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Friday, 16 May, 2008

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M.I.A

She is the ideal definition of woman; beautiful, intelligent, artistic and funny. The embodiment of achievement against the odds. An Aphrodite of the 21st century, walking on shards of shattered electro vinyls, the odd grime beat and some tabla skins. 29 years within this mortal coil, neverendingly pinballing across the globe, Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam has been many things; refugee, visual artist, daughter of a rebel fighter, film-maker, musician, sister, rapper – she’s done the rounds. Her history has been well documented, almost to the point of tedium, but... there’s a bloody good reason for it. It’s interesting. Her childhood spent bouncing between Sri Lanka, India and the (equally exotic) confines of a London council estate as her father fought as a Tamil activist instilled her with that fiery sense of reaction. Reaction against politics. Reaction against music norms. Reaction against gender definitions. It all bubbled over in her acclaimed, Mercury nominated debut ‘Arular.’ A hot bed of political sloganeering, base electro beats and sub-continent styles, it blew the lid off the British music industry. You could almost hear the sound of perplexed scalps being scratched in record label board rooms across London as the say-so-ers muttered to themselves: ‘How can this be so popular... it’s so weird! So unique!’ — Unique it was. The grime kids who had previously laughed at the funny trilbies of the indie lot (and vice versa... but with different headwear), now found themselves next to each other at her concerts. It managed to capture the attention of anyone who was excited about music; be it indie, pop, ‘lectro, rap, whatever... well... maybe not the metallers, who were all too busy sticking devil horns in the air and convincing each other they’re all really scary despite being skinny middle class white kids from the home counties. — The question posed is: how do you follow up such a monumental and controversial album? Not one to shy away from a challenge – after all, this is a girl who only started making music four years ago at the insistence of Peaches – she has pulled out all the stops (literally). Despite hoping to move to New York, and actually renting a house, she was plagued by VISA problems, and eventually forced to record the album in Trinidad, India, Jamaica and various stops in between. It may have cost her the very valuable time of too-brilliant-to-bemortal producer Timbaland, but it’s left some amazingly eclectic results instead. — ‘I kinda just had to go and kill time because they didn’t let me into the States for ages,’ explains the singer, who is surprisingly shorter in the flesh than I’d imagined. ‘My whole creative process has been a waiting game determined by where I can go and where I can’t go.’ — ‘I went to India because I knew it. I knew how to speak the language and I knew what I was going to get, so tracks came out of that. The sound came out of it. There was this one particular drum I wanted to use, so I recorded that and went to Trinidad. It seemed like a natural progression because they also have Indian music, and they understand it. Not that I deliberately wanted to do Indian music... but you see a culture that’s 2000 years old, then you see one that’s more modern, more intertwined with Jamaican culture, then you go see Jamaica. It’s progression...’ — New album ‘Kala’ is a melting pot of (dare I say it) ethnic sounds. It’s a collection of music distilled from her travels; a musical photo album. Some people might even use the dreaded words ‘world music,’ but all shaken up to sound strangely palatable for the pop hungry masses. There’s the tribal / temple drums of ‘Birdflu,’ equipped with chicken clucking samples and the sounds of Indian schoolgirls singing playground songs. Or the Aussie flavoured didgeridoo-laden ‘Down River.’ Or the track ‘$20’; surely the sound of Blue Monday coming down in a room with nothing else but a female Frank Black singing ‘Where Is My Mind,’ while playing Space Invaders. — ‘My main thing was to go to India, use their instruments, and make it not sound Indian,’ she says with the look of concentration across her face. ‘Even though everyone says my music is Bhangra, as well as grime, electro, hip hop or whatever, I never really thought it was. When I went to India, and I got there to see my mum, I realised how all their music progresses in that direction. Whatever you throw into the pot, they still digest it in a certain way. I wanted to flip that around to see if you could make, say, Baltimore Club using their drums. Because most of the time it’s always the other way round. So when I went there I tried to get the drummers to play Baltimore Club on these 2000 year old drum kits at the temple and shit... It was difficult. I achieved stage one; getting the sound of the drums down in the chaos of it, determining what they could play and what they couldn’t.’ — She continues: ‘I make music out of accidents completely. When I make music I have to make room for accidents and then it’s cool. For example, in [recent single] ‘Boyz,’ we were just reversing and flipping the drums. We had this drum pattern up and just, accidentally made a loop that skipped.’ — There’s a lot to ‘Kala.’ It’s a big step forward. Where the lyrics and immediacy of the debut had been the focus, here it’s on making meticulous music. This is a step away from the ‘hey-I’ve-just-discovered-how-to-make-songs-ona- drum-machine’ mantra, and a giant leap towards musical complexity and instrumentation. And that’s an expected repercussion when the only criticism levelled at her last effort from few sources was that it lacked musicality. — ‘I kinda wanted to think as a producer. On ‘Arular’ I was just grateful to have a record deal and be able to sing, and everybody was able to help me and I didn’t give a shit. While doing ‘Arular’ I could tell everyone what I wanted to do, they came off as producers, but on this one I wanted to... come out. There’s more in production, and less about being controversial.’ — It’s difficult to have a message and still focus on art I guess? ‘Yeah, it’s fucked up,’ she replies with typical laconic prose, a slight smirk lifting the corner of her mouth. ‘It’s hard to do both. I didn’t want people to think I’m political, and expect that all my life. I was like ‘look, if I’m making this beat without a man in a 5 mile radius of this studio.... That’s a political statement.’’ — ‘In 2002 and 2003 it was the peak of political stupidity and I wanted to make an album that just went ‘Arghh!’ and do that with the music as well. I was like ‘I don’t give a shit about music, this is how instant shit should be anyways.’ And then people said, ‘I don’t know if she’s actually musical, it’s all about what she says.’ No – I am fucking musical I just never had the opportunity or money to do that. Nobody ever bought me a guitar at 14, and I was never going to get one. It is just not part of how refugees fucking live. I was too busy trying to get an education so I can work at a petrol station.’ — Are you still politically motivated? She leans back quietly, thinking: ‘I think this whole shit with the VISA is about as political as it gets for me at the moment. I don’t want to give people the opportunity to twist stuff and do whatever. It’s something I really want to get into, but it’s not something I want to do as a musician. If you’re really into that shit, then you need to give your life to it. At least I’d like to give some time when I’m not thinking about fitting in touring, or flying back to do stuff. That’s gonna be what I do when I stop this and disappear.’ — Comparing ‘Kala’ to ‘Arular’ is inevitable. They live next to each other and represent totally different things, something reinforced by the fact that each was named after one of her parents. Where her debut album proper was a peon to her father, Arul, full of social commentary and revolutionary rhetoric, her sophomore album continues to reference her family’s roots, but this time her maternal branch, Kala. Talking about Maya’s political connections seemed inevitable with the release of Arular, and it cast an often uneasy shadow over the work, placing the focus on the internal controversy instead of the incredibe hooks that lay within. — ‘The last album was my father’s and I think [my mother] did a better job. They were both really competitive. His idea was to save the world, but hers was to save the family. They were always fighting about it.’ — ‘My mum didn’t have that many opportunities. She comes from a little town in Jaffna, not educated past her O-levels, always doing minimum wage labour and she stayed at that level, but she wanted us to have a good education and do well and stuff like that. To me, it was always a thing not to be dependant with three kids. I wanted to stand on my own two feet. Making this record really meant that to me. Making ‘Arular’ I just made something – I said the things I wanted to say – and things happened because of it. I wasn’t thinking how to build myself a life out of it. On this one, it was difficult because I had to choose between being this tough chick, and being able to do that, and being strong, and growing into a role against being a ditzy chick that could marry some dude.’ — Do you find you have to balance the two; on the one hand being this strong willed, intelligent woman, and on the other, still being a woman with all the desires and needs that go with it? ‘Yeah, but men get really intimidated by that. You have to balance them, but it gets harder and harder, you know that. The more they achieve, it gets harder. Especially if you’re a creative girl. If you’re a creative guy, you just have some 20 year old chick lying about the place and you can say ‘Oh my god, whatever,’ know what I mean? If you’re a chick, it doesn’t work like that.’ It certainly doesn’t work like that if you’re a female muso with seasonings of hip hop to the repertoire. The criterion dictates it needs all be bitches, bling and gyrating stupidly on the top of hired out cars, not hiring 100 ‘Boyz’ to dance for you in your videos. Hip hop has lost the raw edge M.I.A promotes, in favour of a commercial formula for success. — Have you been put in positions where you’ve felt uncomfortable, where you’ve felt pressured into putting looks before music? ‘I’ve had situations where I’ve gone into work with people and the first thing they’ve asked me to do is sing about sex. I always feel like if I was going to I would’ve done it already, and if I had, I would have done it a certain way. I don’t like that coming up first. You walk in and it’s like; woman, radio, sings about sex, gold. It is a bit of an American mentality, but that’s in every genre; hip hop, pop, everything. Not so much indie, but that’s why I feel comfortable being able to access every genre.’ — Did your parents get you into music at a young age? ‘Not really. My dad never listened to music, I didn’t really know him. I knew every single song from a movie, because my mum was really into movies. I’d watch any old crap; anything and everything. I had this Boney M tape which haunted me for about five years of my life. My uncle went to stay in Italy for a bit and he brought that tape back to the village. That tape went everywhere. He used to go and get drunk when I was five or six and come in at three in the morning. He’d throw the tape at me when I was asleep and tell me to ‘Go get up and dance for me now.’ He was really scary. I used to cry and dance around for him. I was known for being a bit of a dancer so he made me get up and dance for hours for his friends. He was really quite thuggy and he had a gang of dudes and used to get in real trouble. All of the Aunties would wait at the door. He did it as a joke, to make the dudes laugh, but he was a bully.’ — It sounds like family is important to you? ‘Yeah. The world moves so fast, with technology and everything, moving to New York you can go either way. You can have no time for shit like that, or go down this route. When you get the opportunity to stay in hotels, you can be who you want, shag who you want, duh duh duh duh duh. The more freedom and opportunities open up for me, the more I step backward and want something secure to hold on to. Only because I’ve never had it. I’ve never had a home my family’s owned. Even my mum lives in a council flat. It’s natural for me to want to alleviate that.’ — It’s an interesting and diverse life M.I.A’s lived. Resultantly, she’s certainly not lacking in any confidence. But there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Many may remember her edited speech at the 2005 Mercury Music awards. It did little but propagate her own high opinions of herself and how ‘like, totally real’ she is. Coming from anyone else, it would have been caustically cringeworthy, but with Maya, there’s the real feeling that she is totally herself... warts and all. And besides, that renowned melody dodger Johnny Borrell has been getting away with far higher levels of egotism for years without justified violent retribution. Today, she’s in top spirits and the preconceived cockiness I was expecting is completely vacant. — She’s a true renaissance woman; from painting to movie-making, she’s been there. Having studied film at Central St Martin’s, music never really seemed a plausible ending. But strangely, it’s this visual background that has given her an indelible approach to beat-making. Where a highly studied lifelong musician may approach songwriting like some mathematical formula, Maya simply observes and does what feels right. — ‘I tell people I’m not really a musician, but it is my priority,’ she says. ‘I’m livingit out now. Everyday I wake up I have the choice to give it up and do whatever I want. But this is what I do and what I enjoy. When I do make music I think ‘If this were a film, how would I edit it?’ I do draw from other things. Being in art school, and having studied filmmaking, it’s really conditioned me. If you’re an artist or filmmaker you naturally become an observer. I’m not an exhibitionist or things like that. I’d rather sit in a corner and think about things. I care about my work...’ — Father versus mother. Politics versus art. Masculine versus feminine. Synthetic versus organic. M.I.A’s new album represents a lot of things. But all that really matters is that it’s a delight to listen to. In Maya we have a renaissance woman; someone so talented that no matter what she touches you know it’s going to be gold. We’re all just lucky enough the she has happened to turn her hand to music; something she’s travelled the world in order to create. It could well be a career highlight that will undoubtedly – and deservedly – send her into the pop stratosphere. ‘KALA’ IS OUT NOW (XL RECORDINGS)

