ONE NATION UNDER A GROOVE – P-Funk Documentary (2005)

Posted on April 23, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

“a joint rolled in toilet paper”: Funkadelic’s Funky Soul / Joseph T. Thomas, Jr.

Abstract: Through an examination of Parliament-Funkadelic’s lyrics and music, this paper explores shit, dirt, and the funk, investigating their relationship to George Clinton and his band’s desire to darken the Humanistic project of Enlightenment, their desire to soil language, and thereby question conventional, bourgeois values. The author argues that Funkadelic participate in what Mikhail Bakhtin calls the “peculiar logic” of the carnivalesque, detourning status quo notions of culture and society, creating complex contortions through the blurring of the good and the bad, the cerebral and the carnal, the sublime and the mundane. In essence, Funkadelic are a musical carnival that exists to dismantle the normal and the everyday, that provides a new lens through which to look at contemporary culture and engage with its many contradictions.

Hey lady, you can be my dog
I can be your tree
And you can pee on me.

Funkadelic,
Standing on the Verge of Getting It On

Caca is the raw material of the soul.

Antonin Artaud
Selected Writings

<1> Parliament-Funkadelic, an ever-shifting group of touring and recording artists—sometimes under the name Parliament, sometimes Funkadelic—may not seem to be, on first analysis, an intellectual band.[1 ] Indeed, when I first submitted a version of this paper for publication in another journal, one of the anonymous reviewers was less than charmed by its preoccupation with the lower stratum, with dung, with its claim that P-Funk’s music is a sort of musical and linguistic stercorary, that is, a home to shit and related concerns. But more so, s/he seemed bothered by the subject of Funkadelic itself: “I am tempted to say,” the reviewer wrote, “[that] this essay is just a pile of shit, but I’d be caught in a very bad pun.” S/he continued, admitting that

This essay is not ‘just a pile of shit,’ [sic] it’s an attempt to place in an intellectual context a group that consciously resisted intellection. The paper’s analysis of carnival, pee and shit comes primarily in terms of Bakhtin, with help from Gramski [sic], Langston Hughes, Martin Pops, Artaud, Guy Debord, Laurence Sterne, and the Marquis De Sade. Unfortunately, there is more in the analysis than in the matter being analyzed[.] (my emphasis)

Parliament-Funkadelic tend to elicit this response in listeners. Concerned as they are with the body (and largely the lower half of that), the band, with their good-time lyrics, unpredictably wild stage antics, and legendary indulgence in drugs, seems to resist, as the reader puts it, “intellection,” and thereby they alienate the intelligentsia. However, under George Clinton’s guidance, the many incarnations of the band embody the revolutionary tendencies prevalent in the black culture(s) of the 1960s and early ‘70s. No, George Clinton’s funksters aren’t traditional intellectuals (save, perhaps, classically trained Bernie Worrell). But they do harness the working-class sensibility of Antonio Gramsci’s “homo faber” (9), tooling in their first few albums an elaborate cosmology that permeates music even today.[2 ] George Clinton’s band does not simply “participat[e] in a particular conception of the world” (Gramsci 9). Rather, they—in typical postmodern fashion—have digested a meal of gospel, soul, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, inchoate funk, and psychedelic music and passed a musical bricolage that “brings into being new modes of thought,” modes that vacillate between body and mind, sublunary and cosmic, controlled groove and chaotic carnival (9).

<2>This paper, then, explores shit, dirt, and funk, investigating their relationship to George Clinton and his band’s desire to darken the Humanistic project of Enlightenment, their desire to soil language, and thereby question the values of the racist civilization that surrounded (and continues to surround) them. In Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud claims that the three requirements of civilization are cleanliness, order, and beauty.[3 ] If these are the elements of civilization in its current form, it is no wonder Funkadelic resist them—not systematically, but chaotically, using the intuitive logic of the carnivalesque in their music and lyrics, indeed, in their very orthographies. In his History of Shit, Dominique Laporte traces back to the 16 th century France’s impulse to “clean” its language of impurities and to “discharge” it of “corruption,” linking that impulse to the West’s desire to, in Freud’s terms, “subjugate the earth” (14-15). He continues, noting that

Purified, language becomes the crown jewels, the site of law, of the sacred text, of translation and exchange. There, the muddied voices and their dialects are expurgated of their dross, losing their pitiful “remnants of the earth” and the vile fruits of their dirty commerce. (18)

As we will see, Funkadelic plays with language as radically as they play with musical forms. Certainly their use of “dirty” language—including their recurring references to shit—serves to poke holes in the tight, odorless, white bourgeois body, showing it to be animal and raw. But it also works metaphorically to liberate the earthy, the “muddied voices” of the long subjugated, the vulgar class from whom we get our word for the obscene. In “Icka Prick,” for instance, from The Electric Spanking of War Babies (1981), Funkadelic proudly use “Graffilthy” language, insisting, “you ain’t seen obscene yet” (playfully rhyming “ain’t seen” and “obscene”), inviting the listener to

Follow me to the men’s room
Watch me write on the wall
I’ll tell it all
Flush you before I go
Wash out my mouth with soap
And shit-talk some mo’!

This legendary “shit-talk” is seen even in their earliest albums, in which they are just beginning to craft the hybrid musical forms that would undergird the suggestive, carnivalesque cosmologies so important to their later works.

<3>Early Funkadelic exist within a peculiar negotiation between gospel and blues.[4 ] Ever dialectical, the themes they create are in constant play between the mundane (the world of the body) and the cosmic (the world of the mind). No song demonstrates this interplay better than the title track of their third release, Maggot Brain (1971), a piece that is, like much of Funkadelic’s catalogue, supremely carnivalesque. “Maggot Brain” is a ¾ blues number, overlaid with an extended guitar solo by the late Eddie Hazel. Rickey Vincent calls this solo “one of rock and roll’s legendary performances,” a “tour de force, challenging the late Jimi Hendrix” (236). Melancholy as this solo often is, it is nonetheless tinged with humor, with sly turns and changes, clicks and buzzes and finger noise that question conventional notions of virtuosity, while the speed and precision of many of the phrases testify to Hazel’s technical prowess. The bluesy quality of the solo recalls Langston Hughes’s claim that, despite the “despondency” of the blues, “people laugh” (26), so witty and surprising are the melodic and tonal shifts in his solo.

<4>Hazel’s impassioned solo is prefaced by a peculiar Clinton rap, one best quoted in full:

Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time,
For y’all have knocked her up.
I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe.
I was not offended,
For I knew I had to rise above it all
Or drown in my own shit.[5 ]

These suggestive lyrics sketch out the carnivalesque cosmology I touched on earlier, a cosmology on which Parliament-Funkadelic would continue to elaborate for the next several decades. Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque provides a useful lens through which to view Funkadelic’s seemingly incoherent topoi, as their cosmology rests upon the fundamental tension between body and mind, is infused with carnivalesque imagery, and suggests hierarchies even as it maneuvers to dismantle them.

<5>The tensions in the rap threaten to tear it apart: bodily waste (“shit”) is paired with renewal (“pregnant”), and renewal is again paired with death (“maggots”), life that feeds off the dead, off waste and refuse. The physical senses (“tasted”) rub against the celestial (“universe”), just as rising (“I had to rise above it all”) suggests its opposite, the burying of the dead in the ground of “Mother Earth,” a strange reconfiguration of copulation (“knocking her up”). Again, Bakhtin helps make sense of these bizarre images:

Earth is an element that devours, swallows up (the grave, the womb) and at the same time an element of birth, of renascence (the maternal breasts). Such is the meaning of “upward” and “downward” in their cosmic aspect, while in their purely bodily aspect, which is not clearly distinct from the cosmic, the upper part is the face or the head and the lower part is the genital organs, the belly, and the buttocks. (21)

Clinton collides the cosmic and the earthy, eating the maggots that are themselves feasting on the “mind of the universe,” and in doing so he has achieved some sort of enlightenment: he knows he “must rise above it all or drown in [his] own shit.” Bakhtin calls carnival “the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change, and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and completed” (10). In the opening lines to “Maggot Brain” we witness this feast, a grotesque parody of spiritual communion, Clinton eating maggots instead of wafers, larval insects instead of the body of Christ. The rap rejects completion just as the melancholy blues does (after ten minutes the solo fades out) by only hinting at a cosmology rather than fully articulating one (besides the opening rap, the number is an instrumental). It concerns “becoming, change, and renewal.” The earth is pregnant. The universe is dead, paradoxically feeding new life, maggots.

<6>“Maggot Brain” is surrounded by legend and speculation. Vincent writes that George Clinton thought the song so “melancholy,” so “compelling,” that he “urged [Hazel] ‘to play like your mother just died,’ and let Eddie Hazel loose in the studio” (236). Whether true or not, this legend emphasizes the carnivalesque tensions found in the song: the imagined death of Hazel’s mother proves renascent, providing inspiration for musical creation. Another legend—this one often denied by Clinton, but relevant nevertheless—is that Clinton wrote the song after finding “his brother’s decomposed dead body, skull cracked, in a Chicago apartment—thus the Maggot Brain” (Vincent 236). Again we see the piece being associated with death bringing forth life, a process that provides the impetus for music. Drummer Harvey McGee, Hazel’s Plainsfield, New Jersey childhood friend and band-mate, recalls a different genesis, however. He points us to Maggot Brain’s “Super Stupid”:

Super stupid bought a nickel bag
Thought it was coke, but it was skag
Super stupid did a one and one
Then his eyes begin to water and his nose begin to run

Oh! stupid with your ups and downs
Your maggot brain, your grins and frowns
Super stupid you’re here today
You’ve lost the fight and the winner is fear

McGee maintains that these lyrics are based on Hazel, for while touring he was known for searching out cocaine in unfamiliar neighborhoods:

It was in Boston. Eddie said, ‘Man, I’m gonna get high, I’m gonna get me some coke.’ . . . Eddie went out and bought what he thought to be cocaine, but it was hard cold heroin. He come back to the room, dumped it out, chopped it up—whoooop, whoooop. And soon as he did it, his eyes [bulged] and his nose start running. We called him Maggot Brain ‘cause he did stuff like that. (Marsh 58)

The scene McGee limns is much less romantic than those posited by fans: Hazel playing like his momma died, Clinton stumbling on the tragic, senseless death of his brother. But this story still participates in the same body/mind dialectic. Trying to get “high” (the drug terminology is apt), Hazel instead is forced to experience an all-too-bodily reaction: his eyes water, his nose runs—we can imagine what else might have happened. He stands as an embodiment of the carnivalesque, grinning and frowning like a clown. He is “super stupid,” grotesque, “Maggot Brain.”

<7>Bahktin is useful in examining the lives, or at least the images, of the funkateers, reminding us that the “Clowns and fools” associated with carnival “were not actors playing their parts on a stage . . . but remained fools and clowns always and wherever they made their appearance” (8). He continues, “As such, they represented a certain form of life, which was real and ideal at the same time. They stood on the borderline between life and art, in a peculiar mid-zone as it were” (8). Clinton consciously desired to enter into this “mid-zone,” this liminal space, turning himself and his band into representations of the carnivalesque. While talking about staging a love affair between him and Iggy Pop, Clinton remarks, “Like, whatever you could do; it was always about theatrics” (Marsh 38). This insight led Clinton to eschew the suits and clean-cut look indicative of his earlier band The Parliaments, metamorphosing himself and Funkadelic into carnival fools—clowns—dressed in fantastically silly costumes. He tried to collapse the wall between life and performance, an element crucial to Bakhtin’s concept of carnival: “Carnival does not know footlights, in the sense that it does not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators” (7). The recurring trope of concert-as-party plays into this blurring of the line between performer and spectator. Rather than a concert, a Funkadelic show is a party, one that doesn’t end until the last patron leaves or the band is forced to stop playing.[6 ] Furthermore, working with a notion similar to Viktor Shklovsky’s defamiliarization, Clinton wanted to shock his audience, to make them uncomfortable with their preconceptions concerning so-called black music, overindulging in the absurdities of both rock and soul conventions.

<8>This defamiliarization did not stop when Clinton and his band stepped off the stage. In fact, it began off-stage, for they participated in the carnival spirit wherever they went. Sidney Barnes, an early songwriting partner of Clinton’s, recalls an illuminating exchange between him and Clinton:

So [George] said, “Sidney, the way I gotta do that, I gotta shock people. So I put on a sheet, and I cut my mohawk, and I walked from Broad and Market to East Orange Avenue. And if nobody kick my ass or arrest me, I knew I had something.” And that’s what happened. And he said, “Man, I just took it to the stage.” (Marsh 40)

Soon after Clinton’s walk to East Orange, his look had evolved to become even more outlandish, more clownish. Catfish Bob Hodge recalls his first encounter with Clinton, one which took place in an anonymous club. Accompanying Westbound president Armen Boladian,[7 ] Clinton was dressed in a costume reminiscent of Bakhtin’s “clowns and fools”:

And George had on, like, pink hot pants, fishnet stockings, some kind of shoes I can’t even remember, but they were like space shoes. A fox, mink thing, and all these beads and jewelry and these crazy pink sunglasses. (Marsh 38)

That Clinton “took it to the stage” is telling, for he blurred the line between art and life. Clinton tried this imagery first on the street, then took it to the stage, then put it on tape, provoking us to question commonplaces of musical style, personal subjectivity, and the semiotic codes by which we make sense of the world.

<9>Clinton and Funkadelic begin crafting their cosmology on their eponymous first album (1970), where it is still only a suggestion, never explicit. Here Clinton coins the word Funkadelic, the term itself containing within it the tensions of carnival. Funk is ripe with earthy connotations: moldy, smelly. It also suggests the unsophisticated, the crude, the natural. And funk music is known primarily for low, repetitive bass sounds—the heavy kick-drum on the one, the thump, the bottom, the groove. In Blues People Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones)[8 ] discusses the adjective “funky.” He argues that using the term “funkiness” is a strategy that “soul brothers” employ to “recast the social order in [their] own image. White is then not ‘right,’ as the old blues had it, but a liability, since the culture of white precludes the possession of the Negro ‘soul.’” He continues,

Even the adjective funky, which once meant to many Negroes merely a stink (usually associated with sex), was used to qualify the music as meaningful (the word became fashionable and is now almost useless). The social implications, then, was that even the old stereotype of a distinctive Negro smell that white America subscribed to could be turned against white America. For this smell now, real or not, was made a valuable characteristic of “Negro-ness.” And “Negro-ness,” by the fifties, for many Negroes (and whites) was the only strength left to American culture. (219-20)

Although, as Baraka maintains, “funky” became too fashionable in the fifties and sixties to have much meaning (as its new use was appropriated by the wider, whiter culture), Funkadelic sought to resuscitate the term. Clinton coupled the term with “delic,” derived from psychedelic, reframing The Funk, giving it added resonance. A quick etymology of psychedelic proves illuminating: the first morpheme, “psych,” is derived from the Greek psukhikos, meaning of the soul, or psukho, soul or life. The second, “delic,” is derived from dêlos, meaning clear and visible. Funkadelic music turns psychedelic music on its head, while simultaneously recovering “funky” from the cultural ash-can. Instead of a music that provides clear insight into the soul, into the spirit, it provides insight into the funk, the earthy and gritty. But the metaphor is more complicated than this. The word soul is problematic. It refers both to the ethereal location of our selves and to the music that has been caricatured by white culture as wild, untamed, and base, music that depends, as Baraka maintains, on cultural roots unavailable to whites: soul music.[9 ] “Funkadelic” evokes the conventional, spiritual sense of soul (by suggesting psychedelic), even as “soul” is erased, replaced with the ever more material funk.

<10>On this first album, Funkadelic probe the issue of soul, the last track titled “What is Soul?” Here Funkadelic interrogate the presuppositions of European philosophy, seeing soul not as the pure, incorruptibly fine material posited by Descartes, but rather as grit, filth, “nastyness”:

What is soul?
I don’t know.
Soul is a hamhock in your cornflakes, yeah.

What is soul?
I don’t know.
Soul, soul is the ring around your bathtub.

What is soul?
I don’t know.
Soul is a joint rolled in toilet paper.

Here we see the playfulness indicative of the band. Soul is “debased” from the spiritual heights with which it is normally associated, reduced to the nasty ring around a bathtub. For Funkadelic, soul is that which remains after we clean ourselves, the inescapable presence of the earthy. Just as the music itself incorporates many competing stylistic and musical elements, the surprising and comic lyrical juxtapositions in the piece stress the bricolage that is Funkadelic—a combination of good things, necessary things, in ways that seem wholly unappetizing: gospel elements combined with blues, rock, soul, psychedelia, and the call-and-response tradition: “A hamhock in your cornflakes.” Furthermore, the tension between the mind, the celestial, the upper body and the earthy, the lower body, is still evident, if subtle. The meditative, calming drug marijuana—used to “get high”—is rolled with “toilet paper,” associated with the bowels, the lower body, the realm of shit and urine and waste.

<11>The album Funkadelic is a wandering—a drifting—through the roots of soul music, a search for beginnings and a charting of possibilities. It begins with “Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?” evoking the mother, the source of new life. Ever ostentatious and psychedelic, the band begins the track with a funky rap, stereo-panning each phrase from left to right:

If you will suck my soul
I will lick your funky emotions

Again we see the soul—the ethereal—tied to the body; it is something that can be “suck[ed]”; “emotions” can be “funky,” dirty, can be “lick[ed].” The song, featuring Clinton on vocals, continues in this vein, Clinton singing, “Let me kiss your mind [laugh], Let me slide a yard of tongue down your throat.” The grotesque imagery is apparent, as is the continued reification of the spiritual: the mind is as bodily as the throat, as a tongue. Later Clinton proclaims, “my name is Funk, I am not of your world,” suggesting the delightfully paradoxical, cosmic Mothership origins of funk that become central to Parliament-Funkadelic in later recordings.

<12>“Mommy, What’s a Funkadelic?” expands the trope of mind-in-body, of cosmic-on-Earth. Searching out the origins of funk, Clinton re-appropriates the backwoods “hillbilly” music of the south, combining it in hamhock-in-your-cornflakes fashion with downtown, citification:

I recall when I left a little town in North Carolina, I tried to escape this music
I said it was for the old country folks
I went to New York
Got slick
Got my hair made, [laugh]
I was cool, [laugh]
I was cool
But I had no groove [laugh]

Groove, the essence of funk, is not found in the city, in slickness, in being “cool,” but rather in the music of “the old country folks,” in places like “Keeprunnin’, Mississippi,” in “what you call way-back yonder funk,” in “old funk” (“Music for My Mother”).[10 ] Locating groove in the country makes sense, especially when one considers that it is in the country that, according to Laporte, shit is most welcome, as fertilizer, as the nourishment of nourishment: “Beautified, ordered, aggrandized, and sublimated, the town opposes itself to the mud of the countryside” (39). However, for Funkadelic, neither city nor country, old nor new is privileged. Although all the songs on the album suggest the re-kindling of a music lost, a time “When the funk it was goin’ strong” (“Good Old Music”), it is only in the musical conversation between these opposites that funk is possible.

<13>The album is supremely dialectical, self-consciously moving beyond the roots of soul and funk to the uncharted realm of Funkadelia. The searing solos of Hazel suggest blues but consistently quote Jimi Hendrix’s rock and roll tones and licks. The vocals evoke gospel, but refuse to settle stylistically. Baraka rightly questions the efficacy of the “return to the roots” that characterized hard-bop, a form of music Clinton was quite influenced by, noting that such returns can smack of “burlesque, or cruder, a kind of modern minstrelsy” (Blues 218). He writes,

Many times this re-evaluation [of “the roots”] proved as affected and as emotionally arid as would a move in the opposite direction. The shabbiness, even embarrassment, of Hazel Scott playing ‘concert boogie woogie’ before thousands of white middle-class music lovers, who all assumed that this music as Miss Scott’s invention, is finally no more hideous than the spectacle of an urban, college-trained Negro musician pretending, perhaps in all sincerity, that he has the same field of emotional reference as his great-grandfather, the Mississippi slave. (Blues 218)

Funkadelic music, however, is not so much a “return to roots” as a recovering and reimagination of those roots, referencing painful history (found, for example, in the place names in “Music for My Mother”), musical pride, and future trajectories all in the same album. As Baraka notes, the “re-evaluation” of musical roots found in hard-bop was “as much of a ‘move’ within the black psyche as was the move north in the beginning of the century. The idea of the Negro’s having ‘roots’ and that they are a valuable possession, rather than the source of ineradicable shame, is perhaps the profoundest change within the Negro consciousness since the early part of the century” (Blues 218). Funkadelic reifies such a “move,” as it looks back and forward, wandering associatively from genre to genre, historical moment to historical moment, an act reminiscent of Guy Debord’s Situationist concept of dérive, or drifting. Indeed, as Parliament put it in their 1975 hit “P.Funk (Wants to Get Funked up),” “Funk not only moves, it re-moves.”

<14>According to Debord, dérive is a “psycho-geographic” tool, a method of resistance, a procedure that allows a group to explore urban settings and create ethnographic maps which reveal the “constant currents, fixed points and vortexes which strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones” (Debord 50). Dérive occurs

when one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. (50)

In this instance, the group of explorers is the band Funkadelic. They don’t explore urban terrain on this album, but map musical terrain, re-visioning musical possibilities, reconstructing and blurring boundaries, foreshadowing the sentiment found on the tune “Who Says a Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?” featured on their 1978 release One Nation under a Groove:

Who says a jazz band
Can’t play dance music?
Who says a rock band
Can’t play funky?
Who says a funk band
Can’t play rock?

These questions—suggested in 1970 and made explicit in 1978—are radical, for they interrogate the stark lines demarcating musical genres, while still holding true to the carnivalesque tensions discussed by Bahktin. Furthermore, it should be noted that Funkadelic would come to consciously reference and lampoon European operatic traditions—particularly in tunes like “(Not Just) Knee Deep” (on Uncle Jam Wants You, 1979)—questioning hierarchies of value and, in the process, problematizing assumptions like those implicit in Alain Locke’s 1936 claim that “Negroes […] must build up […] a class of trained musicians who know and love the folk music and are able to develop it into great classical music” (American Negro 4). Like Miles Davis, who fused early funk, jazz, and rock in his 1969 album Bitches Brew (released the year before Funkadelic), Parliament-Funkadelic value the fusion of forms as an end in and of itself: their goal isn’t the “develop[ment]” of “great classical music,” but, rather, an extended exploration and interpenetration of modes and styles. Funkadelic rejected closure and prescribed roles, remaining “hostile to all that was immortalized and completed” (Bahktin 10).

<15>The same themes are taken up in Funkadelic’s 1971 release, Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow. Legend has it that the album was recorded in one day, all of the players tripping acid. If the sound quality of the LP is any indication, the legends may be true. The album is by far the rawest of the Funkadelic catalog, from the playing to the production value. Yet the nasty sounds that greet listeners on the title track are pure funk (another wonderful paradox), recalling Clinton’s words on “What is Soul?”: “All that is good is nasty.” The title, again, inverts the typical relationship between body and soul. For Clinton, freeing your mind is merely a means to an end: and that end is your ass. The body is what is important, particularly the lower parts of the body, the realm of copulation and defecation. Funkadelic’s music, erotic and scatological simultaneously, suggests Freud’s work on anal-eroticism, a phenomenon Freud characterizes as animal and beneath civilized man.[11 ] Although in “Maggot Brain” Clinton’s desire to eat the maggots in the mind of the universe is to avoid drowning in shit, Funkadelic’s relationship to waste and urine is not consistently negative. [12 ] On Funkadelic’s Standing on the Verge of Getting It on, for instance, the speaker, George Clinton, with his voice sped up, eroticizes pee, saying to his lover in the intro to the title track,

Hey lady, won’t you be my dog
And I’ll be your tree
And you can pee on me.

This statement recalls Parliament-Funkadelic’s joint name, P-Funk, usually thought to mean either Parliament-Funkadelic or, better, “Pure Funk.” Yet the band seems to be simultaneously playing with the idea of urine: Pee Funk. This is appropriate, since P-Funk singer/guitarist Gary Shider’s stage-wear is generally nothing but a diaper and his guitar, his character remaining in the infantile state before one is socialized by toilet training.

<16>Martin Pops’ essay “The Metamorphosis of Shit” is relevant to this discussion. Pops writes,

All agricultural communities subscribe to the Chinese proverb “waste is treasure,” in which the least valued is the most valued: in this equation, shit is death which gives life, the last which shall be first. Shit carries a very powerful double charge, positive and negative, and that is why it is the body’s most magical substance. (107)

The “magic” of shit is a recurring theme in Funkadelic’s music, although the magic is, as Pops suggests, an ambivalent one. Recall: one of the reasons Funkadelic’s celebration of the body and all its products is so off-putting to many is that, in the Western tradition, the body is contaminated with original sin (which is why the body and its pleasures are so often condemned). This sad state of affairs means that “the body’s legacy of original sin contaminates even its waste” (Laporte 35, my emphasis). Thus, agronomic treatises and hygienic literature from at least the first to the nineteenth centuries hold that human manure needs to purified by water or be aired for a specific duration before it can be used as fertilizer:

There is a wickedness in shit that must be given time to dissipate, or it will turn on man, burn his fields, and nourish the malevolent snake [....] But if waste is decanted or purified [...] its noxious properties evaporate, leaving behind only beneficial effects. Shit is not pernicious in and of itself—only through its recent association with the flesh. (Laporte 35-36)

Again, shit has a “double charge,” for it “changes” according to Pops, “from neutral to negative valence on being excreted” (107). That is, shit becomes pernicious after expulsion from the body. To illustrate, Pops points to Mahatma Gandhi’s predilection for twenty-minute sessions on the chamber pot each morning, a ritual of “riddance and purification. The machine of the body processes shit in the temple of the bathroom: the fuller the expulsion, the more bounded the body” (107). However, if Gandhi purified himself by expelling waste, the French historian Jules Michelet, when “short on inspiration, [...] lingered in latrines in order to inspire (breathe in) the suffocating stench that awoke in him the spirit of creation” (37).[13 ] In this case, the nasty, the funk, the shit, is a means to enlightenment by way of inhalation.

<17>However, Antonin Artaud’s famous pun, “caca is the material of the soul” complicates our little discourse on shit even further (qtd. in Pops 108). The pun is elaborate, kaka meaning shit in French, and ka meaning soul in Egyptian. Thus, Pops notes, “The body doubles the soul; shit doubles the body” (109). Put more cleverly, “Loss of shit is loss of soul” (109). Here we see an interesting anticipation of the same cosmology that informs Funkadelic’s view of soul, especially as intimated in “What is Soul?” Soul is shit; soul is the body. Laporte rightly argues that even to this day Western civilization maintains the “ambivalence toward shit” that I’ve been describing (37), an ambivalence illustrated by examples less esoteric than those we’ve encountered thus far. We are all familiar with the many negative uses of shit linguistically. For instance, the vulgar among us might refer to something negative as “a piece of shit,” or call a regrettable situation “shitty.” However, we may signify something exceptional with the phrase “the shit,” as in, “This new album is the shit.” Another positive use of the word (for some, I suppose) is found in drug parlance; it is common to call marijuana “shit,” as this rhyme by Dr. Dre, a riff on Parliament’s “P.Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up), illustrates:

Make my bud the chronic
I wants to get fucked up
Make my shit the chronic
I gots to fire it up

In addition to reefer, shit can refer to a fine rhyme, as it does, for instance, in Dre’s “Nothin’ But a G Thang” (again from The Chronic—and this time, shit is fittingly coupled with funky):

Droppin the funky shit that’s makin the sucka niggaz mumble
When I’m on the mic, it’s like a cookie, they all crumble

Funkadelic revel in our cultural ambivalence about refuse, refusing to hide it. Instead, they underline it, celebrating openly a view in which, as Laporte puts it, “the stercus could be as much a principle of life as of death” (36), a view that contains both the possibility of “drown[ing] in [our] own shit” and, as we will see in the Funkadelic song “The DooDoo Chasers,” the existence of “Holy Shit,” funky music that helps us “get [our] shit together.” So determined are we to be civilized, to live up (an apt phrase, live up) to Freud’s triumvirate of cleanliness, order, and beauty that we sublimate our cultural preoccupations with shit, refusing our impulse to get down, to get funky.

<18>Tying this back to Bakhtin, we can turn to Tristram Shandy, which Pops employs to link shitting and laughing:

In order, by a more frequent and more convulsive elevation and depression of the diaphragm, and the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles in laughter, to drive the gall and other bitter juices from the gall-bladder, liver, and sweetbread of his majesty’s subjects, with all the inimicitious passions which belong to them, down into their duodenum. (qtd. in Pops 108)

Pops continues, again, unknowningly articulating the philosophy Funkadelic made explicit some six years earlier in their song “Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The DooDoo Chasers)”:[14 ] “Comic relief (so called) ‘takes a load off our minds’ (it relieves us) as shitting takes a load from our bodies (we relieve ourselves). Laughing and shitting lighten us and confer buoyancy” (108). This recalls Bakhtin’s “festive laughter,” which is not “an individual reaction to some isolated ‘comic’ event,” but is instead “universal in scope; it is directed at all and everyone, including the carnival’s participants” (11). Pop associates this laughter with the lower stratum of the body, the realms emphasized in the carnivalesque. “The DooDoo Chasers” quite clearly makes this connection as well. Mocking both the rhetoric of the black revolutionary movements of the early ‘70s and the gospel call and response tradition, the hilarious tune calls funk “the P-Preparation, / The mental musical bowel movement,” extending the scatological implications in the Parliament lyric we encountered earlier: “Funk not only moves, it re-moves”:

Funk, the P-Preparation
The mental musical bowel movement
Groovalax
One swipe a clean wipe
And with no extra charge
A psychological trend
A neurological enema
Holy Shit
(let me try one—crap)
Corpolite
Prehistoric doo doo
Helping you get your shit together

The passage doesn’t need much explication: the same tensions found in “Maggot Brain” are evident here. Seemingly contradictory phrases like “neurological enema,” “Holy Shit,” “mental musical bowel movement” all point to the carnivalesque, the conflation of the body and mind, the psyche in psychedelic and the funk in funkadelic. The mind and the body are irrevocably mixed: Clinton urges us to clean “the tidy-bowl of our brain” via his “musical bowel movement,” while also insisting that the goal of this purgation is to “get your shit together.” [15 ]

<19>Bakhtin notes that the carnival participates in the

peculiar logic of the ‘inside out’ (à l’envers), of the ‘turnabout,’ of the continual shifting from top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings. (11)

As we’ve seen, Funkadelic also participate in this “peculiar logic.” They, in effect, detourne conventional notions of culture and society, and like Debord, they are aware that “simple reversal is always . . . the least effective,” for reversal “conserves . . . the values of [the] metaphysics” it reverses (“Methods of Détournement”). Instead, they warp and bend, create complex contortions, blurring the good and the bad, the cerebral and the carnal, the sublime and the mundane. Funkadelic reflect the world through a carnival glass, a fun-house mirror. For Clinton and Funkadelic, nothing is sacred but the Funk, and Funk is nothing but a party, nothing but a carnival. Funkadelic are a musical carnival that exists to dismantle the normal and the everyday, that provides a new lens through which to look at the world and engage with its many contradictions.

NILE RODGERS – BBC Documentary

Posted on April 23, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

As the endless promotion continues for the DAFT PUNK album, somehow legendary disco producer NILE RODGERS got roped and tied into the mindless hype about two robots who convinced him to play an endless loop on their first single. Am I hating DAFT PUNK…no…HOMEWORK will also remain in my top electronic albums of all time, they just lost me around “One More Time”. BBC had the foresight to film a documentary about the man who should not only be remembered for that classic disco sound but for also assisting and reinventing many pop careers. By the way he gets bonus points for appearing on Glenn O’Brien’s “TV PARTY”

BANG THE PARTY! Video(Mix) Tape

Posted on April 11, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

We recently posted an article about a week ago by legendary FAITH founder Terry Farley (see the link below) lamenting the DJ’s importance over the dancing crowd and we couldn’t agree more. For us, dancing has always been the most important part of BANG THE PARTY in tandem with the music, after all we don’t throw parties for people who like to stand. Rather than complain and moan like disgruntled dad DJ’s, we put together what we like to call a VIDEO MIX (TAPE) of all of our favourite dancers who have graciously over the years blessed us with their skills. Hopefully you will be inspired to do the same…even if your dancing skills are no better than Elaine Benes.

http://bangtheparty77-84.com/2013/01/16/terry-farley-when-did-the-dancing-stop/

BANG THE PARTY! Boogie and Modern Soul Mix!!!!

Posted on April 9, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Day two in the blatant self-promotion of both this site and our comeback party on Saturday April 13th…see what we did there. Andycapp decided to compile a mix of some classic boogie and modern soul tracks as a reminder that we still embrace and promote the collectible side of ourselves. It’s free to download or stream and we really hope you enjoy it….it’s already getting rave reviews….

CERRONE – Hooked On You (Kon’s Remix)
LENNY WHITE – Didn’t Know About Love
TBD ECTENSION – Get To My Baby
GLADYS KNIGHT & THE PIPS – When Your Far Away
ASHFORD & SIMPSON – It Seems To Hang On
ROUNDTREE – Hit On You (Tony Humphries Dub)
BARBARA ST. CLAIRE – Teacherman
ASHFORD & SIMPSON – Bourgie Bourgie (Joe Claussell’s Remix)
STEVE SHELTO – Don’t Give Your Love Away
MIGHTY POPE – Sweet Blindness
NEP LOVES ANDY – White Label
SAUVEAR MALIA & MARC CHANTEREAU – Cold Coke
PATTI LABELLE – Get Ready (Back To The Music Box Edit)
RECORD PLAYER – Free Your Mind
BLACK ROCK – Hey Roots
CAROLINE CRAWFORD – Coming On Strong
FREEZ – Southern Freeze

MASSIVE ATTACK (‘S) BLUE LINES – 21 Years On

Posted on March 18, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Brooding, dark, eclectic and beautiful, Massive Attack’s Blue Lines is the landmark release from 1991. A stunningly original work, it was an album that joined the loose ends of music scenes as diverse as soul, punk and post punk, hip hop, dance and even classical.

The record answered the questions set by punk itself, as it soundtracked the comedown from acid house perfectly with ambitious songs that were slowed down to a late night groove, creating a ‘dance music for the head instead of for the feet’ as band member Daddy G once pointed out.

The songs were at once personal, symphonic and soulful, and captured a new multicultural UK, perfectly referencing Subbuteo and Studio One in the same song, as well as the rainy day reality of inner-city, urban life in expansive and imaginative songs. The Bristol-based group made an eclectic masterpiece that managed to capture all the loose ends of British pop culture into a seamless and perfect whole that was also a huge hit.

Could there be a more perfect record that sums up the cross pollination of ideas of the early nineties?

This truly was a roots album from a roots band. With its heart in the smoky clubs of Bristol and the cross section of sounds from dub reggae to punk to post punk to hip hop and soul, Blue Lines captured the new soundscapes of eighties into nineties UK, where a myriad of musics were mashed up and messed up by Es and all-nighters, and saw a tearing up of the template of how to make music.

Massive Attack’s eighties had been a blur of those sound systems and DJ culture. It was a time of adventure in the underground that was the opposite of the dragging mainstream. Year Zero Punk had closed many doors, but conversely the key players like The Clash or Public Image had opened up many more, using the space of dub and the true freedom of punk that could mash krautrock with soul, the sense of musical adventure of Bitches Brew Miles Davis, and the emergent electro cultures coming from New York.

Anyone with ears was checking the reappraisal of classic vinyl from youthful pasts, crackling old soul records, seventies funk, battered reggae releases and post punk adventures. Massive Attack were the true children of this revolution, and could only come from a city where the black and white youth had been immersed in each other’s musical cultures.

Massive Attack were a collective built around a creative core of former graffiti artist and punk kid Robert “3D” Del Naja, Grant “Daddy G” Marshall and Andrew ‘Mushroom’ Vowles.

There was no focal point – just the songs. The best voice got the mic, the best beats were the backing track. They were never a traditional band. They were a collective with guest singers – a new idea in creating music and a template that the Gorillaz, amongst others, would borrow a couple of decades later.

They came together as an offshoot of the Wild Bunch – an ad hoc collection of misfits who were at the heart of Bristol underground party scene of the eighties.

Despite having a smaller post punk soundscape than other UK cities, Bristol already had a tradition of multi-styled musical movements. The Pop Group had sparked it in the punk era with their fierce combination of punk rock and the sharp end of James Brown funk and adventures into skewed dub – their open minded explorations tore the fabric, and the best Bristol musicians followed into this space. Combined with the port city’s multi-racial flavours and musics, you had a ripe space for creativity and combinations.

The Wild Bunch were the main sound system in this Bristol, mixing it up musically at huge parties. A fluctuating crew of music freaks were added to the musical core of Massive Attack, including Tricky and Nellee Hooper, who moved to London after the group’s dissolution and worked as a producer and remixer for a number of major artists, including Madonna, U2, No Doubt, Björk and others and was also a member of Soul II Soul. This was a wildly creative crew of people.

The Wild Bunch first appeared on the national radar in 1985 with a cover of Burt Bacharach’s ‘The Look of Love’, featuring future massive Attack guest singer Shara Nelson on vocals. Then in 1988 Massive Attack released ‘Any Love’. Their potential was spotted by close friend and initial benefactor Neneh Cherry, who helped them to get signed to Circa Records in 1990.

Tempering their sound system aesthetic, they focused on creating their own songs from samples, and working as a collective they put together Blue Lines, the album that defined 1991. It was the perfect comedown after the frenzy of acid house had busted things wide open and caught the pulsebeat of the times perfectly.

A brooding and powerful record Blue Lines captured that melancholy that hovers just below the surface in all great British music, that rainy day darkness that, when it is combined with the euphoria of great pop culture, is the eternal battle for the soul of our best music.

The songs were polished gems that sneaked into mainstream playlists and propelled the band to the top of the charts, whilst never losing their innate underground soul and sense of space learned from dub culture and other maverick musics.

At the time I interviewed the band, and remember 3D talking of his days as a Bristol punk rocker with a deep love for the Dead Kennedys and crazed cider scrumpy nights, as well as the space, dub soundscapes and sense of entering a whole world in an album of Public Image Limited’s Metal Box.

He also talked of the impact of hip-hop and hip-hop culture – the freedom of creativity and the graffiti art. It was these adventures into sound and art that defined the band, and have still remained with them until their recent Heligoland album, an astonishing work that sees them still never settling on their laurels and seeking out new sounds.

The songs were defined by the guest vocalists, from Horace Andy’s sweet, heaven-sent voice, stained with reggae, to Shara Nelson’s cinematic soul swoop, to the whispery guest vocalists, interspersed with Del Naja and Marshall’s and, initially, Tricky’s similarly hushed vocals, all intoned over carefully constructed tracks.

Co-produced by Jonny Dollar and Cameron McVey, who would become their first manager, the tape op on the sessions was Geoff Barrow, who went on to form Portishead – they were carving out the space for what became known as trip-hop while everyone else caught up.

Post-Blue Lines music has never been the same, as a whole range of artists took the opportunity to enjoy the diverse influences and the sonic adventures offered up by this daring journey. Arguably the first album of the 21st century that arrived a decade early, Blue Lines remains a masterpiece – a serious record for serious times and a signpost to a future.

This essay was written by John Robb for the 20th anniversary reissue of the remixed/remastered Blue Lines which comes out on November 19 via EMI

http://thequietus.com/articles/10080-john-robb-massive-attack-blue-lines

CRACKERS NightClub – Popularizing Jazz-Funk in the 70′s

Posted on March 18, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Nightclubbing is a series on RBMA where we tell the story of the spaces that have forever changed the world of music. In this edition, Stephen Titmus writes about Crackers, the oft-forgotten London club that helped popularize jazz-funk in the UK.

From the outside Crackers looked much like any other dodgy ’70s West End disco. Located in the sleazier end of Soho, it was managed by The Wheatley brewery chain, and served food that was never eaten in order to stay open late. Nowadays it’s a strip joint owned by seedy lothario Peter Stringfellow.

Ask Carl Cox, Fabio, Paul “Trouble” Anderson, Terry Farley and Jazzie B, however, and you’ll soon learn that Crackers was at the heart of ’70s underground London: a spot that combined cutting-edge fashion, jaw-dropping dance moves and an incredible soundtrack. To its faithful, it was the high watermark everything was measured against. As Norman Jay puts it, “Crackers was our Paradise Garage.”

Crackers owes its transformation to Mark Roman, a slickly dressed DJ from South End. Roman had been working at another Wheatley-owned pub in East London before being asked to go full-time at Crackers. Playing six days a week in exchange for £63, Roman had full control over the music policy of the club. His ethos was simple: the more obscure and the funkier, the better.

The dancefloor at Crackers was a cramped basement with a capacity not much more than 200. It was an intense and not necessarily friendly place. The smell of sweat, mixed with sausage and chips, hung in the air. The sound system, if it wasn’t already blown on the night, seemed to be heading towards it.

The fashions at the club were unique for the time: Cowboy boots, army surplus gear, peg trousers, clear plastic “jelly” sandals and wedge haircuts were de rigueur for a Crackers soul-boy. (This at a time when you were likely to be called a “poof” or even beaten up for wearing anything more outlandish than a polo-neck jumper.)

It was the dancing, however, that really set Crackers apart. It was the magic ingredient that gave the club an atmosphere ex-regulars swear has never been matched. Mixing freestyle jazz moves and Soul Train-style steps such as The Bump, the dancers at Crackers were serious – spending many hours training in front of the mirror, or in the later years, professional dance studios. This was competitive. Battle dancing. Unless you had real moves, you couldn’t even get near the floor. For mere mortals this meant much of the time was spent at the bar or near the back.

Terry Farley remembers being blown away by his first experience at the club. “The first time I actually got into Crackers I distinctly remember a guy in his 30s, which was probably my Dad’s age at the time, dressed theatrically as a Victorian-era French sailor. The man was flamboyantly dancing Hustle-style with a much younger lad to ‘El Bimbo’ by Bimbo Jet. I had never met a gay man before, let alone watched two people of the same sex dance openly together in a club. I felt like this really was the type of decadence and sleaze that matched my expectations of a proper Soho club. That night opened my eyes and my mind, and I fell in love with that dingy basement club from that moment of enlightenment.”

Farley wasn’t alone. The very idea of dancing with someone of another race or sexual orientation was something almost unheard of in ’70s Britain. Far right groups such as The National Front were on the rise, and confrontations between the British police and minority groups were standard. Most West End clubs, if they let black kids in at all, would have a cap on the number they would allow through the door.

Crackers and Mark Roman were among the first to break down some of these racial barriers in club land. To Norman Jay, a Crackers regular, the club was the starting point for the way Londoners party today. “It was the first (London) meeting place of black, white, straight, gay. The clientele originally was very gay. It wasn’t a gay club per se, but it was hip and fashionable. Yes, the music was brilliant, but it was the coming together of different social groups and races. That was what was groundbreaking.”

Roman’s Tuesday night sessions were the ones that seemed to capture the imagination early on. Launched in 1973, the night was strictly upfront US imports. Anything released in the UK was off the playlist. The music was far-reaching, uncompromising and underground. Complex jazz-funk from the likes of Grover Washington Jr. would sit happily alongside the guttural soul of Bobby Byrd or Johnny “Guitar” Watson. Roman never mixed the records, not that the complex time signatures of jazz-funk lend themselves to beat matching anyway. Instead, meticulously executed segues stitched the music together.

Many of the most famous dancers at the club, such as Horace Carter, a muscular and balletic dancer who would usually dance shirtless and would later model for Vivienne Westwood, were just as famous as the DJ’s on the scene. Outside of the club many of Crackers’ best movers were just average black working class kids: likely to be unemployed, certain to be poor. But in the club they were stars. Norman puts it simply: “It showed you working class black kids could be the best at something.”

The most revered sessions at Crackers were the Friday lunchtime parties. Started in 1974, dancers bunked off school or work to get in a quick afternoon burst of partying. As Mark Roman once remembered on Six Million Steps: “There used to be about six people in there on a Friday. [Before I started at Crackers] it was free to go in. I used to play all my new stuff. Somehow it just went down. The hot summer of ’76 was when it really peaked. We got up to a 1,000 people in there on a Friday lunchtime. It was just ridiculous. The atmosphere was unbelievable! It may not have been legal but it was traditional, people used to go down the pub and that was knocking off time. The poor people that had to go back, I know a lot of people lost their jobs!”

It was just before the summer of ’76 that the fashion at Crackers started to get really extreme. Shops like Acme Attractions, managed by punky reggae originator Don Letts, were selling London’s hippest dressers a mix of outlandish thrift-store finds and fetish gear. The Crackers crowd was among the first to adopt and shape the look that would define punk. As Norman Jay remembers, “To my mind, the first punks – not the music ones, the fashionistas – I saw at Crackers. You know the punk thing didn’t blow up until the summer of ’76, but I can remember seeing punks around Christmas ’75 in the club. I first saw bondage trousers in Crackers before I saw them on the Kings Road.”

In 1976 a new manager was brought in to Crackers. He decided things needed to go in a different direction, and Roman was forced out. Terry Farley puts it in blunter terms. “One look at the diverse and fashionable crowd and the underground music they were dancing to made up this provincial newcomer’s mind. He wanted the playlist to go pop. Which, reading between the lines, probably also meant less blacks, less weirdoes and faggots and more of the type of people he had just left from his previous job with the chain in Swansea.”

Business-wise, though, you could hardly blame the new manager. Crackers wasn’t as profitable as you might expect for a bar that was so busy. Most of the crowd didn’t drink. The majority didn’t have the money for alcohol in the first place, and any spare cash was more likely to go towards getting the look right rather than getting pissed.

Roman moved on to another club in East London, Jaws, and took most of the crowd with him. The management of Crackers tried different DJs in Roman’s place, but no one came close until they approached George Power, a Greek-born DJ from North London. Quickly after he started at the club Power began to attract a new crowd of even younger dancers that filled the space left by the white fashion crowd, many of whom had by this time moved on to punk.

Power wasn’t an obvious candidate to become the new hero of this predominantly black club. He was about ten years older than most of the crowd and had a penchant for shouting ridiculous phrases over the microphone. (“Wang dang dooey, shoobedy on down” was a favorite.) Nonetheless the Crackers crowd loved him. “George would work with the dancers,” Farley remembers. “He would use them to break certain records and focus upon them during the session, made them feel special and they stayed loyal.”

The dancing became even more competitive as new faces, some of them younger siblings of the original Crackers crew, came to test the club’s old masters. The outlandish fashions and posing, which had once defined the club, gradually faded out. The amount of girls at the club diminished and the vibe became edgier. Full of young kids from some of London’s toughest estates, peace and love was not the mantra.

It was around this time that the popularity of the soul scene exploded. Jazz-funk is often derided as achingly un-hip nowadays, but its brief dominance of UK dancefloors was a pivotal event in British club culture. Interest in soul music blossomed in the predominantly white London suburbs of Essex, but then moved national, peaking with huge Soul Weekenders at seaside resorts such as Caister. The considered cool of London was replaced with brash silliness. Chris Hill, one of Essex’s biggest DJ’s and mentor to Pete Tong, would play 1940’s big band music next to the latest soul imports.

Interestingly, even after all these years, Norman Jay’s quick to distance himself from that crowd. “I was an out and out Soul Boy, not an Essex Soul Boy, I was a London boogie boy.” This suburban soul scene never embraced the likes of George Power. “George had two taboos,” explains Jay. “He was friend of the gays and friend of the blacks.”

Power’s tenure at Crackers lasted until 1981 when the club closed. Perhaps even more so than Mark Roman, he inspired a whole generation of wannabe DJ’s and dancers. He laid the foundations for boogie, the more beat-driven, R&B-influenced continuation of disco. Later Power helped found London’s legendary Kiss FM and the seminal house and garage label Nice ‘N’ Ripe.

It’s surprising, then, that his name and Crackers is often reduced to a footnote in dance music’s evolution. From acid house to jungle, many of British dance music’s early innovators owe a debt to what was created in this unimposing West End dive bar. In some ways the music that inspired the dancing at Crackers never went away. Rare groove, a genre that ruled underground London in the ’80s, was the sound of Crackers refusing to die. As Norman Jay says, “The whole rare groove thing was predicated on that era. I just reinvented it for the times. Even my playlist on the early days at Kiss was based on my telepathic memory of Crackers.”

By Stephen Titmus

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/nightclubbing-crackers

THE BALLROOM – Where Voguing is Always in Style

Posted on March 18, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Mention the word “voguing” to people, and generally their first reaction will be “strike a pose, there’s nothing to it”. A dance fad made popular by Madonna in the early Nineties but invented in the New York City gay underground years before, voguing faded into obscurity as quickly as it popped into the mainstream. It’s good for nostalgic giggles, though: we’ve all seen that clip of “Vogue Boy” voguing in a shopping mall. But what if I were to tell you—like a big, gay Morpheus—that vogue was not a short-lived fad? Voguing is now part of a complex, diverse, fully-formed and constantly evolving underground culture called ballroom.

To be clear, “ballroom” takes it name from the venues in which the “ball” events take place, and is not to be confused with the “strictly” kind of ballroom. Like hip hop, ballroom encompasses many different elements of artistic expression, from music and language to clothes and design, and, of course, dance. It deals directly with some of society’s most controversial issues, namely sexuality, race, class, gender roles and expression, beauty modes, self-definition and competition. It doesn’t do this in the polemical style we may be used to from punk and political hip-hop, however, where topics are theorised and discussed. In ballroom these issues are lived and experienced, as a vast number of those taking part in this underground scene are transgender, working class, people of colour.

Ballroom includes society’s most marginalised: minorities within minorities within minorities, for whom voguing and ballroom culture is an important resource. In a world where they have been rejected, ballroom not only accepts these people for who they are, it celebrates them, in a variety of unique and different categories. The competitive, prize-winning aspect of ballroom gives some participants a sense of worth lacking in the “real” world (not to mention money), and the familial structure of the “houses”—mother, father, sister, brother—often acts as a real surrogate, as many in this world have been disowned by their biological families.

Here, voguing is not just a dance, and ballroom is not just a genre. It’s a way of life that brings pride, peer recognition and self-respect. The genre of music is one thing, but the culture which surrounds it is another; and both are intricately tied into one another.

To quote the late, great Willi Ninja, who is perhaps the greatest voguer the world has yet seen, voguing is like a challenge dance: instead of fighting you take it out on the dancefloor. Depending on who you ask, this uniquely stylised dance form arose either amongst the inmates of Ryker’s Island, or at gay Harlem dance parties in the sixties (it’s most probably a mixture of both). Voguing got its name from Vogue magazine, as the competing dancers would flip to pictures of models posing, and imitate them, trying to outdo each other in the process. As it developed the dancers became quicker and more agile, and incorporated other forms of dance such as waacking (high speed arm movements and hand gestures) and body popping (though some say that voguing actually pre-dates popping, and was itself an influence on the original b-boys). Fast forward to 2013 and voguing has come a long way, progressing through the styles of old way, new way, femme and dramatics, to today’s almost hyperactive, turbocharged version of the dance. Although key elements of old way voguing remain (posing, “face”), a much more frantic and stylised choreography takes precedence, with signature moves such as the dip (when a dancer falls flat on their back), the duck walk and hair control (using long hair as stylistic element of the dance, in essence whipping it back and forth).

Then there is “runway” which is both the term for the space on which vogue battles usually take place at a ball (though they can also happen in a designated space on a busy club dancefloor) and a category in and of itself, based on traditional fashion runway modelling. To compete at a vogue ball is most often called “walking” and walking runways is not all about dancing. The “face” category means exactly that: who has the best looking face. Male and female modes are described as “butch” and “femme”, though pretty much everyone is a “queen”, and the ability to pass convincingly as something you are not (a straight thug, a biological woman) is called “realness”. So “Femme Queen Face” is a category for those with the prettiest feminine features, while “Pretty Boy Realness: Andre 3000” requires competitors to look and act as much like Andre 3000 as possible. While traditional beauty modes are aspired to by many in ballroom, it is not exclusive. There are categories for the plus size, with some of the most popular voguers being “big girls”. The categories at balls are labyrinthine, I can’t possibly cover them all here. There’s just not enough room, and honestly, I don’t truly understand all of them myself yet. The general ethos of ballroom, however, is essentially “be yourself” and “work with what you’ve got”.

As these terms and categories suggest, voguing (and ballroom culture in general) is highly feminised. Males are regularly referred to as “she” and many “butch queens” perform “in drags”, while some butch queens go further with their gender expression, and through the process of gender re-assignment, become “femme queens”. In fact, “Vogue Femme” is generally how the current, athletic style of voguing is classified. This is in stark contrast to the hypermasculine, heteronormative and often misogynistic modes of mainstream hip-hop and the dance cultures that surround it. But make no mistake, just because it is feminine, does not mean it is in any way weak or passive. No, quite the contrary, vogue femme is decidedly aggressive, in your face and challenging.

Ballroom culture and voguing has become an integral part of the black gay urban experience, even though it is not quite recognised as such by the mass media (where, ironically, voguing’s influence is very strongly felt in styling and dance). Perhaps the celebration of the feminine and the queer goes against mainstream modes of how “hip-hop” (and by extension “black culture”) is sold to a white audience, but ballroom serves as an important rights of passage none the less. While preparing this article I emailed the house music vocalist Shaun J Wright (a Chicago native who has worked with Hercules & Love Affair, Kiki and Stereogamous) to ask about his own personal experience of the ballroom scene. His answers are brilliant and articulate (I hope to publish this full interview with Shaun some time soon) and go very far in explaining to outsiders how this scene works and what it can mean to the participants:

“My entry into the ballroom scene was quite lengthy. I was familiar with some of the elements of ballroom culture because I would sneak into black, gay clubs in Chicago when I was 15. There would be vogueing and runway battles occurring in the club but I didn’t attribute those things specifically to ballroom. Around the same time I viewed “Paris Is Burning” and it helped me to make connections between what I was seeing in the clubs and the balls, which were still a great mystery to me. When I ventured to Atlanta to attend college I began to learn how to vogue by watching voguers in the club. I would test out my new moves and a few houses took notice.

I attended my first ball in the summer of 2001 in Chicago. It was a really crowded ball with participants from around the country and I was extremely impressed and also a bit confused. I still remember that night in a hazy manner. Though I had been clubbing for about four years by then, balls were something different altogether. The energy just swept through the room and I was never quite sure if my eyes were seeing the events as accurately as they were occurring. It would take attending a few more balls before I was able to process their intensely complex dynamics.

What left the greatest impression that night was watching Legendary Mother Leonard “Lisa” Escada Mugler (R.I.P.) destroy Butch Queen Face. I recall him walking to the judges panel and sending every other competitor on their way without a single vote. All I could hear from the commentator was, “1 Escada, 2 Escada, 3 Escada…”. I decided at that moment that I wouldn’t even consider joining another house. I wanted to be apart of a crew that had that type of mother. I decided to join the House of Escada as most of my friends were already members and it felt like a natural fit.”

Ah, Paris Is Burning. For all intents and purposes, this 1991 documentary feature by director Jennie Livingston is Vogue Culture 101, featuring as it does some of the original legends of the scene like Pepper La’Beija, Angie Xtravaganza, Octavia St Laurent and Willi Ninja, as well as some brilliant footage from various Harlem balls in the 80s. Paris Is Burning’s influence has grown much stronger and since its initial release, and the film has amassed a cult following like practically no other documentary I can think of (it recently topped a PBS poll of the best documentaries of all time, and by a very wide margin). The film has introduced a wide audience to the language, style, music and culture of vogue, though as Shaun Wright is keen to point out, it shouldn’t be taken as the be-all-and-end-all of ballroom culture. The 2005 documentary How Do I Look acts as a kind of riposte to Paris Is Burning, going further into ballroom culture and featuring some Paris Is Burning cast members who felt they weren’t portrayed fairly. The main source for modern ballroom footage is unquestionably the YouTube channel Ballroom Throwbacks, which has been grabbing and uploading candid footage of modern balls for a few years now. Also worth watching is The Luna Show, in which Butch Queen Face legend Luna Khan hosts some great short interviews with many stars of the ballroom scene, both upcoming and legendary. Luna’s not shy about asking many of the dancers to explain their gender transitioning process, and by seeking advice for any kids watching who may have similar feelings, The Luna Show acts as a valuable–if under-acknowldged–resource for the transgender community.

So to the music, which as I mentioned is intricately linked to the dancing, and shares the same in-your-face spirit. One of the most exciting things about the ballroom genre for me, as a producer and a dj, is that it is house music that has a real connection to a living, breathing dance floor. That’s something that has been lacking in the genre for pretty much a decade now, with its emphasis on a cerebral appreciation of “texture” and “space” (think cosmic and minimal, which seem to appeal more to stoners and k heads than to actual dancers). By contrast, ballroom is brash, complex and busy. It can get minimal at times, but with the emphasis still very much on the beat and the percussion, giving the dancers and battlers more than enough to work with. Importantly, it still has very close ties to its roots in New York-based soul/disco and 80s/90s drag queen/diva house. In other words, the original cultures that inspired it.

So how does ballroom music differ from traditional house? Well, while there is a steady kick drum similar to that of house and disco, there is a different feel to the rhythm, and it’s one that can be appreciated most fully on the dancefloor. Traditionally, house music is built up as layers of loops and rhythms created on drum machines and synths. Ballroom, like much American dance music which has emerged since the turn of the century, takes its cues not from steady loops but from rhythms punched out on the pads of an MPC sampler. This gives the music a more staccato feel, similar to the difference between a loop-based hip-hop track from the 90s, and a jerky, Timbaland/Neptunes-style production from ten years later.

Whereas house has a stepping rhythm, a “one-and-two-and-one-and-two” (which comes from disco and feels akin to walking), ballroom rhythms place less emphasis on the “two” and sound more like “one-and-ONE-and-one-one-ONE” (a rhythm more suited to punching or jumping, and which is perfect for a dance that requires landing in different poses in rapid succession). It’s a similar 5-kicks-to-a-bar rhythm to that found in Jersey Club music, which is a close relation to ballroom, and also Baltimore Club, though B-More places more emphasis on sampled breakbeats. That’s not to say that there is no snare. The emphasis on the “one” is often backed up by snare and clap patterns that accentuate every kick in a bar, the type also found in ghetto tech and trap, often using similar 808-based drum sounds. Snare patterns are an important part of the ballroom sound, and the dancers’ reaction to the music, as are large cymbal crash sounds, used by the dancers for posing and “dipping”.

Another aspect of ballroom music is the commentator, who is basically an MC, though the style of MCing used in ballroom differs from pretty much any other genre. It often includes specific shouted chants featuring the names of popular dancers, as well as commands for them to do specific moves on the runway/dancefloor to be judged on, or specific categories for participants to walk in. To get a taste of what the aggressively camp ballroom commentating style is like, start with the YouTube channel of the legendary Kevin JZ Prodigy, who has hundreds of clips demonstrating his style, or check out the Soundcloud page of Divoli S’Vere. to see how producers are getting imaginative in the programming of chants.

I mention this not as a ploy for publicity, but to explain how the influence of voguing and ballroom culture has extended far beyond Harlem, and even the United States, at a time when there’s a lot of talk of outsiders infiltrating the scene and betraying one of its core foundations: realness. Being based in the UK, and not New York/New Jersey/Atlanta/America, technically I AM an outsider. However, house music has always been popular in the UK, and by dint of that, so has vogueing and the NY black/latino/gay/trans/drag underground. Cutting edge house was like pop music when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s (“Deep In Vogue” was one of the first singles I ever bought, and to this day it remains my favourite ever music video) so house music culture doesn’t feel alien to me, it IS my realness. “House” is how I describe what I produce and what I DJ, and seeing ballroom bring so much energy and excitement to this sometimes stagnant genre is a beautiful thing.

Yet while I have connected to ballroom culture most strongly because of the music, that’s not the element that has given me the most inspiration. You see, even though I have been producing music for the last 15 years, it’s only since I reconnected with voguing and ballroom that I feel my music has come into its own. Like those children walking runways, ballroom has taught me. Watching the dancers, seeing them work and thinking about their movements has given me real focus and purpose for creating my music. As I stated previously, ballroom is music for dancing to, and ballroom has reminded me of my primary focus as a dance music producer. It has taught me how to bring it, and how to reach my full potential. The personal importance of this for me is hard to explain on paper, especially if the reader has no experience of the challenges of writing or producing music, and even then in a much maligned, seemingly “throwaway” genre like house. Believe me when I tell you, though, that it is a spiritual thing.

Aside from making music, I’ve dj’ed at balls in London (Horse Meat Disco’s Vauxhall Is Gurning), Glasgow (The Fierce Ruling Divas Ball) and Manchester (Vogue Brawl). While us basic bitches might not match up to the status of the US children, what we are doing is being true to ourselves, and keeping it real. We’re showing a lot of love for the original pioneers and participants in New York and all across America, and even though our thing might look different, as long as it’s done with respect, honesty and love, that should be what really matters. At the end of the day, I’m not sure if we’re going to see another “Madonna moment” with vogue and ballroom culture crossing over into the mainstream again, mainly because I just don’t see who could take it to the charts but retain the credibility (Beyonce is the only one who springs to mind.) If that does happen, though, surely it should be the dancers/producers/designers/commentators/artists themselves who control how they are depicted and how the scene is represented? I will leave the final words, on the expansion and development of ballroom culture to the scene’s original pioneers:

“I’ll just say this: as in in anything, you have to learn what it is you claim to be doing. Go to a ball, see what the culture is like, see what makes it tick, where it comes from. Find out what the “feeling”/”energy” is that only comes from a ballroom. Invest time so that you are knowledgeable in what you’re speaking/showing. There is always somebody ready to call out a poser. Don’t be a poser!” — DJ Vjuan Allure

“If you’re going to refer to ballroom or try to be relevant to it, at least know your history. Know what you are saying, who, what, why, when, where and how. And feel free to attend a ball.” — DJ MIkeQ

Welcome to the Ballroom, where Voguing is always in style

Niall Connolly at 7:00 am Wed, Mar 6

http://boingboing.net/2013/03/06/ballroom.html

PRINCE: A Biography in Print

Posted on March 8, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Sitting up late one night not so long ago with a bunch of musicians, I found myself immersed in the sounds of Prince’s Parade – a record that, at the time of its release, became something of an obsession of mine. But, in recent years, it’s been neglected on my shelves, pulled out only occasionally, and almost always for its closing track, the exquisite ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’. That night we played the record without pause, marvelling at the lack of bass on ‘Kiss’, and the way its percussion seems to distort ever so slightly; at the brilliant absurdity of the Caribbean steel drum on ‘New Position’; and at the swooning romance of ‘Under The Cherry Moon’, which flows like a river despite its deliberately plodding drum beat. We thrilled to ‘Mountains’, chuckled admiringly at the French pretensions of ‘Do U Lie’ and gasped at the sublimely inventive brass and wind arrangements on ‘I Wonder U’. We all agreed: Prince, at his finest – and1986’s Parade is unquestionably one of Prince’s finest albums – is triumphant.

The arrival of Matt Thorne’s mighty tome, Prince, was therefore a welcome one. Despite my youthful passion for Prince’s work – which lasted five years from the first moment I heard 1984’s ‘When Doves Cry’ (from Purple Rain) to 1989’s Batman, after which my interest began to wane as his output became increasingly uneven and my love of indie rock correspondingly gained strength – I knew little about the man. Thorne’s “definitive portrait of the artist and his incomparable musical catalogue” seemed like a good place to start. Though my ignorance of the topic might initially seem to make me an inappropriate critic, it is not a unique condition. According to PrinceVault – the website named after the legendary depository for all of the man’s unreleased material – there have been 48 publications devoted to Prince (though this seems to include giveaways with magazines and the like), and yet he remains reclusive, unpredictable and mysterious. These 476 pages – plus a further fifty sides of notes – would surely be able to shine a light on his personality and music.

They do, but it’s a light that dazzles and blinds as much as it reveals. Matt Thorne is clearly as infatuated with Prince as anyone on this earth, and has undeniably invested a great deal of effort and time into this encyclopaedic volume – seven years of research, apparently. But working one’s way through this book is sometimes a grind, and not in the sexual sense that Prince himself might use the word. There’s no doubt that it’s packed with the minutiae of Prince’s recording career: the roots of huge numbers of songs are explored, set lists have been diligently digested to provide an intricate knowledge of which tracks the artist himself has most favoured, and where possible collaborators have been interviewed to better understand the man’s working methods. Somehow, though, little sense of Prince’s personality emerges, beyond a sex obsessed, progressively more controlling, musically gifted but often misguided individual who was a late convert to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The book starts promisingly with a prologue describing a party at the Purple One’s house in 2006 to promote the release of 3121, and hints that what’s to follow will be a personal voyage into the man’s music. Descriptions of “sinister Walt Disney-meets-David-Lynch architecture” and depictions of neighbours trying to gain access to the event are teasing and initially gripping: few people, asides from inner circle celebrities, are offered the privilege to get this close. But such intimacy is short-lived: before long we’ve set off on a journey that, while unafraid to criticise, remains nervous of prodding too deep below the surface, instead operating as a handbook, a comprehensive guide to huge amounts of material that, to the average music fan, remain frustratingly hard to track down.

Of course, there’s a certain fascination in discovering how Prince cannibalises his own work, lifting lyrics and musical phrases, even sometimes arrangements provided by Dr Clare Fisher – a man who he’s always, somewhat ungratefully, refused to meet, lest he jinx their work together – to create new music, and Thorne tracks these progressions carefully. He also plots a shrewd course through the many musicians with whom Prince has worked, as well as the side projects, protégés and business associates. But for those looking to learn more about the man’s life, it’s short of revelations, something Thorne concedes early on when he admits that, “it doesn’t help that Prince’s mythological approach to his past is shared by some of his family members”. Furthermore, for those looking for a deconstruction of that very mythology, it’s also a little superficial, dependent upon conjecture and insights from those who have worked with him but whom, for the most part, seem wary of giving away too many secrets. (Prince, inevitably, played no role in the book at all.)

Thorne’s academic and highly specialised approach might perhaps be less troubling if he didn’t draw attention to certain themes without offering significant investigation of them. The most disconcerting of all is Prince’s preoccupation with sex. Early on, Thorne refers to two unreleased tracks from the Controversy sessions that “both feature Prince threatening rape.” The sentence is surely enough to stop most readers in their tracks, and Thorne briefly recognises this. “If we are troubled by the songs,” he continues, “then does the fact that having recorded them Prince has (so far) exercised self-censorship and withheld them from a wide audience excuse their content?” But the question remains unanswered, as it does repeatedly the further one reads, beyond a subtle exercise in whitewash: “it’s easy to argue convincingly that he (Prince) needed to visit these artistic extremes”.

