Design: Tony Wilson & Peter Saville In Conversation

If I could listen to anyone discuss the classic Factory sleeves it would be Peter Saville and Tony Wilson so lucky for us someone got the two of them together with a tape recorder between them. Here we have two old friends fondly looking back over their work and discussing the myths and truths associated with it, running through their beginnings together with an early poster for one of the Factory nights through Joy Division and New Order sleeves and on.

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This conversation originally appears as an extra on the 24 Hour Party People DVD. Thanks to Nick Dart.

[Apiento]

The Face: Prince Interview (June 1983)

Prince interview by Carol Cooper taken from The Face in June 1983. Great photo. Just watched the Omnibus program on him from ’91 and it’s pretty amazing stuff. Sheila E and a tour of his house. What more could you want.

[Apiento]

Interview: Dog Eat Dog

Soody Sisco, Martha Fiskin and Linda Pitt made up the core of Dog Eat Dog, an early 80s punk funk band out of NYC who were sassy, smart and fun. Think along the lines of Liquid Liquid or ESG and you are on the right lines. Claremont 56 have been lucky enough to get their hands on unreleased recordings from the band consisting of live tracks and studio sessions which will be released mid-March in a lovely Keith Haring sleeve. As massive fans of that era in New York we asked the band if we could interview them and talk about those times and they kindly said yes…

Photography: Paula Court

So who met who first? Where were you living? Were you at college when you met? What were you studying?

Soody: Linda and I went to High School together in Piscataway, New Jersey. We met working on a school publication. I went to college with Martha. A friend introduced me to David Wald and then David brought in Kevin.

Linda: Soody and I met up during High School. We met up again in our last year of college, there we met Martha. I studied art.

Martha: I met Soody and Linda at college in New Jersey. I studied art: studio and history.

What initially made you think ‘ok. lets form a band?’ Were you inspired by other people out there. Who was that?

Soody: We lived in the East Village, NYC in 1980. All of our friends were in bands.

Linda: After college Soody and I were briefly roommates in Brooklyn. I remember watching the Miss America pageant on TV. There was a sax in the apartment, I picked it up, I made sound… If Talking Heads (art students), The Ramones and our friends Liquid Idiot could all form bands, so could we.

Martha: It was an exciting time. You could pick up an instrument and start a band.

What clubs were you initially going into?

Soody: Tier 3, Max’s Kansas City (where Linda worked), Mudd Club and CBGB.

Linda: I worked at Max’s Kansas City pre-band. CBGB’s was around the corner from home.

Martha: Club 57, CBGB, Tier 3, Max’s, Mudd Club, Hurrah’s and The Roxy. We walked to all these places. New York did seem smaller in those days.

Were you part of that whole Mudd Club scene, hanging out there or just playing gigs?

Soody: A bit of both.

Linda: We went to the Mudd Club a lot but never felt part of the scene.

Martha: I was in a group art show there.

I guess you were quite involved in that art scene that ran alongside the music scene at that time? If so how? Did you see those two scenes as linked?

Soody: Yes, Linda and I were hanging posters that we collaborated on.

Linda: Definitely linked. Take Club 57, a small venue on St Marks Place in the EV, art, performance, music, movies, a showcase for everyone. Al Diaz our percussionist did the SAMO graffiti with Basquiat. Soody and I made art flyers that we wheat pasted around the neighborhood (see above). By chance the guy with the guitar is Richard Hell. We all did our own personnel art as well.

Martha: We all made stuff; various media.

Seems a lot of people involved in the music scene came from an art background and then did the music thing as an outlet for their creative sides. Was this the way it was for you?

Soody: Yes.

Linda: Yessssss.

Martha: Absolutely.

What were your favourite places to play at that time?

Linda: CB’s had the best sound and the infamous dressing room. We once played at 4am in a basement on Chrystie Street that turned out to be a Chinese gambling parlor.

So you played at CBGB’s. Was that another hang out? 

Soody: Yes, it was in our neighborhood.

Linda: Went there a lot. I loved the matinees.

Martha: Sure. What a sound system!

So the music – it seems to have a very funky edge. The congas and the percussion have that Latin thing going on. What were you influenced by? Or was it just a New York thing to have that Latin sound as you grew up surrounded by it?

Soody: It was a popular sound at the time and our early percussionist, Al Diaz, is Hispanic.

Linda: Don’t be fooled by the cow bell.

Martha: Love love love drums. Latin, African, dub…

How do you fit in with the other No Wave bands? Were you having out with ESG, Liquid Liquid etc or did you feel aside from them?

Soody: We were friends with Liquid Liquid.

Linda: Liquid Liquid are our friends. I only met ESG once but they seem incredibly nice. We were part of the noise NY and Naive Rhythm scene so I always felt we were all in the same boat.

Martha: Totally in with Liquid Liquid and Konk.

Who were you favourite bands to go and see back then and why?

Soody: Hmmm, there were a lot. Of the local bands we would go see our friends a lot. I loved DNA.

Linda: The Ramones were always fun, and any band that was recommended that I knew nothing about. There were a lot of new bands and most music at the time was fun.

Martha: Fela, DNA, some big soul shows, all our friends.

I like the review I saw from the Soho News that says ‘the melodies are carried by a very amateurish saxophone player’. Surely that was the whole point – to play like you couldn’t? You know deconstructing your abilities and almost looking at it in a different way… Was that something you were about?

Soody: We couldn’t play!

Linda: I believe the words are self taught. We played out shortly after we started playing our instruments.

Martha: We were inspired neophytes.

The music really benefits from having that raw, captured live thing. Well some of it was obviously recorded live, but when in the studio was it a live run through or did you try and record separately.

Soody: Everything is recorded live, either in studio or performance.

Linda: I remember late nights hardly able to stay awake.

Martha: Down and dirty, low-budget and raw. In a good way.

How come you never got signed to Sire, Ze or one of the other labels picking up bands at that time? I presume that scene was picked over pretty heavily…

Soody: We just didn’t get an offer in the short period we were around.

Linda: We almost got signed to 99 records.

Martha: It would have been 99 if anyone signed us. Maybe Rough Trade or ROIR.

Boring question but how did you hook up with Keith Haring for the Dog Eat Dog piece he did. Were you mates with him?

Soody: Keith Haring was a downtown artist and easy enough to run into. We just asked him if he would do a poster because the dog was one of his favorite motifs. He was very sweet and said he would do it and made an extra for us to add future dates to.

Linda: He was part of the Club 57 scene. I think he went to school with Julie who was working with Martha at the time.

Martha: Keith was a friend from the neighborhood. His work was everywhere.

Going back to the clubs – where else were you hanging out? Were DJs important to you as people or did you more enjoy the art/punk/live scene. What about Paradise Garage, Funhouse etc…

Soody: I don’t think DJs were the entity they are today back then.

Linda: I like music live and went to places we could get in for free which was most. Peppermint Lounge, Danceteria (where I caught Madonna’s first show), loved the dancing boys, Irving Plaza, Tramps, jazz clubs names long forgotten. There was The Empire of Soul Club, Warren and the Empress spun B sides of soul 45’s at various venues.

Martha: The Empire State Soul Club was great!

Were you into hip-hop? Before it went head long down that drum machine beat route it seems the scene you were in (Fab 5 Freddy, Futura etc) was very hip-hop. I think your music is pretty B-boy…

Soody: We loved the rap scene and frequented the Roxy Roller Rink in Chelsea for rap/breakdance shows.

Linda: B-boy, I like it. Loved the early scene. Roxy was our place to go.

Martha: Checking out rap and hip hop at Roxy. Thanks for the comparison.

At the time did you look at the success of some bands around you and think about making your music slightly more commercial or were you not interested in that?

Soody: We would have loved some success.

Linda: Commercial, never wanted that as an option.

Martha: We enjoyed our artistic freedom then, but a wider audience is always great.

What happened with the band in the end? Do you still play together? Is it more of a historical thing or do you have plans to go play in the studio again?

Soody: Oy Vey, play again? We discussed the possibility, but would need to REALLY dust ourselves off!

Linda: Historical, well you never know…

Martha: No plans, but you never know…

What do you all do now?

Soody: I am a museum curator and textile designer.

Linda: Photo retoucher to the stars! That means publishing.

Martha: I work in the film business.

What music do you listen to these days?

Soody: A lot of 70s glitter and 80s punk, always The Ramones, actually too much to list!

Linda: Lots of radio, WFMU and WWOZ, still can’t get enough of Neil Young.

Martha: The Clash, LCD Soundsystem, Spiritualized, Greg Dulli’s various bands and more.

Cheers guys.

Thanks for the interview!

Dog Eat Dog is out mid-March on Claremont 56. You can order it here.

Magazine: Finger (Switzerland) / Wally Badarou Interview

I love the postman. Not literally, just when he delivers something you are not expecting. I was lucky enough to just get sent some back issues of the rather nice Finger magazine out of Zurich, Switzerland.

There is a fair chance you haven’t seen it but basically it’s the dream magazine for a lot of us. It’s a magazine of lists, that has additional slightly longer interviews. Not massive longer, just slightly. I’ve always loved charts as they are such an honest keeper of history. You can’t mess about with charts. If you chart a bad record it stays in there and in ten years time folk can still see it. The honesty level is great. You can’t re-write a chart.

Also, finding out what music people you like and love are into is always one of the best ways to find out about new stuff. When you have someone with great taste recommending you their favourite records you instantly want to get on YouTube (weird how that has become the jukebox of choice – maybe cause you know it’ll probably be there) and check them out. So fairplay to Adrian and the chaps and chapesses at Finger for creating a magazine full of information that also has fine design.

They interview lots of people. And a good broad genre-crossing range across those people. It must take some putting together. For instance in the last issue (amongst others) they had Peter Kruder, Captain Sensible, Bjorn Torske, Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve, Saint Etienne, Moonboots, Matthew Herbert, Frank Black, Kevin Saunderson, David Rodigan, Midlake, ESG, Ray Mang and Wally Badarou. Here’s an idea of the kind of interviews they do. This one with Wally Badarou…

First record you remember?

My first memories were through the radio, not the turntable. Edith Piaf’s «La Foule», Marcel Amont’s «Bleu Blanc Blond», Guy Béart’s «L’eau Vive». First records I remember seeing and hearing, but not actually «listening to» were my father’s: mainly film soundtracks like «Orpheo Negro», George Cukor’s «Let’s Make Love», and lots of classical music.

A song that reminds you of school?
A song from pre-Zaïre Congo, which I never knew the title of.

A record you fell in love to?
I fell in love with music and songs, not records. From Beethoven’s «Violin Concerto in D Major», to James Brown’s «Give It Up Or Turn It A Loose», from Simon & Garfunkel’s «Bridge Over Troubled Water» to Jimi Hendrix’ «All Along The Watchtower». I fell in love with music, way before I knew I would make a living out of it.

Your ultimate heartbreak song?
Stevie Wonder – You And I. Very lo-res video of his solo performance can be found on YouTube. Pure genius.

A record that evokes the greatest summer of your life?
Mayaula Mayoni – Cherie Bondowe. Greatest summers were in the tropics.

First record you bought?
James Brown – Escape-ism on 7“. Brown overdubbed his vocals against slow-down backing tracks, yielding the funkiest slow groove ever. I wish I still had a copy.

Your boozed-up anthem?
Either Count Basie’s «The Kid From Red Bank», Lalo Shiffrin’s «Theme From Mannix», or Weather Report’s «Birdland». Pure energy from absolute masters in orchestration.

A song you use as a ring tone?
I keep my mobile silent at all times, as a courtesy to my neighbours and yet, never miss an important call.

A song you wish you wrote yourself?
Each and every Stevie Wonder ballad, period.

A song guaranteed to make you feel depressed?
Any song of the past, good or bad, when it happens to remind me of a close friend no longer with us.

A song that reminds your friends of you?
How could I know? Ask them.

A record that will make everybody dance?
A song that did make absolutely everybody dance, back in the 60’s in Africa: James Brown’s «There Was A Time» followed by «I Feel All Right», recorded live at the Apollo.

Best concert you ever attended?
Miriam Makeba at the Olympia, Paris, early 70’s.

A record you were looking for the longest?
Talking about Makeba, her first album ever (from 1960 on RCA), which I bought a copy on eBay for 70 euro.

Your Sunday morning song?
Thank god, Sunday is like any other day for us musicians. No darker, no brighter, just regular.

Best Beatles song?
«Michelle»

The perfect anthem for London?
Talking about the Beatles, «All You Need Is Love».

The song to be played at your funeral?
I’ll let it up to my survivors. Music won’t be my concern anymore. They’ll be the ones to worry about. I don’t feel like imposing anything to them.

::

That give’s you an idea of what it’s all about. Fascinating in a short incisive way. I think you’ll probably be able to tell we are magazine fans here at Test Pressing and this format works totally. You can subscribe (pretty cheaply if you ask me) here with Finger being released bi-annually in limited runs of 6,000. Go check.

Finger magazine website.
Finger magazine on twitter.

[Apiento]

Interview: Trevor Jackson

Right, here’s the next of our pretty irregular Test Pressing interviews – this time with Trevor Jackson of Underdog/Output fame. Trevor has long been known for his music but is also a hugely respected graphic designer so we decided to use the sleeves discussed to illustrate the interview. It’s good to interview someone whose not scared of being forthright and having strong opinions.

I was first made aware of Trevor through his work as the Underdog – firstly with The Brotherhood and then in turn with mixes for Massive Attack amongst others. From there it was a short step (through tough times by the sound of it) to starting East-London based Output recordings with releases from LCD Soundsystem and Kieran Hebden’s Four Tet.

Right let’s kick off with the basics. Where are you from originally?

I’m from Edgeware, North West London.

What was it like? What was the first scene you got into?

When I was 12, or 13, Edgware was mainly a Jewish area, there was a whole scene almost like the Jewish version of casuals called Becks, all these kids that would wear Fiorucci and Kickers and hang out at Edgware station. It was a big thing at the time, hanging out there or at Golders Green, or Hampstead, a place called the Coffee Cup. It’s still there. There’d be 200 kids on the street, standing around posing. That was kind of what most of the kids did but I wasn’t really interested in that. These were people whose older brothers were all estate agents and jewellers, typical Jewish suburbia things. I fortunately managed to meet more alternative, interesting people and was able to broaden my social scene. One of my favourites place was Patsy’s Parlour and I used to hang out there all the time. It was a small video arcade and ice-cream parlour full of all different sorts of people.

