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Great to see that electronic music magazine RA has finally discovered Russ Gabriel after only 16 years and a seminal back catalogue ('Future Funk' is my favourite). Welcome to the world of techno, guys, better late than never...
Hey, it's been a slow week around here because everyone in my house has been sick (again), including myself. I was the last one to get the dreaded flu and it laid me low today. The result is fewer posts, but that's all about to change now! As a taster for Bloc, here's a live set from the mighty Convextion for your listening pleasure. Recorded in London two years ago, this music has a timeless quality to it. Unfortunately I have no tracklisting, so if anyone reading can trainspot the tracks, please share the knowledge...
I have been in a reflective mood, so I have mainly been listening to:
Model 500: 'Classics' LP (R&S)
Sten: 'Squares' 12" (Smallville)
Turner: 'She Was Sent' (Remixes) 12" (Orphanear)
Andy Stott: 'Fine Metallic Dollar' 12" (Modern Love)
But as Pipecock might say, I have also needed to 'rock some shit', so I have also been checking:
MLZ: 'Alice Loop' (Modern Love)
Seldom Felt: 'Catscan' (Seldom Felt)
What has been rocking your world?
Here's a brilliant 'boogaloo' mix from Ed Dmx, found in the depths of the TI vaults (really just on my hard drive!) There is no tracklisting, but I'm sure you'll be able to trainspot a good proportion of the songs/tracks. Focusing on 80s electro and funk, it's probably radically different to what he'll play at Bloc - but hopefully it'll get you in the mood anyway...
Red Snapper was one of the most unusual acts to come from the great British electronic movement of the 90s. Ostensibly a live jazz band, they incorporated elements of techno, electro, hip-hop and even rockabilly to make an unusual, often great, noise. Having split up in 2002, the band’s core trio has reformed to play at Bloc and other selected dates this year. I caught up with drummer and Snapper spokesman Richard Thair to talk about why they split, their new line-up and ‘This Is England’…
Hey Richard, how are things?
“Everything’s great, thanks. I live in Wales now with my wife and kids. I bought a big house with an orchard on the side of a mountain and have a big studio - it’s much cheaper than London! I’ve recorded five albums since I moved down here, it’s all library music to pay the bills.”
So how come Red Snapper is reforming?
“Last Xmas, David (Ayers) and Ali (Friend) came down to my place. We did some music together because we wanted to see if we could use what we were jamming for a film soundtrack. The session went really well and then out of the blue, we were given the chance to headline one of the stages at the Big Chill festival. We also got the chance to work with a new jazz guy, Tom Challenger, he plays sax and clarinet with us - so we said let’s forget the vocalist and go back to jazz, punk and rockabilly. That’s how it all came together. Since we started working together, we have recorded five new tracks. I’m not saying that these will be on a new LP, but hopefully they will get some kind of release.”
How did the Big Chill headline gig happen?
“They were the ones who had commissioned us to do the film soundtrack, so that was the connection. Since then we have toured all over eastern Europe - we just got back from Prague the other day - as well as in Russia, playing at a festival to 5,000 people! We have a tour of the UK coming up, including the gig at Bloc, and we hope to play at some of the festivals in Europe this summer.”
How come you split up in the first place?
“The last proper album that we did was in 2000, ‘Our Aim Is To Satisfy Red Snapper’ for Warp, but we also did a remix album for Lo after that. We had decided to call it a day a year before the Lo release because even though the last album for Warp did well, they decided to drop us after ‘Our Aim…. Bizarre, but I’m sure they had their reasons - we’re not Maximo Park after all!”
So what does your new music sound like?
“It’s very raw and very representative about how we feel about music generally. We used to sample ourselves a lot, but this is a much more basic and stripped back sound, just the guitars, drums, double bass and sax. There is so much mediocre guitar music about now and what we’re doing is totally un-manufactured, we’re just following our feelings.”
You’ve been absent for more than five years: are you worried that all your old fans are into something else now?
“We’re more interested in attracting the new generation, but at the same time, it is incredible how many people have come out of the woodwork. At the time, we were a special little secret for a lot of people who were into electronic music, but those people are older now and things have come full circle and live music is much more in vogue than when we were at our most popular. When the three of us talked about reforming, we said that the worst scenario is that we get all the old Snapper fans coming along to the gigs and just a few new ones, which wouldn’t be a bad situation.”
What other changes have you noticed since the last time you were around?
“Well, what isn’t going to happen anymore is that people rush out to buy our new 12”. I think there is a future for vinyl, but not on the scale that we were used to. Illegal downloading has eaten away at sales, but I think if we were to release a new album tomorrow, our profile would mean we’d sell more than some new rave bunch… hopefully!”
What’s it like not having a vocalist anymore?