Later on, Thorne discusses another unreleased track, ‘Big Tall Wall’, about his onetime lover Susannah Melvoin, the sister of Wendy (of Wendy and Lisa): “Lyrically it’s unbelievably reactionary, a throwback to the lock-her-up-in-a-trunk misogynist crap of Cliff Richard’s ‘Living Doll’”, he writes, but though he appears to feel strongly about this, he’s soon acting as an apologist, excusing it as “a definite exercise in black humour.” Unable to hear it, or even read the words – lyrics are never quoted in depth, presumably something inflicted upon Thorne by Prince’s publishers – we’re left trusting the author, and he’s not given us great reason to do so, especially when he later refers to ‘Schoolyard’, a track dropped from Diamonds And Pearls, which Thorne coolly describes as “a sexually explicit autobiographical track which moves from a graphic description of the experience of entering 14-year-old Carrie’s vagina (compared to a glove filled with baby lotion) to a strange sermonising about how the listener might wish to protect their own children from similar experiences.” There are few attempts to reconcile these themes and next to no judgement about the sexualisation of a young girl, even if, in the notes, Thorne refers to a Rolling Stone interview in which Prince confesses it’s about “the first time I ever got any”, as though this makes it more warrantable.

Thorne is largely forgiving of Prince’s dirty mind – something that is naturally a huge factor in his work, and which is indeed sometimes comically played – it’s arguably more indicative of the fact he’s not as enquiring a writer as the subject deserves from a book this lengthy. The contradictions and sexual, political implications of Prince’s boasting, androgyny and his frequent attempts to write for women – often his lovers – remain disappointingly unscrutinised, just as his later spiritual awakening seems somehow glossed over.

Thorne also has a predisposition to superlatives, and there are only so many times that one can face down such declarations as “only here can you get a sense of the true power of a Prince And The Revolution show from this era”. One particularly effusive passage grates more than most, as Thorne gets carried away so far he seems to be deifying his subject: “Prince’s show at the Het Paard van Troje in The Hague was the third of nine after-shows he would play on the Lovesexy tour,” he writes, “and has become the most legendary after-show he ever performed. That Prince had the mental and physical stamina to create such an overwhelming experience in the middle of the night for the favoured few after what must have been an extraordinarily draining show in front of 30,000 people is a feat beyond any other (pop) musician.” Yeah. Right. Beyond any other (pop) musician. Of course.

It is perhaps unfair to criticise a book for not being something rather than acknowledge what it actually is. Prince is a thorough examination of almost every single song Prince has ever composed, as well as a handful that he didn’t but has still performed, given extra context by those who were around at the time of the writing or recording sessions. It draws upon a lifetime’s worth of listening to albums, live recordings, fanclub only downloads and more with the ear of an enthusiast. It will surely delight those for whom the knowledge that Graffiti Bridge started out as a thirty page script, one that Prince’s manager at the time suggested might make a better Broadway musical, is exciting. Furthermore, if you want to know what Thorne made of Prince’s 21 date residency at London’s O2 Arena – he attended nineteen shows and thirteen of the fourteen aftershows – then there’s an entire chapter for you.

But if these seem to be of little interest – and one can only presume that they’re not going to be of much interest except to the kinds of people who, in less than two months, would want to attend nineteen shows and thirteen after-shows in which Prince isn’t even guaranteed to perform – then Prince is perhaps not the book for you. Sometimes too much information is a bad thing, after all. What keeps us intrigued, despite Prince’s frequent stumbles, is his mystery. As the man himself might say: “Shut up, already. Damn!”

Le Grind: The Ongoing Enigma Of Prince
Wyndham Wallace , October 4th, 2012 00:04

http://thequietus.com/articles/10178-thorne-prince-biography-review

FACTORY RECORDS: The Final Years

Posted on March 8, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

On Monday 23rd November 1992, Factory Records – the Manchester home to New Order and Happy Mondays and owners of the Haçienda club – went into administration with debts of over £2m.

The downfall of the company and the shattering of founder Anthony H Wilson’s civic dream has been picked over many times, most scrupulously in James Nice’s weighty biography Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records and most imaginatively in Michael Winterbottom’s cinema fantasy 24 Hour Party People.

The lurid details of Factory’s demise, its chaotic mix of bad money, bad drugs and gang problems, have tended to overshadow the music the label issued during its decline and fall. After toasting their first No.1 single in the summer of 1990, when World Cup fever and the peaking Madchester wave pushed New Order’s football anthem ‘World in Motion’ up the charts, Factory was on a downward curve. Here we trawl through those final transmissions.

Kalima – ‘Shine’
(single, Jul 1990)

Jazz-dance group Kalima had been recording for Factory since 1982, initially as moody funk outfit Swamp Children, and Feeling Fine was their fourth LP for the label. The band were closely associated with Factory’s more lauded post punk innovators A Certain Ratio: soprano saxophonist Tony Quigley divided his time between the two groups, and he, his vocalist sister Ann and guitarist John Kirkham formed Kalima’s core.

In retrospect, Feeling Fine is the last, late hurrah of Factory’s ties to Manchester’s jazz-dance scene, before the label’s clubbing honeymoon really took hold, and there’s little reason to recommend it above predecessors like 1986′s transitional Night Time Shadows (James Nice’s LTM Recordings has reissued the lot as part of its admirable rescuing of Factory’s archives).

Excellent spin-off single ‘Shine’ is another matter, its two lengthy remixes (one by Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge, the other by Kalima’s producer Tim Oliver) turning Feeling Fine‘s lithe original into a record that straddled both jazz and club cultures with ease. Kalima’s bold farewell to the label, the 12″ slots neatly alongside A Certain Ratio’s creative resurgence on the same year’s ACR: MCR album for A&M.

Indambinigi – ‘Zimba’
(single, Aug 1990)

The last of many one-off curios in the Factory catalogue, Indambinigi’s sole 12″ is also one of its most often overlooked singles. ‘Zimba’ was swiftly buried by history, not helped by Factory’s inability to spell the band’s name consistently on its sleeve, labels or official discographies.

The record was a studio collaboration between engineer Steve Lima and 60s star Karl Denver, who’d come into the Factory orbit via his guest spot on Happy Mondays’ dreamlike medley ‘Lazyitis’. Denver’s first standalone release for Factory was ‘Wimoweh 89′, a pretty perfunctory house re-recording of his 1961 hit, the yodelling vocals jarring with the 808 programming supplied by Haçienda DJs Mike Pickering and Graeme Park.

‘Zimba’ and its flipside ‘Shengali’ were far more successful attempts to marry Denver’s reinterpretation of African tunes with contemporary club sounds, but they weren’t to be repeated. Lima continues to work as a producer, while Denver turned his attentions to country music before passing away in 1998.

Steve Martland – Glad Day
(EP, Oct 1990)

The Factory Classical imprint was founded in 1989 and by the label’s demise had issued 14 albums, including works dedicated to Mozart, Monteverdi, Handel and Satie.

Factory’s simple, self-important belief was that, having successfully packaged popular music as high art, it could also pitch ‘high art’ classical music to a popular audience. They failed, but kept faith with the classical programme and, in particular, Liverpudlian composer Steve Martland, who recorded three albums for the label.

Martland’s ironically titled Glad Day EP was the Factory’s only direct attempt at a release that would straddle the classical/pop divide. Teaming up with lyricist Stevan Keane and Communards vocalist Sarah Jane Morris, the EP married Martland’s full-bodied, brassy arrangements to portraits of a country crushed by the Thatcher government (“Private practice, public waste / Nothing left to celebrate / Festival of Britain / Farewell to the welfare state”).

Final song ‘The World is in Heaven’ takes a more celebratory long-view, accompanied by a crossover ’7″ Dance version’, whose dated stabs come straight from The Art Of Noise’s sample library.

Vini Reilly – ‘The Together Mix’
(single, Feb 1991)

Vini Reilly’s Durutti Column were the longest serving of all Factory’s artists, appearing on the label’s debut 1978 release A Factory Sample and continuing their association with Tony Wilson onto his short-lived resurrection label Factory Too.

On Obey the Time, Durutti Column’s last LP for the original Factory, Reilly all but dispenses with the services of longtime creative partner, drummer Bruce Mitchell. Recording the majority of the album at home, Reilly’s signature filigree guitar vibrates over layers of programmed beats and light keyboards that bear a tangential relationship to then-current house sounds.

‘The Together Mix’ (a remix of Obey the Time‘s ‘Contra-Indications’, credited to Vini Reilly alone) was another attempt to capitalise on the club music being broken at the Haçienda. The ‘Together’ of the title were production duo and Haçienda regulars Suddi Raval and Jonathon Donaghy, whose archetypal rave anthem ‘Hardcore Uproar’ had been a hit the previous summer. Together’s relaxed expansion of ‘Contra-Indications’ shares much common ground with another of that year’s club hits, DNA’s remix of Suzanne Vega’s ‘Tom’s Diner’.

A painting reproduced on the record’s insert is dedicated “For John and Emma”. Tragically, Jonathan Donaghy and the picture’s creator, his partner Emma McManus (vocalist on ‘The Together Mix’), had died in a car accident in Ibiza, before the record was finished.

Cath Carroll – England Made Me
(album, Jun 1991)

Cath Carroll’s debut album followed a long immersion in the independent scene: she’d performed in Gay Animals with Liz Naylor (the pair would co-edit Manchester zine City Fun), collaborated on several singles by Julian Henry’s The Hit Parade and fronted Factory-signed C86 trio Miaow. England Made Me was hyped as a major release for the label (HMV’s optimistic press ads reckoned it “should prove to be the shot in the arm and the rocket up the backside that the Nineties has been waiting for”) but it proved to be an expensive, stylish flop.

Beyond its parochial title, England Made Me was a rootless album. Assisted by Chakk’s Sim Lister and Mark Brydon (later of Moloko), it combined recordings from their Fon studios with a strong Latin American influence from sessions in São Paulo. Standout track ‘Train You’re On’ (recycled from the previous year’s Beast EP) skewed the international blend further by adding cutting guitar from Carroll’s husband Santiago Durango and his Big Black colleague Steve Albini, but neither this low key reunion, nor the lush single remix of ‘Moves Like You’, helped the album break through.

England Made Me remains one of the last gems in the Factory catalogue and Carroll has continued to record for LTM and Mark Robinson’s Teen-Beat (Perfect Teeth, a 1993 album by Robinson’s band Unrest, was one huge Carroll tribute).

Northside – Chicken Rhythms
(album, Jun 1991)

Faced with Central Station Design’s original sleeve to Northside’s only LP Chicken Rhythms, featuring the band’s grinning faces plastered crudely onto the heads of cartoon animals, it’s pretty clear that Factory’s once unshakable visual sense had gone out the window. That’s before you turn it over and find tracks titled ‘Funky Munky’ and ‘Yeah Man’. It was embarrassing to take it to the shop counter. No wonder the LTM reissue switched it.

Chicken Rhythms‘ dismal artwork wasn’t fair on Northside, however. Although Madchester also-rans, the group had a charmingly naive take on baggy, and their run of singles (LSD love-letter ‘Shall We Take a Trip’, the wondrous ‘My Rising Star’ and the Yellowman-quoting sign-off ‘Take 5′, that finally took them to Top of the Pops) were as good as those by the early Blur. Or maybe The Dylans.

I last saw Northside supporting Peter Hook’s Revenge at the Marquee, not long after Factory went under (a gig drily promoted with the tagline “Fac it, Haçienda it”). At the end of a sour performance, singer Dermo threw his half-empty beer can into the half-empty crowd, where it hit the floor unimpeded, foaming and hissing. You had to feel for them, fucked over before they’d even begun.

The Wendys – I Instruct
(EP, Sep 1991)

Edinburgh’s The Wendys were a pretty straightforward band, lacking the pop suss of Northside but with a strong, adventurous guitarist in Ian White. A couple of smart, melodic singles – the drawn-out ‘The Sun’s Going to Shine for Me Soon’ and luminous ‘Pulling My Fingers Off’ – proved to be the exception among the rushed, choppy funk of their Gobbledygook album, released in an off-putting sleeve by artist David Knopov.

Housed in an uninspiring, drab green and brown jacket, their final release for label, the I Instruct EP paired two new recordings taped by veteran producer Jimmy Miller with a couple of live tracks. Its downbeat, lyrically grim opener ‘Enjoy The Things You Fear’ was never going to win new converts or find radio play, but an eight-minute version of ‘The Sun’s Going to Shine for Me Soon’ was a hypnotic reminder of The Wendys’ occasional strengths. Presumably intended as a stop-gap release, it would take until the end of the decade for the band released a follow up (1999′s Sixfoot Wingspan)

It’s indicative of The Wendys’ poor reception that, over twenty years on, I Instruct still turns up in record shop bargain bins. I found a 12″ copy for 10p in one store back in the spring.

‘The Other Two – ‘Tasty Fish’
(single, Oct 1991)
Revenge – Gun World Porn
(EP, Jan 1992)
Electronic – ‘Disappointed’
(single, Jun 1992)

After 1989′s Technique, New Order had fractured into splinter groups, coming together in the public eye only for ‘World in Motion’ (although, by the time Factory went under, they were working on the album that would emerge as Republic on London Records). Bernard Sumner formed Electronic with Johnny Marr, Peter Hook put together Revenge, and partners Steven Morris and Gillian Gilbert resigned themselves to being The Other Two.

‘Tasty Fish’, The Other Two’s sole Factory release, was a gorgeous pop confection that foregrounded Gilbert’s otherwise underused vocals. It fell outside the Top 40, but Pascal Gabriel’s high gloss mix was just ahead of the frothing perfection that Saint Etienne would capitalise on. As with New Order, The Other Two’s album (circulated on test pressings before Factory’s fall) would eventually appear on London.

Peter Hook’s rockist trio Revenge scored the first release outside of New Order by mere weeks, their ‘Seven Reasons’ single just beating Electronic’s debut ‘Getting Away with It’ into the racks. ‘Seven Reasons’ uplifting keyboards and cor anglais could hold its head high among New Order’s catalogue, but Revenge’s subsequent album One True Passion floundered under clumsy electro-rock arrangements, its poor reviews exacerbated by some terrible titles (‘Surf Nazi’, ‘Fag Hag’) and a fetish imagery sleeve (“Sexist crap” was my Dad’s terse verdict when I brought it home from Woolworths).

Proving that Hook’s fondness for awful titles hadn’t exhausted itself, Revenge’s fourth and final single, the Gun World Porn EP, was the band’s worst. Opener ‘DeadBeat’, mixed by Gary Clail, found the biker pose worn thin, and the record contained only flashes of Hook’s melodic abilities. By now, David Potts had replaced guitarist Dave Hicks in the band, a partnership that would eventually reap dividends when he and Hook returned as Monaco.

By the summer of ’92, Electronic had scored three hit singles and a No.2 self-titled album on Factory. Like their debut three years before, ‘Disappointed’ was a standalone single that teamed Sumner and Marr with Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant, here as lead vocalist. Arguably their finest single to date, the swirling, euphoric ‘Disappointed’ was another deserved Top 10 hit.

Having loaned both Tennant and Chris Lowe (on Electronic‘s sublime ‘The Patience of a Saint’) to Factory, it seemed only fair that Pet Shop Boys’ label Parlophone should release ‘Disappointed’, although this was the first big hint to casual fans that maybe all was not financially well in the Factory camp. Factory’s logo appeared, dwarfed by Parlophone’s, in the artwork. It wouldn’t feature in the UK Top 10 again.

The Adventure Babies – Laugh
(album, Jun 1992)

It could’ve been John Robb’s Sensurround, it could’ve been Galway’s Toasted Heretic, it could even, with the optimistic benefit of hindsight, have been Oasis or Pulp, but ultimately the much maligned Adventure Babies held the dubious honour of being Factory’s last signing. The deal was done onstage at Manchester’s Factory-backed Cities In The Park festival in the summer of ’91, before the band had built up any kind of fanbase.

The title track of the group’s cute, sometimes cloying, EP Camper Van won over a handful of Radio One listeners, but, typically, it was left off debut LP Laugh. Gentle, melodic and with an air of melancholy, The Adventure Babies’ folky arrangements and multiple harmonies marked them out as The Beautiful South for kids, the sort of band a major could arguably have made far better use of.

Laugh failed to sell, hampered by another terrible sleeve, its photographic high-jinks suggesting that the best days of Central Station Design – the small studio whose artwork had defined Madchester – were behind them. The band may have felt differently: when the reunited Madness released their comeback live Madstock album with a similar cover, lawsuits were threatened. Or the Factory debts were starting to hit home.

The Adventure Babies’ follow up single ‘Barking Mad’ stiffed, having already featured on Camper Van and Laugh. A third single, Laugh‘s title track, failed to make it beyond promo stage during Factory’s downfall.

Happy Mondays – ‘Sunshine and Love’
(single, Nov 1992)

Few bands have risen so high and fallen so low as Happy Mondays. Once they’d broken through with the Madchester Rave On EP late in ’89 (leading to a justifiably famed Top of the Pops debut with The Stone Roses, and naming a movement), their imperial phase stretched out for a year and half, as Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches and its singles soundtracked a cultural phenomenon.

Success found the Mondays readily scuppering their career, with boorish behaviour like guest editing Penthouse, numerous tabloid outrages and a sickeningly homophobic interview given to NME‘s Steven Wells all nails in the coffin. ‘Judge Fudge’, their last of their triumphant Paul Oakenfold/Steve Osborne productions, was a decent single, but its comparatively poor chart performance proved that love for the Mondays was evaporating.

The debauched tales surrounding the recording of Yes Please! are better remembered than the album itself, but Talking Heads’ Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth found a strong new angle on Happy Mondays’ sound, pushing the percussion to the fore, and Shaun Ryder’s lyrics were as inspired as ever. Ruthless Rap Assassins’ Kermit guested on the vibrant ‘Cut ‘Em Loose Bruce’, laying the foundations for his and Ryder’s Black Grape.

‘Sunshine & Love’ was the second single extracted from the album, boosted by remixes from Justin Robertson’s Lionrock, an M-People mix of ’24 Hour Party People’ and a wider release for the Monday’s clomping cover of ‘Staying Alive’ (taken from their prophetic Tyburn Tree hanging in Malcolm McLaren’s The Ghosts of Oxford Street film).

With the band’s wider appeal at a low, none of these could help a weak choice of single sell and on its November release ‘Sunshine and Love’ couldn’t climb higher than a dismal No.62. It was the end for Factory – administrators Leonard Curtis were called in that month – but not for Happy Mondays. Reunited, they’re currently on a major European tour.

Sweeping From The Factory Floor: The Label’s Final Years
Stuart Huggett , December 3rd, 2012 07:29

http://thequietus.com/articles/10872-factory-records-final-years-retrospective-happy-mondays-new-order

THE HISTORY OF Celluloid Records!

Posted on March 8, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

The primal thrash of punk was a howl of rage and hope, a deliberate pop year zero – but after it, what deluge? Inevitably, perhaps, there came a natural urge to more sophistication or complexity, coupled with new musical technologies and a new availability of music, just in time for sampling, which coincided with the CD format. London was moving into Thatcherism and in New York, the Reagan cuts were decimating arts education (sounds familiar in 2013, too?). In every Anglophone territory, social constrictions were forcing creative underground youth to invent sounds that yelled Resistance! in disparate voices and beats. However, in Paris, there was a sense of expansion that encouraged a parallel process. The leftist Mitterand had taken over from Giscard d’Estaing, and hope and creativity pulsed through the capital’s boulevards.

In the hilly 20ème arrondissement near the Porte de Lilas, in a quartier populaire of Paris, was the cramped, messy office of Celluloid. The label’s leaders were an odd couple: studious, courtly Gilbert Castro, a former Director of the Maoists, and the far more extrovert Jean Georgakarakos, a twinkly-eyed barrel of a man. He co-founded Actuel, a dynamic glossy monthly magazine of global news and arts, with their close friend, Jean-Francois Bizot. who was umbilically linked to Celluloid. A drop-out patrician who loved both the low and high life, the charismatic, visionary Bizot shared Karakos’ goofy humour and immense zest for life.

Among the foreigners drawn to Paris and the Actuel/ Celluloid crew was the éminence grise of this compilation, producer Bill Laswell. “Like Burroughs said, Paris in the early 1980s was Interzone; a free meeting space, like Tangier in the ‘60s. Africans, Arabs, Europeans and Americans all connected there. In a surreal way, it was a movement, but it was not documented. That experience is not something people really know about unless you were there, sitting at the table discussing what you were going to do tomorrow. People still don’t grasp what was generating at that moment in Paris,” Laswell insists.

This axis became a magnet for a madcap crew of thinkers pushing a new vision of a multi-cultural future, before the idea of multi-culutralism was tainted by egocentric extremists of all stripes. Back then, cultural fusion was simply a timely post-colonial idea and ideal which Celluloid Records, the fledgling Radio Nova and Actuel were all pushing.

No one was fretting about cultural appropriation, there was just an exultant sense of liberation as artistic connections sparked new musical breeds. But perhaps it took the French to conjure this particular scintillating synthesis. With a magpie energy, Paris was always more “branché” (hip) than other capitals when it came to appreciating and absorbing the so-called “Other”. Says Laswell, “It seemed to be the place where West Africans moved. All the artists came to Paris – as when all the free jazz musicians like Sun Ra, Don Cherry and the Arts Ensemble of Chicago found a second home there in the 1960s.” Laswell name-checks legends whom Karakos was instrumental in bringing to the world on labels like BYG. His eclectic perception of music, which found a kindred spirit in young Laswell, made Celluloid a completely unique cross-cultural mash-up label.

Pre-Celluloid, Karakos has built his business on shrewd importing: “It began with me going to Rough Trade in London, which was just starting up at this period. We would take the car Sunday evening to London, be at the store when they received new releases from each independent at 9.00am on Monday and I would fill my car full of singles from all of the independents at the end of the ‘70s – records like Gang Of Four, Cabaret Voltaire, Metal Urbain. On Monday evening, I was back in Paris and on Tuesday morning I was on the phone to call every store and sell them the records.”

“As a label, we started by releasing some reggae stuff from Jetstar. I had a very good relationship with the boss and he would give me some product to release in France.” Licensing in carefully selected records proved fruitful during Celluloid’s early days. Errol Dunkley’s ‘OK Fred’ and Soft Cell scored massive success. The crew also gravitated naturally to the authenticity of the hard-hitting funk messages from the archives of producer Alan Douglas – early Last Poets albums, Last Poets mainstay Jalal’s big pimpin’ Hustlers Convention LP and a rare one-off session featuring Jalal, Buddy Rich and Jimi Hendrix.

The Celluloid/ Actuel aesthetic hit the road at the start of the 1980s. Karakos explains, “I went on a trip to New York to sell Celluloid records to the chain stores and on my way back, I stopped to sleep over at my friend Giorgio Gomelsky’s house – he was the first producer of the Rolling Stones and had signed The Yardbirds among many other artists. When I arrived there, I saw a guy working up at the ceiling, painting. It was Bill Laswell. He was 22 or 23 years old at that time. I stayed there, he stayed there and we spent all night speaking with him. He said, “In America, there is nobody with guts who can go against the system and release good music, sell it and make it known so you should come and live here.” I went away the next day and thought how I had loved the conversation with him. He was a very young guy, really knowledgeable about music and he spoke really articulately. That influenced me very much. I saw it with my own eyes in the shops – there was nothing interesting in these big stores. Just mainstream rock, the same old shit all the time. So, I decided at that point to go and live there in the States.”

I arrived in September 1980 and the first guy I met in St. Mark between 2nd and 1st Avenue was Bill Laswell. He didn’t believe I would be there. A few days later, he says “I have something for you, Jean.” He met me and he gave me the tapes to Temporary Music, his new recordings with Material. He said, “That’s for you. That will help you to start your company here.”

Karakos’ move had been preceded by writer Bernard Zekri who had moved to the Big Apple as an advance guard of the crew. Tall and lanky with a mop of curls and smouldering poet’s eyes, Zekri immersed himself in the strongholds of hip hop in Queens and the Bronx. Enthralled by the emergent sounds there, he re-invented himself as a producer. Says Laswell, “Bernard Zekri was instrumental. By doing his research as a journalist and with his interest in New York culture, he reeled in things that Karakos liked to exploit. It was a new culture. When hip hop came downtown from Disco Fever to the Ritz and the Roxy, Karakos and Bernard were there, for sure.”

Zekri’s downtown apartment on 8th Street and 2nd Avenue was handy for Club Negril, a haven for reggae and hip hop. Many of the uptown ghetto stars who would soon storm Europe bonded while crashing at Zekri’s after a late night of clubbing below 14th Street. “I was one of the few who had a music background,” Laswell recalls. “They were non-musicians, but they all had personality, charisma and confidence. It was inspiring coming into their world.”

Zekri sent back vivid reports from hip hop’s Front Line that whetted the curiosities of French hipsters. Thus it was the Celluloid/ Actuel axis that orchestrated the groundbreaking tours of Europe which introduced the triple-threat of New York’s underground, all ready for its close-up with a killer combo of break-dancing, graffiti and an aural assault of mixing and rapping. That road show electrified kids at every stop, and shifted their thinking.

On assignment for weekly music paper, Melody Maker, London photographer Janette Beckman took the tour photos that adorn this compilation. “By then punk in the UK was on the wane and we were all looking for the next thing – and here it was! A renaissance, brand new ideas coming from a similar root to punk,” she says. “New York City was experiencing a bad economy, huge unemployment – and these were kids from working class backgrounds inventing a completely new kind of music. There were scratch DJs, double Dutch girls, graffiti artists, rappers, with great styles and new attitudes. Shortly after seeing the show I moved to New York City and that was the start of my documenting the early old school years of hip hop.”

Encouraging such conversions was Zekri, by now a downtown svengali and cultural translator. He corralled Americans to perform in French, including cool girl B-Side aka Ann Boyle, whom he would later marry, golden-voiced Bernard Fowler and graffiti artist / rapper, Fab 5 Freddy Braithwaite, whose much-sampled ‘Change The Beat’ gives its name to this collection. Karakos remembers the session: “B-Side just took the mic to show how to sing the title line in French, ‘Change The Beat, Change The Beat’. Everybody was so surprised and said, ‘let’s keep that’ so we ended up keeping one version in English and one in French. B-Side was American but her boyfriend was Bernard, a Frenchman, so she knew how to speak French and we could understand what she was saying.”

Celluloid quickly became a haven for boundary-bending musicians. The freewheeling, open tone of the label’s identity was set by its colourful founder, Jean Karakos. A controversial prankster of the old school, he had already been turning people on to unexpected music since the 1960s. Infamously, his astute ears and aesthetic were matched by a piratical, cavalier approach to business that landed him in court more than once. Yet even his roughest critics had to admit that Karakos knew what to pillage. His taste was, as the French say, “impéccable”. That the French audience had access to the New York avant-garde, adopted and was shaped by it, even before much of the U.S. knew it was happening, was down to Karakos.

“With Celluloid, I knew the artists, the artists knew me and I had one trait through my career – I never released a piece of shit,” he affirms. “If I worked on or released a record, it’s because I believed in it. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m right, but at least the people know I’m sincere and I’m not trying to sell them stuff because I have too much stock.”

Though hits were, of course, welcome and desired, Celluloid never strategised specifically for the pop charts. In a gloriously old-school way, the label went on its gut. If kids were having fun in some dodgy, run-down urban area, and their art was electric, Karakos or his emissaries like Zekri and another branché French manager/ producer, Martin Meissonnier were there; ready to pluck cultural blooms struggling through cracks in the concrete and transplant them to Paris.

Karakos also continued to work regularly with Bill Laswell. He grew into a sound constructor for a wide range of artists seeking an experimental edge – Laswell would genre-hop from Paris to the Bronx to SoHo to Africa to Chicago to put his imprint on many of this compilation’s tracks. “Bill Laswell was the heart of the label,” states Karakos. “He was a lot younger than me, but I understood he was very mature and he was so serious with music. Music for him was everything. It was music first, then after came drinks, women, whatever else. For Bill, music was the God, even at 22 years old.”

With his own bands like Massacre and Material, Laswell effected testosterone-fueled deconstructions of funk and blues alongside musical extremists like drummer Roland Shannon Jackson and guitarist Sonny Sharrock and saxophonist, Peter Brotzmann. Like a progressive Pied Piper, Laswell coaxed drummer Ginger Baker out of retirement and got him playing with the Laswell rhythm section – a shifting transnational crew including Gambian griot Foday Musa Suso, Cuba’s Daniel Ponce, Brazil’s Nana Vasconcelos, Bernie Worrell of Parliament-Funkadelic keyboard fame, together with hip hop’s Grandmaster D.ST. Perhaps its best known associate was jazz great, Herbie Hancock, whose revolutionary work with Laswell appears here. “Meeting Karakos was the beginning for me,” explains Laswell. ”It was the first time someone appeared who would actually finance things. It made a big difference. I could get things done. Karakos started a lot of experiments that definitely would not have happened without him.”

Linked by their shared love of free jazz, African music and blues, the two men became co-conspirators in capturing the blended sounds of our cities’ real, unsung communities. Of course, uncut hip hop was crucial. Tracks like D.ST’s ‘Home Of Hip Hop,’ featuring Rahiem and The Infinity Rappers, shouted for The Bronx well before the more celebrated war of words either side of ‘The Bridge’ by KRS One, the Juice crew and the rest. It remains a founding text of hip hop.

But Laswell also saw the possibilities in unconventional pairings and brought John Lydon to work with Afrika Bambaataa for the doomy fury of Timezone’s ‘World Destruction’. Their classic melding of UK punk with hip hop demonstrates how hip hop was already punk’s twisted twin, superficially dissimilar, but alike in roots and attitude. Punk’s raw power also appears here in the person of Rough Trade label founder and frequent Celluloid licensing source, Geoff Travis, who co-produced Shockabilly’s freaked out version of the Fab 4’s ‘Day Tripper’; The Clash appear too, jamming with graffiti artist Futura 2000 on a track that tells the story of a man and a movement, ‘The Escapades of Futura 2000.’

The Brits understand the DNA-deep link between punk and reggae. Dennis Bovell who appears here in his Blackbeard persona alongside Winston Edwards, represents UK reggae on ‘Downing Street Rock’. He is a leader in the UK’s first generation of West Indian descent, who forged their own brand of reggae to express their confrontational reality. At the same time, in Paris, musicians from the former African colonies were starting to culturally infiltrate their old slave masters’ haunts. Paris became a two-way post-colonial rampage, with African artists eagerly embracing electronica and jazz, just as the French, English and American artists were exploring the cornucopia of African grooves. Among them and featured here are Toure Kunda, Senegalese ex-pats who were and still are pivotal in the Afro-Paris scene. Working with Karakos, they graduated from intimate Paris boites like New Morning to play vast stadiums as Ambassadors of Africa. African original legends were not neglected by Celluloid, either. The hypnotic ‘Abele Dance’ by Camerounian grand master Manu Dibango, was just one of the Afro-electro dancefloor hits then produced by the scenemaker, Martin Meissonnier. Such fusions irritated purists and awoke global clubbers to the might of African music.

Karakos played a part in opening America to non-Anglophone music. “Slowly, after many conversations, they started to increase the world music division in the Tower record stores and it became a big part of their business,” Karakos recalls. “Buyers originally just thought tribal music, field recordings. But the mix of traditional music with pop and new modernity was a big area – that was the mixture which made it interesting for the American market. “

Disclosure: I too was an Actuel writer and Celluloid artist cutting multi-culti songs. Sadly, scheduling conflicts prevent my duo with Eve Blouin, Chantage, from appearing here – though seek and you shall surely find! Eve and I had an African music radio show, Chéries Noirs, on Actuel’s pirate station, Radio Nova, (now one of France’s premier radio destinations.) This set features Bobongo Stars from Zaire’s ‘Koteja,’ a sprawling, seductive mix of village harmony and percussion with horns, rock guitar, synthesizer and funky bass that defines the experimental era. It was a big tune for us.

In those early 1980s, the burgeoning UK/ US electronic music scene that so intrigued the Africans was starting to shape the pop charts. Here, its purest form is found in Thomas Leer and Robert Rental’s ‘Day Breaks, Night Heals,’ originally a 1979 release on the UK’s Industrial Records; the aesthetic wielded by Celluloid was expressed by its licensed artists as much as its own signings.

But, intrigued as the label was by international music, they still served their home community. Our selection shows the Paris sound to be sparse, moody and inventive. French artists like Nini Raviolette were influenced by the louche experimentalism of Manhattan downtowners’ mutant disco, in which conventional tropes blearily swayed in a shimmering distortion of known dance modes. A sultry night-life presence in Parisian boites, Edwige, stalks elegantly through Mathematiques Modernes’ ‘Disco Rough.’ All the jerky electro dissonance that we love in synthesizer post-punk bubbles in Ferdinand Richard’s funny, apathy-ridden ‘Tele, Apres le Meteo’.

Whether near or far from home, Celluloid fitted in just fine. Looking back, this eclectic Celluloid sensibility was part of the evolution of a gang of young intellectual “gauchistes” who believed in revolution. Forged on the barricades of the student riots of the 1960s, Karakos, Zekri and Bizot, along with Meissonnier and the rest of the crew, were devoted to discovery and revelation. The eccentric, compelling and hilarious denizens of this record are a reminder that, in every generation, we must always continue to ‘Change The Beat.’

Vivien Goldman, January 2013 – Sleevenotes for Change The Beat: The Celluloid Records Story 1979 – 1987 out now on Strut

Various Artists – Change The Beat: The Celluloid Records Story 1979 – 1987

You only have to listen to the first couple of songs off this compilation to sense its efficiency as a portal to a more open minded, musically eclectic and optimistic time and place. The opening salvo is a cover of the Beatles’ ‘Day Tripper’ by Shockabilly, (licensed by Celluloid from cult New York indie Shimmy Disc) featuring one time Butthole Surfer, B.A.L.L. and Bongwater bassist Kramer; free jazz banjo enthusiast Eugene Chadbourne and Klezmer drummer David Licht. The trio indulge in a ridiculously gonzoid exercise in deconstruction that sits somewhere between Beefheart and Pussy Galore. Then from lysergic looseness, we switch to amphetamine strung post punk jazz metal courtesy of Massacre’s ‘Killing Time’. While obviously not at the same level of heaviness as more recent highly technical, jazz and avant garde influenced rock bands such as Shining (No) and Zu – in 1981, Bill Laswell, Fred Frith and Fred Maher were cutting a brand new path that sounded like Sonny Sharrock jamming with Wire and Doug Wimbish.

And on it goes… Naming the first ever hip hop song recorded is an idiot’s quest if ever there was one but if you want to hear something that was probably as important an influence on the development of the N.W.A. aesthetic as Iceberg Slim paperbacks and Blowfly routines, then check out Lightnin’ Rod’s ‘Sport’ (originally from the excellent 1973 album Hustler’s Convention). Lightnin’ Rod was basically a pre-spiritual awakening Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin of The Last Poets rapping proto-gangsta rhymes over music provided by the likes of Tina Turner and the Ikettes and Billy Preston, some 14 years before Dre, Cube et al hit the studio. This track, backed by an instantly recognisable Kool And The Gang deals with the protagonist’s formative years: “I had learned to shoot pool/ Playing hooky from school/ At the tender age of nine/ And by the time I was eleven/ I could pad-roll seven/ And down me a whole quart of wine./ I was makin’ it a point/ To smoke me a joint/ At least once during the course of a day/ And I was snortin’ skag/ While other kids played tag/ And elders went to church to pray.”

From the French side of things there is a clutch of punk funk, post punk, electro and cold wave gems with Mathematiques Modernes’ ‘Disco Rough’ coming on like Belgian neighbours Telex; the excellently named Modern Guy laying down herky jerky James Chance contorted funk on ‘Electrique Sylvie’ and Nini Raviolette making breathy and sensuous electronic music that’s part cold wave synth pop and part space age lounge on ‘Suis Je-Normale’. There are some big names from this side of the channel including John Lydon who froths at the chops on the still stupendous ‘World Destruction’ by Time Zone; an understated Ginger Baker number ‘Dust To Dust’; Brit reggae production master Dennis Bovell (as Blackbeard) teaming up with Winston Edwards and The Clash doing the only thing they were ever any good at: making dance music. (They appear as backing band to Down Town Manhattan graffiti artist Futura 2000, who certainly had wilder skills with the spray can than he did on the mic.)

The best tracks here are courtesy of a real colonial culture clash however, African master musicians Toure Kunda, Bobongo Stars and Manu Dibango engaging with the French and New York underground on their own terms. If Hemingway’s Moveable Feast had literally lived up to its name and ended up in late 70s bohemian Paris and early 80s art gallery Manhattan, then this would have been the soundtrack. If this music were being released now most cultural commentators would be pissing their pants about cultural appropriation, middle class entitlement, authenticity and hipsterism but thankfully only those with too much time on their hands will start applying these tenuous criteria to music retrospectively.

The Quietus , February 28th, 2013 11:43

http://thequietus.com/articles/11470-celluloid-records-review-essay

D’ANGELO’s Voodoo – Behind The Scenes

Posted on February 27, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Holdups and false starts kept Voodoo from a ’90s release. Perfectionist D’Angelo had become distracted by weed and weightlifting, and debilitated by sophomore pressure to follow up his groundbreaking 1995 debut Brown Sugar. In the interim he’d fathered two children, switched managers, jumped to a new record label, and made cameos on scattershot soundtracks. Two promo singles dropped: murky, sample-heavy “Devil’s Pie” in October 1998 and Redman/Method Man-assisted toe-tapper “Left and Right” a year later. But promises of a full-length studio album evaporated into the ether. Voodoo might have seen its commercial release in November 1999, but a planned duet with Lauryn Hill on a lurching cover of Roberta Flack’s 1975 “Feel Like Making Love” remained unfinished and the album was pushed back until just after the New Year. (The rendition would ultimately wind up on Voodoo as a solo D’Angelo record without Hill.)

Voodoo was a project obsessed with 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s funk and soul—a nostalgic nod to the ideas and inventions of black music trailblazers like Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Kool and the Gang, Al Green, and Prince, powered by avant-garde hip-hop-influenced rhythms. As such, Voodoo is decidedly postmodern, bopping in and out of and between eras without necessarily belonging to any singular era in particular. And perhaps the delayed, dislocated timing of Voodoo’s commercial release suggests a truism about D’Angelo himself: Wherever he seems to go, the time is, as Hamlet once said, out of joint.

Brown Sugar relied on programming, with many of the songs pre-written and arranged before D’Angelo recorded them. Voodoo, on the other hand, was a more organic, improvisatory, and experimental affair. Much of the songwriting occurred in the studio. The innovation kicked off, it seems, with Jimi Hendrix. In a recent interview, Voodoo‘s mix engineer Russ Elevado recounted to me how he helped turn D’Angelo onto Hendrix in the mid ’90s. “All D’Angelo had heard of Jimi at that time were songs like Purple Haze and albums like Are You Experienced,” he said. “I had been hired to mix a few songs on Brown Sugar; and, around ’94 or ’95, I kept trying to play Jimi for D’Angelo but at the time he wasn’t really open to it. Finally when I went down to Virginia to talk about the concept for what was to become Voodoo, D’Angelo and I went out for breakfast, and in the car I popped in Electric Ladyland. He looked at me as if to say: ‘Who is this?’”

No surprise, then, that they chose downtown New York’s Electric Lady, the famed studio Hendrix built before he died, as the venue for recording the album. “There we were,” Elevado recalls, “blowing the dust off the original Rhodes that Stevie supposedly recorded with in the early 1970s, and blowing dust off some of the microphones. You have to remember that at that time in the mid 1990s, hardly anybody in soul music was doing any recordings with vintage equipment like that.”

The concept behind Voodoo was simple. Put together a kick-ass ensemble of R&B musicians bent on grooving together. Record them live, in real time, jamming face-to-face in an effort to capture their conviviality and chemistry. This was the way funk records used to be made in the pre-digital era when people who knew what they were doing were actually making them. For Voodoo‘s core rhythm trio, D’Angelo recruited his friend and colleague, the Roots’ Afroed visionary Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson to play drums, and Welsh journeyman Pino Palladino to hold down the bass. Additional collaborators included guitar mavens Charlie Hunter, Spanky Alford and Mike Campbell, neo-soul stalwart James Poyser on keys, and jazz prodigy Roy Hargrove on horns.

“I was a kind of a walking YouTube before YouTube existed,” said Questlove in our recent interview. “People felt comfortable to share archives with me and trusted that I wouldn’t go out and exploit them. So I would get what I would call ‘treats:’ you know, an old promoter that might have worked for Bill Graham back in the day … would hand me a manila envelope and it would be, say, a rare copy of Sly and the Family Stone’s four shows at the Fillmore. I’d take it back to Electric Lady Studios and make copies of it and we’d just study it and then a week later we’d start working on it. That was the process.” The band spent all of 1996 and most of 1997, he says, “just watching treats and jamming. I have to say we really hit our stride in late 1997 when I went to Japan and unearthed about 4,000 video episodes of Soul Train. Then we really got down to business and started recording the album.”

“When my musician friends first heard the album, they were confused,” notes Pino Palladino. “They thought: It sounds kinda weird, the timing’s kinda weird on it. D’Angelo explained the concept of how he wanted the bass to sound to me before we started playing. I attempted to put the bassline where I thought he wanted it. I would never have thought of putting it so far back behind the beat. But it becomes a different feeling: It stretches in and out of different accents.”

The heavy backphrasing is what D’Angelo collaborator Raphael Saadiq once referred to as performing with “the grease,” in the effort to achieve a “loose, way back in the pocket feel” or a “rubber band feeling.” The backphrasing means that the bass is constantly changing its location in relation to Questlove’s straight-ahead, heavy time, impeccable drumming. The effect is a jumpy, unsettling pulse. The bass seems out of joint, never quite landing where you’d expect. Pino theorizes that D’Angelo likely takes his clues from hip-hop. He explains: “Hip-hop is music that’s been deconstructed, it’s made up of bits of samples arranged in different places and often placed behind the beat. The way people sampled stuff influenced D in terms of the way he would write his music. When I first heard the backing tracks for Voodoo, it struck me as the kind of thing J Dilla would do, how he would deconstruct and reconstruct rhythms and just kinda deliberately mess things up. So you get these messed-up wobbly rhythms. You know, Dilla might take a four-chord pattern and start it on the second chord. D does that kinda thing too in his writing.”

Questlove echoes his colleagues when he discusses his drumming on Voodoo. “The thing that really attracted me to D’Angelo’s music was this inebriated execution thing that he had, which we both got from J Dilla. Dilla would program his drums non-quantized: in layman’s speak, it’s the equivalent of having a 5-year old play drums. It sounds sloppy, but there’s a human quality there. Playing drums the way I did for the Voodoo sessions was necessary for me because I had been playing differently before we started recording. There was a time in the 1990s where there was resistance to the Roots’ presentation: There were hip-hoppers who felt like we were doing a disservice to the culture because we weren’t real enough for the street. In a culture of samples, I had been told I sound too much like a drummer. So prior to Voodoo, I had been going through a period where I felt I had to prove to people that I was a machine: I had decided that my playing was going to be cold, you wouldn’t be able to tell if I was a sample or not. I spent three years of just icing my presentation to a science where I was just a kind of super-metronome; I spent three years of trying to hide myself. Then, in walks D’Angelo, and he basically tells me: ‘Yo, I need you to strip yourself of all that coldness and play human. I need you to play fucked up!’ He wanted me to play as drunk and as slow and as dusted as I’ve ever played in my life. I don’t smoke or drink, so he really guided me to a level of creativity I wouldn’t normally reach without some sort of stimulant. The first year of recording he would say: ‘I need you to keep the pocket but don’t drag behind me, but play a little crooked,’ if that makes any sense whatsoever.”

Most of the songs on Voodoo are six minutes or more (lengthy for pop) and almost all the intoxicating, druggy tempos (with the exception of the driving “Spanish Joint”) check in far below 100 beats per minute. Those molasses tempos are extremely unusual for commercial R&B, which often clocks in at 120 bpm or higher. The resulting feeling on Voodoo is chilled out, unhurried. It’s an album that takes its sweet time. Rolling Stone critic James Hunter once deftly described the sound of Voodoo as “loose grooves and lazy-smoke,” calling it ”soul music that moves like smoke easing from a blunt.”

Some fans couldn’t quite get into the songwriting on Voodoo. Or maybe they got bored by its sleepiness. Many, however, managed to rediscover the album’s songs attending the Voodoo World Tour. His tour manager at the time, Alan Leeds, recalls that that D’Angelo is an incredibly generous performer. “He wants the musicians to get him off. He comes to the stage for that. As opposed to just coming for the audience, he actually comes for the musicians to get him off.”

And let’s face it: One of the main reasons certain fans came to see D’Angelo was to hear (and see) him perform Voodoo‘s only real hit single, “Untitled (How Does it Feel).” Co-written by Raphael Saadiq, “Untitled” is a slow-burn ballad that borrows chord progressions and production ideas from 1980s Prince ballads —to my ears, it sounds like a lost track that might have been written sometime between 1981′s “Do Me Baby” and 1987′s “Adore.” Given its appearance on an album full of deliberately unfocused and unhurried grooves, Alan Leeds refers to “Untitled” as “the album’s anomaly,” “a fastball down the middle,” “an easily accessible track with the radio hook.”

But it was the high-concept, simple-execution music video for “Untitled”—in which a shirtless D’Angelo, filmed from just below the waist up, sings to the camera, getting who knows what done to him by an unseen partner—that sent audiences, especially women and gay men, rushing to see D’Angelo live and to purchase the album. The subject of academic articles and endless on- and offline discussions, the “Untitled” video has become so iconic in terms of the history of black male sexual representation that it’s almost impossible to think about the song as an independent entity outside of its visual marketing. The video did its job: it drove sales for both the song and the album (and the tour); “Untitled” ultimately rose to No. 2 on the R&B charts.

But if “Untitled” was the key to Voodoo‘s success, it was also the key to D’Angelo’s ultimate unraveling. Part of the problem was that he’d become recognized in the culture as more of a bachelor stud than a serious musician, and his recognition of that misplaced respect may have been deleterious to his confidence and psychological health. Alan Leeds recalls the first series of shows of the Voodoo tour in which “girls in the audience were shouting ‘take it off!’. The look on D’s face—I don’t even know how to describe. He was stunned. There was a certain percentage of our audience thinking it was Chippendales. I don’t think he thought it through to think how the video was going to come back at him when he got on the stage.” When an artist becomes reduced solely to the terms of his or her body, it can stifle a career, or even foreclose it altogether. What makes the story worse is that D’Angelo had willfully participated in his own exploitation.

With the exception of a few scattered musical collaborations here and there, D’Angelo entered into a long exile from the music industry. For some, D’Angelo became more known for his appearance on tabloid websites than for his music: over the years we’d hear about him drunk, on drugs, in rehab, in label turmoil, in a near-fatal car accident, arrested for soliciting an undercover female cop for sex. Our Internet searches would be haunted by a 2005 Virginia mugshot in which D’Angelo looked flat and bloated: the exact inverse of his Voodoo image. Oh, how he’d come undone.

And so, in retrospect, Voodoo is something of cautionary tale, another chapter in the depressing story of black male soul geniuses whose careers descend into dysfunction. For all of Voodoo’s claims to realness and authenticity, D’Angelo’s imaging, while rooted in promise, had been in some ways a charade, an unsustainable performance of black masculinity gone awry. D’Angelo would not tour again until 2012, when he returned to the stage in support of an album project that is still in the works.

Another way to look at D’Angelo’s career trajectory is that he has always marched to the beat of his own metronome. With the exception of maybe Terrence Malick, no other celebrity of the 1990s or 2000s has fucked with time, and the expectations around time, as much D’Angelo—both in the music and in his career as a whole. He takes his own sweet time. We can name tons of celebrities who seem to be running faster than the speed of light, multitasking and oversharing in a sometimes desperate effort to stay afloat in the marketplace. D’Angelo, on the other hand, is a hermit and a chronic undersharer. He rarely does interviews unless he’s got a product to hawk, he doesn’t have a fashion line and businesses on the side, he doesn’t appear on infomercials, he doesn’t do films and he doesn’t have a TV sitcom in the works. D’Angelo is simply a musician to his core. And that’s enough. For reasons that have clearly not always been under his control, D’Angelo’s entire career suggests an alternate narrative to the need for speed and immediacy and high visibility that is pop culture in the age of the Internet. Nope, D’Angelo just does his own thang.

THEO PARRISH – Crack Magazine Interview

Posted on February 27, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

We thought we’d start by talking about how where you grew up affects the music you make.

For me it’s really elementary. Any person is going to be influenced by where they came from and the trajectory of their experience here on planet Earth. It’s an always-shifting thing. I wouldn’t say mine is very remarkable. Pretty average life for a black guy coming up in the ‘80s; except that, in the States, any African American dude who isn’t hooked on drugs or in jail or is taking care of his kids was like an … ancient relic [laughs]. So that’s the ‘remarkable’ part – everything else was pretty standard.

You attended Kansas City Art Institute. How has that experience affected your music?

Well I look at it all as the same thing. When you do anything creative, you hone in on what those [products’] particular properties are. Other than the materials you use and the mastery of specific materials, you’re essentially talking about very similar things. When you’re dealing with 3D work, you’re dealing with volume, height and density. With sound, you’re dealing with almost the same things except you’re dealing with a time element too.

That might lead us onto how the music press often like to describe your ‘sound’…

The music press … I’m going to be very candid here. Aside from four or five places, I’d say the music press is suffering; it almost doesn’t exist. And I think that largely comes down to there being an assault on the creative gifts, writing being one of them. Now, here’s my bug with that: with the advent of technology, everyone has the ‘right’ to have a blog. That’s effectively cheapened writing in and of itself, across the board. So you’ll have a situation where there’ll be a popular perception about an artist, or subject or something, and as opposed to asking that artist about something directly, there’ll be a referential point offered based on that popular perception, and then all the answers the artist could give will be framed in the question; they’d have to refer to the journalist’s point of view. That typical stance is something that needs to dissipate, and I think that the mere fact that this is appearing in print really says a lot [laughs].

I’m very, very hard on anyone claiming to be a music journalist. One of the cardinal sins of interviews is when they start the statement with “you”. That puts a guy like me in a place where I’m gonna doubt the beginning of each of those statements, because I don’t believe, or rather, I don’t have proof that their point of view is the ‘ultimate’ point of view. So the best thing to do is throw out a subject, and I could go in. But you were saying: “with music journalists, you’re often referred to as …”?

… having a ‘raw sound’.

Right, I’ve heard that over and over again. I could cite a bunch of songs where I’m not raw, a bunch where I am raw. Music moves in such a way you can’t really talk about an artist using one set of adjectives, because that would mean you’ve listened to all of their works; that would mean you’d come to a consensus about what that artist’s work does. But the whole point of an artist is that they are who they are, and that’s separate from their body of work; their body of work is transcendent and speaks to each individual a little bit differently. So I would challenge that tendency. Although “Theo Parrish has a raw sound” may be said, I don’t think that describes me — or anyone else — very accurately. If they have a limited scope then I’m sure they could come up with that, but I’ve been called ‘raw’, I’ve been called ‘complex’, I’ve been called ‘mean’, I’ve been called ‘nice’, y’know … I think this labelling happens because everyone and their mama has access to a million and one adjectives.

You’re booked to play a few dates in the UK, including Eastern Electrics. How do you find the transition of going from smaller venues to bigger ones like EE?

It really doesn’t work in terms of ‘the venue’; there’s about six or seven different elements that depend on whether there’s a ‘shift’. The biggest thing is the sound, the attention to detail. The second biggest is the attitude of the people: whether or not they’re there to ‘show up’; to have a party; to see a show; what percentage [of each] that is; what time of night it is; how much they paid to get in; was it difficult to get in; was there rain; was there something going in the political structure of things; how’s the economy … all these different things play into how a crowd behaves and how I react to the crowd, but all of it’s intuitive. All of it has to do with the moment.

Do you have anywhere in London where you like to buy vinyl while you’re on tour?

Ah man, yes. There’s no favourite, I try to go to as many and as often as possible. I go anywhere from Honest Jons, to If Music, Phonica, Souljazz to Black Market … any place they sell records I’ll pop my head. HMV even — if I can’t find what I’m looking for on vinyl, I’ll go search it out on CD if it’s something that cold …

Did you know HMV’s going into administration? They might shut down.

What?! Oh. Hey man, they should have never fucked with iTunes! [laughs] That’s what happens! I think that’s the biggest thing that’s under assault right now, the fact that people, young people — not all young people, but, like, 12 year olds — have abandoned the idea of collecting anything. Everything’s transient. The only thing that’s valuable is their collection of files. I’m of the generation where if you had something you took care of it. There was responsibility. And responsibility informed your collection, and your collecting of things, and those things would inform your life and give you definition. There’s a whole mentality change going on that I think is more significant than the whole ‘digital vs analogue’ thing; it’s really about the mentality of it.

Vinyl sales have been increasing for the past few years or so. Do you think that people are valuing or appreciating music more these days? Or is it just a trend?

I don’t know what it means for the people at home, but I do know that there seems to be more of an appreciation for it than, let’s say, over the past five years than ten years ago, when people were saying “oh, vinyl’s dead, blah blah blah”, wearing t-shirts and all that bullshit. But people come back to the centre. I don’t know how many DJs out there are mad they let go of their records because they thought they’d show up and not be able to play gigs any more. And then I don’t know how many DJs there are right now who won’t bring their records out because they’re feeling like they’re too fucking precious. Are you selector or a collector? I think it’s more to do with how people are experiencing the music. Are they really sitting down and listening to it, I mean, really listening to it? Are they demanding that when they go hear an artist, or a DJ, or a musician, that they do more than just the average? What makes them unique? What makes them worth your time – not your money – but worth your time to go check out? Are they really bringing more than what you could experience on iTunes?

The music is telling a story. Those pieces of vinyl, they signify effort. And the same with the written word. Art. All arts. If it’s existing in the physical universe, it seems as if you care. That used to not be the case. I remember that if you did something in the physical universe, that wasn’t enough to validate it being ‘art’. It had to meet a qualitative standard. But now, now that technology has cheapened the creative gifts that mankind has been endowed with, we have to give it value just because it exists in the three dimensional world. And that’s a very strange place to be. That kind of dumbs down things. It’s like, “Okay, he put it on record –” “Well, at least he put it on record”. At a certain point, just because you put it on record didn’t mean shit. It had to be good. Now if it’s just on record it at least makes it from a ‘D’ to a ‘C’ [laughs].

About that ‘collector vs selector’ comment: physical copies of your music can fetch extremely high prices on the second hand market, and it seems like some people buy your music only to sell it on.

It’s starting to become like comic book collecting or something. The point is being totally missed. Yeah, OK, I like the idea that something’s rare and ‘unobtainable’, and that’s all fine and good and all that shit. But I’m not making this music for the records to sit on the shelf; they’re meant to be heard and shared with other people, they’re meant to be danced to, to be played so much they get worn out and you gotta buy another copy; that’s why I re-press! [laughs]

I’m hoping people will be saying, “Alright, that’s enough, mine is all beat up, I gotta get another”, or they give it to somebody cause they know they will appreciate it. It needs to be in currency, it need to be in motion. And that’s independent music. We know what commercial music is; we know what three note ringtone music is. Haven’t we done enough damage to our ears with that stuff? I’ve had enough of it. I’m ready to start hearing new sounds. I’m ready to hear an emotional investment in music – and that’s all musics.

That’s the problem with dance music. It’s become so easy to make that it’s become cool to make something that has no soul in it. No soul. And I don’t mean a vocal. I don’t mean ‘soul’ in terms of the genrefied idea of what ‘soul’ is supposed to be; what I mean is someone caring about what they’re putting down. Be it instrumental, ambient, whatever – it should be an honest reflection of the human condition. But there’s a tendency to make everything slick and pristine and take our human part out of it. That’s because dance music has been put in places that it really didn’t start from.

This was rebel music to begin with. It’s gone from basements in the South Side [of Chicago], full of struggle, with gunshots outside, to … Starbucks! [laughs] That means that somewhere along the way the message got missed, it got co-opted. But that’s part of the beauty of it — it’s the most recognisable sound out there. Anyone on the planet can relate to it. The problem is that not everyone knows where it came from – or cares. And being a person that cares, I have to accept that there’s plenty of people that just don’t care; they getting in and they getting on it. And I’m upset. But if someone comes tapping on my shoulder after an endorsement for something that’s half-baked they’re gonna get an honest opinion. They may not like it, because that’s something that’s also scary today: everybody’s scared to critique everybody’s shit. I love it. Tell me my shit is garbage, I’ll go back and do it again and do something better.

It’s a weird time for artists because everybody’s afraid to offend one another. No. We can’t be afraid. We gotta be stronger than that, and realise the art itself is bigger than the egos that make it. Never mind my personality; it’s not that interesting. What I’m hoping is the most interesting thing is what’s being recorded and what’s being played.

Last May you played on London-based radio station NTS. Your name started trending on Twitter, so people who might’ve never heard you saw your name pop up on their computer screens. How do you feel about the way we’re engaging with social media?

I can’t give technology that much credit. It’s based on the music. It’s based on the decision for NTS to exist; the decision for people to find that avenue that they’re presenting relevant. What they do afterwards, how they communicate about it, is different. The point is that all those people checked it out at that moment. Now if, after checking it out, they then told other people to check it out, that’s cool, but that’s still a little bit artificial. The technology that man is gonna be armed with to communicate with other men is always gonna amplify and circulate and make things happen a lot quicker.

I would say that it still comes down to the individuals who know what’s there, and care about it enough to listen. Social media and technology is rarely the problem with man. It’s the laziness of the men, and the women; it’s us, mankind, what we do. How we deal with what we’re given and what we create and how we (supposedly) make our lives easier, and then it ends up biting us in the ass because … well, social media may be great, but I can’t stand it when I’m playing a set and somebody wants to hold up their phone to try to communicate with me – that’s the other side of social media. There’s something about instantaneous communication that means we’re missing out on our lives.

I dare everyone, for a whole week, to turn their phone off. I dare them. I doubt anyone could do that. And that’s where social media makes you addicted to the devices. You’re not addicted to going out and hanging with your friends anymore, you’re addicted to the information you get from hanging out with them. What happens is you miss the whole experience of your life. Pretty soon, humans are just gonna be two big-ass thumbs and a brain.

What about people who use it for professional reasons, music journalists for example?

Even for professional reasons … who’s out of a job now? PR people. It used to be somebody’s job, who knew who to talk to, and why, and you could pay them to do so, and you could get tangible results. Social media just cut out the middle man. It made everyone a PR person and now it’s just a sea of mess. But you know, these are the signs of the times. This is something we have to live through, and we’ll see more benefits from it, we’ll see more crazy shit … who knows what’s gonna happen.

Words: Robert Bates

Photo: Violette Esmerald

DADDY KEV (Low End Theory) – RBQMA Interview

Posted on February 27, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

None has captured the zeitgeist of the “beat scene” better than Low End Theory. A staple of the Los Angeles club scene since late 2006, this Wednesday night party has created a lively conversation between various strains of the city’s leftfield hip hop and dance music, a fertile ground that has helped launch the careers of artists like Flying Lotus, The Gaslamp Killer, Lazer Sword and Tokimonsta. Below, journalist and hip hop connoisseur Laurent Fintoni speaks to the Low End ringleader Daddy Kev about the life of the party.

Low End Theory was founded by Daddy Kev, a promoter, label owner and hip hop producer for the likes of Busdriver and Awol One; indeed, all involved – from the DJs to the sound man – have deep resumes. edIT, one of the original DJ residents, was involved with Kev in the Konkrete Jungle parties of the late ’90s and is a member of The Glitch Mob; he was later replaced by D-Styles, one of the best scratch DJs on the planet. Other residents include The Gaslamp Killer, rapper Nocando and Nobody – a fixture of LA’s leftfield beats arena with releases on Ubiquity and Mush and a long-running radio show for “future roots” station Dublab.

In the six years since it began Low End Theory has become an almost necessary stepping-stone for a new generation of producers from Los Angeles, as well as a required stop for international DJ guests, both underground and mainstream.

As the artists around LET continue to grow in stature around the world, Daddy Kev has focused his sights on ensuring that the party continues to innovate locally. In addition to his LET responsibilities, he also runs Alpha Pup and a studio where he engineers and masters records for local labels and artists. Laurent Fintoni recently spoke with Kev about his own history, the night’s evolution and what happens when your club night is at “the end of its innocence.”

The central theme [for a book I’m working on] is the idea that hip hop production and beats have evolved along certain – often instrumental –lines since the ’80s and how this manifested itself came to a height between 2000 and 2010. I thought the best place to start would be with your views on this idea.

Sometimes when people talk to me about LET (Low End Theory), my easiest analogy is to say Mo’ Wax Part Two. That’s what it kind of is in my mind. I think people like DJ Shadow, DJ Krush and all that early Headz stuff really is an essential part of our vocabulary, perhaps the most essential. I think it’s important to identify the key influences in a movement, and without Endtroducing it’s arguable whether or not the beat scene would have ever come to fruition.

Shadow, Krush, Attica Blues and the Mo’ Wax visual and sonic aesthetic has been a point of inspiration, of course, but for people like D-Styles, Elvin [AKA Nobody] and myself, our memory goes back further to the Egyptian Lover era. The early ’80s LA electro stuff, the 808 stuff. It’s arguable as to whether or not that is some of the first instrumental hip hop.

Without Endtroducing it’s arguable whether or not the beat scene would have ever come to fruition.

When I think of what we do DJ-wise at LET, I also see parallels going all the way back to the origins of hip hop and the mindset of DJs like Afrika Bambaataa and Kool Herc. Their idea that you could use a pair of turntables and a mixer to bridge all these different forms of music, to take out parts of it and re-contextualise it is definitely the spirit in which we operate at LET.

In the first year of the club, before the LA scene became what it is today, we were playing a healthy diet of Dabrye, Shadow, Dilla, and a lot of old Mo’ Wax and Ninja Tune. To me, the DJ Food records are some of the most essential part of this vocabulary. I agree with the idea that this instrumental movement has been evolving for the last three decades. It’s interesting how the term “instrumental hip hop” – I think that encapsulates it best – is the thread that ties it all together.

You were involved in Konkrete Jungle in LA. Was that one of the first drum ‘n’ bass parties in the city?

It wasn’t the first, but we were on it pretty early for LA standards. We started it in 1999 and then ended in 2001. It was definitely a major education for me, doing a weekly club and it being relatively successful in that it kept going and we were booking talent through agents and trying to get people from overseas to come through. It was definitely a very important part of my experience to be able to then go on and do Low End Theory.

You also had involvement in the LA underground hip hop scene right?

At that point we had Celestial going, which was a label I co-founded and ran. I was also producing a lot back then too. My first record was with an MC named Phoenix Orion, who was actually from New York but was living in LA. It was a cool first record to produce because I got to experience the entire process, from the recording and mixing to the actual release and marketing. We started with 1,000 vinyls and sold them out in 45 days. Then we pressed up CDs and ended up selling 10,000 of them. It transformed Celestial into a bona fide indie label. I started the label with Hive and he’d known Omid and it was through them, and then MC Supernatural, that I got hooked up with Freestyle Fellowship. I spent a lot of time with those guys – Abstract Rude, Living Legends, Shape Shifters and other similar artists – in the late ’90s.

Popular artists are either on the express elevator up, or on the one going down.

That’s also how I ended up meeting D-Styles. I was already a fan of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz. I’d been a DJ for years and, like most scratch nerds, I thought ISP were the ultimate shit. He hit me up out of the blue saying that he dug what we were doing with Celestial, which was a huge honour. He then asked me to mix the first single from his debut album, the Clifford’s Mustache 12” and then all of Phantazmagorea. At that point Dave and I were were becoming close friends. It’s also during this period that I worked on Nobody’s first record, Soulmates.

The one Ubiquity released?

Yes. It’s funny because we hooked up for that in 1999 or 2000. I recorded for him and then we lost touch; not fully, but we didn’t really hang out a whole lot until exactly six years later, in the summer of 2006. Strangely enough it was that process of Elvin and I starting to hang out regularly which kinda sowed the seeds of things to come.

The reason we came back together is because I was mixing Busdriver’s Roadkillovercoat album. Elvin had produced two-thirds of it, and because of how long the mixing process takes, we were spending a lot of time together. One weekend I ended up hitching a ride to San Francisco with Gaslamp Killer and Nobody for a gig. The three of us had an immediate natural chemistry. That one van ride, with us talking and laughing about music, ended up forming the foundation for the Low End Theory resident lineup.

Would you then say all this work with Celestial, scratching and so on, influenced both Alpha Pup and Low End Theory?

Absolutely. In a way, it’s like my second act right now. Konkrete Jungle, Celestial and the underground hip hop scene was like my first act. My second act has been LET, Alpha Pup and the beat scene. I feel lucky. I’ve had a second go at this. In the independent music world it’s tough. I’ve know a lot of people I came up with in the mid- to late ’90s who aren’t doing music anymore.

Did you ever see the links between the ’90s drum ‘n’ bass scene and what was happening within hip hop?

Absolutely. We were the ones who were the most about it in a sense. We were trying to illustrate the connection between hip hop and drum ‘n’ bass. Arguably we were the only drum ‘n’ bass guys working with real hip hop MCs, people like Freestyle Fellowship and Supernatural. We were really trying to do songs that had hip hop style arrangements but with a drum ‘n’ bass tempo, and with drum ‘n’ bass’s sonic aesthetic. It was interesting. One thing I treasure about my drum ‘n’ bass education is that I was able to witness the rise, plateau and subsequent fall of an entire genre, and know some of the players too.

I know we’ve been riding a high wave, and I know that we’re closer to the end now than we were before.

I’m an acute observer of human psychology. I got to know some of the biggest personalities within the drum ‘n’ bass and underground hip hop scenes back then, witness how they handled certain situations or… maybe I should say mishandled them. It didn’t really know how to sustain itself and I think that’s the hard thing about the music business. Popular artists are either on the express elevator up, or on the one going down. They have the experience of one and then the other and that’s it. They don’t know how to transition once their cultural relevance has peaked.

I don’t think that’s just business either. The stereotypical artist personality and ego play a big role. It’s something I’ve been very cognizant of, and this time around I’m trying to do my best to make this thing sustainable as long as possible by giving the best advice I can to all of the people who want it.

