The poster is real. I found it, up the lane, sort of attached to a telegraph pole and caught up in some brambles. Instinctively I took a photo of it with my phone as it made me smile. By the next day it had been torn down, and was just lying there face down on the wet pavement. It was a lovely idea though, wasn’t it? Someone clearly took the time to print the invocation off, wanting to challenge the culture of scurrying around, and quite right too, summoning up the spirit of W.H. Davies who may well have passed this spot when traipsing around Kent: “What if this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare?” The whole idea of dreaming, contemplating: it is something we need to do. Step back, sit back, kick back, lie back and reflect, ruminate, consider, cogitate, muse, meditate. And if music plays a part in that, then great, that works. But what music works for contemplation? What do we listen to when we want to sit and reflect? Quite obviously, different things will work for different people. There is a thing about feeling we should listen to certain types of music, and react in a certain way. I often feel I should take the time to learn more about classical music, but something seems to get in the way. There is a classic episode of Only Fools and Horses where Del Boy is going through his ‘upwardly mobile’ phase, and he’s sitting in his flat listening to music on his headphones, and all the indications are he’s playing something edifying and cultured until he picks up the My Generation LP sleeve and says something like: “I don’t care what they say, you can’t whack a good bit of The Who”. Del Boy might be right, but I can’t remember the last time I dug out a record by The Who. It seems absurd to sit and listen to the ‘classics’. I simply could not imagine playing anything like Astral Weeks, Pet Sounds, or What’s Going On. It would
be very unusual to put on Forever Changes or the first Velvets record. And even something like Searching For The Young Soul Rebels or Blue Lines, records I would describe as being among the greatest LPs ever, I rarely feel the need to hear them. Over the past five years or so much of what I have been listening to has been connected to what I have been writing about for YHO, or vice versa. I have often been busy following new trails, often becoming absorbed in unfamiliar sounds. But throughout the adventure there have been some records I turn to, instinctively, ones I know I can lose myself in. And ironically they are not really ones I have written about. There could be something in that. I have a ridiculous filing system for records, which doesn’t even make sense to me. But there are some records that seem to evade being filed away. I keep a small pile of miscellaneous CDs which I have readily to hand, ones which I know I can put on and use as, well, I suppose active background music: something that can be played in its entirety, while being simultaneously easy listening and stimulating. It may well be, if I need to confess, that I have shied away from writing about certain of these records, feeling singularly illequipped or under-qualified to do so. Perhaps to put a more positive slant on things there is a sense of wanting to preserve or protect a private passion. I am thinking specifically of some well I suppose they are dubstep CDs, and readily admit to being a bit of a fraud as any interest I have in that sphere of music is purely a casual one, and my flirtations with the music have been very occasional. I have never got emotionally involved with the politics of the scene. But the fact remains: there are a small number of dubsteppy records I treasure and trust.
The perfect example of this is From The Shadows, a CD by Cyrus (Random Trio) on the Tectonic label from 2007. It was the first full-length artist’s set on the label, and one of the earliest planned CDs put out by someone on the dubstep scene. I think it’s a fantastic and fascinating record, and it’s one that’s grown to be a particular favourite. But I readily confess to knowing very little about Cyrus (Random Trio) except that he is a producer from Croydon called Jason Flynn who has been on the scene from the start. Other than that I can add very little, and know hardly anything else he has recorded. But this CD is incredible and it is one I keep coming back to when I need something I can put on and leave on. It is probably my most-played dubsteppy record. There have been other dubstep records I’ve liked a lot, like My Demons by Distance, pretty much anything by the Digital Mystikz, Benga’s New Beat, and Kromestar’s My Sound. Other titles by some of the big guns have left me cold, like Burial, Kode 9 and Skream. I like the anonymity of some of the artists, but this is a scene shaped originally by 12”s, dubplates, club culture, and in that sense not at all my world really. And there are enough websites,
blogs, forums, magazines, etc. dealing with dubstep and its ramifications. So why go into all this now? I don’t know, really. I guess it’s just a way of acknowledging the usefulness of something like Cyrus’ From The Shadows, a functionality that makes it one of the greatest records ever. And the name Cyrus is everywhere at the moment, which is ironic. I like the idea of listening to dubstep out of context, adopting it as a home listening soundtrack. It is similar in a way to the Basic Channel organisation reluctantly giving in and releasing something other than monolithic 12”s. Appropriately, one assumes, the name Cyrus comes from one of the Basic Channel production identities responsible for a couple of the legendary releases on the label, including the still astonishing 20 minutes that is Presence where practically nothing moves in all that time but it gives the impression that there is so much going on, thus avoiding the irritant factor of so many designer drone and drift works. Presence is also an exceedingly menacing and unsettling track while being simultaneously emotive and incredibly beautiful.
It may be a little disingenuous to claim to know next to nothing about dubstep, because in its critical heyday I read quite a number of excitable articles about the scene, by writers such as Melissa Bradshaw and so on. I am aware of the lineage, I’ve got my Tempa Roots of Dubstep set, I’ve seen the flow chart and know how it is supposed to have evolved out of the garage scene, led by a breakaway radical faction intent on creating a mutant strain of bass music. As a label dubstep seems to have been accepted by those involved, but I have on occasions struggled with the etymology: the dub content has often been well, dubious. But one could argue the name also is derived from the dubplate tradition, just to confuse things in the way the old reggae 12”s did when they had ‘disco 45’ plastered across the sleeve.
Having read about dubstep, Cyrus’ From The Shadows is the record you would want to hear. It’s the record I hoped the first Burial LP would be: a full-length set that sustains a mood of impending danger; very brooding bass activity with portentous beats, film noir atmospheric effects and vestigial melodies. It’s boldly stripped down, with very little in the way of softener or sweetener to endear itself to a wider pop audience. Even the title itself, From The Shadows, seems to evoke the output of earlier imprints like Moving Shadow and No U-Turn. Another Basic Channel-related title is similarly suggested: Decay Product. The cover is great too: capturing the record’s feel of ominous bleak emptiness just before something happens.
