Recently, I've been listening again to records with loads of bleeps in them. From the recent Donnacha Costello compilation through an evaluation process of older music that saw me immersed in the raw sounds of Neil Landsrtrumm's 90s album, 'Bedrooms & Cities' (there are also loads of bleeps on this year's album on Planet Mu) as well as a brand new record by Function on Sandwell District (which I urge you to buy), the past few weeks has all been about shifting tones and tweaked frequencies. As a way of marking my respect for the original bleepster, here's an interview I did with Mark Bell from LFO in 2003. Although the 'Sheath' album was low on the bleep-o-meter, the preceding single, 'Freak', made the glut of electro house that ensued after its release sound like weak-assed muck. Anyway, happy reading!
To paraphrase one of their greatest releases, LFO are back. Or perhaps that should read LFO is back. After a lengthy absence, the pioneering UK techno act – which now only constitutes Mark Bell – have returned with a new single, ‘Freak’ and album, ‘Sheath’. So what has been going on since the Leeds duo released their last album, ‘Advance’ in 1996?
“After we finished the last album, we both wanted to do something different,” explains Bell. “Bjork asked me to work with her, so I did that and Gez (Varley), the other member of LFO wanted to do more straightforward club tracks. LFO is very personal to me and was always my baby – I’m not saying Gez was LFO’s Bez, but I made over 90% of the music on our first two albums – so he agreed I should have the name. We didn’t have a big punch up, but that might have been fun!”
The more mature reader may remember LFO as one of the first UK acts to take electronic US music – techno, house, hip-hop and electro - and make it their own with definitive, system leveling basslines, bleepy sounds and pioneering, hypnotic grooves.
Tunes like ‘LFO’ (which made it into the Top 20) ‘We Are Back’ and ‘What Is House?’ were among the first British techno tracks to be played in clubs and were responsible for converting a whole generation to the joys of dance music.
LFO’s bass heavy anthems also showed that it was possible for European DJs and aspiring producers to emulate the underground electronic music emanating from Chicago, New York and Detroit with a minimal studio set-up.
Indeed, Bell’s own acquisition of the rudimentary technological tools needed to make their trademark bleep techno came from an unusual source.
“I’ve been messing about with machines since I was 13,” he says. “It all started because my first girlfriend’s dad had an 808 drum machine. He was using it for a backing beat for these terrible ballad versions of tracks like ‘Lady In Red’. I bought it from him for 30 quid and I haven’t stopped making music since.”
Armed with this second hand gear, the duo’s groundbreaking debut album, ‘Frequencies’ was released at the start of the 90s - when Bell was just 19.
While he admits he was thrown in at the deep end of the music industry, he nonetheless believes that not much has changed.
“It doesn’t seem that long ago and I didn’t grow up that much either! Actually, I never saw myself doing music for a living, I wanted to do graphics. I suppose it all happened by accident really.”
Despite LFO’s happy-go-lucky approach, Bell’s production skills had caught the attention of Icelandic pop star Bjork, who tried on a few occasions to enlist Bell’s services.
“When she left The Sugarcubes she asked me to work on her ‘Debut’ album, but I didn’t have the time,” Mark recalls. “I ended up working on her ‘Homogenic’ album in Spain for five months and we had a great laugh.”
Bell also produced the singer’s ‘Selma Songs’, the soundtrack to the award-winning ‘Dancer In The Dark’ movie, which Bjork also starred in.
Although he was unfazed by the move from the relative techno anonymity of LFO to becoming the producer for big name acts – “the people I’ve worked with let me do what I do, the main difference with producing is I have real deadlines to keep”- Bell admits that occasionally, he felt nervous.
“I totally shat myself when Bjork played at the Oscars,” he admits. “She was singing and I was about 15 feet away, wearing a tuxedo and playing some electronic stuff on stage. Al the time, I was thinking that 800 million people were watching me! The audience was lit up so I could see John Travolta, Jack Nicholson and the star of ‘Sex In The City’ staring at me thinking ‘what the fuck is he doing with that silly machine?’”
