Claude & Marcus on Hub Radio

Below are interviews which were written for and have appeared in UWE’s Western Eye Newspaper. We have had these, and many more, in extended audio form on the show since September 2007. The full audio interviews with Coldcut and Ochre are yet to be broadcast.  

Coldcut

Jon More, one half of Coldcut, arguably the inventors of the remix, VJ art, cut and paste, mash up, and founders of Ninja Tune records. Having put their first record out in ‘87 they have seen fads, musical genres and scenes come and go, yet Jon’s still wearing the same flat cap that is to be seen in early promo shots of the pair looking like two cheeky ravers. His projects span so widely across all formats and mediums that conjuring up questions for an interview becomes a hard chore.

But tonight he’s open, willing, and relaxed, in the back room at Timbuk2 amongst a puzzling circular pool table and the assorted Detectives Of Perspective, whose Solid Steel nights (the alias under which Coldcut played their slot on Kiss FM) have brought many a heavy weight and DMC Champion from as far as Japan to Bristol. Later, as Jon is half playfully thumbing through records in the DJ booth, I’ll ask him what he’s going to play. “I don’t know, I’ve got a few 7”s…about two hours worth…there are CD decks, aren’t there?” But the real prize is in Serato, the laptop/turntable soundcard. “I’ll just see how it goes” he says. Later local DJ Cheeba will stand arms crossed and eagle-eyed surveying the damage to his customized Rane mixer / 6 deck set up from a safe distance. Jon steadily goes through the motions with hip hop, dancehall, dubstep, and even classic jungle from the essential 90’s mix tape Journeys By a DJ making a feature. Jon fondly remembers a prototype project similar to that of Serato – essentially something enabling you to control MP3s on traditional turntables – “Did you ever see the Scratch-u-lator ?!” he asks enthusiastically. I can only laugh.

But it’s the audiovisual spectacle of the full live Coldcut show that they are probably best known for, something that reached its climax in 2006 with a premiere at the ICA in London, the first night of a worldwide tour which was still going last autumn. It’s a mix of original material and archive film mash ups – Hendrix v AC DC, Sesame Street, and Bush/Blair ridicule – with original material commissioned to video artists along with the unusual brief similar to that of the general Coldcut ethos – “do what you like.” The resulting Saul Williams collaboration in particular was an astounding result in which a 9 till 5 office clone comes to the gradual conclusion his life is worthless and hangs himself, suit, tie and all. “I had no idea that was what Saul was going to do with it. We just gave him the beat and that’s what came back.” In reply to my love for the darkness – I’ll never forget the shock of that night in London – he remarks “You kids used to laugh at stuff like that.” On the subject of dubstep he’s typically casual – “Just like any genre, there is good stuff and there is bad stuff” – a reply quite in tune with Ninja Tune’s spate of latest 12” releases – The Bug, King Cannibal, Ghislain Poirier – some of the biggest upcoming names in the scene – not that you’ll know all of them yet. On the subject of Guy Hand’s latest takeover at EMI, his message that he will “put the power with the suits” and the record industry in general he is confident – “We live in choppy waters, but he has a point, the industry was bloated, it does need a shake up” and his manner is convincing. Yet he’s still one of the best when it comes to the plain old art of packing out the dance floor.

Ulrich Schnauss

Fifteen minutes after the interview was scheduled and still no sign of anyone past a few punters eating what looks like a pretty poor pub lunch. I make my enquiries and am led to the upstairs room which is full of equipment being unloaded, and a thoroughly miserable looking band, Elika, are up on stage sound checking. “Is Ulrich Around?!” I hesitatingly ask. A tired face looks up from the floor. For someone who has been doing this for so long he looks genuinely happy to see me, immediately stopping in his tracks and leading me further into the attic-like crevices of the Louisiana in Bristol, settling down on a chair, his rough hair and same old leather jacket looking no more out of place than it would have done a decade ago.

London yesterday, Brighton tomorrow, right? “Yeah, I think so. I know they (Elika) are playing a gig on their own tomorrow night. Is it Brighton tomorrow? I don’t know. I actually got scheduled in on this tour at the last minute, it’s their tour really.” Dropped in at the last minute and you’re top of the bill, I jokingly add. He looks cautious. “It wasn’t my decision.”

The other two bands on the bill tonight are both from a pedigree of Brooklyn experimental music that’s been somewhat of a scene for the last few years, something I myself am just latching onto – Local dives playing host to gatherings and nights that the city types are all too reluctant to head out too. Ulrich’s music can happily fit in between the out-there sounds of ambient drone bands, but at the same time his use of vocals, melodic progression and epic production make him a more mainstream attraction when compared to those that frequently quote him as a main inspiration. What does Ulrich think of the sound coming out of Brooklyn – bands like Auburn Lull, and so on? “Well, you’re listening to it right now!” He gestures towards the throbbing of the building framework currently enduring the sound check. Enduring is certainly the right word. Home-made sound proofing panels cheaply stuck onto the ceiling remind me of my secondary school music studio, and the fuzzing of the bass amongst the bricks and mortar would still be audible as my friend and I would walk away from the venue and down the road after the interview had finished.