Growing up my older brother used to listen to Stevie Wonder and jazz-funk, his mate used to manage Light Of The World, my sister was into Joy Division and Ultravox. I was obsessed with taping any music program on TV. Top of The Pops, The Tube, I’d sit there every day recording and force my mother to tape things when I was out. I’ve still got hundreds of VHS tapes somewhere. I’d also listen religiously to Westwood on LWR and also Mastermind on Invicta. I also started to read The Face, Blitz and i-D and become more interested in club and music sub-cultures.

I was fortunate to meet a guy slightly older than me called Simon Cass whom I became really friendly with. He was really into New Order, Hi-NRG and industrial music and from the age of about 13or 14 I started going to gigs and the Camden Palace all the time. I used to go nearly every night. The first proper club I remember going to was The Embassy though.

Was that early hip-hop and electro at that time?

Well it sounds like a cliché but my first single that I bought was Giorgio Moroder ‘The Chase’ on 7”. I was really into science fiction at the time so I suppose the logical thing at the time was to listen to electronic music as it shared a similar aesthetic.

The future?

Yeah it was kind of the future. I’ve talked about it many times but the first gig I went to was the Human League for the Dare tour and it a huge effect on me. Adrian Wright was doing the visuals and they had Doctor Who, Captain Scarlet, Fellini movies on multiple screens and it blew my mind, so from a very early age I had a strong interest in visuals. The Dare album had such a strong cover and the band were really into 2000 AD and Judge Dredd which I also loved, so I was kind of linking all this audio visual stuff together. I was stuck in this suburban place dreaming of other more exciting places, New York to me was my mecca. I’d listen to Colin Favor on Kiss playing NYC Kiss FM mastermixes by Red Alert and the Latin Rascals, I’d hear about all these amazing clubs and I started to hear a relationship between the European electronic music I was into and a new American version that was even more exciting.

Where were you going out back then?

I’m trying to think back to where we were going. My older friends all used to go to White Trash and places like that, but I used to go to the Camden Palace, Batcave, Xenon, and Busbys on a Sunday which was more of a north London Jewish social thing where they played disco and jazz funk… London club culture was very small then. I used to go out every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday that I could.

Was that where the early interest in graphics came from?

I was really into this magazine called Escape. There was a group called The Battle Of The Eyes. It was Savage Pencil, Chris Long, and Ian Wright and Andy (Dog) Johnson – all anarchic British comic book artists, Ian Wright and Chris Long used to draw for the NME. Andy Johnson did covers for his brother Matt Johnson’s band The The. Chris Long’s stuff was really incredible, very graphic and unique. All his characters were club kids, the sort of people I’d meet when I was out. I was really into that. It was more kind of comic book but it was well designed. I started to become very interested in the visual representation of music and the relationship between the two, covers, videos, every aspect. It’s funny. I was in my storage last week and I found this bag and I’d found I’d cut out hundreds of music ads from magazines. I can really see where some of my influences had come from. I mean there were obvious things like all the ZTT adverts, which really were amazing, but also loads of stuff random I just cut out. So there was Escape, this small little comic book, and probably Neville Brody’s amazing work on The Face that got me into wanting to either be a comic book artist or a graphic designer.

What else were you up to at that time?

I was also working in a record shop at that time from the age of 13 or 14 for five or six years. I ended up being manager on a Sunday. Richard Russell (now Managing Director of XL Recordings) used to work for me and I used to take great pleasure in telling him to go and put the grills up on the windows at the end of the day.

What was it called?

Loppylugs. It was pretty famous for the area – in Edgware – two minutes from my house.

Did you study graphic design at college?

Yeah I eventually knew I wanted to work in music and design record sleeves, so I studied at Barnet College and I ended up there for four years. I got a diploma in general art and design, then a higher diploma in graphic design. And through it all I was still going out all the time.

Where did you first agency Bite It! come from?

I left college and started working for a company called the Kunst Art Company based in Clerkenwell. They used to do a bit of music work as well as film posters and it was really exciting. this was all pre-computers, working with photo-mechanical transfer machines, photocopiers, Tipex and rotring pens. I started to meet loads of interesting and influential people going out in the evenings. I was confident and slightly precocious, living at home with my parents so I didn’t need any money and could afford to do commissions for little or no money. Whilst I was working for Martin Huxford, doing posters for things like Belly Of An Architect by Peter Greenaway and some other cool things, I started to get my own work in. I’d hear on the grapevine that people were putting records out and when I heard Mark Moore (S’Express) was putting out a record I simply spoke to him at the WAG where I used to go regularly and said ‘I hear you’re doing a record. I want to do the cover’. He told me to bring my portfolio in the next night to show him, I went along with my portfolio, sat down in the corner and showed him my college work and he was like ‘yeah great’ and that was one of the first commissioned jobs I did.

So where does Champion come into it?

After I did S’Express, I was also doing stuff I wasn’t so into; Steve Walsh the Gypsy Kings and some really dodgy things, as I started getting more of my own work in. Martin from Kunst was like ‘Trevor you might as well get on with doing your own stuff’ so I ended up sharing the studio with him paying rent, mainly doing my own work but also helping him out when he needed it. I think it was through working at the record shop that I notice Champion were putting out all these great records. They were connected to these importers in the premises next door, called Record Importers or something, they could cherry-pick the best records as soon as they entered the country and license them. I noticed none of the record had picture sleeves, they were all in that Champion green house bag, so I went to see Mel Medalie, who was a proper character, a crazy South African guy, and I said ‘I’ll do sleeves for you for free and if you like them give me more work’ and one of the first things I did was a cover version of ‘Set It Off’ by the Bunker Crew and he liked it. So he was putting out four or five records a week and I was doing the sleeves cheap but he was giving me shit loads of work so that kept me going for ages. I was doing ‘Break 4 Love’, Todd Terry, Frankie Bones, Pal Joey records… brilliant records.

All those Todd Terry sleeves are quite distinctive with that ‘bit’ design…

You know at the time, for record sleeve designers, there were only a few big people. You had Peter Saville, Vaughn Oliver , Neville Brody and Malcom Garrett at Assorted Images whom I all really respected but you also had Stylo Rouge and all these boring mainstream companies, and for a record sleeves, alot of the time they’d just take a photo, lay some type on it and get paid a fortune. I was like ‘fuck that, that’s just lazy’ and wanted to do something different. Also, computers had just started being integrated into bigger studios, so you had Paintbox and these programs that cost thousands of pounds, and I couldn’t afford that so those early sleeves were a reaction to those big companies. I used to love playing video games on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 and to me it suited the music. It was like 8-bit music. You know, Todd Terry is making these records on pretty low-res samplers so it seemed an obvious thing to do. That was like late ’80s early ’90s. I still had that comic book mentality. The sleeves had a mini-story to them, almost like a two panel comic strip related to things that were going on at the time in rave culture.

What do you think when you see those sleeves now?

They’re innocent. There’s a naivety and I’m proud, you know…

So house was really kicking off in the late 80s, were you still into hip-hop then?

Sure, there was still lots of great hip hop around as well as mutations of it like hip house, the scenes were still connected and as hip hop got faster the two scenes became connected. Clubs like Delirium started to play house as a reaction against the more violent side of hip hop but I still loved both genres. I related to it work-wise as I started working for Gee Street Records. I was going to fashion clubs and parties that still mainly played funk, hip hop and electro stuff as well as all the amazing early London warehouse parties, but I also started going to acid house clubs, Clink Street etc. There were certain points when they crossed over. My favourite london club was a place called Astral Flight at The Embassy. A guy called DJ Wolf played there and he was mind-blowing. Him, Colin Favor and Eddie Richards were the DJs doing it for me then. People talk about Paradise Garage and that was my Paradise Garage. Hearing New Order’s Your Silent Face over that soundsystem… They had this huge rectangular lighting rig that would descend over the dancefloor and this big inflatable couple swinging from the roof fucking. I’d listen to Colin Favor and Eddie Richards on Kiss, then I’d hear them play at the club, and the next day go to the Record And Tape Exchange in Camden and find all the records I’d heard. In the NME they used to do a little chart and I’d be able to discover all the records I didn’t know.

Who was DJ Wolf and why was he so good?

The club from what I remember, was a posh Mayfair venue full of a weird mix of rich socialites, cute girls and art students but he used to look like a goth, with high spiky blonde hair playing from a booth high up overlooking the floor. He used to go from like Bauhaus to Kraftwerk, then to ACR. He was the first British DJ I heard doing that really well. He was really really on point – and he’d play funk as well. It’d be interesting to see a playlist from him. I was too young to go the Blitz and stuff like that so that for me was a really seminal club. It was a really fucking good time.

Did you do the Jungle Brothers sleeve for Gee Street?

I did Royal House ‘Can You Party’ and then I did Jungle Brothers ‘I’ll House You’, basically the same record with a rap on it. I did the sleeve for that and ‘Black Is Black’. I was lucky you know. I was doing that and also working for Network Records. All those bio rhythm sleeves. Neil Macey was working for Network and I remember when that classic Virgin Ten Techno compilation came out and I seem to remember meeting Neil Rushton (the head of Network) at a London launch party or something.

So when was Bite It! as a label born? That was your first venture into music right?

Yeah. I was doing Bite It! as a design thing only. There was a Street Sounds remix competition and I hadn’t really made any music before but I’d bought a four-track and had a little sampling device for the Commodore 64 computer where you could sample for a few seconds with a very basic sequencer, and I made a remix on that. I was making beat-based music only. ‘Beatbox’ by Art Of Noise had a huge influence on me. I was obsessed by Arthur Baker, Trevor Horn and Adrian Sherwood. On-U Sound was a big inspiration. The first On-U dub stuff I wasn’t so into, but when Adrian Sherwood started working with Doug Wimbish, Skip McDonald and Keith Le Blanc (the ex-Sugarhill Gang Band) as well as DJ Cheese I became hooked, hearing that Fats Comet track “DJ’s Dream’’. It was fucking crazy. You know I most probably heard it at Astral Flight with DJ Wolf playing it. So, my initial records were not melodic at all just rhythm and noise.

Then I met this rap crew who lived round the corner from me called the brotherhood and I started working with them. I started Bite It! purely to put out this track ‘Descendants Of The Holocaust’ which was a reaction against stereotypical Jewish suburban life as well as needing to voice a subject we felt that was important to be heard. We’d experienced our own forms of racism and were just as angry as we were excited by the platform of hip hop.

Was that when you first went into the studio properly?

Yes, we went to this small studio called Monroe Studios in Barnet. I used to work with this guy called Roger Benou, he ended up engineering most of my Underdog mixes. We did the first Brotherhood stuff there on an Akai 950 sampler and an Atari ST. It was interesting because that studio became a real haven for loads of underground British music when it moved to Holloway Road. A lot of important Drum ‘n’ Bass producers started out there. Lucky Spin records was next door. DJ Crystal who was the original Brotherhood DJ, Ed Rush, Adam F, DJ Trace all those guys, I used to hear Amen being cut up in a million different ways 24/7 through the walls, everyone at the time worked there. It was a really important creative hub. When I was working as Underdog I was doing all my remixes down there.

The sleeves for The Brotherhood seemed to kick against what was going on in UK hip-hop at that time…

What had happened was, I had this parallel life. With the design I’d gone from Gee Street, Network and Champion then I started working for Pulse-8 doing terrible Euro pop music sleeves. I was making a lot of money but I was hating it. It was soul-destroying especially after designing records that had such integrity. At that point I made a conscious decision to stop designing and start my own label. That’s why I started Bite It! and it had a very strong visual aesthetic.

The reason I wanted to do something graphically strong was that you had Music Of Life and Cold Sweat (UK hip-hop labels) but they appeared second-rate compared to American product. I wanted to make records that sounded as good as American records and looked as good. If not better. Hip-hop visually had already started to be a cliché with the girls, guns and cars and stuff so I wanted to go against that. I was also really conscious to sample from very different kind of records. Not only did they have to sound and look right, the sources had to be different. European jazz-rock, Soft Machine, ECM, it was all about different sample sounds to what was going on at the time. That was part of the ethos of the label.

I remember buying a 12” with a sample saying ‘I might smoke a spliff but I won’t sniff’ that I’d heard on the radio. What are you proud of from that time?

A record called ‘100% Proof’ I sampled this tune by Julian Priester called “Love Love’ on ECM that was originally in 3/4…and I flipped it into 4/4 and I did this tripped-out bonus beat with flutes and tripped out shit, they sold it in Honest Jon’s where James Lavelle had started working before he set up Mo Wax. And he was like ‘What is this???’. He loved it and we started a good friendship.

Did you know the Bristol lot as well?

I was good friends with Mushroom (Massive Attack). When the Brotherhood EP came out it started to get played a lot and Richard Russell who was working at XL, asked me to do an underdog remix for House Of Pain’s ‘Top Of The Morning To Ya’. It went Top Ten on the back of my mix and my remix career as Underdog started to take off along with having the label. Mark Picken, who was managing Massive Attack liked the mixes and eventually started looking after me. I went on a European tour with Massive Attack and DJed at after parties along with Mushroom and G.

Massive Attack kind of changed when Mushroom dropped out…

For sure. I have a hell of a lot of respect for 3D and G but it’s now a very different band. ‘Blue Lines’ in still one of my favourite records of all time. I mean Mushroom wasn’t an easy character, He was always the younger one during the Wild Bunch days, so I suppose he always got treated like a kid in the band but he was hugely talented, made all the best beats as far as I’m concerned and contributed loads of great ideas. I went to Mushroom’s studio and he was like a proper audio freak had amazing gear. I don’t know what’s happened to him, I liked him a lot. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him again for years.

So where else did your influences come from?

Mainly clubs. The whole warehouse thing was massively influential on me. Shake N Fingerpop, Family Funktion, those parties. Norman Jay, Judge Jules. You know he actually used to be a good DJ. Then you had Soul II Soul and all those guys and the Mutoid Waste parties as well. It was an amazing time. That whole period of club culture hasn’t really been documented enough but it was hugely influential to a lot of people. I also used to throw parties with Tony Nwatchuku (from Attica Blues) in Oxford at a place called the Caribbean club back in ’87 ’88. We’d play hip hop, Smith & Mighty, early Todd Terry things, that really was the start of everything for me career wise.