tags: | mia | sri lanka | india | london | arular | kala | xl recordings

Mr Bongo

VITAL STATS Label Head: Mr David Bongo Label Founded: 1989 Annual Releases: 3-4 artist albums, 2-3 DVDs, 3 compilations, 5 singles Mission Statement: Bringing Brazilian sounds to the masses Website: http://www.mrbongo.com/ ‘Without labels like Mr Bongo and Soul Jazz, those styles of music would be forgotten; those labels are keeping them alive…’ Coming from producer du jour Mike Pelanconi ( whose recent credits include Lilly Allen's smash ‘Alright Still’ for Regal/EMI and Little Barrie’s ‘Stand your Ground’ for Genuine/PIAS) , this is one legitimate testament to the Mr Bongo legacy. The Bongo man himself, David, is also a bit of a legend on the global DJ circuit, known for his connoisseur Brazilian selections – think funk carioca, bossa, batucadas and samba soul and funk fresh and classic – as well as his penchant for hip hop, reggae and jazz. Mr Bongo has flexed his skills at such prestigious sweat boxes as the Mambo Inn, Blue Note Japan, Favela Chic France and London’s Jazz Café, as well as adding his worldly styles to a heap of festivals and of course the odd Brazilian carnival. Partay! Back in 1989 the nascent Mr Bongo label was a specialist record shop handling Latin American music, later spawning the Disorient (for Japanese house) and Beyongolia (for hip hop) imprints. Championed by Gilles Peterson and his favorite Dingwalls venue, Brazilian music carved out its space on the UK scene and the store found itself thriving. Another floor was added to stock hip hop, while Mr Bongo’s long-time artists like renowned jazz-man Terry Callier, the folk-funking Doris and Cuban maestro Hanny enjoyed a whole new generation of admirers. Check out one of the sizzling Brazilian Beat compilation series to understand the label and its roots – if that ain’t enough to turn your grey skies blue then you’re screwed. Currently flying the Mr Bongo flag and blending those ‘Brazilian Beats ‘n Pieces’ is twice-crowned DMC finalist Phat Kev, splicing sunshine and splendour for a spicier British summer soundtrack. Meanwhile the cosmopolitan Jose Conde is releasing his ‘(R)evolucion,’ album, a rootsy, funked-up Latin dance trip along with his lively band of musicians, Ola Fresca or ‘Fresh Wave.’ Russ Dewbury, one of the UK’s leading antiquarians of black music, clubbed together with remixer brother Ben Mitchell to bring us ‘Beyond The Rains,’ a soul-meets-jazz-rubs-against-Latin-gone-funky beast that even brought a smile to Robbie Williams’ face. About to blow too is Prince Fatty’s ‘Survival Of The Fattest’ vintage reggae fest, brainchild of Mike Pelanconi and graced by a whole host of specialist musicians and classic vocalists such as Winston Charles of ‘Mr Fix It’ fame. Beats and pieces aside, the Mr Bongo label is all about good times with a conscience. See their celebrated Bottletop campaign, an in-house charity built to fund health education initiatives the world over; its first venture alongside the British Mulberry brand raised over £250, 000. Wowza! Running with the motto ‘Sound Affects,’ the idea is to make music generate cash for humanitarian projects. ‘Africa,’ the first volume, is brimming with classics from Ghana and Nigeria, remixed by the likes of Paul Oakenfold, Adam Freeland and Quantic and features two CDs of other-worldly wickedness, one original and one reworked. While celebrating what is best in Brazilian culture and championing its sound, Mr Bongo and his crew have also been proactive about assisting this impoverished region along its route to development. In north east Brazil, more than 77% of the population live below the poverty line, while 30% of children below the age of five suffer from malnutrition and 2 million children receive no education. In 1994 the label registered Street Angels as a UK charity to boost AMADA, a homegrown charity formed in Dona Aurora, a shanty town on the outskirts of Salvador which works to supply the community with a school and legal system. Now the town is equipped with a health care clinic as well, instrumental in tackling issues such as domestic violence, STIs and substance abuse. Since then the Mr Bongo label has been more than generous with its profits from record sales; sound affects indeed! Like Pelanconi said, we rely on niche labels like Mr Bongo to keep enriching our sonic awareness, to unearth remote sounds so we can celebrate these musical rarities. Skank to the Fattest retro reggae flavours around this summer or lie back to sample some true Latin soul; with Mr Bongo the love is all around.

tags: | mr bongo | soul jazz | disorient | beyongolia | gilles peterson | phat kev | jose conde | more...