I do find From The Shadows captivating, despite or because of its sombreness and severity. I like serious sounding records sometimes, but when I listen to it I get a sense I should be less enchanted by its very concentrated sound, with its very specific sources and references. I should perhaps be learning more about all the composers Alex Ross writes about vividly in The Rest is Noise. I should be familiarising myself with Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Edgard Varèse, Olivier Messiaen, Xenakis, Ligeti, Pierre Schaeffer, and so on, and I probably will, but I find Find The Shadows incredibly effective as something to put on when working. As an hour long work it is extremely useful to put on when typing up notes or when dusting the furniture or sorting out old papers or doing research or decorating or studying the football results or simply lying on the bed dreaming. I like its usefulness. On closer inspection there is quite a bit of variety within the sweep of Cyrus’ record, which is as far as I know his only full-length set. One of the most striking features is the use of unostentatious, pedestrian paced beats, which merged with menacing Morricone atmospherics suggest the sort of instrumental hip-hop which consistently eluded us in the 1990s. Oh, it would have been a joy to encounter something as sustained, skeletal or cavernous as this at that time. The pivotal track, Calm Before The Storm, features a slowly tolling bell, beats like ponderous footsteps, the occasional dub echo, suggestions of strings and synths that create a Morse Code like melody, and very little else. The similarly themed track The Watcher features a slightly faster pace, with a Basic Channel hum and digital dub judder reflecting approaching danger which becomes increasingly imminent. Indian Stomp, the next track, is a more of a surprise, and all the more effective for it, with its tabla beats and ululating Bollywood style vocal colouration, tapping into a
tradition that takes in Suns of Arqa and Timbaland. But this is out of step with the rest of a record which is generally defiantly downbeat, thrillingly grainy and surprisingly cinematic. The next full-length Tectonic release in 2007 was Underwater Dancehall by Pinch. In fact, this was an ambitious double-CD set by Pinch (Rob Ellis), the driving force behind the Bristol-based label. His trajectory seems perfectly typical: moving to Bristol from Newport as a kid, getting involved in the drum ‘n’ bass scene, discovering dub techno and Basic Channel, gravitating towards dubstep as it took shape, doing a bit of DJing, running a club night, doing some promoting, drifting into production, starting a label, and so it goes. If Cyrus is appealingly anonymous, then Pinch is at least relatively visible as a champion of progressive thinking within the dubstep community, a bit of an articulate openminded spokesman for the genre, someone who has even had a go at playing The Wire’s Invisible Jukebox game and indeed came across really well.
The title Underwater Dancehall again seems to suggest oh so perfectly the subaqueous sound of the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction/Rhythm & Sound/Burial Mix tendency. Apparently Pinch claims that it came to him in a flash while at one of the famous DMZ club nights as the bass was quaking and the dawn was breaking and only shadows and silhouettes dancing in slow motion could be seen through the haze of the smoke signals, just
before such activity was outlawed. I could be making that up. But it fits, almost too neatly. The two CDs that make up Underwater Dancehall are a with-vocals and a without vocals twinset. I have to confess it is the instrumental CD that I have played the most. I played it an awful lot when it came out, then filed it away rather too decisively before rediscovering it a couple of years ago and I have been playing it a hell of a lot recently. The CD without vocals, like the Cyrus CD, perfectly provides a soundtrack of active background music, successfully creating and preserving a particular mood over the course of 45-odd minutes. In the case of Underwater Dancehall that spirit is a rather reflective, pensive one, curiously like the dreamt of unadorned dub-dazed electronic soundscape one sought for in vain throughout the 1990s. To praise the instrumental side is not to denigrate the vocal CD, though. It was a bold venture by Pinch. Seven of the ten tracks feature vocals: a mixture of singers and MCs. He may well have been the first dubstep producer to try such an approach to recording. And it works pretty well really when quite the opposite could have been the case. Again it is part of a familiar trajectory in electronic music: the progression from recording instrumentals to adding vocalists, trying to create real songs or at least something with more dimensions. It is easy enough to think of Goldie, A Guy Called Gerald, Pole, Photek, Leila, As One, Ultramarine, and many others who have had similar ideas, tried that kind of approach. Songs: hmmm, everyone thinks they can write them. Get a nice instrumental track, get a singer in, put some words together, and voila. Nope. It doesn’t work does it? It really is not as simple as that. Yes, some people have a gift for writing songs. Some are fantastic at writing lyrics. Some people can conjure up memorable melodies.
Others can sit down and learn their craft, and gradually become skilled. Others soon lose that something special they have. So, when an electronic recording artist suddenly announces that their next record is going to feature fully-fledged songs it is normally time to take to the hills. But, to be fair, Pinch gets away with it here. The other brave thing about the vocal CD of Underwater Dancehall is that it boldly invites comparisons with Smith & Mighty and the way they worked by getting in a variety of singers and MCs to collaborate. Pinch being based in Bristol just made it all the more obvious, and indeed one of the featured singers is Rudy Lee who has worked with Smith & Mighty. I have to confess I wholeheartedly approve of the way Pinch has been prepared to have a go at tapping explicitly into the Bristol blues ‘n’ roots tradition. I think I first came across his name in what might have been the first edition of John Eden’s Woofah fanzine which had a piece on Pinch in, and I seem to recall there he talks about the whole Bristolian tangle of roots and branches and lists his favourite examples of music that originated in the city.
The Smith & Mighty records that Underwater Dancehall specifically reminds me of are the later LPs, Big World Small World and Life Is ..., where in a new century they really nailed their own sound after years and years of developing it through the inert hip-hop/lovers rock and rattling ragga-driven drum ‘n’ bass phases. On these records the modus operandi was to
use a variety of vocalists, including Rudy Lee, the great Tammy Payne, Alice Perera, MC Kelz, Louise Decordova, Hazel Jayne, Chantelle, and Niji 40. In commercial terms Smith & Mighty may be the perennial underdogs, but there is no disputing the central position they occupy in any history of Bristol blues ‘n’ roots. So much leads to and from them. One other explicit reference to the Bristol tradition on Underwater Dancehall comes through a sample of Henry & Louis, a.k.a the production team of Jack Lundie and Andy Scholes, two more mavericks steeped in the soundsystem tradition, reggae obsessives who have never been frightened to venture into less familiar territory. Since 1990 they have been running their own 2 Kings label, but I guess they are best known for the Rudiments LP, released on More Rockers in the mid-‘90s. It didn’t stop people in their tracks but slowly, steadily, surreptitiously, it has become one of those records to turn to for, well, spiritual sustenance. What is it about dub music and roots culture that attracted and retained the interest of a solid core of white people, who got into the music, perhaps indirectly through punk, became immersed in the lifestyle, the philosophy, started making their own sounds and stuck with it through all the changes going on in the world? It’s got to be that sense of spirituality, the devotional aspect, and I can understand that, even envy it in a way, and I have got to a stage in life where if these people want to refer to Jah guidance and the one true love all the time then good for them. We all need something to keep us going, and the high profile atheists are not exactly doing a lot to make their world view and outlook seem at all appealing. One of the big changes for me in recent years in terms of listening habits and appetites is the way I have grown to love that very specific 1990s UK digital dub/roots
sound. I have grown to appreciate that it is not expressive or expansive, where once I might have dismissed it for not being baroque or eccentric or attentiongrabbing. The almost formulaic approach became attractive, the non-demonstrative aspect a virtue. I have spent a lot of time lately listening to records by The Disciples, Alpha & Omega, Manasseh, Aba Shanti I, Iration Steppas, Dread and Fred, Sandoz, and so on. It is incredible functional music, perfect for putting on as background music, conducive to dreaming and working, but without becoming invisible or wallpaper.