With the release of last years Goodbye, Ulrich again employed the vocals of Judith Beck, and they would preview the work in June 2006 with one sole and unadvertised show in London – with Judith singing from hand-written notes on stage. Myself and friends had waited eagerly for years to see the man that had made ‘Far Away Trains Passing By’ – somewhat of a landmark LP looking back upon our collective growing love for electronica. Were the still un-finalised lyrics a sign of a rushed appearance then? “That was a few years ago now, I hardly even remember it….before the album was released, wasn’t it?” Judith isn’t here this evening? “No, she’s busy with other stuff at the moment.”

Truth be told the performance that night was let down by a terrible sound rig, a memory that has been re-enforced by a recent viewing of the episode on you tube. It sounded as bad as I remembered it being. But for someone whose trademark sound relies on tens upon tens of multi tracks being laid down into music production software that others might be more reluctant to rely on, I guess any sound technician would find him a hard task.

The LP signalled the last in a trilogy of releases, started off with 2003’s Far Away Trains Passing By. Ulrich had worked under a variety of aliases up to that point, most notably Ethereal 77, the one full length album Landscapes portraying the same organic textures and productions that made Ulrich’s other work so accessible, yet employing strictly drum and bass as its staple. The album remains one of the only of its genre I can contently listen to from start to finish. His actual name Ulrich Schnauss would be reserved for only traditional ventures into electronic music, more noticeably influenced by the shoegaze music that Ulrich plays out during his DJ sets. “I think I have gone as far as I can, as far as anyone can, with the constant adding of different layers, trying to create a massive wall of sound. The next release will be more electronic, and completely instrumental. With the last album I really tried to keep to song structures, traditional verse-chorus-verse. I think my next work will be more about patterns and less structured.” On the subject of non – linear form in electronic music, I can’t help but take the opportunity to ask him if he’s sampled the new Autechre LP – something doing the rounds at the moment – “Yeah, I like what they do, but I kind of lost touch with them in the mid nineties. It’s great stuff, but it’s just a bit too cold for my liking, you know?”

Ulrich’s biography reads that he moved to Berlin at the beginning of his career from his native Kiel, attracted by the same pull factors that have most recently a generation later has seen such techno upstarts as Chris Clark and Vladislav Delay take up residencies there. But he has since moved to London. “Yes, it was sort of a logistics thing, being closer to the industry, and surrounding myself with people I can work with.” He goes on to stress the multi-cultural and diverse benefits of London. “In London it is truly multi-cultural. In one suburb you might have dozens of different nationalities living together , I don’t think there is anywhere else like it in the world.” When I make the comparison with Berlin maybe having gone through the same process, but ten, fifteen years earlier, with the fall of the wall and so on, my question fuelled by my fondness for the bike rides I had taken around Kreuzberg and elsewhere in Berlin a few years ago, he is insistent on downplaying such a remark. “No, really, Berlin is nowhere near as diverse as here, it’s completely different. London kind of puts it to shame like that.” His longevity in the business is further contrasted against my relative youth yet again when the discussion turns to Techno. “For me, that kind of blew up in the early nineties, you know?” I resign myself to the present day, not for the first time feeling a bit out of my depth – so what does he enjoy nowadays? “I listen to a lot of pirate radio stations in London, it’s good stuff. There is this one thing, liquid drum and bass, it’s quite exciting and fresh at the moment. I can see a future there definitely.” Well, he’s in the right corner of the country for that I explain. Drum and Bass has kind of owned Bristol for quite a while now. In fact, it’s nice when someone like Ulrich is billed – someone a bit more straightforwardly electronic and experimental – comes to break the chain. I pause for a second reflecting on the list of electronic tours that are more and more often skipping Bristol as a point of call, but I decide against further comment to someone that might be so unconcerned with such a small, brief blip on the face of the music landscape.

Later that night Ulrich plays a set of songs completely blended into a rich tapestry of his sound, stopping only briefly to chop and change a few bass-heavy beats on his sequencer. The set comes to an end only forty five minutes in, Ulrich cutting the figure I have unfortunately seen all too many times before at gigs and gesturing hopefully towards the promoter for five more minutes. When the reply is obviously negative his whole body language visibly shifts from his piano stool and he again projects genuine emotion in his stance, un mounting the stage and falling into the sanctity of the crowd that surround him. Enthusiastic remarks are immediately forthcoming, yet Ulrich looks only partly satisfied – “But it wasn’t a full set” I hear him mutter. Where others would look at a fortunate shortcut in their profession, Ulrich sees an opportunity to play out missed. And who would blame him? With such a large succession of varied and contrasting material at hand, one must assume that its consistency is yet to last.

