Electronic Sound December 2015 PDF Edition

DECEMBER 2015
UN D E R WO R L D . SU I C I D E . AG E O F CH A N C E .
MUER AN HUMANOS. YACHT. FINITR IBE .
T E L E X . PA U L OA K E N F O L D . B L A N C K MA S S .
HELLO
Editor: Push
Deputy Editor: Mark Roland
Art Editor: Mark Hall
Commissioning Editor: Neil Mason
Graphic Designer: Giuliana Tammaro
Sub Editor: Rosie Morgan
Sales & Marketing: Yvette Chivers
Contributors: Andrew Holmes, Anthony Thornton, Ben Willmott, Bethan Cole,
Carl Griffin, Chris Roberts, Cosmo Godfree, Danny Turner, David Stubbs,
Ed Walker, Emma R Garwood, Fat Roland, Finlay Milligan, Grace Lake,
Heidegger Smith, Jack Dangers, Jools Stone, Kieran Wyatt, Kris Needs,
Luke Sanger, Mark Baker, Martin James, Mat Smith, Neil Kulkarni, Ngaire Ruth,
Patrick Nicholson, Paul Thompson, Robin Bresnark, Simon Price, Stephen Bennett,
Stephen Dalton, Steve Appleton, Tom Violence, Velimir Ilic, Wedaeli Chibelushi
Published by PAM Communications Limited
© Electronic Sound 2015. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any way without the prior
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may be in that information.
With thanks to our Patrons:
Mark Fordyce, Gino Olivieri, Darren Norton, Mat Knox
welcome
to Electronic Sound
DECEMBER 2015
When Gary Numan announced he would be playing ‘Replicas’, ‘The Pleasure Principle’
and ‘Telekon’, a trio of albums that defined a genre, in a three-night-stand in London,
we knew we would be there every night. Incredibly, all three records were released
within an 18-month period. That’s Beatles prolific.
This issue marks the third occasion we’ve had Numan on the cover, and each time
we discover something new about him. You often find with stars of his calibre that
you’re part of a little game. There’s a record to promote, a tour to sell and the chat
stays firmly within those boundaries. Not with Numan. He is great company and as
honest, entertaining and straightforward as you could wish for. We hope you enjoy
our freewheeling and wide-ranging cover story as much as we did putting it together.
Elsewhere in the issue we celebrate the re-release of Underworld’s ‘Second Toughest
In The Infants’ by re-releasing an interview that hasn’t been seen in 20 years. We
visit a trio of duos: Suicide, who are the subject of an amazing new biography by
Electronic Sound contributor Kris Needs; the spellbinding Mueran Humanos, two
Argentinians who live in Berlin, sing in Spanish and make the most beguiling
electronica; and LA-dwelling duo Yacht whose conceptual electropop has been on
heavy rotation in the office of late.
We also take our Time Machine to the Eurovision Song Contest, 1980, with Belgian
electronic mavericks Telex. And talking of mavericks, we’ve long been fans of Age
of Chance’s cut and paste classic ‘Kisspower’ and this month we discover the story
behind the track in Landmarks. Anyone who makes surprising music is always
welcome in Electronic Sound, and so Paddy McAloon, of Prefab Sprout fame, lands
up in our world with his brilliant 2003 debut solo outing which we revisit in Buried
Treasure. Oh, and there’s the usual round-up of this month’s albums… we’re probably
holding you up, so without further ado let’s throw open the doors of the latest issue.
Electronically yours
Push & Mark
FE ATUR E S
GARY
NUMAN
GARY
NUMAN LIVE
While we were there, we went
backstage and spoke with the
great man. Quite a chat it was
too. Ever wondered what the
best thing about being Gary
Numan is? We did. We asked
Three nights, three albums…
three genre-defining classics. Join
us for a journey through Numan’s
three-night stand at The Forum in
London’s Kentish Town
UNDERWORLD
SUICIDE
In an exclusive extract from
the brand-new Kris Needs biog
‘Dream Baby Dream: Suicide: A
New York Story’, we discover the
actual level of drugs that were
consumed during the making of
their legendary debut album
Marking the 20th anniversary
of their ‘Second Toughest In
The Infants’ long-player, we go
from A to Z with Dr Emerson
and Mr Hyde. You will no doubt
be unsettled by the frightening
world that exists within.
Or maybe not
YACHT
MUERAN
HUMANOS
They have a manifesto, they
believe in alien intelligence,
they believe in freedom of
information and they don’t care
who knows it. They’ve also just
released a mighty fine album of
weird electronic pop
Investigate the world of droning
and repetitive primitivism as
created by this fascinating
Berlin-based (by way of Buenos
Aires) duo, who are taking the
classic boy-girl partnership into
dark territory
TECH
V COLLECTION 4
SYNTHESISER
DAVE
Welcome to Arturua’s
‘V COLLECTION 4’, which
is pretty much your wildest
dreams come true… if you
dream about vintage kit rather
than snarling skeleton dogs with
monkey faces, that is
An increasingly rare Korg Delta
came the way of our synth doc
by surprising means. And no,
not hand-delivered by aliens
readers’
synth
STREICHFETT
STRING
SYNTHESIZER
A collection of very old, very
lovely oscillators that in the
past made noises that sounded
like the future
Need a just-so 1970s string
sound? Don’t we all? This
little trinket box from Waldorf
should do the trick
ALBUM R EV I EWS
UNDERWORLD, IRMIN SCHMIDT,
YOKAN SYSTEM, SHAPE
WORSHIP, AUTRE NE VEUT,
ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER,
PREQUEL TAPES, BLOND:ISH,
ARIS KINDT, LILIES ON MARS,
LAICA and more…
WHAT’S
INSIDE
OPENING
SHOT
What you really want to see is
BLANCK MASS live in church,
right? That would be pretty
delicious. Mass… church…
Oh, look what we’ve got
UP THE FRONT
TIME
MACHINE
The Eurovision Song Contest;
occasionally one of ours slips
in unnoticed. Here’s the story
of what happened to Belgium’s
TELEX in 1980
PULSE
As we do every month, we’re
taking the pulse of the hottest
new artists around. In this issue
our fingers are lightly gripping
the wrists of STREEEAMS,
YUMI AND THE WEATHER,
STUART MCCALLUM and
SHE’S GOT CLAWS
60
SECONDS
UNDER THE
INFLUENCE
PAUL OAKENFOLD talks about
the people, places and music
that shaped him as a superstar
DJ and remix supremo
FAT
ROLAND
The 60 Seconds rulebook
gets ripped up... again. We
told RODNEY CROMWELL no
talking. Didn't say no sirens
though did we? Did anyone
call for an ambulance?
Our tired and emotional
columnist serves up strategies
for surviving the onslaught of
end of year LISTS… in ascending
order, rearranging them
alphabetically and filing them
neatly next to his colour-coded
cookbooks
BURIED
TREASURE
JACK
DANGERS
Prefab Sprout’s PADDY
MCALOON came up with
something of curveball classic
in the shape of 2003’s ‘I Trawl
the Megahertz’. Discover the
story behind this extraordinary
forgotten album
‘NEW ZEALAND ELECTRONIC
MUSIC’ is a sought-after
1975 boxset of New Zealand’s
finest electronic music talents.
Jack has the inside line on the
man behind it, the renowned
composer, Douglas Lilburn
ANATOMY OF A
RECORD SLEEVE
REMIX
REVIEW
You know how you’ve always
looked at HEAVEN 17’s
‘Penthouse And Pavement’
and wondered what the heck
is going on? For the first time,
we have all the answers…
OK, none of the answers
In which we revisit FINITRIBE’s
‘101’ who themselves have
been revisiting the classic track
with a raft of remixes.
We get the skinny on the
SCOTT FRASER and TIMOTHY J
FAIRPLAY re-rubbings
NEEDS
MUST
KRIS NEEDS has a sack full of
tunes to soundtrack his growing
menagerie. This month it’s all
about goat’s scrotums, humping
the nearest blue whale and
advanced hippo flatulence
LANDMARKS
You don’t have to be
Prince if you want to dance…
AGE OF CHANCE’s extraordinary
1986 ‘Kisspower’ cut and paste
mash-up unmasked
THE OPENING SHOT
XXX
BLANCK MASS
Location: Norwich Arts Centre
Date: 22 November 2015
Photo: MARK ROLAND
The hardy souls who turned out on a chilly Sunday
night for Blanck Mass were rewarded with an evening
of the lush, the exotic and the pounding. Supporting
were Popop & The Noise who featured drums (the
pounding), an eviscerated horizontal cello or somesuch
and processed singing that made it almost sound like
pop music was trying to enter the room, but actually
ended up more like a mangled version of Silver Apples
with drums from hell.
Blanck Mass, on the other hand, is one chap, Benjamin
John Power of Fuck Buttons. His aural storm, thanks
to a bank of Dopefer modular and sundry other bits
and bobs, was given some visual pizazz thanks to the
ubiquitous work of visual artist Dan Tombs:
a writhing fleshy orange globule mesmerised the
audience through the intro, the queasy slurred sample
mess that is ‘Loam’.
If you’ve yet to hear the third Blanck Mass album,
‘Dumb Flesh’, recently released on Brooklyn’s ultra-hip
Sacred Bones label, do yourself a favour and rectify
that immediately as it’s easily one of the best albums
of 2015.
XXX FRONT
THE
HEN
BACK WGS
THIN ,
T
WEREN ARE
Y
E
HOW TH W
NO
TIME MACHINE
TELEX
TAKE ON EUROVISION
SONG CONTEST
We backpedal to 19 April 1980 when leftfield Belgian electronic outfit
TELEX took the stage at the Eurovision Song Contest in a bid to bag
the legendary musical prize… or failing that, come last with null points
Words: JOOLS STONE
Electronically speaking, when you think
of Belgium what springs to mind? Plastic
Bertrand of novelty punk hit fame ‘Ca
Plane Pour Moi’? The devastating Front
242? The late 80s/early 90s hardcore
techno scene? R&S Records? The everinventive Soulwax? To the list we should
add spiky, conceptual electropoppers
Telex, whose finest moment found the
trio of Michel Moers, Dan Lacksman and
Marc Moulin gracing the stage of the
1980 Eurovision Song Contest with their
celebratory ditty ‘Euro-Vision’.
The video of the performance, which
took place at the Congresgebouw in The
Hague, Netherlands, is something to
behold with the band donning tuxedos
and twirling their white evening scarves
around for comic effect. There’s even a
lacklustre confetti shower. But how did
the creators of tracks such as ‘Moscow
Discow’ and ‘Temporary Chicken’, both
insanely bonkers and irresistibly catchy,
come to be front and centre at Europe’s
kitschest talent show?
Like the Residents and Daft Punk, Telex
rarely appeared performing unmasked,
but eventually they relented. “We thought
it would be interesting to go,” says Michel.
“After all, we were making ‘pop music’
and Eurovision was the epitome of that,
plus subverting cliches was something
we enjoyed.”
Despite their relatively high profile at
home, they still had to compete with
nine other bands to bag the slot with a
qualifying show on Belgian TV.
“If I remember correctly, it was jointly
voted for by a professional jury and the
public, 50/50,” adds Michel.
the vocoder, unexpected rules about my
flash camera possibly damaging the TV
cameras and our machines having to be
switched off because of fire safety. And
during the performance itself I couldn’t
hear my vocals or the backing vocals, so
consequently my singing was not at its
best.”
“It had a very bad impact,” exclaims
Michel. “Our fans wondered what we
were doing there and we were too
strange to reach a new audience…
except in Portugal, don’t ask me why.”
And how did their performance and the
song itself go down?
Telex ended the night 17th out of 19
entrants with just 14 points, 10 of
which – full marks – came from the
Portuguese jury.
“The audience looked as if they were
wondering ‘What the hell are these guys
doing here?’,” says Michel. “We were
wondering the same thing actually. Polite
applause came after a few seconds of
stunned silence. My favourite memory
was speaking to the eventual winner
Johnny Logan backstage before the show.
“The main thing was having fun and
being satisfied with the result, for a few
days anyway,” concludes Michel. “The
funny thing is that our appearance is
still remembered and shown every time
there is a programme about the contest,
and now you’re asking me about it too,
so in a way maybe we won.”
WATCH THE VIDEO: https://youtu.be/Y_mTNpyvRwc
“Our record company, RKM, came up with
the idea following the great international
response to our first album ‘Looking For
St Tropez’,” deadpans Telex frontman
Michel Moers. “At first, we thought it was
a stupid idea. Not our type of music, nor
our audience and we didn’t really want to
show ourselves on TV, thinking that the
music was more important.”
I told him he was going to win. He said,
There’s a laconic humour at work in
much of Telex’s music, which with its
‘Well, if I win it’s good for me, but if
vocodered Euro vocals, analogue synths
you win, it’s good for music!’.”
and metronome rhythms, inevitably
recalls Kraftwerk spliced with a touch
Michel’s bandmate, the late Marc
of Devo perhaps. For evidence, seek
Moulin, was quoted as saying that Telex
out their painfully slowed down
wanted to come last, but were pipped
version of ‘Rock Around The Clock’
to the post by Portugal, was that true?
and, for a moment of inspired national
self-reference, their cover of the
“Not quite, but we thought the only
aforementioned ‘Ca Plane Pour Moi.’ The
meaningful result was to come first… or
rather snarky ‘Euro-Vision’ is certainly of
last,” says Michel. “Our record company
its time, with its references to the Berlin
actually thought we could win. There
Wall and the exchange rate of Italian Lira, were some interesting bets being made
but what was it all about?
in the UK. So before really getting
inside the circus we started to believe
“The song was a kind of ‘international
that winning was a possibility. It was
situationism’ I suppose,” explains Michel.
the 25th anniversary of the contest too,
“Putting a little worm in an apple. It was
change was in the air and it was the
about this glittering contest taking place
first time that the public could vote.
in old Europe, opening borders virtually,
But in fact the opposite happened. I
if only for a few hours. Musically, we
think the audience and the judges
used a few Eurovision cliches, joyful
understood the song quite well and
harmonies, getting higher tonally towards
were upset by it, though some people
the end, a bit of a Beethoven theme…”
kindly said that we were just too far
While it might have been some 35 years
ahead of our time.”
ago, what does Michel remember about
the night of the contest itself?
Telex had been around for a few years
before Eurovision and they’d already
“The evening was a bit of a nightmare,”
had some success with ‘Moscow
he offers. “We had no real rehearsals,
Discow’. Did appearing on Eurovision
but there were lots of fraught discussions
affect their career at the time?
about hiring backing singers to replace
THE FRONT
pulse
This month, we’re getting hot and bothered
and a bit unnecessary about the warm and fuzzy vibes
of STREEEAMS, the dubbed up ethereal electropop of
YUMI AND THE WEATHER, innovative future jazzer
STUART McCALLUM and cool-as-you-like ice maiden
SHE’S GOT CLAWS
XXX FRONT
THE
STREEEAMS
Bright as buttons blissed-out electropop
WHO they?
TELL US MORE
The handiwork of one Joe Wensley, a
28-year-old East Londoner for whom
Es are clearly good. The letter E you
understand, which he has three times
in his own name and three times in his
band de plume Streeeams.
It’s all about the influences and Joe’s
are cracking. In a nutshell, it’s Bee
Gees to Grimes, which about covers it.
Seems exposure at an early age to the
Caribbean groove of the 1977 single
‘Seaside Woman’ by Suzy & The Red
Stripes, or Mr & Mrs Paul McCartney,
played its part. “A lot of the inspiration
for these ideas comes from childhood,”
explains Joe, whose lop-sided Phil Oakey
haircut and gentle Green Gartside-like
pipes add further pegs to this delightfully
glittery retro-futurism musical washing
line.
WHY Streeeams?
Totally unsigned and completely selfreleasing the debut ‘Letters’ EP, this
mellow retropop is so sunshine-bright it’s
like mainlining wax crayons. The video
for ‘Breaker’ is the perfect introduction
to the warm, fuzzy vibe that is
Streeeams. Made on a shoestring (props
created at home, costumes created by
his next-door neighbour), check out
the must-learn dance routine by Joe’s
girlfriend Kitty Dalton (who also lends
backing vocals on the EP) and pal Milly
Prett. Oh, and look out for the glitter
bomb explosion that makes everyone
jump out of their skin.
NEIL MASON
The ‘Letters’ EP is out now.
For more visit facebook.com/streeeams
XXX FRONT
THE
YUMI and THE
WEATHER
Lo-key seaside indietronica with dubby ripples
WHO SHE?
Brighton-based Ruby Taylor is finally set
to make waves again with her coastal
indietronica. After a promising fleeting
glimpse in 2013 with her ‘All We Can’ EP,
Taylor appeared to sink without trace.
Just as we were about to launch the
lifeboats, her ethereal seaside electropop
has turned up safe and well.
WHY YUMI AND THE WEATHER?
Blissed-out, dreamy vocals set to dubby
laidback beats? Don’t mind if we do.
Coming on like an English Rose version
of Fever Ray, the hypnotic whirlpool
of ‘June’ finds Taylor’s voice akin to a
liferaft adrift in stormy seas, anchoring
you just enough so you feel content
floating on the vast ocean of the
instrumental. The excellent ‘Love’ sees
a much more upbeat Yumi, channelling
the vibrancy and colour of the Brighton
seaside. It’s a summer afternoon on a
deckchair with an ice cold pint of a track.
Check out also the future house of
Decyfer and the soulful electronic pop of
Tidelines. Coming from a stable like that
you wouldn’t bet against the irresistible
ebb and flow of Ruby Taylor’s music
getting some serious attention in 2016.
TELL US MORE
The ‘Something Tells Me’ EP is out now
on XVI Records
Yumi And The Weather come via the
excellent London/Vancover-based XVI
Records who are firmly on our radar
thanks mainly to fellow Brighton-ite
Frankie Knight who featured in our 50
For 2015 tips way back in January.
ROSIE MORGAN
XXX FRONT
THE
STUART McCALLUM
Jazz man on an ambient mission
WHO he?
The first thing you need to know about
Stuart McCallum is he’s a guitarist. He’s
a bloody good guitarist too. There’s
nothing remotely rock ’n’ roll about this
man and what he does, though. He’s a
future jazzer with a talent for combining
beautifully ambient guitar noodlings with
electronic undulations. He’s got form for
this stuff too. He’s a long-time member
of Ninja Tune signings The Cinematic
Orchestra and his recently released ’City’
album is his fourth solo outing.
WHY STUART McCALLUM?
Yes, he’s been around longer than most
of the artists we feature in Pulse, his first
album having landed almost a decade
ago. Never mind that. No, there’s no way
you’re going to be bumping and grinding
to McCallum’s music at your local
discotheque, even if ‘City’ does find him
steering into slightly stronger electronic
waters than before. Never mind that
either. So why Stuart McCallum? Because
sometimes, just sometimes, it’s nice to
have a dollop of organic goodness to
balance out all those machines.
singers, including Sophie Barker (Zero
7) and new Island signing JP Cooper,
which is the first time McCallum has
worked with vocals. And it makes a big
difference. If you enjoyed the Portico
album earlier this year, you’ll dig this
too.
TELL US MORE
‘City’ is out now on Naim Label
A quick word about the friends
McCallum keeps, then. He’s got some
seriously impressive people helping out
on ‘City’, most notably drummer Richard
Spaven (4 Hero and Flying Lotus, as well
as The Cinematic Orchestra), who has
co-written and co-produced the album.
There are also contributions from several
PUSH
XXX FRONT
THE
SHE’S GOT CLAWS
Chilly electronica just like it used to be in the olden days
WHO sHE?
emotional bleakness of the period,
where the detached nature of electronic
music’s creation enables heartily
glum expressions of various levels of
alienation. Fans of synth sadness should
seek her out immediately.
bands from opposite ends of the musical
spectrum to collaborate on a new song
together. It didn’t go terribly well, but
then that was never the idea, was it? All
in all, heading out on her own as She’s
Got Claws looks like it might be the purrfect plan.
WHY SHE’ S GOT CLAWS?
TELL US MORE
MARK ROLAND
With pals like OMD’s Andy McCluskey
singing her praises, and the sprightly
’Synthetic Emotion’ EP out now, it’s
looking pretty bright for Ms Claws. The
EP represents a refining of her electronic
musical urges to the classic Numan/
Foxx/League/Ultravox-era of synth pop.
The lyrics revisit the same dystopian
Once known as Miss Chief, she was half
of Adrenalin Junkies whose 1999 ‘Electro
Tribe’ album was a shouty breakbeat
affair in the Prodigy/Chemical Brothers
neck of the woods. Her next stop was
Paparazzi Whore, a sleaze-core electro/
punk outfit who achieved some notoriety
thanks to their appearance on BBC3’s
‘Singing With The Enemy’, which paired
Kingson Upon Hull’s Micci Lou is a onewoman electronic powerhouse, whose
nom de plume ought to give Numan fans
a clue as to at least one of the influences
behind her proudly self-produced,
glacially vocalled icy electronica.
‘Synthetic Emotion’ EP is out now
00:00:60
sixtySECONDS
XXX FRONT
THE
Catching our ears with the retro-fuelled homebrew disco of his ‘Age Of Anxiety’
album, RODNEY CROMWELL’s minute-long portrait is an urban treat
https://www.youtube.com/embed/LXjX_rneEY4
Your ‘Age Of Anxiety’ album
was due to be the second
long-player from previous
outfit Arthur & Martha? What
happened?
We said it was because you
“couldn’t really be fagged,
preferring aloofness over
leaving the house and social
media ubiquity”. Fair?
“It was Martha (aka
“Bit harsh to be honest. It is
true that I hate social media,
singer Alice Hubley) who
pulled the plug. Ultimately
but life is too short for total
the record was just too Arthur
aloofness. I performed in a
band for six years where I
heavy. When she blew me
would play every gig with
out I was upset for about 10
minutes, but I’m happy how
my back to the audience.
it worked out. I would be
Backstage after each show
I would have to ask the rest
interested in doing another
Arthur & Martha album for
of the band whether anyone
turned up. After we split I
sure, but don’t hold your
breath. It takes me about half
had a few regrets that no one
an hour just to tune the MShad even realised I was in the
10, let alone record an album.” band.”
Your new ‘Black Dog EP’... is
that a real black dog or the
one like Churchill had?
“Definitely not a real dog.
It’s about the black dog that
makes you want to cry, crawl
into a ditch and drill a hole
into your head. I’m more of a
cat person really…”
We have spotted you pictured
with a cat...
“When I got hitched I made
clear to my wife that I didn’t
want a cat in the house. Ever.
She got me drunk and in my
intoxicated state I joked that
I would let her have a cat or
two on condition that they
were named after Zappa’s
children. She called my bluff.
Moonunit is in the photo you
refer to, she is more pliant
than Dweezil.”
Rodney Cromwell’s ‘Black
Dog EP’ is out now on Happy
Robot www.rodneycromwell.
bandcamp.com
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XXX FRONT
THE
UNDER
THE
INFLUENCE
Superstar DJ and remixer extraordinaire, PAUL OAKENFOLD
reveals that, among other things, his dad’s skiffle band proved
more than influential on his formative years…
Interview: COSMO GODFREE
“
FAMILY
TREVOR FUNG
I always remember that the first kind of music I heard as a
young boy was through my father, him being a musician. At the
time we were living in Highbury, North London, near Arsenal’s
old football ground. My dad was in a skiffle band, which was a
British offshoot of rock ’n’ roll, so a lot of his fellow musicians
would come round the house. During that period, my mum and
dad could only afford to go out once a week, it was always a
Saturday night when you’d take your girl out and dress up, and
in the background they’d be playing Beatles and Elvis. I never
really understood why I knew a lot of the words to Beatles’
songs until I got older and then I realised it was because I was
hearing them constantly in the background. I guess aged five I
didn’t really know what it was, but I was singing along anyway.
When I first started out DJing, the person who inspired me and
that I looked up to was a DJ called Trevor Fung. He just had
great musical taste, and a lot of knowledge. He was a good
looking guy and dressed well. At that time, at least in theory,
no one took any notice of the DJ, but Trevor brought something
to the table that attracted a lot of attention. He had a good
understanding of how to put records together, how to tell a
story on the dancefloor. He knew how to get people dancing
and keep them there. Back in those days it was nothing like it
is now. You’d stand around the dancefloor waiting for someone
to go on it, and then the girls would all be standing in a circle
with their handbags, with the guys just hovering around. But
Trevor had a way of changing all that. He was very passionate
about music.
SOUL MUSIC
NEW YORK
Is there one record that’s stayed with me more than any other?
I only like my records [laughs]. Actually, I’d have to say a record
that’s been a big part of my life – and strangely enough the
lyrical content is still relevant today even through the record
is many, many years old – is Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’.
I really love the tone of his voice. I just love soul music. I’m
a big fan of Luther Vandross, Teddy Pendergrass, The Isley
Brothers. During the period when I first started getting into
music, that was the music. It was a big moment for me. It was
all about going to a record store and buying imports. ‘What’s
Going On’, that’d be the album. And also Bob Marley, ‘Exodus’,
that’s another. I’m a bit demoralised with music now, especially
electronic music. I can’t find great stuff any more. There’s so
much out there that’s just average.
I moved to New York for two years in the early 80s. It was a
great time, a really important part of my life. I was living on
169th Street, in what was known as Puerto Rican Harlem. I was
with my buddy who had family there and we were sleeping
on the floor the whole time. There’s a lot of things that went
on during that period that really shaped the way I am today. It
brought a strong work ethic, never having to rely on anyone
else and an understanding that only I can make things happen.
It’s the first time I’d ever lived alone, let alone lived abroad. I
had no family around me and you definitely get those moments
of doubt, “What am I doing here? What’s going on?”, it really
shapes your character and gives you a lot of strength. I kept
thinking, “I’m here for a reason”. You just have to get on with
it through good and bad times. We got robbed, and couldn’t
go to the police station because we were illegals. That was a
big blow because we lost all the money that we’d made. It was
tough. I think I realised it was time to move back after we got
robbed for the second time! [Laughs] I was like, “I’m out of
here!”. To be honest, it had run its course anyway. I felt like
I’d achieved what I’d wanted to achieve. I learnt a lot, I had
plenty to say, and I felt that I could go back [to London] and
get myself a job in the record industry.