Henry & Louis’ Rudiments is a particularly excellent example of that ‘90s dub sound. It oozes a sense of originating in a particular time and place while remaining pretty unique. It is less regimented than some of the records made by their UK contemporaries, but it nevertheless resists the temptation to add in too many variations or gimmicks. It is boldly, indisputably, a dub record, and a peculiarly moving one. Quite rightly it is regarded as one of the finest examples of music made in Bristol in that period while the spotlight was on the city’s activities. With the benefit of hindsight another really significant work in the Bristol canon is the solo set by Smith & Mighty’s Rob Smith, Up on the Downs, released by Grand Central in 2003. It is not really in any way radically different from the S&M LPs, and there are familiar names among the singers and players, like Rudy Lee, Alice Perera, Hazel
Jayne, and Tony Wrafter who has been around the Bristol scene since goodness knows when, playing with the Glaxo Babies, Maximum Joy, Vital Excursions, featuring on some of the classic On-U Sounds sessions, and so on through to the Smith & Mighty era. Also among the technical helpers were Andy Scholes of Henry & Louis and Peter Rose who was part of the S&M/More Rockers team. But there is something about the record, spiritually and temporally, that suggests a link between the Bristol blues ‘n’ roots of the 1990s and what would happen within the dubstep community. And, anyway, it is an incredibly beautiful record. One interesting thing about Underwater Dancehall is, I suppose, Pinch’s relative inexperience. He seems to bring a punk impatience to proceedings which refuses to sit around and serve an apprenticeship but instead seems to imply there are lots of things worth having a go at ‘now’. Before the LP he had, I think, released three or four 12”s, including his signature tune Qawwali, which was originally released on Mike Paradinas’ Planet Mu label (and that imprint has a remarkable story which needs to be told about adaptation and evolution). On Underwater Dancehall Qawwali reappears as Brighter Day, retaining its devotional and meditational Punjabi elements, and even here it is impossible to escape the tangle of Bristol blues ‘n’ roots connections to Massive Attack’s dub take on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Mustt Mustt. Pinch himself later got the opportunity to remix Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Gaudi’s Dil Da Rog Muka Ja Mahi. And round and round we go. The vocal take of Brighter Day features the US-based MC Juakali , who had previously worked with Badawi and Alpha & Omega. It’s good, but the real highlight is Yolanda’s Get Up, which was released as a single. It is wonderfully itchy funk with very deep
soulful vocals, giving an uplifting gospel feel to proceedings which is curiously reminiscent of the Young Disciples with Carleen Anderson. It really should have been a massive hit, but alas and also lackaday.
I have previously confessed that I lost track of Pinch after Underwater Dancehall so it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I began to catch up on his label’s releases. The third full-length set on Tectonic was the 2008 release Aerial by 2562, and it’s got many of the same qualities that make the Cyrus and the Pinch sets so attractive. I do know that 2562 is an identity adopted by Dave Huismans who is or maybe more accurately was based in The Hague. Beyond that I can add little about him and I rather like that. I suspect he would like that, too. I have seen a great quote where he told the zero-inch website: “I would prefer to be completely anonymous, but it's very hard to do in this day and age. So ironically staying anonymous could cost just as much time and energy as being in the picture. Even being anonymous can become a big thing in itself and the more that you try to operate anonymously, the more people want to try to find out who you are and that can detract from your music, which would be the opposite of what you wanted.” Possibly by inviting Huismans to do a 2562 full-length set for Tectonic Pinch was making a point of proving his label’s
outlook went further than dubstep’s Croydon/Bristol settings. Then again, more probably, he simply thought some of the 2562 tracks were fantastic, and they are. There are plenty of brooding Rhythm & Sound style dub pulse beats and rattles with rather more in the way of skipping-paced beats that act as an effective reminder why so many people were devotees of recordings on the Moving Shadow, Metalheadz, Full Cycle labels and the like. Even one of the titles Enforcers seems to suggest a particularly great Reinforced drum ‘n’ bass compilation, coincidentally or not. Where, ironically, this 2562 set stumbles is in including a couple of more frantically paced tracks which can take the listener unaware, even when they should know what’s coming. The irony is that these tracks help Tectonic escape from the confines of a very specific dubstep definition of sound, but their inclusion does break up the flow, making the CD slightly less than perfect for putting on and leaving on and going with the tide without any unnecessary jolts or jarring shocks to shatter the mood. Huismans (I keep on wanting to write Huysmans) got this all so much more right on the next 2562 full-length set, Unbalance, which appeared on Tectonic in 2009. If Aerial felt more like a collection of tracks put together as an act of consolidation, then Unbalance feels like new territory being explored. The pace on Unbalance is more consistent, and interestingly set at a sprightly, skipping pace pretty much throughout. It is therefore not particularly perfect for sitting around reflecting but instead it is ideal for something more active or mobile, especially walking or travelling. It is only on the last track that, if you like, the accelerator pedal is pressed to the floor and there is a furiously frantic finale. For this Huismans should be toasted, for going
against the grain and saving the speedy joyride for the climax in stark contrast to so many electronic artists who disrupt the flow of their records with maniacal moments of madness plonked down in the middle of proceedings. The programming of records is so important, even now.
