PUBLIC SERVICE
BROADCASTING
spacesuited and booted
5 0 N E W A R T I S T S FO R 2 0 1 5 . M o o g S u b 3 7 r e v i e w.
Roedel i us . Adamsk i . Fel i x Kub i n . Wolfgang Flür .
S c h n e i d e r K ac i R e k . C e r r o n e . P O L LY S C AT T E R G O O D .
Editor: Push
Deputy Editor: Mark Roland
Art Editor: Mark Hall
Sub Editor: Neil Mason
Artworker: Jordan Bezants
Contributors: Andrew Holmes, Bethan Cole, Carl Griffin, Chi Ming Lai,
Danny Turner, David Stubbs, Fat Roland, Finlay Milligan, George Bass,
Grace Lake, Harriet Bliss, Heidegger Smith, Jack Dangers, Jason Bradbury,
Johnny Mobius, Kieran Wyatt, Luke Sanger, Mark Baker, Mat Smith,
Miles Picard, Neil Kulkarni, Ngaire Ruth, Patrick Nicholson, Paul Browne,
Paul Thompson, Sam Smith, Simon Price, Steve Appleton, Tom Violence,
Velimir Ilic, Vik Shirley, Wyndham Wallace
Sales and Marketing: Yvette Chivers
Published by PAM Communications Limited
© Electronic Sound 2015. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any way
without the prior written consent of the publisher. We may occasionally use material we
believe has been placed in the public domain. Sometimes it is not possible to identify and
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be happy to make the correct acknowledgement. All information is believed to be correct
at the time of publication and we cannot accept responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies
there may be in that information.
HELLO
welcome to
Electronic
Sound 09
There’s a strong association between electronic music and
space. In 1964, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop sliced up tape
and manipulated sound with filters and effects to create the
sort of spooky atmospheres that perfectly matched the outof-this-world visuals of ‘Dr Who’. As the 1960s progressed, so
did synthesiser technology, the machines made by the likes of
Moog enabling faster sound processing. And while this sonic
revolution was underway, America and Russia were plunging
untold amounts of cash into one goal – to conquer space.
Another major feature in this issue is something we’ve called
50 For 15, for which we have selected half a ton of bands and
artists we think will be shaping the coming year’s electronic
soundscape. From the outré avant garde to the mainstream and
all points between, it’s clear that electronic music is in rude
health. As Noddy Holder said in Slade’s evergreen Christmas
hit ‘Merry Xmas Everyone’, a song you will have no doubt heard
about 487 times as 2014 burned out, “Look to the future now,
it’s only just begun”. In the world of film, meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A
Space Odyssey’, was released in 1968. While the soundtrack
was not electronic, it did feature the work of modernist
composer Ligeti and HAL singing ‘Daisy Bell’ was inspired by
a performance Arthur C Clarke witnessed of an IBM speech
synthesiser six years earlier. A couple of years on, Kubrick
commissioned Walter Carlos to create synthesiser arrangements
for ‘A Clockwork Orange’, the soundtrack of which remains an
electronic music touchstone. The cover of Walter Carlos’ 1973
album, ‘Switched On Bach’ has Bach floating through space,
attached to a Moog modular by a lifeline (or a patch cord).
Heady times for the futurist.
As ever, there’s lots more inside. We’ve also interviewed
Roedelius (catching him on the eve of his 80th birthday),
Adamski, Felix Kubin, Stefan Schneider & Sven Kacirek, Cerrone
and Polly Scattergood. We have some new regular features
too, like Synthesiser Dave, who shows us around the innards
of a Roland SH-101 he is fixing, and 60 Seconds, which is an
exclusive one-minute video portrait. Our first subject is none
other than Wolfgang Flür, the one-time Kraftwerker.
It’s been fun to see this issue of Electronic Sound come
together, echoing some of these coincidences of technology
and sound. The release of Public Service Broadcasting’s second
album, ‘The Race For Space’, along with the Moog’s new Sub 37
synthesiser puts a 21st century glaze onto the space/Kubrick/
Moog intersection. The day after PSB told us about their
thinking behind the decision to base an album around the key
moments in what is arguably mankind’s greatest achievement,
Moog sent us a review model of their new Sub 37 synth.
The Moog is a beautiful thing indeed, destined to become a
classic, and we took it to suitably ‘Clockwork Orange’ location
to photograph it. As for the PSB album, its retro-futurism
seems entirely in step with the founding principles of popular
electronic music as laid down by Kraftwerk: that the past still
sounds like the future when electronic music is at its best.
Forward into 2015, then. There’s big news in the pipeline for
Electronic Sound, which we be sharing soon, and we’re looking
forward to having you along with us as we pile headlong into
an exciting future.
Electronically yours,
Push & Mark
FE ATUR E S
CONTENTS
PUBLIC
SERVICE
BROADCASTING
50 FOR 15
In which we hand-pick 50
electronic artists you should be
keeping an ear open for this year.
From industrial techno to sublime
electropop, we’ve got all of our
musical bases covered
With their mind-blowingly excellent
new album tackling the rather large
subject of space (the final frontier),
PSB’s Mr J Willgoose Esq discusses
life, the universe and everything
ROEDELIUS
ADAMSKI
The extraordinary life of krautrock
pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius
includes tales of Nazis, nudists,
psychotherapy, the Stasi, home
births and a leaky nuclear power
station. It’s quite a story
Adamski unleashes his first album
in 15 years. What’s more, he’s gone
waltz. Or “future waltz’, as he’s
calling it. Yes, it sounds bonkers,
but just you wait until you hear it
SCHNEIDER
KACIREK
FELIX KUBIN
African rhythms meet dark synths
as Stefan Schneider and Sven
Kacirek unroll one serious sense
of adventure and turn the field
recordings they made in Kenya in
an electronic soundscape
Everyone loves the cassette tape,
right? Felix Kubin championed
Germany’s tape underground in the
1980s. For such a little thing, the
cassette held a great deal of power
TECH
MOOG
SUB 37
SYNTHESISER
DAVE
Moog’s long-announced but yetto-ship paraphonic synthsesiser is
destined to become a classic. We
liked it so much we ordered one
When you need a synthesiser
wizard to fix your poorly machine,
Synthesiser Dave is your man.
We suspect he actually is a wizard
ARTURIA/BITWIG
PRODUCER PACK
HANS ZIMMER
PERCUSSION
LONDON SOLOS
This French/German collaboration
is a hardware/software all-in-one
solution and a massive bargain to
boot
Hans Zimmer’s sample pack of
exotic percussion, recorded equally
exotically and delivered by those
lovely Spitfire Audio folk
ALBUM R EV I EWS
MODEL 500, BRIAN ENO,
THE ORB, ROBERT HOOD,
SHERWOOD & PINCH, BEAT
SPACEK, NINA KRAVITZ,
ARCHIVE, MOON WIRING CLUB,
JOHN TEJADA... and more!
WHAT’S
INSIDE
UP THE FRONT
60 SECONDS
TIME MACHINE
We’re launching our new series
of exclusive minute-long video
portraits with former Kraftwerker
WOLFGANG FLÜR, complete with
his famous World War One helmet
Let us take you back to 1937, when
JOHN CAGE delivered a lecture
which rather spookily predicted the
future sounds that would come via
electronic instruments. Yup
CIRCUIT BOARD
In which we explore some of
the curious and often mindboggling connections that hold the
electronic music world together.
AT
NG PHIL!
G, SOMETHI ILED OR SOME OF TH
We really are just one big SIN
happy
G BO
ABOUT BEIN U GO ON ABOUT!
family
YO
MAD SHIT
LANDMARKS
Have we been eating cheese
before bedtime again? The story of
CERRONE’s 1978 hit ‘Supernature’
really does involve Kraftwerk, Paul
McCartney, Lene Lovich and an
unstoppable ARP Odyssey
JACK DANGERS
Unearthing the incredible tale of
PAUL PIGNON and the SYNTHI
100. Pay attention class because
Mr Dangers will be asking
questions later
WHAT’S
GOING ON
We invite the very excellent
POLLY SCATTERGOOD to share
her downtime pleasures with us
FAT ROLAND
Premier league DJs with USB sticks
for goalposts, you know who you
are. Our Fats would like a word
D
’T SING AN
EEH! I CAN
LAND 100M
RO
E
TH
AY
PL
E TIME
AT THE SAM
SYNTH TOWN
A parallel world in which addled
brains are allowed to run free. This
time, Mr Numan and Mr Oakey
meet Mr Smith (from popular beat
combo The Fall)
ANATOMY OF A
RECORD SLEEVE
We decipher the hidden messages
in YELLO’s “Look at the stars, see
how they shine for you…” Oh hang
on, wrong ‘Yellow’
Two days of electronic & live
performances, parties, installations,
masterclasses, screenings and
happenings across London
Tobacco Dock, London E1
Individual or weekend
tickets available from:
Second Edition
Friday 6th
10.00am–7.00pm
—
Conversation
+ More to be
announced
Friday 6th
7.00pm–10.30pm
—
Concert
Tickettannoy.com | Gigsandtours.com
Residentadvisor.net | LEAFLondon.net
0844 811 0061
Nile Rodgers: Unmoderated/Uncensored/Unlimited
The Rise and Rise of Black Butter Records
The Rob da Bank Interview: DJ Harvey
ELAM (East London Arts and Music) Explained
Charlie + Will Kennard from Chase & Status
B.Traits: State of Mind
Meet Team RAM Records
Point Blank Music College: Performance Masterclasses
The Ambient Revival
Modeselektor (live)
Kate Simko & London Electronic Orchestra
+ More to be announced
Saturday 7th
12.00pm–10.30pm
—
Club
In alphabetical order
Anja Schneider | Chris Liebing
DJ Harvey | Luciano
Modeselektor (DJ) | Pan–Pot
Rob da Bank | Sasha | Tale of Us
BEC | Clint Stewart | Enzo Tedeschi | Stephan Hinz (live)
facebook.com/LEAFLondon
@LEAFelectronic
@LEAFLondon
#LEAF2015
60 SECONDS
00:00:60
sixtySECONDS
Take a minute to enjoy this video portrait of the man who was one quarter of the classic
Kraftwerk line-up and take in some facts about his life in music
http://youtu.be/2UydtUc7qbQ
NAME: Wolfgang Flür
BORN: 17 July 1947, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany
INSTRUMENT(S): Drums, synthesiser, voice
BANDS: The Beathovens, Fruit, Spirits Of Sound, Kraftwerk,
Yamo
HIGHEST UK CHART POSITION: Number One (‘The Model’
single, released December 1981)
HIGHEST US CHART POSITION: Number Five (‘Autobahn’
album, released November 1974)
QUOTE: “Subsequent musicians have replicated the entire
concept [of Kraftwerk] again and again and profited from the
futuristic image that we built together – Ralf, Karl, Florian,
Wolfgang. Back then, we understood each other well and had
fun together. We displayed the joy and the pride that we felt
playing together by having our names in neon writing in front of
us on stage. The current Kraftwerk line-up wouldn’t want to do
anything like that.“ (Electronic Sound interview transcript, 2014)
THE
FUTURE
OF
MUSIC:
CREDO
I
Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we
fascinating. The sound of a truck at 50 m.p.h. Static bet
t h TIME
e s eMACHINE
sounds, to use them, not as sound effects, but as
“sound effects” recorded on film. With a film phonograph
of any one of these sounds and to give to it rhythms wi
four film phonographs, we can compose and perform a qua
TO
MAKE
MUSICIf
this
word,
music,
is
sacred
century
instruments,
we
can
s u b s t i t u t e EN a
m
H
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C
A
W I L L C O N T I N U E A N D I N C R E A S E U N T I L W E R EBA C H G
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IN S
,
H
T
M o s t i n v e n t o r s o f e l e c t r i c a l m u s i c a l i n s t r u m eRnEtNsT h a v e a
WE
i n s t r u m e n t s , j u s t a s e a r l y a u t o m o b i l e d e s i g n e r sTHcEo
i eE d t h e
Y pAR
OW
H
t h i s d e s i r e t o i m i t a t e t h e p a s t r a t h e r t h a n c o n s tN
rO
uW
ct the fut
new possibilities, Thereministes did their utmost to mak
it a sickeningly sweet vibrato, and performing upon it, w
instrument is capable of a wide variety of sound qualities,
as censors, giving the public those sounds they think the pu
The special property of electrical instruments will be
o f t o n e s (a s o p p o s e d t o n o i s e s) a n d t o m a k e t h e s e t o n
WHICH
WILL
MAKE
AVA I L A B L E
FOR
MUSICAL
PURPO
PHOTOELECTRIC,
FILM,
AND
MECHANICAL
MEDIUM
I t i s n o w p o s s i b l e f o r c o m p o s e r s t o m a k e m u s i c d i r e c t l y, w i t h o u t
often enough on a sound track is audible. 280 circles per secon
of Beethoven repeated 50 times per second on a sound track wi
W I L L BE E X P L OR E D. W H E R E A S , I N T H E PA ST, T H E P OI
AND CONSONANCE, IT WILL BE, IN THE IMMEDIATE FUT
T H E P R E S E N T M E T HOD S OF W R I T I N G M U S IC , P R I N C I PA L LY T HO S E
STEPS IN THE FIELD OF SOUND, WILL BE INADEQUATE FOR THE CO
The
composer
(o r g a n i z e r
of
sound)
will
not
only
be
t h e Ine1937,
n tLaurel
i r eand Hardy
f i ereleased
l d ‘Way
o fOut West’,
tim
e
.
T
h
e
“
f
r
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m
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”
o
r
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r
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c
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i
o
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of
Cage’s gaze was set futureward, but his prognostications
Irmin
feasible.
p r o b Schmidt
a b l yof Canbwas
e born,t the
h ecoronation
b a ofs George
i c VIutook
n i t were
i nbasedtonhwhat
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e a stechnically
urem
e n t“It is o f
ti
now possible for composers to make music directly, without
place, the first jet engine was tested in England, Daffy Duck
N E W made
MhisEcartoon
T H Odebut,
D Sthe Hindenburg
W I L Ldisaster
BE
D I S Cthe
O assistance
VERE
D, BEARING A DEFIN
of intermediary performers,” he declared. He
acted as a
S c h o foretaste
e n b eforrgreater
g ’ s conflagrations
m e t hto ocome,
d andaa smemorial
s i g n s foresaw
t opercussion
e a as
c playing
h
m
a t erole
r iin afuture
l , music,
in
a
a starring
perhaps inspired by pieces such as Edgard Varèse’s ‘Ionisation’.
concert to George Gershwin was held at the Hollywood Bowl,
to
titshsound
e sogimmaculate
r o u p that
. it could
( H be
a released
r m o on
n CD
y
a s s“Percussion
i g n emusic
d is ta contemporary
o
e a ctransition
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aterial,
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respe
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o r tofathenfuture...
t mthea t e r i a
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with barely
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means will exist for group improvisations of unwritten but
impecunious music and art theorist called John Cage
m o d eand
r
n
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t
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i
s
o
n
the grou
culturally important music. This has already taken place in
delivered a lecture in Seattle titled ‘The Future Of Music:
A N D Credo’.
PRESENT
M EandT inHhotO jazz.”
D SFinally, he envisaged the rise O F
Oriental cultures
of centres dedicated to the performance of electronic music,
P e r c With
u s its
s idual,
o nconcurrentm
usic
is
a in which
c o“oscillators,
n t e mgenerators,
p o r a means
r y for amplifying
t r asmall
nsition
text of upper and lower case, this
s o u n was
d a highly
m modernist
u s i c work, the
o fstuff of twhich
h ethe general
f u t u sounds,
r e . film phonographs,
A n y etc”s would
oun
be d
available itosmodern-a c c e
public of his day had barely thought to dream. “I BELIEVE THAT minded composers.
e x p l oTHEr USE
e sOF NOISE
t hTOeMAKE MUSIC
a c aWILL
d eCONTINUE
m i c aAND
lly
forbidden
“nonmusical”
M e t hINCREASE
o d s UNTIL
o f WE
w REACH
r i t Ai MUSIC
n g PRODUCED
percu
s
s
i
o
n
m
u
s
i
c
h
a
v
e
a
s thetoutbreak
h e i rof World
goal t
All of this was highly prescient; before
THROUGH
War Two, Cage would be making music using gramophone
THE AID OF ELECTRICAL INSTRUMENTS,” declared Cage.
m e t hSuch
o dinstruments
s a r eexisted
c rafter
y sa tfashion,
a l l he
i zconceded,
e d ibut
n t o players,
o n e making
o r him
se
veral widely accept
arguably the first “turntablist”. He had
of un
wwere
r i used
t t ein too
n sentimental
b u t and
c unostalgic
l t u rways
a l– lthey i m
o r t on
a the
n tidea m
u s everyday
i c . objects
T h iass a means
has a
they
alsopalighted
of using
of producing musical sounds, a commonplace concept today
theremin, for instance. “Thereministes did their utmost to
A N D make the
A instrument
NY
OTHER
M E T H O Dbut
S in the 1930s
W Hquite
I Cradical
H in its A
RE
FREE
proposal that the walls
sound like some old instrument, giving
T H E it a sickeningly
P R I N sweet
C I Pvibrato,
L E and performing
OF
F Oit,Rwith
M
W
ILL
BE
O collapsed.
U R This
O was
N Lessentially
Y
CONS
between
art and life
should be
upon
difficulty, masterpieces from the past,” he said.
the principle of his most famous piece, ‘4’33”’. The aim is not
GREAT
FORM
OF
THE
F U T U RtoEpresentWsilence,
I L Lbut rather
N OtheTabsence
BE
AS
IT
W
of performed music
ANOTHER
THE
SONATA,
I
T
W
I
L
L
B
E
R
E
L
A
T
E
D
in which the inevitable sounds of the environment become the
Before
this
happens,
c e n t e musical
r s content.
of
experimental
music
materials,
oscillators,
generators,
means
for
am
available
for
use.
Composers
at
work
using
twent
of
results.
Organization
of
sound
for
musical
THROUGH
THE
PRINCIPLE
OF
ORGANIZATION
JOHN CAGE
PREDICTS
THE FUTURE OF
MUSIC, 1937
BELIEVE
THAT
THE
USE
OF
NOISE
ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it
t ween t he st at ion s. R a i n. We wa nt t o captu re a nd cont rol
musical instruments. Every film studio has a library of
it is now possible to control the amplitude and frequency
ithin or beyond the reach of a nyone’s imag ination. Given
a r t et for ex plos ive mot or, w i nd , he a r tbe at , a nd l a nd s l ide.
d
and
reserved
for
eighteenthand
nineteenthmore
meaningful
term:
organization
of
sound.
PRODUCED THROUGH THE AID OF ELECTRICAL INSTRUMENTS
attempted to imitate eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
e carriage. The Novachord and the Solovox are examples of
ture. When Theremin provided an instrument with genuinely
e the instrument sound like some old instrument, giving
w it h d i f f i c u lt y, m a s t e r p i e c e s f r o m t h e p a s t . A lt h o u g h t h e
obtained by the mere turning of a dial, Thereministes act
In many ways, however, Cage’s text is a throwback to one
u b l iwritten
c walmost
i l l a quarter
l i k eof .a century
W e earlier
a r e– Luigi
s hRussolo’s
ielded from new sound experiences.
‘The
Art
Of
Noises’
manifesto,
penned
in
1913,
in
which
to provide complete control of the overtone structure
the Italian Futurist declared that “with the invention of the
e s machine,
a v a noise
i l awas
b lborn”
e and
i nthat inathe
n early
y 20th
f r century
e q u e n c y, a mp l it u d e , a n d du r a t i o n .
far N
more
O S E “we
S findA
Y enjoyment
A NinDthe combination
A L L of theSnoises
OUNDS
THAT
CAN
BE
HEARD.
of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than
M S in rehearing,
F O Rfor example,
T HtheE‘Eroica’ orSthe
Y ‘Pastoral’”.
NTHE
TIC
PRODUCTION
OF
MUSIC
Cage
echoes
these
sentiments.
“Wherever
we
are,
what
we
hear
the assistance of intermediary performers. Any design repeated
is mostly noise,” he said. “When we ignore it, it disturbs us.
n d oWhen
n awe slisten
o utonit,dwe tfind
r ita fascinating.
c k w iThe
l l sound
p r ofoad u c e o n e s o u n d , w h e r e a s a p o r t r a i t
truck
at
50
mph.
Static
between
the
stations.
Rain.”
l l h a v e n o t o n l y a d i f f e r e n t p i t c h b u t a d i f f e r e n t s o u n d q u a l i t y.
N T Furthermore,
O F DRussolo
I S AhadGattempted
REEM
E Nup This words
HAS BEEN BETWEEN DISSONANCE
to back
“intonarumori”
U R with
E , inventions,
B E TtoWwitEtheElarge,
N cumbersome
NOISE
AND SO-CALLED MUSICAL SOUNDS.
or noise intonators he devised. Using handles, these emitted
E WH
ICH
E M Psounds,
LOY
RMO
NY
a series
of primitive
oneH
perA
machine,
which
wereA N D I T S R E F E R E N C E T O P A R T I C U L A R
beyond
the
range
of
conventional
instruments.
Russolo
OM P O S E R W HO W I L L BE FA C E D W I T H T H E E N T I R E F I E L D OF S OU N D.
doubtless optimistically imagined that society would quickly
f afall
c ein d
w i tways,
h buttthe
h development
e
e n tofielectronic
re
field
of
sound
but
also
with
with Futurist
Cage
a instruments
s e c stalled,
o n dso, that fcome
o l the
l olate
w 1930s
i n gwhen e
stablished
film
technique,
will
wrote his manifesto, composers like himself and Varèse were
i m e still
. waiting
N o for the
rh
ythm
w i l that
l would
b e matchb e y o n d
the
composer’s
reach.
technology
to be invented
N I T their
E musical
R E ambitions.
L AT ION T O S C HOE N B E R G’ S T W E LV E - T ON E S Y S T E M
g rThis
o uonly
p occurred
o f moreethan
q ua decade
a l later,
m after
a t the
e rwar,
ials,
its
function
with
respect
with
the
rise
of
pure
electronic
music
studios
in
Cologne,
in
a
group
of
unequal
materials,
its
function
with
inhabited by composers like Stockhausen and Eimert, while the
a l availablity
i n t ofhmagnetic
e g tape
r ogave
u prise
. )to musique
S c hconcrete,
o e n asb e r g ’ s m e t h o d i s a n a l a g o u s t o
u p practised
a n d in France
t h eby thei Pierres
n t eSchaeffer
g r a tand
i oHenry
n – the
of the individual in the group.
means whereby, soundwise, we were on our way to being able
W ofRanything.
I T I NTheGtimeline ahead was
PERCUSSION
MUSIC
to make anything out
clear.
eventually
n
f rByothe
mtime Cage’sk lecture
e y bwas
oa
r d i npublished,
f l u einn c e d
music
to
the
all1958, Varèse was presenting his masterly ‘Poeme Electronique’,
p t aStockhausen
ble
to
h e addedctooam
p o oeuvre
ser
of
percussion
music;
he
and
Ligeti hadt already
growing
of
electronic
masterpieces,
while
the
efforts
of
Joe
Meek,
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ic structure of a composition. As soon as these
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C T I Ointroducing
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THE
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with
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and
working
in
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with
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IN
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AND
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minded artists like Robert Rauschenberg. In 1937, he had
T
O
T
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A
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A
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ed.
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these
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sounds,
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extramusical
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(t he at er,
dance,
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OR
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THINK.
CIRCUIT BOARD
THE
ELECTRONIC SOUND
CIRCUIT BOARD
EXPLORING THE LINKS BETWEEN THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS, NEW ORDER,
FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, MIKE OLDFIELD, DIE KRUPPS AND, ERM,
JOHN CLEESE
1
‘Electronic Sound’ was the title of George
Harrison’s second solo album, which was
released in 1969 on the short-lived Apple
offshoot Zapple
11
Mike Pickering’s formed his first band,
Quando Quango, with Dutch electronic
music programmer Gonnie Rietveld in
1981
2
George Harrison’s ‘Electronic Sound’
was recently reissued with a CD booklet
featuring an essay by Tom Rowlands of
The Chemical Brothers
12
Three of Ariel’s tracks were remixed by
Justin Robertson, who Tom Rowlands
knew from Manchester University
13
Justin Robertson’s ridiculously long list
of production and remix credits includes
New Order’s ‘1963’
21
22
3
23
The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands
played drums in a band called Ariel, who
released several singles on DeConstruction
Records
24
14
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Rolling Stone put ‘Breaking Bad’ stars
Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul on the
cover of the magazine under the title
‘Chemical Brothers’
One of Aaron Paul’s earliest TV
appearances was in a 2001 episode of
‘The X-Files’ called ‘Lord Of The Flies’
One of The Dust Brothers’ few credits
as artists is a 14-minute version of Mark
Snow’s ‘The X-Files Theme’ on the 1998
‘The X-Files’ film soundtrack
The Chemical Brothers started life as The
Dust Brothers, until the US production
team also known as The Dust Brothers
threatened legal action
Mike Pickering, the Hacienda DJ and the
driving force behind M People, was as an
A&R man at DeConstruction Records
James Barton, the founder of the
legendary Liverpool nightclub Cream, was
as an AR man at DeConstruction Records
James Barton was last year named as “the
most important person in the world of
electronic dance music” by Rolling Stone
magazine
15
16
17
18
19
20
Cream celebrated its 10th anniversary in
2002 with a lavish book entitled ‘Cream
X10’ written by clubland impressario Ben
Turner
25
Monty Python’s John Cleese replaced
Vivian Stanshall as the narrator for Mike
Oldfield’s 2003 re-make of ‘Tubular Bells’
26
Mike Oldfield recorded a version of
Mark Snow’s ‘The X-Files Theme’ called
’Tubular X’, which included snippets of
‘Tubular Bells’
27
Ivo Watts-Russell took the name This
Mortal Coil from Monty Python’s classic
‘Dead Parrot’ sketch
28
The only two constant members of This
Mortal Coil were 4AD label boss Ivo
Watts-Russell and producer John Fryer
29
Jane Horrocks, a long-time fan of New
Order, plays the leading role in the band’s
video for ’1963’
The original line-up of Die Krupps
included Ralf Dörper, who left the band to
form Propaganda in 1982
John Fryer’s ridiculously long list of
production credits includes Die Krupps’
‘Tribute To Metallica’ EP
New Order’s most recent album is ‘Live At
Bestival 2012’, which was released on Rob
Da Bank’s Sunday Best record label
Ben Turner is the manager of Rob Da
Bank, the Radio One DJ and the man
behind the Bestival festival
Rob Da Bank’s Sunday Best club nights
started in a pub in Clapham and the
entrance fee was 99p
Jayne Casey’s cohorts in cult Liverpool
band Big In Japan included Bill Drummond
(The KLF) and Holly Johnson (Frankie
Goes To Hollywood)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood and
Propaganda were label-mates at Trevor
Horn and Paul Morley’s seminal ZZT label
Cream’s media director was Jayne Casey,
who was once the singer with cult
Liverpool band Big In Japan
The Dust Brothers’ first single, ‘Song To
The Siren’, includes samples of This Mortal
Coil’s song of the same name, which is
30 Holly Johnson’s Frankie Goes To
itself a Jeff Buckley cover
Hollywood bandmate Brian Nash is an
excellent impressionist, his specialities
Quando Quango were early adopters
being John Cleese and Frankie Howerd
of the Roland TR-808, which Gonnie
Rietveld bought on the advice of Bernard
Sumner from New Order
1
2
3
4
8
5
7
9
6
10
12
19
11
16
18
13
17
15
14
20
22
21
23
25
24
27
28
26
29
30
FAT ROLAND
FAT
ROLAND
BANGS ON
Fat Roland turns his sights on THE BUTTONISTAS of the DJ premier league,
where the machines do the work instead of, er, Bavarian folk music
Words: FAT ROLAND
Illustration: STEVE APPLETON
For years, I railed against the faded yellow of
Coldplay, against Maroon 5’s billowing hogwash,
against the bland pop pap dripping from Justin
Bieber’s pants. I was wrong.
I’ve just realised the true denizens of dullness are
much closer to home. So close to home, in fact,
they’ve been banging on my door for the past 10
years in a perfect four-to-the-floor rhythm.
DJs, you disgust me. Your populist mp3 mush stinks.
Your personal appearances are little more than
farted slogans. Your number-vomiting machines turn
beatmatching into a game of Snap. You look like
you’ve stumbled out of a Topshop changing room
into the middle of Dixons, your dull eyes wowing at
all the buttons and switches. Does this button make
the music play? No, it’s the spin cycle, you goob.
Through the rise of EDM (Electronic Dance Music, or
as I like to think of it, Evening Disco Merrymaking),
DJs have surpassed the wobbling Fatboy Slim
heights of the 1990s. Their footprint is stamped
all over the charts. In 2014, Calvin Harris earned
enough cash to buy every track on iTunes three and
a half times. I worked that out. With a calculator.
Imagine buying all of iTunes on your wage. You
wouldn’t even make a dent in the As.
Back in my day, when all this was just Creamfields,
DJs had pipes and beards. They had dirty fingernails
from rifling through records. They’d play Midfield
General at 923rpm while scratching in Bavarian folk
music and the crowd would stroke their chins and
dance. Weird was good; obscure was a currency.
When I DJed, it was a sweat-on-vinyl endurance
skill. We jabbed and stroked the decks like boxers.
Compare that to the major EDM star who recently
turned up to a massive gig and pressed play on a
mix CD. Didn’t even bother with headphones. Such
was his snivelling arrogance, when challenged about
it, he said it was a necessary part of his job. Imagine
a bike engineer looking at your Harley and saying
they don’t “do” spanners. You’d spit bolts.
