Hollywood
another world – all of a sudden we
our mission is complete.”
flicks depicted Martians as
would all be human. Then what
monsters so when we go in outer
army would we be – the human race
space or when they do approach
army. They gotta speak about shit
DISCO_POGO_181
THE ARCHIVE / TOP 10: MOST FACELESS ARTISTS / ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUG 2003
182_DISCO_POGO
A SERIES OF RANDOM SUBJECTS IN TOP TENULAR LIST FORM. THIS MONTH:
The world’s most anonymous artists... Words: Tom Magic Feet 1. THE RESIDENTS
own productions. Instead, Banks has
continues to pursue his penchant
Undisputed all-time world
let the music do the talking and
for all things German, werking (sic)
champions of anonymity, California-
techno just wouldn’t have been the
under the pseudonyms of
based band The Residents’ career
same without him.
Dopplereffekt, and, occasionally,
spans 30 years, yet their identities
Heinrich Mueller – the name of the
remain secret and their faces have
3. MOODYMANN
former head of Hitler’s secret police.
never been caught on camera.
What is it about Detroit, eh? Kenny
Blimey.
Instead, they always appear in
Dixon Jnr has an afro and curses a
public in disguise and only indirectly
lot. And that’s pretty much the sum
5. BASIC CHANNEL
answer questions through their
total of our knowledge of this most
In Europe, they don’t come any more
Cryptic Corporation management
unique of house music producers.
shy and retiring than Mark Ernestus
company. Their anonymity was
Any photos that do exist are grainy
and Moritz von Oswald, the hidden
most hardcore early in their career,
at best and interviews are a no-no,
duo behind labels like Basic Channel,
when they formulated their famous
the closest he’s come to date being
Maurizio, Chain Reaction and
‘Theory of Obscurity’, but while their
a few rambling sentences on his
Rhythm & Sound, and who once
creative output – music being just
fittingly-titled debut LP, ‘Silent
performed live at Lost from behind a
one aspect of the band – has veered
Introduction’, where he – at least, we
screen. They’ve single-handedly
wildly over the years to echo in the
think it was him – ranted against
launched whole new areas of
likes of Negativland and The
cheap imitations of Black music. Not
techno, but they won’t do photos or
Simpsons alike, The Residents’
that that means he’s averse to
even be quoted when they do
self-confessed ‘anti-Beatles’ stance
dropping a Rolling Stones track into
occasionally talk to a journalist.
has never wavered.
a DJ set now and again.
With little in the way of facts to go
2. ‘MAD’ MIKE
4. DREXCIYA
covering everything from supposed
Techno’s love of facelessness really
Much-feted Detroit duo James
crazy recording techniques down to
began in the early 90s with
Stinson and Gerald Donald went one
why they’re said to favour Carhartt
Underground Resistance, who
better than the rest of the faceless
clothing. Because it’s from near
militantly eschewed publicity
techno contingent by inventing their
Detroit, apparently.
photos along with the rest of the
own fantasy world of slaves-
hated music industry machine. But
turned-fishmen and underwater
6. DAFT PUNK
while Jeff Mills, Robert Hood and the
civilisations to fill the void created
Only one press photo that comes
rest of the UR crew past or present
by a lack of photos or interviews.
anywhere near showing Thomas
have since become better
Stinson, also known as The Other
Bangalter and Guy Manual de
acquainted with snappers and
People Place and Transllusion, died
Homem-Christo’s faces clearly ever
hacks alike, ‘Mad’ Mike Banks has
last year, ironically just as he
existed, and that was taken almost
remained unseen, a hidden kingpin
seemed to be hitting new levels of
a decade back. And after one cover
in Detroit techno never caught
creativity and had finally begun
shoot in 1996 (with none other than
maskless, rarely interviewed and
talking to the press. Donald has
our good selves), the pair have
even oblique about owning up to his
stayed out of sight, however, and
employed a seemingly endless
on, rumours abound amongst fans,
DISCO_POGO_183
9. KRAFTWERK An odd choice, you might think, given that Kraftwerk’s mugs appear on several of their album covers and photos are plentiful. But ask yourself – if you saw Ralf, Florian, Karl or Wolfgang walking down the street, would you recognise them? Are you sure? As Kraftwerk’s career progressed it became harder and harder to tell them apart. Early on they simply all wore the same shirt, tie and severe side parting; later, as the royalties began to pile up, they were able to literally replace themselves on stage with dummies variety of masks to disguise
find ‘Mixed Up in the Hague’ mixes,
and robots. Rise of the machines
themselves, from the dog fizzogs
but he doesn’t like to talk about it
indeed.
they sported in the ‘Da Funk’ video
very often, nor does he seem to
to the robot heads that
much like having his picture taken.
10. CHRIS MORRIS
accompanied the ‘Discovery’ album.