In many ways Unbalance is the fantasy Warp record that never was. Like many people, I guess, I have enormous affection for so many of the great Warp full-length sets but one has to confess that on returning to these CDs there is often a sense of frustration in that something seems to be missing or maybe they simply do not live up to the ideas that are stored in the memory about what these records were like. Unbalance, oddly, captures that idea of what the Warp records should sound like. Elements are so familiar but difficult to pin down, which is maybe because it doesn’t really sound like anything else except what was in Huismans’ head. It’s like you still get critics burbling on about someone like The Chords or Purple Hearts rehashing ‘60s sounds: if you can find one record from the ‘60s that sounds like Maybe Tomorrow or My Life’s A Jigsaw then I’ll eat the stingybrim pork pie hat I only have in my dreams. The great thing about the beats on Unbalance is that they are beautifully broken, as fragmentary as you could ever wish for. There is no trace of the tyranny of the regimented four-to-the-floor beat on this record. It skips, like a boxer in the gym,
like a CD that’s kaput. And you can dance to it, wherever you like. It moves, it really does, maybe not in a logical way, but like a dream, as indeed one of the tracks is titled. I guess it’s no coincidence that another of the tracks shares a title with Sun Ra’s Love in Outer Space. There is, oh I don’t think it’s blasphemy to say, a similarity in the disjointed, precarious irregularity that is irresistible. Make up your own rhymes and sing along to the 2562 CD. While a mood is sustained on Unbalance there is nevertheless a lot of variety, with suggestions of Ultramarinesque jazzy sashaying, more sinister Photek or Metalheadz resonances, and Basic Channel throbbing menace. The common factor does seem to be the shattered beats, which are the real strongpoint, and it’s easy to imagine people worrying about where these fit in, how they can be classified. It’s little wonder, too, that Huismans has been asked if people can dance to his broken beats. His reply was perfect: “Well I can, so I'm sure others can!” If Pinch and Tectonic truly escaped a stylistic straitjacket with 2562’s Unbalance, then any ideas of there being a very specific Tectonic sound were shattered when the label put out releases by Pursuit Grooves (a.k.a the one-time NY but now Toronto-based producer Vanese Smith) which are impossible to pin and mount and classify. It’s been mentioned before in YHO how it was through an excellent Pursuit Grooves (Slavoj Žižek sampling) mix for FACT magazine in 2011 that I became aware of her Frantically Hopeful CD which was about to come out on Tectonic. There had been an earlier EP (well, 30 minutes worth of music, however you want to define that) Fox Trot Mannerisms, which seems to have come out on Tectonic in the spring of 2010. Vanese must sigh in despair when pressed
to describe the music she makes, perhaps muddying the waters when she tries to be helpful, saying something like: “I’d say it’s a mix of instrumental hip-hop, broken beat, downtempo, house, dubstep. A bit melodic, synthy, spacey, usually but not always with hard drums and rather heavy bass. The tempos just vary. It’s all quite soulful I guess.”
Oh Vanese makes very, very soulful music: experimental and often abstract but definitely soulful. I first came across her through the excellent Pursuit Grooves mix, Sustainable Movements for A New Age: An Environmental Beat Tape, which was given away free digitally to celebrate Earth Day in April 2009. I came across Sustainable Movements and her work via MySpace while searching for new manifestations of the spirit of Georgia Anne Muldrow, and it’s interesting that Vanese and Pinch seem to have hooked up via MySpace too, recognising kindred spirits, fellow adventurous souls, that sort of thing I guess, but yes I lost track of her until Frantically Hopeful came out on Tectonic. Now, though, at this moment in time, twist my arm behind my back and force me to choose I would say Vanese is the best thing in pop, except that it’s difficult to keep up or keep track when there so many other distractions or rabbit holes to bolt down. I love artists like Vanese who seem to do whatever they want when they want because they need to create, communicate, celebrate. There is an air of
urgency to what they do, in the sense of needing to get the music out there without all the waiting around for the wheels of industry to grind. The work ethic is furious and frantic but the quality of the material is impressively, illogically, incredibly high, consistently, and that’s about the only thing that is consistent or predictable. It’s a music that could not have been made at any other time, and it’s produced, presented, distributed and discussed in ways that did not exist before. The trick is to pay attention, which is easier said than done when people are operating under the radar, but the work is out there nevertheless for when the consumer needs it or finds it. I can understand all that, I really can. For anyone not familiar with Vanese’s work or the music of Pursuit Grooves the Fox Trot Mannerisms EP is a great place to start. It might be the most accessible PG record, but it is still gloriously all over the place. The opening track Pressure is a gorgeous fractured soul gem, featuring Vanese singing and chatting beautifully. Then it is into Start Somethin’ with its Rah Band style electro crunch opening before mutating into something even Missy and her Tim would have thought twice about before switching back to the lopsided symphonic soul of Mr Softee with its infectious electro handclaps and floating beats. Shabaps follows with its irresistible Latin-style cowbell beats and swathes of synths accompanying Vanese’s incredibly catchy verses which ooze longing, setting the scene for the unsettlingly sultry Whispers and its dialogue of desire, dubby snares, and elements of Deniece’s Free floating to the surface intermittently as in a dream, appropriately seguing into the woozy Tweezers with its ambient dub washes of colour and typewriter-style clacking beats. The closer Cozy has lovely jazzy organ and skittering beats that seems like the future Nightmares on Wax predicted once upon a
time with Night’s Interlude: what went wrong there? The sheer amount of ground a Pursuit Grooves record covers should be disorientating but it makes a crazy kind of sense. It also keeps the listener on their toes, ensuring the record is one that is listened to rather than something that effectively washes over whoever is playing it. In that respect the full-length PG set on Tectonic, Frantically Hopeful, is very different to the ones by Cyrus and 2562. It is fair to say most records do not specifically belong to their time, except perhaps in terms of production. But Frantically Hopeful is very much of its time, thematically, taking in implicitly or otherwise the Arab Spring, bank bailouts, protests against austerity budgets and dogmadriven cuts. Perhaps most pertinently, Vanese lays into the way that technology has come to dominate our lives, through social media and the latest devices. On the track I Sink she suggests we should disconnect and free our mind for a while. In other words, look up from that little screen towards the big sky: it just might surprise you. To generalise madly if there are any consistent elements to Frantically Hopeful it is the use of clattering beats, like demented typewriters, depth charge bass, and layers of synths. But these elements vary wildly in the way they are used. The synths for example can be icily elegant, or demonstrative in a way suggestive of the spiritual works Alice Coltrane made in the mid to late ‘70s. There’s a suggestion somewhere of She’s Lost Control or something Timbaland might have done with Ginuwine (who’s from the same place as Vanese). There could be faulty CDs at work or rave pop stabs at play. At times Vanese sings as sweetly as Minnie R. or Deniece W. Other places she spits out the words like Mau from Earthling once did, somehow making perfect sense along the
way. It’s an incredible record, which over the past two years has grown in status. Significantly the inner sleeve of the CD bears the exhortation: “Make Noise Like Your Life Depended On It!” Right. Somewhere in between the two Pursuit Grooves releases on Tectonic, Vanese made an EP as GuSHee with the Torontobased “experimental hip hop turntablist” Cheldon Paterson, whom she again met while reaching out on MySpace. I had no idea this record even existed until recently, but it is a real hidden gem absolutely worth seeking out. It gives the impression it might be a homage to the Portishead/Tricky side of the Bristol blues ‘n’ roots thing, but soon veers sharply off into the realm of abstract electronica: well, at least the kind that featured vocals prominently. The work of Nicolette with Plaid particularly springs to mind, which can only be a good thing, but also Andrea Parker, Leila, Ultramarine with Pooka, Secret Knowledge, and too few others really. The GuSHee song Making Babies is particularly bewitching, and like all the tracks on the record benefits peculiarly from being less than four minutes in length. It’s also exactly what I imagine modern pop should sound like. It’s got everything: great tune, dynamics, drama, sexy vocals, and it is very, very danceable and addictive.