“
Paul Oakenfold recently celebrated 25
Years of Perfecto Records at London’s
Ministry Of Sound. He donated
his fee for the show to Teenage
Cancer Trust. For more information,
visit teenagecancertrust.org
XXX FRONT
THE
FAT
ROLAND
BANGS
ON
LISTS, LISTS and more LISTS. We’re drawing
mighty close to that time of year.
But our Fats has had enough already. He will
1) Not make any lists this year
2) Or maybe he will… 3) What? Oh…
Words: FAT ROLAND
Illustration: STEVE APPLETON
Here are Fat Roland’s top 10 favourite words in order. That
sentence was a list and you didn’t even realise it. At this
time of year, idiot journalists like me spew out end of year
lists like a volcano with a vomiting bug, our top 10 of warm
internet puke pouring into your burnt eyes.
You know the kind of thing. Best samba metal album of
the year. 2015’s hottest record shop janitors. Gary Kemp’s
favourite belly lint. We’re veracious rankers; we make
bucket lists that don’t have buckets on. We even list
chemical elements with the most common first. Screw you,
hydrogen, you atomic Adele.
This hegemony of beige best of leaves no room for heroic
but flawed attempts, the beautiful but broken outsiders that
are often much more entertaining. In this I include Apollo
440, Loop Guru, half of Squarepusher’s albums, Lionrock, UK
garage, later Orbital singles and almost everything released
in the 1980s. Gah! I’m listing! End of year lists make me
furious. They’re not even in my top 100 of lists.
Electronic Sound wanted me to write about the best musical
willy of the year. Bieber’s, Kravitz’s, or the one shared
between all current and past members of New Order. But I
won’t play their sick game. From now on, when someone
asks me about the best album of 2015, my answer will be
both non-committal and completist. This is how I’ll do it:
I’ll mention every album released over the last 12 months
and say each one is “OK”. Just “OK”. Jamie XX’s ‘In Colour’
was OK. Bjork’s ‘Vulnicura’ was OK. Mark Ronson’s ‘Uptown
Special’ was OK. Madonna’s ‘Rebel Heart’ was OK. Muse’s
‘Drones’ was OK. Saxon’s ‘Battering Ram’ was OK. This is
boring, right? At least it’s painstakingly fair.
I’m going to mention every celebrity shlong that existed
in 2015 then hum ’n’ haw a non-opinion because all your
stinking best of lists can go to hell. Anyone caught reducing
down the year to a caramelised gloop of sickly bullet points
will (a) be made to write out their favourite body parts in
order and (b) have those body parts pliered off one by one,
IN ORDER.
Do you know what’s even worse? This is a column about
lists and most of it wasn’t even written as a list. Or was it?
Is this whole diatribe secretly a list of my favourite thoughts?
Open your mouth, people. Here comes the warm puke.
THE
ELECTRONIC SOUND
GIFT BOXES
TEA TOWELS
BADGES
STICKERS
TOTE BAGS
GREETINGS CARDS
THE
PERFECT
XMAS
GIFT
www.electronicsound.co.uk/shop
XXX FRONT
THE
BURIED
TREASURE
IN SEARCH OF ELECTRONIC GOLD
In 1991, Prefab Sprout frontman PADDY MCALOON
was struck down with serious illness that led
to perhaps his boldest work, 2003’s ‘I Trawl The
Megahertz’, a fever-dream of skittish longing
that deserves ear time
Words: JOOLS STONE
How would you battle a bout of chronic insomnia
and two detached retinas threatening your sight?
Perhaps you’d seek refuge in late-night talk radio,
but if you’re Prefab Sprout frontman Paddy McAloon
you might start thinking about how these broadcasts
could be turned into material for an album.
Following eye surgery in the early 1990s, McAloon
was unable to work and so passed the time by
listening to radio phone-ins and TV chat shows.
He recorded many hours of audio that he’d go on
to mine for fragments of speech set to a jazzy,
quasi–classical backing on a glimmering spectre of
a record, his 2003 debut solo album ‘I Trawl The
Megahertz’.
The album’s score, with orchestral
arrangements by David McGuinness
and featuring classical ensemble
Mr McFall’s Chamber, is ripe
with melodic Sprout flourishes
that owe more to the likes of
Gershwin, Leiber and Stoller than
the traditional rock canon. In the
liner notes, McAloon explains
how ‘I Trawl the Megahertz’ was
composed entirely on a computer.
“I cannot think of anything else I’ve written that
is so dependent on technology for its existence,”
he wrote. “For it is a sad fact that I am a musical
ignoramus who has found dedicated music software
invaluable. If I asked, I still wouldn’t be able to play
a single bar of this record, as it was all written —
after the fashion of a monkey at a word processor —
straight onto the score page of my computer screen.”
For my part, I discovered the album in early 2010,
during a long, gloomy winter of sick leave when it
arrived as the ideal comfort blanket. I remember
lying on the sofa basking in its orchestral lushness,
while the spoken words featured in the 22-minute
title track gently wormed their way into my
consciousness. It’s an extraordinarily lyrical lament
of separation and disconnectedness, delivered in the
hypnotic voice of American actress, Yvonne Connors.
The album is mostly comprised of instrumental
tracks that drip with a certain timeless nostalgia,
like the soundtrack to some forgotten 1950s
American melodrama. It seems to capture the
loneliness of a city jammed bumper-to-bumper with
taxis, while a thousand faceless Willy Lomans tramp
home in a rush hour downpour to awkward silences
over their evening meal.
This atmosphere comes into play
most affectingly on ‘I’m 49’, where a
phone-in host asks “What’s wrong?”
to which a plummy-voiced, man
responds flatly, “I’m 49, divorced”. The
whole experience is not unlike the
dreams you have while slipping in and
out of sleep having left the radio on.
McAloon’s voice makes just one, brief
appearance on ‘Sleeping Rough’: “I
am lost, yes lost / I’ll grow a long and
silver beard”, he sighs, which is eerily
prophetic, since that’s exactly the look
he now sports decades later.
‘I Trawl The Megahertz’ was finally released in
2003 under his own name so as not to disappoint
Sprout fans who may have been expecting a more
conventional record. Perhaps for that reason, it
passed largely unnoticed, barring a few scattered
rave reviews. It’s light years away from the rest of
his catalogue, but it’s well worth stumping up the
£25 the album appears to go for today.
Immerse yourself in it like a hot bath of indulgent
melancholy and tune in to something remarkable.
THE FRONT
JACK DANGERS’
SCHOOL OF
ELECTRONIC MUSIC
Settle down, settle down. This month’s lesson is all about a rare and very
collectible boxset of electronic music from New Zealand, put together by
the country’s most renowned composer, DOUGLAS LILBURN
This boxset was released in 1975 and was a collection of the
best electronic music being produced in New Zealand, in the
studio set up by Douglas Lilburn. There are three discs, with
music from six composers, and a booklet. There’s a copy of this
on eBay at the moment for £1,000. It’s been there for a while,
but the seller’s not changing his price. I’ve seen it go for $500.
I got my copy in the 90s for $80, which seemed like a lot then.
Douglas Lilburn started the first electronic studio in New
Zealand in the 1960s. He was already known as a classical
composer, he’d been taught composition at the Royal College
of Music in London by Vaughan Williams and stayed friendly
with him throughout his life. He started experimenting with
electronic music with an oscillator he borrowed from the physics
department of the Victoria University of Wellington where he
was a professor. When he was later commissioned to create
some new music for a play by the New Zealand Broadcasting
Company, he set off to learn about electronic music.
He visited Canada and met Myron Schaeffer in Toronto and
looked at the studio in the university there, and then flew to
New York and was shown the massive RCA Synthesiser II. In
London, he went to the Radiophonic Workshop. He found that
the Workshop’s director, Desmond Briscoe, wasn’t interested
in composers, but he did meet
Daphne Oram. He describes her
as “charming” in the boxset’s
booklet and went to her studio,
which was in a converted oast
house in the garden of her
house in Kent. He went back to
Canada and worked in the studio
there for a few months, before
heading back to New Zealand
and talking the authorities into
funding the building of a studio
at the university.
He inspired a lot of New Zealand-based musicians to make
electronic music, and they did it much better than anyone in
Australia or even the UK. The other composers featured on
the boxset are John Rimmer, Ross Harris, Ian MacDonald, John
Cousins, and Jack Body. Sadly, Jack Body died earlier this year.
They were all supported by the New Zealand government to a
greater or lesser degree, and were able to create electronic music
the equal of anything being produced anywhere in the world.
Lilburn died in 2001, he was in this 80s. All his electronic
compositions are really good. There’s a great film of him working
in the studio creating a piece using bird sounds. Some of the
birds are extinct, so he was making up their calls using electronic
sources. I went to his house when I visited New Zealand. It’s
been turned into an artist-in-residence studio. His contribution
to electronic music tends to be overshadowed by his orchestral
work and isn’t discussed that much, but it should be.
watch the video
Douglas Lillburn ‘Poem In Time Of War’ (1967)
www.youtube.com/embed/hw3p4M0CWnI
ANATOMY OF A
FAT ROLAND, our man with the funny handshake, reveals the secret messages hidden deep in the artwork
of your favourite album covers. This time, it’s HEAVEN 17’s ‘Penthouse And Pavement’
This hairstyle is called
“brushed marmoset” and
was all the rage in 1981
Not saying Heaven 17
are sickos or anything,
but ‘Penthouse and
Pavement’ is an
anagram of “Hand-eaten
oven Muppets”
This hairstyle is called
“alarmed badger” and
was all the rage in 1981
Other album title
options: ‘Apartment
and Avenue’; ‘Loft and
Lamppost’; ‘Boudoir
and Bus Shelter’
This one’s called Brad.
Probably. Or Kenneth
The first 16 were
rubbish. Geddit?! Hello?
Is this microphone on?
Hello?
“Hey Mike, it ain’t
fancy dress. “Aaw, and
I came dressed as a
corridor an’ all.”
This is definitely
Kenneth. Or is it Brad?
It could be Susan
You might think this is
a reel-to-reel player.
Actually this is a guy
called Alan and he’s
really, really ugly
Oh wait, I think this
one’s Brad. He looks like
a Brad. Or Kenneth
“Are you guys coming
into the rave, or what?
We got mad pills.
Crusty Dan’s got this
mad jungle remix of
Guru Josh.” “Wrong
decade, Frank.”
Pink tie: £1.99.
Oversize suit: £40.
Not being in the Human
League: priceless
“Hi, my name is Kenneth
Brad Susan. But you can
call me Jeff.”
Smooth complexion,
partly because of
moisturiser, partly
because he’s part
jellyfish
This hairstyle is called
“bald by 35” and was
all the rage in 1726
“I will not write songs
containing sax solos. I
will not write songs
containing sax solos. I
will not write songs
containing sax solos.
I will not…”
BEF stands for
Brian Eno’s Ferret and
is a sister label to MGP
(Martin Gore’s Platypus)
and GNA
(Gary Numan’s Ass)
So, er, locksmiths then
Fashion! You too can
modernise a suit with
carefully dabbed lines
of Tippex.
“Hi, I’m here from
the future to warn you
about dubstep.”
THE FRONT
XXX
THE
REMIX
REVIEW
In association with Prism Sound
Finitribe have revisited ‘101’,
their classic 1990s cut, with a raft of remixes that sit
all nice and comfy alongside
Andrew Weatherall’s original re-rubs
Words: BEN WILLMOTT
Listen to The Remix Review radio show on the first and third
Thursday of each month at 3-5pm GMT at www.hoxton.fm
Internationally renowned manufacturer of high quality analogue
and digital studio products, PRISM SOUND is supporting the
B-SIDE PROJECT, which promotes new artists and provides
additional platforms for live electronic music and remix
productions. To get involved in the B-Side Project network,
visit www.b-sideproject.org
FINITRIBE
ARTIST: FINITRIBE
TITLE: 101
REMIXERS: SCOTT FRASER / TIMOTHY J FAIRPLAY
Finitribe’s ‘101’ actually started life as another track altogether
(‘Bagomatix’), but was renamed after being handed to one
Andrew (then Andy) Weatherall for a 1991 12-inch by the
Scottish industrial electronic experimentalists. With echoes
of his work on Primal Scream’s ‘Screamadelica’, Weatherall’s
‘Sonic Shuffle’ mix boasts a slowed down hip hop beat, a
thundering digital bassline and screaming dub sirens. No
wonder it became a Balearic classic.
Ahead of a brand new Finitribe album, there’s been a slew of
‘101’ remixes this year, first on a Record Store Day release and
now via a new 12-inch that also includes the lesser-spotted
Andrew Weatherall ‘Intensity Mix’ from 1991. There are links
both to Weatherall and to Scotland’s techno community among
the choice of remixers, especially on the Record Store Day
orange vinyl. Timothy J Fairplay has recorded on Weatherall’s
Bird Scarer label and collaborated with him as The Asphodells,
as well as running an imprint of his own and a night in Glasgow
(both called Crimes Of The Future) with Scott Fraser. And Scott
Fraser has also contributed a mix to the Finitribe package.
Fraser says he wanted his offering to flip the upbeat script of
the original and use the vocal in a totally different context “to
make it really dark, druggy and heavy… more of a heads down
dub mix”. Also evident on his reworking, he explains, is the
influence of early Plastikman and Probe Records.
“Basing it around the vocal, I first reprogrammed my own drums
on the 707 and then went about rewriting the bassline on a
Juno,” says Fraser. “I then started mucking around with other
bits of gear and it morphed into the 303 acid line you hear on
the final cut. I have an old Roland 301 Chorus Echo and I used
Prism Sound take their audio production experience and
knowledge on tour each year, along with industry partners and
guest speakers, with their Mic To Monitor series of events. After
successful tours of the UK and the USA this autumn, Mic To
Monitor will be going global in 2016. For more information and
to keep updated, please visit www.prismsound.com and join the
mailing list, and follow Prism Sound on Facebook and Twitter.
lots of that to give the track that very saturated and dense
feel, again adding to the heaviness in the final mix. Each of the
new parts, along with the cut-up sounds I used from the band’s
original parts, were all EQ-ed back through my desk, a lovely
old 90s Soundcraft, then arranged and mixed down in Logic.”
Timothy J Fairplay’s mix of ‘101’ meanwhile stays closer to
Weatherall’s Balearic mood, although operating in speedier
territory.
“My mix was made using a Roland TR-808, an Akai S950, a
Roland SH-09 and a Korg M1, with reverbs from an Eventide
Space and delays from a pretty ghetto Evans EP-100,” explains
Fairplay. “It was recorded and mixed in Logic Pro X and any
other parts were from the original record. I first write any track
or remix I do on the hardware, sequencing either from Logic or
hardware sequencers depending on the gear I’m using. I’ll get
it to sound right before I record the parts, doing a rough mix
on my Soundcraft 200B. Then I’ll record a basic arrangement
before adding the details, such as printing the effects, and
mixing it.”
“The original ‘101’ was built and sequenced on an Atari Mega
S4, which was driving three Akai S1000s,” says Finitribe’s
Davie Miller. “The first elements of the tune were the Test Tone
and JU Bass, a sound which came out of a Juno 106, while
the melodica melody that punctuates Andrew’s mix was John
Vick’s original piano melody. The vocals were recorded to
24-track tape and mixed on an MCI console which The Eagles
had recorded ‘Hotel California’ on. We’d bought both from
Elton John at a car boot sale he had. No, I’m not making this
up. John went to London to set the track up for Andrew and
‘101’ was engineered and mixed in Demis Roussos’ studio. The
rest, as they say, is acid house history.”
Finitribe’s ‘101 Remixes’ is out now on One Little Indian
XXX FRONT
THE
NEEDS
MUST
This latest instalment finds our
esteemed columnist knee-deep in
goat’s scrotums, masturbating ducks
and hippo flatulence… oh and some
corking tuneage Words: KRIS NEEDS
MAGMA
KÖHNZERT ZÜND
JAZZ VILLAGE | 12-CD BOXSET
A major highlight of 2015 has been
the monthly missives fired out by Jazz
Village in its systematic reissuing (on
heavyweight vinyl) of the 11 studio
albums that Magma have released since
forming 45 years ago. The programme
climaxes with this monolithic motherlode
in a claw-shaped box; the ultimate
consolidation of the French group’s
astonishing combination of extreme
cathartic energy and electronically hotwired soundscapes, with 12 CDs capturing
them in their live element before five
decades of Parisian home crowds. Led
by singer, super-drummer and studio
polymath Christian Vander, Magma were
lumped in with krautrock when they first
appeared, but soon showed they were
in a league of their own with dazzlingly
complex otherworldly epics such as
‘Köhntarkösz’ and ‘Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ
Kömmandöh’ (performed in Vander’s
fictional Kobaïan language as part of
several main concept storylines). Some
of the most intense and ecstatic music of
all time is to be found here, including the
band’s major works as nature intended.
The cataclysmic ‘De Futura’ alone, a truly
hair-raising duel between Vander and
demonic early bassist Jannick Top, is one
of the reasons why I can’t take much
other music seriously.
FINITRIBE
101 Remixes
ONE LITTLE INDIAN | 12-INCH/
DOWNLOAD
This was an early classic when I started
doing my original Needs Musts column
in 1991, heralding many subsequent
appearances by the Scottish outfit. It
was also among the first of many from
Andrew Weatherall, who I still rate as the
most creative producer and inspirational
DJ this country has ever produced. After
last year’s revamped reissue of their
Balearic stomper ‘De Testimony’, Finitribe
resurrect ‘101’, the track that really made
their name and slaughtered so many
crowds back then. The 12-inch kicks off
with Weatherall’s ‘Intensity Mix’ from the
B-side of the original single, plus there
are versions by Robot 84 Set, Jokers Of
The Scene and Pixelife, who apply their
own science to the distinctive synth riff.
T.E.S.O.
No.3 Obliate
APERTURE | 2X LP/DOWNLOAD
If Weatherall has always presented
uncompromising vision and restless
passion, then so has Andrea Parker,
whose Touchin’ Bass imprint was another
regular in my 90s columns and foretold
the following century with its relentless
twists on the electro blueprint. To
Andrea, electro meant taking electronic
music to its furthest extremes. Now
she’s started Aperture to take things
even further – as grippingly illustrated by
this evocative set of charred, undulating
soundscapes by Milan duo t.e.s.o., aka
Matteo Castiglioni and Jacopo Biffi.
Formed last year, this brutalist followup to their ‘Over A Neutral Landscape’
debut seethes, fractures, pulses and
belches, sometimes dropping to beatific
floatation through a ruined future city
before the ghostly beats kick through
again, usually via tangled circuit
undergrowth transmitting from some
subterranean enclave or even Ken Dodd’s
bottom. It’s completely unlike anything
else out there. When any melody does
poke through, it’s spectral and alien, but
also shot with the soul that these two
obviously pour into their craft.
SECSEE
Odyssey To Anyoona
A.MZD | 12-INCH/DOWNLOAD
Just hearing the poignant opening chords
and ethereal vocals takes me back to
those gloriously oblivious nights around
1993, when Jam & Spoon had invented a
new form of electronic music which later
got called trance (and was abused to hell
and back). ‘Odyssey To Anyoona’ was the
duo’s golden peak, building beautifully
into a colossal, time-stopping drop which
could make dancefloors cry with the
sort of joy only those lucky enough to
have been in the middle of it will know.
Chico Secci and Greg See’s reworking of
the track presents a more compact 2015
version, which still can’t fail (though
minus the peak-on-peak drop of the full
10-minute original). A nice memorial to
Mark Spoon, who passed away suddenly
in 2006.
other, and bowel-evacuating drums,
all offset by fluty gargling. Primitive,
arcane and demented, but skilfully
pulled off.
DRAX
From the swirling strings and resonant
bass of ‘Dreams Of Another Planet’, it’s
apparent that Marvis Dee (half of the
Slowburn duo I reviewed in September)
has struck on the seam of timeless deep
space techno gold that never fails to
intoxicate both melon and nether regions
if done with aplomb. When he does it
again on ‘Jungle Trip’ and then on four
further excursions, you know you’re onto
a winner.
The 3rd Decade
PERC TRAX | 12-INCH/DOWNLOAD
After the recent remixes of 1993’s
‘Phosphene’, veteran German techno
stalwart Thomas Heckmann uncorks his
first new tackle as Drax since 2002. Built
to singe a goat’s scrotum from 100 yards,
the three tracks pack a lean analogue
punch, starting with the scathing 303
snarl-up of the aptly-titled ‘Acid Brick’,
then humping the nearest blue whale
with the pummelling electro-kick tattoo
of ‘Razorblade’, before finishing the job
with the coruscating shred and advanced
hippo flatulence of ‘Low Machine’ (again
perfectly titled). Takes no prisoners
ACID WITCH
Acid Witch
YOUCKA! | SEVEN-INCH
Continuing the theme of rampant 303
abuse, Detroit enters the fray with
Marshall Applewhite teaming up with
jungle producer 8EN to form Acid Witch.
The duo explore common ground of
old school acid and hardcore on the
unusual seven-inch format, making their
statements direct and to the point. ‘Acid
Witch Theme’ harks back to early 90s
warehouse rave darkness with a volley
of squelches and berserk cackling over
its booming groove. This is acid taken
back to its basic form with stark jacking
percussion (complete with pattering
snares), while a twittering 303 soils its
shorts and shags a passing raccoon in
radioactive frenzy before sinister strings
complete this concise exercise in brutal
mayhem. ‘No Escape’ boasts duelling
303s, split between channels like two
masturbating ducks haranguing each
MARVIS DEE
Subconscious EP
LIME STREET | 12-INCH/DOWNLOAD
MOODTRAP
Make It Better
LOWER EAST | 12-INCH/DOWNLOAD
Anonymous London duo (who emerged
in 2011 on Tsuba) pop up on Lower East
with some unashamed disco plundering
for the female vocal and a sultry throb
in the raw under-carriage. 4Lux’s
Gerd shines on the clanging, lowlevel resonance of his dub mix, while
Lower East honcho Cozzy D unzips a
percolating banana of a rework and
the bonus cut, ‘Ethos Of Love’, hurls a
pulsating house cake.
LOCKED GROOVE
End/Scherzo
LOCKED GROOVE | 12-INCH/
DOWNLOAD
Yes, I did once coin the phrase “trance
trousers” and this third missile from the
mysterious Belgian’s label sports them in
his own bewitching cut, complete with
spangled cod-piece and haunting melodic
underpants amid the groove’s hypnotic
turbo drive. ‘End’ is dark, compulsive and
quintessential early hours nirvana as it
tunnels deeper into the subterranean lair
of the luminous mole’s stiffy. ‘Scherzo’
injects futuristic synth motifs and
mournful strings with fabulous dynamics
THE PRODIGY
Roadblox (Paula Temple Remix)
R&S | 12-INCH/DOWNLOAD
As this month’s column seems to have a
90s flavour, I’ll finish with Paula Temple’s
devastating remix of a track from The
Prodigy’s ‘The Day Is My Enemy’ album.
I was The Prodigy’s DJ an incredible
20 years ago, so it’s reassuring to
still find them causing a commotion.
It’s also almost unbelievably great to
hear a remixer bent on wreaking such
unashamed, Cameron-castrating havoc,
as Paula revs up a ripping techno surge
using Maxim’s vocal, slashed with siren
arpeggios and delivered with killer lightand-shade dynamics to create a harsh
and claustrophobic warhead for modern
times. Paula’s second mix meanwhile
removes the vocals and forges into
deeper vistas. Defiance is in the air and
it’s brilliant.
XXX FRONT
THE
LANDMARKS
AGE OF CHANCE
‘KISSPOWER’
Recorded in November 1986, AGE OF CHANCE’s ‘Kisspower’ was a
cut ’n’ paste trailblazer based around Prince’s ‘Kiss’ and featuring a host
of samples from Run DMC to Bruce Springsteen. Geoff Taylor, AOC’s
bass dominator, talks us through its genesis
Interview: NEIL MASON
We’d played a few gigs and managed to put some money
together to record and release our first single, ‘Motor City’,
in 1985. There was a band at the time in Leeds called The
Wedding Present, their singer Dave Gedge used to live in the
street behind me. He had a fanzine, I think it was called Blood
From A Stone, and he’d come round to my flat to interview us.
We’d sent the single to John Peel that week and I had one of
those radio alarm clocks with Peel’s show on in the background
and he played the single as we were talking to Dave Gedge!
There’s a lot of bands who had that same start to their career
on the Peel show. We initially recorded ‘Kiss’ for our second
Peel session in June 1986. We wanted to do ‘1999’, but we’d
heard Big Audio Dynamite were doing that in their live shows.
There was a band we liked called the Fire Engines who’d
covered Heaven 17’s ‘Fascist Groove Thang’ when it was still in
the Top 30. There was just something great about that so we
thought, “Why don’t we do that with Prince?” And ‘Kiss’ was in
the charts at the time so…
Apparently, Peel got a lot of requests for our cover: it was
number two in his Festive 50 that year. When we signed
to FON we re-recorded ‘Kiss’ as part of the ‘Beneath The
Pavements The Dancefloor’ sessions at FON Studios in Sheffield
in November 1986. When we’d finished we still had some
studio time left, I think it was 12 hours, from six in the evening
until six in the morning.
We loved all the hip hop that was emerging around that time,
LL Cool J had just come out, as had the Akai S900 sampler and
FON had one in their studio. We decided to do a track using the
Akai and the result was ‘Kisspower’. We all brought in a load
of records and I remember us sitting round a table full of LPs
and seven-inches and just trying stuff out. Over the years I’ve
thought we must have heard, or I must have done at least, ‘The
Motorcade Sped On’ by Steinski And the Mass Media, but it can’t
have been that track because it didn’t come out until February
1987. It was on a four-track EP on the cover of the NME, it’s still
one of my favourite records of that genre. We just really liked
the idea of taking a bar or two of one track and putting it over
something you would have never heard together before.
We had [Warp Records co-founder] Rob Gordon engineering the
session. He was Chakk’s in-house guy and went on to do some
incredible stuff. I remember him getting a bit fractious towards
the end because he was so tired: “We’re going to have to wrap
this up soon”. So we’ve got three versions of ‘Kiss’ in there,
Run DMC, there’s several samples from Lenny Bruce’s ‘Religions
Inc’ sketch including the “Hello Johnny what’s shaking baby”
line, ‘Kick Out The Jams’, ‘Nasty’ by Janet Jackson’s in there...