Animal Collective

It’s a claustrophobic, cold evening in Easton. Amid the surroundings of the Trinity Centre, a church-gone-wrong of sorts, Animal Collective are on stage sound checking. Their props, consisting of three cross-dressed mannequins, don’t seem to be in the need of much testing for tonight’s performance. Indeed, they look quite tranquil and looked after. “it’s a new vibe for us”, Avey Tare says when I ask of them later. “Skeletons are always a popular thing for us…we like them, they keep us company.” Not the answer I expected, but then again Animal Collective aren’t the sort that would shrug off questions for the sake of it. Sitting down with them, it has to be said they don’t immediately emit the aura of a band who are quite frequently quoted as being on the forefront of present day experimental music; in fact, I’d hesitantly say they look quite normal. But then he goes on: “I would say my relationship with these skeletons isn’t as strong…we have two in America that I feel much more closer to than these guys. I’m the skeleton keeper on tour. These ones will stay in Europe.”

Animal Collective are more loosely, as their name suggests, a group of friends foremost, who relocated to New York after their native Baltimore grew tiresome. Is their another city on earth that provides more of a hub for so many functions, trades and enterprises? Would they be living there if they weren’t musicians? “I think Ki and I chose to live there before being musicians, really. Aside from getting into schools there, we were attracted into the city environment, the record stores, the idea that you can go out and see a show every night. For a while, that’s just what it was. We’re not really based in New York anymore, but we did play a good couple of years together. It was definitely helpful. I think New York is good for that.”

Since last year’s Strawberry Jam they have been on a long tour, as I’m sure the skeletons will vouch for, and when asked if they are looking forward to the light at the end of the tunnel, and a well earned break, enthusiastic nods are seen all round. “We’ll probably miss each other pretty soon. We’re back in the studio in a few weeks, to mix a few songs that were made in the same sessions as Strawberry Jam. We might record one more track we toyed around with a few years ago and haven’t touched since. It’s mainly a break from touring, but I think we all hope we’ll have the time to work on music. There’s always stuff to keep us busy, I don’t think any of us would want a full three or four months of sitting there doing absolutely nothing.” This energetic work ethos breaks across into their live performance, never mind the extensive discography of side projects that include last year’s critically acclaimed album from Panda Bear. Later as the band play and Avey incessantly throws himself about on stage, I am left wondering how I had him sat down in a seemingly calm state for a whole twenty minutes.

We sat down with Daedelus (Ninja Tune) for a few drinks before his show at the Luminaire this Autumn. In between attempting to explain the technicalities of Rugby to two very puzzled North Americans, the following was said….

You were in Italy yesterday weren’t you?

Today, actually…

You’ve been touring pretty constantly for the last eighteen months, two years?

Trying to, nothing crazy crazy, but we’ve been trying to be out and about as much as possible, we’ve been going to some new places recently, Norway, Brazil and some other countries…

So is Travelling something you like to do, do you draw much inspiration from it ?

Travel is fun, travel is fantastic, it’s work, so its not like party time and stuff, and sometimes I have the ability to bring people along in a work capacity or in a fun capacity, be it my wife or my tour manager, and then it gets more fun. Travelling by yourself sometimes is like pushing a big rock up a hill, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything, especially the last couple of months where it’s really been kicking and the shows have been better. I use a funny machine when I play live, I use this thing called a Monome, it allows me a lot of improvisation but I have a lot of times when I play in new cities andI have a lot of staring contests, battle of wills. So I play a place a couple of times and it gets better typically.

So the Monome’s quite an interesting thing, you’ve got quite contemporary electronics artists, like Four Tet, who when you go see live, they may as well be checking their email on their laptop, right? Well they are sometimes, I mean, it’s famously U-zig who had one of the very first tours with people really using laptops, and I guess he was just checking his email, and WiFi…..But it’s becoming more and more acceptable in the electronic world to have laptop sets?No, if anything people are really starting to rebel against it. Acts like Girl Talk, for instance, there’s an obvious amount of pressure for him to put on a show , and he goes crazy with antics, but it’s still just his laptop on stage, it’s tough. As somebody like that becomes more acceptable in the indie rock community, y’know, there’s more expectation for a show, they want antics, and they want personality and stuff, so it really is difficult.So the Monome is something that really is different, obviously it’s interesting and it’s like another take on live music….Well it is live music, I have to stress that, even though I’m using pre made samples, it’s totally improvised….There certainly is pressure to try and re-create songs for people who know, but the most fun I get is when we’ve finished that portion and we can move on to exploring new territory, that’s the best.