I’ve no illusions about the cyclical nature of music. I know we’ve been riding a high wave, and I know that we’re closer to the end now than we were before. I talk to many of the artists I work with about it, about their transition to becoming a legacy artist. What that means, how that’s different today. The things you need to do it gracefully, and to do it intelligently, so that they can still be in the music business for another 20 years.

I feel 2011 was our peak, with press, people’s curiosity. Coming just a year after my perception of the peak it’s a tough time because guys are getting used to the fact that our brightest days are behind us now, and it’s a tough one to swallow. I look at it more like we have to continue to be innovative with what we’re doing, stay competitive with the bookings. As long as that’s in place we can still call it a business and do our thing. I don’t think our spirit needs to be directly in line with what the press thinks of us.

2006 feels like a key year in terms of events that helped propel this idea of a beat scene forward and cement its culture, with the influence of Myspace as well as Dilla’s passing, Flying Lotus’ first release and LET beginning. Did you ever feel that tipping point?

Yes. When Flying Lotus signed to Warp that was a major step forward too. I felt that if Warp was taking this budding scene seriously, then that reinforced to me that I wasn’t fucking crazy and that we had something significant going on. It gave me confidence that what we were doing was important, that it mattered and that we should keep on.

Another thing about LET that I don’t think gets mentioned enough, or a story that I don’t see often told, is that the artists who came out of there really developed these performance personas with controllers and laptops. They figured out how to emote with it.

How do you keep LET relevant after six years?

It’s hard. There’ve been several changes in the club, the aesthetic, our approach. External factors. The first time Thom Yorke played was the definitive “before and after” moment. Even though it was 2011 and we’d made plenty of impact by that point, it just changed people’s perception of the club permanently. For better and for worse. I love the fact more people were able to learn about the club, know more about it, because at the end of the day I’m trying to make this music connect with as many people as possible. That’s definitely the goal without selling it out or doing something bad aesthetically.

People have come to expect these miracle shows on a regular, if not weekly, basis.

That said, it definitely… it was kind of like the end of our innocence. We were blown up now. For someone who’s been operating from an “underground” aesthetic for as many years as I have, there’s something about that which honestly troubles me. I’ve tried my best to deal with it, internalize it, but that was a hard one to get past.

To me, the peak of our relevance was getting everything to that point where Thom Yorke would want to come down and see us and be a part of it. Since then it’s not been easy because the bar has been set impossibly high and people have come to expect these miracle shows on a regular, if not weekly, basis, which we still deliver pretty solidly. Just last fall we did secret shows from DJ Shadow, Flying Lotus and Amon Tobin all in the space of one month.

For me, the key – where my head and heart have been – has never been about one scene or one aesthetic. It’s always been about the city of Los Angeles. I feel that if my head is right about that – and we’re just trying to foster new talent and give new talent in this city a platform to do their thing and grow and be developed – then our relevance stays right where it is. There are people who credit us for being there during the rise of Odd Future, which happened after Cosmogramma. That said, booking Odd Future wasn’t about looking for the next Flying Lotus or the next beat producer. It was about being in tune with what’s happening on the streets of this city, what young people are interested in, and championing that very confidently. I think that’s a big part of staying relevant. I, of course, can’t speak for everyone but that is where my mind is at. I’m born and raised here and I’ve had had to learn how to articulate it, how to explain it to myself.

In the moment you never think about it.

When you’re busy, you’re just handling it and juggling. It’s hard to have the best perspective on it. I just feel that if the city is where I’m getting my inspiration from, versus it being a whim or something that people aren’t going to care about in five or ten years, then that’s a better position to be in.

Let’s face it: fan bases grow up. They get old, they get responsibilities and all of a sudden music isn’t as important to them as it once was. People get stuck. I’ve realized this now having spanned different scenes and eras. There’s a whole section of my fan base who have zero interest in LET, the beat scene, Alpha Pup or anything else I do now. All they want me to do is to make more Awol records. I meet these people regularly. So it’s funny to me how we have zero control over people’s music consumption habits. We’ve just got to put it out there and watch our consumers grow and get old to a certain degree. It’s a blessing for me to have seen it from these different angles.

To go back to your original question about relevancy, I think you have to offer an alternative. And that’s how I will continue my path, by recognizing what all these other people are on and when everyone turns right, turning left.

Talking with other people I came to understand that Sam XL’s Pure Filth sound system has played a part in bringing sound system aesthetics and an understanding of frequencies to Low End Theory, and thus to the LA beat scene. I was wondering if you could explain your take on the story?

Sam has one of the best sound systems in the city. He has an aesthetic and delivers it – and it’s a really underground, party-minded aesthetic, which also has been important to the city. It’s been tough, though, because doing parties like that is a roll of the dice here. Sam is an LA institution too. He’s worked and done different things for almost as long as I have. He definitely was the only person doing dubstep parties in LA back then that bore any resemblance to what was happening in the UK.

As for the influence on the sound, I think that’s one of those things that begs the question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” The LA beat scene as it stood before LET, the events that were a part of it – Sketchbook, the ArtDontSleep parties – all suffered from crap sound systems. The whole era was marked by that. So when we started LET I made sure we had a TurboSound rig from the very first night. It was like the whole scene went from black-and-white to Technicolor overnight. Then the second week of LET Flying Lotus played, opening up for Awol I think it was. I remember the look on Steve’s face that night. He’d never played on a system like that before. The subs were out of control and he was tripping off it. To him it was the shit. I know that this idea stuck, and you take that one feeling and multiply it for every kid that played the club.

Where do you see this whole movement going to next? I’ve noticed a return of the MC, so to speak. The ’00s were marked by a distinct sense that the MC was shunned – voluntarily or not – and I feel that the ’10s are already showing signs that the MC-plus-producer is coming back, though with new rules.

I agree that there’s a return to that MC-and-producer combo again. I see more of it. Literally in front of me too, such as Flying Lotus taking a bigger interest in rap music. It definitely shows that things are coming back in fashion. I don’t think I’d call it the next phase though. To me, the rap thing never went away. These producers are now coming around to it a bit more perhaps, but I think the beat scene became popular because the audience were seemingly bored by rap music. Rap music in the last decade was getting stale, at least in the mainstream. At the same time you look at the rise of someone like Kendrick Lamar and his aesthetic is more indie than major label – that shows where a lot of people’s heads are at. I think Odd Future also embody this idea of DIY, being able to rise fast without a whole lot of help… Visible help at least.

I doubt I’ll be this close to something like this ever again in my lifetime.

I don’t think that’s where the beat scene is going. If anything, what we’re trying to do for the next few years is put out a lot more really interesting, challenging instrumental records. There’s of course still rap, like The Underachievers album coming on Brainfeeder, but at the same time Thundercat has nearly finished his new album. Nosaj has a new record with no rap on it. What I’m trying to say is that the instrumental aesthetic is not going away anytime soon.

From a business point of view, I believe that there’s one main commodity the music business is based on and that’s new talent. I feel that with genres and aesthetics, those can be revisited so long as you’re doing it with new talent. It’s arguable that this is exactly what the beat scene is, has been and will continue to be.

I feel like we’re fortunate here to have had these really amazing artists come together from the same town with a similar focal point. It’s definitely uncanny. I doubt I’ll be this close to something like this ever again in my lifetime. To witness it and to see the talent – the raw talent so concentrated – it’s definitely been a moment in time I feel.

Anything you want to add?

Sometimes in a genre, someone makes an album that sets the bar so high it kills the genre. I think arguably Endtroducing almost did that to the Mo’ Wax scene. It was all this awesome potential being shown and the album dropped and ain’t nothing coming out that’s going to fuck with that for years. To me, it was borderline destructive, despite being glorious. Nothing else compared. I couldn’t listen to Herbaliser the same way. And I don’t mean to be specific.

I want to say D’s album did the same thing to scratch music. It was just like, “Where do we go from here?” He pulled out every stop, did every tempo, pulled out every trick. Who’s going to scratch “fresh” better than that guy?

One thing I’ve had to come to terms with is that most indie artists have one good idea, literally, and that’s usually their first album. Everything they do after that is an attempt to get back to that point. I won’t say it’s sad. It’s just something I’ve recognized over the years. From a business standpoint you have to deal with it too. But when you have an artist who can do the opposite and show he has more than one idea, maybe five, and they’re all album-length, that to me is a huge differentiator.

One thing I’ve had to come to terms with is that most indie artists have one good idea, literally.

One thing I think I’ve tried to do differently release-wise in this scene is make this an album-oriented thing. We still drop singles and EPs, but not very often, and seldom without it being linked to an album that’s coming. And that is a philosophical difference that separates the beat scene from pretty much the rest of the world of electronic music; definitely dubstep and drum ‘n’ bass and all that stuff, EDM, whatever. We’re more about the long thoughts versus the sound bites, which is ironic given the disposable nature of media these days.

What that shows you, though, is that there is still a significant part of the population who aren’t ADD, that would rather have something bigger to sink their teeth into versus something that lasts 15 seconds, which is the attention span of a lot of people these days you know. It is what it is. If anything, we offer an alternative.

BANG THE PAR T.V. Ep.02 – MUSCLE & HEAT

Posted on February 5, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Muscle and Heat Poster Body Type Option 2

20 BEST BROKEN BEAT RECORDS

Posted on January 23, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

In the late 90s a movement began in West London that was to inspire a new direction in dance music.

Though this movement was never acknowledged in the mainstream music press, never had a crossover chart single, and never truly transcended its community roots, there was a unique alchemy at work – a fertile moment in UK music where a group of friends began to experiment with new cadences, rhythms and distilled influences, meticulously crafting a new genre.

Though “Broken Beat” was never a tagline that the producers anticipated, and one that they often publicly resisted, those two words would come to represent the scattered rhythms, rolling bass-lines and soaring changes that were inherent to this new music. Prior to the mid-2000s, only one tiny divider in Soho’s Sounds of The Universe store, marked “West London”, and one primitive website, that of Goya Music Distribution, were the sum total retail outlets of this sound. The music was heard only at a club night called Co-Op, originally based at the Velvet Rooms, and in later years, at Plastic People, and like many cultures rooted in the Jamaican soundsystem tradition, what was heard there differed enormously from what was released – dub-plates, alternative versions, beat experiments, all united in their emphasis on heavy bass, staccato drum machine rhythms and soulful feelings. Walking into Co-Op for the first time felt like experiencing a glimpse of the future – hand-held laser pens swooped over a frenetic dance-floor, illuminating clouds of collie smoke like sniper sights scouting a post-apocalyptic battlefield, whilst a toy dub siren rang out from the booth, and IG Culture’s deep Jamaican accent punctuated the pounding rhythms – “it’s a Co-Op thing, it’s Co-Operation – if you ain’t here to dance you can go home now.”

Many of the producers who created Broken were dance music veterans, who worked hard to keep the focus on the Co-Op club, keep the music played there ever-evolving, and collectively resist any temptation to fall into a comfortable template. In this sense there was a manifesto about Broken Beat which was specifically informed by past experiences. A sizeable number came from an ex-Reinforced records background – the legendarily aloof jungle and d’n’b label run by 4Hero’s Dego and Marc Mac (pictured above) – such as Seiji, Marc “G” Force, Domu and Colin Lindo. Others came from a house music background, like Phil Asher of Restless Soul, Orin ‘Afronaught’ Walters or Darren ‘Daz I Kue’ Benjamin. One central element of the sound was Kaidi Tatham’s keyboard playing, a virtuoso jazz-funk musician who had been part of The Herbaliser in the mid-90s.

UK soul was represented in the contributions of Demus from the Young Disciples and IG Culture, whose career arc had taken in early UK hip-hop and projects for the likes of Island records. Mark De Clive Lowe, Alex Phountzi and Dave ‘Zed Bias’ Jones also played major roles and the best known outfit was doubtlessly Bugz In The Attic, a cooperative production “super group”, whose signing to V2 was about as close as Broken Beat ever came to cracking the mainstream. Beyond this the network extended worldwide, resonating in releases on a fledgling Rush Hour distribution in Amsterdam, the work of Italy’s Volcov, Germany’s Jazzanova, and Inverse Cinematics (now known as Motor City Drum Ensemble), Japan’s Jazzy Sport records and more.

Broken Beat was as diverse as its parentage would suggest – the arrangements, beats and tempos could vary drastically between releases. With this in mind it’s hardly surprising that many people couldn’t work out what Broken Beat actually was – or is – until the mid 2000s when a characteristic groove eventually emerged. The mindset and the culture was eclectic from the outset, it was vibrant, afro-futuristic dance music for 21st century b-boys and girls. Its roots were in the scientific soul of the Mizell brothers, the afro beat rhythms of Tony Allen and Fela Kuti, the electro funk and boogie of the mid 80s, the spiritual jazz of Sun Ra and Norman Connors, the soulful techno of Juan Atkins and Derrick May. But the execution and production was grounded in MPCs, SP1200s, the hand-me-down samplers of the hip hop and jungle golden eras, which gave the drums a raw, choppy rhythmic feel – hence the “Broken” tag. Though Goya Music Distribution sadly shut down in 2007, taking down many of the better labels with it, it certainly feels like some of this tradition – in particular the stripped down and syncopated drum sounds, and eclectic approach to fusing genres – continues to live on today in the sound of UK funky.

01: COLD MISSION
‘DRUG STORE RUDE BWOY’ (NU-ERA REMIX)
(REINFORCED 12″, 1996)

4hero aka Dego and Marc Mac have laid the foundations of so many important genres that it almost boggles the mind. Nu-Era was a 4hero alias, later known as Marc Mac’s solo pseudonym, most associated with the beautiful and rare broken techno LP Beyond Gravity. On the flipside of this Cold Mission 12”, released at the height of dnb’s popularity, Nu-Era take an odd left turn and slow down the driving groove, syncopating and stuttering the rhythm back to front, early and late. It may seem trivial in 2010 but this is how new directions are formed – many subsequent releases on Reinforced by the likes of Nubian Mindz and Seiji and G Force also dabbled in these same waters, setting the stage for the aesthetic of broken – an experimental, slower, more dancefloor-orientated cousin of jungle. It’s fair to say this remix was at least 10 years ahead of its time, a prototype for what was to come.

02: MISA NEGRA
SPIRITUAL VIBES
(PEOPLE 12″, 1998)

When this dropped in September 1998 it’s doubtful that many stood up and took notice. ‘Spiritual Vibes’ is a humble slice of what the B-side describes as ‘Afro Boogie House’, presumably because no better descriptive genre terms have been coined at this point in time. Misa Negra were Daz-I-Kue on production, and Kaidi Tatham on the keys, whilst a remix dub by Orin “Afronaught” Walters fills up the A-side. Whilst by no means as sophisticated as their later work as a group, Spiritual Vibes sets the tone for their Bugz In The Attic collaborations to come. There’s an inherent musicality about this 12”, and a quirkiness in the rhythms – the Afronaught dub starts half time and doubles over on itself. Bell trees, shells and shakers abound, reminiscent of spiritual jazz classics like Norman Connors’ Dark Of Light, whilst Kaidi’s voice echoes over the beats, whispering “Spiritual.. Vibes..” It’s an off-the-wall blend but it works – deeply reflective, brooding, partly melancholic, but heavy as lead and custom built for a system. The eccentric, almost childlike approach with which influences are mixed and blended here, is the very embodiment of what broken stood for in its infancy.

03: NEON PHUSION
THE FUTURE AIN’T THE SAME (AS IT USED 2 B)
(LAWS OF MOTION LP, 1999)

Neon Phusion are Alex Phountzi, Kaidi Tatham and Orin Walters. ‘The Future..’ is an early broken album with a live mood, doubtlessly the result of many blazed jam sessions. It’s a great example of the melting pot of the time, the optimism of the music, the fall out of drum and bass. You can liken the vibe to jungle at the end of its jazzy period – the feel is blissed out, heavily influenced by the space funk of the 70s but still rooted in driving percussion. ‘Timecode’ is an early take of Orin’s ‘Transcend Me’ with a Headhunters theme to it, whilst ‘Kulu Macu’ has an Afro-Brazilian touch, and raw beats come in the form of ‘Hot Ice’. Annoyingly, the dopest track – the title track ‘The Future Ain’t The Same (As It Used 2 Be)’ – is only ever found on the CD version, along with some other killer bonus material. In that form it’s a particularly quality listen a decade later.

04: VARIOUS ARTISTS
COOPERATION VOL. 1
(COOPERATION RECORDINGS 2X12″, 2000)

This is an excellent compilation of tracks from the scene at the time, with an number of exclusive beats on it. What’s striking about this is how diverse it is – from soft Brazilian lullabies, fusion licks, to harder broken, house and techno, as though no manifesto has been yet been formed. Here some of the finest of the era are nicely collected, including the likes of Seiji and G Force’s ‘Chase The Ace’, Phil Asher’s ‘Phoojun’ and Neon Phusion’s ‘Timeless Motion’, one of the absolute best tracks of the genre ever, worth also tracking down on a separate Laws Of Motion 12″. Raw drum breaks, swirling synths and a quality which some would now call “wonky” abounds. There is also the sound of imagination and cooperation defying the limitations of bedroom studios.

05: VIKTER DUPLAIX
‘MANHOOD’
(GROOVE ATTACK 12″, 2000)“I want to know, what you taste like / Taste like in the dark” croons Vikter Duplaix over this classic disjointed rhythm. Though Vikter is a soul singer from Philadelphia, his work was first embraced and played to death by the West London movement, including Critical Point’s ‘Messages’ on MAW records, ‘Sensuality’, and ‘Looking For Love’ (which had a Bugz In The Attic remix on the 12”, and became a latter day Co-Op anthem). The critic’s choice is still ‘Manhood’ though, the first single after ‘Messages’, which innovates from the first bar to the last, and still gets revival plays today, an edgy slice of hi-tech soul production with the innate catchiness that exemplified the scene at the time. The transposed Detroit chord that cycles through the changes, and the stop and start rhythm were oft-emulated but never surpassed, and the vocal, at once kinky, sexual and even a touch romantic, always got the bodies going on the floor. It’s also worth checking out the RIMA version on the follow up remix 12”, much overlooked due to the intense popularity of the original, but still compelling and fresh today…

06: SON OF SCIENTIST
‘THEORY OF EVERYTHING’ / ‘ION STEEL’
(MAINSQUEEZE 12″, 2001)The Son Of Scientist is IG Culture, whose formidable and charismatic persona reigned over the proceedings at Co-Op. IG’s chops as a producer are rooted in years of experience behind the boards, which he puts to great effect on this excellent 12″. ‘Theory Of Everything’ is as the title suggests, a holistic approach to beatmaking – all sorts of perverted clicks and distortions rise over the beats on this record, along with the rich Prophet strings of 80s electro, as though thrown together, but then sculpted into place. There isn’t a satisfying way to describe what this fusion is, it has to be experienced, and sounds even madder now than then – but it still manages to remain funky despite its harshness. Flipside ‘Ion Stee’l is also ace, with a filthly garage bassline and an awkward time signature. You can feel IG’s sense of humour in this mess, as well as his love for crafting immaculate soundsystem bangers.

07: KUDU
‘SPACE’ / ‘TRANZIT’
(BITASWEET 10″, 2001)Quitely revived by Kode 9 on a mixtape I heard somewhere last year, ‘Space’ by Kudu is nothing if not a disturbing listen. The ascending synth lines creep up the spine, and many of them have a vocal quality to them, as though the circuits are trying to communicate. This was the work of Mark De Clive Lowe, Domu and Seiji in collaboration, and is a good example of the freaky psychedelic quality that many bruk tunes have. The drums skip and stutter satisfyingly, but the funk is somehow retained, despite the artificial sound textures and machines at work.

08: DOMU
‘SAVE IT’
(2000 BLACK 12″, 2001)“I was 23 when it came out” Domu says of ‘Save It’, “And I remember feeling on top of the world every time it was played”. ‘Save It’ was not Dom’s first release, but it was certainly the tune that catapulted him into successful years of international touring, remixing and producing at the height of his career. “There’s always something you’re giving away,” sings Face, “So save it!” – leading us to assume the lyrics are about the popular attitude in the scene of being aloof and shutting your gob, rather like the message of Seiji’s ‘Loose Lips’. This is Domu at his most accessible – smooth Rhodes changes and a hooky ARP Odyssey bassline make this track an instant earworm inducer. One thing that is innovative about the record is the “early” clap, which gives the groove an awkward anticipatory feel, a pattern that was much imitated but rarely matched in broken’s later years.

09: AFRONAUGHT
‘TRANSCEND ME’
(APOLLO 12″, 2001)

If there is one broken beat anthem everyone can agree on, it’s ‘Transcend Me’ by Orin Walters. It’s a simple but effective blend – the Harvey Mason drum break from Weather Report’s classic Sweetnighter LP is sliced and diced into a million bits on an MPC3000 and re-sequenced to give the sensation that the drums are grooving in suspended animation, filled with infinite rhythmic variation. In the background, a filtered Kaidi Tatham rhodes part swells and burbles, meowing like a hungry cat that hasn’t been fed for days, until finally the song reaches a crescendo and Melissa Browne’s dreamy vocals glue the disparate elements together. At 7 minutes 55 seconds, ‘Transcend Me’ shows that Co-Op was not about the three-minute pop song – only there could something as astral, otherworldly, disorientating and spiritual as this become a seminal party tune.

10: DA ONE AWAY
‘TRASH DA JUNK’
(MAINSQUEEZE 12″, 2001)“We live in the funk / trash the junk / now what have we done”. It’s a simple hook line, but it was so effective in the way it works with the drum pattern. Like “Save It”, “Trash The Junk” is all about the anticipation in the groove, the snare seemingly skipping ahead of itself in a delightful way, whilst the melody, changes and vocal sporadically interrupt the drums at the start of the bar. “Trash” is odd, whimsical and experimental, it’s hypnotic in the way in which it loops and builds, until eventually Kaidi’s jazz changes emerge to lift our spirits, and the track erupts with analog synth colours. Another masterful Dego production, it’s well worth flipping this over to indulge in the more minimal and hard edged 808 dub on the flip, which still hits hard and fresh enough to contend with any “funky” dubplate today.

11: MARK FORCE
‘GYPO’ / ’40 DAYS’
(BITASWEET 12″, 2002)Mark “G” Force is perhaps one of the lesser known broken innovators – despite a large and varied discography that included progressive collaborations with Seiji in the Reinforced era, and numerous heavy dubplates during the noughties, he is still under-repped and underrated today. ‘Gypo’ is one of those tunes that many will recognise even if they don’t know the title. It’s an odd one that stops and starts, literally 2-step in that it has two parts to the groove – half garage bounce a la Maddslinky, half boogie a la Central Line, with a bassline that’s just nasty. And that’s about it – instant rewind at Co-Op as soon as the b-line dropped, and a crowd screaming for the heavy groove. As with many of these 12”s, the critics choice is on the flipside – ’40 Days’ is a beautiful slice of home-made boogie that wouldn’t sound out of place on the People’s Potential label if it came out tomorrow. The force has always been strong with Mark, and this still stands the test of time, totally relevant to the post-garage, post-dubstep scene of today.

12: SEIJI
‘LOOSE LIPS’ / ’3DOM’
(BITASWEET, 12″, 2002)Of all the tracks of the Goyamusic canon, ‘Loose Lips’ is perhaps the most well-known amongst casual listeners, and the one that crossed over to the widest audience. The heart of Loose Lips is a stripped down groove – a chopped drum break with Pierre Henry siren noises that echo away in the background, and in all honesty, not a whole lot else. The pattern in itself is noteworthy though – this was Seiji’s innovation, a double snare that emulates a Salsoul double clap at 130 bpm, a signature pattern often used in his work that followed. What makes the track so recognisable is Lyric L and her fast, high pitched voice rhyming with ease – “Loose lips, sink ships, flip scripts drama-tics” – repeated like a mantra for the length of the record. Easy to sing along with, or even shout along with, particularly if you’ve got a beer in your hand. The b-side ’3dom’ is the real favourite though – hard to describe exactly why it’s so good, I guess it must be the hooky 5 note melody that leads it along. When Eve and Benga’s ‘Me and My’ blew up last year, it felt like ‘Loose Lips’ had set the stage for it seven years before.

13: AGENT K
FEED THE CAT
(LAWS OF MOTION LP, 2002)Kaidi Tatham was the jazz virtuoso lynchpin in the Cooperation movement. Doubtlessly, most of the records listed here would not have existed if it wasn’t for Tatham, whose ability to improvise on countless instruments will leave you dumbfounded if experienced in the flesh. A masterful flautist, percussionist, keyboard player and more, it’s his signature changes, based on the styles of jazz greats like Herbie Hancock and Harry Whittaker, that take all the records he plays on to another level of harmony. Despite leading on countless sessions for his numerous friends and collaborators, Kaidi only received praise in his own name for a couple of anthems – the best known of which is ‘Betcha Did’, a heavily orchestrated work that sounds like the Mizell brothers playing at double their normal speed. On Feed The Cat, Kaidi finally got to helm his own album, and the results still sound compelling today – the title track, with its classic, richly textured UK boogie feel, pre-empted Dam-Funk’s revival of the genre by almost a decade. Elsewhere Kaidi fuses spiritual jazz, Brazilian rhythms and analog electronics, with such purity of intent and richness of execution that this surely will be a collector’s item in years to come.

14: 4HERO
‘HOLD IT DOWN’ (BUGZ IN THE ATTIC REMIX)
(TALKIN’ LOUD 12″, 2002)

This gem was where it all kicked off for Bugz In The Attic – a collaborative production outfit comprising Orin ‘Afronaught’ Walters, Paul ‘Seiji’ Dolby, Kaidi Tatham, Daz-I-Kue, Alex Phountzi, Cliff Scott, Mark Force, Matt Lord & Mikey Stirton. That’s a lot of folks crowded round one computer and one MIDI keyboard, and for those interested, no they did not all work on every track credited to that name. The ‘Hold It Down’ remix is the anthem that made them, however – as good as the 4hero original is, the remix takes the mood up a gear. It’s accessible enough to be pop, and has boogie at the very core of the beat, but the genius touch comes half way through, when the chords change and the lush vocals of Lady Alma overwhelm the mix. This 12” was very sought after at the time, due to multiple pressing delays, and even though it might be too rich and saccharine for today’s dancers, it’s a testament to a production team that were on fire in the studio, and such have been the recognized successors to Loose Ends and Soul II Soul in the UK soul canon.

15: NEPA ALLSTAR
‘THE WAY’
(SURPLUS 12″, 2001)

Tony Nwachukwu is another fringe character in the UK soul scene who was co-opted into the Co-Op movement, now better known as the founder of CDR/Burntprogress. Though perhaps not as core a member as the West London lads, Tony’s relationship with the scene dated back to his co-production of Attica Blues with Charlie Dark, and together they ran the successful Blueprint Sessions clubnight at Plastic People around the same time as Co-Op first opened its doors. ‘The Way’ is one of those one-offs that slotted in perfectly to the mood of 2001. Tony always favoured a more techno-orientated approach to production, and this record stutters along with a heavy mesh of analog bass and drum machines ticking away, whilst a chopped up sample of Brainstorm tells us “I can show u the way”. It’s the sophisticated engineering that makes this track, with the best bit being the jokey sample of a certain classic mobile ringtone in the breakdown.

16: COUSIN COCKROACH
‘THIS AIN’T TOM ‘N JERRY / ‘HANDS OFF DA CONTROLS’
(BITASWEET 12″, 2002)

The better broken tunes tend to fall into one of two groups – either they are richly layered, colourful, soulful, and steeped in the lush over-production language of boogie funk, or alternatively, just stripped down dubs which propel the dance through rippling sine wave bass and thudding kicks and snares. Cockroach falls firmly into the latter group, and of all the bass-heavy dubs, is probably the best. Produced by Dego, the name ‘This Ain’t Tom N’ Jerry’ pokes fun at the hardcore records he and Mark produced under that alias in the early 90s. Despite the in-joke, both sides of this sound like they were made with left over samples from that era, a rumour which is unsubstantiated with the author. There’s nothing to dislike here, just two sides of the baddest, most ear splitting stripped down bass and drum you can hear this side of King Tubby played at the wrong speed. The Jammy’s vocal sample says it best – “this one a badbwoy choon!”.

17: DALUNARTIKS
‘HIGHER’
(ARTHROB 12″, 1998)

Daz I Kue is the drum scientist behind many of the Bugz In The Attic tunes – Dalunartiks was a an early project with Alex Arnout which retained a raw hip hop feel, but at dancefloor tempo. ‘Higher’ has a B-boy quality, with Apache congas and horn stabs, whilst the drum groove is old-school but futuristic. The lush drop that follows the build is where it gets going – smooth Detroit pads meet gospel vocals to take it, literally, Higher. Essential because it blends a dusty crate quality with garage-style vocal chops and beats, and yet Daz’s signature afro funk is still all over it.

18: BLAKAI FEAT. BEMBE SEGUE
‘AFROSPACE’
(SCHTUM 12″, 2005)

The most recent record in this selection, and one of the last of the golden era of Goyamusic. Schtum was Mark Force’s label. Here he collaborates with Bembe Segue, one of the first ladies of Co-Op, who vocalled a vast number of the genre’s records. Bembe’s style is part Ursula Dudziak, part Tina Turner, ‘Afrospace’ a swansong to the Co-Op feeling. Her words “Something was missing from deep within, I’ll survive”, empower a groove that is reflective and fractured. The remix by BITA whizkid and technical specialist Matt Thylord finds a space between boogie and garage and hits harder. A latter day classic.

19: QUANGO
‘LET GROOVE COME’ (CO-OP MIX / CO-OP DUB)
(PEOPLE 12″, 2002)

Produced by IG Culture and featuring Eska Mtungwazi, one of the finest jazz singers to emerge from the broken beat scene [today she works mainly with Matthew Herbert]. Eska and IG collaborated frequently on his New Sector Movements project and solidified a rapport on record that was breathtaking at times. The Co-Op mix of ‘Let Groove Come’ is definitely one of their most accomplished, and feels like suspended animation on the dancefloor. It hits with a jerky drum pattern, rugged in the extreme, but Eska clears the air around it with her pitch perfect harmonies, like a breeze blowing through the speakers. The rougher Co-Op dubs of many of the tracks listed here were often never released, and only ever heard at the club, which could be frustrating when trying to track them down. Fortunately, this one made it to vinyl.

20: KAIDI TATHAM & DEGO
GOT ME PUZZLED
(2000 BLACK 12″, 2003) And finally, the creative peak of Dego and Kaidi, the Gamble and Huff of broken beat. This one a certifiable anthem, played constantly and yet still not played out. From the moment the rich Juno pads open the track, it’s a showstopper, a slickly engineered recording, a virtuoso performance from Kaidi Tatham, and Dego at the top of his production game. Clearly this took a while to craft, as hinted at by the inscription “Big shout to Seiji & Mashi, it’s 5Dom l A.” This is built for the Plastic People sound system. The chorus has a gospel feel, the backing track is pensive and yet optimistic, electronic but still warm. The rhythm shuffles into infinity. This is the genre’s musical message personified.

http://www.factmag.com/2010/03/08/20-best-broken-beat/

VIDEO – Kid Creole& The Coconuts Documentary

Posted on January 23, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

JD TWITCH (OPTIMO) – 20 Questions

Posted on January 23, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Where are you based?
Glasgow.

Is this your home town?
I grew up in Edinburgh.

Any reason for the switch of city?
I moved to Glasgow in 1986 to go to university. Although the two cities are only an hour apart, culturally and character wise they are light years apart. It took me a while to get used to Glasgow and for the first year or so I would go back to Edinburgh for the weekends but then I clicked with the city, fell in love with it and remain so to this day.

What is your first musical memory?
My parents listened to Radio 2 incessantly so probably some extremely MOR song such as Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl”. I just assumed all music was terrible as that’s all I ever heard until I was about 11 and got my own radio.

What was the first record you bought?
Some kiddie atrocity I have long forgotten. First proper single was maybe “Denis” by Blondie. It’s hard to remember as it was 30+ years go and it’s not like remembering whom one lost their virginity to. I went from buying zero records to spending almost every penny that came my way on music very rapidly. It’s very easy to look back on one’s own youth and imagine it was a golden era for music but without being nostalgic about it, look at any top 40 chart from 1979, which was the year I truly fell in love with music, and it’s self evident that that was an amazing year for Pop music. Here’s one I randomly found online which for sure has some atrocities in it but also has a huge number of songs I still love and indeed play.

I live in a fairly secluded spot in Japan, so, for better or worse, am completely cut off from what`s happening in the UK charts. My only connection is listening to clips at on-line stores, and I do listen to a lot. I have to say that musically I do find some of what passes for Pop quite interesting, but lyrically I find it all pretty weak. I put this down to me being a miserable old git. If 1979 was a golden year for Pop, what do you make of 2012? Are there any nuggets to be found? I also think that being older you get a feel for how the industry works. Something original comes along, then for the next couple of years only similar things are being signed.
It’s an interesting point about the lyrical content. Apart from a few cases, I rarely listen to or pay attention to lyrics unless they are annoyingly bad and thus stop listening. People in the UK tend to be resistant to music in other languages but that has never bothered me so from quite a young age I was happily listening to music with German lyrics and not really thinking about it at all. As for Pop music in 2012, I pay almost zero attention to it. That’s not out of snobbery but more because I just never really encounter it and have so much other music I want to hear that I just don’t ever seem to have the time to investigate it. I am sure there is some great pop music but the stuff I do get to hear, say if I am in a friend’s car and they have the radio on, doesn’t really do too much for me and all sounds a little homogenised. I’m probably missing out on some great music. Optimo, the club night, always had a great big streak of Pop music running through it as I always liked playing wild music nobody had ever heard before alongside the Pop music I love, though perhaps my definition of Pop was always a little askew from that of top 40 radio programmers.

What was the last record you bought?
Joachim Kuhn & Ralf Kuhn`s “Bloody Rockers”. Late 60s Free Jazz, Psychedelic freak out.

How did you discover this? Where did you find it? Where, in general, do you buy your music / records?
I must have read about the Kuhns somewhere or other at some point and then when I saw their album I recalled the name and something made me want to check it out. The sad fact is that I know I’ll probably never get to know that record inside out no matter how great it is as there’s always other music to be listened to. It’s the kid in the sweetshop syndrome in that I just can’t help gorging myself as there’s so much amazing music being made and reissued. I never distinguish between old and new music. If it’s new to my ears it’s new music.

I bought it online. I buy a lot of music online and there are a couple of great record shops in Glasgow, Monorail Music and Rub A Dub, that I use plus I get to visit a lot of record shops on my travels. I almost certainly spend more of my life now than ever before checking out music, but find online listening or wading through digital promos a lot less enjoyable than finding and listening to music in a record shop.

What inspired you to start DJing / making music / start the label?
I was roped into starting DJing. I used to frequent a night in Edinburgh regularly and one week they had a notice up saying that they were looking for DJs to take over the warm up, as they were probably fed up playing that slot. My friend persuaded me that we should “audition” and somehow we got the job, even though I thought the pitch control was the volume control and had never DJed or even thought about DJing before that point. So, from day one I was part of a DJ duo. I did that from 1987 into 1988 by which point myself and the guys who ran the night were all mad for House music, they also started Scotland’s first ever house night, and we decided to turn it into an Acid House night. We didn’t tell the regular crowd about this and they came along, hated it and never came back. In two weeks it went from being one of the busiest nights in the city to ceasing to exist. My friend called it a day but I now had the DJing bug.

What kind of stuff were you playing prior to House? Can you remember the first House records you heard? Where could you buy House records in Edinburgh? Everyone goes on and on about London and Manchester, but what was the scene like as it emerged in Edinburgh and Glasgow? Do you still buy / play House music? New House music?
Before we committed Acid House suicide the club was probably known in Edinburgh as a Goth club but none of the DJs were Goths and we refused to play any of the bands really associated with that scene. The clientele however were most definitely creatures of the night. We were playing a lot of what became known as EBM but at that point it didn’t really have a name and also stuff that would now be called Minimal Synth. As an aside, when the term EBM came around, I disliked it almost as much as I dislike the term EDM now. I still do. We’d also play some Hi NRG, some early Hip Hop, Schoolly D and Mantronix especially, and even some Funk and Reggae. I remember Shinehead being a big favourite. We were always looking for music with advanced and futuristic sounding production so individual records were more important than genre. Early tracks by Renegade Soundwave, Age Of Chance, Colourbox, Revolting Cocks, Robotico Rejekto, Cabaret Voltaire, Severed Heads dubs, lots of Adrian Sherwood mixes, even The Pet Shop Boys. We called it Electrobeat. We’d also play intensely energetic guitar bands like Big Black, World Domination Enterprises and Butthole Surfers and some verging on Goth bands like Virgin Prunes. Clubs were very musically mixed up back then. That was just the norm and has stayed with me ever since.

The first house record I remember hearing was either “I M N X T C” by Denise Motto or “House Nation” by House Master Boyz. There was a shop that sold imports in Edinburgh and a couple in Glasgow but at that time I was very poor so initially I was mainly buying compilations. Rob Olson’s Chicago Jackbeat series. To this day I have no idea who Rob Olson was. The Jack Trax series and the Jackmaster comps. I’d buy a lot of domestically released imports and also a lot of early British House as it was cheaper than buying imports. I also had a lot of New Beat records as I’d write to all these Belgian labels, who were intrigued that someone in Scotland was into this music and so would happily send large amounts of records to me on a regular basis. I even used to compile a New Beat chart for NME. As time went on and my finances remained incredibly limited I used to constantly write letters to labels all over the world blagging records and ended up on the mailing list of countless labels. I still have piles of Strictly Rhythm, Warp, Network, Shut Up and Dance, Moving Shadow, Relief Records, Cajual and R&S test pressings, amongst many others.

I spent an inordinate amount of time in record shops but then there were a lot of record shops to check out back then. I’d also get the odd record mail order from Eastern Bloc in Manchester. I’d call up and they’d play the latest imports down the phone to me. That seems crazy in hindsight but it was always one of the highlights of my week as the ultra enthusiastic Mancunian on the end of the phone would be shouting down the line “Have you heard this stormtrooper?” and some Belgian rave record would be blasted down the phone. There was a whole language used to describe records that has long since vanished. Stormtroopers, windowsmashers, etc. Pre-internet, getting information was hard but somehow information networks began to form. There were fanzines and most importantly for me, there was a monthly information sheet called Brand X that this DJ from New York called DJ Moneypenny used to compile and post out free to subscribers. It was by far the best source of information about the music I was into and she is a real forgotten hero of those times. She made a couple of great records on Strictly Rhythm under the name Chapter 1, which are completely forgotten about and no doubt go for peanuts on Discogs, and then vanished off the face of the planet. I’ve always wondered what happened to her but nobody seems to know.

There was a small but vibrant scene in Edinburgh from early ’87 onwards and likewise in Glasgow with the real explosion taking place in ’88. I wasn’t clubbing in Manchester or London so it’s hard to compare but I am sure there were great things going on right round the country that went unreported because those places weren’t in the media spotlight or the perpetrators weren’t very media savvy. Certainly by early ’88 there were raves up here with several thousand people attending and a palpable sense in the air that some sort of revolution was taking place before our eyes.

I still buy and play House though I have never regarded myself as a house DJ despite owning a huge number of House records. There are still amazing records being made though. That Crooked Man 12″ is one of the best records in any genre in the last few years. In general I have very little interest in records that are slavishly trying to recreate a previous era of House music. I’d much rather play a great record from 1992 than a record from today that is trying to sound like it was made in 1992, but thankfully there are still people pushing the envelope. I’ve never really been a fan of House music “all night long”, or after 26 odd years “all life long” but as long as I DJ, I’m sure it will remain a component of my sets.

Since I first started buying records I’d fantasised about having a label and in the early 90s when I realized that it was easy and cheap to DIY, I went and did it. I’ve run labels ever since, purely as a hobby. I’ve released around 60 records by other artists which averages out at a relatively unprolific 3 releases a year since 1992.

Can you remember what was the first release?
The first record I ever put out was with my then DJ partner Brainstorm, in 1990 and was called the Rave Bunny EP. It was a bootleg DJ mix of various tracks put together on turntables. The main one was a genius mix of Sweet Exorcist’s “Testone” with Ralphie Rosario’s “You Used to Hold Me” and Plez’s “Can’t Stop”, all mixed live by Brainstorm. He did it in one take on three turntables and pre-dated what became known as mash ups by a good ten years. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing and neither did the engineer in the studio we did it in, so it’s sadly very lo-fi. My then girlfriend sold it by phoning up shops around the country and selling it sale or return. I think she managed to shift almost 1000 copies doing that. Shortly after that we started a label, T&B Vinyl with proper distribution and were releasing original recordings. The first release on T&B was by local acid house legend Ege Bam Yasi.

I was roped into trying to make music in the early 90s as it seemed the logical thing to do but initially I hated the process, hated the results, had zero confidence and did everything I could to avoid doing it again for several years. Then, in the late 90s I was talked into working with this older guy who had an incredible studio and had been working with electronics since the 70s. We had so much fun, working one day a week for several years and I learnt massive amounts from being with him. I had the bug, and I’ve enjoyed doing it ever since.

How long have you been DJing / making music / running the label?
DJing, 25 years. Making music, properly, for 15 years. Running labels for 20 years.

It was a long time ago, but how did the institution that was Pure come into being? And what eventually prompted the switch to Optimo?
Pure started in 1990 and came about because the club we had been doing previously had ended with a riot and the police wouldn’t let us continue. That night had been called UFO and ran throughout 1989 into 1990. The night was run by local promoters whose idea was to have bands play early in the evening and then it would morph into a club night. It was the Madchester era and most of the bands who played seemed to be of that ilk. Bar the very odd record, I loathed all these bands and felt as if I had made some sort of Faustian pact that forced me to be tortured with this music in exchange for getting to play the music I wanted to. Edinburgh was in the grip of football casual violence at this time and The Venue where we were doing UFO lay firmly in the territory of Hibernian Football Club. The Hibs casuals had made the night their own and there was never any trouble but on what turned out to be the last night, this Manchester band, The Paris Angels were playing and had attracted a lot of fans from the rival team, Hearts. The singer made some comment in support of Hearts during his set and then – BOOM! – it kicked off. It was like a scene from a massive bar brawl in a Western. Furniture and drums and bodies and guitars and anything that wasn’t nailed down was flying through the air. I was cowering under the mixing desk in fear of my life. After a while about 50 police arrived, cordoned off the club, arrested almost everyone there and drove them off in vans to the police station. Several people, including the band ended up in hospital. We were told by the chief of police that there was no way we could continue the club in its present form and that was that.

The words “in its present form” lingered in our heads and after a couple of weeks the two promoters we had been working with, myself and my co-DJ, Brainstorm, sat down to see if we could find a way forward. The Venue (the name of the actual venue) was restructured so that entry was through the basement which made it a lot easier to control who was getting into the club and we decided to make it a members only club, not for any elitist reasons but rather again so we could control exactly who was getting in and keep the football casuals out. The police gave us the go ahead and Pure was born in summer 1990. In hindsight it was the best thing that could have happened as it gave us the chance to start again from scratch and do a club 100% on our own terms. Out went anything to do with all the awful Madchester-related music and in came a completely different crowd. We were at the right place at exactly the right time and filled a massive need in Edinburgh so from day one it was a huge success and before long we were running buses every week through from Glasgow. Something that would never happen in a million years nowadays.

Pure was crazy. The atmosphere was more intense than any club I’ve ever seen since and although it was certainly chemically enhanced, I’ve also rarely seen so much love in one room since. The night would often end with people hanging from the roof, climbing up the PA, we had the most ridiculously loud and over-sized PA imaginable, while the dance floor had dissolved into 500 sweaty bodies immersed in one giant group hug. It went on like this for years and amassed a membership in the tens of thousands. The list of people who played over the years reads like a Who’s Who of House and Techno.

I was so immersed in it all that from 1990 to1996 I couldn’t tell you anything that was going on in music outside of House, Techno and all their offspring. “Grunge”? I didn’t have a clue, and still don’t. By 1996 the spell was starting to break. The creative peak in a lot of the music seemed to have passed and the audience were becoming less open minded. It was becoming all about how hard the music was and the fun and sex seemed to have left through the fire exit. I should probably have quit then as I was increasingly not enjoying traveling through to Edinburgh to play but I kept hoping it would change again.

In the meantime I’d started digging into all the other music I had and was buying records in all sorts of different areas of music. The opportunity arose late in 1997 to start a Sunday night at The Sub Club in Glasgow and I seized it, determined to do a night where I could play all the music I loved with little care if anyone else was interested. As it was a Sunday so as long as I got enough people through the door to cover their costs The Sub Club was happy. I roped in Jonnie and Optimo was born, and it was the most fun I’d had for a long time. A lot of our friends were similarly bored with the general club scene at that point and for the first year or so it was almost like a private party, although anyone and everyone with the right attitude was welcome. From time to time people who knew me from Pure would come along and come up to me full of rage telling me I was a traitor to Techno, a disgrace or had lost the plot, which only reinforced in my mind that I was doing exactly the right thing. The owner of the club was forever telling us that the night was going to become huge and I’d think he was delusional, as I just couldn’t imagine that happening and anyway was perfectly happy for it to continue as it was, with no plan for the future. He was right though. After about a year it quite simply exploded. It’s hard to fathom out why but literally from one week to the next Optimo went from having a crowd of around 100 people to being more or less sold out with 500+ people there every week for the next eleven years. It was almost as if a collective lightbulb had gone off in people’s heads and suddenly they got what it was all about.

What are your favourite places to play or hang out in?
Glasgow is probably the best place to play in the entire world out of all the places I’ve ever played. Otherwise, we have good and bad gigs everywhere, but cities where we seem to have cultivated an audience who get what we do include New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Melbourne, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin. I also love playing in Japan and China, the later being somewhere I would love to get to know better.

Would you visit all these places in a year? Do you spend a lot of time travelling?
This year I’ve visited all the places mentioned at least once except for Melbourne. We were due to play in Australia but it’s hard for Jonnie to do too many long haul trips with two kids at home and going all that way is definitely a trip I’d rather do with him so we decided to postpone it until next year. For the last ten years or so we have been traveling non-stop and probably have spent at least a third of each year living in hotels. It’s something I want to spend a lot less of my life doing starting from next year. I love DJing and I love going to different places many of which I have great, great friends in who I only see if I`m playing there, but eventually airports are going to drive me insane. Beyond that, I am getting married this year and while my partner is incredibly understanding about me being away so much I simply don’t want to be away from her as much. I also miss out on so many events in my local friend’s lives and sometimes feel disconnected from many of them as I almost never see them. I’d like to get my life back a little bit, reconnect with Glasgow a bit more and devote a bit more energy to other creative pursuits. I definitely can’t ever imagine stopping DJing but I would like it to go back to feeling like a hobby I love doing rather than the thing that defines who I am. If I end up being incredibly poor, well, I had a lot of practice being poor for many, many years so hopefully I’ll be able to deal with that. If you check my schedule this time next year and I am taking 100+ flights in 2013, please come and give me a big slap!

What is your favourite place outside of a bar / club / record shop?
Bed. Studio. Beach. Good restaurant. Outdoor cafe. Park. Sleazy dive watching a band. Someone’s flat late at night talking rubbish with good friends. Out in the wilds of Scotland.

Seen any good bands lately?
Glasgow has always had a ridiculous number of great bands on the go, which is one of the reasons I started Optimo Music. I’m always seeing bands here and thinking I’d love to release them but then have to have a reality check as I know with most of them I’d find it hard to sell more than 100 copies. There’s a band here who don’t even have a name yet who blew me away so much that I had to ask if I could release their record, and even if it only sells one copy I know I’ve made the right decision. It’s just so good. They are a fusion of two different Glasgow bands. A power Hardcore thrash trio and an all analogue hardware House duo. It’s hard to describe but is a little like a modern version of Dinosaur L.

How would you describe your / the label`s sound?
The label doesn’t have one. It’s the sound of whatever tickles my ears at a particular point in time. I don’t know how I’d describe my own sound beyond “all over the place”. It would probably be better to ask someone who has heard me play many times.

Do you see yourself as part of any scene?
Not particularly. I tend to avoid scenes and my contrarian nature often makes me run in the opposite direction of what is deemed au courant. There are however many people around the world I feel allied to in greater or lesser ways.

What would you describe as “au courant” right now?
Right now, slo mo / druggy chugging 110bpm tracks, 90s fixated House music and lots of House, deep or otherwise in general seem to be what I hear everywhere, except in Glasgow where I’ll always hear all sorts of stuff I never hear anywhere else. Apart from the 90s fixated House, I like all that but I`m never going to play it all night long.

What production / remix / release are you most proud of?
I’m proud of every record I’ve ever released, even the ones that sold about 50 copies. I love doing remixes but I tend to forget about each one quite soon after I’ve done it. The one that seemed to get the most love was one I did for Finnish freaks K-X-P which sadly has yet to see a release. Production wise, both the bands albums I have produced in the last couple of years, Sons & Daughters and Tussle, are records I’m immensely proud to have been involved with.

Was that “18 Hours Of Love”?
Yes, that`s the one. Barely a week goes by that someone doesn’t email me about it. I love the process of remixing, particularly song based material and feel very fortunate that I get asked to work on a lot of great projects. This year I’ve done almost 20 remixes but each one has a lot of time and love devoted to it. I find it impossible to have a formula and just churn them out. I don’t think I’ll ever be the most technically gifted producer but I am very happy that I find it impossible to make identikit, generic sounding remixes and just do my own thing. I’d much rather something I did polarised opinion than most people thinking it was just OK. “Just OK” is terrible.

What production / remix / release would have most like to have done?
My brain doesn’t really operate like that. There sometimes seem to be forces beyond my control that lead me to producing / remixing / releasing artists I’d only have dreamed of working with when I was younger.

Can you give me any examples?
Remixing acts who to me are totally iconic and many of whom have meant so much to me for so long such as Indoor Life, Mark Stewart, Seun Kuti, Konono No. 1, Bush Tetras and Liquid Liquid. Also, getting to release records by acts I am an uber fan of such as Chris Carter, Chris & Cosey, Psyche, Peter Zummo and Factory Floor. If I had a time machine I’d love to be able to go back to New York in the 80s and hide away in a corner in Battery Sound studios and watch Arthur Russell at work.

Who does the artwork for the label?
I try to encourage the artists to present their own vision. If they don’t want to, which is very rare, my girlfriend does it. She also puts all the sleeves and labels together, under duress.

Do you see the label as having a visual identity?
No. Most of my favourite labels have a strong sense of identity but I was briefly signed to Matador Records in the early 2000s and their philosophy was that each record should be the complete vision of that record’s creator. That resonated with me quite strongly and is how I have operated with regard to my labels ever since.

Which artists / other labels are you currently working with?
I have recently remixed Seun Kuti, Esser, Mark Stewart, The Twilight Sad, The Hundred In The Hands, Indoor Life and am currently working on a remix for Hot Chip. I just released the first record on my Autonomous Africa label and have a 12″ due on Japan’s Let’s Get Lost. A few other 12″s and a 7″ are in the pipeline on various labels. Optimo Music has some exciting reissues scheduled that I can’t mention for fear they are bootlegged plus new music by Soft Metals, Dan Avery, The Deadstock 33s and a Factory Floor side project featuring the legendary Peter Gordon from New York.

Who would you most like to work with?
Anyone who is easy to get along with, open minded and interested in crazy ideas.

Does playing, making and releasing music pay the rent?
Yes, it does. Playing provides most of the rent. Remixing provides a little bit of the rent alongside a bit of sound design. Making and releasing music definitely doesn’t help with the rent. Playing music is the only job I’ve ever had.

What sites, if any, do you regularly check on-line?
ilxor, BBC News, Twitter, DJH, Discogs and a few political sites. I am vehemently anti-Nationalist, which I should point out doesn’t necessarily mean I am pro-Unionist, so am always keeping a close eye on what the Nats are up to.

What was the last book you read?
I always have several books on the go and just finished two almost simultaneously. “Give The Anarchist A Cigarette” by Mick Farren and “The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936 – 39” by Anthony Beevor.

What is your favourite book?
Can I have three? “1984” by George Orwell, “Factotum” by Charles Bukowski and everything Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote.

What was the last film you saw?
“Iron Sky”. 5/10.

What is yout favourite film?
As I use its title for some online passwords, I had better not say.

It`s not “Bladerunner” is it?
No, but it’s up there. I can guarantee you wouldn’t guess the answer.

What is your current favourite piece of music?
The entire “Varech” album by Henri Texier.

by Dr Rob on Aug 31, 2012 • 4:31 am

VIDEO – Herbie Hancock on Sesame Street

Posted on January 21, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

VIDEO – Egyptian Lover Interview

Posted on January 21, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

VIDEO – How To Dance To Kraftwerk

Posted on January 21, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

VIDEO – Breakin’ With The Mighty Poppalots

Posted on January 21, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

KID CREOLE – Interview (Early 80′s)

Posted on January 21, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

The Kid & I: A Dinner Date with Kid Creole

The Face Interview

The night Fiona Russell Powell joined August Darnall for a late late dinner date ran into the morning of the Kid’s 32nd birthday and the day the Kensington Hilton caught fire.

The drama unfolds with the Playboy Kid expounding his attitudes to sex and celibacy, VD and romance, real men and Ronald Reagan, and (exclusively for THE FACE) his starring role in the Broadway follow-up to the smash hit Pirates Of Penzance

At 9.30 sharp, as a hot August evening begins to cool down, enter the heroine in a Monroe dress. Temperatures rise, voices subside, the ravishing reporter wiggles her way across the not-so-plush lobby of the Kensington Hilton Hotel, a structure unaccountably situated in Shepherd’s Bush and presents herself to the discreetly non-camp manager filing his nails behind the reception desk. The rendezvous, a dinner date for two, has been arranged with our hero Kid Creole, the pseudonymous alter ego of the 32 year old Bronx(ian) showman August Darnell.

Room 5068. Fiona knocks and waits. No response. She can hear a telephone ringing unanswered inside. The Kid is not at home. Ill-tempered, she returns to the foyer downstairs. The Kid is paged but fails to show. Fiona waits, and waits some more, deciding not to hang around this joint any longer when, out of the corner of a Fabulash-ed eye she sees Taryn, of the Coconuts or more specifically The Babes, cruise across the parquet in full war paint.
Before long our reporter is in the Hilton’s mock baroque dining room, in the company of a small, curl-haired Negro-esque gentleman in turquoise trousers and chinoise t-shirt who is introduced as Greg Ward, tour manager, aide de camp and personal bodyguard to The Kid.

” Hey babe, sorry we’re so en retarde.’ says this former captain in American Intelligence. “The Kid’s just got back from a photo session that took us all goddam day and he’s upstairs changing his suit. How about a drink in my room while we’re waiting?”

Room 4020. Fiona settles into the maize coloured hessian as Greg Ward regales her with tales of acid-induced ‘heroism’ in Vietnam and launches into a lengthy monologue about how he and The Kid got from there to here, an excerpt from which now follows.

” Two weeks ago the Kid was luxuriating underneath a mango tree, taking in the sights and the scenery and the aroma of the island of Haiti and not altogether oblivious to the political situation there. The country is ruled by a one-man dictatorship in the most primitive form – it’s the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. Anyway The Kid got a call from New York on the hotline and he was told to pack his bags and make his way over here.

” While The Kid was in Haiti, I went to Long Island, because I couldn’t take anymore of the craziness of New York City. I love it right, but if you don’t get off the merry-go-round sometime it’ll kill you. I mean New York must he the world capital of ulcers and heartburn, the pace of life is the fastest in the world. New Yorkers are highly aggressive, they play to win and they party to win.

” In London … I just can’t adjust my pace to the London pace which is considerably slower than New York. It’s disturbing the wary everything shuts down so early. In New York we don’t go out until three or four in the morning to go to a club. Here, at the Palace at about 2 am, I wanted to get a drink and the bar was closed. People Say I’m a night person. I’m not a night person. I’m a 24 hour person. During the day I play tennis, hike ride or play racket ball or go surfing and at night I’m at all the clubs. I work around the clock but I don’t end up like most people who start to look green after a while – I try to stay out in the sun a lot.

” Anyway, as I was saving. I was trying to escape from The Kid and hide out on Fire Island with my surf board. Fire Island is a ‘chic’ resort area on the south shore of Long Island where anybody who wants to make a statement about their position in life hangs out. Fire Island is. I suppose, what you would call nouveau riche, it’s for the fast crowd. So I was out there, staying at a place called Salt Air, when a friend of mine called me on Friday, last week and said: ‘Greg, you’re leaving on Tuesday for England. We’re not kidding you, the tickets arc already at your house.’

” I couldn’t believe it. I’d hardly got over the last tour and I was only just beginning to prepare myself physically for the next tour which begins in October. I have to he ready to go anywhere at a moment’s notice. I always keep two hags packed and Pile on call 24 hours day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. I have to physically plan for these tours. working out, riding a hike, push-ups. I was very proud of myself because during the tour I lost 15 pounds but I felt completely wiped out.
” One of the main reasons we’re doing this promo tour is that there’s a great enthusiasm for The Kid over here at the moment. What we’re doing now in addition to touring is unbelievably difficult, we do all these picture sessions, interviews, sound checks, shows and then try to get a little sleep before we move onto the next city. It’s virtually impossible, doing all this press and interviews and 1V in addition to performing. We’re talking about 13 people in the hand, five people in the American road crew, six people in the British road crew, three truck drivers• two bus drivers and two caterers, and they’re all my responsibility. Plus I have to sort out all the promo stuff for The Kid. I’m glad this has happened but it’s exhausting.

” We were only supposed to be here for a week, so I brought the minimum of clothes. I should have packed a lot of sweaters, it’s so cold here and it’s summertime. When I left New York it was 5 degrees. You talk about humidity here, this is nothing. In New York when I left it was so humid that I had trouble lighting a match. It’s just sodden, man. Only fools or those who have no money stay in the city in the summertime. You get out onto Long Island where there’s a constant breeze, it’s tropical like the islands in the Caribbean. The birds sing in the day and at night also. The last time I came to England I brought tapes with me of the birds singing so I could play them on my Sony Walkman and relax and think of home . . .”

At this point the monologue is interrupted by a rapping at the door. Greg shouts “SOYLENT” to which the response “GREEN” in female Virginian tones floats back through the teak and varnish, the pass phrase of the night. The visitors are Martine, a freckle-faced American-Haitian, and Roniy, an attractive American redhead. Both are dressed in the height of an American idea of Kings Road fashion. Pretty soon the minutes have dissolved into hours, the ice into weak gin, and your reporter is still no nearer her dinner date with The Kid. At the instigation of your under-nourished teenage reporter, the impossibly conspicuous foursome relocate in the Hilton coffee lounge.

At 12.30 am The Kid finally makes his appearance, a tired but familiar figure in a beige number from his famous and extensive collection of original Forties suits. An apologetic hand rests on Fiona’s knee: “Hey they’ve sent Marilyn Monroe to interview me! Jesus I’m sorry it’s so late. I’ve been stuck in a goddam tedious meeting with Granada TV discussing the possibilities of another special on Kid Creole and the Coconuts.”

Despite the fact that he hasn’t had more than eight hours sleep in three days and in spite of the fact that we are now into the early hours of his 32nd birthday, Darnell is his usual charming, courteous, and articulate self. He suggests that he and Fiona celebrate his birthday in style by adjourning to Room 5068 where the interview will commence.

Fiona: Can you recommend a good nightclub in New York?

August: Yeah, the Club Continental. It opens up at 3 am in the morning and goes on until
about 10 or 11. I like it because I know the owners, they’re good people, Otto and Coleen
Weinstein, a good Jewish couple.

What clubs do you go to when you come to Britain?

I like The Camden Palace although I preferred Club for Heroes for a night spot. I used to frequent it quite a bit. The Palace is a bit too large and does not afford one a chance for any intimacy-it’s a bit too sprawled out.

What was your reaction to the Falklands War?

The Falklands War is a fairy tale actually. The most unfortunate thing about it is that people had to die. If you can forget for a moment that people died. I think it was the most ludicrous thing that I have witnessed in the last 20 years. I think it was an event which should have been prevented. As for my opinion on what side was right—I will restrain from voicing any opinion until I’ve seen the video tape of the war.

On your travels so far, which country have you enjoyed visiting most to date?

It has to be Switzerland because it’s the antithesis of America. It’s everything that America isn’t. I really like England, it’s great every time I come here I always have a good time. If New York were to blow up tomorrow and I had to move, it would be to London for sure. I worst place that I’ve been to, or lather the place where I had the worst experience was in Copenhagen because some asshole broke into my hotel room and tried to molest my wife. This was during the last tour.

Are you, like many Americans, starting to regret having Reagan in power?

Reagan is definitely the man for the job. He’s the kind of guy we need in the office right now back in America because Americans had fallen into a rut of self-complacency and indifference, and if .anyone can wake them up It’s Reagan-he’s like a slap in the face, like cold water in the morning. He’s got the Americans wondering “Where did we go wrong?” That’s good, it’s healthy. It means the people are starting to ask questions again

I can’t understand how a whole nation can vote such an amateur ‘poolside politician’ like him into such a responsible office.

It’s very easy, it’s called the lesser of two evils. They’re all just as bad, anyway. I think he was running against himself! You get to a point where you say it doesn’t matter who’s in office. I truly believe that now. The machinery is designed in such a way as to prevent a real man from becoming president anyway.

What is a real man?

A real man is a man that has thoughts and ideas that are designed to promote co-existence among the nations. Such a man is deemed to be dangerous; he’s regarded as a person who is not thinking of the best interests for his country, when he thinks that all people are on an equal plane, such as a Kennedy of course. These people will be eliminated by the system, and in some way, they filter through to the top. The machinery will eventually crush them.

You seem to have a very snobby attitude towards Californians.
I am a snob. I have to be baby. I think that what I have is better than the next guy’s.

Are you surprised about your British success?

No. not at all, although I’m surprised that it took so long. I’m surprised that people are so
blind.

Why did you produce Funkapolitan’s LP. Did you think that they were destined for great things?
I thought Funkapolitan were … I shouldn’t say that, putting them in the past tense, it makes it sound as if their career’s over. I think it probably is.

Are you serious?

Yes, it might as well be. The album didn’t do very well, everyone’s lost interest in them, they seem frightened to sound white.

Did you ever hear of a group called Stimulin who were around at the same time?
No.Well, they were part of the big Funk renaissance thing of last year as well. They were really excellent hut because they didn’t have as many of the right connections they missed the boat, got disillusioned and split up.
If they were so goddamned brilliant they wouldn’t have given up so soon. Still, I know what you mean, it’s these bands that lack substance. No sexual drive. That’s what it’s all about, you know. It’s the bands with sexual drive that make it in the long run, the ones that lack it get nowhere. It’s a historical point. Every group or individual that’s ever made it in the music business has only made it through sexual drive and the sexual image and the manifestations of that image.

What about Yazoo then?

Who are they?

They’re like a two piece, a boy and a girl. The girl’s very fat and butch and the boy’s fairly unattractive as well, but the girl’s got an amazing voice, the bloke’s really creative and the two complement each other perfectly. It’s a real breakthrough-a great day for modern music where the image isn’t important and the music wins through.

Do you know how many people get turned on by that? Believe me, more people are excited by that fat chick than by anyone like Kim Wilde. For a long time there’s been a disregard that ugly people relate to ugly people, they get off on an ugly hero. That’s why Woody Allen’s so popular, he represents the common man, the average Joe. ‘This Yazoo sound like your average man and woman. They’ll work really well in the States as well.
It’s a great sexual image. It’s the anti-sex movement.

Yes, I think that Romance is making a big comeback.

Definitely. I agree with you wholeheartedly The Romantic movement, the real romantic movement that harkens back to Frank Sinatra and the great Crooners such as Nat King Cole and Patti Page, and also harkens back to great songwriters such as Gershwin, Cole Porter and Sondheim. Yes, there’s definitely a renaissance of that movement. For an example. Kid Creole and the Coconuts, and Sheena Eastern, believe it or not—”For Your Eyes Only” is a very, very romantic tune housed in a romantic arrangement, and her image is that of a new romantic-not new romantic the way the term was used, or should 1 say abused, recently. Not romantic in the sense of the femme fatale. That group Soft Cell represent decadent romanticism, even that group who did “Poison Arrow”, even though it’s a conscious attempt at romanticism they do feed the coals of the movement. It’s on the rise.

How long do you think British enthusiasm for Kid Creole will last?

It’s gonna last as long as I want it to last. When I’m tired of it, of the Kid Creole character that is, I will extinguish him. But even after I kill him, the success of The Kid will continue, on whatever plane it is, whether it be the success of selling records, or the success of the attention from the press that he gets, you know, all this writing about him. It will continue. I intend to kill The Kid after another three or four albums.

SIMON LE BON (Duran Duran) – Interview (Early 80′s)

Posted on January 21, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Simon Le Bon – The Face Interview

It’s the day before Christmas Eve and I’m on my way to The Savoy hotel, 15 minutes late already for my interview with Simon le Bon, the man who once said: ‘If I was rich and I wasn’t doing this, I’d pay to do it! Just to get up on stage and have all those people looking at you! And some even listening to you

For a lot of girls, six hours spent with the singer of Duran Duran would be the perfect stocking filler, but although Simon is a fairly charming person, Martini adverts just aren’t my cup of tea. My late arrival went unnoticed because Simon was screaming over a newly-discovered spot during the early stages of his make-up session: ‘Oh God, a spot! It travels all around my body; three weeks ago it was heading south down my back towards my bum. It’s the bane of my life!’

We are introduced. Si doesn’t let my hand drop for about five minutes and the first thing he asks me is whether I’m wearing tights or stockings. He then tells two jokes, one vaguely racist and one vaguely anti-semitic, neither of which I get, so there is an embarrassed silence after the punchlines. Undaunted, he turns round and says ‘Bison Melon’ followed by ‘Eno Slim Nob’… Pardon? ‘I’m just making anagrams of my name,’ he explains. ‘Eno Slim Nob,’ I reply, ‘that’s not what I’ve heard.’ He looks astonished for a second and then grins as I continue. ‘Now you’ve got an idea of what my line of questioning is 8°ing to be!’ And so have you.

Down the corridor now to the photo session which takes forever and nearly all of my allotted interview time. I learn all sorts of things about Simon and other people while I fit in and watch. For instance, did you know that Simon’s favourite parts of his body are his eyebrows and his feet? And he likes to make his hair fluff out because otherwise he looks like ‘a pinhead’but he doesn’t like to wear too much hairspray because it ‘makes you look a bit dilly (puffy)’.
Only ten minutes left and I haven’t asked him the colour of his underpants! But Simon smoothly chips in and says: ‘We’ll go to the soundcheck in a cab together, come back to the hotel after ami if you ‘ve still got any questions left, finish the interview in my room.’ That’s fine by me. I’m sure I’II have run out of questions on the way back. Si and I make our way to the lobby and for some peculiar reason he dawdles all the way behind me until we’re sitting down waiting for our cab …

FRP: Your mother left England didn’t she? When did she move?

