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THE THE | LET’S EAT GRANDMA | JOHNNY JEWEL |L’ORANGE JEWEL |JOHNNY | EAT NORTON |DORIS GRANDMA |LET’S THE THE ELECTRONIC SOUND ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE MUSIC ELECTRONIC THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP THE INSIDE STORY OF THE OF STORY INSIDE THE AND DERBYSHIRE DELIA

ISSUE 43 ISSUE TESTING TESTING TESTING

£5.99 43>

9 772398 139006 2 HELLO

WELCOME TO ELECTRONIC SOUND

“Guess who our biggest customers were in the 1960s This early exposure normalised the sound of weird and 1970s,” of The Radiophonic Workshop noises stitched together as music and the various challenged us when we spoke to them for this month’s characters of tones generated by oscillators, creating extensive cover feature. There are a couple of things generations of fans in the process. to unpack there. It’s a Radiophonic-heavy issue, this. But we 43 First, the word “customers”. That’s how The have plenty more for you to get your teeth into. Radiophonic Workshop composers saw the various We interview Italian pioneer and the first Apple programme producers who traipsed over to the Computer-approved musician, Doris Norton, the EDITOR BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, home of the Workshop, legendary experimenter Jon Hassell, and Jeff Wayne PUSH in search of bespoke theme tunes, incidental music, of ‘War Of The Worlds’ fame. Let’s Eat Grandma @PUSHTWEETING atmospheres and sound effects. You can almost talk about their new , as does L’Orange, and DEPUTY EDITOR imagine a bell attached to a shop door, clanging away Thompson Twin Tom Bailey catches us up with MARK ROLAND like in an episode of ‘Open All Hours’. some of his key influences, and we have an extract @MARKROLAND101 Second, the obvious response is, “’’, from ‘Long Shadows, High Hopes’, the authorised ART EDITOR Dick!“, it being the most well-known carrier of biography of Matt Johnson and The The. MARK HALL @HELLOMARKHALL Radiophonic sound. You know what to do… But the answer, which you’ve probably already COMMISSIONING EDITOR sussed, is programmes for schools. Endless pieces of ELECTRONICALLY YOURS, NEIL MASON @NEIL_MASON musique concrète and electronic compositions were PUSH & MARK beamed into the young minds of British schoolchildren EDITORIAL ASSISTANT FINLAY MILLIGAN as they were pretended to be trees, or riding a magic @FINMILLIGAN carpet, during music and movement classes.

CONTRIBUTORS © Electronic Sound 2018. No part of this magazine ADVERTISING Ian R Abraham, Piers Allardyce, Steve Appleton, may be used or reproduced in any way without Chris Dawes James Ball, Joel Benjamin, Lottie Brazier, Bethan the prior written consent of the publisher. We may [email protected] Cole, Stephen Dalton, George Fairbairn, Iestyn occasionally use material we believe has been placed SUBSCRIPTIONS George, Carl Griffin, Velimir Ilic, Jo Kendall, in the public domain. Sometimes it is not possible electronicsound.co.uk/subscribe Little, Ben Murphy, Kris Needs, Nick O’Leary, Robin to identify and contact the copyright holder. If you [email protected] Rimbaud, Fat Roland, Mat Smith, Jools Stone, David claim ownership of something published by us, we Stubbs, Neil Thomson, Spenser Tomson, Ed Walker, will be happy to make the correct acknowledgement. PUBLISHED BY Ben Willmott All information is believed to be correct at the time Pam Communications Limited of publication and we cannot accept responsibility WITH THANKS TO for any errors or inaccuracies there may be in that Studio 18, Capitol House, Emma Garwood information. Heigham Street, Norwich, NR2 4TE, UK

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3 AND THE ORAMICS MACHINE Tower Folly Studio circa 1960

Pictured here is visionary composer and inventor Daphne Oram working with her Oramics Machine, after she left The Radiophonic Workshop in 1959. She’s applying ink to the 35mm strips of film celluloid, which would then be pulled across an array of photoelectric cells in the machine’s base. The signals generated would then be converted into sound, the shapes painted onto the film controlling pitch, timbre amplitude and other parameters. She pursued the technology for years, but it didn’t get beyond some working prototypes, despite the undoubted brilliance and ingenuity of its design. Via the modern GUI, the idea of graphically controlled music generation now underpins almost all music technology. Oram was a gifted musician and composer and was offered a place at the Royal College Of Music in 1942, aged 18, but joined the BBC instead, where she was trained as a junior studio engineer. She used the studio out of hours to experiment with sound, and in 1949 composed a piece called ‘Still Point’ for turntables playing electronic sounds, a “double orchestra” and five microphones. It wasn’t heard until 2016, when it was performed for the first time by the Contemporary Orchestra, and on 23 July, it will be performed for a second time at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with the London Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Robert Ames and with Shiva Feshareki on turntables and electronics. The piece is due to be broadcast on BBC4 on 24 July. Another date for your Oram-related diary is the second annual Oram Awards event, which takes place on 20 July at the Bluedot Festival in Cheshire. The awards, which recognise talented female music creators innovating in sound and related technologies, is backed by the PRS Foundation and The New BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Two winners will receive talent development bursaries of £1,500 each, and another four winners receiving £500 each.

For more, see oramawards.com

4 THE OPENING SHOT

5 3 Welcome 4 The Opening Shot

THE FRONT

8 Reader Offer 11 Eyes Of Others 17 Depeche Mode, Blood Blood 19 Sparks, Ratgrave 21 Elizabete Balčus 22 Black Box 24 Jack Dangers 26 Tom Bailey 28 Fat Roland 30 Jeff Wayne 32 Synthesiser Dave

FEATURES

36 The Radiophonic Workshop 50 Let’s Eat Grandma 54 Jon Hassell 60 The The 64 Johnny Jewel 66 L’Orange 72 Doris Norton

THE BACK

78 Reed & Caroline 80 Submission 02, Brian Chase, Eiko Ishibashi And Darin Gray, Masayoshi Fujita 81 Kiefer, Years & Years, 1i2C, Jaye Jayle 82 Book Of Shadows, Spaceship, Mutant Beat Dance, Tsembla 83 Pariah, Gossamer, Walton, LiiN 84 Gang Gang Dance, Claudia Brücken & Jerome Froese, Emanative 85 Hannah Peel 86 The French, David Sylvian & Holger Czukay 87 Let’s Eat Grandma, Turquoise Moon, Field Lines Cartographer 88 Bjørn Torske, C33, Natureboy Flako, Spheric Music Silver 89 Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, A Flock Of Seagulls, Martyn, Zanti 90 Andrea Benini, Wave Earplug No 2, Seven At 77, Varg 91 Boxwork, Jodie Lowther & ARC Soundtracks, DALI, RP Boo 92 Soulwax, Kumo, Graham Reznick 93 Immersion, Slows, Castles In Space 94 Ben Chatwin 95 Abul Mogard, Concretism, Pinklogik 96 Sink Ya Teeth, Geniuser, Arp 97 Miss Red, 98 Stockists

6 CONTENTS

KOZMOPHONE | PAGE 20

7 READER OFFER

EXCLUSIVE READER-ONLY LIMITED EDITIONS THIS MONTH: THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP FEATURING DELIA DERBYSHIRE ‘STRANGE BEACONS’ / ‘MIND THE GAP’

HOW DO I GET THE ELECTRONIC SOUND READER OFFER? THREE EASY WAYS…

• Buy the latest issue directly from electronicsound.co.uk as a magazine and vinyl bundle, so that’s the magazine and reader offer single for £10.99

• Take out our new Bundle Subscription to get the magazine and the reader offer every month for just £9.99. See electronicsound.co.uk/bundle for details

• Visit electronicsound.co.uk/radiophonic to buy the single on its own for £7.99 – but be quick because stocks are strictly limited

8 READER OFFER

TWO TRACKS FROM THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP MAKE THEIR VINYL DEBUT THIS MONTH. WORKSHOP VETERAN DICK MILLS, AND LONG-TIME ASSOCIATES KIERON PEPPER AND BOB EARLAND REVEAL HOW THEY WERE PUT TOGETHER

A. ‘STRANGE BEACONS’ AA. ‘MIND THE GAP’ ‘Strange Beacons’ is a composite track that explores detachment Co-created by Dick Mills, Kieron Pepper and Bob Earland, the piece and remoteness, classic Radiophonic dystopian themes. It contains a has its origins in an idea Dick and Kieron had while passing through drone sequence from one of the many reels discovered in Delia’s attic London Underground stations like Waterloo where the platforms are after her death, which now reside at the University of Manchester as curved and there is a gap between the carriages and the platforms part of their Delia Derbyshire archive. when the train stops in the station. The other drone sequences are from similar unnamed reels from The announcements to “mind the gap” echo through the station the same period. The ‘Hamlet’ drone was originally recorded at and tunnels and have a eerie quality that lends itself to dystopian Kaleidophon Studio on Camden High Street in Chalk Farm. Set up by abstraction. The work itself was initially created from tape elements David Vorhaus, Kaleidophon was the studio where Delia, Vorhaus made at ’s Real World Studios in 2014 with Dick and recorded some of the famous ‘An Electric Storm’ and Kieron holed up in a back room with multiple Studer 1/4 inch album, which was released in 1969 under the name White Noise. machines. The elements were then edited by Pepper and treated by The drone sequences were originally part of director Tony Earland through his own custom-made modular synth. Richardson’s production of ‘Hamlet’ at The Roundhouse (also in Chalk Farm) in 1968, which was then made into the 1969 film ‘Hamlet’. DICK MILLS: “Sitting on the Underground, the warning about Delia’s drones accompany the apparitions of the ghost of Hamlet’s ‘Mind the gap, between the train and the platform’ provides several father. These and other drone sequences from the attic tapes were opportunities for abstraction: just substitute ‘gap’, ‘train’ and then combined and treated. ‘platform’ with anything and you end up with a potentially scary The addition of repeating numbers stations is something that sequences of events. As a sound designer, my natural inclination was the Workshop are collectively fascinated by. In an age of digital to use comedy sounds, but Bob and Kieron had other musical ideas! communications and encryption, numbers stations, found on Enjoy your Tube trip to… who knows where!” the shortwave radio band, remain in use and are one of the most effective ways of getting secret information to spies and agents KIERON PEPPER: “We wanted to create the sense of speed of the in the field. Broadcast openly so anyone can hear, the repeated Tube train in between stations and used a Jupiter 8 sequence to number sequences are intended for one agent’s ears only. The use of build that tension, and create a slightly uncomfortable sense of one-time pads, the encryption and decryption “keys”, ensures that anticipation, punctuated with pauses at the various station stops. despite being broadcast these numbers are only understood by their I imagined a long journey across London changing from District intended recipient. to Bakerloo, from Central to Jubilee; claustrophobic and slightly The ghostly automatic voices, crackling across the shortwave uncomfortable from the overcrowded platforms and commuters bands can still be heard coming from former eastern bloc nations sardined into the carriages. and western powers too. These sounds were recorded as part of The “The dark, nightmarish moments are represented by excerpts of Conet Project, a database of numbers stations from around the world. tape manipulation experiments by Dick and I at Real World a few years back. We asked ourselves at the time, ‘What is in the gap in your mind?’. We all are carrying the most random thoughts at the best of times, wouldn’t it be great to hear those random sounds? In the gaps in life…”

BOB EARLAND: “Dick had the concept and it immediately appealed to me as it gave lots of scope for different sounds. I live in London and hear these announcements regularly, so the idea of subverting them and their intention in a dark, surreal or comical way was very intriguing. We had loads of great sounds from Dick and Kieron’s Real World tape sessions, which were further manipulated and processed using my modular synth and other effects to add a layer of grubbiness, a bit like the soot that covers everything in the Underground.”

9 PLAY STACK ATTACK

MAGIC MUSIC MACHINE

Tone Lab, a project by industrial designer Colin Hearon, is a synthesiser that aims to “remove the unintuitive, feature-heavy nature of music synthesisers to uncover the essence of digital music creation”. It uses stacking components to represent the process of creating music, with layers being physically built and then tweaked to create sound. First you select the chords you want, then add sound units (from arpeggiator to saw wave to delay), start your loop and then modify from there. Aimed at both young and old budding synthesists, the project won Best In Show at Ohio State University’s 2018 Design Exhibition. Whether you’ll actually be able to get your hands on one remains to be seen… colinhearon.com

10 THE FRONT

INTRODUCING… EYES OF OTHERS

EDINBURGHIAN MASTER OF LAIDBACK BEATS

WHO HE? Edinburgh-based John Bryden, whose ‘Stimulus’ EP from last year caught our ears thanks to an irresistible combo of drum machine and a broken Yamaha CS01, the low-rent weapon of choice when some proper fat bass is required. Bryden describes what he does as “post-pub couldn’t get in the club music”, which is inspired, and he soon found the EP was drawing comparisons with Edinburgh’s mythical beasts, The Beta Band. You can see why. Laidback beats, drifty vocal, infectious groove.

WHY EYES OF OTHERS? So dig around and there was this other track, ‘I See You In The Shrubs’, which is a step up from the EP, louche for sure, but it has that Nina Walsh/Weatherall locked-down groove. It was one of those that caught the imagination of DJs all over the place, one thing lead to another and, well, it’s just been released in its own right with… wait for it… an Andrew Weatherall remix.

TELL US MORE… ‘I See You In The Shrubs’ orignally featured on ‘Bonnie Tropical 2’, a compilation released last September by Edinburgh bar/diner/record store/label Paradise Palms (world domination, not long now) showcasing “a new generation of modern electronica/experimental dance music”, mostly out of Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s well worth checking out as there’s more than a few belters on there, not least Total Leatherette’s retro-fuelled funker, ‘Work Harder’ which is like a dust up between ACR and The Cabs.

NEIL MASON

‘I See You In the Shrubs’ 12-inch, featuring Andrew Weatherall’s ‘A Shrub From Outer Space’ mix, is out now on Paradise Palms

11 WANT LISTEN SKWEEZE ME, PLEEZE ME SAVE OUR SOUNDS

NEW FIDGET KID ON THE BLOCK NO.21 THE FC JUDD COLLECTION

You’ve seen fidget cubes and fidget spinners, but these swish fidget capsules are the latest squeeze, quite literally. Set to be the next craze, probably, the simple pump action looks enormously satisfying. What’s more, they come in five levels of resistance to suit your fidgety needs. One for the jiffle arse in your life.indiegogo.com

The British Library’s Save Our Sounds project aims to save the UK’s recorded sounds from extinction. Curator Of , Andy Linehan, looks at the fascinating life of an early UK electronic music pioneer whose work is part of the Library’s ever-growing archive PLAY The FC Judd collection is a box of tape reels of various sizes, sparsely FRESH OUT THE LAB annotated, with few clues as to the influence of its owner or the creativity behind the content. Frederick Charles Judd was born SAMPLE SPITFIRE AUDIO FOR FREE in London in 1914 and like many of his generation was fascinated by the developing world of radio. As a teenager he built his own The high-end sample creators Spitfire Audio have crystal wireless set and, on leaving school, worked in various jobs launched what they’re calling the LABS programme. while taking exams in radio communication, which eventually led to They describe it as an “infinite series of software professional employment with radio manufacturers. instruments”, made by real musicians for anyone, By the age of 20, Judd had obtained an amateur radio transmitting anywhere, and – here’s the really good bit – for free. licence and his fascination with the technical aspects of radio and There are two already available. One is a soft-toned recording led him to start writing articles for the leading audio piano (a strip of felt between the hammers and the enthusiast magazines. strings gives it the unique sound) the other is a 14-piece At the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the RAF string section, all recorded with Spitfire’s trusty care coastal command and put his technical skills into practice working and attention with high end microphones. The plug-ins on the development of radar equipment. After the war he worked for have a simple interface, and can be used with any DAW manufacturers of marine radar, but spent his spare time writing about you like. Fill your boots. spitfireaudio.com radio and audio technology, moving to full-time writing as technical editor, later chief editor, of Amateur Tape Recording magazine. At the same time, he was developing his skills and interest in the emerging electronic music scene where he exchanged ideas with Daphne Oram and gave public lectures, demonstrations and performances of his own compositions. In 1963, he created his own to release his electronic music and in the same year created the soundtrack to ‘Space Patrol’, a children’s sci-fi television programme. He continued to build electronic equipment, including an early version of a synthesiser and a drum machine, and experimented with generating visual effects from electronic sounds by a system he named Chromasonics. In 1972, Judd published his 11th and final book, ‘Electronics In Music’ and gradually disappeared from the public eye, although he maintained his passion for building electronic devices and radio broadcasting. He died in 1992 and many of his home recordings were lost, but those that survived were donated to the British Library by his widow Freda. Judd was the subject of a 2011 documentary film, ‘Practical Electronica’, and a compilation LP of his work was released in the same year.

For more about Save Our Sounds, visit bl.uk/save-our-sounds

12

WANT WAKEY WAKEY

TEASMADE RIDES AGAIN

Remember the Teasmade? The weird clunky kettle/alarm clock from the 70s that aimed to get a cuppa ready for when you woke up? Well, they’re back in the form of the Barisieur. Instead of waking you up with some shrieking beeping, you’ll be eased into your morning with the sounds and smell of a fresh pot of coffee (or tea) brewing. Its design is based on a combination of a record player and a modern filter coffee machine and was born “with a digital detox in mind, where the design language balances between simplicity and mystified alchemy”. Its stainless steel parts and walnut timber tray mean it’s a bit more contemporary than its retro predecessor, and it has a milk vessel which cools over night, ensuring there’s no lumps in your morning brew. Currently in both black and white variety for £349. barisieur.com

14 READ WANT PICTURE (BOOK) THIS FEEDING RADIATION

‘THE DELAWARE ROAD’ GOES GRAPHIC OLD SCHOOL CONSOLE GETS 21ST CENTURY REBOOT

You will know of ‘The Delaware Road’ if you’re a regular Before PlayStations, before Xbox, before the Sony vs Microsoft round these parts. If you’re not, firstly why not, and, second rivalry, there was Atari vs Intellivision. The latter was discontinued up, you’ve got some catching up to do. ‘The Delaware Road’ in 1990, but now Atari’s old nemesis is being reborn as something is a cold wave delight from the Buried Treasure label, so “new”. There’s not much in terms of information at the moment, but far it’s been a play, a soundtrack and a , and tells we’re told that “the new Intellivision system (name TBA) will carry the tale of two composers who stumble on a conspiracy on the company tradition of ‘firsts’ with its new concept, design and theory while working for a large broadcasting organisation. approach to gaming”. Veteran video game composer Tommy Tallarico The story is now being told in a graphic novel, written by will spearhead the revival, along with several of the original members Buried Treasure boss Alan Gubby, illustrated by Enzo Triolo, of the Intellivision team. The console won’t aim to compete with Nick Taylor, Jarrod Gosling and Luke Insect, it’s a limited either Sony or Microsoft, and will focus on being a more affordable run of just 100 so chop chop if you want your hands on one. gaming experience. intellivisionentertainment.com buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com

THE BURNING SKULL

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O ut 27th July 2018 P re �o rd e r n o w � o m secondlanguagem usic.bandcam p.com or ww w .secondlanguagem usic.com

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O BERH EIM KO RG R O LA N D E -M U ENSONIQ M ATRIX 1000 Poly 800 II JV-2080 / Alpha Juno 2 Virtuoso 2000 S Q -R V o lc a K ic k S H -1 0 1 / S P D -S Second Language M usic | w w w.secondlanguagem usic.com

15 WANT WANT CODE TO JOY SNEAKY PEEX

PROGRAMMABLE BOTS TOO GOOD FOR KIDS ELTON JOHN’S IN LIVE REMIX HEADSET SHOCKER

Sadly not a robot made from tortillas, the friendly-looking File under ‘Whut?’. Elton John has got behind the UK company PEEX Tacobot, aimed at children aged 4-12, is clearly wasted who have come up with a stethoscope-a-like headset/app combo on the young. Each segment has a sensor inside, and which, it says here, allows gig goers to mix the sound for themselves when stacked in various combinations they offer up as it happens. Amazing! We can’t wait to try it at the next Merzbow hours of roboty fun. They’ll dance, chuck stuff, deliver gig we attend. MORE COWBELL! There’s a catch, though. The venue things, avoid obstacles and even fight, if you’re so needs to be transmitting the sound via the PEEX rack, which has to be minded. As if. Offering screen-free coding via a remote connected to the mixing desk for the device to pick it up. So initially or drop and drag coding via an app, they give immediate it’s only going to be audiences in the larger sheds who will benefit. voice feedback once built and will respond to a bunch of But that’s why it makes sense. Perennially bad sound at large venues instructions, which is more than can be said for Dilly, can be mitigated with this system, its inventor Graham Tull says. Elton the ES office dog.indiegogo.com John has been testing it out on tour and at his Vegas residency, and is planning to use it on his 300-date farewell tour. ‘Your Song’, then, literally. peex.live

WANT PROJECT EAR

GIVE YOUR LUGHOLES AN UPGRADE ON A BUDGET

You will know that we do like a pair of headphones at Electronic Sound HQ. They can be pricey little buggers though, which is okay if you got the disposables, not so much if you’re on a budget which is why these Brainwavz Delta earphones caught our attention. The New York Times’ review site, Wirecutter, tested a whole bunch of replacement ’phones for your, erm, phones for under $40 and proclaimed the Brainwavz Delta as the runner-up. We can see why. They’re solidly build with an aluminium housing, there’s a three- READ button remote/mic and they even come with a really nifty, compact hard case. Soundwise, they kick standard issue headphones into a A NEW LEAF cocked hat. Yours for £20. brainwavzaudio.com

DEBUT EDITION FOR FICTION/PHOTO ZINE

The first issue of ‘A Million Ways’, a new fiction and photography quarterly, landed at ES Towers with a lovely line from Editor Dan Hancock. He says the idea had been floating around in his head for years and he was spurred on by the growing independent magazine market and, in part, inspired by Electronic Sound. Needless to say, if you like what we do, you’ll like what they do. The theme for this issue is old/new and the rather crisp, clean design, striking imagery and fine words are a joy. You can find your way to the magazine via facebook.com/shortandsweetco

16 THE FRONT

NEWS JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH?

ROLL UP, ROLL UP, GRAB YOUR DEPECHE MODE BOXSETS

What’s better than a new Depeche Mode vinyl boxset? Two new Depeche Mode vinyl boxsets, with the promise of many more to come. Sony have lined up the double whammy for release in August, each box containing three 12-inches of the singles released around the band’s first two , 1981’s ’Speak & Spell’ and its follow-up ‘A Broken Frame’. They’ve been remastered at Abbey Road and pressed on “audiophile-quality 12-inch vinyl”. The ‘Speak & Spell’-era set includes a flexi-disc of the FlexiPop magazine freebie ‘Sometimes I Wish I Was Dead’ with Fad Gadget’s ‘King Of The Flies’ on the flip. Which probably isn’t quite audiophile quality. depechemode.com INTRODUCING… BLOOD BLOOD

OMINOUS, DISTORTED AMBIENTRONICS

WHO HE? Hailing from Glasgow, Blood Blood is the alias of multi- instrumentalist Davey Gwynne whose lo-fi electronics are peppered with distorted ambient elements and are available for all to hear on his recently released fourth LP, ‘Black Tarot’.

WHY BLOOD BLOOD? Gwynne began writing music at an early age, starting on piano and acoustic guitar. He’s an avid reader, is influenced by the likes of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ and the grimoire ‘The Lesser Key Of Solomon’, and has a keen interest in tarot and occultism in general. ‘Black Tarot’ was actually spawned from a dream where he was giving a tarot reading to his friend, and all the cards laid out were black. He took this as “a challenge from the universe to make an album of pure feeling, where the eyes see everything and nothing in infinite space”. You can hear this dark influence on the record, particularly on the sinister piano piece ’Disparities’.

TELL US MORE… When he’s not focussed on Blood Blood, he’s a key member and core in experimental group Machines In Heaven. He’s also got another solo project that he’s cooking up material for, a one-man psych act Crystal Sun Servants. Gwynne is also a self-described “nerd of all trades”, making abstract visuals for his live shows that involve rope lights, micro cinema and even images of heart surgery. Outside of music, he’s currently working on a virtual reality project, with the goal of “creating immersive worlds of sound and vision for people to explore”. A man of many talents, there seems to be much more to be conjured from the world of Davey Gwynne.

FINLAY MILLIGAN

‘Black Tarot’ is out now on Hot Gem

17 WANT SCANDI NOIR (ALSO IN YELLOW, BLUE, RED, WHITE OR TURQUOISE)

DANISH SPEAKER’S DESIGN SMARTS

When you name your range of home audio speakers after Nordic cities (Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Reykjavik), you’d better make sure they look and feel very nice indeed. Danish company Vifa, set up in 1933 and provider of high-quality speakers to the audio industry ever since, do just that, and their Copenhagen 2.0 is the latest addition to the family. It’s a beefy Bluetooth/AirPlay/ networkable speaker which looks absolutely gorgeous and has just the build quality you’d expect for around £500. The cloth speaker cover is made by Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat (it’s their cloth you see on all those lovely Danish sofas since 1968) and you can choose from six different colours. vifa.dk

18 THE FRONT

WIN RECORD AND WIN

STYLOPHONE 50TH BIRTHDAY SONG CONTEST

Quick! Dig your Stylophone out! Write a song with it (no more than two minutes), record it, upload it to your SoundCloud or YouTube and share the link on the Stylophone Facebook page. Why? Because they’re running a competition to celebrate 50 years of the Stylophone. Tony Visconti is judging the entries, the same Mr Visconti who didn’t produce ’s ‘Space Oddity’ with its Stylophone solo back in 1969 when the little plastic synth was a new-fangled space-age gizmo, because he thought the song was too gimmicky. Still, he’s on board now. You can win a gold-plated Stylophone, and a raft of new Stylophone gear, including the excellent Gen X-1. Hurry though, the INTRODUCING… compo ends July 31. dubreq.com/stylophone50 RATGRAVE

GLITCHY TWITCHY BERLIN HOP

WHO THEY? With a name like Ratgrave, does it really matter? It does? Okay, it does. Ratgrave are a duo of Ninja Tune alumnus Max Graef and Julius Conrad. Berliner Graef’s house excursions and love of jazz and hip hop have imbued his many collaborations, DJ sets and releases with a kleptomaniac’s cool, while newcomer Conrad is the son of jazz bass legend, Jürgen Attig.

