Design: Richard Robinson Genre Map

A good friend of the family, Richard Robinson, created this map linking musical genres together and we thought we’d share. He’s a quality designer and there is a fair chance the man behind many of the sleeves currently sitting in your record collection if you own anything on Tirk or Nuphonic. Make a lovely wallpaper for your desktop if you need a new one.

Check Richard’s website to view more of his work.

[Apiento]

Wally Badarou On The Gregory Isaacs ‘Night Nurse’ Sessions…

We got in touch with Wally Badarou to find out how his contribution to the classic Gregory Isaacs ‘Night Nurse’ album came about. Here’s what he said.

What do you remember about the Night Nurse sessions?

Everything, because my involvement was brief and very simple: February 22nd 1982, I flew from Paris to Nassau, no specific project in mind. The very night I arrived, I left my suitcases still packed in my flat and went down the studio just to say hello before crashing back in my bed, so jetlagged I was. As I sneaked into Studio A, there was Godwin Loggie, whom I’ve known from the days of Countryman soundtrack recording (he had done Toots “Bam Bam” magnificent version for it), now sitting at the desk mixing some great music. “Hey Wally ! Glad you came by ! Here is the Prophet ready for you !”. The synthesizer was up and ready indeed, God knows who for, prior to my showing up. I had never heard of Gregory Isaacs before, and what came out of the speakers was irresistible already. So despite my near 20 hour trip exhaustion, I agreed to have a go at a couple songs. Less than a couple of hours later, I had overdubbed on the whole of the album, somehow reinvigorated by the “less than two takes or leave it” performance, hypercritical of what I did (as usual), and never realizing this unplanned last minute session would land me to be part of one of reggae’s indisputable classics.

That album is one of the very few I contributed to, that I can listen to from start to finish, skipping no song in the process, with absolutely no favourite in mind: from “Night Nurse” to “Sad To Know That You’re Leaving”, each of the songs bears special momentum, groove, grace and spirituality within.

I met Gregory only once, a few months later, still at Compass Point Studios. We just ran into each other one day, with a “Hi Prophet!” and a “Hi Gregory!” informal exchange, mutually respectful, yet quite brief since, as far as I can recall, each of us was busy doing something. So I never got to know the man really, nor any of the brilliant musicians who performed on that album: I did not attend the main sessions. My contribution was a during-mixing totally unplanned injection, with just Godwin, some assistant and myself in the studio.

[Apiento]

New Release: The Popes – Bastards (Mudd & Idjut Boys Remixes)

It’s Claremont central today. Here’s another new one from the Claremont gang hitting the shops tomorrow. Sounding good this side.

The Popes: Bastards (Mudd’s Moule Frite Mix) (SAMPLE)

The Popes: Bastards (Idjut Boys Version) (SAMPLE)

Bastards is released tomorrow 29:10:10 and is available from Phonica, Piccadilly, Juno and all good record stores.

[Apiento]

New Release: Claremont 56 Jute Record Bags

Liking the look of these bags to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Claremont 56. Limited to a run of 50. You can get one here.

[Apiento]

Postcards From Jamaica #7: R.I.P. Gregory Isaacs

Andy M reports direct from Jamaica on the passing of Gregory Isaacs – The Cool Ruler.

I feared the worst when I woke up, turned on the radio and instead of the usual payola stuff it was wall-to-wall Gregory. I changed station and there he was again. His death is front page news here and has hit hard. He was a flawed character but he was honest about it and loved all the more as a result. As one caller to Irie FM, the nation’s favourite, put it “Last one, two years, Alton Ellis gone, Joe Gibbs gone, Sugar, now Gregory. We cyaan lose any more icons til the next generation step up.”

I was lucky enough to see Gregory live a few times. Two occasions stand out. The first time was at a council-sponsored event in the middle of a housing estate in Camberwell in about 1995. It was chucking it down with rain, falling from grey skies onto grey concrete. But when Gregory stepped on stage in a three piece powder blue suit and hat, he lit the place up. From being a miserable wash-out of an event, it turned into a magical moment. The contrast and union between the immaculate Cool Ruler on stage and the motley group of dreads, scallies, students, pensioners and kids in the crowd – skanking under our umbrellas, clutching our cans of Stella – will live long in the memory.