More people listen to electronic music now than
ever before. We should all want to celebrate that.
But an elite bunch of premiership button-pressers –
the buttonistas – are putting showmanship ahead of
music. It’s less Paul Oakenfold, more Paul Daniels.
No-one wants that.
I’m off to funnel this anger on Twitter. Yeah,
that’ll change things. Come join me: @FatRoland,
#realDJing. Because I’ve finally realised these
pathetic buttonistas are worse than Coldplay.
LANDMARKS
SIC
A CLAS CK
TRA
ERED
REMEMBBY ITS
RS
CREATO
CERRONE
‘SUPERNATURE’
Revered French electro-disco producer MARC CERRONE on the making of
his stone-cold 1978 smash ‘Supernature’ (or the theme tune to the ‘Kenny
Everett Video Show’ if you’re of a certain vintage)
“
I was the drummer in an afro-rock band
called Kongas, which I left after three
years because I wanted to do my own
music. Before I made ‘Supernature’, I
had a soul, disco, funk kind of sound
and released two LPs under my own
name, ‘Love In C Minor’ and ‘Cerrone’s
Paradise’.
I was a big fan of Kraftwerk and I
was really impressed by their records.
One day, while I was recording my
‘Supernature’ LP at Trident Studios in
London – I remember the name of the
street, it was St Anne’s Court – I received
a synthesiser from ARP.They sent me an
ARP Odyssey and they said, “If you can
use it for the LP and credit it on the
sleeve, it’s a gift for you”. I said, “What
is that?!”. It took me maybe 10 minutes
to find the button to turn it on. To me,
with all the buttons, it looked more like
a telephone than a musical instrument.
So along with my engineer, we finally
worked out how to turn it on, and the
first sound we found was the sequencer,
the dut-dut-dut-dut-dut… And we
couldn’t stop that fucking dut-dut-dutdut-dut, so I changed the chord and then
it went dat-dat-dat-dat-dat. It wouldn’t
stop! After many, many times trying
to find how the machine works, the
dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dat-dat-dat-datdat stuck in my mind and I said to my
engineer, “Wait, wait, wait, we might
have something here. Let’s put that on
tape”. Then I put the bass on and then
the drums, and in one afternoon we’d
made the title track, ‘Supernature’. It
came really fast, like bingo.
Remember that this was 1977 and it was
still very early for that kind of sound.
Using the ARP meant a big change for
me because I went from lush orchestral
music to machine music. There’s not
another track like ‘Supernature’ on any of
my records – although of course I tried to
do another one.
During a break in the recording session, I
was having a drink in the street with my
friend who worked with me in the studio,
and we saw a girl dancing with some of
the Hare Krishnas we used to see a lot
in that part of Soho. This girl was really
strange, but she made us smile. She
came up to us and said, “Why are you
smiling?” and we said, “What do you do?”
and she said, “You can see what I am
doing, what do you do?”. So I said, “I’m a
musician” and invited her to come along
to the studio. Her name was Lene Lovich.
We got along well and I asked her if she
wanted to write the lyrics for a song I
was working on.
Lene wrote a brilliant lyric for
‘Supernature’ and after that we worked
together on many other Cerrone LPs. She
wrote ‘Give Me Love’, ‘Je Suis Music’,
‘Rocket In The Pocket’… We worked
together for 15 years, right up until the
mid-90s. Of course, I was very pleased
for her when she became successful in
her own right. ‘Lucky Number’ was a
great song. At the time, disco and punk
were very different areas. I was really
excited to have the disco and the punk
entwined together on my records.
When I went to deliver the master of
the finished tapes to Atlantic, my record
company in New York, I was really
excited. I played them the rest of the
stuff from the LP first, tracks like ‘Give
Me Love’, which was the the kind of song
I was making on my first two LPs, and
at the end I said, “Now I want to play
to you the single”. Then I played them
‘Supernature’. And everybody said, “What
is it? No Marc, you made your name as
an orchestrator, with strings, with brass,
why have you turned 180 degrees?”. So it
was very difficult to convince Atlantic to
start the LP with that track. Eventually
they came back to me and said, “Maybe
you’re right. We’re going release ‘Give
Me Love’ and ‘Supernature’”. And
‘Supernature’ was a big smash,of course.
I have had many samples from my work
over the years. Probably hundreds. One
of the first sample requests was from
Paul McCartney. He sent me a letter
proposing to join an instrumental of
‘You Are The One’ with his a capella
for ‘Goodnight Tonight’ by Wings. He
also said that if I accepted, we can split
50/50 on all rights. So I accepted and
that formed the basis of my negotiations
when someone asks me to clear a
sample. If I agree, it’s got to be 50/50.
I’ve worked with Daft Punk, Pink, Run
DMC, the Beasties Boys… There are lots
of different artists and that probably
helped the younger generation to get to
know my music.
It is especially nice now, with with
my record company re-releasing my
work again. It gives me the chance the
rediscover many of my old tracks. Is
‘Supernature’ one of my favourites? Oh,
I cannot say that. I cannot say it’s my
favourite. I have a lot of favourites.
”
Cerrone’s ‘The Best Of Cerrone
Productions’ is released
by Because Music
http://youtu.be/QgGK4qBTwpw
SYNTH TOWN
Retro-Numan and Phil Oakey are in the studio
trying to put a synth super-group together...
Ralf says he can’t make it.
He’s having his tea.
And McCluskey’s cried off
cos Ralf’s not coming,
so it’s just you and me, Phil.
Oo eck Gaz.
What are we going to do?
I don’t bloody know.
Fire up that Roland 100M
and I’ll see what I can get
out of this Polymoog.
I ca
n
hear still
you..
.
Aww
Welcome to
SYNTH TOWN
Twinned with Moogville
Population 808 Mayor: Daniel Miller
Please drive carefully
By STEVE APPLETON and BEBE BARRON
SING, SOMETHING PHIL!
ABOUT BEING BOILED OR SOME OF THAT
MAD SHIT YOU GO ON ABOUT!
EEH! I CAN’T SING AND
PLAY THE ROLAND 100M
AT THE SAME TIME
Oh oh, it’s Mark E Smith of uncompromising
British indie music institution The Fall!
TURN THAT
BLOODY BLIMEY
SPACE INVADER OFF!
I am Damo Suzuki! Who makes the Nazis?
He. Is. Not. Appreciated!! Fortune cookie
pre-cog in terrible witch breath-ah! etc.
This is brilliant! We don’t need
Ralf or Andy McCluskey!
Can a synth trio with Mark E Smith on vocals conquer the world?
Will they show Depeche Mode what’s what?
And will Retro-Numan have his revenge on Mecha-Numan?
Find out next time! Probably.
JACK DANGERS
JACK DANGERS’
SCHOOL OF
ELECTRONIC MUSIC
Our resident archivist JACK DANGERS turns his
attention to electronic composer PAUL PIGNON and his
role in the development of the EMS SYNTHI 100
The Yugoslav Official Broadcaster put
out three vinyl albums of electronic
music, two of them doubles. The tracks
were recorded at a studio headed up by
composer Vladan Radovanovic and based
at Radio Belgrade. But even though they
didn’t make a huge amount of electronic
music there, the studio was instrumental
in the development of the Synthi 100,
the legendary mega-synth designed by
British company EMS in 1971.
One of the main guys working at the
Radio Belgrade studio at the time was a
British musician called Paul Pignon, who
had moved to Yugoslavia in 1962. Pignon
was a physicist as well as a musician. He
did a PhD in Physics at Oxford University,
but he abandoned his studies so he
could pursue music full-time. He played
wind instruments, saxophone and bass
clarinet, but he was also very interested
in electronic music and he used to play
those conventional instruments through
various electronic treatments.
Paul Pignon knew Peter Zinovieff,
the founder of EMS, who had recently
brought out the VCS3. So when Vladan
Radovanovic started talking about having
a synth built for the Belgrade studio,
Pignon persuaded him to commission
Zinovieff’s company. Pignon gave
Zinovieff a description of what he needed
and there were frequent interchanges
between Belgrade and London
throughout the design stages before
EMS built the final product, which they
dubbed the Synthi 100.
EMS put the Synthi 100 into standard
production, but they only made a few
dozen of the machines and there aren’t
many of them left these days. They’ve
still got the one in Belgrade and it
still works. The one in Cologne, which
Stockhausen used, is also still there, also
still being used. The BBC chopped theirs
up and threw it in a skip. When the
Fairlight came out and MIDI came along,
a lot of the big institutions started to get
rid of these unreliable and cumbersome
analogue beasts in favour of the new,
sleek digital machines.
I have a Synthi 100 which was passed
down to the engineer who worked at
the music studio at the University of
Adelaide from the early 70s to late 80s.
He bought it from the university and
had it in his house for 10 years before
I bought it from him. But they are very
difficult to find now. Daniel Miller got
his from the University of East Anglia in
the late 1980s for something like £300.
I think there were only four in the UK
– one in London, one in Norfolk, one in
Cardiff and one in Scotland somewhere.
Canada had two and the United States
had two, but the Synthi 100s were mainly
sold to Eastern Bloc countries because
Russia and the other Communist countries
didn’t want to buy American synthesisers. Paul Pignon left Belgrade and moved
to Stockholm in 1985, working at the
Electronic Music Studio there. The EMS
– which has nothing to do with the
EMS synth company in Britain, they just
happen to share the same name – is quite
famous. It’s one of the big studios and
it’s been going since the 1950s. They
have some amazing equipment, including
a bank of custom-made synthesisers
and Buchlas, and Pignon was developing
software and composing there and would
have been involved in a lot of the stuff
that came out of the studio. I saw a
video of him performing quite recently,
doing pretty avant-garde stuff as Sound
Quartet. He’s 75 now, but he’s got all his
hair shaved off and he doesn’t look 75,
that’s for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSCUlSFzzCg
“
My advice to all Numanoids,
and anybody with an interest
in the history of modern music, is
”
BUY THIS BOOK...
Artrocker
NOW AVAILABLE IN EXPANDED EBOOK
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“A fascinating
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‘79-’81 era...”
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Download it now from:
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ANATOMY
ANATOMY OF A
Our resident record shop looter FAT ROLAND grows a luxuriant Swiss
moustacheand scratches away the YELLO for Stella’s 30th anniversary.
The glowing eye:
The eyes are
windows to the
soul. (Electronic
Sound double
glazing now half
price.)
This represents
either the sun which
will one day explode
humankind into
oblivion – or jaffa
cakes. Not quite
sure which.
This represents
a jaffa cake
which will one
day explode
humankind
into oblivion.
This
represents...
hold on,
let me just
finish this
box of jaffa
cakes
The first band
name to mistype
a colour, closely
followed by REM
stupidly spelling
“red” wrong.
Daubed with paint,
crayons, vomit,
Windowlene and
school milk.
A straight line drawn
during a boxercise class.
On a rollercoaster.
During an earthquake
Stare at this squiggle. Say
“trousers” seven times
slowly. You now have
magic trousers.
Ferris Bueller once
drove this record cover
across Chicago.
Kiss here. Also available
in bacon flavour.
Rejected hairs from
Dieter’s moustache.
Tragic, really.
S is for Sonia, who
actually painted this and
was paid off with a
bottle of Blue Nun and a
signed photo of
Phillip Schofield.
Squint. Squint some
more. Squint even more.
Can you see Phil Collins?
Yeah, sorry about that.
This is not an L. It’s a
shelving bracket. This
whole thing is a DIY
disaster.
Th writr of this
would vry much lik this
lttr back, thanks.
T is one of the most
artistic letters. You
can find it in phrases
such as “Damien
Hirst”, “Tracey Emin”
and “that’s not art”.
This is not an L.
It’s an Allen
key. Seriously.
I’m taking this
whole thing
back to Ikea.
This bit
represents,
er, [looks
at Ikea
catalogue]
table lamps.
If you bazooka
a Casio
keyboard at
Hobbycraft
colouring set,
you get this.
When throwing
a scrabble
set, the letter
most likely
to blind your
grandmother.
THE VERY BEST
IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC
AVAILABLE ON ALL
SMARTPHONES & TABLETS
DOWNLOAD THE
ELECTRONICSOUND APP
FOR FREE AT
www.electronicsound.co.uk
WHAT’S GOING ON
WHAT’S
GOING
ON…
POLLY
SCATTERGOOD
takes us on
a tour of the
contents of her
various gadgety
bits and bobs
…Your iPod?
Right now I’m listening to Chet Faker’s ‘Built On Glass’ album,
which came out last year. It’s experimental electronica and
he sings very slowly over the top of these ambient beats. I
thought it had Aphex Twin elements, but he’s very heavily
influenced by Motown, so it’s quite an interesting mix of
different styles. When I’m not writing, I listen to a whole
spectrum of music – from brand new stuff like ‘Built On
Glass’ all the way back to people like David Bowie. Randomly,
I’ve been listening to a lot of Motown stuff recently as well,
which is why I was quite interested to read that Chet Faker
was inspired by that. Motown is like a universal language.
Everyone loves it.
…Your TV?
I’ve got through ‘The Bridge’ and ‘The Killing’ recently and
now I’m on the original Swedish version of ‘Wallander’.
It’s quite slow and very intense. Every episode is an hour
and a half and it’s all subtitled, but it’s really worth the
commitment.
…Your iPad?
My favourite iPad app at the moment is Animoog. It’s a very
versatile synthesiser and I’m also a big fan of Moogs. It’s fun
to use and has got quite a traditional look to it. I also love
DM1, which is a drum machine, and SoundPrism. I tend to
use my iPad when I’m recording because you can make some
incredible noises and sounds, but also because I don’t read
music. With the SoundPrism app, it’s a very creative way of
using colours and shapes to come up with sounds. It’s totally
visual, so it works for musicians like me who have never really
been taught “the rules”. It allows you to come up with things
you wouldn’t be able to do in the same way if you weren’t
able to see the soundwaves on a screen. I can’t read music,
but I can read soundwaves.
…Your DVD player?
My favourite box set is ‘Twin Peaks’. The idea of a third series
is very exciting. I hope it’s going to be incredible. It’s one of
those programmes I’ve gone back to time and time again.
When I first signed to Mute, they sent me the box set and told
me to watch it. I was like, “Wow, it’s kind of crazy”, but it’s
very beautiful, every part of it, and it makes no more sense
the more times you watch it. It just gives you more and more
questions and that’s what I love about it. I love going to the
cinema too. It’s the best thing in the world. My favourite film
of last year was ‘Boyhood’. I really enjoyed watching that.
…Your games console?
This is a bit awkward really because I don’t play games. I
don’t own a games console. I’d love to, but it’s just something
I’ve never spent my money on. I tend to spend it on geeky
music apps for my iPad instead. I did the track ‘New York
New York’ for ‘Crysis 2’, so if I was to play a game it would
probably be that.
…Your bedside table?
I’m reading a book by Tim Burton called ‘The Melancholy
Death Of Oyster Boy’, which is a collection of short stories and
poems. I’m really into poetry. Sylvia Plath’s ‘Ariel’ or one of
my Leonard Cohen books would be my favourites. The most
precious book I own is one I bought from an antique shop
years and years ago. It is a handwritten diary of a soldier from
World War I, but he wrote it as poetry. It is beautiful, but it
just stops midway through. That’s one of my most treasured
books. It’s completely unique.
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
inter
stellaR
over
drive
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING are one of the most
exciting and unusual bands in the electronic music universe.
On the eve of the release of their stellar second album,
‘The Race For Space’, PSB main man J Willgoose Esq explains
his fascination for inspirational samples, cascading melodies,
thumping beats and sending rockets to the moon
Words: MARK ROLAND
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
Public Service Broadcasting are a peculiar phenomenon and a
peculiarly English one at that. Are they a band? Are they an art
project? PSB certainly have Arts Council funding – and that in
itself is an indication of the changing face of the music industry.
It’s heartening to know that the Arts Council will consider
putting lottery dollars into a couple of guys who have set about
creating an electronic music project initially based on sampling
the nation’s film archive of the Second World War. “The Guardian said we’re more a concept than a band,” says
J Willgoose Esq, Public Service Broadcasting’s corduroy-andbow-tie-wearing main man, over a pot of tea for two at what is
possibly the only pub in south London owned by the National
Trust. “I see where they’re coming from, and I don’t think they
meant it in a derogatory way, but people have since thrown it
at us as an accusation. I kind of disagree. People don’t go to
gigs to see concepts, they go to see bands. And if we weren’t a
band back then, we are now.”
Whatever PSB might be, J Willgoose Esq and his partner
Wrigglesworth are popular. The pair have built up a
considerable following over the last couple of years with a mix
of electronics and live instrumentation in the shape of guitars,
drums and even a banjo, packaged up and fronted by a kind
of languid Oxbridge BBC presenter, circa 1950. And all of this
without a record company flexing a marketing muscle.
“That’s not something a lot of people have picked up on,” notes
Willgoose. “I can’t think of any other group playing at the
Roundhouse who’ve got there without a label behind them.
Maybe things are changing. We were lucky to get a bit of
funding from the Arts Council, though, which definitely paid for
some of the more expensive things on our new album.”
‘The Race For Space’, Public Service Broadcasting’s second
album, is replete with expensive things. Thirty five singers
and musicians, including dream pop duo Smoke Fairies, cello
and viola players, and a sizeable choir, have helped to create
what is a musical tribute to the 15 years between the launch of
Sputnik in 1958 and the end of the Apollo programme in 1972,
15 years of the USA and Russia duking it out for supremacy in
space.
It seems like an obvious step for a band whose music so far
has taken its inspiration from the exploits of the Second World
War and the conquest of Everest. Their breakthrough record
was the stirring ‘Spitfire’ single. Ironically pressing into service
a decidedly krautrock sensibility in order to celebrate that most
British of wartime iconography, it’s the song that sends the
crowds crazy when PSB play live, with its nagging guitar hook
and cascading melodies. J Willgoose Esq and Wrigglesworth
perform it with archive footage of the fighter planes twirling
through the sky behind them, giving an impression of flat-out
admiration for the heroes of the 20th century. “It’s not something I’d have said was that big a deal for me
before Public Service Broadcasting,” says Willgoose. “It’s really
weird what making music teaches you about yourself. You get
asked in interviews why you did things a certain way and you
have to think of proper academic reasons. What’s pleased me
most about what we do is that there is a positivity to it, even
in the darker times, and anybody who knows me well would
definitely not say I was a positive person. I’m one of the most
pessimistic, self-doubting, self-deprecating people you could
possibly meet, so I find it really weird that our music comes out
with this feeling of belief in the world to come, a feeling that
everything’s going to be alright.”
Maybe pessimists are just thwarted optimists?
“Maybe I’ve found a way for my optimism to come out. Then
again, my view of the album is shrouded in doubt and
negativity.”
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
The
samples
have
nothing
to do with
the music!
It makes
no sense!
Agh!
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
With ‘The Race For Space’, PSB certainly haven’t plumped for
the easy option. They haven’t re-written ‘Spitfire’ 10 different
ways and released a collection of crowd-pleasing big tunes.
While there is at least one such track on the album, the
purposeful ‘Go’, which is about the Apollo 11 moon landing,
‘The Race For Space’ as a whole demands a little more of
its listeners. It’s perhaps worth noting the response to the
first single from the album, the horn-driven ‘Gagarin’, named
after Yuri Garagrin, the first man in space. It seems that not
everyone wants their favourite tweedy electronic geeks going
all funk on them.
But ‘The Race For Space’ is a more nuanced and carefully
constructed work than ‘Gagarin’ and its brassy swagger
suggests. It takes several of the significant moments and
achievements of the space race era as leaping off points for
creating new pieces of music that combine an earnest sense
of admiration for their subject matter with what is now a
recognisable PSB musical landscape, albeit matured.
The album is almost teasingly slow off the mark. The opening
title track samples JFK’s 1961 speech, in which he sets out his
plans for America’s space programme, with a backing track of
a heavenly choir. ‘Sputnik’ is a seven-minute orbit of mostly
subtle metronomic pulses and bleeps and blurts before building
into a crescendo that is actually never quite resolved. And then
‘Gagarin’ kicks in. It’s quite a jolt to the system. A superfly
funk blast.
“It came out that way,” says Willgoose. “Going back to the first
album, we did fairly well with the critics, but there were some
who couldn’t get their heads around us using samples and
writing new music around them. They said things like [adopts
enraged critic voice], ‘The samples have nothing to do with
the music! It makes no sense! Agh!’. It seemed to really annoy
them. With this record, I wanted to continue the non-literal
relationship between the music and the samples, rather than
go down a sci-fi, 60s-sounding, original Radiophonic Workshop
route, which I think is what some people might have expected.
“Looking at the footage from the time and listening to some
of the quotes, Yuri Gagarin seemed a larger-than-life figure,
even though he was only about five-foot-two. He was the
most famous man in the world. He was on the front of every
newspaper everywhere. He blazed a trail to the stars and he
was the ultimate hero, the symbol of mankind’s triumph over
nature. It struck me that the song should try to capture some
of his exuberance and energy and somehow translate that into
music. I like the way it’s not quite what you’d expect. It’s not
for nothing that the horn blast is so in-your-face. It’s supposed
to be a bit of a statement, it’s saying that we’re not going to
just do the same old same old. There’s more to us than that.”
A few weeks before this interview took place, Virgin Galactic’s
SpaceShipTwo crashed in the Mojave Desert, with the loss of
one pilot. The Apollo programme had its own tragedy in 1967,
with a fire on a test launch for Apollo 1 which killed the three
astronauts on board. Journeying into space is a dangerous
pursuit and Mr Willgoose felt he had to acknowledge that. The
result is a track called ‘Fire In The Cockpit’.
“I had massive doubts about us trying to deal with that,” he
admits. “But every astronaut account I’ve read and some of
the other books I’ve read all seem to suggest that, terrible
as those deaths were, they saved more lives than they cost.
They probably saved the lives of nine to 12 astronauts. So
it was a big event in terms of the implications it had for the
whole Apollo project, including Apollo 8 going to the moon
earlier than it was supposed to have done and the gamble they
took on doing that, and it seemed it would have been more
disrespectful to leave it out.” The elegiac cello lines of ‘Fire In The Cockpit’ emerge from a
white noise of radio signals and dark electronic tones, providing
a suitably sombre backdrop for the sampled voice announcing
the Apollo 1 accident.
“There’s no way you could take a different approach,” says
Willgoose. “But I didn’t want it to be too maudlin, too
melodramatic. I remember when we were recording the cellos,
one of viola players who’d just played on ‘Gagarin’ leaned over
to me and said, ‘Don’t you want to add to some vibrato?’, but I
didn’t want it to be pushed too far. I wanted it to be a straight
and terrifying treatment of what was an awful event.”
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
Concept
always used
me a bit, and
up making a
probab
t albums
d to, terrify
d we ve ended
at least one,
bly two
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
Overall, ‘The Race For Space’ is an understated album. It
bypasses the obvious neon sci-fi approach for a more reflective
take on the subject. Even the mastering of the record itself is
restrained. “It’s not ludicrously loud, not a square wave assaulting you for
45 minutes,” explains Willgoose. “That just tires your ears and
I didn’t want it to be like that. You want there to be a reason
to come back to the album. I was thinking about Radiohead’s
‘Kid A’, in the texture of it as much as anything else, and I was
trying to get somewhere towards that.”
specs, the general air of the Enigma code breaker – certainly
lends itself to dressing up.
Thinking about it, it’s all rather prog rock, isn’t it? In a
knowing, de-contextualised (so without the long hair, Roger
Dean artwork and horrible solos) and 21st century way, that is.
“I’m not a fan of 70s prog,” declares Willgoose. “Not even early
Genesis, which might be widely accepted, I suppose. Definitely
nothing with flutes on. Concept albums always used to terrify
me a bit, and we’ve ended up making at least one, probably
two. It’s a very strange situation to find yourself in.
He remains nervous about the album’s reception, though.
“I’d be quite upset if the people we’ve brought with us to this
point suddenly went, ‘This is terrible, you’re idiots’, and walked
away. Deep down, I don’t believe they will. I think the album
is quite good, even if it is possibly not what people expect. But
that’s deliberate. It’s designed to surprise and challenge in a
couple of areas, it’s not designed to be safe.”
Willgoose and Wrigglesworth haven’t yet revealed what
they’re planning for their live show when they tour ‘The Race
For Space’ (“We’re keeping it under our hats, although it will
be space specific”), but the astronaut suits they wear for the
‘Gagarin’ video cost £2,000, so if they’re not employed in
some way then they’re not getting their money’s worth. And
the campy theatricality at the heart of the Public Service
Broadcasting aesthetic – the pseudonyms, the bow tie and
“In terms of the live show, it’s based on bands that I’ve seen
who have put something different into their sets, rather than
the ones where the gig sounds exactly the same as the album
and the presentation’s boring and it feels like you’re supposed
to be grateful for even being in the same room as them. It’s
not a reason to go and spend £30. A lot of it comes from a
formative experience watching The Flaming Lips. That’s more
the performance side of things and it’s a way of compensating
for the fact that we’re not very charismatic people on stage,
we’re not jumping around like Biffy Clyro. It’s about wanting to
put on a good show, wanting to entertain people, and turning
your weaknesses into strengths.”
‘The Race For Space’ is released on Test Card Recordings
We reckon 2015 is going to be a
fantastic year for electronic music,
not least because of the huge number
of exciting new artists around at the
moment. To prove the point, the
Electronic Sound team have picked 50
acts we’re tipping for big things and
interesting things over the next 12
months. The future starts right here,
right now.
Are you listening, 2015?
Words: NEIL MASON
With a little help from PUSH, MARK
ROLAND, BETHAN COLE, CARL GRIFFIN,
DANNY TURNER, DAVID STUBBS, FAT
ROLAND, FINLAY MILLIGAN, HARRIET
BLISS, MAT SMITH, MILES PICARD, NEIL
KULKARNI, PATRICK NICHOLSON, VIK
SHIRLEY and WYNDHAM WALLACE
MEGA E MOT I O N
TE E E L
Turning the sequencer up to 11
1980s synthpop revivalists off the port bow
When Norwich-based Peel favourites Bearsuit hung up their
furry coats, three of their number – Lisa Horton, Jan Robertson
and Iain Ross – reconfigured as Mega Emotion. A hectic ball of
energy, they come on with a sort of Depeche Mode meets Pixies
vibe, while others have them chalked as New Order signed to
4AD. Going about the business of getting a leg up since 2013, this
month sees their first single proper, ‘Uncomfortable’, released as
a limited edition cassette on the Post/Pop label. It’s a total belter
in a Human League goes lo-fi kind of way, complete with delicious
female backing vocals, a big sing-along chorus and some truly neat
old school sounds marching away underneath. Should do that leg
up job, all things being equal.
Jim Smith – New Jersey-based producer, Synth Records label
boss and founder of the excellent iheartsynths.com website –
debuted Teeel back in 2011 with the ‘Amulet’ album, but last
year’s third long-playing outing, ‘Hydrostatic’, landed him firmly
back on the map when it comes to hauling 80s synthpop front
and centre. It’s a rich vein that bears repeated mining – and
mine it Smith does with some aplomb. There’s the Pet Shop
Boys-ish ‘Temple Of The Sun’ and the Cure-like ‘Party?’, for
instance, but there’s a deft Daft Punk funk sensibility at work
here too, as evidenced on ‘Disk Go’ in particular. We’re liking
your work, sir. We’re liking your work a lot.
JAY DAN I EL
I FAN DAFYD D
Deep house with extra friction
Four to the floor, right across the world
Credentials? Detroit DJ/producer Jay Daniel has a bucketload
of those. His mum is Naomi Daniel, who sang on some of Carl
Craig’s early Planet E tracks, and he has just overhauled Four
Tet’s ‘Aerial’ for the ‘Beautiful Rewind Remixes’ set. He has
released two EPs of his own over the last couple of years, the
most recent being the ‘Karmatic Equations’ 12-inch double
pack on Wild Oats (Kyle Hall’s ultra-hip Detroit imprint),
which featured five rugged and crunchy deep house cuts, all
suggesting he has a particular fondness for extra heft in the
bottom end. There’s no word on him releasing an album as yet,
but he’s launching his own label shortly, so further batches of
interesting tuneage are on their way.
House music comes in all shapes and sizes – and that now
includes Ifan Dafydd’s corking world house hybrid. The enigmatic
Welshman, who broke a year-long hiatus with his recent ‘Eclipse’
single on the excellent Push & Run label, counts Gilles Peterson
as a fan and you can hear why. With a jazz undertow and a
warm groove underfoot, Dafydd chucks Middle Eastern strings
into his somewhat leftfield floorfillers. One other thing we
should mention is that while the name James Blake is thrown
around like confetti in the electronic music world, with every
other artist supposedly sounding like the Mercury Prize winner,
how many can say he was their former flatmate? Dafydd is
working in a totally different musical zone, but some of Blake’s
magic has clearly rubbed off on his one-time roomie.
N E W BUI L D
Blissed-out Hot Chip side project
WHO THEY?
Al Doyle and Felix Martin of Hot Chip fame needed an outlet for
the surfeit of songs they were creating in their day job. Et voila,
New Build.
WHY NEW BUILD?
Their second album, ‘Pour It On’, cropped up on Sunday Best
last October to across-the-board gushing – and no wonder.
Shrugging off the 80s sheen of their 2012 debut, ‘Yesterday
Was Lived And Lost’, it’s a delightful slab of bright and breezy
mellowness that fingers the hem of both Chicago and Detroit.
As sleek as panthers, as warm as duvets.
TELL US MORE
‘Pour It On’ was produced by Mark Ralph who, as those paying
attention will know, is the co-owner of Conny Plank’s original
customised 56-channel MCI desk, which has pride of place in
Ralph’s West London studio. Hot Chip have already made full
use of the desk and channelling the ghosts of Kraftwerk et
al is clearly no bad thing – as New Build prove. Side projects
often get badly overshadowed by the main attractions, but New
Build’s two long-players to date have already bucked that trend
and the signs are that Al and Felix will be stepping into some
limelight of their own this year.
