Electronic Sound November 2015 PDF Edition

NOVEMBER 2015
The rise and fall of Japan
CARTER TUT T I VOI D. GHOST BOX . LLOYD COLE .
IRMIN SCHMIDT. LUKE HAINES. MONEY MARK .
PH I L MANZ ANER A . PERE UBU. SQUAREPUSHER .
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
HELLO
welcome
to Electronic Sound
NOVEMBER 2015
This month, we’re turning our attention to Japan, a fascinating outfit from an era
which produced great groups and great music in a seemingly endless stream, a
time when being in a band and going through a constant process of invention and
reinvention was simply the done thing.
The Japan story is a classic example of rapid mutation in the British music scene.
By the time they released their first album in 1978, their glam style was slammed
in the music press for being out of date. Japan responded with a second album
within months and three more before the end of 1981, a run of fine records that
sprang from the fecund and frenzied atmosphere of creativity and productivity of
the day. But as each subsequent album crept closer to the glory that was their 1981
breakthrough, ‘Tin Drum’, the band was falling apart. Japan had a Greek tragedy of
a career, and just as they hit gold they split up, the deep schisms that had opened
up between them personally and musically unbridgeable even by the success they’d
worked so hard to achieve.
At the same time as Japan’s doomed trajectory, the underground scene was, if
anything, even more fertile. Throbbing Gristle provided a particularly critical node
of electronic music throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s and its members
continued to create interesting work many years on, so it’s a great pleasure to catch
up with TG’s Chris and Cosey in this issue. They’ve just released a fabulous new
album with Factory Floor’s Nik Colk Void under the name Carter Tutti Void, so we
sent our man Kris Needs to spend the afternoon chewing the fat with them around
their kitchen table. Kris had last interviewed Chris and Cosey in 1978.
Elsewhere, we chat to Jim Jupp and Julian House from Ghost Box Records, a label
whose output over the last 10 years suggests they have inherited the intensive work
ethic and artful aesthetic of the post-punk era. We also talk to Irmin Schmidt from
krautrock legends Can to get the low-down on his solo work, which now spans an
incredible six decades, and to one-time jangly popster Lloyd Cole, whose unexpected
(to us, at least) forays into electronic music are producing some impressive results.
Electronic Sound is a broad church, welcoming all who approach music making with
an explorer’s spirit, searching for new sounds and fresh ways to put them together.
That’s why Pere Ubu’s David Thomas interests us, as well as Squarepusher, Phil
Manzanera, Luke Haines and Money Mark. You’ll find them all inside and much more
besides…
Electronically yours
Push & Mark
FE ATUR E S
JAPAN:
A FOREIGN PLACE
JAPAN
Japan spent the late 1970s and
early 1980s in an almost epic
struggle with their own music,
with their record labels and,
most rancorously, with each
other. The story of one Britain’s
more enigmatic pop groups
makes a compelling read
In an exclusive extract from
a brand new biography by
musician and author Anthony
Reynolds, we get a behind-thescenes look at the astonishing
in-fighting that eventually tore
the band apart
CARTER TUTTI VOID
Returning with a second longplayer, the legendary Throbbing
Gristle duo of Chris Carter and
Cosey Fanni Tutti again hook
up with Factory Floor’s Nik Void
and turn in one of the albums
of the year. We get an invite to
chew the fat over a cuppa round
their kitchen table
GHOST BOX
Often referred to as a modernday Factory Records, Jim Jupp
and Julian House’s retroreferencing, forward-looking
Sussex-based label, celebrates
its 10th anniversary – and
they’ve given us a rare interview
LLOYD COLE
IRMIN SCHMIDT
Indie crooner turned electronic
experimenter talks to us about
his long-standing love for
electronic music and how the
modular workflow has given
him a whole new world of
sound to explore
While his band, Can, were true
innovators, Herr Schmidt’s solo
work was just as mind-blowing,
as the release of a 12-disc
retrospective of his solo output
amply proves
TECH
TOKYO’S 5G
SYNTH EMPORIUM
SYNTHESISER
DAVE
Is this the greatest synthesiser
emporium in the world? We
investigate, but not before
cutting the company credit in
half
Our very own synth wizard
leaves his shed this month
to visit the Electronic Sound
studio where he diagnoses a
sickly Roland Juno 106
readers’
synth
The first, the original, the synth
that launched a thousand synths,
drum roll please, be upstanding
and make squelchy noises
with plenty of LFO modulation
capabilities for the legend that is
the Roland SH-1
ALBUM R EV I EWS
ROOTS MANUVA, WOLFGANG
FLÜR, LUKE VIBERT, JOHN
FOXX/HAROLD BUDD, COMA,
LUKE HAINES, EVERYTHING
BUT THE GIRL, PUBLIC ENEMY,
ZEUS B HELD, COLDER and
quite a fair few more besides…
NYBORG
REVIEW
Analogue Solutions serve up a
very lovely new synth module,
look mum, no keyboard
required
FABFILTER PRO-C 2
REVIEW
FabFilter upgrade their Pro-C
compressor plug-in, giving it a
complete overhaul. Bet it took
them ages thinking about what
to call it…
WHAT’S
INSIDE
OPENING
SHOT
Squarepusher’s band,
Shobaleader One, marked their
full live debut by battering out
a bunch of ’pusher cuts from
1995-99, it was quite a night…
PULSE
We’d like you to meet some very
fine new music and the kind
people making it. This month:
PUMAROSA, FOREGROUND
SET, LETTA and SIM HUTCHENS
UP THE FRONT
TIME
MACHINE
Roxy Music’s guitarist Phil
Manzanera remembers the three
live shows he played in 1976 as
801 with some heavy friends,
including Brian Eno
UNDER THE
INFLUENCE
As you’d expect, Pere Ubu’s
frontman DAVID THOMAS has
some varied and fascinating
influences: American literature,
comedy, cities, cable TV ads…
FAT ROLAND
60
SECONDS
So there used to be rules for our
minute-long video portrait. Did
we not say “no gorilla masks”
when we asked LUKE HAINES?
Apparently not
In the spirit of pop stars writing
novels, it seems that Fats
has been up in his attic and
uncovered a novel written by an
iconic music star who isn’t VInce
Clarke. We would say it’ll make
more sense when you read it,
but it almost certainly won’t
JACK DANGERS
Casting back a mere two
decades, we dig up ‘Mark’s
Keyboard Repair’, the infectious
debut album from Beastie Boy
cohort MONEY MARK
This month Jack talks about
the ultra-rare ‘Casse-tête’ by
Bernard Bonnier, an amazing
artefact recorded in 1979 by a
forgotten master of musique
concrete, and a precursor of
Byrne and Eno’s ‘My Life In The
Bush Of Ghosts’
ANATOMY OF A
RECORD SLEEVE
THE REMIX REVIEW
Ah, art school. Happy days.
Drunk on warm beer, high on
cheap drugs (and that was just
the tutors). We deconstruct the
daubings on JAPAN’s all arty ‘Oil
On Canvas’ album cover
Ukrainian/Canadian duo
UMMAGMA welcome OMD’s
MALCOLM HOLMES on remix
duties and we invite all parties
to tell their respective tales of
how it all came about
BURIED
TREASURE
NEEDS MUST
Tunes that can “sprout the
genitalia of a young donkey”?
It can only be KRIS NEEDS’
monthly round-up of electronic
strays, stragglers and assorted
quirks, which makes him sound
like some sort of techno rag and
bone man…
LANDMARKS
Japan’s synth wiz Richard
Barbieri talks us through
the making of the band’s
breakthrough hit, the very
excellent ‘GENTLEMEN TAKE
POLAROIDS’
THE OPENING SHOT
SHOBALEADER ONE
Location: The Troxy, London
Date: 24 October 2015
Photo: GAËLLE BERI
On one weekend in October, Tom Jenkinson took to the stage
in London to play a set brimful of classic tracks from the late
90s Squarepusher back catalogue. Nothing so unusual about
that. With a career that spans two decades and umpteen
releases, Squarepusher has played his fair share of live shows.
But they were nothing like this.
Back in 2010, Jenkinson released the ‘d’Demonstrator’ album
under the name Shobaleader One. At the time, the project was
shadowy at best. We knew he’d recorded it with a live band,
but when quizzed about his new outfit Jenkinson claimed they
were “a bunch of people who you may or may not have heard
of from other bands and projects”. Alongside Squarepusher
on vocals and bass, there was Strobe Nazard on keyboards,
Sten t’Mech and Arg Nution on guitars, and Company Laser on
drums. The album came out and despite noises being made
about a tour, that was sort of that… until now.
Five years down the line and we’ve finally had the hotly
anticipated full live debut performance of Shobaleader One. So
who are they? All we can tell you is that Jenkinson has been
“working with an ensemble of like-minded musicians to develop
new ideas and reinterpret choice nuggets from his catalogue”.
If you recognise anyone in the photo, do please let us know.
THE FRONT
HEN
BACK WGS
THIN ,
T
WEREN ARE
Y
E
HOW TH W
NO
TIME MACHINE
801
THE SUPERGROUP
THAT LASTED SIX
WEEKS
We’re heading back to the sizzling summer of 1976,
where one-time Roxy Music colleagues Phil Manzanera
and Brian Eno are heading up the intense but brief
experiment they called 801 Words: PUSH
In the summer of 1976, as Britain enjoyed the longest stretch
of hot weather on record – “Phewnomenal!” declared the Daily
Express – and The Clash and The Damned played their first ever
live gigs, four men gathered in a cottage in rural Shropshire.
They were all significant figures on the UK music scene and they
were there at the instigation of Phil Manzanera, guitarist with
Roxy Music, who were on a break at the time. Brian Eno had
played alongside Manzanera in the earliest days of Roxy. Bill
MacCormick had been a member of Quiet Sun, Manzanera’s
pre-Roxy band, before joining Robert Wyatt in Matching Mole.
The fourth man was Bill’s brother Ian, who had written lyrics
for Quiet Sun but was best known as Ian MacDonald, assistant
editor of the NME. Manzanera, Eno and MacCormick had been discussing the idea of
recording together for a while, but during their stay in Shropshire
they came up with an idea for a band that put their original
plans on the back-burner. The result was 801, named after a
reference in ‘The True Wheel’ on Eno’s ‘Taking Tiger Mountain
(By Strategy)’ album – “We are the 801 / We are the central
shaft” – and an outfit quite unlike any other, either before or
since. “It was a crazy project,” admits Phil
Manzanera almost 40 years on.
“There were basically two premises
for 801. The first was that it would
be a band with a limited time scale,
a band that would only last for six
weeks, which was a very Eno type
of concept. The second was that the
line-up would bring together people
who were highly technical musicians
with others who were totally against
even the notion of technique. The
whole thing was designed as an
experiment, both in terms of music
and format, with no purpose other
than to see what happened.” Keyboardist Francis Monkman from Curved Air and slide
guitarist Lloyd Watson, who had played on Eno’s ‘Here Come
The Warm Jets’, were hastily recruited and the line-up of 801
was completed by a then unknown 18-year old drummer called
Simon Phillips. Manzanera booked some rehearsal time at Island
Records, where they started reworking tracks from Manzanera
and Eno’s solo albums, plus a couple of old Quiet Sun songs and
a couple of covers. And as the sessions got underway, Manzanera
arranged for the group to play three gigs at the end of the
six-week period. The first was a low-key set at West Runton
Pavilion in Norfolk on 26 August, which was followed by an
appearance at the 1976 Reading Festival two days later. The
Reading gig was billed as “Phil Manzanera”, with Eno and their
other associates’ names underneath in smaller letters. “Yes, quite right that everybody else’s names were smaller than
mine,” jokes Manzanera. “I suppose the organisers billed it like
that because Roxy were at their height at the time whereas
nobody knew what the hell 801 was, let alone what we might
sound like. The gig was very nearly a disaster because Francis
Monkman got stuck in a traffic jam and only just made it. We
thought we were going to have to play without him right up until
five minutes before we went on.
The relief of him turning up meant
we actually played quite well. John
Peel said some lovely things about
us afterwards.” The third and final gig was a
headlining show at the Queen
Elizabeth Hall in London on 3
September. The set was recorded
and released by Island as ‘801 Live’
a few weeks later and stands as a
fascinating testimony to the intense
if brief experiment that was 801.
It’s almost a sort of bridging album,
with heavy doses of prog, strong
hints of new wave, and plenty of
Bill MacCormick
Brian Eno
Lloyd Watson
Francis Monkman
Simon Phillips
Phil Manzanera
innovative electronic sorcery. The version of Manzanera’s
‘Diamond Head’ is head-spinningly beautiful and proves that
there’s so much more to guitars than big riffs and long solos,
while their take on Eno’s ‘Third Uncle’ is as fierce as anything
you’d hear at a punk club over the next couple of years. Of
particular note is ’TNK’, a dramatic version of The Beatles’
’Tomorrow Never Knows’ underpinned with glorious synth
washes. “That was always one of my favourite Beatles tracks and at that
point nobody else had covered it,” says Manzanera. “It sort of
felt like an outrageous thing to do, but I thought it was perfect
for that particular combination of musicians. Eno had a cassette
of random stuff he’d recorded from the radio, which he turned
on when we started playing ’TNK’ and it comes in and out
throughout track. So we utilised some of the ideas behind the
original ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ in terms of using extraneous
sounds, but then we had all this great musicianship too. “The Queen Elizabeth Hall gig went very well and people
seemed to like it. They seemed to like it a lot. I remember
thinking, ‘Oh, that’s it, it’s over,
that’s not a very clever career
plan, is it?’. But then we all got on
with other things, exactly as we’d
planned to do. Something I was
especially pleased about was how
much interest there was in Simon
Phillips after 801. He was incredible
for his age. I mean, ‘801 Live’ is
worth getting for the drums alone.
Everybody who saw Simon at that
gig thought, ‘Bloody hell, who’s this
guy?’ and he got so much work as
a result, with Mick Jagger, Robert
Fripp, Stanley Clarke and many
more. These days, he’s one of the
most famous drummers in the
world.” That wasn’t quite it for 801, though.
There was actually a second release,
a studio album called ‘Listen
Now’ which came out in 1977, but
this was essentially a Manzanera,
MacCormick and MacDonald record
with a bit of help from guests such
as Godley & Creme and Tim Finn
from Split Enz. Manzanera admits that they just used the name
801 to capitalise on the success of the Reading and Queen
Elizabeth Hall shows. “801 was brilliant fun and I’m still in touch with everybody
who was involved, but there’s no question of a reunion,” notes
Manzanera, who co-produced David Gilmour’s recent ‘Rattle
That Lock’ album and is currently a key member of the Pink
Floyd man’s live set-up. “For one thing, there’s no way I’d even
suggest something like that to Eno. It’s not in his nature to
do the same thing twice. And although 801 did feel more like
a band than a project, we really couldn’t have stayed stayed
together any longer than six weeks without killing each other.
The technical people wanted it more technical and the others
were saying, ‘Nooooo, stop playing so many notes – simplify,
simplify, simplify’. When I think of it, I find it quite amazing
that we managed to last as long as six weeks.”
pulse
Yanking on our new music chain it’s the glamorous
electro-voodoo of PUMAROSA, the ice-cool Norse
invasion of FOREGROUND SET, darkside West Coast
grime producer LETTA and the splendid twitch-techno
of Essex’s own SIM HUTCHINS
XXX FRONT
THE
PUMAROSA
London quintet invoke demons in an old Italian cinema
WHO they?
A London five-piece who formed from the
ashes of fashionista-approved vocalist and
guitarist Isabel Muñoz-Newsome’s failed
attempts to get a punk band together
with drummer friend Nick Owen. After the
addition of Tomoya Suzuki (synths/sax),
Neville James (guitar) and Henry Brown
(bass), they decamped from a stinking hot
10-foot square chipboard rehearsal room in
London’s glamorous Manor House to the 40
degree heat of Calabria in Italy. A residency
in a ruined cinema owned by a surrealist
artist found them sweating out a batch of
songs.
the air when their hypnotic debut single
‘Priestess’ is spinning. Described as a mix
of the heavier songwriting of PJ Harvey or
Patti Smith meets nocturnal electronics of
The Knife and Cocteau Twins, Pumarosa
themselves have the track down as an
“industrial spiritual”, which conjures up a
beautiful, but unlikely image of Throbbing
Gristle performing at a gospel brunch. With
saxophones. Clocking in at a mesmeric
seven and half minutes, it’s not entirely
clear what exactly is going on – but there’s
plenty of time decide, and in any case,
there’s much here to like.
MAT SMITH
WHY pumarosa?
You mean apart from the fact that there’s
a distinct shortage of bands named after
obscure fruit? How about that they seem
to operate in the same dreamy shoegazy
ephemeral territory as The xx while
picking up where SCUM left off in trying
to use their music to conjure demons
out of thin air. It’s a common complaint
when recording in abandoned film houses
apparently. Lots of ghosts.
TELL US MORE
And talking of spirits, there’s very much
something of Siouxsie & The Banshees in
‘Priestess’ is out now on Chess Club
XXX FRONT
THE
FOREGROUND SET
Scandinavian funktronica at its finest
WHO he?
Joar Renolen from Lillehammer is
the brains behind your new favourite
Norwegian electronic outfit. His latest
release, six-tracker ‘All Peak Run’, is
jam-packed with super squelchy sounds,
feel-good beats, funk-fuelled rhythms and
a smattering of bleepiness – what’s not to
love?
backbone of relentless, driving bass and
shuffling drums, coming up clean as a
freshly bought whistle. ‘Mega Trees’ feels
like the theme tune to a futuristic ‘X-Files’
(think robotic Mulders and Scullys),
while ‘Quickfix’ features vocals from
Fieh, another emerging Norwegian artist
whose voice lends an eerie air to what is
otherwise a beautifully chilled slow-jam.
WHY foreground set?
TELL US MORE
Because in less than a minute, ‘All Peak
Run’ EP will have you tapping your toes
at the very least, if not up and on your
feet and dancing like no one’s watching.
The title track is a tour de force, with a
Norway has form with this kind of ice-cool
funk, take the genre-morphing Röyksopp
or ethereal dreampopsters Bel Canto for
starters. Big boots to fill but Renolen is
rising to the challenge and has been pretty
busy over the past few years, starting back
in 2010 when he was featured as “Ukas
Urørt” (unsigned band of the month) by
P3, Norway’s hippest radio station. Since
then he’s released three EPs on Slekta
Grammofon – ‘Good Luck’, ’Nullpunkt’
(‘Zero’) and ‘Høy På Pære’ (‘Keeping Up
Appearances’) – as well as having strong
affiliations with the Diskorama Records
gang.
ROSIE MORGAN
The ‘All Peak Run’ EP is out now on Balsa
Wood/Slekta Grammofon
XXX FRONT
THE
LETTA
Grimy LA beatmaker exorcising demons in stunning greyscale
WHO HE?
American producer Tony Nicoletta has
quite the backstory. Having left home
at 13, he grew up fending for himself in
Seattle and Arizona, dealing with addiction
and homelessness for much of his young
life. He was a junkie for six years, and has
been in and out of rehab countless times.
Since getting his act together (he’s been
clean for some years now), Letta’s been
living in a warehouse in LA’s Skid Row
district, known for its sizeable homeless
population.
WHY letta?
Despite difficult circumstances, he’s always
remained committed to making music. His
resolutely insular debut album, ‘Testimony’,
is full of echoes of his troubled past. Letta
has a real affinity with pitch-shifted R&B
vocal samples, akin to producers such
as Burial or Mssingno. These voices cut
through the layers of sonic fog like ghosts
from the past, the lost souls who weren’t
quite as lucky.
a new type of music where atmosphere
takes precedence over energy, and lush,
heartrending synth melodies occupy the
same space as gunshot snare hits and deep
sub-zero bass.
COSMO GODFREE
TELL US MORE
While he may have grown up stateside,
his musical influences come shrouded
in the dismal gloom of the British Isles.
He’s spoken of his love for Portishead and
Joy Division, both groups that share that
same sense of melancholy and darkness.
In particular, ‘Testimony’ owes a great
deal to the current clutch of UK producers
(Visionist, Logos and Mr Mitch) and the
early grime instrumentals of Wiley and Ruff
Sqwad, and repurposing their textures for
‘Testimony’ is out now on Coyote Records
XXX FRONT
THE
SIM HUTCHINS
Off-kilter glitch-ambience meets weird-techno
WHO HE?
Audio/visual artist from, rather
specifically, north west Essex, who deals
in ambient judder flecked with twitchy
off-piste techno. His compelling debut
album, ‘I Enjoy To Sweep A Room’,
comes on like a tinkly music box rewired
by twisted musical gremlins. Expect
outdated effects units, shoddy guitar
pedals, AM radios and 80s digital reverb
galore.
WHY sim hutchins?
Having honed his production licks in and
around the grime scene, on Essex pirate
radio and at East Anglian free parties,
Hutchins retreated to the blurry edges
of ambient/drone/techno to cook up
his debut outing ‘Ecology Tapes Volume
One’ in early 2015. With a teaser track, ‘I
Will Unify The Hood Through My Vision’,
appearing on No Pain In Pop’s ‘Bedroom
Club III’ compilation in August, his first
long-form is due on the label in early
November.
TELL US MORE
Hutchins fell into experimenting with
video, messing with circuit-bent FX
boxes and screen grabs, to complement
the style of his tunage. Think fuzzy,
lo-fi and re-processed. No Pain In Pop
commissioned him to make Ukkonen’s
‘Luomus’ video, his debut promo, and
a short film by Sim, ‘We Believe In
Technology’, is set to be screened at the
prestigious London Short Film Festival in
January. The video for his album’s lead
track, ‘Tie Me To A Rocket (And Point
Me At The Ground)’, deals with “psychic
driving”, an experimental psychiatric
procedure that saw patients drugged
and exposed to looped audio message
in a bid to alter their behaviour. You will
love Sim Hutchins, you will love Sim
Hutchins...
NEIL MASON
‘I Enjoy To Sweep A Room’ released by No
Pain In Pop on 6 November
00:00:60
XXX FRONT
THE
sixtySECONDS
The excellent LUKE HAINES doesn’t technically break any of the rules for his one-minute portrait – but we might
have to include a limit on masks from now on…
https://www.youtube.com/embed/eS9Mg56y6RM
NAME: Luke Haines
BORN: 7 October 1967, Walton-onThames
BANDS: The Servants, The Auteurs,
Baader Meinhof,
Black Box Recorder
FAVOURITE KRAFTWERK ALBUM?
“‘Radio-Activity’ is the one,” he tells us.
“It was a much more important record to
me than ‘Autobahn’. When I first heard
‘Autobahn’ it was kind of a downer that
they were using flutes. It was half a good
record, there were a couple of cool synthy
things, but the flutes and the bird calls… I
didn’t get that as a kid.”
the recent Mark E Smith tribute ‘Adventures
HIGHEST CHART POSITION?
Oh come come, let’s not be churlish. While In Dementia’, a micro opera about The Fall’s
mighty leader going on a caravan holiday.
it is still illegal in many parts of the world
to allow Haines an existence outside of The
Auteurs, he has released 11 albums under
WITH IDEAS LIKE THAT,
his own name since 2001’s ‘The Oliver
WHO NEEDS HITS RIGHT?
Twist Manifesto’… which is more than his
“I like people like Robert Wyatt who just
previous four groups combined. But if we’re
get on and do what they do,” explains
counting, Black Box Recorder’s ‘The Facts
Haines. “I never really considered it being a
of Life’ grazed the Top 20 in 2000.
career. I probably did for about 10 minutes
in 1994. If it comes to it I can go and get
a job if I have to. I can serve a pint, you
SO NO HITS THEN?
Well, erm, no. But that’s a minor detail when know. I’d be happy to chat to punters.”
the man is clearly some sort of maverick
mastermind. Take the 2003 album ‘Das
Capital – The Songwriting Genius of Luke
Haines And The Auteurs’. It was his own
orchestral testimonial to himself. Face it, no
one else was ever going to bother. Or there’s
THERE’S AN APPRENTICESHIP GOING
IN OUR LOCAL BAKERY…
“You should send me the details… £100 a
week? That’s good money.”
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THE FRONT
UNDER
THE
INFLUENCE
Pere Ubu’s infamous frontman DAVID THOMAS takes
his turn to share some of the building blocks behind his
groundbreaking work
Interview: DAVID STUBBS
THE FRONT
“
A M E R I C A N L I T E R AT U R E
AN EPIPHANY IN GEORGIA
As a kid, I read lot of Hemingway and Ray Bradbury. In theory
they’re two very different writers, but in reality there are
similarities: Bradbury writes about things that aren’t seen
and Hemingway writes about things that aren’t said. I also
remember listening to recordings by Vachel Lindsay, the
so-called “singing poet”. My dad was doing his masters on
Lindsay – he was an American Lit guy – he was into the Beats,
Ginsberg, Kerouac, he knew Gregory Corso’s wife. He was of
that generation. Kerouac I liked because Kerouac was The Kid. I
loved that whole idea of the journey east to west and following
the sun. I thought the other Beat poets were theatrical,
detached, whereas Kerouac was like, “Hey, let’s go!” and that
to a child is much more interesting.
My father had a few albums which he listened to endlessly
like ‘The World Of Harry Partch’, which was my introduction
to music. He didn’t have a huge record collection, but this was
in it. It was amazing. I was 10. No one told me this stuff was
weird. It sounded cool to me. My dad also had a Lenny Bruce
album, which features Bruce lying on a gravestone on the cover.
I also liked The Kingston Trio’s song ‘Tom Dooley’ as well as
‘Worried Man Blues’, a folk song that has become something of
an obsession for me over the years.
Pere Ubu were pre-punk, not post-punk. We came up as
part of a short-lived generation in America in the mid-1970s
who were literate kids. Groups like Television and us and The
Residents and a number of other little groups you never heard
of had ambitions – it seemed very clear to us at the time that
there was another step coming and that we were the step.
The evolution of the rock movement was really an upward
straight line from the adolescence of rock ’n’ roll: ‘Heartbreak
Hotel’, which formalises the third person narrative voice of
rock music (it’s not about the Elvis character, it’s the bellhop
who’s watching the Elvis character), then The Beach Boys and
The Beatles. Then, in the 70s with the arrival of the analogue
synthesiser and the realisation that the hippies were just a
bunch of corporate tykes and the counterculture was a total
farce, there we were, we seized our mission, and punk came
along and wiped the whole damn thing out.