“We’re much happier without one at the moment, unless of course we can find one who can write amazing lyrics - why would we pass that up? One of the problems with Warp was that near the end, we felt that we lost creative control. They were pushing us heard to reach our ‘commercial potential’ and that’s what fucked us up in the end.”
Warp was smart to move into films: what do you make of ‘This Is England’?
“They have always been clever, were always looking ahead to see how could they do new things. They were the first to do something like Bleep and now their film venture. I’ve seen ‘England’ and think it’s great, I just wonder how long Mark Herbert, its director, will stay with them. Having won the Bafta, he must be getting some great offers at the moment…”
Finally, ‘Hot Flush’ is your best-known track: do you feel it’s a bit of a milestone around your neck?
“Why, because Weatherall remixed it?! No, I came from electronic music, that’s my background, so I still love it. It led a lot of people to the other music we did. We still play it live and it kicked off the other night in Prague when we performed it. Who knows, maybe if Weatherall hadn’t remixed it, it wouldn’t have been such a popular tune. I’m just happy it did so well and so many people liked it - one thing I have learnt is that it’s always good to be grateful for what you’ve got.”
One of the few drawbacks of being a vinyl collector is that physical space or the lack of it is often a problem that needs to be addressed. Unlike an MP3 collector, who can buy relatively cheap hard drive space - although there are probably completists out there with endless gigabytes of music - you can't simply press delete when you need to free up some room. Instead, I organise purges which are based around the concept of the 'two-year test'. It means that I go back through a two-year-old shelf of music to see what still sounds fresh. If a record sounds dated, it gets the boot. Heartless? Unsentimental? Possibly. The only way to deal with space requirements while streamling the collection? Definitely. This time, I focused my efforts on music I procured at the start of 2006, around the same time that I started the blog (hence the double-entendre post title). What still sounded fresh and what was fit for the bargain basement? Interestingly, the music that two years ago was the most popular stuff, the labels that were seen as zeitgeist defining, were the ones that had aged badly. Some of the releases on Mobilee and Poker Flat had interesting ideas and displayed an inventive approach, but they also sounded like other producers had quickly caught up with them and then overtook them. That's not to write off either labels' back catalogue: Landsky's '1,000 Miles' is still as sinister as ever, Sebo K's 'Horzions'/'Moved' is a monster of a record, as is the more low-profile 'Hexoflip' by Nhar, and Guido Schneider's 'Focus On' doublepack is still a ridiculously dry yet propulsive collection of techno minimalism. More tellingly old before their time were the records that these labels' releases inspired, the clickety-clackety sameyness of releases on Highgrade, Opposum and some Einmaleins (although I discovered an insane 303 track that Agnes had done for the last label in that list during the test). Established producers whose release have favoured a slow-burning rather than a meteoric, hyped rise fared well: Sieg Uber Die Sonne's 'Sovjet Supreme' is still a superior, moody deep house joint, Uwe Schmidt's 303 'collection' as Atom Heart - in which Schmidt pretended to compile loads of obscure back in the day acid tracks, which he actually produced himself and released under a dizzying array of names - kicks like a mule and Mike Shannon's Cynosure label makes a few appearances, most notably with Adam Marshall's muscular bass. There's even a spooky release on Real Soon by Repeat Orchestra that sounds like a rickety update of Nu Groove's house noir. It may be an imperfect science, but what the latest results of the two-year test suggest to me is that if producers follow their heart and produce music that sounds right for them as opposed to what sounds right for the marketplace, then they're following the right path and will still be welcome 24 months later...
I have been mainly listening to :
Kalon: 'Born Against' 12" ( Sandwell District)
XDB: 'Espac' 12" (Sistrum)
Alex Cortex: 'Skyle EP' 12" (Platzhirsch)
Yuro & Trago: Primary Roots' 12" ( Rush Hour)
James T. Cotton: 'Like No One' 12" doublepack (Spectral Sound)
Various Artists: '200' CD (Planet Mu)
One of the UK’s original electro producers, Ed Dmx aka Dmx Krew has released a slew of EPs and albums that touch on pop, disco, old school electro and ghetto. In straight-talking mode, he sets the record straight on the lack of innovative electronic music, his relationship with Rephlex and his distrust of the music industry. Check out his live/DJ set at Bloc.
Electro was hyped up for a few years and now, the proper stuff seems to have retreated back underground - how has this affected you?
“Thankfully I’m still very busy with gigs, but the whole scene, especially the part I’m involved in, has got much smaller. It seems that no one knows what dance music is anymore, no one knows what techno or electro is anymore. People seem to think techno is all about the Love Parade and German guys with funny haircuts, and everyone thinks that electro is cheesy house music or four skinny guys wearing ties. I just wish that all the rock guys would piss off back to indie and leave electro alone. At the same time, who wants to hear yet another electro track with the ‘Planet Rock’ drums and a robot vocodered vocal?”