50 FOR 15
T RUSS
Hard as nails underground techno
WHO THEY?
Truss is London-based Tom Russell. A stalwart of the
exceptional Perc Trax label, it’s high time his underground
existence got slightly less subterranean.
WHY TRUSS?
We recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Perc Trax
label, reviewing their fine compilation ‘Slowly Exploding. “You
can get high BPM tracks on any street corner in any city –
tracks made for drug-buckets by drug-buckets – but rarely
will you get them done with such style,” said our man Andrew
Holmes. And leading that charge is Mr Truss. We particularly
recommend his Blacknecks collab with Bleaching Agent, which
laughs in the po-face of “serious” techno. The cover and song
titles alone will make you blush.
TELL US MORE
Another good starting point for Truss is the brutal assault that
is ‘Brockweir’. With a borstal riff and one devil of a kick-drum,
it will give your ears a right old bashing. This stuff, as we’ve
pointed out before, nods firmly in the direction of the golden
age of techno – Cox, Mills, Clarke, Tresor at its peak – while at
the same time casting a line into the future of the genre.
Marvellous stuff.
L AICA
SO UT HWAY
Pulled-apart-pieced-back-together experimental darkness
Instead of building his music from the ground up, Laica man
Dave Fleet smashes it into tiny pieces and crafts it into a
murky ensemble of sounds. Incredibly refreshing, it’s hard not
to appreciate the meticulous production values of his work.
While many elements have been changed to the extent that
they’re only a vague resemblance of what they once were, Laica
approaches his brand of industrial grime with finesse and logic.
Like some new Dr Frankenstein, he offers us a glimpse into the
soul of a sound before knitting the pieces back together and the
result is an amalgam of imagination, invention and darkness.
Laica will intrigue, excite and haunt you, but also keep you
coming back to see what’s next on the musical butcher’s table.
Dark-edged indie-electro synthpop
Initially conceptualised as a solo project, Southway became a
two-piece when Bristol-born Shaun Jason met Shiun Kim in
Seoul on Christmas Eve in 2008. Their pulsing electro beats
set against synthesisers, guitars and all manner of percussion
were aired extensively when they went on an international tour
(from Asia to the USA) that lasted two years. Finally settling in
London, they’ve been working on the fourth Southway studio
album (their first as a duo) ever since. Armed with a developed
sound full of synthy guts and new wave-influenced rock, they
play live whenever they can and are continually promoting
themselves around the UK. Catch ‘em quick.
FL IES + FL I ES
SE AFL O O R
Need someone to soundtrack the apocalypse?
Mildly bonkers lightbulb-bright drum ‘n’ bass
Describing themselves as “emerging half-formed from the wreckage
of an art project gone wrong”, London trio flies+flies are as
unpredictable as they are foreboding. A combination of strings and
guitar mixed with electronics and vocals creates an unsettling, dark
undercurrent to their “rhizomatic pop”, but there’s a melodic edge
too that softens the menace. It seems that the art project element
hasn’t entirely been abandoned, as the recent launch party for their
first single, ‘Bad Crab Hand’/’Sufi’, saw the audience guided through
a three-dimensional installation and the band performing inside a
“plastic projection cube”. Carefully making sure they lean towards
artistic rather than pretentious, flies+flies deliver on a number of
levels and even make the apocalypse look like fun.
Fairly mental and pretty brilliant, that’s Seafloor. Brooklyn’s
Matthew Young makes a sharp, bright racket that harks back
to the glory days of drum ‘n’ bass and, on occasion, daringly
tipping toes into happy hardcore and even into housier waters.
Check out his Soundcloud if our mere words don’t do him
justice. It’s here you’ll find last autumn’s ‘The Noise’ EP,
featuring sirens, scratches, blips, beats, breaks galore, thrums,
snares, breakdowns, vocal samples, rapping, a bit of helium.
Over its four tracks – all killers, no fillers – it feels like the same
kind of invention that the Beastie Boys were shot through with.
Look out for Seafloor’s new ‘Drift’ EP on the Infinite Machine
label too. You won’t be disappointed.
D E PT F O R D G O T H
Not a goth, not from Deptford
WHO THEY?
One Daniel Woolhouse (wonder what his distant ancestors did
for a living?), who hails from Peckham rather than down the
road in Deptford. Begs the obvious question.
WHY DEPTFORD GOTH?
Because, not to put too fine a point on it, this shizz is little short
of a bloody marvel. The name Deptford Goth conjures images of
brooding back alley depravity, but what’s served up is nothing
of the sort. It’s actually twinkling and delicate synthpop that
sucks up some low-key R&B and soul along the way. Sure, it’s
splashed in the dark, but it’s nice dark. In short, the sort of stuff
that turning the lights down low was made for.
TELL US MORE
Woolhouse first pinged on the radar back in October 2011
with his ‘Youth II’ EP, followed by a well-received first longplayer, ‘Life After Defo’, in 2013. With ‘Songs’, last November’s
sophomore album on 37 Adventures, things just got better and
better as he added a songwriterly quality to his smouldering,
slow-burn backings. Quite why Deptford Goth isn’t up there with
the name most often mentioned in the same breath, James Blake,
is beyond us. Come on 2015, it’s time to put things right, right?
50 FOR 15
Z OL A J E SUS
Down and dirty dead-of-night stuff
WHO THEY?
Hailing from Phoenix, Arizona, Zola Jesus is one Nika Roza
Danilova. She may only be 25, but by crikey she has already
packed a lot in. Her fifth studio long-player, ‘Taiga’, landed last
October on Mute Records.
WHY ZOL A JESUS?
It’s not hard to see why the world and all its furry friends are
suggesting big things for ZJ in the one-five. Call it classical
industrial, call it goth-grime, call it dead-of-night electronica,
call it what you like, Zola Jesus has been a best-kept secret for
far too long. Heck, even Jools Holland is getting in on the act,
inviting her onto his show last year.
TELL US MORE
The list of comparisons is dizzying. Kate Bush is on there, as
are Siouxsie And The Banshees, Dead Can Dance and, naturally,
the Cocteau Twins. It’s all this and yet so much more. Growing
up, Danilova’s diet was strictly Dead Kennedys, The Residents,
Throbbing Gristle – in fact, anything down and dirty – and it
certainly shows.
SH AB A Z Z PA L AC E S
K RI STA PAPI STA
Experimental hip hop, anyone?
Riot grrrl machine music
The Seattle duo of Palaceer Lazaro and Tendai Maraire have a
rich musical heritage. The former was once of jazz-hop outfit
Digable Planets, the latter’s late father was mbira don Dumisani
Maraire. Which might explain Tendai’s exquisite multi-musical
skills. While the flow here is smooth, it’s what’s underneath
that wows. Musically, the Shabazz shake it up with a box of
electronic tinkles, rolling b-lines, synth runs and all manner
of sonic loveliness. They do like to do things a little different,
which would explain a hip hop act signing to legendary grunge
label Sub Pop. On the face of it, not the most sensible of moves,
but it does seem to have reaped rewards for these guys. Last
summer’s ‘Lese Majesty’ ended up on a number of the more
discerning albums of 2014 lists, while the pair continue to wow
audiences with their hectic live shows.
This. Is. Bonkers. Krista Papista, in her very own words, is
a “Cypriot/Australian multidisciplinary sordid pop artist”,
which is nail on the head, fair and square. Ms Papista also
says that her signature sound “unravels elements of riot
grrrl chicness, euphoric-meltdown synth melodies, requiem
ballads, homo-euro electro beats, film noir trumpets and rabbit
hole transitions”. Quite so. Tracks like ‘Pomoiselle’ have a
wonderfully simple, DIY ethos, the tinny sequences reminiscent
of early over-the-counter kit like, say, a Casio VL-Tone. It’s
hard to beat and her deadpan vocal only adds to the automated
machine music feel. While ‘Pomoiselle’ appeared in 2013, the
much more recent ‘Bad F’ is a proper belter. Marching along
clapping hands, its warmer 80s-ish vibe is a leap and a bound
for one grrrl we’ll be keeping a close eye on this year.
MR M I TCH
TOUR I ST
Dark synth ‘n’ drum-smattered grime
Old school garage, 21st century style
Haunting, experimental beats ooze from the mind of Mr Mitch, a
London grime artist whose music has a claustrophobic, alienlike quality. His ‘Don’t Leave’ four-tracker, his debut for Mike
Paradinas’ Planet Mu label, evokes a sense of menace and terror
through repetitive drum loops and melancholic synthesisers. The
title track is like being sucked into a black hole, the repeated
line “Don’t leave me, girl” accompanied by wailing synths,
dragging you ever deeper, but strangely leaving you wanting
more. With his recently released first album, the often ominous
‘Parallel Memories’, Mr Mitch twists grime into a genre of his
own making that will thrill and disturb in equal measure.
Brightonian William Phillips, for he is Tourist, posted a picture of
a recent vinyl haul on his Facebook page – J Dilla’s ‘Donuts’, Joni
Mitchell’s ‘Blue’, Caribou’s ‘Our Love’ and Miles Davis’ ‘Kind Of
Blue’. Before you’ve heard a note you already like the fella, right?
Growing up with older sisters bang into their garage and then
picking his path escorted by the likes of LTJ Bukem, MJ Cole, Roni
Size and The Streets, it’s little surprise his own take is garagey
in flavour, albeit with an electropop tinge. Tourist is signed to
Disclosure’s Method Records (home to Sam Smith, whose chart
shagging ‘Stay With Me’ he co-wrote) and has been moving in the
right direction since his 2012 debut ‘Tourist’ EP. His latest offering,
‘Illuminate’ (featuring fellow hotshots Years & Years), hit the
shelves at the end of last year. And if the our musical divining rod
works proper, that’s a lethal 2015 combo if ever we saw one.
I BE Y I
Where electronica meets organica
WHO THEY?
Born in Cuba and upping sticks to France at the age of two,
19-year-old twin sisters Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz serve up
emotionally charged, sparse, percussion-led missives.
WHY IBEYI?
Their sound is a potent brew, with Naomi’s love of hip hop
and all things electronica meeting Lisa-Kiandé’s soul and jazz
influences head on. What’s more, Ibeyi further mix things up
by singing in English and Yoruba, a Nigerian language brought
to Cuba by their father’s descendants via chants that rang out
on slave ships in the 18th century – the very same chants that,
hundreds of years later, their Venezuelan mother would sing
when the girls were little.
TELL US MORE
Hang on, Cuba? Their father was none other than Anga Díaz,
the legendary Buena Vista Social Club percussionist who
sadly died in 2006. He lives on through his daughters’ music,
which makes good use of his weapon of choice, the cajón. The
girls’ eponymous debut album is released by XL Recordings in
February, by which time they’ll already be owning 2015. Oh,
“Ibeyi”? Yoruban for “twins”.
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ROEDELIUS
We’re fortunate to catch Hans-Joachim
Roedelius at his Austrian home shortly
before his 80th birthday. Only 24 hours
previously he’d been playing in Brazil and
in a couple of days he’s headlining the
Supermassive Festival in Helsinki. Billed
as “a ride through the underground” and
a showcase for some of the most exciting
up-and-coming experimentalists from
across the globe, Supermassive boasts
a line-up of hot young hipsters such as
Shabazz Palaces, Cold Cave and Finland’s
own K-X-P. The irony is not lost on the
soon-to-be octogenarian maestro.
“Sounds crazy I know, but I’m really
excited about it!” declares Roedelius.
Make no mistake, this is a man who never
stops. And to his utter delight, nor does
the demand for his beguiling, distinctive,
peerless music. His recorded output seems
almost too astonishing for words. We tell
him that we’ve heard he has around 1,600
musical works to his name.
“Oh, there are more! And then there’s also
my poetry and my photography…”
Roedelius’ continued passion and
excitement for making music is a wonder
to behold – and that’s perhaps never been
more true than now, an incredible 45 years
into a career which he asserts was simply
the result of “a wonderful accident”.
Certainly, it was never planned. A trained
physiotherapist by the end of the 1960s,
a lifetime of mending bodies lay before
him. But whether by accident or design, or
possibly a combination of both, another
path opened up for him. It eventually
enabled him to use his healing hands in
a different way, although not before he’d
had one or two convoluted and seemingly
improbable adventures. More on those
shortly.
We’re speaking with Roedelius primarily
because of the release of two albums,
‘Tape Archive 1973-1978’ and ‘Kollektion
02: Roedelius’, the latter a concise
showcase of his music compiled by longtime admirer Lloyd Cole. The albums have
been issued simultaneously by the Bureau
B label to coincide with his birthday and to
acknowledge his incredible body of work.
Roedelius’ birthday celebrations will no
doubt be emotional. He’ll be spending
the day with his 40-strong extended
family in Dresden and in the evening he
will read extracts from his autobiography
to an audience of admirers. By this time,
he’ll have been honoured with the Grand
Decoration for Services to the State of
Lower Austria – which is something like
the British MBE – in recognition of his
tirelessly creative contribution to his
adoptive country’s cultural wealth. And
probably not before time.
The one-time East German city of Dresden
is a place that must stir mixed emotions
in the great man, though. It’s where his
roots are strongest, his family having
settled here after fleeing from the horrors
of Berlin during World War Two (but not
before the 11-year-old Hans-Joachim
had been forcibly enrolled into the Hitler
Youth). Yet Dresden is also where he spent
two years incarcerated by the Stasi, the
communist secret police, after going AWOL
from the East German army in the late
1950s (following, once again, involuntary
conscription). Accused by the Stasi of
being a spy for the West as well as a
deserter, he endured forced labour down
the coal mines and was regularly woken in
the small hours for lengthy interrogation
sessions.
With typically self-effacing nonchalance,
he brushes off this dark chapter as a kind
of character-building experience.
“Oh, it was not too bad,” he says. “I was
young and I could bear it.”
But maybe he’s right. Maybe his
experiences at the hands of the Stasi – as
well as those that came before them
– gave him an impetus to escape the
stultifying confines of oppressive and
paranoid East Germany and to truly pursue
life.
“we
no m had
one
and y
we
had
to
wor
k ve
har ry
d to
surv
ive,
but
it w
all p as
a
of w rt
we hat
wer
e
doin
g”
ROEDELIUS
Roedelius eventually managed to cross
back into West Germany and headed for
his original home city of Berlin, pulled in
by the magnetic force of change that was
crystallising there and gravitating towards
the burgeoning underground arts scene.
His qualification as a physio enabled
him to quickly train as a masseur, which
in turn led to him meeting all manner
of interesting folk, who offered him a
variety of odd and curious jobs here and
there. People liked him and trusted him
and wanted him around.
One such person was the owner of a
Berlin knitwear manufacturing company,
who welcomed Roedelius into his life,
asking him to first become his personal
masseur, and then to fulfill the more
involving roles of family butler (bear
with us here), childcare supervisor and
– because his boss rather too regularly
enjoyed over-indulging his prodigious
appetite for das bier – family driver.
Which is where everything starts to come
together.
In the summer of 1967, Roedelius
drove his employer’s family to Corsica
for a holiday at a naturist camp (these
are Germans, remember) and was
captivated by the beauty and freedom
of the island. He promised himself he’d
return the following year. By this time,
he’d co-founded a group of radical art
experimentalists collectively known
as Human Being – a kind of Berlin
equivalent to Andy Warhol’s New York
Factory – which soon morphed into the
fabled Zodiak Free Arts Lab. Its members
included controversial performance
artist Joseph Beuys, as well as musicians
Conrad Schnitzler and Dieter Moebius.
It was his second season on Corsica
that made Roedelius realise that he was
destined to follow a musical path. Along
with his fellow Human Beings, he gave
the naturist camp’s beach bar the feel
of a Mediterranean Happening, enjoying
what he considers his first performances
as a bona fide musician during the
many all-night drumming, improv and
vinyl-spinning sessions that attracted
s
a
w
e
“ther s spirit n
ni
t hi
i
l
r
e
in B 1960s –
the knew
we were
we ng
bei ded by
g”
n
i
gui
h
et
m
o
s
party people from way beyond Corsica’s
sea-bound limits. Even Jimi Hendrix and
Captain Beefheart showed up to immerse
themselves in the sun-drenched, freeloving vibes.
When the summer season ended,
Roedelius and his pals returned to
Germany via mainland France, spending
time in first Avignon and then Paris
(where Roedelius spent some time
as a private masseur to the wife of a
bohemian aristo) and feeling the climate
of revolution that was sweeping the
country. By the time they landed back
in Berlin, Roedelius was fired with a zeal
to make new music and heave further
on those already shifting paradigms. It
was at this point that Roedelius formed
Kluster (later anglicised to Cluster) with
Conrad Schnitzler and Dieter Moebius.
“Conrad and Dieter already knew each
other and we were all very like-minded,”
says Roedelius. “Conrad was such a great
friend and he was so full of energy. He
was the main force behind the Zodiak
Free Arts Lab. He found the place itself
and it was Conrad who negotiated with
the city authorities to secure state
funding.”
Roedelius and Schnitzler were indeed
extremely close; true brothers and
soul mates. Such was their bond that
Schnitzler even invited Roedelius to live
with his family – his wife and three kids
– when money was tight for them all,
but when there was also an incredible
creative energy between them.
“We just felt so free. OK, we had no
money and we had to work very hard to
survive, but it was all part of what we
were doing. There was this spirit in Berlin
in the 1960s – we trusted our instincts
and knew we were being guided by
something. But it wasn’t political for me.
I’d seen the results of politics in Berlin
in the 1940s, and then in East Germany
in the 1950s. Going through the war was
horrible and so was being jailed by the
Stasi. So, yes, it was this beautiful sense
of freedom that was important for me.”
ROEDELIUS
as
w
re g
e
h
in
“t
h
t
e
e
m
h
o
t
s
ut s
o
b
a tion
ra
vib sonic
y
s
t
m
n
n
e
i
im inr
e
exp at got –
th e me
sid in a
ot y ”
n
and od wa
go
Kluster/Cluster recorded four studio
albums between 1969 and 1972, with
Conrad Schnitzler leaving the group
after the second of these. From the very
beginning, they worked with production
legend Conny Plank, who engineered
their debut album, ‘Klopfzeichen’, and
with whom Roedelius and Moebius went
on to enjoy a very long and productive
relationship. Yet despite the many studio
sessions, the larger part of those years
was spent criss-crossing Europe on their
tour bus. Roedelius encapsulates his
abiding memories of that time succinctly
and positively.
“It was such a great experience,” he says.
“So many people and everybody was so
interesting and different! I’m thankful
that I’ve been able to live the life I have
and to have been able to work with all
these wonderful characters.”
And then came Forst, the rural retreat
and commune that is central to the
Roedelius story. He first heard about
Forst at a time when he and Moebius
were starting to feel the strain of long
stretches out on the road and were
ready for a new impetus following the
closure of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab by
the Berlin authorities due to concerns
over its problematic political associations
(members of the Baader Meinhof Group
were said to have been tenuously
connected) and its increasingly open
flouting of the city’s drug laws.
“A friend of mine who was an antiquities
dealer and very well-travelled told us
he had found this big place by the river
Weser in Lower Saxony,” remembers
Roedelius. “He said it was going really
cheap. But when we went to look at it,
there was nothing there. It was just a lot
of old derelict buildings.”
Roedelius and Moebius couldn’t resist
the lure of the rural alternative with
its promise of a different way of life,
though, and Cluster and their entourage
moved from Berlin to Forst in 1973. They
lived collectively, getting stuck into the
challenge of renovating the farm and its
outbuildings, and constructing their own
recording studio and rehearsal space.
The years between 1973 and 1978 proved
to be a golden era for Roedelius and
this is the period covered by the ‘Tape
Archive’ album. His output during this
five-year span seems remarkable now.
There were two solo albums and four
Cluster long-players, including the classic
‘Zuckerzeit’, a record produced by Neu!
man Michael Rother, who also became
part of the Forst commune. Roedelius,
Moebius and Rother recorded two albums
as Harmonia too, while Brian Eno’s trip to
Forst in 1977, when he took a brief break
from his intensive work with David Bowie
on ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes’ in Berlin, resulted
in the collaborative piece ‘Cluster & Eno’.
Many of these records appeared on Brain
Records, arguably the most significant
German krautrock label.
“It was a productive time and I don’t
think all that would have happened if
we’d stayed in the city,” notes Roedelius.
“But we were also lucky to have the
support of Brain Records. Gunter Korber
and Bruno Wendel [who ran the imprint]
were passionate about our music and
worked really hard for us.”
For his solo adventures, Roedelius
had a private workspace in which he
housed a Farfisa organ, a Revox-A77
tape machine and an echo device. He
borrowed synthesisers from the Cluster
studio next door as and when he needed
them. When time allowed, he would put
extra hours in, instinctively exploring
the soundscapes he had the urge to
create just for himself, separate from his
recordings with Moebius and Rother. He’d
keep the tape running and simply let the
music happen.
“It was one of the most beautiful periods
of my life and also my family’s life,” he
says. “Our first daughter was born there,
in the commune and not in hospital,
which was totally unheard of in Germany
at that time. It was so good to have the
freedom for us to work together as artists,
experimenting with our music during the
night, but doing physical work during the
day too. We chopped wood and we made
bread and things like that. Paradise!”
Looking back now, what would be his
personal favourite album from that time?
“That’s a tough one,” he replies after a
short pause. “There was so much. But if
I have to choose, it would probably be
the ‘Selbstportrait’ series [the first three
volumes of which came out in 1979-1980].
I think they were the most innocent and
the records that best defined that time.”
Talking about his various releases,
Roedelius is full of praise for Tangerine
Dream’s Peter Baumann (who coproduced Cluster’s 1979 album ‘Grosser
Wasser’) and American Tim Story (with
whom he has produced four albums under
the name Lunz), as well as Brian Eno, of
course. But he attributes much of his
success to the production talents of Conny
Plank, who remained integral to the
Roedelius/Moebius/Cluster story both as a
producer/engineer and as a musician right
up to his death in 1987.
“Conny made an important difference, he
made everything special,” says Roedelius.
“There would be no overdubbing with
him. He would just let us play without
interfering. He was one of the best.”
Though essentially an extemporiser, HansJoachim Roedelius’ musical voice is truly
singular and is pehaps more akin to that
of a classical composer. Experimental
and improvisatory, yes, but also highly
accessible; warm and pastoral and, with
reference to its understated and minimal
simplicity, soothing too. Lloyd Cole paid
eloquent compliment to Roedelius when
he was asked about the ‘Kollektion 02:
Roedelius’ album he has compiled for
Bureau B.
ROEDELIUS
“Cluster led me to Harmonia and then
to Roedelius’ solo works, which led me
to believe that the soul I was finding in
Cluster, which seemed so absent from
their peers, came primarily from him,”
said Cole. “The melodic sensibility which
drew me in is his, for sure. Roedelius’
voice is unique, instantly recognisable,
and it still resonates.”
The word “soul” pretty much nails it. It’s
there in every moment of Roedelius’
music, which developed further after a
sudden exit from Forst precipitated a
period of retreat and reflection. With
rumours of radiation leaks from an
upriver nuclear power station and reports
of increased instances of childhood
leukaemia in Lower Saxony, he decided
to abandon the bucolic idyll in 1978. But
he did so with a heavy heart.
inside me – and not in a good way. So I
sold my Korg and took up the piano.”
He’d actually learnt the basics of the
piano as a child, just after the war,
although he was never taught extensively
as his family could only afford to pay
for a handful of lessons. But then a visit
to Vienna for a recital in around 1980
provided a small epiphany.
“Yes, it was a big shame to leave,” says
Roedelius. “But you know, after many
years of exploring with electronic sound, I
realised I’d got bored with it. I’ll tell you
something else too. It kind of made me
“I felt like I’d had my first true encounter
ill. I’d done so much experimentation on
my Korg MS-20 that I’d found out how
with the beautiful sound of the piano,” he
bad music can sometimes sound. There
explains. “It was the medicine I needed to
was something about the vibrations in the cure the Korg disease!”
depths of my sonic experiments that got
Five years later, he gave his first
full piano concert on a Steinway at
London’s Bloomsbury Theatre. The
many wonderfully meditative, organic
compositions he has recorded since then
have often been described as having
strangely restorative effects on people.
“So after stopping my career as a
physiotherapist, when I would have
helped to heal people with my hands, I
was again perhaps doing some healing
with my hands, but this time through my
playing.”
That tone of modesty and humility runs
throughout much of our conversation
today, as Roedelius surveys his long
career with sanguine objectivity and
warmth. With so much to look back on
(and look forward to – a second volume
of ‘Tape Archive’ pieces has already been
discussed), he seems extraordinarily
contented with the rich life he’s led and
is delighted to have been able to pursue
his interests in the way that he has. And
much of his success he puts down to his
ever-present wife, Christine Martha.
“Nothing would have happened without
her,” he declares with a broad smile.
“She’s my muse and my advisor. She
made everything feel so easy for me,
always being at my side and also looking
after our family. I’m just so happy to
be who I am and to have worked with
all these wonderful people. So much
seems to have just happened! It’s such a
privilege to be able to do what you want
to do, when you want to do it. Such a
gift.”
‘Tape Archive 1973-1978’ and
‘Kollektion 02: Roedelius’are both out
now on Bureau B
ADAMSKI
THE
SPIN
DOCTOR
ADAMSKI is back. And he’s back with something very
different and really quite special. ‘Revolt’, his first album
for 15 years, casts aside four-to-floor and serves up a
whole new way of thinking about dance music. Say hello
to future waltz…
Words: NEIL MASON
ADAMSKI
Several storeys high, in a hotel bar
looking out over the gathering dusk and
the twinkling lights, London’s West End
is truly glittering. We’re awaiting the
company of a man last sighted in the
video for his 2012 single, ‘I Like It’. At
the time, he was sporting a mohawk, a
bush of a beard, wraparound shades and
a cane, and he was scoffing cake like
there was no tomorrow. He looked, not
to put too fine a point on it, dangerous.
To be honest, we’re not quite sure what
to expect. But arriving bang on time,
there’s no mistaking Adamski. He looks
proper trim, swish in a natty doublebreasted military-style overcoat and
a wide-brimmed Fedora. Pleasantries
exchanged, he removes the hat to reveal
a freshly-minted shaven head.
“Oh, yeah,” he smiles, folding up his
coat and placing the Fedora neatly on
top before taking a seat and ordering
coffee. “My voodoo viking phase. I’d just
moved to the seaside and I got really fat
and thought I might as well grow a big
fisherman’s beard.”
The new-look Adamski is very much in
line with what we are about to receive.
We’re here to talk about ‘Revolt’, a
10-disc 10-inch box set of “3-step”
or “future waltz” music. But hold
that thought for a moment, because
‘Revolt’ will blow the doors off any
preconceptions you might have.
“I don’t see this as my album,” he offers.
“My album is something else that I’m
putting together. What I’m trying to do
here is introduce a style of music.”
And while it is indeed Adamski at the
controls of ‘Revolt’, his name appears
front and centre on less than half the
tracks, preferring instead to showcase
old friends new stylee alongside a
host of fresh 3-step talent. But before
we get stuck in, we need to do some
housekeeping. He’s been drip-feeding
music as his Adam Sky alter ego for a
while, but the last full-length Adamski
outing was a decade and half ago. What
gives?
“There have been long periods where I’ve
found myself DJing every weekend and
was too knackered to get back into the
momentum of making my own music,”
he says. “So I made a conscious decision
to do more of my own stuff. And then
two years ago, I decided to only make
music in 3/4 time.”
While the waltz is one of the world’s
oldest ballroom dances, dating back
to Germany in the mid-18th century,
Adamski’s inspiration didn’t come from
Europe. It came from Venezuela.
“My daughter’s mum is Venezuelan,” he
explains. “They moved over there, so
I started going out to spend time with
my daughter. Venezuelan folk music is
predominantly in 3/4 time and I kept
hearing all these great melodies with
sexy Latin grooves, but they were played
on these annoying little instruments, like
a cuatro, which is a sort of ukulele. It’s
kind of nice for one or two tunes, but not
all the time. So I just thought I’d start
making this music electronically.”
The end result is one almighty statement
of intent. Produced at Adamski’s Waltz
Factory studio in Ramsgate, ‘Revolt’
sounds enormous. There are full-fat
beefy basslines, sumptuous synths and
gut-busting beats, while the 3/4 twist
adds a whole other layer. It sounds like
dancefloor fuel, although the intriguing
time signature does take a little getting
used to. But a couple of listens in and
you’re completely hooked.
“The term ‘walzer’ in German means ‘to
turn’,” explains Adamski of the seemingly
provocative album title. “It’s about
revolution, physically on the dancefloor,
and it’s also my revolt against the same
old, same old 4/4.”
How tricky was it to make the shift from
four-to-the-floor to three?
ADAMSKI & LEE PERRY
ADAMSKI
“I had waltz lessons with my friend’s
wife, who used to be head of the
Norwegian Ballet and just happens to
live in Ramsgate. She taught me the
fundamental steps, so when I was making
a tune I could be sure it was waltz-able.
I see it as a parallel universe of music.
Whatever the genre – The Damned had a
waltz tune, ‘These Hands’, and PJ Harvey
has the occasional piece in 3/4 time –
there’s something about the feel that’s
different. It’s got this cyclical motion that
music in 4/4 doesn’t have. Also, I always
got stuck in that house and techno tempo
with 4/4, but I’m making music at all
different tempos since I got into waltz
music.”