.
The first album I ever bought was Frank Zappa’s ‘Uncle Meat’
and then ‘Hot Rats’, which featured a really cool vocalist called
Captain Beefheart, on the basis of which I bought ‘Trout Mask
Replica’. Then came the MC5 album – that, along with Curtis
Mayfield’s ‘Super Fly’, ‘Wild Honey’ by The Beach Boys and
‘Burnin’ by The Wailers, was the constant soundtrack to the sort
of crypto-White Panther commune I lived in after I graduated
from college.
My very first epiphany came in a village called Somerville
in Georgia – actually, it may have been the next village
along – and it was a pop song that came on the radio sung
by some English woman, who may or may not have been
Dusty Springfield. What I remember is that the song perfectly
transmitted the feeling of summer in Georgia. There was a
scent in the air that probably came from a processing plant
nearby, yet it was a very distinct moment. Looking back, that
was when I realised the power of sound. The pop song itself
was obviously forgettable because I don’t even remember the
name of it. But I remember the sound of it.
I’m not an arty person, though I reckon I understand art better than
a ton of artists. We were low culture people; we thought the high
culture had its head up its ass. It was detached from the lives of
the people we saw around us, ordinary people. It was in the debris
and the detritus of ordinary people that we thought the work was
being done. Folk culture – I’ve always been a folk culturist. I have a
high regard for the “common man” and a disregard for the elites of
society.
So yeah, I watched TV. We were kids. We understood that the
TV was a propaganda tool, a medium of deception – I saw that
in 1965 as a 12-year-old. I understood at that age that this media
elite, this great and good whose faces you saw on the TV every
day, were nothing more than a bunch of used car salesmen. But
we liked the actual used car salesmen on TV because at least they
were honest. Their adverts had spirit, had drive. We loved it – after
midnight, they’d show the cheap stuff. We loved the idea of selling,
of product, of progress. It’s a shame that most of it has disappeared
now, but in those early days, all the Pere Ubu visual stuff, our ads,
our posters, were based on cheap 1am adverts. Big Ed Stinn, come
on down, he was a huge influence on us.
That’s quintessential: it’s about what people do, it’s about the road,
the journey, the future. It’s about free, white and 21, it’s about 30
cent gas and all that kind of crap. But it’s self-aware at the same
time, it’s about mythologies, and it loves the mythologies, the
same as TV, it’s about mythologies. If you choose the right ones
and understand that they ain’t real, then it’s not a problem. It’s like
the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel ain’t real. So what?
CLEVELAND, OHIO
The place I grew up, where Ubu were formed. It fed in, in ways
that are difficult to communicate. It was totally isolated and
became kind of a big joke. There were endless numbers of
comedy writers who were born and raised in Cleveland, went
into television and discovered these old Polish jokes that they
could turn into Cleveland jokes. You probably have the same
thing in the UK with Irish jokes, and I bet they’re the same
damn jokes. So we were aware of being disdained for where
we came from and probably developed a fortress mentality.
They say women have to try twice as hard as men to get to the
same place – we felt the same minority chip on our shoulder
– and Cleveland itself was hard, very competitive. None of
this happy-clappy “we’re all in it together” stuff – it was more
like “fuck you”. You might only get a gig twice a year in some
crappy little dive and you’d damn well better be good.
And if you didn’t know the latest Popol Vuh album you couldn’t
even show your face in town. This was the golden age of the
record shop. Record stores were incredibly important. Most
people in the scene at that point worked in record shops and if
your shop didn’t have everything, and I mean everything, then
it was like an alpha dog thing, you were sunk.
“
BIG ED STINN,
CAR SALESMAN
The Record Rendezvous stores in Cleveland, those places
had everything. Anton Fier, who played with Pere Ubu for a
while, was the manager at the Record Rendezvous on Prospect
Avenue. That was the place Alan Freed discovered the term
rock ’n’ roll along with the store owner, Leo Mintz.
Pere Ubu’s‘Elitism For The People 1975-1978’
reissues boxset is out now on Fire Records
XXX FRONT
THE
BURIED
TREASURE
IN SEARCH OF ELECTRONIC GOLD
Thick as thieves Beastie Boys’ compatriot MONEY
MARK is perhaps best known for his eclectic 1998
album ‘Push The Button’, but his earlier debut,
‘Mark’s Keyboard Repair’,
was really where it’s at
Words: MAT SMITH
1995 was a curious year for electronic music.
Following its crossover to the mainstream a year
earlier, 1995 saw its metamorphosis become
evident to a broader audience. The rapid, almost
viral way that trip hop, jungle and electronica
styles – to use the parlance of the day – infiltrated
one another was nothing short of mesmerising,
even if it left curious listeners wondering what
the broad church of electronic music actually
represented.
One of James Lavelle’s early Mo’Wax signings was
Mark Ramos-Nishita, otherwise know as Money
Mark. Nishita was a key figure
in the Beastie Boys’ backroom team, hitching himself
to their party wagon as they
landed in California from New
York and appearing on every
album from 1992’s ‘Check Your
Head’ onwards. But his 1995
debut solo full-length, ‘Mark’s
Keyboard Repair’, was the
point where Nishita stepped
up to the front. As he sang on
the album’s soulful last track,
“sometimes you gotta make it
alone”.
Had ‘Mark’s Keyboard Repair’ been executed in the
1970s, it would have been lumped into a terminally
unfashionable jazz-funk bucket and would never
have made it above ground. But this was 1995, and
the British record-buying public were pretty much
up for anything and so ‘Mark’s Keyboard Repair’
settled improbably at the low end of the Top 40
album chart.
The main reason for its success was that it was
so damn funky; most trip hop could only hope to
deliver grooves like the ones in Mark’s repertoire,
but here was someone casually throwing out hooks,
breaks and percussion loops like an imaginary
lo-fi jam between George Clinton, Booker T and
Stevie Wonder circa ‘Songs In The Key Of Life’.
Organs, vibes, kazoos, vintage electronic pianos
and battered old synths – pretty much anything
that could deliver a meaningful melody was fair
game for Money Mark. And, on tracks like ‘Don’t
Miss The Boat’, Mark added vocals that nestled
somewhere between Isaac Hayes, Barry Adamson
and Jon Spencer.
The whole thing was so utterly off-the-wall it
proved irresistible. OK, so other artists would
pepper their breaks with humorous samples (see J
Saul Kane’s Depth Charge, early
DJ Shadow, the entire Wu-Tang
back catalogue etc), but Mark
made every instrument, every
dusty old keyboard or drum
machine, sound fun to play. Some
of the melodies he bashed out –
such as on ‘Insects Are All Around
Us’ – couldn’t help but make
you smile. But under that wacky
lackadaisical vibe lurked the
virtuosity that might make Nishita
electronic music’s Les Dawson,
whereby learning to unplay an
instrument requires you first to be
able to play it to an exceptionally
high standard. It’s that visionary, scholarly
musicality that made Nishita such a dependable
sparring partner for everyone from Damo Suzuki to
the Chili Peppers.
‘Mark’s Keyboard Repair’ has managed to stand the
test of time principally because it was never really
of a particular era in the first place. Twenty years
on, it still sounds maddeningly fresh – and still
ridiculously good fun.
‘Mark’s Keyboard Repair’ is available as a free
download from moneymark.com
THE FRONT
FAT ROLAND
BANGS
ON
Oh, the folly of the rich and famous. Imagine if our
lot got on a MORRISSEY I-can-write-a-novel kick…
we stare off into the distance all wistful, like, and
imagine such things…
Words: FAT ROLAND
Illustration: STEVE APPLETON
I found this in my attic. It’s some kind of novel written
by an iconic music star. I think it’s the future of literature;
someone like, say, Penguin should publish it immediately.
It’s only an excerpt because if I was to post the whole thing,
this magazine would short-circuit in lyrical ecstasy.
Vince Clarke The Quiet One Out Of Erasure barrel-rolled
through the bulbous, golden fields of vegan wheat, eyes
gazing up at the English sky scattered with tea-stained
clouds as if Mother Nature herself had been casting runes.
“O to be free,” trilled Clarky Clarke, the words preciously
careening into the air as if to intone “hark the canopy of the
sky and tell me if this is a blue savannah song”. And what a
song, the blue savannah song, the songiest of English songs.
Suddenly, Clarke thought of The Other One In Erasure, the
one he calls PVC Andy because of his penchant for highstyle attire and posturing costumes. In the secrecy of his
mind, Clarke pictured PVC Andy on stage, song-entwining
the manful microphone in lustful joy, his words step-sliding
from his lyrical tongue into the frenzied and open ears of
the quietly shouting audience who followed as pilgrims from
English city to English city, o praise those who have tramped
and trudged with every fibre of their bulbous being.
Clarky-Clarke-Clarke shook this thought from his blue
savannah tea-stained mind, because for the first time in
his three-score and half-score years, Clarke was alone and
free. So he sang and sang until he murdered a scarecrow,
thrashing and bashing with a cosy killer’s rake until, with
deathblow upon deathblow, he rendered the straw man as
lifeless as an adverbially proverbial, primordial dinosaur.
“Take THAT, Andy, crusher of my freedom desires,” uttered
Clarke in lustful, precocious voice, each flurry of battered
straw a copulation of bulbous relief bursting into the reality
of the air like a bride-thrown bouquet of metaphorical
gladioli.
“Vince, why are you hitting that scarecrow with a rake?”
came a sudden reply from Andy, who stood bulbous and
unnoticed on the trampled carpet of vegan wheat that
was the most wheatingly of English wheat. “Uh, nothing,”
topspan Clarke, and they both left with Andy lecturing
Clarke about leaving the rehearsal studio on his own, and if
he wanted a little respect, next time he might want to put
some trousers on, the bulbous blue savannah berk.
JACK DANGERS’
SCHOOL OF
ELECTRONIC MUSIC
Professor Dangers digs out an album that holds its own against Eno and
Byrne’s 1981 masterpiece ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’, yet pre-dates it
by a couple of years. Meet Bernard Bonnier, a former colleague of musique
concrete don Pierre Henry, and his 1979 album, ‘Casse-tête’
Bernard Bonnier was a French Canadian composer from
Montreal who worked with Pierre Henry in the early 1970s.
Henry taught him everything he knew, first as a student and
then as his assistant. After working in Paris with Henry for
quite a few years, Bonnier went back to Canada and started his
own studio, which he called Amaryllis. Most of his ‘Casse-tête’
album was recorded there in 1979, but it wasn’t released until
1984, and even then no one really noticed.
One track, ‘Soldier Boy’, is simply stunning. It was recorded
at Pierre Henry’s Apsone-Cabasse Studio in Paris. It uses a
short tape loop of Elvis Presley and makes an 11-minute track
out of it. It’s a really early example of using familiar pop tunes
and hacking them up to create something completely new
and startling. It’s the kind of thing that Jimmy Cauty and Bill
Drummond did in 1987 with The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu
when they cut up The Beatles’ music with Samantha Fox.
Really subversive.
The album is a mix of tape loops, found sounds, electronics and
live drums and percussion. Some tracks, like ‘La Demoiselle Au
Corsage Vert’ (‘The Girl In The Green Blouse’) is a collection of
noises, like creaking wood and birds, proper musique concrete
stuff. But then there’s ‘Italian Junk Food’, which could have
come straight off Brian Eno and David Byrne’s ‘My Life In The
Bush Of Ghosts’.
It’s incredible to think that it
was recorded a good couple
of years before ‘My Life In
The Bush Of Ghosts’, which
is such a landmark record.
‘Casse-tête’ is as good
and uses samples and
electronics in really similar
ways. With the live drums,
which are really tight and
controlled, but with more strange sounds and a human feel, it’s
also little bit like the ‘Zero Set’ album by Moebius, Plank and
Neumeier, which came out in 1983. But it predates that too.
I first came across Bernard Bonnier on a seven-inch single. It
was put out by a Canadian publishing company called CAPAC,
the Canadian Authors and Publishers Association of Canada
Limited. Where ‘Casse-tête’ is funny and commercial, that was
a more serious record. Bonnier died in 1994, when he was only
41, I think it was in a car crash. He was almost forgotten, but
his son remastered the album and it’s been re-released so his
legacy is being looked after.
Bernard Bonnier’s ‘Casse​-​tête’ is available
from Oral Records - oralrecords.bandcamp.com
THE FRONT
XXX
THE
REMIX
REVIEW
In association with Prism Sound
This month we’ve got a remix from the hands of longtime OMD drummer, Malcolm Holmes. And yes, it’s
every bit as good as you’d expect…
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
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
https://www.facebook.com/Prism-Sound-141480894399/
and https://twitter.com/prismsound
Ummagma are Canadian-Ukranian duo Alexander Kretov and
Shauna McLarnon who blend ambient soundscapes with multilayered, effects-laden guitars and Shauna’s blissfully pure
vocals. ‘Lama’ is one of five originals on their new offering
‘Frequency’ and the track comes complete with three remixes
which complete the package. Cocteau Twins linchpin Robin
Guthrie provides a typically slow burning version that builds
to a tempestuous climax and Welsh outfit Lights That Change
evoke Joy Division’s later experiments on theirs, but it’s the
rare remix outing for Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s
Malcolm Holmes that will surely get fans of 80s electronics
salivating profusely.
Although all due heed is paid to the original, you’ll find all
the hallmarks of key 80s synth pioneers OMD in the mix,
officially titled ‘Malcolm Holmes’ OMD Remix’. It sounds
effortlessly simple, but on closer inspection there’s so much
going on beyond the surface. OMD’s grasp of melody –
sweetly innocent and joyful, but with an undercurrent of the
melancholic – is very much at play too. At its heart are the
subtle throb of the sequenced synthesiser and the smack of
electronic drums, sounding so authentic you’d swear Holmes
had made it on the same gear such classics as ‘Souvenir’ and
‘Enola Gay’ were forged on.
But in fact everything was made and mixed “in the box”, as
he puts it. “No analogue was harmed in the making of this
record,” he jokes. “I keep my studio really simple, I’m not big
on a room full on cables and mess. I love working totally from
the screen with no clutter around me. I was using a Mac Pro
2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon with 32 GB Ram running
Logic Pro X 10.1.1, Digi 002 and Quested S7Rs for monitoring.
Waves plug-ins included all the usual suspects, CLA-76, an
SSL equaliser and SSL G-Master Buss Compressor. Software
instruments included Spectrasonics’ Trilian, Omnisphere and
Stylus.”
“Every remix is like a separate creation born from the stems of
our song ‘Lama’, each of them taking this song in a different
direction,” explains Ummagma’s Shauna McLarnon. “We
are big fans of many remixes. With taste, skill and enough
originality, they can take on a life all their own. Malcolm
Holmes brought a brilliant OMD 80s-era vibe and awesome
synths to the remix and, I must admit, it sounds unlike any
remix we could have even imagined – such an awesome
upbeat surprise. Malcolm also did another remix for us in
2014 for our collaboration with Russia’s Sounds Of Sputnik,
which is already out and won us a Russian Indie Music Award.”
“Although I’ve been programming for a long time, remixing
is something I had never taken too seriously or pursued as
an alternative to playing live,” adds Malcolm. “After I had a
problem with my heart at an OMD show in Toronto in 2013, I
needed time to recuperate and this was perfect way to do
that. ‘Lama’ was my first proper venture into the remix world.
Shauna has a great voice and alongside a ton of sweeping
guitars, I wanted to take it away from the ambient vibe
and put the track into a more pop form and structure. It’s
important for myself and the artist to be completely happy
with the track and OMD has set the bar really high for me.
But… I must say, I love it when a band lets me loose on a
track and I turn it on its head.”
XXX FRONT
THE
ANATOMY OF A
It’s always interesting when the paint brushes come out for a record sleeve... our arts correspondent
FAT ROLAND discusses the merits of JAPAN’s oil on canvas for, erm, ‘OIL ON CANVAS’...
It was either this or a bowl
of fruit (pastilles)
It was either this or a
painting from Pink Floyd’s
life modelling class
The original cover model
was a Cantonese boy
but instead they got Geoff
from Wales
Dulux colour:
Sunshine Mucus
Thinks: “This had better
chuffing be a Spandau
Ballet album”
Thinks: “I might have the
beef casserole tonight”
Dulux colour:
Distressed Frog
Other albums by Japan: Tin
Drum, Plastic Kazoo, Papier
Mâché Sousaphone
Worst. Selfie. Ever
After this album, Japan
disappeared. The band,
not the country
Alternative band
names: Belgium, Chad,
Stoke-on-Trent
David Bowie during his
bourbon biscuit years
The Mona Lisa during her
custard cream years
Turn this upside down.
Your album is now upside
down
Dulux colour:
Farmer’s Ooze
Paint by numbers
(goes up to four)
Thinks: “Did I leave
the iron on?”
David Sylvian, of course,
went on to form the
Vengaboys or something
I dunno
Artist materials: brushes,
palette knife, paint roller,
annoyed hamster
The members of Japan
later reunited under the
name Rain Tree Wildebeest
Flower Sausage We’re Not
Japan Honest
You too can recreate this
album cover by taking a
photo of this album cover
BORIS
BLANK
GETS
ELECTRONIC
SOUND
MAKE SURE
YOU DO TOO
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THE FRONT
NEEDS
MUST
Our resident electronic explorer is
back, venturing into the unknown
to bravely capture the weird
and wonderful for your listening
pleasure…
Words: KRIS NEEDS
SUN RA
Gilles Peterson Presents… To Those Of Earth &
Other Worlds
STRUT | 2XCDS/2XLP
This month’s column starts with one of the last century’s most
monumental electronic innovators and iconoclasts. Sun Ra, who
insisted he came from Saturn, was first to use an electronic
keyboard in jazz (the primitive Hammond Solovox he acquired
in 1941), was early to adopt the Moog synthesiser then take it
further out than anyone else dared, and he predicted dub reggae
with his wild studio techniques. Ra’s discography is a labyrinth of
mysterious releases on his pioneering independent Saturn label
and now in an ever-growing archive of compilations and live sets.
Following last year’s highly successful ‘In The Orbit Of Ra’,
curated by current Arkestra commander Marshall Allen, Strut
has teamed up again with Art Yard to present an interstellar
selection from DJ Gilles Peterson who straddles early vocal group
outings, chestnuts such as ‘Love In Outer Space’ and unreleased
nuggets from the colossal Ra archive to forge a mind-frying
intergalactic odyssey that favours space chants and oddities over
jazz blow-outs. This is a whole parallel world that serves as a
good launchpad for first-timers and producing previously unheard
delights for veterans.
ESTEBAN ADAME
Rise And Shine EP
EPM MUSIC | 12-INCH/DOWNLOAD
Detroit was a Ra stronghold, early to embrace space-jazz. It’s also
the home of my beloved Underground Resistance, one of techno’s
remaining pockets of below-the-radar electronic subversion.
Last issue we met LA-based UR affiliate Santiago Salazar with
his wonderful album. Now here’s his partner in the ICAN label
Esteban Adame, who’s taken the atmospheric opening track of
his recent ‘Day Labor’ LP and turned it into a loincloth-singeing
monster, adding surging killer beats to its ethereal majesty.
There’s the lusciously deep ‘Frequencia Deconstruction’ version
on the download, and UR have supplied two rare remixes; the
flickeringly subtle ‘Underground Resistance Mix’ (complete with
tape reversals) and Mark Flash’s propulsive rework.
METAMONO
THE MISSING BRAZILIANS
M-PLANT | 12-inch / Download
ON-U SOUND | VINYL+DOWNLOAD CARD
From Detroit to the subterranean south London latrine where
Metamono splash merrily surrounded by their arsenal of handbuilt vintage analogue synths, ring modulators and theremins.
The Crystal Palace trio of Jono Podmore, Paul Conboy and Mark
Hill are shortly to follow 2013’s towering ‘With The Compliments
Of Modern Physics’ with a second album, ‘Creative Listening’. It’s
trailered here with a delicious out-take slab of their mischievous,
wired-to-the-gills urban clatter, which can appreciate that Sun
Ra was the first modern electronic musician but imagine him
jamming with Can. Midway through, an aggressive invading
rooster drops his keks and breaks wind. Metamono’s uniquely
crafted sonic sparks are flying again and flaying the lazy scrotum
of the laptop brigade with idiosyncratic defiance.
Trevor Jackson’s recent ‘Science Fiction Dancehall Classics’
could only scrape the surface of the colossal On-U archive
which, while presaging modern electronic music, still often
sounds frozen in time and out on its own. 1984’s ‘Warzone’
was the sole album released as The Missing Brazilians and the
nearest Sherwood got to a solo album then. It could also be the
furthest out he got in his dub-stretching quest, stripping the
music to bare, radioactive skeletons, with ghostly melodies and
electro-derived mixing desk mangling. Handling mostly bass
and drums, Sherwood is occasionally joined by various On-U
musicians, including a pre-Massive Attack Shara Nelson and
Annie Anxiety. Re-cut from dub plates, it still sounds unearthly
and ruinously futuristic.
CARDOPUSHER
THE BLACK DOG
BOYSNOIZE / LP/DOWNLOAD
DUST SCIENCE | DOWNLOAD
I’m a sucker for the unmistakable sound of the 303 and primal
darkness of the earliest acid house. From the malevolent squelch
of the opening ‘Exceptions’, Venezualan-born Barcelona-based
producer Cardopusher displays uncanny finesse in seducing floornapalming new juice out of arcane machine sounds. ‘Dance To
The Acid H’ practically reworks ‘Acid Tracks’ while ‘Cult 91’ is as
filthy as a hippo’s back passage. The sexed-up rattle of ‘Photinia’
strips down to basic proto-house and ‘Morning Traffic Dance’
recalls the electro-based Underground Resistance productions
of last decade: mercilessly nagging, but innately funky with acid
undercurrents swarming like piranhas around a Portuguese manof-war’s pendulous todger. All told, this positively luminous set
is a masterclass in how original analogue blueprints can evolve
in the hands of new generations; homaging with an unobtrusive
hand from modern technology.
It seems amazing that I’ve been writing about The Black Dog
for over a quarter century now, but August’s ‘Neither/Neither’
album was another inimitable excursion into the electronic
unknown. The Black Dog chose a few remixers who in turn
picked which tracks from ‘Neither/Neither’ they wanted to
rework and they’ve come up cocking a highly-creative leg
against the monolithic originals. In Ambivalent’s case, it squirts
techno gold as ‘Commodification’ gets lathered up with glitch
and shadowy noise, with nifty use of the mighty Godzilla bowel
bugle blast that rears rudely throughout. Then GoldFFinch
come and open the windows on their breezily dazzling canter
through ‘Hollow Stories Hollow Head’. Application mangle
the title track into a dense, big-stringed churn before The
Dog themselves reposition the groove and strings into a dark
shimmer that has more fun with Japanese movie monster
flatulence. Their War & Peace version of ‘B.O.O.K.S.’ stretches
the track into a soaring 23-minute beatless floatation epic.
Dystopia
Manipulator
Warzone
Very Extended Play EP
XXX FRONT
THE
REKORD 61
FREAKS
Vremya Versions
Let’s Do It Again Part One
KONSTRUKTIV | 12-INCH/DOWNLOAD
MUSIC FOR FREAKS | 12-inch/download
Russian producer Rekord 61 presents new mixes of last
June’s ‘Vremya’, spearheaded by his ‘Time Won’t Change
Us’ version; a subtly building mosaic built on shimmering
synth pulse and masturbating frog loop. UR’s Rolando
supplies a second rework, his ‘RRR Mix’ layering Morse code
icing and nagging acid underpants in a compelling exercise
in controlled dancefloor explosives as percussion and
synthesised edginess ups the pressure. The set is completed
by two atmosphere-laden mixes from Russia’s Alexander
Matlakhov, aka Unbalance, whose ‘Tight’ version stalks
dark, shuddering acid alleys and ‘Viscous Remix’ scatters the
kick to support further manipulation of the elements into a
spectral ghost party recalling heavenly early 90s Frankfurt
trou’-toppings.
Hot news this month is the resurrection of Luke Solomon and
Justin Harris’ Music For Freaks, one of the most idiosyncratic
but fun-packed label of the 1990s and 2000s, which is
spearheaded by this shorts-liquidating double-header of
spanking new overhauls. Freaks stood out for relentlessly
trying to push house music past the outer limits, while
not losing sight of its original aim to prod the rectum into
frenetic action.
TERRENCE PARKER/
NO SHIT LIKE DEEP/
MELODYMANN
Here they see 2003’s ‘The Man Who Lived Underground’
reworked into an edgy 12-minute monster of the deep
by Ricardo Villalobos before German duo Tuff City Kids
sprinkle some magic over Turner’s ‘Been Out’. Their blissful,
80s-tinged golden shower enables it to sprout the genitalia
of a young donkey. The package is completed by a previously
unreleased edit of Freaks’ ‘Instrument’ from 1999. Only got a
poxy Soundcloud clip, but it’s great to have the Freaks back
out for some much-needed warped groove action.
DETROIT’S FILTHIEST
Heart Break
After Hours
MELODYMATHICS | 2X10-INCH
MOTOR CITY ELECTRO COMPANY | Download
Great little operation that provides tools for DJs and
producers in the form of loops, acapellas and good oldfashioned sample-built tracks. Their fifth release comes
as two 10-inches, led by Detroit house stalwart Terrence
Parker’s starkly simple, but irresistible piano pounding ‘Heart
Break’, the mysterious No Shit Like Deep’s rough-shod and
cheeky jigsaw of soul vocal group motifs ‘Ambassador Of
Love’ and label head Melodymann’s loping disco-house
locked groove ‘Broken Loop’, which he continues on disc
two’s ‘Low Funk’ and ‘What Are You Gonna Do’. Back to
basics and great fun.
Michigan marauder Julian Shamou, aka DJ Nasty, continues
his reissue campaign by resuscitating 2005’s brutal jungle
mutant ‘After Hours’ (previously released as DJ Nasty’s
‘100% Hood Certified’). Effectively utilises Detroit house
singer Aaron Love and, in keeping with the series, boasts
new 125bpm treatment for housier floors.