Since Frantically Hopeful there’s been plenty of PG/Vanese activity. In September 2012 she released a new ‘cinematic dub’ project under the alias 91 Fellows on the
Californian “avant beat/deep house label” Deepblak Recordings. The EP seems to have been created as a tribute to her grandfather who had sadly died the previous year, and maybe the ‘imaginary soundtrack’ aspects of the work tie-in with her visual arts and film making interests/education/activity. It’s certainly a remarkable piece of work. It is less driven by beats, so there is not that trademark clatter PG does so well. But the bass is very much there, adding menace to the proceedings. There have been so many ‘imaginary soundtracks’ over the past 20-odd years that it is easy to become jaded, but this one works. It succeeds because it flows, from the ominous opening suggesting something sinister heading through the fog to the sense of running away from this, footsteps and heartbeats pounding, to the sense of dread and hiding and waiting, until it is time to move stealthily away, gradually, towards sanctuary. There is at times a real Basic Channel/Chain Reaction dub judder ‘n’ shudder feel to proceedings, and gloriously at one moment a wobbly Simon Topping style trumpet refrain.
Two digital Pursuit Grooves EPs followed in November 2011 through her own What Rules label. Why the two separate EPs? I don’t know: maybe because the music was coming from different places? One for the body and one for the soul, or one social and the other intimate, perhaps. What they clearly have in common is Vanese’s unique way with beats and melody, which I
think can now be described as peculiarly hers. Preparation has four tracks, two of which feature Vanese rapping and sounding fantastic. There are so many things going on in these tracks. The two instrumentals claim a territory somewhere oddly between acidic clatter and ambient drum ‘n’ bass wash. But it’s Let’s Do It Winter that is the jewel in the crown where Vanese raps, well it’s more spoken word poetry of the sort Ursula Rucker would stand up and applaud, about the arrival of the season, before switching into the sweetest singing at the end momentarily almost as if someone is singing along to that one Sinead song on the radio, while all the time there is a graceful electro setting with one of those Timbaland-style vocal tics throughout that become percussive in their insistency. It’s one of the most striking songs of modern times, and oh to hear this on the radio every hour on the hour. The other EP Leaping Desire is more intimate and sensual, and very mysterious. When Vanese sings, well, really it’s more softly spoken lines which become lost in the mix, occasionally making their presence if not meaning felt, it’s all very seductive and erotic somehow. Listening to Love Letter In Bloom it’s impossible not to melt and go all treacly inside. The beats are generally slower on this EP but still very active, occasionally more tribal in their percussive style, suggestive of physical activity of the most intimate kind. Occasionally oddly there is a sense of that very European style of synth pop that became curiously codified as cold wave but which took in some of the most alluring (electronic) torch songs, and it gradually seems apparent that this is the soundtrack for an illicit love affair, the subterfuge and shattered emotion, the passion spent, the messages sent, the devastating cost of desire. A couple of the tracks on Leaping Desire feature contributions from SlowPitch which is another identity adopted by Vanese’s GuSHee partner Cheldon Paterson. There is
a four-part EP by SlowPitch, available free digitally, called Ghost Fossil which is gorgeous and stimulating in the way that instrumental hip-hop/ambient electronica really hasn’t been often enough since the Skylab #1 record way back when. It’s all very atmospheric and abstract, quite dark and dense and disorientating. It seems to lean towards the Chain Reaction/Pole aesthetic which is quite delightful and very welcome. The most recent Pursuit Grooves release is a full-length set, Broadcasting A Sensory Sequence, self-released again digitally via her own What Rules label. It only recently struck me that the title is a mnemonic for bass, which is appropriate. I approve of the way people seem to be giving up on the classification process, the awarding of absurd new names to any perceived trend in music, and simply using the term bass music to describe a wide range of musical activity. It makes sense. PG’s B.A.S.S. is a 40-minute mostly instrumental suite which is Vanese’s most concentrated work so far. There is less darting back and forth stylistically than is ordinarily the case with Pursuit Grooves recordings, which is an interesting development, but there is still an incredible amount of ground covered.
Again, again, again, there are undeniably familiar features to PG’s B.A.S.S. in terms of the electro rhythms, vestigial vocoderised vocals, the chattering and clattering beats, the syrupy synths, the wafting melodies which are so fragrant and fetching, the bb-b-basssss, the low end theorising, the way it all flows as a whole: it shouldn’t work so
well but oh it does, does, does. It’s hard to think of a release of modern times so perfectly programmed for active listening, which is of course the sort of thing we used to say about all those old Jamaican dub excursions. Speaking of which, around the time PG’s Frantically Hopeful came out on Tectonic the label boss Pinch was also overseeing a spectacularly ambitious project: Scientist Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space. I have to confess I got entirely the wrong idea about the whole thing, cynically suspecting it was something where a number of current producers would be invited to tinker with some of the old Scientist recordings. There had been a spate of such things: The Congos being remixed and so on. Fair enough, but not for me. It turned out the Scientist/Tectonic thing was rather different. Instead a collection of exclusive tracks provided by some of the big hitters in the dubstep community were reinvented by Hopeton Brown, the one and only Scientist himself. Well, I had no idea he was still active as a producer, so it suddenly became rather more intriguing when the penny finally dropped. For those who got interested in music in the punk era I suspect the Scientist’s productions are one of the main reasons why so many people not specifically involved in reggae got interested in dub sounds. In terms of what was available, maybe more so than his master King Tubby, the Scientist LPs such as Scientist Meets The Space Invaders, Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires, and Scientist Wins The World Cup, all on Greensleeves, reached out beyond a strictly reggae market. People like Henry & Louis still talk enthusiastically about how these themed LPs opened their eyes and ears to the possibilities and spirituality of dub.