The waltz started as an 18th century
German folk dance called the ländler,
which became the walzer and finally
the waltz. With a helping hand from
Napoleon’s invading forces, it spread
across Europe in the early 19th century,
causing much outrage as it was the first
time that men and women had danced
holding each other. It was given a right
leg up when two Austrian composers,
Lanner and Strauss, created an offshoot,
the Viennese waltz.
“That’s drum and bass tempo,” beams
Adamski. “If you hear strict ballroom
Viennese waltzes, the bpms are 172, 174,
and part of the controversy was that it
made people dizzy. My manager is from
Vienna – I like to keep to the theme –
and the vinyl for ‘Revolt’ was going to be
in this boring cardboard box that record
pressers provide, but she said, ‘No, the
best cakes in Vienna come in beautiful
boxes’, so we got a Viennese cake box
manufacturer to make us these beautiful
beechwood boxes.”
Of course, Adamski doesn’t need to be
doing all this. He’d be comfy enough
taking big bucks for dropping ‘Killer’ and
slaying dancefloors on the old school rave
reunion circuit.
“I was doing a lot of the rave reunions
two or three years ago and it was
absolutely soul destroying,” he says.
“It wasn’t leaving me very spiritually
sated. As I’ve got older, my tastes have
developed and broadened and I haven’t
lost any of my enthusiasm, so why would
I want to stagnate and be Mr Golden
Oldies? It felt a bit like being one of the
original members of Showaddywaddy
playing end-of-pier shows in Blackpool.”
‘Revolt’ is very much a re-introduction to
what Adamski is capable of. Does he feel
like it’s a bit of a two-fingered salute?
“No,” he replies, almost affronted. “The
last album I did for MCA [‘Naughty’ in
1991] had a bit of this stuff about it. They
dropped me after that, though. Straight to
the bargain bins. But then I did squander
a quarter of a million of their money at
Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios. I drank
the contents of their wine cellar, drank
Van Morrison under the table. I was really
fucking proud of myself. MCA didn’t even
recoup the wine bill from that record. I
did make a couple of ‘fuck you’ songs to
ex-girlfriends for ‘Revolt’, but I decided I
really don’t want to radiate any negative
feelings, so there isn’t any of that on
there.”
down’. He burnt down the famous Black
Ark studio he had in Jamaica too. There
was me thinking, ‘He’s one of the world’s
most legendary producers, I’ve got to
make this sound perfect’, and he’s gone
and borrowed some speakers and set
them up facing in on each other so the
sound was just…”
The finished tracks are equally whupwhup-whup, especially ‘Boo Pope’, which
descends into a riot of operatic chanting
with Lee Perry in full freestyle howl
mode over the most satisfyingly huge
synth rumble.
“That’s my 1975 Roland System 100,”
says Adamski proudly. “I got it when
I was living in Italy. I had a load of
obsolete gear, so I went to sell it at a
secondhand music shop. They had this
System 100 and I ended up swapping all
my gear for it. It was like Jack and the
Beanstalk. My girlfriend thought I was
going to come back with a few thousand
Euros and I came back with this dusty old
grey box.”
Talking of dusty old grey things…
But there is Lee “Scratch” Perry, who
guests on two tracks, ‘3Step4ever’ and
‘Boo Pope’.
“I don’t know if Lee Perry has ever heard
of them, but it just totally goes into the
mood of Suicide,” he digresses. “I had the
“Lee Perry is quite upset about The
honour of interviewing Martin Rev when
Pope,” says Adamski of ‘Boo Pope’, on
I lived in Italy. He was doing a solo gig
which Perry invites his Popeship to “drink and someone had set up an interview in
up your piss”.
a café. Because I speak Italian, sort of, I
was translating his answers. I walked him
“Lee is a very strange character,” he
back to his hotel afterwards and it was
continues. “He lives in the Swiss Alps,
amazing. I’m quite often a bit miserable,
which is surreal in itself. I went over there but then I think, ‘I’ve walked Martin Rev
to record with him. I thought I’d get into
to his hotel, had Lee Perry take the piss
the spirit of the whole Alpine waltz idea,
out of my lederhosen, and Robert Plant
so I wore lederhosen, and the first thing
has given me a rewind. I’ve lived!’.”
he said to me was, ‘Your clothes is ugly,
man’. I thought that was rich coming from
an 80-year-old Jamaican man in a shell
suit with a yellow afro wig and a purple
beard.
“Lee doesn’t get up until five in the
afternoon, so I spent all day in my hotel
stressing. His son came to pick me up
and he said, ‘Oh, dad burnt his studio
GUEST WHO?
DAV ID MC A L MON T
“I met him very briefly through mutual
friends and I said, ‘I’ll send you some
music’. I’d been using the name Adam
Sky for about 10 years by this point.
So I sent him some music through
Facebook and he said, ‘I’d love to sing
on this, come and meet me for lunch
at the Groucho Club’. We sat there
for half an hour talking about music
and he was going, ‘But what do you
actually do?’. I was like, ‘You know,
DJing, stuff like that’, and then he
went, ‘Wait a minute…’, and he lifted
up his glasses and was like, ‘Are you
Adamski!?!’. I love things like that
because then I know it’s about the
music on its own merit.”
L E E “ SC R AT C H ” PE RRY
“A few months after we made the
tracks, he came over to London to do
a show and he granted me 15 minutes
to do a photo session with him. Half of
the 15 minutes was Lee going, ‘Yeah,
you can take my picture, but why
do you have to be in it?’. So I said,
‘Because we made a record together
Lee’. He was like, ‘What record?’. I
said, ‘I came to your house and we
made two tunes’. He’d just completely
forgotten.”
MINTY
“Minty was Leigh Bowery’s group in the
1990s and I got given all their outtakes
by Richard Torry, who was their
musical director. He’s the only other
ADRIAN SHERWOOD
DJ I know who can play a whole set in
“There are loads of really interesting
3/4. He wanted to make a posthumous
people living in Ramsgate. My
Minty record and gave me everything
neighbour is Adrian Sherwood, the dub they’d ever recorded. ‘Useless Man’
producer, which is how I came to work
was a track that they released, but I
with Lee “Scratch” Perry. I had David
got these extra outtakes and bits that
McAlmont down to record a vocal and I hadn’t been heard before, so I made a
thought, ‘I can’t bring him to my dusty, 3-step version.”
damp basement studio, because he’s
a proper singer’, so I took him round
to Adrian’s On-U studio, which is a
slightly less dusty, damp basement.”
ADAMSKI
“ONE
OF MY
FAVOURITE
THINGS TO
DO IS GET
INTO MY
PYJAMAS
AND
WATCH
OLD LED
ZEPPELIN
GIGS ON
MY BIG
PLASMA
TV”
The really lovely thing about ‘Revolt’ is
the thought that’s gone into it. Not only
has Adamski fully immersed himself in
a history that dates back well over 250
years and renosed it for the 21st century,
but he also picks a path through his own
musical journey, joining the dots along
the way.
“I like to reference my past in my music,”
he says. “There are certain things that
have fired my imagination throughout my
life and they still do. I didn’t sit around
thinking, ‘What can I do that’s different
to make people take notice?’. ‘Revolt’
has just naturally evolved from people
I’ve crossed paths with, or places I’ve
visited, or things I’ve seen or heard.”
We won’t spoil all the nods for you, but
there is an excellent electronic reworking
of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Dazed And Confused’,
which explains the Robert Plant rewind.
“I love Led Zeppelin,” he reveals. “One of
my favourite things to do is get into my
pyjamas and watch old Led Zeppelin gigs
on my big plasma TV. I’d never want to
go and see them live, all knocky-kneed
and without John Bonham drumming.
It’s good enough for me in my living
room. I met Robert Plant when I was 17
or 18 and I was the cleaner at a rehearsal
studio where he was rehearsing. I’d just
started a band called Diskord Datkord
with my brother and I played him a track
called ‘Wartz’. He was going, ‘That’s
fucking brilliant, let me listen to it again’.
He was really encouraging and I thought,
‘He’s like a golden god’. I used to have
this white dog, she was on the cover of
‘Killer’, and Robert Plant wanted one
of her puppies… but she never had sex
because she hated men dogs. I don’t
know if she was perhaps a lesbian.”
The most touching doff is to his old
friend, the late, great Poly Styrene of
X-Ray Spex. Going back to Diskord
Datkord again, they did a version of
the 1978 X-Ray Spex single ‘Identity’,
complete with a sample of Poly shouting
the track title, as was her wont. On
‘Revolt’, we get ‘Artificial Waltz’, a re-rub
of ‘Art-I-Ficial’, the opening track from
X-Ray Spex’s ‘Germfree Adolescents’
album. And, yes, there’s a sample of Poly
shouting the title.
With so many guests popping in from
Adamski’s past, we know what you’re
thinking. Perhaps there’s been a teenyweeny omission?
“I got back in the studio with Seal last
year,” he admits. “He wanted to do an
electronic album and asked me to do
it with him. It was really nice because
we were best mates, but then it just
fizzled out and we hardly saw each other
for 20 years. Seal’s ‘Kiss From A Rose’
is a waltz, you know. He loves 3/4. I
was playing him some of the stuff I’d
already finished for ‘Revolt’ and he said,
‘Oh yeah, I like this one’, and started
singing over the track. I was like, ‘No
Seal, there’s already someone singing on
it!’. Anyway, we had a couple of days in
the studio and it was all going well, but
then he went off to be a judge on the
Australian version of ‘The Voice’ and just
sort of disappeared…”
ADAMSKI
GUEST WHO?
GUY SIGSWORTH
“My version of The Stranglers’ ‘Golden
Brown’ takes me back to my youth
club disco days. The verses in the
original are in 3/4, but there’s this
really clever muso part in the middle
where it gets a bit complicated. My
old friend Guy Sigsworth sorted that
for me. I first met Guy when I met
Seal. He was Seal’s producer and he
co-wrote ‘Crazy’. He went on to work
with Madonna, Björk, Britney Spears.
He’s really into Norwegian death metal
and he also happens to be a professor
of 16th century harpsichord music, so
he played that bit.”
SKIP MCDONALD
“Skip did the backing vocals on ‘Pump
Up The Waltz’. He lives in Ramsgate
too. I know, I know… Skip was
the guitarist in the house band for
Sugarhill Records. When hip hop first
started, they couldn’t make records
using samples, so they got musicians
to replay what the DJs were looping
on their decks. He’s worked on loads
of Adrian Sherwood’s projects, played
with James Brown, he’s played with
everybody, and what do I get him to
do? Shout ‘Pump up the waltz’!”
ASIA ARGENTO
“She’s a superstar actress in Italy and
France. We have the same agent in
Russia, which sounds really James
“Yeah, he was Rebel MC. He lives in
Ramsgate too. We both played the
Bond. She’s the daughter of Dario
M25 circuit a lot and we’d often be at
Argento, the horror film director. Turns
out she was at a rave I played in Italy
the same raves. We both came from
in 1991. It was her techno epiphany
the underground and then we were
Smash Hits poster boys, we were
and she was like, ‘Techno maestro, I
probably on ‘Top Of The Pops’ together want to do a track with you’. When
at some point too, and then we both
I said I only make waltzes now, she
went back underground. I hadn’t seen
told me her great-grandfather [Alfredo
Casella] was a Futurist composer in
him for 20 years and one day there
Italy in the 1930s and he’d made a
was a knock at my door and there he
was, this big rastaman with a giant hat whole series of waltzes. The track
and a dreadlocked beard. He was like,
‘Um Dada’ is based on a melody from
Asia’s great-grandfather’s music and
‘Hey Adam!’.”
my 16th-century-music-professordeath-metal-brutal-noise-BritneySpears-songwriting friend played the
harpsichord on it.”
CONG O N AT T Y
ADAMSKI
"I’d
rather
eat my
own
nuts
than
endlessly
play
‘Killer’."
‘Revolt’ is by no means all old school,
though. Adamski has gathered around
him quite a collection of new faces too.
Take Sirena Reynolds, who guests on the
electro-tinged pop belter, ‘My Daddy Was
A Rockstar’.
music, I used to like making up names
for bands and artists, so I’ve got lists and
lists of them. They’ll just go to waste if I
don’t use them.”
“She’s involved with a female hip hop
collective called the Lyrically Challenged
Crew,” he says. “They do this monthly
night in Dalston that starts with spoken
word performances, then everyone goes
downstairs and there are MCs and DJs.
It’s her lyric, her story. It’s a harrowing
story, but she’s made it funny.”
“As well as only making music in 3/4, I
also only DJ in 3/4 now,” he says. “I get
less bookings as a result, but I’d rather
eat my own nuts than endlessly play
‘Killer’. The set is 95 per cent my stuff
and re-edits. I got the parts from Seal to
make ‘Kiss From A Rose’ into a techno
future waltz track and people really
love it when I play that. I’ve also been
mentoring a couple of people to make
3/4 tracks so I can have them for my DJ
set.
The track is real standout. Sirena’s
flow is a joy, as is her wordy wrangling:
“Growing up, my daddy was a big rock
star / The type with no songs and no
guitar / He played a white rock at the
end of the pipe / Till it played him, then
out went the light”. Another highlight
is ‘Pump Up The Waltz’. With a title
like that, you can imagine, can’t you?
It’s credited as “Adamski Presents Buck
Dexter”. Buck Dexter?
“Errr,” he says, shifting awkwardly.
“Buck Dexter is, erm, sort of me. He’s
from ‘The Third Man’, the famous Orson
Welles film set in Vienna.”
Sooooo, is there more than one Adamski
alias across the tracks?
“Could be,” he twinkles. “I use
pseudonyms when it’s me in different
frames of mind. Before I started doing
Where next for future waltz, then?
“I did have these grandiose visions
of warehouses full of people wearing
mental wigs and waltzing around, but the
truth is I’ve got no expectations. I might
end up with 300 cake boxes full of vinyl
in the middle of my living room blocking
the telly when I’m trying to watch Led
Zeppelin. Or they might sell like hot
cakes – like hot Viennese cakes! – and
then I might get approached by loads
of people wanting to make future waltz
music. We’ll see.”
‘Revolt’ is released by Future Waltz
Records in February. An EP called ‘This
Is 3-Step’ is out now
B UT T E RI NG T RI O
Top-notch cosmic jammin’
Buttering Trio originally met in Berlin, but KerenDun, Rejoicer
and Beno Hendler only got down to the serious business of
moulding their diverse and cultured sound once they had
reconvened to Tel Aviv. Their debut album, ‘Toast’, which
appeared last year on Raw Tapes Records, firmly embraces the
spirit of trip hop, taking its lead from Portishead and smearing
it with all sorts of goodies. There’s so much to like here – the
Aphex squelches and helium chants of ‘Falafel’, the warm Farfisa
swirls and louche beats of ‘Tired Love’, the different languages
and found sounds, the dubstep touches and infectious grooves –
you really won’t know where to begin.
Y E A R S & Y E ARS
Chart-bound electropop
WHO THEY?
London-based electropop trio Olly Alexander, Mikey
Goldsworthy and Emre Turkmen, who are quietly making waves
with their soulful, 1980s-tinged, house-influenced upbeat
belters.
WHY YE ARS & YE ARS?
Singles all the way since their 2012 debut ‘I Wish I Knew’, Y&Y
arrived proper late last summer when their fourth outing, the
‘Take Shelter’ EP, crashed the iTunes Electronic Singles Chart
at Number One. A major label deal with Polydor should ensure
further rungs are climbed sharpish in 2015.
TELL US MORE
Who you know is always a good gauge. Olly is well equipped
for his role of frontman, what with him being an actor and that.
He’s been treading the West End boards alongside Dame Judy
Dench in ‘Peter & Alice’ (‘Peter Pan’ meets ‘Alice In Wonderland’
– it’s complicated) and his co-star Ben Whishaw (most recently
the voice of Paddington Bear) appeared in the video for Y&Y’s
third single, ‘Real’, as did Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, who you may
know from Channel 4’s ‘Misfits’ and ‘Etopia’. Y&Y are good pals
with Tourist, another of our 50 For 15 tips, too.
FK A T WI GS
Slow and low, that is the tempo
WHO THEY?
Tahliah Barnett should, by rights, romp home this year. Tipped
as one to watch in 2014 by everybody who ought to know about
such things, we really don’t need to be doing it all over again in
2015. But we will anyway.
WHY FK A T WIGS?
Moving to London from Gloucestershire at the age of 17, Twigs
earned a buck cutting a rug as a dancer for the likes of Minogue
(Snr) and Jessie J, before elbowing her way into the spotlight
with the Bandcamp-released ‘EP1’ in December 2012. While it’s
neat and tidy to tag this as R&B, what we’re actually looking at
here is a very neat slight of hand, resulting in something much
more up our street. The beats and backing are wildly inventive,
verging on the experimental, the voice is fragile and captivating.
TELL US MORE
Last August’s ‘LP1’ – her debut album, in case you can’t work it out
– on XL offshoot Young Turks picked up a Mercury nomination. It
won across-the-board acclaim too. When this properly blows up, and
surely it will, the Top 40 massive will be wondering what’s hit them.
This is Bjork-grade squonkiness that also appears to be heading
for the charts. No mean feat for something that is so delightfully
leftfield you’ll need to be looking the other way to see it coming.
E X PLOR ERS
S AM ARI S
Taking electropop to the stars
Icelandic witch house
It’s hard not to smile while listening to Explorers, a duo
consisting of Sheffield native Jeremy Dennis and Chesterfieldborn/Portuguese-bred Robert Bannister. Drawing influences
from their childhood, they craft dreamy and upbeat electropop
that drips with adventure and nostalgia. Heavily inspired by the
1980s (they’re named after the 1985 John Carpenter film), their
use of synths and drums perfectly match the journey they want
to take you on. They’re not completely retro-fuelled, mind, with
hints of Hot Chip and snippets of Empire Of The Sun seeping
through. Anyone going to a disco that starts in the clouds and
ends on an undiscovered planet will need this lot along for the
ride in 2015.
One Little Indian has long been a home from home for the
esoteric. This is the label that signed Björk, after all. Formed
in 2011, Samaris have the same leftfield Icelandic heritage as
Björk and they deal out double quirk like playing cards. They go
straight for the downtempo jugular with the soothing chant-like
vocals of Jófríður Ákadóttir, her lyrics whipped from 19th century
folk poems and weaved into their songs, while Áslaug Brún
Magnúsdóttir adds moody clarinet and Þórður Kári Steinþórsson
underpins the lot with bold, bruised and swollen thrums and
rumbles and infectious skip-along beats. It really shouldn’t work.
Acker Bilk did much to knacker the clarinet’s rep, but Samaris
are determined to redress the balance as ‘Silkidrangar’, their
debut long-player released last spring, triumphantly shows.
50 FOR 15
APRI L T O WE RS
Soaring 80s-style electropop
WHO THEY?
Nottingham duo Charles Burley and Alexander Noble. Pals for
a decade, they began writing as April Towers last June, when
their previous band (indie outfit The Frontiers) fizzled out. Cue
a smart change of direction, the first fruit of which was duly
unleashed online last August.
WHY APRIL TOWERS?
Their sound thumbs a ride from 80s electropop, through 90s
house, and with a smidge of breakbeat chucked in along the
way. Their first single, ‘Arcadia’, made all the right noises.
Literally. That dang-dang-der-dang-dang Human League
synth rumble, the fit-to-pop percussion (drum machine set to
‘bursting’, tom-tom rolls galore), a Depeche Mode vocal twang
here, a huge sing-along chorus there...
TELL US MORE
Nottingham, it would appear, is something of an electronic
hotbed – Indiana, Ronika and Shelter Point at the sharp end
and a host of whippersnappers coming up on the rails, including
OneGirlOneBoy, Owyl, Frolikks and Loophole Project. And April
Towers are more than doing their bit, having already secured
some Radio One daytime play. A new single is on the cards for
early this year.
Y ELLE R KIN
FR ANK I E K NI GHT
Strings meet synths folktronica
Late-night soulful electropop
New York duo Adrian Galvin (folk sensibilities) and Luca
Buccellati (electronic know-how) do a neat hybrid of moody
folktronica/floorflilling goodness, which gives them a refreshing
edge when stacked up against your run-of-the-mill synthpop
bands. Debuting in 2013 with an EP called ‘Solar Laws’, Yellerkin
combine ambient leanings with uptempo tracks that jar against
somewhat sombre lyrics (see ‘Vines’, on which they gently
intone, “Because the days, they feel like murder”). But don’t be
fooled by the many brooding moments, because cuts like the
banjo-toting ‘Tools’, which builds to a dramatic, synth-heavy
climax, shows Yellerkin aren’t devoid of energy. They have
already wowed the crowds at SXSW and their earthy howl is set
to grow ever louder this year.
If you like the soulful end of this electronic business, Brighton’s
Frankie Knight is going to be pushing all of your buttons this
year. Check out her ‘Wade’ EP on the London/Vancouver XVI
label. Bloc Party and Rob Da Bank are among her fans. With a
voice like kittens, it must have been tempting to push those
dulcet tones right up in the mix, but Knight does things a little
different and lets the music do some of the talking too – from
warm keys to deep bass rumbles to bright blips and bleeps. And
she’s by no means the only act on XVI Records worth keeping
an eye on. Watch out for the return of fellow Brightoner Ruby
Taylor and her seaside electronica and ethereal popsters Yumi &
The Weather, who have new stuff ready to drop.
B RETON
D NK L
Perfectly formed electro powerpop
Classy Scandinavian noir-pop
After releasing their debut album, ‘Other People’s Problems’, on
Fat Cat in 2012, last year’s ‘War Room Stories’ on their own Cut
Tooth imprint firmed up the thinking that Breton deserve a bit
more love. And 2015 might just deliver that love in buckets for
the London five-piece. Frontman Roman Rappak and drummer
Adam Ainger have been tinkering for a good while, clocking up
mixes for the likes of Lana Del Rey and Alt J, but Breton aren’t
some remixers’ sidey. That they use those skills to serve up
delicious pop infused with electronic jiggery is mighty pleasing
and what they say about it all makes it doubly so. “One of the
things we love about guitars is they are pure chaos and never
sound the same way twice,” notes Rappak. “So a sampled guitar
is this exact moment of chaos, repeated perfectly.”
With a mountain of brooding synths and the gentle, breathy,
Pet Shop Boys-ish tones of singer Claes Erik Strängberg, it’s
not surprising that Swedish three-piece DNKL have been
enjoying big dollops of attention of late, collecting a full hand of
supportive thumbs-ups from magazines, websites and blogs all
over the place. The Gothenburg outfit released their debut EP,
‘Wolfhour’, towards the end of last year which cemented their
growing reputation as one of Scandinavia’s most hotly tipped
new acts. Their debut album is well on its way and they’ve got
a series of UK dates booked, so expect the kerfuffle to continue
well into 2015.
S H A D S H A D OWS
Dark throwback electronica Italian style
WHO THEY?
Italian duo Luca Bandini and Alessandra Gismondi claim their
skit is “dark and gloomy”. Perhaps not the most convincing sell,
but this is something that should thrill those who appreciate the
early pioneering sounds of outfits like Cabaret Voltaire and The
Human League.
WHY SHAD SHADOWS?
Details are sketchy because we’re going in very early doors
here, along with the other 158 sensible-eared folk who have
hooked on to Shad Shadows on Soundcloud. With a following
wind, we fancy a lot more of you will be hearing a lot more from
them as this year unfolds. That they’re inspired by all things
experimental, industrial and film soundtracky will give you an
idea of the direction of travel. We particularly like their neat
line in distant, deadpan vocals. Dark it might be, gloomy it most
certainly isn’t.
TELL US MORE
They’ve put out just two tracks so far – the hypnotic, psychedelic,
‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ goes electronic drone of ‘Down’ and the
insistent, street-lit, midnight analogue pulse of ‘Minor Blues’ –
but we’ll be keeping a close eye on what Shad Shadows serve up
next. A close eye? Shadows? Do you see what we did there?
50 FOR 15
FAB L E
Full-throttle electronica
WHO THEY?
There’s been just the one release so far, but if there’s a toldyou-so moment to be had with a new artist in 2015, we’d
like to go large on the 19-year-old Devon-born and Brightondwelling Fable. ‘I Speak Words’, from her ‘Parasite’ threetracker, veers from gentle and delicate to frighteningly fierce
and frantic. It’s like shouting at a butterfly.
WHY FABLE?
Fable sounds ready-made to make waves. Big ones. ‘Parasite’
saw her backed by prolific London/Brighton symphonic trip hop
collective Archive and the Brighton connection has also led to
her working with fellow South Coaster Paul Hartnoll, once one
half of Orbital, lending her pipes to Hartnoll’s new 8.58 project
(which also involved a stint with A-league uber producer Flood).
TELL US MORE
She’s continuing to work with Archive and that bodes very
well for her debut album, which is expected to drop early this
spring. With Archive’s own new album out around about now
(‘Restriction’ is their 10th studio outing) you really shouldn’t
underestimate how good Fable’s first long-player is likely to be.
While she’s currently unsigned, we would like another wager. A
crisp 20 pound note says that won’t be the case for very long.
DEAT H IN T H E A F T E R N O O N
E L D E RB RO O K
Swedish pop, 1980s stylee
Laidback beats redefining the word “subtle”
As you may well have noticed, echoing ye olde 80s sound is
never a bad thing around these parts. Swedish two-piece Death
In The Afternoon (Linda Lomelino and Christian Nanzell) add
sleek vocal stylings and snazzy guitar licks to their rounded pop
schtick, all of which sometimes makes them come on a little like
a humanoid Daft Punk. Their most recent outing, ‘Let’s Talk’,
has enough of a kick to get even the most static listener tapping
a toe. But warm and groovy isn’t Death In The Afternoon’s only
flavour, showing off their range with the unsettling, alien-like
‘John Who’, while ‘Kino’ wouldn’t be out of place at your local
disco dancing emporium. Sit back and relax or get up and jump
about? You choose.
Twenty-year-old Londoner Alex Kotz makes the kind of music
that would warm the cockles of even the stoniest of hearts.
His distinctively lazy vocal is an absolute delight, but it’s what
lurks beneath that sets him up very nicely for potentially big
things this year. Even more impressive is the fact that he’s a
self-taught musician. His recent single, ‘Simmer Down’, entered
the world pretty much purring via Black Butter Records, home
to the likes of Rudimental, Jessie Ware and Gorgon City, and
as his people so eloquently put it, shows his “ability to create
brooding productions that fleck with light as if it’s about to
blossom brightly”. And we really wouldn’t bet against it.
H A R R Y EDWA R D S
AL SO A sprinkling of gentle electronica
Off-kilter techno ahoy Every now and again, an artist turns up who totally stops you
in your tracks. Meet Harry Edwards, a teenager from the small
market town of Aylsham in Norfolk, whose deft musical touch
will do just that. That someone so young already possesses
this sort of understanding of sonic light and shade is what
makes him such a find. If this is what he can do now, the
unsigned Edwards shouldn’t remain unsigned for long. He’s been
compared to James Blake (isn’t everyone who drops the bpms?),
but more knowingly he’s also getting nods in the direction of
Ifan Dafydd (who we go on about elsewhere in these pages).
There are smatterings of Radiohead and Talk Talk at work.
In an ideal world, if you were a music maker who counted
techno as your bag, where would you like to stick your chops?
R&S? Yes please. This collaborative outing from the Bristolbased duo of dubstep luminary Laurie Osborne (aka Appleblim)
and rave maestro Alec Storey (Al Tourettes and Second Storey)
earns its place in the legendary Belgian label’s stable with their
tentatively experimental but perfectly formed ‘EP01’ debut.
Dubstep meets rave clearly equals rather mellow techno judging
by this three-track offering. Especially good is ‘Ashford Swaiths’,
on which deep Kraftwerkain keys and ‘Autobahn’ revving
a-plenty ripple along rather nicely over what sounds like an old
typewriter being used as a drum machine. More in 2015 please.
T H E S V E NS
Sunny morning future house
Not Swedish, which is a line that’s going to soon wear pretty
thin because, on the strength of The Svens’ Greco-Roman debut
‘Odéon’, their rise this year is inevitable. Hailing from Strasbourg,
France, but residing in Paris, the story goes that Xavier and Eric
wandered along to a Greco-Roman night in the French capital,
handed over a freshly-burned CD and, one listen later, were signed
on the spot. You can hear why. The Svens’ deep, joy-fuelled
grooves fit the G-R blueprint like it was made for them. So if
‘Odéon’ is an indication of where they’re going, hunt down their
‘SPATIALLOVEVORTEX’ mix so you can hear where they’re coming
from… Primal Scream, Air, Sebastian Teller, 10cc... There’s much to
like about these two.
FELIX KUBIN
C30
C60
C90
GO!
The underground TAPE SCENE of early 1980s Germany produced
countless DIY artists whose exciting and experimental work sounds
as fresh today as it did then. And at its heart was electronic pioneer
FELIX KUBIN, curator of the tape-tastic ‘Science Fiction Park
Bundesrepublik’ compilation
Words: MAT SMITH
FELIX KUBIN
“The cassette tape was comparable to the Xerox machine,”
declares Felix Kubin, a German electronic musician whose
sensibilities are deeply rooted in the past – and in past
generations’ hopes about what the future would be like. “You
could create copies of your work really cheaply and quickly.”
Kubin has released a slew of albums through his Gagarin record
label since he first emerged with his teenage punk unit Die
Egozentrischen 2 in the early 1980s. With a huge catalogue of
work to his name – including soundtracks and radio plays – he
is a composer who operates firmly in the world of art rather
than commerce. It’s no surprise that he considers himself a
Dadaist by trade.
“There was a punk bar in Hamburg called Marktstube,” he
continues. “A lot of the local protagonists would gather there
and play tapes of their newest home recording creations to
each other. That’s how Alfred Hilsberg of ZickZack Records
got to know some of the music he later released. The tapes
were played and discussed, sometimes in such a controversial
way that it would end up in a brawl. Those times were rough!