On those rare occasions he does
Included here by virtue of his
In 1997, Bangalter said: “We are very
speak, rants against the evils of
‘Bushwhacked’ record on Warp,
happy that the concept in itself is
major labels are not uncommon.
radio and TV satirist Chris Morris
becoming famous. You don’t always
rarely speaks to the media, avoids
have to compromise yourself to be
8. CLIENT
celebrity shindigs and refuses to be
successful.” A few years later they
Electronic bands continue to flirt
photographed out of character.
went and made a Gap advert. Go
with anonymity, and electro-pop
Ironically, the amount of
figure.
duo Client are but the latest
controversy his infamous, brilliant
example. The two women in the
‘Brass Eye’ drugs and paedophilia
7. I-F
band will only be known as Client:A
specials generated led to his face
It stands for Inter-Ferenc, but he’s
and Client:B (possibly an effort to
being widely plastered across the
known to all and sundry as Ferenc,
divert attention from a musical past
frantically knee-jerking tabloids. No
the shadowy hardcore electro and
that’s rumoured to include the
doubt irked by his refusal to play
disco junkie from The Hague who
name Dubstar) and prefer being
their game, The Mirror even said
founded Clone and Viewlexx. He may
photographed from the waist down
that ‘Morris hates being
have pretty much single-handedly
rather than from the shoulders up.
photographed because of the
sparked a revival of interest in both
Instead, they like the camera to
strawberry-coloured birthmark on
genres through tracks like the
linger on their matching austere,
the left-hand side of his face’. To
notorious ‘Space Invaders are
Kraftwerkian office-drone outfits.
which Morris would no doubt
Smoking Grass’ and his hard-to-
Speaking of whom...
respond with a pithy ‘shit off’.
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"a trance-laden trip towards euphoria" Wonderland
ALISON GOLDFRAPP her debut solo album
THE LOVE INVENTION 12 May 2023
HOW WE MADE...
FC Kahuna: ‘HAYLING’ ‘Hayling’ was FC Kahuna’s attempt at a bleepy ballad. Sounding like an experimental audio transmission beamed back from space it could – should? – have been a hit. It wasn’t. But that was just the start of its story… WORDS: JIM BUTLER
Origins FC Kahuna – childhood buddies from Leeds, Daniel Ormondroyd and Jon Nowell – first sprang to prominence in 1994 when they established the notorious shrine to debauchery, Big Kahuna Burger. Taking its inspirational cues from the Heavenly Sunday Social, Big Kahuna Burger was none more mid-90s: messy, energetic and imbued with the endless possibilities that acid house’s
Daniel: “I remember playing this Mary Anne Hobbs thing at Sankeys in Manchester – it was a Tuesday or Wednesday night and I had one of those records [big beat by numbers] in my bag. It was a choice between two records. I remember spending ages looking at this record thinking: ‘I know this is going to be massive and I 186_DISCO_POGO
know it’s going to go down really well, but I can’t bring myself to play it.’ The next morning we were like: ‘We can’t do this anymore.’ So we went really low key for a year and a half. Got into the studio and made this track which became ‘Mindset to Cycle’.” The studio was The Depot in London’s pre-gentrified King’s Cross. It was here that FC Kahuna 2.0 was born. Jon: “It was us being put in a room together. Previously we’d done our remixes with an engineer.
Photo: Chris Davison
original spirit unleashed. Alongside touring America with The Charlatans, the club gave Daniel and Jon their production name and some early remixes. And then came the comedown…
HOW WE MADE...
“I REMEMBER HAVING MORE LYRICS WRITTEN FOR THE SONG, BUT SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE. THAT LINE SAYS IT ALL, AND CAPTURES THAT FEELING, SO IT MADE SENSE. IT LEAVES THE LISTENER SOME SPACE TO THINK.” This was us learning our trade. It wasn’t us messing around, but us learning what to do on our own with a load of records, a sampler,
Inspirations and recording
a couple of synths and without a studio engineer.” Daniel: “The Super Furry Animals were always in there. We had a studio next to James from EMF. Then there was an Elastica studio where we never saw any of the girls, just the bloke. Bez would come in. And Joe Strummer. They’d get out of their minds all the time. I think Steve Mackey had one a bit further down…” Daniel: “’Mindset to Cycle’ became one techno thing we had. So the next bit was let’s do the opposite end of the spectrum – the bleepy ballad. I was just learning how to use the sampler. I kept putting loads of stuff in: the bass loop that runs all through the track, and kept on adding. Synth sounds, the live drum loop – which came from a Steve White (Style Council/ Oasis) sample CD – organ sounds… JC, our engineer, came in and I thought he can give me his assessment. He’s gonna tell me it’s a pile of shit. He was like, no, it’s great. And that was about 85% of the finished article. He put that bit of guitar on it, juggled the structure around a little bit, and that was that. He really liked it, which gave me some faith that it was OK.”
people thought that, but it would have been more a band that dance people wouldn’t have so obviously have liked. It sounds stupid now because most dance people like them, but it would have been The Beta Band or Super Furries. There’s a track by the Super Furries that we loved, ‘Some Things Come From Nothing’ from ‘Guerrilla’. It had this blossoming electronic soundscape and then just one vocal across the top which seemed to mean a lot but meant nothing.” Hafdís Huld, formerly of Icelandic collective Gus Gus, was drafted in to do the vocal. By now, the duo had moved to a studio in Streatham, owned by Segs, the bassist with The Ruts. Daniel: “We were upstairs in this flat on a crack estate. There were people getting knifed outside, in the Post Office, totally insane. But we had no hassle at all from the neighbours. People would knock on and go: ‘Sounds good, man.’ That sort of vibe. So we got Hafdís, this tiny, blondehaired, Icelandic singer, totally wide-eyed and innocent, to turn up at this crack estate. There was this separate little room. We put her in there. We did ‘Machine Says Yes’, which she was also doing the vocals for, first. The first take for ‘Hayling’, she starts singing, we’re recording
Photo: Mark Benney
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Daniel: “People, even JC, were like: ‘Well, clearly Air are an inspiration.’ I can see why
HOW WE MADE... and she sang the line and I just went: ‘Alright, stop.’ JC looked at me as if I was insane and I just said we don’t need anymore. It was the perfect first line.” Hafdís: “I heard a demo of the song before I met Dan and Jon so it wasn’t a traditional writing session in that sense, but that is quite common with this style of music. Words and lyrics are important to me and I like to work on that part on my own and with ‘Hayling’ the melody came to me quickly so when we met up I knew what I wanted to sing. There are
poignant: ‘Don’t think about all those things you fear, just be glad to be here.’
many ways to collaborate on music
You see it on Instagram all the
Hafdís: “At the time I was finding my feet after leaving my old band and moving alone to London. I was reminding myself to enjoy the journey and not let anxiety take over. It’s like a little mindfulness mantra about enjoying the little things in life.” Jon: “I didn’t recognise it at the time, but the nub of it is quite deep. I see comments online about how the lyrics touched people.