‘Stop In the Name of Love’... ‘Walk This Way’, which I think
was maybe out that year... ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story...
‘Close (To The Edit)’, I remember Rob Gordon being keen on
Art Of Noise, I wasn’t that familiar with them at the time, but
it was a big track, Springsteen, ‘Rock The Bells’... apart from
anything else, it had a sense of humour.
‘Kisspower’ was recorded around the same time our deal
with Virgin was being set up. They had 500 one-sided, white
label 12-inches pressed up, but no one knew what to do with
them. I’ve got an original copy from the time and I’ve got one
I bought on eBay about two years ago for about £20. Virgin
definitely got cold feet about releasing it. I always remember
a meeting where Simon Draper, the MD at Virgin, said, “MC5
would sue you because they’re broke, Bruce Springsteen would
sue you because he’s rich”.
If only we’d have known what was just around the corner. It’s
strange because fortunes have been made by people bringing
out records where a sample gives it some kind of kudos, and
people have been paid a lot of money to use samples of their
work. What we did, that was the beginning of it. As the years
wore on, Prince wouldn’t let anyone cover his songs. I went
to see him in about 2006 at the O2 in London. He came on
and did ‘I Feel For You’ by Chaka Khan and I thought, ‘What’s
he doing coming on and the first song of the night’s a cover?’
and then I remembered he wrote it! You forget how many
songs he’s written, but if it weren’t for covers you wonder if
he would have got through the 80s in as luxurious a fashion
as he did.
Do we feel like pioneers? I think we certainly did a few things
first. I think we created a path for other people to follow.
People always mention the Justified Ancients as being around
that time, but ‘All You Need Is Love’ with the MC5 sample
on it, wasn’t until a good few months later. I really like Bill
Drummond, don’t get me wrong, but I’d like to know how ‘All
You Need Is Love’ came out with the MC5 sample on it – it
would seem like a coincidence... or they heard our track, which
isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility.
But it’s like any new aspect of pop culture, it comes in and
moves really quickly, six months is a really long time. In the
mid-80s, there was a creative battle going on as to who would
have the most groundbreaking record like LL Cool J, then
Public Enemy, JVC Force, people topping each other with
great records. We quite quickly went from being an indie band,
broke and borrowing stuff all the time, to buying three S900s,
which at the time were over three grand each. There was no
going back once we’d discovered the S900. We used them live,
which people wouldn’t attempt now because there’s so much
loading and reloading of samples, they had relatively little
memory. Did we ever do ‘Kisspower’ live? No! That would be
more of a DJ thing, but it’s an interesting thought.
GARY NUMAN LIVE
XXX
NUMANIA!
Three nights of GARY NUMAN? Yes please.
Three nights of Gary Numan performing first ‘Replicas’, then
‘The Pleasure Principle’, then Telekon’? Yes please with great big knobs on
Words: COSMO GODFREE
Pictures: ED WALKER
XXX NUMAN LIVE
GARY
“Kentish Town Welcomes Gary Numan” reads the sign displayed
above the public toilets near the tube station, spelled out in
the sort of lettering you often see outside cinemas. It’s a nice
touch. Who knows, maybe there’s a Numanoid or two working
for Camden Council. Stepping out of the station, it’s only a
matter of seconds before I spy the first hoodie with a Tubeway
Army face on the back. Then another. And another. A whole
procession of disembodied alien heads making their way up
Highgate Road.
First, the facts. Fresh off the plane from his adopted home of
Los Angeles, electronic music kingpin Gary Numan is in London
for a three-night residency at The Forum. He’s performing three
of his classic albums – ‘Replicas’ (1979), ‘The Pleasure Principle’
(1979) and ‘Telekon’ (1980) – in full on consecutive nights.
Each gig takes a similar format, the album played in its entirety
(but the tracks not necessarily in order), followed by a short
hits section and an encore of early Tubeway Army material.
Numan’s influence has been considerable, to say the least.
Trent Reznor credits him as the originator of industrial music.
He gets namechecked by pop auteurs such as Prince and Kanye
West. He’s lauded by rock bands like Foo Fighters and Queens
Of The Stone Age. He’s been sampled by hip hop producers
of the calibre of RZA, J Dilla and Marley Marl. ‘Are “Friends”
Electric?’ even lent a hand to the Sugababes’ worldwide
smasheroo ‘Freak Like Me’ in 2002.
The period covered by ‘Replicas’, ‘The Pleasure Principle’ and
‘Telekon’ was a rich and productive time for Numan. All three
were Number One albums in the UK. At one point, all three
records were in the UK Top 20 at the same time. No mean feat.
Yet despite this, or maybe because of it, the critics were quick
to decry Numan as Bowie-lite.
These days, Gary Numan is in a position where he no longer
has to ponder his relevance. The success of his ‘Splinter’ album
in 2013 removed the albatross that his early successes had
become and has helped pave the way for this look back at his
machine phase with a fondness for the material that catapulted
him into the limelight in the first place.
WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER
‘REPLICAS’
The Forum in Kentish Town – previously the Town & Country
Club and before that an Irish dance hall – had its first
incarnation as an art deco cinema in the 1930s. Stepping inside,
the most striking feature is the decorative ceiling, rivalled only
by the energy of the punters. It almost feels like a stadium
crowd. Terrace chants of “Nuuu-maaaan” ring out across the
theatre long before the show actually begins.
The roar when Numan actually appears is deafening. Having
come to grips with his fear of performing many years ago, his
stage presence is rather different to what it was when he
started out. Opening with an industrial take on the title track
of ‘Replicas’, complete with a searing guitar solo, he’s already
gyrating across the boards like a spinning top, more glam rocker
than sad robot.
‘The Machman’ is an early highlight, its crunchy T.Rex guitar riff
flagging up that ‘Replicas’ was something of a transitional album
before the full-blown synthpop of ‘The Pleasure Principle’. Mind
you, a little later on, surrounded by a mesh of dancing white
lights, Numan gets one of the biggest responses of the night
when he steps behind his synth for ‘Praying To The Aliens’.
Perhaps wisely, the set list bears no resemblance to the
running order of the original record. The problem with these
album-in-full shows is that it’s often difficult to build suspense
when the audience knows exactly what’s coming next, but
Numan keeps us on our toes, in genuine anticipation. It also
means he’s able to save the best until last. ‘Down In The Park’
(memorably described by writer Simon Reynolds as “a sort of
dystopian power ballad”) is just as elegant as the recorded
version. I’m reminded of why both Marilyn Manson and Foo
Fighters saw fit to cover it. An absolutely storming rendition of
‘Are “Friends” Electric?’ concludes the main set with the entire
crowd chanting the synth riff back at the stage.
GARY NUMAN LIVE
XXX
THURSDAY 22 OCTOBER
‘THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE’
‘The Pleasure Principle’ is probably the best-known Numan
album, but that doesn’t mean it’s shunned by the hardcore fans.
Far from it. There are some impressive tattoos on display tonight,
including a woman with the Tubeway Army face across her right
shoulder. The face also takes pride of place on an amazingly
decorated white scooter parked at the front of the venue.
I get chatting to a charming guy in a tweed hat who’s come
down from Coventry. “I’ve met Gary many, many times,” he
tells me. “Not personally, you understand,” he adds. Uh, I don’t
actually, could you explain? But he’s off again, talking about
how he was in an early incarnation of The Specials. There’s no
time for that now, though. The lights come down as the band
walks out to the ominous tones of ‘Asylum’, the B-side of ‘Cars’,
playing over the speakers.
Tonight, Numan sticks much closer to the running order of the
original album, playing it straight through save for a couple of
tracks that are held back for the end. ‘Airlane’ is a great opener,
of course, all bouncy bass and soaring synth leads. ‘Metal’
and ‘Films’ follow immediately after, the latter’s gorgeous
gliding melody turning into a surprisingly heavy final section.
‘Engineers’ once again sees Numan return to wigging out on his
synth, accompanied by huge cheers from the audience.
The first song held back for the end is ‘Complex’, a space-age
lullaby that soothes us before a chorus of sirens announces
the entrance of ‘Cars’. The hit single undergoes the biggest
transformation of any song played tonight and is steered much
closer towards Numan’s industrial style, but to his credit the
man seems to still love playing it after all these years. It’s with
‘Cars’ that the energy in the room reaches its peak.
Numan isn’t one for inane stage banter. In fact, I don’t recall
him saying anything at all the previous evening. Tonight, at the
end of the hits section, we get a brief but earnest “Thank you”
after a very warmly received rendition of ‘Me! I Disconnect
From You’. As with the other two sets, the encore is a pair of
Tubeway Army songs. ‘Are “Friends” Electric?’, with Numan
on guitar, feels like the ultimate pub rock song, to the point
where the light show is almost incongruous. The same goes for
‘My Shadow In Vain’, which answers the question of what ‘My
Sharona’ would have sounded like with a synth line. For a brief
moment, his new wave beginnings are very evident.
FRIDAY 23 OCTOBER
‘TELEKON’
If pushed, I guess it’s the ‘Telekon’-era aesthetic that I
associate most closely with Numan. This is reflected in the
merch and the stage design. And the crowd, come to that.
There’s an impressive number of lookalikes in tonight – black
hair, black uniforms, red ties, red laces. As on the previous
evenings, it’s a struggle to spot any non-Numan band T-shirts.
There are a few dotted around – Death In June, Metallica, The
Sisters Of Mercy – but Numan fans largely display a somewhat
singular devotion.
Surprisingly enough – and especially as the both of the other
gigs seemed pretty packed to me – I’m told that this is the only
sold-out show. Over the years, Numan’s live sets have often
been built around ‘Replicas’ and ‘The Pleasure Principle’, as
well as tracks from wherever album he’s touring at the time,
which makes tonight a special chance to hear some of the
songs he doesn’t play so often.
‘Sleep By Windows’ is dreamy and sprawling, while ‘Please
Push No More’ has one of the loveliest intros in the whole
Numan catalogue. Together, the pair make a convincing case
for ‘Telekon’ as his most romantic album. But then you’ve
got songs such as ‘The Aircrash Bureau’, which starts off all
paranoid and twitchy before it gets going when the beat kicks
in halfway through.
Again, this set list broadly follows the record’s actual running
order, with a small degree of shuffling around. ‘This Wreckage’
is an obvious opener, while other highlights include the
metallic crunch of ‘Remind Me To Smile’ and a surprisingly
funky take on ‘I’m An Agent’. The biggest singalong of the
night is reserved for ‘Remember I Was Vapour’, before a final
run through the hits – ‘Cars’, ‘Down In The Park’ and ‘Are
“Friends” Electric?’.
In a sense, this residency has been an exercise in nostalgia.
But you’d have to agree that Gary Numan has earned the right
to wallow. He’s never been one for resting on his laurels and
this has hardly been a lazy shuffle through the hits anyway.
His energy has been seriously impressive on all three nights
and there’s no denying the demand for these shows. While
I’m sure that Numan has an excellent follow-up to ‘Splinter’
somewhere on the horizon, on this week’s evidence I hope he’s
not finished reminiscing either.
GARY NUMAN
XXX
GARY NUMAN:
UP CLOSE & PERSONAL
Catching him backstage before one of his recent London shows, we enjoy a free-ranging
and sometimes painfully honest conversation with GARY NUMAN, taking in his past,
his present and his future. We discuss recordings old and new, his darkest lows and his
wildest highs, love and marriage and the kids, his hopes and fears for the years to come,
and a whole lot more besides...
Words: PUSH Pictures: ED WALKER
“Owwwww!” Gary Numan screws up his face in pain and frantically rubs
the side of his head. His wife Gemma pulls his hand away
and peers closely at his ear lobe. The ear lobe which, without
warning and seemingly without reason, she has just sunk her
teeth into. She’s makes a “pffft” sound and starts giggling. “Fucking hell Gemma, what did you do that for?” yells Numan.
“I’m going to need that ear later on. I’ve got a gig to do.” “I’m fed up with you and your penis and your… your… your other
things,” she says. and September 1980. All three records were Number One in
the UK, as were the ‘Are “Friends” Electric?’ and ‘Cars’ singles.
Hectic and intense and then some. The dressing room at The Forum is at the top of the building
and is reasonably spacious. There are bowls of fruit and bowls
of sweets and boxes of records dotted around. Numan finished
soundchecking around half an hour ago and has spent the time
since sitting on a black leather couch, busily signing ‘Telekon’
album covers to sell on tonight’s merchandising stall. He’s
been using a silver felt-tip pen and he’s managed to get ink on
the couch several times. He tuts at himself whenever he does
it. He’s not actually the least bit moody or huffy or grumpy,
though. Quite the opposite, in fact. “What other things?” asks Numan. “Your ball bag and your… your moods,” replies Gemma, still
giggling as she rummages around in her make-up bag. “Anyway,
never mind all that. Come and sit here so I can do your eyes.” “I don’t have moods,” he says with a huff and a grump, taking a
seat in front of the huge mirror and giving his ear another quick
rub. We’re backstage at The Forum in London’s Kentish Town
on the third and final leg of a unique series of Gary Numan
shows. Two nights ago, he played the ‘Relics’ albums in its
entirety. Last night, he played ‘The Pleasure Principle’, again
in its entirety. And in around three hours he’ll take the stage
again, this time to perform ‘Telekon’. The three albums are the
brightest jewels in Numan’s early back catalogue, released in a
hectic and intense period of just 18 months between April 1979
“The last two nights have been fantastic, probably two of the
best gigs I’ve ever played,” he says, as Gemma gets to work
on his eyes. “In terms of the crowd reaction, they’ve been
phenomenal. We did these same three shows in LA a few
weeks ago and that was brilliant too. ‘The Pleasure Principle’
was a big album in America but the other two weren’t, so
I was amazed at how well people knew the stuff. I was
surprised anyone even came, to be honest. But doing the
shows here in London, in my home city, that’s a bit special.
There’s always that extra vibe when you go back to where
you’re from.” “There you go, Biffo,” says Gemma, using her pet name for
Numan and inspecting her handiwork in the mirror. “I think
that’ll do. Yeah, you don’t look too bad at all.” “You don’t have to sound so surprised,” he mumbles. XXX
GARY NUMAN
A little later on, Numan and I find a quiet corner for a chat. I
start by asking him a question that he hesitates over for a few
moments before answering. What’s the best thing about being Gary Numan? “Hmmm. This isn’t just specific to me, but you have an
enormous amount of freedom when you do something like
making music for a living,” he says. “If I get up one morning
and I don’t feel like working, I don’t have to. I could stay in
bed, I could go down the beach, I can do what I want. It’s not
like that every single day because there’s always lots to do
and sometimes there are deadlines and it’s obviously different
when I’m touring, but in general I get to choose when I want to
work. I think very few other people have that sort of luxury in
their jobs and I appreciate that hugely. Do you have a favourite of the three? “I used to always say ‘Telekon’. I used to think that was the best
one by far. But I’m not so sure now. ‘Telekon’ is a bit of a weird
one, really. Some of the songs are great to do live – ‘I’m An
Agent’, ‘Remind Me To Smile’ and all that stuff – but I think it
works best listening to it at home with your headphones on. Of
the other two, the one I’ve had most fun playing is ‘Replicas’,
probably because it’s a bit more guitary. With ‘The Pleasure
Principle’, I’m at the keyboard quite a lot, which means I have
to concentrate more on what I’m playing. And you can throw
much better shapes with a guitar, of course.” The decision to play the albums in their entirety means there
are no get-outs. Are there any songs that you think, ‘Christ, I
wish I didn’t have to play this one’? “As far as being Gary Numan is concerned… I think the best bit
“One or two, yeah,” says Numan with a hearty laugh. “Funnily
about being me... Fuck, this is difficult… Well, these days, I
enough, having just said how much I loved playing ’Replicas’, I
have a fairly ridiculous amount of credibility and I do enjoy that. don’t really like the couple of instrumentals that are on there.
That’s very cool. Then there’s the fact that, while I’m getting
The fans seem to like them for some reason, but I find them
older, I’m still young enough to be able to make albums and
quite awkward.” go on tour and still be an active part of the music industry. I’ve
got the benefit of a tremendous amount of experience and a
When ‘Relics’, ‘The Pleasure Principle’ and ‘Telekon’ were first
extensive back catalogue which commands a lot of respect,
released, everything about Gary Numan – his music, his lyrics,
especially the earlier stuff, and yet my last album got the best
his shifting image, his whole vibe – was decidedly not rock ’n’
roll. The same was true of his live shows back then. These days,
reviews I’ve ever had, which is a great but a bit strange. So
however, he’s rather fond of holding the microphone stand at
all in all, there’s a whole world of reasons that make it pretty
45 degrees and sticking his foot up on the monitor. Having
good being me at the moment.” watched the soundcheck earlier on in the evening, I know
that despite the old material he’s playing for these shows, his
We’re going to touch on some of this stuff again in a while. But
first, I want to ask about these three London shows. Performing delivery is very much Numan 2015 rather than Numan 1980. I
suggest to him that there’s a bit of a contradiction there. three albums over three nights must have been a daunting
prospect. “I started out trying to keep the songs pretty much as they
were, maybe with enhancements here and there, but we ended
“There’s been a lot of stuff to learn,” admits Numan. “I think
up having far more powerful versions,” he says. “Most of those
it’s 42 songs in total. When you’re learning a normal live set,
albums were recorded in mono, so they don’t have the width
you’ll have 20 or 25 songs and you’ll go over them day after
or depth you’d get now, which meant we had to work on them
day after day, so they get ingrained in your brain. Because this
to make them bigger and better while at the same time not
is three different sets, we’d rehearse one of them for a couple
changing them beyond recognition. You have to be careful
of days, then switch to the next one, then to the third one,
because the fans don’t want to hear anything too radically
and by the time we went back to the first set we’d forgotten a
different. They’ll get fucked off because they’ve come to hear
lot of it because we hadn’t been doing it over and over again.
the album. So you’ve got to bridge that gap somehow. We’d go back to songs we’d played quite well last time and
found they were shit again. You’d think something had stuck,
but it hadn’t stuck at all. Especially the lyrics. I had real trouble “In the end, I decided not to worry about it too much. Not
to overly plan it. I just thought, ‘I’m gonna walk out and do
remembering the lyrics half the time.” whatever feels right for that song at that time’. And that’s what
I’ve been doing. The idea of this was never to recreate what
How do you rate those albums now? happened in 1979 or 1980. When I announced these gigs, I had
a few people say to me, ‘Oh, are you gonna wear the leather
“They’re, what, 35 or 36 years old, which is a long, long time
jumpsuits?’. I said, ‘No. No I’m fucking not’. This has been
ago, but I don’t think they sound particularly dated. When I
about celebrating the music I wrote back in those days, but the
started the project, I was worried I’d find some of it slightly
way I looked and the way I moved, that’s done, that’s gone. I’m
embarrassing and, true enough, lyrically there’s a little too
about a stone and a half heavier than I was then, so I wouldn’t
much teenage angst, you know, ‘Oh, poor little me, nobody
fit into one of those jumpsuits anyway.” understands me’, that kind of stuff, but overall I think they’re
pretty good.” GARY NUMAN
XXX
Typical of every dressing room, there are lots of comings and
goings. Tour manager Dave Dupuis wanders in and out every few
minutes with an open laptop permanently balanced on the palm
of his left hand. It seems to be superglued there. Numan’s longtime guitarist Steve Harris tucks into his takeaway and there’s
a message from someone at the stage door who says he knew
Numan 30 years ago. Gemma chats to somebody about tonight’s
“Meet and Greet”, which is an opportunity for small groups of
fans to meet Numan. She calls it the “Meet and Grope”, but
Numan takes it very seriously, giving everybody plenty of time
to chat and collect autographs. Over in our quiet corner of the room, I start asking some
rather more personal questions. I tell Numan that I think his
relationship with Gemma appears to be very playful. Is that a fair
description? “It is, yeah, very much so,” he says, grinning broadly. “Yeah,
playful is a good word for it.” She plays an important part in your career, doesn’t she? “Everything I do. Absolutely everything. She has done since the
day she arrived. We’ve been together for 23 years and we have
an amazing relationship. There’s lots of banter and making fun
of each other. She’s got a huge personality and she’s incredibly
likeable and loveable. She’s so much fun to be around. People
gravitate towards her all the time. She’s really friendly and really
kind and absolutely the best person ever for me. She’s changed
my life around completely from how it was when we met. It’s
all down to her. She’s a brilliant mum, a brilliant wife, a brilliant
human being. “People talk about having a soul mate and stuff like that, but
that’s Gemma for me. It really is. I’ve always felt I was somehow
broken as a person in the sense that there are a few things I
can do really well, but there’s a whole world of stuff I’m really
bad at and have no skills in whatsoever. All the things that I
can’t do, which is probably 90 per cent of what I need, is where
Gemma comes in. So as a team, we work very well together. We
complement each other perfectly. That’s why it’s rare to ever
see one of us anywhere without the other.” Numan has three daughters – Raven, Persia and Echo (aged
from 12 to eight) – and I wonder what sort of impact becoming a
family man had on him. That’s a whole other life there, isn’t it? “To be honest, it’s taken me a long time to find a way of making
it all work in a fairly painless kind of way,” he says. “Before I
had children, I would drive for hours and hours, no music on, just
driving and thinking. Thinking about the next track I wanted to
do, the last one I did, the next studio I was going to use, what
equipment was there... just thinking all the time. You don’t
realise what an important part of the process that is until you
can’t do it any more. Now when I go out in the car, it’s chaos.
Three kids shouting and arguing and fighting all the time. Total
fucking chaos. “These days, I dovetail my day around the children. I get up early,
I do their breakfasts, me and Gemma drive them to school, I
come back and do some emails and other bits, and then I try
to get into the studio by 10 if I can, certainly no later than
11. I’ll stay in the studio until about four, which is when the
children come home, and then we’ll all spend time together as
a family. When the children go to bed, if I was having a good
day in the studio, I’ll then go back out and carry on for a while.
At weekends, I try to be free for them if I can, so we can go
out and about and do normal things – cinema, restaurants, the
beach. It’s a good balance. Their lives are as normal as possible
and I still get to work and be creative and come up with new
ideas. “But like I said, it took ages to get to this point. I really
struggled with it. The first five or six years, maybe more, I was
useless. That’s why the last album took so long. ‘Splinter’ was
a nightmare in that respect. I couldn’t get it together at all. I’d
go to the studio and do some stuff and it would be rubbish, and
then I wouldn’t go back out there for a month because of kids
and other stuff going on. Then I had depression for three or four
years and that fucked me up again. Part of that was trying to
work out this new life I had and how to make it work. I couldn’t
see a way through it. But I’ve got to where I am now and it’s
working very well. So fingers crossed I’m alright again.” You’ve done a lot of heavy touring since ‘Splinter’ came out in
2013. Do the girls usually stay at home when you’re away? “At the moment. I do love touring but I badly miss the children.
We’re trying to find a way around that, though. I’m trying to find
a way of mostly touring during the school holidays so I can bring
them with me. I think they’d love it. They often come to shows
anyway and they get really excited by it. They’re all obsessed
with music and I’d love them to be in the business when they
grow up. They can all sing really well, they’re all learning
instruments at school, so I think it would be great. I’m not one
of those dads who says, ‘Oh, I don’t want my kids to follow in
my footsteps’. I’m the total opposite. I’d love it if they wanted to
follow me.” It sounds like you’ve got the makings of a great all-girl band
there. “Maybe,” he chuckles. “I do know that Raven has properly got
it. No question. We’re working on an album with her now and
she’s only 12. She’s written 14 or 15 songs and they’re all cool
little pop songs, really catchy, really strong. She’s writing songs
at 12 far better than what I was writing at 21. Honestly. She’s
great pop sensibility and she’s really bossy, she knows what she
wants. And she’s got a good ear, she can listen to something and
then sit down and work it out straight away. She’s a clever girl.
Persia is starting to do that as well now and there are signs of it
in Echo too.” You seem to have become a more comfortable with yourself over
the last few years. Would you say that was true? “I think so, but some of that has come from getting older. I’ve
just got more used to myself!” Do you worry about getting older, about ageing? “I don’t worry about the lines on my face or my energy levels, but
I do worry about death. I’m 57 now and it started when I turned
50. That was another reason for my depression, actually. I first
noticed it when I started getting weird about old people. If I saw
an old person, I’d sometimes get really upset, I’d start crying. I
found it terrifying, you know, thinking about how you dealt with
the prospect of the end the closer you get to it. I couldn’t even
think about my mum and dad, I’d get so upset thinking about
them, and I began to have panic attacks. After many months of
that, I eventually ended up at the doctors and they diagnosed
me as having depression. “I’m not so bad now, but I still struggle with it, with the idea of
not being here or of something nasty happening, like cancer or
Alzheimer’s. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, you know, I’ve only
got to get a headache and I’m thinking, ‘Oh God, I’ve got a brain
tumour’. I’m really bad for stuff like that. In a way, I’m fucking
ashamed of myself. It’s fucking pathetic really. But how can you
not worry about dying? I’m not religious, I don’t think I’m going
somewhere golden, there are no pearly gates waiting for me.
And even if there was, I wouldn’t be going through them. I’m
just going to be dead and that’s it. I guess I think, well, these
things are lurking and the older I get, the more they lurk. So,
yeah, I do worry about it. I worry about it a lot.”
GARY NUMAN
XXX
We chat a little about the future, about Numan’s plans to
release a new album towards the end of next year and about
a track he’s recorded with Jean-Michel Jarre for the second
volume of Jarre’s ‘Electronica’ collaborations. He describes Jarre
as “the nicest person I’ve ever met”. I want to talk a bit more
about his three London shows, though, so I ask him why he
decided to do these shows at this point in time.
“I’m not actually a fan of nostalgia and retro stuff… far from it,”
says Numan. “I’m just not that interested in looking backwards,
that’s the biggest reason, but I’ve also had a chip on my
shoulder about my previous success and the shadow it casts
over everything I’ve tried to do since. In the 1990s and the
early 2000s, if I saw a photo of myself in a magazine it would
always say, ’80s icon Gary Numan’, and I’d think, ‘For fuck’s
sake, why did they have to say that?’. I got really bothered
about it. Really bothered. Far more than I needed to be. So I
built up this resentment for my past, which was childish to be
honest, but that was how I felt. It was like my past was holding
me back and diverting people’s attention from the new stuff I
was doing.