So you had all that going on and then the Soho set with The Wag and stuff…

Yeah you had all that and then Dodo’s, Dial 9, Delirium, there was so much going on, The RAW club in the basement of the YMCA in Tottenham Court Rd was perhaps the best club in London for me after the Embassy, Saturday night with Dave Dorrel and CJ Mackintosh was incredible. But I really remember going to some amazing parties along the Thames. I remember vividly the first time I heard house music at a Shake N Fingerpop/Family Funktion party, one of the DJs was cutting up, a mix I stole for years afterwards, ‘Peter Piper’ Run DMC with Fun Boy Three ‘Faith And Hope And Charity’. I went upstairs and there was a Mike Tyson fight being shown on a big video screen and they were playing Farley Jackmaster Funk ‘Love Can’t Turn Around’ and I was like ‘what the fuck is this record?’ There were things like Cultural Vibe ‘Ma Foom Bey’ always being played but that was a proper house record I think I heard.

What made it a proper house record?

It sounded different. I was used to uptempo HI-NRG but that record… It was probably about Darryl Pandy’s vocal, I didn’t go down so well. The floor was empty but I was enchanted, the atmosphere was great. To this day I’m most comfortable in a dark, dirty basement. I’m not into Funktion One soundsytem clarity and air con. I like reggae sound systems smoke and sweat.

Going back to the label – who signed The Brotherhood at Virgin?

We got signed by Simon Gavin and Steve Brown, who went on to form Science, and then we spent a long time making The Brotherhood album. There was no-one in British hip-hop at the time making quality cross-over music with a strong concept, we had one. The band was mixed-race. It was a black guy, a Jewish guy and a mixed-race guy and musically I was sampling 90% English and European jazz rock and we got the English artist Dave McKean who’d done artwork for BATMAN at DC Comics to design the sleeve. I was really happy with the thing as a whole. It joined the dots in many ways. The cover looked very different from anything else at the time, the whole project ended up being very well received.

How do you get from Bite It! to starting Output?

There was quite a gap between the two. I was being managed by Marts Andrups he also looked after Roger Sanchez and Kenny Dope. Marts tragically suddenly passed away, he was a very close friend as well as work collegue and that had a very big effect on me. I was young. I was in my late 20’s and it totally threw me. Up to that point I felt indestructible and I’d never had anything like that happen to me.

Marts was a real character. I’d met him in Honest Jons with James Lavelle and when I met him I thought he was a stuck-up wanker. He was opinionated, totally full of himself and never agreed with me about anything but he had the coolest shit, everything you wanted, sneakers, art, records, he was completely on-point, and when I got to meet him properly we got on like a house on fire, we became great friends and he started to manage me. But then he passed away. I ended up falling out with The Brotherhood and things went sour. They pushed me out of the band and off of the label, after what had happened to Marts I just thought ‘fuck this, I don’t want to do this anymore’ and I got out of it. I don’t really know what I did for a year. I needed to find some new inspiration and I started going back to my records and I realised I was deeply into just weird weird records. I used to go to Soul Jazz and Mr Bongo and buy strange European jazz records, travel the world buying crazy things to sample and play. And It made me realise I wanted to get well away from hip hop and the way it was becoming so narrow-minded, and release music I over regardless of genre and most importantly who else would like it.

Was Mo Wax influential in the move from Bite It! to Output? You look at it as a label and they are releasing tracks by Carl Craig, Richie Hawtin, stuff like that…

James (Lavelle) is a genius, but a victim of his own success. He was on it. People don’t give him enough respect. I grew up with eclecticism, and he took that aesthetic which was missing at the time and brought it to a new label and an amazing mix of stuff. Then they had the club at The Blue Note, Dusted, and I remember DJing with me, Weatherall, Carl Craig, going to see the craziest mix of people, it was a brilliant time. He did a lot of stuff. Maybe the downfall of the label and with regards to Output, I saw that James ended up becoming bigger than most the artists. He was the label and I think that possibly created resentment and it put to much of the spotlight on him, the minute I started Output I didn’t want it to be mainly about me. I was happy for people to know it was my label but I wanted the focus on the artists. They were the most important things. The label was just a conduit for the artists.

What were the first releases on Output?

They were just some bits that I had kicking about. Remixes that got rejected and stuff. The early stuff was very beat-based. I don’t really remember what the first release was but I released three ten inches which were beat excursions…

Now I remember what I did in my time in between Bite It! and Output. I ended up hooking up with this band the Emperors New Clothes who were on Acid Jazz records. They were fucking great. They were like Sun Ra meets ESG meets King Tubby. They were amazing. I got deeply into them and hung out with them all the time and got friendly with Luke Hannam the bass player, then Acid Jazz asked me to produce their album after doing some remixes for the band. We spent perhaps a year making the record, I’d gone from working with only samples to learning how to record live instruments and working with real musicians, it was a crazy time of experimentation and pushing boundaries, it was about as un-acid jazz as it could possibly be, totally out there music, perhaps one of the best things I’d ever done. but we finished the record Eddie Pillar (Acid Jazz owner) refused to pay me. Eddie was notoriously hardcore as was his partner at the time Dave Robinson who used to run Stiff rRcords, I may have been a dick about it but I refused to be fucked over. I told him to go fuck himself and unfortunately I think it’s one of the best things I’ve done. So I ended up putting out an Emperor’s New Clothes record on Output, maybe third or fourth release, and then the band broke up and Luke started to form Gramme with Leo (Taylor) the drummer.

I didn’t realize Luke and Leo were in Emperors New Clothes…

I remember the turning point. We were doing this track that was like the precursor to Playgroup’s ‘Make It Happen’ Leo was playing the drums in a free jazz style, Luke was rolling with a brilliant uptempo wobble style baseline. and it just didn’t sound right, I was trying to explain to leo to play simpler in a more primal almost moronic style and he didn’t understand, I pulled out Metal Box and said ‘listen to this. He totally got it and I think that was the moment Gramme was initially formed. This new direction caused a split in the band and they eventually broke up Gramme formed perhaps a year later? I kept in contact with Luke, he played on many of my later Underdog remixes and also introduced me to Kieran Hebden whom he met at Rough Trade one day. I’d never have signed Four Tet had it not been for Luke.

Was it Fridge (early group featuring Kieran Hebden) at that point?

Yeah Fridge. Fridge was him, Sam and Adem. They recorded in their bedroom. And I listened to their records and went to see them play together at home and they sounded like Can or Faust or something. They sounded amazing.

Was that when the label found it’s identity?

I was really fortunate as I’d signed a P&D deal with RTM Distribution. And I could spend some money on packaging. I could do what I wanted. I was sick of doing all these crap sleeves. All my influences started to make sense. All the experimental music I loved, the fusion of things, genreless sounds, I finally had my outlet I’d always wanted. And there weren’t any labels in the UK doing what I was dong. I felt like all my artists were rejects. We were outcasts and I enjoyed that. I’d always felt like an outcast myself.

Was the label in East London at that point? There wasn’t much going on in Shoreditch at that time…

All you had was The Blue Note. And that was it. For me it felt like a second home as I’d worked in Clerkenwell for so long. I was lucky. To dispel any myth, I don’t have rich parents, I was earning money as a teenager when I first started working living with my mum, so I was saving money, and I could fortunately afford to buy a flat when I was quite young. This was the only place I could buy a nice space in East London. Best financial decision I made and I was fucking lucky and the area blew up.

I suppose there was you and Nuphonic over here…

There was also Tummy Touch. It was them, Nuphonic and myself. Tummy Touch were here before me.

What records were you buying at the time?

I was really into post rock, Tortoise and things like that. I used to have a great relationship with Darryl at the Rough Trade shop in Covent Garden and I’d buy fantastic records from him. I loved that place, and also Atlas Records with Pete Herbert and Mark Kirby behind the counter, They got me into Basic Channel and stuff like that. You know I’d done the early techno with Network but when those Basic Channel records came out they made sense to me. Hip-hop had got a bit boring and I was playing more experimental music – Kompact, Thomas Brinkmann, stuff like that was coming out, restored my faith in club music, that I thought had become incredibly boring.

So back to the label, you had a pretty good track record for discovering bands…

It was more being involved with things. I didn’t discover them. Perhaps I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time.

Do you wish you’d locked down some of the deals with the likes of Four Tet and LCD Soundsystem?

I have never been a good businessman. I’ve never done things for money. Money doesn’t interest me. I never ran the label as a business, I just loved this music and I wanted it to be heard. Also, at the same time I was conscious of my limited capabilities as a label so I felt i didn’t have the right to sign a band to the label and lock then down to anything, it would have been dishonest to do that. Also, I heard stories about how Daniel Miller had never actually signed Depeche Mode so I was like ‘fuck it, why should I sign anyone’ and I also worked with the bands as friends which perhaps was very naive but that’s how I did it. Thing was, it also protected me in a way because the bands expectations of me couldn’t be unreasonable. I didn’t have anything in the contract I had to achieve. All I promised the bands were that I would get there records in the shops, radio and club play and press, the rest who knows? You know I had been running the label by myself, apart from a false start at with a deal with Virgin through Source Records that didn’t work out, and Rob (Sandercombe, label manager at Output) had come in and he was a life saver. He was magic. Just what I needed. Well organised and knew how to work with people so he came along at the right time.

So what happened then?

You know, when people started to really like the records was when it fucked up. No-one taught me how to run a record label and I can hand on my heart say I never drew a wage as I was doing other things, DJing, remixing and designing. I never ran the label as a business and in turn many of the bands didn’t make money, though i’d like to think most of them did well out of it in other ways. I don’t regret it at all. Unfortunately by the time a well organised structure of the label needed to be in place it was too late and we couldn’t go back. It was started in a totally relaxed casual way but the success totally took me by surprise and i was too busy trying to run the day to day business to be able to stop things and make anytime to set it up properly, that messed up everything.

It sounds like most of the bands just turned up?

It wasn’t really that, i listened to many hundreds of demos but most of the artists I released had been ignored or rejected, people just weren’t interested in them, and for me I have a strong attraction to things that other people don’t like, as well as naivety in recording. I love early demos – the initial essence of an artist.

When did Playgroup come into the picture?

Playgroup came along in about 1999. 99% of the things I do are reactionary I create things because I get fucked off with what I see or hear around me, or I think somethings missing and someone needs to do something about it. Playgroup started because I was bored of what I was hearing in dance music. I was listening to all these records through working with Gramme and I was realising that no one was making live dance music anymore that wasn’t dumb or super commercial. All the production on records at that time were super complicated; Aphex, Squarepusher, Timbaland, Rodney Jerkins… I wanted to make a simple record. I’d been doing loads of dark complex stuff and I wanted to make a credible, fun and sexy record.

My main drive was, I was 30 years old, I was sick and tired of the ’80s not getting the respect it deserved. People always used to take the piss out of it, which has obviously changed now, and I strongly felt there was massive influence in the music I was hearing around me, but it seemed people were in denial and and that whole period of time needed to be showcased in the right way. Edwyn Collins, Dennis Bovell, Paul Haig, Shinehead, Scritti Politti, I wanted to get all my influences in there and mix it up with new people. I wanted to make an album that sounded like your best friend’s house party not a commercial super club. At the end of the day, I just wanted that ’80s era to be respected. I was fortunate to work with some really great people on that record.

The ’50 Ways To Leave Your Lover’ – it’s a good one. How did that come about?

At the end of the night I always used to play ‘Mama Used To Say’ or ‘Billie Jean’ by Shinehead as well as Paul Simon’s original, I remember I was DJing at the Massive Attack end of tour party in Paris in the tiny backroom of this club and I played the original of ’50 Ways…’ as the last record and the guys from Air came up to ask what it was. I was shocked they didn’t know it, that moment stuck in my head, it all kind of linked together and it made sense to cover that record.

Is there a new Playgroup album coming at some point?

I’ve probably made about four albums since that one came out but I’ve never felt like releasing them. The longer it takes the more cautious I am about putting stuff out. The reason I want to release music is questionable now. If I’m frank about it there are so many people making great music now. I only want to make records with a purpose and records that don’t sound like other people. I’ve always made music inspired by other people and I don’t want to do that anymore. I can’t make a space disco record better than Lindstrom so why bother. There’s no point. I still have that hip-hop competitiveness at the end of the day.

So closing off that whole Output era – what would you have done differently?

I would have had a good accountant that didn’t rip me off, I wouldn’t have employed a ‘so-called’ business advisor who would end up making things even worse and I probably would have had a business partner or someone that had some experience from day one. But I don’t know if anyone would have seen the potential in it anyway, my initial plan was quite reactionary and destructive, not having a business objective apart from breaking even. Who really would have known that Four Tet would be as popular as he is now? I initially didn’t expect any of the artists I worked with to sell more than 1,000 records, to be honest I would have been quite happy with 200. I’m suppose a snob. A subversive snob. I like the idea of keeping things limited, unique, selective and special.

You’ve always designed record sleeves – what do you make of sleeve design at the moment?

I think it’s interesting now that the whole digital thing has almost gone back on itself. People are slowly reacting against it, Look at Stones Throw, they are releasing limited beautiful screen-printed records using Hennessey in the ink for Madlib, Will bankheads cassette label, people are doing really interesting stuff. So I’m still inspired by things I see around me, whatever format they might be.

Would you buy a record just for it’s sleeve?

I have done, and made many mistakes doing so, especially on crate digging excursions without a soundburger or record deck to hand! But my life has changed over the last two years. I’ve cut down on consuming and purchasing things I don’t need as I had too much of everything. I don’t want to be cynical but having lived through so many things it is rare to see or hear new things that truly excite me anymore, and right now I only want to experience powerful new things I haven’t felt before, or live with essential things that are timeless.

So looking at your design – if you had to pick a favourite sleeve what would it be?

I find it really hard musically and visually to have an opinion on my own work. Maybe the Soulwax sleeve and some of the Bite It! sleeves. I still like them.

You seem to DJ a lot in Berlin – what’s so good about it?