But they were characterised by social encounters, not just
anonymous internet comments.”
The almost Masonic world of tape meets and swaps that Kubin
is describing seems like a million years ago. Audio cassette
tapes, like the comparatively sized iPod of today, were
beautifully robust and portable. You could cart a stack of tapes
from place to place in a rucksack, whereas vinyl was heavy and
brittle and awkward to carry. At the same time, the invention
of the Sony Walkman gave people the freedom to hear what
they wanted, where and when they wanted, destroying the
monopoly on listening habits that radio had enjoyed since the
first portable transistor sets had appeared decades before.
From the 1970s, the music industry got jittery about the
audio cassette because it allowed users to record more or less
anything onto a blank tape. Vinyl, by contrast, still required
a factory to etch each slab of plastic. “Home taping is killing
music” warned countless adverts and stickers – and it is
probably true that this marked the start of a sharp decline in
vinyl sales, with more and more listeners copying their friends’
stuff without paying for it themselves. But at the same time,
as evidenced by ‘Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik’, Felix
Kubin’s recent compilation album on Finders Keepers, home
recording gave birth to a raft of artists who chose to document
their own music on humble cassette tapes. No longer did a
band need to head into an expensive studio to lay down tracks.
Now they needed nothing more than a basic four-track and a
batch of ideas.
The result was a sudden surge of artists with an edge and a
sense of spontaneity and a rough urgency that the mainstream
lacked. Killing music? Not exactly.
FELIX KUBIN
Tape scenes developed pretty much anywhere that C60s and
record buttons could be found, but the German kassettenkultur
pioneers has a mystique that stands them apart from other
home recording artists elsewhere in the world. To understand
why this was the case, we need to hit rewind and stop at the
tail end of the 1970s, back during some of the heaviest frosts
of the Cold War.
“We all thought there would be an atomic war and the
end of the world was near,” reflects Felix Kubin. “And here
in Germany, we thought that we’d be the first ones to be
eradicated. So why bother about common forms of composition
and accessibility?”
The music that was produced in a divided Germany during the
late 1970s and early 1980s was among the most thrilling sonic
developments of the 20th century. This was an era when whole
new genres and new musical aesthetics were formed.
“It felt a bit like a ground zero for German pop music,” notes
Kubin. “There were so many brilliant things happening at
the same time that one could hardly catch up with the latest
releases. Just think of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft,
Einstürzende Neubauten, Tödliche Doris, Palais Schaumburg,
Der Plan, Wirtschaftswunder, Liaisons Dangereuses… their
inventiveness still resonates today. Yes, you had bands like
Can, Neu! and Faust in the early 1970s, but they were mostly
successful abroad rather than at home.”
The list of bands that emerged in the wake of what we now
know as krautrock heralded an exciting burst of creativity and
focus both in Germany and elsewhere. Many would go on to
cross-pollinate their members in multiple line-ups to explore
ever more inventive concepts. It’s no surprise that the likes of
Nick Cave and Simon Bonney from Crime & The City Solution
recruited musicians for their respective groups from Germany.
Late 1970s Berlin in particular was seen as a hugely important
source of ideas, a fusion of music, film and art, an ongoing
exchange of artistic explorations that prompted UK labels like
Mute, Some Bizarre, 4AD and Rough Trade to try to pick up
as many German bands of the day as they could for receptive
British audiences. If that period seemed to generate a dizzying
number of exciting groups, it was nothing compared to what
followed soon after, where the advent of accessible home
recording equipment made the creation and distribution of
music possible for anyone with a simple tape recorder.
“Everyone could go crazy in their cellars,” says Kubin succinctly.
“It seems as if there was a lot of pressure in the kettle in the
German collective subconscious. I think this had a lot to do
with our history and the vacuum of culture and intellectualism
after the Second World War.”
Heightened tension inevitably leads to an explosion of some
sort. In London and New York, the tension was economic
misery and the explosion was punk. In Germany, the result was
bands taking punk’s DIY aesthetic to the extreme, producing
a remarkable tape scene that sounds every bit as fresh and
intriguing today as it did at the time.
Felix Kubin’s ‘Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik’ compilation
contains 25 tracks hand-picked by Kubin in his capacity as
curator and authority on the German tape scene, the material
having been originally recorded and issued on cassette in
limited quantities. The kassettenkultur overlapped with
the emergence of bands like DAF and Palais Schaumberg
and many members of established outfits also knocked out
their own tapes. This is documented on ‘Science Fiction
Park Bundesrepublik’, which includes tracks from Pyrolator
(aka Kurt Dahlke from DAF and Der Plan), Holger Hiller (of
Palais Schaumberg) and CHBB (the late Chrislo Haas and his
Liaisons Dangereuses partner Beate Bartel, who was also in
Einstürzende Neubauten).
“They didn’t have to make a huge step into those dark areas of
the tape scene,” reveals Kubin. “The audio cassette was just a
quick method to get things recorded without having to rent a
studio. Chrislo and Beate released their tapes while they played
gigs and had records out with Liaisons Dangereuses. Beate
told me they did it because they were so hyper-productive and
because they wanted to earn a bit of money on the side.”
Like a lot of underground movements, the history of tape music
is filled with rare and sought-after releases. Kubin notes that
some cassettes from the period can now fetch up to €400
because of the fervency with which hardcore fans approach
collecting these artefacts.
“There was one release that was especially hard to find –
Holger Hiller and Thomas Fehlmann’s interpretation of Paul
Hindemith’s ‘We Build A City’, a concert for kids composed in
1930,” he says. “It originally came out as a tape on Warning,
a precursor of Ata Tak Records from Düsseldorf. In the end, I
had to put it out myself. I am generally not such a hunter for
rarities. I am not a collector. I see all sound carriers as a means
of exchange between like-minded people and I believe the
price for this exchange should be affordable.”
Felix Kubin’s own approach to music was informed by
witnessing performances by the likes of DAF on his television
set around the time that he became a teenager. And like many
electronic musicians growing up in the early 1980s, it was the
changed role of the synthesiser that fired his imagination.
“I was excited about the minimalism, the disharmonic intensity,
the playfulness and the electricity of what I heard,” he says.
“This was finally genuine electronic music. The synthesiser
wasn’t simply used to decorate rock music, it was at the
centre of it all. But it wasn’t just the musical content that was
revolutionary, it was the lyrics too. This was the first time that
Germans had used their own language in a self-confident way,
in a poetic, humorous and absurd way.”
CHRISLO HAAS & BEATE BARTEL
By this point, Kubin had already been making music for several
years, though.
“I started composing when I was nine, but it was when I
discovered the Korg MS-20 synthesiser that I totally got into
it,” he says. “As a child, you are extremely receptive to things
around you and my most important sources were the radio
and record shops. I exchanged a lot of new music with my
friend Generator 1, who was in Die Egozentrischen 2 with
me. Actually, around 1982, lots of children’s bands popped
up around us. They all wanted to create what we called
‘experimental dilettante’ music.”
When it came to releasing his own compositions, it was the
economy of means with which bands operating in the tape
scene were able to get their music out there and into the hands
of real enthusiasts that Kubin was drawn to.
FELIX KUBIN
HOLGER HILLER
“We hated the industry,” he explains, somewhat tongue-incheek. “We were strictly underground. Of course, I would have
loved a credible label like ZickZack to release our album – and
that was actually planned. Tom Dokoupil of Wirtschaftswunder
was supposed to have produced us, but we came along a bit
too late and the whole scene collapsed as quickly as it had
emerged. I kept recording four-track music on tape, though.
I never intended to become a composer later in my life, I just
produced tracks for myself without any plan for a career in
music.”
A composer is exactly what Kubin would become, his music
capturing the futuristic vision promised by synths even when
the instrument was mainly a bolt-on addition to the line-up of
any band trying to look cool. He has released countless albums
and singles since his first forays into the tape scene, amassing
a cult following but always remaining true to the independent
spirit that has driven his work ethic since the early 1980s.
Kubin’s curation work on ‘Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik’
is particularly timely as the audio cassette has been making
a strong resurgence over the last few years. Go to any
independent record shop and there will invariably be an area
turned over to tapes. Some are by mainstream bands trying to
get fans to buy their music on a quirky format they can recall
from their parents’ collections, but many are by alternative
outfits trying to steer clear of the dominance of downloads.
“The main link between putting out cassettes back then and
today is an economical one,” says Kubin. “With dramatically
shrinking editions, it’s much cheaper to produce a tape than a
vinyl record. And a tape is more beautiful and sensuous than
a download, of course. A lot of the music released on tape
nowadays still shows the same impulse for experimentation and
FELIX KUBIN
the same freedom and joy that was typical of many tapes back
then, and it’s nice to have music presented with a bigger time
context due to the nature of the tape. This context is lost in
the digital world, where everything is shrunk to nothing more
than bits and pieces.”
Kubin is, however, circumspect about the rise of a 21st century
kassettenkultur.
“For many people, the tape is about nostalgia… and I don’t
think nostalgia is a good motivator in art,” he cautions. “In
terms of music production, the digital possibilities are much
better today, although I have to admit that when I recently
recorded something on my old Fostex four-track machine for
my new album, ‘Chromdioxidgedächtnis’, which is dedicated to
the cassette format, I was surprised at how good it sounded. I
didn’t need all the virtual analogue plug-ins, I didn’t need any
plug-ins actually, just a bit of EQing on the mixing desk. In my
teenage years, I didn’t even have EQs, I just had a small mixer,
an analogue delay and my four-track recorder providing bass
and treble.”
Like his tape scene forebears, Felix Kubin can clearly see the
potential that old technology and a more simplified palette of
tools can often provide.
“Limitation can be very helpful in creativity,” he concludes.
Which, perhaps above all else, is what ‘Science Fiction Park
Bundesrepublik’ captures so vividly.
‘Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik’ is out now
on Finders Keepers
BORIS
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SCHNEIDER KACIREK
VOTAGE
CONTROLLED
AFRICA
Stefan Schneider and Sven Kacirek have crafted
a unique electronic album based on a series of
field recordings taken in some of the most remote
parts of Kenya. Get set for the opulent synth tones
and African-influenced rhythms of SCHNEIDER
KACIREK’s ’Shadows Documents’
Words: DANNY TURNER
Photos: PETER STRUMPF
SCHNEIDER KACIREK
Music genres always find new ways to
mutate and develop. Hip hop was born
out of rap and turntablism; house music
sprung from the ashes of disco, mixed
with 50s and 60s soul. Yet through
the passage of time, invention (never
mind reinvention), becomes increasingly
difficult, even within the exploratory
domains of electronic music.
Thankfully, some artists still have enough
sense of adventure to seek out new
pathways, to countenance a new syntax.
They may use the same technology and
techniques to chronicle their art, but the
heart and mind that yearns to investigate
and seek out alternative forms of musical
expression holds the key to the unlocking
of fresh generic templates. One such
artist is Stefan Schneider, founder
member of neo-krautrock band Kreidler
and experimental techno act To Rococo
Rot.
Schneider’s latest enterprise is Schneider
Kacirek, which sees him teaming up with
fellow German musician Sven Kacirek, a
drummer and percussionist who studied
at the famous Drummers Collective
in New York. Kacirek has composed
and performed many modern dance
theatre and contemporary ballet pieces
in Germany, as well as releasing three
solo albums. Between the two of them,
they have a history of collaboration with
respected patrons of the avant-garde,
most notably Hans-Joachim Roedelius
(ex-Cluster and Harmonia), Klaus Dinger
(ex-Kraftwerk and Neu!), electroclassical experimentalist Nils Frahm, and
esteemed world music session players
such as Bill Wells and Marc Ribot.
As Schneider Kacirek, the pair utilise
their experience in innovative electronics
to create potent abstractions via the
union of dark synth play and African
rhythms. The result is ‘Shadows
Documents’, one of the most evocative
albums you’ll hear in a long time.
“It was quite an organic process that
brought Sven and I together,” says Stefan
Schneider. “We met each other some
years ago in Hamburg and Sven asked
me to join a research project to make
audio recordings of traditional folk music
in Kenya initiated by the Goethe-Institut
in Nairobi.”
Under the patronage of the GoetheInstitut (the worldwide German cultural
association) and UNESCO, Schneider and
Kacirek travelled to Africa in September
2011 and spent several weeks making
field recordings of traditional Kenyan
music in numerous rural and coastal
locations. This was the first time that
Schneider had travelled to a Sub-Saharan
country, but Sven Kacirek was no
stranger to Kenya. He initially visited the
country in 2008.
“I went to Kenya for the first time after a
choreographer from Hamburg asked me
to create the music for a contemporary
dance piece that was premiered in
Nairobi,” explains Kacirek. “One year
later, I went back to go up-country,
meeting with singers and musicians like
Ogoya Nengo, Ogada Oganga, Salim
Mwatela and Owino Koyo. Since then,
I‘ve been back to Kenya three more
times to make field recordings with
Stefan.”
The material Schneider and Kacirek
recorded was subsequently released on
two albums, ‘Mukunguni’ and ‘Rang’ala’,
both on Honest Jon’s Records. They were
named after two of the villages they
made recordings in.
“We stayed for about a week in
Mukunguni, which is near Malindi, north
from Mombasa,” says Schneider. “We
recorded a group of Mijikenda people,
who play a rare form of percussion during
healing ceremonies for mentally ill people.”
‘Mukunguni’ features folk music from
highly rural villages. Almost taking the
form of free jazz, it explores the intricate
use of melodies and rhythms played in
polyphonic accents, sounding not too
dissimilar to “talking drums”, which are
designed to chase away Pepo Mlume,
the devil who poisons the imagination.
It includes various local instrumentation,
such as Sengenya drums – bumbumbu,
dahdahe, chapuro, vumi and ngoma – and
other local instruments, including the
lungo and dena (metal rings), kayamba
(raft rattle), njunga (bells), ukaya (metal
tray) and bamba (metal guiro), as well as
the rather more prosaic bottle-tops.
The experience of overseeing the
recording of ‘Mukunguni’ and ‘Rang’ala’
fuelled the German musicians’ decision
to record together as Schneider Kacirek
and to use their African adventures as
the starting point for their first release
as such. And as Schneider points out,
’Shadows Documents’ finds the pair
getting a lot more hands-on.
“On ‘Mukunguni’ and ‘Rang’ala’, we were
just recording engineers and we didn’t
contribute anything as participating
musicians,” he explains. “Schneider
Kacirek is a project in its own right,
though. It’s also interesting for us
because, technically speaking, it has
nothing to do with our own music.”
‘Shadows Documents’ is a deeply exotic
collection of analogue synth-based
instrumentals. It’s an out-and-out
electronic record – however hard you
listen, you won’t hear the merest trace of
an acoustic instrument – but the original
material for the album was sourced in
Kenya. Schneider and Kacirek returned
there in 2013, intent on travelling to new
areas of the country and making more
field recordings.
SCHNEIDER KACIREK
SCHNEIDER KACIREK
“Most types of folk music in Kenya
are played by older musicians,” says
Schneider. “We did recordings of singer
Ogoya Nengo, for instance, who is in her
70s. Unfortunately, the young people
would rather listen to hip hop or other
forms of pop music. The fact that young
people grow up in rural regions yet leave
their families in order to find jobs and
education in the bigger cities also plays
a role.”
“It was very important for us to learn
why and how the music is performed
in the villages,” adds Kacirek. “It was
far more interesting to record these
musicians at the spots where the music
originated and is played even up until
today. If we had recorded Ogoya Nengo
in a professional studio in Nairobi instead
of recording her in Rang’ala village, it
would have become a totally different
record.”
“One of the places we travelled to was
Siaya County, which is north from Lake
Victoria,” says Schneider. “A friend of
ours, George Odhiambo, introduced us
to the music of the Luo people who live
around the lake. Going to these villages
to meet and hear the musicians that are
exploring the various different styles
of Luo or Mijikenda music, like dodo,
maranga or ohangla, also gave us a
chance to witness the social gatherings
that are central to their playing. It is
predominantly the music itself that
excites us, of course, but there’s also the
social and political backgrounds of the
songs, and finding out about those gave
us a lot of insight into the meanings of
the music and the lyrics.”
With today’s sophisticated equipment,
one would imagine there would be
little impediment to storing the field
recordings they made onto some sort of
electronic device. In Kenya, however, the
technology that we take for granted is
not always so readily available or easy to
set up. Did they run into any problems in
sourcing the material?
“We had to use battery-driven recording
equipment, as there is no electricity
in most places,” notes Schneider. “All
of the recordings were done with two
unsynchronised ‘zoom’ digital recorders
that have two internal and external
microphones. In fact, we did eight-track
recordings because it’s easier to shift
those two-by-four tracks to one position
on the computer; it enables them to run
in perfect tempo. The external mics we
used, primarily for the voices and drums,
were the Sennheiser MD 421 and Shure
SM 57/58, or the Beta models of the
same type. We also used some batterydriven preamps built by a wonderful
engineer in Düsseldorf.”
Back in the studio in Germany,
Schneider and Kacirek transmuted their
acoustically assembled impressions into
a pure electronic form. The result is
a haunting and mysterious nine-track
album, full of authentic percussive
ambience blended with opulent synth
tones and dark beats. But this is
where ‘Shadows Documents’ differs
from other krautrock collaborations on
which drum rhythms take the dominant
role. Instead, Schneider and Kacirek
used various techniques to modify the
drums sounds into synthesiser-style
instruments, welding the percussive
and synth elements together to create
something really quite unique. Indeed,
this “mutation” of drum sounds into
synth sounds was a central element of
the recordings.
“All of the drums on the album were
played by Sven,” clarifies Schneider. “He
is fantastic in tuning his drums in a very
quick time. It was our idea to have the
drums tuned and played in a way that
they almost sound like electronic sounds,
whereas the synths that I am playing
have a lot of rhythmical qualities.”
“It was not a technical process because
I’m very much interested in playing
drums in a way that it does not sound
like a rock kit or a jazz set,” says Kacirek.
“I like it when the sound of the acoustic
drum kit merges with the synth sounds
in a way that it is difficult to figure out
which sound belongs to the kit and
which belongs to a synth. It is a question
of tuning, different techniques and, of
course, amplification.” ‘Shadows Documents’ can perhaps be
compared to similar genre explorations
by renowned krautrock pairings such as
Michael Rother/Klaus Dinger and Dieter
Moebius/Mani Neumeier. But however
successful this experiment is, Stefan
Schneider and Sven Kacirek feel there is
a lot more to come from them.
“‘Shadows Documents’ is our first album
and like most debut albums it perhaps
carries a little too much information,”
notes Schneider. “We’re very much
looking forward to playing live and
developing our own style. Basically, we
wanted to introduce a certain type of
music, but one that still carries a lot of
sounds that you would usually find in
dance music productions. So while the
inspiration for this album came from
Kenya, the 808 and the 303 are still used
on almost every track.”
‘Shadows Documents’ is released on
Bureau B
YA ARRO HS
Ethereal and otherworldly storytelling
A self-proclaimed “New York native, Los Angeles covert”, Ms
Yaarrohs combines celestial vocals with drawn-out synths and
crashing snares in an intoxicating marriage of otherworldly
storytelling and emotional music. She’s a close associate of The
Glitch Mob, her voice helping to charm the West Coast trio’s
‘Love, Death, Immortality’ to Number One on both Billboard’s
Independent Album and Electronic Album charts, and she’s
just released an excellent six-tracker called ‘Flesh & Blood’ on
the Mob’s Glass Air imprint. Yaarrohs is a witchy siren from the
furtherest reaches of outer space, ready to guide you through
the galaxies.
S H E L T E R P O I NT
Hazy downtempo wooziness
WHO THEY?
What are they putting in the water in Nottingham? Whatever it
is, it’s clearly enough for Coventry-born duo Robin Hearn and
Liam Arnold to call it home these days.
WH Y SHE LT E R P OIN T ?
If delicious low-key electronica is your bag, you’re going to have
very happy ears with these guys. Debuting in 2012 with the
‘Forever For Now’ EP, they took their sweet time following it up,
but last year’s reappearance with a brace of tracks – the smooth,
soulful ‘Serenity’ and ‘Cut Me Loose’ – proved more than worth
the wait.
TELL US MORE
Already onboard the good ship Shelter Point are the likes of
Annie Mac, Huw Stephens and Zane Lowe, as well as Notts
hotshot Indiana, who invited the pair to support her on her
last UK tour. With the ink still drying on a deal with the Space
& Time label and having remixed the likes of Mø and Laura
Doggett, Shelter Point say that further collaborations should be
expected on their debut album. They’re busy working on that as
you read.
L XURY
Playful house music goes deep WHO THEY?
Londoner Andy Smith, known to turntables across the land as
Lxury, makes delicious deep-ish house. And everyone could do
with a bit of deep-ish house in their life, if you ask us.
WHY L XURY?
Following on from last year’s excellent ‘Playground’ EP, take
a listen to ‘Pick You Up’, a taster for Lxury’s forthcoming ‘Into
The Everywhere’ EP. It’s such a solidly refreshing blast of nononsense four-to-the-floor, complete with a repetitive “I’ll
pick you up” hook that swirls round and round your head. It’s
a stunner, make no mistake. Better still, the stamp of approval
comes courtesy of Joe “Hot Chip” Goddard and pals at the most
excellent Greco-Roman label.
TELL US MORE
Did we mention that Andy Smith is mates with Disclosure?
We didn’t? And have we said anything about Greco-Roman
being a most excellent label? We have? OK, how about a tip
within a tip? We’d thoroughly recommend checking out Lxury’s
labelmate Roosevelt, aka Cologne-based producer Marius
Lauber, who does a very neat line in infectious 80s-style
electropop.
KITE ST RI NG TA N G L E
M-B AND
Daft name, sleek tunage
Icelandic experimental electropop
Brisbane’s Danny Harley is one popular artist if Soundcloud plays
are your yardstick – 711,926 plays here, 980,162 there, 1,588,401
over yonder. And while numbers are just numbers, bear in mind
that his debut EP, ‘Vessel’, is but a few months old. Oh, and
he’s sold out two national tours down under. From the garagey
‘Stone Cold’ (featuring Tiana Khasi) to the delicate electropop
of ‘Arcadia’ and on into the “driving synth-wave epic” that is
‘What’s The Point?’, the EP shows he’s a pretty versatile chap
to boot. With all this up his sleeve, we’re in little doubt that
you are going to be hearing a lot more of his bright and breezy
talents this year.
M-Band is not a band, but a solo project born from the mind
of classically trained pianist Hörður Már Bjarnason, who creates
dreamy, melodic electronica dripping with atmosphere. Starting
in his rural hometown in the southern part of Iceland, the
23-year-old ended up joining indie outfit Retrobot (who won
the Icelandic Battle of the Bands competition in 2012) before
moving on to synthpop group Nolo. He’s been working as
M-Band for a couple of years, releasing his debut EP (literally
entitled ‘EP’) to widespread critical acclaim. A debut album,
‘Haust’ (meaning ‘Autumn’), followed last summer on the
Icelandic Raftónar label.
50 FOR 15
PO RT I CO
Former jazz darlings rebranded
WHO THEY?
On the map as Portico Quartet since their debut album,
‘Knee-Deep In The North Sea’, landed them a Mercury Prize
nomination in 2008. Saxophonist Jack Wyllie, bassist Milo
Fitzpatrick and drummer Duncan Bellamy have now slimmed
to a trio, dropped the “Quartet”, and completed an electronic
metamorphosis.
WHY PORTICO?
Embraced as the future of modern jazz, PQ clearly had other
ideas. When original member Nick Mulvey left in 2011, they
were joined by keyboarder and old pal Keir Vine, a synth
obsessive who opened up an increasingly electronic box
of tricks for the band. Their third album, ‘Portico Quartet’,
released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label in 2012, finally saw
a musical swerve.
TELL US MORE
Vine himself split from the group last autumn. The subsequent
name change and a new deal with Ninja Tune probably tells you
all you need to know. Their fourth album, due in March, is not
so much a swerve as a complete handbrake U-turn, screeching
rubber and everything.
G LASS ANI M A L S
MGUN
A tropical electro-indie storm
Where punk meets techno
Oxford four-piece Glass Animals come into 2015 on a high.
They’re building up a fair head of steam through an exotic synth
brew that wears its pop sensibilities with pride and, as if to prove
the point, they’ve just completed a successful tour of America.
Their debut album, ‘Zaba’, released last summer, flaunts a
distinctly tropical vibe, intertwining soulful vocals with electronic
and ambient rumbles. Chuck in hints of Flying Lotus and Jamie
xx here and there and it starts to become a very intoxicating
potion. Assuming they can keep turning out material that’s on a
par with ‘Zaba’, you can expect to hear a lot more of a rumble
about Glass Animals in the coming months.
As MGUN, Detroiter Manuel Gonzales is bringing an almost
punk spirit to the world of techno. He developed an interest in
making music when he was given a Casio at the age of 11 and
remains an analogue hardware freak. He’s a big fan of industrial
and avant-garde music, citing influences such as Frank Zappa
and Sun Ra, and he’s toured as a DJ with the Underground
Resistance crew. He’s never going to be a pop star, of course,
which is something else in his favour. MGUN’s most recent
release is ‘Filth’, a punishing three-tracker on the Ukraine-based
Wicked Bass label which he purposely recorded for the East
European market. “It’s hard as fuck,” says Gonzales. “I believe I
have a lot to offer those folks.”
V ISI ON F OR T U N E
UMM AGM A
A different kind of experimentalism
Dreamy soundscape potpourri
Recorded during what they insist was an “intense two-month
research residency” in a spacious villa in a remote region of
Tuscany, Vision Fortune’s second album, ‘Country’, is about to be
unleashed on an unsuspecting world via ATP Recordings. “The
group had no choice but to forgo their simple daily routines of
sampling local gastronomic delicacies and honing their horseriding skills in order to complete the album,” say their people.
It’s a bit of a swerve from their 2013 debut, ‘Mas Fiestas Con
El Grupo Vision Fortune’, adding an undercurrent of gentle
electronica to their locked down and hypnotic sound. This might
be where guitar music ends and electronic music begins. Or is it
the other way round?
Shoegaze has undergone a revival over recent years, and while
we’re not in the market for over-effected chiming guitars and
wistfully fey vocals, we will make an exception for Shauna
McLarnon and Alexx Kretov. The Canadian/Ukrainian Ummagma
duo operate in our region of shoegaze/dreampop/post-rock, call
it what you will, and they clearly know the right end of a synth
when they see it. Last year they released the excellent ‘Lama’
album on the prolific German label Emerald & Doreen Recordings,
as well as producing the debut LP from their Russian pal Roma
Kalitkin (‘New Born’ by Sounds Of Sputnik on Ear To Ear
Records). They also put out a single called ‘Kiev’ and a collection
of remixes. Promised for this spring are two more remixes that
should act as a further stamp of approval, one by Cocteau Twin
Robin Guthrie and the other from OMD’s Malcolm Holmes.
G H O S T C U L TURE
Sinister and sinuous synthscapes
WHO THEY?
Ghost Culture is sole trader James Greenwood. Actually, he
might be a soul trader too. There’s definitely something a bit
netherworldly about this 20-something Londoner. He has the
air of a fella who’s seen and heard things most of the rest of us
haven’t (and probably wouldn’t want to).
WH Y G HOST CULT URE?
Because every time we play a track from Ghost Culture’s
eponymous debut album in the office – and that’s something
we’ve been doing regularly over the last few weeks – somebody
says, “Ooh, I like this”. We’re impressed by Greenwood’s
strong sense of style too. Dare we mention ‘The Man Who
Fell To Earth’? No, we probably shouldn’t. It’s probably just
Greenwood’s red hair and far-away stare.
TELL US MORE
Greenwood is signed to Erol Alkan’s Phantasy label and is an old
pal of fellow Phantasy artist Daniel Avery. His CV includes stints
as a studio engineer with Avery and also with Death In Vegas.
The ‘Ghost Culture’ album is slightly sinister and decidedly
sinuous, all soft, breathy, semi-spoken vocals, luxuriously
melodic synth lines and perfectly rounded beats. It’s little
wonder that Lord Andrew of Weatherall is a big fan.
50 FOR 15
STR ANGE U Scuzzed up and off-kilter hip hop
WHO THEY?
London duo King Kashmere IV (rapping) and Dr Zygote
(producing). It’s a compelling pairing, not least because Zygote
is also the hand on the tiller of Boot Records, a label crying out
for a bit of love if ever there was.
WHY STR ANGE U?
When Electronic Sound’s very own Neil Kulkarni claims he
hasn’t quite heard hip hop like it before, you know it’s time
to sit up straight and cup your ears. Unearthing something
that sounds this new isn’t an everyday occurrence. Got your
attention? Over seven tracks, their ‘EP#2040’ laid down a new
law not just for British hip hop, but for British music as a whole.
The follow-up, ‘Aliens In Suits’ (the ping-pong title track will
slay you), rode roughshod over that same law.
TELL US MORE
Strange U are inspired by, in their own words, “the spirits of
Oshun, Vishnu, Apollo, Sobek and Jim Henson”. One listen and
that’s underlined – in green pen. When the grinding, off-centre,
scuzzy B-movie funk of Zygote meets the crazy world that
Kashmere paints, the result is infectious, often bearing repeated
listens just to check you’ve heard right. Try ‘The Cake Is A Lie’
with its choice line, “By the way, I was born of a dragon’s egg /
I get my respect in the form of a clarinet”.