“But then ‘Splinter’ came along and it had all these amazing
reviews and it did really well. Lots of reviews said it was one of
the best things I’d ever done. So since then, it’s like I’ve come
out of the shadows and I’m recognised as a viable, ongoing,
credible act from today, not just an 80s person hanging on to
past glories, and that made me feel very differently. I spent
two years touring ‘Splinter’ and I’ll no doubt spent two years
touring the next album, but I wanted to do something in
between so I thought, ‘OK, let’s do this’. I knew the fans would
love it and it feels like it’s not going to hurt me any more. So
it’s been kind of a nice diversion and, yeah, I must admit it’s
been fun.” You’ve obviously spent a lot of time back under the hood of
‘Replicas’, ‘The Pleasure Principle’ and ‘Telekon’ over the last
two or three months. Looking back to that time, what do you
think of the 21-year old Gary Numan? “I was a very immature, very naive young guy. I was still living
at home, I had no experience of the world, and I was a really
awkward personality. I’ve got Asperger’s syndrome, as a lot
of people know, and it was really bad back then. Much worse
than it is now. So I had the usual things you have at that age,
the angst and the fears and the feeling you’re not understood
by anyone, but then the Asperger’s made it much worse. And
when you take that sort of person, with those problems, and
suddenly make them an overnight star... I know I did some silly
things and said some silly things at the time, but I was kind of
bouncing off the walls. The press were quite hostile too, which
didn’t help. So it was a pretty difficult time. I was having a
hard time just getting through life really, let alone being a rock
star on top of it. “I think what got me through it is I’ve always been incredibly
grounded. I’ve never been a big star-tripper, I’ve never had a
big ego, despite how it might have appeared sometimes. I’ve
always felt lucky rather than clever. Always. I’ve had a massive
problem with confidence from the day I started, right up to
today. It doesn’t matter how many people cover my songs or
sample them or say I’m influential, all of which is lovely and I’m
very grateful, it’s never made me feel any more confident. I’ll
write a song in the morning and I’ll love it, but by the afternoon
I’ll think it’s a piece of shit. But doubting myself is also a driving
force. It makes me work harder and want to do better. And I was
like that then as well, so when I look back at me growing up and
I just see somebody really troubled, doing the best they could to
deal with an unbelievable situation, and probably not doing too
bad a job.” What do you think the 21-year-old Numan would make of you
now? “I think he’d be well pleased. I’m happily married and I’ve got
three beautiful children who make me really proud of them
all the time, so that side of my life is sorted. I think he’d also
be pleased that I’ve had a long career but I haven’t ended up
blanding out or doing nothing but endless nostalgia shows. And I
really had to fight to still be here today. There were lots of years
when my career was going so badly. I really was fucked. I was
selling no albums and I couldn’t give away tickets to my gigs. I
literally couldn’t. We had people going down the street, giving
away tickets just to try to bring numbers into gigs, and people
didn’t want them. The five years between 1988 and 1993, I was
absolutely dead and buried. It was a nightmare.” Did you ever think about giving up during that period? “I thought I was going to have to. By 1993, I thought I was
finished. Creatively, I was empty. I had nothing to say. I had no
record deal and I had massive money problems. I’d sold pretty
much everything. All I had left was a 12-channel portastudio,
an Akai 1214, a couple of old synths and a guitar. I had them in
a room next to the kitchen in my house and the room wasn’t
soundproofed so I used to have to work on headphones. That’s
how fucking bad it got. “Anyway, somehow I put together an album in that room and I
released it myself. It was ‘Sacrifice’, the first of the much heavier
albums I did, so it was completely different to what I’d done
before, and it was also the first one I’d done for years where I
hadn’t thought about A&R men or radio play or any of that shit.
But by doing something different and abandoning my worries
about my career, I fell in love with the whole thing all over again.
From a creative point of view, I felt like I’d got back on my feet
again. And then luckily, that album did better and it’s been an
uphill path ever since then. By going back to doing it for the love
of it, that changed everything.” Numan has certainly had a roller-coaster career. Since the
success of ‘Splinter’, he’s been riding a real crest. But how
does today’s high compare to the high of 1979 and 1980, when
‘Relics’, ‘The Pleasure Principle’ and ‘Telekon’ sat at the top of
the album charts? “It was pretty extreme back then. At its peak, ‘Are “Friends”
Electric?’ was doing 40,000 copies a day. A day! I mean, fucking
hell, 40,000 a day! Staggering. The fans were very young so
it was proper mania, proper hysteria, people would chase me
down the street and I had police escorts when I came out of gigs.
It was very exciting, but that’s obviously not the way it is any
more… thank goodness! It was great and I loved it at the time,
but I don’t think I could handle it now. At the moment, I love
what I’m doing and the position I’m in and I’m very happy about
that. Considering how successful I was and how it had all gone
about 10 years later, to go from that to where I am now, that’s
very satisfying.” One of the many fascinating things about Numan is his
willingness to talk bluntly and openly and honestly about his
own failings. Or rather, what he perceives as his failings. He’s
often unnecessarily hard on himself. So much so, I’m almost
afraid to ask my final question. Thankfully, as well as being
extremely self-critical, it is true that he’s also very grounded. What’s the worst thing about being Gary Numan? “I’m 57,” he replies, quick as a flash. “That’s definitely the worst
thing about being Gary Numan. I’m pretty much at death’s door,
you know!” Gary Numan has launched a Pledge Music campaign for
his next album, which is due for release in October 2016.
Visit pledgemusic.com/projects/garynuman
XXX
SUICIDE
DREAM
BABY
DREAM
Myth and legend are never more than a step away from SUICIDE.
In a new book by our very own KRIS NEEDS, ‘Dream Baby Dream —
Suicide, A New York Story’, Alan Vega and Martin Rev reveal the inside
line on their extraordinary career. With this exclusive extract, we’re
treated to the gobsmacking first-hand recollections of the recording
sessions that lead to their startling 1977 eponymous debut album
XXX
SUICIDE
By 1977, Suicide had been walking their own super-voltage
high wire for most of the decade. Marty Rev’s rudimentary old
Seeburg Rhythm Prince drum machine had been joined by the
Farfisa organ he had borrowed then bought from a friend the
previous year. In the early months of 1977, “time and disco and
all these other influences I was trying” were about to collide as
he and Alan Vega prepared to record Suicide’s first album.
Manager and co-producer Marty Thau had booked time at
Ultima Studios, upstate in the small town of Blauvelt; “in the
middle of nowheresville”, as Alan describes it. Nevertheless,
Suicide were thrilled when they walked into Ultima on that first
day. “It used to be a bowling alley, so it was long, narrow and
very wooden,” recalls co-producer Craig Leon. “It didn’t really
look like your typical studio, but
it was a great place.”
Suicide, Thau and Leon
assembled at the studio, along
with hapless in-house engineer
Larry Alexander. They started by
setting up Rev’s Farfisa, Rhythm
Prince, distortion boxes and
hooked in a transistor radio.
Max’s [Kansas City] manager
Peter Crowley still marvels
at Suicide’s set-up at that
time. “They didn’t have any
money, so Marty had a primitive
drum machine and old Farfisa
keyboard, which had broken keys
and a bunch of Electro-Harmonix
guitar distortion devices that he
plugged in series between the
keyboard and amplifier in order
to get this really raunchy sound.
My belief is that they never
sounded better than when they
had that broken-down stuff.”
“We ran through their set several times, because the way that
it was recorded was the way they were set up,” recalls Craig.
“It was all basically coming out of a couple of outputs. There’d
be a straight signal, then an amp signal, and it went through
like radio electronics and things. Basically, I put out a big
mono signal, and you got what Marty was playing and that
was it. Then there was Alan. When I told him he was going to
get these extreme loopy Elvis things, and these kind of repeat
delays from Jamaican records, he was very much into it.”
Craig had thought carefully about the best way to present
Suicide’s senses-blasting live act. “I knew what they’d done
live, and how unique they were, so this record really had to
do them justice. It couldn’t just
be a blank version of what they
did live, so let’s go to the other
extreme in the effects, and what
we do with the sound. I thought
the right thing to do would be
to use a lot of effects from all
the different kinds of music that
was influencing them, and things
I really liked, and make up the
sound with outboard equipment.
If you listen to the multi-track,
when it was recorded, it would
have Marty Rev on a couple of
tracks, Alan on another track,
and everything else as printed
effects which were controlled
and went down live as they were
playing it; all these reverbs and
delays, feedback feeding back
on itself, all this Lee Perry kind
of stuff.”
“NOT BEING A
PRODUCER, MARTY
WOULD PUSH THINGS,
NOT KNOWING HOW
FAR HE COULD GO.
WE WERE GETTING MORE
AND MORE STONED.
HE DIDN'T KNOW ANY
OF THE METHODS.
NONE OF US DID”
“Marty Rev had this whole Rube Goldberg [US Heath Robinson]
bunch of stuff he’d put together, with the drum machine and
all these other things,” says Craig. “There were no sophisticated
synths or anything, it was just whatever he found!”
The unique combination of cheap, patched-up components which
made up Rev’s ‘Instrument’ (as it’s credited on the album cover)
played a major part in the album’s alien, radioactive sound.
“We just set up and played our set,” says Rev. “We had been
playing everything on the album live for so long, the songs had
all developed themselves. After running through the set a few
times, we cut the album live in the time it took to record, like
30 minutes or so.”
Craig thought back a couple of
years to when he was recording
blues-rock singer Martha Velez in Jamaica with Bob Marley
and crackpot producer Lee Perry. While playing on similarities
he had noticed between Suicide and Can’s ‘Monster Movie’
three years earlier, Craig tried out the dub secrets he had
picked up, using the studio’s tape-delay slapback and Eventide
digital delay unit, adding effects live rather than later at the
mixing stage. The studio’s “incredible, home-made. Kind of
microphonic desk” helped. “When they were running through
stuff, it wasn’t so much to get takes for themselves, but of all
these different effects. Marty Thau, Larry and me were running
around working knobs going to different echoes and delays.
Everything you hear on the record was printed live as it was
going down. None of those effects are after-effects. It’s like a
dub mix.”
XXX
SUICIDE
Pic: Mel Austin
Craig says Rev’s original source sound and “everything he was
doing” was “what he was putting out through the guitar amp,
which was miked as the original source sound. I said, ‘Let’s
take off all your effects, and record everything straight and
clean, without the boxes, right into the board’. If you went
back to the very original tape somehow you would get a very
dry version of what they did live without all those effects.
They had their live set pretty much down. I did not, like I did
on a lot of other records, say ‘How about doing this here?’.
It was strictly interpretative.”
“Craig said take off all my effects and play it straight. I agreed to
try it and see how it sounded,” notes Marty. “At the time, I was
playing a Farfisa organ and it was a much thicker sound anyway.
I was using a little AM-FM radio, which I could turn on and play
as an instrument, and used to use live sometimes. Everything
else was going directly into the board, which we had never
done before.”
The radio was a crucial part of
the nightmare inferno Marty
Rev cooked up for ‘Frankie
Teardrop’, “the album’s masterful
centrepiece”, in the words
of Marty Thau. Still the most
shattering 10 minutes ever
committed to vinyl, Suicide’s
ultimate tour de force was the
only track to go through any kind
of time-consuming evolutionary
process in the studio, after its
inception as a demo the previous
year. It was still called ‘Frankie
Teardrop Detective’ that day
Suicide blazed through the songs
which the album would be drawn
from but, later on in the sessions, something would happen
which transformed the track into their most notorious statement.
Then Craig had to go to LA, “so I made what I thought would
be a preliminary two-track mix of what we had, which was
basically the sound of everything kind of put up the way that we
did it; the music, voice and effects. All you could do with what
was recorded was move those effects up or down. You couldn’t
make new ones or anything. I think the band kind of approved of
whatever was recorded by the time that I left. I don’t know what
happened during that time when Marty Thau decided he was
going to become Lee Perry!”
There are several accounts of what happened next and what
mixes ended up on the album. What is known is that, while
Craig Leon was away, Thau came out to play. Although he had
never produced an album before, he decided to do a mix at
Ultima with Larry Alexander, with Suicide on hand for approval
and a large bag of weed for inspiration. In his memoir, Thau
wrote “Taking into account all the obstacles Craig had to contend
with, like the technical limitations of the recording studio, a
very small budget and Suicide’s
recording inexperience, he did an
unbelievably great job. However,
after carefully scrutinising his
discerning and highly substantive
interpretation of Suicide’s
music, I felt his mixes were
too subtle for a group calling
itself Suicide. I wanted to be
touched, thrilled and intimidated
in equal measure by Suicide’s
over-the-top psychodrama, and
needed to experience their poetic
sophistication, as confrontational
I suspected it might sound to
establishment cynics.”
“I ALMOST BLACKED OUT
WITH THOSE SCREAMS
I DID. THAT BLOODCURDLING SCREAM STILL
GETS ME WHEN I LISTENED
TO IT... PUTTING MYSELF
IN THE GUY’S MIND WAS
GENUINELY DISTURBING”
The sessions proved hard going for engineer Larry Alexander,
whose experience of recording electronic music had only run
to his own synth-created album of Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812’ and
‘Nutcracker Suite’. “Larry didn’t know what to make of any of
it,” says Craig. “It was mostly Marty Thau and me. I think he
thought I was insane wanting to feed all these things back into
each other. He didn’t understand what was going on. He was a
little too conventional.”
Rev recalls, “I did very little overdubbing, maybe just a spot here
and there. So the record was like 1-2-3 — done. Then it was all
mixing. Craig seemed very happy with it. We all rode back to
New York in Marty’s car, and he was very positive. We were too
where he was concerned, which he countered with ‘The producer
can only be as good as the band he’s producing’.”
“So Marty said, ‘Hey, why don’t I produce it?’,” says Rev. “Marty
had never produced before. We had a great time because we
would drive up to the studio every day. For us, it was like going
to the country because we hadn’t been out of the city for so
long! Craig was an experienced, polished producer at that time,
but Marty gave some of the things a heavier, rougher, maybe
more street angle; not that there was that much difference to
the two. There couldn’t be, because it was all exactly the way
we played. Marty was more of a punk, so we could be more
involved. He would sit at the board, and Alan and I would relax
on the floor of the control room. Marty would just sit and go
through every track, one at a time, EQ-ing. By that time, we
were so incredibly stoned. Then after he got through all of
them, he’d put ’em all together. Every time he’d finish a track,
he’d turn to us and say, ‘What do you think?’. We’d say, ‘OK,
it sounds good’, because we were all very high on the whole
experience, and whatever else was going through our blood
streams. We were all in a kind of positive state of ecstasy.”
XXX
SUICIDE
As the trio further explored these novel mixing techniques, the
atmosphere in the studio became extremely hands-on, enhanced
by Thau’s freely-circulating marijuana stash. As Rev recalls,
“Marty was trying to explore all the equipment in the studio, like
the big phaser that we used after the album was cut, on the
remix of ‘Cheree’. It was the state of the art one, at the time.
He only had two hands to do all this stuff so we’d be dividing
it up. Not being a producer, Marty would push things, not
knowing how far he could go. We were getting more and more
stoned. He didn’t know any of the methods. None of us did. The
only one who knew anything was Larry Alexander, but he was
resisting and getting his nerves frizzled.”
“It was driving us crazy,” says Alan. “One day it was so hard in
the studio, man, I was seeing treble. I went to open the door
to go outside to the car and saw three door knobs! It was so
intense. The shit that was going on between the two of them
and then asking us what we thought. But Larry Alexander is the
guy who went insane. He said, ‘I gotta get out of here!’. He went
crazy with this record.”
The sessions got crazier still when Alan decided to redo his
vocals on ‘Frankie Teardrop’ with new lyrics after reading a
newspaper story about a factory worker who lost his job and, in
desperation, killed his wife, kids, then himself. “I changed the
lyrics,” he recalls. “Before, it was about a detective at the race
track, because I went to the race track a lot in those days, but
then I saw this story in the paper about this factory worker who
died, so it became a whole new thing, and a lot more relevant.”
In two improvised takes, Alan placed himself in the heads of
both killer and victims, ending up tormented in hell, while Rev
whipped up a disembodied electrical storm, which was given
another sinister dimension through his radio. The track now
almost become like Alan’s psychopathic answer to Patti Smith’s
‘Piss Factory’ as his new lyrics were also inspired by his years
working shit factory jobs in Brooklyn. “Lots of ’em, just trying
to survive. That’s what ‘Frankie’ is about. It’s a self-portrait, of
everybody. ‘We’re all Frankies, all lying in hell’. I really got into
it, because the music had so much of an effect. I almost blacked
out with those screams I did. Marty put on some static from
the radio, which really made it. That blood-curdling scream still
gets me when I listen to it. I hadn’t listened to it for a long time
and when I did it really scared the crap out of me. That’s one
of my longest screams there. Putting myself in the guy’s mind
was genuinely disturbing. I always think it’s the song Lou Reed
wishes he would have done.”
Rev recalls that, when it came time to mix the new version of
‘Frankie’, it took Marty, Alan, Larry and himself to harness the
monster they had created as it appeared on the album.
When Craig returned, he was shocked to find a rather different
album to the one he had recorded, remembering, “Marty had
really overdone it, smoking a couple of joints and really gone
nuts on the effects. That’s all that you could do — either raise
Suicide or raise the effects. If you went through every effect
individually, you’d have to have been on some other planet. He
had destroyed the sound by fooling around with it. You didn’t
hear the original source. I was thinking, ‘God, my name’s gonna
be on this! What is this that he’s done here?’. But there was a
conscious effort to do that and the guys had to agree with it.
They kind of wanted to do it, they just didn’t know how to do it.”
When it was time to master the album, Thau and Leon met at
the venerable Frankford/Wayne studio. “Marty still wasn’t sure
which mixes should be used,” notes Craig. “He brought both sets
to the mastering, which I was in New York to do with him. We
went through the stuff that he had done, because there was
a dispute. I don’t think any of his stuff actually ended up on
the album. If anything made it, it was ‘Cheree’. The mastering
engineer was going, ‘You can’t put this out, quality control
wouldn’t press it!’. I persuaded him that we should go pretty
much with what the band said.”
“Actually, I remember it a bit differently,” says Rev. “I know that
we used ours and Marty’s mix of ‘Frankie Teardrop’, ‘Ghost Rider’
and ‘Girl’ and probably, as Craig said, ‘Cheree’. They were very
close. With due deference to Craig, I don’t remember us not
liking any of his stuff.”
Suicide’s first album was finally ready; created for a minuscule
$4,000 in an atmosphere of cathartic intensity, stoned
experimentation and often under the kind of DIY circumstances
which might have floored other bands. Over 38 years since they
were recorded, its seven songs feel branded into my soul like
eternal footprints, waiting to combust into glorious life when
summoned. They now sound as alien and weirdly arcane as a
Robert Johnson blues recording.
The journey will always start with those two supernatural cruise
missiles, ‘Ghost Rider’ and ‘Rocket USA’, Alan’s speedway anger
juddering through Marty’s spectral R&B motifs. ‘Cheree’ still
swells like the purest declaration of lovestruck awe as New
York’s heart pounds below and its lights twinkle above. Then
it’s Rev playing with an Elvis riff he heard as a child on ‘Johnny’
and the finger-clicking bedroom sashay and nonchalant passion
of ‘Girl’. ‘Frankie Teardrop’ will always invoke that unbearable
tension and swelling terror leading to opening the gate into its
teeming Bosch-like maelstrom, before the album closes with
the desolate descent of ‘Che’, which sees Alan mourning like an
ectoplasmic spirit in a place no one had ever seen, over Marty’s
colossal tomb slabs and Bach-like organ flourishes.
‘Suicide’ was a once-in-a-lifetime alchemical combustion of
disparate personalities on a mutual mission. It was Alan and
Marty’s story so far, but cursed to be a monolith for the future
to appreciate when the present could not. Even in 2015 —
particularly in 2015 — no other album comes close.
‘Dream Baby Dream — Suicide, A New York Story’
by Kris Needs is out now, published by Omnibus Press
KRIS NEEDS WITH MARTIN REV
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kris Needs is one of the most respected music journalists and
biographers in the UK. He started writing for Zigzag in the
1970s, becoming editor of the seminal magazine for five years
from 1977 to 1982, during which time he also wrote for NME
and Sounds. He spent much of the 80s living in New York and
became a producer in the 90s, most notably recording as Secret
Knowledge and releasing ‘Sugar Daddy’ on Andrew Weatherall’s
Sabres Of Paradise label. Kris has written numerous books in
addition to ‘Dream Baby Dream’, including biographies of Joe
Strummer, Blondie, Primal Scream, Keith Richards and George
Clinton. His legendary Needs Must reviews column ran in
Black Echoes for many years and has recently been revived by
Electronic Sound.
Pic: Helen Donlon
UNDERWORLD
XXX
ALPHABET
SOUP
Almost 20 years on from its original release, UNDERWORLD are set to
reissue an anniversary deluxe edition of their magnificent second album,
‘Second Toughest In The Infants’. To celebrate, we’re casting back to
1996, where we find Karl Hyde and Darren Emerson taking a hurtling ride
through their world as it was then… with a little help from the alphabet
Words: PUSH
You are an alien. You have arrived on Earth to conduct a
field study of mankind and one of the questions you are
particularly keen on answering runs something along the
lines of, “What is the single best fucking brilliant toppermost
of the poppermost album released so far in the 90s?”. And
what one word do you hear again and again and again?
“Dubnobasswithmyheadman”, that’s what.
are thundering technoid beats, vocoder vocals, supercharged
guitar riffs and backwards funk loops. There are drum ’n’ bass
wriggles, five-in-the-morning croons, acoustic meanderings
and dub inflections. The musical imaginations of Darren
Emerson, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have clearly gone into
overload. Against odder odds, it’s also a more complete
album. Darren’s mix skills warrant a knighthood.
Underworld’s ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’ is and will long
remain a classic. So much of a classic that nobody with a
reasonable grasp on reality expected the group to ever be
able to come up with anything to match it. Which is why, two
years on, ‘Second Toughest In The Infants’ is going to blow
you away. You’d better make yourself a sandwich. It may be
some time before you get back.
‘Second Toughest’ once again proves that Underworld’s world
is one of myriad moods, textures, tints, flavours, fragrances,
dimensions and angles. And what better way to poke the
kaleidoscopic windmills of their minds than putting Darren
and Karl on the black leather couch (oh, OK, the beer-stained
settee next to the pool table in what must be the dodgiest
pub in Christendom) for a game of word association?
The results? Well, let’s just say that Sigmund Freud would
have jacked it all in and become a chimney sweep if he’d
ever read this…
Against the odds, ‘Second Toughest In The Infants’ is an even
more eclectic collection of tracks than ‘Dubnobass…’. There
XXX
UNDERWORLD
A
A IS FOR APPLE. IT ALWAYS IS. EXCEPT
TODAY. TODAY, A IS FOR AIR GUITARS.
KARL: “I don’t really know if we get any guitar buffs at the
gigs. I enjoy playing guitar and singing, but my big concern
is to make people dance. I’m always thinking about the
grooves. I pretty much gave up the idea of being a classic
guitar player a long time ago.”
DARREN: “Piaw, dioing, pling!”
KARL: “Having said that, I still do a lot of guitar sessions
for people. I was supposed to do one this week with Dave
Gilmour and Phil Manzanera. I do sessions for people who
want guitar sounds on remixes. I’ve also worked with
Debbie Harry and I spent a while working over at Paisley
Park. I’m part of a network of people who get called up and
asked to play on tracks here and there. It’s fun because it’s
something different. It’s a challenge to do a Californian rock
track. As long as you don’t have to do it for a living.”
C
C IS FOR CEREALS. AS IN THE
LINE, “SUGAR PUFFS, SUGAR BOY” ON
‘JUANITA’, THE OPENING TRACK OF THE
ALBUM.
KARL: “What!? There aren’t any Sugar Puffs in there. You’ve
been doing way too much acid. You’ve had that furry yellow
monster crashing through your kitchen wall, haven’t you?”
DARREN: “I’m not into Sugar Puffs, but All Bran is nice. Keeps
you regular. I didn’t need that when I was on holiday in
Dominca the other week, though. I had the shits the whole
time!”
B
B IS FOR ‘BLUSKI’, THE SHORTEST CUT
ON ‘SECOND TOUGHEST’ THERE’S
NO HINT OF A GROOVE, JUST THREE
MINUTES OF BLUESY GUITAR PLUCKING
AND THE OCCASIONAL PULL ON A FAT
BASS STRING. PURE AND SIMPLE. IT’S
GORGEOUS.
DARREN: “I love that track. It’s so beautiful. It was just
something Karl did and the recording is pretty raw, but
that’s what I like about it. We tend to put a lot of rough
ideas down and if they sound good we’ll use them. We’ve
tried working with engineers and they’re like, ‘Hold up, I
need to tweak this a bit…’, whereas our attitude is, ‘That
sounds good to us, let’s fucking do it’. You don’t have to
polish everything up. If it sounds good to you, fucking do it.”
KARL: “I’ve started recording a lot of stuff on a dictaphone
and it sounds brilliant.”
DARREN: “A couple of the other tracks on the new album
have the same kind of laid-back vibe as ‘Bluski’. I’m really
looking forward to playing those live. The gigs so far have
been boom-boom-boom all the way through and it’ll be
good to start off a bit more mellow and build it up. It’s
always nice to throw in a few surprises.”
D
D IS FOR DISGUSTING.
DARREN: “I was squirting all over the place. Up the walls, on
the ceiling…”
E
E IS FOR EUROPA, THE LATE-NIGHT
SHOP ON WARDOUR STREET
NAMECHECKED IN THE LILTING
‘STAGGER’. A TRACK WHICH,
INCIDENTALLY, WOULDN’T HAVE
SOUNDED OUT OF PLACE ON
WISHBONE ASH’S ‘ARGUS’.
ASK YOUR DAD.
KARL: “It’s near our office, but I don’t use it that much. I
prefer the 7-11 on Oxford Street. It’s open longer. That
line, ‘I found you shopping in Europa on Wardour Street,
not phoning Packwith’ came to me when I was in there
one night and I just scribbled it down. I take a pad with me
wherever I go and I’m always writing down stuff I see or
hear. Who’s Packwith? One of the ladies you see hanging
around on the street corners of Soho. Apparently.”