WHY RATGRAVE? They’re called Ratgrave! I can see I’m going to lose this one. So how about this: their name sounds like it literally oozed out of Funkadelic’s ‘Maggot Brain’, NEWS and the music could have come from there too. What you get by fusing Graef and Conrad together is insider SPARKS BIOPIC AHOY knowledge of how to make a rhythm work. That means enormous, wandering bass, manic drums and FULL-LENGTH MAEL BROTHERS DOCO ON THE WAY enormous doses of funk, replete with plenty of spacey electronics and hyperactive switches of direction. ‘Shaun Of The Dead’, ‘Hot Fuzz’ and ‘Baby Driver’ director Edgar Wright is turning his focus to documentaries with a film on oddball TELL US MORE… duo Sparks. Ron and Russell Mael will be the subject of Wright’s first The duo’s upcoming self-titled album was three years feature-length documentary, with the director currently searching in the making, but it’s well worth the wait. Tracks like the band’s archive for material. Sparks played at the O2 Forum back in ‘Blizzard People’ recall Money Mark around the time May, which Wright also shot as part of the documentary. Wright is no of ‘Mark’s Keyboard Repair’ – all jazzy keyboard riffs stranger to working within the world of music, having directed videos and irrepressibly groovy retro synths – jamming with for the likes of Pharrell Williams and, more recently, Beck. There’s no Return To Forever-era Chick Corea’s modular nous. release date as yet, you’ll be the first to know.twitter.com/edgarwright Elsewhere, cuts like ‘Big Sausage Pizza’ splice that hot mess with electro, hip hop or drum ’n’ bass beats, while ‘Icarus’ includes a section that prompts fond memories of Nik Kershaw’s ‘Drum Talk’. This is fusion music at its inventive best… with an awesome name.

MAT SMITH

‘Ratgrave’ is released by Apron on 31 July

19 WANT NOW YOU SEE IT

A HOLOGRAPHIC DISPLAY ON YOUR TURNTABLE, SIR?

Retaining the iconic shape of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, Arcateliers’ Kozmophone is a modular speaker and holographic turntable that, they say, is a “marriage of the past, the present and the future”. The Kozmophone has 360 degree speaker rotation, which can also be removed and used as a portable Bluetooth speaker. There’s compartments to store vinyl cleaning kits, as well as wireless charging for smartphones, but the main draw here is its holographic display. It sits in a cylinder on top of the device, with an array of animations through the Kozmo app to chose from to accompany your tunes. You can even make your own if it tickles your fancy. kickstarter.com

20 THE FRONT

INTRODUCING… ELIZABETE BALCUS

LATVIAN ELECTRONICA + FRUIT AND VEG

WHO SHE? A Latvian electronics-led singer/songwriter who’s been raising eyebrows on the European festival circuit with her live show. Alongside her striking vocal style, beguiling flute playing and imaginative use of looping, her solo performances are augmented by an array of fruit and veg, the electromagnetic properties of which are used to trigger and power the MIDI components in her gear. “I found out about the electricity conductive board,” she says, “which allows you to play anything that conducts electricity – fruits, trees, plants, vegetables, kettles, spoons…”.

WHY ELIZABETE BALCUS? The arrival of her new single ‘Ika’ suggests the live show is no gimmick and she can cut it recording-wise too, combining an infectious earworm sensibility and a commanding vocal presence with production mixing spartan bleep with lusher melodic textures. “The song is inspired by the story of Icarus from Greek mythology,” she explains, applying the famous fable of coming a cropper by flying too close to the sun to her own ambitions and temptations.

TELL US MORE… Her most immediate plans are for a tour of Italy, where she says audiences are full of positive energy for her work, and her diary’s full of European live commitments until the end of October. Then she’ll be working on the follow-up to her “acoustic ” debut LP, ‘Conarium’. “I can’t say before what will be in it at the end,” she declares honestly. Its creation, she says, will probably include “a lot of sudden absurd turning points, like a dream when you’re being thrown from one scene into another.”

BEN WILLMOTT

‘IKA’ is released on 10 August. For more see elizabetebalcus.bandcamp.com

21 22 TIME MACHINE

TIME MACHINE

LABELS SAID THE VOCALS WERE “VERY AGGRESSIVE” AND IT BARELY SHIFTED A COPY OF ITS FIRST PRESSING, SO HOW THE HECK DID BLACK BOX’S ‘RIDE ON TIME’ BECOME A GLOBAL HIT?

words: FAT ROLAND

In a dusty room above a garage in northern Italy, a musician Groove Groove Melody had more aliases than Inspector Clouseau, brandishes a vacuum cleaner. Scattered along the walls is a guitar, making their biggest mark with The Mixmaster’s ‘Grand Piano’ and some old keyboards, a half-broken mixer, and a speaker with a wonky Starlight’s ‘Numero Uno’ – yes, named after the club. But creating tweeter. Outside, a bell tower shatters the silence and next door’s ‘Ride On Time’ was a tougher call, and they spent weeks gluing dogs yap in response. In this damp, distracting space in Reggio Emilia, together vocals from Loleatta Holloway’s 1980 tune ‘Love Sensation’. Daniele Davoli is trying to rewrite house music history. It was taking so long that they ditched their intended “good vibration” “The bell tower was ding dong, ding dang dong,” recalls Davoli, signature vocal because other sample outfits beat them to it. “and the neighbour’s dogs were woof woof woof. If we were recording “We knew we had something good, but we couldn’t close the vocals, we had to stop. There was no insulation, it was just a bedroom circle,” says Davoli. “It took us a month and a half to figure out the without the bed.” vocals, and I remember always going home with a headache. This story ends well. Davoli will go on to form Black Box, whose We came in with excitement and went home defeated every day.” ‘Ride On Time’, released in July 1989, popularised choppy Italo house When it was finished, Davoli dropped ‘Ride On Time’ in Starlight piano lines. But we’re not quite there yet. As the group formed, for the first time. The result wasn’t quite what they expected. sample culture had become the socks-and-sandals of dance music: “It completely cleared the floor,” says Davoli. “Not one person was a shortcut for naff. Where Paul Hardcastle once stood, now there left. It was heartbreaking.” was Harry “Loadsamoney” Enfield parodying ‘Pump Up The Volume’. The record companies were even less forgiving: the major labels ‘Ride On Time’ was against trend – and its journey to success had in Milan demanded different vocals. more stumbles than the ‘Stutter Rap’. “They said she screams from start to end – you’re going to scare Davoli was DJ Lelewel, banging out soul and disco hits at Rimini’s the people away. It should be a bit more like Kylie Minogue. We said, Starlight club. The venue had an Akai S900 sampler, which Davoli ‘Fuck that’, the vocal is the best thing on the record.” used to drop vocals into mixes. The sampler came with a free floppy It barely sold a fifth of its first pressing. And that, it would seem, disc which, he says, “had a single piano sound. It was the shittiest would be the end of it. Salvation came from a record shop 1,000 miles piano you could find. That was the one I used!” away on the Balaeric island of Ibiza. Its owner was an Italian who’d Davoli spent his weekends making tea and mixing compilations stacked his shelves with Italo house imports. One of his customers in the studio of Memory Records’ Stefano Cundari which led to the was DJ Alfredo: he’d dropped ‘Numero Uno’ to pilled-up partiers at first DJ Lelewel single ‘House Machine’, a piano-drenched minimalist the influential terrace club Amnesia. He may as well have tied ‘Ride track that became an opening salvo in the rise of Italo house. For On Time’ to a rocket and fired it across the world. his second effort, ‘Numero Uno’, Davoli forked out £50 for an actual Back in the UK, DJ Mike Pickering, later of M People fame, signed pianist, a keyboard genius named Mirko Limoni. But the sessions Black Box to Deconstruction. faltered and it cost Davoli his studio space. “A BBC journalist came to Starlight while I was DJing and told us “Stefano told us to take some time away,” says Davoli. “Mirko said our records were the biggest records in England” laughs Davoli. he didn’t think Stefano understood what I was trying to do, but we “A week later, we were in London doing interviews all day. We’d never could finish the track in a friend’s shit little studio.” experienced anything like it.” That friend was Valerio Semplici, who’d cut his creative teeth at Shortly into its stay at UK Number One, Loleatta Holloway’s the prestigious Bologna Conservatory. He had vacuum-cleaned the lawyers sued, and the track’s vocals were switched for a close “bedroom without a bed” and put in a mixing desk with such dodgy impression (reportedly M People’s Heather Small). For Davoli, it was frequencies that some channels couldn’t cope with hi-hats or kick a minor glitch. ‘Ride On Time’ became the biggest selling UK single drums. Although the trio came together as production outfit Groove of 1989, and Starlight and The Mixmaster both scored Top 10 hits. Groove Melody, it wasn’t enough to pay the bills so Semplici taught He became resident DJ with Mike Pickering at the Hacienda clarinet, Limoni spent his mornings laundering restaurant tablecloths, in Manchester and, later, with Paul Oakenfold at Pacha in Ibiza. and Davoli kept up the DJing. “I was catching more planes than coffees,” he says. “It was a In the precious hours they spent together, Semplici worked a dream come true: even Duran Duran asked us to produce them. Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, Limoni mastered the programming with When the money started coming in, we bought a new mixer and a an Atari (“he can destroy and rebuild music like I could make a plate new sampler. We wanted a proper studio, and finally we had it.” of pasta”), and Davoli cut up vocals on two Akai S900s, one of which he’d “borrowed” from Starlight. ‘Ride On Time’, featuring the original vocal sample, is on Black Box’s “I took it back on the Thursday before they realised,” he laughs. ‘Superbest’ album which is out now on Groove Groove Melody

23 THE SCHOOL OF

ELECTRONIC MUSIC

THIS MONTH, OUR RESIDENT ARCHIVIST DIGS OUT A RIDICULOUSLY SCARCE RECORD BY ERNEST BERK, WHOSE LONDON-BASED ELECTRONIC MUSIC STUDIO IS ALL BUT FORGOTTEN

words: JACK DANGERS

Ernest Berk was a German choreographer and composer who lived in It goes on to give the address of his “new studio”, which was London. When I first bought this record, there was hardly any mention opened in April 1970 at 52 Dorset Street, London, which is in of him on the internet at all. He was well known as a choreographer, Marylebone, just off Baker Street, where he and his wife, Aisla, and would create work where the performers would be naked before gave tuition in modern dance, percussion and electronic music. it was fashionable with the likes of ‘Oh Calcutta!’ and ‘Hair’. It was also the headquarters of the Dance Theatre Commune. Berk I found out about him through the Hugh Davies book, ‘International was a committed nudist and “eroticist”, apparently. He held “trance Electronic Music Catalog’, which was published in 1967 and listed dance sessions” there, where everyone would get naked and dance every electronic music studio, composition and release that he could to his improvised repetitive electronic rhythms. find up to the end of 1966. His wife was Lieselotte ‘Lotte” Berk (née Heymansohn, but I’m In the section devoted to the UK, Ernest Berk was the largest not sure whether the “Aisla” from the sleeve notes is her or not) entry. Most of the entries are compositions he made for dance pieces, was well-known as a sort of swinging 60s sexy dance fitness guru. usually his own. Perhaps he knew Hugh Davies, as he was also based She had a famous exercise and dance regime which she taught to all in London in 1967 following a couple of years in Cologne playing in sorts of celebrities over the years, and is known as the woman who Stockhausen’s ensemble and cataloguing his work. kickstarted the modern fitness industry. I was intrigued by Ernest Berk, here was someone living in London Berk was born in Cologne in 1909 and he and his wife were in the 1960s who had an electronic music studio and produced all this already successful choreographer/performers in Germany with work, but whose recordings are impossible to find. There’s just one their own dance school when the Nazi regime banned them from record of his on Discogs, a library disc with Berk and Mike Vickers on performing in 1934. They were members of the Communist Party one side, and Bill McGuffie on the other. and Lotte was Jewish. They fled to London where they carried on There is nothing online about this particular record I have. Side with their work. Ernest moved back to Germany, to Berlin, in 1985 one is called ‘Initiation’, and side two is ‘Gemini’. They’re both and taught at what is now the University Of Art. Apparently he died ballet scores. ’Initiation’ is about “modern youth and its ritualistic penniless, in 1993, having lost his job because of restructuring at behaviour” and has titles like ‘Tittilation’ (yes, spelt with two Ts) and the University. ‘Phallic Symbol’. ‘Gemini’ isn’t as saucy, although it is about a man In January 2018, the CTM Festival in Berlin had three nights who meets and falls in love twins. dedicated to Berk’s work with performances and lectures, so now My copy is numbered and signed by Berk, it’s number 35, but there’s lot more information about him out there. The theme of the I have no idea how many would have been pressed. It’s a private festival this year was “Turmoil”, and his life and work is certainly pressing, so there wouldn’t have been many. Maybe 100 or so. a good fit. The artwork is attached to the front of the sleeve and there’s photocopied information page attached to the back. It says: “Berk feels that electronic music is able to express the feelings of contemporary society in a more potent and communicative way than conventional forms of music. This is not to say he disregards traditional forms of music, rather he blends the best elements of both, creating a new and exciting sound.”

24 THE SCHOOL OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC

25 26 UNDER THE INFLUENCE

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

FORMER THOMPSON TWIN AND NOW SOLO ARTISTE TOM BAILEY REVEALS SOME OF THE PEOPLE, PLACES AND IDEAS THAT HAVE BEWITCHED HIS PSYCHE

interview: JOOLS STONE

BAROQUE MUSICAL UPBRINGING “He’s a great communicator, he’s funny, and he looks great “My father was a keen amateur musician and also an early builder of too, a long-haired bearded hippy, like one of The Fabulous Furry home hi-fi, so not only was I listening to music from an early age, but Freak Brothers. He has some remarkable insights into the way our I was also hearing it very well reproduced. We had these enormous behaviour occurs as a direct result of what’s going on in our brains. speaker cabinets dominating the living room when I was growing He’s not just a theorist either. Over the last 30 years he’s spent a lot up. My dad was very Baroque classical orientated. It rubbed off on of time living with baboons in Africa, so he knows how instinctive me, as I still love Baroque today. Although I dutifully learned to play tribal behaviour works at that level and then spots how it correlates the piano, I also grabbed a guitar at some stage, so that was my stab with our own. at teenage rebellion I suppose. With a guitar you can retreat to your “Before I read his book, ‘Behave’, and watched his lectures my bedroom to express your adolescent angst.” perception of neurology was very much a closed door, but now I find it the most fascinating. One of the big conclusions arising from WENDY CARLOS his work is that we have very little choice when it comes to our “Wendy Carlos was a huge influence. Her realisation of Bach’s behaviour, which is created unconsciously by the neuro-chemical ‘Brandenburg Concertos’ formed this weird bridge for me, taking me responses to our experience of everything, going all the way from being a Baroque nut to an electronics nut. Hearing that familiar back to an evolutionary perspective. So we’re just the product of music in a way that was completely fresh to my ears was such a something we have no control over, which is a quite liberating idea. magical thing. They’re the most amazing works, I’d recommend It’s also interesting to see people like Sapolsky at the cutting edge them to anybody. They stand alone as this ground-breaking audio of scientific research coming to the same conclusion as eastern document. It’s interesting to look back and see that it was a proper, about our ultimate lack of free will.” studio-based classical interpretation, rather than some rock star gurning away on stage.” LUCIAN FREUD’S PORTRAITS “I’m a keen, but very lazy amateur painter. I rarely get around to INDIAN CULTURE painting these days, but even when I don’t have time to put in the “When I was a student, I began to develop an interest in eastern practice I really like to go to life drawing classes and keep my visual mysticism. I read all the key books everyone read at the time, but for acuity honed a little. Some people check in for a yoga or pilates class some reason I wanted to take it a step further, so the first thing I did whenever they arrive somewhere new, but me, when I arrive in a new after I left college in 1975 was go to India, where I wanted to study place I just go life drawing, wherever I find myself in the world. yoga. It became a life-long journey which I’m still on. We travelled “I enjoy painting figurative stuff and although I’m not sure I would over land, through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, so by the have liked him as a person, I find Lucian Freud’s paintings wonderful. time I arrived in New Delhi I was already battle hardened. I really like to spend time with his work. With any great portraiture, “I must have visited India 30 times since, it’s my second home you’re looking for some clues of the inner person, that tension on Earth I think. I don’t know where my first home is these days, between the surface and the interior, feeling like you’ve been let into although I split my time between New Zealand and . But Indian a secret about the sitter, their thought processes and inner workings, culture in general, and my yoga practice in particular, is a fantastic and that’s there with Freud. focus for me. Eventually of course I developed a taste for Indian “It’s odd that he had that family connection with Sigmund Freud music too and had the good fortune to meet and play with many too, which makes you think of that overlap of course, but his work just Indian musicians who were able to teach me, so you could say I’ve does that on its own anyway. It makes you engage with the mind of had a life love affair with all things Indian.” the subject in a fascinating way. All great art should reveal something about the psychology of its creator. And that’s part of the addiction NEUROLOGIST ROBERT SAPOLSKY for both the artist and the audience. You feel like you get to know “Someone who I’ve only recently become aware of, but who’s has them and on some level you end up caring about that person.” had a profound effect on me is a neurologist called Robert Sapolsky. He taught and researched neurology for a long time at Stanford Tom Bailey’s debut solo album ‘Science Fiction’ is released by University. I came across his lectures on YouTube, which were Mikrokosmos on 13 July produced for medical students learning basic neurology and I’ve completely fallen under his spell.

27 BANGING ON

OUR SO-CALLED “COLUMNIST” WITH A PILE OF WORDS IN SOME KIND OF ORDER. HIS COLUMN FEELS LIKE THAT DAY YOUR PARENTS MOVED HOUSE AND DIDN’T THINK TO MENTION IT. EH? NOT HAPPENED TO YOU? JUST US THEN…

words: FAT ROLAND illustration: JOEL BENJAMIN

“I’M OFF TO BASINGSTOKE FOR A KARAOKE Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy Kenneth is a dad. I congrat- SLAM. WISH ME LUCK.” ulated him on turning his man-splurge into a cogent pile of boy The words fill my screen like an absolute unit. I stop scrolling flesh that walks, talks and dribbles in roughly the right order. Facebook and look again at the status update. Basingstoke. I’m delighted he’s up to his nose in nappies or whatever it is Kraftwerk. Karaoke slam. It was posted by my friend Kenneth, parents feed their children. I’m overjoyed his kid’s in a “good the one with the bendy leg. He chose one of those colour school”, which is code for “it’s near the off-licence”. I am okay backgrounds which make your Facebook status updates look with dad and boy wearing matching Crocs because, according like a big gay brick. It’s the internet equivalent of using your to a recent Facebook post, “they fit like gloves for hands if feet outside voice at a funeral. Basingstoke. Kraftwerk. Chuffing were hands”. I’m okay with this. I’M OKAY WITH THIS. I AM karaoke slam. ABSOLUTELY FINE WITH ALL OF THIS. It makes a change from Kenneth’s usual Facebook posts Basingstoke. Kraftwerk. Karaoke slam. It’s then I notice where he vomits on about his kid. Oh look, my lad’s wearing the status update is a week old. I check for more recent posts a school uniform. Oh look, my girl’s eating her potty. Oh look, from Kenneth. Did he hit the high notes in ‘Pocket Calculator’? child number seven’s pointing at a goose. But there’s nothing. Of course there’s nothing. Parents can choose to do anything with their children, We edit our social media like we edit our memories of anything at all: poke them up chimneys, sell them to the circus, childbirth: just keep the good stuff and forget about the poop inflate them and enter them in cross-channel balloon races. nets. The EDM artist will Instagram a video while making fat But instead they post photoshoots all day, every day with beats, but she won’t post the hours of furious laptop-bashing their offspring trussed up with kidnap victim grins. If you’re so as Windows updated. The DJ will post a selfie with adoring desperate for your child to be loved, give them plastic surgery. clubbers, arms aloft, but he won’t take a picture of the dirty Slice off that puppy fat. Gold-cap those baby teeth. Implant a kebab he ate alone in the taxi home. massive beard like God. I’ll never know how the karaoke slam went because if the One of these days, Kenneth is going to ask me to babysit. result isn’t worthy of a mauve breezeblock of shouty text, then This will be a huge mistake. The last time someone lent me all we’re left with is a return ticket to Basingstoke and a Croc- something, I ended up snapping its nozzle off, and step ladders full of shattered dreams. don’t even have nozzles. My gaff isn’t child-ready. I’ve got half a Ludo set, ZX Spectrum cartridges without the Spectrum, and an I-Spy book which isn’t quite filled in because I forgot what a chaffinch looks like. I have nothing modern. The moment he starts asking for ‘Candy Crush’, ‘Minecraft’ or nitrous oxide, I’m stuffed.

28 BANGING ON

29 30 LANDMARKS

LANDMARKS

WITH PUNK RIDING HIGH, WHO KNEW A MIX OF VICTORIAN SCI-FI, DISCO AND PROG WOULD HAVE SUCH AN IMPACT? JEFF WAYNE ON ‘THE WAR OF THE WORLDS’ AND THE MAKING OF OPENING TRACK ‘THE EVE OF THE WAR’

interview: JO KENDALL

“For a decade before ‘The War Of The Worlds’ I’d been working as “The Journalist”, the only non-singing role, and the label contributed a composer/arranger/producer and would sometimes go out on the to his fee. road with artists I was working with as the musical director and “The book was originally written as an episodic adventure for a play keyboards. I’d composed over 3,000 theme tunes, jingles and magazine called Pearson’s. A chapter was published per issue and to film scores; in 1968 I did my very first commercial for the British excite the reader enough to buy the next issue, ‘The Eve Of The War’ Cheese Board. I’ve moved in many directions musically, was trained was the first chapter. It read like an overture, not much happened but classically, then went into studying jazz. I composed all the idents for it introduced the theme and got you to the water’s edge to try and find LBC radio, and the original ‘Good Morning Britain’ theme. out more. “When electronic music hit, I was one of the first musicians in “We had a month creating the backing track with a band of very the UK to use synthesisers. I went to a demonstration by Robert special musicians, the likes of Herbie Flowers and Chris Spedding. Moog when he came to the UK in 1968. The Moog IIIc was a ground- I had a collaborator called Ken Freeman who I used to call Prof breaking synth that looked like an old-fashioned telephone exchange because he was so brilliant at electronic engineering. They all got switchboard. I bought one and Dr Moog came to my home studio a feel quite quickly for what we were doing. Prof played on most of to help install it. I remember it vividly; here’s the genius who was the synthesisers and I did on all the other keyboards. Then there changing the way music was going to be produced and he was on was a 48-piece symphonic string orchestra, and lots of overdubs my floor trying to figure out what the green wire of a UK plug was for. with guitars and synthesisers. We made a synth that sounded like “During the mid-70s, I signed David Essex to my fledgling label, pan pipes and the recording method increased from 24 to 48 tracks… Ollie Recordings, and we had a great run together where I was when the link that connected two 24 tracks was working, ha ha. producing and arranging his songs. Then I went out with him on the “I would write out the band parts, but in synthesiser terms sound road for a couple of years. Because of that success, my composing settings didn’t exist yet. I had to describe the sound to Ken – such as, work started to diminish. My dad [US theatre actor Jerry Wayne] ‘I need the sound of bubbles’ and he’d go, ‘Okay’ and translate using kept reminding me, ‘I know you’re having a great time, but as a oscillators and so on. On ‘The Eve Of the War’ it ends with the ‘We-oo’ composer you should set your heart on a story that you fall in love lick that he designed. This was an era with no memory storage so we that you can interpret as a musical work’. had to build each sound every time we used it. Even when it was built, We started reading ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea’, staying in tune was a problem, the oscillators would drift into space. ‘Brave New World’, ‘The Day Of The Triffids’, and some non science- You had to be rather patient. Part way through, the Yamaha CS-80 fiction too. One night when I was on tour with David, Dad came over was released. It was game-changing; a multi-timbral synth against to wish me luck and handed me HG Wells’ ‘The War Of The Worlds’. the monophonic ones we’d used. It could play chords and effects and It was about 150 pages long. I read it very quickly in hotel rooms on the it had a touch-sensitive ribbon controller… it made life a lot easier road and it was the first book that immediately inspired musical ideas. and gave me a wider berth of a . “When I finished the tour I traced the right’s owner. It turned “By the time I completed the record, it cost £240,000. That came out it was HG’s son, Frank. My dad and I became a partnership and from my life savings. Perhaps the dumbest thing I ever did was not presented ourselves to Frank’s agent, explaining that we were read the small print on my contract: Columbia didn’t have to release interested in interpreting his dad’s story, but very much in the way the record when it was finished, but they did, and it had some he wrote it – as a dark, Victorian tale that was having a bit of a pop at success! My wife Doreen and I were able to keep our house and the Empire. It hadn’t been done like that before; others such as Orson carry on. Welles had modernised it. Frank was convinced and sold us the music “I would’ve been happy for the album to appear in the chart for a rights – he particularly liked the father and son team, it was like him week then drop out. I couldn’t have predicted ‘The Eve Of The War’ and his dad. being a hit, or ‘Forever Autumn’. The album spent 330 weeks in the “I had the benefit of a good, long-term relationship with Columbia album chart, has spawned 300 remixes and been used for gaming, Records and, when I pitched them the idea, I was offered a contract events, arena shows… I hoped to grab the listener’s attention by Dick Asher, the VP of International, to the tune of £35,000. It took and keep them with us. Well, that happened! It must be on its third me six weeks to compose the first draft of the score, but by that point generation of popularity by now.” I knew I wanted it to have guest artists and expansive visuals… and it was not going to fit on a single disc. I went back to Columbia and they ‘The War Of The Worlds’ 40th anniversary tour starts in November. doubled the budget. Then eventually we signed Richard Burton as See thewaroftheworlds.com for details

31 SYNTHESISER DAVE’S

WORKSHOP RESIDENT FIXER OF UNDER THE WEATHER ELECTRONICS

IN FOR REPAIR: SEQUENTIAL CIRCUITS PROPHET 5

THE ROLLS ROYCE OF EARLY POLYPHONIC SYNTHS? OR IS THE ROLLS THE PROPHET 5 OF THE VULGAR CAR MARKET? DON’T SPARE THE OSCILLATORS!