The most recent time was in July this year (see photo above) at what turned out to be his last show in Jamaica (his appearance at the Big Chill was apparently his last ever). I knew he was in bad shape by this point as a mate had seen him being carried off a flight into a wheelchair at Kingston airport a few weeks before. But the prospect of a double-bill of him and the Mighty Diamonds at Studio 38 wasn’t to be missed. The trademark suit, fedora and swagger were still there and he raced through the hits in front of an adoring audience. He wasn’t so pristine anymore, the jacket came off after one song, then the top button on his shirt was undone, half his shirt came out next, then the tie was off and finally the shirt open revealing a natty string vest. The drugs had taken a toll on his voice too but he still delivered an energetic and entertaining, if brief show. As he said before coming back for an encore, “dem still want more”.

TRACKS FROM ANDY’S HI FI

Gregory Isaacs – Cool Down The Pace 10” mix

This is one of my favourite Gregory tracks aided and abetted by the Roots Radics with Wally Badarou. Ride on Cool Ruler.

Buy it on iTunes here.

[Andy M]

New Release: Mark Seven – Salute 2: Reach Out & Touch Your Dream!

Loving the sound of this one already…

Here’s a taster…

You can pre-order the CD’s at the LN-CC store (fine work chaps) here. They’ll be shipping early November.

[Apiento]

Apiento & Co. On Soundcloud – Get Your Free Edits Here…

I try not to use Test Pressing to go on about our Apiento & Co. releases but we have finally sorted our Soundcloud page for Apiento & Co. so I thought I’d better mention it. There’s lots of free edits to download, a version of Steve Mason’s ‘Boy’s Outside’ and more.

If you are on Soundcloud click on us here and say hello.

[Apiento]

Exhibition: 30 Years Of Japanese Fashion At The Barbican

We went to see the above exhibition at The Barbican yesterday and it provided a very mellow few hours. It contains work from three of the masters of Japanese fashion – Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons. The early work from all three designers still looks amazing. Garments made from flawed or aged fabrics are show to express the Wabi-Sabi concept – Wabi meaning without decoration, and Sabi meaning old and withered. As well as mannequins featuring these designers work (and others including Mintdesigns, Next Generation and Jun Takahashi) there were some lovely films. The clip below is from one, Wim Wenders ‘A Notebook on Cities and Clothes’ which follows Yohji Yamamoto on the run up to a show in Paris.

There were also some refreshingly fun and colourful clips from Issey Miyake’s Pleats Please fashion show which were (sorry) super-balearic. All the models wandered out to the centre of a large white space at the same time, smiled to camera (when’s the last time you saw a model smile on a catwalk?) and then wandered randomly around with the soundtrack sounding like something from Look De Ibiza. All in all, well recommended.

[Apiento]

Just Because 014: Pop & Lock

Another quick one stolen from Shawn Stussy’s blog to make mine look nice. If you have five minutes go kill it there.

[Apiento]

Mix: Jose Padilla – Cafe Del Mar (Number 2)

Class.

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Thanks to Andrew Pirie for the tape.

[Apiento]

Arena Homme +: 25 Years Of Buffalo – The Legacy Of Ray Petri

Classic stuff here from Arena Homme + in Winter/Spring 09/10 covering the work of the late Ray Petri. Buffalo is perhaps one of the finest styles ever to come out of London and be associated with club culture. The mix of sportswear and the likes of Armani looked fresh at the time and still do now. It’s a classic look and if you want to read more, well look at more, there is a great book published by Westzone named ‘Buffalo – The Style & Fashion Of Ray Petri’ containing loads of his work.

[Apiento]

Radio: Jon Savage – Savage Music 011 / 1966 Live

It’s Savage Sunday. This time it’s 1966 that gets the overhall, the reason being that in Savage’s eyes ’66 was one of the best pop years ever with the end of mod and the start of psychedelia and is a pretty dark year before the hippy movement kick in in ’67. This one starts with the 13th Floor Elevators and moves from there… Bootleg central.