G
F
F IS FOR FIRST TOUGHEST. OR, WHY
THE NEW ALBUM IS CALLED ‘SECOND
TOUGHEST IN THE INFANTS’ AND A BIT
OF BOLLOCKS ABOUT DARREN AND
KARL’S SCHOOLDAYS.
DARREN: “Where that title came from is a brilliant story. I
couldn’t stop laughing when I first heard it. It really tickled
me. It was something Rick’s little nephew said to him at
Christmas. They had the old video camera on and there’s this
little kid going, ‘I had a fight the other day and now I’m the
second toughest in the infants’. It really stuck in my mind.
He’s apparently become the first toughest since then. He’s
had this other kid now.”
KARL: “I wasn’t tough at school. I was just a bloody good
runner.”
DARREN: “I absolutely hated school. OK, I learnt to read and
write…”
KARL: “Just. I thought school was a laugh. I’m from a village
in Worcestershire and the school was full of farmers’ sons…”
G IS FOR THE GEORGE, A PUB WHICH
STANDS MIDWAY BETWEEN EUROPA
AND THE OFFICES OF TOMATO, THE
MEGA COOL DESIGN COLLECTIVE
UNDERWORLD ARE INVOLVED WITH.
MORE OF WHICH LATER.
DARREN: “There was a point when I was getting locked in
The George almost every bloody night. I’d get really pissed
and end up having to stay there. I’ve calmed down a lot
since then, though. I had to. I was fucking wasted all the
time. I’m taking it easy now.”
KARL: “And I’ve gone in the other direction. I’ve picked up
the burning torch. I’ll carry it into the night and end up shitfaced in some gutter.”
DARREN: “Someone has to do it, don’t they?”
DARREN: “They used to shag sheep for PE.”
KARL: “It was very, very idyllic. Everything was in the 70s,
wasn’t it?”
DARREN: “I went to school in Essex. One of the guys in Let
Loose went to my school.”
KARL: “One of you made it, then. Essex is such a small place,
isn’t it?”
DARREN: “Let Loose, The Prodigy…”
KARL: “Depeche Mode. They all live in Darren’s road. I tried
to get into his road but the prices were too high. Full of
bands and taxi drivers.”
DARREN: “And bank robbers.”
KARL: “Yeah, bank robbers.”
DARREN: “I met a bank robber on holiday.”
KARL: “Did you? Did he give you any top tips?”
XXX
UNDERWORLD
H
H IS FOR HIATUS. LET’S FACE IT,
BEARING IN MIND THE SUCCESS
OF ‘DUBNOBASS…’ A LOT OF OTHER
GROUPS WOULDN’T HAVE WAITED TWO
YEARS BEFORE GETTING THE FOLLOWUP OUT.
KARL: “The first year was basically spent playing live. We did
two tours of Britain and some of the festivals, we did Japan
and all around Europe. Then Rick and I took time out to do
some adverts with Tomato.”
DARREN: “Then Rick gets his wife pregnant.”
KARL: “As usual. We were like, ‘Strewth Rick, I thought
this was supposed to be a band’. So the album only came
together a few months ago. We suddenly went, ‘Shit, we’d
better do an album’. But in all of that time, there was never
any pressure from Junior Boys Own. Steve Hall at Juniors
just told us to come up with the album we wanted to make
in the time we wanted to make it. So that’s what we did.”
DARREN: “Steve never pushes us into doing things we don’t
want to do. There are always offers for us to go to a major,
but we just don’t see the point of it.”
KARL: “Steve understands that you don’t push someone
into being something they don’t want to be simply because
you’ve got a schedule. I guess we just wanted to get away
from it for a while. Otherwise you start getting sucked
into the music industry. We don’t want that. I mean, I’ve
been in loads of different bands and this is the first one I’ve
ever been in where I get a real kick out of seeing the other
members. I get excited, I get stupid. Which is what it’s all
about. I’ve stopped trying to be a star and…”
DARREN: “Started having a good time!”
I
I IS FOR...
KARL: “Iceland! Top place. We played there with Björk.
There was a massive crowd at the gig. About 8,000 people,
including the Prime Minister! That’s probably the entire
population of the country.”
DARREN: “It’s a very beautiful and very odd place. You step
off the plane and it’s what you would imagine the moon to
look like. There are craters everywhere.”
KARL: “And the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen. It’s a
shame it’s so far away.”
J
J IS FOR ‘JUANITA’. A CONSTANTLY
SHIFTING, CONSTANTLY SOARING
GROOVE, IT’S A HELL OF A WAY TO
OPEN AN ALBUM.
KARL: “Juanita? She works in the office below Tomato.
That’s all really.”
DARREN: “That’s it Karl, move it along quick…”
KARL: “K! K! Erm... Kyack!”
DARREN: “Hahahahaha!”
KARL: “If you saw her, you’d know.”
DARREN: “Perhaps we should talk a bit about the track.
Actually, it’s three tracks in one. A megamix. The idea was
to have one side of the album which just flowed. We wanted
a sort of mixing vibe.”
KARL: “Its like the B-side of The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’.”
DARREN: “Fuck Off!”
KARL: “Anyway. Lovely. And long.”
DARREN: “Very long. The track’s long as well, isn’t it?”
K
K IS FOR KEBABS.
DARREN: “I’d rather stay on the cod. Unless I’m pissed, of
course.”
KARL: “There’s a great kebab shop in Caroline Street in
Cardiff. It’s great when you’re out of your skull. It’s a bit
different the next morning.”
DARREN: “Greasy.”
KARL: “Great country, Greece. My girlfriend and I go out
there every year to stay on this little island where a friend
of ours has a guest house. Which island? I’m not telling you!
Get your own bloody island!”
M
L
L IS FOR LISA. IT’S ALSO FOR DARREN,
ONLY HE’S NIPPED OFF TO THE BAR.
LEAVING KARL TO COME UP WITH…
KARL: “Laudanum. Ask Darren all about laudanum and
opium dens. He was there with Sherlock Holmes. They were
classmates. Shhhhhhh, here he comes.”
DARREN: “L is for Lisa? Lisa, my girlfriend?”
KARL: “Yeahhhhhhhh.”
DARREN: “Nice girl. Lovely girl. Top girl. We have been
together about a year and a half. I’m very happy at the
moment. Hang on, how do you know about Lisa?! What’s he
been saying?”
KARL: “Nothing. I’ve been talking about Sherlock.”
DARREN: “Huh?”
M IS FOR MUMS AND DADS.
DARREN: “Rick is a dad now. He’s got a lovely little kid. Esmee.
She was born in June. He’s over the moon.”
KARL: “We were at his place working on a mix when his wife’s
waters broke. She went, ‘Er, Rick, I think this is it’, and he
was like, ‘OK, ummmm, this channel is this, that channel is
that, here’s the effects, ummmm, here are the keys to the
house, make sure you lock up’, and they were off. We were
sitting there trying to do the mix and all we kept thinking was,
‘Oh God, oh God, Tracy’s having a baby, oh God, oh God’. And
Rick was in the funniest state I have ever seen in my life. A
mixture of euphoria and panic. One minute he was like, ‘Wow,
this is really happening’ and the next he was, ‘Fuuuuuck, this
is really happening’.”
DARREN: “He’s making a great dad, though.”
KARL: “That is so important. I’m lucky in that my dad is
great, too. I gave him my silver disc for ‘Dubnobass…’. He’s
been to a few of our gigs and I took him up on stage with me
just before we went on at Manchester Academy. The place
was totally rammed, Darren was playing and everybody was
rocking, and my dad was gobsmacked. He just stood there
with his mouth open, looking at the thousands of people. He
loved it. He is a bit of a nutter, though. He’s turned 60 and he
races Land Rovers. He’s good at it, too. Our house is full of his
trophies.”
XXX
UNDERWORLD
N
N IS FOR NOSE UP.
KARL: “I never do drugs. If you were like me, would you
waste your money on drugs? My ambition is to get to
normality, to understand three dimensions. Just the three. I
have to keep telling myself that there are just the three.”
DARREN: “I know a few people who do coke and it just
makes them paranoid. I’d much rather stick with beer. I
wouldn’t do ecstasy, either. The way so many more ecstasy
users are dying these days scares me. It really does. People
don’t know what they’re getting. I think the government
should let clubs introduce testing, like they have in Holland.
But it won’t happen, so you’re going see more kids dropping
down.”
KARL: “The government are incredibly hypocritical to put a
levy on alcohol and cigarettes, two drugs that kill thousands
every year, and then criminalise other things. Taking money
with one hand and wagging the finger with the other.”
DARREN: “The thing about the Dutch is they’ll admit it
exists. And they know they can’t stop it, so they put their
efforts into making it safe.”
KARL: “The government must start getting active, getting
involved and understanding what’s going on. Especially in
this instance, when people are dying. It’s no good them
blaming the clubs for the situation. You could close every
club in the country and it wouldn’t change anything. I’d
like to know why MPs can’t own up that we’re all just
people. They’re people like everyone else, we’re people
like everyone else, so let’s fucking work together and make
a positive community where you can actually grow and
develop. At the moment, it’s very sad, very repressed and so
amateur. So, so amateur.”
O
O IS FOR ORANGE, THE TELEPHONE
PEOPLE. TOMATO WERE RESPONSIBLE
FOR ORANGE’S HUGELY SUCCESSFUL
TELEVISION AND CINEMA
CAMPAIGNS.
KARL: “Tomato have been doing a lot of interesting stuff
lately. We did the last Levis campaign, which was the second
we’d done for them, Adidas, Nike, TSB, The Times, The
Guardian, Sony Playstation, the Pepsi Challenge campaign…
The good thing about working at Tomato is we actually direct
the commercials as well as thinking up the concepts. People
come to us because they know what we do. It’s the same
with people who want an Underworld remix or to have Darren
DJing at their club. They come to us because they know what
we do. And if you’re able to make money outside of selling
records, like Darren does with his DJing, like we do with
Tomato, you don’t have to bow to music industry pressure.
When someone comes up to you and says, ‘Here’s half a
million to sign this deal’, you can say, ‘Get off, matey’. We
can make money without signing our lives away.”
P
P IS FOR PORNOGRAPHY.
KARL: “Oh, you’ve heard all about Rick being a porn star,
have you?”
DARREN: “He’s been in lots of films. ‘Shut Your Mouth’, ‘Up
Your Bum’...”
KARL: “’Doggy, Doggy, Doggy’...”
DARREN: “’Fish Fingers’...”
KARL: “I don’t know how his poor wife copes.”
DARREN: “Oooooh dear. We are in tuuurrrubble!”
Q
S
Q IS FOR QUANTUM PHYSICS.
DARREN: “Do you want another beer?”
S IS FOR ‘SAPPY’S CURRY’, ANOTHER
OF THE MELLOWER CUTS ON ‘SECOND
TOUGHEST’. IT WOULD MAKE A
BRILLIANT SOUNDTRACK TO A SLOWMOTION FILM ABOUT A FAIRGROUND
RUN BY ACID FREAKS.
DARREN: “Sappy isn’t a person. Sappy’s a dog. We were at
the dog track in Romford one night, looking through a few
names, and ‘Sappys Curry’ popped up. ‘Born Slippy’ was a
dog, too.”
KARL: “Going down to the dog track is a good night out.
Dogs and ice hockey are my hobbies. Actually, a couple of
weeks ago, I met my hero, this Canadian ice hockey player
called Rob Stewart. He’s the only person I’ve ever written a
fan letter to. He plays for Bracknell now, but he used to play
for Romford. He used to go around with Dog Track Dave…”
DARREN: “Dog Track Dave?”
KARL: “Yeah, he used to look after quite a lot of those ice
hockey blokes.”
DARREN: “Dog Track Dave?! What a daft name!”
KARL: “I’m not going to say anything. I have to meet him
most weeks.”
R
R IS FOR ROMFORD, THE LONDON
SATELLITE TOWN THESE GUYS CALL
HOME.
DARREN: “Lovely place. But contrary to popular opinion, I’m
not a Romford boy. I’m from Hornchurch.”
KARL: “I never thought I’d live there, but I love it. I went
back to Worcestershire just before Christmas and I had a top
time, going out with some of my old mates and going up
to Birmingham, but I was pleased to get back to Romford.
I arrived back on Christmas Eve and I was sitting in front
of the telly with a couple of beers, and I thought to myself,
‘This is fucking great, I’m so happy here’. I honestly couldn’t
think of a better place to be on Christmas Eve. Once you
start hanging out with people there, you realise that they’re
really good people. They stick by you. That might sound
cheesy, but they’re people who really mean what they say.”
T
DARREN: “Yeah, ‘You’re a cunt!’, for example.”
T IS FOR TOKYO.
DARREN: “We had a great time out there. Steve Hall and I
went out one night and got completely wasted.”
KARL: “They ended up being bundled into a cab by some
Japanese businessmen.”
DARREN: “As you do!”
KARL: “They were very tight on the hotel desk and they
wouldn’t allow anyone to bring guests in. It was something
to do with the fact Primal Scream had been staying there
the week before and had invited half of Tokyo’s female
population back. So we had to make do with fireworks.”
DARREN: “Martin, Rick’s brother-in-law, was acting as a
roadie for us and he started letting them off in the hotel.
They were more like fucking mini rockets than fireworks!
The corridor was full of smoke. And the thing was, the
bastard was letting them off from the doorway to my room.
There were huge skid marks on the carpet where they’d
been let off. I tried to clean them off but they wouldn’t go.”
KARL: “You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?”
DARREN: “You fucking did.”
XXX
UNDERWORLD
U
U IS FOR UNDERWATER, DARREN’S
RECORD LABEL.
DARREN: “It’s been going for about a year. It’s more of a
hobby, just putting out records I really like by people I really
like. Steve Rachmad from Amsterdam is doing a mix track
for me at the moment, which is very minimal, and Karl and I
are also doing a few things. It’s all very underground. I don’t
promote anything, I just put the records out there and see
what happens. They each sell about 3,000 and I’m happy
with that. I’ve done loads of tracks that I want to release
under different names and not tell anybody who it is. I
want to do four or five minimal grooves, which are good for
mixing purposes, then a little album of my own. I want to do
something different, probably some deep stuff like K Scope.
I love that kind of vibe.”
W
W IS FOR WAITRESS. AS IN ‘CONFUSION
THE WAITRESS’, A TRACK TO RIVAL
‘DARK & LONG’ ON THE SPOOKOMETER.
KARL: “I love waitresses! They’re like nurses,
aren’t they?”
DARREN: “So it’s a uniform thing, is it?
V
V IS FOR VOCALS.
KARL: “Vocals are what comes out of my gob. I love singing.
The trouble with most singers is they feel that, because they
have a voice, they only have one voice. They forget that as
children, as babies, they made the most amazing diversity
of sounds. To me, the human voice can very easily compete
with a sampler. It can make lots of different noises, it can
sing pure or gritty or whatever. My approach to singing is
to not think about it too much. I tend to just do what I feel
might be appropriate at the time.”
X
X IS FOR...
KARL: “Xylophone.”
DARREN: “No. let’s go for X-rated.”
KARL: “Erm, no, there’s just something about them. I fell in
KARL: “As in Rick’s films?”
love with a waitress 16 years ago and I’m still with her. She’s
gorgeous, but she’s not a waitress any more. She’s an agent
in the film industry. That’s what often happens to waitresses.”
DARREN: “I think we’re in enough bother already. Next!”
DARREN: “Why Confusion? Because Karl was confused about
whether he should go out with a waitress or a nurse. He
made the right choice in the end. Maybe I’ll get Lisa to be a
waitress for a bit.”
KARL: “Or a nurse.”
Y
Y IS FOR YANKS.
KARL: “I am about to achieve my dream of driving across
America. I’m doing it with this English friend of mine who’s
moving house from Los Angeles to New York. The idea is to
stay in the weirdest motels and stop off at the weirdest bars.
We want to meet the nuttiest people we can. My mate’s great
like that. He looks like Mr LA, he has long, dark, curly hair
and he wears those cowboy boots with silver tips, but he has
the most precise English accent I’ve ever heard.”
DARREN: “Bizarre!”
KARL: “He’s a great geezer. He’s a very devout Christian and
he plays an organ in a church.”
DARREN: “How have we gone down in the States? Shit,
basically, mainly because MTV don’t want to play dance
music. They don’t want to get involved with it. That’s why so
many American artists come to Europe.”
Z
KARL: “In America, nobody would know who Derrick May was.
He’s a god here, but out there…”
DARREN: “It’s a shame.”
KARL: “The trouble with America is that people see dance
music as black. If you’re white you’re into rock music and if
you’re black you’re into dance. America is a bit of a sad place,
really. I mean, Nirvana were brilliant, but it was just America
catching up on punk. I mean, fuck me, how long did that
take? And now we’ve got thousands of bands like Green Day.
What a sad bunch of bunnies. They’re so far behind. They’ve
lost it. It’s like the end of The Roman Empire. Whereas
Europe is very interesting, with lots of different cultures
coming together.”
Z IS FOR ZEBEEDEE. WELL, IT’S EASIER
THAN ZETRAPHRIDE.
AND IT IS THAT TIME OF THE EVENING.
OR IS IT?
DARREN: “I do like my sleep, don’t I?”
KARL: “Yeah.”
DARREN: “Yeah.”
KARL: “Time for bed, then?
DARREN: “Bollocks, it’s your round.”
The ‘Second Toughest In The Infants’ remastered reissue is
out now on Universal Music Catalogue in a series of special
editions that collect together rare singles, remixes and
unreleased studio and live tracks
XXX
YACHT
TH
SHIPPING
HE
FORECAST
XXX
YACHT
Former DFA recording artists YACHT have their very own belief system.
They have a manifesto too. Not only that, the Los Angeles outfit produce
shiny electronic pop music with side orders of extraterrestrial intelligence
and future gazing. And it really is as marvellous as that all sounds
Words: MARK ROLAND
“People always want to know about the alien stuff. It’s sticky…”
So says Claire L Evans, one half of YACHT, the Los Angelesbased band/conceptual art project whose new release, ‘I Thought
The Future Would Be Cooler’, with its canny underground suss
welded on to some magnificent contemporary electronic pop,
might just be one of the albums of the year. Her partner is
Jona Bechtolt, who started YACHT as a solo vehicle in Portland,
Oregon, back in 2002. And in case you are wondering why all
the shouting – YACHT! – the band name must be capitalised
because it’s an acronym: Young Americans Challenging High
Technology.
YACHT believe in extraterrestrial intelligence. It says so on their
website, in a section headed ‘Trust’. They also believe piracy
isn’t theft. “We subscribe to the free online dissemination of
all things, including our own music,” they declare. One time,
Jona made an entire album from samples of Nirvana. But then
he mentioned he had used pirated plug-ins to do so during an
interview and got called out by the software company who made
the plug-ins. Jona being Jona, he apologised and paid up.
YACHT like to be explicit about their beliefs, even when it gets
them into trouble. They like other people to be upfront about
theirs, too. “We call it radical transparency,” they say.
“All bands have belief systems, all people do,” Claire insists.
“We’re always interested in knowing what people believe. A lot
of artists have a hard time being explicitly political, or making
explicit social commentary, or presenting their ideologies clearly
because of fear of comments on YouTube. People are afraid to
be vulnerable in that way. We like to position our thoughts really
clearly.”
“There’s too much focus on one’s personal brand these days,”
says Jona. “Anything that tarnishes it or makes it less accessible
is avoided.”
“Or even makes it identifiable in the way that you could
have a negative opinion about,” adds Claire. “There’s a lot
of ambiguity in music because people don’t want to take a
clear stance on things. When you do, there’s always a chance
someone could disagree with you.”
Hence the pretty strong thread of sympathy towards, or at
least interest in, various ideologies in the world of YACHT.
Their 2009 album, ‘See Mystery Lights’, takes its title from
the phenomenon of people seeing strange lights in the night
sky. Tracks like ‘The Afterlife’, with its river baptism video, and
‘Psychic City (Voodoo City)’, which is preceded by a Michael
Jackson-esque “Due to my strong personal convictions…” type
of disclaimer, all give YACHT an air of cultishness.
Oh, and there’s also the YACHT manifesto. All decent cults
need one. Claire reads it out to me (and later emails me a PDF
version too). They made lots of copies of it and handed them
out in LA, the city they now call home.
Los Angeles is, of course, a place where new trends and oddball
doctrines and crackers notions sprout up like mushrooms –
and where these always seem to find plenty of eager recruits.
YACHT, one suspects, know this. Part of their appeal is their
aesthetic, which plays around with slickly designed PR stunts
and ideas, including radical transparency, a kind of endless
innocence about sharing information and beliefs.
“There’s always a new extreme innovation in juice,” says Claire.
“There’s a juice place in our neighbourhood that sells a $20
juice. Fungal rhizomes... it’s next level.”
“It’s marketed as the $20 juice, like it’s something to be proud
of,” adds Jona, acknowledging LA’s reputation as a beacon for
the gullible.
YACHT
XXX
“You have that cereal café in London, don’t you?” says Claire.
“People need to be presented with extremely manufactured
experiences. You can’t just have a bowl of cereal at home, it
has to be ‘the cereal experience’, the cereal-themed experience,
a level of abstraction that we seem to require now in order to
enjoy something. It might be a consequence of our extremely
mediated reality.”
Are YACHT satirising these developments? Yes. And no. Like
complaining about traffic when you are traffic, they’re as
implicated in the hipster/technology bind as the rest of us.
When I mention that a lot of this reminds me of Devo, who
peddled a philosophy similarly born of a bleak analysis of
mankind’s inherent stupidity alongside their exciting electronic
pop, and also relocated to LA when the going got wacky, it’s
met with an enthusiastic response.
“The thing that’s so brilliant about Devo is that there are so
many ways of consuming Devo,” says Claire. “Most people think
of them as that weird synth band that did that song ‘Whip
It’ and wore funny hats. And that’s a valid way to consume
them. But then you look a bit deeper and you realise there is
this incredibly thorough satirical and intellectual thing that’s
happening beneath all that stuff…”
“Not to mention an incredible catalogue of music,” adds Jona.
And there’s the rub. All the clever philosophy, satire and chic
graphic design in the world isn’t going to matter one bit unless
there’s some decent music there. Fortunately for us, ‘I Thought
The Future Would Be Cooler’ is stuffed with it.
The album opener, ‘Miles and Miles’, lays out YACHT’s stall
pretty effectively. It starts tiny, a single synth being poked
attractively, Claire singing about the emptiness of space and
the loneliness of life on Earth, before the song explodes into
a mirror ball of huge disco strings, and bounds along full of
excitement and optimism and an almost rockist headrush
which (and they probably won’t thank me for this) is vaguely
reminiscent of Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’. The whole album
seems to combine this nihilistic and grim analysis of life,
but stitches it into a can-do American positivity and a pop
sensibility that delivers hook after hook.
“We try not to make the same song twice... and definitely not
the same album twice,” says Jona. “So we’ve changed the
process literally every time we’ve written a song.”
Claire and Jona used to make a virtue from working with
limited equipment, in a sealed world of their own, applying a
lo-fi DIY ethic to their productions. It was good enough for DFA
Records, who released two YACHT albums (the aforementioned
‘See Mystery Lights’, followed by ‘Shangri-La’ in 2011) and who
were undoubtedly attracted by their inherent groove, historical
referencing and ability to put on a pretty great live show.
With ‘I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler’, however, YACHT
have thrown open the doors, inducting long-time live band
member Rob Kieswetter (who has had his own Bobby Birdman
project on the go since 2002) into the creative process and
recruiting top-drawer producer Jacknife Lee, who has helmed
albums by U2, Taylor Swift and One Direction.
The high-gloss electronic pop sheen, with its impressive
production credits and a sound to suit mainstream radio, is
made entirely palatable because YACHT’s output is back-loaded
with much anxiety and fuck-you attitude, not to mention some
absolutely impeccable influences, all of which is abundant
in their cover of Family Fodder’s ‘I Want To Fuck You Till
I’m Dead’. Family Fodder, in case they slipped by under your
radar, are a UK outfit centred around multi-instrumentalist
Alig Fodder. They have been releasing mini-masterpieces of
ultra-indie psych wonder since 1979, influencing the likes of
Stereolab along the way.
“I was very embarrassed about playing that song to my parents,”
says Claire. “But it’s so tender, it’s about wanting to give
everything of yourself to one person with total abandon in such
a sweet way.”
“I’ve been a huge fan of Family Fodder forever,” says Jona. “I
think their ‘Savoir Faire’ single is a perfect song, maybe my
very favourite song of all time. I love Family Fodder’s ‘Debbie
Harry’ and ‘Film Music’ too. Those three songs are like the
perfect trifecta.”
Talking of Debbie Harry, the title cut of ‘I Thought The Future
Would Be Cooler’ is clearly in the thrall of Blondie’s ‘Rapture’
and their cover of ‘The Tide Is High’, copping those gorgeous
swooping vocals and the even bells. It’s more than a simple
homage to the truly great Blondie, though. Somehow, despite
being in Los Angeles 35 years later, YACHT belong to that
post-punk New York scene, where the music industry was
briefly at the mercy of bands determined to forge new kinds of
idiosyncratic pop sounds.
That said, the video for ‘I Thought The Future Would Be
Cooler’ skewers pretty much every contemporary tech
obsession, from vaping to drones to Apple watches. The
album also does a fine line in post-modernist material like
‘Ringtone’, with its zeitgeist punching chant of “Ringtone!
Ringtone!”, which is about as millennial a pop song you’re
likely to hear this side of Taylor Swift. Another high-energy
high point from a record that is, frankly, full of them, is ‘The
War On Women Is Over”, a livid post-punk workout that deals
sarcastic lines such as “The war on women is over / If you
close your eyes” with considerable rage.
“I don’t get yelled at in the street, I don’t feel threatened, I
largely don’t feel unsafe,” says Claire. “But on the internet,
it’s a different story. There’s no image of me on the internet
that doesn’t have some horrible thing written underneath
it. Anyone who makes art in the 21st century – music,
photography, anything that has public documentation on
the web – experiences some degree of unprecedented vitriol
about what they do. That’s being public in the 21st century.
But being public and also being a woman, it’s several degrees
deeper and darker.