TALE OF US & MIND
AGAINST
Astral
LIFE & DEATH | 12-inch/download
Finally, a lovely slice of luminescent deep techno laced with
glimmering melodies and restlessly creative spirits in full
flight. For some reason it makes me want to go out and
stroke my pet rabbits. Till next month…
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THE FRONT
LANDMARKS
JAPAN
‘GENTLEMEN
TAKE POLAROIDS’
Synth master RICHARD BARBIERI remembers the
heady days of 1980 and gives us the full skinny on
Japan’s first single for Virgin Records
Interview: ROSIE MORGAN
At the time Virgin signed us, we didn’t have any hits. What
convinced them to take us on was this growing interest in the
band. They came to see us play live and realised we’d been
playing all these London shows that were sold out in advance.
We had a residency at The Music Machine in Camden – I think
it’s called Koko now – and we used to sell that out every
week. So Virgin took a gamble with us, and ‘Gentlemen Take
Polaroids’ was the first recording we did with them.
I think Japan had three stages. You can group them: the first
two albums are of a type, and then ‘Quiet Life’ was a big
musical change, and then there was another massive change
for ‘Tin Drum’, which was a completely different sort of
animal altogether. The ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ album is an
extension of ‘Quiet Life’ really. With ‘Quiet Life’, we’d found a
way of doing things and a producer we liked working with, so
‘Polaroids’ was about perfecting a new style we’d developed.
The hardest thing to explain is how we used to compose and
arrange our music. Nowadays, you can move tracks around on
a computer within seconds and easily test different things out.
Back then, you couldn’t record everything you did, so to try
new ideas you’d have to play the whole thing again, but that’s
how we did it. Just in a studio, a couple of keyboards each,
building the track up like that.
Although David Sylvian is credited as the writer on all the
tracks, by that time we were working on material together as
a band and arranging them in rehearsal rooms. David would
come in and he would usually start playing either an acoustic
guitar or, as in this case, a keyboard. He had this basic line
which is on the album, playing single notes, going through the
verse, and we would all start playing along. I still have tapes of
us rehearsing and writing this song.
The sections gradually built up from that and then we’d start
working on the arrangements. Of course, David would have a
vocal in mind already: it’s always good to have the security of
the song behind whatever you’re doing. It was an authentic,
organic process, but it worked because we had a good
understanding of each other. It was a process we’d developed
while recording ‘Quiet Life’, so by this time we were quite
comfortable with it.
The studio we used belonged to Virgin and it was really wellequipped. I ended up playing a few things that weren’t part
of my normal set-up on the ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ track
itself, like a Polymoog and a Micromoog, and I think David
played an ARP Omni and a Roland Jupiter 4. They’re things that
didn’t feature before, and didn’t feature in the future either,
they were just around in the studio. Everybody’s very precious
about vintage gear now, but in those days you didn’t think the
kit was anything special. When I look at the old stuff I was
using then – and I’ve still got it all – I’m so full of awe, I love
it, but at the time, I didn’t really feel that way about it. I just
thought, “This is what I need in order to get the job done”.
Looking back, what I find hard to imagine is how I managed to
go on stage with some of these synths! Some of them didn’t
have memories, so you couldn’t store your sounds, you had to
program everything as you went along. Sometimes you had
to program for the next track while you were still playing the
previous one. I would never even attempt that now!
We had a piano on the track too. We used to sometimes treat
an acoustic piano by opening it up and putting little weights
on the strings to get different tones and mutes and generally
make each note a little more interesting harmonically. Studios
would be horrified to find out people did this. It was nice to hit
on those low notes in unison with the bass drum and it gave a
nice emphasis to what Steve Jansen was doing with the drums
at that point. Mick Karn played a lot of other things besides his
bass on the track too, like saxophone and oboe, and Rob Dean
played a beautiful EBowed guitar throughout, which helped
give it a really rich sound palette.
‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ doesn’t have a normal versechorus-verse-chorus arrangement. It’s about seven minutes
long and it has this really nice outro segment after the last
chorus. Most tracks would fade out or start to end there, but
this goes into a whole new piece at the end. Everything drops
down dynamically and David starts singing layers of baritone
voices, and all these abstract electronics start coming in. And it
builds from there and becomes quite eerie. That’s the favourite
part for me, when that outro starts.
There’s this application I liked to do back then, which I used
in the outro here: I would have my Roland System 700 on a
sample and hold setting. It makes random pitches controlled
by an LFO that aren’t in time with the track, just running
randomly, but the notes often fall in quite interesting places.
It’s never exactly wrong, because there’s always seemingly a
beat it can attach to; the tuning is off as well, so sometimes
it’s just a tiny bit out and it sounds lovely. It’s like an accident.
You let it run and think, “I hope it works!”. But you end up with
little electronic tones in exactly the right places that you could
never replicate again.
‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ was the last album we recorded
with John Punter as our producer. We started working with
John on ‘Quiet Life’, which was for me the most enjoyable
album we ever made, and John really brought his personality
to the ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ single. Whenever I listen to
it now, I’m always surprised at how processed the whole thing
is: there’s a flanger, or a phaser, or a pitch shift on everything –
the drums, the bass, the vocals, everything.
At that time, everybody in Japan had an innate respect for
each other whereby we gave each other a lot of space and time
to try things out. If I walked into a rehearsal room today and
somebody was playing and they wanted me to join in, I’d be
conscious about coming up with something that would be safe
and would fit in and would work, because I wouldn’t want to
embarrass myself. But being fearless comes with being young
– and we were only about 22 when we recorded ‘Gentlemen
Take Polaroids’. If you don’t have any fear and you don’t know
what’s involved, then you don’t really worry about it, do you?
When Orson Welles first started making films, he didn’t know
the rules, so he could break them. He could come up with
something original because he didn’t know what he was
supposed to do. He just did what he felt was right. And we
had that same attitude. When you’re not having to follow any
particular guidelines, and you’re working with people you trust,
people who give you the space you need, you come up with
stuff. You don’t know if it’s what you should be doing or not,
but you do it anyway.
In the end, the ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ single only charted
at Number 60 and Virgin weren’t too happy about that. But
a year later, our old label, Hansa, re-released all our earlier
singles and we were in the charts every week. By the time ‘Tin
Drum’ came along, the New Romantic thing had started, and
‘Quiet Life’ and ‘Polaroids’ seemed to fit really well with that
scene. It’s funny really, because we never felt a part of it, but
at that time Japan and Soft Cell were the most popular chart
acts of the year.
For his latest news and releases find Richard Barbieri on
Facebook or go to richardbarbieri.net
JAPAN
FROM THE
GL AMOUR
TO THE ETHER
Beautiful faces, fabulous hair, immaculate clothes. Laconic vocals,
luxurious synths, sinuous rhythms. We are talking about JAPAN. Of
course. To mark the release of a superb new biography, ‘Japan: A Foreign
Place’, we chronicle the steady rise and sudden fall of one of the most
perfect pop groups of all time
Words: CHRIS ROBERTS
JAPAN
“I WAS ALREADY MORE DRAWN TO
ABOUT WHICH THE BAND WERE LE
Japan were the elegant emperors of elegiac electronica. Proud
as Picasso, shy as Schiele, they were not like other bands. They
expressed an immortal yearning and melancholy, often via the
Trojan horse of throbbing electropop. And then, just as they
“made it”, they stripped everything down, broke every rule,
with a boldness that startled and seduced.
Strictly speaking, they were releasing records for just four years.
So in the great timeline of popular music, they were effectively
only for one night and no repeat (bar Rain Tree Crow, but
we’ll come to that). Yet what an impact they made. Though
far from the biggest stars of their era, their legacy left a long
tail which still twitches. Even those who mocked their foppish
earnestness at the time now acknowledge their grace, guile
and genius.
Daringly re-wiring the house of art-pop while veiled by
their immaculate image, Japan made three turn-of-the-80s
albums – ‘Quiet Life’, ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ and ‘Tin
Drum’ – which coaxed new elements of sorrow, soul and
beauty from electronic instruments. If their presentation, for
all its peacocking, was aloof and chilly (nobody did hauteur
like David Sylvian), the music was warm, emotive, proving that
synths could sigh, and could dovetail with other instruments
and voices to map out previously uncharted terrain. ‘Ghosts’ is
surely the least likely Top Five hit of its (or any) decade.
Japan’s influence since has been implicit rather than explicit.
While most around them in the early 1980s were realising
electronica could be great fun as a buzz and a beat and a
shiny happy signifier of ersatz futurism, Japan used synths
as a texture, a mood: mindfully eerie rather than mindlessly
ecstatic. They were less interested in surface sheen than in the
spaces in between. Silences, pauses and juxtapositions were in
their palette, years ahead of the curve. You can perhaps discern
slight traces of their pensive lineage in James Blake, alt-J, The
xx, FKA twigs. They mapped out new methods of dance.
David Sylvian, of course, has all but disowned Japan’s work,
embarrassed by his juvenilia. When I interviewed him in 2004,
discussing some reissues, he at first feigned to have “no interest”.
He relaxed later, offering a few insights into the work and the
well from which it sprung. “‘Tin Drum’ moved away from the
rock/pop background we’d grown up in and we diversified
somewhat,” he said. “Obviously synthesisers were developing
throughout the early 80s and we were creating our own
imaginary, exotic, mini-orchestra. We dug into the dirt of all that,
to see if it bore fruit.” As it turned out, we liked them apples.
Japan’s “career” – running rings ahead of or behind fashion –
torched the trad. Formed in south London during their mid-70s
schooldays, the brothers Batt (New York Dolls-fixated and
hence surname-changing David and drummer Steve Jansen),
bassist Mick Karn (who also played wind instruments) and
keyboardist Richard Barbieri at first offered – with guitarist Rob
Dean – abrasive, lippy glam-funk. Out of step both visually and
sonically with punk, ‘Adolescent Sex’ and ‘Obscure Alternatives’
are now mostly dismissed by the people who made them,
but regardless of genre they fire on all cylinders, overflowing
with flair and bravado. Then-manager Simon Napier-Bell
pitched Sylvian as “Jagger meets Bardot” and the band were –
inevitably, ironically, whatever – big in Japan. “I don’t cringe
as much as I laugh,” Sylvian told me in the 1980s. Their name,
intended as a stopgap, stuck.
Touring the East, they assimilated new sounds. ‘Life In Tokyo’,
one of Giorgio Moroder’s most underrated pulses, repositioned
them as nouveau disco. At the same time, Sylvian in particular
was pushing for sparseness, more restraint. One imagines the
band members not so much having blazing rows as Britishly
sulking in silence at each other. Sylvian’s previously highly
sexualised vocals became so laconic and suave they all but
out-Ferry-ed Bryan Ferry. Jansen’s intricate rhythms and Karn’s
unique bobbing bass style (it’s all about that bass) broke many
moulds, and Barbieri’s washes of synth were allowed to pour
forth. And being exceptionally well dressed, with fabulous hair,
Japan were embraced by – or lumped in with – the nascent
New Romantic movement.
1980’s ‘Quiet Life’ was the next level of romance-among-robots
that Roxy Music were struggling to find. Bizarrely, just as Japan
found themselves and a whole lot more, their original record
label (Hansa) dropped them. Virgin, liking the hair, stepped
smartly in. With a shunt of publicity, Sylvian was “the world’s
most beautiful man” (a reductive tag he loathes to this day) –
and Japan were minor chart stars. ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’
was narcissistic but noir, rich with regret, and combined
electronica (assisted by Ryuichi Sakamoto from Yellow Magic
Orchestra) with organic instruments to achieve a sophistication
of atmosphere. Guitarist Rob Dean left, feeling superfluous.
Japan’s impulses, European by blood and futuristic in feel, were
no longer following but leading. Many of the “bigger” New
Romantic bands stole not just their look but their ideas (and
diluted or defused them; less sad pierrots, more clowns).
O MELANCHOLY PIECES OF MUSIC,
ESS THAN ENTIRELY ENTHUSIASTIC”
Sylvian, now brunette and bearded, recalled this period for me
with a typical self-effacing shrug. “I remember the recording
being laboured,” he told me. “The label wanted an album
immediately. I felt pushed: we hadn’t really defined where we
were going next. It did pick up momentum, find its feet, but
there was an enormous amount of tension within the band.
I guess the seeds of ruin were probably sewn during that
project.” Seems he couldn’t “relax and swing”. “With greater
success came more pressure to tour, hence more friction,”
he continued. “And I was already more drawn to melancholy
pieces of music, about which the band were less than entirely
enthusiastic. My heart was calling me as a writer to conceal
myself less, to strip things away. With ‘Polaroids’, I was
just beginning to get there. With ‘Tin Drum’, the door really
opened and I saw a path ahead that resonated for me.”
As it did for others, surprisingly, which shows how open the
era was to aesthetics and the quiet storm of the new. ‘Tin
Drum’ was definitively non-commercial yet stayed on the
charts for a year. Sylvian’s visions of China and the Far
East wove around eccentric synth burbles and minimalist
rhythms. ‘Ghosts’ brought existentialism and fatalism (and an
arrangement of deceptive precision) to ‘Top Of The Pops’. “I
don’t know why, but I convinced Virgin to release it, against
their wishes, understandably,” said Sylvian. “I just felt we
had something original there. Its strange popularity felt like
justification, vindication. It was a very important piece of
music in terms of my own development and confidence. It was
personal, but it communicated too, and that was gratifying.
But it was my interest, not the band’s.”
Suddenly, everyone who’d sniped at Japan got it. Their future
looked golden. And so they split up. “We broke up just as ‘Tin
Drum’ was released. But we were committed to a huge tour.
So there we were – ‘successful’ – playing our biggest ever
shows and TV, knowing between us that it was over.” Success
had come too late, according to Sylvian. They’d grown up
together in public and were different people to the original
school friends. “In particular, Mick and I were pulling apart.
The band had reached a peak, and it seemed a noble way to
bow out after all that hard work. To say, ‘Well, we got there,
finally’.”
As for the New Romantic scene, he insisted, “We genuinely
did not feel a part of any movement or genre. We were a
very self-contained group of people socially. Always felt
on the outside. Of that, or anything else. Yes, image and
presentation had been important to us from the beginning,
but it became something I was less and less interested in
sustaining. It had been convenient, given me something to
hide behind. Initially, I doubt I could have walked onto a stage
without that: I was just too shy. A mask got me through it.
Once I decided as a writer I wanted to express myself clearly,
it had to be done away with.”
Working with Ryuichi Sakamoto on ‘Forbidden Colours’ for the
film ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’, Sylvian had an epiphany
on how to move forward himself, and 1984’s landmark ‘Brilliant
Trees’ album (on which Jansen and Barbieri appeared) was the
first in a series of fascinating and meditative solo works. “At
that point I knew there was a richness about it that no longer
required ‘critical acclaim’,” he said. And so he retired from
the spotlight. As of December 2014, he’s all but benched his
trademark luxuriant vocals, releasing ‘There’s A Light That
Enters Houses With No Other House In Sight’, a sparse, mostlyinstrumental collaboration with electronic musician Christian
Fennesz, pianist John Tilbury and poet Franz Wright, which
muses on creativity and mortality.
JAPAN
The Japan story had a coda or two. In 1987, Sylvian had
recorded vocals for Karn, beauties such as ‘Buoy’ confirming
that any feud was on ice. Ten years on from ‘Tin Drum’, Sylvian,
Jansen, Barbieri and Karn reunited, recording as Rain Tree Crow.
But although earlier rows over girlfriends had passed, tension
and resentment ensued, with the others accusing the singer of
egomania and frustrated that he wouldn’t agree to the name
Japan being used. Sylvian told me he was “in analysis” at
that time. “Things were prickly and volatile between us, but
the actual recording was a joy. We were talking about further
albums, but it fell apart. There were financial pressures. We
had the biggest budget I’ve ever worked with in my life, and
somehow we still managed to exhaust it.” Japan or not Japan,
it’s an underrated album with, as Sylvian says, “a warmth
which resonates throughout”.
One dividend of the project was the subsequent work by JBK,
or Jansen Barbieri Karn. Sylvian met and married Ingrid Chavez,
moved to America, found serenity (for a while). ‘There’s A
Light That Enters Houses’ shows that such serenity remains
inconstant. Jansen and Barbieri made an album under the
name The Dolphin Brothers, then across the 80s and 90s
there were records from the permutations Jansen/Barbieri and
Jansen/Barbieri/Karn. The trio also played with No-Man, after
which Barbieri became a long-term member of Porcupine Tree.
He’s also recorded with Tim Bowness and Steve Hogarth.
In 2004, Sylvain told me he was working with Jansen again.
“That’s good – and obviously he’s my brother. As far as I’m
aware, there are no bad feelings between Rich or Mick and
myself, but we’ve lost contact. That happens.” The resulting
album, 2005’s ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’ by Nine Horses, was a
collaboration between Sylvian, Jansen and Burnt Friedman
which echoed the Japan mood as gorgeously as anything since
the band’s heyday. But then in 2011 came Mick Karn’s untimely death from
cancer, losing us one of the most creative bass players the
world has known. He left a body of work, from Dalis Car (with
Peter Murphy) through sublime solo singles like ‘Sensitive’ to
cameos on Kate Bush and Gary Numan albums, of breadth and
imagination. His memoir, ‘Japan & Self-Existence’, emerged
prior to his death and his work as a sculptor was widely praised.
“I wouldn’t dismiss pop music,” Sylvian said to me in 2004. “It’s
easy to generalise and say it’s all superficial and meaningless,
but I don’t believe it is. A great deal of it is just based on ego
and image and style… but in a way people need that. It lifts
them up for a moment.”
The music of Japan remains a double-edged caress: perversely
poignant pop which sounds stronger and silkier as the years
pass. What’s becoming ever more evident is that when their
chance came to be king, they took it.
THE JAPAN
ALBUMS
ADOLESCENT
SEX
Inspired by the New York Dolls, Roxy
and Bowie, early Japan weren’t subtle
but were thrillingly visceral, Rob Dean’s
guitar riffs lacing gritty white funk while
David Sylvian drawled of lust and politics.
Their louche cover of ‘Don’t Rain On My
Parade’ is a gas.
OBSCURE
ALTERNATIVES
More songs about cities and sleaze, with
some startlingly good cod-reggae thrown
in. For all the band’s later progress, the
sheer strut, crackle and presence of
‘Obscure Alternatives’ is something to be
marvelled at.
QUIET LIFE
The critical tide turned as they explored
both Moroder-ish avant-disco and
Sylvian’s fondness for mournful elegy.
They still dressed like a bonfire in a
Zandra Rhodes warehouse, but they were
maturing fast.
GENTLEMEN TAKE
POLAROIDS
They learned to relax and swing. Filtering
rain-swept romanticism through layers
of lush Richard Barbieri synths and that
insanely brilliant rhythm section of Mick
Karn and Steve Jansen, Japan were the
thinking person’s pop visionaries, more
Leonard Cohen than Duran Duran.
(1978)
(1978)
(1979)
(1980)
TIN DRUM
Images of the Orient were now used
deftly rather than heavy-handedly. ‘Tin
Drum’ was so finely nuanced, it was in
places almost ether. Karn’s rubbery bass
gave it all flesh, but wasn’t actually on
the holy near-silences of ‘Ghosts’, a
rogue existential hit.
OIL ON
CANVAS
A farewell live double album featuring
tracks taken from the band’s final gigs,
a six-night stretch at the Hammersmith
Odeon at the end of 1982. Japan were
never the most exciting live act in the
world, but the song selection is nothing
short of superb. (1981)
(1983)
RAIN TREE
CROW
(1991)
The class reunion hit hurdles, with the
others blaming Sylvian’s control-freak
tendencies. Yet among diverse delights,
jewels like ‘Blackwater’ and ‘Every
Colour You Are’ caught that lightning in
a bottle again.
JAPAN BOOK EXTRACT
IN
FORE
PLA
A
EIGN
ACE
ANTHONY REYNOLDS’ recently published book
‘JAPAN: A FOREIGN PLACE (THE BIOGRAPHY, 1974-1984)’ is a
fascinating insight into Japan, featuring contributions from the band
and their associates, as well as many previously unseen photographs.
In this exclusive excerpt, Reynolds reveals the rising tension in the
ranks as Japan made preparations for their ‘Visions Of China’ UK tour
at the end of 1981
JAPAN BOOK EXTRACT
The forthcoming ‘Visions Of China’ tour would be Japan’s
biggest yet in the UK, and their third that year [1981]. The
group were riding a rare wave for any pop group – they
were now commercially successful, critically respected and
fashionable. As such, it was planned that the tour should
incorporate a lavish stage set that travelled with the band from
venue to venue.
The designers chosen for this job were Markus Innocenti and
Edward Arno, two hip and happening set designers who worked
as partners and even dressed identically.
Markus Innocenti: “We came to Simon’s [Napier-Bell, Japan’s
manager] attention through Virgin as we’d done some work for
Simple Minds. We were given ‘Tin Drum’ and then met with
David and listened very carefully to what his ideas were. David
was the band’s voice, and he had the greatest say. What we
came up with was a kind of English music hall version of a
Chinese village. The drum riser was big – it almost came up
to David’s head and had an opening in its front that someone
could walk through. The stage was covered in cloth and had
a paving look, but it had to be really taut otherwise Mick
couldn’t do his shuffle. There was even a ladder that David
could climb up in order to sing from a raised platform, but he
wasn’t keen on that idea. There was a small bridge and behind
it all a projector screen. This was very important to David, as
he wanted to project actual visions of China onto it – stock
footage of China we got from the Chinese embassy. The whole
thing was a huge, theatrical deal.”
Edward Arno: “They were intense people, or David was, or
maybe the situation was. David was very self aware, to the
point that it was almost weird. I remember one meeting
we had with him in this very spare room and it was like
everything was arranged just so for him. You felt like you
were a walk-on part in the ‘David Sylvian Story’. It was almost
funny. I mentioned this meeting to Mick; I said, ‘Is he always
like this?’ and Mick said, ‘Yeah, and that’s one of the reasons
we love him’.”
Innocenti: “Of course, we were made to feel that Simon was
doing us a favour by letting us do this gig. He got us incredibly
cheap. I got on with Mick best. Richard was quiet but a lovely
guy with a core of steel, I thought. Steve was a sweet guy and
all the girls loved him. David was very aloof. I wondered if this
was in part because I became so close to Mick.”
Arno: “Mick and I became very close as the tour went on.
Anyway, we listened to David’s ideas and went away and had
the set built. We thought the band were going to be very
excited by what we’d come up with.”
After two weeks at Nomis [a studio and rehearsal space], in
early December the band assembled at Shepperton Studios for
a dress rehearsal, where the Chinese-influenced set design was
finally assembled and on display. Exhibiting behaviour that was
becoming a pattern before an important live event, Sylvian
seemed to panic on entering Shepperton, declaring that he
“hated” the set and promptly walked out again.
Innocenti: “We turned up for a dress rehearsal and David
freaked out. He said, ‘It’s all too much! It’s not what I wanted
at all!’. I tried explaining that we had no lights on it and that
when it was lit it would make all the difference; lit, it would
have looked stunning. We were due on tour in two days, and
I couldn’t believe he was saying this. I suddenly realised there
was something going on in the band that I wasn’t privy to and I
put it down to nerves. Anyway, David kept going on, ‘I hate it!
This is not what I wanted’, and so on. I persuaded him to let
me light it, just a bit, and the rest of the group were blown
away by it – ‘Oh, it’s awesome’, and so on, but David wouldn’t
budge.”
Mick Karn: “I’ve known him for about 11 years and he’s very
easily influenced by anything anyone might say; it stays in his
mind. The week before the tour started, he did an interview
with one of the papers and the guy who was doing the article
said how dated he thought the whole rock scene was and that
it was pathetic the way we were trying to make it stay alive
by using things like slides and stage sets, and Dave agreed. I
think that’s what put the spark in his mind and a week later he
wanted to do the tour with no lights at all, which would have
been a total contradiction of what we had planned for four
months before the tour. I think it’s a great weakness not to see
something through that you’ve decided upon.”
Richard Barbieri: “We eventually lost a lot of money when it
was decided the stage set construction wasn’t right and a new
one had to be rebuilt.”
Karn: “The set was completely taken over by Dave and
designed by Dave, so if there was anything in it he didn’t
like, then it was his fault. When we turned up to rehearse the
weekend before the tour started, the set was much bigger than
anyone ever saw; it had towers in the top where I would be
playing saxophone, Dave would be singing ‘Ghosts’, the others
were at the bottom, and there was a roof over the whole thing.
All the lights were theatrical lights especially designed for the
set; you can’t use them on a normal rock concert, so Dave
would have been letting down all the lights people as well, not
to mention the fans because he just refused to do the tour in
the end.”
Innocenti and Arno were shocked, but pragmatic.
Innocenti: “Another meeting was arranged between me, Arno
and the group. It was like walking into the middle of an
argument. David kept on saying that he wasn’t prepared to
tour with that set and there was talk of cancelling the tour.
Mick looked sullen and annoyed, Steve was embarrassed and
Richard was furious. He was the most confrontational with
David. And it suddenly seemed to me that David was using
the set thing to sabotage the band. He was trying to distance
himself from them.”
Karn: “That whole night was spent arguing with Dave, everyone
arguing. It came to a stalemate where he said he would not
do the tour with that behind him, so that left Richard, Steve
and me in the position of saying‚ ‘Alright, we won’t do the tour
if it’s not there’, which would have been really childish so we
didn’t do that, we said‚ ‘Okay, you can have your way again,
we’ll do the tour without the set’, because we just couldn’t let
all those people down.”
Karn recalls this crisis happening within 24 hours but others
involved recall it playing out over a number of days. In Karn’s
version, he states that the band argued all night on the eve
of the tour, with Sylvian offering the ultimatum: “It’s not my
decision any more; either the stage set goes, or the tour is
cancelled. It’s up to you.” Karn was, understandably, “livid”,
telling Sylvian: “Have it your way, but get this straight – I can’t
carry on like this, you’re impossible to work with, and it’s just
not a band any more. I’ve had enough.”
Karn states that this was the point that Japan broke up, while
not mentioning that he had already aired plans to make a
solo album, thus breaking, according to Sylvian, an “unspoken
agreement” that none of the members of Japan would ever
record solo while still part of the group. Karn says that the
arguments raged until early morning, leaving only a few hours
left to pack.
When he returned to his flat to do so, Yuka [Fujii, photographer
and Karn’s girlfriend] was of course waiting for him. She
apparently cut short Karn’s justified grumbling with the
shocking words: “I will be moving out while you are on tour
and moving in with Dave.”