SL: She went to Florida about two years ago.

And your father’s still living in London?

Yes.

So your parents have split up?

Well, um – the taxi’s here now.

At this point we are summoned to the front door of The Savoy where a black cab is waiting to take us to Wembley Arena. Simon’s security guard follows behind in another cab. We slip past the 30 or so waiting fans who have kept up a long vigil outside the hotel, clutching flowers, chocolates and other gifts for the band. Travelling slowly through the heavy Christmas traffic, we continue the conversation …

You were about to elaborate on the break-up of your parents marriage.

Ah well, I miss my mother a lot, but I miss the whole familybecause I don’t see them much. Jonathon – he’s my youngest brother – he’s always going off sailing in the Caribbean … I come from a very middle-class family.

Why did your mother move so far away from her three children?

Just to get a bit of head space and to get a better job I suppose.

From the interviews I’ve read, you’re obviously very attached to your mother. Do you hold with the cliche that children who are nurtured from birth for showbiz stardom by their parents miss out on a normal childhood?

Oh no – my mother did get me a lot of acting work when I was a kid but I object to the suggestion that 1 was moulded. That’s a bit of an insult really. I wasn’t a ‘child star’, I wasn’t forced to go to stage school or anything like that. I just did the work because I had a pretty face, I suppose. Before she got married, my mother was involved in acting but when she had three kids it was a bit difficult for her to carry on with it.

So she pursued her ambitions through you?

I’ll admit that if it wasn’t for her I certainly wouldn’t have carried on doing drama and if she hadn’t pushed me I wouldn’t have gone to university to study drama.

Do you believe in the sanctity of marriage?

I believe that if you make big promises like that, you should keep them.

And you’re marrying your girlfriend Clare soon, aren’t you?

‘Here I made a gentleman’s agreement with Simon not to reveal his denial.)

Do you expect a nuclear war within your lifetime?

I expect a bomb will go off but I don’t expect a world-wide holocaust.

Have you taken any precautions like installing a bunker at the bottom of the garden?

No, certainly not. If there was a war and if England was involved in any way, 1 wouldn’t like to come out of my shelter six months later to find a totally flat, black land. I just wouldn’t want to survive.

Do you support the CND?

(Carefully) I believe that disarmament will never happen. I think there’s a lot of other facets of CND which I wouldn’t like to associate myself with. They’re not just involved in getting rid of nuclear weapons – they bring party politics into the issue which they shouldn’t do.

Would you do a charity gig for the Greenham Common women?

Err… we’re not going to do any charity gigs for a long time! I think the Greenham Common have got a lot of guts and I’ve got a great deal of admiration for them but I’ve heard that they won’t let any men join the lines. I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it is, I think they’re a bit silly.

The last charity gig you did for Mencap didn’t come off too well, did it?

No, it was just a major fuck-up on a lot of fronts basically. What really happened was that we over-estimated the amount of people that would come to the show. It was at Villa Park, Birmingham, and we thought we’d be getting people from all over England but about 90% of the people there came from within a 40 mile radius of Birmingham, so we actually had about 7 000 people less than we’d hoped for and those 7,000 were the ones that were going to make the profit for Mencap.. . We ended up giving Mencap a lot of money out of our own pockets; all in all, with the band and our two managers, it cost £70,000 between the seven of us.

In your current tour programme, there is a listing of events connected with the group. For June this year, it says you stayed in the South of France getting ideas for the new LP, playing tennis, attending the Cannes Film Festival and ‘reflecting on the nature of life’. What conclusion did you reach?

There are some funny things in that programme. That sounds very intellectual and philosophical, which isn’t us at all.

What an odd thing to write.

No, really, we were just mixing business with pleasure

And rubbing your fans’ noses in it. So, what is the meaning of life, Simon?

(laughs) Um, well, for me, very busy – for some others, not so busy!

So basically, Kaspar de Graaf, who wrote the tour programme, was just being pretentious?

I think it’s one of his little jokes really; Kaspar’s got a big sense of humour.

Therefore he’s making fun of thirteen-year-olds and you’re condoning it.

It doesn’t worry me,

What happened behind the bike sheds?

What!! How do you know about that?

You mentioned it in a Flexipop interview just before ‘Planet Earth’ was a hit.

That was a long time ago and only me and two other people know about it, and one of them only a little bit. I’m not going to give those kind of secrets away!

You were obviously still at school so you must have been very young.

I wasn’t very young. I mean, I was old enough!

Is it true that Nick Rhodes (real name Nick Bates) was nicknamed Master Bates at school so he decided to name himself after his favourite synthesiser?

Ha ha: It’s a piano actually, not a synth. A Fender Rhodes piano! I think he liked the name Rhodes because of the Greek island connection and also because of the music business connection as in Bernie (laughs at what must be an ‘in’ joke). If I was going to change my name I think I’d call myself something like Jet Cane or Peter Smith or something.

Have you ever been gobbed on?

Gobbed on? Don’t you mean spat at? Well, actually yes, quite a few times, mostly on stage.

Really? I can’t quite imagine all those sweet young girls in the front row -

We did the Hazel O’Connor tour and there weren’t so many little girls in that audience, let me tell you. I usually see it coming and I tend to get out of the way in time. In fact, I’ve never had a direct hit.

Do you like Test Department?

Pardon?

I said: do you like Test Department?

What’s a test department?

Oh dear, how long have you been away? (Simon looks -worried) They’re part of the latest craze that’s sweeping the country…

(At this point, dear reader, you may fast-forward the interview button, because of course we all know who Test Dept. are.)

Oh yeah, I think I’ve heard a bit about it. I have heard some music like that but quite a long time ago; you used to get bands who used washboards and brooms with bits of string tied to boxes, things like that…

You mean like The Chevalier Brothers. No, it’s not like that, let me explain it to you again.

(I try to capture the essence of Test Dept., SPK and Einsturzende Neubauten in a nutshell which is rather hard and Simon still looks blank).

Er, yeah. What I think about Test Department is this: Great, if that comes from it sounds good or they can get good tunes or music from it – fine, but it sounds a bit gimmicky to me.

Have you ever been told that you look like a young ElvisPresley?

Yes, I’ve also been compared to the bloody bloated Las Vegas Presley – that was a down-right insult… do you think I do.

Actually, yes.

(looking glum) I think it must be because we pull the same expressions when we’re singing. I must admit I’ve never been a big Elvis fan, although I think what he did for music was brilliant, but I don’t like his voice that much. I think the best things he ever did were ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘King Creole’.

Are you planning any similar film ventures?

Well, I’d like to do films but not like that.

What’s your sexual fantasy?

I’m a bit shy about it to be honest… I don’t think I’m a pervert at all, not compared to some of the stories I’ve heard.

Is it a recurring fantasy?

No, they change all the time.

I noticed in a list of likes and dislikes, you once wrote for likes: women, rubber, water and leather.

Women – yes, but I’ve definitely gone off rubber. I don’t like the smell very much. When I used to go caving and pot-holing, which I’m sure must have awful connotations, I used to have to wear a neoprene suit. The fantasy at the moment is definitely a hot one because of all the cold weather. Have you ever seen the film Walkabout? There are some amazingly erotic scenes in that with trees. There’s some beautiful trees that only grow in Australia and they look just like women’s parts; the way the branches split is incredibly erotic. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not into trees, I really like women, I just find the imagery erotic … I’d like to make love in a poppy field and eat strawberries at the same time and then ride away on two dapple-grey horses.

It sounds just like one of your videos!

(Laughing) Yeah, okay, ‘Hungry Like A Wolf just happened to be one of my fantasies!! Whafs your fantasy then -you did promise you’d tell me.

Oh I’ve got do many! Mostly bondage, buggery and water sports with greasy bikers. (Of course, I was only joking).

(Eyes gleaming, mouth grinning) I’m fairly dominant! As the band has developed over the last three-and-a-half years, I’ve become a lost more confident in many ways, including sexually!

John Taylor was once quoted claiming you wrote the video storylines just so you ‘could get to work with more chicks’. Is that true?

I think that was a kind of a joke. But take ‘Girls On Film’ for example. When we first talked about making a soft-core porn video, 1 must admit that one of the, er, attractions of doing it, would be to actually see it being filmed and to actually be there.

Why does every member of the band, with the exception of Andy Taylor, go out with a model? Isn’t that a bit of a cliché: popstar-goes-out-with-brainless-beauty?

Doesn’t Battersea Power Station remind you of an upside-down table with those legs? I really like it, it’s the oddest-looking building there is.

Talking about legs -

Have you noticed that they’ve wrapped up Big Ben? It looked just like a big Christmas present, It’s great. Apparently they’re cleaning the clock-face because its eroding.

Would you like to do a duet with somebody?

Vocally? I’m not at that stage yet. I’d love to work with Dolly Parton though; I think she’s so funny. I’m not really into that song, the one she did with the old git with the grey hair, but she’s so funny in the video. She looks great and she has the most incredible bosom. What else can you call it? That’s a bosom if ever I saw one- I think all that working with other people, like The Assembly and Paul McCartney with Michael Jackson, is a bit naff… I think they’re doing it because they’re running out of ideas and they want other people to help them basically. You can’t deny it’s working in a very sweet way with McCartney and Jackson, but I grind my teeth whenever I hear “The Girl Is Mine’.

Which member of the band are you closest to?

It changes a lot. In the studio, I’m closest to Nick, we do a lot of work together… Socially, I’m probably closer to Andy or John.

How would you describe them individually, given one word each?

Nick – desperately intelligent; John – desperately sociable; Andy’s like that as well but he’s got a very dry sense of humour, he’s very cynical sometimes. He can be really mean to you one moment and then the next he’ll come up and say he didn’t mean it. Andy’s a really nice guy. Roger – John once said ‘he’s the earth that cannot be shaken,’ but I see him as the branch that cannot sink.

How does it feel to know that you are the masturbation fixation of thousands and thousands of pubescent girls all around the world?

No-one’s ever put it that way before! It sounds quite exciting; it doesn’t appeal to me but it does flatter me. There’s pros and cons to that; the public property thing can get too much. When everybody thinks that they know you personally, they can get really fresh and forward with you. I mean, I know I do this for a living and I go out and give a lot of myself on stage and on record, but I don’t give that much. Ifs very disconcerting when somebody comes up to you and grabs your arse or something. I may be public property but there are some parts of me which aren’t, and thaf s one of them.

But you do concentrate on your sexuality in the most blatant way possible. Take your first album cover for example; it could be concluded from the group photo on the front that you’re well-endowed. I thought it was probably unintentional until I turned over to the back cover, where there’s a zoom-in shot of just your crotch next to a car-engine – the symbolism is rather obvious, isn’t it?

(Laughs) I noticed that as well. I couldn’t believe they’d used that photo. Of course I’m not going to deny that I am well-endowed. It has been pointed out to me before – about the photo I mean. Uh, you know, if s very hard to do an interview about the size of your dick! Look, I’ve gone all pink.

(Unrelenting) Yet I noticed on the large video screen at your gig on Sunday that your flies were half undone. It wasn’t accidental because someone I know who is on the tour with you said the zip was at half-mast every night.

Oh, er, blah, aah, what actually happened is that I did a jump and the buttons popped off. I didn’t get around to having the trousers mended until the other day; they have now been altered slightly with a heavy-duty zip.

What do you think about when you masturbate? Don’t pretend you don’t!

I wasn’t going to! If I can’t think of anything I just look through my fan-mail till I find something good, I’ve had some great suggestions from secretaries who want to get me between the filing cabinets.

Do you ever feel limited in any creative way with Duran Duran?

Limited only by my own limitations. No, there’s plenty of room for development while if s still huge, it’s very difficult to discipline yourself to try not to run before you can crawl, if anything, I only feel limited by my own creativity.

Where did you get the nickname Muscles?

That was really stupid. I was doing a show in London ages ago before I joined the band, and some choreographer started calling me Muscles. The band all call me Charlie, because it’s my middle name. Imagine being called Jimmy the Hoover! What a bad-news name for a band. It reminds me of someone I know called Jimmy the Con. He’s a bouncer at the Cedar Club, Birmingham; he’s a real laugh. Once, he lifted me up above his head and just twirled me round. He’s a real funny guy…

We have now arrived at Wembley Arena and the taxi-driver takes us round to an obscure back entrance where there are a handful of female fans hanging around the security fence. It’s about 5.30 and the gig doesn’t start until 9. As we wait for the gates to be opened, one of the girls recognises Simon who isn’t exactly crouching in the corner.
‘Ohmigod! I don’t believe it, look, it’s Simon!’All of a sudden, all these faces are pressed against the window and fists are beating on the roof and thin screams pierce the freezing sir, I’ve never been in this situation before; it’s so unreal, like monkeys in a zoo, but Simon completely ignores the commotion outside and carries on talking while signing his autograph for the taxi driver’s two daughters.
Simon carries my coat, bag and tape-recorder into the backstage area, then hands me over to his bodyguard. The sound-check takes about 45 minutes; Duran Duran are doing Cockney Rebel’s ‘Come Up And SeeMe’ which they do so well, it ends up sounding just like a Duran Duran song. The soundcheck over, we climb into the back of an extremely luxurious coach which is going back to The Savoy. About a hundred girls run after us as the coach sets off. I can hear them screaming and part the curtain to watch. Simon shrugs his shoulders- ‘The exercise will do them good.’He offers me a chocolate from one of the many boxes lying on the floor.

Were you ever a fan?

Not in that way, no. I didn’t start going to concerts until about ’76 or ’77. The first concert I ever went to was Genesis’ ‘Lamb L ies Down On Broadway’ tour at Earls Court. I think Peter Gabriel’s brilliant… I also like The Cramps and Big Country.

How much money have you made this year?
I don’t know. We don’t find out until about five years later. I’m really bad at business and accounts, that’s why we have Andy Taylor in the band.

How important is money to you?

I think it will be one day but it isn’t at the moment because we’re having a great time just being in the band and it pays for itself.

What satisfies you more than anything else?

Being on stage. If s a really big challenge – if s really dangerous in a way. Every night before I go on, I have a kind of trauma about whether I can do it tonight.

Would you rather have achieved fame through acting than through the (according to some) less credible medium of being a pop star?

At one point, my parents and a lot of other people thought I was mad joining a group and psychologically I rebelled against that kind of prejudice. Alot of people think that being in a group is a lower form of art than acting. I disagree with that attitude completely. There’s a lot to be said about going on stage and performing what is basically your own script, something that you’ve come up with totally by yourself. When you’re acting, you’re work-’ttg with someone else’s script and someone else’s character and you’re being directed by other people as well. There’s a lot of pride attached to being able to work the whole thing out yourself… But I’m really looking forward to seeing Sting in Dune. My favourite actor is Donald Sutherland -1 love his face, it’s not 9 fashionable or handsome face but it’s so charismatic. I’d like toplay a part that I could really get rny teeth into, not necessarily something deep and meaningful, but something with good words in it. I’m very fond of Shakespeare because of the words.

I expect you like Mervyn Peake then?

Yes, how did you know? That’s very perceptive, I feel like I’ve been stripped naked. I love the Gormenghast trilogy – they’re my favourite books.

Do you respect your audience?

Yes, I do very much and for a lot of different reasons as well. Because they’ve got the common sense to like decent music like ours and for sticking by us in the face of great adversity.

How would you define your audience?

If s very widespread. It’s not just made up of 13-year-olds.

What does ‘Seven And The Ragged Tiger’ mean?

It’s like a commando team. Seven is a really special number for us because it’s the number of the actual unit of our success, the five members of the band and the two guys that manage us who are a very integral part of everything. The ragged tiger symbolises luck and success.

Do you stay on good terms with your old girlfriends?

Some I do, some I don’t. Some you end up with big bashes, some you can write letters to.

Have you ever hit a girl?

Yes but I haven’t hit a girl, I’ve smacked one. I would never hit a girl on her face. If I was going to hit one, I’d hit her on the bottom

Before I met you, I was convinced that I was being sent to interview a megalomaniac!

I wouldn’t call myself that although I like my one-and-a-half hours of power that I have every night. I enjoy that. If I told them to get up and smash up the place and not go to school tomorrow, some of them would do it unquestionably… You know, I’m really enjoying this interview.

Good. Why?

Because you’re so cute and sexy and you’ve got nice legs. That’s why I walked all the way behind you at the Savoy!

The coach has come to a hydraulic halt outside the main entrance of The Savoy. Simon and I descend into a crowd of girls; I get away as fast as possible, and five minutes later Simon escapes loaded with gifts, kisses and phone numbers.

Would you consider seeing a psycho-analyst?

No. I’d rather find out about myself through myself. To start with, I’m very happy with myself. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. It also seems very vain to pay someone else to talk about you. On the subject of ego, I think it’s really very important to keep a good balance between what I’m doing for a living, which is like walking a tightrope between charisma and bullshit, and to know what I really am, which is basically the same as everybody else, but just lucky enough to have a decent job … Have you heard that joke? How many psychologists does !t take to change a light-bulb? One. It takes a very long time and the light-bulb has to want to change.

That’s the best one you’ve told all day.

I like telling jokes and stories. You know, I used to lie a lot when I was young, well up into my teens actually. I used to tell peoplethat my parents were Russian refugees or that I was a gypsy I used to really over-romanticize and over-glamourize everything because I thought I was a really boring slightly overweight youngster, which is what I was. I was so embarrassed when they did my life story in No. 7. It had all my mother’s quotes and my mother would never let you think I was boring. Those pictures of me sitting in that bloody tweed jacket – I cringed then and I cringe now when I see it, I had a really hard time at school when I was in the local newspaper.

Have you taken speed to keep your weight down?

I used to but I don’t touch drugs now. Heroin is getting so fucking trendy in this country again, it’s frightening. And it makes me sick that people are still being led to believe that it’s fashionable or glamorous… You can’t even enjoy it the first time, you have to do it two or three times before you stop puking up – what’s the attraction of that?

How long do you see the success of Duran Duran lasting?

I’m a big optimist. I do believe in the future of the band. A band has to make a very big effort these days to be able to change enough to be fashionable but also be able to please yourself which is more important. You can’t approach anything if you’re not totally satisfied with what you’re doing.

Finally, Simon, can you think of any question which I’ve neglected to ask, which you feel could be important?

Well, you could have asked about our music.

by Fiona Russell Powell

TERRY FARLEY – “When did the dancing stop?”

Posted on January 16, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

When did the dancing stop . Yesterday i watched previously unseen footage of the final night at the Legendary Paradise Garage , what struck me was the fact the film directors focus was not on the Dj booth and the DJ but the dance floor and its wonderful array of characters , dancers and freaks who were the focus of the night . When you realise the DJ concerned was Larry Levan it really does show just how important the crowd were to club culture . While we used to leave parties with our clothes ringing wet with sweat now we leave with a IPhone full of pics of some DJ at best putting on a few CDS or playing off a laptop at worse acting like a circus seal spending more time on egging crowd reactions that working the music .

When did we stop dancing , when did the DJ become more important than the crowd ? . In London’s fledging clubbing scenes of the 70s and early 80s the crowd went to the clubs and parties where the best dancers and In crowd went the DJ was almost a after thought – as long as he ( there really wasn’t’ a ‘she ‘ back then in DJ terms )played what the dancers demanded .
When did we start watching a DJ instead of dancing with our mates , why do we put up with idiotic people taking up the floor who are filming the DJ ,why is the best dance floors now being cut to ribbons to provide extra table space for naff VIP’s ( Pacha in Ibiza hang your head in shame ) ,people with more money than taste and who in some extreme situations in the US have had DJs thrown off the decks because they did not like the music .
Dancing is now reduced to a crowd reacting to a big breakdown or a simple shuffle with a raised hand every now n then – When did we all stop dancing ?

There is a simple solution to this cheese fest of crowds standing face on to the booth as if its a concert not a party that they are supposed to be a equal partner in the madness not a onlooker and that is to stick the DJ booth on the floor . Panorama Bar does it as do many of the cooler London House music parties such as Secretsundaze . You still get the whoppers with Iphones and back pack’s surrounding the decks but by and large as if by magic the rest of the crowd suddenly start dancing , yes dancing as opposed to raising a hand during a breakdown or pointing back at the seal / DJ .

What people have to realise is THEY are the stars , the heroes of club culture not the DJ . Its that magical moment when you look around and everyones smiling and locked into the groove that makes a great House party , where you make life long friends and get a passion for a music that can last decades .
Start dancing again , turn your back on the DJ and dance with your crew .. the good DJ’s will honestly take it as the ultimate compliment .

GREG WILSON on…how clubbing changed the world.

Posted on January 16, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Last month I was over in Chicago chilling out in my hotel room ahead of my first gig in the city, at Smart Bar, a venue with a rich tradition, which opened back in 1982. Chicago is, of course, along with Detroit, Philadelphia and New York, revered as a key US city when it comes to the evolution of dance culture (and, indeed, black culture, with, way before House, a deep heritage in Rhythm & Blues, Blues and Jazz, dating right back to the ‘great migration’ of black workers from the southern states, beginning just over 100 years ago).

Checking out my emails, there were a few messages from people who weren’t aware that I was out of the country, asking if I’d watched the Channel 4 programme, ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’, which had been broadcast that night, and pointing me to a Facebook thread where a heated discussion was taking place, some people criticising the show for what it had chosen to disregard, others enjoying the trip down memory lane, regardless of what might have been left out, thankful that there was something half-decent to watch on a Friday night. I also had a look on Twitter, where the majority of people seemed positive about the programme, although this was peppered with the odd dissenting voice, asking why this or that hadn’t been included in the show’s Top 40 key moments in clubbing history.

Even though it was available to view online, I wasn’t able to watch it until my return to the UK. In the meantime I had a look on a couple of the dance forums, to see what had been said, including Faithfanzine, the home of one of London’s key movers and shakers of the Acid-House / Rave movement, Terry Farley, who, as I’d expected, had been interviewed for the programme, and it was interesting to read what he had to say. He was particularly critical of fact that Hip Hop hadn’t been covered, asking ‘how the fuck can you do a show about dance music and not mention Hip Hop?’ He was then informed that the company behind the programme, Fresh One, had already produced ‘How Hip Hop Changed The World’ in 2011. This splitting of 2 previously firmly connected forms is, I believe, one of the main reasons that the early 80’s era, which I’m constantly banging on about as crucial to our understanding of how dance culture developed in the way it did, is continually miscomprehended and, as a result, totally underplayed, time and time again.

In reply to a complaint that ‘the whole programme failed to portray the mix of music that has taken place in dance music clubs’, Farley responded; ‘I did my best to keep on repeating ‘ nothing started in 88′ and explained how thousands upon thousands would be dancing in Warehouses in the mid 80′s BUT of course they have a show ready and just wanted quotes to fit the shows template.’ In defence of this criticism the producers of the programme would surely point out that they touched on a few things, like New York Disco and Northern Soul in the 70’s, as well as pirate radio in the pre-Rave period, but this was but a fraction of the overall content, the impression being that not a lot of note happened before the big bang of ’88, which would take what was previously the domain of the underground squarely into mainstream focus.

At this point I should explain that, although I hadn’t yet seen it, and didn’t know it was coming on that weekend, I was fully aware that ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’ was imminent, because back in April I’d been approached by the programme and asked to contribute, selecting, in order of importance, 25 ‘defining moments’ from a list they’d compiled. I was also invited to let them know if there was something I felt had been missed out. I agreed to look through the list, but with some trepidation; ‘On the surface the programme sounds brilliant, but it always concerns me that we’ll get the same old story – DJ’s go to Ibiza in 1987 and it all kicks in from there’. Having looked through it I concluded that this wasn’t a programme I wished to personally endorse, and I emailed to politely decline, explaining my reasons:

I have to say that it is largely the same old story – there are big gaping holes as far as the black / dance music scene of the 70′s / early-mid 80′s are concerned, and on that basis I wouldn’t want to participate in rating your selections. Apart from Kiss FM and Goldie, I don’t think that black culture in this country is covered at all. The biggest omissions in my eyes are (in no specific order):

1. The release of ‘Planet Rock’ by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force in 1982, the record that split the atom as far as electronic dance music is concerned – its importance isn’t even mentioned in the entry about Kraftwerk, even though it pre-dates (and serves to influence) the Techno movement you do mention.

2. The Street Sounds Electro series, which set the standard with regards to UK dance compilations, and introduced dance music to a whole new pre-Rave generation – it was also the first series of mixed albums.

3.The Soul / Jazz-Funk All-Dayer scene of the 70′s and early 80′s, where people were travelling up and down the country to rave well before there were raves.

4. The magazines that promoted black / dance culture during the 70′s – Blues & Soul, Black Echoes, Record Mirror, and the specialist radio DJ’s who pioneered via the airwaves.

5. The explosion of breakdancing in shopping centres throughout the UK in 83 and 84, where many young white kids first met their black counterparts and discovered black / dance culture.

6. Cut & Paste – from NYC’s Steinski in the mid-80′s through Coldcut in the UK and via seminal UK dance releases like M/A/R/R/S ‘Pump Up The Volume’, Bomb Da Bass ‘Beat Dis’, S Express ‘Theme From S Express’ and Coldcut’s ‘Doctorin’ The House’.

7. The introduction of the 12″ single – a revolution in itself.

8. The mods in the 60′s, and their R&B All-Nighters in cities like London and Manchester, from which the Northern Soul scene would be born.

9. Tamla Motown – the UK’s greatest dance label of all (American music, but Tamla and Motown were, along with Gordy, Soul and others, separate labels under the Motown umbrella Stateside).

I concluded by stating; ‘I’m sorry I can’t be more positive, but from the list of stuff you sent, although I’m sure it’ll be a successful programme for Fresh One, it still falls well short in projecting the fuller picture, relying mainly on the tried and tested tales as is the norm, which is fine if you’re only interested in the surface of things, but it misses the mark with regards to depth.’

I suppose that this is the crux of the matter – do you want a show that will really get to the core of how club culture emerged, and subsequently changed the world, or do you want a couple of hours of quick-fire feelgood entertainment, which although somewhat disjointed, is pretty slick in its presentation and contains a little bit of something for everyone. ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’ was always going to be the latter, a fast-moving collection of clips that, even if you didn’t like / agree with what was being shown, you knew there was another ‘moment’ imminent.

Further to this, as I noticed someone point out on Twitter, the programme seemed to have a firm eye on the US, where dance culture, on a commercial level, has finally hit paydirt. This was illustrated when the narration stated that ‘our special relationship with the USA may have got just a little bit more special’ in reference to this development. The choice of the presenter also suggests this intention – Idris Elba has major kudos across the Atlantic playing the drug lord Russell ‘Stringer’ Bell in ‘The Wire’. Away from acting, Elba DJ’s and records under the name DJ Big Driis, which, in his role as host, gave him a further level of authenticity / authority. Add the fact he’s regarded as something of a sex symbol, and it was a very shrewd choice (no doubt his own, given that he co-produced the show, so much so that its title was elongated to ‘Idris Elba’s How Clubbing Changed The World’, which is more likely to catch the attention of a largely indifferent US TV audience (‘How Hip Hop Changed The World’ was issued without the ‘Idris Elba’s’ preface, although, once again, he co-produced / presented the programme).

The premise of the show was that it all started in New York in the 70’s (with The Loft and Paradise Garage briefly name-checked), citing ‘Saturday Night Fever’ as the catalyst for bringing the movement to the UK, leading to Britain, as the programme asserts, taking its position at the vanguard of ‘modern club culture’. There is a level of truth in this, but only with regards to the mainstream experience – the underground scene in the UK goes right back to the early 60’s, with its own unique lineage, separate to what was happening in the clubs of NYC, which ultimately fuses with New York Disco culture in the late 70’s / early 80’s to create the alchemic conditions from which Britain would instigate the oncoming Rave era, taking the culture worldwide as a consequence. In short, club culture, as we know it, doesn’t only start in New York, but also in the UK, and, as some would argue, at an earlier point in time.

Once I would probably have been upset by a programme like ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’, which, apart from what it left out, contains far too much superfluous content for my liking, and a fair few inaccuracies to boot, but I’ve learnt, from experience, not to have any expectations and, with this in mind, I accepted the show for what it was, a populist take on the culture which has shaped so many lives, but largely without the roots apparent, just the branches. A documentary about the history of British dance culture that doesn’t include reference to the likes of Guy Stevens, James Hamilton, Roger Eagle, Jeff Dexter, Les Cokell, Ian Levine, Colin Curtis, Chris Hill, Bob Jones, Les Spaine, Richard Searling, Russ Winstanley, Mark Roman, Ian Dewhirst & Paul Schofield, Terry Lennaine, Greg Edwards, Robbie Vincent, George Power, Graham ‘Fatman’ Canter, Froggy, Mike Shaft, Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson, Norman Jay, Jay Strongman, Chris Sullivan, Hewan Clarke, The Wild Bunch, Trevor M, Mastermind Roadshow, Maurice & Noel Watson, Paul Murphy, Mike Allen, Winston & Parrot, Stu Allan, Chad Jackson and others who made their mark in the pre-Rave era (apologies to those I’ve undoubtedly missed out), should be taken with a pinch of salt.

However, such a documentary wouldn’t make it onto prime time Channel 4 – this used to be a cutting-edge station, but now it’s part of the orthodoxy. As someone said on the prior mentioned Facebook thread, ‘why didn’t they show something like ‘Maestro’ instead’ (‘Maestro’ is a gritty documentary about New York Disco culture, focusing primarily on Larry Levan, the fabled DJ from the Paradise Garage), to which someone answered ‘Channel 4 would never show something like that’, before a third person added ‘that’s exactly the type of thing Channel 4 used to show’. In essence, Channel 4 is a very different beast to what it used to be, and whereas once it was probably the station I’d be most likely to record something from, nowadays I don’t even check the listings (which is why I was unaware that ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’ was coming on in the first place). These days my stations of choice are no longer Channel 4 and BBC 2, but BBC 4 and Sky Arts.

In a certain sense it’s about getting older and realising that the era you hold most precious is, for the majority of the club populace, prehistoric, even the Acid-House period is ancient history for the majority of contemporary Channel 4 viewers, where the most popular shows of the past decade have included ‘Big Brother’ and ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. The programme, in many respects, should have only covered what they regard as ‘modern club culture’, with its roots in House music, The Haçienda, and Ibiza, because the tokenism of mentioning just a few, and not all, of the key moments that came before, negates the efforts of all those, dancers and DJ’s, who really built this movement, establishing its firm foundations in the years when the mainstream glare was elsewhere.

It’s also interesting to see the omission of some DJ’s who very much made their mark on ‘modern club culture’. Jeff Young, for example, was the DJ who kicked off the BBC Radio 1 Friday night dance show that would later become the domain of Pete Tong, working at the station between 1988 and 1991, the peak years of the Acid-House / Rave era, before Tong took over (it was Young who also brought Tong in to work at London Records earlier in the decade). Another example would be that famous Ibiza trip itself – ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’ would only mention 2 of the group of 4 DJ’s who headed there in 1987, Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling, whilst the lesser known of the quartet, Nicky Holloway and Johnny Walker, were no longer deemed important enough to mention. Further to this, the ‘Ibiza 4’ was actually 5, for it was DJ Trevor Fung who facilitated the trip, Fung already working on the island for a number of years before the others came over, having previously holidayed there since 1977. There are other examples, but when it comes to history, not only the history of dance culture, but in general, you’ll find that the originators are more often than not usurped by those who benefitted most from their pioneering spirit, and who, in turn, are then presented themselves as the originals.

So, if post-House / Haçienda / Ibiza is ‘modern club culture as we know it’, what came before is something of a classical era, which needs to be understood in a different way. The thorough documentation of the Northern Soul movement means that any self-respecting dance chronicler has to tip their hat to it, usually focusing on Wigan Casino, its most popular venue, rather than those earlier clubs that many on the scene at the time may have cited as more influential, like The Twisted Wheel in Manchester and the Blackpool Mecca. The Casino is the epitome of Northern Soul to the casual observer, just as Studio 54 is the venue most associated with the New York Disco era…or at least it was. Nowadays, as ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’ illustrated, it’s cooler to reference The Loft and the Paradise Garage as the key NYC Disco venues. This was unlikely to have been the case in such a programme a decade ago, but the publication of Tim Lawrence’s ‘Love Saves The Day’ (2003), a widely acclaimed book that got deep into Disco culture, documenting the New York club scene of the 70’s to a level nobody else had come close to, shone a light on this previously forgotten era.

Like Northern Soul, this can no longer be denied, too many people have come to realise that a documentary about the history of clubbing is going to be deeply flawed without reference to The Loft and the Garage (at the very least). That said, we still have a situation where the early 80’s, a period I maintain is perhaps the most pivotal of all, being the crossroads between the old (Soul, Funk, Disco, Jazz-Funk) and the new (Hip Hop, House, Techno, and all their subsequent mutant strains), is still very much the ‘missing link of dance culture’ I referred to in my article, ‘Electro-Funk – What Did It All Mean?’, which I wrote in November 2003, a month before I made my DJ comeback:
http://www.electrofunkroots.co.uk/articles/what.html

As I said in the piece at the time, ‘although this (the period) has been documented in a number of books and publications down the years, often with a fair degree of insight, the subject is rarely approached with any true depth and attention to detail, the information all in fragments.’ This is still the situation almost 9 years on, although my resurrected DJ career has helped me draw more attention to my own writings on this and related subjects, meaning that at least those keeping an eye on what I’m up to, and who like to dig that bit deeper, are aware that the post-Disco / pre-House period was anything but the tumbleweed strewn dance wilderness many club documentarians have projected by omission.

I’ve always believed very strongly that the truth will eventually out, and whilst TV shows like ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’ are but transient interludes, lasting testament to this culture will be found in the pages of books and the more serious minded films and documentaries from and about the era. The ‘same old story’ I mentioned earlier will come under increasing scrutiny as more information emerges with regards to those lost years between the so called ‘death of Disco’ at the end of the 70’s and the birth of House in the mid-80’s.

It’s those crucial early-80’s years that hold the key, but there hasn’t been a voice loud enough to really capture the imagination of that significant minority needed to change perceptions, in the way that David Mancuso and The Loft re-emerged, phoenix from the flames style, as fundamental to our comprehension of the Disco era, having previously been regarded, at best, as a mere side issue, and at worst not mentioned at all. Any book / TV documentary / film that professes to understand dance culture, but which has failed to reference The Loft, or the Paradise Garage, will be seriously flawed for those studying its evolution in the future, who’ll then question the entire content of the work on the basis that if the author can get it so wrong in this case, there’s a strong likelihood that there are other significant errors in their account.

Something that might today be regarded as the final word on the subject may well, in 10 years’ time be dismissed as full as holes, something new coming along in the meantime that provides a more thorough account. With this in mind, Bill Brewster & Frank Broughton’s book, ‘Last Night A DJ Saves My Life’(1999), re-published with over 100 extra pages in 2006 with planned further updates in the future, adding fresh information they might have missed previously (and, no doubt, taking out what they now feel is expendable).

Whilst, as a somewhat lone voice, or so it often seemed, it’s been difficult to highlight the claims of the early-80’s, I’m confident that the era, at least from an NYC perspective, is soon to be finally opened up in all its hybrid splendour. In his follow-up to ‘Love Saves The Day’, Tim Lawrence is currently completing a book which will hopefully hit the shelves in around 12 months’ time, titled ‘Life And Death On The New York Dance Floor: A History 1980-1983’:
http://uel.academia.edu/TimLawrence/Books

Before he wrote ‘Love Saves The Day’, Lawrence had originally intended to cover the New York club scene at a later point in time, 2 decades on from David Mancuso’s original Loft parties, when Masters At Work (‘Little’ Louie Vega & Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez) were writing a new chapter in the NYC dance story. But what, for me, really sets him apart as a documentarian of dance culture is that, having heard Mancuso’s name come up in interviews one time too many, he saw the bigger picture, switching the emphasis to the 70’s, and set about unearthing the story that now underpins our understanding of New York Disco and its influence on all that followed. A cultural anthropologist, he restored Mancuso to his rightful place at the roots of the Disco movement, making a crucial contribution to our understanding of the era. Not only did he do this with his writing, but he was also part of a team of people who brought this seminal figure over to the UK for regular London Loft parties, which continue to this day.

In a similar way, when asked to write the sleevenotes to the 2006 ‘Discotheque: The Haçienda’ retrospective, rather than, as most writers would, concentrate on the post-88 golden era, he asked the pertinent questions ‘why this club?’, ‘why Manchester?’, ‘how did it happen?’ and, for the first time, illuminated the period that led up to the club becoming a world-famous bastion of dance – his main focus being the period 1982-1988, before ecstasy made its impact, illustrating how the music was already well in place before the drug came on the scene. Incidentally, the #1 defining moment in dance history, according to ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’, wasn’t a musical movement, or a club, or a DJ, but the little pill itself. This is exactly why, for me, dance culture took a wrong turn in the 90’s – the music was already established when ecstasy appeared, and initially the drug enhanced the music, however, it wasn’t long before the drug became primary and the music supplementary, which is always the wrong equation.

As with ‘Love Saves The Day’, ‘Life And Death On The New York Dance Floor’ was originally intended to be a very different book. Tim Lawrence had planned to cover dance culture, not only in New York, but Chicago, Detroit and the UK, leading up to the Rave explosion, but once he’d started writing he realised that there was so much that had happened in NYC during the early 80’s that this was either going to be an unfeasibly thick book or his sole focus should be on New York from 80-83. This is exactly the time and place that I’ve been banging on about for all these years, so needless to say that I’m hugely excited about this book, and itching to read it. It’s going to finally illuminate that missing link in a way that helps connects the dots and, for the first time, properly bridge a major gap in peoples’ understanding of how this most critical cultural juncture would inform everything that has followed.

After Chicago I travelled to Brooklyn, where I felt a real sense of history this time around, the area increasingly the cultural hub of New York. Manhattan may have held sway in the past, but Brooklyn has risen and is, I’m sure, about to hit full-tilt in the coming years. My gig at The Bunker, held in 12-turn-13, a loft space I’ve previously appeared at for a Mister Saturday Night party, was one of those occasions that will live in the memory for a long time – there was certainly that special indefinable something in the air, and the recording can be heard here: http://soundcloud.com/gregwilson/the-bunker-brooklyn-26-08-12. The following day I was the guest of Dennis ‘Citizen’ Kane for the 1^st anniversary of his Disques Town podcast, in which we focused on the New York club scene 30 years ago, with all the music I selected coming out of the city in the 6 month period up to September 1982, providing a taste of just how prolific the dance movement in NYC was back then. To contribute to the discussion Dennis had invited his friend, Sal Principato, along, to add his recollections. Sal was the frontman with the influential 99 Records band, Liquid Liquid, best-known for their 1983 track ‘Cavern’, which was what Grandmaster & Melle Mel based their worldwide hit ‘White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)’ around. The full show is now available at www.dsgtnyc.com/podcast.php or on SoundCloud:

Disquestown Podcast episode #13 Dennis Kane w Greg Wilson & Sal P. by DSGTNYC

It was great to talk with those 2 guys, both of whom experienced that period directly and have a wealth of knowledge between them. We got so deep into things that later, when I’d left the studio and returned to where I was staying, Dennis and I carried on discussing the era on the phone for over 3 hours, no longer conducting a radio interview, but simply indulging in our joint passion for what happened way back when, when Dennis was in New York, at the epicentre of things, whilst I was across the Atlantic in Manchester, fully absorbing the influences and inspiration of a city over 3,000 miles away.

There’s always going to be an element of subjectivity when someone writes a book, makes a documentary, or, indeed, does a radio interview, and nobody can produce such a thing as a ‘definitive account’, there’s always something they’ll miss – different people place different emphasis on different things, and often important aspects, sometimes vitally important, are overlooked as the emphasis is placed elsewhere, the elephant, as is said, not touched from all angles. It can take a long passage of time before someone suitably detached, as Tim Lawrence was with regards to New York in the 70’s (or The Haçienda in the 80’s), takes a more objective approach, seeing the bigger picture, and changing the general consensus as a consequence, this ‘new’ information becoming key to our fuller understanding.

Let’s hope that, on the positive side, ‘How Clubbing Changed The World’ served to whet the appetite of, at least, some of its viewers, parts of it providing them with a portal to a deeper appreciation of what went before. And it’s not just the younger generation of clubbers, even many of the older heads who were personally embroiled in the era of House, The Haçienda and Ibiza, E’d-up and enjoying those heady days to the full, have little knowledge of the records, clubs and DJ’s who laid the groundwork for them to subsequently experience what they now fondly recall as the greatest nights of their lives. As they say, we’re never too old to learn, especially when it comes to understanding our heritage, and whilst clubbing can lay its claim to helping change the world in which we live, some of its greatest treasures are still buried beneath the surface.

LUKE SOLOMON (The Freaks, Classic Records)…. Interview

Posted on January 16, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

2011_Luke-Solomon-shot-2-4x5-film-for-press2

Attack meets British house producer and DJ Luke Solomon at his home studio to discuss the concept of legendary status in music, the problem with retro house and the perils of chart success.

“Some people are so scared of what you’re supposed to say, how you’re supposed to behave,” Luke Solomon tells us at his North London house. “It goes back to that whole thing of making yourself marketable. I think that’s perhaps been one of the reasons why I haven’t got on as well as I otherwise would, because I refuse to bow down to those things. It’s not how it should be.”

Luke would freely admit that he isn’t a household name. Where other DJs and producers of his generation have courted celebrity and the wealth which comes with it, he seems too principled and too humble to join in with all the shameless self-promotion that requires. But, having been dubbed the unsung hero of British house music, Luke’s contribution to dance music over his two decade career is substantial.

His incredible passion for music – and especially house – has seen him run the celebrated Classic Music Company label with Chicago house legend Derrick Carter, inadvertently score a crossover top 10 UK hit single with ‘The Creeps’ by his group Freaks and work with the likes of Damian Lazarus, Rekids, Crosstown Rebels and Visionquest. As a talented and versatile producer and a consistently forward-thinking DJ, Luke deserves to be held in the same high regard as any of his more famous peers.

Attack: Who was it who first described you as the unsung hero of British house music? Was it Andy Weatherall?

Luke Solomon: Yeah, Andrew Weatherall. It’s a little frustrating in some respects to get this legendary status thrown around. Don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly flattering, but you’re trying to translate it to money and record sales and stuff and I have to work incredibly hard to get by. I’ve got a nice house, fortunately I’ve got a wife that works and I’ve had some success over the years – for one odd reason or another – with pop music, but for a continuous income I have to battle and battle. In a way that’s a good thing because it keeps me ambitious. I’m still trying to prove myself.

But as you get older you become part of the furniture. People kind of say, “Oh, that’s Luke Solomon. We know what he does. That’s fine. He’s just there.” I think your chances are reduced even more. You get to that situation with promoters too. You get put into a pigeonhole. It happened to me with Classic and Derrick - people assume that I do something that Derrick has become famous for. Derrick became a bigger beast than the label itself so people make that assumption. It can be frustrating.

It would be easy in your position to get frustrated by other artists making more money and becoming more famous.

Yeah, it is. I’m not bitter about it but I am envious. I see people whose careers I’ve helped launch fly past me and earn thousands of thousands of pounds and of course I think, “Fuck! Why isn’t that me?” But if I look at it as a whole I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve achieved. To have someone like Andrew Weatherall announce me in such a way… I look up to people like Andrew and Derrick and Harvey and think if I can achieve something like what they’ve achieved I’ll be a happy man.

Unfortunately, money gets in the way sometimes, though, doesn’t it? I’m self-employed, I don’t have a pension, I don’t do any of that stuff, but as long as I’ve got a body of music that I can be proud of and when I’m old my kids have got something that can get them through university, I’ll be happy.

It must still be good to be able to earn a living doing something you really love.

It is. I still get the biggest buzz from sitting in the studio and making music then going out at the weekends and playing to people who appreciate it. It’s a wonderful thing. And I’m optimistic about the music industry now. From speaking to people about how digital sales are starting to take effect, I’m optimistic about that.

It’s mad. It’s quite amazing to watch it. I’m going from the days we used to sell thirty, forty thousand copies of an underground record. Look how many copies Isolée sold, or DJ Sneak’s ‘You Can’t Hide From Your Bud’. To suddenly watch that taper away, no one seemed to know what was going on, then to see the rise of digital, then to watch vinyl become an alternative method for people putting out music and promoting themselves. I think that’s brilliant. I love it.

People see it as quite an elitist thing in some respects and I get a lot of people I know saying it’s only people with money who can afford to buy vinyl, but I used to save every single bit of my pocket money up when I was a kid to go and buy a cassette. That wasn’t cheap, it was a lot of money. Economies change, things get more expensive, that’s just how it is. Five pounds to me in the 80s is probably the equivalent of ten, fifteen quid to a kid now. I look at what toys my kids can buy with a fiver. They can get fuck all!

As things have changed, are you happy with the direction you’ve taken?

I don’t think there’s anything that I’ve ever done which I’ve done in a half measure. I overdo it sometimes but it’s art. Deep down I know when I’ve done something that I’m proud of. The only thing that I regret being part of is ‘The Creeps’ in its final version. It became a pop song and it wasn’t our version. We rewrote top lines and stuff.

That was more about the knock-on effect of having a top 10 pop record and it was hard to deal with. The financial blip which happened as a result of ‘The Creeps’ and the fallout and the after-effect of having that money made me think that if it ever came round again I’m not sure I’d want it anyway. It’s a weird situation to be in. People’s perceptions of you change. They suddenly look at you slightly differently and talk to you in a different way because of the success.

I started getting booked to go and DJ at parties that I was a million miles from. I’d start playing the music I play and then get kicked off. I was like, “Why am I being booked to play at these things in the first place? I don’t give a shit that they’re going to pay me four thousand quid, I don’t wanna play here.” It’s the most soul-destroying thing I’ve ever had to do. Give me three hundred quid and a dark basement and I’ll have the best night of my life.

How did you first discover dance music?

Dance music first kind of crept in when I started going to raves. Living in Weston, we used to drive all around the West Country if someone said there was something going on one weekend. I didn’t know what the music that I was dancing to was, but it blew my mind.

Then someone gave me a tape of mad acid tracks, which had a massive effect on me. I was already hearing dance music, but then I heard this other dance music which was very psychedelic and out there. I used to play that tape all the time, take it to parties. We went to this one party with all these yuppy, hoorah Bristol kids – some friend of a friend of a friend thing. We turned up in all our mad flowery dungarees and tie dye and stuff and they were listening to George Michael or something. I remember putting this cassette in and all these rich kids were like, “Turn it off! It’s horrible!”

The first dance floor you cleared…

Haha, yeah! But I’ve always had a massive kick out of discovering things that no one knows about and playing it to get a reaction, just to see what that reaction is. I think one of the most rewarding things is when you blow someone’s mind by playing them something. I’ve got a good group of friends where it’s like “Have you heard this? Have you read this? Have you seen this film?” I love that idea of turning people on to stuff.

It’s a common trait among DJs.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s not enough just to listen to music, you’ve got to play it to someone else. It’s still the greatest kick, to have someone go, “What the fuck is this?!”

I think the greatest, most inspiring thing right now is hearing people like Richard Barratt – DJ Parrot – from Sheffield. He’s making this stuff as Crooked Man. Obviously I’m a big fan of stuff like Sweet Exorcist from back in the Warp days and Cabaret Voltaire. Chris Duckenfield told me about it and when I heard it it was like, “Oh my god, this is gonna change things.”

As soon as I latch onto something like that I’ll champion it forever. I think it’s a really important thing to do. It’s like, “You’ve gotta hear this. It’s brilliant.” Other people hear it and think it’s brilliant too, then they pass it on. It sends this word of mouth thing out and I think it’s still one of the best ways of getting people to hear music that they wouldn’t normally hear.

What do you think of the rest of the house scene at the moment?

There’s a lot of retro going on at the moment, which bothers me quite a lot. There’s a lot of looking back and replicating the past instead of being inspired by the past.

What kind of thing in particular?

The whole new mid-90s garage revival that’s back around again. I like to hear someone like Eats Everything where he’s taking a sound or a rhythm or melodies from the 90s but it sounds quite modern because he’s doing something original with it, but there’s a lot of people just trying to copy exactly what’s happened already. OK, they weren’t there the first time round, but I was…

You look at someone like Motor City Drum Ensemble, you can argue in some respects that he’s very much retro, but there’s something that he does that makes it contemporary. There are people who do get it right. Take Rush Hour, it’s almost a retrospective label, but there’s an element of it that makes it exciting and they do it properly. Same with people like KiNK and Neville Watson. Someone in Chicago might disagree with me if they were there the first time round, but I do think that there’s a lot of retrospective retro which doesn’t do anything original.

Do you think it’s maybe inevitable as dance music grows into, what, its third decade?

Well, where can you go with any music now? It’s that whole Bill Drummond argument that every melody’s been played. I don’t think there’ll ever be any kind of music that’ll come along and have a revolutionary impact.

But I still hear music that excites me. I don’t get bored. I’m having a moment with R&B and hip hop again, which I didn’t think would happen. Things like the Frank Ocean album, which I think is fantastic, and the new J Dilla album. There was a time when I’d given up on hip hop. I guess it has to go through an evolution again and it feels like it’s happening again for the first time since Pharrell. It’s exciting because that had a really good effect on dance music, to the point where I couldn’t live with another Missy Elliot sample on a house record.

Going back to what you mentioned earlier about discovering dance music, how did you first make the transition from being a DJ to an artist?

I was working in a record shop round the corner with a guy called Ty Holden and we’d both become friends with Rob Mello. Ty suggest we go into Rob’s studio in West London so we went over with some ideas and worked on an EP which we released as The Leveller. That was me, Ty, Rob and Zaki.

Were you musical before that? Did you play any instruments?

No, not at all. I had a really disjointed upbringing and I was kind of passed around. My parents didn’t really have that kind of focus. I did a lot of art and went to art school so I was creative but eventually the art found its way into a different world. Eventually I met up with Justin and then we started buying bits of equipment. We started out with an Atari running Cubase and a lot of borrowed things: Jon Marsh of The Beloved‘s mixing desk, two S950s and a lot of samples.

Since then the whole approach to making music must have changed massively. What have you been working on recently?

I’ve finished an artist album which we’re going to put out next year. I take a long time to make records because I have to be completely right in my own head. If I can walk out of the studio and say, ‘This is how I wanted it. This is how it should be,’ then certain things have to take a creative process in order for it to work. The Difference Engine was me making a DJ set, effectively, using various musicians and live approaches to electronic music.

For this record I wanted to make a more Balearic album, which kind of covered my broader spectrum of music that I play as a DJ, very vocal-led with a lot of musicians on it. I recorded everything here then went and mixed it with Pete Hofmann on a couple of Neve desks, used lots of plate reverbs and things. I ended up with an album which Rekids didn’t feel was the right follow-up to The Difference Engine, probably because it fell out of the world of dance music quite heavily, but I’ve gone back to it and kind of remixed it with a slightly different approach. The plan is to release it as a full-length album on Classic.

As well as that I’ve also made a clubbier album as The Digital Kid. That’s more of a clubby… I always play things to people thinking they sound really clubby and they tell me it’s not. ‘Doesn’t this sound like something you’d play in clubs?’ ‘No, not really.’ ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ So it’s one of those again.

I’m also just about to start recording with Roddy Radiation from the Specials for the next Mother Rose single. If you told me when I was 16 or 17 that I’d end up having Roddy Radiation coming to my house… Wow. Career highlight, for sure.

Words: Greg Scarth.
Date: 1st October 2012

“Dan Snaith on Daphni, Radiohead, and the “EDM Barfsplosion”

Posted on January 16, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Snaith has never been a stranger to dance music, but he has spent the last couple of years reinforcing his club bona fides in earnest. His breakthrough, early in 2011, was a Caribou remix of Virgo Four’s “It’s a Crime,” which reworked a lost Chicago house cut from the 1980s into one of the most bewitching club anthems in recent memory. Remixes for Hot Chip, Carl Craig, Art Department, and Sinkane, all released under his Daphni alias, further cemented his off-kilter (yet still, somehow, populist) approach, while Daphni’s “Ye Ye,” released on Four Tet’s Text Records, proved him capable of unabashedly huge techno bangers. On the vinyl-only Resista label, he turned his hand to re-edits of songs by Thomas Mapfumo and an obscure Togolese band called Cos-Ber-Zam. And amidst this general flurry of activity, Snaith also launched his own label, Jiaolong, on which he released idiosyncratic club music by Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan and Chaz Bundick’s Les Sins (a.k.a. Toro y Moi) alongside oddities like Daphni remixes of Cleveland’s Emeralds.

People talk about Daphni as though you were a recent convert to dance music, but you were making pretty “proper” 2-step way back in 2003, with “If Assholes Could Fly, This Place Would Be an Airport.” You’re not new to dance music.

No, definitely not. With that track and even my first album, the Manitoba album, I was listening to so much 2-step garage around that time. Even before I moved to London, I was coming over to visit a lot and buying records from Blackmarket every time I was in town. Jeremy [Greenspan] from Junior Boys was the first person that played me Dem 2 records and stuff like that, in Canada — he was probably one of the people who introduced me to Detroit techno. So it’s something I’ve been doing for a long time, but it has come in and out of the music I make.

When I was making Swim, I was like, “Is this all going to make sense on a Caribou album, or is it going to need some other outlet to release it?” The tracks that went on Swim all made sense as Caribou stuff, but there was loads of quite dance-oriented music that I’d made. One of the tracks on the Daphni record, “Ahora,” was made halfway through making Swim, in 2009. So there was a bunch of stuff that definitely didn’t seem like Caribou music. I was already thinking that maybe it’d make sense to do a limited 12-inch under another name, but it took a while to crystallize the difference between the two things, to make sense of it and to act on it. I wasn’t even planning to release a Daphni album until a few months ago. There are loads of Daphni tracks that aren’t going to see a release that I’ve just made to DJ with. That’s what all these tracks are made for. It wasn’t until a few months ago, when I put a bunch of my favorite ones together, that I thought, “This actually is coherent as an album.”

Quite a few Daphni tracks have been edits of funk or Afrobeat songs.

I was making lots of different edits of things to play in my DJ sets. A couple of them went in DJ mixes I did, maybe one for Allez Allez, around the time Swim came out. So people started hearing them, and I could tell that people were interested; people were asking about them. That’s how the Daphni Edits 12-inches [on Resista] came out. For the Cos-Ber-Zam track, I just sampled that loop from the record, just a drum loop and a voice. They’re this Togolese band that only ever released one seven-inch. I found out about them from Analog Africa, this fantastic reissue label that clears everything and contacts all the original musicians. I made it to DJ with, but I really loved it, loved that combination of the synthesized sounds up against the sample, so I asked them [if I could release it].

When I contacted them, they couldn’t track down the publishing rights, so it had to be credited as a remix for it to be released at all. A lot of where the samples come from, and the influence from African music and global music generally, it’s the records that I’m listening to that are exciting to me. There’s such an amazing culture of reissues unearthing this music at the moment. When I was starting to make music in the late ’90s, Soul Jazz were reissuing stuff that has now been quite canonized, like the 100% Dynamite series. They’re amazing — I love that label. But now, I cannot believe the things that crop up on Boomkat — 500 copies of some totally obscure record of somebody playing, like, solo oud or something. It’s hilarious to me, in one sense, but it’s also amazing that there’s this genuine interest in weird music, rare releases, and it doesn’t even have to be danceable.

Having seen you DJ, it seems like you’re trying to open up the idea of what constitutes “dance music.”
That [Cos-Ber-Zam] track, in particular, is totally the wrong tempo to put into a house set. But there’s some crazy energy to it. That’s my favorite thing about the DJs I like the most, and when I’m happiest with my DJ sets, is that ability to really surprise people — to totally blindside the room in a way that somehow makes sense. Sometimes that track works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I play that track after people have gotten accustomed to a certain tempo or a certain kind of music, and it just unleashes this wild energy. People are like, “What is going on right now?” That moment of excitement is something that’s really special in clubs. You’re not watching a band play their hits; a DJ can pick any record from anywhere, and that potential is something I want to make the most of, rather than just playing something that’s uniform.

All the tracks on the Daphni album were made really quickly. The day that I’m DJing, I’ll be working on a track because I want to play some new music, just to see people’s reaction to it, get that kind of buzz. Often, making the music really is almost like a DJ set, to some degree. I’ll have some kind of sampled loop, and I’ll get this modular synthesizer going, and just kind of collide the two things together as if I were mixing an acid record into an older sampled track or whatever. It’s just a collision. But I’m definitely not arranging it. I’m arranging Caribou thinking of there being a notional band involved: There’s gotta be a bass line and then something in the midrange, and a vocal above it and some kind of arrangement that sort of flourishes around it. With the Daphni stuff, there doesn’t need to be that much stuff. There doesn’t have to be a verse and chorus, obviously. Hopefully, there’s a feeling of excitement and spontaneity in these Daphni tracks. Things are happening really fast, and I’m not going back and editing. Caribou records take a lot more time, and I’m a lot more meticulous and go back and really think about them. Daphni tracks, I don’t really think about them, I just do.

What made you decide to start your own label, Jiaolong?
Part of why I wanted to release these Daphni reords is that I could make a track, play it one weekend, have it pressed up on Monday or Tuesday, and it could be in shops three weeks later. That immediacy was very exciting, because Caribou has become quite an involved thing. There are four people in the band. I finish a record, there’s a three- or four-month lead time to releasing the album. I have to book a whole tour, there are singles and videos, blah blah blah, all the normal stuff. So it was really exciting to just be able to make a track and have it out there — if it had been digital, it would’ve been even faster, I guess — as quickly as the medium of vinyl allowed. So that was really the only plan for this music. It wasn’t intended to end up on an album, particularly. And then I released a couple things for friends, like I did a remix for Emeralds, who are close friends, just to play in clubs, and Jeremy from Junior Boys wanted to release some tracks, and Chaz from Toro y Moi sent me some music, and I was like, “I love this, can I release it?” But I definitely have no intention of Jiaolong becoming a real label. Now I’m getting emails from people, like, “Hey Dan, you may remember me from this, do you want to release this friend of mine’s music?” This is my worst nightmare! I spend too much time answering emails already. The last thing I want to do is run a label. But it is a great outlet to get stuff out there quickly.

“Yes I Know” reminds me a lot of Terry Riley’s “You’re No Good,” with its heavy soul loop and freaky synthesizer.
That’s an amazing record. I wasn’t thinking about that when I made it, but thank you. That’s a killer record. The source material for “Yes I Know” is a really short track, and I haven’t done that much with it. I guess that’s another thing I’ve become more confident with over the years. I know that I can write music, and I know that I can compose; if something really simple works, I don’t need to overcomplicate it just to prove to people that I’m really doing something. I’ve got the confidence to be more simple as well as doing things that are more complicated.

How do you determine the line between something for you to play in your own sets versus something that you release under your own name? I thought it was interesting that “Yes I Know” leads off the album, when in some ways it’s just one big loop of someone else’s song.
The liberating thing about making this music is that I wasn’t thinking about those issues at all. That’s probably what happens a lot of time when people make sample-based club music. It’s the excitement of making it that lets the music get made, and then those questions come afterwards. For example, I’ve had experiences with clearing samples where it’s just ground everything to a halt, and I’ve had friends who have not been able to release a track at all because there’s a sample in it. It’s a really great, original piece of music, and it just has some small sample in it. That seems a shame to me when that happens. But I also understand there’s a lot of issues around that, particularly if you’re sampling music made by musicians around the world who aren’t relaxing in a mansion somewhere. That’s why it’s so great to be able to deal with a small label who’s directly in touch with the musicians, and go directly to them and say, “I want this track to come out just because of the music, not because of any kind of financial benefit for me. Can we work something out that everybody’s happy with?” In fact, Analog Africa have never cleared any sample usage before, so it was amazing to me, and kind of ties into my love of the original music, which is obviously what making that track is all about.

It seems like it was your Virgo Four remix that announced your arrival as “dance” producer. Were you surprised at how that took off?
Well, yeah. I finished that track quite quickly, as well, and listening back to it, I was immediately very happy with it. The mix sounded great right off the bat. I knew I was really pleased with it, but it’s quite a specialist thing, in some ways. I know they’re a legendary band, but it’s still a contemporary artist going back and remixing an old track, something that wouldn’t necessarily cross over. I was surprised the way it connected the way it did.

For coming from the fringes of dance music, as you do, a lot of your Daphni cuts are quite big, populist tunes.
I’m certainly not trying to be obtuse or obscure in any way. I love playing a big tune in the middle of a DJ set that has other weird music in it. I love those moments. Who doesn’t love being in a club when everybody’s got their hands in the air? That’s a big thrill for me. Obviously, there are always two sides to that. There are certain tracks where everybody would have their hands in the air and I would have my hands over my ears.

I’m definitely not trying to do anything that’s intentionally not populist, that’s for sure. And I love big melodies. That’s always been a part of the music that I make. That inevitably makes it cross over in a way that something without a lot of strong melodic content wouldn’t.

Do you think your audience is more open to you taking risks because of your history as Caribou? Or do you think that if DJs took more risks, they could get away with it?
It’s funny you say that. I often feel conservative. I’ll see Theo Parrish play something, or Kieran [Hebden, a.k.a., Four Tet], when we’re playing back to back, will play some tune that completely surprises me, and I’m like, “This is a disaster, this is never going to work.” And the next minute everybody’s freaking out to some Steve Reich record or some Brazilian track or something. And I always think, “Damn, I wish I had the balls to play tracks like this.” So I’d say something like that to Kieran, and he’d be like, “What are you talking about? You play totally weird shit all the time.”

It’s funny: Having played so many live shows, I’m never nervous before a Caribou show, but I often get nervous before a DJ set. I’m thinking, “This room is full of people who don’t necessarily have a clue what I’m about, and I could quite easily clear this room.” I’ve definitely cleared some rooms over the years. So there’s that real pressure, but I also have that stubborn streak that I think maybe is helpful as a DJ, that’s like, “I really want people to hear this track right now, and I feel like it’s going to work,” and you just have to kind of will it in there. There’s definitely a tension between those two things.

As far as your question about the audience, I’m not really sure. I end up in quite varied situations. Kieran and I played back to back at Creamfields Andalucía this summer; we just played in Ibiza. That night at Horst [in Berlin, playing an eight-hour set] was amazing — a small club with people who have come specifically to hear me do one thing — but I’ve ended up in lots of different scenarios, which is another reason I get nervous about DJing. It’s more of a crapshoot than a ticketed Caribou show. Often I don’t know what to expect when I’m doing a DJ gig. I’ve got a good idea of a bunch of different clubs around Europe and Canada and in New York, and I play with friends a lot more. But in the beginning, when I was trying to get more DJ sets, and people didn’t really associate me with dance music yet, I’d end up playing after someone who had just played an hour of the biggest Ed Banger tracks ever, and I’d be playing after them, and it would be like, I don’t have one track of anything that can follow this guy, let alone a whole hour. Now I’m getting to do more really long sets where I can kind of build things up, then totally break them down again, and build them up again a few times over the course of the night.

What was it like to play that eight-hour set at Horst?
I think it was the best DJ experience that I’ve ever had. It was such an amazing crowd. I ended up playing for nine hours and then had to go straight to the airport. At the end, Johnny [the club's owner] came up and said, “Dan, I’ve never had anybody play for nine hours and not have to go to the toilet once during the entire time.” And I was just like, “Oh, I just forgot! Now that you mention that, I desperately need to go to the toilet!” But I had just kind of forgotten. At various points, I was like, “Oh, I’ll play a few more tracks, and then I’ll go,” and then the whole night just disappeared.

What did you close with?
That’s a good question. I can’t remember, but it might have been Albert Ayler — it’s quite often this Albert Ayler track, “Love Cry.” That’s one of my favorites. It’s him when he was trying to cross over and made a kind of populist soul album with free-jazz saxophone over the top of it. It’s a real treat, that one.

You’ve been doing a lot of back-to-back sets with Four Tet. What’s it like when you two play together?
I’ve been playing back to back with Kieran for 12 or 13 years or something. The way I met Kieran, I met him at the Big Chill festival in the U.K. I was just a punter, and I went up and started talking to him — “I like your music, blah blah blah” — sent him some music later, and then booked him. We were putting on this club night in Toronto when I was in university there. So he came over and stayed for like two weeks on our couch. It was before he started traveling to DJ and to do live shows, and if somebody emailed him now, and was like, “Do you want to not be paid any money? We’ll pay your flight, and you’ll sleep on our couch, and you don’t know us very well…” [Laughs] But it was the right time. He played that club night with us, and then we went on lots of record-buying trips. That was the start of our friendship. I moved to London quite soon after that, and we’d end up playing pubs. We’d get from 10 till midnight, and the two of us would be playing psych-rock records or So Solid Crew or Nas records. We’ve been doing it for a long, long time, but not consistently. We’ve just randomly ended up DJing together here and there. And then last year, we were like, “This seems like a lot of fun and something that people genuinely seem to get excited about.” And we get excited about it. Kieran’s been living in New York the last year, so when we get to hang out the most is if we book a show together.

Your careers have sort of moved in lockstep. You and Four Tet always seem to have new albums out the same year, and now you both have singles-driven albums that aren’t really albums. You have the Jiaolong label, he has Text Records. It’s a little uncanny.
There are two sides to that. There’s no question that I learned the way the quote-unquote music industry works, or how to be a contemporary musician in control of the things I want to control, from Kieran. He’s the person who got me signed, and whenever I needed advice, I’d go to him. I’ve followed his model right from the start. When my first album came out, he had so much experience already. He had done three Fridge albums, he’d signed to a major, been dropped, done 50 remixes, whatever. And the fact that we’ve become the closest friends, that’s the other half of it. Swim and There Is Love in You, these two records line up musically because we’re doing the same things. I’m phoning him up, saying, “There’s this thing on Friday, do you want to go?” We end up checking the same things, seeing the same things, talking to each other about the music that we’re making. We’re both the first person who we send our tracks back and forth to. When I was considering releasing the Daphni tracks, he had put out the “Pinnacles”/”Ye Ye” 12-inch, and I thought, “Maybe I should start putting out music. I’ve got these tracks and I want to put them out.” And Kieran was like, “It’s a piece of piss, running a label! It’s the easiest thing in the world.” So knowing somebody who’s doing the same thing has been a part of why I started releasing music this way.