In Berlin you can play in most clubs the people will look really normal, but you play the weird records and they go off. You play them in London and they leave the dancefloor. And there is something about that essence of Berlin that is still super exciting to me, people seem open minded and free in many ways. Maybe that’s what is missing in London at the moment. I made a real conscious decision to stop playing big gigs at the moment. I’ve seen many of my contemporaries play bad music simply for money. There are to many people that will compromise their beliefs to earn a living and I don’t want that. If I’m honest I don’t like being in the limelight, never have, I don’t want to play anthems and do things that people want me or expect me to do. The Playgroup thing mucked up so many aspects of my life as it put me in the spotlight, made me feel uncomfortable, messed up relationships and even my health. When you put out a record and start playing the promotional game you get pushed into a world that changes everything. I don’t want that attention nor care about what anyone thinks about who I am or what I do, as long as I’m proud of what I do I’m content. Now I’m much happier playing for 2-300 people where I know I am going to have a good time than a big gig which might pay me well but I leave the booth feeling like I should of stayed at home and question why I bothered in the first place. big gigs can be great with the right promoter, line up and crowd but it’s almost impossible to play records that have any detail, sensitivity or depth, which is what I appreciate most. Berlin to me is good but it’s not necessarily the epicenter. One of my favourite gigs has been this small town Asturias in northern Spain, I played a little club for 200 crazy people for 7 hours. Fucking amazing.

So rounding up – you’ve been quoted as saying you share ‘an equal love of low brow and high brow culture’. How does that manifest itself?

It manifests itself as I am often full of contradictions, but I like what I like, not what people tell me I should, And I am opinionated in the process. People seem scared of strong opinions these days. I respect people that are passionate and have genuine reasons behind why they do things even if I don’t agree with them. For instance with movies I love Enter The Void and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Cannes winner 2010) as much as I appreciate Hollywood blockbusters like Armageddon and Bad Boys 2. I don’t have any preconceived ideas of what I should and shouldn’t like and how I need to fit in in anyway. I’ve never wanted to be part of anything.

I respect individuality and innovation in all forms and refuse to be pressurised to think or conform in anyway that I don’t feel totally comfortable. People have been too lackadaisical recently, this country has been putting up with so much shit recently, we’ve been continually lied to and deceived, people say nothing and accept that’s the way things are or simply ignore what’s happening. I think now what’s going on with the student riots is really exciting. I got hairs on the back of my neck when I saw students revolting. That’s what this country needs. That can only be a good thing for culture as a whole

Finally, if you could go back to any club in time where would you go?

I would go to the Funhouse as shown in that New Order video. That’s the weirdest thing for me. Arthur Baker is a friend now but I considered that guy a god at one point. Everything he was involved in. Him, John Robie, Latin Rascals, you know… he was amazing. What I would do to go back to the Funhouse where JellyBean Benitez puts on that Reel to Reel tape of ‘Confusion’ and the lights go, and the B-Boys and girls start dancing, that’s where I’d want to be. I know the Paradise Garage was the one for a lot of people, but for me it’s definitely the Funhouse.

Trevor-Jackson.com

[Apiento]

Interview: DJ Harvey

Our friends in Australia, The Blackmail, got in touch to see if we wanted to run an interview that they had just done with Harvey for their site. We of course said yes. To be honest I don’t quite understand the cult that is developing around the man but you have to say he’s got it right – the parties, the space in Hawaii and living the happy life. On top of that he seems totally genuine and speaks total sense. So over to Mr Michael Kucyk of The Blackmail and on with the program…

Text: Michael Kucyk Images: Harvey Bassett

Spanning many scenes and sounds, Harvey Bassett has been unconsciously carving his global cult notoriety for almost 25 years. As a DJ, Harvey is like no other. His infectiously positive personality seeps into his eclectic sets that aren’t limited to meaningless genrefication and often journey for six hours. Harvey will play whatever he feels, how he feels, and will never spin a lyric out of context. Inspired by his encounters with Larry Levan, he started the lewd label Black Cock with fellow Englishman Gerry Rooney and released legendary reel-to-reel edits which became heavily sought after and widely bootlegged. With a long list of credits as remixer, producer and session player, he has been involved in recording outfits Map Of Africa and Food of the Gods, as well as his recent solo project Locussolus. After overstaying his Visa, Harvey has spent the last 10 years bouncing between Honolulu, Los Angeles and New York. A newly acquired green card finally allows him to visit Australia for the first time.

Michael Kucyk: Are you enjoying the freedom of having a green card?

Harvey Bassett: Yes I am, this year I took a tour of Japan and Europe, which was fun. It was nice to get out and about. I don’t want to spend the next 20 years on the road. It’s nice to be in one place for a couple of months so I’ve been enjoying Venice since I got back.

MK: With such a large gap between visits to Europe, the UK and Japan, have you noticed a dramatic change in any club cultures?

HB: Not dramatically, no. I mean there might be a whole new generation of kids that have come through in that ten years but there was definitely a percentage of the old school represented too. It was good.

MK: Are there any new countries that you’ve toured recently with scenes that have excited you?

HB: Nothing so far. It seems like the scene is small. The venues are maybe only up to 1000 people but globally it seems to be pretty healthy with all the digi-communication and all the rest. People tend to know what’s happening.

MK: You’re involved in thirtyninehotel, a club in Honolulu. How’s that going? Does it have a community following?

HB: Pretty good, chugging along out there. I actually haven’t been out there for ages because I’ve been touring. There are definitely people there but I don’t know if they’re thirtyninehotel people. We’re open five nights a week and stuff goes on there. It could be anything from a seminar of lawyers or earth mothers to a wedding or a jazz band, reggae band, rave party. On the weekend it tends to be R’n’B based music on Fridays and dance music on Saturdays. There are regulars that come out for those nights.

MK: Has this international travel encouraged you to start digging again?

HB: When I was away in Europe I got into it but I think that was more to do with the guys I was hanging with. They’d be like “Harvey there’s a warehouse two miles from here with five million records,” and I’d be like “Let’s go then!”. I don’t purposely go out searching for them anymore but if stuff comes by way or if someone has a bright idea then I’ll go off and dig for some tunes.

MK: Did you have much luck at the warehouse?

HB: That particular spot was in Switzerland. Usually at a place with that many records it takes a whole day just to understand what’s going on in the room. It’s like “OK I’m getting a vibration from this area.” I found one or two records but I actually gave them to the guys I was digging with. Knowledge swapping.

MK: Can you recall your strangest digging experience?

HB: I remember once being in a warehouse somewhere in New York and we had a packed lunch and got locked in for a couple days with mountains high. We uncovered a full working record player so we got to listen to the tracks right there. I’ve had various rooms ankle deep in water with rats and the records are covered in dog shit from the guard dogs at the storage units. Some awful, stinking, brutal stuff. There’s also AIDS hospices where you get gay guys who have been disinherited by their families and all their loved ones have died so all their possessions end up in a warehouse. You go down there and pick up some disco records. That’s maybe morbid instead of strange but at least they go to a good home.

MK: Have there been opportunities for you to tour Australia in the past?

HB: Loads of people have said it but nobody ever made the call or took the kangaroo by the horns. I’ve always been down. I’ve even got some distant relatives and a few good old buddies out there. But this is the first time it’s actually come together and its perfect timing in many ways. It’s a good time of year and it seems like the scene is healthy.

MK: I hear that you’re an avid surfer. Are you looking forward to hitting some waves out here?

HB: Yeah man! As long as it’s not too strenuous! I might drag out a long board. I just bought a new wetsuit and I’m considering bringing it along so I don’t have to borrow someone else’s stinky beaten up wetsuit.

MK: You should watch some cult Australian surf movies like Crystal Voyager or Morning of the Earth. Both have classic psychedelic soundtracks.

HB: I’ve seen both of those. I’m big up on the surf movies.

MK: Earlier in the year I saw you play at Cielo in New York’s Meatpacking District and you opened with a medley of Justin Vandervolgen’s edits. Is he one of a few producer-DJ-edit makers that inspire you?

HB: Yeah I think he’s really good, he’s a friend. Actually I think that was the first three songs off his Golf Channel mix. I was like “that’s fucking great, I’m going to play it!”. So that fantastic mixing wasn’t me. It was Justin making it super smooth although I was adjusting it as it was playing. There’s a thing called Hot Q on the CD player which you can edit on the fly so that’s handy.

Loads of people inspire me. So many European cats making new records and edits and obviously Rub N Tug with Eric Duncan and his C.O.M.B.i stuff. On my European tour I played alongside 20 of the most happening DJs on my scene and everyone gave me a CD with 30 edits on it. And I was like “Whoa!”. Just mind-boggling amounts of rare cosmology. There’s some sublime and some ridiculous, you just have to check them all out.

MK: You’re bringing DJ Garth with you on this forthcoming Australian tour. Do the two of you share a similar spiritual vision?

HB: Spiritual vision (laughs)! There’s not a spiritual bone in my body mate. Me and Garth go back a long way. We’ve been friends for 20 years. He’s a gentleman and a scholar and a real good time DJ. I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather be on the road with for a few weeks. He’s definitely part of and a purveyor of the style of DJing, if there is one, that came out of our scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He’s a great DJ and has a great bedside manner as I would say.

MK: How did you two meet?

HB: I don’t really remember. Probably at the Zap club or a TONKA party in Brighton many years ago.

MK: What about Gerry Rooney? How was Black Cock a collaborative effort?

HB: He would often come up with the tracks that we would edit. He’s been a collector, dealer and DJ for many years and has access to unbelievably incredibly great music. We would have some fun cutting up and editing those tracks and putting them out. Although we haven’t done anything together; although we did do a remix kinda but even that wasn’t really together. It was sort of a Black Cock record but he remixed; it was kinda official but he was in London and I was in LA and we basically did a mix each. Gerry was definitely instrumental in the Black Cock thing, for sure.

MK: He seems pretty illusive. What does he do now?

HB: He’s still DJing and dealing records. I’m not sure if he has a website that you can buy records from him or if it’s by secret phone appointment only. I know he DJs out on the scene in London and gets around the world.

MK: The names Black Cock and Map of Africa are pretty potent with a sense of perverse attraction. Were you channeling some raw sexual energy when creating the music?

HB: To a certain extent. Obviously it’s all about sex – the potency of the Black Cock, the double entendre and the tongue in cheek font. And the same with Map of Africa. Just to have fun with word play, and also secret meanings that aren’t that secret. It’s a joke but it’s kinda cool at the same time. To me so much of music is sort of a version of fourplay, especially on the dancefloor. You’re sizing each other up and it’s a version of sexual play in many ways – the way you move and express yourself, shake out or dance with someone. I like names. I often like inventing names and concepts. Obviously Black Cock and Map of Africa are prime examples of the sort of fun we like to have.

MK: Food of the Gods doesn’t feel as erotic.

HB: That’s because I didn’t make it up (laughs)!

MK: Are these just recording projects?

HB: We’ve never performed live as such. It would be nice to be able to put a live unit together and play out but me and Thomas [Bullock] basically never have the time. He’s in New York and I’m in LA, and when I’m in New York, he’s in Europe. To get a tight act together it really takes a couple of months of living together and working together every day for a few months. A couple of years later we’re deep into other projects and our solo projects so I don’t know if Map of Africa will ever play live.

MK: What can you tell me about the Rwandan Ice Cream Project?

HB: Basically these drummer girls came over to New York from Rwanda. They were holocaust survivors and had come over to learn to make ice cream so that they could take the knowledge back to Rwanda and get some parlors going to make a living. It turned out that they were members of this all woman drumming ensemble so we put them in the studio and recorded a couple of hours of songs and chants. It will be released and all the profits will go towards a Rwandan good cause.

MK: Have these girls since returned home?

HB: Yes. Hopefully they’re ice cream millionaires by now.

MK: What does a regular day for Harvey consist of?

HB: Wake up, have a cup of tea, let the fog of the night before clear, decide if I have anything to do, go to the studio, jump in the ocean. You could say I’m awfully romantic and that I get on my motorcycle, drive up to the surf and have a macrobiotic sandwich on the way. It swings between that and peeling the kebab that I slept on the night before off the side of my face. Finishing off the can of hot special brew that I left on the windowsill. Straggling down a very oily 50/50 spliff before staggering out into blinding daylight. In the last couple of months I’ve been pretty healthy and productive. I’m all about good food. A friend of mine catches a lot of fish in the ocean right in front of the house and brings back lobsters and flounders. I would imagine Australian’s are quite used to that behaviour but it’s pretty exotic for an Englishman to actually be able to cook local fish caught a hundred yards away.

MK: Are you eating some quality tacos?

HB: Yes. Without question, the best Mexican food in the world outside of Mexico is in Los Angeles. There are some phenomenal tacos of every variety. I like to eat the ones from the traditional Hispanic taco trucks that feed the workers. You can get three carnitas tacos, a seafood tostada and a Mexican coco cola for five bucks and you’re stuffed and ready to go back to cleaning toilets. Happy and full.

MK: What do you think you’d be doing if you didn’t get into DJing and producing?

HB: Absolutely any kind of mundane brainless job like greeting people at the supermarket. A job that wouldn’t take up any of my brain so that my brain could be left to meditate. I once worked in a factory where the speed of the machines was such that you couldn’t day dream, or you’d loose a finger or two in the blades. I actually learnt to slow the entire productivity of the factory down by turning a particular knob. It was just slow enough so that everybody in the factory could daydream and everyone was happy and could get the job done. But this is where the party’s at and I don’t want other people spoiling party time.

::

As we said at the top this article first appeared on the ace The Blackmail site. Follow them for more. Thank you kindly to Michael Kucyk.

[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]

Interview: Dave Dorrell (Part Two)

Here’s the second part of our interview with Dave Dorrell moving from the RAW days up to acid house, major label deals with Polydor Records, ‘Pump Up The Volume’ and it’s lack of follow-up. Images by james McLintock.

So going forwards, many of the Soul/Jazz Funk DJs took a while to adopt to the acid house thing whereby you, from what I understand, seemed to jump straight in and feel right at home. What was the appeal to you?

It was at RAW when I played my first Acid House record. I had a copy of ‘Funkin With The Drums’ and I didn’t really know where it fitted. It was kind of an anomaly and no-one was writing about this stuff, no internet, so nowhere to find out what it was about. So it just existed as a bit of vinyl which I had but couldn’t play [out].

There was no scene to attach it to…

There was no scene. There were no vocals. It was just a drum machine. And I think there were at the time early attempts to make similar music going on in Nottingham and Manchester. I say Nottingham specifically as Graeme Park was recreating sounds from these records in the studio. So one of these records I was playing at Raw was T-Coy ‘Carino’ which no-one saw as a house record at the time but you look back on it now and it was obviously an attempt to make a house record.