When Dave Smith and John Bowen first of tracking down. It eventually proved to be released this back in 1978 most synths looked a couple of diodes in the keyboard matrix like they were made by MFI, the cheap which had gone high in resistance, reducing furniture manufacturer of the time (think the voltage across them. Why this caused IKEA, only without the silly names and with a few notes to go out of tune I don’t know, more Formica). The Prophet 5, by comparison, seeing as it’s a digital system at that point. was pure Chippendale (think 18th century But replacing them fixed the problem, so I’m furniture rather than oiled torsos). This one is not going to worry about it! a Rev 2, with solid walnut casing, heavy duty The memory problem can be tracked down aluminium panels, and superb build quality to a single memory chip, still reasonably throughout. With five-voice polyphony and easy to get hold of, and socketed, so easy an extensive patch memory this was way in to change. If you have to replace one, make advance of anything else on the market at sure you’re not ordering the surface mount that time. version. But if you do get the standard The original Prophets went through a version by mistake there is space to install an few incarnations. The first was the original adaptor board, so it’s not the end of the world. Prophet 10, a 10-voice version which, as While it’s open, it is worth cleaning up the far as I know, never actually went into full keyboard contacts. They look a bit fragile but production due to its tendency to overheat they do the job, and are surprisingly robust. and massive tuning problems. They took If there are any keys with an odd feel it’s away half of the electronics and released it worth checking that the wire hasn’t got bent. as the Prophet 5, later to be known as the This one also has a MIDI retrofit with some Rev 1. These are very rare, only around 180 slightly dodgy soldering, so I redid that at were made, and were hand-built in a garage. the same time – prevention being better than The Rev 2 was factory-produced and cure and all that. added a tape storage interface and a few A quick recalibration of a few of its other extras. This is probably the most settings, and the job’s a good ’un. Not sought-after model and the some say the a massively complicated task once I’d most reliable. Around 1,000 or so were sorted the mysterious tuning problem, and made. The Rev 3 swapped the original SSM a pleasure to work on, especially with the oscillator chips with CEM chips, and is extremely detailed service manual. I’ll get generally thought to sound a bit more sterile the butler to polish it before it goes back. and cold, but I’ve never had one of each in the same room so I can’t really say. Later For more, visit facebook.com/synthesiserdave they reintroduced the Prophet 10, which was basically two Rev 3s in the same box with two keyboards. This one has two problems. A couple of notes are out of tune, despite the auto-tuning routine, and patch one, in bank one, isn’t memorised. The tuning problem took a bit

32 SYNTHESISER DAVE

NICE TO SEE SOMETHING DESIGNED TO BE WORKED ON OH WHAT A LOVELY LOT OF SSM OSCILLATORS HALF THE INTERNET SAYS YOU CAN’T FIT A MIDI RETROFIT TO A REV 2. THIS IS IT…

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35 DELIA DERBYSHIRE AND THE INSIDE STORY OF THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP

36 FROM ITS BEGINNINGS IN 1958, THE LEGEND OF THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP CONTINUES TO GROW. WE JOIN AN INTIMATE 60TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, EXAMINE THE MYTH OF DELIA DERBYSHIRE AND TALK TO THE LAST COMPOSER TO LEAVE THE BUILDING WHEN THE WORKSHOP WAS WOUND DOWN IN THE LATE 1990S

37

37 THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY GATHERING

IN 1958, A MYSTERIOUS ELECTRONIC MUSIC STUDIO WAS ESTABLISHED AT THE BBC’S MAIDA VALE BUILDING. SIXTY YEARS ON, AN INTIMATE GATHERING OF ALUMNI CELEBRATES THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP WITH A LIVE PERFORMANCE AND A POST- GIG GET-TOGETHER. WE PICK UP THE BAR TAB…

words: MARK ROLAND

he Royal Albert Hall had been part of London’s entertainment Then there was the Wobbulator, a test tone oscillator whose output T scene for just 20 years when it hosted the first ever sci-fi could be varied by a second oscillator through wildly extreme ranges, convention over several days in March 1891. The event and The Crystal Palace, which was invented by Dave Young, the witnessed some hardcore Victorian cosplay as fans gathered to second engineer to be employed at the Workshop. Dick tells me celebrate the blockbuster sci-fi novel ‘Vril: The Power Of The Coming Young had been shot down over Hamburg in 1939 and spent the rest Race’. There were stalls featuring magic shows, fortune telling, and of the war in a German POW camp, “six happy years” he chuckles. even one selling Bovril, which took its name from a contraction of the His invention took up to 16 inputs from sound sources such as words “bovine” and “Vril”, such was the novel’s popularity. oscillators, fed them into four mixable outputs, all housed in a clear If the BBC had been around back then, no doubt someone would perspex box, and created a unique droning organ-like sound. have commissioned a radio version of the novel, with a soundtrack of Later, during the aftershow get-together, The Crystal Palace is strange sounds from The Radiophonic Workshop. described as “a machine of pure genius,” by , one of the In May 2018, Dick Mills, who worked at The Radiophonic Workshop 1960s cohort. He lives in Poland now, and sent a message to his old from 1958 until 1993 (that’s 35 years of shaping the sonic landscape of colleagues from his holiday in Tenerife, to be read out by Dick Mills. the nation, for which he surely deserves at least an MBE or something) I’m standing next to at that moment, who joined The is sitting in one of the green rooms of the Royal Albert Hall. He’s Radiophonic Workshop in 1973. hanging around, waiting for a rather special Radiophonic Workshop “I was terrified of him!” she whispers to me when Cain’s name gig that is happening later on in the venue’s Elgar Room. So are we. crops up. “Did you know,” muses Dick, as the band soundchecks a few doors These innovators and creative individuals made it up as they went down, “the original Radiophonic Workshop mixing panels came from along, inventing the machines they needed to craft the sounds they here. They were built in 1943 for the Royal Albert Hall, and somehow could hear in their imaginations. And judging by the noises coming they made it up to the Workshop. We used them for years.” down the corridor from the Elgar Room, that’s exactly what they’re They didn’t really work properly (adding an input would half the still doing 60 years later. volume of the overall output), but the make-do-and-mend ethos of post-war austerity Britain was, of course, both a necessity and a he ghosts of the Victorian sci-fi convention are long gone, guiding principle for the early days of The Radiophonic Workshop. T but the Royal Albert Hall’s imposing presence leaves you in The place was full of engineers, inventors and composers, the no doubt as to this venerable institution’s central role in the tripartite skill set often lurking within each Workshop employee. cultural sweep of the last 150 years. Fifty years ago, John Lennon Many of them could turn then-plentiful war surplus electronics into knew how many holes it would take to fill it. Like the BBC itself, the sound creation solutions. Some of the equipment they built was as place stands for permanence. ingenious as it was eccentric. The abiding British fascination for peculiar science fiction, the For example, reverb effects were achieved with a real reverb Beeb, The Radiophonic Workshop, the Royal Albert Hall… tonight chamber, a room in the basement with a speaker at one end and a they’re all part of one long oddball continuum, a hall of mirrors microphone at the other which would capture the sound from the where pasts and futures co-exist, where reverence for tradition sits speaker with the added reflection characteristics of the room. alongside a urgent need for innovation. As such, The Radiophonic

38 THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP

PADDY KINGSLAND

Workshop, “a long corridor with some very drab rooms” as Workshop started at the Workshop in 1970, Peter in 1974. member puts it, seems like a perfectly workable They both joined the BBC as studio managers, the in-house term for metaphor for Britain itself. what we might understand as recording engineers. Tonight’s live performance is a low-key marking of a significant “You’re operating the equipment in the studio,” explains Paddy, who anniversary: 60 years since the establishment of The Radiophonic achieved Radiophonic immortality with his work on the TV version of Workshop at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, just a couple of miles ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’. “You covered a huge range; to the north of the Royal Albert Hall. Less celebrated is the 20th you could be doing Jimmy Edwards in a comedy show one day, and the anniversary of its ignominious closure, officially announced in next it would be Gene Vincent. It was a wonderful job.” 1998, but effectively it was over by 1996, when the last Workshop Paddy first encountered the set-up when some on-the-job training employee, Elizabeth Parker, scrambled to finish the music for Michael included a visit to the Workshop. Palin’s documentary TV series, ‘Full Circle’. “I didn’t know much about them,” he confesses. “We’d played The evening is intended as an intimate and poignant gathering theme tunes from the pink album [the 1968 album ‘BBC Radiophonic of fans, aficionados and friends, including a handful of former Music’], with Delia Derbyshire, Jon Baker and David Cain – people colleagues beyond the current touring band. In attendance are the often used those at Bush House, the BBC overseas deptartment – aforementioned Glynis Jones and Brian Hodgson, whose first stint and so I’d kind of heard of them via that, and ‘Doctor Who’ of course, lasted from 1962 to 1972, before rejoining in 1977, finally leaving in but not much else. It looked like fun, and , who was 1995. Elizabeth Parker (1978-98) isn’t here, but has offered to talk in charge said [adopts plummy voice], ‘If anyone would like to come, to us a few days later, and David Cain is here in spirit. It’s the most you’re very welcome to apply to my office’. So I did. After a few short comprehensive gathering of Radiophonic Workshop composers attachments, they offered me a job in 1971 and I stayed until 1981.” anyone can remember, and it’s likely to be the last. “I really enjoyed playing tapes that had come from The Radiophonic “We ain’t going to live long enough,” quips Dick, “so we’re doing Workshop when I was a studio manager,” says Peter Howell. “They our own tribute band.” had special leader tape on them, and it was BASF tape, too – fancy!” He’s joking, but later on, making a short speech to the audience, he The Radiophonic tapes always sounded great, he says, because pays emotional tribute to his friend and former Workshop colleague they recorded at a higher level than was standard. It was as if they Ray Wiley, who passed away a few weeks earlier. had a special relationship with sound. Which, of course, they did. He didn’t however imagine for a second that he was entitled to eter Howell and Paddy Kingsland wander into the green room. go there. His route to the Workshop came via the BBC’s amateur P They’ve finished sound checking. Inevitably not everything is dramatic society, The Ariel Theatre Group. One of the shows the working properly on the stage, which is crowded with gear group put on, at The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, needed some old and new. Workshop archivist and musical director sound effects for a slide show and Peter, as the audio guy, was pops in. Somewhere in the building is Roger Limb, whose tenure pointed in the direction of some “bits and pieces upstairs” to see lasted from 1972 to 1995. His work on ‘Doctor Who’ is well known, and what he might be able to come up with. In an open room, just left his track ‘Passing Clouds’ has the unusual distinction of being used by apparently unused in a corner, were two EMS VCS 3 synthesisers. Prince as the opening atmosphere on the ‘Lovesexy’ album. It was the first time Peter had touched a synth.

39 DICK MILLS

The piece he put together fitted the bill, and at the aftershow party, energy denigrating each other’s efforts. The French thought that someone suggested he approach The Radiophonic Workshop. In the Cologne studio spent far too much time producing “elementary those days, it was possible for BBC employees to go on attachment laboratory experiments”, while the Germans discounted the musique to different departments within the corportation as part of their concrète made in as merely “fashionable and surrealistic”, professional development, and so Peter first joined the Workshop on haphazardly put together. a temporary attachment in 1973, which became a full-time job in 1974. He was the second-to-last person to leave the place 24 years later. he BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop would not have the luxury Despite it being 15 years after the Workshop’s inauguration T to indulge in such snooty academic mud-slinging. It was a under Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe, the equipment was still a service department, making music for whoever needed it. hotchpotch collection. “Whereas people like Pierre Schaeffer and Mr Stockhausen “It was old BBC stuff, and anything they could scrape together,” would labour for months or even years over a piece until they felt it says Peter. was right,” says Dick, “we had to labour for days over a composition Like the old Albert Hall mixing panels. that our customers wanted right. Anything we experimented with or “The BBC obviously thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have an in- originated was always someone else’s commission.” house department that would do all our funny noises, sound effects Dick describes the typical response as, “Do you want it good, or and electronic music for us?’,” says Dick. “Whereas Daphne Oram do you want it by Monday?”. More often than not, it was delivered wanted to pursue a more arty line and create music and treatments on Monday, and it was also good. Like one of Paddy’s cues for ‘The for their own sake.” Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’, among his finest work in his own Oram and Briscoe were the department’s first employees in 1958. opinion, which was needed at ridiculously short notice for a Vogon It had taken two years since the idea was first proposed for the spaceship scene. He wrote it as he played it, the composition took all BBC to actually create The Radiophonic Workshop. The BBC was of a handful of inspired seconds. stung into typically sluggish action by an internal report about the Mark Ayres remembers Malcolm Clark (who was at the Workshop innovations in sound taking place at the in from 1969 to 1994), telling a story from when he was sent to represent Paris and Cologne. the BBC at an international electronic music studio symposium. In the 1950s, the two European studios represented opposing “Someone from one of the other studios very proudly announced schools of non-traditional music making; electronic music created they had finally finished digitising their entire output of the previous with oscillators, and music created by tape manipulation. Pierre 50 years, and pulled out a couple of CDs from his bag, put them on the Schaeffer and Pierre Henry in the Paris studio of French national desk and said, ‘There it is!’. Malcolm took one look and replied, ‘We broadcaster RTF were tape music pioneers, while in Germany’s WDR do that before breakfast!’.” studio efforts were focused on electronics. Perhaps to avoid the kind of temperamental jealousies that had These two heavyweights of the new European electronic music sprung up between Paris and Cologne, the BBC stipulated that The movement were funded by their respective governments to produce Radiophonic Workshop should be staffed by engineers rather than serious experimental work for its own sake, and spent quite a lot of composers. Oram and Briscoe were both engineers and composers.

40 THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP

PETER HOWELL

According to Dick Mills, Briscoe always wore sandals “for medical Studio One and pick the bloke playing the instrument of your choice reasons”. He was even excused boots when he was in the army, he and say, ‘Oi, do you want to do a few experimental live recordings?’. says, and when he had to wear evening dress, he had a pair that were And before too long, he’d be saying, ‘Why do you want me to put my painted black. mouth over the other end and suck?’.” Oram was a BBC studio manager with a keen interest in avant- And if that sounds a bit ‘Carry On Up Your Oscillator’, Paddy garde electronic music. She’d already visited both the RTF and WDR Kingsland’s anecdote does rather compound the image… studios, and had made quite an impact with a piece of electronic “In the early days, the department, Radio 3 music she’d composed for a BBC radio play using filters she’d built types, would get letters from people with names like Herr Hernholz- herself with surplus sine wave oscillators, recording between Resonator or something, who were experimenting in electronic midnight and four in the morning in studio downtime. music in Germany and wanted to visit. They always pushed them onto As Dick says, Oram’s vision for a studio to challenge the Desmond. They’d arrive with a pile of tapes and say, ‘Maybe I could dominance of Paris and Cologne, where electronic art could be play you my latest piece’, and they’d bung it on the machine. pursued for the cultural benefit of the nation, soon evaporated. The “Eventually, after a few of these visits, Desmond had a bell push reality was that the BBC wanted a special effects assembly line. installed under his desk, which he’d operate with his knee, and you Oram left in 1959 to pursue her Oramics machine, a revolutionary could actually hear it outside – bzzz. The secretary had been briefed device that could convert visual information into electronic tones. to not come in straight away, but after a few minutes, to come in and Despite Daphne Oram’s disillusion, the Workshop soon hit its say, ‘Oh Desmond, you’re wanted urgently at Broadcasting House’, stride and was perfectly placed at the Maida Vale complex. The and he could say, ‘I’m so sorry, we’re going have to switch off, thank building housed a huge orchestral studio, and dozens of smaller you very much Herr Resonator, see you another time’.” facilities. Elizabeth Parker remembers its creative atmosphere fondly. “In its heyday, it was an amazing place,” she says. “You’d find onight’s show, despite the problems with the headphone yourself standing next to Bon Jovi or Bill Nye or Micheal Nyman or T monitor mix which was, Mark Ayres tells us, running a André Previn, you never knew who you would see in there, it was quarter of a beat behind the main mix, is rapturously fantastic. Muhammad Ali was there once, he just came around to received. As a band, The Radiophonic Workshop mix crowd-pleasing have a look!” hits, like the extended ‘Doctor Who’ theme that closes proceedings, And the John Peel sessions were recorded there, of course. and a chunk of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe’, complete “Oh yes,” she chuckles. “They went on through the night, and if with nostalgia-inducing excerpts from the TV series, with more I was working late in the evening, you’d sometimes start to smell radical pieces like ‘Electricity’ and ‘We Would Not Be Here’, a track marijuana coming up through the floorboards, which was actually featuring Stephen Hawking’s synthesised voice, sent by the great really rather nice!” scientist himself quite unexpectedly when they wrote to him asking “If we wanted to base particular music on a given permission to quote a few lines from ‘A Brief History Of Time’. The instrument, and there was nothing that we could use to synthesise high point is a “re-improvised” section from their 2017 album ‘Burials that,” says Dick, “you’d just stick your head through the window of In Several Earths’.

41 ROGER LIMB

In the audience are Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and the actor Nowadays, there would be a system for employees to spot Caroline Catz. A familiar face to fans of ITV’s ‘Doc Martin’, Catz is set the warning signs and seek help. As it was, she “dropped out”, to play Delia Derbyshire in a forthcoming film about her life. When abandoning music. Recently, however, she’s started playing the the show is over, the crowd starts to disperse, leaving a handful of viola da gamba and thinks she might be able to do something Radiophonic insiders. One of them is Glynis Jones. She’s just been with it. chatting with Roger Limb. “It’s difficult though, because I’m so analogue and tape loopy… “I haven’t seen him for 40 years!” she says, slightly astonished and I saw someone explaining on the TV recently how to run two tape clearly delighted. machines in sync, it made me feel like I was out of the stone age,” Glynis Jones started at the Workshop in 1973. She’d been a studio she laughs. manager at the BBC World Service in Bush House, and before that Brian Hodgson, who worked closely with Delia Derbyshire, was in the music division. It was Roger Limb who had encouraged her addresses the Royal Albert Hall aftershow gathering. to join the Workshop on attachment. She did, and never returned to “I joined the Workshop in 1962,” he says. “I remember how Dick Bush House. As she joined, Delia Derbyshire was leaving. welcomed us into the Workshop, which he did with every one “On my first day there,” she remembers, as we quaff white wine, of us, and we all benefited from his experience. I arrived shortly “I was put in a room with a VCS 3 and three reel-to-reel tape machines, after Delia and she was really quite stunning in every way. She a big oscillator and a load of Welsh poems, and told to produce music was elegant, beautiful and talented, and I thought, ‘Shit, she’s for them. I absolutely adored it.” so wonderful’. That was before she turned into a sort of funny Jones took to her life as a Radiophonic Workshop composer like old hippy, stinking of snuff and booze, but her talent just shone a duck to water. She lived nearby and the composers were allowed through, and I hope the film that Caroline Catz is going to do will to come and go as they pleased, so she could record at night if she help perpetuate the wonderfulness of Delia. wanted, which she often did. For several years, she blithely went “I left, formed my own company and then went back later on about her composing duties at the Workshop without much concern. to manage the Workshop,” he continues. “I felt so privileged, “I never had anything rejected,” she says. “For the first three but managing them was a bloody nightmare. All prima donnas! years, I just went into the room and did it quite innocently. Then As an ex-prima donna myself, I know how difficult that can be. suddenly it started becoming more and more important to me, and But the sheer talent, you’ve heard it tonight, was just wonderful. more stressful.” I’d like to say one more thing, about Mark Ayres. When he was a For Jones, a dawning realisation of the importance of her work kid, Dick encouraged him. Without Mark, the Radiophonic library undermined her confidence. In what we’d now recognise as a stress- would not exist, he found it as the BBC were about to put it in the related reaction, probably to the never-ceasing treadmill of deadlines, tip somewhere. And without Mark, who I gave all these tapes she hit a brick wall and quit in 1975. to, there wouldn’t be a Delia archive either. A toast, to the new “I was only young, and now I can look back and see what incarnation of The Radiophonic Workshop, of which I’m very happened,” she says, sadly. “I wish I hadn’t left, really, but it was a proud, and a great fan. To 60 years!” real crisis point.”

42 THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP

BRIAN HODGSON

picture begins to emerge of a group of mavericks, none “The artists approached me in 2001 and asked if I could get some A with “any ambition whatsoever”, according to Dick Mills. former members of The Radiophonic Workshop involved,” says Or rather, no career ambitions beyond making music, Ayres. “So I spoke to Peter, Brian, Paddy and Delia. Delia was quite creating new sounds. interested in doing it. I had a long conversation on the phone to try They were all, it seems, allergic to the idea of progressing through and persuade her that it might be a good idea. She asked me to put it the ranks at the BBC into management. When the role of manager in a letter, which I did. l got the letter back unopened after she died. did become vacant, when Desmond Briscoe retired, Dick says no one It was an enormous shame.” was interested in applying for the post, “although deep down we all The event was the spark that eventually led to the creation of the felt we should”. current live band. Had Delia lived, perhaps she would have been up Some explained why they wouldn’t be applying, others went on on that stage tonight too. holiday and “hoped it would all be past by the time they got back”. As we leave, a summer storm, the likes of which we’ve rarely seen Brian Hodgson was “slowest out the door” and got the job, but no before in the UK, erupts directly overhead. Lighting flashes streak one wanted to leave what he calls the creative ranks. across the night sky every few seconds creating a surreal shift in “I’m eternally grateful to Desmond and Brian for tailoring the shadows. It’s a stratospheric light show with accompanying noise studio space around each of our own peculiar talents,” says Dick. and rain so intense that by the time we reach a bus stop just “We were genuinely looked after, we were appreciated.” 20 metres away, we’re soaked through. It seems like a fitting tribute There’s an idea of the Workshop that is almost hackneyed, a to The Radiophonic Workshop by way of a cosmic reference to White clichéd rose-tinted revisionism that it was an idyllic enclave of Noise, Delia and Brian’s spin-off project with David Vorhaus, and their eccentric noise makers, keeping irregular hours, living the life of album ‘An Electric Storm’. out-there composers, untethered to real life, in a low-level rebellion Perhaps Delia is summoning up one last electric storm. against (and also cosseted within) a strangely indulgent yet strict BBC (the Auntie Beeb nickname makes sense here). And it turns out it’s pretty much true.

ark Ayres, who brought together the touring version of M The Radiophonic Workshop, reveals a titbit as he talks about the genesis of the live Radiophonic Workshop. The first performance was in March 2002 for an art project called ‘Generic Sci-Fi Quarry’, a celebration of British sci-fi and its reliance on quarries to stand in for alien planets. The piece took place in an actual quarry with a soundtrack by Ayres, Brian Hodgson, Peter Howell and Paddy Kingsland.