V UUR W ERK
D E MS
Electro-dub with extra frites
Lyrically emotional electronica
Flemish trio Vuurwerk were last spotted chucking out excellent
off-kilter electronica with a brace of EPs on Mush Records. The
sharper knives among you will twig that they’re also skewed,
mind-tripping sonic mavericks Jealov and the sharpest of all will
know the iron girders techno they make as Kwatza. Stepping
up their Vuurwerk activity last year, the group enlisted singers
and rappers on a debut album that sees a radical shift towards
a more song-based approach, the flavour of which is decidedly
Massive Attack. The first fruit from these new sessions has just
fallen from the tree in the form of the excellent ‘G.R.I.P.’ EP on
Lo Recordings.
Tinkering away and developing their own sound since 2011,
south London trio Dems (Dan Moss, David Gardener and Duncan
Mann) have produced some superbly atmospheric tracks,
their hypnotic mix of vocals, synths and percussion earning
them spots supporting the likes of Azealia Banks. The group
carefully craft all their music in their Balham studio and have
just released their debut album, ‘Muscle Memory’, on the Sew
In Love label. Work on a second LP is already underway and
they’re off on a UK tour shortly, the dates including a special
launch bash for ‘Muscle Memory’ which they say will be
“somewhere between a live show and an art exhibition, with
lots of musicians and collaborators”.
EMIL I E N I CO L A S
PRI D E S
Haunting vocals plus dark synths
Sleek and slick Scottish synthpop
Clearly smarter than the average bear, Norway’s Emilie Nicolas
caught the ear of commercial radio DJs in her home country
with an electronic cover of ‘Pstereo’, a track by rather popular
Trondheim rockers the DumDum Boys. Attention duly grabbed,
she wasted little time showing off the flip side of her upbeat
electropop coin. Namely chillingly beautiful vocals, slow-paced,
repeated synth crescendos, and assorted clicks and whirs – all
of which can be heard on her debut album, ‘Like I’m A Warrior’,
which came out last year. The record was only issued in
Norway, though, and that can’t possibly be right. Here’s hoping
one of the smarter labels out there ensures it gets a wider
reaching release over the next few months.
There’s something very sleek and professional about Prides.
Maybe it’s their bird-in-flight logo. Maybe it’s the jauntily angled
“I” in their name. Or maybe it’s the smooth pop blend of cheerful
melodies and buoyant beats, plus the strong sense of storytelling
that runs through ‘The Seeds You Sow’, last year’s debut EP from
the Scottish trio. Whatever it is, they’re already several steps
ahead of many of our other 50 For 15 tips, having appeared at the
closing ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, supported
Blink 182 at the Brixton Academy, and headlined the BBC
Introducing stage at the Reading & Leeds Festivals. So far so good,
but with their sing-along anthems and energetic live shows, the
chances are Prides have only just begun to scratch the surface of
their bid for world domination.
MOOG SUB 37
SYNTHESISER DAVE
ARTURIA/BITWIG PRODUCER PACK
HANS ZIMMER PERCUSSION LONDON SOLOS
TECH
TEN
THINGS
W E LOV E
ABOUT
THE
MOOG
S U B 37
TECH
Words: MARK ROLAND
We first had a play around with Moog’s new Sub 37 at the
BPM event back in September. Just a few minutes with it was
enough to be pretty sure that we’d like one to be permanent
fixture in the Electronic Sound office. At £1,199 a pop, it’s not
an insignificant investment for a mono/paraphonic synth. Moog
sent us one to evaluate, and it took about half an hour of
noodling around without the distractions of a trade show for the
Sub 37 to cast its spell. We want it. And we don’t want to give
it back. Check out the video to see and hear why, or read the
short version if you are time starved...
TECH
Watch the
video review
http://youtu.be/rTwkkjSU_9Y
ONE
THREE
EIGHT
Would you just look at it!
Wood side panels, that
dramatically scooped back
plate, the outputs and power
switch panel nestling in one of
the side panels. And it’s got
Moog written on it. Moog.
The arpeggiator and its 64step sequencer. Hours of fun.
Interpolating waveform
selector (which means it
slides from one waveform to
another) for some really subtle
movement in sound.
T WO
Would you just look at it
again! The knobs sell the
thing before you’ve even
switched it on. And the extra
large cut-off knob, something
it shares with the Sub Phatty
et al, is a beauty. And when
you do switch it on, all the
pretty lights twinkle orangely
at you and make you feel
good about yourself. These
are the main reasons we lust
after synthesisers, aren’t
they? Aesthetics - don’t ever
pretend they don’t matter.
FOUR
The layout of the control
panel is simple yet
sophisticated.
FIVE
It’s paraphonic - you can play
two notes at once!
SIX
The Multidrive knob makes
everything sound edgy and
intense.
SEVEN
And so does the Feedback
knob! Fatness awaits.
NINE
The Mixer, which is a very
simple yet powerful soundshaping section.
TEN
We haven’t even scratched the
surface.
TECH
Dave
Oh, the beauty and desirability of the vintage synthesiser! Oh, the pain and
distress of the blown capacitor, the drifting oscillator and the ‘You have to switch
it on an hour before you need to use it and don’t look at it in a funny way or it
won’t work... Hold on, what’s that smell? And that blue smoke? SWITCH IT OFF!
SWITCH IT OFF! PULL THE PLUG OUT THE MAINS, IT’S A DEATH TRAP!!!’.
Luckily for us, we have Dave to help us out. Dave brings kaput specimens of
early synthesis back to life in his shed, using a skilful combination of a soldering
iron, bits and pieces, fine coffee and magick.
In this, the first in an ongoing series of visits to Dave’s shed, we learn about the
innards of a blue Roland SH-101, guide price £600-£1,000.
http://youtu.be/a2ETW80blP8
‘Future Days does not capture Krautrock so much as unleash
it. At long last, the definitive book on the ultimate music.’ Simon Reynolds
‘His book is so well researched and filled with
such enthusiasm for its subject that it absorbs
from start to finish.’ The Observer
books and music at the heart
of independent publishing
@FaberSocial | fabersocial.co.uk
TECH
KEYLAB 61
PRODUCER
PACK
ARTURIA
Arturia’s hardware/software hybrid
hooks up with Bitwig’s DAW
to create a bargain package
Words: LUKE SANGER
TECH
Arturia, well known for their excellent
software replications of classic hardware
synths, have teamed up with Bitwig, the
new DAW kids on the block, to bring
forth the ‘Producer Pack’ bundles.
The pack includes a complete version
of Bitwig Studio, a new “dynamic
software solution for music creation and
performance”, to quote the website,
along with the Arturia Keylab (25, 49
or 61 key versions) and their much
respected Mini V and Analog Lab soft
synths.
You get 5,000 synth sounds programmed
from a selection Arturia’s vintage synth
emulations, including the ARP 2600, the
Modular V and various Prophets, Jupiters
and Oberheims. All of eBay is here. And
if you want to sound like Klaus Schulze,
go right ahead, because he programmed
some of the sounds. Priced from £300 to
£400 (depending on which keyboard you
opt for), this is an excellent value bundle
for someone looking for an all-in-one
solution. Even when taking the Keylab
out of the equation, the price for the
software alone is a good deal.
I was given the Producer Pack 61 to
review (and it’s worth bearing in mind
that the 25 key version doesn’t have
the after-touch or drum pads you get on
the 49 and 61 key options). Straight out
of the box, the Keylab looks great – a
luxurious metal case with wooden end
cheeks and a high quality keyboard,
the knobs, sliders and pads all feeling
up to the job. Setting up involved
installing and registering several products
individually online. It was relatively time
consuming, but once it was done and
I fired up Bitwig, everything appeared
to be functioning perfectly and with
minimal fuss, and this on a relatively old
Macbook.
The Keylab integration with Bitwig is
quite elegant and is based around two
main “modes”, sound-mode and mixmode. When selecting sound-mode on
the Keylab, a confirmation message pops
up on Bitwig and all the Keylab control
functionality is mapped to the selected
instrument or effect on Bitwig. I had
a nice groove going in no time – using
the bundled Mini V along with some
of Bitwig’s great native drum machine
modules – and recording automation
was as easy as pressing record and play
on the Keylab and turning a knob or
pushing a fader. Switching to mix-mode
then changes all the Keylab controls to
address the mixer functions on Bitwig,
the faders in this case felt responsive
enough to set the volume levels of
individual tracks quickly and accurately.
For adding new tracks and instruments, I
couldn’t find any obvious way to do this
straight from the Keylab, likewise for
turning on/off the metronome or undoing
a bad take. In this respect, I didn’t feel
quite as detached from the computer as
I’d like for something billed as having
“seamless integration with the hardware
and software”. That said, the mapping
functionality of Keylab is certainly in the
same league as the Novation Remote
series or Akai’s MPK controllers, albeit
lacking the full integration of products
like NI’s Maschine and Ableton’s Push.
All in all, this has everything you need
to make great sounding tracks and to do
so quickly. The combination of Bitwig’s
intuitive workflow, the excellent Mini
V and Analog Lab soft synths, and the
effectively mapped Keylab controller
adds up to an excellent value and very
tasty bundle indeed.
KeyLab 25 Producer Pack RRP £309 /
49 Pack RRP £339 / 61 Pack RRP £419
(prices inc VAT)
www.arturia.com
THE VERY BEST
IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC
AVAILABLE ON ALL
SMARTPHONES & TABLETS
DOWNLOAD THE
ELECTRONICSOUND APP
FOR FREE AT
www.electronicsound.co.uk
TECH
HANS ZIMMER
PERCUSSION:
LONDON SOLOS
SPITFIRE AUDIO
Hans Zimmer’s samples gives you
instant Hollywood sound design welly
Words: LUKE SANGER
Hollywood heavyweight Hans Zimmer, known for his scores
on blockbuster movies like ‘Inception’ and ‘The Dark Knight
Rises’, brings his knowledge and experience of orchestral
percussion to the table in this collaboration with British
sampling connoisseurs Spitfire Audio, who also recently gave us
the fantastic Martyn Ware collection of samples from the great
man’s Roland 100M and Jupiter 8.
‘London Solos’ is the third instalment in the Hans Zimmer
percussion collection, with 13GB of huge-sounding multisampled ethnic and orchestral drums, played in a variety of
ways and recorded with intense attention to detail at AIR
Studios with a clutch of vintage mics that probably cost more
than your house.
My first impression on loading up the Kontakt-based instrument
is the interface looks top class. Smooth and clean granite
colours with simple, functional controls. Each instrument has a
dial for “Response”, which gives control over the dynamic range
between the soft and loud sample layers, effectively boosting
the quieter recordings. I found this really useful when triggering
the drums from my controller keyboard.
There are also dials for pitch, with a high pass and low pass
filter (named “Boom” and “Crack”), which all operate as
expected. Where the quality quickly becomes apparent is the
ability to change the microphone perspective, with control
over close, front (stage) and surround. Switching and mixing
between these adjusts reverberations ranging from dynamic
to cavernous 3D sounds. Each drum has various articulations
available and mapped across the keyboard, from delicate taps
and rolls, to thunderous smacks and flams.
Spitfire Audio have made a sterling effort in capturing the
different instruments and their nuances, the attention to detail
in the interface matched by extremely high quality samples.
Being able to select different percussionists and their preferred
microphone placements really allows you to shape your sound
effectively and with minimal fuss.
Although ‘London Solos’ is billed as a pack to add to the
previous two in the Hans Zimmer series, I would happily
recommend this as a stand-alone percussion instrument for
artists looking to add big cinematic sounds to their arsenal.
‘London Solos’ RRP £199 (plus VAT)
www.spitfireaudio.com
ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM
REVIEWS
When the Detroit pioneer first funnelled
Chicago house through the exhaust
pipes of the motor city, he produced
beautiful mechanical electro closer in
tone to Kraftwerk than Mr Fingers. This
is what I want to hear with a Model 500
record. Listen to ‘Control’, released as a
single in 2012. Listen to its rolling bass
and scrunchy micro-squeaks. Listen
to the precision of the beats and how
the economy of phrasing is designed to
evoke a reaction in the shortest blast
possible.
MODEL 500
Digital Solutions
Metroplex
Do it right and don’t break the rules –
Model 500’s comeback album shows
a master at work
We are in the era of the comeback.
The past couple of years has seen Nile
Rogers dust off his white jacket, Aphex
Twin resume his job licking windows,
and Giorgio Moroder announce through
trembling moustache that he’s breaking
his three-decade album silence. Even
The Libertines are... Oh wait, no-one
cares about The Libertines.
Juan Atkins releasing his first Model 500
album since 1999 not only puts him on
a well-trodden path, it shoves him onto
a high-speed motorway. How does he
fare? Dare we watch? One thing we can
be certain about is ‘Digital Solutions’ is
more of a solo effort than most of his
previous Model 500 records. His live
collaborator, “Mad” Mike Banks from
Underground Resistance, had a hand in
the production, but it was Atkins who
announced the completion of the album
last July. Add in the fact that it appears
on his own Metroplex label and you’ll
understand why we can consider this as
an auteur work.
‘Control’ is included on ‘Digital
Solutions’, but Atkins saves it until the
very end. Instead, he chooses to open
with the riffing, squealing synths of ‘Hi
NRG’, all twiddling funk based around
a three-note hook. The 4/4 beats run
more smoothly on ‘Storm’, this time
in the form of simmering deep house,
but they’re not typical. ‘Electric Night’
is much closer to the album’s heart, a
soft electro mood-setter deadpanning
the virtues of “Do it right / Don’t break
the rules”, perhaps as an introspective
reflection on 2010’s excellent ‘OFI’. The
title track is Kraftwerkian – and I mean
that in a good way – and is another
highlight. The zap-snare reminds me of
the scene’s earliest influences. History is
etched into this album.
Alas, so is more recent history,
specifically Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access
Memories’, which I thought sounded like
a bunch of geezers dossing about in a
studio with too many influences at their
disposal. To be honest, there’s a touch of
this here. ‘The Groove’ sits somewhere
between a drowsy jam and a fluffy Alex
Reese-style rhythm, but it’s spoiled by
modded synths posing as guitar solos.
‘Encounter’ meanwhile becomes a Lonestyle slow-stepper, but not before we’re
subjected to a dubstep bassline that
seems clumsily pasted in, like an audio
Microsoft Paint. It’s a long way from the
clipped mayhem of Model 500’s classic
‘No UFO’s’.
Amid the experimentation, ‘Digital
Solutions’ is still a, erm, model of
focus. ‘Standing In Tomorrow’ is a good
example. Its welcome ‘Strings Of Life’
richness is battered with Nintendo bleepfoolery sounds, as if Atkins has taken
apart the circuitry of rave. There’s a
master at work here, of that there is no
doubt. The cymbals he layers into the
snares adds an energy that most other
producers would have missed.
The overall impression is of an artist
who knows his sound, has plenty of
vitality, and feels no pressure to bow
to dancefloor trends – which, these
days, are so dominated by house music,
techno might seem invisible. A little
too often, Atkins raises the stakes by
simply upping the resonance and flooding
the results with delay, when his true
groove comes from those tiny moments
of programming genius. But plenty of
genius there is, which is why I’d rather
listen to a thousand Model 500s than a
dozen nu-breaks copyists.
So Juan Atkins has joined the high-speed
comeback autobahn. I’m thumbing a lift.
JOHNNY MOBIUS
ALBUM REVIEWS
noodlings accompanied by snippets
of John F Kennedy’s landmark speech
explaining his vision of space exploration
and its importance in the history of
mankind, illustrating the passion that
PSB’s J Willgoose Esq and Wrigglesworth
have for these sort of scientific and
interstellar concerns.
PUBLIC SERVICE
BROADCASTING
The Race For Space
Test Card Recordings
The south London multiinstrumentalists look to the stars for
terrestrial inspiration
Public Service Broadcasting’s ‘Inform,
Educate, Entertain’ was buoyed by a
surplus of inventiveness and ambition.
It was a remarkable debut, with a
coherence and a confidence that
sounded like the work of artists who
had been making music for years. For
anyone concerned that the follow-up
might be hindered by an exhaustion
of ideas, no such anxiety is necessary.
While this second album revisits the
musical template of the first in terms of
its multiple textures, layers and use of
samples, ‘The Race For Space’ features
a collision of impressively eclectic
and seemingly disparate genres, all
underpinned by PSB’s reliably innovative
use of electronics.
‘The Race For Space’ is very much
a concept album, but it’s thankfully
more informed by the post-modern
aesthetics of Factory Records than the
prog rock indulgences of bands such as
King Crimson and ELP. The album’s key
themes are revealed by its eponymous
opener, a delicate collage of ambient
Although the recording may occasionally
lack the immediacy of ‘Inform, Educate,
Entertain’, there are plenty of twists
and turns in unexpected directions,
plenty of challenging explorations of
new dimensions of sound. The demented
jazz-funk of ‘EVA’ and the blissedout harmonics of the Balearic-tinged
‘Valencia’, which features a real human
female vocal, are two good examples.
‘Gagarin’ similarly provides a surprise
excursion to a futuristic dancefloor,
complete with nifty fret work and mighty
horn stabs. ‘Go’ is the most infectiously
catchy track here and illustrates just
how dextrous the duo are at merging an
innate pop sensibility with experimental
soundscapes and seamlessly rhythmic
sampling.
Central to the success of the album is
the manner in which the music evokes
the grandeur and wonder of the currently
stalled space race, serving as a pleasingly
nostalgic document for a bygone era.
While the majority of the tracks are
decisively upbeat and celebratory, one
of the most affecting moments is ‘Fire
In The Cockpit’, an eerie mood piece
combining samples describing the tragedy
of the Apollo 1 fire and droning waves
of static and white noise. ‘The Other
Side’ meanwhile revisits the first manned
mission outside Earth’s orbit, the samples
detailing the tense communications
blackout that the Apollo 8 astronauts
experienced when they journeyed to the
far side of the moon and the relief of reemerging within transmission range and
the guidance of mission control.
Human endeavour and achievement, be
it earth or space bound has remained
a recurrent theme of Public Service
Broadcasting’s work – and they should be
applauded for celebrating it in a way that
is endearing and inspirational. ‘The Race
For Space’ is a fascinating and highly
accomplished album that references
the past, while bravely gazing into the
future.
MILES PICARD
two girls, while born in Cuba, were
brought up in Paris.
So what we get is the soul-loving LisaKaindé on piano and hip hop buff Naomi
on percussion, using the kit their late
father made his own. If you’ve always
thought that the cajón, a sort of tea
chest box of tricks you sit on and play
with your hands, is a quirky distraction,
Ibeyi would like a word.
IBEYI
Ibeyi
XL Recordings
French-Cuban twins sisters make an
early dash for the album of the year
gong
We’ve heard the thrumming chant of
the intro, ‘Eleggua’, and we’re into the
first track proper, ‘Oya’. About two and
half minutes in, it rolls out a gentle
crackle, that delicious, familiar crackle
your favourite vinyl album makes as
the needle drags the groove for the
umpteenth time. Then, out of nowhere,
an infectious tribal groove kicks in. Even
on the strength of the first couple of
tracks of this debut album, it’s a record
that should end up owning 2015.
Ibeyi (apparently pronounced “ee-beyee”) are 19-year-old twin sisters Naomi
and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz. Something old
meets something new, their music is the
result of seemingly disparate cultures
rubbing seductively up against each
other. Their mother is Venezuelan, their
father is the late Cuban percussionist
Anga Diaz. His family were descended
from Nigeria, from where traditional
Yorùbán chants arrived in Cuba aboard
the slave ships. Centuries later, the
sisters grew up listening to their mother
singing these chants. And if that doesn’t
seem quite heady enough already, the
‘Ghosts’ almost sounds like two songs
in the mix. The percussion is a deeply
satisfying low rumble, the piano a
tiptoe-tug at your coattails. ‘River’, with
its haunting aaaaah-aaaahs and deeply
infectious groove, is a blinder. Over the
top of the backing tracks, Ibeyi switch
their lyrics from English to Yorùbán
and back again, and it’s the delivery
of the ancient rhythmic chanting that
really gets the hairs a-bristle. In places,
they are peak-of-her-powers Björkgrade goosebump good. And just as Ms
Guðmundsdóttir channels the mystical
quirk of her homeland through blips and
beeps, so the twins similarly deliver.
See ‘Yanira’, with its sweet melody and
electronic pip-pip-pip percussion. What’s
more, the shizz that Ibeyi are dealing
with straddles the continents.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking
this is some arch electronic/soul hybrid,
though. Listen to tracks like the offkilter pop belter ‘Stranger/Lover’ and
you’ll realise the potential that XL boss
Richard Russell heard when he signed the
group. Russell takes the production hot
seat here himself, by the way. It’s also at
work in songs such as ‘Faithful’, all lowslung bass rattling the window glass and
heartbreak lyrics.
Sometimes we wonder why we even
bother to tell you all this. By the time
you read it, you will little doubt be fully
Ibeyi compliant. Won’t be able to move
for the buggers. Bit early for an album of
year contender, isn’t it?
NEIL MASON
ALBUM REVIEWS
‘Nerve Net’ (1992) was a relatively busy,
bustling offering by Eno’s standards,
reminiscent of some of the livelier
passages of his 1977 ‘Before And After
Science’ album. He himself described
‘Nerve Net’ in self-penned notes for
Warners as a record that “draws on jazz,
funk, rap, rock, pop, ambient and ‘world
music’… what it turns out as is none
of these things but a weird and selfcontradictory mess, and a mess that I
love – like paella, everything I like is in
there somewhere”.
BRIAN ENO
Nerve Net / Shutov Assembly Neroli / The Drop
All Saints
A quartet of welcome reissues of
some of Eno’s 1990s output, complete
with extras
The 1990s was an excellent decade for
Brian Eno. He’d made his name, of course,
in Roxy Music, before it turned out there
was insufficient room for his and Bryan
Ferry’s large personalities within the
group. He did his most historically vital
work in the 1970s, assisting Bowie in his
European transition (which helped turn
round the sensibilities of subsequent rock
counterculture from American fixation
to Europhilia) and producing his series
of ambient recordings. However, these
were considered by critics as impressive
but academic, of little relevance to
mainstream development. Come the post-rave culture, ambient
was now a key part of the afterglow of
pop, a key usage. Eno was vindicated;
furthermore, he was right at the centre of
things, producing U2. He was a wealthy,
revered and influential figure in a flush
decade for music, but by no means
complacent. The recordings he made in
the early 90s showed that his unabashed
thirst for new ideas about the formal
possibilities for pop music and what it
could potentially constitute was unabated.
Certainly, there’s a feeling of splurge
and abandon about ‘Nerve Net’, on
which he lets his notional hair down,
with tracks like ‘I Fall Up’ reminiscent of
Talking Heads (a group with whom Eno
had played a mentoring/producing role).
And yet it retains a sense of formalism
– that this is pop music about what pop
music could be about – while ‘The Roil,
The Choke’ sounds more like an artful
assemblage of words juxtaposed for their
phonetic effect rather than conventional
self-expression. In contrast, ‘The Shutov Assembly’,
released the same year, is a collection
of sound installations put together for
the benefit of a Russian artist friend
who’d had difficultly obtaining Eno’s
music in the recently expired Soviet
era. Comprising work he had created for
mostly European venues, ‘The Shutov
Assembly’ is hardly the soundtrack to
the end of history heralded by Shutov’s
freedom to listen to what he damned
well pleased. It heaves and looms and
rolls darkly. In its generally ominous
mood, it seems to anticipate troubles
in Europe ahead (Eno would later be
among the few musicians to engage
with and explain the fate of war-torn
Bosnia and the particular tragedy of that
multicultural society in a conflict driven
by ethnic tension). ‘Neroli’ (1993) followed at a time when
Eno was taking a lively interest in
perfume – olfactory ambience and its
fundamental role in the human sensory
experience struck him as a potential
future for artistic endeavour. ‘Neroli’,
however, subtitled ‘Music For Thinking’,
comes with no scratch ’n’ sniff sleeve.
Minimal in extremis, it’s the perfect
accompaniment to cerebral cogitation or,
as I have found, to the writing process. It
turns over its main theme patiently and
repeatedly, rotating in unclouded deep
mental space. It’s music for when music
is too intrusive but silence too unhelpful. ‘The Drop’ (1997) is the least essential
of these reissues. Its cover is also
curiously perfunctory, a kitschy piece
of work featuring the silhouette of
a forklift driver. It’s never mediocre
(Eno is constitutionally incapable of
mediocrity), yet never more than an
efficient collection of glacial, angled,
funk-inflected sketches. But Brian Eno by
this point belonged to a higher pantheon,
as much a reference point as an artist,
beyond reproach, a place he remains to
this day.
DAVID STUBBS
Adamski has certainly been having fun
with this and the opener, the fast-flowing
and jumpy ‘3Step4Ever’, featuring Lee
“Scratch” Perry and the aptly named MC
Wildflower, is a declaration of intent. You
may not like it on the first hearing – I
thought it sounded like a rave tune for
people who are into three-legged races –
but it’s deeply embedded by the second
time around.
in Melody Maker in 1990, he nods to
a relationship between punk and rave,
pointing to the shared attitude, sense of
freedom and desire to break the rules.
These three elements are still there in
his 2015 creative manifesto - and you’ve
got to admit that’s something worth
supporting, regardless of whether you
and ‘Revolt’ become best buddies or not.
NGAIRE RUTH
ADAMSKI
Revolt
Future Waltz
Rave’s original pin-up boy pops his
head over the parapet with his first
album for 15 years
Adamski is often referred to as the first
pop star of rave music. He was a leading
light of the new breed of post-acid
producer/performers to achieve success
in the mainstream, most notably for his
killer ‘Killer’ single, for which he enrolled
the unique vocals of the then-unknown
Seal in 1990.
When mavericks like Adamski are still
recording and releasing new stuff –
six albums and 25 years later – you
know it’s because some big, fresh
idea is tickling their fancy and they’re
running with it out of curiosity or for
the adrenalin rush that comes from
being creatively motivated and having a
personal stimulus and focus. It’s a bit like
baking a cake. Everyone else benefits
from your delightful indulgence.
Adamski’s big, fresh idea is making the
quantum leap from 4/4 to 3/4 music. Or
3-step as he’s calling it. Which is why, as
well as covering several rock and punk
classics, ‘Revolt’ also includes a version
of Englebert Humperdink’s ‘The Last
Waltz’ (recorded with David McAlmont).
The same thing happens with a lot
of these tracks. ‘Revolt’ pushes the
boundaries in so many weird ways – and
not only with the unusual rhythms and
shifts in tempo – but it’s a great party
record. If it’s confused, it’s confused in a
good way, so leave your preconceptions
at the door. The likes of ‘Useless Man’
(Adamski versus Minty, Leigh Bowery’s
old band) and ‘Num Generation’ (”My
generation has gone / I just type on
my computer all day”) are tricksy, but
‘Artificial Waltz’ (a cover of ‘Art-I-Ficial’
by X-Ray Spex) and ‘London Dungeon’
with Congo Natty (once known as Rebel
MC), will amuse. And OMG, how many
people are going to be trying to burp
along to the belching sample that’s used
as a percussive instrument on ‘My Daddy
Was A Rockstar’?
There are safety nets, though. The slow
flow and perfect vocals of Shanki on
‘Tru Luv’ are beautiful (silly spelling also
forgiven), while ‘Pump Up The Waltz’
shifts the pace, brings depth and a sense
of expectation. I’ve never had Adamski
down as sexy (sorry Adam), but ‘Spin’
comes very close, with its dub reverbs
and sharp, snappy, whisked-in beats.
There’s the echo of an inner-city reggae
basement blues bar in many of the tracks
and the often dark yet always engaging
lilt of something akin to a Bavarian folk
dance everywhere. It’s even there in the
smooth moves of Betty Adewole’s almost
unrecognisable cover of Led Zeppelin’s
‘Dazed And Confused’.
Adamski’s curiosity about all types
of music and his understanding and
nurturing of sonic history is nothing new.
In an interview with Simon Reynolds
ALBUM REVIEWS
GHOST CULTURE
Ghost Culture
Phantasy
A moody and dubby debut from a
new signing to Erol Alkan’s Phantasy
imprint
Sometimes, just sometimes, amidst
electronic music’s hum and thrum, an
album comes along, sticks its head above
the parapet and grabs you by the scruff
of the neck, demanding to be heard.
So it is with Ghost Culture’s self-titled
debut. Made by enigmatic bedroom
auteur James Greenwood (his bio,
somewhat mysteriously, describes him
as “emerging from the London fog”), it’s
an album that bristles with confidence,
exhibiting deft electronic motifs and
flourishes at every turn, showcasing a
serious rising talent.
Written using a vintage Korg Mono/
Poly synth, the cornerstone of Ghost
Culture’s hugely seductive sound, it’s
a multi-layered triumph, as suited to
the adrenaline of the dancefloor as it is
to indulgent headphone listening. But
however you experience it, Greenwood’s
music is all-engulfing. Wonderfully
resonant, alluringly stark and crepuscular,
hugely rich in mood and tone, his
plangent, dystopian groove feels like the
beckoning of a distant, austere future.
The trio of singles – released over the
last year to much critical acclaim – form
the first part of the album, and as a
strategic preface to the remaining tracks,
they’re a killer statement of intent.
‘Mouth’ gradually creeps and builds from
dubby, vaguely unearthly beginnings
into shimmering, melodic, Depechemeets-house territory. Greenwood’s
detached vocal (recorded using a Tannoy
microphone ripped from an old tank, a
canny Alkan trick) adds an otherworldly
vulnerability – think emotionless android
– to the glacial backdrop and nagging
beat of ‘Giudecca’. The coldwave appeal
of ‘Arms’ even veers into acid-fuelled,
LFO-style IDM. And so it continues: from
the head-bobbing Kraftwerkian electro
of ‘Glass’ and the disembodied voltaic
flurry of ‘Lying’, through to the hypnotic
automaton funk of ‘Lucky’ and the
beguiling moonlit intimacy of ‘The Fog’.
Underground dance music, visionary
bedroom electro, call it what you will.