Yeah it sounds like a Latin tune…

Yeah that whole Latin thing out of NY was also kind of doing stuff that was a bit more hip-hop. It was toying with a scene that was growing up around the Paradise Garage but Chicago probably inspired it. Maurice and Noel were trying to play more up-tempo records at that time. I remember them playing Fern Kinney ‘Groove Me’ on plus 8 because it had a 4/4 beat and if you went really fast on it it sounded like a house record and those were the kind of moments when you thought ‘mmmn – there is something in this’.

And then acid as a sound landed in a pile of records in front of me and I still have all three of them. ‘Land Of Confusion’ was the first one that I heard and I was like ‘what is this?’. And it wasn’t as if I was from a purist background so I was like does it have a German influence? No. Does it have an industrial background? Yes, sort of but not really. And it didn’t sound like anything. I didn’t get it. We were getting most of our records from New York and I bought all three acid house records that day that had come in and I played them back-to-back. Another one was Phuture’s ‘Acid Trax’. I played them early as I wanted to see what they were like on the big system at RAW, we had an amazing sound system there, and they sounded incredible. And everyone just kind of stood there in horror (laughs). I told this story a few times. The club started filling up over the course of playing three acid house records back-to-back and at the end of it I thought ‘where can we go from here?’ so I put on ‘Cross The Tracks’ which was the biggest track in London at the time and everyone ran on the dance floor. And I thought whatever that was before, that is really something. Danny and Jenny (Rampling) came down, they were already doing Shoom, it was running parallel, and they did a Wednesday night at RAW with Kid Batchelor. I think about 80-100 came. You know, smoke was going all night, they had Smiley t-shirts and we were like ‘it’s all a bit weird this’ and something’s happening but no-one could quite work out what it was…

So it was the suburban kids that came along and kicked that whole thing along…

Just like with punk, absolutely, maybe it was about money, maybe they are just out there in the suburbs and they are more adventurous…

Something to do…

But yeah, I knew Oakey and all that anyway and it all meshed.

We like that whole Balearic thing at Test Pressing. What records were your favourite records at that time?

I might have to take another pill to feel the same way about Mandy Smith as I did then, but there was a particular little niggly mix by PWL that took Finitribe and mixed it over Mandy Smith. I still listen to Finitribe. I was going to Rough Trade a lot so I guess Split Second and all of those Front 242 records. I was listening to a lot of electronic music to be specific. The funny thing was my old school friend, Luca Anzilotti (one half of SNAP!) had moved to Frankfurt with his family during his last year of school and we got back in touch about ‘86 and I was going to Frankfurt to the Dorian Grey. I mean that club was like nothing in London at that time. You had to go in through Frankfurt airport, past people with trolleys and suitcases, in through what looked like an outdoor café, and from there you’re in. They had huge strobes built into the floor. So you’d go into the club and DJ Hell was the warm-up DJ for DJ Dag and Dag was a legend in Germany at the time. He played stuff that no-one in England was hearing, though some bits were slipping in from Ibiza, which was the kind of Front 242, Split Second sort of tracks. Skinny Puppy, Severed Heads ‘Hot With Fleas’ and things. KFMDM. So I am standing there looking at the DJ, the sound system is incredible, the music is really industrial and clangy and then suddenly this massive Star Trek laser, super strobe goes off for second and it was like ‘shit’. So those elements were really important to me and I came back with tons of records from Frankfurt. Anyway, for me its Finitribe, Mandy Smith and Split Second. Who would put those three in a box together?

So taking it a step forward again, like a lot of people you went from DJing to the studio, when was that an angle?

I was DJ-ing at the RAW one night and this American guy came up to me at the end of night and said ‘I really enjoyed your set – I’m here setting up a music channel called MTV that you might have heard of’. They were setting up MTV Europe. He asked if I’d like to make a musical identity for the channel and offered me an inordinate amount of money to go in to the studio. He wanted me to create a series of 15-second ‘idents’ to go with the animations but we didn’t have those so we had to make them blind. I had a friend of mine called Martin Young who was in Colourbox, and I asked him if we could get a studio as I had all this money. That was the first attempt to do something and it was hugely influenced by what was going on in New York at the time but with a British slant. We were just taking bits and pieces and just layering them all down and it was soon after that in Spring Summer ’87 Martin called me up and said I am in the studio and its going nowhere, do you want to come back in and go back down the avenue we were mucking about with for MTV. I was like ‘yeah sure’. I think he had this kind of basic rhythm track going and the initial idea (from owner of 4 AD, Ivo Watts-Russell) was that he’d work with AR Kane but they had kind of fallen out so he had to deliver something and so went in there and that became the prototype for ‘Pump Up The Volume’.

How did CJ come into it?

CJ was in the band I was managing at the time – Nasty Rox. He was the DJ. Nellee Hooper was the percussionist, John Waddell on guitar, Leo T on bass and Dan Fox on vocals. I’d just swung them a deal with ZTT I thought this was the best thing that could ever happen…

Of course, Trevor Horn at the time was pretty special…

We did the deal, and I was writing about them, promoting gigs and then Trevor got called into court with Frankie Goes to Hollywood so Trevor didn’t produce the record and Steve Lipson did, and he is great as well, but with Trevor Horn it may well have been a different record.

So back to M/A/R/R/S – why no follow up?

Well we started on it. We did a couple of things. We took studio time. We had a very Acid based track we were working on and a few other things then we got a law suit from Cadburys or whatever and it just got a little weird and it fell to pieces. It was kind of odd and it just ended up as a one-off and probably for the best. I guess if we’d been a little bit more focused but CJ was in Nasty Rox, Martin had Colourbox with his brother Steve and his commitments lay there. There’s demos somewhere but we never gave anyone anything.

On the surface you wouldn’t think 4AD (the label that released ‘Pump Up The Volume’) was a good record label for an out and out dance record but the more and more I listen to music on the label there’s a lot of drum machines going on, they are just better at hiding it under layers of guitars or whatever…

I think the walls of music culture were fairly permeable at the time. I think if you look at what was going on you could see that. People were like what is the difference between New Order and Bobby O and it was basically a northern vocal and that’s it. And then you can kind of see there’s not a big leap between New Order and the Cocteau Twins. So you see its all different micro shades from the same spectrum.

So from there you and CJ went off and you were in the studio a lot…

We got asked to go in. A lot of people wanted to trade on the name. We weren’t really mercenary about it but people were asking if we wanted to remix stuff, so we were like ok.

Who was the engineer on your records?

Robin Hancock was our preferred, he now owns Wright Brothers over in Borough market supplying Oysters to the best restaurants in London…

So what were you remixing at the time?

Well we got to do Nu-Beat records like Jade 4U, KAOS ‘Definition Of Love’, De La Soul, Jungle Brothers….

Whose idea was it to lay Aaron Neville’s ‘Hercules’ under your mix of ‘I Come Off’?

I can lay claim to that. I loved that record but it was a bastard to do. 4th & Broadway had it for the UK and they asked us to do it but they said they needed it by January 2nd. CJ was like I don’t want to do it and I was like ‘nah, I really want to do it’, so we booked time on Boxing Day and the day after that. That Aaron Neville break featured on an NME cassette and Neil Spencer had turned me onto it and I was like ‘ok this is ripe for abuse’. So we asked Andrew Hale (Sade) to come in to play keyboards so he came down with his keyboard and set up and we were like ‘we haven’t got a fucking clue’. Then we were like actually – ‘you know that bit in Once In A Lifetime’, it fits perfectly over this’ and if you listen carefully that keyboard line is nicked from Talking Heads. So we delivered it and they (Delicious Vinyl) hated it and I was like ‘we have given up fucking Christmas to do this’ so Julian Palmer who was the head of 4th & Broadway used it as the last track on the B-side of the American one but when it came to the UK they slapped it on the A-side.

What was happening club-wise for you at that time?

I’d been doing Love at the Wag.

Ah, before we go there I’ve just remembered you had a label as well with Polydor…

Yeah that’s right. I’d met Dave Angel in Berwick Street market one afternoon and we got talking. He’d done a bootleg of Sweet Dreams and I thought you know what I know everyone in the record companies so I phoned up RCA and they said we love that but we can’t put it out and then I managed to ok it with Dave Stewart and they couldn’t find the multi-track so Dave and me went in the studio and that was the birth of my relationship with Dave, who I then signed to Love Records…

So Love (Dorrell’s label with Polydor) was one of the first ‘dance’ affiliated labels?

Yeah I guess so. I got a deal out of David Munns the head of Polydor and I was on my way to ink the contract by the flyover in Hammersmith and I had a mobile phone and London records called me up and said what are you doing? Why are you going to Polydor with this? Bring the contract and we’ll cross out Polydor and write London (Records) on it. The rivalry between the two labels at the time was intense. I probably regret not doing that because David Munns was saying ‘we’re going to put dance music on the map’ so I was like ‘ok… sign the contract’ and then he stuck it to me cause he disappeared after 8 months and got moved upstairs to run the whole group and I got completely screwed. Completely screwed. I remember the first record I put out, which we were told was going to go top ten, went in at 41. Someone tipped me off that the head of marketing, I know who you are and what you did (laughs), had taken the ‘barcode’ off our record and put a Jason Donovan ‘barcode’ across all our 12s. Jason Donovan went in the top ten and we were stranded. It was one of those things, I was suddenly aware of the vicious nature of record companies and a year and a half it all come to an end.

So was it back to DJing then?

No not at all. The last band that I wanted to sign to the label on the back of a three track demo was called Future Primitive, and I knew the singer from the London club scene, Gavin Rossdale. I thought ‘oh fuck this I’m going to manage this instead’. I hated the label so I went off and managed bands again and they became Bush and off we went.

When was the last time you DJ’d?

The last gig I did was for Craig Richards. It had been a really great night and he came up and I said ‘well that’s the last record’ and he said ‘you can play another one’ and I said ‘no that’s the last record I am playing as a DJ’ and I cancelled all my gigs and went to the States with the band. And that was it. I went to chase it.

Do you regret cutting back on DJing to go into management?

The house wave had kind of crashed, Movement 98 anybody? I’d been doing Love at the Wag for two and a half years, a really good run, great DJs coming through the door, Trouble and stuff. Oh and Steve Proctor. (To the dictaphone) ‘What’s with this I was your warm up DJ Steve? It was my club!’ That’s what his website says. ‘I employed you! Big kisses Steve’.

After that I got a phone call from Nicky Holloway asking if I wanted to do the Milk Bar so I thought a Saturday night there would be brilliant. I said to Pete (Tong) do you want to DJ there with me and we called it Hot for the first few months and it had become more Balearic again and House no longer dominated the playlist. You had Soul II Soul and stuff and Italo was coming in and it was a right old mix up and that made it feel like a really good club again. We did it for a couple of years on a Saturday night. The Milk Bar was one of the best clubs I ever did. The bouncers were dancing, the bar staff were on the bar pushing the kids off and everyone singing along to ‘Like A Prayer’. You are in DJ heaven.

They were good nights and then clubbing took this other leap forward and I used to spend my nights running between jelly shots and bottles of Sol at the Milk Bar to go and see Weatherall DJing at Flying across the alleyway, getting knocked out hearing him drop the Primals for the first time down there in a cloud of smoke. I made friends with that whole Flying lot and then all of a sudden I’m dong gigs in Nottingham and Glasgow… I did Boy’s Own in Sussex, one of the best gigs I went to, and I had a nightmare that night and I played Salsoul 3001 (a disco soul version of the 2001 theme tune) and I was so off my head I couldn’t DJ. It was so hot that the sweat was dripping from the roof of the marquee onto the records and the needles were just skidding across but it was a beautiful night. So there were those boys and the Slough posse and Charlie (Chester) had found the next wave really. It was another door opening and another peek into a new world. That period, and the music, were fantastic. You could play what you wanted and the crowd were really responsive…

So it all joins up…

I think I went from RAW to Love to The Milk Bar into the Flying mob for a bit. We did the first gig with Sasha in London, Milk Bar Saturday night. The first gig Sven Vath did, Milk Bar Saturday night. So we had all these connections and bringing them in but there was a point around ‘93 when it all went a bit handbag and by ‘94 I didn’t like the music anymore. I didn’t like the predominant sound at that time. There was no soul in it and it felt extremely white and that was never really what I was for. So at that point it felt time to put it down as I wasn’t as in love with it as I had been over the past years.

What do you think about club reunions?

You know honestly I don’t really like these ideas. I try to avoid them. I’m not really for nostalgia. I don’t think it smells as nice as you think it will. Reunions feel to me like a pair of old shoes. They never feel right even though they were perfect at the time, but when you try and put your feet back in them, they just don’t look right. They don’t feel right.

What do you see the difference between doing things then, making your own flyers compared to now and they way you can get all your information to people in minutes.

The basic elements don’t change. Watching footage of the Dirtbox in Stockwell recently, someone had left a comment that it ‘looks like Dalston today’ and I thought you know what it is like Dalston today. And though it’s probably much easier to make your own flyer on your laptop and print up your own flyer it’s still pretty much the same thing to promote your own night. You don’t have to go round clubs giving out flyers, but if you aren’t actively out there anyway then no-ones going to come. You have to be out there promoting your own thing even if by word-of-mouth and that doesn’t change. I could open a Facebook page and start up a club night but whose going to come unless I actively promote it.

Finally, what’s more important, the art or the money.

The art! I now work as an artist with Melissa Frost and Mihda Koray under the name Slayer Pavilion. We ‘ghost’ Biennales. It’s a lot of work and I probably lose money but ultimately it’s very rewarding. The money? That was never the reason. The crack was the reason. If you could get money out of a label, great, but the things I felt the most connected to were connected to having a good time and meeting people. If it’s good it tends to make money anyway. I don’t think anyone should go without remuneration for their efforts.

Thanks to Terry Farley, Pete Tong and Frank Tope for the additional questions.

[Apiento]

Interview: Hey! Convict Interview Dominik Von Senger

Hey! Convict are Tamas Jones and Jason Evans. Over the last few years they have been forging a relationship with Dominik Von Senger of the Phantom Band, Unknown Cases and a Can cohort (amongst many other things), that resulted in the ‘No Name’ 12 on Golf Channel a few months back. First up we have Jason describing the working process of getting the Golf Channel 12 together and then second we have the interview with Tamas and Dominik discussing Patti Smith, Can recording techniques, drum patterns and more.

Here’s what Jason has to say on the record…

“The original of ‘No Name’ is from Dominik Von Senger’s ‘The First’, a record from ’82 that i found in Melbourne the week before I moved to New York. The whole LP is pretty ace, but this track really blew me away.