“THE HEAD OF THE PLAYLIST AT RADIO 1 SAID: ‘IF YOU RELEASE THIS AT EXACTLY THE RIGHT TIME YOU’LL HAVE A TOP TEN HIT.’ WE WERE LIKE: ‘OH RIGHT! OH SHIT.’” and this worked well for us.” Daniel: “As soon as it got to the end of that first line I was like: ‘Stop!’ And that was it. I don’t even know what else she had written. She’d nailed it. It was what I’d heard in the Super Furries thing that I liked. It was something easy to remember, something meaningful and that we could repeat over and over. Like a Beta Band-type of thing which they used on ‘Push It Out’. And you just build up everything else around it which anchors the track.” Hafdís: “I remember having more lyrics written for the song, but sometimes less is more. That line says it all, and captures that feeling, so it made sense. It leaves the listener some space to think, make their own connections to the song.” The line culled from Hafdís’ lyrics was plaintive, yet 190_DISCO_POGO
time – it touches people really deeply. People find real meaning in it. Which is mad. It wasn’t meant to be a grandiose statement – more just get on with it.” The title came from a colourful weekend on Hayling Island, off the south coast of England. Jon: “Carl Clarke, the promoter of Headstart [the night Dan and Jon DJed at after Big Kahuna Burger and another catalyst for the rebirth of FC Kahuna] was in this band Urban DK. His partner in the band’s parents had a house there – a real nice gaff. It’s a posh little enclave.” Daniel: “We went down for a weekend to work on something for them. We took a boat out, played table tennis, did some handclaps, did some samples and it was all beautiful by the sea, going out in the speedboat and coming back. We were like you can do the return thing and help us out on a track.
So when we were doing it, I was thinking we should get them involved so I called it ‘Hayling’ as a reminder. But by the time we’d finished it, it was done – it didn’t need anymore. The name just stayed.”
The release By now signed to City Rockers, the early-00s label du jour funded by Ministry, and with an album recorded, FC Kahuna were on a roll. The album, ‘Machine Says Yes’, was causing a buzz, but it was ‘Hayling’ that excited the radio heads. Daniel: “There was a meeting with the head of the playlist at Radio 1 and they said: ‘If you release this record at exactly the right time you’ll have a top ten hit, you do know that don’t you?’ And we were like: ‘Oh right! Oh, shit.’” Jon: “We’d decided that the title track was going to be the first single and ‘Hayling’ would come out after. Our radio plugger came to us and said if you switch it around they will A List ‘Hayling’. Obviously being the stupid young twats we were, we were like: ‘No, this is our art. And it will be presented like this.’ Stupid bastards.” Daniel: “We released ‘Machine Says Yes’ and that got on the B List, but didn’t do as well as it needed to do. Then there was the whole breakdown – dance music died. Overnight it was dead. Ministry reacted and pulled the plug on the dance labels they were funding, so City Rockers had no power to release our music. We had to find a new home. And that dragged on. It was basically a year later when it finally got released properly (on Skint) and by then we’d missed the boat.” Finally released in 2003, ‘Hayling’ fell just short of the Top 40, reaching number 49. By then it had become something of a chillout anthem and a permanent
fixture on the glut of downtempo compilations that flooded the market in the early-00s. Daniel: “I guess maybe that’s why JC brought Air up because they were playing with stuff against the grain. They were such an innovative band. We didn’t want it to sound like jazzy, floaty records. We wanted to go against the grain. Be a bit more interesting. But that’s as someone who’s written the music. If you’re listening to it you probably don’t pay attention to that. It has something that hits. So something slow and evocative obviously worked. I was probably overthinking it [it not being chillout].” Jon: “We had no interest in that world - apart from The KLF. You wouldn’t find me and Dan in the chillout room at a club nodding our heads. It was a complete accident. But if you take it in isolation it does fit in. I guess it sticks out on our album to a degree as well. But there was no inspiration being taken from Zero 7, or Massive Attack.”