“I have all kinds of comment blockers on my web browsers so
that I don’t read the comments anymore, it can lead to one’s
undoing. It’s very dispiriting to work on something you’re
passionate about and then receive the most base, misogynistic
commentary about your body, or the criminal sin of having
short hair, or whatever it is that some jerk on the internet
thinks is important.”
XXX
YACHT
You thought the future would be cooler?
“I think about it a lot. I’ve been doing loads of research
recently about the early internet, because I’m working on a
project about it. In the beginning, when it was less a oneto-one representation of the world and was still something
that was a bit subversive and undergroundy, people were
very excited about anonymity as something that would be
very liberating. Feminists were writing extensively about
how we would be able to express ourselves without any fear
of judgement or limitation of gender in the freeing space of
the web, but that has kind of turned around, and anonymity
enables the darkest and most horrific kind of commentary
against women.”
Before we go, I want to clear up something about the
album’s artwork. Claire is pictured on the cover in a blank,
clinical environment, her cropped hair bleached, her makeup muted, dressed in a white sci-fi tunic. The only real
colour in the image comes from her rather startling three
arms, which are covered in red latex gloves.
“I’m the third arm,” reveals Jona. “It’s a practical effect, not
a Photoshop job.”
You’re actually under the desk with your arm poking up?
“Yes.”
“We wanted to pick an image that would appear futuristic
in some way, but not be immediately dated,” says Claire.
“Which is very difficult, without it looking like some retro
futurist kitschy thing within a few years. It speaks of being
of the future without me wearing some wacky glasses.”
So what does it mean?
“I guess that the focus has shifted to Claire with this album,”
replies Jona. “And that while I don’t sing any of the songs
on this record, I’m still attached.”
“He’s the manipulating hand that controls a lot of things that
are happening.”
“I’m not the puppet master, just the third arm.”
That’s cleared that up, then. As YACHT say themselves
in the final line of their manifesto, it’s easy to feel
disillusioned, if only it wasn’t all so funny sometimes…
‘I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler’ is on Downtown
The YACHT
Manifesto
The future is an impossible goal. It’s something we chase
after, believing in an illusion of control. That isn’t to say
our actions don’t affect what the future is like— in our
case, hot, dry, loud, unjust—but that once we catch up to
yesterday’s future, it’s no longer what we imagined. It’s just
the present all over again. And so on.
We’ve made an album about that. It contains some
speculations about the future that are big and distant as
science fiction stories. But it’s also about looking carefully
at the world around us and trying to understand what we’ve
done with the imaginations of those who came before us.
Would they believe it?
We live in a complex moment. There seem to be networks
at every level of reality; as with all our technologies, we
can’t keep ourselves from grabbing them, turning them
around, and using them as a mirror. Every person is a node.
Our technological economy is full of entities selling our own
lives back to us. It’s easy to feel disillusioned, if only it
wasn’t all so funny sometimes.
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MUERAN
HUMANOS
ARO
THE OU
OUND
UTSIDE
They make music that is at once experimental,
propulsive, foreboding and beautiful. They call it “rock
concrète”. They love Baudelaire and Shakespeare as
well as Suicide and Coil and Swans and Sonic Youth.
They are Tomás and Carmen, originally from Argentina
but now based in Berlin. Meet MUERAN HUMANOS
Words: BETHAN COLE
Pictures: TXEMA NOVELO
XXX
MUERAN
HUMANOS
Two Argentinians living in Berlin. They sing in Spanish, make
music full of minor chords, and have a taste for avant-garde
electronica, punk and industrial music like Coil, DAF and Suicide.
They also make their own, sometimes disturbing images and
videos. No wonder they think of themselves as outsiders.
And yet Berlin, a city of artists, thinkers and creators of many
colours, seems to be an ideal home for the two dispossessed
and saturnine musicians that call themselves Mueran Humanos.
Tomás Nochteff (aged 36) and Carmen Burguess (33) settled here
seven years ago, when they found there was more demand for
Carmen’s art and for them to play live in the German capital –
more so than in Barcelona, where they lived previously.
“Outsiders... it’s how we feel forever, since we were little
kids,” says Tomás, who does all the talking for the pair. “We’re
detached from mainstream culture, if you like. We are also
detached from our country of origin and from the country we are
living in. We are people who don’t fit.”
To my mind, this sense of uneasy alienation is very healthy for
the creative psyche. It’s perhaps even essential. You only have
to read Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ to realise that migrants and
émigrés are responsible for some of the most profound artworks
of the 20th century – with Polish-British author Joseph Conrad
an early prime example.
“So we’re more like outsider artists, artists who are not trained or
part of the art world,” continues Tomás. “I’m making an analogy
with them. We are like outsider artists because we’re not part of
the art world or the music world.”
And so ‘Miseress’, the second Mueran Humanos album, is a record
that doesn’t sound like much else around. To start with, the lyrics
are all in Spanish, and Tomás thinks not being able to comprehend
the meanings of songs might be a good thing for English listeners.
Then there’s the timbre of the sound, which is droney with a
chiaroscuro palette. Sometimes it’s light and effervescent, like on
the title track, sometimes it’s full of dank gloom and menace, as
on ‘Espejo De La Nada’ (‘Mirror Of Nothing’).
Tomás remembers hearing Led Zeppelin and The Police via
his father’s record collection when he was a child. Later, as a
teenager, he discovered Sonic Youth and Swans. Carmen says
she’s been influenced by punk music from Argentina; Tomás
cites lots of German bands, particularly krautrock outfits. On
their website, the pair ally themselves to Chrome, Silver Apples,
Coil and Suicide. It’s worth noting that Jochen Arbeit, guitarist
with legendary German industrialists Einstürzende Neubauten,
also plays on ‘Miseress’.
Mueran Humanos have channelled these influences and
inspirations into a music that’s packed with nuance and
orchestration. They’ve dubbed their very textural combination
of heavily treated synthesisers, guitars, drum machines and
tape loops as “rock concrète”, a reference to musique concrète
because of all the manipulated sounds, many of which cannot be
traced back to their sources.
“We don’t like to be labelled, so we invent a label for ourselves,”
laughs Tomás rather triumphantly. “It’s very tongue-in-cheek,
it’s kind of ironic in a way. What I’m trying to describe is that
we’re using techniques from musique concrète, we’re using
sound sources that are not made with instruments or that are
being processed, but at the same time we’re a rock group, so
‘rock concrète’ was a label which was fun for us to say.”
He goes on to explain that he and Carmen have recently spent
a lot of time listening to early avant-garde and embryonic
electronic musicians, particularly Pierre Schaeffer and Luc Ferrari,
as well as modern classical composers.
“We really enjoy all of these. But at the same time, I think this
music is actually experimental music, which means the most
important thing is the process. The process is important to us
too, but it’s different because we are coming from rock and pop
music. So what we are creating are songs not explorations.”
As the ‘Miseress’ album shows, what this adds up to is propulsive
and foreboding electronica with an almost gothic sensibility. So
where does the darkness in their sound come from?
“I think it’s just part of our personality, it’s just the things that
appeal to us,” says Tomás. “It’s not that you are a bad person
because you like aggressive music, you know. It’s usually the
opposite... really mean people listen to ballads! The guy in
‘American Psycho’, for instance, he listened to ballads.”
Not that Mueran Humanos sound especially depressive. Tomás
explains that it’s a kind of innate aesthetic awareness.
“It’s about poetry like Baudelaire, writers like Dostoyevsky, artists
like Aleksander Rodchenko. We naturally feel attracted to those
kinds of things. And it’s not only dark, there’s a lot of light too.
But society is very bleak and I think people often react to these
things. Part of the anger they feel comes from the frustration of
living in a modern society.”
Tomás has wanted to translate these feelings of anger and
frustration into art for a long time. Back in Argentina, when
he was working as a proof reader for a newspaper in Buenos
Aires, he became interested in the cut-up techniques of William
Burroughs and began experimenting using headlines from the
paper in his spare time. Much of what he came up with turned
out to have quite an apocalyptic theme. This is how the name
Mueran Humanos – Die Humans – first came about.
“Every night, I was coming home from my job very late,” he
says. “I was in a strange position because I knew everything
that people would be talking about the next day. It made
me realise how the newspapers and other media set the
conversations that we have every day, how they decide the
things that we talk about.”
Experimenting with the cut-up texts, he first made fake ransom
notes and a number of poems before eventually creating a
fanzine out of these fragments.
“If you take a newspaper and look at the headlines, you’ll mostly
see wars, disasters, break-ins, ransoms, fires, tsunamis, bombs,
kidnappings, death,” notes Tomás. “If you rearrange all this,
it looks like extremely dark stuff. I would show it to people
coming to my place and they’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s so dark, it’s all
about horror and terror’, and I would be like, ‘No, this is what
you are reading every day, you just don’t realise’.
“When you destroy and rearrange a text, you discover things that
are in your subconscious and the hidden powers of your mind,
but on the other hand the cut-ups also reveal what the original
texts are all about. That was why I made the name Mueran
Humanos, because it was like a comment on the headlines I was
using for the cut-ups.”
Appropriately, Tomás’ love of dystopian fiction has also
influenced ‘Miseress’. One song, ‘Guerrero De La Gloria Negativa’
(‘Warrior Of Negative Glory’), a droney and doomy incantation
that fizzes with an intense ritualistic energy, is based on the
Philip K Dick novel, ‘VALIS’. An acronym for ‘Vast Active
Living Intelligence System’, ‘VALIS’ explores Dick’s interest in
Gnosticism. The narrator, Horselover Fat, has visions that expose
hidden facts about the reality of life on earth, leading him to
embark upon a search for alien space probes and a two-year-old
female messiah called Sophia.
“The song is in a similar spirit to the novel, which is a novel that I
really like,” explains Tomás. “It mixes the psychedelic experience
and the mystical experience, so it can be quite confusing. You
don’t know where one starts and the other ends.
“To complete the lyric, I introduced a reference to the Black
Iron Prison, which is a concept from the novel. It’s a system
of social control and Horselover Fat wants to release humanity
from it and start time again. But because it’s all mixed up
with mysticism, the psychedelic drug experience and also
schizophrenia, nobody really knows what is happening. It’s a
very complex book, a mix of gnostic concepts and mental illness
and all the drugs that Philip K Dick took.”
MUERAN HUMANOS
XXX
The lyrics of the title track of ‘Miseress’ is about another fictional
character, but this is a character invented by Tomás and Carmen
themselves. While still minor key and haunting, not least thanks
to Carmen’s half whispered vocals, it’s less unrelenting and more
tuneful than some of the other tracks, almost hinting at New
Order in its arpeggiated background melody. It’s undoubtedly
the stand-out track of the album and Tomás explains that
the imagery Carmen has created for the record cover is also a
portrait of the woman featured in ‘Miseress’.
“The song is about a process in which this woman frees herself
and becomes an individual instead of a child or someone who
is not fully independent,” he says. “So it’s about how she takes
control of her life and the pain that she has to endure to do
that. The song talks of a condition of cold-heartedness, which is
something that women who are independent are often criticised
for. These women are called cold-hearted because they are not
seen as soft in the way a woman is supposed to be according to
the stereotype.”
Defying stereotypes and convention is something these two
autodidacts do well. Perhaps it’s their outsider ethos working.
Neither Tomás or Carmen had a conventional university
education and yet they both love to read, watch avant-garde
films, and create art and music.
“We were very bad students, both of us,” emphasises Tomás
without embarrassment. “We didn’t got to university. We didn’t
even finish high school.”
And yet they have a song based on the cult French film ‘The
Nun’ (‘El Vina De Las Orgias’) and another that includes a
snippet of Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV’ – “And if we live, we live to
tread on kings” (‘El Circulo’).
“Culture is seen as something boring,” says Tomas, sounding
rather irritated. “I don’t think so. People think reading books is
boring, but we find the opposite to be true. For me, reading the
sort of books I read is fun. For me, it’s the pop music on the
radio that is difficult.”
‘Miseress’ is very much a soundtrack for our troubled times from
two thoughtful and sensitive musicians, who seem to have
absorbed some of the world’s pain and are now retransmitting
it in their own inimitable style. They’ve had a strange journey
from Buenos Aires via Barcelona to Berlin, but let’s be thankful
they made it. If they hadn’t, this record wouldn’t sound quite
the same.
‘Miseress’ is out now on ATP Recordings
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ARTURIA ‘V COLLECTION 4’
SYNTHESISER DAVE
READERS’ SYNTHS
STREICHFETT STRING SYNTHESIZER
TECH
XXX
THE
SYNTHS
THAT
DREAMS
ARE
MADE OF
ARTURIA’s ‘V COLLECTION 4’, the biggest collection of vintage synth
emulations on the market, has just become a total bargain too
Words: MARK ROLAND
To step into Arturia’s ‘V Collection 4’ is to walk into a magical
room stuffed with every piece of vintage kit you’ve ever
wanted: it’s a millionaire’s playroom. And they know it too
because in the Analog lab software that’s part of this collection,
they’ve pictured the studio for you. There it is, with subtle
lighting making whichever synth you’ve decided to fire up glow
attractively. It’s a digital dream, but one that’s so nearly real it
hurts.
Arturia’s dominance of the soft synth biz apparently remains
largely untroubled by any serious competition. After all, they
worked with Robert Moog himself on their emulation of the
Moog modular, the Modular V – which is included here, natch.
The ‘V Collection 4’ is an extensive package of soft synths with
the attractive price point of £289. And while we were putting
this overview together, Arturia announced a promo period,
from now until the end of January, during which time you can
buy the collection for a staggeringly cheap £139.
As well as the Modular V, there are another 10 vintage synths/
keyboards onboard, the Spark 2 pad-based sequencer/sampler/
drum machine/phrase player as well as the Analog Lab, which
organises any of the sounds from the various soft synths behind
one simple interface, which was bundled with the Keylab series
of keyboards Arturia produce.
It’s basically every vintage emulation Arturia produce in one
mind-bogglingly huge package, or “our ultimate compilation of
13 multi-award-winning, 64-bit TAE software instruments”, as
Arturia put it. TAE is Arturia’s True Analog Emulation cleverness
and there’s a page about it on their website with graphs and
everything, making great claims for TAE’s reproduction of
oscillators, filters and soft clipping. I’ll let you look that up for
yourself while we get stuck in to the exciting stuff.
So what do we have here then? There’s Mini V (a Minimoog),
Modular V (Moog modular), CS-80 V, ARP 2600 V, Jupiter-8
V, Wurlitzer V, Prophet V & VS, Oberheim SEM V, Matrix-12 V,
Solina V and VOX Continental V, plus the above-mentioned
Spark 2 and Analog Lab.
It is an impossibly vast collection, and we don’t have the
time or space to dissect each synth in depth, but we’ll take
a whirlwind tour around the highlights. Suffice to say that
for something like £25 a pop (or £12 if you buy during the
promotional period), the ‘V Collection 4’ is a bargain and there
really is something for everybody here. I find myself coming
back to the Wurlitzer V and the VOX Continental V more than I
thought I would, and the Oberheim SEM V is a favourite… as is
the Jupiter-8 V. Oh, and the ARP 2600 V… and the Modular V.
If the 1960s and proper playing are your bag, the VOX
Continental V and the Wurlitzer V are great fun. The VOX with
its reverse keyboard and red casing comes with a whole host of
fun skeuomorphic elements; drawbars, rocker switches, effects
pedals and amps. You can choose to put it through a Leslie
cabinet, one of the amps, or direct and the whole thing sits on
a maple parquet floor. The Wurlitzer has a carpet under foot,
which becomes more visible when you hit the FX button on the
Wurlitzer V and the animation delivers a flightcase that slides
out across the old pub carpet, opens up, and you can load up
from a selection of stomp boxes. Click on the front panel of
the piano and it opens to reveal a graphic EQ and an editable
velocity curve. On the audio front, the hammer sounds on
some presets really can almost trick you into feeling like you’re
playing the real thing.
TECH
XXX
The Solina V string machine is a nice addition and is a good
place to go when you need that swelling synthetic string sound
that only ARP could deliver in the 1970s. It’s a very simple
interface, made more complex when you click on the lid, which
reveal upper resonator controls, the LFO and the effects panel.
Getting into synth world, chronologically speaking, starts with
the Moog Modular and the ARP 2600. Owning an ARP 2600
is, let’s face it, not an option for many of us (they only made
a few thousand of them after all) and you’re certainly not
going to find one that will change from a blue Marvin (ARP
freaks know what I’m talking about) to grey with the press of
a button. I know, but I’m easily pleased. I also love the way
notes can hang in the background on some sequences when
the filters don’t close properly JUST LIKE ON THE ORIGINAL.
A little bit of bleed is one of the analogue quirks that had been
all but wiped out by digital technology.
You can lose yourself in the ARP 2600 V and the same goes for
the monstrous Modular V, which allows you to fill empty panels
with more modules and patch them up. And if the intimidating
task of attaching cords from one module to another is a
synthesis too far (some of the presets are a proper spaghetti
bolognese of different coloured cables), you can always load
your favourite sounds into the library on the Analog Lab and
tweak them with easy-to-understand sliders and knobs, which
have been pre-mapped to the main parameters on the synth for
your ease and convenience. Both synths sound amazing and are
gateways to hundreds of lost headphone hours.
A more straightforward experience awaits with the Mini V,
Arturia’s very well established Minimoog emulator. It’s easy to
use and really does sound like a Minimoog to those of us who
aren’t going to fire up an oscilloscope and the like to measure
the differences.
The Oberheim SEM V emulator (the original synth was first
produced in 1974) is a joyous experience. The iPad version
is already a big favourite around these parts and there’s
something about its simple architecture that makes it so
compelling. It’s down to taste, of course, but the SEM V makes
some excellent aggressive sounds very easily, yet can also
produce rich and sweet pads. Two VCOS and sub oscillator,
filters, the arpeggiator plus some onboard effects are all you
need. And it offers up to 32-note polyphony. Killer.
You can progress through the years and have a play with
the CS-80 V. It has PRETEND COOLING FANS! It’s so damn
complicated its pixels need pretend cooling down. You can
only really marvel at this stuff (and stop them spinning and
distracting you by clicking on them). I know everyone has a
million plug-ins and computer software is capable of magic, but
really, the attention to detail is staggering.
Another example: you can get inside the CS-80 V by clicking
on the panel on the bottom right and there you find the detune
panel. There’s a representation of its oscillators, emerging from
a tangle of wires, and you can detune them. Just like the real
thing. The CS-80 was notorious for oscillator drift and some
people liked it because of it. So you want to recreate it? Go
ahead, Arturia think you should. Luckily, there’s a reset button.
*Presses reset button*. One complaint for my ageing eyes is that
it is a bit on the small side, given the densely packed panel.
Squinting at the tiny sliders got a bit tiring. But I fixed it using
the Accessibility panel on my Mac, which enables me to zoom
and fill the screen with the synth.
After the complexity of the CS-80 V, it’s something of a relief
to get to the relative simplicity Jupiter-8 V. This may well
be my own bias, I’m just so much happier with synths that I
understand and the Jupiter is one of them. It’s a pleasure to
fool around with and while I don’t own a Jupiter-8, I do have a
Juno-106 and Jupiter-4. If I close my eyes, you could fool me
into thinking either them was playing at times, it’s recognisably
Roland, circa late 1970s/early 1980s.
The Prophet-V, which is a hybrid of the Prophet 5 and the VS two for the price of one if you like, represents the Sequential
Circuits contribution to synths and its move from the analogue
70s to the digital world of the 80s. It’s nice to have them both
here and in hybrid mode you can play them both at the same
time for some very complex sounds. The Oberheim Matrix-12
V, meanwhile, is an absolute beast. With a patch named
Complete Mess, you can tell it’s not just me who has got
themselves tied up with it. It’s an intimidating looking thing,
LEDs glowing, the mathematical approach, multiple envelopes
hiding behind labels, which are buried in pages, so many
choices… stick to the presets, captain. The original was known
for its flexibility (and complexity), and the V version has carried
that across.
A pretty thorough collection, then. I don’t suppose making soft
synths is really a game where you take requests, but if Arturia
were to make an EDP Wasp (with Gnat and Spider sequencer
thrown in) I would be first in the queue. One day…
Arturia ‘V Collection 4’ RRP £289. From now until
31 January 2016, Arturia is discounting the package to £139.
For more, visit arturia.com
XXX
TECH
SYNTH
ESISER
DAVE
This month, Synthesiser Dave steps in to revive
a rather poorly KORG DELTA
You know how there are urban legends about old synths being found in skips?
Well, here’s a real one. Synthesiser Dave was given a Korg Delta a few years ago.
The person who passed it on was a bit cagey about where it had come from at the
time, saying he’d picked it up cheap. Last year he confessed the truth – he found it in
a skip. For real. Along with a Korg MS-20 and a Korg sequencer. We can but dream.
Anyway, it turns out the Korg Delta had been mistreated by its previous owner and
Dave needs to get it fixed up so we can enjoy the sounds of 1978 in full polyphony
(all 49 notes of it!)
watch the video
www.youtube.com/embed/mDsLSJTmfEE
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XXX
TECH
READERS’
SYNTHS
Got a synth with a tale to tell? Send your stories to
[email protected] with ‘Readers’ Synths’ as the subject line
HEWLETT PACKARD/RCA/B
& K/EICO TEST OSCILLATORS
Owner: Rod Mitchell
Where: Wasatch Mountains,
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Year purchased: 2011
Amount paid: $45 – 50
“The sound of the vintage test oscillators has been something that my ear was
drawn to since childhood. In all of the old sci-fi films that was the sound of
the future. My work is greatly influenced by the sounds of yesterday’s world of
tomorrow. My aim is to take that sense of optimism and combine these sounds with
the world of now. As a result, my studio is an odd blend of the really old and the
really new.
“The vintage electronic gear was mostly purchased from the surplus department
where I work, or was donated to me by friends who were more than a little amused
that anyone would use these ‘boat anchors’. I have four tube-driven oscillators, one
RCA that dates to the 1940s and three Hewlett Packards that probably date to the
early 1960s. There are two solid state oscillators from the 1970s, one by B & K, the
other by Eico. The solid state models are dual waveform units generating sine and
square waves. The tube models are sine wave only.
“None of them worked properly when I first got them. The capacitors were old, the
tubes worn out. I spent a great deal of time and money fixing them and keeping
them working. The Eico and the B & K are solid state so they didn’t hum too bad. But
the other three were unusable at first and required a lot of parts and effort.
“There is really nothing that sounds like a tube sine wave in synthesis. They have
a very pure tone, but at higher amplitudes they clip, almost to a square. These
machines provided the raw samples that were used by the late Stephen Howell at
Hollow Sun to produce a series of software instruments for the Kontakt sampler. In
the early days of tape music, natural and found sounds played a large role. Recordings
were made, reversed, played at different speeds and so forth. Found sound is a large
part of most of my compositions. I like sounds that wheeze, hiss, hum and distort.”
Check out Rod’s work as Atomic Shadow at atomicshadow.com
TECH
XXX
STREICHFETT STRING
SYNTHESIZER
When you need that 1970s string sound,
this nice little go-to box from Waldorf hits the spot
Words: MARK ROLAND
TECH
XXX
In the 1970s, synthesis was often pressed into what were quite
sad attempts at emulation of acoustic instruments. The “any
sound at your fingertips” marketing promises many synthesiser
ads made were met with understandable snorts of derision
when the presets on, say, a Moog Satellite were demonstrated.
Or perhaps an ARP Solina String Ensemble. What were
considered hopelessly compromised attempts by machines to
create anything approaching the organic majesty of massed
strings of an orchestra fell out of fashion pretty quickly. The
only way you could make use of the sounds on offer was to
create your own special sauce of effects and ladle it all over
them, only then would they start to make quite useful pads.
It’s probably safe to say that string machines were never taken
to the heart of budding synthesists of the 1970s and many were
junked far more quickly than “real” synths.
But then people started to listening more closely to Kraftwerk
and their string sounds (mostly provided by the eccentric Vako
Orchestron), Air released ‘Moon Safari’, disco was re-evaluated
and an appreciation grew for the string machine of the 1970s
and its atmospheric space-filling capacity.
The Waldorf Streichfett String Synthesizer is an attempt to
create a small, modern box synth that gives users the same
kind of shimmering synthetic string sounds of a past era. Once
you’ve popped the word “Streichfett” into Google Translate
(which tells us it means “spreadable fat”, which either sort
of makes sense in a world where a fuzz pedal can be called
Swollen Pickle, or is garbled nonsense, I can no longer tell the
difference), you can hook the thing up to your computer via
the MIDI power cable (you can also use the supplied mains
USB cable) and it appears as a MIDI device in your favourite
DAW (or just plug it into a MIDI keyboard) and you’re away.
The box is reassuringly simple. Just 10 knobs and six switches
across the whole panel. You get three banks of memory, with
four patches for each bank, so just 12 memory locations. The
machine is divided into two sections: strings and solo. The solo
section is based around a tone generator that produces classic
simple presets: Bass, E-Piano, Clavi, Synth and, erm, Pluto. You
sweep between them rather than select them, which can lead
to some interesting transitions. The filtering options are limited,
as you’d expect. The rudimentary VCA has an Attack knob,
which delivers clicks in its Perc range, a Decay knob which
also doubles as Release, and when you switch its modifier to
give a (slightly) more complex envelope it adds sustain at 100
per cent. Finally, there’s a dramatic Tremolo effect: the knob
controls both the speed and depth of the effect – you can’t
alter those parameters independently. You can slap reverb
from the internal effects section on the solo sound. The Effect
section also offers Phaser and Animate, but these appear to
have limited, if any, impact on the solo sounds.
Meanwhile, over in the strings section things are little more
lush. Again, the tone generator is a sweeping knob that moves
between Violin, Viola, Cello, Brass, Organ and Choir with a
Crescendo knob (attack time to reach full sustain – there is
no separate sustain) and Release. An octave selector allows
you to mix upper and lower registers or play them separately.
The manual recommends that you keep the Ensemble button
pressed. This is chorus and it fattens the section’s sound
considerably and has three options that vary from very wide, to
less wide, to a bit of both. Further quite radical mutations are
made possible via the Effects section, where the Phaser makes
for some gasping shapes and Animate creates movement in the
sound (it’s actually an LFO). Again, only the depth is editable –
the speed of the effect is pre-programmed.
What Waldorf have done here is create a simple synthesiser
with limited options and worked on making effects which,
although also restricted, end up giving you a wide range of
colours and tonal textures that have real character. I’m a big
fan of reduced options when it comes to sound creating, it
simplifies the process and allows for quicker decision making.