43 THE DELIAN MYTHIC MODE

THE MYTH OF DELIA DERBYSHIRE GROWS BY THE YEAR, BUT HER ARCHIVE REVEALS THAT ALL IS NOT QUITE AS IT SEEMS, OFFERING A FASCINATING INSIGHT INTO HER SOUND-OBSESSED CHILDHOOD AND HER WORK AFTER LEAVING THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP

words: DAVID BUTLER pictures: DELIA DERBYSHIRE ARCHIVE

44 THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP

f all the remarkable individuals associated with The (the electronic backing to ‘Yesterday’) or did not take place (the O Radiophonic Workshop, nobody has quite captured tantalising, however erroneous, Hendrix suggestion), partnerships the imagination to the same degree as Delia Derbyshire. with famous “great men” rather than the significant work that she She was not there at the outset of the Workshop in 1958, joining did create. the facility in 1962, and by 1973 she was gone – and yet she continues That work included her collaboration with the dramatist Barry to fascinate in ways that her other brilliant colleagues have not. Bermange on the four ‘Inventions For Radio’ (1964-65), which Her extraordinary life and work has been dramatised on radio, resulted in a new genre of radio feature whose audible influence can film and in at least two theatre pieces (Noctium Theatre’s ‘Hymns For be traced to figures as diverse as and Jonathan Harvey, Robots’ being the most recent, performed throughout 2018), to say and her partnership with the artists Elsa Stansfield and Madelon nothing of the numerous artists in various disciplines who have cited Hooykaas, all of which represented some of the projects that she was Derbyshire as a major influence on their own practice. most proud of. Much of that fascination is generated by the myths that have It’s difficult to dispel some of the most deep-rooted of these myths, developed about her, some of which were perpetuated, as her but we’re now able to tell a more complex and nuanced story of Delia long-term partner Clive Blackburn has acknowledged, by Derbyshire Derbyshire’s life. If the core facts (and fiction) feel so familiar that herself. The standard narrative of her life tends to move through a might be in part because, by comparison, we have known so little predictable sequence of beats, spliced together: her childhood in about the other phases of her life, especially her origins and post- Coventry and the background sound of the Blitz, her realisation of Ron BBC work. Grainer’s ‘Doctor Who’ theme tune in 1963, her lack of official credits How did somebody from a working class background in Coventry, at the BBC, her freelance activity and encounters with famous growing up in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s, develop an interest figures such as Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono and Anthony Newley, her in electronic music when it was not being taught in schools (or growing disillusionment at the BBC in the early 1970s followed by her higher education for that matter) and opportunities to hear it were departure in 1973 and then… seemingly nothing. extremely limited? And what did she do after she left the BBC? Did Nearly 25 years pass before Derbyshire is approached by Peter she, as Louis Niebur states in his book ‘Special Sound: The Creation Kember (Sonic Boom) and begins to create music once more just And Legacy Of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop’ (2010), retire prior to her death in 2001. It’s a narrative that has been replicated completely from music by the mid-1970s? For many years, the widely again and again – in journalism, in academia, in dramatisations of held assumption was that she did. Yet, far from disappearing from Derbyshire’s life, as well as the fan cultures devoted to her. view in 1973 and withdrawing completely from creative activity, In the laziest and most reductive versions of that basic narrative, Derbyshire was still active as a practitioner into the 1980s, albeit in a there’s a reliance on the well-worn tale of the tragic self-destructive far more ad hoc manner. artist, with the added appeal of celebrity gossip and speculation Much of that counter-narrative has emerged as a result of as Derbyshire’s post-BBC life is often summarised as a decline research generated by the Delia Derbyshire Archive, housed at into alcoholism until a last creative gasp thanks to the revivifying the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library. The archive presence of Peter Kember. has grown considerably since it was first acquired in 2007 and now A 2008 piece in The Times is a textbook example of this tendency includes donations from Derbyshire’s friends and colleagues as well with the item dwelling more on claims about her “chaotic love life” as a substantial collection of material from her childhood, including and collaborations with McCartney and . There’s a some of her first writing about sound and music, in which we can see strange emphasis on the projects that Derbyshire might have done her creative personality emerge and develop.

45 DELIA DERBYSHIRE FEB 15TH, LOWER THIRD

Her schoolwork demonstrates a growing affinity for sound and These tapes are revealing of Derbyshire’s own diverse tastes an interest in the sonic potential of everyday objects. In one story, and interests in music: Mozart, Penderecki, Stockhausen, Can, Ray she imagines a dusty music shop where the instruments and other Davies, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and Yusef Lateef’s 1961 items, a music stand and metronome, come to life at night, dance ‘Eastern Sounds’ album. What also becomes clear from the freelance and play hide and seek with particular emphasis on the sounds tapes is her resourcefulness in recycling, repurposing or reinventing each item makes as the dust sets them off sneezing and the double existing material from her own back catalogue, sometimes bass bursts out laughing (“You did not know a double bass could transforming a favourite sound source (her beloved green metal laugh? Then listen carefully when you next hear an orchestra; you lampshade) into a new configuration or lifting a cue directly from one might hear the ‘POM, POM, HA, HA, POM, POM, HO, HO,’ of Little production into another. Willie, the double bass”). Elsewhere, she writes frequently about The recording of a boy chorister (John Hahessy, later Elwes), her burgeoning love of music (“my favourite hobby”) with particular which provides the basis for the entire score of ‘Amor Dei’, is mentions for Bach, Heller, Mozart, Haydn and Purcell, together with recycled by Derbyshire for several later projects, including her sound dances by Shostakovich and, above all, Beethoven’s sonatas (with design for Peter Hall’s 1967 Royal Shakespeare Company production the 12-year-old Derbyshire describing them as “the pieces I like of ‘Macbeth’. There is clear evidence in the archive tapes of best… because they are so interesting”). Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson, her close friend and colleague at The There are also numerous examples of her love of visual art, which Radiophonic Workshop, sharing material from earlier productions on would become a driving concern in her work both within and beyond new freelance projects outside of their BBC commitments, whether the BBC, taking in projects about Goya, Henry Moore, Paolozzi for Unit Delta Plus or Kaleidophon, the two independent facilities and Picasso, as well as a series of fruitful collaborations with they set up in the late 1960s with Peter Zinovieff and David Vorhaus Hornsey College’s Light/Sound Workshop, which resulted in several respectively. pioneering events that experimented with the relationship between The vast majority of Derbyshire’s BBC projects, including electronic music and visual projections. Derbyshire’s schoolbooks the original ‘Doctor Who’ tapes, are contained within the BBC are full of visual miniatures and doodles – often intricate, abstract Radiophonic Workshop Archive, housed in the BBC Archive Centre shapes and geometric formations – and it’s here that we can at Perivale, but Derbyshire’s personal archive at The University of perhaps see the origins of her later interest in loop-based music and Manchester Library holds a number of key BBC works, including ‘The the process of repeating a musical structure or sonic element. Dreams’ and ‘Amor Dei’, the first two ‘Inventions for Radio’ from 1964, The core of the Derbyshire Archive, however, is made up of items a 1971 Schools Radio dramatisation of the story of Noah that finds that she had kept with her after she left the BBC: documents and Derbyshire creating a series of synthesiser-based dances with an correspondence relating to many of her freelance and some of her infectious groove, and ‘Tutankhamun’s Egypt’ (1972) one of her last BBC projects, including scores (often using conventional notation, major assignments at the BBC before her departure in 1973. but also Derbyshire’s own graphics) and work-in-progress notes. ‘Tutankhamun’s Egypt’ was a problematic production and, Most significantly, there are 267 tapes, primarily 10.5-inch reels, according to Hodgson, marked the real beginning of Derbyshire’s which feature final mixes, draft edits and make-up tapes where one “disintegration” and disillusionment with, as she later put it, the can hear certain projects in varying stages of development, as well “accountants” who she felt were taking over the running of the BBC. as recordings of non-Derbyshire material. Derbyshire had mapped out her concept for this 13-part factual

46 THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP

UNIT DELTA PLUS ROUGH CONCERT PROGRAM, GRAPHIC 1966 SCORE

series in advance, which included sampling a recording of the silver and Stansfield’s electronic sound for works such as ‘Running Time’ trumpet found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, but the original production (1979) displays a strong Delian influence, with ambiences and looped schedule was changed late in the day and the transmission order rhythmic sequences created from everyday sound sources. of the episodes swapped so that Derbyshire was left working on It was Stansfield and Hooykaas who introduced Derbyshire re-scheduled episodes right down to the wire as they were being to the Polish-born artist Elisabeth Kozmian in the late 1970s. By dubbed (her frustration is audible in some of her introductions to the now, Derbyshire had returned to London after living and working respective cues). for several years in north east Cumbria, near Hadrian’s Wall, first in For Hodgson, it was on this production “when she really started the village of Gilsland and then at the remarkable LYC Museum and withdrawing from everything [as] the pressures of the deadlines Gallery, where she was an assistant to the Chinese-born artist Li were becoming more and more, and she hated pressure”. Hodgson Yuan-chia. would try to help Derbyshire, inviting her to join him at his new Derbyshire was not without music during these years and had independent facility, Electrophon, and collaborate on the score with her two pianos, a VCS 3 synthesiser and a much-loved spinet. for the horror film ‘The Legend Of Hell House’ (1973). Although Back in London, she composed a solo piano score for Kozmian’s Derbyshire was credited on the film, her actual contribution to the “experimental documentary” ‘Two Houses’ (1980) and followed that production was, according to Hodgson, “confined to having dinner with a demo cue, augmenting electronically Kozmian singing a Polish and standing around taking snuff”. folk song, for an unmade film. These projects see her still active as a Derbyshire was not quite withdrawing from everything, though. composer and musician seven years after it has often been reported At the same time as her career at the BBC was coming to an end, she and assumed that she had retreated from creating new music. was developing one of her most rewarding collaborations, with the According to Clive Blackburn, Derbyshire’s partner from 1980 until visual artists and filmmakers Elsa Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas, her death in 2001, she would take on the occasional project and, in the known collectively as Stansfield/Hooykaas. 1980s, made several visits to Adrian Wagner’s studio to work on new Derbyshire first partnered with Stansfield on the sound for music, including the theme for a programme about Stonehenge. Anthony Roland’s award-winning art film ‘Circle Of Light’ (1972) and It’s all too easy to sweep over this lengthy phase of Derbyshire’s that was followed by two films with Stansfield/Hooykaas: ‘One Of life and see it as an inexorable fall into decline, but to do so would be These Days’ (1973) and ‘About Bridges’ (1975). Each film would see to deny her any agency in making principled decisions about what Derbyshire involved from an early stage in the production (a marked projects and roles she wanted to take on. None of this is to pretend contrast with the 11th hour nature of ‘Tutankhamun’s Egypt’) and it is that her post-BBC life was free from difficulties, but neither was it perhaps not surprising that she would generate a substantial amount without music and creative activity, whether that was running an art of new material rather than repurposing earlier sounds and cues, with gallery, composing for piano, or playing the spinet for her own delight. the score for the first film based primarily around manipulations of the We still have much to learn about her work and some mysteries human voice. may never be resolved, but that is something to celebrate and will Although only collaborating directly on two films with Stansfield/ ensure that Delia Derbyshire continues to surprise and enthral. Hooykaas, Derbyshire’s friendship with the pair was enduring and she would influence their later experiments in video art: ‘Labyrinth David Butler is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Screen Studies at the Of Lines’ (1978) sampled Derbyshire’s score for ‘One Of These Days’ University of Manchester

47 THE L AST POST

THE FINAL COMPOSER TO LEAVE THE WORKSHOP AS IT WAS BEING WOUND DOWN IN THE LATE 90S, ELIZABETH PARKER RECALLS HER TIME AT THE AUDIO COALFACE

words: MARK ROLAND

48 THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP

few days after the gathering at the Royal Albert Hall, the What about Delia Derbyshire? A BBC announced the closure of the Maida Vale studio “Well, one or two people were extremely derogatory about her. complex. The building will be emptied by the end of the year. There was talk of her having gone off the rails. Perhaps you have to die, There are a few petitions knocking around, but the BBC won’t be I don’t know,” she sighs. “I wasn’t there in the 60s and really think that swayed. The erasure of the tape, so to speak, is inevitable. Jon [Baker] and Delia and Daphne Oram, they were the real crux of We call Elizabeth Parker, the last Workshop composer. She joined it. Delia was an amazing character. I heard all sorts of weird rumours in the late 1970s, after completing a masters degree under Tristram about her, carrying cheese around and working naked in the studio, Carey at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. She and Carey didn’t I don’t know if that was true or not. The legend has grown, because it’s see eye to eye. good for it to have grown.” “I couldn’t see the point of putting little pegs in that huge Synthi 100. Did you know her? I couldn’t get anything that sounded like music,” she says. “I had two or three very long phone calls with her before she died. Parker worked on the ‘Doctor Who’ story ‘The Stones Of Blood’ in She would call me up in the afternoon, and we’d just talk. She’d be 1978 and later took over ‘Blake’s 7’. She was nominated for an Emmy slurring because she was drunk. But it was really rather lovely. But the for her work on David Attenborough’s ‘The Living Planet’, a ground- time I did meet her, which was at the 25th anniversary of the Work- breaking piece. After more than 20 years at the Radiophonic coalface, shop, I didn’t actually speak to her. She was a very tall and imposing she was the last Workshop employee to leave the building. person. I think she and I would have got on really well, and we would “Yep,” she confirms decisively, the single word laced with ironic have been a force to be reckoned with had we worked together. pride. “It was a bit of a cheek, because one of the engineers was “But what I did was not in the true understanding of what casing me on the last day, they thought I might walk out with some of Radiophonics is. I suspect I moved away from it a bit, but that was the mouldy old equipment. I said, “Shall I give you the key, then?’ and alright, that was the way things were moving. You had the Pet Shops he said [adopts an officious tone], ‘That would be appropriate’. And Boys and all sorts of people moving electronic music on. So I think it that was it. I walked out and burst into tears, actually.” was perfectly legitimate to still be there, but doing a mix of music and The last work she did as a BBC employee was for Michael Palin’s sound. I was always writing signature tunes and background music ‘Full Circle’, alternating episodes with Peter Howell, who had already and things like that. With the advent of the sampler, you could write turned freelance. In the end, all she took with her was the circular music that sounded less Radiophonic and more orchestral, and that’s studio workstation furniture, which she paid for. She installed it in her what people were wanting in the late 80s and the 90s. So, you know, home studio, where she worked as a freelance composer for the next I was only going with what people wanted.” 10 years. What do you think of the live version of The Radiophonic There’s an ambivalence in her memories of The Radiophonic Workshop? Have you seen them? Workshop. She remains modestly proud of the work she accomplished “No. To be honest, I left it and that was that,” she says. “I am an af- (with the notable exception of the signature tune itself for ‘The Living terthought as far as The Radiophonic Workshop is concerned. I don’t Planet’, which was done in a hurry and she can’t bear to hear even take much notice of what they’re up to. But frankly, whatever age I am, now – “that bloody trumpet…”), but she remembers feeling that as a I don’t want to be in front of a live audience.” woman she could be casually belittled, especially when it came to the technical side of the job. For more about Elizabeth Parker, visit elizabeth-parker.co.uk “Women and the Workshop weren’t the greatest mix,” she says. When she presented her demo of the proposed music for ‘The Living Planet’, she remembers, it was to an intimidating room filled with “grey-suited men and one other woman”.

49 NOW HEAR THIS

50 LET’S EAT GRANDMA

MARKING A RETURN TO THE FRAY WITH THEIR SECOND ALBUM, ‘I’M ALL EARS’, LET’S EAT GRANDMA DIP THEIR BISCUITS INTO WATERS NEW – MUSICALLY AND QUITE LITERALLY. WE TAG ALONG FOR THE RIDE… words: MAT SMITH

enny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton from Let’s Eat Grandma J are eating rich tea biscuits, and Jenny is dipping hers into a cup of water. “I’m confused about this,” says Rosa. “Well, they don’t have soya milk here and I don’t like breakfast tea without soya milk,” responds Jenny. “And not all of us can afford teabags.” There’s a pause before they both erupt into laughter. Interviewing Let’s Eat Grandma, it seems, is often like this. It’s almost as if you’re eavesdropping on a private conversation, a narrative loaded with banter and in-jokes that only makes sense to themselves. Their first album, 2016’s well-received ‘I, Gemini’ positioned the then 17-year-olds as twins that just happened to have been born into different families, playing on the inseparable bond and firm friendship that has existed between them for most of their lives. Still in their teens, the duo have just released the follow-up to their debut, ‘I’m All Ears’, pushing their music in unexpected electronic directions as they move along newly-discovered pathways.

remember the first time we met,” says Rosa. “We were on “I the same table in our reception class in Norwich, and Jenny was drawing an orange and blue snail. I liked the snail, and I thought that if I make friends with her now, then maybe in the future we can start a band. And so we became friends.” It may be a wry summary of how Let’s Eat Grandma came about, but it isn’t that far from the truth. By the age of 13, they were hanging out every weekend, initially playing earnest covers on ukulele and guitar and slowly but surely piecing together the material that would form ‘I, Gemini’. For their band name they chose something that made them both laugh – a classroom lesson about how the incorrect placement of a comma can materially alter the meaning of a sentence (“Let’s eat, grandma” versus “Let’s eat grandma”). As a proposition, ‘I, Gemini’ was loaded with hybrids – uke, guitar, viola, mandolin, glockenspiel, recorder, home-grown electronics and overlapping vocals full of urban pronunciation. Its broad-minded fantastical lyrical themes, its perpetual soundclash between the organic and the electronic, felt perfectly poised; playful and free, but never without order. Key to the album’s success was the notion that Hollingworth and Walton were identical in everything but DNA They’d appear on stage wearing the same clothes, hair occasionally intertwined and singing with voices where the affectations made it hard to discern which of the pair was singing. “We created that idea,” admits Jenny, “and it became how the album got marketed, but it got taken a bit too far. We’ve always been close, but I almost feel, on a personal level, that the constant comparisons to one another, and not being able to have your own space as a person, has had quite a negative effect, especially as we’ve got older. “We’ve naturally moved away from the twin image thing,” agrees Rosa, “even though we’ve stayed every bit as close as friends. If anything we’re even closer now because of all the time we’ve spent together on tour and writing the together.”

51 ’m All Ears’ is, at least outwardly, a very different record The one possible exception to this is the track ‘Hot Pink’, ‘I from its predecessor, and even a cursory listen suggests highlighted already here as a perfect modern pop song. Scratch that Let’s Eat Grandma have moved in a squarely electronic a little below the surface and this song reveals itself to be about pop direction. The pair don’t necessarily think it’s that different, and something much deeper. confidently brush off any notion that this is that hoary old music “It’s about us being constantly subjected to sexist bullshit from cliché, the difficult second album. people,” explains Jenny. “We don’t mind people having negative Two major points differentiate ‘I’m All Ears’ from its predecessor opinions and we don’t mind people disliking our music, but when – the more mature lyrical themes and that pronounced use of the comments are specifically sexist, and if you have to bring that electronics. Though synths were a feature of the first album, they angle into your argument, that’s just unfounded.” were less prominent than the organic, almost folksy arrangements “I just think it’s important to write about these things that are that surrounded them. For the most part, ‘I’m All Ears’ is the reverse bothering you and that you know are bothering other people,” adds – traditional instrumentation still abounds, but this time it’s the Rosa. “It’s one of the best ways possible of doing it, and of trying electronics that have them surrounded. to make some form of difference, I guess. For example, ‘I Will Be “I think that interest in electronics has always been there to be Waiting’ is all about embracing change and mental health and feeling honest,” says Jenny. “But I guess it’s got stronger. Other than pop, good after a long time of feeling a bit shit, which hopefully will mean electronic music is one of my favourite genres, so it makes sense that something to some people.” it would have quite a big influence.” ‘I’m All Ears’ is potentially a more straightforward record than They also found themselves composing using Logic, which they its predecessor, but it is one that still has musical eclecticism at didn’t have access to for the first record. its heart. Whether in the spontaneously-written introduction of a “I don’t think we started using Logic to make it easier to write the dark, droning chord into the otherwise bold, grandiose John Hughes songs, often you end up using that to create something that sounds movie-friendly sound of ‘Snakes & Ladders’, the curt little a bit dated… unless you bring in the analogue synths.” reference points of ‘The Cat’s Pyjamas’ or the constant evolutions And yet, even though it was largely written using software, of ‘Donnie Darko’ that close the album, this is a record rich with ‘I’m All Ears’ has the distinctive warmth and texture that comes layers, where nothing proceeds precisely as planned. ‘Donnie Darko’, from embracing analogue kit. It suggests that not only did Let’s written not only without Logic, but without the logic of a definite Eat Grandma spend the two years since their debut embracing plan, is essentially the whole album’s ideas compressed into one technology, they may just have amassed a studio full of old synths? 12-minute song, beginning in rocky territory and somehow quite “I wish,” says Jenny mournfully. “We’re definitely not rich enough naturally ending up as a 80s-inflected disco track – without ever for that.” once sounding like an over-ambitious sprawling mess. In the event, synth envy wasn’t a major issue. “I think a lot of people forgot that the songs on the first record “David Wrench, who produced most of the record, has all of the incorporated so many different sounds and influences,” says Jenny. analogue synths that we’d ever want to use, stuff like the ARP 2600,” “That’s always been a part of us as a band, we’re not really into says Rosa. singling ourselves down into any one specific thing. I also feel like Wrench had been a regular at Let’s Eat Grandma shows and was we never really gave away which direction we were going in with keen to work with the duo. He is one of three producers who worked this record, and I feel like that’s part of our sound, you know, just on the new album, with the credits for the more pop-leaning ‘Hot being a bit everywhere all at once. To us, it kind of makes sense that Pink’ and ‘It’s Not Just Me’ going to SOPHIE and ’ Faris we’d make another varied record.” Badwan – Jenny and Rosa confess to being huge fans of both. “A lot of time passed between the first and the second album, “A lot has happened between writing ‘I, Gemini’ and this record,” even though we only released the first album when we were 17,” says Rosa, turning to the themes of motion and tenderness that have continues Rosa. “We’d written ‘I, Gemini’ a few years before replaced the mystic lyrical otherness of the first outing. “We’ve had that. The time in between was where we developed a lot as a lot of first-time experiences since then.” and in that time we’ve written so much music that “There is a lot of vulnerability to our music,” says Jenny, picking wasn’t on either album.” up the thread. “I think it’s weird because there’s a bit of a duality For such an accomplished, seemingly untroubled second album, to being a musician and yet being a sensitive person. You’re put in it’s easy to overlook the fact that its creators still haven’t even these situations where you’re on stage and you have a real rush entered their 20s yet. I wonder whether they have any sense of panic of adrenaline from everyone watching you, which is quite a bold about leaving their teens behind. position to be in. But if, on a personal level, you’re quite sensitive, “I wake up every day with an apprehension of ageing,” deadpans it’s natural that it would end up coming out in your lyrics.” Jenny before laughing. “I don’t think I can imagine myself at any age Both admit to a sense of frustration when they’re asked until I reach it, and then it sort of makes sense.” what “statement” a particular song is trying to make when it was “I honestly don’t see the point of thinking about the future,” essentially born out of personal introspection. concludes Rosa. “I don’t think you can really live like that. You can’t “Usually we’d just go home for a few months and write songs waste your time predicting what you’ll be like as a 50-year-old. You and would be completely detached from everyone else’s opinions,” just need to live in the moment, and that’s exactly how we approach sighs Jenny. “I mean, we obviously do want people to listen, and our songs.” we do want them to be able to relate to our songs, but we don’t want to always be worrying about what people actually think of them.” ‘I’m All Ears’ is out now on Transgressive

52 LET’S EAT GRANDMA

PHOTOS: CHARLOTTE PATMORE

53 PHOTO: ROMAN KOVAL

54 JON HASSELL

WORTH IT

LEARNING THE ROPES FROM STOCKHAUSEN, LA MONTE YOUNG AND TERRY RILEY AND SHOWING THE WAY FORWARD TO ENO AND BYRNE, JON HASSELL IS AN ELECTRONIC MUSIC COLOSSUS. SEEMS THAT AT 81, HE’S JUST GETTING STARTED words: STEPHEN DALTON

he exotic musical worlds that Jon Hassell inhabits “You put down one layer and then another layer on top,” T are not visible on any map. In his long and winding Hassell explains down the line from Venice Beach in Southern journey from Memphis trumpet student to downtown California, his adopted home for over 30 years. “The touch-up New York City composer to free-floating citizen of the becomes the painting in a way, and then there are things that avant-jazz cosmos, He has been opening up new sonic territory poke through that layer. It was pretty much a perfect metaphor for half a century. for dealing with these multi-track pieces. Just the idea of Drawing from eastern and western styles, from northern things showing through other things was very powerful. Like and southern hemispheres, Hassell has pioneered a kind Natalie Cole singing with her father 30 or 40 years later, maybe of techno-tropical fusion sound that blends futuristic and that’s strange form of pentimento at work.” primitive, cerebral and sensual, acoustic and electronic. ‘Listening To Pictures’ also taps into one of Hassell’s and were early collaborators, long-standing fixations: the concept of “vertical listening”. adapting Hassell’s revolutionary ideas, even if the results This entails full sensory immersion in a piece of music, hearing sometimes proved contentious. Later, art-pop icons including what is happening now, not anticipating what happens next. David Sylvian, Peter Gabriel and Björk enlisted Hassell to This notion derives from the freeform jam sessions that enrich their albums with his luscious ethno-jazz trumpet Hassell used to perform with the avant-garde composer La textures. More recently he has been embraced by left-field Monte Young. electronica artists, working with the likes of Carl Craig and “We were doing these two or three hour tune-ups basically,” Moritz Von Oswald. Hassell recalls. “Sometimes it would just gel when everybody Not many composers make their best work at 81, but Jon was on that frequency, and this angelic chorus of overtones Hassell certainly comes close with his first new album in happens – many images converge and you just get this strong nine years. Glitchy and gleaming, sumptuous and cinematic, feeling, that’s what I meant by vertical listening.” ‘Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)’ sounds like it was made by some ambitious young cut-and-paste digital orn in 1937, Jon Hassell grew up in Memphis during collagist rather than an octogenarian veteran of the analogue B the pre-Civil Rights era. Despite his white middle jazz era. Like his enduring musical icon, Miles Davis, Hassell class background, his early musical education remains an omnivorous, forward-facing innovator. included African-American juke joints and the “deep roots Building on his existing relationship with the fabled British ” of the Mississippi Delta. Which may help explain his electro label, the new album is released on his own Warp- enduring fascination with musical styles more often affiliated imprint Ndeya, which shares its name with the associated with the global south. album’s softly undulating final track. He also plans to use the The progressive jazz pioneer Stan Kenton and Peruvian- newly created boutique label to reissue classic works from his born exotic pop queen Yma Sumac were early passions for multi-decade back catalogue. Hassell. Later, Miles Davis became a key guiding influence, Derived from the art world, the album’s “pentimento” helping to shape not just his trumpet-playing style, but also subtitle refers to layered re-paintings where traces of the his restlessly experimental attitude. Hassell even went on to previous work remain visible on the canvas. A keen collector commission several album sleeve designs from , of titles and concepts, even before the music exists for them, the German artist most famous for Miles classics including Hassell decided this term ideally encapsulated his sonic ‘Bitches Brew’ and ‘Live Evil. layering methods on the album.