Anthony Reynolds’ ‘Japan: A Foreign Place (The Biography,
1974-1984)’ is published as a deluxe hardback book on
Burning Shed and is available exclusively from the Burning
Shed website. Visit burningshed.com
CARTER TUTTI VOID
TRIP
TRIP
TRIP
STREN
STREN
STREN
PLE
PLE
PLE
NGTH
NGTH
NGTH
When CARTER TUTTI VOID invited us to spend an afternoon at their
remote rural HQ, it was an offer we couldn’t refuse. Two parts Throbbing
Gristle to one part Factory Floor, the threesome made their recording debut
with a live album recorded at their very first gig. Now there’s a second
album, ‘f (X)’, a rare non-TG release on the seminal Industrial Records. And
it’s an absolute corker
Words: KRIS NEEDS
CARTER TUTTI VOID
One afternoon in early 1978, I stood
with Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti
gazing through the kitchen window of
their terraced house in Hackney, east
London. Trains thundered frequently over
the nearby railway bridge and Throbbing
Gristle’s Death Factory loomed a
threatening walk away in nearby Martello
Street.
What had once been another street
running behind the house was now a
derelict bomb site, but they took great
delight in pointing out the distinctive TG
lightning flash defiantly sprayed amid
the National Front graffiti on a crumbling
opposite wall. At that time, Throbbing
Gristle were the most dangerous band in
the UK, punk-struck as it was. Their 1977
debut album, ‘Second Annual Report’,
had been an unexpected success, selling
out of its first pressing of nearly 800.
On an autumn afternoon nearly four
decades later, I’m visiting Chris and
Cosey again, this time to talk about
their new outfit Carter Tutti Void, and
we’re looking through another window
at a very different view. Over 30 years
ago, determined to bring up their son
Nick in a better environment, the couple
left London for a quiet Norfolk village
and set about renovating an abandoned
former school. Instead of Hackney’s
urban wreckage, our gaze is greeted
by a rich, green lawn stretching to the
old school’s now converted toilet block,
which is framed by flowering trees and
Cosey’s vegetable garden.
Pastoral calm surrounds this idyllic
domain, which still sported blackboards
on the walls when they moved in and
began turning it into their new home and
the nerve centre of their activities ever
since. The only surviving blackboard is
now used for works in progress. Today
it’s covered with paper to hide the top
secret project they’re working on.
The front room is sparsely furnished
but comfortable, housing a spectacular
cabinet of toys and memorabilia Chris
has acquired over the years, from Daleks
to Kraftwerk promo items, while Cosey’s
collection of cat ornaments are spread
over an adjoining sideboard. To the
right is their studio, where Chris, Cosey
and the third member of Carter Tutti
Void, Nik Colk Void from Factory Floor,
create their music. Although Chris has
sold his original 808 and other analogue
antiquities, he still boasts a formidable
electronic arsenal, including the
Machinedrum that provides the beats on
Carter Tutti Void’s new album, ‘f (X)’, the
first non-Throbbing Gristle release on the
fabled Industrial Records since 1981.
The very positive reaction to ‘f (X)’ has
taken Chris, Cosey and Nik by surprise,
especially as it was only selectively
sent out online, with no high-profile
promotion. A combination of glowing
reviews and word-of-mouth buzz has
led to history repeating itself as the first
(white vinyl) pressing sold out sharpish.
It might seem hard to believe the
coruscating washes and spectral pulsings
of ‘f (X)’ were created in this distinctly
rural setting, but when you consider
how Chris and Cosey have always
remained gloriously isolated from the
fleeting trends and shallow mundanities
of the outside world, why wouldn’t it
be recorded in a place like this? And
speaking of places like this, Norfolk is
also where Nik calls home. She was born
and raised here, returning after a spell in
the smoke, when she fell pregnant.
Chris, Cosey and Nik sit around the large
table which dominates the light-filled
country kitchen, ready to commence
what turns into a hugely enjoyable
two-hour conversation rather than a
gruelling interview. There really is no
need to retread what transpired in the
years after TG splintered and Chris and
Cosey embarked on their idiosyncratic
path. That’s a story for another time. Too
much is happening in this latest phase
of their remarkable career, which started
when they were joined by Nik to play
Mute Records’ Short Circuit Festival at
London’s Roundhouse in 2011. The set
appeared the following year as Carter
Tutti Void’s debut album, ‘Transverse’.
Conducting a parallel life in Factory
Floor, Nik stayed on to add her processed
Fender Telecaster and spark a new
dynamic with the former TG pair, as so
startlingly captured on ‘f (X)’, Carter Tutti
Void’s first studio incarnation.
The invincible bond between Chris and
Cosey has obviously been enhanced by
Nik’s like-minded outlook and thirst for
sonic foraging, the trio now sufficiently
united to share the kind of telepathic
creative soul searching that produces
magical spontaneous combustion. During
our chat, they often make a statement,
then look to the others with an “isn’t it?”
or “wasn’t it?”. We ease in by discussing
the effect of domestic surroundings on
their music.
Cosey Fanni Tutti:
“I think what’s going on in your life has more of an impact on your music more than
the environment in which you produce it. Like recording at Martello Street affected
the music because of what we went through going to and from the studio, with the
NF and gangs that were around. You had to watch your back all the time. There was
all sorts going on politically, which we were very aware of, and punk was coming
up. We went back to Martello Street for a BBC programme and it was quite shocking.
People were having picnics! You should never go back, really. I didn’t like it, I felt
quite angry. Give me a placard and let me go down London Fields!”
Nik Colk Void:
“Where I lived in Tottenham, the place was reverberating from six in the evening to
six in the morning. The whole feel of being in London and going out the door was
really claustrophobic. The area was pretty grim, but it was also very creative. When
I moved back to the countryside, I was going somewhere I was completely familiar
with, but after a couple of months my music started coming out a lot darker. Not
intentionally, but I suppose it’s the relationship with nature opening my mind up.”
Cosey:
“In the city, that kind of environment locks you into a mindset... and it’s hard to get
out of it because you have to protect yourself on all levels.”
Nik:
Cosey:
Chris Carter:
Cosey:
“I was going into central London on the tube and it seemed quite bleak, but when
you get to the countryside it’s completely different. When you’re flying off to shows
at the weekend, it’s nice coming back here, rather than a warehouse where you hear
the sewing machines going on the other side of the wall.”
“It’s an age thing as well. When you’re young, you don’t even notice it. When I think
back to Martello Street and even to when I was in Hull, the conditions we lived in
were appalling, but that was just a means to an end. As long as I had a roof over my
head and could sleep somewhere, I was quite happy. But then you realise it’s actually
having an impact on your work and health, and you have to do something in the end.
You go to where you know you can function and breathe.”
“The biggest thing for us was having kids, though.”
“You’re not selfishly driven any more once you have kids. You have someone else to
think of. They become number one on the list and then what you want to do is next.
That has a lot to do with it.”
CARTER TUTTI VOID
How much does this environment affect your
recording methods?
Chris:
“When we recorded here with TG, we did it a similar way. We all just set up in the
studio. When we did the first Carter Tutti Void album, the live album, we set up in
there, trying out all the ideas first, then we did it the same way with ‘f (X)’. A lot
of people say the first album doesn’t sound like a live recording, but it was. The
preparation for it was similar to the way we recorded this one.”
Cosey:
“We just get comfortable with the starting points. Chris writes the rhythms, then plays
them to me and Nik, then we all decide whether it has legs. You start working with it
and feel your way through it and take it on the stage… and everything changes then
anyway.”
Chris:
“Whatever we do in there never sounds like that when we
get onstage.”
Cosey:
“And we don’t want it to. We just want to know that, if we’re going to do it live, we
know the territory when we go onstage and then we can go where we want. There’s
no script really.”
Nik:
“We have our own work spaces, our separate tables, our tools that we’re familiar with,
and that’s kind of like our language. I’ll have a different setting for each track and
I’ll literally have it all written down. As far as playing in different spaces goes, you
can never determine that. What Cosey is playing or what Chris is playing is always a
response to the live situation.”
Chris, 37 years ago you said you were building your
own equipment. Is there still an element of that?
Chris:
Nik:
Chris:
Nik:
“Yeah, although I don’t build so much now. The stuff I do now is for myself. I don’t
use it with Carter Tutti Void, but I do some programming with software. It’s a
combination of how you use bits of gear in unconventional ways, putting things
through other things they don’t usually go through.”
“Do you read the manual?”
“I do! I’ve got a t-shirt that says ‘RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual)’. I wrote for
Sound On Sound for about 10 years and would have to read the manuals to write the
reviews. When we’d go on tour, I used to take manuals on the road and read them
like novels. I used to quite enjoy it. The thing is, I don’t like to settle too much on
one piece of gear, which is why we were constantly selling old gear and buying new
stuff. I like the feeling of being slightly outside my comfort zone. I’ve got favourite
bits of gear, of course. I’ve got a Machinedrum drum machine I’ve had for years and
I do like that. It’s like a heartbeat pulse all through ‘f (X)’. It’s quite low-res so it’s
got a quirkiness which adds to that heartbeat feeling, but it’s quite a clunky, heavy
machine, so I sampled it and put it on my laptop.”
“When we rehearsed the new album, Chris’ set-up had changed so much. I’ve never
seen anything like it. I’ve still got my box and stuff which looks like a car boot sale
compared to Chris’ set-up.”
Chris:
“When we did The Roundhouse, there were wires everywhere. We had so many
different boxes. I think that’s what made the live album so unusual. There was
so much interaction going on. Like that bit where we had someone torturing a
metronome. We never figured out who it was.”
Cosey:
“It was like a workshop, wasn’t it? When we went on the stage, I remember the
audience cheering, and I looked out at them and thought, ‘They’re really up for
whatever we want to do’. It was such a wonderful feeling. I think now there’s an
expectation that they shouldn’t expect anything! With our Chris and Cosey stuff, and
even TG, they were actual songs. This is quite different. These are non-songs. It’s the
pulse. You kick in and ride with it and it goes up and down. It’s a fabulous feeling
when we’re playing live.”
How did the three of you get together?
Chris:
Nik:
“We first met at the ICA in 2006 when we were DJing at the Cosey Club. We had
some history going back, but we hadn’t connected. I was actually in Factory Floor for
a while, I did three gigs. Then Mute asked if we would collaborate with someone at
the Short Circuit Festival.”
“Initially, we were only going to do one performance, so didn’t really talk about how
we were going to go about it. It just happened. We had about a week to prepare for
it. And because that’s how it started, it became the foundation of how we wanted
to go on. We got away with it and loved it... so we thought we’d just carry on doing
what comes naturally to us.”
CARTER TUTTI VOID
Were you already a fan of Chris and Cosey’s work, Nik?
Nik:
“Oh yeah. At first I imagined it might be quite scary to meet them [much laughter],
but musically we clicked straight away.”
Cosey:
“We said, ‘Let’s set up your gear and try something out’. We kept going for quite a
while, didn’t we? When we stopped we went, ‘Well, that was kind of easy, wasn’t it?
It works then’. It was as simple as that. You don’t often get that. After Sleazy [TG
founding member Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, who died in November 2010], it was
‘I can’t get this with anyone else’. I would say there’s only Sleazy and Nik I’ve ever
played with like that.”
Nik:
“I like going into one instrument with loads of different effects. I’ve got my head
down, really concentrating and listening hard. I think just being able to concentrate
on the guitar, which I’ve been playing since I was 16, is the best thing I can do. When
I came to work with Chris and Cosey, I thought, ‘You’ve got to be loud!’, but then I
realised it wasn’t about that. It was about being really controlled about what I was
doing at quite a low level in order to get these intricate sounds that you won’t get
when you’re blasting it.”
Cosey:
“Although it sounds like a self-indulgent way of doing it, it’s not at all. It’s all of
us together. The sound is the focus, not one person or what they’re doing. It’s the
little parts that make up the whole and that’s what you’ve got to try to build and be
sensitive to. I think Chris is the only one who has a job, if you like, because he’s the
engine, the starting point. Once it kicks in, nobody has to do anything.”
It’s just the momentum of the track?
Cosey:
“You feel it physically and emotionally and you interject with what you feel your
emotions are building up to... driving it along, bringing it down, bringing it up again.
And you’re feeding off the audience as well. It’s very intuitive and a wonderful way to
create music.”
Chris:
“When we did the live shows, there were cheers from the audience when we did
certain things.”
Cosey:
“It’s when you arrive at the same moment at the same time. It’s almost like you’ve
given them a present. ‘Yeah you’ve heard me, that’s really what I wanted’. And it’s
like, ‘Yeah, we did as well’.”
Is it strange for you, Nik, hopping between Factory
Floor and Carter Tutti Void? There has to be some
overspill, hasn’t there?
Nik:
Cosey:
“Not too much. I play different instruments in Factory Floor, whereas I concentrate
on the guitar with Carter Tutti Void. I don’t play anything in a traditional way and I
approach every instrument the same. That’s just where I’ve got to from doing this for
years. I’ve found my own identity in what I play in my music. It doesn’t matter what
situation I’m in, I just apply it to that.”
“I think the difference is in the fact that expectation has gone with us, so you can sit
back and lose yourself. There isn’t an aim or a format as such with us. It could be
anything. It could be a 60-minute track or a two-minute one.”
Nik:
“With Factory Floor, you do think about how people are going to enjoy the tracks. You
always feel like you’re working on music you did yesterday as opposed to tomorrow...
I don’t find that with Carter Tutti Void. The next Factory Floor album is the last one
of our contract with DFA and after that I’m looking forward to being able to put
tracks out as we record them. We finished a single a couple of months ago and that’s
not coming out until next year because there isn’t anywhere to do the vinyl pressing.
Psychologically, that’s a bit strange when you want to evolve with your music.”
Chris:
“That is a big drag with vinyl. I wanted ‘f (X)’ to come out sooner, but we we couldn’t
get the pressing. The majors have jumped on the vinyl bandwagon and are buying all
the time in the pressing plants. It’s outrageous. If you want to press vinyl, you’ve got
to have so many pressed a month to keep your account open. Only the majors can do
that. Our white vinyl sold out quicker than we thought it would, so now we’re trying
to get it repressed on black and that’s proving to be a problem.”
Cosey:
“The people that started this and created a market have been pushed out by the
majors. It’s the third time this has happened to us. It happened when we did TG’s
‘Second Annual Report’ and didn’t expect people to like it. Then with Chris & Cosey’s
‘Heartbeat’ album, which sold out, and now with Carter Tutti Void!”
Chris:
“For this one, we didn’t even bother to do any promotion. With ‘Transverse’, we had
Mute and that’s a big machine. I can understand why we got so many reviews for
that, but it’s been the same thing for this. It’s word of mouth as well. You only need
a couple of good reviews. The Guardian gave it their Record of the Week, which was
really good.”
It’s impossible now to convey the overwhelming
impact that came from going to see bands such as
TG or Suicide. Listening to ‘f (X)’ reminds me of those
times. It sounds like nothing else out there.
Cosey:
“To me, this album feels like when you have something deep inside that has to be
exorcised. It’s not like a nasty thing, it’s just that you bring out everything you want
to give to whoever you’re with to play alongside you. And because there are no
boundaries or limits, anything can happen... which is a fantastic feeling. When you
went to a TG or Suicide gig way back then, there was a feeling in the room that it was
you lot against the world.”
CARTER TUTTI VOID
After Sleazy died, you spectacularly brought
home his dream project of re-imagining Nico’s
‘Desertshore’. Do any of you have any long-standing
personal favourite albums?
Nik:
“I have to say mine is Nico as well... ‘Chelsea Girl’ and ‘Desertshore’. I remember
when I first heard the Velvet Underground when I was 11. I heard Nico’s voice and
said, ‘Who’s that man singing?’. After that, I was really interested in the fact I thought
it was a man’s voice and the feeling behind it.”
Cosey:
“The sense of control in her voice is amazing. There’s a kind of strength and
vulnerability and a real honesty about her feelings. There was always a thing with
me and Sleazy where we’d be trying to stamp the fact that I have validity whether
I’m female or male. There was always that agenda going on. You must come across it
with Factory Floor. There’s one girl in the band and if there’s a technical problem it’s
‘What have you done?’. I didn’t used to notice it, but it pisses me off now.”
Nik:
Cosey:
“There’s an assumption that the man in the band is the technical one and does the
work and is the boss. If only they knew!”
“Our generation fought to do what we did. We put ourselves out there and got all
the flak for doing that, but there comes a point where it’s an accepted thing and
there’s not the knowledge or the understanding of how hard it was to get there. You
shouldn’t have to put up with comments that are basically deep-rooted sexist and
misogynistic, especially from alternative, anarchist type people.”
After the success of ‘f (X)’,
what’s next for Carter Tutti Void?
Chris:
“We’ve been recording the live shows and got some really good stuff, so we’ll do
another album next year. We recorded the two nights we did at Oslo in London and
they don’t sound anything like the album! We’re also doing a project we can’t talk
about at the moment.”
Nik:
“The great thing I found in this project is it goes on its own natural path. We haven’t
discussed what we’ll do next at all, have we?”
Chris:
“We don’t talk about it much, we just do it.”
‘f (X)’ is out now on Industrial Records
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GHOST BOX
Making Dead
Men Sing
We’ve had 10 years of wonderful music and fabulous visuals from those
genre-defining folk at GHOST BOX RECORDS and we’re popping corks with
label co-founders Jim Jupp and Julian House to mark the occasion. Stand
by for stuff about synths, sci-fi, Bagpuss, electromagnetic fields, alchemists,
William Burroughs and haunted dancefloors
Words: CARL GRIFFIN
GHOST BOX
And so the idea for Ghost Box began to take shape.
Jim Jupp started building up his home studio,
conducting early experiments for what would
eventually become his musical offshoot, Belbury
Poly. He found himself mainly drawn back to his
old synths.
Much of this material is readily accessible now, even
the preposterously obscure stuff. But a decade ago,
in the days before YouTube, a lot of it only survived
as vague memories.
“There was this perfect window to start our label,
when the internet only really functioned as a means
“I had a Yamaha CS-20M that I’d bought secondto open up possibilities,” notes House. “If you
hand when I was about 15,” he says. “I’d gigged
photograph something from a distance using a long
heavily with it with one of my bands, but
lens, everything condenses into a flat plane, but
miraculously it still worked... more or less. I’ve since the reality of that scene is far more complex and
had it repaired and spruced up. Despite its simplicity, detailed. I think memory can work in the same way.”
it still gets regular use.”
The concept of sound collages working together with
Julian House was meanwhile thinking about how
visual cut-ups was rooted in the inspiration House
their new label might look. House is very much a
took from William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s
latter-day Peter Saville, his distinctive work for the
‘The Third Mind’, a book he discovered while still
Intro design agency, where he still plies his trade,
at college. It was the first publication to showcase
gracing many a discerning record collection. As well
the technique that Burroughs and Gysin popularised
as being the visual provider for the whole Ghost
in the 1960s by taking text, cutting up the pages,
Box roster, he’s designed sleeves for the likes of
and then reconfiguring the segments to form new
Stereolab, Broadcast, Primal Scream, The Prodigy,
narratives. Burroughs then adapted this approach for
Oasis, Doves and many more besides.
film-making with director Antony Balch, whose 1966
short ‘The Cut-Ups’ has been hugely influential on
For Ghost Box, House set out to create a visual
House.
palette that matched the peculiar musical
otherworld that the label’s sound conjures. The idea
And while the familiar graphic design discipline of
of using a semi-subconscious pull of generationally
applying brand consistency is present and strong
shared cultural reference points that felt more than
with House’s Ghost Box work, there is also a
just an empty pastiche had been brewing since his
characteristic wonkiness that separates it from
undergraduate days at Central St Martins Art School
anything else out there.
in London.
“Julian has always had very clear ideas about how
We’re talking those jumbled up, half-remembered
it could all look,” explains Jupp. “When we started,
signifiers of four or five decades ago again – the 60s we just had a simple website as a way to knock
jazz and 70s folk sounds, the snippets of incidental
out a few hand-printed CDRs to a small number of
TV music, the hazy scenes from entertainment
like-minded people. Over those first few years, it
shows and current affairs documentaries about
seemed to grow organically into a legitimate record
nuclear war and domestic industrial strife. And
label. Which we never really intended to happen.”
perhaps above all else, the post-war sci-fi novels
and TV programmes that juxtaposed a very British
and very mundane kind of provincial life with the
fantastical. All of this goes into the Ghost Box
mixing pot and the result is quite a potion.
“The parochial stuff from the post-war period and
how it’s overlaid with something either ancient
and mysterious or extra-terrestrial and cosmic is a
common thread for us,” agrees Jupp. “The weird
impinging on the ordinary. It’s what Nigel Kneale
and John Wyndham wrote about in ‘Quatermass’
and ‘The Day Of The Triffids’. It’s what a lot of
‘Doctor Who’ was about too.”
JULIAN HOUSE
Alongside his design work, there’s also Julian House’s
music. He began his sonic adventures as a teenager
playing around with the music programme on his ZX
Spectrum. He’d spool the sounds he created to make
C90 tapes, though more in the manner of a surrealist
than a turntablist. These days, he’s the man behind
the dislocated mosaic sound of The Focus Group.
“Tape and film cut-ups always grabbed me,” says
House. “Playing around with things in a way that you
really shouldn’t, it’s like a form of magic. That’s the
principle I’ve taken right through into The Focus Group.
It all happens in a studio space, but it’s not something
I could ever take out and play live.”
As well as the strong current of surrealism that runs
through The Focus Group’s output, it’s easy to forget
that much of the label’s brand of electronic music is at
its core psychedelic.
“British psychedelia is a very big influence on us – and
specifically its opposing forces,” admits House. “On
one hand, it was debauched and transgressive, with
all the reverb, effects pedals, synths and hallucinatory
visuals, but then there were those naive, child-like
pastoral elements too.”
There are elements of folklore weaved into Ghost
Box’s complex audio tapestry as well. ‘The Geography’
by Jupp’s Belbury Poly project, which appears on
2012’s ‘The Belbury Tales’ album, is a real beauty in
that respect.
“It’s about putting a fictional gloss on things that are
well outside of any kind of academic sphere,” explains
Jupp. “Julian and I grew up in South Wales and the
landscapes – the Neolithic and Roman stuff – were
all around us, but in terms of our experience and
understanding of that, it came through oddball TV
shows like ‘Children Of The Stones’. The same goes for
the way that folk music was introduced into our lives.
It wasn’t through listening earnestly to the Alan Lomax
archive, it was through the folk music on programmes
like ‘Play Away’ and ‘Bagpuss’. And whether or not
there was a phoney aspect to it, that was all we knew
because that was our culture in the 70s.”
So what do you get when you put electronica and
psychedelia and folk together? In an article written not
long after Ghost Box started, respected music writer
Simon Reynolds dubbed it “hauntology”. Everyone
needs a lucky break along the way, of course, and
having the early support of someone like Reynolds
was a huge help to the label.
“Oh, we’ve had lots of lucky breaks,” laughs Jupp. “But
Simon Reynolds was certainly very positive about us
in this big feature, which was in The Wire in around
2006. The article was about the idea of ‘hauntology’
as a music sub-genre based around a scene of sorts
that included us and people like Moon Wiring Club,
Jonny Trunk, The Caretaker and Mordant Music, all
of whom were making this very distinctive British
electronic music.”
Reynolds had indeed nailed the unique Ghost Box
approach and he brought home the point in his
‘Retromania’ book when discussing the significance of
‘Caermaen’, another Belbury Poly track. By sampling a
1908 barrel-recorded folk song and changing its pitch,
tone and structure to create an entirely new melody,
Reynolds declared that the Ghost Box boss had
effectively “made a dead man sing a brand new song”.
This notion of making dead men sing new songs neatly
sums up what Jupp and House had seized upon when
they started the label. And they knew that referencing
specific residual aspects of their generation’s shared
cultural history, however deeply buried they may be,
would chime with similarly minded people.
“We certainly thought people of our own generation
would get it quicker,” agrees Jupp. “We weren’t trying
to create something from a specific era and we didn’t
just want to attract white British blokes in their 40s,
though. If you’re undertaking any creative endeavour
and you’ve got a set of references and a respect for
the source material, I think anyone can get it.”
These days, Ghost Box have a broad audience who
clearly understand this strange, half-imagined
creation that rings somehow true even if they didn’t
experience it or remember it themselves. For those
people, according to Jupp, Ghost Box “becomes an
exotic otherworld they feel must have happened at
some point”.
JIM JUPP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHq767Fl26E | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28IzZMGdxwE | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq_hztHJCM4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv4tsUg7MLQ | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdzsDbwJDA | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlXtD9CobcQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd08qDpBdbI | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWx4KPcgyUY | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlXtD9CobcQ
things to watch
GHOST BOX
A HAUNTING
WE WILL GO
When Simon Reynolds used the term
“hauntology” to describe the music scene
developing around Ghost Box Records
in the mid-2000s, he was co-opting a
concept first explored by philosopher
Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book,
‘Spectres Of Marx’, which concerns the
ideas and themes of the past bleeding
into or “haunting” the present. More
recently, it’s become associated with
the postmodern notion of disjointed
temporality.
Reynolds’ tag doesn’t half seem to
cause problems, though. Maybe it’s the
tendency for many commentators to
come over all academic and excessively
analytical when trying to grapple with
a definition of the music sub-genre.
Or maybe it’s the unhelpful links with
black-clad, bat-inclined gothiness
that has little to do with the primarily
electronic sounds of the scene. Jim
Jupp has mixed feelings about the
tag, particularly where its gothic
connotations might give people the
wrong idea of where they’re coming
from.
“The word ‘hauntology’ sparks huge
debate with bloggers and music
journalists,” he says. “It certainly hasn’t
done us any harm, but I’m not even
really sure I know what it means. The
debate often seems to miss out on the
actual music and gets bogged down in
semantics, so I decided I didn’t want to
get involved. I’d rather talk about the
type of synths I use than discuss Jacques
Derrida.”
So what do you get when you put electronica and
psychedelia and folk together? In an article written
not long after Ghost Box started, respected music
writer Simon Reynolds dubbed it “hauntology”.
Everyone needs a lucky break along the way, of
course, and having the early support of someone
like Reynolds was a huge help to the label.
“Oh, we’ve had lots of lucky breaks,” laughs Jupp.
“But Simon Reynolds was certainly very positive
about us in this big feature, which was in The Wire
in around 2006. The article was about the idea of
‘hauntology’ as a music sub-genre based around a
scene of sorts that included us and people like Moon
Wiring Club, Jonny Trunk, The Caretaker and Mordant
Music, all of whom were making this very distinctive
British electronic music.”