It’s a faster route to invention and a way out of paralysis
caused by endless choice. You need a string sound? Power up
the string machine, play with the knobs until it sounds the way
you like it. And because of its pre-programmed nature, you’ll
like what you hear pretty quickly, it’s been engineered to
sound good and fit into mixes. By experts.
Although Waldorf seem a little shy of the raw unprocessed
sound of the Streichfett (“We recommend you always activate
the Ensemble Switch for strings and choir sounds,” says the
manual), it’s eminently usable if you’re looking for a naive,
naked sound. Mind you, whack the Ensemble button and
suddenly you’re catapulted into a lush bed of gently flowing
strings which is irresistible.
Downsides? Well, the sounds can be a little harsh, and we
found ourselves wishing we had a cut-off filter just to take
the edge off. But there’s nothing that can’t be solved with a
little judicious use of EQ. We also detected some occasional
anomalous output from the Streichfett, a quiet high whining
noise, some kind of oscillator leak, and there is some hiss in
the output too, so the more fussy might want to gate it in your
mixes. But we think that these little quirks are part of what
gives analogue instruments their character. Or we’re lazy. But
then this is a machine that will have you playing The Beatles’
‘Blue Jay Way’ one second and doing The Pet Shop Boys the
next. From swirling overwrought psychedelia to cool elegance,
it’s all in there.
Waldorf Streichfett String Synthesizer RRP £199.
For more info, visit www.waldorf-music.info
ALBUM
REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
XXX
blamed them. Their work here was done,
surely. Trying to follow that record was
Stereo MCs hard. Stone Roses difficult.
Of course, we all know what happened.
‘Born Slippy (Nuxx)’ happened. Thanks
to a slot in Danny Boyle’s ‘Trainspotting’,
the former B-side and non-album single
sold over a million copies in the UK, spent
41 weeks on the charts, topped out at
number two and ended up Single of the
Year in both NME and Melody Maker.
And then they followed that up with this.
THIS.
UNDERWORLD
Second Toughest In The Infants
UNIVERSAL MUSIC CATALOGUE
A masterclass from Romford’s
finest in how to do a 20th
anniversary reissue
“What’s he saying?” has long been
the cry ever since I’ve been playing
Underworld in earshot of the offspring.
“Something about a Greek hat? And salty
something? Was that fish man? It gets
wet? Like an angel?”
In our house, Underworld are known as
Skullface, a reference to the cover of
their 2002 ‘A Hundred Days Off’ album
that looks like, well, a skull. To this day,
they remain pretty much the only thing
up my sleeve the progeny will tolerate.
Why? Because no one does it quite
like Underworld. No one builds tracks
like they do, no one drops a beat quite
like them and no one else does whiteknuckle doolaalee techno shizz as good
as Skullface. It’s such a basic thrill that
even those with cloth ears get it.
Originally released in March
1996, ‘Second Toughest In The
Infants’ was the follow-up to
‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’, a debut
album so brilliant that if Smith, Hyde
and Emerson had packed up and become
chartered accounts no one would have
‘Second Toughest...’ is Underworld’s
finest hour, or one hour, 13 minutes and
12 seconds if you’re counting. And you
should be, because not one second is
time wasted. What’s more, the 20th
anniversary is marked with so much
more than an obligatory remastering and
reissue.
The frankly irresistible super-deluxe fourdisc edition is the only serious option as
it features the album itself (remastered at
Abbey Road) along with a disc of singles,
B-sides and remixes, one of previously
unreleased cuts and a fourth slab of
demos, live takes and mixes of just one
track. Which one? You really have to ask?
The album itself we know about. You
don’t? Stop reading immediately. You
need to head it. We’ll wait. Back?
Pretty good eh? It’s a total ground zero
album from which much of the last 20
years of electronic music has catapulted
itself. The opening segue of ‘Juanita:
Kiteless: To Dream Of Love’, followed
by ‘Banstyle/Sappys Curry’ is a truly
marvellous way to spend half an hour.
And that’s just the first two cuts. This
collection offers up over four hours of
further delights.
CD2, featuring singles, B-sides and
remixes, is better than many first choice
standalone albums. ‘Cherry Pie’ is a
total heart-stopper, re-rubbing as it
does the epic swirl of ‘Rowla’; ‘Oich
Oich’ is a hoot with Rick on delicious
confusing word duty. CD3 meanwhile,
the previously unreleased material set,
is a fascinating glimpse into the creative
process behind a stone-cold classic
album, with early versions of ‘Confusion
The Waitress’, ‘Rowla’ and ‘Pearl’s Girl’
among a mountain of ideas others can
only dream of. The final disc charts the
genesis of ‘(Nuxx)’ with seven versions demos, lives, mixes - topped off with the
breathtaking full-length, remastered 11
minute 46 second version of ‘Born Slippy
(Nuxx)’.
Like the eight tracks on the original
release weren’t enough on their own.
With your boxset Skullface, you are
spoiling us. It really is a complete treat.
What’s he saying? “Rust on the rails”?
NEIL MASON
countenance, rather like a charismatic
lounge lizard turning up pissed at your
dinner party. Given the reputation of
Schmidt’s collaborator on the next clutch
of projects, it’s an appropriate image.
IRMIN SCHMIDT
Electro Violet
MUTE
A 12-CD retrospective of the
Can man’s solo work delivers a
thorough listening experience for
those with stamina
A taste of Irmin Schmidt’s solo material
was made available a couple of years
ago with the enjoyable ‘Villa Wunderbar’
compilation. Clearly it went down pretty
well, because Mute have now gone the
whole 12-disc-boxset-40-page-booklet
retrospective hog. It’s an epic amount of
listening, but remarkably there’s never a
dull moment.
The first CD, ‘Toy Planet’ (1981), is a
collaboration with a fellow pioneer
of electronic music and high/pop art
jazzer Bruno Spoerri (who recently had
a decent payday after winning a legal
tussle with Jay Z over an uncleared
sample). It was recorded at Spoerri’s
studio in Switzerland where they may
well have been using his EMS Synthi 100
(which recently turned up on eBay with
a £70,000 price tag) to generate some
of the electronic pulsing. It certainly
sounds like it. The album combines
Spoerri’s sax with danceable electronic
beats and some junk percussion, which
gives the whole thing a lush, shambolic
Duncan Fallowell is a writer who was
something of a counterculture figure in
the early 1970s when he had a music
column in The Spectator. He was one of
the first British music journalists to cover
the German scene, and came close to
actually joining Can when Damo Suzuki
left. He’s since gained a considerable
reputation as a novelist and travel
writer, and his input looms over 1987’s
‘Musk At Dusk’ and beyond. Schmidt
sings Fallowell’s words, and the album
retains a sense of the writer’s strangeness
throughout. It’s a drowsy collection,
slinkily subverting bossa nova rhythms
and jazz to create an enjoyably sleazy
easy listening experience unadulterated by
irony. It sounds more at home alongside
Kurt Weill than 1970s krautrock,
especially on the standout, the fabulous
and disturbing ‘The Child In History’.
The 1991 album ‘Impossible Holidays’,
a continuation of the themes and
louche feel of ‘Musk At Dusk’, ends
with ‘Gormenghast Drift’, signposting
the arrival of the opera ‘Gormenghast’
(libretto by Fallowell), which was
premiered in 1998 in Germany and
released in 2000. It mixes arias
delivered by sopranos with the beat
mongering that doubtlessly led to more
than a handful of German opera lovers
covering their ears in horror.
‘Masters Of Confusion’ and ‘Axolotl Eyes’
are collaborations with Jono Podmore,
aka Kumo and also records as Metamono,
and represent a wholehearted leap into
the electronic sounds of 21st century
beat production. Both albums are notable
for some flamboyant piano playing,
explosive electronics and “concrete”
recordings; mostly plate smashing left
over from the ‘Gormenghast’ sessions.
The multiple sound textures Podmore
and Schmidt conjure up frankly put a
great deal of contemporary electronica to
shame. If Miles Davis had lived into the
laptop electronica age, maybe he’d have
made a record that sounded a little like
parts of ‘Axolotl Eyes’.
The film music (half the CDs here are
culled from various TV and film projects)
is equally interesting. Moments like
the catchy ‘Mary In A Coma’ combine
Schmidt’s love of melody, humour and
experimentation, and there is a wealth of
similar explorations to discover.
While 12 discs of one composer’s output
might seem a little daunting, especially
when that composer has avant-garde
chops to spare and an opera to his name,
‘Electro Violet’ is actually an eminently
listenable and enjoyable retrospective
with enough depth and variation to suit
every occasion, and enough of a stretch
for the average listener without ever
veering into horror show territory.
MARK ROLAND
XXX
ALBUM
REVIEWS
listen-once, pick the best/delete the
rest pop music befitting the instant
gratification tastes of some music fans.
‘Whispering’ has its fair share of hidden
depths, whether through evoking the
rigid forms of abstract art on ‘Klee’ or
somnambulant concerns on the pulse and
thud of ‘A Dream You Never Wake Up
From’. ‘Yokan Teresa’ steps away from
the electronic framework and adds frantic
guitar work that sits somewhere between
Factory Records jangliness and Talking
Heads on ‘Thank You For Sending Me An
Angel’.
YOKAN SYSTEM
Whispering
AMPLE PLAY
Japanese duo construct
fizzy pop album that’s too
good to whisper about
To go from that burst of six-string
randomness to ‘Yapa’, which seems
to co-opt the synth arpeggio from
Kraftwerk’s ‘The Robots’, takes some
doing, but Yokan System don’t seem
to get troubled by that type of thing.
When you can write impressive one-note
melodic refrains like on the brief middle
eight of that track, any nod to electronic
music’s forebears is totally acceptable.
At the other extreme, ‘Tete’ has the feel
of Yokan System operating on the edge
of control, trying to wrestle wayward
synths as they judder and bolt recklessly
forward.
If one criticism can be levelled at
‘Whispering’ – and I admit it is somewhat
tenuous – it’s that after a while pop
music this slick can feel a little like
eating too many brightly-coloured
sweets. Sometimes you just need a
burst of something optimistic, cheerful,
energetic and fun. Album highlight ‘Sea
Moon’ is a case in point being the type
of affirming pop that lifts your spirits
and causes all sorts of warm, fuzzy
recollections to spill forth. This is what
good pop music is supposed to do, and
Yokan System do it better than most.
MAT SMITH
‘Whispering’, the debut album from the
Tokyo-based duo of Mai and Tsukasa is
a ridiculously polished affair, the kind
of deft electronic pop music that most
artists take years to accomplish and
that makes other recent attempts in the
genre sound woefully inadequate.
The album contains 13 short tracks, all
chock-full of shimmering, luminescent
brilliance and haunting voices. Like all
good pop music should, the songs range
from downbeat, introspective moments
to the neatly euphoric, all of which are
deceptively simple, not structured from
overly complex building blocks, just
sharp, infectious, bold melodies and
gently insistent vocals sung in Japanese
and English. Think of it as being like
minimalist furniture constructed entirely
from brightly-lit neon tubes.
In spite of the impressive, naggingly
insistent quality of the finest moments
here – the pairing of ‘Sympathy Doll’
with its recollections of New Order circa
‘586’ and the mysterious ‘Ipanema’ being
cases in point – this isn’t throwaway,
Pic: Phil Miller
Yet while that very individual style
remains a constant here, he’s also clearly
enjoying the chance to escape the
relatively tight confines of dancefloor d
’n’ b tunes here. He might jokingly refer
to the album as an ‘Obsolete Medium’
in the title, but he makes full use of the
freedom that medium allows to explore a
range of sounds, speeds and genres.
ROCKWELL
Obsolete Medium
SHOGUN AUDIO
Drum ’n’ bass gets a sizeable kick up
the backside from a true maverick
While much of drum ’n’ bass, once
the most progressive and boldly
experimental of forces in electronic
music, is sadly stuck in a creative rut at
the moment, there are still a few brave
souls out there still willing to shake up
and reinvent the genre.
London-based producer Thomas Green,
better known as Rockwell to those
who’ve caught his string of singles over
the past five years, is one of those
renegades. From his first productions
onwards he has always displayed a
distinctive and instantly recognisable
style, meaning a Rockwell tune sticks
out in a DJ set the same way a fresh
Dillinja cut did in the 1990s or an Andy C
track in the early 2000s.
Putting that Rockwell sound into words is
difficult. It certainly seems more electronic,
more digital than the free flowing, live
sounding breakbeats of most d ’n’ b,
almost as if that well worn template had
been smashed into a thousand tiny pieces
and then meticulously reconstructed, each
minute particle given its own individual bit
of sonic sparkle.
After a short introductory skit, it kicks
off with its most conventional moment,
the tender vocal track ‘Faces’, sung in the
sweetly lilting and heartbroken voice of
Lauren L’Aimant. From then on, however,
the script is torn up and we’re taken
on a rapid trip through 360 degrees of
beats. ‘INeedU’ and ‘Lines Of Ground
Glass’ are both d ’n’ b on paper, but in
the flesh prove to be enthralling collages
of rave euphoria, Detroit techno grandeur
and Art Of Noise-style synth magic.
‘14Me’ is hip hop speed, but boasts
both delicate melodicism and dubstep
savagery, its backbone boiled down to
the simplest of snares and sub-bass
rumbles. There’s an accomplished full-on
rap offering (‘Guts, Blood, Sex, Drugs’)
that pops up unexpectedly two-thirds of
the way through, with Brooklyn rapper
Ja’s commanding rhymes providing a
timely human counterpoint to all the
bewildering electronic trickery.
It starts bonkers, basically, and by the
end it’s even more insane. ‘Please Please
Please (Play This On The Radio)’ not only
has one of the funniest song titles of the
year, its thrusting rave stabs and manic
techno-flavoured energy sound like Jeff
Mills and Squarepusher double booked
in the same studio. It has about as much
chance of making the Radio 1 playlist
as the next Gary Glitter single, but it’s
fantastic all the same, and on a sweaty
3am dancefloor will make total sense.
All in all it’s a brave and totally
committed statement from an artist who
evidently believes there are many more
interesting and strange places electronic
music is yet to travel to. While that
might not earn him a place on daytime
radio alongside Rudimental, it has
certainly earned our respect. Obsolete
medium? Extra large more like.
BEN WILLMOTT
XXX
ALBUM
REVIEWS
‘I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler’
is a colossal failure as a coming-out party
for Claire L. Evans’ beautiful brain. But,
really, it’s not her fault. Pop music has
its own weird rules - anything in German
sounds absurd; Coldplay + time =
Maroon 5. And you can’t write about the
nexus of technology and contemporary
socio-politics if your genre de choix is
electropop. It’s just too obvious, too
tautological; a double-positive that
always resolves to a negative. It’s the
hammy robot in 50s sci-fi that croaks
“I AM A ROBOT” because it’s a robot.
We know. You’re a robot. Cute.
YACHT
I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler
DOWNTOWN RECORDS
Electropop brainiacs rustle up
the party album of the year.
Hands down, no question
It’s difficult being a clever bastard.
Unless you hide your light under
a bushel (or a taxi, in the case of
unlikely cab-driving 1980 ‘Mastermind’
champion, Fred Housego), people love
to take pot-shots at anyone whose IQ
outnumbers their waist measurement.
The phrase “know it all” is an insult.
Which is weird right?
That’s why, if you’re going to be a
smart-aleck Mekon who day-jobs writing
serious papers for respected science
journals, you’d better be careful only to
mix in similarly egg-headed circles. The
last thing you want to do is strap on a
pair of stilettos and glam it up as the
Annie Lennox half of this generation’s
Eurythmics. And, if you really must go
there, you definitely don’t want to write
an album about digital identity, ecology,
wealth distribution, feminism and other
CLEVER THINGS FOR CLEVER PEOPLE
because some moronic critic is bound to
sneer at you for doing a hokey job of it.
Did someone call?
So basically, this album is doomed to
failure. And yet it’s phenomenal… once
you ignore the lyrics that is (except
the rather brilliant ones to ‘Don’t Be
Rude’, which is essentially ‘ET: The
Extra-Terrestrial: The Musical’, scored
by Sparks, choreographed by Toni Basil
and stretched into a heartbreaking ronde
by the ghost of The Cure). That might
be down to the Dave Stewart half of
YACHT, Jona Bechtolt. It might be the
result of the album’s sound-sculpting
collaborators (including Jacknife Lee).
But, mainly, it’s just the mathematical
miracle of squeezing 2,777 ideas into
just 2,776 seconds.
The opener, ‘Miles & Miles’, manages
to cram in six distinct movements,
out-‘Paranoid Android’-ing Radiohead
by way of ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Voodoo Ray’
and the hippie rock musical ‘Hair’. And
it’s all uphill, downhill, upside down,
round-the-bend, inside-out from there
on, as the next 10 tracks Rik Mayall
their maniacal way through the LCD
Soundsystem / Ace Of Base / Blondie
/ Beloved / Daft Punk / Fugazi / PSB
/ Fountains Of Wayne / Stuart Price
/ Gwen Stefani / Hot Chip / Aphex
Twin / Daphne & Celeste songbook
(which doesn’t exist, but definitely
should). Personal fave? ‘L.A. Plays
Itself’, because I’m a sucker for threeminute pop songs with bonus choruses,
obscenely squelchy basslines and a
swaggering tempo that evokes images of
The Bee Gees fucking potholes up and
down Hollywood Boulevard. But why
pick? Even the turkeys are eagles.
A brilliant, exhilarating, dumb pop
album, overflowing with imagination,
humour and breathtaking sounds which
seem to make the air dance in your
ears. And you know what? It takes some
serious smarts to pull that off.
ROBIN BRESNARK
SHAPE WORSHIP
A City Remembrancer
FRONT & FOLLOW
Bored of London? Try this
intelligent psychogeographical
take on our nation’s capital
‘A City Remembrancer’, the debut album
from south London producer Ed Gillett, is
something of a confusing paradox in the
world of electronic music. This is, after
all, a form of music that is inherently
a product of progress. And yet, by
taking London’s ongoing state of flux
as its subject matter, Gillett is asking
us to think about the implications of
advancement.
London is, of course, a product of constant
change and continuous development.
Its long history is one of population
upheaval, ghettofication, community
displacement and gentrification. Typically
this is undertaken under the auspices of
societal improvement, but more cynically
because of the financial motivations
afforded by real estate.
Gillett’s conceit when documenting
the psychogeography of London’s
history is subtly manipulative. On one
track, ‘Mudlarks’, he includes recorded
conversations of archaeologists trawling
the amorphous muddy banks of the
Thames to reveal relics from the city’s
past, long buried and randomly brought
to the surface thanks to the tidal
movement of the famous river. In doing
so, he is gently expressing how the great
waterway itself attempts to preserve the
capital’s rich history. Contrast this with
‘Heygate Palimpsest’, about a doomed
housing estate in Elephant and Castle
wherein London’s policymakers sought
to forcibly erase an aspect of its social
legacy and pretend it never happened.
The estate itself was constructed using
the principles of Swiss-French modern
architecture pioneer, Le Corbusier,
and was regarded as modernity itself
when it was built, yet is now seen as
embarrassing by planners compared to
shiny cookie-cutter glass boxes. It lasted
less than 40 years.
With these politicised themes as the
motivation, ‘A City Remembrancer’
should perhaps have been a folk album.
Instead it has the same depth and
ambient sheen as The Orb circa ‘U.F.Orb’,
its ideas being allowed to develop
along discrete paths before swelling
into more complex, almost mechanistic
arrangements. ‘Zoned (Hectate)’ fizzes
with warm, bubbling analogue textures
before carefully-positioned breakbeats
add an element of forward motion and
energy to the track before dropping out
into gentle, pretty piano layers.
‘Vertices (Ziggurat)’ finds Gillett spraying
the track with juddering, skipping beats
and monolithic bass tones as it attempts
to draw a comparison between high-rise
developments and the doomed Tower of
Babylon.
If the subject matter sounds like Gillett
is focussed solely on problems, that
isn’t totally the case. The ethereal
atmospherics of ‘An Exemplar’ has that
forward-looking sheen of a science
documentary, the tones and textures
intended to evoke feelings of invention
and the power of imagination (think
Disney’s future world EPCOT Center
theme park), but is its inclusion laced
with irony? After all, Corbusier’s
concrete dreams were once seen as
the logical panacea for encouraging
demographic and societal harmony.
These are deep themes, unsettling ones if
you choose to focus on them, and Gillett
only really offers you an insight into the
issues; it’s up to the listener to decide
whether to respond to, or ignore, what
he’s teasing out here within the structure
of an absorbing suite of intelligent
electronic tracks. Choose wisely.
MAT SMITH
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word a few too many times, or just the
final syllable. It’s disorienting, being
unable to tell man from machine. ‘Over
Now’ initially plays it straight, but this
is revealed as a feint when the song
suddenly erupts into vicious static. It’s
difficult to listen to and almost had me
checking my speakers.
AUTRE NE VEUT
Age of Transparency
DOWNTOWN
Stateside singer/producer messes
with convention and serves up an
album for the narcissistic laptop era
Autre Ne Veut is 33-year-old Arthur
Ashin who works at the margins of R&B
and electronica. His last album, 2013’s
critically acclaimed ‘Anxiety’, set the
bar high for ‘Age of Transparency’. It’s a
dense record, so let’s get stuck in…
Ashin’s arresting vocal style will
undoubtedly be off-putting for some, but
a real draw for those who value gut-level
impact over technique. It scans as R&B in
the sense that it seems to communicate
meaning and emotion outside of the
lyrics. It’s performative, but entirely
sincere – excess in aid of clarity rather
than obfuscation.
Throughout the album, Ashin revels in
playing with the fabric of his sound.
There’s plenty of vocal manipulation and
digital glitching. ‘On And On (Reprise)’
is a bold curtain raiser. It begins as a
showcase for the strength and power
of Ashin’s voice, before turning into
something of a litmus test for the
following 45 minutes. He begins to
replicate certain digital ruptures with
his voice alone – repeating a particular
Plenty of other musicians are working
with similar ideas, but Ashin employs
these techniques in a particularly
effective way, making it part of the track
rather than an end in itself. Unprepared,
you may genuinely be tricked into
thinking your CD is skipping, or that the
file is corrupted. Rather than drawing you
into a rich soundworld, it has the effect
of repelling you, of placing you on the
outside. Combined with Ashin’s theatrical
vocals, it’s quickly evident that you’re
listening to a performance. It feels like
his aim is not to make you focus on the
sound itself, but rather how it affects
your listening.
Some of the songs lean closer to more
straightforward synth pop. ‘Panic Room’
sounds like something Passion Pit might
have come up with, while ‘Switch Hitter’
stalks around like a nightmare cabaret.
Neither is a particular highlight, but
they’re crucial to the running order –
touches of lightness that prevent the
record from appearing too wrapped up
in its own self-importance.
Nearing the end of my first listen, I
couldn’t wait to press play again. I was
excited by what I’d heard, anxious to
gather my thoughts and write. Then
the first bars of the final track ‘Get Out’
hit, and within minutes I was convinced
I was listening to one of the year’s
finest records in any genre. It’s glorious
and overwhelming, a well-earned
showstopper. The chorus is pure pop, like
something off a Blood Orange album.
Everything cuts out halfway through,
before the song gradually builds back up
again with church organ and heavenly
choir. It feels like a secular spiritual,
so fervent are the vocals – and indeed,
the transcendent climax reminds me of
Spiritualized’s swirling gospel rock.
Ashin has made a fantastic record, one
that expertly balances his experimental
and pop directions. ‘Age Of Transparency’
is fully in love with the possibilities
of sound, and continually flattens you
with intense physical rushes whilst also
providing more cerebral pleasures.
COSMO GODFREE
like some sort of thrash metal/Zen garden
hybrid, it takes the Pixies’ classic quiet/
loud dynamic to terrifying extremes.
There’s a particularly punishing section in
the middle, with Lopatin providing brief
moments of soft piano respite before
submerging you again in the digital murk.
ONEOHTRIX
POINT NEVER
Garden of Delete
WARP
Experimental composer dials up
the fear factor for his most
ambitious album yet
Brooklyn-based Daniel Lopatin, owner
of the Software label and all-round
experimental dude, derives his recording
alias from WMJX 106.7, Boston’s adult
contemporary station. Which is about
the last place on earth he can expect
to hear his own music. If Oneohtrix is a
radio station, then ‘Garden Of Delete’, his
seventh album and the second for Warp,
is a mangled transmission, one that
begins with jabbering goblin noises and
just gets weirder from there.
‘Garden Of Delete’ is a confrontational
record that challenges the listener
throughout its duration, constantly
teasing and feinting, baiting and daring.
It doubles down on the more “difficult”
aspects of Lopatin’s sound – sensory
overload, aggressive synth barrages,
harshly distorted vocals – and relegates
all that soft ambient droney vaporwave
stuff to the background.
Early teaser ‘I Bite Through It’ is one of
the more immediate tracks. Coming on
‘Mutant Standard’ is the epic eightminute centrepiece. It starts off with a
rubbery jackhammer riff and a muffled
kick drum pattern – OPN goes techno, if
you like. Suddenly there’s a major change
up and now we’ve got Aphex Twin
scoring the next Super Mario game. Five
minutes in the track just goes full wacko,
its ravey maximalism drawing heavily
from fellow Warp artist Rustie. It’s an
impressive composition, leaping about
so rapidly between ideas – although this
may not be to everyone’s taste. Not
that Lopatin gives a damn. He’s clearly
relishing the possibilities afforded him by
this new direction.
That said, it’s a hard record to get your
head around, and, to the extent that
it’s “about” anything, I’m not sure I’ve
understood it. But that’s all part of the
appeal. In the past, Lopatin has been
praised (and sometimes criticised) for
making experimental music accessible or
pleasurable. Experimental music doesn’t
have to be either of these things, but
neither does it have to not be them.