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Tune in weekly to ByteFM for the Savage Music shows.

[Apiento]

Documentary: Happy Mondays ‘Bummed’ (Making of…)

This one comes via Caught By The River, the smart culture site from the Heavenly Records gang.

In the late 80s there was an educational Granada-produced TV show called Information Technology who happened to make an episode focusing on the run up to the release of ‘Bummed’ by the Happy Mondays. It covers all sides of the process from the band deciding on sleeves with Central Station Design, to studio time with Martin Hannett. As they start promoting the album they go to a radio station where the presenter asks Shaun Ryder ‘Why are you on factory?’ – ‘Cause no-one else wants us’ he answers. From there it’s off to an amazing looking gig at Dingwalls.

I have nicked this wholesale from Caught By The River so if you enjoyed the piece have a dig about their site as there’s lots to get lost in. Here’s what Jeff Barrett (press officer for Happy Mondays and Heavenly chief) had to say on the times and enjoy the clips.

“Our man in Manchester, Mr Dave Rofe, sent me this you tube link yesterday. The heading in the e mail read “Fox ‘ead”, a nickname given to me twenty odd years ago by Bez when, whilst sporting way too much hair, I was publicist for Happy Mondays.

I got around a bit back then and the downside of the digital boom is the amount of times the words ‘Fox ‘ead’ appear in my in-box. I’m not embarrassed but I do open the link with a little trepidation knowing that someone is gonna say, “Is that really you? fucking hell!”. Well, this is one of them.

It’s an educational TV programme that was made in 1988 to enlighten young people into the business workings of a record label as they make and release a record. So far, so what. The good bit is that the label they chose as the subject was Factory and the record they chose was ‘Bummed’ by Happy Mondays. Genius.

I’d not been in the job long, in fact ‘Bummed’ was the first record I worked (I was press guy for the whole Factory label) though I did have previous with the band as a fan (and London gig promoter) and I knew their manager, Nathan McGough, from when he managed The Bodines, a band that had been signed to Creation when I worked there in the mid eighties. A big thing to point out here is that what you are gonna watch is PRE ‘Madchester’. This is very important.

Those in the know were already aware that the the Mondays had ‘it’. Tony Wilson certainly knew that they were an important group and you can see it in the film as you follow him from recording studio to production meeting to launch party (the bit where he pretends to be interested in the production costs is funny). What struck me while watching it is how innocent things were at that time and it brought back to me just how fucking great a band the Mondays were. Look at the live footage – from Dingwalls, London – incredible. We were so lucky to have them.

A year later, as we now know, things went mental. The city was re-branded. A culture was sold and innocence got lost. It got dark and greedy and before long it got boring. The sad thing is that now the Mondays get seen as a joke turn on the revival circuit instead of a very important group. It’s probably their own fault and they probably don’t care but I do. It was a real honour to do that job and I’m proud to say I was there. Hey, I even got a nickname off of Bez! ”

[Apiento]

Mix: Eden Rock – An Autumn Mix

Eden Rock are Swedish-based duo Albin and Christoffer. They have recently made a couple of reworks and a remix for the Concretes amongst other bits. Their aim is to bring you sweet disco sounds from unknown sources. To reintroduce music that has been forgotten, ignored or just didn’t fit in a world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. (Those were their words – mine would be far less eloquent). They have a couple of lovely tracks up on their Soundcloud page if you are of balearic bent so check the links below. The mix is a perfect blend of sunny autumnal sounds. Roll on winter.

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Eden Rock have a website, MySpace and Soundcloud all well worth checking in on.

[Apiento]

Golf Channel Mix On Resident Advisor

If you’re a fan of the Golf Channel label get over to Resident Advisor where head honcho Phil South is interviewed and delivers a mix of new and unreleased bits. If you have never heard his mixes for us at Test Pressing they are highly recommended and are here, here and here. Nice.

[Apiento]

Mix: Baleariksoul – L.I.F.T.