Have you two ever collaborated on music together?
We have, actually, once, for a Notwist remix. At the time, it was a record we both liked and were excited about. I don’t think it’s either of our best work, that’s for sure. He’s also played in the Caribou Vibration Ensemble, so we’ve had that experience. In terms of producing music, it’s funny — we really should do it, at some point. But it seems like we’re always both so busy, and even though it seems like we’re in lockstep, schedule-wise, there’s a lot of time he’s on tour and we’re not, or he’s in America and I’m over here, or then he comes back and I’m off on tour. It’s not like we’re in the same neighborhood. We used to be quite a lot, literally down the street, and hanging out all the time. But it’s not always the case.

There’s also the fact that we have such similar skill sets. We both kind of work by ourselves and combine samples with programming. It’s almost more fruitful for me to do a duet with a banjo player or something, somebody who does something totally different. And that’s what’s happened on Caribou records in the past. The people that I’ve collaborated with have either played instruments that I don’t play, or sing really well, which I also don’t do. Kieran and I might just be both reaching for the mouse to do the same thing.

I was surprised to see you guys booked at Creamfields Andalucía, which tends to be pretty full-on rave.
There are several stages, but our stage was me and Kieran, James Holden, Luke Abbott, Nathan Fake, John Talabot — all our friends. That was part of the reason we wanted to do it. And also, we wanted to see the carnage on the main stage and go over and check out Tiësto and whatever. Which, I’ve gotta say, was demoralizing. I thought it would be funny, and maybe even spectacular. It was the greatest scam in history. His private jet touches the ground half an hour before he starts. He doesn’t step out of the limo until the intro music is already playing, and they’re still trying to line up the video while he’s playing his first track, like they can’t even be bothered to put together a spectacular LED fuckstravaganza. It’s the laziest shit I’ve ever seen in my life. As for what he was playing, it was absolutely horrible — as I should have expected, but I’ve never seen any of those huge populist guys.

“Fuckstravaganza” — that’s right up there with “EDM barfsplosion,” a recent coinage of yours from the Jiaolong press release. How much are you paying attention to the overground scene in the U.S.?
Musically, it just has zero relevance to what I’m doing. Maybe I was being a bit provocative throwing a bit of “barfsplosion” in there, but I’m fascinated by it as a phenomenon. That’s why I wanted to go see Steve Aoki and Tiësto — are things a lot crazier than at the mega-raves in Toronto that I remember from the ’90s? What’s different this time around? What’s drawing these huge crowds? I’m intrigued by the phenomenon. I don’t really resent it. There’s so much shitty music, or predictable, boring, popular music out there, it’s not something that angers me. I’m not in a grumpy old man mode where I’m like [adopting grumpy old man voice], “Everybody should be listening to Theo Parrish!” That’s not going to happen.

You raved in Toronto in the ’90s?
Yeah, I did. In Toronto, it was enormous. This was when people started taking E: 1994, 1995, a few years after they were already doing lots in Manchester. I had already been going to clubs in high school; I saw Richie Hawtin play literally in the basement of somebody’s house in the town I grew up in, because he was from just down the road. A few people in our high school were listening to Plus 8 and that kind of stuff. My friend’s brother put out a record on Plus 8. So there was a connection to something. But then when I arrived in Toronto, every weekend there’d be two 50- or 60,000 capacity raves, with a huge drum and bass arena, and I don’t know, Oakenfold, all those people. But at the same time in Toronto there were lots of smaller clubs, so I was going to the smaller clubs, places that were playing more diverse music. And I was putting on nights. It was kicking off big time in Toronto; that was definitely a part of the culture that I was making music in.

What are the differences between your experience of raving in the 1990s and EDM today?
I guess there was no festival concept back then, or at least I never went to one. It was more like a big, dark room, not so much in the way of lighting at all. It’s definitely the lights that have exploded. In fact, the next back-to-back thing Kieran and I are doing is this thing at Brixton Academy that’s five pounds, and there’s going to be no lights at all. It’s going to be total darkness in this 5,000-capacity venue. James [Holden] is doing it, Floating Points, all the Hessle Audio guys. That’s more Kieran’s reaction to this lighting thing: Let’s have people listen to the music again.

How has it been for Caribou supporting Radiohead’s tour?
Obviously, all of us in the band are fans, and have been for a long time, so that’s really amazing to get to know them all. They’re all so lovely. And we were picked by them, not by their agent or their manager or somebody who thought, “This would be a good marketing ploy.” They wanted us to play before they played. Even to the extent that for some festivals around Europe, they said, “We’re going to headline, but you have to offer the set before us to Caribou,” which is an amazing thing for them to do. Also, playing two nights to 60,000 people in Mexico City is an experience unlike any other. We’ll never get that again, for sure. That scale is absurd.

Have you had to adapt the band to playing venues that size?
It’s an opening slot, so it’s shorter than we’d normally play. In the beginning, we were like, “We have to play the hits.” We were a bit terrified. But it turns out that of all the bands of that size we could open for, their fan base is the most musically interested in other things. Maybe it’s because we’ve been approved by Radiohead, in some sense, but people are interested in what we want to do. Now we’re starting to play longer sets; I think we’re just going to start playing weirder stuff and whatever we want. We’re back into being comfortable and doing what we want, which I think is the best thing to do anyway — not to worry about “maximizing exposure.” That’s not why we’re doing this.

October 9 2012, 9:34 AM ET
by Philip Sherburne

IDJUT BOYS: Patience Pays

Posted on January 16, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

To say the North London Idjut Boys are icons of the dance music scene and legends in their own right is an understatement. For nearly 20 years, Conrad McDonnell and Dan Tyler have been doing everything together, from DJ’ing to producing to partying. The self-taught Brits met in the late 80s at clubs that the likes of DJ Harvey spun, and shortly thereafter, hooked on the lifestyle, decided to switch from being mere observers to participants and auteurs. Over the course of their tenure, they’ve founded three record labels (U-Star, Noid, and Droid); released copious amounts of edits, 12″s, and albums by themselves and their peers; and traveled the world countless times around. Somehow, though, save for the Meanderthals album they crafted with Rune Lindbæk, they never managed to make an original long-player. That is no longer the case! On July 23, the Idjuts dropped Cellar Door through Oslo’s Smalltown Supersound. The full-length may not be what anyone expected―it’s decidedly a “listening” album as opposed to a “club” one―but, if there’s one thing that’s remained consistent with the duo, it’s that one can never foretell what they’ll pump out next. We caught up with McDonnell and Tyler a few weeks back to discuss their past, present, and future, and it’s with great pride that we present you with the full conversation.

“Patience pays – apply that now and you will succeed.”

So concludes the opening of a treasure hunting guidebook this writer peruses while waiting for esteemed DJs and production duo the Idjut Boys to arrive in the boozer. It could well be a maxim for the pair during their last 20 or so years in the musical game as, at last, the birth of their debut album Cellar Door is almost here.

It may well be their first album proper as the Idjuts, but it’d be unfair to accuse them of laziness – the pair follow a hectic schedule of remixes, 12 inches and DJ sets. But arguably, the love of delay explicit in their space-age take on dance has been mirrored in its release.

Dan Tyler and Connie McConnell may no longer be boys but they still have a child-like enthusiasm when it comes to talking music. Disco, house, electro, r&b, soul, techno, hip hop, pop and rock – their passion for such sonics and everything else in between gushes out of them like hot steam. The twosome also make for a lovably incongruous pair. Connie speaks with a northern brogue and has bags under his eyes big enough to climb into, whilst Londoner Dan wears red trousers and brings a CDJ in a pillow to the pub that he’s returning to a mate – his daughter briefly joins us while Connie is outside discussing the merits of the Cannabis World Cup over a gasper. When they say they love chaos, it’s no surprise. It’s in their music, their DJ sets and, from this meeting, their way of life…

Cellar Door is the first album from the pair as the Idjuts, but not the first they’ve worked on together. Various aliases have become them – the Meanderthals (with Norwegian Rune Lindbaek), Head Arse Fusion Band, Pastrami Man – and they’ve lorded over numerous labels – U-Star and Noid to name two of their best. So why, after a lengthy time in the business, is now the right moment for an Idjuts album?

“We’ve had a lot of ideas stored in the computer which we’ve been sifting through for some time. We’ve always been working on music – whether that be remixes or our own material. But after the Meanderthals record, we started getting them in some sort of order with an inkling it was time to do something longer as the Idjuts,” explains Connie. “All we had when we went into the studio were rough ideas. You wouldn’t recognise anything in the songs from the demo versions. There’s just no way.”

Recorded with Sally and Steve from Balearic veterans A Man Called Adam and a whole host of other players (“whoever was in the room at the time” jokes Connie), the album veers away from smoky dancefloors into more sumptuous, horizontal pastures. The likes of “Song for Kenny” and “Going Down” are moments of magic in a rich, aural quilt woven across the record’s eight songs. It demonstrates a deliberate desire to make a ‘real’ album in the traditional sense – something which so many ‘dance’ acts strive unsuccessfully to do…

“Some of it is totally usable in a club setting,” Dan affirms. “But the overall aesthetic was to make it a listening experience – this is side one, this is side two – we wanted it to go beyond out and out club music.” The Bill Brewster penned blurb accompanying the record backs up these claims: “this is what the Idjut Boys sound like strapped to an Eames chair, cheroot in hand, while their pet tiger Keith sits by the hearth fire.”

ellar Door should do wonders to spread the gospel of the Idjuts further within the more mainstream musical psyche – but having finished the record last year, the attention of the pair is already wandering towards new, potentially less populist spheres. In particular, a dub rendering of the album.

“From that pool of material, we’ve probably got another album’s worth of songs,” Dan explains. “It’s free, out there, abstract, odd, however you want to call it.”

“We wanted to use the original tracks as instruments,” Connie continues. “The different channels of the tracks are just a new set of tones – so we used effects to shape and create different ones. Man, I’m itching to get our teeth into this odd stuff. With musicians there needs to be structure. But with the dub you don’t need that – it’s based more on total instinct.”

Dan attributes discovering this rich creative furrow to their studio techniques. “You’d never reach this by sitting at a keyboard trying to programme correctly – or showing any sort of respect to the original versions. We don’t try to behave in a sonically correct and precise fashion. For us, that’s a big part of the way we love working – it gives results you wouldn’t get. For better or for worse.”

“We aren’t mouse-generation people mate,” adds Connie. “That’s just not how we interact with our music. We use a different interface for it. And that’s like four hands and nods to each other.”

Their thirst to explore these new pastures is born from playing marathon DJ sets in clubs across different shores, but particularly in Japan – the duo are keen to sing the praises of the clubs, the sound and the crowds and their ability to still be into the energy of a room long after the sun has come up. Both are certainly still in love with the energy of the peak time, Saturday night moments – but sound increasingly fascinated by stretching a night of cavorting into the weird and woozy hinterland of morning and beyond.

“DJing all the time and living the kind of nightlife we do via clubs means you are a 12 inch animal. But playing in places like Japan shows you what you can do once you’ve been on the decks for seven or eight hours. You can start using music which may not have any energy in the drums but still conveys real emotion,” says Connie. “There’s always that ‘last one of the night’ mentality. When you’ve been doing that for another five hours and the dancefloor has stopped thinning out and starts getting fuller, you stop and ask yourself ‘what’s going on here?’”

Excitingly for London heads, the Idjuts kick off a new residency at the Waiting Room in Stoke Newington in September. Starting on a Thursday night, it will see them only having 4 hours in which to fashion their party – but versatility has always been one of their great strengths both as DJs and producers. As they readily admit, they’re prone to playing wedding disco music at any opportunity as well as the more high-energy club tackle. Their skills as selectors are glaringly obvious from the numerous released mixes they’ve put out over the years. The Saturday Nite Live mixes, the acclaimed Press Play CD for Tirk and now their latest, Five Years of Claremont 56.

This latest effort, a release formed of a 2CD compilation and accompanying mix, is a celebration of the imprint run by long-time cohort Paul Mudd, who, along with other disco luminaries such as Steve Kotey, used to get down and lose his shit at parties run by the Idjuts at the Cross some years ago. The label’s output has been consistently high so it’s no surprise that the Idjut’s take makes for an eclectic, dubby musical journey.

“We did it live and late at night,” says Connie. “We set up our mixer, gathered together all the effects we could find and routed everything through our studio desk. I apologise in advance to any of the artists featured on the mix, as we may or may not have coated it with a liberal layer of reverb. But we’ve got four hands so we can turn a lot of knobs at once.” “There was wine – maybe even some beer involved,” nods Dan.

The release has received glowing reviews but props have come from even loftier quarters, as Connie excitedly explains: “Paul forwarded us an email from Can’s Holger Czukay (who features on the release). He was like ‘Excellent mix guys’’, we’re listening to it over and over again. If he’s getting it, and enjoying it, then ’nuff said.”

The props of a founding member of German kraut-rockers Can are not the only ones to ring in their ears when it comes to mixing and music making. Indeed, the pair have long been long been associated with the power of ‘the edit’. What do they reckon to the current glut clogging up the shelves of record shops?

“Some pieces of music just don’t need an edit,” says Dan. “Some great pieces of music don’t need a fucking huge kick drum. It might not be sonically sounding modern – but certain, great tunes carry something in them – and that doesn’t die whether they’re 30 years old or not.”

“It’s also a shame if you’re thinking about doing an edit as opposed to doing something original,” says Connie. “Especially now it’s so easy to make music – all you need is a laptop.”

But their opinions are not overtly negative. Many edits may be formulaic but their sales are useful for ensuring the health of the dance music industry continues. Plus, they’re exposing more elderly killer tunes to new generations of ears…

“I hope it’s the gateway to people,” Connie continues. “They’re editing real music – place, talent and skill – and maybe, just maybe that will become the aspirational point in it. Some people do that really, really well. But then sometimes we turn up and someone will be playing the top ten edits of that week back to back. There’ll be no consideration of what emotion these tunes are delivering and the potency slips.”

“But you can get quite creative with edits in a sampling way,” Dan argues. “I tend to buy some – they can be a useful tool when someone has been creative with it.”

“It’s come hand in hand with the Internet becoming a great source and tool to find music,” Connie continues. “We’re perhaps a little bit cavemen-esque in that we’ve come from an era of digging through crates and basements – whereas now, music is for everyone via the Internet. There’s no snobbery. And why the fuck should there be. It doesn’t matter whether it’s rare or where you got it from. Is the music good? That’s all that fucking matters. But those basements full of crates still hold gold.”

As I leave them in the pub debating the merits of another pint, it’s apparent that although they may well consider themselves cavemen, they’re far from prehistoric. Their vibes hark back to a slightly more innocent time but their legacy as purveyors of fine, space disco – alongside the likes of Lindstrom and Prins Thomas – endures and should, with the release of Cellar Door, blossom. As the treasure hunting guide book should perhaps say “patience ‘eventually’ pays…”

Jim Ottewill

by Juno Plus on 16.07.2012 at 13:15pm

INTERVIEW

How did you two meet?

Conrad McDonnell: Through the same parties, I think. In Cambridge and London… maybe Manchester, too.

Dan Tyler: Yeah, yeah.

C.M.: I’m scared to say the dates. Like, late 80s.

What brought you from one city to the other?

C.M.: Music jobs and college, really. Being a lot younger, you’re up for the adventure.

D.T.: That was a happy combination of cities to be in at that time; they were all pretty interesting… socially, musically, whatever.

What kind of stuff were you getting up to? I plead total ignorance here.

C.M.: There’d be parties going on in farmland and in farm buildings and warehouses in and around London. After a while, you kind of work out which ones you like, and we kept going to one called Tonka quite a lot. DJ Harvey used to play there. In some kind of strange way, not ones to let the party go, we wound up doing what we do, I guess.

You just started DJ’ing together?

D.T.: There always used to be a party after the party, so we saw that as an opportunity [for us]. We started doing a few parties that honed our very special business skills [Laughs]. We had some fun, learning how to lose money. [Laughs]

So when did you actually become the Idjut Boys?

C.M.: Uh, we got an opportunity for a bit of studio time because we were annoying a neighbor. We ended up with a weekend in the studio―a good studio called East Court in West London. We worked with a really nice engineer guy, and he managed to translate our mumblings and random synth noise actions into the Idjut Boys EP. We were very, very lucky in that the record caught on with a few people we were into… like, we heard that François [Kevorkian] played two copies of our record at the Ministry. When you hear that sort of thing, the first thing out of your mouth is, like, Right we need to make another one.

What are your backgrounds in music?

C.M.: Just really liking music―listening to it, dancing to it. Our relationship with music is obsessive, to say the least. It’s in a relationship with us. [Laughs]

To say the least. So it sounds like this is the only job you can have!

C.M.: Yeah, for better or worse, but probably for better, since we’re still doing it, in one way or another. We’ve employed zero strategy all the way. We’d make a record, get the money back from the record―enough to make another record. If those records were reaching exotic, far-off places, you might be lucky enough to go to them and play.

You guys have put out a lot of records. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve only listened to half of them. What has compelled you to be so prolific? It seems like you two live and breathe in the studio!

C.M.: You know what? There was a time, in the late 90s and the beginning of this century where we were DJ’ing so much that the studio kind of took second place. That has good and bad sides. Your wallet’s always full and you’re seeing a lot of the world, but… living life as a DJ… it’s almost like solitary confinement; you’re locked in this world of needing new records and going out to play them. With zero recovery time. It becomes a bit weird. We were just not in the studio―we were too knackered. I can’t remember when it was, but it was about 10 years ago, when we moved into this studio. And we decided to change it around a bit, make some more music.

Eventually, I can imagine it catches up with you. There’s only so many years you can tour before having to make music again!

C.M.: Oh, absolutely. It’s been an absolute pleasure and a total privilege to be a guest DJ all over the planet―absolute magic. It’s a great thing. But making music and being part of that and having that as your legacy (rather than a mixtape)…

Things are so different now. The way the record industry is now, it’s very, very, very different. I don’t want to have to get on a plane to pay my rent; I want to sit in the studio and have some fun. We work with some great people and… we’re a bit older, so it’s also just a little easier.

D.T.: Without one, you can’t do the other. That definitely applies. Like Connie said, we’ve been totally blessed and are so grateful for the opportunities we’ve had to get around and meet great people, see different cultures, but we’d like to be able to do music whilst doing that. And to be relevant to music now, too.

It’s a balancing act… or a yin and yang thing. You need to take the DJ’ing thing in equal measure with the studio stuff.

Anyway… one of the things I’ve always been curious about is how you’ve perceived yourselves. From my perspective, you’ve always been very unusual… outsiders… the odd men out. Whether it’s with your DJ sets or your records or your labels. Was that something you were cognizant of? Like, how did you feel like you fit into the scene when you were coming up?

D.T.: That’s for you to say. No, but… I think we’d rather be odd men out than the same as everyone else…

C.M.: Yeah, we’ve always just done what we’ve wanted to do. Possibly to our decrement in some instances. You make a record that’s really successful and, basically, you get 50 remix requests. Some people have made fantastic careers by doing that, but that’s not really what we’ve wanted to do. Also, we’ve just evolved musically, from then until now. We DJ around so we kind of hear what music’s out there and we like to fill the gap. Why make a record that’s the same as somebody else’s? Use your skills and your talent to make something else―someone’s already made that great record; don’t fuckin’ copy it.

I totally see and admire that… I’m just saying that, when I think of the early 90s UK scene, I think of, like, happy hardcore and progressive house and that kind of stuff. Not the shit that you guys have done.

D.T.: I totally hear you, man.

C.M.: But the thing is that… I know that was going on here, and I know that was massive, and we had those jokers on Radio 1 for years that basically destroyed dance music in this country with their cheesy bollocks, and they’re all rich, rich men now, but they fucked it up. We weren’t involved in that. We didn’t want to take part in that whatsoever. The parties we went to were nothing like that; the DJs we listened to were nothing like that. We were just kind of going with our people, really. We were going to parties with people who loved the same things.

D.T.: We brought our thing to America and Japan and lots of other place, but those places in particular. For people that dig it the same way we do. Who don’t change with the direction of the wind, to fit the marketplace.

When did you guys decide to make Noid? What was the genesis of that?

D.T.: Noid… man… fuck… we were doing U-Star―

C.M.: I think it started at Harvey’s house.

D.T.: Yeah, Harvey played us his edit and some things and we were like, Oh, yeah―we’ll put them out. Noid is born. We did some ourselves. Then, there were loads and loads of edits out. Now, it’s become, like, a genre. It’s like people do edits before thinking of doing original music. They think that edits are their original material―that’s sort of a good one. [Laughs] Noid was kind of sporadic. We put some records out by Harvey… Dimitri [from Paris]… Ray Mang… and some by us, yeah.

It sounds like both Noid and U-Star were just vehicles for you to do your own thing, without someone else in charge.

D.T.: Exactly.

How was that experience? Today, the vinyl market is wacky. The number of pressings people do and the production and distribution deals… the market is super small, compared to what it once was. How was running Noid and U-Star in the 90s? Was it a chore or a success?

C.M.: We couldn’t make them as fast as we could sell them―that seemed to be the case, at least for a while. We were so into it. We were so into it that we did everything sort of ass-backwards and the wrong way around. It cost us a fortune to do anything because we didn’t know the right way to do stuff. But, at the end of the day, the distribution company [we worked with], we couldn’t repress records quick enough for them. We used to sell a lot of records. Now, it’s kind of… I’ll tell you what―we’re kind of okay because we’re 20 years in and we can command the fee we do and get paid a certain amount for remixes. But, if you’re starting out, I think it must be tough. You have to do, like, four jobs just to keep your head above water. I hope it [improves]. As you said, people don’t sell as many records… so, what’s happened is records have become really expensive. If you’re starting out and want to buy a handful of records―wow.

Yeah―it’s hundreds of dollars.

C.M.: Yeah. And I find that… restrictive for people. They shouldn’t be that much.

D.T.: If you’ve got the wherewithal and the tools to get your stuff out there, though, in some ways, it’s probably easier to do that today than it was when we were starting. It’s a different kind of process. It’s nice to see that vinyl hasn’t completely disappeared―and that people appreciate it.

When we used to go record shopping on the weekends or whatever… if you didn’t go, you’d just miss some great record. Because they were there and then they were just gone. There’s a bit of that now, with the limited pressings. It used to be a bit of a pilgrimage, getting records, though―if you didn’t haul ass into town, you weren’t getting any.

Well, we should talk a little bit about the album! When did you start working on Cellar Door?

C.M.: January, the year before this…

D.T.: January ‘11.

C.M.: January, 2011!

D.T.: Some of the tracks on there have roots that go farther back, but―

C.M.: Some parts. Basically, we did the Meanderthals record, and Joakim [Haugland of Smalltown Supersound] was happy with that. We did that with Rune Lindbæk. And then he was like, Is there an Idjut Boys album? So we came back from Japan and then we started. We got everything we had on the computer―and there was a lot of stuff―and siphoned it down and siphoned it down, and then started deciding what we needed with what. We worked quite hard and were quite methodical―we worked out recording schedules. The drums were recorded live. It’s all played… and recorded with the best gear we could lay our hands on, in some really nice places.

When we were in the room when Bugge [Wesseltoft] recorded “One for Kenny”… Bugge’s got the headphones on, and Dan and I are standing in this beautiful, big studio in Oslo, [watching him] play the piano with his eyes closed. We can’t hear the track―we can only hear the piano―but we were almost in tears, man. That was truly, truly sick.

We were lucky because Joakim helped us to do this kind of stuff. I just think it’s really fun to go to different places and work with different people. It certainly adds something.

How did you go about constructing the whole thing? Since you guys don’t actually play anything yourselves…

C.M.: We program, so [we] get a groove going and a guide bass line, and, from that point, we get [other] people in.

How do you two divvy up the workload?

C.M.: When it gets to the point of driving you mental, you swap. [Laughs] Looking at the screen, doing the same thing… you get to the point where you’ve had a really, really long day and you’re working on something that doesn’t seem to be working, and you get really frustrated. But, fortunately, there’s that other pair of eyes.

D.T.: I will say that, with this, I totally credit Connie for his engineering skills. We work in tandem, but… well, we’ve had no schooling in engineering. Everything that’s happened with our studio has been trial-and-error, self-taught.

The album is meant to be something you can put on one piece of vinyl or a CD. You might gravitate towards one or two tracks, but it’s meant to be something you can listen to [the whole way through]. We’ve played some of it in clubs, but… we’ve had a couple of people who’ve heard it, and they said it was a little different from what they were expecting. We are intending to do a dub copy of it as well, which will take it somewhere entirely different.

Alright, so, lastly… what’re you doing for the remainder of the year?

D.T.: Yeah, there’s another single―we’re just debating what it’s going to be. Maybe with a remix from an extremely well-known dance music god. That will remain a mystery until [we] decide it won’t be any longer! But we also have a couple of remixes to do… we just did one for Dennis Kane… and we have another one for our friend Luke Solomon. And then, yeah, maybe a dub copy of [our] album. We just did a compilation for Claremont 56. It’s a five-year compilation, which we’ve done a mix for, too.

C.M.: There’s a label out of L.A. called Acid Test, and I think we’re going to do something for it.

D.T.: It’s sort of like that little label we had, Droid. [Acid Test] is leaning that way, so we’re hoping to satisfy them. We both dig that kind of music and it’s certainly a million miles from Cellar Door.

Text: Nik Mercer
Images: Joanna Hill
Posted: 20 August, 2012

10 BEST DETROIT TECHNO DOCUMENTARIES…so far

Posted on January 16, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

1. Real Scenes: Detroit

One of the slickest-looking docs on Detroit techno, Real Scenes: Detroit, produced by Resident Advisor and Bench, takes the long view on the topic, but manages to hew more to the current side of Detroit’s regeneration and growth rather than its bygone history and post-industrial decay. A winner, any way you look at it.

Real Scenes: Detroit from Resident Advisor on Vimeo.

2. Detroit: Blueprint for Techno

Speaking of Canada, they do a helluva job crafting this documentary, Detroit: Blueprint for Techno, which was produced by cable channel MuchMusic a number of years back. For only 25 minutes in length, it goes super-in-depth, with footage from all the usual suspects plus Rolando, Terrence Parker, and more.

3. Slices—Pioneers of Electronic Music: Richie Hawtin

While he spent most of his techno-formative years across the river in Windsor, Ontario, it’s impossible to talk about Detroit techno’s legacy without mentioning Richie Hawtin. Hawtin’s impact on the scene is long established, and he’s often credited with spreading techno throughout Canada and the midwest with his infamous parties. This documentary was made after he made the jump to Berlin, and it’s a thorough look back at his time in Detroit and how he transitioned to Europe in the 2000s.

4. Belle Isle Tech
The super-lo-fi Belle Isle Tech, made by skate photographer extraordinaire Ari Marcopoulos, is a real slice-of-life kind of flick, which follows ghetto-tech kings DJ Assault and Mr. De’ around Detroit for a few days—from their very humble-seeming home studio to a nighttime party cruise on the city’s infamous Belle Isle.

5. Universal Techno

The French-produced 1996 doc Universal Techno is an awesome hour-long piece which really takes its time with all of techno’s main players. Juan Atkins, Derrick May, Jeff Mills, UR, and all the main players are well represented, but this film goes a step further, talking with folks like Autechre about how Detroit’s impact has spread overseas and throughout the world.

6. Modulations

Modulations extends far beyond the scope of Detroit, but while it traces dance music’s broader roots, it’s still got awesome footage from Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Eddie Fowlkes, and tons more.

7. Current TV’s Underground Resistance episode

“I’m nothing in comparison to the music.” That’s “Mad Mike” Banks’ take on Underground Resistance, the label and collective he founded in the early ’90s to subvert the dominant major-label record industry and spread the gospel of real underground Detroit techno. This documentary made by Current TV examines the UR story from front to back.

8. High Tech Soul

This one mixes the musical with the social, looking at the history of Detroit as a breeding ground for underground music, and featuring all sorts of lesser-known but equally important names in the scene, like classic club The Music Institute’s promoter, George Baker.

9. Techno City

The rather unknown Techno City was produced in 2001, and new-school legends like Carl Craig, Stacey Pullen, and Kenny Larkin lead a good portion of this tour, which culminates in the second Detroit Electronic Music Festival.

Detroit Techno City Documentary from Rave FM on Vimeo.

10. Detroit Techno & The Electronic Music Festival

Over the last 12 years, Detroit’s electronic music fest (sometimes called DEMF, now officially Movement) has undergone countless organizers, production companies, major sponsors, and official names. This three-part documentary looks back at the festival from its shaky beginnings to its more solid foundation a decade late.

UNDERSTANDING FILTERING

Posted on January 16, 2013 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard

Understanding filtering
RA’s Jono Buchanan offers a straight-forward guide to the world of filters.

Here’s a quiz question: what do sieves, coin slot machines and low bridges have in common? If you’re wondering how such a question could have anything to do with music production, let me explain. Each of those things is designed to allow certain things to pass through its assorted restrictions, while trapping or preventing the passing through of other objects. Any of these objects might be a useful image to have in your mind as you begin the process of filtering; the audio equivalent. Filters, within synthesizers, as effects plugins or even within EQ plugins do precisely the same—allowing some elements of the audio frequency spectrum to be heard and others to be trapped, or, as we’re talking about audio, dramatically reduced in volume.

However, we need to take a step further back to really appreciate the capabilities and uses of filter effects by understanding that first and foremost our ears are filters themselves. There are frequencies which exist which are below the range of the average person’s hearing, while there are plenty more which exist above our upper hearing thresholds too. While we’re all different and indeed our hearing capabilities change as we grow older, the average person can hear from 20Hz (cycles per second) at the bass end to 20,000Hz, or 20kHz at the top. This wide range allows us to hear everything from rumbling tube trains a station down the line to the most ear-piercing screechy treble, explaining in part why our ears are drawn to music which provides a combination of these frequencies, and plenty more in between.

However, due to the nature of multi-track recording and mixing, you’ll be aware a mix won’t work well without a balance across the audible frequency bands. If you want to add extra brightness to a sound within a mix, you’d turn to an EQ effect and make the necessary adjustment, while the same might be true in reverse—if a sound has too much high-end, you’d accordingly dial some treble down in volume. Like EQ effects, filters are used to control the tone of a sound but there are some fundamental differences between the two types of effect and this article will explain them, as well as looking at some practical uses of filtering effects.

For starters, EQ effects tend to feature multiple bands, which can be independently adjusted up or down—cut or boost, in other words. You could use a single EQ plugin to roll out bass, boost low mid-range, scoop out upper mid-range and enhance treble for instance, simply by adjusting the bands of your EQ to the relevant frequencies and then boosting or cutting as you wish.

Unlike filters, EQs can change tone across several frequency bands at once.
Filters don’t do this. While they too allow you to select a frequency point at which they’ll go to work, the frequencies outside of their range will be dropped in volume. This may happen fairly subtly or much more extremely but the important point is that filters aren’t used to boost volume as their name suggests; they cut, or filter out unwanted frequency content. In another striking difference from EQ effects, filters only feature a single band of operation. They allow you to choose a single frequency to act as the point at which filtering will start and then drop the volume of frequencies beyond that frequency. As you’ll know if you’ve ever spent time with a synthesizer or a filter effect, this point is called the “cutoff” frequency, which makes sense, as frequencies beyond this are indeed dramatically reduced in volume.

Most filter effects are what are called multi-mode, as they’re capable of operating in a variety of ways. The most common filter type is called a “low-pass filter” (often abbreviated to LPF) which, as its name suggests, allows low frequencies to pass through and be heard, while cutting off upper-frequency content. The effect of using a low-pass filter effect on a sound is to make its tone deeper, darker and muddier. A naturally-occurring example of a low-pass filter is a wall. Imagine standing in a queue outside a club—all you’ll hear is thumping bass, the only frequency group with enough energy to permeate the wall. Whenever the door to the club opens, much higher frequency content will rush out to meet you as the filtering process offered by the wall will have been temporarily removed. When the door closes again, the wall will go back to being an effective low-pass filter.

We can replicate this naturally-occurring effect with a filter placed in the output channel of a project. By putting a filter there, it will affect every part of the mix, so it’s an effective way to achieve the global filtering approach achieved naturally by a wall. To do this, place a filter in the output channel and select the low-pass filter mode if your filter plug-in offers multiple options. Then bring the cutoff frequency down towards the bottom. As you do, you’ll hear the brightness being sucked out of the mix, leaving you just with murky low-end content. Whenever you move the cutoff point back up, you’ll regain the upper frequency content and the mix will become brighter.

The next most-common filter type is a high-pass filter (HPF), which does precisely the inverse of a low-pass filter. It too uses the cutoff point to determine the frequency at which filtering will occur but rather than letting low frequencies through to be heard, it lets high frequencies through instead. Correspondingly, it will drop the level of frequencies below the cutoff point. This, as you might expect, leaves a very thin sound, particularly when the cutoff frequency is set high enough only to leave sparkling treble frequencies, cutting mid-range as well as bass.

One of the reasons high-pass filters sound so unnatural (even more so than low-pass filters) is that if you apply the same technique we heard in the previous example—putting a high-pass filter across an entire mix—for many of the sounds present, only their harmonics remain. Recorded and synthesized sounds tend to be rich in harmonics, with a loud fundamental frequency at the bottom and a series of related frequencies, called harmonics, present in a sound as well, stretching upwards. The reason for the unnatural quality is that no natural sound can produce such upper harmonics without a fundamental frequency present to trigger them, yet a high-pass filter will retain the sound of the harmonics while reducing the volume of the fundamental. As this simply isn’t possible in the real world of natural acoustics, high-pass filters bring an exciting, un-real option to the filtering table.
The third most common filter type is called a band-pass filter (BPF). This sets a band of frequencies around the cutoff point and lets them through to be heard, cutting out bass frequencies below and treble frequencies above. This is a sound we’re all familiar with because of telephones. If you’re put on hold during a call and you’re played music, you’ll notice that both the bass and the treble frequencies are reduced, leaving sufficient frequencies to hear the music, albeit in a fairly compromised way. Band-pass filter effects can be created using a low-pass filter and a high-pass filter in tandem but band-pass filters achieve the same result without having to set up two separate filters.

So now we’ve heard examples of the three most common filter types working across a whole mix but, of course, filters aren’t only used in this way. The three main components of a synthesizer—the oscillator, filter and amplifier sections—are responsible for pitch, tone and volume control, so filters play an integral part in shaping the tone of individual sounds too. When you look at the filter section of a synthesizer, as well as being able to select the filter mode you want to use (if multi-modes are available), the other dominant dial alongside cutoff will be resonance. The dictionary definition of resonance in this context would be something like “resonance boosts the volume of the frequency at the cutoff point.”

In case that doesn’t make musical sense right away, think about it like this: We already know that, regardless of which filter mode you’re working with, the cutoff point acts as a threshold, preserving the volume of frequencies on one side, while cutting the volume of frequencies on the other. The cutoff point has to be “somewhere” therefore, and resonance’s job is to turn up the volume of frequencies regardless of where cutoff is placed. Again, this is unnatural. Usually, the further you get away from the fundamental frequency, the quieter harmonics get, yet with a low-pass filter, you could place the cutoff somewhere around the upper harmonics, where they’re dying out in volume, then use resonance to dramatically boost their volumes at this point. This gives an edge and bite to the sound.
Envelopes also play a huge part in determining the behaviour of filters. Remember, envelopes allow you to change parameters over time, so any envelope allied to the filter section will change a sound’s tone over time. Even though the previous audio examples were created using automation of the cutoff point, they could just have easily been created using envelopes, as the movement was “ramp-shaped” from the top of the frequency range to the bottom. Most synthesizer envelopes are four-staged affairs, with controls for attack, decay, sustain and release. It’s easiest to imagine envelopes affecting volume, as here it’s easy to imagine attack time as a fade in, release as a fade out and so on. However, as we’re discussing filters, rather than an envelope affecting volume, here you’ll be affecting tone with sounds getting brighter or duller as cutoff is affected by the four stages of movement.

In the previous audio examples, the tone “speaks” immediately and this would be achieved by setting a very quick, even immediate attack time. The downwards ramp would be created via the decay time which, in our examples, is fairly long. The sustain level will be the point where the cutoff point comes to rest after the decay stage, so if your cutoff point is set towards the top, you’ll struggle to hear decay at all as there’s nowhere for the cutoff to go between the immediate attack and the high sustain value. The release time will affect what happens to the tone of the sound once you let go of the notes you’re holding and, as such, is hugely dependent on the volume envelope stage. If you set a long filter release time, you’d rightly expect to hear the tone of the sound change as you let go of the keys you’re holding. However, if the volume envelope’s release is set to a very short time, the filter release simply won’t have time to be heard before the volume is chopped off the sound. So, to hear a longer filter release time, you’ll need at least as long a volume envelope release time.

Interestingly, inverting filter shapes can work really well too. As you might expect, if an envelope is inverted, rather than the decay acting as a “bite” which moves rapidly down to the sustain level, instead it will “suck” up to the sustain level instead. This is a great way to get basslines and kick drums working well together as any kicks/bass notes which fall at the same point won’t overload with bass frequency. Instead, the bass note will start as an almost imperceptibly quiet sub-bass rumble and then get brighter. With a little trial and error, it’s perfectly possible to get the rise to fit musically with the speed of your track.
LFOs are also hugely important tools for getting filters moving, as anyone who enjoys “wobble” dubstep patterns will testify. LFOs are like regular oscillator shapes which inflict their shape and speed upon other parts of a signal. Using a sine wave shape which rises and falls, you can force the filter cutoff to correspondingly rise and fall so that the tone of the sound opens and closes. Simply set up an LFO with the speed and shape of your choice and then use the routing options within your synth to patch this LFO into the filter Cutoff.

The LFO amount will prove crucial too—too much and tone shift will be too wide, too little and it will barely be audible. If you’re using a plugin synth and the LFO speed can be clocked to the tempo of your project, this movement can make musical sense too, as the speed of movement will be in time with the rest of your track. If you want multiple speeds so that the rate of movement can change from one note to the next, either automate the LFO speed so that it changes for each note, or set up multiple versions of the same sound with different LFO speeds from one to the next. Then, when you’ve played in the notes you want, chop them up and move them to the assorted tracks you’ve created so that each note plays back at a different speed.

You might be wondering how extremely a filter reduces the volume of content beyond the cutoff point. Again, this is often variable with an example setting of 12dB/octave. What this means is that for each octave of harmonics beyond the cutoff point, volume will be reduced by 12dB. For more extreme filtering, increase this number; for more subtle filtering, reduce it.
If you’re looking on in envy wishing that such treatments were possible for non-synthesizer sounds (such as vocal parts or anything else you’ve recorded), worry not: all of this capability can be applied via filter plugins native to your DAW. In fact, this is exactly how the first audio examples were created, by using a filter plug-in (UAD’s Moog Filter) inserted into the output channel of the mix. The parameters are the same—you’ll have a choice over which filter mode you use, there’ll be cutoff and resonance controls, plus envelope and LFO options. So dive in and enjoy the wonderful world of filtering as creatively as you can.

Words / Jono Buchanan

Published / Wednesday, 24 October 2012

How To… start a record label!

Posted on June 25, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

http://www.factmag.com/2012/06/23/how-to-start-a-record-label/

The major labels of this world may be in trouble, but not since the DIY explosion of the late 1970s – which led to the formation of Rough Trade, Beggars Banquet, 4AD, Mute and literally hundreds of others – has the independent sector been in such rude health. Far from deterring would-be modern-day Tony Wilsons from going into business, the unfavourable economic conditions of the 2000s seem instead to have encouragedthem; now that it’s virtually impossible for a decent label to turn anything more than a modest profit, the chancers who used to get into this game for the money have moved on, and it’s the music-lovers who remain.

It’s not hard to produce a 12″ single and get it out into the world. You can get two tracks mastered and 300 vinyl copies pressed up – to a fairly high standard – without breaking the £1000 mark. True, it’s no small sum, but it’s one that can probably be raised through a bit of diligent saving and abstinence from one or two of your consumer vices over the course of, say, a year. The world has seen greater sacrifices, you’ll agree. And in terms of getting the music heard, and getting it to market, we’re living in a golden age: you can reach customers without having to rely on traditional distribution networks, and you don’t need radioplay or elaborate promo to raise awareness. Thanks to Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Big Cartel, Blogspot and the like, you can build the profile of your label and have your releases on sale in next to no time – if the music’s good, the customers will come to you.

Initially, we had planned to put together a nuts and bolts guide to the business of founding and running a record label, but in the end we decided that there’s enough of that sort of thing already plentifully available on the internet, and that a looser, more intuitive approach to the subject would be more useful, and less tedious. So we simply decided to call upon the wisdom of the owners of some of our favourite contemporary record labels: Swamp81, Captured Tracks, Hessle Audio, Downwards, Olde English Spelling Bee, RVNG Intl., Hotflush, Ninja Tune, Planet Mu, Hyperdub, Idle Hands, Tectonic, Hospital Productions, Hippos In Tanks, Editions Mego, Dais, Spectrum Spools, White Denim, FXHE, Werk Discs, Finders Keepers, Punch Drunk, 100% Silk, Not Not Fun, Touch, Greco-Roman Minimal Wave, Clone, Environ, Acid Ragga and Hemlock. Frankly, you can’t buy this kind of advice.

DON’T OVERTHINK IT, JUST GET ON AND DO IT.

Regis (Downwards, Sandwell District): “I’ve always loved the DIY tradition of UK independent record labels. You make it, you release it and all of a sudden you’re a label. The Desperate Bicycles were right: ‘It was easy, it was cheap – go and do it.”

Mike Paradinas (Planet Mu): “Don’t be afraid of contacting whoever you want to release music by. Back in the mid-90s – pre-mass-internet- there seemed to be far more barriers between scenes.”

Jon More (Ninja Tune): “Matt and I just really got into ninjas; he found this cut-out-and-keep ninja in a book that we were given, and we really liked it. So we got talking about it, came back to our studio, and decided to form Ninja Tune. Matt did the very first [logo] design for it which was pretty much a stickman.”

Chris Farrell (Idle Hands): “I wish I’d known how easy it is – I would have done it years ago!”

Ryan Martin (Dais Records): “Dais started with a simple phone call from Gibby [Miller, Martin's partner in Dais] one morning in which he just bluntly stated: ‘We have all this material at our disposal, we have the passion and drive, we should start a label.’ I couldn’t have agreed more and by the end of the day, we had the label set up and the ball rolling.”

DO IT YOURSELF.

Matt Werth (RVNG Intl.): “You are your label’s truest advocate. Don’t leave the work to other people. Disseminate the message and the music from the source.”
THE MUSIC SHOULD COME FIRST, AND THEN THE LABEL.

Pinch (Tectonic): “At the time of setting up Tectonic there was barely a handful of dubstep releases available to buy. I wanted to help address this situation!”

Mike Paradinas (Planet Mu): “I started the label because I thought I could do a better job than my peers. And I wanted to release my flatmate’s music.”

Ben UFO (Hessle Audio): “In 2007 there weren’t many dubstep labels around, and there certainly weren’t many who were interested in releasing the more percussive, garage influenced tracks that we were into. It felt like there was a space for us, and a demand for the music that we wanted to represent.”

Kode9 (Hyperdub): “Sometimes its important to jolt people out of their expectations, because often their expectations are pretty narrow.”

Scuba (Hotflush): “The first ever release was some of my early tunes. The second release was Distance. So it was basically just our mates – people we’d met down FWD or wherever, likeminded people who wanted to do similar stuff but without the infrastructure or maybe just not knowing the right people to do it. So it was a complete DIY thing.”

Todd W. Ledford (Olde English Spelling Bee): “I don’t drink often but alcohol was involved in the formation of OESB. I mostly avoid alcohol now.”

A CLEAR VISION HELPS, BUT UNCERTAINTY IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF. FOLLOW YOUR INSTINCTS. IF YOU CAN’T PROVIDE ANSWERS, ASK QUESTIONS.

Peverelist (Punch Drunk): “I guess what’s behind dubstep, and also Punch Drunk, is the idea: what happens next after Jungle? So, it’s about bass music, and soundsystem music, but apart from that, it’s not really one sound.”

Ben UFO (Hessle Audio): “Try to have an idea of what you want to achieve and at least a rough idea of how to go about it – but your goals will almost certainly change over time, and that’s nothing to be scared of.”

Chris Farrell (Idle Hands): “Don’t pay attention to trends too much, stick to what you are into. And don’t force things – if they’re going to happen, they will happen.”

Dominick Fernow (Hospital Productions, Bed Of Nails): “I think raising questions and not providing answers is ultimately the goal.

Matt Werth (RVNG Intl.): “There’s no right way to run a record label while you are finding your voice. Just try to sing and sign in the key of life.”

RELEASE MUSIC THAT YOU LOVE, THAT YOU BELIEVE IN, AND THAT YOU THINK WILL STAND THE TEST OF TIME. SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO SAY NO.

Untold (Hemlock): “Curate a catalogue of music you’ll be proud of in 10 years’ time. If you love a track then put it out even if it’s not trendy. Go easy on the remixes.

Mike Paradinas (Planet Mu): “Just release good records.”

Andy Votel (Finders Keepers): “A lot of it’s based on detective work and socialising with your heroes, and then with people who become your heroes in the process.”

John Elliott (Spectrum Spools): “I generally just try to put out music that I’m naturally attracted to, or more importantly feels natural to me. I’m a fan and a listener of the artists on my label, and I go to nerdy extents to make sure I get all their limited cassettes and all that kind of stuff.”

Amanda Brown (100% Silk, Not Not Fun): “When I got the Octo Octa record, I cried listening to one track… it was so pure. I cried because it was so unbelievably good, but also because I get to put it out, and also because it’s sort of sad. I mean that’s what I want to do this for. Those feelings.”

Ben UFO (Hessle Audio): “It’s not a competition, there’s no rush, and if you’re even slightly doubtful about a project then it’s probably not worth pursuing.”

HONOUR THE ARTIST’S VISION TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY HONOUR YOUR OWN. MAINTAIN CRITICAL DISTANCE.

Jon Wozencroft (Touch): “You have be really hard on the editing side of things, and be willing to say, ‘No, that’s not going to work for the label, we’re not going to release that, you can do something better than that. The distinction between playing music and producing and releasing music is an important distinction. Nowadays it’s commonplace for musicians to have their own record companies, which is great, but…it doesn’t allow you to have that objectivity, or the distance, that makes for the best work.”

Peter Rehberg (Editions Mego): “It’s just a matter of constant discussion to see what can be achieved and what is practical.”

Actress (Werk Discs): “You treat [the work] honestly, and put your full effort into the artists, and I think off the back of that what you find is you have a project that gives you more satisfaction, and one where the artists feel that you’ve put a lot into it.”

Barron Machat (Hippos In Tanks): “The greatest lesson experience [of running a label] is dealing with human emotion and allowing this to define yourself as an individual. Carry through all tasks, ride out all storms – and exist in harmony with the artist’s vision.”

GET ORGANISED, DIG IN AND LEARN TO LOVE ADMIN.

Omar-S (FXHE): “If you’re going to drugs, let it be on a an artistic level. There’s no way in hell all those P-funk guys would’ve made all those records without all that shit they were doing, right or wrong. If you’re gonna do that, do it on an artistic level – where you’re just a badass motherfucker and you have to do that shit. So far as somebody doing that shit and then trying to do business – that fucks everything up, that fucks up people trying to get my music. People need to stop fucking doing drugs and then trying to go to fucking work and trying to run a fucking business.

Serge (Clone): “All the other things – like promoting your music, keeping your company going, making sales – they’re just not fun, it’s just work. I could be selling potatoes or second-hand cars.”

Untold (Hemlock): “Day to day there’s a lot of admin. Paying the artists and suppliers. Going through spreadsheets of digital sales and working out artist statements. Amending contracts, invoicing for compilation licenses. Taking down pirated releases. Learning to love Microsoft Office.”

Todd (Olde English Spelling Bee): “Crucial supplies include PCP, ketamine, AK-47s, pullover masks, getaway vehicles, mob connections, soundsystem, team of hackers/phreakers, typewriter, fax machine, hi-strength shipping tapes, solid tables, warehouse shelving, security cameras, alarm system, pizza delivery, backup generators, reinforced steel doors, three month supply of foods and liquid, geiger-counter, satellite feeds.”

PRODUCE BEAUTIFUL ITEMS, ITEMS THAT YOU YOURSELF WOULD WANT TO OWN. DO IT YOUR WAY.

The Bug (Acid Ragga): “I mean it’s commercial suicide to start this label – we’re going to great lengths to present it in a very unique way. For the first release, at least, I’ve commissioned artwork from Zeke [Clough] who did the Skull Disco stuff, the vinyl’s going to be coloured, and it will use a whole array of fluorescent and metallic colours on the sleeve. I wanted to make an item that’s collectible, and something I want.”

Loefah (Swamp81): “There’s a culture right now that says you’ve got to do it one way, but you haven’t got to do it one way at all. The only reason the majors are loving mp3s is ‘cos there’s no production costs. It’s the cheapest thing, so they can make as much as they can out of a failing business. I don’t know. I think the most viable form is vinyl. It’s like a book – it’s not going nowhere.

Chris Farrell (Idle Hands): “Make your listener feel special.”

Matthew K (White Denim): “I love vinyl as a medium and a product. That’s what I [as a consumer] want to spend my money on, and I feel like it’s the most ‘legitimate’ format one can use. Which is good, because I have put out some music that could be hard to take seriously if it were an mp3 or cassette release. I want to show that I think these artists are all worth me personally spending thousands of dollars on.”

…BUT DON’T BE AFRAID TO EMBRACE THE FUTURE.

Omar-S (FXHE): “My shit is available on vinyl. It’s available on digital. It’s going to be available on whatever fucking new format comes out in the next couple of years, some Shaolin space shit or whatever.”

HAVE A SCHEDULE AND DO YOUR BEST TO STICK TO IT, BUT EXPECT DELAYS. LOTS OF DELAYS.

Veronica Vasicka (Minimal Wave): “Things always take longer than expected and pressing plants vary so widely in terms of quality. Someone needs to publish an article on the top 20 pressing plants in the world.”

Chris Farrell (Idle Hands): “Don’t plan too many releases ahead, so many little things can go wrong. I try to stay one or two releases ahead of myself. That’s also because I know my own tastes change as much as anything else.”

Regis (Downwards, Sandwell District): “The people with the least amount of talent always seem to take up the most of your time.”

Untold (Hemlock): “You need to main a coherent schedule giving each release the best possible exposure. For vinyl-led labels like us, that involves hitting an ideal release date while relying on a manufacturing process often fraught with delays. We liaise with our artists, distributor, PR agencies and mastering house to get the release in the shops when we said we would.”

AIM TO GET YOUR MUSIC HEARD, BUT DON’T PROSTITUTE YOURSELF TO THE BUYING PUBLIC, AND DON’T FLOOD THE MARKET.

Loefah (Swamp81): “With Swamp81, the music’s there on vinyl. If you want to go and get it, you can; I’m not gonna shout about it, I’m not gonna try to get it into HMV or whatever the fuck the high street record store is now [laughs], I’m not gonna go digital, I’m not gonna do all that shit… so it’s like, it’s over here. If you want to be part of it, you can be, but you’ve got to make a bit of effort.”

Mike Sniper (Captured Tracks): “There’s no way to force taste on to people. Too many labels get a little bit of steam going and start spending way too much money on outmoded means of getting an audience. There’s all kinds of people in the music industry who will try to convince you of all these things you need to do for your artists to get heard. It’s actually not incredibly hard to get your band heard by its potential audience, but it’s not automatic that people will react to it. If that was the case anyone who bought a banner on the bigger websites would be famous, and that’s not the case.”

Actress (Werk Discs): “We don’t release to satisfy consumption. And the stuff we release is quite heavy, so we do feel we need to put stuff out and then take a break; give people some time with it.”

BEWARE THE VAMPIRES OF COMMERCE. RESIST TEMPTATION AND STAND TALL, STAY PURE.

Alex Waldron (Greco-Roman): “Watch out for sponsors. As the heat intensifies the vultures circle, and week on week there are more and more proposals from advertising agencies who can’t believe just how cheap it is to ride your wave compared to their traditional marketing strategies. not all music sponsorship is unimaginative these days – some are even more forward-thinking than traditional music businesses and they certainly have bigger budgets – but still you should think twice before letting a homogenous high street clothes retailer hold the camera for some online ‘content’ for your artist, or before allowing a Japanese car company to finance your music video. Small independent labels tend to be on the creative front line but they clearly have no money which makes them prime targets…so resist the temptation and stand tall.”

Matthew K (White Denim): “I feel that as soon as I start to try to cater to a specific audience, or try to predict what will sell and move in that direction, I’m really wasting my time.”

Veronica Vasicka (Minimal Wave): “Stay true to your vision but let it to grow and evolve. Don’t compromise your integrity, and never lose hope.”

Amanda Brown (100% Silk, Not Not Fun): “Be authentic to yourself only. Don’t worry about whether you’re involved or uninvolved in a trend, if you get bashed or praised for the concept or statement behind the records. Care deeply and specifically about the music you release – believe in it, believe in the artist – and let the blogosphere and print media go wildly twisting around you. Stay avant, be diagonal, keep the mystery. Don’t spam the universe with Twitter feed and Facebook updates and boastful mass emails. Prop the art, push it out front.”

Actress is best known for his own music, but he’s also the boss of Werk Discs, through which he released the first Actress album, Hazyville, as well as records by Lone, Cloaks, Starkey, Lukid and others. werkdiscs.com

Amanda Brown co-founded the Not Not Fun label (Peaking Lights, Sun Araw, Ducktails, etc) with Britt Brown, and is at the helm of dance imprint 100% Silk (Ital, Maria Minerva, Octo Octa, etc). She is based in California, and makes music as LA Vampires. listentosilk.com

Alex Waldron is co-founder and manager of Greco-Roman, the party-minded, Berlin-based label that’s provided a home for artists as disparate as Drums Of Death, Grosvenor, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Hackman. greco-roman.net

Ben UFO is a DJ with few, if any, equals, and he started the Hessle Audio label with his friends Pearson Sound and Pangaea. The label’s releases include work by Blawan, Untold, Joe and Objekt. hessleaudio.com

Chris Farrell is proprietor of the Idle Hands record store, label and distribution company in Stokes Croft, Bristol. Idle Hands has released music by local artists including Kowton, Peverelist, Alex Coulton and Kahn. idlehandsbristol.com

Dominick Fernow is best known for the music has makes as Prurient. He established the Hospital Productions store (R.I.P.) and label in New York, and its huge catalogue encompasses cassette, CD and vinyl releases by virtually every contemporary noise artist of note. More recently he inaugurated the Bed Of Nails imprint as a dedicated platform for the more techno-oriented music he’s making as Vatican Shadow. hospitalproductions.net

Jon Wozencroft is co-founder and art director of audio-visual publishing imprint Touch, one of Britain’s longest running independents. Its current roster numbers the likes of Fennesz, Philip Jeck, Oren Ambarchi and Jana Winderen. touchmusic.org.uk

Kode9 is a producer, academic and boss of Hyperdub, through which he has issued records by Burial, Cooly G, Scratcha DVA, Joker, Zomby and many more. hyperdub.net

Matthew K is the man behind Philadelphia-based White Denim, and his catholic taste has seen him issue limited editions by Mi Ami, M Ax Noi Mach and countless other oddballs . He’s also a member of Sub Pop-signed band Pissed Jeans, and is responsible for the indispensable Yellow Green Red music review site. whitedenimmusic.com

Mike Sniper is the owner of Captured Tracks in New York. He has released by contemporary work by Wild Nothing, Dum Dum Girls and Silk Flowers, to name but three, and reissues of Nick Nicely, Cleaners From Venus, Medicine and others. He also makes music as Blank Dogs. capturedtracks.com

Omar-S is Alex ‘Omar’ Smith, Detroit native, house producer extraordinaire, and owner of FXHE, a label primarily focussed on his own work, but occasionally catering to Kyle Hall, Big Strick, Luke Hess and others. fxhedetroit.us

Pinch, aka Bristol-based Rob Ellis, is co-founder of the Multiverse family of labels, and the man behind Tectonic, the highly respected dubstep imprint to which the likes of Skream, Loefah, 2562 and Cyrus have contributed. tectonicrecordings.com

Regis, real name Karl O’Connor, founded his Downwards label in Birmingham in 1993, gaining instant notoriety for his own brutalist techno productions and those of friends Surgeon and Female. The label has always pursued a parallel interest in post-punk and outsider electronics, recently providing an outlet for the likes of Tropic of Cancer, Pink Playground and The KVB. O’Connor is also a “patron” of the Sandwell District collective. wherenext.tumblr.com

Scuba is Berlin-based Brit Paul Rose. As well as being an acclaimed producer in his own right, Rose is boss of Hotflush Recordings, which has released records by Joy Orbison, Mount Kimbie, Distance, Sepalcure, Sigha and many others. hotflushrecordings.com

Serge is the brains behind the long-running Rotterdam electro and techno label, Clone, and the record store of the same name. Clone has released music by Drexciya, Dexter, Alden Tyrell, Legowelt and others, and its many subsidiaries include Frustrated Funk, Royal Oak, Clone Basement and Clone Jack For Daze. clone.nl

Peter Rehberg co-founded the Mego label in Vienna in the 1990s, subsequently reactivating it as a solo enterprise under the name Editions Mego. EM now acts as an umbrella for several subidiary imprints – Spectrum Spools, Ideologic Organ, Sensate Focus, Old News and Recollection GRM – while continuing to release electronic music by the likes of Russell Haswell, Mika Vainio, Bruce Gilbert, Emeralds and Kevin Drumm. editionsmego.com

Peverelist is Bristol-based Tom Ford. Not only one of the finest producers working today, through his Punch Drunk and latterly Livity Sound labels he has documented the impact, evolution of legacy of dubstep in Bristol, launching the careers of Guido, Gemmy, Kahn and Hyetal along the way. punchdrunkmusic.com

Todd W. Ledford founded the cult Bobby J label in the 1990s, and more recently Olde English Spelling Bee, which launched the careers of James Ferraro, Ducktails, Rangers and others. oesbee.blogspot.com

Untold is Jack Dunning, producer and co-head [with Andy Spencer] of Hemlock Recordings. While the label has served primarily as an outlet for recordings by Dunning himself, it has also released acclaimed records by the likes of James Blake, Pangaea and Breton. hemlockrecordings.co.uk

Veronica Vasicka is the boss of Minimal Wave, a New York label dedicated to reissues of rare synth and DIY electronic pop music from the 70s and 80s. minimalwave.com

Audio and MIDI: Editing techniques

Posted on June 20, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Audio or MIDI? That is the question. Jono Buchanan looks into the importance of understanding the inherent strengths and weaknesses of both, and the many ways to extend the relationship between them.

Nearly all DAWs offer the chance to work with two types of data, region or block, as nearly all provide both MIDI and audio capabilities these days. Whether you’re looking to fire up an instrument and doodle away with your controller keyboard until creativity strikes, or recording, chopping up and editing “real” sounds onto audio tracks, these two data types can happily exist side-by-side within one arrangement.

However, through this article, we’re going to look at ways to extend the relationship between these data types further, exploring techniques which cross from MIDI to audio and vice versa. The ways in which we can interact with audio differ from those in which we can with MIDI. This suggests that the editing processes for each will also be different. By learning what these differences are and how they can benefit your work in progress, it’s easy start thinking along the lines of “if this MIDI part was audio, I’d be able to…” or “if this audio file was mapped to my MIDI keyboard, I could…” Switching back and forth, converting one data type to another so that techniques can be applied more creatively is a weapon top producers use every day.

Converting to audio

Let’s start by looking at some examples of when converting MIDI parts you’ve programmed for synths, drums or other plug-in instruments might benefit from being bounced down as audio files. From a purely administrative point of view, the first benefit comes if you’re sharing the parts of your track with a co-writer or remixer who is working in a different DAW or with different plug-ins. To ensure an absence of compatibility issues, bouncing stem mixes of groups of files or, better still, individual tracks with each part rendered as audio, means that DAW-swapping problems are a thing of the past. However, the benefits of bouncing MIDI to audio goes much further.

For all of MIDI’s strengths, there are some issues which can’t be resolved for a part that is MIDI-based, while other tasks are much more long-winded than they would be were the data in audio form. For instance, if you want to reverse a sound, there’s no way to do that with MIDI, but once a part is bounced to audio, it’s a simple task to find the “reverse” function and apply it to your audio file.

Reach Out…

Reversing is effective not only when it’s applied to entire audio files but also when reversed reverb is employed to preempt a sound. Normally, reverb provides a decay tail after a sound to create the illusion that the note decays into an acoustic space but, what if that space somehow “knew” the sound was coming and faded up in volume to meet it, rather than providing a tail as normal? This is the trick made famous in “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode, where the “reach out, touch faith” line is pre-empted by a reverb rush which rises to meet the vocal line. Reverse reverb tricks are achieved firstly by bouncing the dry file you want to apply reverb to down as an audio file.

Gating without Noise Gates

Audio files are great for more than just producing reversing tricks. In particular, they can work wonderfully well for creating quasi-gating effects, which are particularly useful for pad sounds with slow attack times. If you have a MIDI pad part that are changing chords every bar but which takes a little while to attack, there’s no way you can use MIDI to create a busy sequence part, as whenever you try to repeatedly trigger the sound, you’ll find it doesn’t attack quickly enough.

One way around this is to bounce the pad part down as an audio file and then use the “chopping” tool within your DAW to cut the part into slices. If these slices lock to the 8th or 16th notes of your track, you can create rhythms. However, this won’t sound effective until you’ve selected the chopped files and dragged their end points “backwards” to create short gaps between the regions. This will provide a blast of audio followed by a short period of silence, providing a gated effect. Often, these chops will sound unpleasantly “glitchy,” as the audio regions will click every time they start and stop. Most DAWs allow you to create a short real-time fade in/out for each region and if you apply these fades, with short values such as two or three milliseconds, you’ll get rid of the clicks without affecting the percussive nature of each slice of audio.

Less dramatic, but just as effective, is the notion of being able to stop long release times once a file is bounced as audio. If you’re using a pad which has a long release and you come to a point in your track where you want an abrupt change of mood, it can be frustrating to have to wait for the pad to decay fully, as this can dilute the effect of the track changing character. By bouncing the pad down, it’s a simple job to chop it at the point where you want its sound to stop, creating a much clearer division between one section and the next. It’s what I call a “jigsaw piece edit,” as you can see and hear the line where a sound stops so clearly. If it’s too much to have the sound stop completely dead at the chop point, extend its region a little and apply another real-time fade, so that you’re compromising the difference between a full “hard” and more gentle “soft” edit.

Sampling

Reversing the MIDI to audio concept has its own advantages too. The most effective way to do this is to use sampling techniques, which will allow you to take any audio file and convert it to MIDI so that it can be triggered, either as one long file, or in slices. Looking at the advantage of using one file first, for beat programming in particular, it can be great to layer up loops of original, double, half and quarter-time lengths.

You might be wondering why this works, so here’s a short explanation. Samplers capture a sound using a sample frequency, in the same way that pitch is also measured in frequency. In pitch frequency terms, let’s take the note A above middle C, which has a frequency of 440Hz. The A at an octave below has a frequency of 220Hz and the one below that, 110Hz. The reason As are all called “A” is because this mathematical link exists between them—for each octave rise, the frequency will double, and for each octave drop, it halves. So it is with samplers.

More often than not, sampling frequency is set at 44.1kHz, so by triggering a note an octave below its original sampling time/pitch, the playback frequency is 22.05kHz, producing a halving of pitch and time.

Getting Choppy

However, the disadvantage of long blocks of sound triggered from a single key becomes all too obvious if you suddenly change the tempo of your track. Suddenly, rather than having a loop which sits comfortably with the rest of your production, you’ll suddenly discover that, as the loop is simply triggered at the beginning of a bar but then has no tempo reference points until it’s triggered again, it’ll be out of time.

As with the pads example given above, to rectify this, chop your audio file into slices, with either 16th note or 1/32nd note resolution. Then save each slice as a new audio file. Most DAWs allow you to select lots of audio regions and save them as separate files in a single operation, so it shouldn’t be too painful to make this happen. You can then drag the audio files into your sampler and assign each one to its own key—again, this is usually possible via a single operation so that the first file maps to C1, the second to C#1 and so on. All you need to do to have the original loop play back via MIDI is to draw a ramp of notes from C1 upwards in a semi-tone scale, with a note being triggered in the time-frame you selected when you sliced the original audio loop up. In other words, if you chopped in 16th notes, enter an event every 16th note.

When you press play, the loop should sound identical. Now, though, you can change playback speed. As each slice is being triggered from its own position within your track, if you slow down or speed up the tempo, the positions of those slices will still trigger where they’re stored, so while you might get brief gaps in the audio file, or a few glitches if you slow it down a great deal, the loop will still run in time.

Often, DAWs contain dedicated “Convert To Sampler” options which carry out the task of changing an audio file into a chopped sampler track automatically, saving you the time of the actions described above.

Lastly, here’s one final trick to try once your audio file is converted to your sampler and is being MIDI triggered. Adjust the amplifier envelope settings within your sampler, these are likely to have immediate attack, little or no decay, full sustain and little or no release, as these settings will play each “slice” to sound like the original audio. However, if you drop sustain to zero, you can use the decay time to control how long each slice will play for.

Words / Jono Buchanan

Published / Tuesday, 18 October 2011

FOR AUDIO EXAMPLES CLICK THIS LINK

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The Return Of D’Angelo????

Posted on June 6, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

He was once hailed as the next Marvin Gaye. Then, after his ripped body threatened to overshadow his music, he vanished into addiction. So what the hell was he doing recently singing his heart out in a Pentecostal church in Stockholm? And how are his abs? Amy Wallace witnessed D’Angelo’s ecstatic return to the stage—and hung out with the master of the sacred and the profane as he finishes his first album in a dozen years.

The massive weight gain didn’t make Michael “D’Angelo” Archer see the darkness that was looming. Neither did the hermit-like isolation, the shattered friendships, the years wasted without a new record in sight, or even the car accident that nearly killed him. By the time he careened off a lonely stretch of road near Richmond, Virginia, in September 2005, hitting a fence and rolling his Hummer three times, he’d already failed two stints in rehab—including one where his counselor was Bob Forrest, the guy on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Bob had been cool, D’Angelo says, but his message of sobriety didn’t take. “I went in under a fake name so people wouldn’t know who I was, right?” D’Angelo tells me, in his first sit-down interview in twelve years. “So, you know, Michael never got treatment. It was this other character that was in there. And the moment I left, I went straight to the fucking liquor store.”