The afterlife Either way, this bleepy ballad went on to have an inordinately successful afterlife, finding a home on all manner of TV shows, films, video games and ads… Jon: “Yeah, it was amazing. I remember it appearing on ‘Six Feet Under’, which I genuinely loved, it was one of my favourite shows at the time. Being on a show that you loved and respected was great. There wasn’t much money in it. There’s not a huge amount of money for things appearing on TV, but it was a genuine buzz to see it on-screen.” Daniel: “At the time it was largely the case that the record label sign you up to exploit you for whatever they can. I remember The Beta Band turning down lots of
ads… if it had been something really awful, there would have been a discussion. It was never part of a Republican campaign or anything. I don’t know. It was all like ‘CSI Miami’, ‘Need For Speed’… none of it particularly terrible and it was getting the song out and about.” Jon: “Being used in the opening of ‘Layer Cake’ (the 2004 film starring Daniel Craig and Sienna Miller) was a great marriage of sound and vision. It’s funny, Matthew Vaughn, the director, was on 6 Music talking about film and music. I was really excited to listen and hear him talk about our song. The story was they couldn’t get the song they wanted so ‘Hayling’ was the reserve. I assume they couldn’t afford the one they wanted. We were the super sub!” Hafdís: “I think we captured some magic that day in the studio and I loved the finished track.” Daniel: “I like what Woolly (Paul Woolford) did to it. He did a Special Request remix and he took it close to that ‘Testone’ bleep sound. I thought those vocals
sound good and those bleeps sound good. And so I listened to the original and I remember thinking: ‘How’s he made it sound better than ours?!’ It reappraised my relationship with the song. Because it became something else over time. And he put it back in context. He’d taken it closer to that Warp bleepy sound.” Daniel: “I think the reason for its appeal over time is Hafdís’ lyric. It’s a massive part of it. It’s like a wellbeing mantra. It’s almost before mindfulness was a thing - it almost encapsulates this thing that modern living endorses. A peaceful escape route from modern living. Without having a conversation about it, without giving her any instruction of what I wanted her to do she came in with something that I wanted to hear without knowing that’s what I wanted. And it’s a mantra that works maybe more now than it did then.”
DISCO_POGO_191
CRATEDIGGING WITH...
Ralph Lawson The songs that comprise the key of Ralph Lawson’s life make for a lovely sound indeed… INTRO: SEAN GRIFFITHS. PHOTOS: JON SHARD
As co-founder of both legendary Leeds party Back To Basics and record label 20/20 Vision, it’s fair to say Ralph Lawson’s place in the annals of house music history is assured. He’s given everyone from Maya Jane Coles to Paul Woolford to Motor City Drum Ensemble a leg-up with releases on his label and famously played the first-ever record at Basics in 1991, before booking everyone from Daft Punk and Harvey to Ron Trent to play the club over its
“I could probably have made this whole list warm-up tracks! I’ve just started playing a residency at an amazing little club in London called 17 Little Portland Street, which has one of the nicest booths I’ve ever played in and incredible sound for a small club. And there’s a new small place in Ibiza I’m going to be doing a residency over the summer called NUI Ibiza.” With over 30 years as a DJ, record collector and label
30-year plus history. While big plans are afoot for 20/20 Vision’s 30th birthday in 2024, he’s still happiest playing the warm-up as a resident DJ, despite leaving his post as resident at Back To Basics after 28 years in 2020 and an estimated 700 appearances at the club. “I absolutely love the warm-up set, for me it’s the most underrated and enjoyable DJ session there is,” he enthuses.
founder under his belt, it’s no surprise that Ralph’s choices tell quite a story, from teenage record shop excursions where he discovered dub through to afterparties where only minimal cuts from Ricardo Villalobos will do.
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CRATEDIGGING WITH... WARM-UP TRACK
Quintus Project: ‘Night Flight’ (Derwin Recordings) “This track is a moment of absolute Balearic bliss that’s perfect for any warm-up. It’s around 95bpm and the Psychemagik Remix is 14 minutes-long. It’s always nice to have a big, long record at the start of the evening as you’re settling in and getting the booth sorted. It starts with this arpeggiated synth sequence and an absolutely killer dreamy vocal. I start nearly every day with this record and never get bored of it. I could do the whole list with warm-up tracks, but this is one of the best there is. “There’s a couple of others I always love playing in the warm-up including the Todd Terje remix of ‘Life’s A Beach’ by a band called Studio which went down a treat at Little Portland Street recently and the I-Cube remix of the Tornado Wallace track ‘Lonely Planet’ too.”
The track’s about the day Marvin Gaye passed and it starts with this FM radio report announcing his death. We’d turn down all the lights and the track would come in and everyone would just go for it.”
TRACK THAT EVERYONE SHAZAMS
SECRET WEAPONS
TOILET BREAK TRACK
Unknown: ‘Feel Like a Laser Beam’ (Outre-Mer)
Moodymann: ‘Day We Lost the Soul’ (KDJ)
Manuel Göttsching: ‘E2-E4’ (Inteam)
“It could be anything from Moodymann, he’s an absolute genius and one of the greatest and most unique musical artists of any genre for me. But this one’s an absolute Back To Basics classic and one that often got played at that point of the night where you’d done the warm-up and it was time to crank things up.
“This is one of the greatest pieces of electronic music ever made. The whole thing’s 40 minutes across two sides of vinyl. It will give you enough time for a leisurely number two or the whole club could go off and powder their nose and come back and the record would still be playing.”
“I haven’t got a clue what people try and Shazam in my sets, but I can tell you the track I was trying to Shazam for ages and that’s this track Sean Johnston’s been playing which is an absolute acid barnstormer and has this vocal that goes ‘Feel like a laser beam’. I absolutely love Sean’s DJ sets and I texted him after one and asked him what it was and even he wouldn’t tell me!”
DISCO_POGO_195
CRATEDIGGING WITH...
WHEN IT’S TIME TO GET WEIRD
Gil Mele: ‘The Andromeda Strain’ (Kopp) “This was the score for a movie which came out in 1969 and the record has this hexagonal packaging which opens up. The record was first released in 1971 and it’s astounding that someone managed to talk the record company into packaging it like this all the way back then. The film’s this really odd sci-fi psychological thriller where a weird alien organism turns up on Earth and threatens the whole of humanity with this deadly virus. The score’s weird and edgy and filled with pure electronic tones. Weatherall actually put me on to it being repressed and reissued for Record Store Day a while back.” 196_DISCO_POGO
TIME TO GO OBSCURE
CLASSIC SING-ALONG
Rhys Celeste: ‘Microlith Limited Edition’ (Fundamental Records)
Crazy P: Never Gonna Reach
“Rhys is better known by the name Microlith and was one of the most promising IDM and electro producers on the planet. He was from Malta and sadly passed away in a quad biking accident in 2017, at the age of 24. It’s a really sad story but over the lockdown I got really into electro and particularly his music. He had a rare ability to make something really emotive out of a genre which can be quite cold and repetitive in lesser hands. He’d written so much music - this was actually released posthumously. I’ve picked it because it comes in this amazing packaging, with four pieces of vinyl inside an acrylic case you have to unscrew to access.”