55 In the mid-60s, Hassell’s musical journey led to assell’s theories about a global north/south divide collaborations with some of the founding fathers of the 20th H have shaped much of his creative career. He decries century avant-garde. While studying in upstate New York, he the “cultural racism” that holds music from colder joined La Monte Young’s Theatre Of Eternal Music and played northern societies in higher regard than music from the on the original recording of Terry Riley’s milestone minimalist southern hemisphere, creating an artistic hierarchy which work ‘In C’. He also spent two years in Cologne studying under elevates arid intellectual abstraction over more rhythmic, Karlheinz Stockhausen, where he shared a class with future communal, spiritually uplifting forms. He recently completed a Can founders Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay. book-length version of his thesis, ‘The North And South Of You’, On his return to New York, Hassell created an “invisible many years in gestation, but now finally looking for a publisher. sonic sculpture” called ‘Solid State’, an early experiment in “In northern climates it is cold, you’ve got to keep moving, analogue Moogtronica whose tones were time-sculpted using you have to think of things to do indoors,” Hassell explains, voltage-controlled filters. Completed in 1969, the piece was giving me a TED-talk soundbite summary of his grand theory. performed live several times over the coming decade. “So it developed in a different way than the people who stayed “That was done in the really early electronic music studios in the south and invented dances and picked food off the trees. with a bank of Moog oscillators,” Hassell recalls. “It was a That led to the northern mentality, and of course the northern response to being in New York and being with Terry and La mentality took over and ruled.” Monte, I was obviously influenced by them. It’s like a big block As he began to carve a career as a trumpet player and of sound that the sequencer cuts holes in rhythmically. That’s composer in mid-1970s New York City, Hassell crystallised his definitely one where the idea of vertical listening comes in very theories into the concept of “Fourth World” music. This snappy strongly, the harmonic layers element is there. There is nothing term was rooted in a compelling counter-factual fantasy of much of surprise there so you fixate on the overtones and the the “coffee-coloured classical music” that might have arisen holes that have been cut out to make them audible.” if geopolitical history had taken a less Eurocentric, north- In the early 1970s, Young’s wife Marian Zazeela introduced dominated, colonialist path. Hassell to Pandit Pran Nath, a Pakistani-born maestro of the Hassell put this theory to work on his early albums, pan- meticulously precise Indian classical singing style Kirana global collaborations that fused antique tradition with gharana. Hassell studied obsessively under Nath and still high-tech studio sonics, samplers and sequencers. He worked cites him as a key influence in opening up his mind to new with Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos, Senegalese musical . His signature “conch shell” trumpet drummer Ayibe Dieng, Moroccan musicians from the gnawa style, typically couched in the “electronic eye shadow” of Arabic spiritual tradition, and many others. This was music digital delay, partly grew from his attempts to replicate the from everywhere and nowhere, both ancient and modern, delicate dynamics of Indian raga singing. organic and synthetic. Hassell also credits the liberating influence of soft drugs and psychedelics on his musical awakening around this time. While studying with Nath, hashish milkshakes and marijuana- laced ladoo almond sweets were part of his daily diet. “The whole thing was coming out of drug culture in a way,” Hassell says. “Of course, it’s easily corrupted and it becomes a cliché, but that whole era of Timothy Leary – tune in, turn on, drop out, all that kind of thing – there was something going on then that was very much needed. It was a way of escaping the torture of being lost in logic and the way the world is set up on certain levels. That was like the giant of the north struggling with the giant of the south in a big tug of war.”

56 JON HASSELL

57 PHOTO: ROMAN KOVAL

58 JON HASSELL

ultural cross-pollination has remained a recurring Despite his bruising brush with the celebrity world, C motif throughout Hassell’s career, though he hesitates Hassell’s association with Eno and Byrne undoubtedly helped to call it a manifesto. open the door to more mainstream projects in the 1980s and “It’s not a catechism to follow or anything, it’s just a way 1990s. He became a serial collaborator, playing with the likes of defining what’s going on,” he explains. “It’s really about of Peter Gabriel, David Sylvian, Tears For Fears, Ry Cooder and discovering the rest of the world. The way I’d describe Fourth Björk. He largely dismisses this period as the music industry World is a kind of tasteful embrace of what is. And taste here embracing a cosmetic trend for global fusion sounds. means not leaving the spice off the table, right?” “I was just doing overdubs,” Hassell shrugs. “It was part Hassell’s Fourth World idea found an enthusiastic champion of the temperature of the moment, but it’s probably not worth when Brian Eno arrived in in New York in 1978. Fellow late- calling it a collaboration. There was already a consciousness night party animals on the fringes of the post-punk art rock of what I was doing. I’d been to that territory first, so it wasn’t scene, the duo first ran into each other at the downtown like I was being educated by them in any way.” performance space The Kitchen. Eno was serving as producer By the early 1990s, Hassell was forging ahead again, to Talking Heads at the time, and recruited Hassell to play on sampling Public Enemy and commissioning remixes from the band’s seminal 1980 ‘Remain In Light’ album. he likes of 808 State. Hip hop beats and ambient electronic Eno and Hassell then worked together again on their joint textures figured prominently in his ‘City: Works Of Fiction’ album ‘Fourth World Music Vol 1: Possible Musics’, which and ‘Dressing For Pleasure’ albums. served as a kind of sonic blueprint for Eno’s next Byrne “A lot of early hip hop really enchanted me,” Hassell explains. collaboration, the avant-world collage of ‘My Life In The Bush “It was technological African in a way, the African spirit moved Of Ghosts’. over to New York and beatbox technology. That was such a “He and David Byrne were hanging around,” Hassell recalls. beautiful culture, related spiritually and culturally to Africa.” “I was turning them onto the Ocora label, the French early world music label. Out of which came ‘My Life In The Bush Of hile Hassell’s experiences on ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’, which I was originally involved in, but it wasn’t really W Ghosts’ created bad blood between him and Eno, the going where I wanted to go.” hurt eventually healed. Hassell is being unusually diplomatic here. Although ‘My “I owe a lot to Jon,” Eno wrote in in 2007. “If I Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’ was initially conceived as a three- had to name one over-riding principle in Jon’s work it would be way collaboration, he dropped out after hearing some initial that of respect. He looks at the world in all its momentary and demo tracks that he disliked. He later dismissed the finished evanescent moods with respect, and this shows in his music. album as “a not-too-subtle appropriation of what I was doing”, He sees dignity and beauty in all forms of the dance of life.” publicly criticising Eno and Byrne for their “toxic” rock star Preferring to forgive, but never quite forget, Hassell arrogance. Nowadays he is more conciliatory, conceding his describes Eno’s early sleights against him as a “brotherly own stubborn attitude may have played a part too. transgression”. The pair have worked together many times “I did some little cassette things for the album, and then since and are close friends again. Fellow ambient godfathers, they went off to LA to the studio,” Hassell says. “I was in veteran explorers of the Fourth World. New York, we were all living in New York, and what I got back “Yeah, we are,” Hassell chuckles. “It’s a good thing to leave from them was just too poppy for me at that point. If you had it a while. It is brotherly in a way. It’s as if your brother married to slice it in one direction, I was more on the jazz side and they your girlfriend and it took two decades to get over it. But I’m were more on the pop side. I made some errors in terms of godfather to Brian’s daughters, and we’ve actually had a very saying I really didn’t want anything to do with that. I think it close connection recently. I guess as we head towards the exit could have pushed things in another way that was more me. door of life, it becomes a hand-holding moment.” But then it would probably not have been a gigantically successful record, ha!” ‘Pentimento’ is out now on Ndeya

59 LONG SHADOWS, HIGH HOPES

60 THE THE

IN A FLURRY OF ACTIVITY, THE ENIGMATIC MATT JOHNSON HAS RECENTLY STEPPED BACK INTO THE LIMELIGHT PLAYING A BUNCH OF SELL-OUT LONDON SHOWS BEFORE EMBARKING ON AN EXTENSIVE TOUR WITH A REBOOTED THE THE. HUNGRY FOR MORE?

In an exclusive extract from the freshly-published official biography, ‘Long Shadows, High Hopes: The Life And Times Of Matt Johnson And The The’ by Neil Fraser, we join the story in 1986 with the recording of the ‘Infected’ album complete and Matt Johnson declaring he won’t be touring to promote it, but he will accompany the release with a film consisting of a promo video for each track…

att Johnson’s adventure on the road during the filming of Christopherson had already worked in South America, M ‘Infected – The Movie’ was like an unstoppable train, with a not far from where Herzog had filmed, and suggested this as a plan to follow the path of madness trodden just a few years possible location. Johnson didn’t need much persuasion and it previously by German film director, Werner Herzog, when he filmed wasn’t long before flights to Bolivia were booked. There was ‘Fitzcarraldo’ in the Amazon. It was inevitable that things were going a three-day stop-over in Jamaica where it is likely that the to get very messy, very quickly. He travelled to South America with island’s finest herbs were sampled. Any such indulgence may a tiny crew that included [manager/Some Bizarre supermo] Stevo, have set the tone for what was to follow. Suffice to say that director Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, and producer Aubrey “Po” when they got to South America things began to warp out of Powell, who worked with Sleazy at art design group Hipgnosis. The shape rather wildly. chances of this being a straightforward trip were nil. This was a travel experience in the proper sense, with hotels Christopherson, who is probably best-known as a member of where, as Christopherson mentioned to one interviewer, you Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, was the man behind the camera never knew what was going to crawl out from under the toilet of one of the earliest Sex Pistols photo shoots, the rent boy theme of seat. Johnson was particularly struck by the uneasy conflation which caused a certain amount of consternation as the ambiguous of cultures where local Indians sporting Elvis haircuts and sexuality of early punk gave way to something more straight and crucifixes guzzled Coca-Cola. Western corporate capitalism strait-laced. Psychic TV was the ideal set up for Christopherson had, as Johnson saw it, infected the indigenous culture, as to further his visual ambitions and he was increasingly working Catholicism had done centuries before. with film and video. Being signed to Some Bizzare brought him into Thrown into this mix would be tribal witch doctors, Stevo’s orbit, so he was perfectly placed to become involved in the communist rebels, drink and drugs. As they were in Bolivia, film project that Johnson had in mind for ‘Infected’. cocaine was hard to avoid, and of a purity that no one had Johnson and Stevo had somehow managed to persuade CBS experienced before. Strange local hallucinogenics were also to cough up the not inconsiderable sum of £350,000 to realise this on offer, and the strongest weed that any of those who indulged dream. For an artist of his stature this was unheard of, but with had ever smoked, not to mention all kinds of potent booze. the album in the can, and unwilling to form a band to tour, the film As if trying to evoke the drink-sodden spirit of Malcolm Lowry’s was an alternative to performing live. CBS were reluctant, but ‘Under The Volcano’ via Hunter S Thompson, Johnson’s desire Johnson said he would also be prepared to embark on a worldwide to push himself physically and mentally to the limit, to inform promotional tour of interviews, an odyssey that proved almost as his art, inevitably led to a state of mind that swiftly became gruelling as touring with a band. somewhat unhinged.

61 hough much of what happened went unreported, and much Also part of the small crew was Philip Richardson, who had been T will remain so, you can see the carnage in the videos working as assistant to Christopherson, and was invited onto the themselves. How else could you explain the spectacle of project from the beginning, working on pre-production duties like Matt Johnson strapped to a bizarre metal frame atop the deck of a location scouting, casting, prop-sourcing and filming cutaway scenes. boat travelling down the Amazon like some east end version of Klaus He had already worked on the ‘Heartland’ video, which had been Kinski? Or more vividly in the finale of closing video ‘The Mercy Beat’, filmed in Greenwich, but filming in South America was a touch more the story behind which sums up the craziness of the whole adventure. exotic than South London. Richardson avoided the cocaine, though he That Johnson needed to escape himself through drink and drugs did chew his way through a lot of coca leaves, which goes some way in order to film some of this stuff is perhaps understandable – he towards explaining why he can’t remember eating anything for the was after all not an actor, and revealed years later that he didn’t feel entire trip. comfortable in his own skin at the time. He was also exploring and “In Iquitos we had a fixer called Fredy Valles who spoke English,” exorcising his own demons. says Richardson. “He was rumoured to have made lots of money “I just felt angry about all the stuff that was going on in Britain at smuggling jaguar skins out of Peru. One night Fredy took Stevo, Matt the time,” he says. “I was a lot younger then. Life had changed a lot and myself out to a late-night rave in a jungle clearing. We were the for me and I was trying to deal with all these residual feelings that are only non-locals there. No one except Fredy spoke English. It was very dragged forward from childhood, trying to rationalise them.” dark, very noisy and very jungley.” In a television special about the making of the film, he talked He doesn’t remember too many details of what happened that about the atmosphere on the shoot, which would impact his already night, though does recall strange conversations that he describes charged mood. South America, understandably, seemed exotic as “physical”, which may, or may not, help you understand just how compared to Europe and North America, and the sense of otherness strange a night the trio had in deepest, darkest Peru. served to push him further towards the fringes of rational behaviour. “You almost sense the spirits in the air, there’s something magical about the place. But the thing was, the heat started getting to people, and people were doing things they shouldn’t have done, I suppose. I’m not excluding myself from blame, everyone got up to things that you can’t really talk about on TV, and we all started to get a bit paranoid.”

62 THE THE

quitos is a small city and port so deep in the Peruvian jungle But two of the crew managed to hurl him off. Although I don’t think I it is only accessible by plane or arduous boat journey. we really captured what went on down there, I think you can see it’s A square in the ghetto area was chosen as a location for the not just a performance. I lived that song when I was there.” filming of ‘The Mercy Beat’, which seemed to be some kind of climax You couldn’t really have made this up: a small film crew from the to all this weirdness and tension, and it was as if all the clichés about UK making a video for a pop star who was questioning Western South America suddenly descended upon the crew in a single day. democracy, when all of a sudden the Sendero Luminoso (Shining The hot square was deserted when they arrived and started to set Path), who wanted to replace bourgeois democracy with a “New up, but as filming was about to start in the early evening, a political Democracy”, appear in the very same square. The two political rally of around 2,000 Marxist Peruvians suddenly appeared and the viewpoints were on the same side of the fence, but the protagonists scene and atmosphere was, quite literally, radically transformed were, in reality, worlds apart. Naturally, the leaders of the rally wanted to know what a film crew The pragmatic Christopherson, interviewed for the television was doing in this sleepy part of town. Were they just another example special about the making of the film, explained how they were able to of the capitalist West come to exploit the peasants of a foreign land? exploit the situation they found themselves in. In fact, this possible contradiction had troubled Johnson. Was his “What you have to do is use those situations and make them work attempt to highlight Western infection not, in some small way, guilty for the film. I think that if you have an artist who is prepared to take of the very same thing? Not that those particular thoughts had much those risks, because a lot of rock musicians are not prepared to take time to cross his mind in the heat of the moment. Speaking to Ian Pye any risks whatsoever, you can do that. That’s one of the good things of the NME at the end of the year, Matt Johnson tried to convey the about Matt, he’s prepared to stand up in the middle of 1,000 people chaos that ensued. who are all completely out of their heads on cane alcohol or drugs “When we did that shot on the bandstand in Iquitos, a communist or whatever, and, you know, go through that experience… hopefully rally came marching through,” he explained. “They wanted to burn that intensity comes out in the films.” down the houses of the rich people. Then they started shouting at us. Anyone who has seen the video can make their own mind up. ‘Gringos, the exploiters!’. The Indians stood around us and protected The chaos captured was mostly unchoreographed. Johnson looks us. I was trying to hurl Stevo out into the crowd to film them. He’s possessed, and who’s to say he wasn’t? going, ‘Get off, leave me alone’. Then the generator went dead and all the lights went out. Everybody was terrified. The communists’ leader managed to climb onto the bandstand. He was screaming, going mad.

63 hough the craziness subsided, the remainder of the trip, if be a piece of crumpled-up newspaper. I never did find out if Matt T Richardson’s recollections are anything to go by, was like put it up there on purpose.” the wreckage of a wild party. Three decades on, the man himself professes innocence, though “The craziness was unrelenting right to the very end,” Richardson he does remember how Christopherson fared. recounts. “Filming proper had finished in La Paz, and we were due to “There’s a very funny story Sleazy told me after he’d been strip- return to England the following day. Peter asked me to take the ‘The searched back at Heathrow upon his return. Anyone who knew him Mercy Beat’ car out and do some cutaways. I went with the Spanish- and his particular predilections and perversities knows it is probably speaking production assistant, Mark, who drove while I filmed. On true. He was stripped naked in a room with a couple of customs the street we were accosted by a thin, casually dressed man in mirror officers giving him a thorough inspection and after they’d donned shades and moustache. Although the conversation was in Spanish, the latex gloves and inspected a certain intimate cavity, Sleazy then I understood that he was asking Mark what we were doing, whether told them, ‘It’s up there somewhere… you’ll just have to search we had a permit, passports please, and take me to your hotel. harder!’.” On arrival, this not-so-secret policeman said that the whole crew Johnson, meanwhile, had arrived in New York, to work with were to be confined to the hotel until an investigation had been made [director] Tim Pope, in a state of disrepair. Having survived some and suitable fine agreed. Later, in the dead of night we gathered in the dangerous experiences, be it strapped to a boat, threatened by the foyer, split into various cabs and drove swiftly to the airport. Shining Path or kissing snakes, this was a different Matt Johnson. “Unfortunately, on arrival at Heathrow, we were expected. Each “He arrived in New York and he was in a real state from South crew member was intimately searched, the film cans were opened… America,” says Pope. “Frankly I did not like him very much. He was nothing was found. Matt had headed for New York and given me a very difficult, dangerous even. He was in a completely worn-out wooden flute to bring back for him. As they searched me, a small state, beyond exhaustion, and I remember he would go to the gym package was detected jammed halfway up the flute. It took the and really work himself out, but then would drink like mad. He was customs officer an age to get it out while I cried inside. Turned out to really, really edgy, very difficult to work with.”

64 THE THE

There was certainly no love lost between the two at this juncture. sodden singer manifesting his guilt in a performance as far removed Though they are now good friends, Johnson’s view of Pope at this from the standard music video as it was possible to get. Rather than point was not much better than Pope’s view of him. a fantasy vision, Pope was to present a slightly crazed, but far more “I arrived into Manhattan from South America feeling emotionally honest depiction of where male sexual fantasy could lead than was and physically exhausted and was immediately thrown into yet being portrayed at the time in videos by the likes of Duran Duran. another shoot. There was something about Tim’s demeanour in those “We started in the afternoon and shot the scenes in an days that immediately started to grind my gears. Having this person apartment on Bowery,” says Pope. “We brought hundreds of then trying to order me about was like a red rag to a bull really. cockroaches which we let loose, and I sometimes think of the “I wanted to ensure these shoots would be like nothing he’d ever poor sod who inherited that place; there’s probably thousands worked on – before or since. I was exercising hard, guzzling vodka of cockroaches still walking around it now. Then we went up to and all the while Stevo was feeding me cocaine on the sidelines. Spanish Harlem. What we didn’t know was crack was just becoming To his credit Tim went toe to toe with me the entire time. The film he a big thing, and we’d chosen to film in an area near the biggest made for ‘Out Of The Blue (Into The Fire)’ is still my favourite even to crack dealer. It was very edgy. So we had police protection. I was this day. But we bonded through that experience and out of that standing on the sidewalk with my producer and all the crew were a mutual respect and genuine affection and friendship grew.” loading up the gear and this huge rat came out of this building site By the mid-80s, the majority of music videos on MTV were safe, next to us and ran around our feet. I watched this rat roll onto its bland productions, stuffed to the gills with clichés such as petals back, have an epileptic fit in front of us and die. And that was about falling in slow motion, billowing curtains, people running down the best fucking thing that happened that evening. From thereon it corridors or splashing into swimming pools. They weren’t typically was downhill.” filmed in a real-life brothel in New York. ‘Out Of The Blue (Into The Fire)’, Johnson’s confessional about ‘Long Shadows, High Hopes: The Life And Times Of Matt Johnson & lust and infidelity, was filmed in glorious 35mm colour, the drink- The The’ by Neil Fraser is published by Omnibus Press and is out now

65 JOHNNY JEWEL

A SURPRISE SOUNDTRACK ALBUM, ohnny Jewel, , composer and member of synth-rock outfit AN UNTIMELY DEATH, A CHANCE J Chromatics, has a rather complex relationship with ‘Twin Peaks’. David OPPORTUNITY AND A HAWAIIAN Lynch’s mysterious horror drama series has played a significant part in his FULL MOON… PEAK INSIDE THE life, and not always for positive reasons. RED ROOM OF JOHNNY JEWEL “When ‘Twin Peaks’ was on TV originally, I’d seen a few episodes, but hadn’t seen the whole thing,” he explains. “I got more into it when renting it out on VHS words: FINLAY MILLIGAN in 1993/94 when I moved to Austin. I had a really good friend and that was our tradition, we’d watch ‘Twin Peaks’ every night. He ended up killing himself in 1994 and after that it was almost impossible for me to watch the series, because there was such a strong association with him.” So when David Lynch and Dean Hurley (Lynch’s sound and music designer of choice) approached him about using music from his ‘Windswept’ album, as well as Chromatics playing at the show’s popular tavern, the Roadhouse, in last year’s ’Twin Peaks’ revival series, it wasn’t a decision he took lightly. “I had to think about whether or not I felt like we could do it justice,” he admits. More on that later. Back in May, on the first anniversary of the premiere of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’, Jewel released a surprise instrumental album called ‘Themes For Television’. Created using outtakes from his previous album ‘Windswept’, the 21-track offering contained melancholic synth whines and delicate cymbal washes reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti’s iconic ‘Twin Peaks’ score. But while track titles such as ‘Red Curtains’ and ‘Black Room’ make reference to the cult TV drama, Jewel says that the music was never created with ‘Twin Peaks’ in mind. “It began completely unrelated, before there was public information that ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ was going to happen,” he reveals. “So it was just one of those instinctual things. As an artist you follow inspiration, you dive down into a rabbit hole. It’s pure coincidence. It was only during the last leg that it was with ‘Twin Peaks’ in mind.” Jewel says that he found he kept coming back to a particular palette of sounds, and it was during this period of exploration that Chromatics were asked to perform at the Roadhouse, leading to one of those “moments of serendipity” where he was in a certain headspace. And while the titles on the album are linked to the show, there’s nothing verbatim about them.

66 JOHNNY JEWEL

“I’m a huge fan of the sonic language that David and Angelo created, but there are no literal references”. Back to the Roadhouse. The dive bar that residents of Twin Peaks frequent contained performances from the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Hudson Mohawke, with Moby even making an appearance playing guitar alongside Lynch alumni Rebekah Del Rio. So how exactly did Chromatics find themselves performing there? It seems Dean Hurley sought them out. “Chromatics had released a single called ‘Shadow’ on SoundCloud and Dean Hurley had got a hold of it,” explains Jewel. “When it came time to present options to David for what the Roadhouse could possibly sound and look like 25 years later, Dean thought we would be a really good fit and David responded really strongly to the lyrics.” While he says it was an amazing opportunity, his main concern “up to, during and afterwards” was to treat everything with the utmost respect and for the band to do the “very, very best” they could do. Chromatics notoriously don’t rehearse, but this wasn’t the case in this instance. “We rehearsed for this because we wanted to do a really, really good job.” Like most of the cast, Jewel and the rest of the band were completely in the dark about the contents of ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’, but it was something he somewhat cherished. “It was very important to me that I never asked any questions,” he reveals, “that there were no curiosities, there was no anything. I was aware of a couple of things, but it wasn’t appropriate to be asking questions and it felt disrespectful.”

n a somewhat Lynchian vein, Chromatics long-awaited fifth album was I delayed when Jewel destroyed the 25,000 existing copies of the record after a near-death experience of his own. Announced back in 2014, ‘Dear Tommy’ will finally be released later this year, but what happened that prompted such a visceral reaction? It seems an annual Christmas holiday to Hawaii went awry when Jewel was swimming in a bay and the tide shifted, sending him further from the shore than he anticipated. “Everything was fine and then it was full moon,” he says, ominously. “I think this was the first full moon in 38 years on Christmas, and the water kind of shifted.” While being continually moved further from safety, he suffered from extreme muscle failure, which then triggered a panic attack. “It was horrible. It felt like the bottom of the world was opening up and that it was going to swallow me, and the water was 100 per cent indifferent. Externally it was very calm.” Thankfully, one broken bit of Styrofoam later meant he was able to float back to land, but the experience had a profound effect on him. “I spent a long time thinking about if I wanted to release that version of the album and it was kind of the realisation that I have more time. I can make it better. I want to give these songs the life they deserve.” He says that he allowed himself to “breathe musically” and running his own Italians Do It Better label means he’s not constrained to the pop album cycle. “I have that kind of freedom to make those artistic decisions,” he offers. While there’s still work to do (“I’m going through all of the mixes I have for this version and trying and focus on what songs I want to be on it”), ‘Dear Tommy’ is finally slated for release in the autumn. We ask if there’s a specific meaning or person behind the title, and Jewel tells us there’s meaning in everything they do. “It’s a love letter to my friend who I watched ‘Twin Peaks’ with, as well as another friend of mine,” he explains. “In the band we all have our Tommys. They come into your life, tell you something about yourself, or show you something about the world you didn’t know, and they exit, usually through death.” And so we’re back to ‘Twin Peaks’. Inevitably. We wonder whether Jewel has any of his own theories about what happened to Twin Peaks’ Homecoming Queen, Laura Palmer? “I have no idea,” he replies, after pondering for a few seconds. “Death’s beautiful, you know? It’s important to not have answers”.