Nice mix of quality house across the board from Paul Williams a.k.a Balearik Soul. Crack it in the car and it’ll brighten up your day. Love the Kenny Dope track (Five-O) on this one…

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[Apiento]

New Album: The Orb & Youth Present Impossible Oddities

The early 90s seem to be making a bit of a return at the moment; Primal Scream are playing Screamadelica live again (and are on the Cornflakes ad (you always had the feeling Gillespie was fake)), some of that lovely deep house from then is sounding great, loafers are back, and The Orb and Youth are releasing ‘Impossible Oddities – The Story Of WAU! Mr Modo’. Alright that doesn’t join up quite as it should (excuse – I have flu), but the point is stuff from then is starting to sound and look good again. I guess it always happens across generations. Perhaps its nostalgia, perhaps the fact that some of it was flipping great.

Back then I was working for Guerilla Records. I lost a load of records one day when out and about so called Wau! Mr Modo to see if they could send me another copy of The Orb’s ‘A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain…’ as I couldn’t find the one I’d lost. The next day a whole box of 12’s turned up via courier full of white labels and versions I’d never seen before. Tons of records. That care and ‘being kind where you can’ attitude was something that I tried to take on as it was a great thing to be on the receiving end of. Point is, I liked WAU! Mr Modo for life. So buy this album. You need it.

Also on top of that, The Orb soundtracked our lives (or quite a large part of it) for sometime there. It was perfect to get stoned to and perfect for the car on the way home from the club. It was a soundtrack we could all agree on. Around the early 90s The Orb did a few all nighters at the Brixton Academy which coincided with our lot really getting into acid – a good fit. They had the sound wired all around so speeches would come from the back left, bass from the right and generally it all went down as you’d hope it would when feeling slightly out of it. In the next few years they did a benefit for the miners in Sheffield (where the label was based) with Primal Scream which we traveled to and popped in to say hello to Adam Modo (the other part of the label alongside Youth and Alex Patterson). All I remember through the haze is that he was a big bloke and the gig was great.

So the music itself… They always knew what they were doing as a label. It was always pretty out there, still is I guess, and even the pop moments like Zoe’s ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day’ started off being pretty cool before going off to hit the charts. Then you had the early Orb releases which are getting better and better with age – a UK take on the German cosmic scene for the acid house generation. The compilation brings various releases together with the first track on the album being the demo of ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’. It sounds more like a 90s cut and paste record in this version. There’s lots of early mid-tempo house tracks (piano riff and weird noises) that sound good and Sun Electric’s underground sleeper ‘O’Locco’ appears. Shame there isn’t more actual Orb recordings but I guess Big Life own the rights to it and something happened along the way. To round-up, as a look at the eclecticism that was around before the likes of Mo’ Wax took it jazz this is a good place to start. Space is the place and all that…

‘The Orb and Youth Present Impossible Opportunities: from underground to overground: the story of WAU! Mr Modo’ is out soon on Year Zero. CD1 and 2 come unmixed with the the third being an Orb mix.

[Apiento]

Free Track: Stereolab ‘Sun Demon’

The majority of the “free” stuff we get sent to “share” is pretty crap but occasionally there’s a good one and here’s a perfect example. Apparently when Stereloab were recording their last album ‘Chemical Chords’ they also recorded another set, the soon to be released, ‘Not Music’. ‘Sun Demon’ is taken from the new album which I imagine is out sometime soon. Again, it sounds very Stereloab and very individual.

Download ‘Sun Demon by clicking here.

[Apiento]

The Face: Motorcity Techno / Detroit Piece (May 1988)

This one comes from The Face in May 1988 as Stuart Cosgrove travels to the Motor City to meet and interview Derrik May, Juan Atkins, Blake Baxter and Kevin Saunderson.

[Apiento]

Interview: Chris Carter

Andy Blake of Dissident/Cave Paintings recently interviewed Chris Carter around the re-release of his ‘The Spaces Between’ album on the Optimo Label. They got talking about drum machines, life in Throbbing Gristle and syths, synths and more synths. Over to Andy…

Recently, I had the chance to run a few questions past Chris Carter, a genuine musical and cultural innovator. His detailed and informative answers on the various topics make a great read and if I can persuade him to go for another couple of rounds there may well be a longer, more involved piece at some point. For now though, here is the raw Q&A.