Anyway, a short while after i got to New York Tim Sweeney asked us to do Beats In Space and straight away that was one of the tunes I knew we had to put on the mix. Fast forward about six months after the show and we received a really nice thank you email from Dominik. He’d heard the mix and was really happy that people were still playing his record. Naturally, I, being completely blotto at the time, emailed him back asking for the parts with the thought that Tamas and I could fool around with them and maybe do a simple edit.

Dominik responded the very next day, really keen on the idea, explaining he’d just need some time to track down the 24 track tape — which, he said, actually started as an 8 track of bass and drums in Cologne and was fleshed out in London, with many bits and bobs added by Reebop Kwaku Baah and Rosko Gee (both of whom are also both great musicians who played in Can during the years the band recorded ‘Saw Delight’ and ‘Out of Reach’).

A month or so went by and we got another email from Dominik. After a long search that had led him back to Matrix Studios in London, he was sad to inform us that the original 24 track, which had remained in London this whole time, had been wiped clean! In the same email Dominik told me that as a joke Nigel Frieda (the engineer from Matrix) suggested they should record it again…. Of course this sounded to me like a great idea.

So come January, Dominik got together with his new band to record ‘No Name’ for the 2nd time, 26 years after the original. Things were kept loose and it took a few months to get everything down. Dominik would send us demos as he was working on stuff and would allow us, which at this point included Phil South of Golf Channel who had become interested in the project, to offer feedback. It was cool to see the process of how Dominik was approaching the song for the 2nd time… There’s heaps of little things, but for example… Though he was using many of the same instruments this time round he was really excited about trying a different rhythm — as both the Casio Vl.1 and the first Dr.Rhythm machine, which he’d previously used, were pretty limited in what could be programmed.

Anyway, about a month ago Dominik finished his new version, which is the track Phil played on his Beats In Space mix. full circle, right back to Tim’s show, who is the master of all this, because without his show, there would be no Dom vs Con!”

It’s good to read how much time and love goes into some of the music being released at the moment but the long and short of it is that Tamas from Hey! Convict recently did this interview with Dominik and edited it to a soundtrack of his music. Here it is.

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Thank you kindly to Tamas, Dominik and Phil.

[Apiento]

Interview: Dave Dorrell

We haven’t done an interview for some time so after thinking about who to speak to we plumped for Dave Dorrell. Dorrell was involved in many of the seminal London night clubs – The Dirtbox, Batcave, RAW, Love and The Milk Bar – as well as being a journalist and manager of note for the Pet Shop Boys amongst others. There was almost too much to cover so we just started at the beginning and tried to work through the key years. Thanks to Frank Tope, Terry Farley and Pete Tong for additional questions.

Dave Dorrell images by James McLintock. Wild Bunch image by Beezer.

So Dave, where does it all start?

Well as a child I was a hippy. My sister worked at Biba so if you want the first thing I was seven with my hair down to my waist and she took me to see the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park for the free concert. That was my first concert. Barefoot, we walked the length of Oxford Street. That was a day.

What was the first scene you really got into youth culture-wise?

The first thing that we really got into it was kind of the Disco/ soul scene I guess. So Disco, but then at the same time it was Punk. I was about 15 when Punk happened and we started a fanzine at school called The Modern World (after the Jam song). We got an exclusive interview with two of the Sex Pistols – Paul Cook and Steve Jones – cause they lived in a flat in Bell Street, the same street as our school. I skipped first break at 11 o’clock and went up to the top of this old Victorian building and all these nubile punk nymphet’s came skipping about between rooms and we were like ‘it’s eleven o’clock in the morning this is ridiculous’ and then I remember when we did it Sid Vicious went past on a Suzuki motorbike with no helmet on.

So from the off you were brought up on an eclectic mix of music?

Definitely, definitely. From youth clubs days listening to Ska and Soul same as everybody else and then everything from T-Rex and Sweet and all that nonsense and my sisters into Jimi Hendrix and Bowie and all those things were getting fed into the machine at some point.

So you’re out dancing to the records, when did playing them to other people seem like an option?

For me it was at school. There were a few us really into music. Gary Crowley was in the year above me and he was a huge influence on all of us in being so ahead of the curve. He was going to see The Jam really before anyone knew about them and The Clash at The Roundhouse. Me and my old mucker Chris Clunn, a fantastic photographer who did all the pictures for our fanzine, really got into smoking dope and listening to Reggae and were asked to DJ at the 6th form party. Chris said ‘I’m going to call my cousin up (his cousin was Jamaican) and get him to come down as well’. We turned up with a box of seven inch records and they turned up with a sound system that had to be lifted off a lorry. After that we played when we could. From like 16 on we were DJing in local pubs and stuff like that.

When did you get a name for yourself?

I guess from 19 I thought there is more out here. We were going clubbing and seeing bands all the time and we had an eye on doing a party. I think the first thing that we ever did was at Battle Bridge behind Kings Cross. In those days Battle Bridge was still squats, everything from hippies to punks, and they had a hall there and we did a night. We charged to get in and people turned up. We alternated a few times with another clique from West London, which was Sean Oliver and Neneh Cherry and that whole gang. I think they were good days. Those were good parties.

What was the party called?

I think it was Emergency Ward 10.

So was that at the start of warehouse culture?

I mean for me definitely. It’s kind of before any other warehouse parties that I knew about. I think the Dirtbox was around the same time and I DJ’d for the Dirtbox when they opened up a big warehouse in Chelsea. Around the same time there was D-Mob in Beak Street – Chris Brick and co., these crazy Welsh kids. They were doing various bits and pieces. They had an illegal party in the basement on Rosebery Avenue in Islington called the Doghouse which had Maurice and Noel Watson as residents. So that was the beginning of the 80s I guess…

So what came next? You mentioned Neneh Cherry – was she the link to a new crowd?

Well that kind of came about after. I’d been going to the Beat Route where Steve Lewis (above) was Djing and listening to Fela and Gill Scott Heron and Material.

The mix…

Yeah absolutely. And that was where my focus was. The mix of things was extremely appealing and soon after that the guys got the Wag Cub and everything properly happened in the space of 24 months yet it feels like it was spread out over years. I started to DJ at The Batcave occasionally. I was starting to write at The NME as a result of a new fanzine we were working on, and it all happened pretty quickly. Across ’80-‘83 I remember going to all sorts of different scenes. Going to see The Specials, going to the The Jam at The Rainbow, watching Skinheads beat up Dexys’ fans at the Electric Ballroom, I guess ‘81 or ‘82, and soon after that I’m writing for The NME and DJing at warehouse parties and the whole thing has a run of about three years.

When you hear a tape of a warehouse party from that time they sound like they have a kind of have a naive amateur edge…

It was. It was completely made up. There were the established clubs, The Mud club, The Batcave was running kind of alongside that, early warehouse parties running alongside that, so you had very divergent scenes that were kind of open to everybody and though I was having a massive Goth moment at one point I was still going out to the warehouse parties the D-Mob guys were throwing as the NME offices were on Carnaby St. I was DJing at one end of Carnaby St at the Batcave then going to D-Mob at the other end.

It was quite unique in that there were an number of very strong scenes, Punk had moved into being almost Gothic, ‘82–‘83, the warehouse scene was coming out of efforts that Chris Sullivan and Ollie were doing at Billie’s in Covent Garden. The Blitz was going at the same time and I’d go there as it was on my doorstep and my sister went out with one of Spandau. I came home one night and there was bloke (Steve Norman) in a Hawaiian shirt playing guitar to her . I was like what is this??? (laughs). You had this very strong youth movement, not even youth movements, they were more explorations into music and style and none of them seemed to be too clear-cut. I’d go to the Beat Route and have a flat-top and mashed up jeans. I’d go to Batcave different jeans, same flat-top and it was odd how it all interlinked but was quite separate.

So obviously there was a point when your tastes refine and you get your own palette – was hip hop the crux of this?

I think that probably is about right. A friend of mine was the editor of Black Echoes and she came back with a 12” of Rappers Delight that she had managed to get from Sylvia Robinson herself. It was the first rap record I’d ever heard and that was an absolutely revelatory moment. It was like ‘what is going on here???’ I guess that opened the floodgates. From there it was trying to get anything I could out of any shops that had records of that nature. Places like Groove Records you know…

So do you think that was the unsaid link that you had with the likes of The Wild Bunch, Nellee Hooper and all that lot?

I can pretty much lay claim to bringing the Wild Bunch up from Bristol. I was going out with a girl from Bristol so I’d go down and see her. I went to one of their parties in St Paul’s and I was doing an occasional night at The Wag on Wednesdays and I got the guys to come up. I remember them coming up and blowing everyone’s minds as they had all these breaks that people in London weren’t plugged into…

Were they on the mic at that time?

They were a little bit on the mic but mostly they were DJing. ESG, their first 6 track EP playing it covered up and at the ‘wrong’ speed, and the break from the B-side of Eddie Kendricks ‘Keep On Trucking’. Cutting between two copies. Seven inches sellotaped to twelve inches – all that stuff. I guess the situation at the time was there was a nascent version of the scene in the West with Newtrament and The Language Lab guys but that was it. It was quite a tiny scene really and you could join the dots fast. Next thing Nellee was moving to London with Miles and they (The Wild Bunch) were getting a deal with 4th & Broadway. I remember being in a studio just around the corner from here, just off Shoreditch High Street, when they recorded the ‘Look Of Love’. Miles was one of the best DJs I ever saw in my life. I remember seeing him in Tokyo around ‘86 or ‘87, at Gold I think. It was an incredible club. It was in a bank vault and the DJ booth was made of Gold bricks. He was DJing and was playing Ramsey Lewis ‘Sun Goddess’ and then mixing some jack track, underneath it… Amazing.

So from the warehouse thing through to Special Branch. How do we get from there to there?

As a journalist I was running around the world for the NME. Going clubbing in New York on the back of generous record companies so I got to do all that stuff and chasing the whole hip hop thing. So Dirtbox started to do a regular night at the Titanic which was Berkley Square and I was bringing lots of electro and playing that. Sometime around ’84. I guess a number of scenes were all starting to converge and I think I met Nicky (Holloway) through Paul Oakenfold. Paul was working at a clothes shop called Ice in St Christopher’s place and we got talking. You know Paul was always a character, and I remember him saying he was going to New York and me saying he was going to have a great time as it was so amazing over there.

Two months later I bump into him and he’s working in another clothes shop and I said ‘how did it go?’ He said ‘it was great – I’m giving up my job and I’m going to start a record pool’. I was like ‘what’s that?’ He explained that DJs in New York got their records from a ‘Promo’ person. He’d kind of fallen into this in New York and saw the classic gap in the market and the market in the gap. The next thing I know he’s wearing a Beastie Boys cap, promoting Def Jam and doing a night at the Embassy. I was like ‘wow you’re get up and go’. At that moment what had been previously very separate scenes started to connect. Meeting Nicky and Paul – years before Spectrum – and that was my connection to the suburban scene that previously I had had no connection with as I was always central. And as such, it was suddenly another door opening. Bringing it back round I can’t remember the first time I met Nicky Holloway but it’s been a lifelong love affair.

So lets go rare groove. Who was the greatest DJ on that scene and why? (Chart above from i-D September ’87)

I’d have to say Barrie Sharpe. I used to warm up for Barrie when the rare groove thing was really kicking in and Rene Gelston had just set up Black Market records, I don’t think it was even a shop, he was a hairdresser and it was just a label in his head at the time, and we got a night at the Wag called Blackmarket and Barrie was the main DJ, Lascelle was playing upstairs and I would warm up downstairs for Barrie, and he would play pretty much two hours of James Brown productions and the full breadth of that was eye-opening. I mean you can’t forget Norman Jay and the Soul II Soul boys as they pulled out some utter gems but in a funny way they weren’t as purist as Barrie. You know if you went to Africa Centre you’d hear Will Powers next to some obscure African funk track and they were throwing things in the mix so they had their own sound so it wasn’t strictly rare groove but Barrie was utterly strict and totally pure.

So where does RAW come into it?

RAW comes about ’84–’85 and ran through to ’87–‘88. RAW was Oliver Peyton’s idea. He was great at finding venues and he found a new one. We were hanging out at the Spice Of Life and going to The Wag a lot and Oliver had just come up from Brighton. Once we saw the venue, it was like ‘wow, we’ve got this amazing venue in the centre of London, what do we do next?’ Oliver had just finished a design degree at Sussex and was like ‘ok, I’m going to drape the whole place in canvas you take care of the music’. He made it look like nothing else. So, I got Rob Milton to come in and do it with me as I was DJing with him at the Dirtbox, and we were the original RAW DJs and much later on Ben and Andy (Boilerhouse). Rob left the country so I had to get someone else in to do it with me and CJ (Mackintosh) used to come occasionally and that was it. Rob was a great DJ.

So when did it really kick off?

I’d say ‘85 into ‘86 it was a line around the block. Like seriously. I think it was the last time that there was such enthusiastic mixing of every single element. We were playing Hip-Hop, Rare groove,Disco and everything went. We’d have the bleachers set up and people would stand up and dance all night whistling. It was a sweatbox. It was 6 floors underground and I’d be drenched by the time the night finished. It lasted for a good couple of years and was it pretty amazing having that as your playground for a couple of years…

So slightly different tangent, who styled the shoot of you in i-D that looked very very Buffalo? It was certainly a very London look…

You know what, no-one styled it. That’s just what we wore at the time. It was me Nellee (Hooper), Milo, Barnsley and Zorha. We were knocking out these Chanel No.5 t-shirts and I was ‘advertising’ one. Product placement I think they call it these days. Nellee had just moved to London with Zohra and Miles and they lived on Delancey St in Camden and we all hung out together. That was kind of the look we were sporting. It was kind of influenced by the Japanese style. Nellee had a Westwood shearling coat on and there was a lot of ‘styling’ going on but no-one styled it.

What other DJs did you respect at that time?

Definitely the Wild Bunch, but then again Jay Strongman stood head and shoulders above all of us. He was the DJ. When he was core DJ at the Dirtbox he was the first person I heard play Double D and Steinski’s ‘Lesson One’. The first person I heard play Go-Go. He’d throw a Cajun record in and it all kind of went together. Because of the music scene the Dirtbox had kind of spawned you’d just as likely hear Theatre Of Hate or something. Jay would merge all of that into what was warehouse culture and would happily play the Clash next to obscure old blues tracks.