It wasn’t just that Scientist’s dub techniques were visionary. The appeal of these records had a lot to do with availability, presentation and context, all of which was very much down to Greensleeves, one of the most important labels in UK pop history. While it became a commercial institution there seems still something strangely subversive about appropriating that most typically, traditionally English of titles/tunes, Greensleeves, for a reggae label. The label itself, with a story similar to so many others, grew out of a West London record shop/mail order business run by Chris Cracknell and Chris Sedgwick, and got off to the best of all possible starts by releasing 7”s of Dr Alimantado’s Born For A Purpose and Reggae Regular’s Where Is Jah.
generation that had grown up on Stan Lee’s artwork for Marvel and Roy of the Rovers. The modus operandi for these LPs was for the Greensleeves team to come up with a theme (which was often topical), Scientist to come up with his tracks, and Tony to provide the appropriately eyecatching artwork. It was all very clever and worked a treat. I was reading an interview with Tony McDermott recently and it’s interesting to note that he studied graphic art at the London College of Printing, and this would presumably been around the same in the late ‘70s that Neville Brody was doing art there which is appropriate given the impact their design work had on the pop world. Tony has designed many, many sleeves for reggae labels, but it is the artwork for the Greensleeves/Scientist titles that he will be eternally revered. Mind you, the generic Disco 45 sleeve he designed, depicting the history of reggae, is fantastic.
The cover artwork for the great Scientist LPs was by Greensleeves’ in-house designer/artist Tony McDermott. These were attention grabbing comic/pop art masterpieces featuring wonderful amounts of detail and a great sense of humour which was really unlike anything else around. They very much stood out too, which was important, appealing to a
The sleeve, at least in part illustrated by Kiki Hitomi of King Midas Sound, for the Tectonic/Scientist project directly references the old Tony McDermott artwork, featuring cartoon illustrations of Scientist with the dubstep doyens. And I guess there was the risk the whole thing could be too referential/reverential, but incredibly it actually works really well. It seems the opportunity was offered to Pinch to do something with Scientist
through his representatives in the UK, which neatly echoes the way the Basic Channel guys got involved with the Wackies organisation some years earlier. If you were Pinch how could you refuse? It was an opportunity to make a big statement about where the roots of his music really were, at a time when through commercialisation and evolving taste dub aspects seemed to be disappearing from the scene. It was also a gamble: Scientist’s reputation really rested on what he had done 30-odd years earlier. Pinch had heard these records via his elder brother, then later he’d gone through the drum ‘n’ bass and Basic Channel thing at a time when it tied into labels like Blood and Fire and Pressure Sound which were actively salvaging great dub works and connections were there to be made back and forth. But 30 years is a long time, even for hopeless romantics.
I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that, in a way, it’s almost academic whether the Scientist reworkings succeed because the original versions on the second disc add up to an exceptionally strong compilation. There has been a series of Tectonic Plates collections, featuring tracks released by the label plus exclusive dub plates. It’s a useful series, and neatly titled too. But none of the volumes in the series are as strong as the Dubstep Originals CD here. I guess there was a bit of oneupmanship going on: the producers couldn’t be seen to donate sub-standard material for a project with such significance. And that is one of the curious
things: why on earth hadn’t anyone got Scientist to participate in something similar well before this? Or maybe I’m missing something, which is quite possible. Oddly or obviously, depending on your perspective, the weakest tracks on the Originals CD are by the artists supposedly considered to be the more progressive or WIRE-friendly: Shackleton, Kode 9 & Spaceape, and Kevin Martin’s King Midas Sound. One of the highlights, and of course this is all subjective as hell but said in an authoritative tone nevertheless, is Guido’s Korg Back which has that vintage computer game almost-orchestral melody thing going on which is so strangely appealing. The Distance contribution, Ill Kontent, is really striking, and perhaps played blind I might have thought this was the Shackleton track with its Arabic vocal samples but it does have that sludgy sound that I mentally associate with the Distance recordings I know of old (already). It is really quite a sinister track. The Jack Sparrow track Red Sand turned out to be a really pleasant surprise, with a great tribal feel and good use of what are presumably samples of Aboriginal chants. And our friend Cyrus (Random Trio) also comes up trumps with Footsteps, a characteristically stripped-down and ominous sound which seems a long, long way from what I understand to be filling dancefloors worldwide in the name of dubstep. Or is it? I wouldn’t know, to be honest, and wouldn’t it be great to be wrong. And the star of the show is RSD or rather Rob Smith (of Smith & Mighty) using his dubstep identity, though in reality what he has been doing as RSD is perfectly in keeping with the spirit and sound of S&M: so it goes and may the circle be unbroken. His contribution After All, featuring the vocals of Prince Jamo, is an absolute classic. The right elements are all there in the mix: the stuttering beats, the sonic warfare bass vibrations, the shards of sweet lovers rock, the sound effects. But, but, but,
oh this is where I show my own preferences, because it’s the guitar on the track that is the real treat. It’s the sort of guitar you used to get on all the old classic dub tracks: clang, clang, clang, sharp as a stiletto, then treated with loads of delay, echo and reverb. Lovely! And this sentence is dedicated to anyone who has ever heard this track and wondered whether it was Rob Chant on the guitar, if you know what I mean.