Reynolds had indeed nailed the unique Ghost Box
approach and he brought home the point in his
‘Retromania’ book when discussing the significance
of ‘Caermaen’, another Belbury Poly track. By
sampling a 1908 barrel-recorded folk song and
changing its pitch, tone and structure to create an
entirely new melody, Reynolds declared that the
Ghost Box boss had effectively “made a dead man
sing a brand new song”.
This notion of making dead men sing new songs
neatly sums up what Jupp and House had seized
upon when they started the label. And they knew
that referencing specific residual aspects of their
generation’s shared cultural history, however deeply
buried they may be, would chime with similarly
minded people.
“We certainly thought people of our own generation
would get it quicker,” agrees Jupp. “We weren’t
trying to create something from a specific era and
we didn’t just want to attract white British blokes in
their 40s, though. If you’re undertaking any creative
endeavour and you’ve got a set of references and a
respect for the source material, I think anyone can
get it.”
These days, Ghost Box have a broad audience who
clearly understand this strange, half-imagined
creation that rings somehow true even if they didn’t
experience it or remember it themselves. For those
people, according to Jupp, Ghost Box “becomes an
exotic otherworld they feel must have happened at
some point”.
Ghost Box have a number of regular contributors and
one of the most important of these is Jon Brooks,
who records as The Advisory Circle and seems to
have assumed the role of the label’s third wheel.
International Year of Light 2015. The latter was
composed on a harp played by laser beams, with a
score based on the alchemical writings of philosopher
and occultist Cornelius Agrippa.
“Jon came to us really early on, when he was doing
stuff for Lo Recordings as King Of Woolworths,”
explains Jupp. “Someone at Lo mentioned Ghost
Box to him and he immediately said to himself, ‘This
is it! This is what I want to do’.”
Mulholland is also putting the final touches to his
next Mount Vernon Arts Lab album, ‘A Spectre
Over Albion’, which follows last year’s ‘Norwood
Variations’. Featuring string quartets, choirs,
musique concrete and spoken word, the record
is slated for an early 2016 release and sounds as
intriguing as its predecessor.
Brooks has a background in music engineering and
mastering, as well as being a composer and music
producer, and he’s been integral to the development
of the technical side of the label.
“Jon has done an enormous amount in helping me
get my head around music production,” continues
Jupp. “He does all our mastering work and if we do
something new we always run it past him first. He’ll
give us a critique on the technicals, on the way a
track sounds, and if it needs improving he’ll know
how to do it. So he’s become part of the collective.”
The word “collective” reinforces the feeling of
something going on at Ghost Box that’s almost
wilfully non-conformist. Some people talk about the
label with a similar level of reverence to the way
they used to talk about Factory – as a complete,
idiosyncratically democratic identity.
“The label itself is more important than the
individual artists,” explains Jupp. “The label is
what means the most to people. We all work fairly
anonymously and we only work with people who
understand that. So if someone comes along who
has a load of photos of themselves on their record
sleeve or on their press releases, they’re not really
going to fit in with us.”
Of course, Factory was never afraid to push the
envelope in terms of releasing challenging and
experimental material. The same is true of Ghost
Box. Take Drew Mulholland’s recordings as Mount
Vernon Arts Lab, for example.
In his day job at Glasgow University, Mulholland
holds the grand sounding position of Composer in
Residence and Research Fellow in both the Schools
of Geographical & Earth Studies and Physics &
Astronomy. He’s just completed two new works, one
for the University’s First World War commemorations,
which took place in September, and another for
the School of Physics & Astronomy to celebrate the
“I’ve manipulated the sound of the Earth’s
electromagnetic field, recorded with a VLF Receiver,”
offers Mulholland. “I’ve also mixed in field
recordings along with samples from some hypnotic
regression therapy tapes I found in a charity shop.”
All of which sounds definitively hauntological and
points to the mutual attraction between Mullholland
and Ghost Box. Jupp and House have cited Mount
Vernon Arts Lab’s ‘The Séance At Hobs Lane’ album
from 2001 as an influence on them wanting to start
a label in the first place. And during his Glasgow
University lectures and seminars, Mulholland
frequently references Julian House’s work and
occasionally screens his films and project artwork.
“I love the Ghost Box aesthetic,” declares Mulholland.
“I think the world that Jim and Julian have created
is quite brilliant, but from my considered academic
perspective I also believe Mr House to be the most
talented and visionary graphic designer and filmmaker we have in Britain today.”
Ghost Box’s 10th anniversary compilation album,
‘In A Moment… Ghost Box’, is out now
IRMIN SCHMIDT
ABOUT
SCHMIDT
With the imminent release of a bumper box set of his solo work, onetime Can man IRMIN SCHMIDT looks back over his illustrious career and
talks about fleeing war-torn Berlin as a child, learning his trade under
Stockhausen, and his sonic adventures in the worlds of classical music,
experimental electronics, film soundtracks and fantasy operatics
Words: KRIS NEEDS
XXX SCHMIDT
IRMIN
“I actually just liked the idea of having all my work concentrated
in one big box. It’s like when you’re a writer; there’s always the
moment where your works are collected into one edition and
available as one thing. It’s nice to have… and that’s it!”
So Irmin Schmidt modestly describes the motivation behind his
monumental new ‘Electro Violet’ collection, which presents six
CDs covering all his solo albums, then another six drawn from
his enormous catalogue of TV and film soundtracks, including
a disc of previously unreleased tracks. As he says, it’s nice
to have. But beyond that, this epic rollercoaster ride through
over 30 years of projects confirms Irmin Schmidt as one of the
leading avant-garde pioneers of the last century, an artist who
can easily be placed next to his early mentors Stockhausen
and Ligeti.
Irmin’s shapeshifting work with Can occupied just 11 years out
of the musical journey which started in the early 1960s and is
still going on. Such was the magnitude of Can’s astonishing run
of albums between 1969’s ‘Monster Movie’ and 1974’s ‘Soon
Over Babaluma’ (after which technology impinged on their
anarchic creative ethos and they diluted and fragmented during
their last five years) that his solo work often fell under his old
group’s vast shadow, especially when Can started to receive the
kind of posthumous recognition afforded true innovators.
Born in 1937, Irmin Schmidt’s formative years were spent
acquiring a formal training in classical music. He attended
the conservatorium in Dortmund and several other venerable
establishments, before conducting various orchestras during the
60s. But he also studied composition on Karlheinz Stockhausen’s
Courses for New Music in Cologne and under innovative
composer Gyorgy Ligeti between 1957 and 1967, founding the
Dortmund Ensemble for New Music in 1962. Crucially, then,
Irmin moved in both old school classical and forward-thinking
experimental circles from his early teenage years. He started
composing soundtrack music when he was a student.
“I was making music to short films from the beginning of my
composing career, just for money when I was still a student,” he
recalls, speaking on the phone from his home in Provence in
the south of France. “Sometimes they were totally stupid, these
kind of short documentaries or industry films, but I learned my
craft like that. That was one part of my composing.”
And let’s not forget that Can supplied the music for a number of
movies, as heard on ‘Soundtracks’ in 1970.
“We did quite a lot of nice film music, especially at the
beginning, when we did ‘Deep End’ and some very famous
German films. Then we were touring so we had no time for that,
but soundtracks go through all of my life.”
The story of Can, formed by Irmin Schmidt, fellow Stockhausen
student Holger Czukay, guitarist Michael Karoli and drummer
Jaki Liebezeit, has been well documented. For Irmin, it started
with his revelatory trips to New York in 1966 and 1968, when
he experienced The Velvet Underground and the Fluxus art
movement, meeting key figures such as La Monte Young
and, at the same time, being struck by the simple power of
James Brown and The Stooges. Jimi Hendrix, one of America’s
major electronic innovators, had a profound effect on Irmin,
particularly the Woodstock assault on ‘The Star Spangled
Banner’, a moment which defined the 1960s.
“When I heard Hendrix’s ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ for the
first time, it really stirred me,” he says. “It was an orchestral
painting, but a solo on one guitar. It’s very emotional and
full of a certain kind of expression. That’s what fascinated
me in Hendrix, because what he was doing there, by the way
he was playing the guitar, it was like a new instrument. And
that’s what you try to aspire to as a composer. It was the
same with Ligeti, who produced a new orchestra sound which
had never been heard before, and Charlie Parker’s role in the
modern saxophone. The sax was invented in 1840 or something
and was especially used in classical music. It made very
uninteresting sounds, but the moment Charlie Parker and the
great jazz musicians started playing it, they turned it into the
modern instrument.
“It was the same for me with electronics. Modern music for
me is Igor Stravinsky and Jimi Hendrix, because they made
new sounds. The synthesiser, in effect, was not yet a real
instrument, so you had to create it. And with Can, I created
my own. The concept was mine, but despite my work with
electronic music I’m helpless with the technical side itself, so I
asked an electronics engineer to build my Alpha 77, then used
a totally new idea of synthesising that can be played live. This
concept gave the synthesiser a new aspect in the 1970s.”
After the dissolution of Can in 1979, Irmin returned to
composing soundtracks and simultaneously embarked on a
solo career. The first album to bear his name was ‘Filmmusik’
in 1980, featuring his music for a movie called ‘Im Herzen
Des Hurricane’, which he recorded with Swiss electronic
composer and sax player Bruno Spoerri. The following year
the partnership also produced Irmin’s first solo studio album,
‘Toy Planet’, one of that decade’s electronic milestones, which
foreshadowed future strains such as techno as well as world
music. While citing the warm, throaty contrast of Bruno’s sax
as “one of the attractions for me to work with him”, Irmin
underlines the importance of collaborators in his career.
“I always like to work with people who can do something I can’t,
or have more knowledge of something I don’t have knowledge
of. Bruno is a jazz musician and he also knew more about
electronics than I did. We met and talked about electronics and
he had his own ideas, so we decided to make a record together.
He had a studio in Zürich so we worked there together.”
While elements from ‘Filmmusik’ appear in the soundtrack
selection of ‘Electro Violet’, ‘Toy Planet’ is the first disc of the
box set. After the synthetically resonating theme of ‘The Seven
Game’, the title track looms as one of Irmin Schmidt’s most
startling and groundbreaking pieces. Beatless and juddering,
it shimmers and pulses with its own kaleidoscopic momentum.
“On that piece, I used a sample,” explains Irmin, who was
presaging sampling and the soon-to-arrive Fairlight. “I built
a kind of choir and let more than 24 different loops run onto
each other, which led to lots of strange sounds because of this
overlaying. On ‘Toy Planet’, we used our two synthesisers in a
new way, combining them with concrete sounds and sample
techniques that, at the time, didn’t really exist. This was the
result of overlaying loops of samples, which was a different way
of making a piece of music.”
Irmin cites his old teachers Stockhausen and Ligeti as pioneers
of the techniques that he initially used in Can, helping to shape
them into one of the seminal bands of the 1970s.
“I owe a lot of my ideas about electronics to Stockhausen,” he
explains. “I studied and worked with him, which was actually
based on the fact I heard ‘Gesang Der Jünglinge’, his first big
electronic piece, and was so affected by it that I wanted to
learn more. Electronic music got its first real masterpiece with
Stockhausen in the 50s and it was a big influence on me.
“I was trained by a lot of great musicians, composers and
conductors, but then I had the idea that only this music by
Stockhausen and Ligeti was totally new in the 20th century.
There was jazz, but here there was something in western
culture that was a very different aspect of music. I had the idea
that all this was new in music – seriously and genuinely new –
so I wanted to bring it all together in what I was doing. Can did
that and everything I’ve done ever since is the same idea from
another angle.”
IRMIN SCHMIDT
XXX
Irmin’s voracious quest for fresh sounds was the key element
in his musical evolution after his formal training and the
explorations of Can, as breathtakingly illustrated by the title
track of ‘Toy Planet’ and the album’s equally startling ‘Rapido
De Noir’. The latter is built on a recording of a steam train
hurtling along the tracks, the locomotive surge and snakelike synth solo traversing the kind of sonic strata that came
naturally to Irmin. Almost 35 years on, it still sounds like a
supremely advanced piece of electronic music, even though it
rides the rhythm of a now obsolete steam train and its initial
inspiration came when he was fleeing wartime Berlin with his
mother.
“I was only five years old, but this childhood experience
influenced me very much,” he recalls. “I was fascinated by my
train trips and the monotonous rhythm of the trains and all the
sounds around it seemed a kind of hallucinatory world. So I had
the idea of using a rhythmic basis from a train. It doesn’t exist
now, but until the 90s the train made this ‘didomp-didomp’
rhythm going over the tracks, so Bruno and I edited this basic
rhythm by taking a real recording of a train and then I put my
music over it.
“I played the long solo on the Prophet 5, which never usually
sounds like that. I used a distortion pedal for a guitar and a
wah-wah pedal and other things to bring the Prophet 5 alive,
because synthesiser sounds were very flat at that time. I played
this solo live in one go using the pedals, which gave it special
overtones. I also had little nails which I threw down onto a
tiled floor and it made a very strange noise. I recorded that and
transposed it higher, so it was covering the hiss and producing
a new sound together with the hiss.
“That’s typical of how I worked with Can and later with Bruno,
just creating with concrete sounds. I’m not the inventor of
this – Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and Stockhausen worked
like this too. I was the next generation and, in a way, the next
generation was using a kind of different approach to recording,
using the tradition and working it into further adventures in
sound.”
After ‘Filmmusik Volume 2’ and other soundtrack work,
including the 1983 German TV series ‘Rote Erde’, Irmin swung
into another creative curve by teaming up with long-time
Can supporter and affiliated wordsmith Duncan Fallowell, the
English novelist and counter-culture commentator who had
turned down an invitation to join Can when Damo Suzuki left
in 1973. Fallowell’s lyrics took Irmin into exploring (and also
singing) the songs on ‘Musk At Dusk’ in 1987 and ‘Impossible
Holidays’ a few years later, which now sound like expansively
reaching twin works, encompassing everything from convoluted
Bowie-esque grandeur and Teutonic reggae to decadent
German cellar bars of past times.
Both of these albums are elevated by the unmistakable
presence of Michael Karoli’s guitar and Jaki Liebezeit’s drums,
inevitably recalling late period Can outings while spinning
into the unknown, as on the sweeping epic ‘The Child In
History’. ‘Impossible Holidays’ continues exploring queasy cafe
atmospheres while adding a sexy new dimension with the buttfriendly bass of ‘Surprise’, the piano-splashed space-funk of
‘Shudder Of Love’, and the richly dark panoply of sax, accordion
and castanets draping the lustrous ‘Time The Dreamkiller’.
Maybe it’s how Can might have sounded if they’d continued
along a linear path, unencumbered by pressures.
“Michael and Jaki played on my solo records alongside many
other musicians, but always in a way that the nucleus on these
two records was actually us three. The difference to Can is
that on these two records, I wrote the songs and they accepted
playing them. There is still Can in it because of them. I mean,
there are three Can members out of four!”
XXX SCHMIDT
IRMIN
‘Gormenghast Drift’, the haunting track which ends ‘Impossible
Holidays’ was an evocative pointer to Irmin’s next major
project, ‘Gormenghast’, a fantasy opera in collaboration again
with Duncan Fallowell. It was Fallowell who introduced him
to Mervyn Peake’s trilogy of novels concerning the supremely
dysfunctional Groan family in the colossal Castle Gormenghast,
including the heir Titus Groan, his doomed sister Fuchsia, the
power-crazed psychopath Steerpike, the sadistic chef Swelter
and the evil dwarf Barquentine. Irmin was inspired to write the
music, while Fallowell wrote the libretto while living in Russia
in the 90s.
“I read the trilogy and a lot later this idea of an opera came
into my head,” says Irmin. “That was an interesting challenge
because every song in an opera or in a musical creates a
character. You have to work hard to use the book’s characters
to build a structure and put in the dramatic tension. When
writing, you have to work very, very closely together, which
Duncan and I did.”
The work was first staged at Germany’s Wuppertal Opera House
in 1998. Even listening to a full-blown opera, it’s still possible
to discern that the composer and performer is Irmin Schmidt.
“It was my magnum opus! Three hours of music! My idea
from the beginning, and the founding of Can, was to bring in
the classical music I grew up with. I’ve never wanted to give
romantic harmonies a rock rhythm and that’s it. I think it’s a
deeper kind of thing to use 20th century music in every aspect.
You will find Bartók and Stravinsky and Ligeti and Stockhausen
inside the music, just as you will also find Otis Redding and
Frank Zappa and Miles Davis and John Coltrane. All this is great
music created in the 20th century and, in my way of thinking, I
brought it all together in a new way.
“Every musician builds on a tradition and my tradition was, on
one side, the classical tradition, in which I’m totally at home.
But there was another tradition based in the music that came
from Africa. It’s these different traditions which sort of made
a whole in my head. What I didn’t want was just to use the
classical influence, like having some romantic chords. It’s
much more difficult and you can hear it in the opera. I’m using
unusual 19th century chords in the aria of the cook, but the
way I put them together is something new, with the melody
and the rhythm. Put all together, it’s a totally new aspect of
20th and 21st century music.”
The technical mastermind of the ‘Gormenghast’ opera was
Irmin’s son-in-law Jono Podmore, who has been active in
electronic music for over 20 years and gets up to glorious
mischief on arcane kit with idiosyncratic analogue marauders
Metamono. For years, he has also traded under the name Kumo
and, after clicking with Irmin while working on the opera, the
pair made ‘Masters Of Confusion’ (2001) and ‘Axolotl Eyes’
(2008) together.
“Kumo co-produced the opera with me and he played an
important role,” says Irmin. “He knew something I didn’t. He
was a whole generation younger than me. I always like to
work with people who give me a new dimension of music
or sound or knowledge or whatever. Kumo is a fantastic
rhythm programmer and sound engineer, and we were equally
responsible for the music on the two albums we did. I like
teamwork. When I started with Can, it was several composers
working as Can, which itself became one composer consisting
of four or five individuals.”
Drawing material from shows in London, Holland and France,
‘Masters Of Confusion’ saw Jono underpin tracks such as
‘Goatfooted Balloonman’ and ‘Burning Straw In Sky’ with the
sort of grooves then gripping electronic music, including trip
hop and drum ’n’ bass, while a skipping house beat propels
‘Those Fuzzy Things (Out There)’. ‘Axolotl Eyes’ was meanwhile
crafted out of extended jams recorded at Cologne’s Studio B
and Irmin’s home studio, then edited in London with guests
including avant jazz trumpeter Ian Dixon and singer Paul J
Fredericks. All told, the Irmin-Kumo collaborations are a
volatile, highly fruitful collision between two restless musical
souls on an untainted mission into the beyond.
‘Electro Violet’ is released on Spoon/Mute on 20 November
LLOYD COLE
DIMEN
If you still think of LLOYD COLE as a jangly popster,
you’re in need of some re-education. His latest album,
‘1D’, follows on from his 2013 collaboration with
krautrock pioneer Roedelius and finds him walking a
fine line all the way to the future
Words: JOOLS STONE
Pictures: KIM FRANK
XXX
LLOYD
COLE
“THE MINUTE I SIT DOWN AND
CONSCIOUSLY TRY TO ‘MAKE
SOME MUSIC’, WELL, I REALLY
DON’T LIKE THAT FEELING”
What happens when successful pop stars withdraw from the
spotlight? Do we expect to find them years later patiently
sitting in the same little genre box we discovered them in,
obediently doling out their hits to a devoted fan base? Despite
being a huge admirer of his 80s and 90s work, I rather lost
track of Lloyd Cole around the turn of the millennium, so I was
more than a little surprised to hear of his recent adventures.
Lloyd Cole shot to fame in 1984 with The Commotions, his
Glasgow-based, Rickenbacker-toting band, and their debut
album ‘Rattlesnakes’, enjoying a rash of jangly pop hits
during the decade. After going solo in 1990, he maintained a
reasonable profile, slipping comfortably into the role of acoustic
songwriter elder statesman.
Yet Cole’s latest album, ‘1D’ – subtitled ‘Electronics 2012-2014’
– has none of his trademark lyrical flair. There’s not a single
literary or pop culture reference (no sign of Norman Mailer, Eva
Marie Saint or even Sean Penn). Nor is there any evidence of
his distinctive vocal style, since ‘1D’ marks a bold departure
into challenging territory of generative music, a style that
owes far less to Bob Dylan and Lou Reed than it does to Faust,
Tangerine Dream and, crucially, one Hans-Joachim Roedelius of
Cluster and Harmonia fame.
This is not the first time that Cole has dipped his toe in these
burbly waters. His electronic voyages date back to his 2001
ambient album ‘Plastic Wood’ and he collaborated with
Roedelius on their ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ long-player
in 2013. But fans of Cole’s earlier work might be surprised to
learn that his love of the more experimental end of the musical
spectrum pre-dates his own recording career by a decade or so.
He traces it back to his passion for 1973’s ‘(No Pussyfooting)’
album, made with two reel-to-reel tape machines plus Brian
Eno and Robert Fripp. It wasn’t until the 1990s that any sign
of Cole’s penchant for electronics began to emerge in his own
music, though.
“I think it all started in 1993 with ‘Bad Vibes’, where I
attempted to bridge my song-based material with more
electronic music and weld it into one cohesive thing,” he
explains. “It failed dismally and I decided to pursue the two
strands as distinct projects. I went back to recording traditional
songs for the next album but I still had a room full of synths,
so I started to make some instrumental sketches and was
careful not to think of them as potential songs, which was how
I’d always worked before.”
Does the way he thinks about a piece of music inevitably affect
its eventual form, then?
“Well, these things don’t even need to be songs or compositions,
they can just be constructions,” he says. “And with generative
music, who even composes this stuff anyway? I simply put the
pieces in place and it outputs.”
Lloyd Cole found his way into electronics almost by accident.
His first forays came via early stabs at film compositions,
which he describes as “living somewhere between Brian Eno
and John Barry”.
“Frustratingly, most of these film projects didn’t turn into paying
jobs,” he says. “The competition’s so intense that nobody gets
paid and I ended up with a bunch of material that I didn’t have
any use for. So I decided to make a CD as a calling card to send
out to music supervisors who might want to commission me.”
The The’s Matt Johnson, who was working in the studio next
door, and record producer Chris Hughes (aka Merrick of Adam &
The Ants fame) helped advise Cole on what to do with his new
sound reel.
“Pretty much everyone I played it to said, ‘Well, it sounds like
an album, you should just put it out’,” he continues. “And so
that became ‘Plastic Wood’. A lot of it was made in real time,
using an Oberheim Echoplex and recorded direct to DAT. I think
that was when I first realised I enjoyed making this type of
repetitive music.”
‘Plastic Wood’ caught the ear of Roedelius, who was sent the
album by a mutual friend and liked it so much he promptly
made his own overdubbed version of it, asking if Cole wanted
to release it. The pair agreed to work on a fresh project
instead, but it took another decade for ‘Selective Studies’ to
come together.
I can’t help thinking that the world of knobs, patches and
intimidatingly vast banks of control panels must have initially
seemed entirely alien to Cole. Wasn’t he worried that he
needed a degree in electronic engineering to get to grips with
the analogue universe?
“Actually, I think you can make this music without really
knowing what you’re doing at all,” he offers. “A lot of people
take the approach of, ‘I’m just
going to plug this into here and
see what happens’. I started
to assemble a modular synth
for ‘Selected Studies’, which
was as much about learning as
it was composition. At least 75
per cent of the pieces came not
from scenarios where I sat down
with the intention of recording
something, but when I was just
playing around with things. I’d
be reading about something
in [modular synth guru] Allen
Strange’s book and just try it out.”
How different is the modular
process from writing traditional
rock songs?
“To me, it’s very similar,” says
Cole. “I write songs using tiny
fragments based on things I hear
or read and then I think, ‘That
could become the spark for
something beautiful’. I believe
there’s something in Eno’s idea of making everyone change
instruments on [David Bowie’s] ‘Boys Keep Swinging’. The best
stuff you create is when you’re out of your element.
“I have no formal musical training, I can’t always recognise a
chord and sometimes I can’t even tell if it’s a major or minor,
and I think that’s what appeals to me about modular. You don’t
have a keyboard, so you can’t even tell what key you’re playing,
and that can be a lovely way to work. You often don’t know
the exact chords you’re playing, you just know what sounds
right. I find the idea of music as a showcase for virtuosity is
rather bad taste anyway. Once you’ve honed your chops, the
skill lies in learning to underplay things.”
Cole was attracted to the modular route partly as a way of
escaping the ubiquitous drudgery of working with computers.
And strangely, despite the potentially perplexing mass of wires,
oscillators and filters, he sees
this as a parallel to retreating
into nature and spending time
in a remote cabin in the woods
with an acoustic guitar.
“I think the reason I like working
in modular is it keeps things
pretty simple,” he says. “I can
see my modulation patches, I
can see everything that I’m
doing because it’s there on the
matrix. I’m comfortable working
this way and, frankly, I don’t
want to go back to any other
type of synthesis.”
One measure of how enmeshed
Cole has become with the
analogue world is the matterof-fact way he sometimes gets
technical, talking at length
about the role of binary logic
LLOYD COLE WITH ROEDELIUS
in programming modules to
Pic: Camillo Roedelius
create polyrhythms. He doesn’t
take much encouragement to
start tackling thorny topics such as the difficulties of tuning
oscillators.
‘1D’ wouldn’t have happened were it not for Gunther at Bureau
B Records nudging Lloyd Cole about the unused pieces he
had left over from the ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ album.
The recording process for ‘Selected Studies Volume One’ was
surprisingly simple, with Cole and Roedelius sending each other
around 15 segments of music. They each completed six pieces
XXX
LLOYD
COLE
and only one track had any further back and forth. Cole has
spoken of the album’s recording process as “a type of circuit”
and the way he refers to the collaborative process is equally
cold and functional.
“With ‘Selected Studies’, nobody except Roedelius and I knows
who did what,” offers Cole. “But with ‘1D’, there’s nowhere to
hide because it’s just me.”
When it comes to modular collaborations, Cole’s work with
Roedelius is clearly only the beginning. So is the modular
community, with its enthusiast sites like the intriguinglynamed Muff Wiggler, a hotbed for this sort of meeting of
minds? Is there an inherent openness to “modding culture” that
you won’t find in traditional rock circles?
“There is a whole subculture that’s very interesting,” says Cole.