‘Ghost Culture’ is a prodigious rite
of passage, a gloriously woozy and
breathtakingly ornate soundtrack for
the witching hour and beyond, full of
mesmeric atmospheres and textures,
with not a single dud moment to speak
of. More excitingly, with Erol Alkan
describing it as “just the tip of the
iceberg”, this is only the beginning.
Ghost Culture, then: out of the shadows
and into the light. After such a strong
and assertive opener, it’ll be really
interesting to see where he goes from
here, but let’s not jump the gun. Right
now, this feels like a power surge, a real
shot in the arm for electronic music.
You’d need to be made of stone not
to fall hard for its wraith-like, esoteric
charms.
VELIMIR ILIC
Having worked as a studio engineer on
Daniel Avery’s acclaimed ‘Drone Logic’
LP, Greenwood was signed by Phantasy
Records boss Erol Alkan after hearing just
one track (‘How’) on SoundCloud. Alkan
subsequently invited Greenwood to work
at his Phantasy Sound studio, where
the pair poured their creativity into
developing and building the 10 tracks for
this album. And boy, what an incredible,
electrifying first album it is.
Pic: Jenna Foxton
FLUG 8
TRANS ATLANTIK
Disko B
Photographer muso Daniel Herrmann
delivers a cheeky slice of dark,
Kraftwerk-inspired electro-minimalism
The artwork gives it away. A black and
white shot of a jet plane high in the sky
directly above us, its vapour trails slicing
the image down the centre. It’s clearly
inspired by the ‘Autobahn’ sleeve. And
then there’s the title. ‘Trans Atlantik’.
Just add ‘Express’, why don’t you?
Kraftwerk’s grip on the musical
imagination of electronic music producers
is equal to the hold that The Beatles had
on popular culture, so it’s not surprising
that some of the endless mutations of
their various blueprints veer on homage.
But Flug 8 man Daniel Herrmann is a
photographer as well as a musician, and
photographers tend to have the urgent
need to understand the world around
them by replicating it and recording it.
So while ‘Trans Atlantik’ isn’t an aping of
the Düsseldorf Beach Boys by any means,
it feels like a photographer’s gaze has
settled on the electronic music canon
and produced this album as a way of
internalising and digesting it.
When the vocoded voice starts to intone
“Trans… Atlantik” on the title track, it’s
pretty funny. Come on, that’s got to be
a gag, right? The gently pulsing rhythm
sounds for all the world like an updated
version of the beat box Ralf and Florian
used on their early albums, and the
opener here, ‘Zeitraffer’, with its slightly
growling melodic textures and simple
riffs that build and start to float over one
another, gently lifts from ‘Autobahn’.
Its clicking kick drum, however, owes
more to the legendarily purist German
techno clubs and the humour, if there
really is any intended, feels wistful. A
special kind of German joke perhaps,
loaded with more complex meanings
and subtlety, just like Kraftwerk’s own
ineffable drollness.
of his art school projects centred around
old Super 8 films his parents had shot
on their travels. It’s where the Flug 8
moniker came from.
But the scope of ‘Trans Atlantik’ is far
broader than all this talk of Kraftwerk
suggests. It glides along, several
krautrock touchstones stroked as it
passes. There’s the unfolding ambience
of Klaus Schulze here, the soulful
mathematics of Moebius and Roedelius
there. At one point, a clean image is
extracted from the blurry photocopy
of early Cabaret Voltaire. There are
other detours from the autobahn in
‘Watch Me Grow’ and ‘On A Spear’,
pretty but mournful collaborations with
Mono Girl, aka Danish artist Kristina
Kristofferson. They’re soggy with
mysterious Scandinavian gloom and
more earnest than some of the shinier
metallic surfaces. They allow a flawed
humanity to emerge and keep this from
becoming an arid Deutsche Gramafon
Produkt, as fabulous as the driving synth
workouts of the likes of ’Android’ and
‘Musik Aus Metall’ undoubtedly are.
The latter is a collaboration with NU
Unruh of Einstürzende Neubauten which
showcases his talent for minimalist
techno bridling with disciplined energy.
Highly recommended.
Daniel Herrmann’s own lineage is
interesting. His grandfather built organs,
so they were a permanent fixture of his
childhood, one in every room, and the
swell of organ pipes is never far away on
‘Trans Atlantik’, just like on Faust or Can
records. His father was an airline pilot
and his mother an air steward, and one
There’s certainly something of a nostalgia
for a bygone era in this collection of
electronic pieces. It’s rooted in an early
1970s Germany of kommune electronics
and hippy idealism, particularly on
‘Ostsee’, transmuted by the passing of
time into a 21st century soundtrack for
grainy home movies, underpinning the
faded glamour of flickering Kodacolour
with modern awareness and sensibility.
It’s a hypnotising and invigorating
listening experience.
MARK ROLAND
ALBUM REVIEWS
early Hood, not a lot happens, but what
does happen is all the more exquisite
for its lack of adornment. The precisely
executed layers of percussion, drums
and nagging-but-evocative synth loops
are characteristic of a producer who
combines power with space, allowing his
tracks to breathe.
ROBERT HOOD
20 Years Of M-Plant Music
M-Plant
To paraphrase AC/DC, if you want
a three-CD retrospective from a
member of techno’s founding fathers,
you’ve got it
A leading light of Detroit’s second wave
of techno pioneers, Robert Hood is also
one of the most revered, bestowing a
series of sacred texts upon the faithful
since around the time Taylor Swift was
born.
‘20 Years Of M-Plant Music’, an almost
career-spanning collection of Hood’s
M-Plant output (so nothing from his
Underground Resistance years), goes
some way to explaining why he inspires
such devotion. It sees two decades of
single-minded techno distilled into three
CDs – his earlier, minimal compositions
on the first (very much the Detroit disc),
funk and soul (the timing of which
coincided with his relocation from Motor
City to Alabama) on the second disc,
and a third set of previously unreleased
bits and new tracks. It has a combined
running time of three hours and 44
minutes. Hardly a moment is wasted.
Fittingly, we open with a homage to
Detroit, specifically the city skyline,
in 1997’s ‘The Grey Area’. Like most
Fussy is something Hood is most
certainly not. At times – on ‘Protein
Valve 1’, for instance, or on ‘Untitled’,
when the hi-hats don’t appear until well
over halfway in – his tracks have all
the potential threat of an ill-lit corridor
disappearing into the blackness. It’s the
reason his work is so often described
as “cerebral”, despite lacking literary
lyrics or dizzying key changes or any of
the other accoutrements we normally
associate with clever music, because it’s
a right-brained kind of cerebral, leading
the mind along those corridors.
Equally, Hood’s early brand of minimalism
asks us to reassess what we perceive
as a DJ tool – those motorised slabs of
beat that bind a set, but are designed
specifically as bridges between one peak
and the next. On a practical level, much
of his Detroit output qualifies, yet it’s
that cerebral edge that demands your
home-listening time. Later, on 2001’s
‘The Greatest Dancer’, Hood introduces
funk chords via a Sister Sledge sample.
The consummate DJ, he’s well aware of
the track’s ability to fire up a set. Indeed,
anybody who’s heard it played out knows
that to be the case. It’s less effective as
a standalone piece, though, much more
obvious and ironically more of a DJ tool
than anything you’ll find on the first of
the three CDs.
Even so, ‘The Greatest Dancer’ earns
its place. How else could we appreciate
Hood reconciling his more ascetic side
with a desire to explore funk and soul,
as he does on CD2? Reactivating his
Floorplan alias to much acclaim in
2010, he produced an actual song in
‘We Magnify His Name’, a joyful mix of
gospel and house, while ‘Baby, Baby’
is pure funk and ‘Never Grow Old’
another dose of celebratory 4/4 gospel.
Hood became a Christian in 1998 and
it’s tempting to think that this and his
move to Alabama somehow coalesced in
the euphoric Floorplan-era tracks. That
they mix so well with the straight-up
techno of ‘Alpha’ or the popping acid of
‘Power To The Prophet’ is a testament
to the unifying vision of the man with
his hand on the tiller. Whatever the
mood, however funky the chords get
and however yearning the vocal, it’s still
recognisably Robert Hood in charge.
What then for the future? More of the
same hopefully – certainly if the new
tracks and edits on CD3 are anything
to go by. ‘20 Years Of M-Plant Music’
closes with ‘Minimal Minded’, a fresh cut
that, by abiding to the principles of its
own title, seals the knot on what is yet
another essential addition to the canon.
Another sacred text.
ANDREW HOLMES
Pic: Marie Staggat
whereas any musician with a cheap tape
deck, a stack of blank C60s and access
to a photocopier could get their music
out there. This was DIY as the first punks
never believed possible.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik
In Germany, that cassette culture led to
the dominance of esteemed independent
labels like ZickZack, while many of its
icons later went on to become significant
players in the wider German music scene.
That said, for every Kurt Dahlke – who
operated under the alias Pyrolator and
now runs the Ata Tak imprint – there was
an Ernst-Norbert Kurth of The Residentsesque Nero’s Tanzende Elektropäpste
(Nero’s Dancing Electropopes), who
rapidly disappeared into obscurity (the
liner notes advise that Kurth is now a
lecturer in China).
Finders Keepers
Eclectic compilation from the backin-the-day West German DIY scene,
where the cassette tape was king
We may well look back on the late 1970s
and early 1980s, that point where punk
mutated into post-punk and begat new
romanticism, synthpop, punk-funk and all
manner of disparate sub-genres, as one
of the most crucial of periods in modern
music’s genesis. It was an era inspired
by the DIY spirit and propelled by the
relative ease with which it was possible
to pick up cheap gear and make passable
tracks out of the most economic of
means and ideas. A time when anything
went and nothing needed to conform
to preconceived notions of what made
music “music”.
‘Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik’
taps into the burgeoning home recording
and cassette label scenes in what was
then West Germany. If punk fired the
imaginations of the youths of Germany,
as it did their UK and US cousins, it
was the humble cassette that provided
its most utilitarian means of dispatch.
To press vinyl, you still needed to
engage with the recording industry’s
infrastructure – manufacturing plants,
minimum orders, release schedules –
Between the poles of scene luminaries,
cult artists and artsy one-offs, beneath
the layers of hiss and the flimsy xeroxed
covers, lie some of the most interesting
sounds to have emerged from the
underground. Blending spiky guitar artpunk, industrial noise blasts, naive synths
and musique concrete tape experiments
– all staples of the post-punk scenes,
admittedly – this was an era in which
German music was often much more
innovative than anything being produced
in the UK.
The list of contributors to this album
includes what appears to be lots
of made-up band names – Kleines
Schwingvergnügen, Wat?Sanitär! and
Plastiktanz being just three great
examples – but there’s also rare and
unreleased material from important
artists like CHBB (original DAF man
Chrislo Haas and Einstürzende Neubauten
founder Beate Bartel) and Palais
Schaumburg’s Holger Hiller. Beginning
with the brilliant Swell Maps-indebted Dit
& Uta’s ‘Science Fiction Park BRD’ (which
gives the collection its title), the 25
cassette gems add up to one somewhat
complicated album. It’s intentionally
linked only by a recording format and the
intense swell of experimental ideas that
informed the scene, rather than by any
single, unifying sound (other than tape
hiss).
The result is something that occasionally
leaves you feeling dizzy. Genres
and concepts clash, sometimes
uncomfortably. At the heart of it all
is the obsessive curatorial vision of
electro-futurist boffin Felix Kubin, one
of many whose imagination was fired by
seeing the likes of DAF on his TV screen
when he was young, and his liner notes
lovingly recount the epiphany that would
lead him to start issuing his own music –
and his own cassettes, naturally.
With tracks ranging from Kleines
Schwingvergnügen’s ‘10 Jahre
Frauenbewegung’, which sounds like a
German cover of The Cure’s ‘Lovecats’,
to Andy Giorbino’s ominous John
Carpenter-ish synth pulse on ‘Stadt Der
Kinder’ to the Autechre-esque industrial
grind, distortion and bleeps of ‘Insekten’
by Eisenhauer, this is a survey with
incredible reach, a testament to the
inventive minds of its many creators and
the magpie-like skills of the enigmatic
Kubin.
MAT SMITH
FELIX KUBIN
ALBUM REVIEWS
in post-modern bricolage. This makes it
sound a bit too polite and wallpapery,
though, which it is most definitely not.
ARCHIVE
Restriction
Dangervisit
Wildly diverse, sharply cinematic and
post everything from rock to trip hop
Despite the heterogeneous stylings of
this album, which includes rock skiffle
and industria as well as crepuscular neosoul torch songs, Archive’s roots lie in
electronic music. Still relatively unknown
in the UK but very popular in continental
Europe, the core duo of this outfit, Danny
Griffiths and Darius Keeler, actually
started out in the obscure days of
‘ardkore. Back then, as Genaside II, they
produced the cult proto-jungle 12-inch
‘Narra Mine’, which nestled in many rave
DJs’ boxes during the early 90s. A few
years on, in 1996, they secured Archive
a deal with Island Records and made
‘Londinium’, a dark trip hop album that
became something of a leftfield classic.
‘Restriction’ is Archive’s 10th longplayer and is an equally strong and
confident statement of musical intent.
It’s a cohesive record, of that there is no
doubt, but it’s difficult to classify. The
elements are so wildly diverse – raucous
guitars, smooth electronics, crunching
breakbeats, lulling voices – if you were
going to be damning about it (which I’m
not), you might call it sophisticated 21st
century dinner party music with its roots
Yes, there are tracks like ‘Black And
Blue’, all sparse, haunted vocals and
plaintive strings, which is redolent of
London Grammar (and I mean that as
a compliment). But then there’s also
‘Kid Corner’, a claustrophobic, bulletsplattered, foreboding industrial piece.
Darius Keeler says it’s inspired by a
newspaper article about “this place in
America where you can buy guns for
kids”. The very first track, ‘Feel It’,
meanwhile layers jangly guitar riffs over
deconstructed beats and is described in
the press release as “a mutant hybrid
of skiffle and dubstep”. I can’t think of
two more unlikely musical bedfellows
than that. It certainly makes for original
listening.
Yet however far and wide this album
ranges stylistically and texturally, what
knits everything together is a melodic
potency that lifts it into the realms of
sounds you might wish to hear on the
radio – albeit 6 Music rather than Radio
1. It’s very apt that Archive are often
described as cinematic (they made a film
to accompany their last album, ‘Axiom’),
because many of these tracks have the
feel of evolved soundtracks. With its
abstract haikus and grinding, thunderous
breakbeats, ‘Ride In Squares’ would be a
perfect fit for a dystopic noir thriller.
If you are after some easier listening,
the female vocal cuts – ‘Half Built
Houses’, ‘End Of Our Days’ and the
aforementioned ‘Black and Blue’ (which
are sung by Holly Martin and Maria
Quintile) – are perhaps the first you
should think about downloading. There
is an alluring reflective melancholy about
them that reminds me of Portishead as
well as London Grammar. But whether
it’s veering to the sweet side or the dark
side, ‘Restriction’ is a quality record. So
how come Archive aren’t a whole lot
bigger in the UK than they are? It’s a
total mystery to me.
BETHAN COLE
pictures, the short films – is as arresting
as the sounds. The detail, the realisation
and the sheer inventive effort of it all
puts much of the contemporary music
industry’s output to shame.
MOON WIRING
CLUB
Leporine Pleasure Gardens
Blank Workshop/Gecophonic
Another round of gloriously
kaleidoscopic spectral electro from the
mysterious hauntologists
There’s something about engaging with
the netherworlds conjured by Moon
Wiring Club that brings to mind Edgar
Allan Poe’s lines about our ability to
reliably distinguish between reality and
fantasy: “All that we see or seem / Is but
a dream within a dream”.
German synthpoppers Propaganda lifted
Poe’s ‘Dream Within A Dream’ for the
opening track of their 1985 debut album,
which also included ‘Dr Mabuse’, their
paean to the fabled master of disguise
and telepathic hypnosis whose true
identity can never be pinned down.
Almost the same could be said of Mr
Paris Green and Dr Lettow-Vorbeck,
the names behind the mysterious
MWC, composers of electronic musical
excursions that coax devotees into a
distorted musical dimension of halfdreamt but fully-imagined hyper-reality.
Enter MWC’s world and you’ll discover
that listening is only part of the pleasure.
For everything that emanates from
the Blank Workshop – the words, the
With ‘Leporine Pleasure Gardens’,
there’s also a continuity of the theme
of laudanum-laced visions of Victorian
England, particularly the playful delights
of Lewis Carol’s hallucinatory imaginings.
Mad toppers and bonnets in 2013’s ‘A
Fondness For Fancy Hats’, here it’s the
hare, a leporine presence pertaining
more to down-the-rabbit-hole trips
than anything conceived by folklore
revivalists. Musically, we’re picked up
exactly where we were dropped off last
time, hence the looped narcoleptic voice
intoning “Here we go again…” at the start
of the album. The burst of percussion and
weighty synth line that follows acts as
a counterpoint to this faintly unsettling
welcome and sets the tone for the rest of
the record.
There’s an irresistible immediacy and
an occasional lightness to ‘Leporine
Pleasure Gardens’ that will surely only
serve to widen the appeal of MWC.
Tracks like ‘Further Down The Lawn’
and ‘Bouyancy Castle’ take knowinglyreferenced electronica into uncharted
territory, on one hand bringing to mind
the early dancefloor experimentalism of
New York (The Latin Rascals), Chicago
(Phuture) and Leeds (LFO), but on the
other magicking up something else
entirely, something propulsively new. You
might hear echoes of Boards Of Canada
or fellow hauntologists Pye Corner Audio
elsewhere, but there’s never a derivative
moment. This is a truly ingenious work
underpinned by a percussive complexity
and a powerfully dystopian low-end that
sounds like the distant future. ‘Magatrix
Freeze’ warrants a special mention for
the way it wonks its improbable slapbass well beyond the fonk. Even Mark
King won’t have ever heard anything
quite like it.
All in all, this is thrillingly singular stuff
from Moon Wiring Club and quite the
restorative for ears that may have grown
weary of identikit electronica.
CARL GRIFFIN
ALBUM REVIEWS
Tackhead, hip hop and funk. And while
On-U gave the world the likes of the
New Age Steppers (featuring Ari Up
from The Slits and Mark Stewart), Dub
Syndicate, African Head Charge, Bim
Sherman and Gary Clail, Sherwood’s
Pressure Sounds imprint ensured there
were also accolades for Jamaican
pioneers such as Burning Spear, Keith
Hudson and Prince Far I. Oh, and let’s
not forget his remixes for the likes of, oh,
pretty much everyone. He even made
Shed Seven sound decent.
SHERWOOD &
PINCH
Late Night Endless
On-U Sound/Tectonic Recordings
Two generations who champion the
fine art of dub come together for a
right royal rub down
What’s the first thing you think of when
we mention Chicago or Detroit? Exactly.
In the UK, Sheffield and Bristol evoke
similarly vivid musical pictures. Some
places are synonymous with the sounds
they spawned. Others not so much. Take
the Kent seaside town of Ramsgate, for
example.
As the sharper knives among you will
have realised, we’ve not just plucked
Ramsgate out of thin air. Nope. While
it sounds unlikely that it should be
synonymous with dub, the idea isn’t
actually so daft at all. See, the Kent
coastal town is where revered producer
Adrian Sherwood calls home and it’s
out of his On-U Sound studio that we
gratefully receive this debut offering from
Sherwood & Pinch.
Sherwood should need little introduction,
but we’ll do one anyway. Starting in
1981, his On-U Sound label played a
significant role in introducing the spikyhaired post-punk brigade to reggae and
dub and, through his association with
Thing is, anything with Sherwood’s name
attached is always worth the ear time.
‘Late Night Endless’ is no exception.
Teaming up with Pinch – the trailblazer
who shifted dubstep down the M4 to
Bristol – and his Tectonic Recordings
label, it’s one of those “of course”
collaborations. The pair met when Pinch
(real name Rob Ellis) booked Sherwood
to play at a Tectonic night at London’s
Fabric. The meeting proved to be a twosides-of-the-same-coin moment and you
can hear it spinning in the air throughout
this album.
The clappy twinkle of ‘Different Eyes’
and the deliciously gentle groove of
‘Run Them Away’ see the two producers
shoulder-to-shoulder, while you’ll
recognise the satisfyingly deep sub
rumble and garagey undertones of Pinch
on tracks such as ‘Music Killer (Dub)’ and
the frenetic ‘Gimme Some More (Tight
Like That)’. Sherwood takes centre stage
on the likes of the low-slung ‘Bucket
Man’ and the excellent jazz scented
‘Wild Bird Sings’. He also adds to the
proceedings by bringing a host of friends
to the party, including Lee “Scratch”
Perry, Daddy Freddy, Congo Natty and
his Tackhead mate Skip McDonald. Natty
and McDonald are also residents of
Ramsgate, by the way.
‘Late Night Endless’ is an intoxicating
brew and one all the richer for the
meeting of these dub generations.
We could do with more of this kind of
thinking from both the old and the new
schools. Ramsgate as the home of dub?
Not so daft really.
NEIL MASON
the few outfits to successfully blend
electronic dance music with cogent
elements of reggae and dub, The Orb are
known for their sampling polemic, but
the issue of sampling has always been
a thorny one for Alex Paterson. Having
been a leading exponent of the practice,
despite agitating other artists and record
labels – and no doubt a few fans too –
he seems to have been less interested
in this aspect on recent releases. This
may be viewed as a positive, though. As
this compilation proves, too much of The
Orb’s music suffers from an overuse of
sketchily layered lo-fidelity samples.
THE ORB History Of The Future Part 2
Malicious Damage Further adventures into Alex
Paterson’s forward-thinking past
In 2013, ambient house masters The
Orb celebrated a quarter of a century’s
worth of music by releasing their ‘History
Of The Future’ compilation box set.
Comprising four discs, the recordings
condensed the band’s back catalogue
into a collection of singles, remixes,
live tracks and promotional videos,
including landmark releases such as the
underground classic ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’
and hits like ‘The Blue Room’ and
‘Toxygene’. A little over a year later, Orb main man
Alex Paterson has now sanctioned the
second – and final – of the ‘History Of
The Future’ duology. ‘Part 2’ focuses on
rare tracks, some of which are available
for the first time, alongside previously
unseen video footage on a fourth DVD
disc. All the material is from the time
following on from the group’s departure
from Island Records at the dawn of the
new millennium, when they released a
torrent of experimental ventures, albeit
with wildly variable results. Apart from being forerunners of the
ambient house movement and one of
Indeed, ‘History Of The Future Part 2’
perfectly demonstrates the pros and cons
of the group’s approach to sampling.
Disc one journeys between deep,
oozing dub reggae, wildly atmospheric
electronics, and rich, earthy trip hop,
but it also moves from the sublime
to the ridiculous, with several tracks
polluted by scatterbrain spoken word
sample-fests that really add nothing
to the production. Discs two and three
meanwhile concentrate more on The
Orb’s limited edition 12-inch releases
recorded with Paterson’s long-time
collaborator Thomas Fehlmann, as well
as with the likes of Lee “Scratch” Perry
and Dreadzone’s Tim Bran. It’s here that
you’ll find The Orb’s true value, hitting
the heights with a series of pungent,
unwinding ambient dub arrangements
that are positively unique to them.
As far as The Orb are concerned, peaks
and troughs come with the territory.
And some may well consider it part
of their charm. Uncompromising risk
takers, you can’t help but be energised
by their sense of self-confidence and
steely determination to do things their
way, which is as much responsible for
producing this collection’s more refined
moments as its head-scratching ones. DANNY TURNER
ALBUM REVIEWS
Fast forward to now. These days, we’re
asked to believe that not only are
‘Headhunter’ and ‘Hmm, Hmm’ related,
but that EBM spawned new beat and
together they paved the way for rave,
bringing the student-night clubgoers
along for the ride. Indeed, Wikipedia calls
new beat “a crossover of electronic body
music (EBM) with the nascent Chicagooriginated acid and house music,”
adding that the sound was also “heavily
influenced by new wave and darkwave
acts such as Fad Gadget, Gary Numan
and Anne Clark”.
RO MARON
Collected
Musique Pour La Dance
The tireless work ethic of this cult
Belgian producer highlights a missing
piece of the rave puzzle
Picture the scene. You’re in a
Birmingham nightclub in 1988. It’s
student night, a pint is 80p, and the DJ
has just played REM, The Wonder Stuff
and The Smiths to general approval and
much shuffling of Doc Martens.
Next up is something new from Pop Will
Eat Itself, who are shedding their grebo
image to embrace hip hop on a track
called ‘Def. Con. One’. It’s pretty startling
in the context of what you’ve already
heard, but even this giant leap forward
for indie is dwarfed by what comes next
– ‘Headhunter’ by the Belgian group
Front 242. A mix of declamatory vocals
and Cabaret Voltaire-style industrialfunk, ‘Headhunter’ is a key EBM cut of
1988, indeed of the genre as a whole. It’s
followed by a new beat track, Taste Of
Sugar’s ‘Hmm, Hmm’, which despite also
originating in Belgium is a eurodisco kind
of danceable compared to the Batcavefriendly chugging of ‘Headhunter’. ‘Hmm,
Hmm’ is fun – high-pitched vocals and
lyrics about oral sex – but it’s a novelty
record compared to the mighty Front
242.
What? Seriously? If that’s the case,
then where did this darkness go in the
meantime? Frankly, if you take new beat
as represented by ‘Hmm, Hmm’ or the
equally archetypal ‘The Sound of C’ by
Confetti’s, then asking ‘Headhunter’ plus
new beat to equal rave is like asking two
and two to equal jelly. It just doesn’t
make sense. There’s obviously something
missing.
The answer – the missing link, if you
like – lies with this two-disc compilation
of material from the hands of Belgian
producer Ro Maron (real name Rembert
De Smet), who also sometimes operated
under the name Agaric. Maron worked
both alone and with collaborators such
as Ferre Baelen of TC Matic and Maurice
Engelen from Belgian rave favourites
Praga Khan – and the edgy buzz of the
latter is an indication of where we end
up at the end of more than two hours of
erratic and mercurial Maron brilliance.
By settling on a period of time only
glanced at by 2013’s ‘The Sound Of
Belgium’ box set, ‘Collected’ focuses
on the point where new beat began
to look like a genre of music capable
of bridging the dark narratives of EBM
with the velocity of rave. Things kick off
with the sound of change. Zsa Zsa La
Boum’s ‘Something Scary’, one of only
two tracks that this compilation has in
common with ‘The Sound Of Belgium’
(the other being 2 Body’s ‘Body Drill’) is
significant in illustrating the crossover
from the original new beat style to the
harder-edged material that was to follow.
It does it with the simple expedient of
adding spashes of 303, tribal drumming
and an unsettling vocal sample from
horror movie ‘The Entity’. Job done.
And there you have it. It had taken a
couple of years but in that one track,
Maron forged the link between EBM, new
beat and rave. Working at an incredible
rate of knots, he released his music the
moment it was finished, sampling all
and sundry, applying liberal amounts of
acid, and advancing the sound with each
new release. The aforementioned ‘Body
Drill’ by 2 Body found favour at Junior
Vazquez’s Sound Factory, while Air Of
Gloom’s ‘Meditation’ plunders Enya’s
‘Orinoco Flow’.
As ‘Collected’ progress, the material
gets harder, darker, and more hectic
– brilliantly, deliriously so in the case
of Agaric’s ‘Tiled Room’. Instrumental
and dub mixes on the second disc
demonstrates how the sound stretched
its wings. The Rhythm Kings’ ‘A La
Recherche Du Temps Perdue’, for
instance, is a full-on 303 wig-out that
would happily grace any acid set today.
The results are occasionally samey, so
this isn’t the sort of album you’d want to
devour in one go. But as an artefact, as
a moment in time and as an answer to
the question “How did we get from there
to here?”, it’s a more than worthwhile
listen and an essential companion to ‘The
Sound Of Belgium’.
ANDREW HOLMES
Sonic the Hedgehog gazing up at golden
rings in a foggy daze. The analogue
melody barely troubles the percussive
clicks, its purpose to merely echo rather
than to punctuate. The tune on ‘Sweet
Boy Code’, an edit of Mr Mitch’s remix
of Dark0’s ‘Sweet Boy Pose’, is barely
present and the embodied “last night”
refrain sounds lonely and longing. ‘And
Feel (Don’t Ask)’ is all about what he
leaves out, the silence unthreatened
except for a degree of complexity in the
last section of the track.
MR MITCH
Parallel Memories
Planet Mu
Grime guru Mr Mitch turns to footwork
to produce a debut loaded with hooks
and catchy choruses... that somehow
aren’t there
There lies the genius of ‘Parallel
Memories’. It bursts with hooks and
catchy choruses that simply aren’t there.
The half-harmonies and nasty basslines
are reigned in so much, your brain fills in
the rest. Snarky scrapes and single drum
pads stand cold and alone. ‘Afternoon
After’ has 16 kick beats in the whole
song: I counted them. What you’re left
with is a long-player that is deceptively
drizzled in melody, that hooks you in
with a kind of desolate emotion.
There is the machismo too: aggressive
head beats and bombastic barks to
stop any Guardian journalist calling it
“crepuscular”. Some tracks go nowhere
and Mitch’s apparent reliance on pre-set
sounds can come across as more loweffort than lo-fi. But just listen to the
80s melancholia of ‘Wandering Glaciers’,
the tooting staccato of the brilliant
‘Denial’, or Flying Lotus channelling
Portishead on ‘Fly Soup’.
Wayne Rooney really did sing with Ed
Sheeran. And to think that more people
will remember that than this brave debut
album.
FAT ROLAND
‘Parallel Memories’ has been billed as
“instrumental grime”, a prospect that
thrills me about as much as Wayne
Rooney singing in a pub with Ed Sheeran.