“Crazy P have been one of the main acts on 20/20 Vision over the years and are an established main stage dance act at festivals these days. Their greatest strength is that they’re brilliant songwriters. We’ve just reissued the Hot Toddy remix of ‘Never Gonna Reach Me’ which is a classic slice of disco. The reaction to playing it out again has blown me away. I play it and have loads of people singing the words back to me. You go to their gigs and their lead singer Danielle has this legion of fans who just know all the words and will be singing them back at her. It’s such a rare thing to have when dance music can be quite often so anonymous.”
Me (Hot Toddy Remix)’ (20/20 Vision)
CRATEDIGGING WITH... GUARANTEED FLOOR FILLER
Nightcrawlers: ‘Push the Feeling On’ (Great Jones) “I struggled with this one a bit and the truth is that it’s probably anything by Daft Punk, but I played a party recently where the crowd was really mixed and there was a garage DJ on after me. I was playing and everyone kept requesting this track. The older generation of house heads are into it and the new generation of young kids love it too. It seems anything with MK involved just transcends ages and scenes. Whatever you think of that record it fills the floor.”
ONE MORE TUNE!
Galaxy to Galaxy: ‘Hi Tech Jazz’ (Underground Resistance) “This is one of my dearest one more tunes - it would always get dropped at Back To Basics. It’s from Underground Resistance and ‘Mad’ Mike Banks and it’s a full live jazz band meets techno project. I suppose it’s similar to 808 State’s ‘Pacific State’ in some ways, which also always goes off, but this has a much rawer and faster Detroit feel and became such a regular last tune.”
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AFTERPARTY TRACK
HOME LISTENING FAVOURITE
Ricardo Villalobos: ‘Easy Lee’ (Playhouse)
Scientist: ‘Scientist Meets the Space Invaders’ (Greensleeves)
“This is the archetypal afterparty track for me. I first heard him play this in fabric in the middle of the night and I’d just never heard anything like it. It sounds like a warbling goat herder on acid on a vocoder, with these laid-back minimal beats under it. It’s one of my favourite records ever and I don’t think it’ll ever be bettered as an addled afterparty tune. Depends on the kind of afterparty though, as it’s capable of clearing people out too!”
“Dub was my first love. I was into it before house music and I can listen to it all day long. There’s not a lot of vocals or a song structure to get bored of and I have it on and can work to it while it’s on in the background. It sets your headspace. I bought this at Record & Tape Exchange in Camden when I was 14. I just liked the cover really as I was a massive ‘Star Wars’ geek and it had laser guns on it. I got home and it absolutely blew me away and opened me up to this whole new world of music. It’s still one of my favourite records.”
OUT MAY 2023 BUY NOW AT DISCOPOGO.CO
MY HOUSE IS YOUR HOUSE...
Danielle Moore From photos revisiting her childhood to transformational outfits, the Crazy P singer’s house is testament to her wildly colourful life… INTERVIEW: ANNA CAFOLLA. P H O T O S : J O N S H A R D
As the magnetic voice of the fluid electronic group Crazy P, disco doyenne Danielle Moore has long been a siren call for ravers to find a home on the dancefloor – be it a local sweatbox or the festival beach feeling the afterglow of a sunrise set. Today, Moore calls Todmorden in West Yorkshire home. She’s invited us in after a fourweek tour which saw the electronic outfit travel to New Zealand, Australia, and Bali with their riotous live set and amorphous brand of unbridled disco, house and pop. The group has since been focused on writing a new album and continues to release a series of curated projects with Leeds label 20/20 Vision, with expansive collaborators so far including Ashley Beedle and A Certain Ratio. She has also been spending more time in the Todmorden hills, writing and recording in a studio that’s built into the earth. Her “hobbit hole” is her salvation, a creative space with only a little table, CDJs and microphone. “As you get older, everything takes its toll a bit more,” she says. “This is my little slice of peace.” 200_DISCO_POGO
Growing up in a working class northern town outside of Manchester, Danielle found her homecoming at age 18, when she was introduced to The Haçienda and scenes that would set life in motion. “I had my really seminal dancefloor moments there. I could dance how I wanted and feel so myself,” she says. She describes one night, eyeing the only other girl on the dancefloor moving as enthusiastically as herself. It was only when she went to jovially approach the other woman that she realised it was her own reflection in the room’s mirror. It’s a funny but perceptive anecdote for how Danielle lives life, propelling herself forward with her own euphoric vision of the world. “I’m 52 this year, and I sometimes find myself up against the idea that I’m not ‘steady’ or ‘settled’,” she shares. “I’ve experienced more than a few raised eyebrows. But I know I’m so lucky with my life. Would I swap those travels and memories and music for anything? Would I fuck!” As with the heart-on-sleeve, arm hair-electrifying dance music she makes, Danielle shares the off-kilter items from her home that are steeped in personal stories.