“But what I think is really exciting is that people are constantly
coming up with new ideas for modules and new ways of
making music. I’m working with an old friend to build my own
module and there’s open source software which enables you
to write codes to fine tune your modules and get the precise
features you need.”
Now that he’s fully got to grips with the modular way, can he
see himself marrying electronics with his lyrical songwriting?
“It’s not out of the question,” he replies. “I have been thinking
that, 22 years after ‘Bad Vibes’, I might have another go at
trying to bring the two together, but I haven’t committed to
doing anything concrete yet. There’s an entire folder of pieces
from these sessions that are ripe for some form of collaboration,
so I’m hoping for the next record to take those and maybe
work with five or six people, different voices working to one
unified aesthetic, which would be mine.
“I feel I really have to be constantly learning with modular
stuff. The minute I sit down and consciously try to ‘make some
music’, well, I really don’t like that feeling. I also tend to think,
‘Who needs another piece of music by me anyway?’, so it’s got
to be something new. It’s the same with painters in a way. You
don’t expect them to show you everything in their sketchbook,
but they’ll keep on painting regardless.”
Whether it’s an abstract expression or a new spin on
Lloyd Cole’s classics of old, I reckon we’re poised for more
masterworks in the future.
‘1D’ is out now on Bureau B
NAME?
While it may seem a little cryptic at first, the title ‘1D’
signposts the simplicity of the music on this album.
“It’s not complex, it’s one-dimensional music, one idea
per piece,” says Cole. “To be honest, some of the ideas are
absolutely tiny. ‘One Voice’ is literally one synthesiser voice
and that’s it. ‘Slight’ is the word I like to use to describe these
songs, but that doesn’t necessarily imply something negative.
I’m only interested in making beautiful pieces, even if they’re
at bonsai scale.”
Cole might have unburdened himself of lyric writing duties this
time but there are other challenges to tackle, such as thinking
up suitable titles for these instrumental tracks. One piece was
originally titled ‘All ModCan’, after a Canadian modular synth
manufacturer called Modcan, but he wasn’t convinced this
intensely geeky private joke was funny enough. He went off
googling for ring roads with interesting names, instead, leading
him to ‘Ken-O’, named after the Ken O Expressway, which
loops around Tokyo.
OFF PISTE
DAVID SYLVIAN
In just a few short years,
Japan graduated from being a boy band doing kitschy
pastiches of David Bowie and
the New York Dolls to crafting the sublimely atmospheric
‘Ghosts’, only for the band
to implode at the height of
their chart success. As the 80s
progressed, Sylvian’s vocals
matured into a rich Scott
Walker-ish croon, while his
solo albums became increasingly less song-orientated and
less mainstream, eventually
blossoming into full-blown,
20-minute-plus ambient
compositions in collaboration
with the likes of Harold Budd
and Can’s Holger Czukay. Let’s
see Zayn Malik take a bash at
that.
PADDY McALOON
Prefab Sprout were always
far more esoteric than their
chart highlights would have
you believe, with songs about
Cold War chess matches and
whisky priests, but it wasn’t
until after their 80s heyday
that their erudite songwriter
showed his true experimental
colours. Rendered temporarily
blind and bedridden with
a serious illness, McAloon
became addicted to late
night talk radio, which
subsequently seeped into his
2003 solo album, ‘I Trawl
The Megahertz’, a patchwork
of spoken word and random
recorded snippets layered
over a mesmerising orchestral
soundscape.
FRANK TOVEY
As Fad Gadget, Tovey carved
out an impressively jagged
niche in the early 80s, crafting
sinewy synth classics dripping
with austere menace such
as ‘Back To Nature’ and
‘Ricky’s Hand’. But he enacted
a staggering volte face in
1989, eschewing electronics
and transforming himself
into a folk protest singer on
his ‘Tyranny And The Hired
Hand’ album, which featured
covers of traditional labour
songs like ‘Sixteen Tons’ and
‘John Henry’. Sounding like a
noirish Billy Bragg, the broad
indifference meted out to this
brave digression may have
been the final straw for Tovey,
who retired from recording a
few years later.
TOKYO’S 5G SYNTH EMPORIUM
SYNTHESISER DAVE
READERS’ SYNTHS
NYBORG SYNTH REVIEW
FAB FILTER PRO REVIEW
TECH
JAPA
SEC
SYNTHE
SANCT
AN’S
CRET
ESISER
TUARY
TECH
POWER
This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of the
most exciting synthesiser shops on the planet. We
popped into Tokyo’s 5G synth emporium to celebrate,
but we forgot to take a birthday cake
Words and Pictures: MARK ROLAND
You wouldn’t know it was there if you just passed by.
There’s no sign, no window of goodies tempting you
in, nothing to alert you to the existence of one of the
most outrageous collections of vintage synths you’re
likely to encounter. But tucked away in an anonymous
building in Tokyo’s Harajuku district, the buzzing
centre of Tokyo’s hyper-intense youth culture scene, is
a shop called 5G and this year it celebrates 25 years in
the business of buying, restoring, and selling vintage
synthesisers. It’s quite a place.
It’s on the fourth floor. You have to get in a little
lift to get up there. The doors open on every floor,
revealing various small businesses and shops, and
people shuffle in and out, oblivious to the synthesiser
wonderland that awaits. When the lift doors opened
for our visit, we thought maybe the place had closed
down. All we could see was a scrappy corridor, a few
cardboard boxes, tatty carpet, all bathed in silence
like an abandoned office block… but then we turned
a corner and there was the door. And behind the door
was synthesiser nirvana.
ON
Stepping inside is a slightly nerve-wracking moment;
with the quiet reverential atmosphere it’s like a place
of worship, which in many ways, it is. It demands
awed respect. The shop’s owner, Makato Miyosawa, is
used to hearing gasps of surprise and delight from new
visitors.
“They walk around with their mouths open, saying, ‘I
don’t believe it!’,” he laughs.
The first thing you see is the wall of shiny new
modular. The shop is the official Japanese distributor
and stockist for the German synth stalwart Doepfer
(along with several modular manufacturers like Tiptop
and Mutable), and they’re all on display. Slotted in
beside it, half-hidden and shoved there for lack of
space, is another huge rack of modular. It looks old,
it might be Moog, it’s difficult to tell, because gazing
around the room is blowing our minds.
Synths are racked from floor to way over head height
along every wall, and in an island in the middle of
the shop, creating a narrow circuit of synth-lined
passageways. Some are in glass cases, some are
leaning up on their sides jammed into spare spaces
between racks. There are synths behind synths, on top
of synths and between synths. There are cardboard
boxes which, in all likelihood, contain synths. Behind
the glass counter (in which are displayed more synths)
a couple of engineers are quietly tinkering with yet
more synths on their workbenches. The only noise
in the place is Kraftwerk’s ‘Radio-Activity’ album
on the shop’s hi-fi, playing at low volume, which
is occasionally punctuated by an engineer running
up and down the keyboard of a synth he’s testing,
listening out for wonky oscillators.
Makato is no stranger to visitors from all around the
world: well-known musicians regularly turn up when
they’re on tour in Japan, making their pilgrimage.
Aphex Twin, Jeff Mills, Boys Noize, Orbital, 808
State, John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers, The
Chemical Brothers, Mike Paradinas and Richard
Barbieri have all visited the shop over the last 25
years.
“It’s nice to have lots of people from around the world
visiting us,” says the quietly spoken and polite Makato.
“But I’d rather these machines would stay in Japan,
really. Once they’ve gone out of the country, that’s it,
we’ll never see them again.”
Still, a good number of them made it to Japan from
other countries in the first place, like the vast amount
of Sequential Circuits Prophet 5s and Minimoogs that
TECH
are piled up all over the place. And 5G is the official
distributor of the Dave Smith’s new gear, including
the sough-after Prophet 6. There are quite few ARPs
knocking about (Odysseys, a Quadra, a Solina) and
there’s also a good showing of EMS gear from the UK,
including a VCS3 and the very rare EMS Polysynthi,
with its five panels of primary colours, a brave attempt
to rethink panel design for the post-punk era that was,
unfortunately, doomed. There’s no price label, so I ask
Makato how much it is.
“If it doesn’t have a price on it,” he says, “it’s either
not for sale, or we’re not sure how much to charge
for it. Some of them are so rare, they are difficult to
price.”
There is also an EMS/Rehberg Synthi Logik on show.
It wasn’t priced when we visited, but it is on their
website now, yours for a mere 800,000 yen. That’s
around £4,500. Not bad for a single VCO synth that
comes in its own suitcase and was originally intended
to be mauled by school kids. More than a few of those
were probably mouldering in school storage rooms
until they were cleared out and dumped in the 1980s.
Oh, for a time machine.
As you’d expect, Japanese gear is very well
represented. I’ve never seen so many Korg MS-20s in
one place. There’s also a load of Yamaha CS-15s and
30s, at least three Roland Jupiter-8s, a clutch of Super
Jupiters, a couple of Jupiter-6s (no Jupiter-4s, though,
just as well, we might not have been able to resist)
and many elderly Korg 800DVs from 1974. So of all
the synths that have come and gone we wonder which
is Makato’s favourite. His answer comes back pretty
quickly.
“The Roland SH-101,” he says. “That was the popular
synth when I was very young, so I like it for that
reason. I think Roland got everything right with that
synth. It’s small, powerful and looks great.”
We couldn’t make the same choice. There are synths
in 5G we’ve never seen in the flesh before, much less
heard, like the Buchla Electric Music Box, which is a
new recreation of the Buchla Music Easel, but is still
an exotic and rarely seen beast. By the time you’ve
slavered over a EML 500, or a VCS3, or the glass case
stuffed with Roland System 100 modules, or Moog
modular units, you start to get pretty blasé about a
Roland SH-101.
We left the shop reluctantly. If we’d stayed in there
for much longer, the company credit card may have
taken an unexpected bashing, and then we’d have
had a slight extra baggage issue at the airport. But it’s
somehow comforting to know that 5G exists, taking
care of sick synths as they get older and sending them
back out into the world, fixed up and ready to be
loved by new owners who, we hope, will treat them
with the care and respect they deserve.
In the end we only spent about £10, on a CD the shop
sells called ‘A Cat On Modular’ by Masayasu Tsuboguchi.
It’s pretty good, but it’s not a Roland SH-2.
5G is at Le Ponte Bldg 4F, 1-14-2 Jingumae,
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo.
Opening hours are 12.00-20.00,
they’re closed on Tuesday.
Find them online at www.fiveg.net
watch the video
www.youtube.com/embed/EuDOFciG5Us
XXX
TECH
SYNTH
ESISER
DAVE
Synthesiser Dave’s shed is sort of like one of those homes for distressed hedgehogs.
People find a poorly hedgehog under a bush, or on the hard shoulder of a motorway,
take it home and put in a cardboard box with a blanket and some cat food, and then
they call Mrs Tiggywinkles, hoping they’ll come and take the flea-ridden spiny wormeater off their hands. That, in some ways, is what happened with this Siel DK 80. Its
owner phoned Synthesiser Dave and asked him to come and collect it for mending
and, on discovering it might cost about £25 to bring it back to life, offered to sell it to
Dave for a tenner. The Italian synth manufacturer Siel (Societa Industrie Elettroniche)
made this peculiar synth in 1985, not long before they gave up the ghost, and it was
a sort of a response to the Korg Poly 800, which Dave didn’t like at all. But Dave
rather likes this.
watch the video
www.youtube.com/embed/31euo_cLWz8
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XXX
TECH
READERS’
SYNTHS
Has your synth got a story to tell? Tell us all about
it – email info@electronicsound.co.uk with ‘Readers’
Synths’ as the subject line
ROLAND SH-1
Owner: Michael Vallone
Where: Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA
Year purchased: 1995
Amount paid: A Hagstrom guitar
(with $100 cashback!)
“I acquired my Roland SH-1 from a local pawn shop sometime
in 1995. It was hiding on a shelf in incredible condition and
awaiting adoption. It had been sitting there for some time and I
don’t think they really knew what to do with it; they were much
more interested in guitars. So I took in my old Hagstrom and
made a deal. They gave me the SH-1 plus $100! I walked out the
door laughing.
“I was just forming The Tara Experiment around that time
and wanted to expand my synth arsenal to start making the
Radiophonic sounds I heard in my head. Straight off, this synth
struck me as very beautiful and more than adequate as far as
functionality goes. I remembered Chris Carter and Vince Clarke
using it early in their careers, so I had a reference of some sort.
I felt it was perfect for making experimental electronic music.
Moreover, I already owned a wonderful Roland SH-101 so I was
familiar with the layout and the idea of pairing them together to
form a larger system was very attractive. It was a great move
because I was really able to expand my sound immensely.
“Although the Roland SH-1 and SH-101 are similar synths, the
filters are a bit different as well as a few individual functions. I
use both heavily to this day, but there is just something very
special about the sound of the SH-1. It fits into the mix so well
every time. There is a graininess to the sound that I just love too.
The filter can get quite raspy at times as well. Processing noise
or anything via the external input is a real plus. I also use it to
control my modular system via CV and quite often run one of
the VCO outs from the modular to the external in of the SH-1 to
fatten its sound.
“Secretly I think I like the fact that it isn’t a very popular or
sought after synth. I’m all about having an original sound with
my music and the Roland SH-1 delivers in spades. There are
endless possibilities within its sound palette. The fact that there
are two different envelopes is another added advantage.
This feature puts it a bit closer to its sibling the SH-5. Now if
only it had a second VCO... Another useful feature is the HP
filter; I don’t always use it, but it is nice to have for certain
sounds and the processing of noise.
“As one of Roland’s first small mono synths,
I think they did a marvellous job: it’s truly an obscure classic.”
TECH
XXX
NYBORG-24
Analogue Solutions
Back to analogue, but certainly not back to basics
with this cute and compact monosynth
Words: MARK ROLAND
Analogue Solutions tags itself as a maker of “boutique
electronic instruments”, which is a nice way to think of their
very desirable gear. The Telemark and Leipzig synth ranges,
for example, have the kind of aesthetic and sound designed
to appeal to lovers of not just analogue synths, but the era
they sprang from, with all that Cold War paranoia and German
ingenuity. There’s also their big analogue sequencer, Megacity,
which forces users to take different paths to create patterns,
reconnecting with the hands-on relationship that is lost in the
DAW world of ultimate choice.
Analogue Solutions’ gear is for people who like to free
themselves from the computer screen and work without the
endless and sometimes paralysing choices of today’s computer
studio environments. The Nyborg-24 is the latest offering
from this fascinating company. There is also a Nyborg-12, the
difference being in the filter. The 24 is Moog-like, while the 12
is more akin to the Oberheim SEM.
The Oberheim SEM is probably the most obvious antecedent to
the Nyborg, being a standalone synth with no keyboard. The
SEM was designed in the 1970s to connect to another synth to
fatten the sound, and then Oberheim built them into their own
keyboard versions with two-, four- and eight-voice variations.
You can daisy-chain two Nyborgs together, or with optional
software, up to four. Given how fat and fabulous this unit
sounds on its own, a four-unit version is something we’d like to
play around with.
On the inside, it’s similar to the Telemark and shares many
of the same circuits. The key point about these synths’
innards, which the company is keen to stress, is that they
are pure analogue; nothing is locked down with a CPU (with
the exception of MIDI/CV), which means the unpredictability
of analogue, that makes so many vintage 1970s synths
sound unique, is very much present and correct. It’s a subtle
distinction, and if it doesn’t mean much to you, then, well, it
just isn’t that important. But if you’re the kind of person who
knows it when you hear it, then you’ll certainly hear it when
you start messing around with the Nyborg.
What did we like about the Nyborg? Well, first up, the great
ergonomics; the angle is perfect. You’re not going to hit a
button by accident and it’s designed for physical movement.
You want to get involved with it, its large knobs entice you into
tweaking and experimenting, to reach out and adjust in midflow. And those adjustments can be pretty tiny physically, but
they have big sonic implications. If you don’t like the default
upright look the Nyborg can be reconfigured to sit in a rack,
or to be horizontal. A screwdriver is all you need, and a kit for
rack mounting. You can add wooden sides too if you fancy it,
which would be pretty handsome.
The fact that you can’t store any patches might be anathema
to some, but again, it encourages invention and improvisation,
allowing you to lift out of comfortable habits that result in the
same old sound. If when you approach an instrument, you’re
never quite sure what’s going to happen, the unexpected
results can lead to fresh ideas coming thick and fast. It can be
quite exhilarating.
The Nyborg-24 is easy to use, quite intuitive, you’ll get some
great sounds straight away. It helps you to understand the
signal paths of analogue synthesis without needing to get
involved with patching (if that floats your boat, go for the
Telemark). The sub oscillator is lovely and adds some real beef
when required, but you can’t have sub oscillator fatness and
noise, you have to choose between the two.
This is a unit that takes time to warm up, and while that’s not
exactly a benefit there’s something nice about having to treat it
with respect for its truly analogue nature. And maybe you need
to warm up to it too. It’s a kind of halfway house between a
modular and a synth. It’s hardwired behind the faceplate, so
there’s no patching capabilities, but the feeling of having an
upright standalone unit with no keyboard could well serve you
as a gentle introduction to the sense of working with modular if
it’s not something you’re familiar with, and reconnect you with
your analogue roots.
Nyborg-24, RRP £499 from Analogue Solutions
TECH
PRO-C 2
FabFilter
The Pro-C gets a makeover…
Now more gluey, with a gooey GUI!
Words: LUKE SANGER
FabFilter have released a major update to their Pro-C
compressor plug-in. It’s actually a complete overhaul, hence
it’s worthy for its own review. FabFilter have carved out a loyal
fan base of users in a seemingly crowded market of software
processors. Every DAW these days comes complete with its
own plethora of EQs, filters and dynamic processors, so why
buy more? Well, the attraction of FabFilter products is that they
have released a complete toolbox of commonly used processors
at an affordable price, and have nailed the balance of ease-ofuse with great sound, something not always present with DAW
bundled plug-ins.
The Pro-C 2 adds five new compression types, covering
different scenarios like vocal processing, mastering and
modern EDM “pumping”. Also introduced are new features
like lookahead, range, hold, side-chain EQ, a quite brilliant
oversampling option and possibly the best user interface I’ve
seen in a processor plug-in.
The interface is a real pleasure to use, with fully animated level
and knee graphics and super accurate level monitoring. The
plug-in itself can be resized up to full screen, which is ideal
for surgical mastering tasks. The sound, as with their previous
products, is beautifully modern and transparent, however the
different compression algorithms do impart their own character,
as you would expect.
To be honest it’s difficult to find a flaw with the Pro-C 2. I
suppose if you were looking for particular vintage compressor
emulation, then there might be more suitable options out
there, but for a slick, modern sounding compressor, with an
interface that properly utilises the technology at its disposal,
the Pro-C 2 is hard to beat.
FabFilter Pro-C 2 for Mac and Windows, RRP £114
ALBUM
REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
quality. From the moment the weeping
strings open up on first track ‘Hard
Bastards’ to the last notes of the glorious
pop-fuelled piano-led closer ‘Fighting
For?’, this is one heck of a record.
On board for desk duties is young
British producer, Fred, and musical
heavyweights
Four Tet, Adrian Sherwood and With You,
the latest pseudonym of Switch, dance
producer extraordinaire most notable for
his work with MIA.
ROOTS MANUVA
Bleeds
BIG DADA
Rodney Smith returns with album
number six. Any good?
Let’s not ask silly questions, eh?
One minute and 45 seconds in and Roots
Manuva has already dropped the C-bomb.
Twice. It’s not that Rodney Smith
strikes you as a man needing to shock,
but he can’t half grab your attention.
Since he served up 1999’s breathtaking
debut ‘Brand New Second Hand’, Roots
Manuva has rewritten the book not only
on UK hip hop, but on being a British
independent artist in general.
Where to start? The Four Tet rubdown
on ‘Facety 2:11’ is the sort of thing that’d
have Fatboy Slim reaching for the phone
to offer remix duties, while Switch lends
a proper dancefloor rumble to ‘One
Thing’ and adds a weight to ‘Crying’, a
joyous piece of work that drops some
killer reggae pimping keys right at the
end. But the big wins come out of the
On-U Sound Castle, Ramsgate, courtesy
of Adrian Sherwood, who brings Doug
Wimbish and Skip McDonald along for
the ride.
Lest we forget, Wimbish and McDonald
cut their teeth in the Sugarhill Records
house band and went on to become
Tackhead. Righto. So among the half a
dozen or so cuts straight outta Ramsgate,
we get the very special ‘Don’t Breathe
Out’, which unfurls a corking sample of
Barry White’s ‘Honey Please, Can’t Ya
See’. Expertly wrangled by Sherwood and
Fred, the swirling, plumped up chorus is
as satisfying as anything you’ll hear this
year. Or last year. Or the year before.
When Rodney claims that in an
“egocentric jest of daring to do things in
the tradition of Jesus, I’m ready to bleed
for the artform”, he is only half joking.
He may not quite be Jesus, but every
last ounce of everything is squeezed out
for this near-masterpiece. Oh, and let’s
not forget ‘Cargo’, which he says is his
stadium song because, well, you never
know what might come up in the future.
Like ‘Cargo’ says, the “original blueprint
/ don’t need tweaking”. The reason?
‘Bleeds’ is just one show-stopper after
another after another. All these years
down the line and Roots Manuva is still
waiting for everyone else to catch up.
NEIL MASON
There’s something more than a bit
special about Rodney. That he’s stuck
with his label, Big Dada, when surely to
goodness bigger and richer imprints must
have come a-knocking speaks volumes.
Then there’s his trade. That unmistakable
deep, warm rumble of a voice, the flow,
his compelling, richly detailed storytelling
and often glorious turn of phrase. But
this is not a man content to wax lyrical
over some beats. This is, always has
been, the full-blown craft of songwriting.
‘Bleeds’ is so much more than what
Rodney describes as the “inane rambling
of my classic Manuva-scape ranting bars”.
You just can’t argue with this level of
Pic: Shamil Tanna
happened to be Mouse On Mars, fellow
Düsseldorf travellers in the world of
electronic music. ‘Eloquence’ boasts a
raft of international talent all happily
contributing: Jack Dangers of Meat
Beat Manifesto; Bon Harris of Nitzer
Ebb; Maki Nomiya of Pizzicato 5; Marc
Almond’s keyboard player Anni Hogan;
Mexico’s Ramon Amezcua, aka Bostich.
They’re all students of the Kraftwerk
school in one way or another, and the
result is a patchwork of electronic music,
some rebooting Kraftwerk’s clean and
fastidious approach, others moving into
less familiar territory.
WOLFGANG
FLÜR
Eloquence – Complete Works
CHERRY RED
A collection of international
electropop from former Kraftwerk
drummer and full-time Musik Soldat
The opener, ‘I Was A Robot’, is a
slick example of the former, an
autobiographical jaunt through Flür’s
life in Kraftwerk, and ’Cover Girl’, an
updating of Kraftwerk’s ‘The Model’,
is another. Flür describes the album as
electropop and the likes of the perky
‘Blue Spark’ and ‘On The Beam’ (with
Maki Nomiya of Pizzicato 5) certainly
have a stamp of international pop
about them. ‘Staying In The Shadow’,
the collaboration with Jack Dangers of
Meat Beat Manifesto, is an unsettling
and fictional journey into the psyche
of a troubled soul, far darker and
experimental, while ‘Moda Makina’ brings
a mariachi flavour to proceedings.
You sense an understandable struggle
in the presentation of his own work,
between the necessary distancing from
his former band, and the reality of his
own ebullient creative personality. And
as such, ‘Eloquence’ isn’t Kraftwerk-lite,
but a solidly realised album that is both
fun and engaging. It’s pulled together
from disparate sources, and sounds like
it, but the potential for Flür to produce
a more focused work that straddles
his literary bent and electronic melody
making is an enticing prospect. He will
never escape the “ex-Kraftwerk” tag, but
why would he want to?
MARK ROLAND
These days, one-time Kraftwerk member
Wolfgang Flür traverses the globe,
playing his solo ‘Musik Soldat’ shows,
getting into some alarming scrapes every
now and then, but always thriving on his
interactions with musicians and other
creative types along the way. And so the
sleeve of ‘Eloquence’, subtitled ‘Complete
Works’, features Flür’s own Halliburton
suitcase, bought during his Kraftwerk
days, a symbol of international travel,
while the title is a reference perhaps to
the fact that Wolfgang sees himself first
and foremost as a storyteller. The album,
then, might be best understood as a
series of short stories, some true, some
fiction, some in between, spun by an
itinerant ex-robot on the hoof.
By his own admission, Flür was never a
songwriter. His post-Kraftwerk releases,
like 1997’s ‘Time Pie’ as Yamo, and
this, his first solo album, have relied on
collaborators to realise his musical ideas.
The trick is to choose your collaborations
carefully. With Yamo, his electronic pals
Pic: Tom Steinseifer
ALBUM REVIEWS
LUKE VIBERT
Bizarster
PLANET MU
Multi-faceted electronica pioneer
once again sets aside the
pseudonyms
Cornish-raised maverick Luke Vibert has
operated under a bewildering array of
pseudonyms, from Wagon Christ for his
more chilled out funk adventures to Plug
and Amen Andrews for his drum ’n’ bass
and jungle manoeuvres. His debut EP
for Mo’ Wax, 1995’s ‘A Polished Solid’,
was the first time he used his real name
and since dropping the ‘Big Soup’ album
for the label in 1997, he’s chalked up
seven Vibert full-lengths for stables as
impressive as Ninja Tune, Warp and Mike
Paradinas’ Planet Mu. Apart from making
it easier to keep track of his prolific
output, bringing his work under one
banner has another even more important
advantage. It offers him the freedom to
mix and match styles and tinker at their
edges and it’s that sense of freedom
which means his records just keep
getting better and better.
From the gentle, witty hip hop of
‘Knockout’ at the opening of this release,
to the Pac-Man-sampling, dancehalldrenched jungle tearout ‘Don’t Fuck
Around’ at its close, Vibert may play
havoc with the genre classifications, but
his offering is consistent and consistently
ace at that. Whatever he comes up
with is always witty and playful, both
in terms of the array of inventive vocal
samples and the quirky twists the music
itself takes, and it is always coaxed
along by fresh, infectious beats. What’s
particularly refreshing is that where
others in the electronica field go to
great lengths to seem big and clever,
Vibert puts the same amount of effort
into making his tracks inclusive and
accessible.