The last thing grime needs is to be
stripped of its attitude, its humour, its
bad-boy swagger. I would have happily
ignored it, but crafty Mr Mitch signed
a deal with IDM label Planet Mu and
unleashed the jaw-dropping vocal attack
of ‘Don’t Leave’.
Planet Mu took a risk when they
threw themselves into the skittering
minimalism of footwork, a genre more
to do with Chicago dance battles than
shaven-headed tokers in bedroom
studios. Mitch is not a footwork artist,
but it’s in the context of his footwork
label-mates RP Boo and Traxman that
‘Parallel Memories’ should be considered;
in the context of their trilling snares
and solitary rimshots, and the clouds of
echoing space that dominate their music.
Take ‘Intense Faces’, the third track
here. It sounds like a heroin-saturated
Pic: Pani Paul
ALBUM REVIEWS
which her instalment of !K7’s esteemed
‘DJ-Kicks’ series struggles and doesn’t
quite overcome.
NINA KRAVIZ
Nina Kraviz: DJ-Kicks
!K7
The Russian DJ delivers the first ‘DJKicks’ mix of 2015 with a set that’s
more radio than dancefloor
Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the
beholder: one person’s Brad Pitt is
another person’s smelly armpit. But even
allowing for a modicum of subjective
adjustment, Russian DJ Nina Kraviz is a
phenomenally beautiful woman. For this
– the crime of being attractive – she cops
a considerable amount of flak. Some of
it she brings on herself. After all, even
though you can’t blame her for taking
the Hugo Boss shilling, being the face of
a perfume giant isn’t perhaps the best
way to silence those who say you trade
on your looks.
Whatever you think about that, there’s
no denying that Kraviz is a very visual
DJ. To watch her in action is to see a
performer in love with the sensuality of
the form. A master of the well-placed
bass-swap, her style has a crisp, modular
feel that she accentuates with conductorlike hand movements, little sashays,
and a dancing style best described as a
kind of tech-house vogue. This being the
case, you might think that a mix album
isn’t the best forum for the Kraviz magic
– and you’d be right. It’s a problem with
As a mix, it represents a departure
from her usual sound, which is heavy
on the tech-house, sexy but raw.
The accompanying PR guff has Kraviz
explaining that the idea was to create “a
mysterious sonic journey, inspired by the
times I used to listen to late-night radio”,
and it does indeed have a woozy, afterhours vibe. The fact that she’s picked
a track from Goldie’s much-unloved
second album ‘Saturnz Return’ (‘Truth’,
with vocals from David Bowie) speaks
volumes about the idiosyncrasy of a
set-list that moves from breaks to deep,
somnolent techno to spacey IDM. Here
you’ll find Polygon Window nestled next
to Adam Beyer and Plaid beside DJ Bone.
Steve Stoll, Baby Ford and Porn Sword
Tobacco all feature, as well as a clutch of
productions from Kraviz’s newly launched
own label, трип (pronounced Trip).
From such disparate parts, she conjures
a beautifully sequenced album that
eschews builds and peaks in favour of an
overall feeling akin to an opiated haze.
Based purely on the sound she creates,
it’s terrific. Where it falls down, however,
is the mixing itself. Shorn of the visuals,
and with a self-imposed brief to create a
more atmospheric set, Kraviz flounders.
Too many of the transitions consist of
one tune simply fading into another, as
though having chosen such great tracks
she’s not sure what to do with them.
There nothing wrong, as such, but it’s
hardly a great advertisement for the
art of the DJ. Agoria’s ‘Balance 016’,
M.A.N.D.Y.’s ‘Renaissance: The Mix
Collection’ and James Holden’s ‘DJ-Kicks’
– to pick three mix albums at random –
all deal much more deftly with material
that’s just as diverse as this.
Still, if the idea is to evoke that latenight radio show feel, then the occasional
outbreak of rudimentary mixing fulfils
the remit, and as an exercise in conjuring
a sensation, this set is entirely consistent
with the Kraviz values: a love of music, a
sensual experience. Beauty is as beauty
does.
ANDREW HOLMES
Pic: Obi Blanche
BEAT SPACEK
Modern Streets
Ninja Tune
Steve Spacek’s back and he’s been
hollowed out by the cosmos
Created largely using his iPhone and
iPad apps, ‘Modern Streets’ feels new,
feels like Steve’s been liberated from old
constricts via new technology. ‘I Wanna
Know’ fizzes with the post-punk electroaggravation of early Cabaret Voltaire,
beautifully contrasting with Steve’s
customarily sweetly soulful vocals.
‘Tonight’ takes Ghanaian hi-life out to
space, strands it on a low-gravity surface,
repopulates it with a digital elasticity and
hum. ‘Inflight Wave’ is pure electropop,
part Prince, part early Human League,
but with a warmth and an odd sense of
folksiness I haven’t heard anywhere this
side of Ultramarine.
You’ is the kind of track David Bowie
should be making right now, haunted by
the ghost of Arthur Russell. As the album
progresses things get weirder and there
are essential silences as the peripheries
get clogged with little shards and scraps
of detritus and detail. We wind up on the
epic, gorgeously suggestive ‘Alone In Da
Sun’, like some great long-lost outtake
from AR Kane’s ‘I’, rubbery with bass,
frictive with splashy Talking Heads-style
loops, Steve coming on like an R&B
crooner who’s been hollowed out by the
cosmos, only able to proffer us love if
our molecules get scattered to the solar
winds. A beautiful, unsettling coda.
Although all the sounds here are
determinedly modern, the title cut again
seems to come from the same bleak,
late 70s post-punk place as much of the
rest of the album, perhaps a reflection of
the similarly despairing political realities
Steve’s addressing in his lyrics. ‘I Want
Some people come back and tarnish their
legacy. Steve Spacek’s come back and
actually given us what I think might be
the best thing he’s ever given us. 2015
starts here. Exquisite.
NEIL KULKARNI
Spacek were always one of the most
unplaceable of acts to emerge from the
mid-90s explosion in headphone-friendly
dub and hip hop based music, otherwise
known as t*** h** (sorry, still can’t bring
myself to say that phrase). Though
ostensibly from the same kind of roots as
artists on Mo’Wax and Ninja Tune, they
put a unique spin on their influences,
seemingly as much inspired by 80s pop
and electro as well as the more furtherflung electronic reaches of jazz and funk.
They had no interest in shoring up any
concept of pulling from a “golden age”,
the overly-reverential attitude that kept
so much t*** h** so earthbound.
That unique attitude is still massively
evident on Beat Spacek’s ‘Modern
Streets’, the latest project from vocalist
and producer Steve Spacek. It’s not
unplaceable music, it sounds like the
streets you walk made aural flesh, but
in a musicological sense it blends the
familiar in proportions you don’t expect,
to put you sonically in a world both
recognisable and revelatory.
Pic: McLean Stephenson
ALBUM REVIEWS
German experimental music scene, is the
first time the material has appeared on
CD. POPULÄRE
MECHANIK
Kollektion 03: Populäre Mechanik
(Compiled By Holger Hiller)
Bureau B
Early 80s cassette-only electronic jazz
experiments for the more adventurous
listener
“Rock was clearly developing into a
soundtrack for squares… and there
were jazz musicians who wanted away
from the entertainment circuit for
sophisticates.”
In those two statements, you have
almost everything you need to get a
handle on Populäre Mechanik, a shortlived early 80s electronic-jazz-postpunk collective who released just two
albums, both on their own cassette label.
The project revolved around Wolfgang
Seidel, who made the above comments,
a one-time cohort of Conrad Schnitzler
at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin.
The pair recorded together, Seidel using
a synthesiser to hack out rudimentary
rhythms. When the late 70s rolled
around, Seidel was attracted to punk’s
attitude, but it was the likes of Devo
and XTC that really interested him.
‘Kollektion 03: Populäre Mechanik’, a
compilation put together by Holger Hiller,
another bright light of the 1970s and 80s
Tape hiss is evident throughout, but
it enhances the sense of adventure in
these recordings. Populäre Mechanik
might have been putting out relatively
lo-fidelity product, but the performances
and sounds they captured are anything
but. There are elements of systems
music at play here, pieces made up of
musicians being assigned repeating parts,
collaging them in a live context, devoid
of the usual concerns for traditional
harmony, but allowing individual
expression to gradually twist the track
into new shapes.
There are trumpet squiggles at the
top end and sometimes the brass is
processed and sounds like a huffing great
elephant rampaging around the place.
Electronics burst and fizz, like on the
transmuted reggae of ‘Scharfer Schitt
No 1’, where you can hear that Wolfgang
Seidel’s rejection of boring rock music
led to an interest in the Jamaican dub
masters and their studio experiments
with tape echo and sound manipulation.
Much of the material here seems to rely
on splicing avant garde jazz techniques
with dub studio mangling and Eno-esque
simplicity and electronics, as on ‘Für Ein
Paar Deutschmark Mehr’, which evokes a
pleasantly sinister atmosphere.
It’s occasionally reminiscent of The
Residents, with the jazz dial turned up
and the rock deconstruction switched off.
It might also put you in mind of the path
that Tom Waits took with ‘Bone Machine’
10 years later; jazz filtered through the
rhythmic clockworks of post-punk. There
is the odd squall of electric guitar, as
on ‘Wiedereingegliedert’, but its manic
flourishes are from the more deranged
end of the Robert Fripp school of guitar
danger, accentuating noise and texture
over melody.
Like the sonic archeology undertaken by
the likes of Veronica Vasicka’s Minimal
Wave label, this album is further proof
that a lot of the music that never came
within a million miles of the radar,
much less flew in under it, has a more
compelling story to tell than most of the
stuff that was more successful. And while
we’re on the subject, isn’t it about time
that Holger Hiller’s own oeuvre got the
decent re-release treatment?
MARK ROLAND
VARIOUS ARTISTS
Elevate Your Mind 2014
KMS
Dantiez Saunderson curates a cool
collection of material on his dad’s
KMS label
idea that Detroit techno has always been
less about the place and more about a
state of mind, as evidenced by the many
outsider artists who have embraced the
sound. Belgian producer Lionel Weets
shines with ‘We Can’t Sleep’, a jittery
headspace track awash in slick organ
licks and a bassline catchier than a dose
of the clap in a Mexican bordello. Seph
from Argentina meanwhile sets a deep
space laser battle to music on ‘Jade’ and
Canadian Joe Mesmar’s 5am twilight
groove ‘Hot Trouble’ has the sort of
dis(co)located deepness that’s perfect
for dark and dank clubs. And that other
sound you can hear? People scrambling
around on all fours, trying to find their
marbles.
Dantiez Saunderson fires off a brace of
cuts himself (and why wouldn’t you when
you’re in charge of compilation duties?)
with the muscular march of ‘Hologram’
and the smoothed-out edges of ‘Lucid
Ethics’. Elsewhere, we get more from a
panoply of global producers – Spanish,
Italian, French – eager one and all to
make their mark on this revered label.
Remixes of tracks by Saunderson (the
elder) bookend the collection, with Mike
Clark giving ‘The Love I Have’ a deep
vocal brush and Tomio Ueda subjecting
stone-cold classic ‘Pump The Move’ to an
even bigger bass treatment, like it was
recorded 20,000 leagues under the sea.
For a label now in its 27th year – a long
time in music, an eternity in the faddish
world of dance music – ‘Elevate Your
Mind 2014’ is a remarkable statement
that shows how KMS is in the rudest of
health.
KIERAN WYATT
Although a cornerstone of Detroit
techno’s legendary founding triumvirate
– alongside Juan Atkins and Derrick
May – Kevin Saunderson has never come
across as a genre purist. Sure, his own
productions have consistently showcased
a keen ear for a jacking rhythm, but
always one infused with a funk and a
mood that owes as much to the Chicago
house aesthetic as Detroit’s late-night
body music vibe. Like a kung-fu master
doing a little water boxing, Saunderson
moves effortlessly through the styles.
It’s a direction he’s translated well to his
KMS label, an imprint responsible for a
raft of bona fide dancefloor classics over
the decades and for its ability to attract
heavyweight techno talent. Key players
such as DJ Rolando, Thomas Schumacher
and Steve Big have all had releases on
KMS. Fast forward to today and ‘Elevate
Your Mind 2014’ shows us where the
label is right now.
What’s immediately clear is that this
latest collection from KMS – collated
by Saunderson’s son Dantiez – nails the
DANTIEZ SAUNDERSON
ALBUM REVIEWS
NAGAMATZU
Neural Interval
Zoharum
The long-lost back catalogue of the
cult darkwave duo is released on CD
for the first time
JG Ballard’s ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ was
less a novel and more a compendium of
random, interconnected thoughts strung
together by the weighty themes that
spun around the collective consciousness
at the dawn of the 1970s – the space
race, science, the tragedies of JFK and
Marilyn Monroe, warnings about car
safety, the Cold War, mass billboard
advertising, sex.
The Burroughsian nature of Ballard’s
book served as a muse for a number
of artists that emerged from the postpunk escarpment of late 1970s Britain.
Andrew Lagowski and Stephen Jarvis,
school friends from Ipswich, took the
name of their band – Namagatzu – from
a minor character in the story, a nurse
who makes only the most tangential of
appearances. And like the fleeting role
of the nurse, Nagamatzu’s career would
prove to be something of a footnote in
the annals of electronic music. They did
release three cassette albums and a 12inch single, though, all of the tracks from
which are compiled on ‘Neural Interval’,
itself a phrase borrowed from ‘The
Atrocity Exhibition’.
Listening again now, you do wonder
why Nagamatzu didn’t become better
known. Stylistically, the duo were every
bit as imaginative as Cabaret Voltaire,
the tracks from both ‘Sacred Islands Of
The Mad’ (1986) and ‘Igniting The Corpse’
(1991) blessed with the same jerky
electro juxtapositions that dominated
the Cabs’ releases back in the day. The
cloud of noisy sonic interventions that
littered the post-apocalyptic wastelands
of early industrial music – grainy vocal
snatches, looped samples, buzzing
echoes and extra-terrestrial radio whines
– can be found on the likes of ‘Carmine’
and ‘Watch And Waste’. Nagamatzu
slotted neatly into the enthralling scene
promoted by labels like Factory and
Rough Trade. If only more people had
noticed at the time.
Entirely instrumental, save for sampled
snatches of vocals and occasional mic
work from Andrew Fleck on the 1983
‘Shatter Days’ album, Nagamatzu were
darkwave before anyone bothered to
give this strand of synth music its own
identity. Their music was full of bleak
urges and grey textures, yet it wasn’t all
doom and gloom. At several points on
‘Shatter Days’ and ‘Sacred Islands Of The
Mad’, you can hear the sort of emotional
peaks and troughs that pre-‘Technique’
New Order specialised in, while some of
the earliest material presented here has
the same thwarted pop edge as OMD’s
first album – all descending harmonies,
icy synth sprinkles, minor symphonic
swells, expressive bass hooks and
intricate rhythm tracks.
‘Lift Off’, taken from the ‘Space Shuttle
Shuffle’ 12-inch and ‘Sacred Island’
cassette, was perhaps Lagowski and
Jarvis’ most overtly commercial moment.
It arrived in 1986, the same year that
Challenger fell from the sky, casting
a long shadow over NASA’s space
programme. The busy dancefloor groove
and layers of control room dialogue
create something between paranoid
anxiety and nihilistic erotic anticipation,
not dissimilar to the musings on the
space race that Ballard obliquely
assembled back in 1970.
But Nagamatzu were at their best when
they stuck to the most economic of
tools. Namely skeletal, fractured beats,
sinewy but expressive bass melodies,
whining electric guitars and uncluttered
electronics. With those tools, the
possibilities were arguably endless,
stretching out far into the distance
with no need for verse-chorus-verse
conscription. It’s the fact that they
abruptly stopped, despite the horizons
they could have reached, that makes the
collected synaptic gestures of ‘Neural
Interval’ the perfect desert island disc for
a nuclear-ravaged terminal beach.
MAT SMITH
Get past the sorry-ass sexist shite
and much of ‘The Best Of Cerrone
Productions’ is well worth a listen – as a
whole raft of French dance music artists
will attest. Ask Daft Punk or Bob Sinclar
and neither will be slow to name Cerrone
as a major influence (Sinclar worked
directly with him in 2001), while the
likes of Run DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie
Boys, BDP and Mark Morrison have all
used samples of his work over the years.
CERRONE
The Best Of Cerrone Productions
Because Music
Gaelic disco king serves up
retrospective collection of his finest
floorfillers
Marc Cerrone is a French disco producer.
The French disco producer if we’re
being picky. With a career spanning five
decades and clocking up sales in the
high tens of millions, he began life as a
drummer in a band called Kongas, before
ditching the sticks to strike out under his
own name in 1976.
Nigh on 30 albums down the line, we
get this double CD catch-up that brings
together 36 Cerrone productions dating
back to his Kongas days. Curiously,
the cover features a young lady who
is clearly trying to tie her shoe laces
without bending her legs. Tricky
business. Different times and all that,
but Cerrone seems intent on reaffirming
his rep for erring on the side of softcore.
One of his biggest hits, 1979’s ‘Love In
C Minor’, makes ‘Je T’Aime’ sound like
a CBeebies theme tune, while pretty
much all of his 70s album sleeves have
to be seen to be believed (try ‘Cerrone’s
Paradise’ for starters).
As such, there’s many a moment that
seems pretty familiar on this collection
of predominantly string-soaked disco
rompers. When the opening track, 1978’s
‘Got To Have Lovin’’ (a Cerrone co-write
with fellow disco don, erm, Don Ray)
reaches the obligatory breakdown and
a repetitive rising keyboard lick kicks
in before a smooth funk bass joins the
party, it is really not far away from
Daft Punk’s ‘Aerodynamic’. Daft Punk,
incidentally, straight sampled Cerrone’s
1976 magnum opus ‘Supernature’,
slowing down the synth melody for
‘Veridis Quo’.
out like a sore thumb here. That he
made a record this forward-looking in
the mid-70s is impressive. His label at
the time, Altlantic, weren’t much keen
on the track, but were proved very wrong
indeed, as it was a monster hit. Had
Cerrone continued down that route, who
knows what we’d have been looking at
today.
While this is clearly an album aimed
squarely at Cerrone newbies – and it will
no doubt prove a voyage of discovery for
hip hop/baguette beat fans – the shame
is that pretty much everything here is
an edit. The original of the previously
mentioned Don Ray track clocks in at
an almighty eight minutes, with a break
stretching over more than two minutes.
This version is a mere four-minute edit.
To hear this material as the disco god
intended would have been a treat
indeed. Here’s hoping someone plans to
release a compilation of the full versions
in the near future.
NEIL MASON
For the most part, Cerrone deals
in enjoyable by-numbers disco, the
exception being ‘Supernature’. It sticks
ALBUM REVIEWS
‘Shadows Documents’ takes a different
tack, however, drawing inspiration
from the sounds of Kenya and grafting
“acoustic impressions” of the country
with electronic motifs and pulses. There
are no direct field recordings as such (if
there are, they’re inaudible), but instead
a focus on the hypnotic rhythms of tribal
music – where Kenya meets krautronics.
SCHNEIDER
KACIREK
Shadows Documents
Bureau B
African vibes meet German
engineering on these warm and
absorbing soundscapes
There’s a real sense of layering as the
album progress and it becomes a fully
immersive experience, a scintillating
listen full of warmth and charm. Rooted
in analogue electronica, virtuoso
percussion and soporific repetition,
the whole thing feels very much like a
dream sequence, enveloping you in its
subtle atmospheres. The opening track,
‘Doubles’, with its rumbling groove and
stratum of electronic clatters and bleeps,
is like a malfunctioning ECG monitor.
The chirpy ‘Birds, Bell And Sticks’ has the
bare bones of an imperceptible drum ‘n’
bass beat lurking beneath the surface.
With the sinister, creeping rattle of ‘Low
Rhythm’, you sense that something
untoward is about to spring out from
the undergrowth. On ‘We Will Need
Each Other’, meanwhile, the background
crackles like the gentle maelstrom of
hundreds of scurrying insects.
Details materialise at regular intervals –
the mix is littered with clicks and cuts,
vaguely touching on elements of dub and
even the occasional bit of improv – so
there’s never a sense of vapid repetition.
It all comes to a head on the final track,
‘Spiegelmotiv’, by which point Schneider
and Kacirek have really found their mojo,
as an oscillating backbeat locks horns
with a head-nodding array of percussive
buzzes and throbs. It’s absorbing stuff, as
is the entire album. Despite its reliance
on synthesisers and programmed beats,
it’s to the duo’s credit that ‘Shadows
Documents’ feels inherently organic,
rather than a perfunctory electronic
afterthought.
VELIMIR ILIC
On paper, this collaboration between
German musicians Stefan Schneider and
Sven Kacirek is a mighty appealing and
intriguing prospect. It’s a real meeting
of minds: Schneider is one of the
founding members of seminal krautrock
outfit Kreidler and electronic postrockers To Rococo Rot, and has worked
with everyone from Hans-Joachim
Roedelius and Bill Wells to St Etienne
and Alexander Balanescu, while indemand percussionist/producer Kacirek’s
CV includes the likes of Hauschka, Nils
Frahm and Marc Ribot.
Fusing African rhythms with dark
electronica, ‘Shadows Documents’
sees Schneider and Kacirek indulge
their obvious love and fascination for
Kenya, where they have both spent a
considerable amount of time in recent
years. In some ways, it’s a progression
from the pair’s field recordings of
the Mijikenda tribes in and around
Mukunguni village on the Kenyan coast
(released as ‘Mukunguni’ on Damon
Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label in 2013).
Pic: Peter Stumpf
JOHN TEJADA
Signs Under Test
Kompakt
Smart and bright techno music for
dancefloors and headphones, often
both at the same time
Californian producer John Tejada’s
career stretches back 15 years, with
countless recordings under both his own
name and a string of aliases, a trio of
album collaborations with fellow West
Coaster Arian Leviste, and numerous
releases with Takeshi Nishimoto as the
instrumental electro-rock duo I’m Not
A Gun. So it’s perhaps little wonder
Tejada has amassed a back catalogue
that encapsulates a variety of divergent
styles. He was initially influenced by 80s
hip hop, but these days his tent is firmly
pitched in the house, tech house and
techno domains.
underpins pockets of bright melody and
shimmering, undulating synth waves.
Tejada toys with the same refrains
throughout, adding intermittent pitch
changes and heightening the tempo
with an intelligent use of drum breaks.
The result is compelling. ’Y 0 Why’
employs similar techniques but goes
into deep space territory, ending up
not too far removed from the Richie
Hawtin school of lunar modulation.
Bobbling interstellar melodies float
airily, punctuated by wistful, bubbling
notations and squelching bass motifs.
The production is spotless, but the use of
analogue hardware creates its own sense
of atmospheric resonance.
‘Beacht’ is another fascinating listen,
showcasing Tejada’s ear for a strong
melody while building techno constructs
through syncopated tones and brooding
beats. It sounds very simple, so simple
you almost feel you could make this
music yourself, but the spacing of the
notes, the choice of sounds and the
pattern phases, as well as the incredible
attention given to every element, belies
a hidden complexity. Make no mistake,
‘Signs Under Test’ is the work of a man
who understands techno’s lineage and
has years of experience to back it up.
This is high praise for sure, but what is
most impressive is the way that Tejada
manages to keep the quality consistently
high throughout. ‘Cryptochrome’ is a
good example of how, despite rarely
deviating from the traditional techno
aesthetic, he’s able to switch on the
ambient mood with effortless ease.
Indeed, it’s John Tejada’s ability
to diversify and toy with different
ambiences and sound palettes that
really widens the appeal of this album.
Operating on two levels – high tempo
enough to partition the dancefloor
and headphone perfect for those that
appreciate the devil in the detail – ‘Signs
Under Test’ is quite an achievement.
DANNY TURNER
Needless to say, Tejada lives for making
music. He is most at home drifting
between the generic contours of hienergy techno for clubs and expansive,
pulsing arrangements better suited to
home listening. ‘Signs Under Test’, his
third album for Kompakt, somewhat falls
between the two.
Created using mostly analogue
hardware, the opening ‘Two 0 One’ sets
the prototype, as a deep bass drum
Pic: Juan Mendez
ALBUM REVIEWS
BELLE AND
SEBASTIAN
Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance
Matador
Indie darlings serve up surprisingly
good electronic album shocker
Well, this is a surprise.
Belle And Sebastian aren’t your usual
Electronic Sound fodder, admittedly.
But the rumble about this, the ninth
studio outing from the Scots indie
darlings and their first album in
five years, suggested they might be
wandering onto our patch. Recorded in
Atlanta with producer Ben H Allen III,
whose credits include Gnarls Barkley
and Animal Collective, confirmed
the rumours. A proper case of
getorfmoiland, right?
The opener, ‘Nobody’s Empire’,
suggests we might not be popping a
couple of carts into the double barrel
just yet, or at least until the intro is
over. An insistent warm kick-drum up
front, the swelling of strings, some
gentle synth stabs, a piano tinkling
away over the top… for about 30
seconds, after which it’s indie business
as usual. The following track, ‘Allie’, a
straightforward ba-ba-bah-ba-jinglejangle jaunt, compounds the initial
disappointment.
But just as you’re reaching for the
shooter and rounding up the dogs, it
happens. ‘The Party Line’. A low funk
bass rumble, handclaps, squelches,
swirling keys, a thudding four-to-thefloor, it is a total banger, one of those
tunes you hear and wonder who is
this? The treats continue through ‘The
Power Of Three’, which throws up a
St Etienne-style 60s undertow thanks
to Sarah Martin’s breathy vocal. ‘The
Cat With The Cream’ is a tiptoeing,
string-backed bewitcher and then we’re
slap-bang back into rollicking electronic
territory with the rattlingly good ‘Enter
Sylvia Plath’, which comes on like a
skew-whiff Pet Shop Boys. It’s a tune
that belts along, locking itself down
nicely and building to its conclusion just
shy of seven minutes. It’s like they’ve
been in this mode forever and the
same goes for the gentle quirk of ‘Play
For Today’, another track that lands at
around seven minutes.
We’ll duck the French-feel café bar
busk of ‘The Everlasting Muse’, as
pleasing as it is, but the percussion-led
‘Perfect Couples’ is much more like the
sort of track you’d expect if B&S went
electronic. It sounds so comfortable in
its shoes – the lyrical skip in its step, the
jittery funk guitar riff, the sturdily low
b-line, it’s all somehow familiar. There’s
more than a passing nod here to Orange
Juice and the way they twisted and
turned to give their solid pop-mongering
a dancier edge. History repeating, then.
Strip out the first two tracks, ditch the
closing ‘Ever Had A Little Faith’, start
the album with ‘The Party Line’, and
we really would be saluting this album
for having nut bowls full like Christmas.
And while it’s perhaps unfair to suggest
they’ve bottled it by serving up a clutch
of trad B&S tunes, you can’t help but
admire the curve of the ball they’re
throwing. So often bands of Belle And
Sebastian’s standing would be weary
of exploring a sound at odds with their
reputation, but this is a real artists-atwork record, one that could have easily
fallen between two stools. That it didn’t,
that for the most part they’ve turned in
a hugely enjoyable electronic romp, is
proper hats off stuff.
NEIL MASON
Pic: Søren Solkær
‘Body II Body’ follows and is really a
double header; Nyssa’s ambient vocals
sound curiously alien in the moody
ambient opening minutes until the beats
come into earshot, like a carjacking set
to music and the sort of rhythm you’d
hear Richie Hawtin going doolally for.
‘Discipline 1982’ meanwhile continues
the deep bass love-in before climaxing
with a machine gun bpm attack that’s
part computer game and part Terminator.
EGYPTRIXX
Transfer Of Energy (Feelings Of
Power)
As the album ebbs and flows, you’re
always aware of a strong appreciation
for melody and rhythm. As experimental
as the tracks are, this isn’t the sound of
a knackered old washing machine being
kicked down the stairs with the “record”
button pressed. ‘Mirror Etched On Shards
Of Amethyst’ begins with something
resembling a malfunctioning hoover
(or is it a sanding machine?), but soon
dissolves into a pool of big, lush chords,
like Moby slowed down to 33rpm (note
to kids: ask your dad what revolutions
per minute are).
‘Not Vital’ mines a darker vein, where
the beats buzz like static and the synths
oscillate like alien transmissions; fine
fare for sure, although it wouldn’t be
recommended listening if you were
suffering from a particularly intensive
bout of future shock. And if you’ve made
it thus far, then the closing ‘Conduit
(Repo)’ will dump you straight back on
the dancefloor, building a tough metallic
groove before fading out to a mirage
of deep space washes and the sound of
letting go. Prepare to be rinsed out.
KIERAN WYATT
Halocline Trance
Tough metallic grooves and demented
robot vibes from Canadian producer
David Psutka
Egyptrixx is David Psutka, a Torontobased electronic music producer who’s
already carved a serious name for himself
in both experimental and techno fields
under the aliases Hiawatha and Anamai.
But it’s as Egyptrixx that he really comes
to the fore, having set a major marker
with 2011’s ‘Bible Eyes’, an album stuffed
with fuzzing beats, found sounds and
dystopian distractions.
‘Transfer Of Energy (Feelings Of Power)’
delivers another dose of dissonant
electronics, only more so. ‘Halocline
Trance’ – also the name of Psutka’s new
label – starts the album with a whoosh of
Numan-esque nostalgic keyboarding but
undercut with a massive bass drop that
screams 21st century, before segueing
into the title cut and running further with
the demented robot vibe. It sounds both
analogue and digital, often at the same
time. Old and new, slow and fast, light
and shade. This is what it means to be
Egyptrixx.
Pic: May Truong
GARY
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