It’s funny one – it seems with a few of those guys like Steve Lewis from the Beat Route – they just seem to walk away from it at all at a certain point. Do you think there’s an element of it ‘doesn’t get much better than this…’?

Of course. That’s the secret of life. It’s not the 100th glass of champagne, it’s the anticipation of the first one and it’s almost the anticipation of the first one that’s the most exciting, so by the time you get to the 100th you’re over it…

Quite a few London DJs were spinning in New York pre-acid house – Fat Tony, Noel Watson to name a few – did you get to play out there?

No. Much to my chagrin though I went to every decent club in New York. I was going over mostly as a journalist. The first time I went was in December ‘83 to an exhibition by Keith Haring at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery which was incredible because in the basement Haring had sprayed his signature figurines in fluoro green and pink and yellow all over the entire space – wall, the floor and the ceilings – and he’d installed Grandmaster Flash in the corner as the installation. I was just like ‘wow’. That was when I started think ‘ok – art and music’. The following night I went to The Area. Probably the best club I ever went to. Grandmaster Flash was DJing again, Debbie Harry was dancing on the floor with Andy Warhol, and you just think ‘this is just nuts this place’. New York at the time was absolutely incredible. Meeting people like Mark Kamins who was DJing at Save The Robots and hanging out there a lot. Going to Danceteria and dancing with Madonna, meeting Arthur Baker, just being swept away but the whole scene rather than thinking ‘I want to DJ here’. It was never really my first thought. It was much more anthropological. And that’s how it felt.

You hear about people bringing back tapes from that time, and I suppose when you know what you are going for you want to bring as much of it back as possible and distribute it amongst your mates…

That group of friends they were doing that as well. And by ’86 and ‘87 we had links into Tokyo too. Nellee was over there. Miles was over there. We’d bring over Melon. I introduced them one night at The Astoria. We were doing RAW, must have been ‘86, Nick Truelocke was doing The Astoria with Noel and Maurice (Watson), and half-way through my evening about 12 o’clock, Nellee came over and said they want you to introduce them so I had to run across the road to Astoria and introduce them (Melon) and then run back to RAW and carry on DJing.

Were Melon a big band back then?

They were a big kind of scenester band. The Face and stuff. Anything from Japan was kind of hip. Their album was on Columbia. Everyone was trying to figure out how The Beastie Boys had become the biggest band in the world and everything was up for grabs. Melon and Major Force, as a collective, kind of represented Japan’s end of the game.

Part Two covering the acid house years follows soon.

[Apiento]

‘Sup Magazine: Robin Guthrie Interview

The new ‘Sup Magazine is out and about. If you see one pick it up. It’s well designed and has a good broad section of interviews without being too try hard. This issue has interviews with Hot Chip, Beach House, Gonzales, Nicolas Jaar and a New York house special with Conneticut’s Underground Quality gang. You can pick it up in East and central London easily but I’m not sure about the rest of the country. They have a website so maybe you can find out there. Our favourite piece from this issue is this interview with the Cocteau Twin’s Robin Guthrie. I have never read an interview with him, but his work speaks for itself so I was interested. I’d heard he was a miserable bastard but it seems the polar opposite is true. He speaks a whole lot of sense and it’s refreshing to hear someone unafraid to mince their words and not bother playing the PR game which is so commonplace these days. Love the bit where he is on about people that take 15 years to make pop records not being the geniuses they are heralded as but actually being ‘fucking retarded’. Here it is if you have five minutes…

[Apiento]

Faith Magazine: Mike Pickering Interview

The last issue of the Faith fanzine was one of the best for a long long time. From Kevin Rowlands picking the records that mattered to him to this interview with Mike Pickering of Hacienda and Quando Quango fame which we asked to get a copy of for Test Pressing. Good work chaps.

Thanks to Jimmy P, Terry Farley and the Faith peoples.

[Apiento]

Conversation: Phil Mison (Cantoma) and Joel Martin (Quiet VIllage)

Phil Mison’s Cantoma album is released soon on Leng/Claremont so we thought we’d put Phil in conversation with Joel Martin of Quiet Villiage to get some thoughts on music, the internet, finding new music and their clubbing pasts.

Test Pressing: Easy one for 5… When did you two first meet each other?

P: We first met properly through Oscar from Trax (London record shop). You gave me some CDs with mixes on and then I think we were doing a party in West Hampstead and you came down and played, Gerry (Rooney) played, and DJ Gareth (friend of Phil’s who live and hung out in NYC for years) played. It was a good party.

J: Gareth! He would tell you a little story about the records he played. Like I remember when he played Dennis Parker ‘Like An Eagle’ and he’d say about everyone in 12 West (an early club in NYC) where Tom Savarese was DJing…

P: Yeah I remember that. Apparently they had some massive steps at the back and loads of dancers would be doing a dance waving their arms like birds.

Test Pressing: You both put a lot of value in hunting down records for yourself, the same as say The Idjut Boys, Harvey, Gerry Rooney etc. How do you think the internet impacts upon what you are trying to do finding new music without everyone else discovering it?

J: I think it stems from people coming to see you and you having exclusive things that only you play and they can only hear you play. I think sometimes people get overtly paranoid about other people finding out about what they play and with re-edits, the internet and bootlegging, you never know whats gong to happen. But you do have to realise that DJs are only playing other peoples records and the artist would think it insane that you wouldn’t want to share their music with other people. It’s not like Scott and the Antarctic but it’s nice to have music that you have found yourself. With the internet now people don’t have to venture out. You can find what you want on the internet and its all about money – if you have it, you can own the record.

P: Maybe the day of clubs with one core DJ who has a core crowd going to hear them every week and hearing music from that DJ is long gone. It was like going to Pure or Glam (Danny Rampling clubs) and that was the only place you could go and hear ‘Come On Boy’ by DJ H featuring Stefy before it was bootlegged. If you’ve got the power and the crowd then that is a justification for not telling anyone about those records.

J: I had this discussion with Gerry Rooney the other day, and I am sure Phil agrees, that for quite a few of us there is as much a buzz in finding something in the field yourself (laughs) , as there is to listening to it and playing it. Finding it, and physically tracking it down is almost a bigger thrill or high than the music contained within.

Test Pressing: It’s definitely true that people used to make more of an effort to go and track records down in the late 80s and early 90s…

P: I heard about a fight in Trax records over a copy of ‘Numero Uno’.

J: (In disbelief) ‘Numero Uno’?! But yeah, there weren’t any record shops where you could get that stuff.

Test Pressing: I miss those days of wandering round Soho with your list of records trying to cross them off…

P: Yeah religiously from about November ’87 I’d go out every week and buy records. I’d panic if I missed a week buying records. Ridiculous.

J: It’s happening again with the small little labels. If you miss that first press and don’t get it within the first couple of weeks of it being out, you can get it on Discogs or whatever, but it will be £30 or £40 as no-one is doing long runs of vinyl anymore. Not on 12 inches.

Test Pressing: It feels pretty healthy at the moment…

P: I agree. There’s loads of good music out there.

J: I speak to certain trusted people as I won’t listen to clips. Mates of mine will listen to clips on sites for hours, and then make a list, and then go and listen to them properly in a record shop and then decide whether or not to buy the record. But for me, if I am going to spend £8 or £9 on a record then I want that record to be something that I’ll be listening to in 10 or 20 years time, and that will also sound good at home, because otherwise I’ll get it on CD.

Test Pressing: There seems to be a select few of you sharing music…

P: You realise how small this scene is sometimes to be honest.

Test Pressing: Have you both done LA?

P: I did a party with Tony Watson on the Hollywood Boulevard and we DJ’d in a bar with George Takei’s star outside and it was a great party. LA is a werid place. It’s hit or miss. You know you have the Sarcastic parties and that’s the biggest thing, I am not sure how big as I haven’t been, but I have been to Candelas and that’s only about 80 people.

Test Pressing: What about Japan?

P: The first time I went to Japan, it was to play at Ageha which is like a superclub over there. They took me up to the booth and it was 8 decks in there. But I wasn’t DJing there, I was in the shed outside (laughs). It was 200 people and me DJing all night. As it was getting a little bit light they pulled the doors open behind me and the sun was rising over a lake outside. I was like ‘fucking hell…’.

Test Pressing: Who was the last DJ you heard that you really enjoyed?

P: I’d say Mark7 at Disco Bloodbath.

J: Frankie Valentine at a small do in Stoke Newington. He was playing, and I thought he’d play house but he was playing serious serious adult music, and I didn’t know most of it. He was playing soul and disco, Euro records, then a boogie record and then a rocky cut… I had to go and say ‘this is serious Frankie’. I love to go out and hear music I don’t know.

P: But you’re a music obsessive. It must be hard to go out and hear records you don’t know…

J: No. Even when I was 17 going out, I was never the one wishing to hear a certain tune, I would revel in hearing music I didn’t know. It would be a real ecstatic rush. I definitely had the mentality of wanting to know what music was though, as once you hear a piece of joyous music you want to repeat that.

P: I remember going on a tour of Portugal with Muzik magazine with Paper Recordings, Danny Tenaglia and loads of others and Elliot Eastwick played Eric Kupper’s ‘Planet K’ and it was like what the hell is this…

J: He did a great mix of Robert Palmer. Do you remember? Rampling played it…

Test Pressing: Is that where you two meet musically?

J: Rampling was one of the first DJs I remember hearing club-wise, as I was always a big radio-head, but Rampling and Trouble I liked for different reasons. Rampling would play Euro and also New Jersey records and then Trouble would play the full on garage madness which is a different lick.

P: Rampling told me the story about how he booked Tony Humphries for Shoom. He had the tapes from Kiss or whatever, so he went to New York on the off-chance of meeting him. He went to Zanzibar and he wasn’t playing, went somewhere else and he wasn’t there and he was like ‘oh no’. So he was like ‘it’s a wasted journey’ and then he had one number and thought he’d have a final go. He dialed from the airport, Humphries picked up, he canceled his flight and went back. He met him, then he came over and played. I love stories like that as it shows the passion for it.

Test Pressing: Finally, what’s the one record you wish you hadn’t played?

J: The first record…
P: All of them (laughs)…

Cantoma’s album ‘Out Of Town’ is released on Leng/Claremont 56 on May the 4th.

[Apiento]

Interview: Andrew Weatherall

Good interview from Expletive Undeleted with Andrew Weatherall discussing being narky in the early days, MP3s and the reforming of PiL. Refreshing to see something raw in this day and age. Nice work chaps.

Thanks to Andy C for the heads up.

[Apiento]

‘Sup Magazine: Carl Craig Interview

Carl Craig talks Dilla’s ‘Big Booty Express’, Steve Reich, Detroit (of course) and why Leonard Cohen’s band need to loosen up. Interview from ‘Sup Magazine by Kelly “K-Fresh” Frazier and photography by Dennis Duijnhouwer.




[Apiento]

The Face: David Toop Arif Mardin Interview

[Apiento]

Interview: Dave Lee

Dave Lee has a new CD Sunburst Band album hitting the shops soon so we caught up with him to do a quick interview. The CD brings together all the remixes to date of The Sunburst Band and very good it is too. Anyway, the album is in the shops soon but until then here’s Dave.

What is this new CD you are promoting?

A new CD from The Sunburst Band, with all the best remixes we’ve had done plus a few new ones exclusive to this fantastic double CD. Some of the remixers included are Dennis Ferrer, Milton Jackson, Henrik Schwarz, DJ Meme, Grant Nelson, Idjut Boys, Yam Who, Recloose, IG Culture….as well as a few boring ones I’ve done.

Is it as bent as your other releases?

It’s a bi CD… This CD will have sex with anything. Pretty much like me. But it’s maybe a bit more expensive than I am.

What DJ’s have been supporting it on the scene?

The remixes have been played by Carl Craig, Ashley Beedle, Gilles Peterson Jimpster, Kerri Chandler, Seamus Haji, Groove Armada, Danny Krivit, Fedde Le Grand, Danny Rampling, Dimitri From Paris, DJ Spinna, DJ Spen, Domu, Tony Humphries, Glenn Underground, Roger Sanchez, , Jazzanova, Laurent Garnier, Benji B, Ben Watt, Karizma, Prins Thomas, Quentin Harris, X-Press 2, King Britt, Osunlade, Faze Action…..WOW!!!!!!

Does the scene still exist?

Which scene? For house music, yeah I guess. Though it’s not going through a particularly strong period in terms of crossover success, there is still some good music being made. The problem is there is an awful lot of rubbish out there. Possibly a bigger problem is the fact that a lot of the shit seems to sell pretty well.

Where does the inspiration for the Sunburst Band come from?

My love of disco, boogie, jazz funk and heavily soiled underwear.

If you could take the Sunburst Band back in time where would you like them to play live?

Be nice to have them playing during the Battle of Hastings, though I suspect we’d have problems with the amps.

And who would be your three dream front women to front the project?

Patrice Rushen, Minnie Ripperton and Philip Schofield wearing a bra/panties and blonde wig

Have you been thrown out of any bars recently for inappropriately touching anyone?

Why are you asking me this? You know it was part of the settlement that i can’t talk about it.

You have possibly the best collection of ‘pure’ disco in London. Why are you such a rubbish DJ? I never see your name on posters round Shoreditch.

I don’t know, I often ask myself that. And I’m such an arrogant c**t too!

Why don’t you DJ at some good clubs rather than that Southport Weekender with all those old blokes?

In the next couple of months I’m playing Lovebox, Garden Festival in Croatia, Beachdown Festival Brighton, Zouk Singapore, a couple of decent places in Italy . I guess lots of the trendy London places have gone very electro/minimal/deep house – though I like some of that stuff (not all night) its not what I’m known to play, so I guess I’m not the obvious choice. The other factor is I’m pretty expensive and though I do occasionally play for less I can’t do it too often as its what finances everything really. Also, lots of the well paid gigs are pretty good and on several occasions I’ve done things for nout and they’ve been shit, as though the promoter might love good music he’s crap at organising his night. Anyway, I will always stick up for Southport as it is a wicked event, a mixture of ages and has a great vibe.

Cheers Dave.

Peace.

[Apiento]

Interview: Map Of Africa

This interview by Jaclyn Marinese with Map Of Africa first appeared in Issue 18 of ‘Sup Magazine.