Are you saying that there are too few original ideas and producers?
“Yes. Anyone who goes into a studio and thinks ‘I’m going to make a house track or an electro record’ has already destroyed any chance that they had of making anything new or challenging. Remember how exciting dubstep was back in 2002 when everyone was still calling it grime? Now that everyone knows that it’s called dubstep and all of those records sound the same. By the same logic, of course electro is boring: it’s 25 years old, of course house is boring as well. A lot of the electro from the US and Europe that is coming out now sounds like it was made 10 years ago.”
So apart from your own work, what music does excite you these days?
“At the moment, I’m struggling to find new music that excites me. I was really into the UK garage sound in 2001 when it morphed into something weird and I even went through a phase of buying ragga records! The producers whose records I rate are the same old people - Aphex, Dopplereffekt and Underground Resistance whenever they put out a record. I’m into Fastgraph as well as that whole Traxx, James T Cotton and Jamal Moss crew because there is something raw and primal about their music. I’m not sure what they’re releasing will still be really good to listen to in 20 years’ time. When I DJ, I mix up that stuff with older records by Juan Atkins and Derrick May and other older Chicago and Detroit stuff because a lot of the kids haven’t heard these records before.”
What about Italo Disco?
“For me, there are about 20 incredibly wicked Italo records, including ‘Spacer Woman’ and there are about 7,000 cheesy ones. I like the Classics series that Clone’s doing, although I’m sure the people who have been collecting the original releases for years must be gutted now.”
If electro and electronic music generally is so derivative, are you doing anything to chart new territories?
“The ‘Collapse of Wave Function’ series is my attempt to make music that is freakier, more experimental, music that pushes it a bit. I did eight EPs last years and some, like the Computor Rockers one, was more of a ‘robot’ electro one for the fans. It was a good track, worth putting out, but what I really want to do is release the freaky shit, but I’m not sure that it would do so well.”
What do you make about the digital sphere - do you think the internet has helped people find out about your music?
“As far as I’m concerned, the only good thing about the internet and MySpace is that people can find out about my music and I can get gigs without having to use an agent.
Before the internet existed, I discovered Parliament and Kraftwerk by accident, just by listening to the radio. I found out about Rephlex by finding a blue record with ‘TR303’ written on it in my local record store. You used to have to take a bit of a punt on music because most places didn’t have listening decks. There is so much great music to listen on MySpace and that’s great, but I hate the way that each page is classified by genre - it’s just another way of profiling groups of people.”
You have a long relationship with Rephlex - how come you have stuck together for so long?
“Because Rephlex don’t give a toss: they are genuinely trying to push it and that means it can be slow and frustrating, sometimes it takes ages to release stuff, but I’m always happy to do it. Grant who runs the label is one of my best mates and he is the biggest music fan, he’s just obsessed with music and making money doesn’t come into it. Unfortunately, labels like Rephlex are few and far between: it seems like being sincere is a thing of the past and now running a label is about second-guessing what people want to hear. Rephlex has never pandered to the market and that’s what the music is all about, pandering to tastes. The music industry is based on capitalism, which is all about people shit and convincing them that they want it - that’s why people only listen to one small genre of music. Ceephax Acid Crew released the tenth record on Breakin’ and all the people who are into electro didn’t like it and the acid techno people didn’t know about the label.”
What happened with Breakin’ - it seemed to disappear a few years ago?
“I had to take a break with the label for a couple of years because I was losing so much money, but now I have a good distribution deal with no real exposure. Breakin’ did four EPs last year and none of them lost any money. The label is helping me to get gigs, which in turn keeps it (the label) ticking over, but our sales are down. We used to do about 1,000 copies on vinyl of an unknown artist, but now it’s really a struggle to do 500-600, and the most we did of a release last year was 800 copies. At the same time, we have found cheaper ways to do things and the most the label ever sold was about 1,500 copies on vinyl. I’m sure I could do better if I was more of a businessman and hustled the label, but I’ve avoided the ‘industry’ and kept it at arm’s length as much as I can, ever since I started. When I was starting off, I was offered a few recording contracts, and if I had signed them, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation now
Three posts in one day - a record for this blog! I've had a rough time over the past 24 hours or so, so this is proving to be quite a pleasant escape from my personal troubles. Anyway, this is meant to be another short one, so for once, I'll stay to the point. I'm playing down at Electric City in Dublin tomorrow night, in between Phil Long and Siphon from FVF. If you're in the area and you'd like to pop down, email me for guest list. Please come and say hello if you do make it down...
PiL: 'Metal Box' (Virgin) Orgue Electronique: ‘The Garden (Crème Organization) Russ Gabriel: 'Konanco' (Pariter) Aux 88: 'Remixed' (Puzzlebox) Sascha Funke: 'Mango' (Bpitch Control)