Unkle

‘War stories are about the places that you’ve been in your life, the mad scenarios, the difficulties, the shit...’ Dark, dramatic, disorientating, challenging; welcome to the musical and lyrical landscape crafted by the men from UNKLE. This is a thrilling kind of purgatory; this is catharsis; this is Never, Never, Land. A twilight zone to which James Lavelle and Richard File obsessively return: their fiercely anticipated third LP, ‘War Stories’, is another exercise in depth-charging; more nightmares interrogated. An operatic cacophony of voices and selves takes on a guitar-led sonic quagmire, digging out the grimy origin of intractable matters and feelings and driving them back below. While it might not be advisable for sensitive souls to follow the dictates of a secret intro to ‘Back And Forth’ on a collection of UNKLE remixes, ‘Listen... with earphones in the dark,’ the record is riddled with and built for self-immersion and self-interrogation. Whether ‘War Stories’ has you fleshing out its undisclosed terrors with your own demons, or you use it as a dream catcher, a talisman to contain the darkness, its transient rays of light will afford you blinks of wonder. Dense, chaotic and with characteristic unrelenting UNKLE intensity, ‘War Stories’ defies numbness and indifference; it crowds the mind’s eye like black ink bleeding across a blank page. — I imagine my meeting with UNKLE to be on a suitably sombre day; greyness, prophetic winds, drizzle. The capricious British weather has other plans: enter a blazing sun, preternatural blue sky and, worst of all, queue the bridsong. I’m sitting with one half of leftfield’s most macabre musicians on a bench in a playground of surreal brightness, and even the man himself is relaxedly chirpy. A detoxing Richard File is rolling liquorice cigarettes, guzzling Evian and making surprise diversions from our interview to greet the skittering, tuneful wildlife - ‘Look, Starlings! They’re definitely Russian, aren’t they?’ When it comes to shooting the duo, we even have to seek out the shadowy spots to construct a backdrop in the appropriate mood. Because for all the departures in terms of sound and production from the first two UNKLE records, with ‘War Stories,’ the primary emotional register is the same; caught between rocks and hard places. — So are these guys simply married to the dark side? Rich squirms a little and laughs, ‘That’s where me and James collided ten years ago, being that way inclined musically, so there’s always going to be a strong foundation there. I’m into serious music, the records I’m going to play my kids will be serious; that’s where I get off, you know?’ But is there no respite? Pity us, great war lord! ‘It’s not all doom and gloom, there are songs there that ultimately give hope – ‘Price You Pay,’ certainly, beyond that... I don’t know! That’s the mid-point of the record, though. Also, it’s how you look at things, I’ve got mates who can’t cope with what you call ‘dark music,’ but for me it pulls me up, it’s going down to the fucking depths and some people aren’t up for it. Each to their own!’ I joke there could be a warning on UNKLE records similar to those for explicit content; Rich chuckles again, ‘Everyone should experiment at least once.’ — And experimentation is the order of the day with ‘War Stories’: the ever ambitious pair, whose previous collaborators include DJ Shadow, Richard Ashcroft and Ian Brown, recruited Queens Of The Stone Age producer Chris Goss to wrestle their third record into an alternative direction. Where ‘Psyence Fiction’ and ‘Never, Never, Land’ bare their very machinery as they judder and snarl along, all processed beats and electronic excursions, ‘War Stories’ matches the very human dilemmas it confronts with generous helpings of organic production, as well as beat splicings. Further, the LP was created between London and LA’s desert Rancho de la Luna. Speed-freak biker guitarists thrash against studio wizardry; live, urgent instrumental parts replace confected elements. (So ‘War Stories’ demands the introduction of an UNKLE show - a forthcoming global tour finally sees their work presented live.) Rich recalls: ‘Working with Autolux on ‘Persons And Machinery’ was amazing – with those musicians you can plug anything into anything, and it sounds great!’ Josh Homme, The Duke Spirit, Ian Astbury and 3D are among the considerable guest vocalists, which while it may confuse the album’s specific style, gives a blurring effect that might just be by design. Is ‘War Stories’ meant to morph into a many-headed beast that no matter with which tongue he speaks; no matter which mask he dons, he is still trapped in the same maddening mentality – or, ‘head space,’ as James tends to say – and knows only the language of frustrated desire; cries of despair? — One UNKLE trademark is obscure, horror-show vocal sampling, at its most prominent on ‘Never, Never, Land.’ A downtrodden narrator extols our grim lot: ‘That’s life, man, that’s what you’ve got to go through;’ a Star Wars style narrator echoes: ‘Even now in heaven, there were angels carrying savage weapons...’ to usher in feverish guitars. But on ‘War Stories,’ significantly, we have James himself singing for the first time, his direct and raw appeal of ‘Hold my hand, / I need you now,’ laid over an urging groove of a bassline. Rich’s icy backing refrain ‘Secrets everywhere...’ serves to expertly warp – the way only UNKLE know how - what might have been a relatively straight love song. Cascading as the album does from its intro motif of disappointment – the bluesy female moan, ‘How thoughtless of you to let me down, / When I thought you’d be around...’ – ‘War Stories’ clearly concerns itself with private battles rather than political conflicts. On ‘Mayday,’ Liela Moss’ understated lines of torture, ‘I ebb and you flow, / It’s a bit screwed that you can’t catch my love,’ belies jaunty guitars and rousing drum rolls. Thus real human pain is etched around the encroaching soundscape. Usually with UNKLE the music is more emotive than any overt lyrical expression, but ‘War Stories’ is dogged in its message, inhabited as it is by victims who refuse to be silenced. — Future classic ‘Burn My Shadow’ keenly demonstrates this new style; the imperative both felt to distill lengthy, cinematic works into the sharp, urgent narratives of distinct figures. Tentative guitar strumming becomes an almighty barrage, only to fall away as Ian Astbury’s character steps up. The song is a parting speech, his dignified answer to impending dissolution, whether voluntary or enforced. ‘I have burned my tomorrows, / And I stand inside today,’ is his majestic resignation above eery, wayward chimes. He continues: ‘I will face my destroyers, / I was ambushed by the light, / And you judged me once for falling, / But this wounded heart will rise...’ Herein lies another departure from UNKLE’s existing repertoire: the semblance of hope, the promise of salvation. In their very first live show, ‘Burn My Shadow,’ was orchestrated by stacks of retro televisions, hectic with rolling, monochrome bar codes. Perfectly suited to a song about the erasure of identity – so many lives flattened and reduced to the same value or residue, the same senseless code – the flashing black and white lines also direct us to the pair’s unprecedented use of contrast, the light and the dark. It was crucial this time for UNKLE to temper the darkness, to slice epic electronica and carve out room for dynamic songs. Vividly felt, insistent characters demand space all of their own, finding a more fitting accompaniment in erratic guitars than soulless studio beats. In James’ view, this intensely human focus and execution ‘represents what UNKLE is about the best – I’m more proud of this record than any other.’ — ‘A lot of fucked up shit went on with ‘Never, Never, Land,’ I wasn’t in a good place, really,’ confides James. ‘I was burnt out; Mo Wax had finished, my relationship had broken down, I was doing a lot of drugs and was just not happy.’ When I ask what kind of film that record would have been, ‘Apocalypse Now,’ – they all are!’ is his laughing response. The analogies continue: for ‘War Stories,’ if the record were a person, it’d be someone ‘very confused, like me!’ An animal? We decide it’d have to be a black panther, bent on some twilit mission through the undergrowth. How about a drink? ‘A bottle of meths, probably!’ (Here James echoes Rich’s earlier joke when I ask him how he imagines we’ll feel as ‘War Stories’ marks its dubious, distorted close: ‘Downing a bottle of vodka and dialing 999, probably!’) Last we discuss the LP’s dominant emotion; ask James and it’s a feeling ‘of internalising, searching,’ so when pressed to find just four words to crystallise this rich record, ‘The highs and lows,’ are his reply. — James alludes to past difficulties between the duo, talking about recording the first two albums – ‘I couldn’t repeat those scenarios, testosterone-led angst, sick of the attitude going on,’ – so it’s especially touching when I recall Rich earlier: ‘It was great to collaborate on a song vocally with James. The desert gave him freedom, being away from stuff – it meant a lot.’ James paints Goss as a calming influence, ‘he has a Buddha kind of quality to him. He said, “This is a Broadway play, we’re going to make theatre...” Although, to be honest with you, there were tense moments with this one as well!’ ‘Theatrical’ is indeed apt for ‘War Stories,’ its hysterical human pitch, apocalyptic trajectory and epic guitar work make it modern tragic art. Contrast this overt drama and narrative aspect with the more abstract, atmospheric effect of ‘Never, Never, Land,’ rolling out vast, swathing soundscapes inhabited by grainier figures, swallowing their screams. When I ask James whether UNKLE is about fantasy or therapy, ‘Confronting things,’ is his immediate reply, just as Rich tells me about their chiaroscuro work, ‘It’s just reality, it’s recording what you feel. But believe me, I enjoy my life immensely!’ — ‘War Stories’ was built to be about emotion and experience undiluted; axing excess beats and clunkier movements in the pursuit of concision, of ‘real songs.’ Which means that a proper UNKLE tunes is bass-driven with an intricate beat pattern, and lyrical content is central. Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Massive Attack and the Beastie Boys all influenced ‘War Stories.’ Looking to records like ‘Check Your Head,’ and ‘Mezzanine,’ James admires the way the bands ‘shed their previous skin.’ His shedding metaphor is appropriate; a violent sensation that UNKLE’s music often enacts and interrogates is that of a disintegration of self, and the dread attending threatened identity. While the sentiment behind the genius ‘Burn My Shadow’ feels perplexing and hyper-sensitive, a sardonic requiem for a troubled life, its widely banned video carelessly suggests a suicide bomber. But remember the conflicts this record registers are deeply personal, not political: individual war stories detailing paranoia, need, betrayal, disenchantment, distress, regret. Hear the ghostly melody of an abandoned bell, brooding piano keys, achingly beautiful strings, skeletal handclaps, claustrophobic beats... Guitars soaring and crashing with hope... Because this is music demanding an immediate, visceral response, music that Rich hopes ‘goes straight for the heart.’ For James, ‘If it wasn’t for that, I’d go live in the countryside and grow vegetables...’ May the sweet Lord forbid that forevermore! ‘ WAR STORIES ’ IS OUT NOW ( SURRENDER ALL )