‘Themes For Television’ is out now on Italians Do It Better

67 EXTRAORDINARY MAN

68 L’ORANGE

HE’S DEAF IN ONE EAR, MAKES BEAT-HEAVY MUSIC FROM UNPROMISING RAW MATERIAL – INCLUDING PRE-WAR JAZZ AND OLD RADIO SHOWS – AND YET SEATTLE’S L’ORANGE WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT HIP HOP… words: ANGUS BATEY

is most recent record may be called ‘The ‘Paul’s Boutique’ gave way to simpler, more accessible H Ordinary Man’, but L’Orange is anything but. tracks based around single recognisable samples, if The North Carolina-raised, Seattle resident samples were involved at all. More recently, as digital has, without necessarily even trying, managed to distribution has acted against sonic diversity and pop’s reconfigure conventional thinking on how sample-based mainstream has homogenised, sample-based hip hop songcraft can work. production has come to feel almost like a deliberate Over the course of six years and seven (soon to be homage to this magpie music’s experimental roots. For eight) LPs, he has crafted a signature style that has given too many artists, sampling in the 2010s feels more like a 21st century hip hop arguably its first truly distinctive deliberate signifier of supposed authenticity rather than new production voice. At the heart of his electronically- a creative musical choice. made music is an unmistakably human heartbeat, Yet as much as L’Orange’s tracks recall earlier eras, courtesy of a crate-digging process that has seen him his approach succeeds in achieving the kind of turn – frequently, though not exclusively – to jazz records timelessness few of his contemporaries can match. made in the pre-stereo era. Those early jazz samples may evoke the 1940s or 50s, There is no easy get-out for a beatmaker when the but the vocalists whose words are woven inside and original record isn’t in a time signature with two or four around the music are very much of their moment. beats to the bar. When L’Orange loops a sample, the Meanwhile, the taut snares and expansive mid-range effect rarely fits preconceived notions of sonic shape: melodic elements (snatches of piano or brass that blow the new musical figure he creates can feel off-balance, like desert winds across his unusually wide stereo and it means his singular productions are always slightly soundstages) recall the snarl and snap of early 90s out of step with what everyone else is doing. classics from the likes of RZA or DJ Premier. “Jazz, especially early 20th-century jazz, is such a That expansive stereoscopy has been achieved difficult genre to turn into hip hop,” he says. “These despite the recent worsening of partial deafness that are songs that were not necessarily recorded to a L’Orange had suffered since childhood. A benign tumour metronome; often they were just done in one take. necessitated three surgeries in recent years, and he has “That exact thing is what drew me to the genre early now lost almost all hearing in his right ear. on, the idea that the music is sort of beautifully imperfect, “For about a year and a half it really hurt to listen to and therefore very human. If it’s played perfectly, it’s music,” he says. “I have roughly five per cent hearing in because it was played perfectly in that moment. That my right ear. So if I’m making a song or checking a mix, creates a situation where the humanity of the music if I put on headphones and turn it up far too loud, I can hasn’t been refined out. It’s not only pleasing: it’s wobbly, get a glimpse.” and at times off-key.” He had worked with the engineer Seiji Inouye before his operations, and that partnership has become vital. ince the late 1990s, when hip hop first became “My relationship with him pre-dates my relationship S America’s dominant commercial genre, the with him as an engineer,” says L’Orange, “so I can speak music has diverged. The sample-heavy a lot more candidly. I have to learn his equipment because patchwork approach taken by “golden age” classics like mixing has gone from a sort of mechanical and emotional De La Soul’s ‘3 Feet High And Rising’, the Jungle Brothers’ process to a very tactile and intellectual one, even ‘Done By The Forces Of Nature’ or the Beastie Boys’ cerebral, maybe.”

69 here is another way L’Orange’s music is person talking to the side, and I try to do it as sort of an T distanced from pretty much everyone else’s: he automatic narrative. I know the listener is never going to chooses to work primarily in the LP format, and get all the details that I’m trying to put in, but my hope is each release has a coherent storyline running through it. that, by doing that, I establish a deep story that will imbue These are very much bodies of work conceived to be the essence and the emotion of that part of the story.” heard full-length in a single sitting, ideally from a vinyl This necessitates a way of interacting with vocalists copy – his albums usually have very clear breaks at the that goes beyond 21st century norms. Since the late end of side one. It helps, too, that they are also released 1990s, conventional wisdom has suggested that the MC by the excellent Arizona-based independent label Mello is the star, soliciting music from a number of producers Music Group on beautiful multi-coloured vinyl pressings best equipped to supply the range of beats necessary to that will surely see them being rediscovered by future compete in the marketplace. The resulting releases tend generations much in the same manner that L’Orange has to rely on the rapper to supply whatever thematic found their component parts. or sonic cohesion they have. With L’Orange’s LPs, he sets Other producers may build sonic worlds, but L’Orange the ground rules. is probably the only one who populates those worlds Whether he’s collaborating over the full length of an with fully-drawn characters, and then uses his music to album with an MC as he has done with the celebrated tell their stories. As he explains, every project begins likes of Kool Keith (the 2015 time-travel not with demos or sonic ideas, but a narrative he writes ‘Time? Astonishing!’) or Mr Lif (2016’s tale of dystopian down in advance, sometimes as a poem. revolution, ‘The Life And Death Of Scenery’) or working As well as the lived-in patina lent to his tracks by with a selection of different vocalists each contributing vintage jazz, the other element that’s become a key to no more than a single song in a longer cycle (as on his part of his sound is the inclusion of dialogue taken from three solo albums ‘The Mad Writer’, ‘The Orchid Days’ radio plays. These spoken word snatches act as both and ‘The Ordinary Man’), the working relationship is as atmospheric and thematic cues, dragging the listener not distinctive as the ensuing tracks. just deeper into the distinctive soundworld he creates, To the outsider, it seems less like the relationship that but pulling them through each LP’s dramatic arc. normally exists between a producer and a vocalist, and “I go to as many record stores as I can,” he says, “and more that of a film director with a cast of actors who are I try to establish relationships with them. If something given the outline of the plot, but encouraged to improvise comes in, like an old radio show that they haven’t seen the dialogue. before they might end up passing on that normally, but if “During ‘The City Under The City’ [L’Orange’s first full- they know I’m there, they know I’m gonna show up the length collaboration with a single MC, Kansas native Stik same day and grab it. Figa] was when I really solidified what I think the process “I keep a very large collection of old radio shows, and should be for me,” he says. “Instead of telling each I comb over them,” he says, “trying to find pieces that vocalist the story I have in mind, I tell them the emotional can express the story that I want. It’s often an imperfect beats of my story. I try to express these as abstractly as process. There’s no single radio show that tells my story. possible, without giving any details, because, as I’ve got I have to use symbols, and I have to know privately when older and as I’ve worked more often in music, I’ve found the narrator is talking versus when the characters are that it’s not my job to control what the artists around me talking. I try to put tense and pronouns and gender of the do, it’s my job to position artists that I trust around me.”

70 L’ORANGE

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He admits that the directions he gives can sometimes There’s a deliberate aim at something bigger, too. appear so vague as to be almost opaque. His suggestions Anyone hearing connections between the different to Jeremiah Jae for 2015’s masterful ‘The Night Took Us albums and their storylines isn’t imagining things. In Like Family’ included for one lyric “to sound like you’re His latest project, an album with ‘The Ordinary Man’ downtown, it’s been raining all day but it just stopped, collaborator Solemn Brigham to be released this month there’s fog settling in, and you can see the lights of a bar under the group name Marlowe, melds raps about being a block away”. an underground artist into the radio-play-assisted tale of Yet there is method in this apparent madness, and an inhabitant of a lost subterranean land. L’Orange says the resulting collaboration has the listener reaching for the project marks a return to the location of the story far-flung points of reference. ‘The Night Took Us In Like told on ‘The City Under The City’, while a skit in which Family’ is definably and definitely a hip hop record, but Brigham tries to persuade passers-by to come into a its tale of revenge in a criminal underworld puts it in dismal carnival sideshow links the record tightly to the the tradition of noir authors such as Raymond Chandler down-at-heel big-top environment of ‘The Ordinary Man'. and James Ellroy, while ripples of distant piano and It’s as if he is not just building a series of sonic worlds, disembodied voices echoing through the spaces in the but a shared universe they all inhabit. mix suggest that the paintings of Edward Hopper are also So while it is fairly clear where L’Orange wants to apt touchstones. take the listener narratively, there’s a lot of room left for In many respects, ‘The Ordinary Man’ takes these individuals to draw their own conclusions. That openness unique or unusual aspects and dials them all up. Its to reinterpretation is an obvious strength, but only, storyline concerns a stage conjurer whose audience he argues, if the leeway is given to the listener within keeps asking how the tricks are performed, and who, certain constraints. in the end, rebels against their demands. What sounds, “I think a lot of the time, artists fall into this trap of musically, like a distant relative of De La Soul or DJ saying, ‘It means whatever the listener wants it to’, Shadow ends up even more strongly recalling ‘The ” he says. “It’s sort of a cop out to do that, to say, ‘I’m Clown’, Charles Mingus’ acerbic take on the torture talent not willing to own my message, what I’m willing to own can inflict on those bestowed with it, and ‘The Prestige’, is my work, my music’. They can then say, ‘It’s now the Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film of illusion, illusionists and audience’s responsibility to tell you what I am’. deadly creative competition. “And so, the distinction that I try to create there is, Better still: rather than restricting the vocalists’ I know what I am… but the listener’s not wrong either. contributions, the narrative direction ends up providing The story, in my mind, goes very clearly in one direction, the rappers with a broader canvas on which to show but I am positive there are people who’ve realised their skills. In ‘The Difference’, Elzhi and Blu propel the there’s a story and have tried to piece it together, and story forward by showing the distance the magician have their own sort of mosaic of how they view it – has put between himself and his contemporaries, but and they’re absolutely correct also.” the song allows both MCs to indulge in some dazzling one-upmanship of their own. Fellow Mello Music signee 'The Ordinary Man' is out now; the debut, self-titled Oddisee’s dextrous, bravura verses on ‘Look Around’ Marlowe LP is released on 27 July. Both are on Mello work as both the magician’s despair as the public fail Music Group and are available from lorange360. to understand what he’s doing, and the rapper’s own bandcamp.com thoughts about life on the road in front of audiences who may only distantly, if at all, grasp what it takes to get up on stage and perform

73 MAC MUMMY

74 DORIS NORTON

A TRUE ELECTRONIC PIONEER, ITALIAN COMPOSER DORIS NORTON TELLS US ABOUT HER PROG ROCK BEGINNINGS, APPLE-SPONSORED EARLY SOLO WORK, IBM EXPERIMENTS AND 90S DANCEFLOOR BANGERS… words: SPENSER TOMSON

reat artists are a fact throughout history, but because “We live, I think, in a metaphysical web of chances and “G getting in the game is hard, the destiny of too many is to circumstances,” she explains. “I thank my metaphysical web, but remain in the shadows, but optimism must never die. There also I know that “audentes fortuna iuvat” [fortune favours the brave]. is always someone standing out from the crowd”. In late 1984, Norton was in contact with IBM and she began a These are the apt, but somewhat ironic words of Doris Norton, collaboration that would lead to her 1986 album, ‘Automatic Feeling’, a pioneer of computer-based composition and electronic music about which used IBM AT, or ‘Advanced Technologies’, which was at who there is surprisingly little information despite the considerable the very forefront of computing at the time,enabling her to surf a critical recognition she has achieved throughout a career that spans technological wave that would keep her at the creative vanguard. six decades. Italian by birth, her first creative venture was as part of Norton thrived on this progressive influence and used it to push late-60s prog rock outfit, Jacula, whose gothic output manifested the boundaries of her creativity. itself with cathedral-sized organs and a near classical sense of scale. “I like to use the same equipment for years and years,” she says, Alongside the guitar of her husband Antonio Bartoccetti and the “but I own the Musik Research recording studio with my son [Anthony church organ of Charles Tiring, Norton provided vocals and keyboard Bartoccetti, the techno producer Rexanthony] and he changes the on early albums including 1969’s ‘In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum’ studio set-up as technology changes, so I have to adapt myself to and ‘Tardo Pede In Magiam Versus’ in 1972. the new gear. I don’t like to use musical instruments conventionally. “The band never broke up” she says, “I’ve continued collaborating To experiment with their potential is a fulfilling experience. Maybe with the founder and leader, there was never a state of inactivity. it’s possible to be one step ahead of time, going against the stream, I composed many tracks, some of them were released, many others beyond the conventional rules.” are still in the attic, stored on floppy disks.” She can trace these prog rock leanings to her upbringing, with an early musical experience that shaped outlook. “My most vivid early memory, when I was about five or six years old, was seeing a performance of Verdi's ‘Il Trovatore’ at an Italian theatre. During my childhood I loved medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music – Vivaldi, Handel, Rossini and Paganini, but I’ve always preferred to use electronics than to play classical instruments. I was never interested in reading a musical score. If you’re a piano player and want to be technically proficient, you must play the piano every day for hours. I prefer doing something more creative and rewarding.” Aside from her vibrant use of melodic motif and a sense of energy that rolls through her sounds, one common aspect of her solo work is a sense that, via the exploration of these sonic tools, she is constantly examining the human experience. In 1980, she found herself working with several companies at the cutting edge of music technology… “It was a very interesting time” she says, “I collaborated not only with Roland, but Apple and IBM too. I got into licensing deals and many of my never-issued experimental tracks were chosen for commercial jingles.” While some of the tones and textures on her first solo album 1980’s electronic opera ‘Under Ground’ (which carried the now- famous Apple logo) are unmistakably of the time, synth lines dance above ecstatic beats and create an electronic type of pop that retains its impact. And it’s this spirit of experimentalism that seems symbolic of Norton’s outlook more generally. By embracing these ever-progressing frontiers of equipment, she never used technology for its own sake or fetishised the equipment itself.

75 76 DORIS NORTON

n 1981, Norton released ‘Parapsycho’ and ‘Raptus’, two afforded to those working in other genres and movements. Perhaps I albums that, while similar to previous releases, focused on a this is due to the general absence of “rockist” sensibilities, because very specific exploration of the sound. They were still the sound itself is so heavily intertwined with the technology, these brimming with energy and hooks, but there was a more complex type innovators have escaped the gender biases of other genres? of electronic pop at work. “I’ve never experienced a prejudice,” says Norton. “I’m “‘Parapsycho’ and ‘Raptus’ were inspired by research into how comfortable enough in my own skin to have no problem interacting music has control over physical and psychological health and how the with other people… if they aren’t out of their minds. If they are, I electromagnetism and the psychic energy influence psychological don’t interact with them at all”. and behavioural functions,” she says. She went on to release a series of albums that operated in the These specific sonic explorations of how technology affects ground between techno and trance – 1993’s ‘Next Objective One’, the human experience continued throughout the 1980s and let to 1994’s ‘Next Objective Two’ and 1995’s ‘Next Objective Three’. the trio of recordings that she is perhaps best known for – 1983’s “Maybe my brain was reorganising itself after the ‘Techno Shock’ ‘Nortoncomputerforpeace’, 1984’s ‘Personal Computer’ and 1985’s pieces,” she speculates, “maybe my brain wanted to shut down its ‘Artificial Intelligence’. left hemisphere to improve the right one; maybe I was in a state of “I think that the musical content shouldn’t be an illustrative mental concentration, in a mystic absorption… I don’t know why I pantomime,” she says. “In my solo albums most of the tracks did them, I simply did them.” are instrumental: if there aren’t lyrics, everyone has a different Regardless of why she created them, they made a massive impact experience of listening and of emotive understanding. The album in the clubs. How does she feel about the recent developments in titles are purely indicative: ‘Nortoncomputerforpeace’ is a call for music consumption and production which have, arguably, followed in non-violence and it was inspired by the human suffering, at that time, the wake of her own sense of progressiveness? in various countries: wars, violence, hunger…” “The modern digital jukeboxes contain overloaded libraries, These themes continued into the next decade with 1990’s millions of songs available to stream, an ever-expanding database,” ‘The Double Side Of The Science’, which, Norton explains, is “an she says. “Electronic music equipment has come a long way and is observation about the ambiguous interpretations regarding the now is available at an affordable price, which enables everyone to potential that science and technology can offer to humans. be ‘producers’. And everyone includes not just the artists, but also “We have to enjoy the benefits,” she says, “but have we to accept emulators who are unable to create something original. Millions of the risks too. In my mind, to destroy the human habitat and, at the songs, millions of producers, millions of seconds to choose some same time, to try to find a way of escape to other planets is madness.” interesting tracks. To discover new music within our preferred For these pieces to be so simultaneously high-minded and, well, genres is getting harder and harder… and more frustrating.” catchy as hell, is impressive. It’s something that very few of her Paving the way for computer-based composition while retaining contemporaries would even contemplate. an accessible and commercially successful sound, for those who As the 1990s continued, Norton’s technological savvy was are not yet familiar with Norton’s work, the recent vinyl reissues on matched only by her ability to work in new sounds and movements, on Alessandro Adriani’s Mannequin imprint will provide an excellent which resulted in more primal three-part ‘Techno Shock’ series starting point. released in 1992-93. “My life never maintains the proper rhythm of space and time,” “The music being listened to at the emerging techno rave events, concludes Norton, “but thanks to the reissues I’ve realised how much especially the those in the surrounding areas of Rome, renewed time has passed since the original releases.” my passion for the shamanic and tribal rhythms,” says Norton. And they still sound like they could have been made yesterday. “Rexanthony and I composed and recorded the tracks for the first Or tomorrow. three albums and he has continued the series up to ‘Techno Shock 10’, crossing into other genres too. It was a pleasing studio experience. Reissues of ‘Nortoncomputerforpeace’ (1983), ‘Personal Computer’ Our intention? We had a lot of fun! And besides, the ‘Techno Shock’ (1984) and ‘Artificial Intellingence’ (1985) are out now on Mannequin project had a remarkable sales success.” Alongside the academic and critical success, financial reward is not readily associated with innovators in electronic music, no matter what gender. And yet it seems electronic music is an area where women have enjoyed – especially in recent times – an equality not

77 BLINDING

78 THE BACK

REED & CAROLINE Hello Science Very

There’s something rather pleasing about a serious subject wrapped all unfold, it doesn’t have to be a show / Formulate hypotheses and in sweet pop packaging. And there are few more serious subjects gather all the facts / Put your model to the test and see how it reacts”. than science. Constantly under attack from religious conservatives While she’s vocalising about the process of scientific experiments, and conspiracy theorists, it potentially holds the key to planet earth’s this careful logic could be a message to ‘Flat Earthers’, espousers of survival in the face of ecological erosion. The new record from US fake news or creationists. synthpop duo Reed & Caroline, their second for Vince Clarke’s Very This rigorous scientific approach is similar to how Reed works on Records, zeroes in on this theme with irresistible style. his compositions and deals with the world too. On their first album, the excellent ‘Buchla & Singing’, folk “Reed really uses science as a way to cope with things,” Caroline songwriter Caroline Schutz and synth sorcerer Reed Hays set says. “It’s a way of making yourself feel better about those issues by compositions about such offbeat subjects as the beauty of washing looking at them from a scientific perspective.” machines or the lifecycle of earthworms to infectious electronic Reed & Caroline don’t consider science and its by-products to melodies and pristine beats. Written entirely with a Buchla synth, be entirely benevolent. Technology is portrayed as threatening on underpinning it all is an appreciation for living matter as much as ‘Internet Of Things’: Caroline sings about the coffee maker talking to machines — oh, and a love for science as the governing factor the washing machine, how everything is interconnected, and how uniting them both. notions of privacy are increasingly diminished, as conversations are Throughout ‘Hello Science’, the pair dive deeper into the subject, snooped on by companies through the microphones built into their with an urgency driven by the ecological and moral decay they’ve products. The subject is dark, but the arrangement is jaunty, with witnessed on their home turf. a flavour of reggaeton or Latino pop. Elsewhere, on ‘Digital Trash’, “In these troubling political times, people are putting science into Caroline’s subject is the “paper trail” we leave behind online, again question,” Reed says about the new record. “It’s almost like a faith accessible by unscrupulous data harvesters. that’s being outlawed. Because of that, ‘Hello Science’ became really It’s a diverse record. ‘Continuous Interfold’ is a brooding piece personal for me.” of ambient electronics, while ‘Buoyancy’ is a disarming collision of This new tone is apparent from the opener ‘Before’: a poignant bittersweet melody and throbbing, club-ready beats and electropop paean to the limited natural resources of the planet. bass. ‘Metatron’ extolls the virtues of various shapes over writhing Emotive synth sequences are complemented by compassionate neon synth sequences, and there’s an ingenious Vince Clarke remix cello, while Caroline, in her crystalline voice, sings about how we of ‘Before’, whose powerful synths are evident all over the track. need to take care of the ancient artefacts of the earth before we lose But perhaps the record’s most important moment is ‘Another Solar them forever. System’: over ticking sequences and optimistic blips, Caroline sings Just as Reed & Caroline’s songs have become less whimsical and of the possibilities of moving worlds to escape a crumbling earth, how more critical, their musical palette has expanded. The presence of they might contain the right elements to host life. But listen closer, cello is just one indication of the broadening of their scope. They’ve and it’s revealed to be a fruitless exercise, and that we’re doomed to also added another vintage synth to their setup: the Vako Orchestron, repeat the same mistakes. a kind of mini Mellotron that Kraftwerk used on ‘Trans-Europe It’s this juxtaposition of unorthodox lyrics and masterful pop Express’ and ‘Radio-Activity’. For ‘Hello Science’, Reed sampled arrangement that makes Reed & Caroline such an engaging act. On Caroline’s voice and fed it back into the synth to create eerie textures. ‘Hello Science’, they’ve perfected a dark and delicious combination. ‘Dark Matter’, meanwhile, is an excursion into , with live bass and guitar over which Caroline asks whether dark matter (the BEN MURPHY fabric that supposedly holds the universe together) matters; yet this weighty subject is sugar coated with irresistible hooks. ‘It’s Science’ is a classical cello arrangement, over which Caroline sings, “Please don’t be afraid of what you don’t already know / It will

79 ‘SUBMISSION 02’

VARIOUS ARTISTS BRIAN CHASE EIKO ISHIBASHI AND MASAYOSHI FUJITA Submission 02 Drums & Drones: Decade DARIN GRAY Book Of Life DiNDDL Chaikin Ichida Erased Tapes Black Truffle Regular ES readers will be New York’s Brian Chase is one of There’s a singular, naturalistic familiar with composer and those endlessly flexible players, It’s hard to believe this is an purity about this ambient/ sound designer Ian Boddy’s equally at home as the drummer entirely live recording of a experimental composer’s work excellent ambient/electronic in Yeah Yeah Yeahs or as an performance at Tokyo’s Super that’s truly outstanding among label, DiN, and this latest sampler intern in La Monte Young and Deluxe venue. Japanese multi- his many gifted contemporaries. – a multi-artist compilation Marian Zazeela’s Dream House. instrumentalist Ishibashi’s Berlin-based Fujita is on a of cuts from its digital-only His ‘Drums & Drones: Decade’ flute is crisp and rueful like mission to bring the under- imprint, DiNDDL – hits the sweet set compiles three albums a fly trapped in a web, while appreciated vibraphone into spot, too. Filmic, kosmische- made using the just intonation the sparse, measured tones of the spotlight, and here he like atmospheres and driving tuning technique, all derived Illinois musician Darin Gray’s experiments with its delicacy analogue pulses abound, from meticulously-processed upright bass are precise and to stunning effect. He prepares most notably on Boddy’s own drum resonance. Pieces like goading, like a hungry circling its bars with kitchen foil or ‘Arclight’ (recorded as ARC, with ‘Snare Brush Drone’ straddle spider. When Ishibashi’s beads, and on the hypnotising Mark Shreeve), a shimmering deep-thinking spirituality and electronics wash over the top, ‘Fog’, uses a cello bow to bring panoramic soundscape of noisy, layered disquiet, while the minimalist jazz ends and further neoclassical poise to a Tangerine Dream/Jean-Michel percussion statements such as these two pieces take a stranger, beautifully, studied meditation Jarre-esque pomp. Now which ‘Bridge Drum’ carry a considered, darker direction, as though the on dawn stillness. CG self-respecting synth head rapturous vibrancy. MS spider has lost his patience and wouldn’t want that? VI found his hunger. ST

80 THE BACK

KIEFER

KIEFER YEARS & YEARS 1I2C JAYE JAYLE Happysad Palo Santo It Should Be You No Trail And Other Unholy Path Stones Throw Polydor Pink Dolphin Sargent House