Which helps explain why, months later, high on cocaine and drunk off his ass, D’Angelo found himself ejected from his car on that balmy Virginia night, hurtling through the pitch-blackness, flying. When he hit the ground, he broke all the ribs on his left side—and dealt another blow to his foundering career. Once he’d been the heir apparent to the giants of soul: Marvin, Stevie, Prince. (The rock critic Robert Christgau was so transported by D’Angelo’s live show that he called him R&B Jesus.) But shortly after the wreck, discussions ended with several top music executives, including Clive Davis at J Records, who’d been considering signing him to a $3 million contract. Then D’Angelo’s manager told him he was done with him, too.

Still, D’Angelo couldn’t feel the bottom, even though it was right beneath him. He shows me how close, reaching toward the floor with his well-muscled left arm, the one inked with 23:4, for the Twenty-third Psalm. It’s early March, just a few weeks after he’s finished a sixteen-day mini-tour of Europe—his first live performances (not counting church) in more than a decade. We’re sitting on a black leather couch in a Manhattan recording studio on Forty-eighth Street off Broadway, a quiet sanctum despite its proximity to the circus of Times Square. Through a bank of windows is the room where he has recorded many songs for his (very) long-awaited third album. Dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, his hair in short tiny braids, D’Angelo looks good at 38—more solid than in his famously shirtless six-pack years, but clear-eyed and radiantly handsome. “I didn’t really think I had a problem like that,” he says, taking a hit off a Newport. “I felt like, you know, all I got to do is clean up and I’ll be fine. Just get in the studio and I’ll be fucking fine.”

What finally made him see, he says, was the passing of J Dilla, the revered hip-hop producer, on February 10, 2006. They’d just talked on the phone, D’Angelo says, when suddenly, J Dilla was gone at 32 after a long battle with lupus. It was like a blinding light had been switched on. Why did so many black artists die so young? He’d been haunted by this thought for years. Marvin. Jimi. Biggie. “I felt like I was going to be next. I ain’t bullshitting. I was scared then,” he says, recalling how shame engulfed him, preventing him from attending the funeral. “I was so fucked-up, I couldn’t go.”

Shame, guilt, repentance—D’Angelo knows them well. To say that he was raised religious doesn’t begin to capture it. He’s the son and the grandson of Pentecostal preachers. To D’Angelo, good and evil are not abstract concepts but tangible forces he reckons with every day. In his life and in his music, he has always felt the tension between the sacred and the profane, the darkness and the light.

“You know what they say about Lucifer, right, before he was cast out?” D’Angelo asks me now. “Every angel has their specialty, and his was praise. They say that he could play every instrument with one finger and that the music was just awesome. And he was exceptionally beautiful, Lucifer—as an angel, he was.”

But after he descended into hell, Lucifer was fearsome, he tells me. “There’s forces that are going on that I don’t think a lot of motherfuckers that make music today are aware of,” he says. “It’s deep. I’ve felt it. I’ve felt other forces pulling at me.” He stubs out his cigarette and leans toward me, taking my hand. “This is a very powerful medium that we are involved in,” he says gravely. “I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher. It was a ministry in itself. We could stir the pot, you know? The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of that energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”

···In 1995, when D’Angelo—or D, as he’s known to his friends—released his platinum–selling debut album, Brown Sugar, he looked, on first impression, like the rappers of the time, with his cornrows, baggy jeans, and Timberland boots. But when he played and sang he instantly stood apart, a self-taught prodigy in touch with the ultimate muse. His groove hearkened to something purer, and whether crooning or caterwauling, he performed with fervor, like he was channeling the masters. A musician’s musician, he played his own instruments, arranged and wrote his own songs. He was only 21 years old.

Many would rise to praise him—not just critics, but his peers. Common, who calls D “one of the most impactful artists of our day and age,” remembers being in his car when “Lady” first came on the radio. “I was calling people and saying, ‘Have you heard this?’ ” he says. George Clinton, the godfather of P-Funk, compares D’s second album, Voodoo, to Gaye’s groundbreaking What’s Going On. And Eric Clapton’s reaction to hearing Voodoo was captured on video. “I can’t take much more,” he says, reeling. “Is it all like this? My God!”

But for many, it was skin, not just music, that helped D cross over from R&B maestro to mainstream sex object. In 2000 he released the smoldering video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel?),” an instant sensation that made fans everywhere, especially women, lose their lustful minds. It’s easy to find on YouTube: 26-year-old D’Angelo, naked from the hip bones up, staring straight into the camera, licking his lips and writhing in ecstasy. The video propelled him to superstardom—but it claimed its pound of flesh. D struggled mightily with the way his body threatened to overshadow his music. Then he all but disappeared.

“Black stardom is rough, dude,” Chris Rock tells me when I reach him to talk about D. “I always say Tom Hanks is an amazing actor and Denzel Washington is a god to his people. If you’re a black ballerina, you represent the race, and you have responsibilities that go beyond your art. How dare you just be excellent?”

After Brown Sugar went platinum, Rock put D’Angelo on The Chris Rock Show. Later, when D was mixing Voodoo, Rock hung out some in the studio. No surprise, then, that the first thing out of Rock’s mouth after “Hello” is a joyful “He’s back!” But he adds a sobering downbeat: “D’Angelo. Chris Tucker. Dave Chappelle. Lauryn Hill. They all hang out on the same island. The island of What Do We Do with All This Talent? It frustrates me.”

I tell Rock that Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the drummer for the Roots and one of D’s closest collaborators, has ticked off much the same list. Questlove has a theory about what happens to black genius—what he calls “a crazy psychological kind of stoppage that prevents them from following through. A sort of self-saboteur disorder.” Rock says he understands.

For a black star, Rock says, “there’s a lot of pressure just to be responsible for other people’s lives—to be the E. F. Hutton of your crew. Everything you say is magnified. I mean, street smarts only help you on the streets. Or maybe occasionally they

will help you in the boardroom, but boy, you wish you knew a little bit about accounting.” There is pressure to be original but also pressure to be commercial, to make money, to succeed. Sometimes the two run at cross-purposes.

I ask Questlove what he thinks has held D back. He says it’s not just the way “Untitled” turned D’Angelo into “the Naked Guy,” though of course that didn’t help. It’s something bigger. “We noticed early that all of the geniuses we admired have had maybe a ten-year run before death or, you know, the Poconos,” he says. “That renders D paralyzed. He said he fears the responsibility and the power that comes with it. But I think what he fears most is the isolation”—the kind that fame brings.

Questlove believes D’s “eleven-year freeze” must end, not just for the artist’s sake, but for the culture’s. “I’ve told him: He is literally holding the oxygen supply that music lovers breathe,” Questlove says. “At first, it was cute—’Oh, he’s bashful.’ But now he’s, like, selfish. I’m like, ‘Look, dude, we’re starving.’ When D starts singing, all is right with the world.”

···Michael Archer grew up not knowing Jesus’ name. To some black Pentecostals, God is known as Yahweh and the son of God as Yahshua or Yahushua. “We would go to other churches and people would be saying ‘Jesus,’ ” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Who are they talking about?’ ” The piano, on the other hand, was something he understood innately. At 4, he taught himself to play Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland.”

When he was 5, his parents split, and the boys went to live with their father. “Mom was struggling,” he says of his mother, then a legal secretary. Michael played the organ at his father’s church and helped lead the choir. When he was 9, however, his dad “was battling his own demons,” and the boys went to live with their mom for good. After that, “me and my father really didn’t have much contact with each other.”

In those years, Michael was drawn to his maternal grandfather’s Refuge Assembly of Yahweh, up in the mountains outside Richmond. The region had been a hub of slave trading before the Civil War, with Richmond being a place where 300,000 Africans and their descendants were sold down the James River. Then and now, church was a place where loss could be mourned, pain salved. But what attracted Michael was the way fire and brimstone infused the music. In the temple, Michael saw his elder brother Rodney speak in tongues; he witnessed healings and exorcisms. At one Friday-night revival, he noticed a woman in a pew a few rows up. She was acting strange—tugging at her clothes, foaming at the mouth, ripping at the Bible. “She was possessed. E-vil,” he says, breaking the word in two. “It was a long, hot, steamy night, and that demon disrupted it.” He recalls his grandfather and the other ministers praying hard as the woman crawled on all fours, screamed, and ran outside to jump on the hoods of cars. “The demon was raising holy hell, and my grandfather came outside. He had big hands, and he didn’t say a word. He just—” D’Angelo raises his palm to me—”and she falls out. That’s it. End of story.”

Already Michael was developing into the musical connoisseur that D’Angelo is today. His Uncle CC was a truck driver who moonlighted as a DJ, and he had a huge record collection. This was the beginning of what D now calls “going to school”—delving deep into jazz, soul, rock, and gospel history, from Mahalia Jackson to Band of Gypsys, from the Meters to Miles Davis to Donald Byrd, from Sam Cooke to Otis Redding, from Donny Hathaway to Curtis Mayfield to Sly Stone to Marvin Gaye. When Michael was 8, Gaye had just made a comeback with “Sexual Healing” and won two Grammys. “Everybody was talking about him,” D’Angelo recalls. “Everybody.” So just after Sunday sermon on April Fool’s Day 1984, when Michael learned Gaye was dead at 44—shot by his own father—he was crushed.

That night, D’Angelo had the first of many dreams about Gaye. It was in black and white and took place at Hitsville U.S.A., Motown’s Detroit headquarters. D was playing piano while a bunch of famous Motown stars milled about, waiting for Gaye. “When he finally showed up, he was young, very handsome, the thin Marvin. Clean-shaven. Very debonair,” he told an interviewer back in 2000. “He came straight to me and shook my hand and looked me dead in the eyes, and he said, ‘Very nice to meet you.’& He grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go.”

After that, whenever Gaye’s music came on the radio, Michael felt a chill. The opening bars to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” made him get up and leave the room. It was as if the power in Gaye’s music had been linked, somehow, to his tragic end. “I would be petrified,” he says—so petrified that his mother took him to a therapist. But the dreams of Gaye—himself a preacher’s son—didn’t go away until Michael turned 19. That was the year he changed his name to a moniker inspired by Michelangelo. That was also the year that his demo tape found its way into the hands of Gary Harris, then an A&R executive at EMI Music.

At their first meeting, D played a little Al Green on the piano and appeared to be just another “young kid with a lot of mystery.” Earlier, Harris had seen a video taken at a talent show when D was 8. “He’s playing the chords from ‘Thriller,’ and then he starts singing: It’s close to midnight. Something evil’s lurkin’ in the dark. He was killing it,” Harris recalls. “We used to call it ‘getting the spirit’ in church. He’s the rarest of breeds: a genuine live attraction.”

The church warned D’Angelo against secular music. “I got that speech so many times,” he says. ” ‘Don’t go do the devil’s music,’ blah blah blah.” But his grandmother encouraged him to use his gifts as he saw fit. Not long after Harris signed him, D dreamed his last Marvin dream, this one in color. “I was following him as a grown man,” he tells me. “He was a bit heavier, and he had the beard. He was naked, and all I could see was his back and that cap he used to wear all the time. And he got into this whirlpool Jacuzzi with his wife and his daughter and his little son, and that’s when he turns around and looks at me. And he goes, ‘I know you’re wondering why you keep dreaming about me.’ And I woke up.

Angie Stone, the soul diva who sang backup vocals on Brown Sugar, says that from the moment she met D, “I knew a superstar was on the rise.” But “there was an innocence there that if we weren’t careful was going to get trashed,” adds Stone, who became romantically involved with D during that period and remains fiercely protective of him. “It’s not a little bit of God in him. It’s a lot of God in him. Sometimes when you have that much power, Satan works tenfold to break you.”

As D’Angelo caught fire in the mid-’90s, the star-making machinery worked overtime to mold him into a bankable headliner. Stone remembers an event in Manhattan in September 1996 that was billed as Giorgio Armani’s tribute to D’Angelo. Stone—thirteen years older than D—was three months pregnant with their son. They headed to the event together in a limo, but as they neared the venue where D was going to perform, it suddenly pulled over. “He was asked to get into another car, where he would be escorted by Vivica Fox,” Stone says, her voice breaking slightly. The lissome Fox had just appeared with Will Smith in the blockbuster Independence Day. “It was a Hollywood moment. They wanted a trophy girl. I had to walk in behind them to flashing cameras. It started the wheels turning of what was yet to come.”

The A-list was circling now, wanting a taste of D’s authentic flavor. When Madonna turned 39, she asked him to sing “Happy Birthday” at her party. One press report had her sitting on his lap and French-kissing him. In fact, two sources say that ultimately D rebuffed her advances at another gathering not long after. At that event, the sources say, Madonna walked over and told a woman sitting next to D, “I think you’re in my seat.” The woman got up. Madonna sat down and told him, “I’d like to know what you’re thinking.” To which D replied, “I’m thinking you’re rude.”

But the lure of fame was constant, the temptations everywhere. While his label hoped for a quick follow-up album, D retreated, citing writer’s block. He would later say that the birth of his first child, Michael Jr., got him back on track, but Voodoo—partially written with Stone—would be a full five years in the making. D fathered a daughter, now 12, with another woman, and has a third child, now almost 2.

Three weeks after its January 2000 debut, Voodoo hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. Some early reviews were tepid (only later would Rolling Stone list it among its 500 best albums of all time), but it sold more than a million units in five weeks (and 700,000 since). The record would eventually win two Grammys, for best R&B album and best male R&B vocal performance for “Untitled.” But as D began to fall apart, the video would be the only thing many fans remembered. “The video was the line of demarcation,” says Harris. “It sent him spinning out of control.”

Paul Hunter, the director hired to make the video, says his work was misunderstood: “Most people think the ‘Untitled’ video was about sex, but my direction was completely opposite of that. It was about his grandmother’s cooking.”

I’ve stopped by Hunter’s office in Culver City, California, to hear how D’Angelo came to be filmed bare-chested (but for a gold cross on a chain around his neck), wearing only a pair of precariously low-slung pajama bottoms, looking like a wolf circling a bitch in heat. Illuminated from every angle, he spins very slowly as the camera fetishizes his every ripple and drop of sweat. I’ve imagined a lot of things that inspired the song’s rousing lyrics (Love to make you wet / In between your thighs cause / I love when it comes inside of you), but collard greens weren’t among them. Hunter is quick to explain that he, like D, was raised in the Pentecostal church.

“When I used to sing in the choir,” Hunter says, “after the rehearsal, you go in to eat. I remembered seeing the preacher looking at a lady’s skirt one week and then, the next Sunday, talking about how fornication is wrong.” Such mixed messages about the pleasures of the flesh were intertwined with the pleasures of the palate—part of the same sensual stew. “So I was like, ‘Think of your grandmother’s greens, how it smelled in the kitchen. What did the yams and fried chicken taste like? That’s what I want you to express.’ “

The video was the brainchild of co-director Dominique Trenier, D’s manager, whose goal—some still see it as a stroke of genius—was to turn his client into a sex god. D’Angelo had been working hard with his trainer and was cut down to muscle and bone. Never in his life had D been this taut and virile, and Trenier seized the opportunity to create a true crossover artist without losing his loyal base. Initially, Hunter says, to capture the heat they were hoping for, “we were going to build sort of a box for a girl to come and mess with him. We all said, ‘Well, how can we push it?’ “

But when the shoot began at a New York City soundstage, the fluffer turned out to be unnecessary. D’s memory was all he needed to bring it home. The video may have looked like foreplay, but it was actually about family, Hunter insists—about intimacy. Later, when I tell D’Angelo this, he says, “It’s so true: We talked about the Holy Ghost and the church before that take. The veil is the nudity and the sexuality. But what they’re really getting is the spirit.”

The shoot took six hours, and it changed D’s life. Trenier got his wish: Thanks to D’Angelo’s luscious physicality, albums started flying off the shelves. But the trouble began right away, at the start of the Voodoo tour in L.A. “It was a week of warm-up gigs at House of Blues just to kick off the tour, draw some attention, break in the band,” says Alan Leeds, D’s tour manager then and now. “And from the beginning, it’s ‘Take it off!’ “

Questlove, the tour’s bandleader, was alarmed. “We thought, okay, we’re going to build the perfect art machine, and people are going to love and appreciate it,” he says. “And then by mid-tour it just became, what can we do to stop the ‘Take it off’ stuff?”

D’Angelo felt tortured, Questlove says, by the pressure to give the audience what it wanted. Worried that he didn’t look as cut as he did in the video, he’d delay shows to do stomach crunches. He’d often give in, peeling off his shirt, but he resented being reduced to that. Wasn’t he an artist? Couldn’t the

audience hear the power of his music and value him for that? He would explode, Questlove recalls, and throw things. Sometimes he’d have to be coaxed not to cancel shows altogether.

When I ask D about this, he downplays his suffering. Watching him pull hard on another Newport, I realize that he finds it far easier to confess his addictions than his insecurities about his corporeal self. Self-destructing with a coke spoon—while ill-advised—has a badass edge. Fretting over what Questlove has called “some Kate Moss shit” seems anything but manly. If given the chance, he tells me, he would absolutely shoot the video again. But he does admit to feeling angry during the Voodoo tour.

“One time I got mad when a female threw money at me onstage, and that made me feel fucked-up, and I threw the money back at her,” he says. “I was like, ‘I’m not a stripper.’ ” He was beginning to sense a darkness beckoning. He recalls a particular moment onstage at the North Sea Jazz festival in 2000. The band was in the middle of “Devil’s Pie,” his song about the spell fame casts upon the weak—Who am I to justify / All the evil in our eye / When I myself feel the high / From all that I despise—when he felt an ominous presence in the crowd. “That night I felt something that was like, whoa,” he tells me. E-vil.

On the last day of the eight-month tour, Questlove says D’Angelo told him, “Yo, man, I cannot wait until this fucking tour is over. I’m going to go in the woods, drink some hooch, grow a beard, and get fat.” Questlove thought he was joking. “I was like, ‘You’re a funny guy.’ And then it started to happen. That’s how much he wanted to distance himself.”

While the tour was a success, both critically and commercially, it left D broken. “When I got back home, yeah, it wasn’t that easy to just be,” he says. “I think that’s the thing that got me in a lot of trouble: me trying to just be Michael, the regular old me from back in the day, and me fighting that whole sex-symbol thing. You know: ‘Hey, I ain’t D’Angelo today. I’m just plain old Mike, and I just want to hang out with my boys and do what we used to do.’ But, damn, those days are fucking gone.”

···Upon his return to Richmond after the Voodoo tour, D stepped into what he calls “an avalanche of shit.” First he lost a few people who were close to him, including his Uncle CC, whose record collection had been the bedrock of D’s musical education, and his beloved grandmother. After that, “I just kind of sunk into this thing.”

It’s not that D wasn’t working, exactly. “I was in the studio,” he says. “But I was also partying a lot. A little too much.” He liked cocaine, he says, “because I could be a bit of an antisocial. It made me really open up and talk.” But the problem with doing coke, he says, is “you can drink like a fish and it don’t bother you. It was good in the beginning, but it got out of hand.” For the first time, he says, “people started to go, ‘Yo, man, you’ve got to get it together.’ “

Executives at his then label, Virgin, were exasperated. Momentum is money in the music business, and D was squandering his. Sometime in the mid-2000s, Virgin and D’Angelo parted ways. Then D had a falling out with Questlove, who’d played a track off the album-in-progress on an Australian radio station—a cardinal sin in D’s eyes. Things had begun to unravel. In January 2005 a bloated, bleary-eyed D’Angelo was arrested in Richmond and charged with possession of cocaine and marijuana and driving while intoxicated. Trenier, horrified by the mug shot that appeared in press accounts, drove from New York City to Richmond to pick D up—then drove him to California so D wouldn’t have to be seen in public in an airport. Soon, D was in rehab at the Pasadena Recovery Center. But he wasn’t listening.

The near fatal Hummer accident came in mid-September of that year, after D had received a three-year suspended sentence on the cocaine charge. Still, he didn’t think he’d bottomed out. Only five or six months later, after J Dilla’s passing, would D finally reach out to Gary Harris, the man who’d first signed him. D told Harris he wanted to talk to Clapton, with whom he’d performed a few times. Harris tracked down a number. “I was like, ‘Yo, I need some help,’ ” D recalls telling Clapton, who founded the Crossroads treatment center in Antigua. D would be welcome there, Clapton said, but it would cost $40,000. Harris called a former boss of his: Irving Azoff, the famed personal manager, who didn’t know D but knew his work. Harris says Azoff agreed to cut a check.

Getting D to Antigua was an odyssey in itself. First off, he had neither a driver’s license nor a passport—a challenge when trying to board an international flight. Second, while he’d begged for this intervention, his commitment to it waxed and waned. When Harris first arrived at D’s Richmond mini-mansion on a Sunday in late April 2006, the kitchen was littered with empty alcohol bottles, and D was a mess. “What should have taken a day took four days,” Harris says, recounting their journey from Richmond to Charlotte to Puerto Rico, where “it took me two days to get him out of the hotel.” Even once D was admitted to Crossroads, Harris says, “he was calling everybody he knew to get a ticket out.” At his first two rehab centers, D had been able to evade and outsmart the counselors. At Crossroads, he was forced to deal. “It was like sobriety boot camp,” he says. “They are up in your shit.”

After his month in Antigua, it still took eighteen months for D to ink a new deal, this one with J Records (which would become RCA) in late 2007. But even then, in D’s world, nothing happens quickly.

Everyone around him knows about D-time, a pace so slow that it could test even the most patient saint. Over the next few years, there were creative stops and starts. There were also setbacks. On March 6, 2010, D was arrested and charged with solicitation after offering a female undercover police officer $40 for a blow job in Manhattan’s West Village. He reportedly had $12,000 in cash in his Range Rover. Asked to explain, he says, “It was just me making a stupid decision, a wrong turn, on the wrong night.” He adds, “I’m not the role-model motherfucker. Look at all the shit that I’ve been in.”

Questlove and D were back in touch now, but the drummer admits he kept D’Angelo at arm’s length. For a while it seemed they’d only talk after someone died. Michael Jackson’s passing had them on the phone in 2009. Then, in 2011, just hours after Questlove missed a call from Amy Winehouse on Skype, she, too, exited the stage. “D’s the first person I called,” Questlove recalls. “And I was just honest, like, ‘Look, man, I’m sorry. I know you’re thinking I’m avoiding you like the plague.’ I just said plain and simple, ‘Man, there was a period in which it seemed like you were hell-bent on following the footsteps of our idols, and the one thing you have yet to follow them in was death.’ ” He told D that if he’d gotten that news, it would have destroyed him. “That was probably the most emotional man-to-man talk that D and I had ever had.”

Such honesty was only possible, Questlove says, because D’Angelo was finally getting his act together. He’d kicked his bad habits—well, most of them. “Any person who’s dealt with substance abuse, it’s an ongoing thing,” D tells me. “That’s the mantra—one day at a time—right? So you’re going to have good days and bad days, but for the most part, I have a grip on it.” He feels the forces of good are on his side now. “I don’t know why it didn’t happen sooner. It’s just the way Yahweh ordained it.”

His newfound discipline is evident in the way he has thrown himself into studying a new instrument, practicing for five and six hours a day. “The one benefit of this eleven-year sabbatical was he used 10,000 Gladwellian hours to master the guitar,” says Questlove, who compares D to Frank Zappa. “He can play the shit out of it, and I don’t mean no Lil Wayne shit.”

Alan Leeds, the tour manager, senses a conscious decision on D’s part to push beyond the beefcake. “I wonder if that isn’t partially a way to take the attention away from that Chippendales shit, because when you’re standing up playing guitar, there’s a little less attention to what you’re wearing and whether it’s on or off and having to choreograph your moves,” says Leeds, who’s previously worked with James Brown and Prince. “It prevents you from having to calculate that shit.”

Still, D is back in the gym, and it’s not just vanity that’s tugging at him. He knows physical presence is key to any live performance. And though he’s still finer than fine, with swagger to spare, he’s no longer the chiseled Adonis from the “Untitled” video. Eating little more than fish and green apples, D’s been working to trim down his five-foot-seven frame, which just a few months ago had topped 300 pounds. In January, on the eve of his European tour, his managers told me he still had another twenty-five pounds to go. Which is why when I boarded the plane for Sweden, I wasn’t surprised to see D’s personal trainer—Mark Jenkins, the same one who got him into underwear-model shape twelve years ago—a few rows up.

···When you haven’t been onstage in more than a decade, a lot of things go through your mind. For D, it boils down to a question: Is this really happening? Backstage in Stockholm, before he steps into the light, the rumble of his fans tells him the answer is yes. Fittingly, this venue is an old Pentecostal church. Packed into pews, where red leather-bound hymnals are stacked neatly for Sunday worship, the audience of 2,000 is excited to the point of near levitation. No one was sure D would show tonight, and in fact he almost didn’t. He missed two flights before his managers finally delivered him to Newark airport. “He Got on the Plane. Praise Jesus,” Tina Farris, his assistant tour manager, would blog later. “The knot in my stomach is slowly unraveling.”

When he finally takes the stage (“In a minute!” he teases the audience from the wings. “In a minute!”), he sports a black leather trench coat that hits his black pants mid-thigh and a big-brimmed black hat. He calls this look Chocolate Rock. His hair is arranged in two-strand twists, and silver crosses hang on chains that bump against his chest. Also around his neck is the strap of his black custom Minarik Diablo guitar, named for its devilish horns.

He steps into the spotlight, the guitar slung low, his face aglow. If you could somehow access the voltage in the air, you could turn on all the lights in Scandinavia. First, the strains of an old song, “Playa Playa,” cut through the din. Then a Roberta Flack cover—”Feel Like Makin’ Love”—and then, seamlessly, a bluesy new tune, “Ain’t That Easy,” whose lyrics acknowledge, I’ve been away so long. The crowd catches the double meaning and roars as D peels off his jacket, revealing a black undershirt and sculpted arms. He glides through a mix of the old (“Chicken Grease,” “Sh*t, Damn, Motherf*cker,” a cover of Parliament’s “I’ve Been Watching You”) and the new (the infectious “Sugah Daddy,” and “The Charade,” a battle cry that D says “is telling the powers that be, ‘This is why we are justified in our stance’ “). Is he rusty? A little. But his presence grows with each song.

At one point, he grabs the hem of his wife-beater with both hands and tugs it up—one, two!—in time with the song. The brief reveal of his midsection is a flashback to the trying days of 2000, but it’s 2012 now, and the shirt stays on. When the band rips into its encore, “Brown Sugar,” it feels like D has rounded third base and is about to slide to safety. “Good God!” D yelps, kicking the mike stand away, then catching it with his foot before it flies into the audience. “Give my testimony!” he shouts, blowing kisses from the stage.

The show is a triumph, and soon Twitter and Facebook are on fire. He’s really back—no longer a specter. D’s band—he can’t decide on the name, but he’s considering the Spades—radiates happiness and exhaustion as they load onto the tour buses, nicknamed the Amistad I and II after the slave ship. The next night he fills a 1,600-capacity club in Copenhagen, and afterward the buses leave on D-time—a full twelve hours behind schedule. By the time they arrive at the hotel in Paris on Sunday, January 29, sound check for that night’s show is just three hours away. Still, despite having traveled 760 miles across Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and France, D and his trainer head directly to the tiny hotel gym. Coincidentally I’m there, too. I ask if D wants privacy. He does. As I head for the door, he steps wordlessly onto the treadmill, a weary man with many miles still to go.

But that night, at the tour’s first 5,000-seat arena, Le Zénith, D’Angelo is revived. Toward the end of the show, after a medley featuring snippets of the melodious, bumping “Jonz in My Bonz” and the gospel-fueled “Higher,” he hits a single percussive note on the piano that reverberates and fades away. Then he hits it again, and all of us in this cavernous hall begin to scream. It’s the beginning of “Untitled,” which he didn’t perform in Stockholm or Copenhagen—which he hasn’t played in public, not once, in a dozen years. After a few bars, D stops abruptly and stands up. The crowd cheers as he leans on one end of the piano, his chin in his hands, catching his breath. What happens next is the most soulful, palpable connection I’ve ever felt between an artist and an audience. As D sits back down and starts to play again, the audience spontaneously begins to sing. How does it feel?—four words coming from thousands of throats, urging him on. He responds gratefully, “Sing it again, sing it again.” And they do, loudly, prettily, right on tempo: How does it feel? “Oh, baby, long time,” he sings, “that this has been on my mind.” People are crying, swaying, raising up their hands. I’m one of them. It’s impossible not to be overcome as this sexy anthem, this source of so much pain, is transformed before us into a crucible of love. “Thank you so much,” he says, his fingers fluttering on the keys as he brings it home. Then he stands up, kisses both his hands, and opens his arms to the crowd. The blue lights go dark.

I’m reminded of something Angie Stone says about D. “D’Angelo is always going to be D’Angelo,” she tells me. “You can’t take too much away from the gift itself. I’m sure there’s still some fear there, because it’s been a long time out of the spotlight. And when all the spotlight he’d got lately has been negative, there’s a rebirth of some kind that needs to take place.” God willing, we’ve all just witnessed it.

···

Upon D’Angelo’s return to New York City in mid-February, his friends and colleagues began to worry a little. D-time speeds up for no man. Russell Elevado, D’s longtime engineer, told MTV Hive that D wanted to finish his album “as soon as possible, but once he gets into the studio he gets into his own zone…. Altogether there’s over fifty songs that he’s cut since we started. I think he wants to put twelve songs on the album.”

Questlove tells me the same thing. “To get five songs out of him, we had to throw away at least twelve that I would give my left arm for,” he says. “I don’t mind that, because I literally feel he is the last pure African-American artist left.” Still, as weeks pass, Questlove admits, “My first fear was him not doing this at all. Now my new fear is, okay, the tour is over. Now what?”

For nearly a month, D mostly holes up in his apartment on the Upper West Side. Jenkins comes by regularly to sweat D in his private gym. He fasts for a few days, and the weight is coming off, but it seems D is headed back into his pre-tour cave. Only music persuades him to go out. Late in February, after he and D go to see Björk together, Questlove addresses a tweet to the Icelandic artist, saying, “amazing job last night. even d’angelo was mind blown & he leaves the house for NOBODY.”

So when will he release his new album? D can’t say for sure. His managers and his label are pushing hard for September, before the Grammy deadline. But nobody’s banking on it. Sounding like a man who’s all too familiar with D-time, Tom Corson, RCA’s president and COO, says simply, “This year would be nice.” In mid-April, D and his band are back in the studio, this time in Los Angeles, supposedly adding the final touches. But everything hinges on D letting the music go.

“I’m driven by the masters that came before me that I admire—the Yodas,” D tells me, using the term he and Questlove have coined for their heroes. He tells me of a music teacher who told him that when classical composers like Beethoven made music, “people didn’t understand it, and it got bad reviews,” D says, recalling how his teacher said Beethoven responded: “He’s like, ‘I don’t make music for you. I make music for the ages.’ “

That’s all well and good, Chris Rock says—as long as D actually releases his music. “You’ve got to earn it, man,” he tells me, adding that the only reason fans aren’t disappointed by Jeff Buckley, the celebrated singer-songwriter who recorded just one album, is that he drowned. “Body of work, babe. It’s all body of work at the end of the day. I mean, the only way D’s going to be a great artist with the output he has now is if he dies.”

I can’t help but think about J Dilla, whose death was the pivot, D says, on which his comeback began to turn. Dilla was the ultimate underground artist—prolific beyond compare, a legend in the hip-hop world. When he died, he’d made so much music with so many people—from De La Soul to Busta Rhymes to A Tribe Called Quest—that his legacy was secure. For all of D’Angelo’s otherworldly talent, for all the passions he distills and reflects when he’s in front of an audience, for all his perceived connections to Beethoven and Michelangelo and Marvin, and yes, to Jesus himself, the same cannot yet be said for him. Can Dilla, the overachiever, spur the underachiever to reach his true potential?

Back in the Times Square recording studio, I tell D I want to read to him something from a fan who posted recently on Prince.org, a site frequented by devotees of all things funky. The fan is worried by reports that D is trimming down, he writes, because of the havoc the “Untitled” video wrought: “While it’s cool that dude is getting in better shape, I hope he’s not trying to get back to the way other people picture him or want him to be. Dude just needs to get his head straight.”

I look up from the page. “Is your head straight?” I ask.

“Straight,” D’Angelo says, his eyes locked on mine. “Yes, my head is straight.” Just because you’re black, he adds, doesn’t mean you have to look or sound a certain way, “or, you know, act ignorant or what have you, whatever the fucking gatekeepers have us doing because they think that that’s the formula to make money. And a lot of motherfuckers, they just fall right into line.” D has a term for artists like this: “minstrelsy.” If he’s learned nothing, he’s learned this: He’s no minstrel.

I ask him about Internet reports that the new album is called James River, after the Virginia waterway whose swampy banks provided hidden refuge for escaped slaves. No, that’s no longer the title, D says, but he doesn’t say what is. I let slip that I’ve heard about another new song he’s written called “Back.” I just want to go back, baby / Back to the way it was, it goes. And then: I know you’re wondering where I’ve been / Wondering ’bout the shape I’m in / I hope it ain’t my abdomen.

I tell him I’m impressed that he’s addressing his body directly, using wry lyrics to confront and reclaim this difficult chapter of his life. He murmurs a thank you, but he looks a little unsettled. “Wow,” he says, when I ask if the song will appear on the album. “I don’t know if that’s going to make it.”

Later, when I reach Janis Gaye, Marvin’s second wife—and a longtime D’Angelo fan—I tell her about the dreams D had of Marvin, and she isn’t surprised. Her own children dreamed of Marvin on the night he was killed, and D is just a few years older. “Marvin is a protector, and I’m sure there was something in Marvin’s spirit that saw something in D’Angelo’s spirit,” Janis says. I tell her about Rock’s stern admonition that D needs to step it up, and she agrees. She even has a suggestion: “He should go to Marvin’s Room, the studio that Marvin built,” she says of the famed studio on Sunset Boulevard where Gaye recorded many of his hits. “Go in and take his fifty songs. Not to sound kooky or out there, but Marvin will help him to choose.”

Amy Wallace is a GQ correspondent.

The Estoteric Art Of Great Sound.

Posted on June 1, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Sound systems are intrinsic to the dance music experience, yet few of us really know much about them. RA’s Stephen Titmus attempts to demystify things with help from Funktion-One and Martin Audio.

Most of us understand that great sound is a pillar of an epic night’s raving to electronic music: power, volume and clarity arguably matter more than in any other genre you could name. Few of us, though, know how a good sound system actually works. That’s understandable. Audio nerds tend to talk about their craft using impenetrable industry-specific jargon. Sound is obviously a science. Getting a basic handle on what makes for good or bad systems, however, isn’t hard.

Loudspeakers seem like a logical place to start. To the layperson, they’re the part of a sound system that’s most easily identifiable. Good loudspeakers are all about “head room,” says Jason Baird, R&D Director at Martin Audio. He’s a man that should know. Baird’s been working with sound for over 20 years and has been involved in some of the world’s most celebrated sound installs: fabric’s room 1 and Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage to name a few. To Baird, “the ability to go loud without running out of steam or sounding harsh” is key.

“Typically when you feed too much power into a loudspeaker system then it no longer behaves in a linear manner. So when you’re designing a sound system to produce higher levels, then you need to take that all into account.”
When speakers start to behave in a non-linear manner—”distort” to you and me—the drivers of the speaker start to add their own, often unpleasant frequencies to the overall sound. (Been in a club where the sound feels like it’s going to take your ears off? That’s probably a compression driver distorting.) Drivers are the components within the loudspeaker that convert electrical energy to sound, ranging from sub-woofers at the low frequency range to tweeters for the highs.

Funktion-One‘s founder, Tony Andrews, has a good explanation for why speakers are split in this fashion: “Sound covers a range of ten octaves, and we’ve only got one with light which is the rainbow. So it’s quite easy to get a full range of frequencies of light out of one light bulb because you’ve only got one octave, but in sound you have ten. So the differences between the top octave and the bottom octave in terms of wavelength and the amount of energy you need to make them is huge. The engineering requirements are almost contradictory between the top octave and the bottom octave, and that’s why it gets divided between woofers, mids and tweeters—or even four or five ways. It’s very hard to get all the frequencies out of one speaker because it’s so broad.”

In order to cover the entire frequency range of music smoothly, speaker manufacturers have to use different materials for each driver. This can range from stiff yet light carbon fibre for bass frequencies, to delicate materials like paper for mid and high frequencies. The drivers in good speakers will also be highly efficient in the sense that they are very good converters of electrical energy to audio energy. They don’t have to work too hard to do their job. This helps create the aforementioned “head room” and allows the speakers to go loud for long periods of time without distorting, something that’s especially important in night clubs where the clientèle can be exposed to music for longer periods than almost any other scenario.

Getting your mitts on a set of top quality speakers is a starting point, but in some ways it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The acoustics of a room play a huge role. So much so, in fact, that a bad acoustic environment can make even the best speakers sound crap. Rich Cufley of Sound-Services is someone who’s passionate about this point.

Cufley is the go-to sound guy for some of London’s best underground parties. When Ostgut Ton roll into town, Cufley is the man who’s taking care of business. He often deals with rooms that were never designed to be used as nightclubs, and makes them sound like ones that were. (All the while attempting to meet the lofty expectations of demanding international DJs and hard-to-impress London clubbers.)

“Next time you walk into an empty building, no matter what it is, if you just clap, the time that reverb takes to disappear is the key to how it’s going to sound.” Cufley’s job when getting a room ready for a club night is to try and get rid of as much of the reverb as possible. As Cufley explains, “The first port of call with trying to improve the sound in a building like a warehouse would be heavy theatrical draping. It’s one of the thickest things you can put on the wall temporarily. It really helps with the high-mid and high frequencies, and it will stop the clatter and the reverb.”

This added reverb not only sounds unpleasant, but it also “tires your brain” over the course of a night’s clubbing. Your mind is hardwired—from the hunter-gatherer days—to judge space and time through sound. Reverb bouncing around the space of a building—”secondary reflections” if you want to use the technical term—puts your brain into overdrive as it attempts to unscramble the flood of information it’s being sent.

As you may have guessed, improving acoustics can be an expensive business. According to Cufley, the average quotation for a Funktion-One rig is probably half the price of what it would take to drape a building properly. Unsurprisingly, some promoters and club owners are reluctant to shell out this kind of cash, a point reiterated by Baird at Martin Audio.

“The appreciation of how much difference good acoustic treatment can make to a sound system is something that people don’t really understand. They have enough trouble getting their head around (the fact they’re) paying a lot because of the sound system, never mind paying a lot of money to acoustically treat the room that they’re in. ‘What? I’d rather spend it on a lighting rig or a new bar.’”

Even if the money’s not there, however, simply having an idea that acoustics matter can make all the difference to promoters and club owners trying to find new spaces. Cufley talks about times when he’s used materials like camouflage netting to improve the sound of a room when nothing else is around. Recently he used hay bales stolen from a roller rink to provide the finishing touches at Loco Dice’s Under 300 gig. They “absorbed loads of bottom end,” as straw has surprisingly good acoustic properties.

So it’s clear speakers are not the beginning and end of good sound. There are always going to be other factors at play. Nevertheless, one speaker brand in particular seems to have developed a reputation as a golden bullet for great sound. Funktion-One speakers are now treated as a marketable feature of a night. A simple Google search will reveal the amount of club promoters who use Funktion as a talking point. One promoter has even gone so far as to describe the music played at their night as “Funktion-One fuelled house.” Tellingly, if you search for similar use of a rival sound system manufacturer, you see only a few results. In some ways this is nothing new, big sound systems are an obvious selling point. But to see a brand pushed to the forefront—and gain recognition from not only audio geeks, but Joe and Jane clubber too—seems like a recent development.

Funktion-One’s moment in vogue would seem to have some substance behind it. F1′s founders also started Turbo Sound in the ’70s, a company that made several notable leaps forward in speaker technology and worked with bands like Pink Floyd. Funktion’s Tony Andrews has over 40 years of experience with audio, a pedigree that’s given him strong and unusually outspoken convictions on sound systems. He’s openly critical of competitors and describes line arrays, the speaker set-up used at most major live gigs, as “not really proper audio.” F1′s stance against line arrays—and therefore lack of presence in the live music market—is one of the reasons they are so focused on club music.

Andrews says that it’s the ability to focus sound onto a small space that makes F1 speakers great at working in acoustically poor spaces. “We’re much better at dealing with problematic rooms because with line arrays you have fixed dispersion. You almost need a room to fit the dispersion of the PA, which is the wrong way round in my opinion. Because you can cater the dispersion of the [Funktion-One] speakers just beyond the audience and nowhere else, I would say generally we are better at dealing with difficult acoustic spaces.”

Narrowing the dispersion of sound cuts down on the amount of music bouncing off the walls. If you imagine a long thin room with speakers at one end, if the sound comes out at a 60 degree angle rather than a 90 degree angle, then it’s going to hit the walls much less. This will give a smoother sound. F1 speakers are designed with this in mind. It’s one of the reasons the speaker’s distinctive polygon-shaped horns look the way they do. (Though it must be said F1 are not the only brand that can achieve these results.)

So there are reasons why F1 stacks are so popular with dance music promoters using off-the-radar spaces. It’s Funktion’s club installs, however, where its products really shine. Celebrated systems in Berghain and Space Ibiza cement F1′s reputation week in and week out. F1 speakers are both simple and efficient, which means they can effectively produce smooth audio for long periods of time without need for correction from sound engineers. The end product is consistently excellent sound.

While it’s clear Funktion-One are the most talked about sound system brand in the dance music world, many others provide comparable results. DC-10 uses a Void Acoustics rig, while Ministry Of Sound and fabric both have multi-award winning sound systems powered by Martin Audio.

As Martin’s Jason Baird tells it, “If we take a client to either of those venues and demonstrate the system to them, then it’s quite a persuasive demonstration.” Baird speaks of a “premier league” of manufacturers that make the best products—of which he naturally includes Martin Audio, but also Funktion-One. Rich Cufley, whose favoured speaker brand happens to be F1, also backs up this school of thought.

“I think a properly set up system, (set up) with someone who’s passionate about how that system works and is designed, with good engineering know-how, can really get good results out of most modern day systems. You could give me a stack of Turbo Sound, though it’s 20 years old, and I’d hope to get something that was really great.”

Having that person—usually a trained sound engineer—to set up and oversee a sound system is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. Cufley talks about times when he’s seen Funktion-One systems set up badly and they’ve sounded “atrocious.” Sometimes he doesn’t even need to hear a system to know it’s going to sound dodgy: F1 speakers should be stacked at a specific angle, and ones that aren’t signal an engineer with all the right gear but no idea.

“There’s people out there and they buy the front ends and the obvious Funktion-One stacks that everyone’s going to see, but they power it with the wrong amps, they use the wrong crossovers, they might not be the most competent engineers. It breaks my heart when I walk in somewhere like that.”

Amplifiers can also have a huge effect on the overall sound. As with loudspeakers, head room is key. You don’t want the amps straining to power the speakers. It’s also important to use amplifiers that are a suitable power rating for the speakers in order not to blow them up. Cufley warns that “you could write a book on the subject,” but it’s clear that in listening to him talk that a great sounding amplifier can make a dramatic improvement. (Cufley specifically uses Full Fat Audio with his existing equipment). There has to be a cumulative approach in order to get good sound, all the way down to the cables. It might sound obvious, but if every element is of a high standard, the final result will be improved.

Having a full knowledge of the ins-and-outs of a sound system is something that seems to come primarily from experience. Cufley, for instance, says that “if you put me out there in the real world, I’m absolutely useless.” Ask him a question about a sound system, however, and he’ll informatively nerd out over all aspects of audio—usually at a length that will get uncomfortable to the casual listener. He’ll even forfeit meals in favour of working and has a semi-religious abstinence policy for all of his team.

“We don’t allow any drinking from our crew when they’re working. I hate that cliché of a drunk engineer. You can’t hear properly if you drink. Even worse [is] a coked up engineer. The protection hairs in you ear—as soon as you do cocaine—go into protect mode and you can’t hear properly. Any sound engineer that has put cocaine up their nose [should] go home immediately. You are no use to anyone.”

Baird from Martin Audio also points out how important sound engineers can be to a night’s success. Chiefly because modern sound systems are more complicated than ever before: “If the people setting them up haven’t been trained to do it then it’s easy to make a mistake. When I hear a sound system that’s been set-up badly, then it’s [not an] intrinsic problem with a particular loudspeaker. It’s more the way it’s been configured.”

So the next time your hear bad sound, don’t just divert your anger at the speakers. Perhaps you’d be better off blaming the inexperienced sound guy or the club owner who scrimped on acoustic treatment. In fact, the weakest link in the audio chain is not usually the hardware, or even the guy who set it up, but the person supplying the music—the DJ.

Tony Andrews is a man who’s explicit about his thoughts on this subject. “The performance of the whole system will come down to the least good bit. It’s like a chain of events: from the DJ to the loudspeaker. I don’t particularly want to pick on DJs—and all engineers out there know this—[but] it’s just staggering how many DJs will drive the mixers into the red. If you drive them into them red… How can I put this? The whole thing’s fucked before you even start!”

A system can only work with what you put in there and, as such, a good DJ should take care to play the best quality music at their disposal at the best possible sound quality they can manage. In other words, if the record the DJ is playing sounds bad, then no matter how good the speakers are, the audio coming out is going to sound bad too. Most experts will say that to achieve the best sound quality, DJs should be playing either WAVs or vinyl (provided the decks are set up correctly). And if anyone’s thinking of turning this point into a tedious digital vs analogue debate, Cufley references Andrew Weatherall as the man to put the argument to bed.

“What I like about Weatherall is he’s playing off of CDJs, but he’s ripped it from the vinyl and he really cares about how it sounds and he’s got a great pair of ears. He’s got this amazing vinyl, he’s cleaned it, he’s taken his time, he’s listening to it on his studio monitors and he’s ripped it onto a CD, so he doesn’t have to carry records around. He’s playing it in a CDJ2000 which is a great-sounding CD player so the warmth and the feeling’s there. All the components are there for a magical, magical night.”

That elusive feeling when the bass drops back in, your fist pumps and your hackles rise… That’s something that is just less likely to happen with low quality files and bad speakers. To sound experts like Cufley, it’s still the unquantifiable aspects of audio that are most fascinating.

“A human being’s hearing is capable of more than we could possibly measure and understand. We need to treat audio and human hearing with the respect that it deserves, and we need to push it forward. All we can do is get the technological sound of it as perfect as possible, but there are still things we don’t understand about how humans react to sound. The only thing we all agree on is that when’s it’s right, it feels amazing. You look at how many people get addicted to a good club at the weekend and sound is beyond drugs. Absolutely.”

Words / Stephen Titmus

Published / Tuesday, 15 May 2012

ANDREW WEATHERALL – Entering A love From Outer Space

Posted on May 29, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Walking through East London, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the barrage of lights, dirt and skirts is representative of life at its fastest and most empty – but Lord Sabre Andrew Weatherall, who toils in a bunker concealed deep under the streets sopping with lager and city boy nights out, is still in love with the place…

“No amount of All Saints shops can eradicate the stain of 400 years of skullduggery. I’m hoping that the screams and blood of the Ripper victims will stay ingrained in the walls a lot longer that the latest shops…”

Mischievous words from a man whose passion for eclectic sounds and eccentric wardrobe has led him to being cast as the John Peel of our times. Weatherall has been a benchmark of impeccable taste since frolicking in the primordial soup of acid house at the fag end of the 80s. He’s a self-confessed Luddite, whose fingers may be on the pulse of all things electronic, but whose clothes and facial hair suggest has stepped out of another age.

A Love From Outer Space (ALFOS) is this techno timelord’s latest venture – an evening and ethos created with first lieutenant Sean Johnston. Launched in 2010 at the Drop (now known as the Waiting Room) in North London’s Stoke Newington, a basement venue for 120 like-minded souls, the evening was billed as an “oasis of slowness in a world of ever increasing velocity” – and underlined how Weatherall and his henchman were out of sync with a modern universe glistening with tablet computers and hollow gestures.

But ALFOS has maintained its 122bpm pace - it is the rest of the aural electronic world which has chosen to slow down and dance in time with them. The nights at the Drop spawned a cultish following, leading to Thursday nights on Church St running over with ravers, students, straight from work dancers and Weatherall devotees, all desperate to hear what part of the pulse his fingers had grasped.

18 months later and the residency may have come to an end but the pair’s mission is ongoing. The new Masterpiece three-CD compilation, to be released in May on Ministry of Sound, is the culmination of Weatherall’s inspired crate digging. Following in the footsteps of fellow dance veterans Gilles Peterson and Francois K, it’s a landmark summary of a 20 year love of leftfield sounds and a friendship, originally brought about by “acid house conduit” Jeff Barratt of Heavenly Records and cemented by Sean chancing his arm and acting as Weatherall’s chauffeur to gigs.

“He played me this 110bpm, what I call ‘hypno-beat’, without wanting to be responsibile for kick-starting the ‘hypno-beat” special edition of Mixmag,” jokes Weatherall, feverishly tweaking his tache over a joint and a cup of tea in his basement headquarters on Shoreditch.

He says the parties were an instant success: “The music suited a school night and a 2am finish – and I was pleased with the lady count. Many of the punters would be guys like me and Sean. They’d have to explain the night to their girlfriends; ‘it’s a Weatherall gig but it’s all right. You’ll like it. It’s a little bit weird but it’s pretty groovy. No honestly you’ll like it’. Looking at the crowd, that seemed like the scenario.”

It was summer 2011 that ALFOS left its moorings in N17 and began causing a stir in other rave zones. Sets at T In The Park in Scotland and a riotous boat party and main stage set at Electric Elephant in Croatia sparked massive reactions both on the dancefloor and online and led to the pair grabbing a monthly slot in Glasgow. “I love London,” says Weatherall. “It’s the best city in the world but I also like how nicely perverse it is to host your residency hundreds of miles away from your home city.

“But our crowd in Stokey used to travel,” he adds. “Some used to come from Glasgow to Stoke Newington. We haven’t had anyone going the opposite route and travelling from Hackney Wick to Glasgow. But people are gradually getting wise, and gradually getting the idea that we’re damn good value for money. You book us for the whole night and it’s much cheaper than booking three or four other DJs.”

It is from these deliberately low-key beginnings that the latest piece of the ALFOS puzzle falls into place. Masterpiece is billed as a “distillation” of the influences and breakdown of the tackle that Messrs Weatherall and Johnston based their club night on.

Stretched across these three CDs, kicking off with The Asphodells’ “A Love From Outer Space” and culminating with the original by ARKane, this release came out on Ministry of Sound – an unlikely collaborator for a renowned auteur who appears happier digging deep underground rather than use a platform based in the more corporate and shiny side of dance. “The incongruous connection is part of the reason for doing it,” explains Weatherall. “Sometimes surprising people can be done by going for the more obvious thing. And the guy Gavin who is doing it put out the Watch The Ride compilation I did a few years back. I knew I wouldn’t have to compromise and it would be a good opportunity to get a lot of great music out to people who might not have heard it via a commercial outlet.”

But doesn’t this raise some contradictory questions about the position of the artist and the age-old talking point of ‘selling out’? “I interviewed Throbbing Gristle many years ago,“ he recalls. “I said to Cosey (Fanni Tutti, key agent provocateur of the Gristle) that taking the money from a corporate gig and putting it into an underground thing is fine as long as you’re funding interesting work.”

“But Cosey said ‘No – because that money is tainted. And anyone who you give that money too – their art is tainted as well.’ Part of me agrees with her stance, but the scales are tipping towards the idea of getting out music that people wouldn’t otherwise hear. I don’t think it’s tainted. People are intelligent enough to hear a piece of music that has been attached to a commercial project. They’re not gonna go ‘oh that’s that bit of music – we must go out and buy a Volkswagen’ or whatever it is I’ve advertised! Or I must go to the Ministry of Sound – they’re probably not – they just like that music.”

Casting a curious eye down the lengthy tracklisting of Masterpiece, it’s arguable that perhaps only the most dedicated digger will have much of a clue as to what is going on. Tornado Wallace, Apiento and Name in Lights are just some of the artists to be featured but then there are also choice hunks of cosmic grooves from these two chaps themselves – Weatherall remixes of the Horrors and Toddla T, as well as an appearance by Sean’s burgeoning Hardway Bros project. It’s clear from the breadth and scope of the release and their sets that these two live and breathe records. Sean admits to having cut his vinyl habit down to a miserly 5,000 bits due to the pressure of a young daughter and girlfriend. But what exactly is the ALFOS sound and where has it come from?

Weatherall explains: “Much of ALFOS is very ‘hypno’. It has New Beat elements, early house elements, but we’re not playing loads of old tunes. It’s not about nostalgia. It’s just distilling that spirit I had when I first started out and I never considered myself a DJ. I just played records.”

And seeing them DJ over the past year – whether it be at Electric Elephant festival in Croatia, at the Garage in Islington in February or at the recent totally ram-jammed Easter special at Corsica Studios – it’s clear that dancers are moving in sync with their low-slung grooves, often without knowing who many of the artists the pair are pushing actually are.

“I’m always perverse – if there’s a big record, I’ll turn it over and listen to track two on the B-Side. A lot of the music people ask about – nine times out of ten it’s probably the B-Side to something they’ve got and they’ve just been playing the other side. I don’t want to give the game away but that’s basically it. Okay this is gonna be a big record – people are going to be into it – but it’s going to have a limited shelf life. This track on the B-Side that people think is obscure and a grower is going to have a bit more longevity.”

Sean continues: “They’re all out there. It’s just that we’re digging in different places to other people. There are a few obscure things we play, but the majority of any of our sets is made up of music we’re sourced from outlets open to anyone. It’s not stuff we’ve been sent, downloaded or promoted.”

The world keeps turning for both these players of the most modern sounds. And the calls for Weatherall to accept his status as the icon for all sonics left, weird and possibly dangerous continue. Unsurprising due to his tinkering and raving with Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and in the Sabres of Paradise – he’s watched rave culture morph from afar until it’s formed its current mongrel shape. Where does this leave him?

“I can maintain this image of being a Luddite and this supposed disdain towards technology and the internet. But in the background I’ve got a management office that maintain an online presence, Sean who controls the ALFOS publicity – I’m in an enviable position where I can pretend to be an Edwardian painter. But it is a bit like the Wizard of Oz – all this stuff is going on and it all seems modern but when you pull the curtain back, there’s just me surrounded by steam pulling levers.”

The pair mention Andy Blake and Joe Hart’s South London based World Unknown party as possible contemporaries but seem more than happy to be continuing at their own pace amid their own orbit. “There might be other places that I don’t know about, which I think is marvellous,”continues Weatherall. “I kind of like the fact that I don’t know. I might go out tomorrow and get handed a flyer and there’s been something going on for months and months.”

Over a final cig, both are happy to admit there is no game plan. This isn’t a career – this is just a way of moving as mavericks. Gentlemen – strap me in and take me to the cosmos…

Words: Jim Ottewill

THE WAREHOUSE: The place house music got its name

Posted on May 25, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

In honor of its 35th anniversary, RA’s Jacob Arnold looks back at the origins and the heyday of the legendary Chicago nightspot.

In the mid-’70s, Chicago was still America’s second largest city. Yet after the financial collapse of a number of independent soul labels a few years earlier, its recording industry was virtually non-existent, and its club scene was heavily segregated. Into this vacuum stepped Robert Williams, a promoter whose parties brought together straight and gay youths of all races. His club, The Warehouse, closed before the first Chicago dance tracks were recorded by artists like Jamie Principle, Jesse Saunders, J.M. Silk, Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, and Chip E., but it set the stage for house music, popularizing after-hours clubbing and DJ edits in Chicago and launching the career of Frankie Knuckles.

Williams grew up in Jamaica, Queens, NY, then moved to Harlem where he studied law at Columbia University. In the early ’70s, he began dancing at Manhattan clubs like The Sanctuary, Better Days, and The Gallery, but it was David Mancuso’s parties that made the biggest impression. “I liked the intensity of it,” Williams explains. “He gave parties in his loft, private parties—membership only…. People were taking drugs. They were on LSD, most of the time, but it was wild. It made it super intense. And the music was great.”

As a juvenile officer at Spofford Juvenile Center in the Bronx, Williams met future DJs Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles after they were caught skipping school. Williams encountered them again at East Village clubs like The Dome. Admits Williams with a smile, “They were much better dancers than I was.”

Williams moved from New York to Chicago around 1972 to escape the rat race, but he found Chicago’s nightlife underwhelming. After a few apartment parties with his fraternity brothers at Phi Beta Sigma, Williams and a half dozen friends founded US Studio, a venture inspired by Mancuso’s loft parties. In 1973, they opened Chicago’s first after-hours juice bar in a commercial space at 116 South Clinton Avenue.

At a time when most Chicago bars closed at 3 AM, US Studio was able to stay open all night as a liquor-free establishment. “We charged two dollars,” Williams recalls. “[And] we had five hundred people. It was so crowded that the police came to raid our party… but they had a difficult time getting in.” After just a couple of weeks, the building burned down between parties. “We lost a little equipment,” Williams explains, “but we bounced back.”

US Studio subsequently found space at 1400 South Michigan Avenue, across the street from a fire house. Unsurprisingly, inspectors shut the space down after just a few months. Next, an industrial realtor rented the group 10,000 square feet of loft space on the seventh floor of 555 West Adams Street. DJ Craig Cannon remembers, “We’d get in this elevator… confined, but the closer that you get to the floor where the party is, the louder the music gets, so it builds anticipation. By the time the elevator’s door opens, you’re practically running out of there.”

By this time Williams had been voted president of the group. Chicagoans Bennie Winfield and Michael Matthews were the DJs, but Williams made regular drives to New York to get music from Mancuso and Levan. He brought back exclusive soul and disco 12-inches by artists like First Choice, B.T. Express and LaBelle.

After two years on Adams Street, a dispute over membership fees resulted in most of the group leaving Williams to form “The Bowery.” As luck would have it, this splintering of US Studio resulted in the launch of The Warehouse at 206 South Jefferson Street. According to Williams, Adams Street “was a little large for us to maintain,” but The Warehouse, which could be glimpsed out the old club’s rear windows, was just right. A lease was signed in June 1976, and a couple of months later the space opened for parties, though initially they were just twice a month.

Meanwhile, disco music’s popularity began to skyrocket. Remembers DJ Michael Ezebukwu, “Back then Chicago was full of clubs. It was Den One, it was the Ritz, there was Le Pub, Broadway Limited… that’s just a short list.” Ron Hardy attracted a black crowd to Den One some nights, but for the most part it was a white club featuring the talents of Artie Feldman and Peter Lewicki.

There was also Dugan’s Bistro, Chicago’s largest gay disco, which opened in 1973. Its DJ, Lou DiVito, won two consecutive Billboard awards for best regional disc jockey, but the club was notorious for turning away African Americans. “They would ask us not only for the regular ID, but passports as well,” Craig Cannon explains. In response, the club was picketed and leafleted by a group calling itself the Committee of Black Gay Men.

By this time there were other black-owned after-hours lofts, including Lonnie Fulton’s Social Sounds and Michael Fields’ Castle in the Sky, and it became evident that The Warehouse would need a new disc jockey to stay competitive in Chicago’s growing club scene. Williams first asked Larry Levan, but he didn’t want to leave New York. He then approached Frankie Knuckles, who had taken over for Levan at New York’s Continental Baths before it went bankrupt. Knuckles agreed to come out for a “grand opening” in March 1977.

Williams enlisted Richard Long and Associates, also from New York, to install a custom sound and light system, but initial parties with Knuckles were a bust. Says Williams, “The music was fantastic, the sound, but… I guess there was controversy, propaganda, against Frankie. [People said,] ‘I don’t really want to hear that New York stuff.’” Knuckles returned to New York for a time, only visiting Chicago periodically for special parties.

It wasn’t until Knuckles spun at a few of The Bowery’s events that he developed a following. Williams explains, “[It was only] then they started coming to the Warehouse. So then Frankie decided he liked it, so he said he’d relocate for me.” According to Knuckles, this was in July 1977, almost a year after Williams had started holding parties in the space.

While there was no sign on the building, and the official name was “US Studio,” dancers started calling the club “The Warehouse” early on, and Williams adopted the name. Like its predecessors, the Warehouse was a nineteen-and-over, members-only juice bar. Knuckles usually kept the party jumping until eight in the morning.

“That place was three levels,” Cannon remembers. “You walked up the stairs and paid, and then you walked down the stairs to the party, and then there was a basement below that.” With no air conditioning, The Warehouse relied on fans and open windows in the summer. Cannon recalls the breeze made for a beautiful effect, especially when the open-beam ceiling was draped with crepe paper: “When you turned the mirror ball, you turned the fan on, and it was decorated, everything seemed like it was moving.”

Asked if there was acid in the punch, Cannon exclaims, “Oh, definitely. Everything was spiked. It was just crazy.” Williams recalls that they “had marathons which lasted a couple of days. Like twenty-four hours. Kids would go home, change clothes, come back.”

For its first couple of years, The Warehouse was one of Chicago’s wildest discos, but it wasn’t until 1979 or so that it began to embody a distinctive scene. Around this time, a black middle class “preppie” culture was developing in South Side private schools, including the Catholic high school Mendel. Teens who listened to Devo and The B-52s on Herb Kent’s Punk Out radio show began forming their own party promotion groups which rented spaces and distributed flyers, or “pluggers.” One such group was future producer Vince Lawrence’s Infinity Space Eclipse, which began throwing parties with an IZOD dress code.

Knuckles began to spin at North Side clubs to supplement his Saturdays at the Warehouse, starting with Carol’s Speakeasy (in Den One’s old building). In October 1980, Dave “Medusa” Shelton, a young clubber with curly blond hair (whose first party as a promoter had been held at The Warehouse the year before), opened his own juice bar, 161 West. Knuckles DJed there Friday nights. A Gay Life print ad from October 1980 describes dancers “jacking their bodies all night,” over two years before the first house record.

As electronic music gained a foothold, Knuckles began to mix New Wave records with his usual soul and disco cuts. Knuckles’s top ten list for April 9, 1981 (published by Brett Wilcots in Gay Chicago) includes such unlikely records as “Jezebel Spirit” by Brian Eno & David Byrne and “Walking on Thin Ice” by Yoko Ono alongside more predictable choices by People’s Choice, Billy Ocean and Grace Jones.

While Chicago’s more adventurous “progressive” fans were buying records at Wax Trax!, which also sold leather and studs, Knuckles and many other DJs shopped at Importes Etc., which started life as a counter in a used car dealership run by owner Paul Weisberg’s father. The store began a symbiotic relationship with Knuckles, labeling records “heard at the Warehouse”—which was soon shortened to “house.” In a 1987 obituary, DJ and Gay Chicago columnist Tom Parks credited Importes’ Dick Guenther with coining the term as a “promotional gimmick.”

Alongside imports, Knuckles began playing fresh edits of disco tunes that were already a few years old. Knuckles explains via email, “My close, dear friend Erasmo Rivera was in school for sound engineering. One of his classes was on editing, and he was cutting up everything. I began giving him records to re-edit.”

Williams says those edits drove the crowd wild: “You’d be like, I [have] that album at home, and it doesn’t sound like that. What the hell is going on?” For example, Knuckles’ edit of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes’ “Baby, You Got My Nose Open,” starts at the break, then loops the passage, “All you men, all you men” before concluding with “…out there.” Another signature track was The Dells’ “Get on Down.” Knuckles would repeatedly tease two bars of crowd noise and the spoken word, “All right, let’s get it on!” before launching into the rest of the break.

Around this time, Knuckles was in high demand. In 1981 and 1982, he DJed for parties at Sauer’s, Pyramid, Annex 2, The Smart Bar and Metro. As Knuckles expanded his audience, The Warehouse benefited from the diversity. Cannon enthuses, “My fondest memory is the mixed crowd. Racially, ethnically, sexually. That was the best thing. I hit on all the straight guys, unbeknownst to me.” Knuckles confirms, “It was hip to act gay and hang out at gay clubs, but not actually be gay. You figure that one out!”

By all accounts, the Warehouse’s final year was also its wildest. The club was consistently packed with teenagers, many of whom were underage. Williams remembers parents coming to look for their children. According to Knuckles, older members were driven out. The club was overcrowded, and there were even several stick-ups inside. Knuckles sensed things spinning out of control, admitting that “the club was no longer safe.”

In November 1982, Knuckles left The Warehouse to open his own club, The Power Plant. “I felt I had reached a point where I couldn’t go any further with the Warehouse,” Knuckles explains. With The Warehouse gone, other after-hours clubs rose to take its place, including The Playground, First Impressions, and Shelton’s Medusa’s. Williams himself opened the Muzic Box [sic] several months later, where DJ Ron Hardy rose to local stardom. These new clubs (and the sudden availability of inexpensive synthesizers and drum machines) set the stage for local producers. In early 1984, electronic dance music by Chicago teenagers began to hit stores and the airwaves.

Three short years later, despite spawning several UK chart toppers, Chicago’s house scene became a victim of its own success. Many of its best-known producers signed to major labels, where they were quickly cast aside in favor of hip-hop. Meanwhile, Medusa’s latest dance club, which alternated house and industrial nights, came under attack by local residents concerned about teenage delinquency. In January 1987, a city ordinance passed requiring juice bars to follow liquor bar hours. It went into effect that April. Williams took his parties back underground, but Chicago’s club scene would never be the same.

Words / Jacob Arnold

Published / Wednesday, 16 May 2012

DISCO IS MUSIC FOR THE DISILLUSIONED – Article From 1978

Posted on May 22, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Disco is music for the disillusioned. It isn’t art: no auteurs in disco, just calculated dessicating machines. It isn’t folk: no disco subcultures, no disco kids seething with symbolic expression It isn’t even much fun: no jokes, no irony, only a hard rhythmed purposefulness. Disco is the sound of consumption. It exists only in its dancing function: when the music stops all that’s left is a pool of sweat on the floor. And disco’s power is the power of consumption.

The critics are right: disco is dehumanising – all those twitching limbs, glazed-eyed, mindless. The disco aesthetic excludes feeling, it offers a glimpse of a harsh sci-fi future. ‘What’s your name, what’s your number?’ sings Andrea True in my current favourite single, and it’s not his telephone number she wants, but his position in the disco order of things. The problem of pogoing, I’ve found, is not that it’s too energetic for anyone over 30 years and 11 stone, but that it requires too much thought.

