letting the music speak for itself, part 1

Robag Wruhme's remix 001 of 'Neuland' by Extrawelt, released June 2011.  Photo by Jason Hawkes - first non-cheesy 'London at night' image I could find.

hear the drummer get wicked

...or so goes the immortal phrase of rap legend Chuck D, 46 seconds into Public Enemy's 1990 single 'Welcome To The Terrordome' (that title an inverted reference to the debut album by Frankie Goes To Hollywood).

Tonight's post is in fact more of a reference to 'Hear The Drummer (Get Wicked)' by Chad Jackson which samples Chuck D, and is one the better tracks from the early days of sampling technology, in a line that begins in something like 1982 with former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren's 'Buffalo Gals' (inspiration for Neneh Cherry's excellent 1988 'Buffalo Stance'), and goes through classics like 'Theme from S-Express' (also 1988) and '19' by Paul Hardcastle (1985).

What makes Chad Jackson cool, and so much better than scraping-the-barrel, how-did-it-even-get-released rubbish from the same time like this or this (what would I do without dodgy charity shop compilation albums?), is the way his track is such a celebration of all the drum parts he samples, and through them a celebration of the original live drumming that made it all possible.

Finally, then, after this lengthy detour, is the point of tonight's post: the inspiring rhythms of legendary drummers.  First up Steve Gadd, whose brilliant drum part propels Paul Simon's 1975 single '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover'.  The very same year Gadd also played on 'The Hustle' by Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony: talk about versatile!

To my mind at least, you can't talk about great pop music drummers without mentioning Tony Allen, self-proclaimed 'master drummer of Afrobeat, 'drummer and musical director of Fela Kuti's band Africa 70 from 1968 to 1979' (thank you wikipedia), according to Brian Eno, "perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived" and the man Blur's Damon Albarn sings "really got me dancing" before the two collaborated in The Good the Bad & the Queen.  The first Tony Allen track I ever heard is still my favourite: 'Afro Disco Beat'.  There's so much going on I could listen to it again and again all day.

slicing and dicing

Tonight, vocal chop-ups.  Back in 1996 when the Chemical Brothers remixed the Manic Street Preachers 'Faster' (<-TOTP footage) they were quoted saying how they enjoyed remixing guitar bands because it gave them access to sounds that, as dance producers, they couldn't easily create themselves.  Listening recently to Four Tet's 2009 remix of the Manics' 'Pretension//Repulsion' (<-original track) I was totally reminded of this quote because it has this incredibly distinctive sonic palette that, no matter how much Kieran Hebden messes with, only ends up feeling a distillation and super concentration of the Manics sound that was already there.  As with any form of artistic abstraction, like in Mondrian's 1912 painting 'Trees in Blossom' (reproduced above), this only works when the original has a strong enough identity to survive.  On this Manics track the sound is slightly reminiscent of the equally distinctive sound of Nirvana's Unplugged album, check out their version of the Meat Puppets' 'Plateau'. 'Unplugged' would be an amazing album for a Fourt Tet-style remix treatment: Dave Grohl's brushes, Kurt's croaky crooning, the resonant acoustic guitars - recognisable in an instant.

For another great vocal chop-up check out this brilliant version of the Pet Shop Boys' 'Can You Forgive Her' (fast forward to to 2:38) produced in 1993 by Marc "MK" Kinchen best known for remixing the Nightcrawlers' 'Push the Feeling On', another great vocal cut up.  The full vocal remix of the Pet Shop Boys is cool, too, but the dub version focusses best on the great choice of words - juxtaposing general, "PAIN!", "SHE DEMANDS ---" with completely specific "BICYCLE!" so that you're instantly drawn into wondering what on earth the back story is.

Another classic from even longer ago (1987) is 'House Nation' by the fantastically-named House Master Boyz & Rude Boy Of House.  According to this great article I read recently, this one used to get played on twin copies and mixed out for ages by the legendary Alfredo Fiorito, original DJ at Amnesia in Ibiza.  Interestingly it was checking out Alredo's 'Original Sound of Ibiza' compilation that led me to George Kranz's deliciously cheesy 1984 track 'Din Daa Daa', the video for which is here.

Chop-ups are also a big thing for modern bass music, like the great one on the The xx's remix of Florence and the Machine, which so successfully transformed the vocal that at Glastonbury Florence ended up singing the remix instead of the original.  A great recent example I've been listening to a lot is 'You' by Bicep and Ejeca.

Tonight's post is in honour of my ever so cool bass playing friend Dom Green whose new band the Penny Orchids I went to see play at the 12 Bar Club tonight - so new in fact that there's not even any web stuff up on them yet but watch this space.  In honour of Dom then these are all about the funky cool rhythm of low slung bass and drums locked in tight together.  See, it's not all about being so complicated it could only have been put together on a computer.  In fact probably it's even more complicated when you play live and intuitive: all those imperfections that make things sound so good.  Like in 'Time' by Ty Segall & White Fence which came up on my cycle home a minute ago, or on Nirvana's 'Milk It', one of my all time favourite tracks, and one the band themselves were especially fond of, pointing in a new direction they might have ended up taking.  Like in the bad-ass bass-playing style of the Clash's Paul Simonon in 'Guns of Brixton', or as ripped off by Norman Cook in Beats International's 'Dub Be Good To Me'.  Or in more modern times the rock icon that is Warpaint's bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg, especially their cool track 'Bees' (<- track starts around 6.15 in).  Ice cool bass and drums heroes tonight I salute you: in the words of the mighty Folk Implosion: you're the ones, 'Natural One's.

So track number three in my initial inspirations and then I'll give it a break for today.  By the way I'm hoping that track by track, along with the blog title (in my mind, by the way, the reference is to Bass-o-matic, not Gershwin) the theme I'm going for here will make itself clear, without me having to get all ponderous and wordy.  At least for now I want to let the music speak for itself.  So, track three is 'Hot Music' by Soho, which I first heard at Tief at Corsica Studios back in April, an amazing dancefloor moment in Medlar's set (<-soundcloud download of a promo version) when the song, crowd, lights and everything totally came together.  In all likelihood it had a lot to do with the back room being chock full of people seeking refuge from the slightly relentless main room Morgan Geist set, but when this came on everyone seemed to be suddenly re-energised and with the coloured lights it felt like being transported to the Dance Energy studio circa 1990! - perfect really, especially when you notice the link between the band Soho (<- their own site, full of loads of music history) and 90s cheese - they're actually the same guys responsible for the classic Smiths-sampling track 'Hippy Chick'...

Here's the other main one, I came across it on Hype Machine yesterday, posted on facebook and it immediately got liked so it can't just be me this time.  The track is 'Follow Birds' (<-Bandcamp) by Robot Koch (<-link to his soundcloud).  Certainly an artist I'll be making time to check out further, from my initial look there's a decent sized back catalogue and plenty of positive critics' comments.

So how else to start this new blog of mine than by posting the couple of songs that have inspired me to do it?  First of all 'Who’ll Pay Reparation On My Soul' by the London-based artist Stubbs (first name Andre according to google) on his Reparation Of My Soul EP (Baalsaal Music, Germany).  I first heard this running around the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park, kicking off hour two of Mr C's epic seven hour Freq 10 mix (<-free to download from Soundcloud) celebrating 10 years of his Superfreq night at Paramount on the 32nd floor of the Centre Point building on Tottenham Court Road.