He may only be 26 years old, but A band who can balance pop 1I2C’s John Whitaker cites Evan Patterson, of Louisville’s Los Angeles’ Kiefer Shackelford nouse, tap into the mainstream Depeche Mode and Tangerine arpeggiating mathcore rockers is making a significant mark and still please the ES stereo is Dream as influences, and the Young Widows, has willed his in the world of experimental rare indeed. Hello then, Years & tracks on his new album – solo project into a band. The jazz. ‘Happysad’, his second Years, who are something of a wherein, like a Sesame Street hammering piano of ‘No Trail full-length and debut on Stones guilty pleasure round here. The segment, each track must begin (Path One)’ sounds like Philip Throw, is described by Kiefer opening decidedly uptempo with the letter ‘U’ – certainly Glass in a metal mood, before as “my emotional journey of the salvo of ‘Sanctify’, ‘Hallelujah’, reaffirm that. A dark mood segueing into ‘No Trail (Part last year”. Through 13 delicious ‘All For You’ and ‘Karma’ would full of weighty rhythms, grim Two)’, which is redolent of late- experimental jazz instrumentals have us swinging hips if we atmospherics and harshly-tuned era Johnny Cash lending his (particular attention should be weren’t so curmudgeonly. synths prevails on tension-filled vocal grit to the soundtrack of paid to the buoyant ‘Socially There’s a few too many ballads standouts like ‘Underground’, a David Lynch film. The sparse Awkward’) Kiefer further on this, their sophomore album, ‘UFO’ and ‘Unhinged’, only for electronics which augment cements himself as a notable for our liking, but such is the cool those rough edges to become ‘Accepting’, ‘As Soon As Night’ name in avant-jazz. For fans of thrum of their synthy goodness smoothed by near-classical and ‘Cemetery Rain’ create an Flying Lotus. FM we’d be suckers for an extended passages. File under therapeutic all-enveloping sense of a long offering à la ‘Love And Dancing’ music for anxious robots. MS night of existential writhing. MR if they were so minded. NM

81 BOOK OF SHADOWS

BOOK OF SHADOWS SPACESHIP MUTANT BEAT DANCE TSEMBLA Various Spells Vol 2 The Last Days Mutant Beat Dance The Hole In The Landscape Occultists The Dark Outside Rush Hour NNA Tapes

Berlin label Occultists gather The seventh long-player from This self-titled long-player from It’s as though Tsembla – an together six tracks from six Spaceship’s Mark Williamson US trio Mutant Beat Dance alias of Finnish musician Marja artists, showing some of the isn’t called ‘The Last Days’ for clocks in at a whopping 200 Ahti – has created eight tracks of interesting new sides to the nothing. Nope. After 12 years minutes, suggesting the recent ethnographic electronica on her well-worn techno path. Label living at the end of the Central addition of Steve Summers fourth album ‘The Hole In The boss James Demon channels the Line, here Williamson imagines re-sparked the collective’s Landscape’. But here the sounds filtered, tranced out style of Jeff the death of his old stomping mojo in a big way. The press of the land and sea have been Mills on ‘So Good’, F600’s ‘The ground as he relocates from release explains the project recreated instead by some kind Whisperer’ follows a similarly Loughton to West Yorkshire. evokes “the wild and free sound of Heath Robinson music box. urgent trajectory, but adds some It’s a pensive, thoughtful affair, of Chicago’s Music Box era into ‘Gravitating Bones’ sounds like magical high frequency spin with reminiscences such as the the 21st century”. Above all else, the mating call of a clockwork and neat rhythmic syncopation. hypnotic ’No More Fights In Late it also speaks to the resurgence whale rising from the deep, while The dark synthpop and esoteric Night Bars’ and the melancholic of post-punk aesthetics in the ‘Penumbra’ could be the field vocals of Lucia Luna make her ‘The Expensive Cars Our Parents electronic landscape, especially recording of a Japanese water offering ‘Origami’ probably the Bought Us’ seemingly drawing a the doom-laden chug of ‘Curtail garden made on ‘Blue Peter’ standout here. BW line so Williamson’s new life, and Corporation’ and the enjoyably when their confidence was high new work, can take shape. We peculiar ‘Toy Story’. JB after that Tracy Island build. look forward to what’s next. NM Utterly delightful. ST

82 THE BACK

PARIAH GOSSAMER

WALTON LIIN

PARIAH GOSSAMER WALTON LIIN Here From Where We Are Imperishable Black Lotus Users Houndstooth Innovative Leisure Tectonic Handheld

Given his hammerhead-hard Taking his name from the Manchester’s Sam Walton This debut album from London- productions with Blawan under fine threads of silk woven by first made a mark with records based duo Neil Simons and Malo the Karenn alias, you’d be spiders, the latest release from for London label Hyperdub, Ramsoir is synthy catnip with forgiven for assuming Pariah’s Gossamer (real name Evan twisting elements of grime and bells on thanks to a combination latest project may follow suit. Reiner) is a hypnotic, immersive techno into new shapes. More of sassy pop nouse and the warm Instead the London-based experience. ‘Imperishable’, the recently, Walton’s music has cosy sounds of their 80s/90s producer takes a step back to LA-based producer’s second been released via dub master keyboard arsenal. Veerng from explore beatless terrain on ‘Here album, dives into an excavation Pinch’s Tectonic label, and his the infectious ‘Gemini’, which From Where We Are’, which of synthesised sounds. ‘III new album ‘Black Lotus’ finds wouldn’t have been out of place is more Tangerine Dream than Encounter’ uses orchestral him sharpening his sound. ‘Koto in the Top 10 if it was 1984, to techno. Given the drastic change synths to create the feeling of Riddim VIP’ is a near beatless the 90s-flavoured 60-second in sound, this project represents a new discovery somewhere brush painting of delicate Oakenfold theme tune-isms a huge artistic release, deep in a void. From the opener ‘I east Asian synth textures and of ‘Pilot’, and on into the more something particularly evident Embrace Of Light’, to closer ‘VIII ominous bass, while ‘Erhu’ is soundscapey second half of the on ‘Rain Soup’ which brims with Into the Endless Void’, Gossamer a collision of modern R&B and record, the highlight of which is sonic glee. An intriguing, exciting intricately weaves a new minimalist Japanese classical. ‘Sekhet Aaru’. Neat and very tidy new direction. JB ambient soundscape of his own, Original and excellent. BM indeed. NM one that’s mesmerising and beautiful. NO’L

83 GANG GANG DANCE

GANG GANG DANCE CLAUDIA BRÜCKEN & EMANATIVE Kazuashita JEROME FROESE Earth 4AD Beginn Jazzman Cherry Red Gang Gang Dance – Brian DeGraw, Josh Rarely a month passes without ’s Diamond and Lizzi Bougatsos – are one The head-turning pairing of ex-Propaganda intergalactic legacy making its presence of those justifiably celebrated New York vocalist Claudia Brücken and Tangerine felt in some manifestation. Son of Spiders bands who have wilfully avoided easy Dream founder Edgar Froese’s talented From Mars drummer Woody, Nick pigeonholing since their 2003 debut LP, multi-instrumentalist son, certainly piques Woodmansey started Emanative in 2006. always operating comfortably on the the interest. The collaboration makes sense Three albums later, he’s leading the vibrant frontier between art and music. The title throughout, though even if the the mid-life, jazz-driven collective that released 2015’s of their new album, their first since 2011, observational opener ‘(The) Last Dance’ ‘The Light Years Of The Darkness’ on Gilles translates roughly as “peace tomorrow”, initially sets a somewhat downbeat tone. Peterson’s Brownswood imprint. lending the album a serenity of poise, but Reflecting on the last throes of a terminal On this latest, Woodmansey’s band with enough rough edges to reinforce how relationship (“We danced our dance / We is swelled by a galaxy of globally-based out of reach the concept is. had our chance”), it’s set against the jarring collaborators, including Idris Ackamoor, The standout ‘J-TREE’ is a curious backdrop of a soft-rock lead guitar hardly set former Fela Kuti sideman Dele Sosimi, hybrid of a song, with 90s keyboard half- the pulse racing. Manchester’s Nat Birchall, The Heliocentrics’ melodies, dubby effects, the violent sound Froese’s synthesised interventions Malcolm Catto, Ninja Tune’s Indian-born of stampeding buffalo, an aura reminiscent soon restore optimism however. Darkly percussionist Sarathy Korwar and Flying of Ibizan early morning sunrises and vocals atmospheric and compelling on ‘Wounded’, Lotus collaborator Ahu. They traverse dawn that are subdued yet optimistic. Further in, he really picks things up once Brücken’s chorus spiritual rousing, funky spaced- chunky beats, spiralling notes and fuzzy storytelling brightens. She articulates her out jazz, ancient prayer rituals and almost guitars give the album’s lengthy title track heart-on-sleeve emotional turnaround with obligatory Sun Ra homaging, including a euphoric urgency as it fluidly jumps refreshing honesty, though the flipside is a Birchall’s ‘Reflection’ (constructed from between electronic music reference points, lyrical earnestness that lacks the excitement one of Ra’s loose-jamming theories) and finally collapsing dramatically into messy and intrigue of her mid-80s ZTT work. Her ‘Minute’s To Midnight For This Planet’, from percussion and classical piano motifs. MS voice however is still on form, and at its best a poem. If only Ra could see the cosmic when underplaying things on the memorably beauty he finally wreaked... though he ethereal ‘Forevermore’. CG probably can. KN

84 THE BACK BRIEF ENCOUN HANNAH PEEL Particles In Space My Own Pleasure TERS ‘MARY CASIO’ GETS THE REMIX TREATMENT HANNAH PEEL, THE ELECTRONICA/BRASS BAND HYBRID WITH THE EMPHASIS ON THE TREAT QUEEN FACES THE QUICK-FIRE QUESTION MACHINE

From where we’re sat, there’s two sides to Hannah Peel So a remix album, eh? and we’re not sure which one we like most. On one hand, “There was something uncanny that happened when creating the there’s Pop Peel, with her charming music box cover ‘Mary Casio’ album, it was as if by creating it as a character, the music versions and hands-in-the-air disco dancing belters from didn’t feel like mine. I adore the end result, but after the release it felt her excellent 2016 sophomore album ‘Awake But Always like perfect open source material for others to play with. It’s not often Dreaming’. Single-handedly, ‘All That Matters’, especially you get the free reign with a colliery brass band, so everyone was live, is winning her piles of new admirers. really up for creating their own space journeys.” On the other hand, there’s the Maverick Ms Peel, the Are you a fan of the remix in general? side that pushes at the boundaries with experimental “I’ve found lots of new music that way. Good ones always send me on pieces like ‘Octavia’ or ‘Foreverest’ that punctuate a journey to explore the original, to see what’s making it work… I feel the pop on ‘Awake…’, and then, of course, there’s the like a detective dissecting things.” utter wow of ‘Mary Casio: Journey To Cassiopeia’, her It’s tricky to put your finger on the appeal of remixes of familiar songs. synthesisers meet colliery band opus. That must go double if you made those tracks in the first place? So if you were going to do a remix album, say, you’d go “They become soaked into your brain and it’s hard to see past the for the pop side, right? Here’s the Peel curveball. While version you love! I like to take risks though and the original ‘Journey ‘Particles In Space’ is indeed a remix album, it’s ‘Mary To Cassiopeia’ felt like it should be shared and explored much like its Casio’ rather than ‘Awake…’ that get the rerub, with Peel original story.” reasoning who wouldn’t want to muck around with the How did you go about choosing remixers? sounds of a brass band? Who indeed. “This all started because Arvo Party asked if he could do a remix ast The remixers in question are all artists/producers autumn and I loved what he came back with.” who, like Peel, are fiercely independent signed to small They are all independent producers and artists. How important is the labels or releasing material themselves. Their work here whole independence thing for you? we very much like, especially ‘Particle D2’, French artist/ “Massively important. I feel creatively free and in control and producer Sarasara’s breathy, tribal -ish take although there’s a lot of hard work outside of creating music, the on ‘Andromeda M31’ and ‘Particle E5’, the deep space positives are hugely rewarding when it works. I make music to make thrum of Avro Party’s re-imagining of ‘Life Is On The more music.” Horizon’, but there are two clear standouts. Peel’s old But if Sony came along waving their chequebook… pal Erland Cooper from Magnetic North (who mixed the “Ha! Well I don’t think a major label would have funded me to create original album) opens ‘Particles In Space’ with ‘Particle and release a synth/colliery brass band album to start with… but G1’, which takes the euphoric brass swell of ‘Casio’ they could licence it for sure! Being independent means my team and closer ‘The Planet Of Passed Souls’ and refines it to its I have control, we can choose what to release and when, there’s a very essence. My word, it’s powerful. Closing the album, wonderful network of artists out there and we all help and encourage Die Hexen’s ‘Particle G7’, takes the same track and lifts each other. ‘Particles In Space’ was a way to support and bring the vocals, a recording of Peel’s Manchester Cathedral attention to some of those artists who I think are captivating.” choirboy grandfather, and pimps it up with church organ- Did the remixers all have free reign, or were there rules, like DO NOT sized keys to stunning effect. MESS WITH MY MUSIC! The real joy here though is Peel herself. Her “Everyone knew to begin with that their intergalactic path would be a independent mindedness, both musically and business- divergent journey to Mary Casio’s, so the rules were simply play with wise, allows her to do what the heck she likes, more often it and make it your own.” than not with dazzling results. So those two sides? There Is it interesting to hear how others interpret your work? is no right or wrong side of the fence for this kind of artist, “Yes, I collaborate a lot but this approach, letting go, feeling a little the pop isn’t any less valid than the experimental side. distant yet totally absorbing, was breathtaking.” That she’s doing it all on her own terms is admirable. Did you worry that you’d not like some of the mixes? “Of course, a tiny bit, but ultimately I trust the artists involved and NEIL MASON knew they wouldn’t send anything that they didn’t want out there.” Are there any particular favourites here? “Like birthing seven children, I love them all no matter what individual personality they have. This collection seems to cater for every mood.”

85 BURIED DAVID SYLVIAN & HOLGER CZUKAY Plight & TREASURE Premonition/Flux & Mutability UNEARTHING ELECTRONIC GOLD Groenland

XMAS COMES EARLY AS DAZZLING AMBIENT THE FRENCH MASTERWORKS GET LONG-OVERDUE REISSUE Local Information Too Pure (2003) Talk about buried treasure. Thirty years old and out of print for quite some time, these genuinely seminal Though Hefner survive in the collective consciousness as the exemplar ambient works will surely astonish anyone hitherto of an indie guitar outfit, the band deployed vintage synths and drum unfamiliar with their timeless, outrageously bravura machines on later recordings. Which means that this, The French’s mastery of the extemporised. ‘Local Information’, isn’t quite the without-precedent one-off it might Sylvian’s swift flight from the glamorous synthpop first appear. successes of Japan and the incremental respect he A short-lived studio band comprising of Hefner’s Darren Hayman and gained for focusing on the art rather than the product is bassist John Morrison, The French recorded their lone album by layering well-documented. That journey began in earnest with simple electronic lines onto a bed of pattering drum machines. It was, 1984’s solo album ‘Brilliant Trees’, which used avant- Hayman said later, “liberating to pack the guitars away.” garde and jazz experimentalist elements so astutely. Despite some nice reviews when it appeared in 2003, including five Among the many luminaries that played on that album stars in The Guardian, ‘Local Information’ was missed by many. was Can visionary Holger Czukay, who also played on Me included. I found it a year later when a mutual friend, the musician/ Sylvian’s subsequent solo LP. The pieces here though, Eno biographer David Sheppard introduced me to Hayman at a launch came about by accident. of a compilation album by Pete Astor’s Weather Prophets. In early 1986, Sylvian travelled to Czukay’s former I discovered Hayman nurtured an enthusiasm for forgotten budget cinema home/studio near Cologne to contribute vocals electronic keyboards, and was the proprietor of an expanding home- to his friend’s forthcoming ‘Rome Remains Rome’ album. made modular synth. At the time I was researching a book ‘Strange Sylvian wasn’t in the singing mood, and settled himself Sounds’, which profiles weird instruments in the history of pop so we by playing the array of instruments at hand, among them had some common ground. A subsequent exchange of creative wares a pump organ, a vibraphone and one of Can’s customised found me with ‘Local Information’, which I loved on first listen. synths. Czukay then started playing orchestral samples The album’s 10 tracks catch a gifted writer growing into maturity. through the studio’s fold back system and, on that first Lyrically, eight are small-town vignettes, Hayman skewering crushed night right up until dawn, surreptitiously recorded it all. suburban dreams with pinpoint accuracy. Familiar territory, as Over a second night the looping, ethereal experiments anyone conversant with his preceding or subsequent work will know. continued, resulting in ‘Plight & Premonition’. The exceptions are ‘The Pines’, which appears to portray redneck Anchored by the deepest of sub bass, ‘Plight’ is as survivalists, and the hilarious ‘Gabriel In the Airport’ (Gabriel as in hauntingly beautiful and complex an exploration into the “that plasticine video guy”, as Hayman puts it). realm of controlled experimentation as you’re ever likely Musically, it’s melodic electropop willfully reluctant to be tied to any to hear. Drama and delicacy combine in such unique reference points. Maybe Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Ballad Of Lucy Jordan’, ways over 15 seemingly short minutes, and build to a for its quietly bubbling synths and domestic angst? Or a more humane devastating climax with an eastern mystic flute sample Momus? ‘When She Leaves Me’ could be an inversion of Blancmange’s marrying a Cold-War-evoking shortwave radio broadcast. rendition of ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’ relocated to a bedsit ‘Flux & Mutability’ was recorded in the same studio in somewhere in Essex. 1988, after what Sylvian had called his “dispiriting” solo My introduction to ‘Local Information’ came pleasingly full circle in tour of that year. Given that, the music here is remarkably 2006 when Hayman invited Sheppard, Astor and me to a day’s recording alive. Can’s Jaki Leibezeit and Michael Karoli were both for his Darren Hayman & the Secondary Modern album. My job was to involved, Leibezeit adding a high-pitched, handheld drum. add electronic gadgetry. A photo on the CD booklet shows me hunched And Marcus Stockhausen was there too, contributing a over an omnichord and a stylophone. I also played my test oscillator, poised flugelhorn. Quite the session no doubt. and although I brought my theremin along we didn’t use it. Sylvian himself says that ‘Plight & Premonition’ is one All Darren Hayman’s albums are good, but in my view, there’s none of his few works that he can actively return to and enjoy better than ‘Local Information’. as a listener. And that’s probably all you need to know.

MARK BREND CARL GRIFFIN

86 THE BACK

LET’S EAT GRANDMA

LET’S EAT GRANDMA TURQUOISE MOON FIELD LINES CARTOGRAPHER I’m All Ears Midnight Demon Groundwaves Transgressive Spun Out Of Control Concrete Tapes

The follow-up to 2016’s ‘I, Gemini’, the debut Until now, recordings of the ultra-rare Whether you’ve crash landed on another album that saw Let’s Eat Grandma’s Rosa soundtrack to long-lost 1983 grindhouse planet, aliens have invaded Earth, or you’ve Walton and Jenny Hollingworth widely hailed “classic” ‘Midnight Demon’ seldom made it found yourself in a post-nuclear fallout for their “experimental sludge pop” (their onto the open market. At invite-only record situation, Field Lines Cartographer’s latest words), ‘I’m All Ears’ sees the Norwich and movie fairs, tape copies would change release, ‘Groundwaves’, gives an unsettling teenagers’ sound evolve into broader, ever hands under-the-counter for thousands. insight into being left alone as the only more interesting territory. Short-lived LA synth duo Turquoise Moon survivor in an unknown atmosphere. The Intimate and personal lyrics offer a (ex-Atari developers Terry Ferrello and watery, echoing synths that bounce around fascinating insight into the pair’s fast- Frank Heisenberg) made their compelling in tracks like ‘Zero Time Generator’, invoke changing lives – relationships, passions and instrumental music on self-customised gear a distinct outer-space feel. Is this Earth? Am insecurities – and identities as young women. that included a Roland JX-3P and a LinnDrum, I alone? It feels like a much more polished and and scored the 12 tracks here in nine days. By using static and broken radio creative affair than its predecessor. Their Whether the above information is true or chatter across the record, the Lancaster- thrilling, effervescent songs remain brilliantly not (our sources are unreliable) this absolute based producer makes you feel distinctly angular and compelling, but they’re taken up belter of a score is hugely satisfying. Moody, disconnected from civilisation. Listening to a notch with glossier production values and a dystopian and reassuringly grandiose, it the opener, ‘Repulsin Engine Test’, you could wider, more diverse choice of sounds. recalls classic 1980s soundtracks from the be forgiven for believing you’ve woken up in Ultimately, these are some of the slickest, likes of Tangerine Dream (think Michael a catatonic nightmare in which all life has edgiest earworms you’re likely to hear Mann’s 1981 noir-esque ‘Thief’ in particular), been destroyed. all year – check out the jaunty, powerful or Brad Fiedel’s ‘The Terminator’. This is With ‘Groundwaves’, Field Lines “celebration of femininity” that is ‘Hot Pink’, wholly immersive stuff, so adrenalinised Cartographer’s brilliance lies in his ability co-written with The Horrors’ Faris Badwan and nostalgically thrilling on peak tracks to create an ambience that’s every bit as and producer SOPHIE, and ‘It’s like ‘Aurora Over LA’, you’ll barely be able to chilling as a psychological horror, while only Not Just Me’, with its infectious Chvrches/ believe your ears. CG using audio. It’s quite the spine-tingling tour vibe. VI de force. NO’L

87 BJØRN TORSKE

BJØRN TORSKE C33 NATUREBOY FLAKO VARIOUS ARTISTS Byen Ballad Of Reading Gaol – The Theme For A Dream Spheric Music Silver Smalltown Supersound Cacophonietta Five Easy Pieces Spheric Music Cold Spring Hailing from Tromsø, the The second album from For 25 years, the Germany’s birthplace of Norwegian nu As part of Test Dept, Paul London-based Chilean producer Spheric label has been pursuing disco, Torke’s first solo release Jamrozy was the archetypal Natureboy Flako (aka Dario the platonic ideal of symphonic in eight years is a masterful shaven-headed, 1980s, south Rojo Guerra) explores a more synth music that made Vangelis blend of laid-back ambience and London agit-industrial noisenik. electronic path than his the go-to soundtrack guy in dancefloor grooves. Showcasing Their site-specific performance debut. ‘Theme For A Dream’ is the era of the Yamaha CS-80, his harmonious marriage of the art was trailblazing stuff. This positively humming with the alongside the warm cosmic two, opener ‘First Movement’ album sees Jamrozy create personality and warmth of pulses of The Berlin School. creates atmosphere as it builds an atmospheric survey of analogue equipment – a Juno- Smooth electronic tones into a more tropical, Latin track. incarceration, taking Oscar 106, Korg MS-20, ARP Odyssey a-plenty, then, in the shape While ‘Night Call’ leans towards Wilde’s famous poem as a start and Roland SH-2000 synths for of ’Edison’s Legacy’ by Axess the more disco/funk side of point (‘Prologue’) for a series those who get excited by such which merges ambient, Jarre things and closing track ‘Natta’ of percussive sound art/spoken things. The results are esoteric and kosmische. Klaus Schulze contains hints of a more sinister word pieces (‘Movement III’). but approachable, from the turns up (‘The Breeze’) as does ambience, ‘Byen’ maintains the As a metaphor for mankind’s unashamedly noodling ‘Stream Bertand Loreau (‘Art Of The perfect balance between dance gloomy prospects, it’s a Of Being’ to the more direct Sound, Pt 3)’. Delightfully swirly, and relaxation. This is the sound foreboding listen, but the tones and relaxed funkiness of chilled electronica for your of Torkse at his finest. NO’L textures and carefully wrought the title track. Dubstep attitude mellow needs. MR rhythms swell into a compelling meets 1970s Berlin, perhaps. BW beauty, too. MR

88 THE BACK

EMILIE LEVIENAISE-FARROUCH

EMILIE LEVIENAISE- A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS MARTYN ZANTI FARROUCH Ascension Voids Broken Hearted City Époques August Day Ostgut Ton Downwards 130701 A Flock Of Seagulls? From the US-based, Netherlands-born There’s much to like about this After the release of her debut 1980s? With the haircuts? Yeah, artist Martyn makes music widescreen outing from Marc ‘Like Water Through The Sand’ that’s them. The shame is that which, flitting from jazzy Almond sidekick Anni Hogan and album, French composer/pianist these Liverpool hairdressers explorations to crushing breaks early doors Simple Minds bassist Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch turned pop stars seem to be without breaking a sweat, is Derek Forbes, whose smooth went quiet for three years. Here remembered as all style over sinister yet colourful. This is flowing licks underpin this entire she makes her stunning return content, because they couldn’t clear to see on his fourth studio outing. The locked down rumble with ‘Époques’ a second outing half pen a hit. Fortunately, release, ‘Voids’. ‘Manchester’, of opener ‘Scream Machine’ for FatCat’s 130701 offshoot. ‘Ascension’ is a reappraisal of his ode to producer Marcus is kind of ‘Zoo Station’, while ‘Époques’ is an emotional listen, their finest moments, stylishly Intalex who passed away last the synthy thrum and haunting piano keys tinkling and bold cello reworked with the help of The year, harks back to Blighty with melodica of ‘Head Sounds’ and viola set against scattered Prague Philharmonic. Take your a bulging old school bassline and with Hogan’s gentle vocal is electronic textures. Dramatic pick from huge, string-swollen early Tempa-style drum patterns. a standout, as is the soaring keys pounding against the slow versions of ‘Wishing (I Had A ‘World Gate’ weds housey drums duet of ‘Planet rumble of a cello, ‘Ultramarine’ is Photograph Of You)’, ‘I Ran’, and jungle textures. Really, really Sweet’, which is charm itself. a perfect combination of these ‘Telecommunication’, ‘Space Age good stuff. JB Looking forward to Hogan’s new elements. Another neoclassical Love Song’ or our favourite, solo outing in the autumn on the star in the house of 130701. FM ‘Transfer Affection’. It’s all strength of this. NM pretty marvellous stuff. NM