tags: | unkle | war stories | back and forth | surrender all

Calvin Harris and his keyboardist Sean interview

Calvin Harris and his keyboardist Sean interview

Current buzz boy Calvin Harris is nursing his hangover with Notion and his keyboardist Sean (vs The Robots) over a burger and chips. Not so fresh from his very first London gig – ‘people were even nodding their heads by the end’ – and unaware of his impending love-in with the mainstream media (the Dumfries dude’s electro ditties have been rinsed across the airwaves and now even daytime TV is dipping its greasy fingers in to sample his bedroom beats and bleeps) he likes to deflect questions with cheeky awkwardness. Scruffy and bemoaning his recent experience as an M&S employee, not even Calvin could have guessed that a couple of months down the line he’d be booked up by Global Gathering and making much more than music with the delectable Kylie Minogue – boy dun good! While his forthcoming record ‘I Created Disco’ is a D.I.Y dream, all bogus homespun samples, dodgy lyrics and comical vocal manipulations, you get the feeling that his future tunes will have a high tech studio sheen. Oh, and Ms Minogue’s sugar frosted tones, of course: poptastic! WHO’S THAT BLOKE TALKING DISCO ON YOUR TITLE TRACK – AN ALTER EGO? CALVIN: I did it in a funny voice in my garden - one of my many massive egos. I was just replicating what someone else said; this dude invented disco with his wife, Mary. They had a good thing going. You know, they invented it in the 40s and it lay undiscovered for almost 30 years. WE KNOW YOU’RE ALL ABOUT THE COLOURS, BUT ISN’T THAT A BIT SUPERFICIAL? CALVIN: Yeah, pretty much, but I just love it. When I was at school with Sean he wore yellow trousers and see-through waistcoats. SEAN: It was just like a yellow bag, round my waist with a purple string. SO YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO WEAR SCHOOL UNIFORM? CALVIN: He didn’t. He was special. SEAN: They just let me get away with it. I wasn’t actually officially registered at that school, I just turned up anyway. And nobody said anything. CALVIN: He had the last laugh. He passed art. WITH FLYING COLOURS... WHAT IS ‘COLOURS’ ON THE ALBUM REALLY ABOUT? CALVIN: It’s just a daft little song about nothing in particular. Very loosely based on a dude who’s kind of... You know when you can’t think of words? YOU PICK YOUR MOMENTS, DON’T YOU? BLOODY HELL! CALVIN: Now we do a song about girls who should wear colours. It’s slightly sexist and a bit out of order, but quite funny... WHAT ABOUT ‘I LIKE GIRLS,’ SURELY YOU DON’T LIKE THE SCORES OF BIRDS LISTED IN THOSE LYRICS? CALVIN: I do, yeah. I can get on with any girl. I don’t necessarily mean in a romantic way... SEAN: He just wrote that to make a point, basically that he wasn’t gay, I reckon. CALVIN: You see, I produce the music, then make up entirely fictional situations and characters to fit each song. That’s why my accent might change slightly. It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, but it’s not Goldie Lookin’ Chain. HAD YOU BEEN WAITING TO DROP ‘ACCEPTABLE IN THE 80S’ UNTIL THE MASSES GOT ALL NOSTALGIC OVER THE ERA AGAIN OR IS THIS JUST HAPPY TIMING? CALVIN: It’s all part of our cynical game-plan implemented some years ago. I have a team who spot trends and I got a fax in from Jonathan, my guy at head office, and he said: ‘Yeah, mate. It’s the 80s next year. Can you write a song?’ So I was like, ‘OK. The most obvious 80s record I can.’ It’s paid off brilliantly. AND YOU’VE GOT ALL THOSE KIDS WEARING LEGGINGS OUT ON THE STREET... CALVIN: No. That’s the Klaxons. I don’t force anyone to do anything. I’m not starting any sort of trend. I’m just making tunes. SURE, BUT WHEREVER WOULD WE BE NOW WITHOUT THE 80S? CALVIN: People who were adults in the 80s didn’t have a very enjoyable time, which is fair enough. They’re alright. We need the 80s. Or the 90s would have been... different... We’d still be listening to T-Rex and Slade... NOT CALVIN HARRIS? CALVIN: Well, you probably would be, but I’d just be making really shit music. THE GUARDIAN SAYS YOU’RE ‘A MORE THAN SLIGHTLY COMIC ELECTRO-FUNK EGOMANIAC HAILING FROM BONNY DUMFRIES’... CALVIN: It got a lot worse by the end, when they were doing the ‘Hello’ sort of quips. It was: ‘Most likely to make us laugh, least likely to make us dance.’ Which comes across politely as if he’s not listened to any of the tunes. Or he’s a fucking twat. And I wouldn’t say I’m more than slightly comic. I’d say I’m slightly comic. OK, AND DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER ALIASES THAN CALVIN HARRIS? CALVIN: Stouffer. The cat in Harry Hill. I had a really shit house record out when I was 17. It sold five copies I believe. I think my mum bought four of them, and we distributed them down the local church. WHAT ARE THE KEY INGREDIENTS TO A CALVIN HARRIS TUNE? CALVIN: A bit of melody, a big funky bassline, fucking rocking beats and some kind of nonsensical vocal... The album is on HMV.com for £8:95 to pre-order. That’s a fucking bargain. 15 tracks for £8.95. I would buy it. WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT BETWEEN YOU AND MARK RONSON? CALVIN: I was speaking to him yesterday, he came to the gig. I reckon he would. SEAN: Well, basically, Calvin’s got a band behind him so we could all gang up... CALVIN: But Mark Ronson produced tunes for Nate Dogg and Ghostface Killah. Bang bang. ‘I CREATED DISCO’ IS OUT ON 11TH JUNE (COLUMBIA)