In a month’s time actually.

Will you be supporting him or will there be another take on ‘The Weather’ LP ?

There will be some collaboration I’m sure at some point, he’s such a freestyling genius, that he can just get up on stage and do something really wonderful, but he’ll have his own backing band and we’ll play kind of separate.

Exquisite Corpse was a such a hip-hop presented album – you had guests such as MF Doom, TTC and stuff, and it was brilliant. The next album “Denise The Days Denise” was, as I describe it being, “Samba-rific”. Was that a conscious push away from the hip hop world or something that just came naturally to you?

No, if you look at the records that came before Exquisite Corpse there’s always been an unevenness, so in a sense it was just trying to reclaim a little of the territory that I had left for a little bit. Especially when working with collaborators you have to be very conscious of how they operate. Someone like MF Doom, I didn’t sit him down and say “I want this kind of verse with this kind of concept” – he just has enough personality, whereas other people maybe I had little stronger discussions with. You make decisions all the time about which directions you want things to go, even unconsciously.

What was it like working with Scott Herren? Do you have much contact with him?

I play shows with him pretty regularly, I just played a show with him in Paris, a week or two ago now. He’s a dude, he’s doing his thing, he’s a very interesting personality, the way he expresses himself with people and stuff.

Is he doing sets with a live drummer at the moment?

Not right now, he works with some fantastic drummers, but that’s more sporadic. You’re much more likely to catch him doing a DJ set.

He has the project A Cloud Mireya, with his significant other, you’ve got something similar going on with Laura?

It’s quite different, in the sense that Laura Darlington’s my wife, she’s been on a few of the records here and there, she’s also worked with Flying Lotus, little bits here and there. Our partnership is entirely acoustic, both of us came from live music backgrounds. I don’t know about A Cloud Mireya totally, but she’s actually produced half music on the record that we have coming out, so it’s a little different, I don’t know how much Scott had her sing, but I know with our project at least she did all the production, and sometimes we disagreed…it’s very difficult making music with your significant other.

So is that an LP in the works?

Yeah it’s done, it’ll be coming out on Ninja Tune next year, we turned it it in, and hopefully….it’s a quiet record. And right now in the music world, loud seems to resonate more, so we’ll see how it goes…

Talking of Flying Lotus, have you heard his new EP on Warp yet?

I’ve heard everything, but not organized as an EP. He’s another LA person, I talk to him all the time, a fantastic fellow- it’s so good to see someone like Warp realize what they have on their hands, and they’re really doing quick moves to make it happen. The record’s been really cool for Warp as well, because when was the last time you heard them do anything electronic ? I mean the Clark record was cool, but it was almost like him going to become a rock band.

On the subject of Adventure Time, your side project with Frosty…Dreams of Water Themes. It’s one of the most psychedelic album I’ve ever heard….

Fantastic!

Full of skits about water and aqua wildlife. I know the new album is called ‘Adventure Time In Space’, is that right ?

Well, it’s working title. The idea though is that we’re doing a space record.

So another conceptual album?

Yeah that’s all I ever do is conceptual records, it’s just that Adventure Time shows that thread a little more. But we’re probably going to end up being even more psychedelic on this album, and a lot with it has to do with the scene in L.A. at the moment. DJ Nobody has the best psychedelic record collection of probably anyone in the world. I mean it’s crazy, the amount of obscure, unreleased jams that he’s found. So people like that make it easier to tap into stuff and fall way off the bandwagon.

So do you find a lot of inspiration from within the LA community? I mean, you can’t be home that much, you’ve been travelling so long…

No, but my heart is always there and I’m talking to people constantly. A lot of the time inspiration comes from any number of sources, the people you meet, the things that happen and stuff. But a lot of time in my case, since I do do sample based music in part, a lot of the time you’re ripping inspiration from dead people hands. The dead people that leave records, and you find them some place, even if you’re not sampling the record there’s just this idea that something…..people’s life work went into this record and it’s fifty cents.

So I was going to ask you about Of Snowdonia, and this whole fascination you’ve got with Wales

It’s an Obsession.

I know you’ve played Cardiff a few times.

It’s a great scene there, but my obsession with the place kind of goes back to childhood. It’s things I can’t even speak of properly because I don’t even know myself. I’m definitely going to be working in a record that’s entirely in Welsh and done with the proper amount of attention I would like to give it. That’ll be in the future, we’ll see. I’ve now met all the Super Furrys, really nice people, and this woman called Cate Le Bon, are you familiar with Cate LeBon??

No, I’ve never heard of her.

This interview’s over!