89 ANDREA BENINI

ANDREA BENINI VARIOUS ARTISTS VARIOUS ARTISTS VARG Drumphilia Vol 1 Wave Earplug No 2 Seven At 77 Nordic Flora Series Pt 5: Crush Cristalline 4mg Where It’s At Is Where You Are Posh Isolation

This solo outing from the This collection of primitive A second outing for the Swedish maverick Varg, aka frontman of Italian genre underground electronica from innovative fundraiser from John Jonas Rönnberg, adds another hoppers Mop Mop is inspired, Slovakian label 4mg needs your Jervis’ very fine label. The idea is chapter to his exciting Nordic it says here, by “early African attention. MAKiNA GiRGiR from a track each from seven artists, Flora Series, where ironic- electronic music and modern France have a suitably stern each clocking in at 77 minutes, looking track titles betray the beats”. ‘Drumphilia Vol 1’ is way female vocal for their early sold as a limited edition CD set stunning musicianship residing better than that sounds, with 80s DIY seven-inch feel, and of 49 in aid of MSF. Highlights underneath. Case in point ‘(+46) Benini weaving an impressive Brigade Rosse from Germany includes Spaceship’s West Placing My iPhone X Facing web with only the use of turn in some electronic austerity. Yorkshire field recordings, the Up To See When U Answer My percussion instruments, be There’s a whiff of late 80s EBM gentle mesmerising ‘Get Out Of Texts’ which reveals itself to it organic or electronic, from about Belgium’s The Revolving The Way’ by Hefner’s Darren be one of the most beautiful drum machines to thumb pianos. Eyes, all-out weirdness from Hayman, Yukka’s blippy ‘Arctic moments on the album. Brazen Tracks like the deep housey Stílus Együttes (Style Group) Tern’ recorded on a tablet during electro number ‘Rush/Tinder’ is ‘Maharaja’ have a strong St and their Trio-esque ‘TAB’ and a commute and Twenty-Three followed by the Burial-inflected Germain flavour, which is no bad there’s a spot of DAF with Hanging Trees’ modular/tape melancholy of ‘Vanity Lights thing at all. SR ImiAFan’s ‘Sekundenzeiger’. loop/violin/piano workout. NM (First Crush)’, one of many All good stuff. MR sonical one-two punches. JB

90 THE BACK

BOXWORK

BOXWORK JODIE LOWTHER DALI RP BOO Trench & ARC SOUNDTRACKS When Haro Met Sally I’ll Tell You What! Boxwork Music The Blow Volume 4 Burning Witches Planet Mu Front & Follow Boxwork Music’s second Damon Baxter, aka Deadly Not unlike urban music’s release is straight from Mr The fourth in the label’s Avenger, appears with with a equivalent of , the Boxwork himself, aka south collaborative series sees second album on the excellent footwork scene can sometimes London-based musician James multi-disciplinary artists Jodie Burning Witches in as many seem to be more concerned Wilson. ‘Trench’ follows last Lowther and ARC Soundtracks months. This time, Leicester’s with appearing clever than year’s debut ‘Dive Left’ and taking ne side of a cassette each. big beat big cheese hooks up communicating directly. Not so takes us further into his wacky Lowther’s tracks are invariably with artist/illustrator Luke with RP Boo, alias of Chicago- world – a record that “has no melodic yet unsettling, with Insect for this 80s BMX-themed based producer Kavain Space, genre but is influenced by them the haunting ‘Tourmaline’ like romp. We love the cheeky licks who draws on hip hop vocals and all”. And it certainly is, from the a fragmented refrain looping created by those authentic 80s sounds closer to the gloriously off-kilter rhythms of ‘Through inside an abandoned building. sounds (Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids In trashy ghetto tech movement The Perch’ to the avant-jazz ARC Soundtracks go for a more America’ on ‘Chrome’, anyone?) than chinstroking prog. The stylings of ‘Velveter’, it’s nuts, expansive approach on their while the electro homage on likes of the Marshall Jefferson- but delighfully so. We’ll be on 30-minute piece, ‘Taken Up & ‘Curb Dogs’ and ‘Gettin’ Crit’ are sampling ‘Back From The Future’ the blower phoning the men in Dissolved’, deploying drones, très cool. Oh and it’s sprinkled and ‘Wicked’Bu’ are direct and the white coats shortly. FM sketchy rhythms, processed with some great skate samples. brutal. Seething with anger and vocals and cut-up texts to muse Much fun. SR finding fresh, intriguing new on disappearing landscapes. MS ways to express it. BW

91 SOULWAX

SOULWAX GRAHAM REZNICK GENIUSER Essential Robophasia I Am Deewee Burning Witches Ahh Ohh

Soulwax’s latest LP is based around a It’s about time somebody had the confidence Geniuser is a duo of Michael Allen and commission for the Belgian band to put to give us a fresh take on 80s electro. And electronic producer Giuseppe De Bellis together an ‘Essential Mix’ for Radio 1, given the synthwave joys of his brilliant founded in 2005 and ‘I Am’ represents their but rather than a regular mix they opted to debut ‘Glass Angles’, it’s probably no first recorded material since 2009’s ‘Press create an hour of completely new music surprise that LA producer Graham Reznick / Delete’ EP. Vocalist Allen is best known based around the word “essential”. The has had the guts to once again eschew the from much-missed 4AD act The Wolfgang results are very much dancefloor-based, house-derived path of least resistance. Press, but his legacy extends back through mainly instrumental and are definitely track Here he hits us with a heavy-gauge, post-punk groups Mass, Rema-Rema and rather than song-based, with hyperactive Harold-Faltermeyer-goes-electro-boogie overlooked punks The Models. electro the thematic spine running down celebration of all things pre-house and high Recorded with Einstürzende Neubauten its centre. voltage, spicing his irresistible mix with a producer Boris Wilsdorf, ‘I Am’ is dark, Opening tune ‘Essential One’ can’t sprinkling of disco-savvy Kraftwerk and moody electronic blues music, full of low- help but draw comparisons with Justice thrill-heavy John Carpenter. Stomping tracks slung basslines and impenetrably deep and those distorted organ chords, while like ‘The Score’ get right on it, shooting their webs of gloomy synths, all framed by Allen’s ‘Essential Two’ is more hypnotic and heads neon lasers from the flashing heart of the compelling delivery – one part preacher, down acid house. ‘Essential Three’ has dancefloor, serving-up powerful volleys of one part cynical observer, one part ravaged, a Daft Punk disco swagger and a chorus electrocuting excitement. burnt-out narrator. possibly borrowed from Depeche Mode’s The slower paced atmospherics of The blurry nihilist funk of ‘Monkey’ is ‘Enjoy The Silence’, plus a sultry spoken word ‘Unsoled’ hit a very sweet spot indeed, a lot like Birthday Party-era Nick Cave narrative in French. Other highlights include coming over like some maverick Mantronix fronting The Revolution Corps Of Teenage the rattling go-go percussion of ‘Essential score for a futuristic 80s US crime pilot, Jesus instead of Alan Vega, while the Eight’, the Australian-voiced race through involving renegade androids with vocoder bleeping incessant post-industrial whine of the thesaurus on ‘Essential Eleven’ and the voices. You know you want some. CG ‘Disconnected’ and the strictly-regimented radioactive Drexciya-echoing acid electro gloom of ‘Man Of God’ are moments of of ‘Essential Six’. BW savage poetic genius. MS

92 THE BACK

IMMERSION LABEL PROFILE Sleepless Swim~ THE INDIE IMPRINTS CATCHING OUR EARS

SLOWS A Great Big Smile From Venus Deep Distance

WHAT DO WIRE GET UP TO IN THEIR SPARE TIME? SIDE HUSTLES, THAT’S WHAT… LABEL: CASTLES IN SPACE The spin-off projects from the members of Wire have LOCATION: Biggleswade, UK always had their own unique identity, but always EST: 2015 retained just enough of a distinctive Wire-ishness to link them back to the mothership. The one exception POTTED HISTORY: “The label grew out of a music review blog I ran might be Colin Newman’s Immersion unit formed with for a few years,” says label head honcho Colin Morrison. “In my youth his wife, the fellow post-punk musician Malka Spigel. I played keyboards in bands, one of which saw some minor success, Deactivated in the early 2000s and only brought back leading to a publishing deal with Chrysalis. The band fizzled out, but the to life two years ago, Immersion was initially a purely label side of things always fascinated me, so having played music and ambient/dance project, but has been recast as a Neu!- written about music, I wanted to have a go at releasing music.” inspired, analogue synth-dominated proposition. During his blogging life, he met Stuart Mclean of The Dark Outside New album ‘Sleepless’ is a more rounded affair than radio broadcasts/cassette label fame, who helped Colin get Castles In Spigel and Newman’s last Immersion outing, while still Space off the ground. The first release was a seven-inch by Tauchseider, suggesting they are continually searching for some pure which featured McLean in collaboration with Soundhog, Innes Smith essence they just haven’t found yet. While ‘MS19’ and and Colin Newman of Wire. ‘Hovertron’ carry their constantly-evolving keyboard “Due to a mixture of persistence and luck, the label has spidered lines on forward-motion grooves that in other hands outwards from that point,” says Colin, rather modestly. might have been delivered as thudding techno, there’s something altogether more considered about the MISSION STATEMENT: “That’s easy,” he says, “Castles in Space is a Immersion approach. The stand-out track is ‘Propulsoid’, truly independent label specialising in brilliant electronic music in lovely a sinewy stew of Suicide-y synth lines, fractured guitar deluxe, hand-finished vinyl pressings. The label aims to be a mark of layers and a measured, metronomic groove from Matt quality for people who love electronic music as much as I do.” Schulz of Holy Fuck. That’s you, that is. Yes, you. Schulz also appears on ‘A Great Big Smile From “I want Castles in Space to be recognised as a label delivering Venus’ the third album from Wire guitarist Matthew accessible, unpredictable, moody and exciting music,” he adds. Simms as Slows. In Wire, Simms is tasked with filling “The intention is that if you like one release, you’ll like them all.” the role left by Bruce Gilbert, and, like Gilbert before him, his solo music is rich in experimentation and KEY ARTISTS & RELEASES: “I’m very proud of the Concretism releases uncompromising in its sonic adventure. Whereas Simms’ by Chris Sharp. His latest LP, ‘For Concrete And Country’, has sold last record was fashioned entirely from vintage kit, the almost the whole first run of 500 copies, which I think for a niche label two long untitled pieces here employ synths, distinctive and a concept LP about Cold War paranoia, is something to be proud of. guitar playing and Schulz’s adaptable drumming to “One of my favourite releases is the KL(ÄUS) LP, it’s a beautiful imaginative effect. classicist synth record from the Berlin School via Sydney. It’s retro, The result is a collection of movements but with a modern twist. I’m also really proud of the Akiha Den Den encompassing abandon, early tape music soundtrack by Simon James. This turned out to be quite a package with collage and Can-esque boundary pushing on the A-side clear vinyl, a beautiful booklet and an hour of additional music on CD.” and low, post-rock sonic rumbles on the flip, which only ever sounds like the right sort of unpredictable and FUTURE PLANS: “The intention is to keep building our reach and never a messy sprawl. The standout moment happens reputation, making our lovely releases available to dedicated electronica toward the middle of the first track, wherein percussion fans who appreciate such things” says Colin. “It’s such a wonderful and modular patterns combine to approximate what it time for electronic music and I kind of feel like I’m only getting started. would have sounded like if original Velvet Underground There’s some great stuff in the pipeline. After the summer, there will drummer Angus MacLise had retooled his psychedlic be at least one new release a month for the next 12 months. So far 1968 album ‘Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda’ armed to everything has been released in small runs, these limited editions are the teeth with analogue gear. investments, kids. Get on board while you still have chance!” Wise words indeed. MAT SMITH Concretisms’ ‘For Concrete And Country’ is reviewed on page 95. For more, visit castlesinspace.com

93 FIRST AND LAST AND ALWAYS

BEN CHATWIN Staccato Signals Village Green Recordings

MADE IN SCOTLAND, NOT FROM GIRDERS, BUT FROM SOUNDS THAT BLOW YOUR SOCKS OFF

The cover art for ‘Staccato Signals’ is a piece of abstract art that seems to show light cascading down from a source somewhere way up in the sky. It’s an apt metaphor for the music Chatwin creates at The Vennel, COMPOSER/PRODUCER BEN CHATWIN, REVEALS THE his home studio in South Queensferry, Scotland. FIRST AND LAST RECORDS HE BOUGHT AND THE ONE HE He works in grand sweeps and big gestures and REACHES FOR IN AN EMERGENCY ‘Staccato Singals’ is nothing if not ambitious. Early on, ‘Silver Pit’ announces itself with orchestral, almost church-like grandeur, but with burning, sun-like guitar GUNS N’ ROSES resonance melting away underneath. Like all of the FIRST Use Your Illusion II tracks here, it uses acoustic and electronic instruments Geffen, 1991 and thrives off the friction between the two. “I remember asking my mum if I could get the It’s a subtle rather than overt combination though. cassette tape of ‘Use Your Illusion II’ when it There are times, like during ‘Helix’, where the sound of was released in 1991. I was 9 and I’d seen ‘The scraped, effects-laden guitar and strangely plucked Terminator 2’-inspired video for ‘You Could Be Mine’ violins do battle with a rising tide of industrial sonic on MTV. For some reason I was convinced she corrosion, where the parts are discernible. ‘Fossils’, would say no, but she didn’t and with that started a for instance, has the most traditional use of live strings life-long obsession with music. Thanks Mum!” here, but pitting them against a simple, bubbling electronic bassline, they seem fresh and dramatic. The deeper you sink into his world, the more the lines between the two become blurred and eventually CATERINA BARBIERI irrelevant, and a new and very vivid musical language LAST Patterns Of Consciousness takes over. For most of ‘Knots’, by way of contrast, Important, 2017 there’s a hovering layer of unresolved, discordant “I’m a big fan of minimal synth explorations and this strings present throughout, but they only really come record is on another level. Beautiful and intricate, into the foreground in the very slightest moments. The repetitive melodic lines twist and turn around each rest of the time they’re more like a presence, affecting other forming these huge spaces to exist in. It’s the atmosphere without really announcing their arrival. even more impressive given it was made with an Without wanting to delve too far into the “sonic extremely small modular synth set up. It’s a record cathedrals” school of description, these pieces bring the that sounds like intelligent machines performing theatre of nature to mind, like the way a Turner painting Steve Reich.” captures the light cutting swathes across a turbulent sea. Like nature, the moods can twist and turn quite suddenly. ‘Claws’, for instance, ratchets up the drama almost imperceptibly, but then swaddles us BONNIE PRINCE BILLY in the warmth and reassurance of gorgeous brass, ALWAYS I See A Darkness the compositional equivalent of a huge sigh of relief. Domino, 1999 In short, Chatwin was right to go large with ‘Staccato “This is a record that, for me, seems to suit any mood, Signals’, because ultimately he pulls it off. Evocative, medium or environment. As with all of Will Oldham’s moving sounds you’ll find yourself very easily getting music there’s something remarkably honest and lost in again and again. BW intimate about this collection of songs– but he also brings both a wisdom and humour that sums up the human condition. I mostly listen to instrumental music, but Oldham’s lyrics on this record really speak to me. I’ve never not been moved putting this one on.”

94 THE BACK

ABUL MOGARD

ABUL MOGARD CONCRETISM PINKLOGIK Above All Dreams For Concrete And Country Glint Ecstatic Castles In Space Pinklogik

Following 2016’s ‘Works’ compilation, the Okay, so they had our attention with “a Moods for moderns. Dreampop for now Serbian factory worker/synthesist and limited run of 200 ‘nuclear bunker hospital people. ‘Glint’ is by far the best album all-round enigma delivers his first full-length bay’ turquoise vinyl”. But with this, the fourth yet from Pinklogik, aka Bristol synthesist since 2015’s ‘Circular Forms’. Three years vinyl offering from Essex-based Chris Sharp, Jules Straw, an artist I first came across in the making, ‘Above All Dreams’ evokes Castles In Space are really spoiling us. on MySpace about a million years ago. of a cinematic quality with Following last year’s ‘Electricity’, a The ease with which Straw flips between drones that are full of rich textures. Mogard collection previously unreleased on vinyl her atmospheric electronic pieces and goes about his production less academically cuts, this is brimful with Sharp’s signature her ethereal pop songs is a delight, but than noise purists, preferring to improvise sound of “aged analogue synths and general the big leap forward here is the depth and for “hours, days, months and years”, using tape noise”, ‘For Concrete And Country’ the intensity of the emotions she explores. intuition to settle on the perfect sound. turns up the coldwave to 11 (or down to -11) Charming one moment, challenging the next, The three years spent crafting this to bring his “world of dusty archival sounds ‘Glint’ will leave you feeling a bit giddy. It will particular record was clearly time well spent. and grim Cold War Britain” to life. The titles also leave you wanting more. Opener ‘Quiet Dreams’ is a slowly expanding are a joy in themselves. The tuneful Jarre- ‘The Vision’ and ‘Lost’ are the tracks I rumble, underpinned by a high-pitched mewl, isms of ‘Waiting, Watching’, the haunting keep returning to, partly for the gently fizzy the epic 16-minute title track, a sweeping ‘Dustfall’, the spooky ‘Hardened Telephone tunes, but mainly for Straw’s beautifully panorama with granular fuzz that fades in and Exchange’… and yet despite all the cold talk, understated vocals. ‘The Vision’ is a out. Then there’s the science fiction tinged ‘For Concrete And Country’ isn’t short on particularly fine example of musical sorcery. ‘Upon The Smallish Circulation’, a swirling thrumming warmth. Play it once and it will be looping around cloudburst drenched with yawning groans That the limited run sold out tout suite isn’t your head ever after. The only question is and the arpeggiating whine of a spaceship lost on us. The attention to detail, both in whether or not you’re ready for this. So if dashboard. This might be Mogard’s finest terms of music and as an artefact, is the sort all you lovely now people would please step work to date, it’s an intoxicating listen, one of thing that should see you lot in an orderly forward, the rest of you will find yesterday with an allure as mysterious as Mogard’s queue. An earful of this and you really won’t back behind you somewhere. P backstory itself. FM want to be missing out on this label’s very fine wares. NM

95 ,

SINK YA TEETH

SINK YA TEETH KUMO ARP SINK YA TEETH Day/Night Zebra Hey Buffalo Tapeworm Mexican Summer

Too impatient to wait for a label to sign them, Kumo is one of the various monikers of The latest release from NY-based Norwich duo Sink Ya Teeth decided to crack Jono Podmore, who is also Professor of the Alexis Georgopoulos (aka Arp) touches on and get their debut album out under their Practice of Popular music at the Hochschule such a range of reference points that own steam. Smart move. für Musik in Cologne, working most recently categorisation is impossible. And with Across its 37 minutes, ‘Sink Ya Teeth’ to curate and manage the archives of Can. instrumentation including analogue synths, develops its post-punk, New York electro This release consists of two elongated double bass, Fender Rhodes, flute and tape blueprint in a series of intriguing builds. field recordings from the window of a London delay, its sound world is similarly hard to The foundations are Gemma Cullingford’s flat – one taken during the day, the other pigeonhole. irresistible bass guitar, sparkling electronics at night – and adds a layer of electronic ‘Fluorescences’ nods to 80s pop with its and the deftly programmed machine drums. instrumentation. Podmore worked on each descending synth motif, and could almost LCD Soundsystem pulled a like-minded piece only in the hours in which the original be a radical Tears For Fears remix. The trick when they channelled their (similar) recordings were made. drum pattern of ’Folding Water’ hints at influences (The Fall, Talking Heads, Eno, ‘Day’ begins with low-level atmospheric the Burundi borrowings of Bow Wow Wow, disco, hip hop) to international fame, but sounds, the distant traffic noise and turning while the dextrous mallet hits of ‘Parallelism’ James Murphy can’t sing like Maria Uzor, over of the air are meditative and calming. evoke David Sheppard’s Snow Palms project. whose voice pirouettes around her subject And then suddenly there rises a metallic And just when the ambient flute textures matter effortlessly. spin, as though an alien object has slowly of ‘Ozu’ drift toward meditative new age, The slinky Moroder stylings of ‘Glass’, dropped from the sky and settled above the Georgopoulos switches mood with some the driving emptiness of ‘If You See Me’ estate. ‘Night’ has a similar if slightly more ominous edits. (where Maria comes on like Grace Jones, malevolent feel, the barking of dogs and More short story collection than novel, her vocals alternating between rumble of traffic adds to the sinister twinge if you’re looking for an album of consistent Sprechgesang and wistful melody) and the of the artist’s synthesiser and theremin. ST moods, avoid ‘Zebra’. If, on the other hand, almost operatic grandeur of ‘Substitutes’ are you’re after an experimental pop collection just three examples of why this is on our list joyously indifferent to genres and their as an album of the year contender. MR musical boundaries, this is for you. MB

96 ,

THE BACK

MAX RICHTER MISS RED The Blue Notebooks K.O. Deutsche Pressure Grammaphon

REFRESHING DEBUT BLAST SEES DANCEHALL NEOCLASSICAL TOUR DE FORCE RECEIVES GET A PROPER LICK OF FRESH PAINT VERY WELCOME 15TH BIRTHDAY REISSUE

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say: “I had no “‘The Blue Notebooks’ is an attempt for music to comment interest in making a record that sounds like everybody on society and specifically it’s an anti-violence record,” else, those types of record disappoint me every time, explains Max Richter. “It’s a subtle and peaceful protest I wanted to make something totally fresh on my terms.” against political, social and personal brutality. Sadly it’s That’s Miss Red, aka Sharon Stern, talking about the still very current today.” mindset she adopted when making this, her debut album. When ‘The Blue Notebooks’ was originally released But when you’re a white Israeli born to a Polish dad and in 2003, the world was a rather different place. There Moroccan mother, there’s a good chance you’re going to was no Trump, no Brexit, there wasn’t even Electronic bring something new to the yard. Sound. There was, however, the beginnings of the Iraq Miss Red and her collaborator The Bug (Kevin Martin) War, a conflict some would argue resulted in the political say they’ve made an album for a new dancehall style. landscape we find ourselves in today. And, conceptually, What they’ve come up with is a futurist electronic work it was that very conflict that partly influenced ‘The Blue of intensity, brevity and wit which transcends the genre Notebooks’, which Richter describes as a “meditation on where the album nominally belongs. ‘K.O.’ is a positive violence and its repercussions, inspired both by the Iraq eruption of machine music and wildly inventive vocal flow War – which was looming – and my own experiences.” which just doesn’t let up. Now celebrating its 15th anniversary, this stunning The excellent ‘Dagga’, the first single, isn’t the best album by the trailblazing neoclassical composer is just cut here, but its minimal sound palette of white noise as relevant and poignant as it was in the early noughties. rhythms, ticks and blips creates a scratched canvas for Back then, the melding of classical instrumentation with Miss Red’s plaintive rhyming to splash across. It’s as if lo-fi electronics was considered somewhat radical, but they’ve taken her vocal textures as the start point for the now Richter is a figurehead in an ever-expanding genre. electronics – by turns dry and hoarse, then sweet and While ‘On The Nature Of Daylight’, with its rich tuneful, but always jumpily rhythmic. string arrangements and palindromic structure, may The album opens with ‘Shock Out’ which alternates be the best-known track here after being included between stripped out minimal beats and Red’s vocal in Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning sci-fi filtered like she’s coming down the line via a 1980s phone drama ‘Arrival’, it’s keeping good company. Academy box, and enormous bouncing metal bashment rhythm Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton provides narration worthy of any first wave hardest of hardcore industrial over the sombre keys of the title track, monologuing outfits. Her voice is stretched and serrated in ‘One Shot from Franz Kafka’s ‘The Blue Octavo Notebooks’, a text Killer’, used as another sound source to scree over the selected by Richter himself. sinister beats which grind on relentlessly. This reissue is ably supported with a CD of new This extremist sound manifesto is adhered to arrangements and remixes, the ecclesiastical tones of throughout, Miss Red’s Jamaican-infused chat spot- ‘Iconography’ given a rather nifty dance rejig by Scottish riveted to the heavy metal crashes of punishing beats electronic musician Konx-Om-Pax. Elsewhere you’ll and electronic experimentation, with plenty of air around find a previously unreleased recording of the wistful the mix so the full impact of the noise can get into your piano jaunt ‘A Catalogue Of Afternoons’, as well as an veins. ‘Come Again’ is the first time her vocal adopts a orchestral version of ‘On The Nature of Daylight’. REVIEWS BY recognisable dancehall tic, but the track itself features a “I wanted to invite the listener in,” says Richter, JAMES BALL, stuttering bass so low that it’s like a tariff-busting Harley “allowing them space to reflect, rather than be beaten MARK BREND, CARL GRIFFIN, Davidson motorbike idling inside your head. Yardcore. into submission. The world is tough enough, and I don’t NEIL MASON, want to add to the brutality.” FINLAY MILLIGAN, BEN MURPHY, MARK ROLAND ‘The Blue Notebooks’ is delicately meditative, full KRIS NEEDS, of beautiful compositions that act as the root to many NICK O’LEARY, modern classical pieces today. Whether it’s your first PUSH, FAT ROLAND, time with this album or you’re merely revisiting, this MARK ROLAND, remains essential listening. SAM ROSE, MAT SMITH, SPENSER TOMSON FINLAY MILLIGAN BEN WILLMOTT

97 STOCKISTS

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