Crazy P 7-inch “We put out ‘If Life Could Be This Way’ over lockdown. It was the first 7-inch we ever released. We wrote and recorded it over one weekend. The sentiment is just… hope, really! We released it when people were really struggling. When we were really struggling. The cover image shows me as a kid, sitting on our avenue wall with lads I hung out with. I look cheeky and have a plaster on my knee – pretty standard. That photograph represents a lot of things to me, with one being my love of getting dirty. I’m so proud of the single, and I’m so proud of the image. It connects so many elements of my personal history together. “The video we released with it is made up of all the band’s photographs over the last 25 years. Taking a trip through those memories helped us remember what we’ve achieved. I really struggled with lockdown – I worried about my existence. This became something tangible to believe in.”
Photo album “I used to always carry a little camera with me. I love the shared ritual of photos – shooting, printing, getting the pictures
MY HOUSE IS YOUR HOUSE...
out and holding them in your hand with cake and tea to laugh and cry together. I made this photo album for my husband. There are pictures in here from the very last year of the Garden Festival before it became Love International. That’s where we had our first kiss! In the photos you see how happy people are, our group of Brummies – to put it one way they’re having a really good time. I’ve got pictures of the live band touring Australia and New Zealand in there too, and our attempts at family holidays where it’s pissed down and everyone looks a bit grumpy. Precious.”
A photo at a favourite gig “This is taken when everything changed for us. We were asked to do support for Faithless’ 2005/06 stadium tour. We did the SEC in Glasgow, Cardiff, the Manchester Arena, Brixton Academy for three
they said they thought it captured my energy through the night. I don’t usually like photographs of myself, but I’m so engulfed in the moment. This might sound wanky, but I think it’s so cool! Especially when I know how nervous I was. This was transformational – it made me realise that you have to lose yourself on stage. Now I feel like I’m stepping into a character.”
Stage outfits
nights, Hull ice rink [Arena]! We were so used to sweatboxes and tiny local venues, and yet here we were playing for 10,000 people a night. That’s when we really had to put on a performance. Someone sent me this photo in the post –
“My stage outfits are always colourful and bright. I have a beautiful full-length kimono dress and jumpsuit by Michelle Walton who reworks authentic kimonos into gorgeous pieces of clothing. I wore this purple outfit for Glastonbury. Unfortunately, I jumped off a speaker and tore the arse out DISCO_POGO_203
MY HOUSE IS YOUR HOUSE...
without any knickers on. Michelle fixed that! The kimono dress makes me feel so elegant, and the sleeves are broad and sweeping so I feel like I can fully command a stage. I also have this boiler suit by Mikkel, an urban artist from Leeds, which she spray painted with a massive love heart. On stage it glows, and it gives me confidence to shimmy around. “I never used to dress up – as a kid, I was more comfortable in tracksuits. When I joined the band and found my stage character, I started experimenting with my makeup and outfits. It still makes me feel empowered. The fact that most of my outfits are either made by my friends or second-hand is really special to me too. I take a piece of them on stage with me.” 204_DISCO_POGO
Mirrored disco hat “Brett Deardon is a plasterer by trade, and a wizard of this particular craft of reworking hats with mirrored glass. He wore this incredibly decorated welder’s hat to Homoelectric in Manchester. I bought an old postman’s hat and he decorated it with mirrored tiles. When the light hits the hat on stage it has this magic, dazzling effect. It’s a piece of furniture for me now. Grace Jones has one too!”
Painting “This is a painting called Goddesses. It’s also by Mikkel, who, in her 30s, had a stroke. She partially lost her sight and some speech. She had to retrain herself to walk and use her right arm. She said that because of the stroke she’d get these overwhelming visions and flashes of artistic inspiration. She did
this exhibition at the Golden Lion Pub – the beating heart of Todmorden – where my husband and I fell in love with her work. She did these two paintings for the designer Paul Smith, but he rejected them because of the portrayal of women’s breasts. I had to have them! This painting is huge and beautiful, striking on the dark wall of our cottage. It’s showing women for all their shapes and sizes. This painting celebrates what I’m all about – imperfections.”
The Apollo, Manchester “We used this photo for the cover of the first Crazy P album I was part of, ‘The Wicked is Music’. The Apollo is an iconic Manchester building, and back in the day it still had the old school lettering board. Our friend was managing the building and went up the ladder to change
MY HOUSE IS YOUR HOUSE...
the letters to show our original name, Crazy Penis, for the shoot. It was a freezing day, but it was such a thrill to do. Our brilliant friend is no longer with us, so this photo is even more dear to me. The Apollo holds a lot of memories for me – I saw Prince there in 2004, six rows from the front with my sister.”
Stuffed pheasant “I used to love this Instagram page called ‘Badly Stuffed Animals’. I bought this stuffed pheasant from a stall in Todmorden market. Every morning I say ‘hello’ and ‘how are ya?’ to my pheasant. I love that it has a second life with me! “I was vegetarian for about 30 years – but not anymore – and yet I’ve always had this fascination with birds and feathers. I worked with an incredible costume designer named Natasha Lawes, who used everything and anything for costumes in music videos, the National Ballet, and horror films. She would buy roadkill and animal by-products. She made me a headdress about 15 years ago from the wings of a dead bird. I think it’s brilliant.”
Cushion “My friend Louise Gardiner is a talented embroidery artist and designer, who made this beautiful cushion to mark 100 years of the Suffragettes. She’s done so much work with survivors of domestic violence, women with mental health issues, and refugees. I respect her so much. It’s a piece of art that reminds me how hard women fought for and continue to fight for our equality. Every now
and again, when I’m feeling a little bit low, powerless or vulnerable, I give the cushion a hug. I think of the collective struggle. This has pride of place in my front room.”