tags: | calvin harris | i created disco | columbia records

Jazzy Jeff

The sheets are unashamedly used and shoved to one side on the bed behind him. It’s quite touching and honest. The room smells of incense (though I’ll not speculate why, of course). Simple clothes, but new – no sign of his considerable wealth on the wrists or around the neck, and there’s definitely no evidence of the delirious, dubious fashion choices suddenly made popular again by giddy new rave fashionistas. Juice-box bling, anyone? — No, DJ Jazzy Jeff is simply an inauspicious, content-looking man on a sofa preaching about the death of the music industry. ‘The world will never be without music. It can survive without the record industry, but it can never survive without music. I think what’s going to happen, what needs to happen, is it’ll destroy itself so it can rebuild itself.’ And with that, he sits back decisively and gives me my first great quote of the day. — ‘Wha?!!’ we cry, a little shaken up, ‘Who is this agent provocateur issuing a clarion call to burn down EMI’s headquarters? This rabble-rousing Robin Hood seeking to return music to the people? We just wanted to know about Will Smith!’ Well, as a man once said, you can’t always get what you want. You can often, however, get something you didn’t ask for. — Just look at Jeff. I suggest the following image to him: A young Jeffrey Townes, aged a mere ten, starts playing around at DJing in his parents’ basement. A pair of enormous headphones dwarfs either side of his tiny little head. It’s his kunstleroman moment of realisation, the inescapable march of history before him, swelling his little chest with pride. Visions of Grammies streaming before his eyes! Of his label, A Touch of Jazz, of revolutionary turntablism! Visions of enough platinum discs to melt down and then be re-moulded as a giant statue of himself in the very centre of Philadelphia! — Jeff laughs at me. ‘Man, calm down. It was not like that. I just expected to be married with kids and working for the electric company. I did not expect this shit.’ Well, I prefer my version. Though now I think of it, one could never truly expect grandiose delusions from a man as humble and grateful as Jeff Townes. He’s just happy to be allowed to tour. ‘Y’know, the real bug out for me is to play in places I never thought in my life I’d even travel to – play in Indonesia, and then that same Notorious B.I.G track, that same Tupac track and that same Dr Dre track resonates in South Asia, in South London and in South Philadelphia. And I’m like, wow, that’s really deep.’ It’s like a language, I suggest. ‘Exactly! It’s like, though we don’t speak the same verbal language, we speak the same physical language. That’s crazy, man.’ Score great quote number two. Jeff, as you might have noticed, is enthusiastic about, like, everything. He even loves Scotland, where he’d played to thousands of people the night before we met. But to return to the portrait of the humble firebrand we painted earlier, Jeff is never more enthusiastic than when declaiming the death of the industry. ‘Y’know, there’s this big backlash against the internet because it’s taking money away from the industry, but the thing is – it might just be saving music.’ Quote number three! Keep listening, there might be more. — ‘Now that there’s the internet, there’s this wide open forum that kids can go to and investigate. They’re saying, ‘Man, what’s up with Nirvana? What’s up with Sting?’ They’re discovering all this shit and that’s where the hope is.’ I’m not sure they’re downloading Sting, but I get the point. It’s something apparent in Jeff’s new record, ‘The Return of the Magnificent.’ Lounging in an opentop Cadillac and brimming with all-star MCs, Jeff flips old school breaks and samples on us and drops a vibe that’s as timeless as early summer evenings – like opener ‘Hip Hop,’ where classic Jazzy J scratching punctuates Jeff’s agreement with Twone Gabz, that ‘Foreverever, foreverever and everever / Me and hip hop together.’ It was, he says, ‘a conscious nostalgia for hiphop,’ which taps back into his belief that new kids like Lupe Fiasco ‘and his skateboard record’ are going back to go forward. — ‘You don’t turn on the radio and get the history of hip hop. Or the history of anything. It’s just tensongstensongstensongs. The kids hear the ten songs all day, then they go to the club and they go to the DJ and say, play the ten songs. It’s the Matrix! It’s bullshit.’ What are we going to do, Jeff? Is it all just hopeless? ‘Nah, I see the hope. I remember coming to the UK waaaay back in the day, and when they’d play a hip hop record, they’d tell you about the original of the record. How cool is that? You’re educating your listeners about the record and the origin of the record. That’s where the new music is gonna come from, that’s what I wanna help do.’ — Where a better placed man to do so than he? He’s seen it all, from Melly Mel through Tribe Called Quest to now. That’s why Jeff Townes preaches doom for the industry, because ‘The industry doesn’t give a fuck about the artist.’ Unsurprisingly, he laughs off my suggestion that he’s a revolutionary (he’s far too laid back). ‘Nah man,’ he says, ‘I’m just one of those people that thinks music belongs to the people.’ Great quote number... Oh, I’ve lost count. The thing is, Jeff talks it up and lays it down in interviews; that way, when he plays, it’s just about the music. ‘THE RETRUN OF THE MAGNIFICENT’ IS OUT NOW (BBE / RAPSTER)

tags: | dj | jazzy jeff | the return of the magnificent | bbe | rapster

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