Can you tell me a bit about the composing and recording process for the music included on the original version and this new release of the album ‘The Spaces Between’? Did you have much of a plan for the various tracks before starting work on them or was it more of a case of turning the machines on and seeing what they had to say for themselves?

My workflow for solo pieces hasn’t really changed that much but in those days, in the early 70s, it was usually a case of turning on all the gear and just experimenting for hours on end. I would usually begin with something rhythmic, a sequence, a bass line or a drum machine pattern to improvise over. But I’d always have a cassette deck and a reel-to-reel tape machine plugged into the output of my mixer so I could just hit record at a moments notice. As I accumulated recordings of these experiments I’d often replay them and reintegrate them back into new recording sessions, building up arrangements of live electronics, sequenced patterns, rhythms and earlier experiments.

I mostly recorded onto cassette but that was purely a financial constraint because although I had a day job – actually we all had day jobs then, all the way through Throbbing Gristle – reel-to-reel tape compared to cassette tape was relatively expensive, well it was on my wages. Which is ironic because I had some decent reel-to-reel tape recorders, a Tandberg, an Akai and later a Tascam but I couldn’t afford to keep buying fresh tapes for them and eventually ended up using the Tandberg and Akai primarily for tape experiments and looping or as tape-echo machines. Although I did also use them to supplement my income by editing (on tape) quite a few issues of Revealer cassettes.

What was the studio environment like and how much did it change over the period these tracks were made? Was there a fairly stable set up much of the time or were you experimenting with wiring things up in different ways and rebuilding in new configurations after each gig or other reason that meant you had moved the kit around?

I’ve never been one to stick to a rigid set-up for the gear I record and perform with. I’ve owned hundreds of different instruments: synths, keyboards, sound modules, drum machines, effects units, mixers and recorders. Although having said that I do keep the recording side of things unchanged for extended periods. Such as recording onto cassette, which I probably did for five or six years. Even with synth and effects gear I built myself, which was a lot, I’d refine or reconfigure things and re-build stuff again and again, or sell gear to fund bigger and better pieces of gear. Which I still do.

I moved around North London a lot in the seventies, from various bedsits, apartments and shared houses and my gear was set-up on a very ad hoc basis. The equipment I’d built myself could be very temperamental and once I’d got things working together and playing with each other nicely I’d tend to leave them in place for as long as I could, or until I had a performance to do or a jam to play across town. Of course getting a new piece of gear – which was fairly often – always skewed the arrangement somewhat and figuring out different ways to integrate it was fun, and is something I still enjoy.

What I did through most of the seventies would be to configure a set-up of some synths, a few sequencers, a drum machine or two, lots of effects, all going into a mixer and then a recorder of some kind, cassette mostly. I’d also often make a schematic of how things were patched together, not really because I wanted to get the same sounds again or because the set-ups were overly complex but because I like to sit down and visualise on paper how things are connected. It’s something I still do now. It all goes into some logical compartment of my brain that I access when trying out new set-ups. It’s the same with well written instruction manuals, I just love them. I read instruction manuals like people read novels, for pleasure. The downside of this of course is that people who know me know this and are constantly getting in touch asking for advice on this or that. I have a great t-shirt that just says RTFM. Which is an acronym for Read The Fucking Manual.

How aware were you at the time of what the rest of the world was up to musically and culturally? Did you pay much attention to what other people were doing or were you and the other Throbbing Gristle members very much living in your own world then?

I guess we were living in our “own world”, most bands are but then but we were all voracious record collectors too. And although we did share some tastes in music there was an extraordinarily wide range in what we individually enjoyed listening to. I know it may sound like a cliché now but we really did listen to everything from Stockhausen to Abba via Zappa and the Beach Boys. Actually we’re all still like that, only we don’t buy physical product now, just downloads.

I guess I’m trying to get some sense of your awareness and the relative influence – or lack thereof – on your music of things as disparate as; music from the top ten to prog rock and the all the way thru to the avant garde, the Daily Express, the 3 day week, those casual and very dangerous forms of racism, sexism and homophobia that the English seemed to perfect around this time, the heavy and seemingly never-ending hangover from the hippie 60s, punk as it was emerging, the beginning of the end of the job for life etc.