So, the reworkings by Scientist: yeah, they are good, surprisingly good, as in the great man seems to have taken the project particularly seriously and treated tracks with meticulous care. There is nothing gimmicky in his reinventions. There really is nothing dramatic, either. But, I don’t know, oh it’s like a skilled mechanic who’s got the bonnet up and relishes getting right inside the engine to tweak this and adjust that and replace one part with a more effective one and simply tossing some other unnecessary parts over their shoulder with a sense of purpose. The end result? Well the engine does things it could never have done before, and maybe not everyone would notice, but those who know ‘know’. And he, Scientist, could quite easily have taken the money simply for endorsing the project because the daft old romantics would still have loved the idea. Different people will hear different things in what Scientist has done to the dubstep originals. I think he infinitely improved the cuts by Kode 9 and King Midas Sound. The reworking of Jack Sparrow’s Red Sand
makes it seem wonderfully like a troop of Nyabinghi drummers had wandered into the studio while Scientist was at the controls. And what Scientist has done to the Distance track is a delight, and particularly impressive when one considers how little was there to start with. Then perhaps it is just me but one can imagine Scientist rubbing his hands with glee when he got to work on the RSD track, though it is a little disorientating to think about because it all becomes like a hall of mirrors when there are already so many dub features used on a track being handed over to one of the pioneers of dub technology. Oh, and is it overly sentimental to imagine Rob Smith shedding a tear of pure joy when he heard what Scientist had done to his track? I don’t know that much about him, but I do like the cut of Pinch’s jib. He gets things done. And he seems to have a lot of respect for his elders, and earns their respect in return. As well as being associated with Scientist and Rob Smith he has forged a bond with Photek whom one senses is very much an inspiration for much of what Pinch has done in terms of production. So when fate brought them together it seemed only natural that a revitalised Photek should cut some sides for Tectonic. His track Closer is particularly strong, surprisingly so. It’s not T'Raenon but it’s good stuff. And it’s easy to see why Pinch and Photek might connect. I guess I tend to think of Photek as a singles artist, but his 1997 LP Modus Operandi is one I would definitely call a classic and maybe for that reason it’s not one I play often enough but the great thing is that when I do dig it out the CD just knocks me out, and strikes me as a record capturing someone at the peak of their powers doing something no one has ever done as well. Is it generally considered a classic? I have no idea. It should be, but I have my
doubts. I can’t imagine it being picked by writers on many of the music publications as one of the most important records ever, but I would rather hear Modus Operandi than Pet Sounds any day. I think it made something like No. 81 in a list of the Top 100 LPs of the 1990s in FACT magazine. I don’t think it made it onto a similar list on the Pitchfork site. It wasn’t chosen as one of The Observer’s 50 albums that changed music. What kind of idiots make up these lists? That’s a rhetorical question: we know the answer don’t we?
I think Modus Operandi is just incredible, I really do. I think it more now than I did at the time. It’s an out-and-out- mod classic, with not one unnecessary note over the course of 70-odd minutes: precision engineering. Maybe it’s daft to talk about it being a modern jazz record, but it does conjure up a mental image of a drummer and a double bassist in deep contemplation, as oddly enough some of Timbaland’s productions would do.
Link Wray? Perhaps. But then I loved what Robert Gordon and Link Wray did together. And I love what Pinch and Photek have done together. Acid Reign, I guess, is what you might expect from the title. But the other side, M25FM, is the one, P&P slipping into darkness, and almost as the title implies the perfect soundtrack to play on an endless loop if you were going to drive through the night round the London Orbital, though I have no idea why anyone would even consider doing that.
Another elder that Pinch has got involved with is Adrian Sherwood, which again makes perfect sense. The pair have been ‘playing’ live together and pooled resources to issue a joint Tectonic/On-U Sound 12” recording of Bring Me Weed/Weed Psychosis. It sounds exactly like one might expect or hope or fear, and as such probably shouldn’t work as well as it does, but then again that’s the great thing.
What Photek did with his samples and breaks was wonderful, his conjuring with a kick drum and renegade snares so enchanting, his use of space, rhythms and textures quite terrifyingly effective and edgy. So, yeah, jazz. Why not? These young kids were in with their E-MUs and Technics rather than their ARPs and Moogs but it’s the same thing.
It’s the same with Rob Smith’s RSD recordings. There is a great compilation out of tracks he’s done as RSD, primarily for Tectonic and Peverelist’s Punch Drunk label, and it’s all familiar as hell, curiously clichéd, but stimulating and absorbing and addictive and useful and do you know what? You could describe the tracks without even hearing them, but they are nevertheless uniformly superb, right down to the requisite run-of-the-mill MCs: very odd.
In 2012 Pinch got to record a single with Photek for Tectonic. Was this a modern equivalent of Robert Gordon recording with
I remember reading in The Wire’s Invisible Jukebox thing about how Pinch’s older brother introduced him to On-U Sound
when he was a nipper. I wonder if Sherwood’s work on Creation Rebel’s Starship Africa was among the records he later passed on to Pinch? It struck me recently how the Starship Africa cover could easily be the one for a Photek LP. Oddly Modus Operandi and Starship Africa are so alike but so different. And made in such different circumstances.
One had his own home studio and was driving round in a Knight Rider dream machine with a major record deal to fund his meticulous music, while the other was probably living in a derelict squat, grabbing cheap studio time in Berry Street’s hole in the ground, scrabbling around for outlets prepared to release his instinctive productions. One was coming up with Modus Operandi, a modernist’s eternal nervous 9am-tic ticktick-tick twitch, alert to everything. The other was creating Starship Africa, the sound of chancers let loose in the studio with some functional reggae rhythm tracks, alive to limitless lysergic possibilities, allowing the subconscious to take over, willing to lose control and give-it-a-go. Dub can go many ways, but one approach is to strip it all down so that it becomes x-ray music while another is to go berserk and add all sorts of effects and treatments; more, more, more radical reverb, delay, distortion, echo, exaggeration; which is what happened with Starship Africa. It still at times sounds like it is laying the
foundations for what would happen in the dubstep community 25-odd years on. ‘Psychedelic’ as an epithet is generally to be avoided. It is, genuinely, the last refuge of the lost critic, but in the case of Starship Africa it is the literal truth. ‘Psychedelic dub reggae’ was apparently part of the concept swirling around in the mind of Sherwood’s co-conspirator Chris Garland, one of the “zen gangsters” credited on the sleeve, an idea all to do with mixing aspects of Jamaican dub production with others absorbed from listening to Terry Riley, Steve Reich, krautrock, and so on. Starship Africa in the ‘90s seemed to became the intellectual property of Wirey Toopiarists, cod rowers and macro dub infesticons, who used it to illustrate notions of oceans of sound, afrofuturism and dub ambience, so it is worth revisiting how it was first received critically. Kris Needs in Zigzag was enthusiastic, and reviewing Starship Africa for the NME in June 1980 Vivien Goldman described it as being “probably the dub purist’s dream. If you listened to Dennis Bovell’s recent I Wah Dub and thought it had too many pretty-pretty tunes, slaver over Starship Africa. It’s a conversation between friends, with minimal words; the real dialogue is in the silences.” Vivien was reviewing the original 4D pressing, and yes there are close connections between her and Adrian Sherwood/On-U Sound, being part of the same circle and so on, but she nevertheless captures the spirit of the LP neatly: “New melodies are ripples of piano re-created as temple bell chimes, or melodica fragmented into half-heard yodellers three hills away”. At the end of the review is an added comment by NME staff member Max Bell: “Yeah, but you can’t dance to it”. This has all the hallmarks of a specifically smirking, sarcastic tone adopted by enemies of progress who would find a niche on a succession of magazines like Q/MOJO/The Word preaching to their own.