Popular music has always been dance music; disco is nothing but dance music. It has no rock’n’roll connotations; off the dance floor it is utterly meaningless, lyrically, musically and aesthetically. Every disco sound is subordinate to its physical function; disco progress is technological progress. The end doesn’t change but the means to that end, the ultimate beat, are refined and improved – hence drum machines, synthesisers, 12″ pressings. And disco is dance music in the abstract, content determined by form. Popular dance music of the past, in the 1930s say, was a form determined by its content.

The content was developed by dance hall instructors and sheet music salesmen and band leaders whose rules of partnership, decorum, uplift and grace, can still be followed in ‘Come Dancing’: the music is strictly subordinate to the conventions of flounce and simper. In contrast, when Boney M, German manufactured black American androgynes, sing for our dancing pleasure, ‘Belfast’, it means nothing at all. Any two syllables arranged and sounding just so would do and how we dance to them is, of course, entirely our own affair. There are no rules in disco, it’s just that individual expression means nothing when there’s nothing individual to express. I trace disco back to the twist, the first dance gimmick to be taken seriously and the first dance step to be without any redeeming social feature. I blame disco on Motown, the first company to realise that if the beat is right, soul power can be expressed without either the passion or emotion that made it soul power in the first place.

Disco is nothing like muzak. Muzak’s effect is subliminal; its purpose is to encourage its hearers to do anything but listen to it. Disco’s effect is material; its purpose is to encourage its hearers to do nothing but listen to it. Not even think.

Disco music is only disco music in discos. These days there are CP discos, women’s discos, anti-fascist discos, students’ discos, youth club discos, cricketers’ discos, punk discos and reggae discos. The disco form can be used by anyone who’s got a record player, records and a large enough room. But a proper disco exists only to be a disco and the records it plays exist only to be played by it. The Musicians’ Union hates discos because they put live musicians out of work.

I hate discos because they seem like such a soft way of making money: a DJ doesn’t do anything except buy records and put the needle on them – I can do that too. The whole enterprise is parasitic: if there is such a thing as disco creativity it happened in secret studio places long before. The best discos are the best just to the extent to which nothing unexpected happens – feet never falter, taste is never threatened, offence is never taken because never given. If you want a surprise don’t go to the disco.

Clubs with records as their only means of entertainment came to Britain from the continent in the early ‘60s. Before then DJs and records had been used in ballrooms (cf the pioneering career of Jimmy Savile) but not as alternatives to live music and, initially, discos simply served two sorts of incrowd: rock aristocrats seeking social exclusion and soul freaks seeking musical exclusion (as they still do in the Northern Soul clubs). The main British disco development occurred in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s as live rock became increasingly undanceable, expensive and in the wrong places (colleges and concert halls). British disco went teenage pop and, in a commercial sense, it mostly still is.

The style of consumption involved is working class provincial. Bouncers, louts, uneasy sexual posturing; dance hall culture really, but cooler and smarter than in the ‘50s, and with flashing lights and much better music. Women do most of the dancing, men most of the drinking, and none of them take disco as seriously as, perhaps, they ought. Because meanwhile in America discos are the setting for adult chic consumption, part of the culture of singles rather than of teenage courtship, anonymously safe places for elaborate displays of apathy. Can’t imagine drunks in Manhattan’s spruce discos, bumping buttocks with Susan Sontag and Lennie Bernstein.

The European connection is that discos in Paris are more like they are in New York than they are like they are in Nottingham. And French and Italian teenagers are, anyway, chic-er than Britons of any age. But the most wonderful Euro-discos of all are the ones in the holiday belts – Costa Brava, Riviera, Costa del Sol. Cellars which are open permanently in the summer months and in which earnest Northerners – Dutch, British, Swedes, Germans, develop their own singles culture, their own disco style. I can only explain it by noting that they dance to Donna Summer in their sandals. Ah disco! Ah Baccara!

As a rock writer, I’ve always been a frustrated DJ rather than musician. ‘Hey you,’ I’ve wanted to shout, ‘Listen to this!’ The model was John Peel, music lover and eclectic. I certainly didn’t fancy the provincial disco DJs I knew – big, hearty philistines who knew nothing about the records they played but enjoyed the patter and had dreams, like Albert Finney in ‘Gumshoe’, of moving from master of ceremonies to master of a comic routine. But this was a doomed approach anyway, survival from dance hall days. Real disco DJs aren’t entertainers at all, have nothing to with music. They’re technologists, men (very few women) of the future: their job is to play the audience. It’s a job I want again. By 1984 it’ll probably be called ‘consumption-coordinator’.

Discos are where people dance and dancing can be anything from the shuffle to a pre-rehearsed and elaborate routine to a straight display of cartwheels. What disco dancing isn’t is a) musical interpretation and b) self-expression. The opposite of disco dancing is what Legs and Co. do on ‘Top of the Pops’ – ie choreographed responses to the ‘meaning’ of a song.

What they do is so embarrassing that I usually turn the picture off, but I turn it back again for the rest of the show because, at an admittedly low level, it does reveal the difference between the Anglo-Collective disco style – all those dumpy little boys and girls looking nervously at each other – and the American-Individual style (on the clips from ‘Soul Train’) – all those intense boys and girls looking determinedly at their own feet. Most disco dancing has little to do with elegance, grace or agility, which is OK by me because if it did I wouldn’t do it.

Rock music, dance music, has always been a form of sexual expression – girl meets boy physically. The social problem has then been the control of this expression – hence the moral about rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis’s hips etc. Disco’s greatest achievement has been to develop a form in which sexuality is expressed and controlled simultaneously. Critics have missed the point of the standard formula – machinery plus orgasmic sighs.

The problem is not that the sighs are fake, but that it wouldn’t make any difference if they were real! Disco isn’t a frustrating music – preventing the climax from occurring – but a music of control – preventing the climax from being disruptive. It’s a noisy form of some Eastern mystical discipline and the only puzzle to me is why disco is so important an aspect of gay culture. I’m not gay, so I can’t say, except that it seems as if disco stylisation allows gays public displays that are sexual without apparently being offensive to the usual custodians of public morality.

The only thing to say about disco music as music is that it has given extraordinary opportunities to pop’s previously second class citizens – its session singers, engineers, Bee Gees. The technicians, in other words, who always could produce any sound to order but used not to know what to do with them. They know now.

Previous popular music has only reflected the world, in various ways; the point of disco, however is to replace it. •

JEROME DERRADJI presents The Birth Of House Music!

Posted on May 16, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Jerome Derradji is proud to present his latest full length, 122 BPM – The Birth of House Music to be released in June on Still Music. .

122 BPM is the story of how a father and his son changed Chicago’s Dance music scene in the 1980s and went on to take the world by storm, leaving an impression that will last forever with just a couple of 12” releases the world would soon know as House music. Nemiah Mitchell Jr and Vince Lawrence couldn’t have known what their contribution to House music would become. Their story provides the missing Chicago link between soul, disco, new wave and then House, between the radio and club DJs and their audience, between the old generation and the new generation. This is the story of the first House records ever made – long before Trax or DJ International were even dreamt of.

The compilation includes numerous unreleased tracks and beyond hard to find house tracks made in Chicago in the early to late Eighties from the catalogues of Mitchbal Records and Chicago Connection Records.

It will be released in June 2012 and includes a 3 cd set – including a 1 hour exclusive mix from Jerome Derradji – with a 28 pages booklet documenting the story of Mitchbal and Chicago Connection Records, a gatefold DLP and an exclusive D12″ featuring the uber rare Frankie Knuckles’ Unfinished Business – Out Of My Hands remixes along with the original classic disco release by Chicago disco band OMNI .

Once again, thanks to all of you for your outstanding support.
Jerome – Still Music Chicago

CLICK HERE FOR A SAMPLE VIA SOUNDCLOUD

Jerome Derradji Presents: “122 BPM – The Birth Of House Music - Mitchbal Records & Chicago Connection Records- CAT# Stillm3cd006, Stillmdlp006 and Stillmd12034

Tracklisting 3cd Boxset

 Cd1 Jerome Derradji ChicaFlange House Mix

1 – Mr Lee & Kompany – Jackmaster Jerome Derradji Edit 2 – Mitchbal & Larry Williams – Do That Stuff Dance Mix 3 – Mitchbal & The Housemaster – When I Hear The Music 4 – Risque Rythum Team – The Jackin Zone 5 – Jeanette Thomas – Shake Your Body 6 – Libra Libra – I Am Music (Instrumental) 7 - Unfinished Business – Out Of My Hands (Club Mix) 8 – Dezz & Grant – The House Is On Fire 9 – Mr Lee & Kompany – Can You Feel It 10 – Z-Factor – Fantasy (feat. Jesse Saunders) Instrumental - Jerome Derradji Edit

  CD2 

1 – Jeanette Thomas – Shake Your Body  2 – Mitchbal & The Housemaster – When I Hear The Music 3 – Unfinished Business – Out Of My Hands (Club Mix) 4 – Dezz & Grant – The House Is On Fire 5 – Mitchbal & Larry Williams – Do That Stuff Dance Mix 6 – Libra Libra – I Am Music Instrumental 7 – Mr Lee & Kompany – Jackmaster Vocal Mix 8 – Z-Factor – Fantasy (feat. Jesse Saunders) Instrumental 9 – Risque Rythum Team – The Jackin Zone 10 - Mr Lee & Kompany – Can You Feel It

  CD3 

1 - Z-Factor – I Am the DJ (feat. Jesse Saunders) 2 - Libra Libra - I Like It (Club Mix) 3 – Risque´ Rhythm Team – More Than Just A Dance (Backyard Mix) 4 – Libra Libra – Where Did My Love Go Vocal 5 - Z-Factor - (I Like To Do It In) Fast Cars 6 - Mr Lee – I Can’t Forget (Vocal Mix) 7 - Z-Factor – I Synthesize 8 - Z-Factor – My Ride 9 - Risque Rhythum Team – That’s The Beat 10 - Libra Libra – I Am Music (Ninja Mix) 11 - Mc Ghee – I Got Broke Breakdancing Instrumental 12 - Mitchbal & Friends – Love Is The Answer Farley “The King Of House Music” Jackmaster Funk Remix (Bonus)

Tracklisting DLP Lp

1   A1 – Jeanette Thomas – Shake Your Body  A2 – Z Factor – I Am the DJ (feat. Jesse Saunders) Jazzy Mix  B1 – Mitchbal & Larry Williams – Do Dat Stuff Dance Mix  B2 – Libra Libra - I Like It (Club Mix) Lp 2   C1 – Z-Factor – Fantasy Instrumental  C2 – Risque Rythum Team – The Jackin Zone  D1 – Z-Factor – (I Like To Do It In) Fast Cars  D2 – Mc Ghee – I Got Broke Breakdancing Instrumental

Tracklisting D12″

A1 – Unfinished Business – Out Of My Hands (Love’s Taken Over) Vocal Mix
A2 – Unfinished Business – Out Of My Hands (Love’s Taken Over) Instrumental Mix
B1 – Omni – Out Of My Hands (Love’s Taken Over) Long Version
B2 – Omni – Out Of My Hands (Love’s Taken Over) Short Version

CLASSIC NIGHTCLUBS – The Shelter (New York City)

Posted on March 27, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Opening in 1991, The Shelter has become a sanctuary where racial and sexual diversity are a force for togetherness, and where the post-Garage dance community can express themselves freely amongst friends. Following the closure of the weekly Body & Soul party in 2002, the club started by DJ Timmy Regisford, Freddie Sanon and Merlin Bobb has taken on even more importance and meaning, within the increasing sanitisation and restrictions of post-Giuliani New York.

Arriving on a deserted Varick Street in West SoHo as the hum of a bass drum emerges through the exterior of an anonymous building, we enter one of Manhattan’s last subterranean havens. Rhythmic, deep and very intense, the gospel release of Dennis Ferrer’s ‘Church Lady’ summons us to the heart of the dance floor, where the dancers are immersed womb like in the music.

Through the loud yet beautifully clean sound system, the whoops and call and response hollers of the congregation creates a profound spiritual intensity, as the ritual of the dance unfolds. While the community from Harlem across to Queens are just waking up and dressing for church, a middle aged black woman walks slowly across the dancefloor, her arms raised in exultation towards the booth; where DJs Timmy Regisford and Sting International move monk-like in the darkness. Opening my eyes just as the heavy strings and drum break of Inner Life’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ raises the hairs and sends a shiver up the spine, I survey the scene around.

To my left on a small sofa, two Garage elders in Adidas bottoms nod out as if in a lucid dream of days gone by, while one of their topless soul brothers screams in synch to Jocelyn Brown’s devotional lyrics. As talc is scattered around the borders of the spotless dancefloor, Lonnie Liston Smith’s ‘Expansions’ increases the energy. Somewhere between the swirling angularity of Wildstyle era breakers and the balletic grace of eighties jazz troupes like The Jazz Defektors, a young crew drop some incredibly elegant yet raw moves, while a lone dreadlocks plays imaginary keys on the dance floor. Lost in the groove now, a young Japanese girl smiles knowingly at us first timers, while Sting International works the EQs between Babe Ruth’s ‘The Mexican’ and Man Parrish’s ‘Hip Hop Be Bop’ before dropping into a trio of classic acid cuts including Mr Fingers’ ‘Can U Feel It’.

Looking around at the euphoric faces and sweaty embraces, Larry Heard’s Trax classic needs no answer. As we step out into the afternoon sun, refreshed and inspired by our Sunday morning epiphany, I make a promise to return to New York to tell the story of some of those who have made Shelter their home.

It’s early June when I land back in New York having arranged to hook up with Ben Johnson, the Londoner who has become Shelter’s warm up DJ and owner of the Syam Music Group including Un-Restricted Access (URA), in partnership with Timmy Regisford. Sitting outside a SoHo Café in the humid summer heat, he explains why the DJ dubbed ‘The Maestro’ had such a restorative impact on him when he arrived in New York in the mid nineties. “When Timmy was rocking The Shelter back in the day it was one of the only places you would here Afro-Beat and jazz and all these different types of music. He could do this and make it work partly because he had the courage to play 12 hour sets, feeling the connection with the dancers.”

It is the combination of mood and movement that makes Shelter such an intense experience. “When I first saw the dancers I was just amazed,” he recalls. “There were guys doing Capoeira moves and back arches, landing on one arm. And then all these different fusions, from African, Latin, tap and breaking and then the two step with everyone just so together and accepting, it was just beautiful – rhythmic and very spiritual.”

Meeting up with Freddie Sanon later in the day he explains the genesis of the club. “After the radio show at WBLS had finished around two in the morning we had nowhere to go, so Timmy, Merlin and I started talking and said we needed a place, somewhere we could call home. We felt the only appropriate name to call it was The Shelter because with the Paradise Garage closing there was no where else for us to go to – we were homeless.”

Starting out as a reunion party for the Garage, The Shelter soon became a regular weekly. “We wanted to continue what the Garage had which we felt was special, a club where all these interesting people could get together and get loose,” he continues thoughtfully. “A place where you could be gay, you could be straight, black or white – somewhere that you could get release from every day life… We wanted to keep that going – a feeling of being at a house party.”

When Sanon first started going to clubs like the Gallery in the mid seventies it was as an under eighteen and for him it is vital the crowd at Shelter crosses generations. “We need a place where everyone is accepted. When you come to the club you can see a sixty year old dancing next to a fifteen year old who has sneaked in. The only way of keeping this scene going is to bring in our kids and our nephews down to the club. That is our only hope that this lovely thing we have will continue. We need to pass the culture on for this to survive.”

Taking a walk down to the Lower East Side later that evening I am determined to speak to some of those dancers whose story has become an overlooked footnote in the history of New York dance music. Outside a gallery bar on Orchard Street I meet Louis Kee AKA Loose, a veteran of the scene and one of the members of the Melting Pot collective whose DJ Kervin Mark is dropping the house and broken beats indoors. “I started dancing in Manhattan in 1979, going to the Loft, the Garage and Better Days,” he recalls. “At that time there was a real fusion of jazz and disco. When you went to the underground clubs the dancing was very intense, we did everything from ballet and gymnastics to martial arts and then these Nicholas Brothers moves.”

In parallel to the early UK jazz dance scene, the movements were influenced by the jazz tap style of dance from the thirties known as hoofing, as well as a myriad of other dance forms that reflected the moods and modes of DJ’s like David Mancuso at the Loft. “On the one hand you had the gay community doing their pre-voguing and then you had the rawness of early breakdancing. It was a real underground thing that came from what people had in their soul. For those of us who came through that it was all about the family thing as well, to have value in yourself and your community.”

I ask how accepting the house community has been of the young breakers who crossed over to house dancing in the nineties. “Well here is a group of people who would not have been accepted at a regular house club but at The Shelter they were freely open to people with dance skills,” he replies. “As long as the feeling is right and they understand the spirit of the community. So now a lot of the energy is actually coming through the breakers and they are taking it to a new level. You see, in the dance community you always have a home, somewhere that you first heard this music that made you want to be a dancer.

So for us it was the Loft and the Garage and now these kids are calling Shelter home. Although they didn’t go to those clubs they learned from those that did how to act, how to be warm and fun and also just as importantly not to compete and to see the dancefloor as a communal place. It doesn’t matter what colour you are or what sexual orientation, as long as you are there expressing yourself in peace. It’s also great that we’ve got this youth now in the scene.”

Two of the youngest members of the Shelter family are The Martinez Brothers, the church raised sons of an ex Garage head from the Bronx who are breathing new life into the house scene. Sitting in a park around the corner from Dance Tracks record shop, the younger of the brothers 15 year old Chris, recalls their personal conversion to house music: “We actually wanted to be hip hop DJs but our father came in and said ‘nah I don’t like the message they are sending out’. So he brought home some house CDs and started introducing us to the music he used to dance to at the Garage and we just fell in love with it.”

Eighteen year old Steve picks up the story: “Our first party was a Danny Krivit boat ride which was just amazing man. I’d been to a lot of hip hop events but I’d never experienced an atmosphere like that with everyone screaming and going nuts so that is what caught me most.” The Body & Soul DJ has been one of the many supporters of the brothers, inviting them to play at the 718 Sessions, which along with occasional parties like Ruben Toro’s Temple is vital to the scene.

The brother’s first New York DJ slot was at the Shelter. “That was the first time we had ever been to the club and also seen Timmy play so it was like ‘this man is a legend’. The way he works the system and blends and rides the records. No one does that like him. He is the man.” Another fan is Dennis Ferrer who has just released the brothers first 12” ‘My Rendition on his Objektivty label. “We hooked up with Dennis on My Space, sending him messages and mixes,” explains Chris. “So he helped us with The Shelter gig and with our productions. He’s become like an Uncle.”

TMB continue a long and proud heritage of Latinos in New York dance music. However, their journey into house has not always been an easy one: “Our friends were mostly into hip hop,” says Steve, “but when they heard what we were listening to they said what is up with you listening to this gay music, what’s the matter with you, are you a homosexual or something. So we would just go ‘nah’ whatever’”

Back in the day, when DJ’s Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash extended and cut up the drum breaks from the early dance underground, hip hop and disco had a natural connection. However, the creation of musical ghettoes through both social and cultural conditioning has resulted in many hip hop crews holding similar views to Chris and Steve’s friends and similarly house people being turned off by the nihilistic message of much of today’s hip hop. One figure who has broken down the barriers is Quentin Harris. Raised on a diet of Funkadelic and Motown in his Detroit home by his musical parents, this gay black American entered the music business as a trumpeter at Maurice Malone’s open mic sessions at the Hip Hop Shop on 7 mile alongside the likes of Slum Village and Jay Dee who became a big influence on the young producer.

Around the same time, Quentin would also hang at the underground house parties like Heaven where DJ Ken Collier held court. For Harris the unsung Collier was not only an inspiration as a DJ but also as a gay black man on the house scene. “The man played with so much energy. He would literally make the walls of the room sweat. Also around that time I was really fighting with the whole ‘am I gay thing?’ what should I do, should I come out or will there be too many problems for me. So it was very empowering to go there and see this gay black man who was so respected within the community.”

As producer for New York hip hop group The Masterminds, Quentin found himself spending more and more time in the city and became immersed in the house scene. “I would go to places like The Sound Factory and the original Shelter,” he recalls eagerly. “I was just absorbing all this in – the music and the madness. I just got so wrapped up in it. Coming from Detroit where I had experienced Ken Collier I was looking for something like that and to me Timmy had the same kind of intensity.”

While it took a move to New York to really inspire Harris as a house producer, his techier and soulful productions are clearly indebted to his hometown. “Detroit has been a major influence on my work,” he states. “When you go there you will totally understand techno. It’s industrial and dirty and that is reflected in the music. When you listen to Clear by Cybotron which came out in 1980 that song still sounds fresh today, and I always loved things like that which were minimalist but powerful. So I learned a lot of that from both techno but also Jay Dee whose beats were very stripped down but they took you somewhere.”

Following an inspired edit of ‘Cloud 9’ by Donnie, and India Arie’s ‘Ready For Love’, things have been gaining momentum rapidly towards his debut LP ‘No Politics’, which develops Harris’ role as a producer for singers like Cordel McLary, Colton Ford and Jason Walker. Meanwhile, his recently opened Kiss My Black Ass session seals his connection with the post Sound Factory/Tracks ballroom community, bringing flamboyance and performance back to New York nightlife.

As the conversation flows, we naturally move on to the division that has been created between the house and hip hop communities. “House got labeled not only as gay music but also repetitive but my argument to anyone in hip hop is that their music takes from all forms of music,” suggests the man who has had his feet in both camps. “So to say these two don’t belong together, they are crazy because if you look at it there is soul, funk and disco and house and hip hop are both an offspring of that. So they are both continuing that lineage from James Brown. Another problem is that a lot of powers that be think that people are not intelligent enough to appreciate different types of music so they keep giving people the same thing.”

Cut to the floor of The Shelter on Sunday morning at 8am and the fiercest of the young dancers are dropping the most extravagant and expressive of moves, as Timmy Regisford builds the atmosphere and intensity. As they drop, spin and do some incredible handstands and swirling windmills I invite a key figure on the house dance scene, Conrad Rochester to say a few words about the scene he has seen develop. “The first time I really got into the house Dance side was in the park on the Lower East Side watching these guys doing bridges with kung fu slippers on, and I wanted to know where they hung out. That’s when the Garage and the Loft came in. It’s been building from there and now through all this new blood at The Shelter we’ve got something really exiting happening.” As a promoter for nights at Shelter and other clubs around New York and beyond, Conrad is responsible for bringing in the dancers and building the scene on a global level.

As an educator and networker he is taking on a similar role to Perry Louis and his Jazzcotech collective in London. “I have just formed House Dance International hosting workshops and competitions with kids from all over the world so this is growing all the time,” he says excitedly. “We need to show the industry to respect the dancers because they need us. I don’t think we’ve been respected enough in the past so that is why it is so important for us to network and put this thing out there, and to connect all the young kids with the elders.”

As the conversation flows he talks passionately about other dancers on the scene like Ejoe Wilson, one of the most influential house dancers and host of the weekly Soulgasm session, Cricket the “experimental b-boy’ who has been integral to opening the doors of House music to b-boys, and Archie Burnett one of the hardcore Loft heads whose freestyle voguing and whacking earned him a role in the film ‘Check Your Body At The Door’ alongside Conrad who also features in Josell Ramos’ documentary ‘Maestro’.

But he is most animated when talking about the fusion of b-boy and house culture and the exiting possibilities it is opening up. “The dancing is changing radically. When I look at some of those kids I’m like ‘wow’ – it’s on a whole new level. They do their variations and power movements so crazed out and abstract. Then you have another level of style which is double jointed – taking the voguing and whacking forms of disco (which was an overlooked influence on the popping of b-boys) to a whole new style, by tapping back into the breaking.”

Outside the venue where Freddy Sanon is welcoming late guests, while keeping an eye out for the NYPD who constantly monitor the club, Conrad introduces me to a wonderfully bright spirit called Melanie, one of the many young female dancers crossing over from other dance forms. “I started dancing when I was three,” she explains. “My family is Puerto Rican and my father would teach me the hustle and salsa. When I was about six years old my mother put me into professional dancing – doing jazz and ballet.

My first experience of dancing at clubs was going to hip hop and Latin clubs but it is only at The Shelter where I have really experienced this feeling. Before then it was just learning the movements but here it was just total self-expression. Intertwining with all these different spirits you come in contact with so it’s on a different level. The first influence of this is African and of course I connect with that through my Latin side. But it’s just a whole multicultural fusion that is going on and house is the epitome of that modern tribal thing in New York. It’s so deep and free.”

Conscious that the role of women is often overlooked on the dance scene, Freddie Sanon introduces me to Donna Edwards, who started DJing in Queens back in 1982 before graduating to the clubs of Manhattan and eventually to become the first female DJ to play at The Shelter. “The first underground club I went to was Better Days where Tee Scott was DJing. He was a major inspiration,” she recalls. “He also played at Empire Skate Rink and I skated every Tuesday night.” I am interested to know about the interaction between the clubs and the skate scene and in particular how much of an influence skating was to the graceful style of dancing that developed around clubs like The Loft. “I think the swirling and jumping has definitely crossed over from the skate rinks to the clubs and that’s because pretty much everyone I knew that skated went to the underground clubs as well.”

It’s 2.30pm as I head back inside The Shelter where Timmy Regisford is squeezing the last drop of emotion as the house lights are raised. Some stand rooted to the spot their hands raised in the air shouting in jubilation towards ‘The Maestro’, others move organically around the floor swirling and stretching while a muscular ballet dancer swirls gracefully across the floor doing a pirouette. As the last bars of Mos Def’s ‘Umi Says’ ring out at 3pm, and the intoxication amongst the dancers reaches its zenith, I am reminded of the intensity and community interaction of the rumba parties on the streets of Havana; such is the meaning of the ritual of the dance to those who make the pilgrimage week after week to this righteous session.

As I head out of the venue, I am introduced to an ex Garage head Frankie Paradise a well known face on the scene. “I was a loyal member of the Paradise Garage and as a gay man it was important to be geared towards the right sort of crowd, somewhere that you could be safe,” he explains softly. “So I found myself moulded by that whole community. And for me that is continuing through The Shelter and I have been supporting it since day one. I love the fact that they have been able to hold on to this and give what’s left to the community. All cultures and differences coming together – it’s a spiritual thing where for a little while we all feel as one. Letting our minds go. For me Shelter is the last spiritual mecca in New York City. And what I feel here I’ve never got anywhere else but the Paradise Garage.”

This recurring comparison between The Garage and The Shelter is something I put to the press shy but rather genial Timmy Regisford when I finally sit down with him on my final day in New York. “We set it up because we wanted to keep the spirit alive of what the Garage represented and what underground music meant to the City,” he says. “If we had not opened up the space there would have been a void. With Shelter that family thing evolved much more I think. At the Garage people knew each other but with Shelter it became much more family orientated. Those people left over from the Garage realised how special it was and started to really bond and called themselves the Shelter family.”

Timmy Regisford has built a reputation for his epic12 hour sets which take the dancers through a whole range of emotions. “I play music that I love that I would want to hear as a dancer. I know that because I come from the dancefloor so I know what they expect. I like to challenge them as well though and to take chances and I am lucky to be in a place where if it is quality music where they would embrace it.”

It’s an all embracing approach to music he learned as a radio DJ under Frankie Crocker at WBLS in the early eighties. “He heard me spinning in a club and I went there and worked as an intern for three years for no money then he offered me a job,” he recalls fondly. “I had one of my biggest musical educations under him. I learned so much under his wing it was just priceless what that guy impacted in my life. He taught me that there was more than just dance. There was jazz, blues, Latin and African.”

It was this love of African music that saw Timmy dropping cuts at The Shelter way before other DJs picked up on Afro-Beat. “I started experimenting in The Shelter and found that this music worked so I started looking into the roots of it, and went to Nigeria and licensed Fela’s music to Motown and signed his son Femi and produced his first two albums for the label. So that is my passion. I love African music.”

I wonder if his new album ‘Africa Is Calling’ is making a statement to those ears that are closed to the plight of the great continent. “I don’t think African music has been embraced as any other music. Be it jazz r&b or salsa,” he replies firmly. “Just like Africa itself is the only place that people don’t really care about. I’m a firm believer that if we as a society wanted to build a better future for people in Africa we could do that. Just the powers that be choose not to.”

I close by asking Regisford about his role as a mentor to other DJ’s such as Sting International and Quentin Harris. “I’ve never seen myself in that role,” he says humbly. “Sting is a guy who is like a brother and a real music lover. He has a real passion for music that is unbelievable. I am also very happy with the way Quentin is developing to become one of the strongest DJs and producers around.”

While his productions skills have been put to multi-platinum use producing Shaggy, Sting International remains firmly committed to the underground scene, something that started working as a DJ in Brooklyn. “The DJ sound systems are the roots of it all for me,” he states with a soft drawl. “So it was a street thing to begin with. Richard Long had started doing sound systems for the clubs like Bond International and Paradise Garage but also for reggae clubs in Brooklyn, one called Love People and also The Empire Skate Rink.

So they were all influences on sound and I got close to him and then I got tight with some of the guys who worked for him after he had passed away. So it just rolled from there getting heavily into the technical aspects of the sound and living through that whole era developing a reputation for that clean heavy sound. The Shelter is just another part of the sound systems so it’s just a stem from what Richard Long set up back in the day. I play the system just as I did on my mobile back in the day. I do it the same way.”

Entering the room, Freddie Sanon adds a few words to encourage others to embrace the spirit of Sting, which has seen him develop his own following down at The Shelter: “We need other young DJs to have the same passion and to take time with what they do. People just need to take more time and relax into what they do. Life is going so fast we need to take time for ourselves. Don’t come in to the club with the rushed attitude. I don’t think people appreciate what we have in life just getting up in the morning and being alive. We need to have that all around us and all the love and appreciation that comes with it – that gives life to us.”

As I head back to my apartment to get ready for the Soulgasm party later that night I am reminded of what Conrad Rochester told me in the back room of Shelter, a sentiment that holds true for anyone who experiences the love and communality of this long running session. “What is great about The Shelter is that it gives us an opportunity to escape from our everyday dramas and problems. We can come here and express ourselves. House has always been underground and it’s time for people to see this and to join us, because it deals with so many different styles and cultures from different urban communities. All you have to do is to tap into your free spirit and to express who you are through dance.”

Originally published in Straight No Chaser Final Issue Summer, 2007

THE JOY OF DISCO – BBC Video Documentary

Posted on March 6, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

A special treat this Sunday for all our disco-fan readers outside the UK, The Joy Of Disco is a BBC documentary about that much derided music genre that seemed to come out of nowhere to change the world in the late 70s.

I’ve seen a lot of documentaries about disco, and this is undoubtedly one of the best. Featuring new interviews with many of the key players (Giorgio Moroder, Nile Rodgers, Nona Hendryx, David Mancuso, Tom Moulton, Kathy Sledge, Nicky Siano and lots more) and some great, rare footage of top nitespots like The Gallery and Studio 54, this is a real treat for the disco fanatic.

But what really makes The Joy Of Disco so good (and well worth a watch, even if you are not a disco fan) is the placing of the music in its proper historical and social context. Disco was black, urban music that became the soundtrack to the gay liberation movement and, according to the program makers:

foregrounded female desire in the age of feminism and led to the birth of modern club culture as we know it today, before taking the world by storm.

All up to the (seemingly inevitable) racist and homophobic “Disco Sucks” backlash. That put paid to the faddishness of the genre, but ultimately, by driving it back underground to the gay and black clubs that spawned it, helped make it stronger than ever and actually did very little to kill the sheer joy of the music itself.

The Joy Of Disco explores these issues in the kind of detail they deserve. It aired on BBC4 on Friday night, and some industrious soul has already put it up on YouTube to share the love (yes, it’s another case of get it before it’s gone). This is highly recommended viewing – you won’t see anything this interesting, exciting or fabulously funky on your screens this evening

Posted by Niall O’Conghaile

Understanding Reverb!

Posted on February 28, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Understanding Reverb

RA’s Jono Buchanan takes a detailed look at the science and applications of the staple effect.

Reverb (short for reverberation), firmly resides within the A-list of effects, as it’s a go-to treatment for almost all track types within any mix. Whether you’re looking to enhance dry vocals with a specific spatial type, bring drama to searing lead lines, or simply glue your mix together with a treatment which can be shared by a number of sounds within a mix, we all know that tracks mixed without reverb can sound dull and lifeless. But how much do you know about reverb and the parameters which tend to crop up within most reverb plug-ins? And to what extent can reverb be enhanced by other plug-ins—EQ, filtering, gating, phasing—to help you create treatments which are completely suited to your tracks, rather than relying on a preset, in the hope you’ll get what you need?

This tutorial will focus on all things reverb—helping you better understand the types of reverb plug-in available, the key parameters within reverb plug-ins and some extra steps you can take to help squeeze a great result from the tools you have.

Broadly speaking, two types of reverb plug-in are available—convolution reverbs and artificial ones. Convolution reverbs use “samples” of real spaces to apply reverb to a sound. This is done by recording an impulse response (or IR), which is a sound triggered within a space to spark its natural reverb, which can then be used within a reverb host. Convolution reverbs use a neat trick to allow this to happen; they use the dry trigger in phase inverted form to cancel out the same sound present within the reverb tail, meaning that all you’re left with is a recording of the space in question which can then be applied to your mix.

If you work in a studio with a great-sounding drum room, or you like the sound of your local church hall, for instance, you can make a recording in that space and use the resulting file as an impulse response, bringing those particular natural acoustics to your mix. The sound you choose to trigger to capture an IR is crucial, as reverb is tone-sensitive. In other words, if you use a hi-hat as your trigger, you’ll only capture the treble aspects of a room’s reverb, while a sub-bass will, conversely, only help capture the bottom end. For those taking IR recording seriously, it’s common to find that engineers use sine-wave sweeps which rise quickly from low to high pitch, to ensure that all parts of the frequency spectrum are captured.

On paper, convolution reverb sounds perfect; after all, what could be better than the organic nature of a real space being applied to your mix? Well, it’s certainly true that if the IR stage is taken seriously and if the room you’re recording sounds perfect for the projects you’re going to apply it to, convolution reverb has a lot going for it. However, those are two big “ifs.” As you’d expect, any convolution reverb is as impaired by its IR recording as it is enhanced by it. Suppose the natural decay of the reverb you’ve recorded is three seconds and you suddenly decide your mix reverb needs to be nearer to five. There’s no way to stretch the impulse response to increase the decay time, so that won’t work. Similarly, in order to capture the space you’re recording perfectly, you’ll need good microphones and a mobile recording rig, plus a conducive atmosphere to make a clean recording so, somewhat ironically, the majority of producers using convolution reverbs tend to stick to the preset IRs which ship with the plug-in. However, as we’ll see later, there are some great “abuses” of convolution reverb approaches which can bring some real creativity to your mixes.

The alternative reverb type, which is more common, is artificial reverb. Like sound synthesis, this process involves a plug-in constructing a man-made reverb solution based on key parameters, which model the variable elements of a space and allow you to control these to build a spatial solution which works for your track. Spaces vary in lots of ways—their shapes, their sizes, what they’re made of, how reflective the surfaces of the room are—and all of these things and more combine to produce the tone of a reverb tail. Most plug-ins allow you to tweak parameters corresponding to these natural characteristics, usually meaning that if a flexible solution is one you’re looking for, artificial reverb can often provide what you need. So, while both reverb types can achieve great results, let’s look at specific parameters to understand how they can be configured to give you the best results within your mixes.

Reverberation is split into two distinct phases: early reflections and reverb. Early reflections are the reflected signals which meet the listener just milliseconds after the dry signal has arrived, perhaps only bouncing off a single surface before reaching the listening position. As you’d expect, these signals don’t have time to be significantly distorted by the environment in which they’re playing back. Rather than the virtual surfaces of your plug-in sucking tone information out of these individual reflections, early reflections sound more like the dry signals which triggered the reverb in the first place. However, after a few more milliseconds, the early reflections are replaced by true reverb; the reflection of signals that have bounced off multiple surfaces. These are often very different in character, particularly if the overall reverb time is long. How they change depends on the space being modeled. For instance, if you were constructing a cathedral reverb, the overall time would be long, as cathedrals are vast spaces which sound can travel up and down, bouncing off walls, pillars, the ceiling and the floor but constantly being reflected back from hard, un-absorbent materials.

In fact, cathedrals produce such rich reverb taps because of the brick-work from which they’re made—as these feature rough, unpredictable surfaces, the sound which is reflected from them disperses in wild, unpredictable directions. To understand this better, imagine hitting a tennis ball against a smooth wall. The angle the ball bounced away from the wall would be inversely proportional to the angle you hit it at in the first place. In other words, if you hit the ball at 45 degrees to your left, it would bounce a further 45 degrees away from you as it bounced back. Now imagine the wall you’re hitting against featured bricks which randomly stuck out from the smooth surface. As you hit the ball, it would be impossible to predict which angle the ball would bounce back at. It might catch the edge of a brick and move sideways, or it might catch an opposing edge and come straight back to you. Either way, the result would be random.

Sound waves, causing vibrations through the air, work the same way as they hit a wall; if the surface is uneven, they’ll respond like the tennis ball in the second example, making their reflections unpredictable. You might think that such a degree of randomness would be a disadvantage but in sonic terms, the opposite is often true. To understand why, we need to understand a little bit about natural phasing. As we know, sound waves are so-called because sounds form vibrations in the air which can be measured as waves with rising and falling lines. As you’ll also know, doubling a track in your DAW and copying exactly the same audio file down to the duplicate track and pressing play doesn’t always yield a great result—rather than simply increasing the volume with a doubled signal, often you’ll find that nasty phasing occurs, with some elements of the signal jumping out in volume and others appearing to cancel out altogether.

This is also true for reverb. If you work in a perfectly square room with equally reflective materials on each side, as a sound triggers, it’ll enter the room, bounce off surfaces on either side at the same time and return to the listening position from left and right sides simultaneously. This causes the sonic equivalent of a doubled file, with some frequency content seeming to get louder, with other parts cancelled out. As you’d expect, this provides completely undesirable reverb and studios constructed with this shape go to great lengths to treat their walls, floors and ceilings to ensure that such undesirable reflections are kept to a minimum.

Compare a space like this to one constructed with our virtual tennis ball example and you can imagine the benefits of the latter; such reflections would be minimized due to the unpredictable nature of the sound bouncing off its surface. In larger music venues, this is why you tend to find the walls and/or ceiling are treated with physical objects which purposely break up sound waves to ensure a more random result. Just look at the ceiling design of London’s famous Royal Albert Hall, for instance. Those flying saucers aren’t just decorations, they’re distributing sound signals all over the hall to ensure a higher quality of sound.

Artificial reverbs provide a range of parameters which can be adjusted to tailor settings so that they’re appropriate for your track, with sliders or dials to move between the extremes of each setting. As you’d expect, different plug-ins provide different controls but some parameters are common to most effect plug-ins, as they control the most typical characteristics of a real space.

Taking a plug-in like Logic’s GoldVerb as an example, you can see the parameters for Early Reflections and Reverb across the left-hand side. Firstly, there’s a “Pre-delay” slider which sets the time between the original sound source triggering the sound from the plug-in and the initial reflections being heard. If you set this too low, the dry source and the early reflections could merge and conflict, while a setting too high will result in an obvious ‘gap’ between the source signal and the reverb starting. The room shape slider below allows you to model the shape of the space you’re working in, varying the number of reflective surfaces in particular. Finally, you can set the size of the virtual space you’re applying reverb from, so you can tailor a treatment from a wide base such as a whole mix or single instrument such as a piano, or restrict it for smaller mono sources.

As the sound moves into the full reverb phase, you can control how long it takes before the reverb tail begins via the Initial Delay slider, before controlling the stereo width of this portion of the reverb via the Spread slider. Remember, sound waves have energy which runs out over time, more so as the signal is absorbed as it bounces into walls. As bass waves are longer and slower, they’re more resilient to this process of absorption so as reverbs tail away, it tends to be high frequency content which gets sucked away, leaving more bass frequencies in reverb tails the longer they go on.

The High Cut dial allows you to mimic this, filtering out high frequency content, or indeed, unnaturally preserving it if you so desire. The Density dial, as its name suggests, controls the density or diffusion of the reverb. This spreads the reverb tails out, creating more natural results the higher the dial is set, though if you’re after grainier, more unusual reverb tails, lower settings here might appeal.

Lastly, the all-important Reverb Time dial allows you to control how long it takes for the reverb to decay altogether. If you want a small “drum room” type setting, a second or less will be desirable here. If you’re modeling a church hall, you can experiment with much longer settings. At the top, a slider lets you set the balance between Early Reflections and Reverb, while the mix slider on the right sets the balance between input (dry) and output (wet) signals. If you’re using a reverb like this in-channel, this dial will prove crucial. If it’s set up on an auxiliary, the mix should be set to 100% wet, with the auxiliary send level controlling the dry and wet balance.

GoldVerb is a typical native DAW plug-in, allowing for some configuration without offering every possible reverb parameter. If you want more in-depth results, a plug-in like Sonnox’s Reverb lets you go much further, tweaking a wider selection of parameters relating to the same two stages. The Early Reflections section here lets you choose a room shape, while then placing the sound source to be effected either at one end of that virtual space or somewhere between front and back. After that, as well as being able to change room size and the stereo width of the object you’re applying reverb to, you can control Taper and Feed Along. Taper lets you balance the volume of reflections relative to how far they’ve traveled, so you can unnaturally increase the volume of far-travelling signals which should have a lower level, for instance, while Feed Along allows you to inject a “re-amplification” process into the early reflection stage, re-distributing echoes to increase their density.

Feedback controls allow you to decide to what extent the early reflections will be re-circulated in a room but, as discussed earlier, this could lead to unpleasant phasing issues, depending on the shape of the virtual space you’re creating. Accordingly, a Phase Selector allows you to offset any problems if they build. The Reverb Tail section is also awash with options, including Reverb Time and the Overall Size of the reverb. Again, Dispersion of reflected signals is variable via its own slider and phasing issues can again be addressed if necessary. The Absorption Slider effectively allows you to change the materials from which your virtual space is being built, by controlling how much signal is swallowed by the environment, while Diversity creates change in the reverb either creating a narrow, focused result, or a more varied one across a wider stereo picture.

As you’d expect, all of this means that a wider range of reverb treatments can be constructed from a plug-in like this but in terms of finding a solution which fits your track, where do you start? As with synthesis, the best results come from experimentation with parameters and a keen pair of ears, though there are some rules you can apply which will help you get a better result more quickly. Firstly, wherever possible, remember that reverbs work best when they enhance a mix, rather than becoming the focal point of its whole sound. If you’re listening to music live, you know the sound at the very back of the venue isn’t going to be great and the reason for this is that here you’re receiving the greatest amount of wet, reverberant signal compared to the dry sound you’d hear on stage. In other words, the further away you are from the source sound, the less focused and dynamic it sounds.

As the process of adding reverb adds space and distance, be careful that you don’t add too much. Secondly, think about whether you want a shorter, truer reverb offered by early reflections or a longer, more detailed one using the reverb tail. It’s possible to simulate the energy of a drum room using ambience effects which rely heavily on early reflections even when making electronic dance music, while bass frequencies triggered by kick drums and bass sounds rarely respond well to swamped, longer reverb treatments as they become overwhelmed in the mix. Think too about density levels—do you want a rich reverb where reflected waves are spread randomly through a virtual space, or a tighter, grittier one where signals reflect more evenly?

Of course, the beauty of the DAW environment means that the reverb you set up can be further enhanced by other effects too. Perhaps the most famous example of this is gated reverb, where the natural decay tail of a reverb is suddenly snapped shut as it drops below a gate’s threshold level. Using gates, rather than a rich, full treatment, an unnatural volume cut-off is suddenly applied to a reverb. This works particularly well on sharp percussive sounds like drums or synth stabs, though of course you’re free to try them on any sounds you like. Similarly, phased, flanged, or filtered reverb treatments can also work wonderfully well. Perhaps most usefully, though, lots of reverb plug-ins feature their own EQ sections, allowing you to control the tone response of a reverb from bass to treble.

Suppose you’ve created a reverb for a vocal part which sounds great but is causing sibilant spikes in the sound, creating clusters of over-bright reverb every time an “ess” sound is sung. By switching on a reverb’s EQ, you can reduce these completely, tailoring the tone response of a particular frequency area to the demands of your track. Similarly, if you’re applying the same reverb to lots of sounds within your mix and suddenly the bass-end sounds too dry and disconnected, you might be tempted to send a little signal from your bass channel into the reverb, only to discover the space becomes overwhelmed and muddy. Using EQ to back down the levels of bass in the reverb can help you strike a balance between the dry and wet sounds which works more successfully. For special effects, why not try stacking multiple reverbs up in a chain? As always, a keen sense of sonic adventure and experimentation will help you achieve the best results.

Words / Jono Buchanan

Published / Thursday, 23 February 2012

BALEARIC: What’s It All About?

Posted on February 10, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

By definition, and harking back to it’s original origins, it means a musical style that means anything goes. To some it means a specific period in Ibizan clubbing history, as Terry Farley, DJ and producer, says when questioned. “Its all about Alfredo – pure and simple. A South American kid in exile looking at the rich and fabulous slumming it at an after hours club off their rockers and thinking ‘I can play anything and they will dance’. The UK take on Balearic is totally shaped by what he played in those two summer seasons before 1988. By ’88 by and large he was playing HOUSE – using that logic Balearic lived for two beautiful years then died a death in ’88.”

So what does Alfredo, one of the Godfathers of the whole scene, think? “Originally, it was as simple as me trying to make a party with a very cosmopolitan and different crowd very late at night, or very early in the morning!!! A crowd that came from another places and was open to a special experience. This fact gave me the opportunity to play all kinds of styles and tempos of music, and not only English, also Italian, French, Spanish, Brasilian, African, South American… That was the beginning. In actual terms – a mixture of chill out, lounge and dance music. At that time in Ibiza I could play soul, reggae, rock, pop, Latin, and if I like it, the crowd would like it. They where kind of ready for that. And I think they where looking for that `cos I was one of them!”

It’s certainly true that Alfredo was the original DJ and there are those like Farley who believe his playlist in those two years is where it began and ended, but there are thousands more around the world that picked the baton up and ran with it, loving the anything goes spirit of the genre that allowed DJs and producers to take in folk, ambient, house, R&B and whatever suits the mood.

Manchester duo Moonboots and Jason Boardman of the Aficionado club probably have a better take than most on the overall sound of the modern balearic beat. “Its all about playing anything good outside of the four-four mainstream for minds and feet with a balearic edge. Referencing the multi-tempo playlist of Ku (above in 1985), Shoom and the Cafe Del Mar, disco has been added to the mix alongside electronic and folky oddities.” Bill Brewster, author and DJ, shows the extremities of the genre, “Balearic Beat in 2012 is the same as it was in 2011, 1999 and 1984. It’s shit pop records and brilliant EBM records. It’s everything and nothing.” We disagree on the shit pop records but then we like The Blow Monkeys. Mark from International Feel, the label behind DJ Harvey’s recent releases amongst many others, also goes for the anything goes angle. “Balearic Beat is anything I want it to be… Anything you want it to be. In a world of digital noise, black sausage waveforms and ringtone pop music, its pure atmosphere and melody, the last bastion of real emotion in music. Or it maybe just Terje’s moustache!”

The Terje he mentions is Todd Terje. Norwegian Terje, a DJ, producer and maker of edits (we haven’t got space to go into those now), has recently show his ‘man most likely to’ colours and has been getting a big worldwide response to his recent ‘Inspector Norse’ release – a record that takes in disco, electronic sounds and his love for an analogue synthesizer, its the perfect track to show the dancefloor side of our sound. With the Pitchfork website taking notice of Terje’s release it seems the time for the balearic scene to step up is soon coming. Mudd, owner and producer of the uber-balearic label Claremont 56 agrees, “Modern balearic music seems to have upped it’s game. Last year saw some wonderful new music made with a few more band albums coming to the shores. This year will hopefully see some more of it being vocal led and with a fresher look on the style.”

The DJs find it hard to pin down. When asked for his thoughts, Swiss DJ Lexx, one of the scenes finest mix-tape meisters and respected DJ, says “I have no idea how to describe balearic beat in 2012. Is it really up to me to say/define what it is? Is there such a thing as balearic beat in 2012? I’m struggling with this one…” Its the undefinable that makes it almost like a secret society. You either get it or you don’t. In or out. Stuart Leath, long-time clubber and owner of soon-come record label Emotional Response thinks the DJing style of Lexx sums its up. “Just listen to how he puts it all together in his mixes and that for me pretty much captures it… No-one else is really close in my mind.”

So, what does it all mean to us at Test Pressing. It means the beautiful sounds of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra with their fusion of world and classical music in the 80s. It means finding strange records no-one has ever heard or hoping to find a B side on an Italian pop record with ‘that’ sound. It could be any of the host of new producers and DJs bringing the sound full circle to the current day and starting to bend its edges into new shapes. It’s getting a new mix for our website and marvelling at the amount of music that fits our world. It’s not just music. Anything can be balearic. The art-house film ‘Bagdad Cafe’ is very balearic for example, and on the subject of video, if you want to watch the most balearic thing ever then check the Ku Tourist clip ‘Look De Ibiza’ linked to below from the mid-80s with its amazing soundtrack. To summarise, to us its an attitude.

We’ll give the final word to Alfredo. A don and Ibizan legend. “My definition of Balearic; its a music mostly, eclectic, happy , sexy, not cheesy, that gets its roots in the origins of dance music and flourishes on the dancefloor, as a sound that makes you forget genres, or categories and you just enjoy it, listen to it, dancing and sharing it. Beat poetic, but real!“

by Apiento on Feb 9, 2012 • 10:06 am

http://testpressing.org/2012/02/what%E2%80%99s-it-all-about-balearic-beat-in-2012-2/

DJ HARVEY – Interview and Video….

Posted on February 8, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Gettin’ Next to DJ Harvey from chris cruse on Vimeo.

Text: Michael Kucyk

Spanning many scenes and sounds, Harvey Bassett has been unconsciously carving his global cult notoriety for almost 25 years. As a DJ, Harvey is like no other. His infectiously positive personality seeps into his eclectic sets that aren’t limited to meaningless genrefication and often journey for six hours. Harvey will play whatever he feels, how he feels, and will never spin a lyric out of context. Inspired by his encounters with Larry Levan, he started the lewd label Black Cock with fellow Englishman Gerry Rooney and released legendary reel-to-reel edits which became heavily sought after and widely bootlegged. With a long list of credits as remixer, producer and session player, he has been involved in recording outfits Map Of Africa and Food of the Gods, as well as his recent solo project Locussolus. After overstaying his Visa, Harvey has spent the last 10 years bouncing between Honolulu, Los Angeles and New York. A newly acquired green card finally allows him to visit Australia for the first time.

Michael Kucyk: Are you enjoying the freedom of having a green card?

Harvey Bassett: Yes I am, this year I took a tour of Japan and Europe, which was fun. It was nice to get out and about. I don’t want to spend the next 20 years on the road. It’s nice to be in one place for a couple of months so I’ve been enjoying Venice since I got back.

MK: With such a large gap between visits to Europe, the UK and Japan, have you noticed a dramatic change in any club cultures?

HB: Not dramatically, no. I mean there might be a whole new generation of kids that have come through in that ten years but there was definitely a percentage of the old school represented too. It was good.

MK: Are there any new countries that you’ve toured recently with scenes that have excited you?

HB: Nothing so far. It seems like the scene is small. The venues are maybe only up to 1000 people but globally it seems to be pretty healthy with all the digi-communication and all the rest. People tend to know what’s happening.

MK: You’re involved in thirtyninehotel, a club in Honolulu. How’s that going? Does it have a community following?

HB: Pretty good, chugging along out there. I actually haven’t been out there for ages because I’ve been touring. There are definitely people there but I don’t know if they’re thirtyninehotel people. We’re open five nights a week and stuff goes on there. It could be anything from a seminar of lawyers or earth mothers to a wedding or a jazz band, reggae band, rave party. On the weekend it tends to be R’n’B based music on Fridays and dance music on Saturdays. There are regulars that come out for those nights.

MK: Has this international travel encouraged you to start digging again?

HB: When I was away in Europe I got into it but I think that was more to do with the guys I was hanging with. They’d be like “Harvey there’s a warehouse two miles from here with five million records,” and I’d be like “Let’s go then!”. I don’t purposely go out searching for them anymore but if stuff comes by way or if someone has a bright idea then I’ll go off and dig for some tunes.

MK: Did you have much luck at the warehouse?

HB: That particular spot was in Switzerland. Usually at a place with that many records it takes a whole day just to understand what’s going on in the room. It’s like “OK I’m getting a vibration from this area.” I found one or two records but I actually gave them to the guys I was digging with. Knowledge swapping.

MK: Can you recall your strangest digging experience?

HB: I remember once being in a warehouse somewhere in New York and we had a packed lunch and got locked in for a couple days with mountains high. We uncovered a full working record player so we got to listen to the tracks right there. I’ve had various rooms ankle deep in water with rats and the records are covered in dog shit from the guard dogs at the storage units. Some awful, stinking, brutal stuff. There’s also AIDS hospices where you get gay guys who have been disinherited by their families and all their loved ones have died so all their possessions end up in a warehouse. You go down there and pick up some disco records. That’s maybe morbid instead of strange but at least they go to a good home.

MK: Have there been opportunities for you to tour Australia in the past?

HB: Loads of people have said it but nobody ever made the call or took the kangaroo by the horns. I’ve always been down. I’ve even got some distant relatives and a few good old buddies out there. But this is the first time it’s actually come together and its perfect timing in many ways. It’s a good time of year and it seems like the scene is healthy.

MK: I hear that you’re an avid surfer. Are you looking forward to hitting some waves out here?

HB: Yeah man! As long as it’s not too strenuous! I might drag out a long board. I just bought a new wetsuit and I’m considering bringing it along so I don’t have to borrow someone else’s stinky beaten up wetsuit.

MK: You should watch some cult Australian surf movies like Crystal Voyager or Morning of the Earth. Both have classic psychedelic soundtracks.

HB: I’ve seen both of those. I’m big up on the surf movies.

MK: Earlier in the year I saw you play at Cielo in New York’s Meatpacking District and you opened with a medley of Justin Vandervolgen’s edits. Is he one of a few producer-DJ-edit makers that inspire you?

HB: Yeah I think he’s really good, he’s a friend. Actually I think that was the first three songs off his Golf Channel mix. I was like “that’s fucking great, I’m going to play it!”. So that fantastic mixing wasn’t me. It was Justin making it super smooth although I was adjusting it as it was playing. There’s a thing called Hot Q on the CD player which you can edit on the fly so that’s handy.

Loads of people inspire me. So many European cats making new records and edits and obviously Rub N Tug with Eric Duncan and his C.O.M.B.i stuff. On my European tour I played alongside 20 of the most happening DJs on my scene and everyone gave me a CD with 30 edits on it. And I was like “Whoa!”. Just mind-boggling amounts of rare cosmology. There’s some sublime and some ridiculous, you just have to check them all out.

MK: You’re bringing DJ Garth with you on this forthcoming Australian tour. Do the two of you share a similar spiritual vision?

HB: Spiritual vision (laughs)! There’s not a spiritual bone in my body mate. Me and Garth go back a long way. We’ve been friends for 20 years. He’s a gentleman and a scholar and a real good time DJ. I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather be on the road with for a few weeks. He’s definitely part of and a purveyor of the style of DJing, if there is one, that came out of our scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He’s a great DJ and has a great bedside manner as I would say.

MK: How did you two meet?

HB: I don’t really remember. Probably at the Zap club or a TONKA party in Brighton many years ago.

MK: What about Gerry Rooney? How was Black Cock a collaborative effort?

HB: He would often come up with the tracks that we would edit. He’s been a collector, dealer and DJ for many years and has access to unbelievably incredibly great music. We would have some fun cutting up and editing those tracks and putting them out. Although we haven’t done anything together; although we did do a remix kinda but even that wasn’t really together. It was sort of a Black Cock record but he remixed; it was kinda official but he was in London and I was in LA and we basically did a mix each. Gerry was definitely instrumental in the Black Cock thing, for sure.

MK: He seems pretty illusive. What does he do now?

HB: He’s still DJing and dealing records. I’m not sure if he has a website that you can buy records from him or if it’s by secret phone appointment only. I know he DJs out on the scene in London and gets around the world.

MK: The names Black Cock and Map of Africa are pretty potent with a sense of perverse attraction. Were you channeling some raw sexual energy when creating the music?

HB: To a certain extent. Obviously it’s all about sex – the potency of the Black Cock, the double entendre and the tongue in cheek font. And the same with Map of Africa. Just to have fun with word play, and also secret meanings that aren’t that secret. It’s a joke but it’s kinda cool at the same time. To me so much of music is sort of a version of fourplay, especially on the dancefloor. You’re sizing each other up and it’s a version of sexual play in many ways – the way you move and express yourself, shake out or dance with someone. I like names. I often like inventing names and concepts. Obviously Black Cock and Map of Africa are prime examples of the sort of fun we like to have.

MK: Food of the Gods doesn’t feel as erotic.

HB: That’s because I didn’t make it up (laughs)!

MK: Are these just recording projects?

HB: We’ve never performed live as such. It would be nice to be able to put a live unit together and play out but me and Thomas [Bullock] basically never have the time. He’s in New York and I’m in LA, and when I’m in New York, he’s in Europe. To get a tight act together it really takes a couple of months of living together and working together every day for a few months. A couple of years later we’re deep into other projects and our solo projects so I don’t know if Map of Africa will ever play live.

MK: What can you tell me about the Rwandan Ice Cream Project?

HB: Basically these drummer girls came over to New York from Rwanda. They were holocaust survivors and had come over to learn to make ice cream so that they could take the knowledge back to Rwanda and get some parlors going to make a living. It turned out that they were members of this all woman drumming ensemble so we put them in the studio and recorded a couple of hours of songs and chants. It will be released and all the profits will go towards a Rwandan good cause.

MK: Have these girls since returned home?

HB: Yes. Hopefully they’re ice cream millionaires by now.

MK: What does a regular day for Harvey consist of?

HB: Wake up, have a cup of tea, let the fog of the night before clear, decide if I have anything to do, go to the studio, jump in the ocean. You could say I’m awfully romantic and that I get on my motorcycle, drive up to the surf and have a macrobiotic sandwich on the way. It swings between that and peeling the kebab that I slept on the night before off the side of my face. Finishing off the can of hot special brew that I left on the windowsill. Straggling down a very oily 50/50 spliff before staggering out into blinding daylight. In the last couple of months I’ve been pretty healthy and productive. I’m all about good food. A friend of mine catches a lot of fish in the ocean right in front of the house and brings back lobsters and flounders. I would imagine Australian’s are quite used to that behaviour but it’s pretty exotic for an Englishman to actually be able to cook local fish caught a hundred yards away.

MK: Are you eating some quality tacos?

HB: Yes. Without question, the best Mexican food in the world outside of Mexico is in Los Angeles. There are some phenomenal tacos of every variety. I like to eat the ones from the traditional Hispanic taco trucks that feed the workers. You can get three carnitas tacos, a seafood tostada and a Mexican coco cola for five bucks and you’re stuffed and ready to go back to cleaning toilets. Happy and full.

MK: What do you think you’d be doing if you didn’t get into DJing and producing?

HB: Absolutely any kind of mundane brainless job like greeting people at the supermarket. A job that wouldn’t take up any of my brain so that my brain could be left to meditate. I once worked in a factory where the speed of the machines was such that you couldn’t day dream, or you’d loose a finger or two in the blades. I actually learnt to slow the entire productivity of the factory down by turning a particular knob. It was just slow enough so that everybody in the factory could daydream and everyone was happy and could get the job done. But this is where the party’s at and I don’t want other people spoiling party time.

EDIT ETIQUETTE: Rules to edits?

Posted on January 31, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Edit etiquette

Are there rules when it comes to edits? Should there be? RA’s Will Lynch explores all sides of a thorny issue that shows no sign of going away.

A few months ago I had lunch with the guys from Soul Clap, Eli Goldstein and Charlie Levine. We met up at their usual Berlin haunt, The Michelberger Hotel, and ate schnitzels and maultaschen while we talked about something central to their craft: edits, and more specifically, unauthorized edits. In terms of producing as well as DJing, edits are a big part of Soul Clap’s sound, and their rerubs of other artists’ songs have earned them both admiration and criticism. For some, tracks like 2010′s “Extravaganza” are a clever reuse of pop culture that make for great moments on the dance floor. For others, they’re unoriginal at best and examples of plagiarism at worst. In one of RA’s more controversial reviews, Jack Haighton gave voice to the second opinion by saying of “Extravaganza,” “Yes, it’s catchy enough. (It should be. It’s taken from a platinum-selling album only five years old.)”

Like many successful DJs, Goldstein and Levine have an interesting way of being both very serious and very laid back. Talking about edits brings out both sides: they take the subject very seriously, though their stance on it could hardly be more laissez-faire. “Where do people get these rules?” says Goldstein. “Part of what makes this music so amazing is that you really can do whatever you want. It doesn’t make sense when someone comes along and says ‘oh, that’s not allowed.’” As they see it, edits have been around since the days of disco, and what they’re doing isn’t anything new––in fact, it’s one of the most essential building blocks of production. “Think of Ice Cube, ‘Jackin for Beats.’ Or Moby, ‘Go,’ one of the biggest rave anthems ever. You know what that samples? The Twin Peaks theme.”

As for the ethical side of things—the problem of benefiting from someone else’s art—they’re not convinced they’re causing any harm. “For me, when you’re doing vinyl-only, it’s a pass,” says Goldstein. “You press 500 copies, you’re going to lose money. The whole reason you do it is because there’s a demand, you want to give people something they want. You don’t do it to help yourself.”

Levine thinks about this one for a minute. “Well, you could definitely say edits helped our success.”

“Yeah, that’s true, but the edits aren’t so different from the rest of what we do––our DJ sets, our original tracks, our mixes, it’s all the same thing.” They also maintain that they would never make a fuss about someone else sampling their work, as long as it sounded good (though they were a little irritated by Joel Alter naming a recent track “Soul Clap”—”Maybe we’ll make a track called ‘Joel Alter.’”).

Soul Clap’s line of thinking is common, and not just within their immediate scene: the free-for-all mentality is shared by countless techno, hip-hop and even pop artists. But that doesn’t mean it’s agreed upon—far from it. Though they’ve been around for nearly 40 years, edits remain one of the slipperiest aspects of electronic music culture. For some artists, they’re a lark, something done just for fun to pass around among friends. For others, they’re a serious form of artistic expression, in the same league as original productions. And for some they’re lazy, not something you should take credit for and possible grounds for a serious lawsuit. One label manager who falls somewhere in the middle put it this way: “I guess it’s kind of like drug dealing. We all know it is a big part of our scene, but only the really stupid drug dealers are going to talk about how they do it publicly, which in effect shows they have nothing else going on for them or nothing else to lose.”

The basic meaning of “edit” is itself a source of disagreement. Originally, the term referred to a song that’s been lightly modified for club use. This is what Tom Moulton had in mind when he cooked up the first dance edits back in the mid-’70s. “I worked at a bar on Fire Island, and I watched people on the dance floor,” he said. “Back then everything was edited for radio play, so the songs would end after three or four minutes and you could see this confusion—people didn’t want to stop dancing to the old song yet.” Moulton became famous for what were known as Tom Moulton Mixes: new versions of pop songs that extended rhythm sections, repeated hooks and tweaked the levels here and there to better suit a big sound system. These relatively minor adjustments made the track infinitely better for clubs, and the words “Tom Moulton Mix” became something DJs looked for in the bins at record stores.

Back then the only way to make an edit was with scissors and reel-to-reel tape, but even in the age of Ableton, many edits follow Tom Moulton’s blueprint. “Sometimes when I hear a track, right away I start thinking about what I’d change,” says Ryan Elliott, the Panorama Bar resident and head of A&R at Spectral. He makes edits all the time, but instead of putting his name on them and selling them, he keeps them for himself and his friends. “[Ryan] or Shaun Reeves will send us these zip files full of edits, everyone loves them,” says Berlin-based DJ Bill Patrick. “Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make the track way better. Mathew Jonson has this track, ‘Cold Blooded,’ it has this amazing bassline that leaves and then doesn’t come back in. I wrote [Matt] and was like ‘I love that track but I want to fucking kill you for not bringing that bassline back in.’” Rather than playing the original and working around this detail, a producer like Elliott or Reeves might fix the bassline and play out their own version instead.

That’s what you could call the classic model of an edit, but these days edits often involve a much greater level of artistic input. The easiest examples of this can be found on W+L Black, Wolf + Lamb’s vinyl-only edits imprint. This is the label that gave us most of Soul Clap’s edits (the ones that have been released, anyway) and a couple dozen more by artists like Hot Natured (Lee Foss and Jamie Jones) and Nicolas Jaar. Though they’re stamped as edits, these tracks usually act more like remixes, albeit ones made without the stems (or separate parts) of the original track. Take the label’s latest release, Jaar’s remix of “Work It” by Missy Elliott. Everything aside from the a cappella is completely different from the original, especially the overall mood, which is eerie and subdued instead of crass like the original. In other words, the way it’s reinterpreted is more artistic than it is utilitarian.

“For me, making an edit is like going on vacation,” says Jaar. “It’s a way of getting out of your head, your usual creative process, and just doing something totally different.”

For other artists, the edit is much closer to the core of their creativity. Eduardo de la Calle is the DJ and producer behind Analog Solutions, a low-profile, vinyl-only techno label that sold nearly 8,000 records in 2011, its first year of operation. His productions are highly original pieces of work—modern, imaginative, stylistically fresh—but also heavily indebted to the past. “The idea was to develop a label to pay tribute to the art of sampling,” he says. “Creatively remodel old gems maybe unknown to the younger generations.” Most or all of Analog Solutions’ records sample classic house or techno artists: Carl Craig, Aaron Carl, Basic Channel. At times the samples are indiscernible, but sometimes they make clear references to older songs—for instance, one uses the inspirational speech from “Transitions” by Underground Resistance. De la Calle goes to pains to make clear his respect for the original artists: in the second pressing of the label’s catalog (the first sold out), there is a large sticker on each sleeve itemizing what’s been sampled, sometimes over an image of de la Calle wearing a Metroplex sweater and a ski mask.