Take ‘War’, for example, which lands
slap bang in the middle of ‘Bizarster’. It
has hip hop at its heart, with a cymbal
smashing beat that will no doubt bring
comparisons with DJ Shadow to bear.
As it builds though he introduces warm
swathes of brass and tinkling vibes that
beautifully offset the more aggressive
rabble rousing of the war-declaring
MCs. It’s highly original without making
a big deal out of it. It’s sonically
uncompromising, but easy on the ear
and sure to get heads nodding and feet
heading toward the dancefloor.
‘Manalog’ – as you’ll have noticed, he’s
as fond of a pun as a Sun headline
writer – and ‘L Tronic’ have more of an
acid influence, the former evoking the
choppy rhythms of early 90s techno, the
latter looking back even earlier to the
bold synth basslines of Chicago house.
But in each case, again, there’s no pofaced attempt to be authentic as these
elements are combined with a sense of
percussive swing and lively stoned fun
that is entirely his own.
Likewise, ‘Ghetto Blast Ya’ takes on the
cliches of rave’s early days and lovingly
sculpts something utterly modern from
its charging Amen breaks, spinbacks,
stabs and sirens. ‘Officer’s Club’,
meanwhile, is probably the simplest
moment here, an unfettered disco groove
lightly embellished with frisky keyboards
and intertwining vocal lines.
It’s probably unfair to pick out highlights
as ‘Bizarster’ is more than a sum of its
parts. It’s rich in variety but consistent
in its inventive, joyous tone. Aphex Twin
might be the household name, but those
who really know their West Country
electronica inside out will be just as
excited by the arrival of a new Vibert
album as anything Richard James has to
offer.
BEN WILLMOTT
stringing up his home studio with a web
of patch cables all in an effort to get the
sounds just right.
The result is a selection of tracks
augmented by live players that traverses
styles carefully, with no suggestion that
Shepherd simply wanted to throw the
kitchen sink at the studio to show off his
knowledge of musical genres.
FLOATING
POINTS
Elaenia
PLUTO
A ridiculously accomplished debut
album named after a bird you’ve
never heard of
The elaenia is a curious little bird
common across South America, but
one that is often incorrectly identified
because of the existence of no less
than 18 sub-species, many of which
look more or less the same. Accurate
identification requires a degree of
patience, persistence and a keen ear,
because when all else fails, it’s each
sub-species’ unique call that finally
reveals which one is which.
Naming his debut Floating Points fulllength after this elusive avian seems
to typify Sam Shepherd’s well-read
nature and his idiosyncratic approach
to music. A crazily well-educated guy,
the 29-year-old Londoner has an IQ
that’s probably as high as the number
of records he owns, and takes the same
amount of care over his studies as he
does his approach to making music.
This project was some five years in the
making and involved hunting down
rare synths just to add brief moments
of texture, building equipment and
This is, first and foremost, electronic
music, but it is also soulful, recalling the
instrumental stretches on Marvin Gaye’s
‘What’s Going On’ while at the same
time the Fender Rhodes-y stabs and
vamps on ‘For Marmish’ have an echo
of Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea’s work
on Miles Davis’ more extreme electric
jazz moments. That this set also takes in
funky breaks, Autechre-style wonkiness
and thrillingly fizzy synth arpeggios might
seem hugely incoherent, but somehow
it all hangs together perfectly. Possibly
once again nodding to the bird that
gave this release its title, ‘Elaenia’ also
incorporates moments of languid Latin
rhythms, a warm, summery vibe that
adds a further rich dimension to the
seven pieces here.
The entire spread of musical innovation
on display is best exemplified by the
three-part minor symphony ‘Silhouettes
(I, II & III)’, a 10-minute opus that
contains so much detail it doesn’t sound
the same twice – shuffling jazz kit
work, shards of synths, loose keyboard
riffs, mournful strings, noir angles and
so on. It might seem monumentally
epic and ridiculously overwrought, but
one suspects that Shepherd probably
composed this in his head while writing
his PhD thesis in neuroscience.
Records like this that cover so much
ground in such an effortlessly causal
manner don’t come along very often.
When they do, they often represent the
high-water mark of an artist’s creative
endeavours, after which everything
else pales in comparison. If ‘Elaenia’ is
just one tentative step on the road for
Shepherd, what he could be capable of a
few albums further into his career will be
worth waiting patiently for.
MAT SMITH
ALBUM REVIEWS
book about French composers as being a
“clumsy but subtle technician”, which is
about as perfect a description you could
come up with for his late 20th and early
21st century acolytes, of which Foxx is
certainly one.
JOHN FOXX/
HAROLD BUDD/
RUBEN GARCIA
Nighthawks
JOHN FOXX &
HAROLD BUDD
Satie was a man ahead of his time. His
manuscripts would sometimes have
further instructions scrawled in red
ink: “Light as an egg”, or “Work it out
for yourself”; esoteric thought-bombs
that would later seem not out of place
in the art of Yoko Ono. Another note
told the performer to repeat the piece
840 times, which would take about 19
hours if obeyed, something La Monte
Young would later actually do with his
mid-1960s ‘Dream House’ pieces in
New York. Satie also wrote he only ate
food that was white, while necking vast
amount of red wine, reminiscent of David
Bowie’s cocaine, milk and red peppers
diet of his Thin White Duke phase.
Selected reissues of ambient
collaborations from the House of
Foxx
Satie remained an outsider for most
of his life, an eccentric outlier on the
fringes of the mainstream while taking
potshots at it. He published his own
magazine, which was often a vehicle for
regular slaggings of eminent music critics
he didn’t like. He was, in many ways,
a proto-art rocker; clever, thoughtful,
playful and constantly looking to upset
the status quo.
The influence of Erik Satie surrounds
these three CDs like a weather system
and informs the work of everyone
involved here. Satie is the grandaddy
of ambient music. He was producing
spacious and spare piano pieces in Paris
around the end of the 19th to the early
20th century, which are remarkable
not just for their beauty, but for how
startlingly modern they still sound.
They’ve even survived the indignity
of being famous in the 1980s for
soundtracking chocolate bar adverts.
John Foxx first heard Satie in 1966.
“I was at art school,” he says. “A girl I
was in class with played ‘Gymnopédies’
on the lecture piano one afternoon.
I remember the scene exactly – old
Victorian art school, doors open to a long
avenue of trees. River beyond. Summer
glistening outside. I was very young and
everything seemed magical and infinitely
promising. Completely captivated in
a moment of stillness and wonder.
Everything followed from that single
moment.”
Satie was an organiser of sound and
called himself a “phonometrician”
(measurer of sounds) rather than a
musician. In 1911, he was described in a
Foxx describes himself as Harold Budd’s
apprentice on these recordings, and
what else can you do with a master of
ambient piano like Harold Budd? It’s
Translucence/Drift Music
METAMATIC
difficult to unpick the contributions each
made to these lovely recordings (pianist
Ruben Garcia was the junior partner of
the trio, starting his recording career in
the early 1990s) and there is no point.
They each unfurl slowly, enveloping the
atmosphere just as Satie did. If I had to
pick a favourite, it might be the utterly
gorgeous ‘Drift Music’ disc, but each
of the three is a thing of beauty, their
characters gradually revealing themselves
on repeated listenings.
This is music that will last forever,
ageless and metaphysical, an aural
musical presence that somehow transfers
a solitary memory of a British art school
in the 1960s, and of Belle Époque Paris,
directly into the listener’s consciousness.
Quite an achievement.
MARK ROLAND
After sloughing off the poor reception
to their debut long-player, Clarke and
Bell hit their stride with the understated
hit ‘Sometimes’ and saw that success
continue largely unhindered through a
quartet of albums – ‘The Circus’ (1987),
‘The Innocents’ (1988), ‘Wild!’ (1989)
and Clarke’s analogue renaissance, the
wonder-filled ‘Chorus’ (1991).
ERASURE
Always – The Very Best Of
Erasure
MUTE
Another ‘Best Of’, another chance
to appreciate the 30-year Bell/
Clarke legacy all over again
The story goes that 30 years ago, on 23
March 1985, a shy young singer and Judy
Garland fan called Andy Bell auditioned
to be part of a new, as-yet-unnamed
Vince Clarke musical project. By then
Clarke had quit one band (Depeche
Mode), dissolved his second (Yazoo), set
up a mostly-overlooked label (Reset) and
started a series of one-off singles that
delivered as many misfires as it did hits
before he axed that as well. For Bell, the
opportunity to audition had an element
of risk about it given Clarke’s limited
recent success.
But sometimes things just have a habit
of working out. In Bell, the 36th singer
that Clarke had seen that fateful day, he
found a partner who was able to take
the limelight and let him get on with
what he had always done best: writing
electronic music with some of
the most simple, arresting melodies in
the business. Meanwhile, Bell brought
a sense of soul, drama and showmanship
to a collaboration that has lasted to
this day.
Despite scoring their only UK Number
One single with the ‘ABBA-esque’ EP
in 1992, Erasure’s success suddenly
foundered. ‘Always’, from 1993’s Martyn
Ware-produced ‘I Say I Say I Say’, and
the track that gives this career-spanning
compilation its name, felt for a while like
the pinnacle of their success. After that,
it seemed as if Erasure had become a
fan’s band and a mere pop footnote.
A brisk climb up Peter Gabriel’s ‘Solsbury
Hill’ for the career-reinvigorating 2003
covers album, ‘Other People’s Songs’,
acted as a springboard for reminding the
listening public that Vince and Andy were
still alive, well and just as capable of
bashing out pop gems as they ever were.
Fast forward and 2014’s slick ‘The Violet
Flame’ showed them to be in rude health
on the cusp of their fourth decade.
For this compilation, there’s an inevitable
weighting toward their early period
successes and recent returns to form
barely get a look-in. The release is
rounded out with two discs of remixes
you’ve probably already heard – at least
it will save you from having to dust off
the vinyl originals – along with a largely
pointless new version of ‘Sometimes’,
but such is life with one-size-fits-no-one
collections.
‘Always – The Very Best Of Erasure’
apparently presages a whole host of
30th anniversary remasters, events and
as-yet unannounced happenings. Unless
you’re a die-hard fan with money to
burn, you don’t need any of that, or even
this collection. Just listen to the timeless
wonders of ‘A Little Respect’, ‘Stop!’,
‘Chorus’, ‘Sometimes’, or countless others
from the Erasure back catalogue not
surveyed here and you’ll be pleasantly
reminded of this unlikely duo’s enduring
status as synthpop royalty.
MAT SMITH
Pic: Richard Haughton
ALBUM REVIEWS
Half of the 14 tracks here are named
after TV masts, the other half are less
directly about the masts and more
around the subject. Like ‘Pages From
Ceefax’, that early text-based information
interface with its agonisingly slow load
times, football results, weather, breaking
news and cheap holidays. There’s also
‘Testcard Bossanova’ and ‘Programmes
For Schools Follow Shortly’, which will
stir memories in anyone who grew up
in the 1960s or 1970s when we’d sit in
front of the school telly waiting for the
BBC broadcast to start, while the teacher
snuck out for fag and perused the sports
pages of the newspaper.
ALPHA SEVEN
Great TV Masts Of The UK
SOFACOM
Retro ambient trip hop explores
the psychogeography of elderly
communication technology.
As you do…
‘Great TV Masts Of The UK’ is an
electronic concept album, bound
together very literally by TV masts of the
UK. Just how great they actually are is
debatable, but in the same way people
find themselves ensnared in esoteric
research of bygone technologies, so Pete
Roberts, aka Alpha Seven, has fixated on
TV masts and the analogue signals they
once beamed across the nation.
This nostalgia of the futurist is a strangely
strong current in contemporary culture.
Maybe Kraftwerk started it. Blame them.
You can also hold them responsible for
the track ‘Emley Moor’, which has a riff
strongly reminiscent of ‘Tour De France’,
but adds a guitar motif for a kind of
melancholy Chris Isaak feel. The mast
itself collapsed in 1969, victim of entirely
unexpected stress failures caused by ice
build up on the mast itself and the guy
wires. The collapse sliced a church in half
and left the north of England without ITV
and BBC2 for several days. And there you
were thinking TV masts were dull.
‘Great TV Masts Of The UK’, then, is a
project built from fragmented memories
of growing up in the UK, having strange
testcard images beamed at you by the TV
channels when they weren’t broadcasting
any actual content. That idea is, in itself,
a novel one in these times of 24-hour
access to all the content you can eat,
via whatever device you happen to
favour. And so it’s fitting that the sonic
template for this project is also a retro
flavour, namely trip hop. The album is
infused with the loping sound of beats
manipulated to dozy bpms in a sampler,
slightly lo-res for that authentic grit.
And in the same way trip hop gained
much of its uncanny familiarity from the
use of samples, so ‘Great TV Masts Of
The UK’ keeps jogging the memory with
melody you seem to recognise, only for
it to pass, leaving an impression of itself
that gradually fades like the white dot on
the cathode ray tube when you reached
to switch the TV set off and sat back
to hear the ticking of cooling vacuum
tubes and inhaled the familiar smell of
burning dust on hot components. All
faded memories now. And the music? It’s
lovely.
MARK ROLAND
pulse with the beat of the dancefloor
as shimmer with its possibilities. Drums
don’t figure large; instead the album’s
heartbeat is a bass synth that bears
the listener away on any number on
little fluffy clouds. Think the shoegazey
stylings of ‘On My Own’ by Ulrich
Schnauss for comparison.
COMA
This Side Of Paradise
KOMPAKT
Album number two from the
Cologne duo is a startlingly wellcrafted pop-house hybrid
Dovetailing neatly with Kompakt’s
styled-up and laidback ethos, Coma’s
duo of Georg Conrad and Marius Bubat
specialise in the kind of meticulously
crafted tech-house that’s equally at
home in a club, commute or even your
local floatation tank. Their 2013 debut,
‘In Technicolour’, didn’t always hang
together – an issue they overcome with
almost insouciant ease here – but it
demonstrated an understanding for the
lush and narcotic possibilities of their
chosen furrow. DJs the calibre of John
Digweed and Sasha duly stocked their CD
wallets, hard drives etc.
It’s tempting to say that on this second
outing Coma perfect the formula. In fact,
they don’t quite perfect it, but they come
very close. Here is a record that during
its admirably concise 46-minutes flirts
outrageously with perfection. Rare is it
for a set to slip down so easily, or be so
moreish.
Things begin in tremendous style with
‘Borderline’. Like the rest of ‘This Side Of
Paradise’, ‘Borderline’ doesn’t so much
Oh, but what’s this? The second track,
‘Lora’, couldn’t be more of a mood killer
if it was wearing a onesie and wanted
to talk about kitchen appliances. It is,
as they say, “nice enough”, but its chief
problem is that by employing Hot Chipstyle vocals and a Hot Chip-trademarked
“annoying squeaky bit” it sounds way too
much like… Hot Chip. Which is never a
good thing.
Even so, Coma are forgiven that minor
infraction – and neither will we linger
long on the decision to release it as the
lead single – because the rest of their
work here is just so damn beautiful.
Besides, ‘Lora’ is swiftly followed by one
of the set’s strongest moments, ‘The
Wind’, with frequent collaborator Dillon
lending gorgeous vocals to a luxuriant
pop triumph guaranteed to soothe any
hangover or attack of the blue meanies.
From here things only get better,
each track a mini-masterpiece, each
a progression from the last. And if
the first half of ‘This Side Of Paradise’
concentrates largely on finely honed club
ballads, then the next section leads us
away from all that hushed ennui to the
dancefloor. The bpms rise on ‘Pinguin
Power’ and we feel the first stirrings
of euphoria. Again on ‘Poor Knight’,
when perhaps if we weren’t so blissfully
opiated our hands might even reach for
the lasers. If you’re of the belief that
an album’s close should be its most
masterful moment, a rousing distillation
of all that has gone before, then you
won’t be disappointed by ‘Happiness’.
A triumph then. If you’re pining for
the sorely missed Telefon Tel Aviv, if
you’re wondering about the next Ulrich
Schnauss or Gui Boratto, then here it
is. ‘This Side Of Paradise’ isn’t quite
perfection, no. But it’s as near as makes
no difference.
ANDREW HOLMES
ALBUM REVIEWS
Kevorkian, Laurent Garnier, Bob Sinclar.
I’ll stop now shall I?
ST GERMAIN
ST GERMAIN
PARLOPHONE FRANCE
Ludovic Navarre makes long
awaited return with something of a
curveball
Frenchman Ludovic Navarre is almost a
mythical creature, such is the sparsity of
his St Germain output. Three albums in
20 years is not exactly prolific, but when
two of those records are ‘Boulevard’
and ‘Tourist’, you can almost forgive the
tardiness. You don’t hear much from him
interview-wise either. His English is as
shoddy as our French... and as anyone
who has conducted a chat through an
interpreter knows, life really is too short.
So for the most part, his music has been
left to do the talking.
Back in 1995, the FCom-released
‘Boulevard’ didn’t so much talk as
stand on a table and shout loudly while
waving its arms about. The thrill was
instant, but hard to explain. At the time,
deep house was something of a bestkept secret and by rights any music that
melts jazz and blues into a rumbling
pot of downtempo house music sounds
like a bridge too far. But it worked
because it’s precisely, uniquely, the
sort of groove that no one else ploughs
quite like the French. Think Motorbass,
Cassius, Daft Punk, Justice, François
Which brings us to this, St Germain’s
eponymous third long-player. Sure, the
trademark deep house moves are very
much still present, but in comes a very
heavy African influence. Recorded with
Malian musicians, the album features
traditional instruments such as the kora,
the balafon and the n’goni, alongside
guitars, pianos, saxophones and, of
course, loops, beats, locked down
grooves and late-night bass. As Navarre’s
people say, it all follows “a secret
formula only St Germain could concoct”.
Yup. Most folk woudn’t even dream of it,
let alone do it.
So does it work? It’s not a difficult
listen. Many a time it has wafted across
the office without complaint, which is
rare. It would no doubt go about its
business as the background soundtrack
to sundowners the world over pretty
efficiently. But it’s so much more than
toe-tapping wallpaper.
At eight tracks, it neatly splits into a
record of two halves. Side A, tracks
one to four, are gentle-gentle, and then
there’s side B, where it all kicks up a
gear. From opener ‘Real Blues’ featuring
the voice of the late blueser Lightnin’
Hopkins intoning he’ll “come back home”
over some wild African percussion to the
intricate noodles of ‘Hanky Panky’ (is
that a kora solo I hear?), the first half is
very, very mellow.
The second half is when night falls. The
piano tinkle, jazz sax-infused ‘Family
Tree’ sees the sun safely to bed before
morphing halfway through its eight
minutes into a sleek floorfiller. ‘How
Dare You’ is all tribal chanting meets
deep south blues over some serious 21st
century moves, while ‘Mary L’ kicks up a
dark, glitchy low rumble and when that
beat kicks in... this is a house music like
you’ve never heard before.
So what if it took Navarre, what, 15
years? So what if he takes him another
15 years for the next one. This is
delightfully quirky, stirringly soulful stuff.
When our French friends are involved, we
wouldn’t want it any other way.
NEIL MASON
era that should not be consigned entirely
to history.
LUKE HAINES
British Nuclear Bunkers
CHERRY RED
Unhinged maverick returns with a
Dadaist hauntology riff on the Kling
Klang sound
Since responding to an ad in longgone music weekly Sounds and joining
indie outfit The Servants back in the
late 80s, he’s served his time has Luke
Haines. Never a careerist, even when
the opportunity arose with 90s Britpop
band The Auteurs, his often contrary and
confrontational music is his art for its
own sake. And it feels safe to assume
that he will continue to chase his muse
for the rest of his days. And for that, all
hail.
‘British Nuclear Bunkers’ is an opportune
and prescient meditation on one of
Britain’s most disconcerting roomfilling elephants. Occasionally echoing
the foggy half-remembered analogue
nostalgia of Ghost Box acts like Belbury
Poly, this long-player will resonate
keenly with the 40-somethings who
recall being somewhat freaked out by the
80s nuclear threat. Although instead of
evoking any audiological ghosts specific
to the time, Haines channels early
Kraftwerk (‘Radio-Activity’ in particular)
to summon the chilling spirit of the
period and perhaps to remind us of an
The album’s somewhat paranoid and
occasionally unsettling tone is set with
opener ‘This Is The BBC’, an authentic
sounding radio broadcast that coldly
advises a nuclear strike is imminent. It’s
affecting stuff and forces the listener to
consider the potential scenario. Which
is a laugh then. Well actually, in a way
it is – albeit a grimly black-humoured
one. Haines is poking us with his rhythm
stick here, laughing through his unkempt
’tache in his guise as electro-Situationist
and thought-provocateur. “The bunkers
are still there, you idiots!” he seems to
be shouting. “Wake up!”.
The title track is all slow-paced forbode
and radioactive Korg menace and owes
much to early Kling Klang. The drama
continues with ‘Camden Borough Control’
and its Geiger counter clicks and harsh
synth squalls. But just as you begin to
wonder whether this is all going to be
too much like hard work, ‘Test Card
Forever’ introduces lightness and a
certain Radiophonic incidental jauntiness.
It’s not all baleful darkness that proceeds,
although ‘Cold Field Morning Bliss’ has a
plodding metronomic uncertainty, which
perhaps aims to remind us to enjoy each
new dawn while there’s chance…
‘Bunker Funker’ soundtracks the
subterranean Saturday night with a
welcome electro-funkiness that bounces
along like an old video game. It skronks
primitive acid lines and choppy synth
handclaps in a nod to Phuture, which
is repeated elsewhere with danceable
charm.
Standout ‘Pussywillow (Kids Song)’
marks the high point of the album with
its titular children’s choir-sung refrain
that conjures a circular, ritualistic dance
taking place in some brutalist-utilitarian
communal square, post-WW3. The
theme is echoed in closer ‘New Pagan
Sun’: “We are under the ground / We are
under the hum” sings Haines in his nasal,
wintry tones, hopeful that the new order
is taking shape deep underground.
CARL GRIFFIN
ALBUM REVIEWS
the stark electronic tone paintings he
had introduced as Levantis the previous
year on a four-track EP called ‘Believe’
(on beautifully obscure operation The
Trilogy Tapes, lining up with names such
as Bee Mask, Dog Lady and Preggy Peggy
& The Lazy Baby Makers).
In some perverse way, ‘Romantic
Psychology 1’ could be seen as a kind
of demonic echo of his European
namesake’s deep sea emissions; new age
given a stark urban rinse, but much more
than just background music.
KRIS NEEDS
LEVANTIS
Romantic Psychology 1
TECHNICOLOUR
Actress iconoclast Darren J
Cunningham gives shadowy alter
ego whole album
Not to be confused with the samenamed veteran European producer
responsible for new age classics such as
‘The Sound Of Dolphins’, the first album
from Ninja Tune’s recently established
vinyl imprint actually harbours the first
extended work from the alter ego of
Darren J Cunningham, better known as
Actress.
Hailing from Wolverhampton and
launching his Werkdiscs label in 2004
with an Actress single called ‘No Tricks’,
Cunningham established his new label
with his debut long-player, ‘Hazyville’,
in 2008; 2010’s acclaimed follow-up,
‘Splazsh’, appeared on Honest Jon’s,
who also released ‘RIP’ two years later.
Cunningham has also released a string
of singles and EPs, including ‘Machine
And Voice’ for Nonplus, ‘Ghosts Have a
Heaven’ for Prime Numbers and several
for Werkdiscs/Ninja Tune.
After 2014’s ‘Ghettoville’ for Werkdiscs/
Ninja Tune, Cunningham took a break
from Actress’ outsider house and minimal
glitchy technoscapes to further explore
But for his first full-length excursion
as Levantis, Cunningham follows the
maiden 12-inch voyages from names
such as Legowelt, Hieroglyphic Being,
Florian Kupfer, Kutmah and BNJMN
that have established Technicolour as a
brightly diverse new imprint. It could be
his most introspective work to date and
certainly benefits from being released
on wax, starting with the deep black
sleeve, which includes artwork insert by
Eve Ackroyd (the black-on-black death’s
head image is a ringer for The Velvet
Underground’s ‘White Light White Heat’).
The skeletal, billowing resonance and
sustained micro-frequencies of the sound
were made to be broadcast through the
warmth, depth and extra textures of
vinyl, while the presentation positions it
as an evocative art object.
Cunningham says that ‘Romantic
Psychology 1’ is inspired by “nigredo and
possession of the shadow”. In alchemy,
‘nigredo’ (blackness) means decomposition,
the alchemists believing that, on the
journey to the philosopher’s stone, all
ingredients had to be cooked into a
uniform black matter before they could
progress. In psychology, the word is a
metaphor for “the dark night of the soul”.
Cunningham’s mission here seems to be
reducing his sound to its dark shadow,
invaded by occasional strafes of invading
light, which sets the basic template on
opening tracks ‘Exploding Boxes’ and ‘Red
Blocks’. Rolling slowly as clouds against a
mountain, the resonant, subtly morphing
tones are pinched by skeletal rhythmic
scratches, dipping to subterranean levels
of whale flatulence that re-imagine the
time-space continuum for the rest of the
side. By side two’s ‘Colour’, delicate beat
suggestions have joined the misty sonic
globules, like music filtering in from the
bubble next door.
flirted with straight-up rock and funk
bands before turning to electronica in
his 20s. Formerly of Bordeaux, but now
based in London, Russell has slowly but
surely been building up a back catalogue
of exemplary remixes and original
productions, roadtesting them at DJ and
live shows across the capital. The horror
movie bass of ‘You Freak’ was featured
in a mix by Hawtin himself and other
cuts have surfaced on labels such as
Multi Vitamins, Adjunct, Telegraph and
Lebensfreude, but ‘Force’ is his first fulllength studio effort.
SEBASTIAN
RUSSELL
Force
FENOU
Finally, the first ever full-length
from one of dance music’s most
innovative disciples
The eerie throb of 21st century minimal
house and glitchy techno is a sound that
has seemingly conquered dancefloors
the world over. From its roots as a
minority pursuit beloved of a handful
of electronica geeks and hardcore
trainspotters, it now packs out clubs
in Ibiza, London, Berlin and New York
sending thousands into delirious states
with little more than the woosh of a hihat and the muffled rumble of a squelchy
bassline. It’s made heroes out of DJs and
producers – from long-term champions
such as Richie Hawtin and Sven Väth to
more recent newcomers – but especially
those who are both. For it’s not good
enough these days to just spin other
people’s records; your DJ appearances
need that extra zip, that je ne sais quoi
only the super-secret mash-up that you
finished in the early hours of last Tuesday
can bring.