In some ways it is possible to consider Pinch as a singles artist who has come up with a string of classic sides: Qawwali, Midnight Oil, The Boxer, Croydon House and so on. But his willingness to collaborate is quite striking. One of the more arresting experiments in collusion of recent times is the full-length set Pinch and Shackleton made together for Honest Jons, a label that has quietly built up a very impressive catalogue of new music.
This incredibly significant record came out at the end of 2011, and as it pitched the two hottest producers together there was a risk they would cancel one another out, but curiously, thankfully, they came up with something incredibly strange and beautiful and surprisingly abstract and impressionistic which is still revealing new things on each listen. I have no idea how well this collaboration sold, or even how well the records made individually by Pinch and Shackleton fare commercially, but they do not seem to go out of their way to make themselves, well, loved, though perversely this makes them all the more loveable, for being contrary is better than trying to please everyone and ending up pleasing no-one which was the ultimate moral of the new pop story. That Pinch and Shackleton record significantly seems to be Pinch and Shackleton rather than Pinch vs Shackleton. Who did what and when and why and how is open to conjecture. Supporters of each producer will have their own ideas, but who cares really? It is just astonishing the two
guys have pooled resources to come up with an oddly beautiful record of quite sinister ambience which somehow seems to have captured the spirit of the time (those titles: Selfish Greedy Life, Cracks in the Pleasuredome!) in much the same way Photek’s The Hidden Camera once did. The Pinch and Shackleton set is not an unprecedented record, but it is pleasantly peculiar. One can imagine the enemies of progress poking fun at its seriousness and saying: “But you can’t dance to it”. Well, I can, or I could if I wanted to. But it’s not really a record made for dancing. It’s not really a record made for putting on in the background. It’s not even a record that demands attention. It is instead a record to explore, one you want to climb inside of and probe, with different aspects of different tracks inviting inspection at different times. The Pinch and Shackleton record is refreshingly abstract and oblique, like Wire (the punk outfit) spin-off projects once were. For two prominent figures in a scene which has become big business it is a delightful development. It is great to imagine kids lost in this music. They will have bought it in considerable quantities, and why not? It is not an alienating record. It is not devoid of beats, the percussion rolls at times, and the bass pulse is pretty much a consistent feature. That familiar subaqueous distorted dub dimension even emerges from the depths on the closing track Boracay Drift. But it is not a record that takes the easy options. And it has one of the greatest tracks of modern times in Levitation, which is a work of devotional exotica, with spooky sound effects, atomic bongos, and traces of cellos and choral music in the mix. Thirty-odd years ago 23 Skidoo came up with Urban Gamelan and Suns of Arqa with Acid Tabla (touched by the hand of Adrian Sherwood). These wonderfully prophetic titles predict the orientalism which is very
much a feature of the Pinch and Shackleton record. Where did this fascination with the east come from in dubstep? From early ‘80s Cabaret Voltaire or Jah Wobble records? I doubt it. Via Suv of the Full Cycle/Reprazent Bristolian crew with his occasionally startling and criminally neglected 2001 Desert Rose set, where he traces his own roots and incorporates aspects of North African/Middle East/Spanish flamenco music into his drum ‘n’ bass sounds? Or from modern-day multicultural Britain? Oddly it seems to be the music of Muslimgauze/Bryn Jones that has become one of the touchstones of modern times and thus directly responsible for the Arabic elements in a lot of current music. How did that happen? The middle eastern elements, if not the politics and religious ones, of Muslimgauze seem to fascinate a specific audience today. It’s a good thing, certainly, but curious nevertheless. Some of the seriously hip music types have outed themselves as Muslimgauze fanatics. JD Twitch of Optimo has of course put together a user’s guide which he prefaces by explaining how he became a Muslimgauze fan while still in nappies before Bryn Jones even knew where Palestine was. Maybe I am just jealous. I was aware of the music of Muslimgauze ‘back in the day’ but don’t ever remember really hearing it until recently, though oddly enough it sounds exactly like I imagined it would when I simply knew of it rather had heard it which is not necessarily a good thing. It is easy to see why Muslimgauze might be appealing to a new generation, and how they might be weirdly attracted to the cover story of this guy in Manchester who didn’t travel but was nevertheless obsessed with the Islamic world and what was going
on in the Middle East and who made so many recordings, very much as though his life depended on it and he was running out of time, which turned out to be horribly true. But doesn’t it just seem to sum up our times that the aspect of Muslimgauze that has proven to be the most influential is that percussive context when goodness only knows what Jones would make of the world today. Shackleton is someone who seems to have particularly absorbed aspects of Muslimgauze in his own recordings. I have to admit I don’t know that much about Sam Shackleton as a person, which suits me. But if I was pressed about the best records of modern times I would unhesitatingly cite Shackleton’s strange sounds, declaring myself to be a big fan of the Skull Disco Soundboy Punishments collection, the fabric55 set, and the Draw Bar Organs/Music for the Quiet Hour EPs, despite being intensely irritated by the intermittent, intrusive interventions of Vengeance Tenfold who really does not add anything of value to proceedings and in fact makes me avoid certain Shackleton recordings. And that is the point: as much as I admire or approve of Shackleton’s expeditions into sound, I don’t really play them. They are not records I turn to instinctively. They are not ones I would almost automatically put on when I am working, walking, reading, washing up, tidying up, browsing online, doing my tai chi, getting ready to go out, making a pot of tea, drinking a mug of coffee, hiding from the football results, unwinding, resting, reposing. They are not recordings that have become part of my life. In fact there are times when I would rather listen to nothing rather than Shackleton, and yeah just stand in silence and look up at the sky, which is where we came in, and I go out.