Apart from his ongoing working relationship with Bjork, Bell also produced the last Depeche Mode album, ‘Exciter’. Although he grew up idolizing the Basildon synth act, he believes that the strangest situations occurred outside the recording studio.
“The thing about working with big acts is that you’re sent to huge, over the top studio complexes, to the kind of places J.Lo records in, but I don’t mind, I just get on with it,” Bell says. "I work fast, so it doesn’t get boring. It only gets difficult when the songs are shit, but luckily I haven’t had many of them,” he adds. “The only odd thing about working with Depeche Mode was them asking for time off or asking me where we’ll go for food!”
Despite these commitments, Bell says he never stopped working as LFO – and has a portable set-up with him wherever he goes.
However, given that it took him seven years to produce ‘Sheath’, the 47-minute follow up to ‘Advance’, something doesn’t add up.
““Luckily, I’m in the position where my production work has put me in a situation where I don’t need to release music to make a living anymore, but I still make music all the time, “Mark maintains.
“I’ve got hard drives full of all sorts of crap and CDs all over my studio full of music, but when it comes to actually releasing it, it feels like a job,” he adds. “I remember reading a magazine article about the do’s and don’ts of releasing an album and that haunted me for years. I thought if someone chose some tracks and released them that would be the easiest solution. So a friend of mine who was making cassette compilations of my music anyway came in and chose all the tracks for the album.”
At one end of the ‘Sheath’ spectrum there’s the punky, electronic howl of ‘Mum-man’, the rave inflected ‘Snot’, the visceral grind of ‘Mummy, I’ve Had An Accident’ and the primal bleep-bass groove of single ‘Freak’, while at the other end, there’s hissing ambience on ‘Blown’ a haunting, woodwind track, ‘Nevertheless’ and the atmospheric soundtrack of ‘Moistly’.
Despite its brevity, ‘Sheath’ is a diverse work, full of darin attitude and raw energy.
“It’s only 47 minutes long, but has a wide range and it’s not too self-indulgent,” Mark observes. “I could have put out an LP’s worth of ‘Freak’, but if you’re going to release an album you need diversity. I don’t have the patience to sit through 70 minutes of a sub-sub genre, there has to be something fresh all the time.
“‘Premacy’, one of the tracks on ‘Sheath’ is nearly six years old. I really enjoyed listening to them all again, even if I can’t remember making some of them! For each different track on the album, there’s about 20 or 30 similar tracks lying around in the studio,” Mark reveals.
Promotional copies of ‘Sheath’ were sent out on cassette – the album fits neatly onto one side – but using this old school format wasn’t a coincidence.
He’s not a fan of MP3s and Bell won’t use or praise technology for technology’s sake. In fact, he thinks that the increased availability of music making technology has stymied creativity - and blames it for stagnation in electronic music.
“There are so many producers using software to produce and so much of it is music by numbers. People think modern electronic music is experimental but it’s not, the tones and frequencies were explored 60 years ago and it’s just generic, music-by-numbers. The difference between making music with software and working a track through machines is like playing football with a Playstation and playing football in your local park, there’s no attitude or human touch” Mark says, warming to the subject.
“It’s especially noticeable in techno, where people seem scared to progress. I’m not being a revisionist, but listen to the old Relief records and, although every track is clubby it’s also memorable,” he points out.
“However, if you go to a techno night, you hear the same track over and over again without any variation. It’s like the surprise and fun elements have gone and they’re trying to regurgitate the past in a narrowly defined way. They’ve wasted an opportunity to be creative.”
Against this mediocre backdrop, Mark Bell aka LFO is about to release his latest collection of raw electronic music. ‘Sheath’ may have been waiting in Bell’s studio for nearly seven years, but it’s about to deliver a wake up call to his jaded peers.
“I’m not a huge fan of the music, but at least electroclash has ideas and energy,” Mark concludes. “I went to a Gigolos party recently and there was a proper mix of people and, instead of pontificating about getting the rhythms to sound perfect, the crowd were being entertained and having fun. That’s what electronic music is really all about.”
LFO: he is back.