For all the abrasion, there are numerous
surface pleasures to be had here, but
rarely are they as easy or as beautiful as
on OPN’s last couple of records, there’s
too much disruption for that. But on a
sound design level, Lopatin is streets
ahead of the competition. So much
of the enjoyment is about how these
textures interact, how they play off
each other. Admittedly, I sometimes find
myself longing for more languid moments
like the older ‘Chrome Country’ or ‘Music
For Steamed Rocks’. But then he hits you
over the head with the helium sea shanty
of ‘Animals’ or the gothic R&B of ‘Freaky
Eyes’, and resistance is futile…
‘Garden Of Delete’ is a puzzle, and
one I don’t mind admitting to having
trouble figuring out. Still, it comes highly
recommended. I can think of few artists
whose music achieves such extremes of
beauty and terror.
COSMO GODFREE
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diverse: folk (2008’s ‘The Grape And
The Grain’), art rock (2007’s ‘The
Unrest Cure’), ambient electronica
(2006’s ‘Scene Memory’) and straightahead songs (2013’s ‘Zero Sum’). Yes,
in the hands of some polymath genius
this diversity could signal an enviable
elasticity or the Midas touch.
LEO ABRAHAMS
Daylight
LO RECORDINGS
Friend of the stars turns in hit and
miss album of ambient electronica
Let’s start with some positives: on paper,
producer and guitarist Leo Abrahams
has great credentials. He’s collaborated
with Paolo Nutini and composed film
soundtracks with David Holmes, and
worked with Pulp, Roxy Music and
Antony And The Johnsons. This album
alone features Stella Mozgawa of
Warpaint on drums, a Brian Eno guest
vocal, and collaborations with Karl Hyde
and Leafcutter John.
Abrahams is nothing if not a great
networker. Sadly, in today’s febrile
media-dominated music world, dropping
names such as Eno and Hyde often seems
to mean more than the actual music.
Forget everything that we are told to
believe is important - the PR spin and
the hyperbole and all the superfluous
ephemera - and focus on the work itself.
Which, unfortunately, doesn’t hold up all
that well.
The first sign of trouble, in addition
to the name-dropping and the avid
networking, was Abrahams’ back
catalogue. He’s made four albums
previously and all have been very
However, ‘Daylight’ appears to be a
diluted mish-mash of vaguely ambient
electronica that doesn’t really know what
it wants to be. Indeed, midway through
the opening title track, Abrahams
peppers us with machine gun-like rock
guitar riffs. He’s obviously trying to be
experimental and lateral – there’s a
reference in the notes to 1960s Chinese
ink art and the idea of making music
out of chance events – but I’m afraid it
doesn’t work.
I wasn’t sure about it on first listening,
but now after a few plays I’m convinced
it’s not at all right. ‘Daylight’ is an album
that made me think of the old adage,
“you’ve got to know the rules in order
to break them.” If your songs aren’t
strong and focused in the first place,
they’ll just come out like an amorphous
unremarkable mess. And I’m afraid a lot
of this album feels like backing tracks.
Perhaps I’m being harsh, certainly if
there was one cut that charmed me
it was ‘Halo Effect’, which reminded
me of Japan’s oblique arthouse funk.
But one track does not a summer
make. Ultimately, ‘Daylight’ just isn’t
compelling enough to stand alone as an
album.
BETHAN COLE
and BAFTA nominations and bagged the
actual Best Film Score gong at the Golden
Globes for his ‘The Theory Of Everything’
soundtrack. With a dozen or so films to
his name, Jóhannsson is fast becoming
a composer in demand, which brings us
to ‘Sicario’, a dark thriller starring Emily
Blunt as an FBI agent… lawless US/Mexico
border… war against drugs… clandestine
journey… you get the idea.
JÓHANN
JÓHANNSSON
Sicario – Original
Motion Picture Soundtrack
VARÈSE SARABANDE
A film soundtrack that makes
the most of things that go bump
in the night
Film soundtracks have a habit of being,
well, film soundtracks. As important as
music in films is, it should never be the
main attraction. All that money spent on
making a movie only to be overshadowed
by the music. It would never do.
That said, there’s something rather lovely
about film music without the picture and
as a result there are plenty of OSTs that
pass with some ease into your record
collection. A quick flick through my
shelves finds Ry Cooder’s ‘Paris Texas’,
Michael Nyman’s ‘Brazil’ and ‘The Cook,
The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover’, Peter
Gabriel’s ‘Birdy’, Vangelis’ ‘Bladerunner’...
Earlier this year Berlin-based Icelander
Jóhann Jóhannsson, who you may know
as a solo artist with releases on FatCat,
4AD and Touch, or for his collaborations
with the likes of Marc Almond, Barry
Adamson, Pan Sonic, and Can’s Jaki
Liebezeit, went overground in a rather
major way when he picked up Oscar
While there are plenty of memorable
theme tunes, making an entire
soundtrack stand up as an album is a
whole different ball game. The first few
tracks here bode well - slowly building
heartbeats, quietly intense drums,
sinister descending strings. Many of
the tracks are short, pop song length,
and have evocative titles like ‘Target’,
‘Convoy’, ‘Surveillance’ and ‘Summer
Meadows’ (actually not the last one).
They sort of feel like labels rather than
song titles. ‘Convoy’ is for the convoy
scene, right? Big trucks trundling along
dusty roads and all that.
There’s a lot of percussion at work here,
five different drummers apparently, which
Jóhannsson says was partly inspired by
Swans, the group not the big white birds.
Always a good sign when people name-
drop Swans. “I wanted to capture a kind
of relentlessly slow and mournful but still
ferocious and brutal energy,” he explains.
It’s something he does with ease. This
is a dark, unsettling work. The industrial
thrum of ‘Surveillance’ is quite the racket,
while ‘The Border’ has us fair jumping
out of our skin when, without warning,
it pounces at you. If indeed sound can
pounce. Which it can. And does here.
Regularly. It’s all about the textures and
the production is truly lavish. To be in
the room when the 65-piece orchestra
builds to its menacing crescendo on ‘Night
Vision’ must have been a rare treat.
So while there are tracks here that no
doubt work well in the film, on their own
you can’t help feel they’re too short for
you to become involved. You want it
to work like some of the best ambient
albums do, structured as one, long
piece of work with peaks and troughs,
rather than what feels like a collection
of snippets. That said, if you like you
music evocative and visceral, get some
headphones on, turn the lights out
and be scared half to death… by music.
Which in itself is both no mean feat and
quite a ride.
NEIL MASON
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REVIEWS
let the music do the talking. We’ll call
him Mr Tapes for the sake of argument.
So Mr Tapes unearthed a bunch of old
DATs full of samples and sounds made
by his old new wave/industrial band
between 1989-91. Taking those tapes as
the starting point, he dusted off some
old vinyl as inspiration and out popped
‘Inner Systems’. The sound of his teenage
golden era revisited, rewired and reimagined.
PREQUEL TAPES
Inner Systems
R’COUP’D
Shadowy German offers up
80s UK electronica as blueprint
for glitchy synth goodness
Everyone thinks their teenage years
were a musical golden era. Anyone
lucky enough to find themselves in
their teens when I did will know this to
be true. My own electronic adventure
began in the early 80s with Cabaret
Voltaire’s ‘Sluggin’ Fer Jesus’ and their
‘Red Mecca’ album. My understanding
of music up to that point had been that
stuff should have a catchy chorus, like,
say, Racey’s ‘Lay Your Love On Me’. You
can imagine what the Cabs did to my
world.
Berlin’s Prequel Tapes, it would seem,
is cast from much the same mould. He
talks of the distant lands of Sheffield
and Manchester, an appreciation of The
Cure whose melodies “stayed with me for
days”, a fascination with Clock DVA and a
subsequent obsession with techno. All of
which you’ll gather from ‘Inner Systems’,
his debut outing on Fink’s Ninja Tune
offshoot imprint R’COUP’D.
Its creator is a modest chap who - and
I appreciate the cliche alarm will sound
rather loudly at this point - prefers to
The result is a deeply satisfying record
of warm synthesis that will chime with
anyone who uses as comfort blankets
albums such as The Cure’s brace of
‘Faith’ and ‘Pornography’, Future Sound
Of London’s ‘Lifeforms’ and The KLF’s
‘Chill Out’.
It is a dark, intense outing as the brooding
opener ‘Under Your Skin’ attests, but
everywhere there’s chinks of light, snips
of melody, morsels of the familiar that
are well worth waiting for. ‘When We Fall
Into The Light’ does just that. A hypnotic
nighttime Cabs-like rhythm leads the way,
underneath which an almost orchestral
swirl is slowly unpeeled, never quite
fully revealing itself throughout the eight
minutes. While the hypnotic ‘Scarlet Fog’
is so evocative you can almost hear it
arriving out of the gloom. The title cut
is a real treat with its haunting distant
piano refrain, glitching bass and intense
conclusion, while ‘Untitled Memory’ is
perhaps the set’s showstopper. It almost
has a tune throughout, almost. Its snug
squeezebox-like thrum is pitted and potted
by squelches, rumbles and ticks that leave
you twitching along.
Much in the same way Ghost Box mine
some 70s netherworld, Prequel Tapes
taps into a very rich period of 80s
electronica. While it’s by no means a
party album, it is a deeply rewarding
listen for those who share the same
touchstones as Mr Tapes and will surely
appreciate the way in which he has deftly
messed with multiple pasts with such
panache.
NEIL MASON
Opener ‘Shy Grass’ starts with soft
guitar strains and echoing children’s
laughter, crashing waves and inaudible
conversations intersecting a smooth trip
hop beat, before plateauing at that good
old chilled 90s rhythm. The samples and
synths seem to get more random and at
a little short of seven minutes, there are
only so many squeaky doors (“recorded
in Tulum, Mexico”) you can take before
losing interest. Follow-up track ‘Los
Pensamientos’ is just three minute long,
but even so, a man whispering in Spanish
over new age sounds fails to recapture
any lost attention.
BLOND:ISH
Welcome To The Present
KOMPAKT
Seasoned tech-house duo
spring a surprise on their long
overdue debut album
Since their formation seven years
ago, Canadian duo Blond:ish have
dropped six EPs and a ton of singles,
but astonishingly no full-length album.
Instead, Anstascia D’Elene Corniere and
Vivie-Ann Bakos have drip-fed fans
on sporadic, sensual techno releases.
Past EPs (see ‘Lovers In Limbo’ and
‘Wunderkammer’) have largely followed
the sound of their German-based label,
the acclaimed Kompakt.
Surprisingly, Blond:ish’s debut album
sees them escape the dancefloor as they
slip off to an entirely different kind of
party, one with blacked-out windows,
rogue mattresses and a TV looping trippy
videos. ‘Welcome To The Present’ delves
into spiritual and psychedelic realms and
rifles through traditional instruments,
world electronica and obscure spoken
word along the way, in an attempt
to elevate us far beyond the club
environment. The duo’s staple techno
beats even take a back seat. Indeed, the
album is four tracks old before it even
shows any hint of a familiar 4/4.
But that’s not to dismiss the foreign
influences of the album. Mexican doors
aside, the pair’s “physical and spiritual
adventures” around the world enlighten
some parts of the album. ‘Nada Brahma’
is a prime example, paying homage to a
classic Indian theory - that the universe
was created from the energy of sound. A
relaxed early-hours beat instills pleasant
nothingness, before culminating in a
soundscape of soft water noises, ominous
piano trills and discordant layering.
‘Moonvalley’ follows this world musicinspired success. Eastern instrumentation
meets a tech-house beat and results
in a hypnotic, slow-burning rhythm.
The track has an urgency that could do
with featuring on numbers like ‘Myein
Caravan’ and ‘Jupiter & Jaguar’, which
just fade into the background and not the
way downtempo electro is supposed to.
The album’s finale, ‘It Starts Now’, is an
apt conclusion. Philosopher Alan Watts
speaks over an ambient instrumental,
musing about taking responsibility and
looking to the future. It’s thoughtprovoking on a theoretical level, but it
also reminds us that Blond:ish have taken
a huge step away from their Kompaktdependent sound. Yes, ‘Welcome To
The Present’ may be overambitious
and unfocused at points, but Blond:ish
showcase the roots of some interesting
ideas. It’s a mixed bag, but a promising
entry into the world of full-length albums.
WEDAELI CHIBELUSHI
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way that the painting, according to Sebald,
plays with the viewers’ expectations. Of
course, as is always the case with such
conceits, the success of the concept is in
the ear of the beholder. But even taken
on its own terms it’s a superb record. An
involving and atmospheric work, chilly,
layered and dense.
ARIS KINDT
Floods
SCISSOR & THREAD
Transporting, immersive ambience
meets art history lesson. Bonus
Our story begins in 1632, with
Rembrandt’s painting ‘The Anatomy
Lesson Of Dr Nicolaes Tulp’, in which
the good doctor is pictured dissecting a
cadaver for a group of bearded men who
all look vaguely similar – a bit like 17th
century hipsters.
Forward to 1995, and WG Sebald’s novel,
‘The Rings Of Saturn’, which as well as
detailing the narrator’s walks around
Southwold in Suffolk, includes a chapter
discussing this very painting. Sebald
argues that the cadaver, a recently
executed felon by the name of – wait
for it – Aris Kindt, is ignored by the
preening medical hipsters. According
to him they’re way more interested in
Dr Tulp’s textbook than they are in the
corpse under their noses. In other words,
they neglect the physical in favour of
theory. Though present, Kindt becomes a
memory. He disappears.
And so to ‘Floods’, an album inspired by
Sebald’s interpretation of Rembrandt.
Placing Kindt front and centre, it plays
with sound and memory in much the same
The Aris Kindt of ‘Floods’ is two men:
producer Francis Harris and guitarist
Gabe Hedrick. Harris runs experimental
house label Scissor & Thread, while
his acclaimed 2014 album ‘Minutes Of
Sleep’ took the genre and coaxed it into
gorgeous meditative shapes. If you know
that album then you’ll recall that its first
two tracks, ‘Hems’ and ‘Dangerdream’, are
heavy on beatless atmosphere, and it’s no
coincidence they both feature Hedrick on
guitar. Teaming up here, the duo stretch
their wings in similar style, using drones,
ambient textures and submerged melodies
to take us further from clubland and into
even more more sepulchral spaces.
While ‘Minutes Of Sleep’ took its
inspiration from house, ‘Floods’ takes the
road less travelled. Tracks like ‘Now Grey’
and the outstanding, narcoleptic ‘Blue Sky
Shoes’ use the kind of fuzz provided by
Suicide or Spacemen 3 as a starting point,
decaying the music into dreamy, fogbound
soundscapes. You’ll search in vain for the
wide-eyed celestial shimmering beloved
of shoegazing-meets-electronica types
like M83 or Ulrich Schnauss. ‘Floods’ is as
downcast as it is downtempo. The album
fair shivers, with tracks like ‘Every New
Thing’ having more in common with the
frosty hypnosis of Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas
or James Kirby’s work as The Caretaker.
On ‘Embers’, meanwhile, it drifts into
destroyed dub-techno territory.
The final track, ‘Braids’, finds Harris in a
reverie of childhood. And the fact that
it features Hedrick’s guitar at its most
prominent only serves to highlight a lack
of structure and separation elsewhere.
Fittingly on an album so concerned with
memory and spectral presence, it’s both
there and not there. So intricately woven
are the sounds on ‘Floods’ that, like the
cadaver of Aris Kindt, they disappear.
ANDREW HOLMES
tour to promote their previous album,
‘Dot To Dot’. It would be tempting to
suggest that the coastal environment
filled these songs with an organic, natural
texture, but aside from the addition of
occasional strings and live drumming,
‘∆GO’ is more or less entirely a product of
machinery. Opening track ‘Stealing’ has
a naked, shimmering synthpop brilliance,
somehow encapsulating the enthralling
essence of listening to electronic music
for the first time, while still sounding
utterly now.
LILIES ON MARS
∆GO
LADY SOMETIMES
Sardinian duo serve up
synthpop take on tried and
tested ethereal blueprint
Dreampop remains a wonderfully
problematic concept. In their attempts
to emulate the mental state they were
probably in when they decided to record
the songs, it’s a genre that suggests
bands whacked out on torpor-inducing
chemicals running their wavering voices
through a watery reverb effect matched
by equally echoey musical backdrops
with little substance.
Although they operate within that broad
ballpark, Lilies On Mars are something of
an exception, with the Hackney-based
duo of Lisa Masia and Marina Cristofalo
adding their quavering harmonics to
a bedrock of slick vintage synthpop
rather than drab shoegazing dullness.
Yes, tracks like the detached and
mournful ‘It Was Only Smoke’ carry an
amorphous, dubby nothingness, but by
fusing unexpected symphonic grandeur
to wobbly ephemerality, it is pleasingly
reminiscent of LA Vampires’ collaboration
with Zola Jesus.
‘∆GO’ was conceived at Masia’s beach
house in Sardinia in the wake of a 2014
Masia and Cristofalo cite the BBC
Radiophonic Workshop as an influence
on their sound, but it’s difficult to
hear definitively in the buzzing synths
and bouncy rhythms of tracks such as
‘Dancing Star’ and ‘It Might Be’. The more
experimental sections of the album –
cuts like ‘From The Earth To Above’ and
‘I’ve Got You’ – do undoubtedly have a
wayward, primitive dimension, but citing
the Workshop is, perhaps, an abstract
reflection that the long tone echo created
by the likes of Daphne Oram and Delia
Derbyshire exists in all electronic music
anyway, much like synthetic dark matter.
Similarly abstract are the lyrics, which
carry the obliqueness of a poem that can
only be fully understood by thoroughly
knowing the motivations and emotions
that the author was experiencing as
the lines coalesced on the page… and
no one’s got the energy for that these
days. Without understanding or context,
all that remains is an implied feeling;
that the lyrics are delivered via the
girls’ imperfect harmonising is another
technique to deliver emotional content
without once giving away their true
feelings.
With a bit more studio polish and a bit
less leftfield meandering, ‘∆GO’ could
have reached the same lurid heights
as Goldfrapp’s ‘Head First’, and as
a consequence you’d have probably
tired of it pretty quickly. Thanks to its
imperfections and curious, mysterious
angles it feels like something much more
enduring, increasingly revealing itself and
its intricacies with each successive listen.
MAT SMITH
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tracks; the plaintive ‘My Morning Ritual’
and the hauntingly hypnotic ‘Broken
Folk’.
KEITH SEATMAN
A Rest Before The Walk
GHOST BOX
Deep analogue atmospherics
for long winter nights
Who lives in that crumbling old house
down the lane where no one ever
leaves or enters, but whose lights you
see in winter if you walk down that
way? Maybe it’s the unhinged posh
sounding lady whose voice is sampled
on ‘Once More With The Whirligig’
- “Never no more will we dance will
we sing / In a whirligig ring to the old
woman’s tune on a bucket with a spoon
/ In the moonlight on Mondays”. It’s a
startling, unsettling track that evokes
occasionally felt uneasiness triggered
by particular places or sounds, giving
voice to some murky corner of our
subconscious.
Summoning these sentiments is the
business of psychogeographic explorer
Keith Seatman. And on this, his fourth
long-player, he really hits the ghostly,
half-dreamt target. This new work was
inspired by walks and field recording
missions around the beaches and woods
near the Devon recording studio of altfolk singer Douglas E Powell (whose
album ‘Good Men Get Lost At Sea’ is
highly recommended). Powell provides
vocals on a brace of blindingly good
‘A Rest Before The Walk’ is a
spellbinding, captivating piece of
emotionally nuanced electronic
experimentation, which sits somewhere
close to the burgeoning section
marked hauntology. Fans of electrorecontextualisers like Moon Wiring Club,
Pye Corner Audio and The Advisory Circle
will be glad to make its acquaintance,
with its blend of evocative Radiophoniclike keyboard compositions and glacial
electronic folk. The album has been
freshly re-pressed after its initial run sold
out within a week following airplay on
BBC 6 Music and Radio 3’s underrated
‘Late Junction’. Which is no surprise
given the immersive, diverting range of
audiological textures on show.
From the eerie John Carpenter-inspired
filmic sounds of ‘Strange Tales & Lost
Paper Trails’ to the stompingly propulsive
sci-fi house of ‘Broken Folk’, there’s
an incredible expanse of patterned
depth in what Seatman has cooked up
here. Using a vast array of instruments
and equipment including an unlikely
stylophone and some beautifully retrosounding synths like the Korg Monotron
Duo and Roland’s famous SH-101, as
well as a Boss DR-220 drum machine,
he’s captured a classically 80s analogue
feel with some aplomb. Belbury Poly’s
Jim Jupp is credited with additional
production touches, which makes sense
given the Ghost Box man’s predilection
for keyboards at the more obscure end of
the used market.
There are plenty of standouts among the
14 tracks, but none more head-turning
than the snappily titled ‘Along The
Corridor 1st On The Left Room 2882’,
which bottles the thrill and fear of the
chase with adrenalised menace. We hear
fast-paced footsteps in the dark, an old
telephone endlessly ringing in some
distant room and an increasing sense
that our pursuer is closing in. Brilliant.
CARL GRIFFIN
35-minute single track. His aspiration, from
the note he sent out to his collaborators,
was to “create something sprawling and
complex out of something that is very
short and very simple.” And that’s exactly
what he’s achieved with ‘Tppr’.
LAICA
Tppr
ARELL
Dave Fleet’s new “social
experiment” features a sprawling
cast of underground artists
Proof, if it were needed, of the old adage
that mighty oaks from little acorns grow.
For the latest Laica project, on his Arell
imprint, Dave Fleet (who we featured in
our 50 For 15 ones to watch feature back
in January) has assembled an entire album
from a tiny little beat tapped out on his
wooden desk as he set up his equipment.
After tidying up the eight-second rhythm,
Fleet invited similar musical minds to
manipulate the loop as they saw fit, and
then twisted and tinkered with the new
segments to create what became ’Tppr’.
He’s rustled up a cast of underground
electronic artists, which brings to mind
Nurse With Wound’s infamous list of
like-minded individuals and groups –
Concrete/Field, Yves De Mey, Antony
Ryan, Joe Ahmed, the wonderfullynamed Grief Athletes, David Oxley, Chris
Dooks, TVO, Dil23, Farmer Glitch, Rabid
Gravy, Thee Balancer, Hermetech, Kendle
Mintcake, Simplicity Is Beauty and Chra.
It’s probably impossible for anyone
other than Fleet to identify which of
his collaborators did what on the final
The record is loaded with episodic stopstart moments, switching from Thomas
Köner-esque, barely-there ambient
static to impenetrably dark and heavy
passages, from wobbly synth textures
to echo-y dub. At times, you hear the
distant echoes of industrial bands like
Nagamatzu, or maybe the grinding guitar
angst of Trent Reznor in soundtrack
mode. It’s a piece with little levity, more
a slowly-developing piecemeal electronic
jam loaded with heavy emotion arising
from head-scratchingly simple origins. On
occasion, it’s just possible to make out
what might have been Fleet’s original
rhythm, a light, barely perceptible, earthy
tap, but then again it might also be a
figment of your imagination.
The challenge with taking your lead
from so many varied sources is that it
could result in something lacking any
semblance of coherence. To Fleet’s
credit, ‘Tppr’ sounds like it all belongs
happily together. While it retains a
natural diversity of sources and ideas
that bubble up at what might seem
like random intervals, what emerges is
a work that feels carefully composed.
The best trick in Fleet’s repertoire is
somehow making this all sound exactly
like you’d expect a Laica album to sound
– dark, moody, expansive and loaded
with just a trace of paranoia that you’re
being watched, recorded and exploited.
Fleet had no idea how ‘Tppr’ might turn
out, whether it would spawn a potentially
infinite number of shard-like variations
constantly feeding back and forth, or
whether it would just fizzle out into
nothingness. The result is something that
his inchoate table-top rhythm could never
have suggested on its own, but with the
power of imagination he’s ended up with
a record that pushes at the limits and
boundaries.
MAT SMITH
XXX
ALBUM
REVIEWS
BUTTERFLY CHILD
Futures
DELL’ORSO RECORDS
Dreampop godfather flutters out of
hibernation for unexpected return
When did dreampop become the new
term to drop, then? Though it was
originally coined way back in the 80s
by A.R. Kane’s Alex Ayuli to describe
his band’s sound, it didn’t really catch
on for a fair while. Probably not until
2009 in fact, when Beach House caught
wider attention with ‘Teen Dream’. They
filtered familiarly-textured 90s shoegaze
structures through an opiated synth-led
lushness to render them warm and new.
But where did it all start? Belfastborn, LA-based Joe Cassidy, aka
Butterfly Child, would point you to
his early EPs on A.R. Kane’s H.ark!
Label, his 1993 Rough Trade debut
album ‘Onomatopoeia’ and 1995’s ‘The
Honeymoon Suite’. True progenitors
from a man ahead of his time and
now making a return to a scene that’s
ascended without his presence. Recent
interviews have failed to elicit much in
the way of a satisfactory explanation
from Cassidy as to the reason behind his
17-year hiatus or indeed for this return,
so we’ll have to make of that what
we will.
It’s fair to say though with that sort of
pedigree, many will be waiting to hear
this new work and wondering if it can
match its predecessors’ high standards.
So can it? Lead single ‘Lost In These
Machines’ certainly does. It’s a soaring,
majestic beauty with a soulfulness onetime labelmates Spacemen 3 would
be proud of. But it’s a long way down
the running order, and much of what
precedes it sounds like it was made
with little recognition of so much of
the guitar-led, indie-influenced, faintly
leftfield pop that’s been made since
Cassidy’s heyday. Had it appeared sooner
in the album, it might have put some of
the more prosaic sequences of nostalgic
sounds into perspective, melodicallydriven and lyrically-adept though they
may be.
In the main, guitars and Cassidy’s
plaintive vocals are well to the fore.
There are summery vistas and pastoral,
melancholy tones that, surprisingly,
owe more to the High Llamas
(particularly where keyboard notes slide
introspectively downwards on ‘Still
Learning To Crawl’) than the likes of My
Bloody Valentine. But here and there,
layers of shimmering guitar waves build
to form soft walls of dense beauty that
bring Slowdive to mind.
Aside from ‘Lost In These Machines’, and
the poignantly downtempo closer ‘Beauty
#2’ with its grandiose Sigur Ros-ness, there
isn’t much that even sounds like the genre
Cassidy helped to seed. And although the
complex cascading guitars that introduce
‘Playfair Steps’ recall Beach House’s
‘Zebra’, it soons descends into – shudder
– Coldplay territory. So not exactly an au
courant sound, but that may also prove its
strength if it catches the ears of those who
appreciate a straightforward focus on the
alt-pop basics.
CARL GRIFFIN
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