Sebastian Russell is certainly one of
those sonic polymaths. Indeed, he’s been
a guitarist since the age of 10 and has
Opener ‘Pourpre’ sets the tone straight
from the off, with a nagging tinkling riff
that snakes over a dubby bassline, before
going through the gears to lead single
‘Free Fall’ and its incessant micro-techno
groove and analogue synth hooks. This
is what Russell is all about: melodies to
the fore, lashings of beats and bass and
some judicious sampling all thrown into
the pot. It’s a potent mix that steers
clear of the creative cul-de-sac that
some minimal techno seems to have
disappeared up of late.
Elsewhere, the gothic ‘Death Song’ thuds
along to a quite thunderous kick drum
and a Morse code hook that spells out
“M-I-N-I-M-A-L” (probably) while the
Detroit sensibilities of ‘Flirt’ elevate the
mood with the sort of sci-fi cyber-funk
beloved in Michigan. There are more
obtuse moments too, clearly meant for
home listening; check out ‘Légèreté’ and
‘Shark’ that both bubble along to offkilter melodies and sideways beats.
‘Force’ is an impressive debut and over
11 sharply produced tracks Russell has
not put a foot wrong. It exudes quality,
care and attention and showcases a keen
ear for the unusual while keeping sights
firmly fixed on your local nitespot. If
you’ve been anywhere near a minimal
house dancefloor in recent times, you’ve
almost certainly danced to one of
Russell’s tunes. Now’s the chance to get
your rave on in the comfort of your own
home.
KIERAN WYATT
ALBUM REVIEWS
IRMLER &
EINHEIT
Bestandteil
KLANGBAD
Series of Faustian pacts between
the organ experimentalist and
assorted percussionists continues
Last year’s ‘Flut’ collaboration between
Faust founder Hans-Joachim Irmler and
Can’s metronomic forager Jaki Liebezeit
was one of the albums of 2015, invoking
ancient ritual catharsis as the former’s
keyboards duelled with the latter’s
featherlight pulses like astral entities
locked in the same time warp. It was the
latest out-of-body miracle to be spawned
in the Faust studio as part of Irmler’s
ongoing mission to explore matching
keyboards with different percussionists,
which had previously brought him
together with Gudrun Gut and Christian
Wolfarth.
For this set, Irmler chose FM Einheit,
who has been known recently for his
collaborations with Diamanda Galás,
Mona Mur, Andreas Ammer and Ulrike
Haage (although he started in the late
70s with punk outfits such as Palais
Schaumberg). Many remember Einheit
as a founder member of the fearsome
Einstürzende Neubauten, infamously
extracting rhythms from his custom-
made metal instruments or tools such
as road-drills. When I saw him in action
in the early 80s, he practically reduced
an LA stage to flaming matchwood
with his latest power toy. After leaving
Neubauten in the mid-90s, Einheit
worked on film soundtracks and then
formed Gry with Danish singer Gry
Bagøien.
bass-spring resonance and disembodied
chorale shards, sometimes sculpting
something approaching a hip hop beat
(if heard filtering up from the bowels
of another planet). ‘The Taking’ is built
from snippets of theatrical recordings
made by Einheit, including brass, strings
and voices, inspiring Irmler into queasy
overdrive.
In 2009, Einheit teamed up with
Irmler for ‘No Apologies’, which almost
seems like a skeletal proto-type for the
cauldron unleashed by the pair here as
they explore mating Irmler’s organ with
an instrument of Einheit’s own invention,
the bass-spring, and various found
sounds. ‘Bestandteil’ is actually edited
down from eight two-day jams conducted
between 2012 and 2015. Honing such a
monstrous bulk of material into a single
CD must have been a monumental
endeavour, but Irmler and Einheit have
emerged with a work that is quite
startling in the unearthly resonance and
aural whirlpools they spark up between
them.
While the sounds can get savage and
almost impenetrably dense, tracks such
as ‘Treat’, or the sepulchral calm of the
intro to ‘Streetlife’, introduce floatation
tank-like weightlessness as the organ
takes a rest from howling at the super
blood moon and Einheit pulls back the
throttle on his arsenal of counter-tones.
It’s rather like a good film introducing
some calm to make the storm more
effective, while Einheit’s skilfully
sculpted rhythms make sure the album
retains a semblance of groove.
The droning intro static of ‘Reset’ paves
the way for ‘Brooks’, which sees Irmler
kick his organ into searing exclamations
that rage like electrocuted Medusa
locks before settling into stretches of
uneasy calm. Meanwhile, Einheit sends
out shadowy pulses constructed from
The set finishes with a reprise of
‘Brooks’, obviously another section of
that particular jam, with both participants
– and the listener – by now locked into
the almost demonic alchemy crackling
between them, long unbound by earthly
restraints. If ‘Bestandteil’ is anything to
judge by, hopefully Irmler’s series will
continue to fly and fly.
KRIS NEEDS
HANS-JOACHIM IRMLER
coming from electronica’s most unlikely
protagonists.
EVERYTHING
BUT THE GIRL
Walking Wounded
Temperamental
EDSEL RECORDS
Reissue double bill stands as a
testament to the vibrancy of 90s
electronic music scenes
Who’d have thought that melancholy 80s
indie singer-songwriter duo Everything
But The Girl would become darlings of
90s club culture? It really was about
as improbable as Morrissey embracing
Detroit techno, but it only took one
record to turn around their whole oeuvre
for good. That record was the Todd Terry
remix of 1994’s ‘Missing’, which ended up
selling three million copies and going Top
Five in the UK and the US.
It was when Ben Watt started going
to the nascent drum ’n’ bass clubs
Speed and Metalheadz that the band’s
fate was sealed. A whole new sound
for Everything But The Girl was born
and the two resulting albums – 1996’s
‘Walking Wounded’ and 1999’s
‘Temperamental’ – represent the high
watermark of club music in the 90s,
an astounding and optimistic era of
sonic innovation. The reissue of these
two albums only serves to compound
what a golden era it was, especially
‘Walking Wounded’ is undoubtedly the
stronger of the pair and anyone who
enjoyed the bittersweet lost-on-thedancefloor mournfulness meets propulsive
house beats of Todd Terry’s ‘Missing’
remix will relish ‘Wrong’ with the similar
sentiments of longing gliding over kinetic
chubby house chords and beats. The
title track, co-written and co-produced
with Spring Heel Jack, features the same
chemistry: Tracey Thorn’s yearning vocal
opining love lost and found intertwined
with a spangled constellation of beats.
It’s no surprise that with their new found
immersion in the drum ’n’ bass and house
scenes they lined up some stellar remixing
talent including Photek and Dillinja, Mood
2 Swing and Deep Dish, names with real
insider cachet.
‘Temperamental’ suffers by comparison
with ‘Walking Wounded’. It just hasn’t
got the same melodic focus and
fortitude. Where ‘Walking Wounded’
and its associated mixes still feel fresh,
the opener of ‘Temperamental’, ‘Five
Fathoms’, just sounds like the sort of
generic house music you tend to hear in
the background at the hairdressers. It’s
too languid and unfocussed, like they’ve
taken the successful formula of ‘Missing’
and diluted it too much. The title
track itself is a little catchier and more
defined, more of a disco stomper with
Thorn’s falsetto giving it that authentic
mirrorball sound, but otherwise the
album comes across as a seamless segue
of rather bland house. The vocals are still
beguiling, but the production is just too
polished and polite for its own good.
It’s not a bad album, it’s just not as
strikingly good as ‘Walking Wounded’,
which had all the enthusiasm for new
genres experienced afresh. Yet again
with ‘Temperamental’ they lined up some
A-list remixers. Kenny Dope and Fabio
manage to create more alluring versions
than the originals. My favourite is former
Strictly Rhythm golden boys Wamdue
Project who create atmospheric drifting
deep house magic out of the title cut.
Of the two, ‘Walking Wounded’ is
definitely worth having in your collection,
‘Temperamental’ perhaps only if you’re a
fanatic for the remixers.
BETHAN COLE
ALBUM REVIEWS
he was about as far out of the orbit of
‘Merz’ as it was possible to get. And
then in 2013 he released ‘No Compass
Will Find Home’, again acoustically
driven, but later that year he hooked up
experimental drummer and sound artist
Julian Sartorius to record the album
again, this time as purely drum and vocal
renditions. It’s an extraordinary piece of
work by any standard.
He’s an interesting chap is Conrad.
Raised in Dorset, his folks lived in Outer
Mongolia when ‘Merz’ was released and
these days he calls Bern in the Swiss Alps
home.
MERZ
Thinking Like A Mountain
ACCIDENTAL
Mauled by the music industry
in the 90s, Conrad Lambert serves
up impressive sixth album
For a while back there, Merz were the
next big thing. The “back there” was
1999 and Merz’s eponymous debut
album was partying like it. Awash with
major label big bucks, Conrad Lambert
was heralded as an unique talent,
reviews for ‘Merz’ glowed and then,
well, nothing.
“I’m not an urban kid so my music’s not
going to turn out like urban electronic
music does,” he explained when I met
him for a chat around his debut release.
“I think a lot of my music is a blend
of the country mixed with six lanes of
traffic. My environments have kind of
merged.”
Which is fascinating when you hear
‘Thinking Like A Mountain’, album
number six, which finds Matthew Herbert
and Maas’ Ewan Pearson at the controls.
Interesting that he talked about his
environments merging all that time ago,
because that’s precisely how ‘Thinking
Like A Mountain’ sounds.
It starts with the experimental
12-minute plus ‘Shrug’. Almost pastoral,
it creaks and whispers, melody leaks
out, repetitive refrains come and go.
More song-writerly cuts follow, the
gentle pop of ‘Oblivion’, the tiptoeing
‘Absence’, before we hit a step change
for the closing trio. ‘Serene’ sees the
set fair burst to life, a rolling bassline,
the bright tinkle of a beat, while ‘Ten
Gorgeous Blocks’ is a squelching, hectic
headspinner that melts down into a
splendidly noisy sequenced romp. It’s
followed by the closing electronic swell
and plinky plonks of ‘Mercy’, a track that
slowly turns to just a warm strumming
guitar and Conrad’s distinctive warble,
before it ends, just stops almost without
you noticing. And there you are, sat in
the silence for a while like it’s part of the
record.
And here’s the thing. If you flip the
tracklisting and listen from the last track
to the first, it sounds like an entirely
different musical journey. Which is pretty
clever stuff. But then this is Merz. While
he won’t be setting the world alight,
we’re glad to have him around and we’ll
always be happy to warm our hands on
his bright sparks.
NEIL MASON
‘Merz’ was a pretty astonishing record
for the time. Conrad’s voice was wild,
the throaty yelp of a wild cat, the
songs straddled rock, dance, folk, soul,
electro (see ‘CC Concious’ if you need a
sample). But no one was exactly killed
in the rush and, as was traditional in
such circumstances, next big things that
weren’t got flushed down the tubes chop
chop.
Rather pleasingly, Conrad bounced back
up on the excellent Grönland label
in 2005 with ‘Loveheart’, a gentle,
affecting record that sounded as battered
and bruised as he probably was from
the whole experience. Essentially a
folk album (as was the 2008 follow-up
wanderlust outing ‘Moi Et Mon Camion’)
Pic: Stéphanie Meylan
NAYTRONIX
Mister Divine
CITY SLANG
Life on the road provides the
inspiration for Nate Brenner’s
restless second album
You have to love side projects. It’s
impossible not to think about bands
schlepping around the world in tour
buses, each member plugged into their
MacBook, writing their own music rather
than talking to one another, just pushing
sounds around a glowing screen in the
early hours of a hazy morning. In recent
years, the proliferation of such electronic
side projects has provided validation
that technology facilitates creativity in
hugely unprecedented ways, while also
confirming that life on the road with your
bandmates must be pretty dull.
By day, Nate Brenner is the bassist in
tUnE-yArDs, a unit who seem to have
as much disregard for conventional
capitalisation as they do musical norms.
It’s therefore no surprise that Brenner’s
second full-length as Naytronix has a
wandering, wonky vibe to it. Conceived
and written while touring the world with
his main band, ‘Mister Divine’ captures
that jaded mood of endless roads, identikit
hotel rooms and sleep-wrecking time
zone shifts; periods of quiet introspection,
inchoate possibilities and troubled dreams.
Though written in near isolation, ‘Mister
Divine’ was executed in a traditional
studio environment, Brenner hacking
through his musical sketchbook with
producer Mark Allen-Piccolo to craft
nine discrete songs from a slew of ideas
and notions, adding percussion, horns
and guitar embellishments to the tracks.
The layered arrangements make for a
set of rapid, almost hyperactive switches
of style suggesting the wild flicker of
Brenner’s creative spark in the genesis
of these songs. This is the work of a
musical magpie stealing shiny things
from any available nest and hoarding
them for future use. In Naytronix’s
case, the prize jewel is the imperfect,
unpolished quality of Brenner’s voice.
It adds a human dimension to these
songs – a trembling, melancholy tint that
offsets any restlessness in the music.
The work of cult Nigerian musician
William Onyeabor was a source of
inspiration for Brenner, and this manifests
itself in some of the funkier excursions
such as ‘Dream’ or the Yeasayeresque ‘Shadow’. On the title track, the
loose quality clashes with a feeling of
skittishness and a constantly shifting
sound world of bleeps, soulfulness and
downbeat jazz guitar licks that can’t be
pinned down.
Elsewhere, you hear axe-shredding guitar
work and summery licks blended with
false beats that would make Autechre
smile (‘Starting Over’) or glitchy synths
and lucid Motown molasses bass with
wistful vocals (‘Back In Time’; the
dreamy ‘I Don’t Remember’). The
maudlin centrepiece of the album is ‘The
Wall’, which finds Brenner presenting
the same clipped horn-filled textures
as St Vincent’s 2012 collaboration with
Onyeabor champion David Byrne.
That ‘Mister Divine’ creates meaningful
coherence out of so many diverse inputs
is both testament to the sheer boredom
and endless frustration of the touring
lifestyle, and a credit to Brenner’s sharp
ear for structure and sonic interplay. With
results like this we can only hope it’s not
too long before he gets himself back on
that tour bus.
MAT SMITH
Pic: Ginger Fierstein
ALBUM REVIEWS
The interplay between their two
frontmen – the earnest preaching
tones of Chuck D and the diametrically
opposed Flavor Flav, the court jester of
proceedings – is key to their appeal of
course. Admittedly they’ve had nearly
30 years to perfect it, but the verbal
sparring is effortless and breathtaking,
even on lesser known album tracks like
‘Night Of The Living Baseheads’ and the
thunderous rampage of the underrated
1991 single, ‘Shut Em Down’.
PUBLIC ENEMY
Live From Metropolis Studios
UNIVERSAL
An intimate live recording from the
undisputed champions of hip hop
With the exception of Kraftwerk, who
are without doubt the closest thing
electronica has to its own Beatles, it’s
hard to think of a band with a bigger
influence on electronic music than Public
Enemy. Their dense, intense, multilayered productions shaped the dance
genres that came after them – from the
sample explosion of Coldcut and M/A/
R/R/S to rave, jungle, drum ’n’ bass, trip
hop and big beat – even more than the
hip hop they paved the way for.
Now in their mid-50s, they don’t tour
quite as often as they did, but studiowise they have never let up, in recent
times delivering new albums every couple
of years. ‘Live From Metropolis Studios’
is, as the titles suggests, a live offering
but having been recorded at the London
studio in front of just 125 extremely lucky
punters, it has an unusually intimate feel.
Not that Public Enemy have gone soft on
us and cracked open the acoustic guitars
for an ‘MTV Unplugged’-style pedestrian
stroll through their finest moments. Not
at all. Over the 21 track selection here
they prove they’re just as capable of
whipping up a blistering intensity as ever.
But equally important is the music: the
powerful sound of crackly breakbeats,
rough-cut samples and dexterous
scratching. A million people – probably
literally – have aped their style since,
but no one can do it quite like this.
The chunky sax that blazes its way
through ‘Show Em Watcha Got’, the
brutally simple two-note Buffalo
Springfield sample that underpins ‘He Got
Game’, the lively breakbeat on ‘Can’t Do
Nuttin’ For Ya Man’, which could easily
have been made yesterday… They’re all
executed with a character and irresistible
grooviness that shows little sign of
deserting them yet.
As you’d expect, a hefty portion of the
tracklisting is devoted to the stonecold classics culled from their first three
records, ‘Yo! Bum Rush The Show’, ‘It
Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us
Back’ and ‘Fear Of A Black Planet’. It’s
an impressive bedrock of anthems, from
early singles ‘Bring The Noise’ and ‘Rebel
Without A Pause’ to ‘911 Is A Joke’, ‘Fight
The Power’ and ‘Don’t Believe The Hype’,
all celebrated in their full glory here.
But there’s also plenty here to suggest it
might be worth looking up a few of their
more recent offerings that may have
passed you by. For example, the 2013
double whammy of ‘Hoover Music’, which
pits Rage Against The Machine-style
riffing against their trademark funkiness,
or the block party exuberance of ‘I Shall
Not Be Moved’.
All in all, ‘Live From Metropolis Studios’
is a fitting testament to a band who
changed music forever in so many
ways, and have refused to sell out or
compromise ever since. Respect is due.
BEN WILLMOTT
ZEUS B HELD
Logic Of Coincidence
LES DISQUES DU CRÉPUSCULE
Journeyman German producer
puts a Schrödinger’s cat among
the pigeons
Despite a career spanning five decades,
German electronic composer and
soundscapist Zeus B Held (Bernd Held)
is not exactly a household name, but
his production credits add up to an
impressive role-call of the bleeperarti,
encompassing the likes of Gary Numan
and John Foxx, alongside post punk
luminaries such as Spear Of Destiny, Pete
Wylie and… erm, Transvision Vamp.
Yet there can’t be too many instrumental
concept albums devoted to philosophical
and mathematical ideas of chance, so
it falls to the recently revived seminal
Belgian new wave label Les Disques Du
Crépuscule to dish up this deliciously
off-kilter piece of existential muzak. Les
Disques, a kinda Factory Records for the
Low Countries co-founded by the late
Annik Honoré, have long championed
wilfully uncommercial curates’ eggs in
the past, including the poetry of Richard
Jobson and the long post-Josef K career
of Paul Haig, so clearly Zeus is in capable
hands here.
At turns loungy, spooky and ambient,
Held’s production chops are very much
in evidence. Everything is rendered with
striking clarity and brightness. Bells ping
and ball bearings ripple along creaky
floors with a preternaturally vivid sheen.
There are wafts of Air and Four Tet and
an unabashed intellectualism combined
with musical playfulness reminiscent of
Momus. At points it recalls the gallows
humour behind the ‘Portal’ video game,
where a sadistic robot tortures its human
quarry with a series of mindbending
gravity puzzles. Any recording with
track titles featuring words that get
your Google finger itching earns instant
brownie points and this had us looking
up all sorts, including “Sisyphus” (‘Chaos
In Sisyphus’) and “Tyche” (‘Five Beats On
Tyche’).
Despite the lofty title and concept there’s
evidently a mischievous wit at large, as
demonstrated by the irresistible vocodered nocturnal jazz funk of ‘Sho Pen How
Air’ along with the Metal Mickey boogie
of ‘Kant Can’t Dance’ that recalls Saint
Etienne in their mid-90s floorfilling pomp.
‘Kepos Garden’ sounds like it could have
been composed for Douglas Adams’ ‘The
Restaurant At The End Of The Universe’
and would comfortably hold its own on
a Café Del Mar compilation, while ‘Stay
Epicure’ has more than a whiff of early
Human League with its queasily doomladen chords. Half of the album is given
over to more abstract soundscapes and
there’s such an impressive range of
textures and swatches on display that at
times it begins to sound more like a demo
for synth manufacturers than a cohesive
work.
The coup de grâce of ‘Logic Of
Coincidence’ is undoubtedly the opening
track, ‘The Glass Dice Bead Man’, and its
companion piece ‘Surrender Your Soul’,
both of which feature Luke Rhinehart
reading from his cult 1970s novel (and
Held’s favourite book), ‘The Dice Man’,
over an urgent, quasi-classical march.
Which, unlike most self-help, feels
strangely invigorating.
If a lift shaft falls through a wormhole in
space would anyone hear it? Who knows,
but if they do there’s a good chance this is
how it will sound.
JOOLS STONE
XXX
ALBUM REVIEWS
Colder were an 80s throwback act.
Albums ‘Again’ and ‘Heat’ didn’t exactly
set the world alight, but were impressive
in their steadfast adherence to the
signature sound. Tan, meanwhile, spent
the intervening years opening a design
studio – a very cool one, you imagine –
while the time away has allowed Colder’s
reputation to ferment nicely making this
something of an anticipated return.
COLDER
Many Colours
BATAILLE
Ladies and gentlemen, pray turn up
your collars, sigh and stare wistfully
off into the distance…
Those who fought the electroclash wars
at the turn of the millennium will no
doubt remember Colder. Frenchman
Marc Nguyen Tan’s alter ego was first
spotted keeping company with the likes
of Four Tet and LCD Soundsystem on
Trevor Jackson’s Output label, a breeding
ground for the then-hip young genres on
the street: electroclash, the post-punk
renaissance and chillwave with its lo-fi
electronics and “way too cool to feel”
vocal delivery.
As with LCD Soundsystem, Colder were
lumped in with all three. If anybody
could match James Murphy’s masterpiece
of ennui, ‘Losing My Edge’, for sheer
jaded elegance then it would be Colder,
whose icy analogue synths and dislocated
vocal delivery automatically marked
them out not just as a scenesters’ band,
but an 80s revival scenesters’ band at
that.
Never mind that you can trace the origins
of chillwave past ‘Being Boiled’ and
‘Warm Leatherette’ to Suicide, Silver
Apples, and even White Noise in 1969,
What’s changed? Not a lot. Tan is still
dragging hard on a Gauloises in the middle
of an existential but oh-so stylish crisis
and there’s still enough musical space to
accommodate an Ikea. Nevertheless, as
well as an added complexity to the music
(the use of piano chords throughout is
particularly effective), there is a more
mature and – incredibly – an even more
introspective sound to ‘Many Colours’.
Tan’s delivery has changed too. Previously
he sounded like Genesis P-Orridge, now
he’s gone the full Ian Curtis; except, that
is, on ‘Stationery Remote Anger’, when
he sounds like Ralf Hütter with the song’s
funereal tale of airborne dread making the
most of Tan’s talent for lyrical imagery.
A guest appearance from French dream
pop singer Owlle on the highlight,
‘Midnight Fever’, proves a turning point
after which the tracks seem to loosen
their shoulders, relatively speaking.
Colder reveals new tricks, vocal melodies
co-exist with spacious synth and new
sounds appear, only to be bent and
twisted out of shape. ‘Your Kind’
promises to take us out on a rousing
note, but then along comes ‘Silence’, a
mournful ballad worthy of the if-onlyIan-had-lived Joy Division that exists in
your head.
By rights this 39-minute wallow in
malaise should be a chore. And certainly
it seems like one at first. But if you can
forget that it’s 2015, the year of the
short-attention span, and spend a bit of
quality time with it what emerges is a
layered and strangely addictive release.
‘Many Colours’ is Colder’s best yet
and without doubt the year’s premier
chillwave-revival record.
ANDREW HOLMES
of choice. If his material to date had
seemed somewhat disparate, there’s a
real cohesion here. Everything sounds
hewn from the same piece of stone
(although we’ll see that this can also be
a weakness).
FAZE MIYAKE
Faze Miyake
RINSE
Hotly tipped producer reshapes
grime template and turns in
ice-cold debut
See that stylish chap on the cover? That
would be Faze Miyake. Faze is usually
referred to as a grime producer, and
not without reason – his ties with the
scene run deep. His 2011 breakthrough,
‘Take Off’, took grime’s sound palette
and injected a hefty dose of stateside
swagger, finding inspiration in the new
hip hop capitals of Atlanta and Chicago.
He’s also part of the sizeable Londonbased Family Tree crew, home to MCs
like MIK and Merky ACE.
But Faze’s remit is much broader, and
while this self-titled debut album pulls
a fair few buckets from the grime well,
it makes more sense as an untethered
satellite floating between various
bass-heavy genres. Originally slated for
release in the summer of 2013, Faze has
taken his time here and it shows. None
of the tracks are particularly intricate,
but the textures are perfectly rendered,
the product of intense attention to
detail. It’s a record that operates at more
of a plateau than a series of crowdpleasing peaks, although it functions
just as well in the club as in your vehicle
Five of the 11 tracks here are blessed
with vocals. ‘None of That Stuff’ is a
clear standout, with the whole of Family
Tree turning up to spit bars, verses
stacking up against each other over a
menacing instrumental. Otherwise, the
songs are all female-led (which is great
for what’s nominally a grime record).
Little Simz – enjoying something of a
moment right now – completely bodies
‘The Nest’ with the kind of casually
accomplished performance that results
from true confidence on the mic.
Elsewhere, it’s a thrill to hear Chicago
rapper Sasha Go Hard on ‘Below Me’,
and I can only hope collaborations like
this one lead to more cross-pollination
between grime and US hip hop.
For the most part, the instrumentals
are pretty strong; they don’t feel like
bridging tracks, nor do they seem
empty without a vocalist. ‘Burciaga’ is
the pick of the bunch – propulsive yet
restrained and built around a whiny
little G-funk figure. If there’s a problem
with the album, it’s the format. Taken
as individual tracks, there’s little in the
way of weak material. As a front-toback listen however, it’s too repetitive.
It needs more songs like ‘What U Say’,
where Izzy Brooks’ voice is given room
to sparkle over dubstep-laced production
that would fit right in on a Katy B record.
It’s far from the best thing here, but it
feels especially welcome after a run of
samey instrumentals.
With a bit more variety, this could have
been one of the records of the year.
As it stands, the album drags a little
towards the end, despite the intelligent
sequencing. It’s clear that Faze is a
talented producer, with the ability to
conjure up imagery and atmosphere as
well as make club bangers. Hopefully
next time round he’ll discover how to
make the long-player format work to his
strengths. For now, there’s more than
enough to cherry-pick from.
COSMO GODFREE
XXX
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