Well I know this phrase has become another cliché and I’ve probably used it too often about the 70s’ but (to Quote Dickens) “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

On a purely personal level it was the best of times because I just couldn’t get enough of it. I was fresh out of school and like a sponge – soaking up everything: knowledge, music, film, books, relationships, sex, concerts, DIY electronics, I was in different bands, I was performing – all good and the list is endless. It was the worst of times because I’d gone through some truly life changing and traumatic relationships and I was still trying to find myself, I’d had lots of poorly paid day-jobs, I got arrested, I got sick, I got burgled, I was constantly in debt, I was misunderstood, I had a car crash, I got beat up, I moved around a lot – another endless list of twenty-something angsts. The arrogance of youth and articulate self-confidence had completely bypassed me.

Of course, as you mention, we also had all those other 70s issues to cope with – sexism, racism, National Front, the hysterical press, awful TV, power cuts and also with us being ‘outsiders’ constantly getting harassed by the S.P.G., getting chased by Nazi skinheads one day, black gangs the next and punks at the weekends. Nobody seemed to like us then, well except the all welcoming All Nations club opposite our studio, that had the best sound system and played the best dub and ska in East London.

When the original cassette release of The Space Between happened in 1980 what was the main motivation behind bringing the music together into a collection? Did you listen to the tracks much over the preceding few years or did you rediscover them as a group at some point and feel that their time had come?

For years I’d made cassette compilations of my tracks, like mix tapes, but of my own music. I’d give them to friends, to Throbbing Gristle and later to people like Daniel Miller, Geoff Travis and writers such as Sandy Robertson and Jon Savage and journalists on Sounds, NME and Melody Maker that I’d got to know. I’m talking about a handful of copies, not hundreds. Anyway in 1978 shortly after we’d started Industrial Records and were looking for artists to bolster the label Cosey and Sleazy suggested I release some of my tracks as an album on IR.

Was there much that you left out of that release that could have fitted in with it stylistically and/or thematically? Are there plans for more releases and re-releases from the vaults or do you feel that you have covered the 70s and 80s period of your work enough now?

Oh yes there was a tremendous amount I left out, in fact for a long time it was intended to be in two volumes. But in the end I decided to edit it all down to a single 90 cassette. The original IR release also came with a small booklet of my collages and some texts and photos. What I’d like to do at some point would be to re-release the original IR version as a super limited double CD package with the booklet and maybe a couple of tracks from that period which were not included first time around. It’s just making the time to find all the parts and compile it together. But it’ll happen one day I’m sure.

Even by the time i began to spend time in studios in the late 80s the sounds of machines like the 808, 606, 303, 727 etc had already become part of the classic canon of electronic music building blocks and these days they seem as ubiquitous and easily identifiable to almost anyone into electronic music as, say, the piano, or the surf guitar sound or the grungy distortion of the heavy metal guitar. Can you remember what it was like to take those machines out of their boxes and use and hear them for the first time?

The first brand new ‘off the self’ synths I ever bought were an EMS VCS3 (above) and a MiniKorg 700 in 1973 and 1974. Actually you couldn’t get two more disparate synths. One was the pinnacle of keyboard-less experimentation the other was probably the most basic and simple to use home keyboard synth on the market. But buying, unpacking and plugging in both of those synths was like nothing I’d ever encountered before and even though I only owned each of those for a fairly short period (please don’t ask why) they were two of my favourites – each for entirely different reasons – and I’ll never forget that experience. Whereas going though exactly the same process with many of the other pieces of gear I’ve owned over the years has just faded from my memory.

But it’s an area that’s fascinated me for years. I don’t even know what you’d call it: “the psychology of buying new ‘things’ ” possibly? You know? – that new car, new synth, new TV, new fridge, new phone feeling. It’s a process almost everyone goes through at some point, although of course in different ways and usually with different outcomes, but it’s essentially the same for us all. That unboxing, plugging-in and using moment is going to be a different subjective experience for everyone. What may sound fantastic and inspiring to me may sound dull and uninteresting to someone else.