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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Howie B As one of the most in-demand producers of the 90s, Howie B seemed unstoppable. Then came an incident at an airport…
“I’m 59 now so I’m like: ‘OK, tranquillo, take it slow.’” Speaking from abroad, producer, composer, remixer and label boss Howie B seems content, amiable and appears fairly tranquillo, but his initial 90s production hot streak was far from calm. “It wasn’t a first flush of success,” he says, “it was a constant leak: it was just mental, the calls just kept on coming in, from everybody, from all genres, not just trip hop or electronic music, but rock, jazz, classical, everything.” Beginning his music industry career working in recording studios, starting as tea boy, he eventually rose to be one of the UK’s most in-demand producers, and by the late-90s, was riding high as the UK’s downtempo don. He’d worked with Soul II Soul on their debut album, produced and engineered for Tricky, Goldie and Massive Attack, put out his own productions on Mo’ Wax, launched his Pussyfoot label and was producing and remixing artists from Björk, Everything But The 208_DISCO_POGO
Girl and Leftfield, to Annie Lennox and Simply Red. Then in 1997, shit got real as he landed a job programming and producing for U2’s ‘Pop’ album (“That was mental as well – where the fuck did that come from?!”), before heading out on tour to engineer their live shows. His career was, as he demonstrates over Zoom via effusive arm movements, truly taking off. At which point things completely fell apart. “I produced two albums for U2 and then when I went on tour with them, I got busted in Minneapolis with weed. And that was when I had just achieved a presence in the States and that was where I really wanted to be. And obviously, I wanted it too much and yeah, suddenly I was chopped off at the legs! Just as all this stuff was coming together and all these bands were calling me from America, they wanted me to go over there and work in their brilliant studios and suddenly, I couldn’t work in the States for five years.” With a US drugs bust preventing him from capitalising on his success, Howie B’s biggest market and many exciting potential
projects were now out of reach. Who knows what acts he might have produced or what direction his music might have taken if Minnesota’s law enforcement had been less thorough that day? Instead, he took a 180-degree turn, metaphorically and literally. “It was like the carpet was just pulled out from under me, it was a big hit. So, I went OK, I need to start focusing on other pastures and in terms of making music, I thought I can’t go West, but I can go East – so I started looking East, to China, Japan, to Asia.” Initially, it was an outdated music industry contractual clause (or massive music industry scam, depending on which side of the contract you’re on) that gave Howie his way into China. Back when records were manufactured from fragile shellac and often broke, record companies would subtract 10% from their profits and put it down to breakages. However, as he explains, even after record production switched from shellac to the much-lesslikely-to-break vinyl, breakage clauses remained in record
Photo: Ganesh Lockhart
WORDS: HAROLD HEATH
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
offer to go to China for a gig,” he continues, “and I couldn’t figure out how they knew me there. I thought I was just going to do a little DJ gig in Shanghai, but I ended up in first class with Bernie Ecclestone who was going there to sell the Grand Prix, a footballer I can’t remember, and some business guy. And then I started DJing like crazy out there and from around 2003 up until now I’ve been spending two, three months a year DJing or writing film scores in China.” Asia opened up a new world of opportunities, and he began to branch out musically. “I started getting into more artistic, creative projects which were less song based. I began working a lot in films and audio visual and I focused on that, building a brand-new presence for myself in a completely alien area.” Aside from his highly regarded full-length and short film scores, in the last couple of decades Howie B has also created music for TV and adverts, put out several of his own artist albums, occasional 12-inch releases and some hand engraved 7-inch singles with Craig Richards. He also produced Happy Mondays’ 2007 ‘Uncle Dysfunktional’ album and released a ‘fabric Live’ and ‘AnotherLateNight’ mix. 210_DISCO_POGO
Photo: Jim Dyson
contracts, “… but what they would do is punch a hole in the record sleeve and ship all the so-called breakages out to sell in Asia! In the 90s I had four albums that came out on Polydor and loads of them went to China. It’s a fucking joke, but that’s how they knew me there.” Which is how, in a frankly unexpected twist in his tale, in 2001 Howie B was enlisted by the British Council to be part of a trade delegation promoting UK business in China. “All of a sudden I got this
Above: Howie B in the late-90s. Below: His second album, ‘Turn the Dark Off’
“Then in 2015,” he continues, “I set up another label, HB Recordings, to put out just my own music and I put out another two artists (Ela Orleans and 崔健*) on the label too. Then I closed it, relaunched Pussyfoot, then closed it again – it’s been a tough time in the music world! But now I’ve just set up a new label, Dog Tooth Records and this time I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing it for 35 years; I’ve got it down.”
He has also been curating Thai festival Wonderfruit since 2015 and in the last couple of years has been remotely producing bands, singers and artists via Zoom from his studio on the French Île d’Oléron. It’s been quite the journey for Howard Bernstein. From studio tea boy to his current role as a well-respected composer and producer-for-hire. So, what does he think about his career looking back? His answer tells us all we need to know about just how tranquillo Howie B really is in 2023: “I feel like a fucking Formula 1 Driver: I’m just getting into fourth gear and I’ve another three or four to go.”
Turning up the volume on artists
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HAVE YOU EVER RIDDEN A HORSE?
CHRIS FRANTZ What can we expect from the conversation tour you are embarking on with Tina [Weymouth - his wife and Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club bandmate]? “We’re going to be using a compilation video and still photos throughout the talk. It’s primarily a conversation with the journalist Miranda Sawyer who is eminently qualified. We’re going to be talking about our lives in music and art and anything else that might come up.”