[Apiento]

Dubplate Sufferah: An Interview With Dennis Bovell (Part Two)

Last time man like DB told all about his early days as a producer, and about hanging about outside cutting houses whilst Jah Shaka prepped his soundbombs. In the second part of his interview about cutting houses, how disco stole Sly and Robbie’s flying cymbal and turning sound system clashes into band clashes.

How much of a disadvantage were you at, making English reggae? And how much of a problem was it that you didn’t come from Jamaica in the first place [Bovell moved to the UK from Barbados aged 12]?

I had to go the extra mile. I had to make sure my stuff was stinging. By the time I done ‘Silly Games’, I showed them my craft and it was totally FM sounding and wasn’t off the radio – still isn’t off the radio! – and I’d created a new drum beat. The intention was to make every tune with that drum beat in that reggae style, but the success of it… I couldn’t. People would have thought it was all I could do. Sly Dunbar had the same one on every tune! We called it “Flying Cymbal” but it was so infectious disco had it and called it disco.

Lloyd Bradley told me that cutting houses had a very specific job in that world of reggae, and didn’t move out of that world until punk came along…

The invention of the cassette ruined it too. D’you know, by the time Lovers Rock had hit I’d stopped using Hessle because by the time I cut Yuh Learn I’d learned not to cut my stereo tapes in mono any more. I wasn’t aiming at sound systems any more. I was aiming at radio and the wider ear.

Was there overlap between what you’d call ‘wax culture’ and the uptown places?

The dub cutters were John Hessell and a place in the West End called LTS, London Transcription Service. LTS was owned by a friend of mine’s brother, Bill Farley in Tin Pan Alley, Denmark St. Shaka used to use there. I quickly stumbled on a guy called John Dent. John Dent was first called Sound Clinic and he was the cutting room that was attached to Island Records. That’s where I cut The Slits, Linton Kwesi Johnson. This guy has cut all Bob Marley and all U2. As cutting engineers in this country go, he’s the man. He built another cutting room called The Exchange in Camden. Him and Graham, then he left and went and opened his new cutting rooms called Loud.

Can you give me an example from the time at Island, with John Dent, when something clicked for you as an artist?

There was another guy called Aaron Chakraverty at Master Rooms. He made me realise how far I could push that piece of plastic to reproduce and enhance, even, what you intended from the mixing room.

That post-punk period was really interesting…

I produced Orange Juice. There was a song called ‘Wheels Of Love’. I’d done what I call a skid mix, which involved lots of backwards sequencing. If you hear the 12” version you’ll hear it. Once I’d done it I needed to go to the cutting room to hear how they sounded.

Why could you not know that in your studio?

Too much bass makes the wave got like that (shows jump in the air). The skid was a piece of information backwards that could trip the cutter head and make the cutter head think it’s a square wave, and think it can’t read it. If you printed a record like that, it would jump. The first few copies of the Pop Group album I cut, I lifted the cutter head before conventional standard dictated. It was just another crazy idea.

Was there a link between early pirate radio, back in the early ‘80s, and cutting houses?

You’d have to ask Dread Lepke about that. He’s going to open a radio station in Ghana, for his sister. You know, Rita Marley.

Who would you bump into at a typical cutting house?

You’d try not to bump into people. It was inevitable at Hessle’s, because people would just turn up, typical sound system stuff. Count Shelley, Neville The Enchanter, they’d be everywhere cutting dubplates. You’d have to phone up and book a particular cutting time: here on Monday, there on Tuesday. come the weekend you have to have dubplate!

It hadn’t occurred to me the volume of music people would be getting. How important have cutting rooms been to UK street music?

It was the only means to liberate the stuff that was being recorded. Before I pressed Matumbi’s ‘After Tonight’, that song was on the sound systems of Great Britain for about two years. People were flocking to London to see me to get a dubplate of that, from Birmingham, from Manchester, from Leeds, from Coventry, from Doncaster, from Bristol.

What did they have to do to get their dubplate?

Chat to me at the right time…. and pay me, basically. They’d be cut to order. People would bring their deposit or cash or a postal order. You had to go to the source, to get a dubplate. If cut a dub for someone and I heard they let someone else cut it, they weren’t getting no more dubs from me. You had to go to the source.

Going to the source. What impact does that have on the music?

It just allows me to know where the music’s gone. It would allow me to know if I was popular enough to do a live show. If my tune was being played on the Bristol sounds, I could safely go to Bristol with my band and do a show there because people knew my music, people would come. Birmingham, the same.

Who else was in the same position as you? A DJ and producer and musician?

I used to get a lot of flak from the band: what are you? A sound man or a musician? Sometimes the rehearsals might clash with the sound playing out. They’d be like, ‘I’m fed up of going to hear your sound!’

So what are you, soundman or musician?

I am me. I’m both. The soundman did win, back then. This was a time when sounds were more important than bands. It was sounds and oh – there’s a group playing too. I remember arriving once at Acton Town Hall with Matumbi. We arrived and all the sounds had lined the stages with their boxes. I was like ‘Ya! Move dem!’ They deemed it their right. ‘We’re the sound! You’re only a group!’ It was only because I was in both worlds that people would listen. That kind of thing would cause friction. Groups were disrespected by sound systems, people getting turned off so the sound could play. Luckily no-one would do that to Matumbi. We’d plug a desk from the stage into the sound so it went around the room in this enormous PA system. We used to have group showdowns. There was this group called Black Volts, that was led by Michael Bruno, Frank’s older brother. Our band would clash Black Volts in Pountney Hill, just up the road from the Beaufoy, that was the scene of the big sound clashes between Duke Reid, Sir Coxon, Count Shelley, Neville the Enchanter. Those big sounds would have soundclashes there. So we decided to do a group clash. It was a show of strength.

Do people need to know why all this was important?

We found a way to bring [the music] from the studio to the living room, via the cutting room. From the control room, to the cutting room, then to the living room. It’s all rooms, isn’t it? There was room for improvement, in maximising the quality, and the best way to do that was to get it right at the cutting room stage. Even if it lacked something in the control room, in the studio, you could inject, elasticate frequencies, then it would lock them in, so that any reproduction of it would be regular. They are the heroes. Of ears.

[Emma Warren]

Dubplate Sufferah: An Interview With Dennis Bovell (Part One)

Dennis Bovell was born in Barbados and moved to England when he was 12. At school in Wandsworth he discovered tape looping, with the help of a broom handle, and created his own cut-up of Bob and Marcia’s ‘Young, Gifted And Black’ with a teacher-performed trombone piece on top. The sound system top boy created Lover’s Rock smash ‘Silly Games’, formed UK reggae band Matumbi, wrote the soundtrack to seminal south london flick ‘Babylon’ (check it if you can) and produced a host of post-punk gems from Orange Juice to The Slits to The Pop Group. But this interview is mostly about that forgotten area of UK sound system culture, the cutting house – the place where DJs and producers have been going to get their dubs cut since reggae arrived in the UK in the 1960s.

The full feature, by Emma Warren, contains interviews with the UK’s foremost reggae historian Lloyd Bradley as well as drum ‘n’ bass don DJ Zinc and Jason Goz from Transition Mastering Studios, will be in the next issue of the super-fly dancehall and grime fanzine Woofah. Pick up the print version or check it online at Woofahmag.com. And you can check Emma Warren’s monthly half-hour Wandering Feet podcast, featuring music from kizomba hip hop dudes Ritchaz e Keke and Silkie and interviews with William Orbit, Deadbeat and Musinah here.

People know about pirate radio and all that, but they don’t know how important cutting rooms were. Do you agree?

Without cutting rooms we wouldn’t have had what we had. Cutting rooms are most important. The transition of the music, from the studio to the turntable.

How did you discover cutting houses?

About the age of 15 there was a recording studio built in my school in Wandsworth. The school was called Spencer Park, then it was renamed John Archer after the first Mayor of colour, and since completely abolished. The site where it was, directly opposite Wandsworth Prison, was a hospital during a time of war. Then it became a school. There was a bell tower in the building which was turned into a studio. Our school had a thriving orchestra, a thriving drama group and it was positively one of the best schools in Wandsworth. The studio wasn’t built for the drama department, it was built for the English department to record plays. At the same time, I was involved with a group of lads and we were called Roadworks Ahead. We helped ourselves to quite a lot of the Government’s gear, to adorn the stage when we played a gig. The headmaster made us take them back. I’d made friends with lads that lived down the end of my road, and lads who knew I could play the guitar. Norman Hitchock, Colin Short, Derrick Chandler and me: that was Roadworks Ahead. The studio was built and one day I hit upon an idea to make a loop. This involved recording a piece of a popular reggae tune and editing it together so it went round and round constantly in a loop, with a broomstick to keep the tension on the tape recorder. I created a loop from what was the number one reggae tune at the time: Bob and Marcia’s Young Gifted and Black.

Was this a new idea for you? Or were you inspired by other people doing it?

No. I had the idea. At this time I was messing around with tape recorders. No-one had done it before as far as I was concerned!

This was when, ’67, ’68?

Yes. I was a kid of 14, 15, playing with a tape recorder, in charge of the school recording studio. But I was also a musician and I suddenly had the ability to tape from disc on to this tape. I brought in my copy of Young, Gifted And Black and realised there was a bit of the song where they weren’t singing, so if I took that I could then make my own record without having to have a band and no-one would know where it came from.

How many bars did you have?

Two bars.

I thought you were going to say six, eight…

I took two bars of that song and I made a loop. And in order to make it play without going whrrrrrrwhrrrr (does wonky time sound) I needed tension. An old Ferrograph, it was. A broomstick came in handy to steady the tape. Then copying that onto another reel… we were blessed, we had two tape recorders, just ¼ inch two track tape. You’d have to mic the whole band up to record it – we did that as well – but for this purpose we didn’t. That record is why I became known as Blackbeard the Pirate later on, because I’d done this in my school days. I invited members of staff who played trombone and flute to join me in my adventure and to play a trombone version of a very popular song, Guantanamera. To be marrying that with Young, Gifted and Black! I did that.

I guess that makes you the original fusion man. So how did this record lead you to the world of cutting houses?

It was customary for sound systems to play dubplates. Except in those days they weren’t called dubplates, they were called ‘wax’. I took it to the local cutting house, which was owned by R.G Jones. Now R.G Jones is one of the most reputable studios in this country. It’s in Wimbledon, right. And old man Jones, he’s long passed away now…

Reputable how?

Cliff Richards recorded there. The first black group from Scotland, Average White Band, their first album was recorded there. Mutumbi’s first recordings were recorded there. RG Jones were the first people to have PA Systems. Old man Jones was intrigued by this school boy who was cutting wax.

How did you know about him? Did you know about cutting houses generally?

It was probably the Yellow Pages to find him. It was Wimbledon and I lived in Clapham Junction so it was the closest one.

So he was intrigued by what you’d done?

I didn’t tell him what I’d done! But he was intrigued that kid of my age wanted to cut an acetate. So he explained to me about the frequencies and the cutter head and I made this acetate and sold it to this soundsystem called Jim Daddy. It must exist somewhere. It was the only one I made. The only other person would know about it was the teacher who played on it, he was a young one so he’s probably still alive. I’d like to find that man again.

So the tune went to the sound systems. And…

From thereon in, I was doing that kind of thing.

Now you had a place to get the music out.

I had a place to get my wax cut. And an outlet. The first one we did, we sold it for £3. In 1967 went a long way. It was a lot of money! A lot of people were getting £3 a week.

What were cutting houses generally like?

After that I found another cutting house, owned by a man called John Hessle. John is the architect of dubplates in this country right across the board. He was less expensive than RG Jones. He was cutting in mono, so it was the same on each side of the record. In fact, a lot of my stereo tapes were melted down into mono by using him, but sound systems were largely mono anyway. So it wasn’t that bad cutting a dubplate for a system on a mono lathe. He was an old Jewish man and they had a lathe in their front room in Barnes.

Another person with a cutting room in their house…

Another person, yes. RG Jones was a proper studio. Hessle’s was in his house. In Barnes. In Nassau Road.

What was the picture when you knocked on his door?

First was ‘what was this black kid doing in this neighbourhood’. John was blind, he’d been wounded by shrapnel and he lost his eyesight but his hearing improved. He had this mobile recordings business. I went on mobile recordings with him as a youth, to record Jaspar Carott. Before he was big on TV he used to record for a label called Sweet Folk All. Sweet Folk All! I’ve got loads of Jasper Carott records from before he was famous. Once I went with Hessle to the Royal Albert to record the Latvian Song Festival. A 500 voice choir no less! And John, he was a neighbour of David Rodigan. I met Rodigan then, before he was Rodigan the DJ, when he was Rodigan the actor. He did one of the first Guiness adverts on TV. Way way waaaay before he was Rodigan the DJ. He was curious what was going on and John Hessel would slip him acetates and he got to meet Shaka, everyone else.

Who else would be there?

Me, Sufferah. Shaka. Shaka would be camped out there all day. Be using the cutting room all day and no-one else could get in, then John would get pissed off ‘I’m not cutting any more tonight, this is my home!’

Shaka was in there, no-one else could go in. So where do you wait?

In the street, van loads of black people, the neighbours going (puts on posh voice) ‘what’s going on dear?’ I didn’t wait in a car. I was the first person, one of the first people, to go there and word spread. I was there before Shaka, before Coxone

So what did these cutting houses do before? Were they linked to soundsystem culture?

Not at all. They were tape to disc. Ordinary transcription service.

So the people who came from Jamaica, who were cutting dubs for their sound systems, where were they going?

John Hessel told me himself that he was intstrumental in building the Treasure Island studio. He was a friend of Duke Reid in Jamaica, before Duke Reid passed away. This was a Jewish guy, a white guy. I owe that man a lot, for taking me as a young man and telling me about the frequencies. He was instrumental in guiding me in how best to put the frequencies on so they reproduced properly. He was afraid of tripping the cutter head. You’d have to send to Germany for a new one and that cost wong. He wasn’t about to trip that for a dubplate for some young black boy. He’d send me back to the studio to remix it if my treble levels were too high.

I’m interested in the fact that cutting houses provided a sort of schooling…

It happened for me from talking to the cutting engineer. He’d been alive during the war, enough to be blinded. Him an elderly man, me a teenager. Whatever he said was gospel. If John said it, I had to do it. By this time I’d moved away from looping and moved into recording. I was recording with Matumbi and engineering. I’m interested in placing microphones and all that. I want the best for my product and I want to sound as heavy as the Jamaican stuff. And John was the best man to talk to.

Part two follows soon.

[Emma Warren]