For about 10 years I wrote a lot of in-depth equipment reviews for Sound On Sound. But because I’d been sent so much new gear to review I got very blasé about getting hold of new equipment, particularly if I’d been reviewing a run of things I wasn’t especially impressed with. It’s a shame because that definitely affected my enthusiasm for seeking out new gear for new inspirations and the whole unboxing ritual. Although I think that’s pretty much worn off now.

Was there any sense of the impending paradigm shift due to the sounds themselves and/or the new ways of programming or were they each just one among many new boxes to experiment with?

In 1971, or 1972, the magazine Practical Electronics (above) published some articles on electronic music and synthesis theory complete with diagrams, and photos of experimental musicians: people like Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire and the EMS studios. After reading those pieces I went from hearing electronic, or electronically produced music in the abstract to seeing the absolute logic and sense of it all in those printed schematics and flow charts. It completely entranced and fascinated me and I instantly “got it” and started building my own electronic instruments. Those articles probably set me on this path I’ve been following ever since.

But in terms of equipment and gear I suppose for me the first paradigm shift was buying my VCS3 synth. Although it didn’t really have ‘a sound’ as such, unlike say a Moog synth, I think part of its appeal to some people was that it could sound completely different every time you turned it on. But for me it was as much an aesthetic thing too, presenting all these sonic possibilities in such a complete self-contained package. The next significant shift was when I bought a small Roland sequencer (a 104), a Roland drum machine (a CR78) and a Roland synth (an SH-3A) which could all be interconnected a synchronised to play together, in tune. That was such a major step for me because although I’d already built a basic step sequencer and synth all they could produce were relatively unrepeatable experimental sounds, and I wanted to take my compositions a step further.

And what about modifying things?

In the early days, mostly the Throbbing Gristle period, alongside building much of my own gear I did modify some of our equipment. In that period we weren’t exactly spoilt for choice and the range of things available was either very limited or out of our price range, which was pretty low anyway. And I’m talking about a time before programability, when a lot of things either had a basic set of sounds or a handful of presets built in. So by modifying equipment and instruments beyond their normal comfort zone we could make them sound different to how everyone else was using them. Basically we felt our sonic palate was limited with what we had, so I adapted them. Then by the early 1980s’ there was a boom in new audio manufacturers and gear started to get more sophisticated and prevalent and also more programmable. It was around then that I really got into programming complex sounds, and for a while continued modifying the hardware too. But by the time samplers took off in 1985-86’ish my hardware modifying phase had ceased altogether.

Were you excited when you first hooked a couple of boxes together with sync24 and they locked together? I can vividly remember nearly crapping myself with glee when I hooked an 808 and a DMX together and ran them in sync for the first time even though this was a fair while after it had become possible. It must have been thrilling to do this kind of stuff when this was the vanguard of technology.

I first got into syncing and triggering in the mid 1970’s, I had built a couple of step sequencers, a whole bunch of CV synth modules and a basic trigger-able analogue drum machine. These were all interconnected and being triggered, or triggering each other in sync. For a DIY system it was quite a complex set up at the time, but also quite temperamental, actually you can hear the fruits of me using some of that gear on ‘The Space Between’ album.

I started using Din Sync24 when I got my Roland TR-808 in 1980, shortly before Throbbing Gristle split-up the first time around. Which I should add, was one of the very first units in the UK. I went to pick mine up at Rod Argent’s store and their very first consignment had literally just come off the van and into the stock room, an hour later I had mine hooked up to a Roland CSQ sequencer (above) and some synths and I was recording tracks. Within weeks I’d bought a Roland MC8 sequencer (from Richard Burgess) and I had a technician at Roland who I knew retrofit a Din Sync24 socket to it. At last I could sync up all of my modular system, my keyboards to some decent drum sounds with rock solid timing… and sync it all to a reel-to-reel multitrack tape. Those were really exciting times and the floodgates had opened so to speak.