“It’s not our first time at the Camden Electric Ballroom, we played there with Talking Heads in 1980 and Tom Tom Club in 2001. The first time we played Mick Jones from The Clash came backstage and the promoter had decided to repaint the dressing rooms. The walls were not yet dry. Mick Jones was wearing a very expensive Savile Row suit and before I could tell him to stop he leant against the wall.”
Why was New York such a creative place in the 70s? “Rents were very cheap and you 212_DISCO_POGO
The Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club co-founder on dining with James Murphy, ruining Mick Jones’ suit and the Happy Mondays’ off-stage proclivities…
could get a hamburger deluxe at a diner for $1.50. You could live on very little money in Lower Manhattan and it attracted a lot of artists. We’d just graduated from art school and what attracted us were artists themselves like Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Philip Glass. New York was the centre of the artistic universe. In 1974 it was where it was at. Our thinking was if we try really hard we can become known as a
band. If the band didn’t work out we could consider becoming painters.”
Do you own any Warhols or Basquiats? “No and I wish I did. We met them but didn’t buy any of their work. Nor did they give me any.”
What did you make of the New York bands that followed in your wake 20 years later like LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?
Photo: Jessica Glick
You’re holding one of the talks in Camden, your book mentions you played there several times in the early days of Talking Heads.
“I don’t know much about Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but am very familiar with LCD and The Rapture, I like them very much. Before he was famous we took James Murphy out to dinner. We heard ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ by The Rapture. We looked to see who recorded it, ‘Oh James Murphy’. So we called him up and after dinner he took us to his studio. He told us the first record he bought with his own money was Talking Heads’ ‘77’.”
We do it every year. We’re overdue because of the pandemic but are going in September.”
Which Talking Heads track did you most enjoy performing live?
You both produced Happy Mondays’ 1992 album ‘Yes Please’. Shaun Ryder dropped his bottle of methadone before getting on the plane to the studio in Barbados and discovered crack on the island as a substitute. If he’d not dropped that bottle how do you think the album may have turned out?
“I always immensely enjoyed ‘Found A Job’, it’s such fun to play. But there are a few, ‘Take Me to the River’, ‘Burning Down the House,’ ‘Psycho Killer’ – what a song that is.”
Do you think people were surprised to read about David Byrne and what you call his ‘lies of omission’ in the book? “I don’t know if there were any big revelations. A lot of our fans knew about it already as the press love to talk about controversy within bands and any animosity. I have great admiration for David and I hope he feels the same way.”
Have you watched Spike Lee’s ‘American Utopia’ film of Byrne’s New York concert residency? “I’ve seen some highlights from it. I’m sure it’s a very good movie, it’s just a little weird for me to watch it.”
In a recent Guardian interview what did Tina say was the key to a long marriage? “(Thinks carefully). Not giving away too much.”
Correct! What’s the most unusual romantic thing you’ve done? “Flying her to France and spending two months living it up.
Both you and Tina had fathers in the military - did that help with your rhythmic precision? “As a kid I enjoyed parades and parade drumming. It’s exciting. I used to march in them when I was 13 on Memorial Day and the fourth of July. Yes, you can hear it on ‘Road to Nowhere’.”
“I can only assume it would have still been very difficult. Maybe less than with crack. It was really bad. We got our first grey hairs there and we were only in our early 40s. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We knew Tony Wilson who we liked very much and Factory Records which we thought was a cool label. All we knew of the band was that they’d had some pretty big hits, but not of their proclivities.”
You recorded at Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point studios a lot, what is your favourite album by another artist to come from there? “I would have to say Grace Jones’ ‘Nightclubbing’. We were there when she made that, we were in the other studio making the first Tom Tom Club album. We suggested she cover ‘Warm Leatherette’ and ‘Walking in the Rain’ when Chris Blackwell asked us for suggestions.”
‘Stop Making Sense’ remains the best concert movie. What competes? “‘The Last Waltz’ but that has all the interviews in-between, we didn’t want to do any interviews. We’ve made a new deal with a distributor for ‘Stop Making Sense’, it will be re-released with additional footage in 2024 on the 40th anniversary. Hopefully it will be released in IMAX with Dolby Atmos sound – that would be wild.”
You mention drummers and bass players being ‘in the pocket’ when they are in the zone. Which combos do you most admire? “I would say Bootsy Collins and Clyde Stubblefield in James Brown’s band.”
Bookend your record collection? “The first album I bought was the soundtrack to ‘Goldfinger’. I still love that. The last thing was a box set of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. I love the old dub music.”
If Talking Heads reformed to play a festival who would you like to be on the bill with? “I would say Kraftwerk, they keep getting better even though they keep losing members, Wet Leg and let’s say the Patti Smith Group and Grace Jones.”
Which three words would Tina choose to describe you? “My Cherie Amour.”
Have you ever ridden a horse? “I grew up in Kentucky so I have ridden friends’ horses. Last time would’ve been in Lake Tahoe on a tour with Tom Tom Club and some of the band came with us.” JOHN BURGESS
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PARTING SHOT
DJ Shadow Photographed in the National Sound Archive, London for Jockey Slut, 2002
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Photo: Eva Vermandel
“To me, it’s about manifesting my original understanding of hip hop, which was taking what’s around you, subverting it and spitting it back through a hip hop paradigm. Hip hop music is the music that taught me socially, musically, politically, ideologically, but I’ve been influenced by other music as well, increasingly over the years. Otherwise it becomes a little incestuous. You get hip hop records now that are sampling hip hop records from 1988. So in ten years are they gonna be sampling the record that’s sampled from the record that’s sampled? You need to refresh the gene pool and I do that through other music these days.”
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