“The idea to put the stickers on the covers is one way to say thanks to the people who really influenced me to do the music that I am doing today,” he says. “But some people get confused and think it’s some strategy to get famous or something.”
De la Calle’s tracks are often confused for edits—Berlin record store Space Hall calls him “Mr Edit”—but that’s not how he sees them: in his mind, all but a few are original productions. His opinions on sampling etiquette are in many ways identical to Soul Clap’s: as far as he’s concerned, sampling is one of the essential building blocks of electronic production, everything is fair game and there’s no hard distinction between original productions, remixes and edits—these are just three different points along the same continuum.

This kind of sampling has earned de la Calle a few detractors—one Berlin record shop stopped stocking Analog Solutions because of it—but he is by no means alone in this approach. Greg Wilson, the English DJ and master of the reel-to-reel edit, says this kind of thing reflects a musical tradition that predates even disco. “It’s the same as it’s always been with music,” he says. “Music of the ’60s was drawing from rhythm & blues and the blues itself, taking guitar licks from old tracks. There’s nothing new in that—it’s something that’s always happened and always will happen.” Colin de la Plante, better known as The Mole, takes this line of thinking beyond music altogether: “Even Nabokov ripped off Lolita,” he says. “There was another book, also about a guy who’s obsessed with this girl name Lolita, same name and everything. Nabokov’s book is way better, but he got all of the basic ideas from someone else.”

Some artists feel that, more than being just permissible, edits do a valuable service to the original. De la Calle says that he “rescues” classics from Chicago and Detroit by making them sound cutting edge again. Soul Clap half-jokingly compare themselves to history teachers, chronicling dance music for a younger generation. “The music ceases to be old,” as Wilson puts it. There’s evidence that many original artists feel this way as well. In 2006, the French DJ Pilooski released an unauthorized edit of Frankie Valli’s ’60s tune “Beggin.” Valli heard the track and liked it. Instead of suing Pilooski, he and his label worked with him to release it officially. The original track had been largely forgotten, but the edit brought it back to life: Pilooski’s version made it into an Adidas commercial, and even spawned a cover version by a Norwegian band called Madcon. Soul Clap went through something similar with their edit of “Bakerman” by Laid Back. After their edit had been out for a while on W+L Black, Laid Back’s management got in touch with them with an offer to clear the samples and release it on their own label, credited as Laid Back vs. Soul Clap.

So what’s wrong with edits then? It depends on who you talk to. Maybe the simplest objection is a legal one: unauthorized edits violate copyrights, and copyrights exist for a reason, namely to make sure artists get the money they deserve. Plenty of artists go through the trouble and expense of clearing their samples, and those who don’t are only making the market more dysfunctional.

“I don’t think it is constructive to do things that are basically illegal,” says the aforementioned label manager, who asked to remain anonymous. “Let’s not beat around the bush—it is effectively stealing. I know people dress it up in polite terms, that it is reinvigorating old music or it is this and that and the other, but the bottom line is that anyone who makes edits and do not pay mechanical property rights to ASCAP or GEMA, and are probably not paying anything to the original artists, are effectively trading off other peoples’ work.”

Another prevalent argument has more to do with artistic merit. When Tom Moulton and his peers made the first edits on reel-to-reel tape, they were, intentionally or not, designing a musical experience that had never existed before. The same could hardly be said for many of today’s edits. “You have this glut of edits which are no longer interested in diving deeper and deeper,” says Finn Johannsen, the DJ, music critic and Hard Wax employee. “Back then, there were no computers, so beatmatching and the convenience aspect was not the point of it. Today, there are a lot of edits floating around where the only purpose is to make DJing easier.” He finds many of the arguments in favor of edits “valid but lazy. You can always say ‘It’s always been this way,’ and of course it was, but to make that your main mission… it’s just a question of what you’re aiming for as an artist.”

There is of course the ethical angle as well. Some would say that an artist who makes an edit takes credit for something that is largely not his or her own. This opinion was at the root of Haighton’s review of Soul Clap’s R&B Edits: is it really enough to tweak a platinum-selling record and put your name on it? It doesn’t help that many edits, not least those in the Wolf + Lamb camp, replace the original artist’s name with that of the editing artist (“Soul Clap – Extravaganza” instead of “Jamie Foxx – Extravaganza (Soul Clap Edit)”). Granted, this is only meant to keep snooping lawyers from stumbling upon an illegal edit through Google, and when the edit is of a widely known pop song, the assumption is that listeners will recognize the original. But is that valid?

“I think it’s just the opposite to be honest,” says our anonymous label manager. “I think that a lot of kids out there don’t have the musical knowledge or depth and background to understand the historical references being made. I know people that have used a Todd Terry drum loop and have gone, “oh no no, that came out of my sampler,” because they don’t know any better. I think ten years ago, if there was a big sample people would know the sample and maybe be more respectful about it. Now I think everything is up for grabs, it’s a free-for-all and nothing is sacred anymore.”

It’s worth noting that a number of artists either didn’t want to be interviewed for this article or agreed to do so only if they could remain anonymous, mostly because they’ve done their share of unauthorized edits and don’t want their name linked to something that is, after all, illegal. Contrary to what many producers think, however slim the chance of repercussion may be, there is reason to be concerned. “I know of people in this business that have used illegal samples and have been sued in the past, and they have lost more than 100% of the record sales…,” says the anonymous label manager. “So look, if you have some young kids and they are telling you some stuff about edits, please just remind them what they are doing might be illegal and they may not know exactly what they are doing, because once it is on the internet that is it, it is published.”

Even if you’re not convinced by the legal risks, some argue that since listeners will associate an edit with the original artist (and perhaps assume it’s their work), that artist should have the opportunity to sign off on it. “People are going to hear your edit, and they’ll hear the original artist, but maybe he or she never would have done it that way,” says Ryan Elliott. “To release your edit of somebody’s track without even showing it to them, I don’t think that’s right. You at least owe them the courtesy of getting to say ‘yea’ or ‘nay.’”

Meanwhile, there’s a much broader opinion that sweeps all of these discussions aside: in a place as chaotic as today’s music industry, why bother doing things by the books? Most artists have stopped expecting to make money from their records, copyright laws are ill-fitted to the culture and erratically enforced, and nearly everything is on YouTube or illegal download sites anyway. None of this looks set to change anytime soon. In this lawless environment, it can feel a bit quixotic to play by the rules, especially when no one can agree on them.

Greg Wilson describes the same situation in rosier terms. For him, it’s “open season” or “the wild west,” a place that can be very exciting to those who accept it. “We’re in an unprecedented moment,” he says. “Recorded music has been around for about a century, so we have this incredible amount of material to draw from. And then we have this situation where hip-hop, the most successful music form of the late 20th century, is basically about taking two records, extending those records and putting a rap over the top of what was in reality someone else’s music but making a new thing. So for a lot of artists, especially younger people, that’s what they’ve grown up with, that’s all they’ve ever known, so they look at things in those ways. That’s their way of expressing themselves, and it’s the language they use.

“Old fashioned people might find it a bit out of control,” he adds, “but this is where we are. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Words / Will Lynch

Published / Tuesday, 31 January 2012

QUALITY IS OVERRATED – Stefan Goldmann

Posted on January 24, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

In “Everything Popular Is Wrong,” Stefan Goldmann claimed that the more artists deviate from the known and established, the better their chances are for success. But why should this be so? Now he offers a detailed examination of the psychosocial framework that underlies what we listen to, looking into the factors that decide what is culturally relevant and what is not — with surprising results: exploring the unknown is not only more fun, but also more rewarding.

The amplified champions

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Bluebeard, its protagonist Rabo Karabekian muses on the origin of special talents and the diminished opportunities in modern societies: “I think that could go back in time when people had to live in small groups of relatives – maybe fifty or hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn’t afraid of anything and so on. […] of course a scheme like that doesn’t make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communication has put him or her in daily competition with nothing but the world’s champions. The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness.”^[1]

Science has had a thought on this subject, too. This development has been named the Superstar Effect^[2], in which presumably only minuscule differences in talent or slight advantages in competitive situations snowball into the domination of a whole market by one or a few performers. If you want to buy a recording by a soprano opera singer, you’ll most likely want to buy one by the best — the number two soprano will have a hard time moving any CDs, since the presumably slightly better number one will have preempted the market. The CDs cost about the same, so why spend any second thought on lesser talent?

The superstars obtain what I’d like to call a “first call” position: it is not just about income, but mainly about opportunities. That’s where things strike culturally. Everybody prefers the top performers. A festival wants to present and a label wants to sign the best artists, a movie producer wants to hire the best actors and playwrights, someone who goes to court wants the best lawyer, and so forth. Only affordability and availability seem to give the rest of the list any chance. That’s why the superstar gets the greatest choice to pick from the best opportunities, earning disproportionately more rewards and spreading out to even wider recognition, while the other contestants service whatever is left over.

This cumulative aspect of superstardom has been described by sociologist Robert K. Merton as the Matthew Effect, named after the verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “For unto every one that hath, more shall be given, and he shall have abundance, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” In other words, the rich get richer, the poorer get poorer and success breeds success.

What are rewards?

An artist feels rewarded when she receives the attention of the audience and of those mediating between artist and audience. Rewards are people coming to hear a performance, spending time listening to recordings, learning the specific style, recommending the music to others and following the further offerings of the artist. Rewards are receiving critical acclaim by experts and peers, finding followers who copy the style, getting the aesthetic message distributed with the help of those who service the media or manage the venues where artists meet the audience. In short, the more social interactions the artist’s efforts produce, the more those efforts have been rewarded. That’s the way society views an artist to be “excelling.”

On the economic side, all these interactions produce fees, royalties and other sorts of material exchanges. People pay to attend concerts, to listen to recordings or to consume media coverage. In varying shares, these payments eventually reach the artist. Usually income will develop in parallel with these social interactions. Respectively some economists have argued that social relevance and monetary rewards match, i.e. whoever ends up earning more is also the better artist, offering the higher quality works of art. Such reasoning makes most of us cringe simply because we don’t trust the market to be a good judge on matters of quality and relevance. Investigating this assumption, in what follows I’ll discuss some theories that separate quality, relevance and the rewards system and examine how they interact.

Birth of the star

But how do we decide who is “best”? Even experts often disagree on the qualities and talents of top performers. And we all have encountered the notorious prevalence of some cultural product that no one we know in person seems to consider even “good,” yet it is inescapably all over the place. It’s not as if we’re all listening to the Rolling Stones or whoever dominates the stadium act category in music. There are many artists who comfortably occupy a place of their own without having the reach of a stadium act. So there must be something else going on as well.

Reasons given for the emergence of superstars range from differences in talent, amplified by mass media^[5], to the need to communicate about the same topics when socializing with others^[6]. I don’t think these models match what we experience in reality. I’d like to offer a different explanation based on the effects of mental shelf space limitation and social proof. The concept of mental shelf space is analogous to the shelf space limitations in retail: a shop can store only so many CDs, books or brands of cereal. In any given category our minds only comfortably deal with between three and seven items and zone out on the Long Tail, limiting the number of names we can memorize^[7].

Most people will not bother to regularly follow more than a few novelists, musicians or movie actors. There are simply not the psychological capacity, enough time and funds to compare thousands of contestants in order to figure out who should receive our limited attention. The search costs would be too high. Therefore we try to minimize them by employing shortcuts. Sticking with the best is one of those shortcuts. And in order to quickly identify the best we look out for social proof. Social proof is a psychological principle that states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct^[8]. We assume that enough of the others have gone through the search process and have identified the best when choosing one over the others. Whenever we are uncertain of what to look for, we’ll try to figure it out by looking at the choices of others.

This can go to bizarre lengths: Participants in an experiment were told that two shown, obviously different geometrical objects were the same. Astonishingly, when social proof is overwhelming (actors pretending to be other participants identified the objects as being identical), an MR imaging of the brain indicated that the objects were actually seen as being identical^[9]. In other words: In the right social context, we override our own judgments and rewire our brains to see, feel or hear what’s actually not there^[10].

Music is a means of social distinction, too. We actually do want to associate with certain groups of people and disassociate with others. With social proof we can figure out what others do and match our behavior accordingly. Social proof is so attractive because it helps us socialize, identify our group and save a whole lot of time, too. We might end up watching a mediocre movie, but we’ll enjoy the company of like-minded friends. In cultural contexts we rarely ever experience severe pain from following that strategy. Well, unless the movie was “Cowboys & Aliens” of course. In the bigger picture, social proof and limited mental shelf space promote diversity of categories and monoculture within categories at the same time.

These psychosocial factors are the reasons why the Long Tail doesn’t work (within one category) and people flock to the upper end of the scale. Against what a lot of propaganda claims, no distribution model or technological measure has ever changed this. Only a few geeks and professionals will ever bother to check out more than a few alternatives, and we all end up with the superstars. In a self-fulfilling prophecy these eventually do get better than the rest since they are exposed to better opportunities, get more funds to reinvest in their work and education, as well as better access to and allocation of other supportive means.

Quality is overrated

A nineteenth-century French novelist named Arsène Houssaye coined the phrase “the 41st chair” to describe the plight of talented individuals, deserving of rewards or recognition, who are nevertheless bypassed as these rewards are garnered by a select few. Houssaye’s phrase was inspired by the Académie Francaise. This elite institution, founded in 1635 during the rule of Louis XIII, was designed to identify and reward the nation’s greatest talents. If you are elected to one of the 40 seats you retain your position for life.

These positions are so important to French society that the members of the Académie are called the “immortals.” The immortals that have held seats include some of France’s most famous citizens, from Dumas to Poincairé to Voltaire. It is intriguing though that the likes of Descartes, Molière, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Diderot, Stendahl, Flaubert, Zola and Proust never got in. It was not that they lacked the ability. It was just that the limitation in numbers made them inhabitants of the “forty-first chair.”^[11]

Houssaye’s phrase is a good analogy to what happens to the other contestants within one category. Once the shelf is full, they are relegated to the forty-first chair no matter how great or valuable their actual contributions are. Mental shelf space has two varieties though, a vertical and a horizontal one. Vertically, within one category there are a few superstars and many inhabitants of the 41st chair. Horizontally though there are many more individual categories, each with its own superstar structure. That’s why we don’t all listen to the Rolling Stones exclusive, but also Theo Parrish, Carsten Nikolai, Pierre Boulez, Meshuggah or Fred Frith.

This is intriguing, since horizontal mental shelf space for anything seems to allow for the coexistence of much more items than vertical: we know more separate supermarket product categories than brands of ketchup for instance. In marketing theory the according strategy is known as category positioning: if you can’t be number one in an existing category, create a new category. That might be a good explanation why culture is always changing. The contestants’ determination to reach “first call” status (and the impossibility to get ahead on crowded paths) makes them invent categories. Whoever creates a new category into people’s minds is likely to be associated with it due to social proof snowballing effects.

The horizontal dimension is a social one in the first place. Individuals don’t follow all categories available, but have preferences of a few, becoming “fans” of a style and its representatives respectively. Still, whenever we decide to engage with something less familiar (“let’s go to the opera tonight”), we consult social proof again. Then we join the already existing fans and skyrocket the chosen superstars’ social exposure. That is why the artist who is considered best by the public is not defined by talent or social chatter, but by category leadership, which is usually obtained when the category receives its initial public recognition (“Oh, that’s interesting — who does this?”).

That’s why the actual quality, say of works in a new style of music, doesn’t matter much for success. This explains why often artists creating great works later on receive seemingly unjustly little recognition, while others reap the rewards. Some had their names identified with the category earlier on. Deepening a category is an activity that leverages those already on top. It is a paradoxical situation in which increased competition actually helps the predetermined winners by inflating the category’s rewards (more attention and funds flowing in).

This failure of readjusting the “class” structure within a category once the positions have been distributed is also named the Ratchet Effect^[12]: those on top do not fall much behind. It would cost the audience too much brainpower to readjust regularly. If you wonder why someone is still around artistically despite failing to keep up the quality that’s the reason. “Once a Nobel laureate, always a Nobel laureate” as Merton put it.

That effect is not always obvious. For instance, I recognize that virtually all techno superstars of the last decade now seem to lose their grip on dominating the distribution of recorded music. Their singles and albums don’t move that much anymore and their labels are shrinking to levels where they have to be cross-subsidized (even if that’s through the cheap labor of and endless supply of new interns). Still, their touring schedules are packed to the max. They do lose some ground, but no one replaces them. The Ratchet Effect applies to the internal hierarchy, not to the category itself. Categories often decline or get repositioned by other (sub-) categories, but even the captain of a sinking ship is still its captain.

Categorical morphology

In music, categories are often defined by but not limited to styles. One might be the leader of post-minimal technocumbia, but acting in a movie or wearing a mouse mask might do the job, too. “Gimmick categories” like these are usually exactly one artist deep, but at the same time they are subcategories of wider styles of music, too.

Things often get mixed up and attributes from outside music often define what artists stand for. A lot of pop has been highly influential with unimpressive musical foundations and inflated political, social or other agendas. Eventually such agendas help to break new aesthetics, too. Punk’s social and political relevance was probably earlier understood than its groundbreaking musical implications.

An initially small stylistic category might grow big and then split up into subcategories. Think of rock, having branched out in tree-like fashion with countless levels of subcategorization. It is sometimes hard to draw the line whether contestants happen to be in the same or in separate categories. Each of the 40 members of the Académie has his own story, and so have the artists on top in a bigger category. They share an audience, but develop individual profile in order to make it worthwhile for the audience to engage with more than one artist (even if that means putting on the mouse mask). The clearer the differences are the more likely we look at separate categories.

At a higher level, a subcategory might grow to become so enormous that entire other subcategories get repositioned. Once minimal outgrew loop techno (you know, the stuff Adam Beyer used to do), the leaders of minimal automatically became “bigger” than those of loop techno. The personnel’s structure within the subcategories didn’t change, but the metacategory (“techno”) found itself being transformed.

Stefan Goldmann is an electronic music artist, DJ and owner of the Macro label. stefangoldmann.com

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/quality-is-overrated-the-mechanics-of-excellence-in-music-pt-1/

Footnotes:

^[1] Vonnegut, Kurt: Bluebeard (1987).

^[2] Rosen, Sherwin: The Economics of Superstars, in: American Economic Review 71 (1981): pp.845-858.

^[3] Merton, Robert K.: The Matthew Effect in Science, in: Science 159 (1968):pp.56-63.

^[4] Grampp, William: Pricing the Priceless. Art, Artists and Economics (1989): p.37.

^[5] Rosen (1981).

^[6] Adler, Moshe: Stardom and Talent, in: American Economic Review 75 (1985): pp.208-212.

^[7] Miller, G.A.: The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, in: Psychological Review 63 (1956): pp.39-50.

^[8] Cialdini, Robert B.: Influence (1984 / rev. 2007): pp.114-166.

^[9] Berns, G.S.; Chappelow, J.; Zink, C.F.; Pagnoni, G.; Martin-Skurski, M.E.; Richards, J. : Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity and Independence During Mental Rotation, in: Biological Psychiatry 58 (2005): pp.245-253. For the pioneering study on conformity see Asch, Solomon: Studies of Independence and Conformity, in: Psychological Monographs 70 (1956).

^[10] Now that’s just what Adornians have been waiting for. Before you get too excited having found the proof that we are all brainwashed, don’t forget that conformity phenomenons occur in any social group, including any gathering of non-conformists.

^[11] I owe this to Cal Newport, who uncovered Houssaye as the author of the 41st chair equation in: How to be a college superstar (2010): pp.132-133.

^[12] Duesenberry, James S.: Income, Savings and the Theory of Consumer Behaviour (1949): pp. 114-16. Also see Merton (1968) p.57.

Everything Popular Is Wrong: Making It in Electronic Music.

Posted on January 16, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard 1

Stefan Goldmann on why Web 2.0 can work for you but won’t for most, where all the money went and how working against the market consensus can be a winning strategy.

Electronic music. What we believed for a long time was that anyone with a bit of talent had a chance at a career of about ten years before eventually retiring from the circuit. Of course there are exceptions for whom this does not seem to apply. Francois Kevorkian has probably had the longest career here (unless we count Kraftwerk as part of our little world); and it’s hard to imagine techno or house without Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills or Laurent Garnier.

That’s the good news: it does not necessarily have to meet a predetermined end. On the other hand, artists emerging now face the hardest times ever to establish themselves. The lifespan between breaking through and being laid off seems to have reached a historic low point of half a year. The reasons behind this “haircut” to artistic longevity are the radically lowered barriers to participation, as well as the hectic marketplace discovering today’s new talent and abandoning yesterday’s new talent.

Let’s clarify “barriers”: in the old days of the music business, which was basically before the end of the 1970s, the main barriers to “making it in music” were studio time and access to distribution. Whoever wanted to be heard adequately needed well distributed releases. That is, having recorded material in the first place. The means for producing such recordings were so expensive that at some point only big corporations could spare the funds to pay for the required studio time and personnel.

The effect of this economic barrier to resources was that a couple of hundred artists and bands gained access to an audience of millions. Once a recording was produced it enjoyed a long life in the market due to the lack of competition that otherwise would have pushed it off the store shelves. Only under these conditions did the huge, continuous investments in promotion and distribution actually make economic sense in those times and circumstances.

This model experienced a serious challenge with the advent of the affordable 4-track recorder, which enabled home recording that could deliver marketable results for the first time ever. For instance, the whole late ’70s/early ’80s New York downtown scene can be pretty much explained by this piece of technology. Progress in affordable music equipment in the form of synthesizers, drum machines and samplers gave birth to a plethora of innovative styles in music, including hip hop, house, techno and drum ‘n’ bass.

At the same time independent distribution was born, conquering channels previously serviced exclusively by major corporations. The new distributors were capable of connecting with ever smaller target groups. Fueled by enthusiasm, small businesses could survive on small quantities of product previously considered not to be worth the effort. Tango from Finland and death metal from anywhere found comfortable niches with worldwide followings.

These enabled artists and the people around them to become professionals, i.e. to make a living on the music instead of funding a hobby through an undesirable day job. That was the core economic feature of the independent music culture: no riches, but still sufficient funds to avoid wasting time on activities not related to music. Anyone busy generating income from 9 to 5 wouldn’t be able to gain the deep skills necessary to sustain a career in music and hold an audience for long.

By the way, this comfortable indie-constellation was never really threatened by the majors, who only occasionally dropped by to sign away the most successful artists of any niche. Working within your own artistic preferences became a pretty comfortable thing to do back in the ’80s.

The next level was reached when it took nothing but a standard PC and a microphone (if required) to render an entire production. The software that emulated the previously needed pieces of gear came mostly for free thanks to piracy. Therefore, production costs practically hit zero and the record sales you needed in order to sustain a release fell almost to the cost of the manufacturing of the records themselves (with a few bucks for promotion).

At that point, at least in dance music, sales figures of just around 5,000 physical units were considered a “hit,” whereas a bit earlier it would’ve required a few hundred thousand units. Many soon realized that even the expense of pressing up records or CDs was not really necessary. A digital download has no costs at all. The logical outcome was distribution that granted any piece of music total availability, with the downside of being the most inefficient way of distribution ever: what should I download when there are five billion files to choose from? Whom should I bless with my attention? Do I have any attention to spare?

Contrary to public perception, this didn’t affect the majors all that much. Their problems were mostly in their inability to maximize the advantages they already had instead of wasting resources on trying to revive an overthrown order. Soon enough it dawned on them that big artists (i.e. those with the biggest turnover) can generate reasonable income through so called 360-degree-deals, covering live gigs, publishing rights, merchandise, etc. all under the control of one company.

Even the smallest labels engage in a similar policy nowadays. But the required resources to participate in the game of filling stadiums, really cashing in on movie and advertising deals today are almost exclusively in the hands of majors. Interestingly, the so called “democratization” of music production and distribution didn’t change this allocation of relevant income to the majors’ detriment at all.

Others fell victim to it. Absurdly, the complete disappearance of economic barriers to distribution (offering a free download doesn’t cost more than the time to upload the file) hit the wallets of the “indies” first, stripping a substantial part of their income. This mostly affected the artists and the personnel around them: designers, engineers, studio musicians, promotion and label professionals, music journalists, et al. The mass of competition they encountered meant anyone with a limited marketing budget had a difficult time surviving in the market.

With the same promotional tools available to almost anyone, they lost their efficiency. The professionals listed above basically lost their income. In 2000, an average vinyl single generated a return of a couple of thousand Euros, while in 2011 the same single generates a loss of a couple of hundred Euros, even without what were formerly known as “production costs.” Anything on top, like a bigger production, a decent mastering, or proper sleeve design became factors of deepening material loss. That area of the craft gets subsequently cut off and replaced by an undiscriminating routine of two-step-distribution: “save as” and “upload to.”

Fleeing to a purely digital distribution doesn’t look that much better in general: only an established artist backed by a strong physical release experiences significant digital sales. The overwhelming majority goes by unnoticed. The average “digital only” dance single generates around 100 Euros of profit, for both artist and label, now most often being the same person. And these figures go down, too. Today a couple millions artists try to reach a few hundred people. Or like the contemporary pun puts it, “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 people.”

The result is a wide spread de-professionalization. If an artist regularly loses money on her efforts, she faces an economic end to her endeavors sooner or later. Being a “musician” is increasingly becoming a profession for those coming from inherited wealth or being mercantily exceptionally clever. It’s less then ever a question of the intrinsic quality of the music. What used to be done by professional enthusiasts now becomes the domain of the artists — turning them into designer, PR dude and distributor.

It all subtracts from the time spent actually creating music. This puts additional pressure on the remaining professional environment. Nowadays it is increasingly harder to get hold of well executed services. Mastering, manufacturing vinyl, music PR — no one qualified enough is willing to tolerate the miserable working conditions and hilarious paychecks of these jobs for an extended time. Whoever has the chance seems to flee the music industry for something more prosperous. The error rate in manufacturing and distribution grows exponentially and actually feeds the market with ever shabbier products in content and execution.

There’s this die-hard belief that income, at least for the musicians (but not for the professional environment), will come from the fees for live performances instead. But how do you get live performances in the first place? Well, press helps. The problem encountered there is that the media has adapted to the state of the music industry. In electronic music that means whoever succeeds in producing two singles may find himself covered by all relevant press and booked throughout the club circuit, just to be replaced by the next “lucky fool” (a term from stock speculation) about three months later.

New artists get “pumped and dumped.” What about a year old break, a production that takes longer, or time for having a baby? Two weeks without a release are perceived as a career flaw for those who had their breakthrough in the last three years. A longer shelf life in the media and on the circuit seems to be granted only to artists who started before the big flood came, which is pre-2005 approximately (if I were to spend a year on the beach, most likely I’ll be able to continue exactly where I had stopped). Or to those who buy their coverage — although that only works over a longer period of time on a five-figure budget. Most others face the high probability of approaching music as something you do between college and some dull job.

The artists’ disillusionment leads to ever lamer results in music — why bother? A single produced hastily in two hours work sells 500 units, while a delicate masterwork moves 800 (plus a bit of beer money from Beatport). These figures are in constant decline, too. The market average first pressing of a vinyl 12″ is 300 units now, which regularly indicated sales below this figure (deduct records given away as “promotion” and to friends).

What have we learned here? The so called “democratization” didn’t work. Everyone did believe they gained access. This access by itself is stripped of value, though, because no one cares that DJ XY from Z has that new record out. Through any available channel I get dozens of requests per day to listen to somebody’s track. That’s after a spam filter and a disclaimer that I don’t want to receive files. The result is that I don’t listen to files at all — I do buy vinyl regularly. DJ XY doesn’t get the gig.

If he does by accident, that’s for the cab fare. In Berlin, with its conspicuous population of 50,000 DJs, promoters and club owners don’t have to try hard. There’s always someone who will play for free if asked. Hey, that’s free promotion for the new DJ XY record. Meanwhile in the provincial town of Z, the locals “practice” for free, so they develop the skills they’ll need to “make it” in Berlin one day. That’s where things come full circle. No proper gigs, no record sales, no income. Anyone who is not already “there” doesn’t seem to arrive anymore.

The propaganda that the future will have us all giving away music for free in order to make a living on gigs has been proven wrong by reality. Because basically everybody does exactly this and still doesn’t get booked all over (or not often enough, as with most “mid career” artists). The exception being Radiohead, of course, but only after a decade on the million-dollar budget of a major. The only profiteers here (and biggest fans of piracy and Creative Commons) are the stock holders of the Nasdaq 100. If you want to make a living on music, buy the relevant stock and live off the dividends.

That’s where all the money goes that used to pay musicians and music professionals some time ago. It says a lot about the other side of “democratization,” too: the individual in search for music experiences no upside. He pays for the returns of Apple, Google, Beatport and the speaker fees of Larry Lessig and Chris Anderson by being lost in a flood of irrelevant, crappy music and the feeling that others had more fun before (hence the retro obsession in today’s music). The total de-motivation doesn’t manifest itself only in the musicians’ under achievements, but also in the annoyance of everybody else.

A frustrated DJ plays lame tunes in front of people bored to tears. That’s the average event out there. Alternatively, a collective nostalgia for some era of “old days” prevails. Everyone keeps doing the same thing out of the fear that the slightest deviation from the norm will scare away the small remaining, yet patient audience who goes along because of a lack of alternatives (we dance either because we paid or because the drugs kicked in).

Did that depress you? Now, here comes the good news: exactly because everyone seemingly performs to the lowest still acceptable standards, all you have to do as an artist is to unleash disproportional waves of creativity. Since nothing promises secure success anymore, all considerations to what “works in the marketplace” can be freely dumped and forgotten. The more out there you get, the better. It’s the only way to stand out in a totally dull environment.

The advantage is, put cynically, that the old channels are jammed. Whoever tries to break through them following “proven” old ways (which usually means emulating other people’s career paths) is wasting time and energy. We can’t learn much from studying the careers of Carl Craig or Ricardo Villalobos anymore because the conditions that enabled them don’t exist any more. The channels that do work are found elsewhere and are open to those who possess endurance, individuality and substance — the values that are disappearing most rapidly now.

To an extreme extent, success in the arts is subject to random factors (we see many successful people who have no clue how they got there, how to stay there or how to repeat it). The more radically and frequently you stand out, the more often you get exposure to those factors, thus increasing the probability of channels opening up for you. That is not spamming the Internet but creating radically individual great music in the first place. Once you enter the channel, you allow more factors to work for you, since these tend to add up (path dependency).

Art always had to be great (whatever that is) and move people in order to succeed, too. But now there’s that third dimension of having to create a wide gap between you and the competition, even if that’s just within one genre. If you can implement this idea in your work, the flood is not threatening at all anymore since it works against itself. “Unique” is the most valuable word in a crowded environment of generic ideas and overwhelming redundancy. Striving for this quality is also exactly what is most rewarding artistically. Besides screaming fans and free drinks, that is.

A very odd example for creating stand out events: I had that funny experience when I recorded an album for cassette last year. No one involved expected anything more than to have some fun with it. Still, I spent a lot of effort on this one, specifically on getting my head around the question why to use a cassette at all. No one else would have put more work than necessary into such an obsolete format. And just that brought in a lot of attention, which any file on Beatport, regardless how good it is, wouldn’t have done at all. And there was no free lunch involved.

On the contrary, distribution was severely cut down to a very few sources. Today it’s actually so much easier again as long as you can get your head around the notion that “anything popular is wrong.” Especially in mainstream media like Germany’s Der Spiegel or UK’s BBC (in features, not the usual playlists), I’ve only been covered because of totally odd projects. For the same reason new opportunities follow, which artists who cling to functionality and marketplace consensus never encounter.

I don’t play techno clubs exclusively now, but also find myself scoring a ballet, performing in museums or getting calls from classical performers for collaboration — my techno background makes me stand out in these settings as well. In return, crossover encounters of this kind add that edge to the artist’s profile which feeds back into the club scene. It’s definitely more rewarding than spamming the internet with “listen to this track” emails.

Highly individualized, lightly advertised work is way more attractive nowadays than consensus-style work, advertised to death (short, unsustainable hype is the most one can hope for there). People are starting to realize this. Many top labels stopped promoting their new singles for instance. It just appears in the shops and that’s it. It’s not unlikely that artists will increasingly lose their interest in having their output available all over and seek for a more intimate exchange with the audience.

Why plaster the Internet with files? Who finds that valuable anymore? Imagine an incredible piece of music available only once — on dubplate. Or let’s consider falling back in history — music only in the presence of its creator. No release. Come to the concert. Enthusiasm will be back when you get this feeling of attending something really special. How to create this feeling for the audience is the core task of the creatives, if they deserve that name.

That said, it still takes a huge amount of time and dedication for an artist to develop a standout profile. This raises the issue of financing a career in music. Since the indies mostly lost their capacity to fund musicians, the artist’s required initial investment has become higher again. Usually people argue there will have to be some sort of day job then.

As aforementioned, that would be perfectly fine if being occupied all day with something not relevant to music didn’t actively hinder you from devoting yourself to developing your artistic edge. Your mind will be occupied with other stuff instead of exploring the areas of sound where it gets deep. To be able to create stuff that outlasts two weeks, you’ll need to go full time at some point.

Even after tolerable initial periods of day job-cross-finance, those who succeed are never safe. Since the available funds (those remaining after the Nasdaqs sucked out what they could) get distributed to more and more people, even electronic music’s top and near-top level artists’ income drops rapidly. Periods of sufficient remuneration are followed by periods of economic frustration.

Therefore there is a need to have sources of income that are independent from your own music’s direct returns. That is, any income that can be obtained with spending very little time on it — no day jobs allowed unless you are a grossly overpaid consultant for a few hours a month, like I am occasionally. One may consider the pros and cons (there are such) of grants and fellowships, commissions from the industry or institutions, as well as sources of passive income.

The latter means that once set up, a scheme generates income without investing further time — interest, the concepts of arbitrage and leverage, or exploiting details of copyright law may serve as rather abstract examples here. How to make them work for you would be a topic of it’s own. Separating income and music in your head can be deeply rewarding. The freedom experienced in creating music to your own criteria first and even “against the market” if necessary is way more elegant than trying to squeeze as much as possible out of music that has to produce your paycheck. That is another factor contributing to an artist’s longevity in the market — having guts and principles. Get your head around it, do your homework and you’ll quickly see solutions that work for you.

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/everything-popular-is-wrong-making-it-in-electronic-music-despite-democratization/

Stefan Goldmann is an electronic music artist, DJ and owner of the Macro label. This article, which first ran in Silo magazine, is translated from the German.

» Stefan Goldmann | April 13th, 2011

LET’s NERD – Todd Terje with James Murphy

Posted on January 13, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

Todd Terje has started a blog in which he “Asks smart people stupid questions.” This is an excellent site for gearheads and producers especially….We’ve posted the first interview with James Murphy but go check out the other interviews with Morgan Geist (Metro Area, Storm Queen) and Andy Meecham (Chicken Lips, Emperor Machine).

http://letsnerd.com/

TERJE
First question is, how do you record your drums? Can you teach me? I wanna set up a kick/snare/hihat/2tom set in a small room, it´s got wooden floor and no damping on the walls. How do I get this to sound ok? I´ve read somewhere that you have a quite basic approach to this. Please do tell, o oracle of nice sounding drums. Preamps?

JAMES
For some DFA drums:
It’s simple, but not so simple. Firstly, I like to “deaden” the room quite a bit. I put blankets up on the walls and stuff. And maybe something blocking the drums from the rest of the room with a big duvet on it, to make the reflections less. Then, listen standing in front of the drums when someone plays… Is there a lot of “low mid range”? If so, put something like a plush chair near the kit. Then, I like to make a “kick drum hut”. My favorite thing is to put a piano bench right in front of the kick. That way i can keep the mic on the kick outside the drum while still getting less bleed. Then, take the bottom heads off the toms and deaden them with some fabric gaffer’s tape and small squares of neoprene mouse pad. So they go “thud” instead of “booooongggg”.

For mics, I like to use nice nice nice mics. Me? Kick and snare are Neuman TLM 193s. Medium sized condensors. You can get away with an Equitek e100 for a cheap alternative. Snare top and bottom (with the bottom out of phase). Toms, I use very fast medium diaphragm mics – -EV RE2000s. With a slow pre-amp, like the built in pres on my Otari MX5050Bll 2-track. Overheads, I like something nice, like some Schoepps, or AKG 451s, more over the snare than the cymbals. Then, I make a “beatle sound” as well… which is a pair of old ribbon mics… RCA bk5s or Coles 4038s… One, mono, just over the kit — between the overheads. The other in front of the kick. I get a tape measure and make them both the same distance from where the beater hits the kick drum head. Those 2 mics I mix together as an “image” of the kit. The other mics are like the “disco” sound — tight and dead — and the ribbons are like the “soul” sound. And you can mix them together.
Setting the mic pres…. I run drum pres VERY VERY cold… Low input. As low as possible. So that there’s tons of un-distorted headroom. That way the ring and room and cymbal noise isn’t too loud. People tend to record drums “hot”, which is why they suck. If you record drums “hot”, they should be one or 2 mics at most. You can cook the ribbons, for example, but nothing else. I like UA 610s with the eq on them, no compression. I tend to lift the highs a bit when I print so that they have a nice disco snap. The ribbons I run thru an old Altec tube mixer.
That’s the drums, I guess…

TERJE
Can you please explain to me what a “word clock” is? You showed me at least 3 boxes of word clocks in your word clock closet the last time. Is this something I need to worry about, or can I be happy without knowing?

JAMES
Oh… Right… It’s the thing that makes sure the digital info all lines up. Each bit of sound info is like a picture. If you think of an image as
pixels, and the image you look at has 300 pixels, and so does the screen you’re using, it’s very critical that the pixels line up… otherwise, each screen pixel will be an averaging of 4 other pixels, making the resolution much shittier. That’s what happens on cheap digital audio. There’s a noticeable “flatness” that you don’t get with analog. No “depth”. That’s from the digital info being translated sloppily. The word clock is the thing that, 48,000 times a second, in 24 places, lines up all those little samples. Not a sexy job, but a critical and difficult one. So WCs tend to be both expensive and ignored. But that’s why so many tracks you get sent in MP3 form as promo sound “good” on your laptop, but then you get the vinyl, and they basically sound the same. Not very deep or interesting. They just sit there, like MP3s, Even though it’s vinyl. And so you say to yourself “well, why bother playing the vinyl”. It’s the in-the-computer-mix disease.

TERJE
What´s the best compression setting EVAR? Would life be easier if I studied lots of compression theory?

JAMES
Shit — that depends. I like playing with stuff that sounds awesome. I have some invisible compressors that are amazing, but not exciting, and I have ones with real “sound”. I use a DBX 165 VU (old, black faced VCA
compressor) and an original Teletronix LA2A for vocals. Also Purple Audio copy of an 1176 on tons of other shit. Fuck around.

TERJE
I hear you´re no enemy of VSTs, anything recommendable?

JAMES
Not a single thing. Though that shitty “mic modeller” thing was good. Not for “modelling mics”, but it had a “proximity” setting that I thought was great for bass guitar. There’s a logarithm for the curve and shape of low frequencies based on proximity that you can’t replicate with a typical eq (and it’s often the thing that “fixes” low end) that this plug in did quite well. Otherwise I use the gates on the computer (because they can look ahead) and that’s about it.

TERJE
Have you thought of constructing your own gear? If so, what?

JAMES
Yes! We make monitors now, which I use in the studio. We’re working on a pre-amp and a DJ mixer (that’s almost done… totally amazing sounding… really).

TERJE
What are your 5 most favorite synths?

JAMES
Shit.

EMS synthi A or VCS3

Yamaha CS60 (or 50, or 80)

Moog Taurus ll

Korg Poly Ensemble

TERJE
Synth/effects/thing that´s highest on your wantlist?

JAMES
Some big Oberheim.

TERJE
Who should I interview next?

JAMES
Hmm… Morgan Geist?

TERJE
Okley dokley. Thanks!

RETROMANIA – An article on the end of the fascination with retro music….

Posted on January 4, 2012 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

In the bookending chapters of Retromania (Simon Reynolds’ 450-page exploration into the culture of retro, released earlier this year), concerns are raised over the current musical landscape and its fixation on the past. Reynolds opines that pop has become inspirationally bankrupt in this last decade, turning out an endless procession of revivals and rehashes instead of surging forth into the future. He compares the big stylistic revolutions of sixties psychedelia, seventies punk, eighties hip-hop and nineties rave with today’s smaller incremental shifts, and wonders when (if ever) we might get to see such grand evolutionary steps taking place again.

Cynicism, realism or just plain codgery – where you stand on the retromania debate boils down to your own experiences and tastes, of course. All the same, Reynolds’ rhetoric has drawn as much controversy as it has praise. The aim of this Wreath Lecture isn’t to add fuel to the ongoing dissection of Retromania’s argument. My own feeling is that Reynolds puts paid to his critics’ misgivings within the book itself, if not in further interviews. As a history of pop it’s a fascinating read whichever side of the fence you sit and sceptics are more than encouraged to give it a try. The book does make one unassailable point, however: the first decade of the 21st century was largely characterised by revivalist scenes based on the repackaging of old ideas. But more recent developments this year suggest that Retromania could well represent a closing chapter in pop’s history. I’m of the opinion that 2011 will be remembered as a pivotal year in which our love affair with retro began to fade and a resurging interest in the new and now was rekindled.

Taking a look through the 2011 end of year lists, there’s an overall sense of purging, of rejuvenation and indeed progress that hasn’t been present for quite some time. And while we’re not quite speeding away from it just yet, the decade that brought us electroclash, nu-rave, emo, freak-folk and the ‘New Rock Revolution’ (certainly the biggest music journo oxymoron in history) doesn’t feel so recent anymore. Nobody asked for a nineties guitar-pop revival this year, but the call was answered all the same and met with all-round indifference. Oh hey, Viva Brother – how’s conquering the world going for you?

With a whole generation of young musicians now having been raised around club and dance music, electronica is no longer seen as a futuristic frontier. Today’s listeners are as familiar with synthesisers and beats as they are guitars, and blending these is now fairly standard practice rather than a novelty. The rock acts thriving best today are comfortable with this fact, harnessing electronic sounds and ideas when it suits them rather than trying to force a loveless marriage. This means that artists like St. Vincent or Battles can hone their unique styles through mixed media, incorporating drums that sound like samples and guitars that sound like synths (and vice versa, of course). Rock isn’t dead at all – it’s simply adapting to new ears.

The retro-fetishism of ‘80s synth pop and electro-house in the 2000s helped in some way to make electronic sounds more saleable to distrusting rock audiences. We’re past that point now. Rockism is an old man’s sport, the internet age having pretty much dissolved the tribal boundaries that once existed between rock, pop, dance, hip-hop, commercial and underground music. With access to an iPod and an internet connection, there’s no reason you can’t listen to any style of music. We’ve never felt more at ease with eclecticism. It was with open-arms that Glastonbury welcomed Beyoncé on opening her headline set, not with the question ‘Are you ready to rock?’, but rather ‘Are you ready to be entertained?’ Skrillex’s brand of buzzsaw mosh-dance has seen US hardcore and metal fans donning day-glo for the first time and raving it up to purely synthetic music in packed-out stadiums. The UK has always boasted a much longer-standing history of rock-friendly electronic bands, like the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers. But in 2011 it’s no longer necessary for DJs and dance acts to meet such prescribed criteria in order to make that crossover. Today’s audiences are no longer defined by their allegiance to the gig or the club venue – one typically leading to the other on a night out.

Today’s young vanguard are equally at ease with the internet as a musical tool and medium. The playlist at house parties can now be dictated by live streams beamed directly from multiple guests’ smartphones, spelling an end to stereo-squabbles and increased exposure to others’ tastes and influences. The multi-disciplined teen-hydra Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All transcend mere rap collectivism with their internet-savvy and idiosyncratic approach to music and media. A case in point would be the video for Tyler’s ‘Yonkers’, which managed to do in three minutes what the whole of his album tried to in 74, and whose viral distribution via internet channels was largely responsible for the masses of hype surrounding Odd Future at the start of this year. The likes of Skrillex or even Odd Future may not be to everyone’s tastes, but at least their detractors can’t complain about them being derivative. This new eclecticism isn’t the same bland melting pot of past influences, plucked, stewed and regurgitated as per Retromania. It’s a vivid technicolour tapestry of ideas. You can’t even call it genre-hopping any more, it just is. And so long as it keeps moving in the right direction, this will continue to be a positive force for future music.

The extant UK dance scene has been central to spurring on new music. It’s been fascinating to watch the exponential rise and mutation of dubstep over the last decade. From its beginnings as a humble offshoot of 2-step and grime, dubstep evolved into the huge, ubiquitous force we know today. Who would have thought that the dark, ebbing frequencies first heard at specialist nights like FWD>> would eventually have found their place at the top of the charts? Reynolds upholds dubstep as an exception to the rule in Retromania, but dismisses efforts from Magnetic Man and Tinchy Stryder as “watered-down crossovers into chart-pop terrain”. In the short time since this passage was written however, we’ve witnessed the emergence of dubstep across the pop board. The best example of this can be found on Katy B’s On A Mission – the definition of a UK bass-pop gem and one of the first successful crossover records of its kind. She is at once well respected by the underground and adored by pop’s mainstream. And although elements of trance, rave and breakbeat feature prominently, Katy’s mission in question is clearly to accelerate away from the past – influences absorbed, but never flouted. Unlike the preceding Magnetic Man album on which she featured, it doesn’t feel like a token attempt to cut & shut dubstep with pop music. It’s a celebration of UK bass from the bottom-up, harnessing that heavy modern sound to fit her own unique songwriting talents.

Far from slowing down, dubstep and its bass music offshoots are still evolving and reinventing themselves at an alarming rate. Labels like Night Slugs and Hessle Audio are continuing to release records that defy categorisation, the loose, sub-bass heavy template a seemingly bottomless well of inspiration. Bass music now incorporates a spectrum ranging from Shackleton’s atmospheric sound-sculptures to the punchy, synth-laden maximalism of Rustie and Damu.

But those looking to explore even wilder frontiers need only look to the US, and the rise of footwork – a great-grandchild of the original Chicago house scene which, like dubstep, started life as a subterranean version of a more popular style. It may have been in incubation since at least the late nineties, but to most ears the genre’s herky-jerk rhythms, lo-tech production and competitive dancing culture are at odds with pretty much anything we’ve come to see in dance music so far. The recent attention brought on by a series of albums and the influential Bangs & Works compilations on the British Planet Mu label (as well as by dubstep-footwork hybrid man Addison Groove) has seen high praise from commentators such as Reynolds, who speaks in interviews about its “jaw-drop” effect.

Listening – and dancing – to footwork feels like discovering a remote Galápagoan species that has evolved in a vacuum since the early days of house and techno, away from the influence of other dance trends. Named after the freestyle breaky-legged dance performed in Chicago basements and gym-spaces, footwork eschews kickdrums (one of the key percussive elements in house/techno derived dance music), opting for a flurry of erratic snares, toms and rapidfire samples, underpinned by booming sub-bass. Scene stalwarts including DJs Spinn and Rashad are now making waves in Europe – at high volume, away from its comparative strangeness on headphones, footwork has been delighting rather than baffling clubbers. Relative newcomers such as Young Smoke, T-Why and Jlin are pushing the style into even stranger territories. Footwork has proven to be unlike anything we’ve really seen in dance music before. The fact that this once very isolated scene is now infecting outwards bodes well for the future. With a number of albums this year influenced by the genre, by global adopters including Machinedrum, Sully and Africa Hitech, it’s only a matter of time until footwork gains much wider currency.

The world has seen an immeasurable amount of change in only the last twelve months – from the rise of the Tory-led government, the Arab spring, student protests, the Fukushima disaster, the killing of Bin-Laden and Gadaffi, the phone-hacking scandal and subsequent collapse of the News of the World, the England riots, the Occupy movement, not to mention the growing concerns over global economic collapse – there’s no denying we’re far from the pre-credit crunch era of housing booms and relative social stability. Art, music and youth culture are directly affected. There is no longer the same space for the privileged, vintage-toting, apolitical, hipster figure that came to define youth culture in the last decade. Music, as a reflection of public mood, has to galvanise itself in order to fit the changing perspectives of its audience. This doesn’t necessarily mean a return to protest music in the sixties sense of the word (God knows we don’t need any more Frank Turners), but maybe a sense of progress, of movement and action is required in these new, visceral times. Sassy post-modernism comes off as a rather shallow aesthetic when the rent’s overdue and all the shops down the road have had their windows smashed in. No wonder it was PJ Harvey’s topical Let England Shake that made the most impact on critical lists this year.

As long as there’s comfort to be gained and money to be made from nostalgia, retro will always exist. It would be dangerous to abandon the past altogether – pop history is far too rich and plentiful to be ignored outright. But pop is far from eating itself. It would be impossible to cover all the ways in which new music is thriving in 2011. I haven’t even had the chance to touch on the innovations in hip-hop and R&B this year, with Death Grips and Shabazz Palaces representing only a pinch of what’s new and exciting in this arena. It may be some time before we see the kind of seismic movement yearned for by Simon Reynolds in Retromania – but if there is one, it may already be here: we just haven’t realised yet. Rave music wasn’t the product of someone taking a pill and inventing the TB303 one night while everyone else sat about listening to The Smiths. Similarly, post-punk came from a large number of permutations and external influences over a very disparate range of scenes and subcultures, with kids reworking disco and funk licks to suit their own art-school tendencies.

The fact that there are now so many avenues to explore, (or as The Quietus’s Luke Turner puts it in his Wreath Lecture: “the continued shattering of our culture”), means a unified paradigm shift is even less likely to happen in 2011. But with the kind of impact that can come out of the slow development and subsequent explosion of original styles like dubstep and footwork, it’s clear we can still achieve enough momentum to push through those retromanic tendencies and use these new ideas to fuel and define the future.

- Charlie Frame , December 20th, 2011 03:51

http://thequietus.com/articles/07610-futuremania-retro-goes-cold-turkey-in-2011

What Happens To Your Brain Under The Influence Of Music

Posted on November 1, 2011 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

From the perspective of neuroscience, listening to music is one of the most complex things you can do. Many parts of your brain have to work together to comprehend even the simplest tune. So what is music really doing to our minds?

The Mechanics of Music

There isn’t a single music center of the brain, in large part because listening to even very simple music combines a bunch of distinct neurological processes. Let’s first look at the more strictly mechanical aspects of listening to music. As you might be able to guess from its name, the auditory cortex is an important part of processing the sound of music. Part of the temporal lobe, the auditory cortex takes in information from the ear and assesses the pitch and volume of the sound.

Other parts of the brain deal with different aspects of music. Rhythm, for instance, is only connected in a relatively minor way to the auditory cortex. A lot goes into keeping even relatively simple, regular beats – tapping along to something as basic as a 1:2 rhythm brings in the left frontal cortex, left parietal cortex, and right cerebellum, and more unusual rhythms bring in still more areas of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum.

Tonality – the building of musical structure around a central chord – is another crucial part of musical understanding, and it reels in still more parts of the brain. The prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, and many parts of the temporal lobe all go into our ability to recognize the tone of a given piece of music. Taken all together, this means that music already brings in three out of four of the lobes of the human brain – frontal, parietal, and temporal, with only the visual processing occipital lobe unaffected…and there might be a bit more to say about that in a moment.

Music is sometimes given a quick and dirty classification as a “right-brained” activity, meaning that the act of processing music is centered on the right hemisphere of the brain. While this fits nicely with the general dichotomy that the left side of the brain is more engaged in logic and the right in creativity, these are all pretty big oversimplifications. While it is broadly true that music involves more of the right hemisphere than the left, the fact is that the processing of music is so diffuse and decentralized throughout the brain that it’s hard to come up with any single category for all the different areas involved.

The Deeper Impact

Those, however, are just the basic mechanical aspects of listening to music. A good song can trigger a cascade of secondary responses, often involuntarily. An obvious example of this is the propensity to move in time with music – not so much dancing, which is an active, independent process, but simple motions like tapping one’s toe along with the song. This is caused by stimulation of neurons in the motor cortex.

Another intriguing side-effect of listening to music is the activation of the visual cortex, found in the back of the brain in the occipital lobe. Research indicates that some music can provoke a response in this part of the brain, as the engaged listener tries to conjure up appropriate imagery to match the changes and progression in the music.

Part of the reason that music tends to be so meaningful to us is that it’s deeply intertwined with memory. Because the brain is so completely engaged in listening to music, it’s one of the parts of a situation that is remembered most clearly later on. Songs and pieces of music can serve as powerful triggers for memories – hence the cliche about couples and “their song.”

And let’s not forget the language aspect of music. Obviously, not all songs have lyrics, but those that do draw upon the language centers of the brain. The two main parts of the brain associated with language are Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area, the former of which is found in the temporal lobe while the latter is in the frontal lobe. Previous research has tended to indicate that Wernicke’s area is more crucial to language comprehension, while Broca’s area is more tied up in language production, though it now appears that there’s significant overlap. In any event, we can add them to the list of brain regions tied up in music comprehension.

The Subjective Sounds

So just why does music carry so much meaning for us? Because music draws on so many different parts of the brain, it’s hard to say with certainty, but that might actually help give us an answer. Music is extraordinarily complex even before it enters the brain – the pitch of music, for instance, has to be much more stable than frequencies we normally sound, or else it would just devolve into chaotic noise. The same is true of rhythm, tone, and other musical properties – these have to be highly complex to cohere into anything even vaguely musical in the first place.

And it’s not as though there’s any real objective measure of what counts as “musical” and what doesn’t. That shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone who’s ever read a music review, but it’s crucial to remember just how much the brain is involved as an active participant in shaping our interaction with music. Memory is one of the most obvious influences here – you’re more inclined to like a particular piece of music if it carries positive associations, for instance.

It’s also possible that a person’s particular brain chemistry can affect his or her appreciation of music. Considering how many different parts of the brain are activated by listening to music, even one unusual link in that chain can drastically alter the person’s response. There’s also plenty of more everyday factors to consider – how much a person knows about music, whether they themselves play an instrument, whether the music has lyrics, and even whether it’s a recording or a live performance can all dramatically change the particular neural response to the same basic piece of music.

The Hardwired Responses

If there’s one constant in all this, it’s that songs carry a tremendous ability to provoke emotional responses – indeed, it can even seem that that’s our brain’s primary concern when it comes to music. Brain imaging studies have shown that “happy” music stimulates the reward centers of the brain, causing the production of the chemical dopamine. That’s the same chemical produced from eating great food, having sex, and taking drugs.

Even better, the brain hangs onto the ability to understand the emotional impact of music, even if the finer points of comprehension are lost. One study, for instance, focused on a woman with damage to her temporal lobe – and, by extension, her auditory cortex – that made it impossible for her to comprehend different melodies and other basic parts of musical structure. Even so, she was still able to read the basic emotional content of the music, respond appropriately to “happy” and “sad” music in turn.

This process seems to start early, too. Researchers at Brigham Young University found evidence that infants as young as five months are able to discern when a happy song is playing, and by nine months they’ve added comprehension of sad music to their repertoire. Interviewed in 2008, BYU music professor Susan Kenney explained what the babies were responding to:

“The happy songs were all in major keys with fairly short phrases or motives that repeated. The tempo and melodic rhythms were faster than any of the sad selections, and the melodies had a general upward direction. Four of the sad songs were in minor keys and all had a slower beat and long melodic rhythms. For an infant to notice those differences is fascinating.”

And the effects of such music only increases as we get older. (Considering the babies’ responses to the music involved turning their heads slightly, you’d sort of hope it would.) We actually can have physiological reactions to music – happy music with a fast tempo and major key can make us breathe faster, while sad music in a slow tempo and minor key can slow down our pulse and cause blood pressure to rise.

Of course, the roots of those reactions are found back in the brain. It’s just another indication of how powerful and multi-faceted our relationship with music really is, and how it’s able to change our brains in ways both obvious and so subtle that we can barely comprehend what’s happening.

By Alasdair WilkinsSep 7, 2011 9:36 AM

http://io9.com/5837976/what-happens-to-your-brain-under-the-influence-of-music

TODD TERJE – RA Interview….

Posted on October 31, 2011 by bangtheparty77to84 Standard Respond

The Norwegian artist gets serious with RA’s Mattis With.

Todd Terje has kept a high profile in electronic music scene for the last half decade through his extensive touring, edits and constant remix assignments. Original productions, however, have been few and far between. This is about to change. His acclaimed Ragysh EP is the start of a slew of releases from Terje, which will begin in earnest with the first release on his new imprint, Olsen, in October. RA’s Mattis With recently stopped by Terje’s studio to talk about the label, the Norwegian style of DJing and the difficult task of balancing a tight touring schedule with fully indulging in artistic experimentation.

I wanted to start by having you explain the Norwegian style of DJing, and the sort of restless way of playing records.

Yeah, that’s right. In Norway you have to play with the dynamics to keep the crowd interested and dancing. What would happen over the course of five hours in Berlin gets compressed into two, because of the strict alcohol restrictions. So that makes the dynamic of a club night just crazy, but it also makes for more playful sets.

So does this apply to you when you play abroad as well?

I definitely have to adapt when playing abroad. My first booking outside of Norway was in Birmingham about six years ago. I was going to bring the Norwegian eclectic way of DJing to the world, so I packed every record I considered fun regardless if it was mixable or not; samba, punk tracks, old disco. I was really keen on bringing the vibe you’ll have at clubs like Nomaden and Dattera where you’ll drop-mix tune after tune. It went terribly. The crowd couldn’t relate at all. That’s when I learned you have to warm-up the crowd with more streamlined tracks in the beginning to prove to them that you’re able to mix properly. After that fact is established, you can take them on a ride. I had to learn the hard way.

How do you adapt to the different cities you’re playing in?

These days I’ll pack a more diverse selection that can cover any crowd or situation. So what I’ll do is test the crowd with a few more standard house cuts, maybe that is the boring 30 minutes of my sets, but when I do I get a feel for what the crowd is reacting to; the beat, the percussion, the disco breaks or melody. I don’t mean to sell out or anything, but you got to know what you’re working with.

The purists may not like this, but a DJ’s job is also to entertain, right?

Yes, exactly! I remember Pål (DJ Strangefruit of Mungolian Jetset) once stated on his radio show that he was perfectly fine with playing Madonna in his sets. “Cause Madonna is cool and DJs are, after all, entertainers.” This was a real eye-opener for me; especially that it came from Strangefruit, one of my heroes, and a DJ that I feel always plays quite artistically. This attitude also helped me adapt to the reality of playing in Norway. When you have an empty floor and 18 girls in the corner thinking what you’re playing sounds shit, why not get them on the floor with a Madonna tune and then play your shit afterwards?

So just be an entertainer then?

Not just. He probably didn’t mean it that literally either. I look at a DJ’s role as somewhat in between an entertainer and an artist. If you are the entertainer for two tracks it will give you so much space to take your set wherever you want. Rather than just playing the most introverted, weird stuff from the get-go.

Let’s talk about the producer side of Todd Terje. How did you get into making music?

I guess it started with a computer. A friend of mine showed me the music-making software called Modtracker. It had four channels and was on a PC 386 that had about a megabyte of RAM. At the time I was listening to Dutch dance music like 2 Unlimited and Scooter. So when I saw this program my first idea was to make something similar. I copied the program went straight home and made my first tune called “Mastermind.”

Haha!

It was really bad. The software had only four channels. So I started with the kick, but because of the lack of channels I had to place the hi-hat on the same channel, hitting in between kick. The next channel had a pad—a sample pad—cause if I played it, it would use up all the processing power. The main element was a one note bassline which I changed the offset on, so it would hit at different times as the beat got moving. Looking back at it was incredibly primitive, but this period also helped me understand sequencing on a basic level. So now when I’m programming I know exactly where to place that rimshot, simply because I’ve been doing it since I was 13.

Some of this experience is definitely proving useful now, as my next tracks will be quite percussive. I want to play more with rhythm structures because that’s what got me into this music. Things like Prodigy. I had no idea their beats were old funk samples. I thought it was programmed, and was amazed at how they managed to pull off such complex beats. So I was sitting at home trying to do the same with my Modtracker program.

Can we expect a breakbeat Prodigy throwback coming up then?

No, not exactly Prodigy. But more rhythms that are not just straight 4/4. There are other exciting things you can do with a kick drum.

I heard there were some interesting circumstances concerning your track “Ragysh.” Could you tell me how the track got started, and how its release came together?

Yes. I started it about two years ago. Around that time I was listening a lot to Luciano’s remix of Argy’s “Love Dose.” The thing I loved about that track was the main element, the groove pattern that runs throughout the song. This was also about the same time as the Fedde Le Grand track “Put Your Hands Up for Detroit” came out, that also had the same type of groove going for it. So I was interested in these simple tracks all about one rhythm. I played the Luciano mix a lot actually. One time in Tokyo I played it in 105bpm and that is when the party started. The track really sounds good in -20%.

But anyway, the idea was to make a track all about one riff. It was really simple to make. If you have a cool beat going, the riff will almost come by itself. So it was just eight bars with groove and the beat—sampled from Tom Tom Club and Salsoul Orchestra—to begin with. It lay around for about two years until I looked at it again. So I just added the trance-y chords without much intent one rainy night when I probably should have been working on something else.

I don’t really get a feel when I make tracks like that. They’re fun, but it’s not the most intricate thing to make, you know. But I finished it regardless and tried it out. It worked really well. Gerd (Janson, owner of Running Back Records) had heard it in a DJ set and asked me for it. Gerd always asks if I have material lying around, even if it’s not finished. So he got his hands on “Ragysh” and showed great interest in releasing it. I wasn’t planning on releasing it at all, but he was so persuasive that I just had to put it out. So without Gerd, the track might not have been out there at all.

Sometimes I get the sense that there are two Terjes fighting for your attention, there is your DJ persona and then a more artistic side of you that is the producer Terje. How do you balance the two?

You’re right. There is definitely a battle going on. I would really like to spend more time further developing Producer Terje. I feel there is so much I’d like to do that I haven’t had the time to do yet. Especially ideas with rhythm that haven’t been fully explored. Of course you have broken beat and dubstep playing with rhythms, but I’m not interested in them. That’s what I want to do next.

It’s a bit difficult, though. I’ll be in the studio making some inspired tracks that are weird and interesting, but back on tour I always have to let my shoulders down and play for the lowest common denominator to get the floor working. So when I make tracks that are weird and fun, and that I have a real good feeling for from an artistic point of view, they might not know what works on a dance floor. Sometimes I wish I had a dream disco somewhere where I could play all of this stuff, but I know when I get on the road it’s always the more smacking disco stuff that has the biggest impact.

Do you think one sometimes stands in the way of the other?

It might sound like it, but on the other hand DJ Terje also really helps the producer with the final stages of a track. The simpler the track, the better it works. Right now I’m working on a very detailed track, working on it on a micro level. If I would allow more of DJ Terje in the process I would get it done really fast. There are infinite ways you can go with arrangements, but it helps to think in the context of the dance floor. For now, though, I’m consciously trying to give the musician and producer space to experiment.

Do ever think about separating the two?

Maybe, but for my album I want to do a mix of both. I would like to show there’s more to Todd Terje than just beat-mixing and making the break come in and the beat drop where it should. It’s not rocket science. For now, I feel it’s important to produce under one name because people might listen to the music open-mindedly. I might be able to open doors to new sounds for people that never have listened to, say, Weather Report. Not that I make fusion jazz. But if there are Weather Report or weird Norwegian jazz influences in my music and the people that loved “Eurodans” like it, they might go and check out those records. If that is the result, I feel I’ve accomplished quite a lot.

Then you go into another of the DJ roles, the educator.

Definitely. I’m always trying to showcase the music that excites me—and my influences—without wearing them on my sleeve. I’ve been inspired by Wally Badarou and his magical sound for many years. His sound is something that really would work on a dance floor. So every once in a while I try to steal a little bit of his feel and sneak it into my tracks. Another example is Jam & Spoon’s “Stella,” from which I used some of the chords in my own music. What I’m doing is nodding my head in different directions to see if the listener picks up. I guess you can call that a sort of education, even though “Stella” was a big hit record. It is just my way of saying it’s time to bring back those records, or maybe even listen to them for the first time.

While we’re on the subject of jazz, you’ve told me that of all your tracks, you’ve taken a particular fancy to the remix of Bjørn Torske.

Yeah, that track shows the direction I’d like to take my sound in the future.

What is it about that that you would like to show us of your own sound?

Well it’s the leftfield drums, the feel that is sort of jazzy and spacy at the same time. Kind of like Jon Eberson’s first record with Moose Loose, without it being too jazz-funk sounding.

Is important to you that there is an element of humour in your music?

It’s important to have some sounds and grooves that crave your attention, pull you out and wake you up a little. I’m not sure if it works that way on a dance floor but it does in my head. Sometimes that is not the same thing. Again, I think you could be so much more experimental with rhythms in dance music without it killing the vibe or continuity. Every time I play the Bjørn Torske remix it stands out, but it still fits between big minimal hits.

What’s coming up for you?

I’m starting a record label with Joakim Haugland and Smalltown Supersound called Olsen. It will be my record label (music, artwork and pressing), but powered by Smalltown Supersound. The first release will be my next EP called It’s The Arps. The name of the EP comes from one of my favourite Monty Python sketches, but no one seems to get the reference! Not even the Brits. Every sound on the EP comes from the ARP 2600 synth.

I have plans to do this with other instruments too. I’ve been buying so much equipment lately that I feel each instrument deserves its own release. You can make almost whatever sound you feel like on the ARP, but even this has its limitations, especially when it comes to fast high-pitched sounds. So if I plan to do it with my other synths, it might not sound as good. Maybe it will just be limitations when it comes to the instrumentation, like just a drum set and a 303.

Do these limitations help you to be creative?

Yeah, because you have your starting point just by figuring out how to create the kick. There are so many sample packs and sounds these days; most people are carrying around a memory pen with 300 kick drums. So that makes it hard to figure out where to even begin. With this EP it was all about working around the limitations of the ARP. In the process, I came across some truly unique sounds within the synth that I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Words / Mattis With Published / Monday, 26 September 2011

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Simon Le Bon – The Face Interview

INTERVIEW

Jerome Derradji is proud to present his latest full length, 122 BPM – The Birth of House Music to be released in June on Still Music. .

Understanding Reverb

The amplified champions

What are rewards?

Birth of the star

Quality is overrated

Categorical morphology

Stefan Goldmann on why Web 2.0 can work for you but won’t for most, where all the money went and how working against the market consensus can be a winning strategy.

- Charlie Frame , December 20th, 2011 03:51

The Mechanics of Music

The Deeper Impact

The Subjective Sounds

The Hardwired Responses

By Alasdair WilkinsSep 7, 2011 9:36 AM

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Le Grind: The Ongoing Enigma Of Prince
Wyndham Wallace , October 4th, 2012 00:04

Sweeping From The Factory Floor: The Label’s Final Years
Stuart Huggett , December 3rd, 2012 07:29