Looking back we can see now that this was a (short lived) precursor to MIDI, not as versatile but it was a standard way of synchronising rhythm instruments. And I’m not alone in the opinion that Sync24 still has the tightest, most solid sync, much tighter than MIDI. But even at the time I don’t think people outside contemporary music had the slightest idea what a major step the introduction of Sync24 was having on music production, and not just in electronic music. If you look back at the music charts the very early eighties there was an explosion of electronic based contemporary dance music. You’d had the introduction of Din Sync24, the 808, the 909, the Linn Drum, the Oberheim DMX, the Roland Bassline. It really was a golden age.

For you, how revolutionary was the idea of having multiple percussive sounds simultaneously programmable with the now fairly standard 16 step system for the first time? Was this new territory for you or had you been fortunate enough to have access of multiples of sequencers like the Korg SQ-10 and the Arp sequencer and your own similar creations and been able to do something similar before this?

It’s no secret I was a fan of German electronic music, and not just the Berlin School. I suppose it’s fair to say Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream probably had some influence on my sound with their multiple threads of sequences and percussion but the introduction of a standard for syncing everything certainly made life easier for us ‘sequencer heads’.

As I said earlier I was doing the whole ‘sequencers and drums thing’ back in the early 1970s so I guess there wasn’t really a “first time” for me, It kind of crept up on me slowly. The Holy Grail for me, for many years, was being able to synchronise all my different sequencers and drum machines and synths. That was another reason I got into modifying gear. Adding clock and trigger inputs or outputs to things, building weird little interfaces to keep things locked together. I couldn’t afford to buy an Arp or a Moog system, not even a Mini Moog but I had the wherewithal to make an attempt at something that could sound as good as those, well in my own ‘Heath Robinson’ way.

When I could finally afford to buy some ‘real’ gear, shortly after I bought the VCS3, one of the first things I bought was a Roland 104 Step Sequencer to act as a kind of ‘master-clock’ to control my home made modular sequencers, then I got a Roland CR78 drum machine and although all these different modules and units only had trigger ins and outs I could sync them together to each other – after a fashion. Even when playing in Throbbing Gristle, for some studio sessions, I would send Sleazy a constant trigger pulse from my set-up so we could sync up a step-sequencer I’d built him for triggering tape loops and drum sounds. Although the accuracy could be very hit and miss, which sounded fine – it was Throbbing Gristle after all. In retrospect it’s obvious that these methods were an early form of multi-tracking, but without the tape – and without Sync24 or MIDI.

There’s a great quote from Cosey in the Red Bull session where she talks about hearing some other people’s music a few years down the line and wondering if you had been influenced by them before realising that due to the chronology it was actually you that had influenced them.

I know, isn’t that the weirdest thing? We don’t listen to a lot of contemporary music, never have. It’s that old chestnut: the last thing you want to do when you’ve been in the studio for hours and hours is to start listening to someone else’s music when at last you’ve got some free time. We’d rather read a book, watch a movie or listen to Classic FM.

But recently we’d been watching some 80s music documentaries and every now and again we would hear something and say “hang on… that sounds like one of our tracks, which came first”. Thank goodness for Google – because we realised again and again that we’d written ours first, sometimes with a decade between our track and what sounded like it was influenced by our track. Which I suppose is nice, in a “sincerest form of flattery” kind of way.

In the 70s and 80s did you ever have a sense that you had become part of the continuum of influences and incidents that defines the progress of electronic music? Do you find it liberating or limiting in any way or is it just something that you find vaguely interesting and amusing?

It wasn’t until the mid 1990s’ that we really started noticing in interviews that people were referencing me and C&C as being influential or inspirational with our music. Or my use of electronics in both my collaborative work with Cosey and Throbbing Gristle and my solo projects. Of course we’ve been aware of our part in that continuum of influence for years with our work as Throbbing Gristle, although more often than not it was for different reasons and probably less about the electronic aspect of Throbbing Gristle’s music. But by the early 2000s I was resigned to the fact that I’d become part of this nebulous ‘electronic music’ historical timeline, increasingly being referred to in academic crusty tomes and such. It seems as each year passes I’m becoming more a part of it, not that it bothers me – in fact I do find it quite amusing – I guess it’s part of who I am and what I do now isn’t it?

The new release of ‘The Spaces Between’ containing a previously unreleased track is available on Optimo Music.

[Andy Blake]