Robin The Fog

For those of you who missed it on either The World Service’s ‘Weekend’ and ‘Newshour’ programmes, or Radio 4’s ‘PM’, here’s my report on ‘Amen Brother’, the rapidly snowballing fundraising campaign by British DJ Steve ‘Deluxe’ Theobald to give something back to the surviving member of the group that one day in 1969 inadvertently created arguably the most influential six seconds in the history of recorded sound – The survivor is Richard Spencer, the group The Winstons and the track… Well, if you’re reading this you probably don’t need much of an introduction, but here’s a potted history:

In further developments, the World Service’s feedback programme Over To You has now dedicated half of its most recent edition to listener’s reactions to the report and the campaign, largely because, as the producer informed me, ‘Twitter went mad over it’. Respect is also due to redoubtable presenter Rajan Datar for choosing this as his own favourite amen track of all time.

I’m pretty certain I’ve written before in these pages on the subject of my great affection for so-called ‘oldskool’ hardcore and jungle music, so much of which is based on the sampling and reinterpretation of this most crunchy and distinctive of all the so-called ‘breakbeats’. It was the first music I truly loved and early exposure to labels such as Reinforced, Strictly Underground, Suburban Base and Movin’ Shadow proved a genuine future shock to my tender teenage ears. In unguarded moments I’ve even commented that jungle was just about as funky and futuristic as machine music ever managed to get, and that the early work of artists such as Shy FX, a pre-jazzy 4Hero and a pre-Strictly Come Dancing Goldie were often as unwittingly avant garde as anything dreamed up by other more lauded pioneers of 20th century musics, your Schaeffers, your Ras and your Moondogs. While I admit that that last sentence will probably have made quite a large number of people surprisingly angry (and acknowledging that coming of age in that period is bound to have clouded my judgement on the subject), I do sometimes feel it was the last time music and technology took a genuine step forward together into the unknown. And to those who might sneer at some imagined lack of sophistication in tracks such as ‘Original Nuttah’ or ‘6,000,000 Ways 2 Die’ (and such people are surprisingly legion), I can only point out that, whatever your thoughts on hardcore and jungle, it’s one hell of a gateway drug to all kinds of weird and wonderful music. To debate this further, send a heated email to the usual address.

To the uninitiated, the 2004 documentary on the Amen Break by Nate Harrison is still essential viewing, providing far greater historical context and critical theory than I could offer here. For my own part, news of a campaign intending to give something back to the surviving member of a group responsible for the backbone of so much music over the past three decades struck a huge chord, as it clearly has to thousands of others if £22,000 worth of donations (at the time of writing) is any kind of yardstick. Online sampling database ‘Who Sampled‘ lists over 1,500 individual tracks that have “officially” used ‘Amen Brother’ in whole or part, but as someone with a personal collection of amen-sampling tracks in the hundreds (at least), I would wager that’s a conservative estimate – it could be two or even three times that figure. And the original band never saw a bean. A worthy cause indeed.

For added value, I’ve included a slightly truncated transcript of my Nate Harrison interview below. I started by asking him for his own take on the cultural impact of sampling:

Nate Harrison: In the late 70s/early 80s and definitely throughout the 80s sampling technology was developed. And this is not something even per se to do with pop music, but just in terms of technology, it became possible to record any sound and essentially play it back as an instrument. You could take somebody’s voice or banging pots and pans together. You could really take any sound and kind of ‘musicalize’ it if that’s even a word, by mapping it across a keyboard and playing it like an instrument. One of the first things that sampling allowed for is the re-use of older recorded material, so for example in the case of the amen break, you could sample the drums and then re-play them as if they were your own drums. And so, voilà – you would have your own drum beat under your song. Sampling really took off in the 80s, you can absolutely hear [it] in the first instances of hip hop music.

RTF: There are so many breaks to choose from and many by much more famous and ‘visible’ artists. What could have made this break, taken an obscure B-side of a lesser-known soul group such a phenomenon? 

That’s a really great question – why did it become so popular, why did the Amen break become such a lynchpin? I think there’s no real right or wrong answer I would say the sample itself is very long, as compared to funky drummer, the tighten up break or the apache break, there’s a lot of material to work with in the amen sample itself. And it is not only long, but the rhythm itself is kind of syncopated, so there’s lots of variations on the drums you can derive from sampling the original break and then sort-of chopping it up and re-arranging it. One of the sort characteristics of the other breaks is that they are just one bar [in length]. You can loop it but you can’t do a whole lot [more] with it, other than get really specific and chop up just the snare and what have you. But the amen is really conducive to chopping and rearranging. It also sonically just has this kind of punch to it that I think really makes it unique. There’s something just about the groove of that break and especially the way people chop it up, of course, but there’s just something about the way the drums hit and the funkiness of it – but also the robotic-ness of it. For me, it’s this perfect blend between very organic sounding and very robotic-sounding at the same time.

Your documentary on the break is still getting a huge amount of attention over a decade later – what inspired you to first make it?

I had come from a musical background so I actually had made a bit of music myself. I was very much into UK drum ‘n’ bass culture – although I didn’t live in the UK, I lived in the US – but I was very much into that kind of music. But at the time I was also in graduate school and I was working on various projects, and I just thought an interesting project was to talk about the intellectual property issues of this particular break. I knew of the break already, I knew that it had come from a band called The Winstons, but that’s really all I knew. So I set forth and spent several months just doing as much research as I could about it. But that was back in 2004, youtube didn’t exist at that point, Wikipedia wasn’t what it is today, it wasn’t as easy as it might be today to do some of that research.

When I mention the break to people, that documentary is usually the first thing they refer to! It seems to have had a huge impact in spreading awareness of the history of the amen and where it comes from. 

That’s really humbling and nice to hear, it’s also I feel a little bit uneasy about it in the sense that I think it’s really The Winstons that should, especially G.C. Coleman, the drummer, who unfortunately passed away some years ago. [I]t’s really them that should be getting the spotlight, I’m just some geeky white kid from New York! I don’t consider myself to be part of that history at all, but I definitely think it’s a history that should be known.

Apparently [Winstons frontman] Richard Spencer was completely unaware of the break’s seismic impact until the late 1990s?

Yeah, I haven’t spoken to him directly, though we did email one another many years ago about this and by that point he was aware of it and he wasn’t exactly happy about the situation, you know, he felt a little bit bitter and I can’t say I blame him. I think he was – a lot of people were – just caught off-guard as to the novelty but also obviously the economic viability of sampling. You know, it’s really the backbone of so much music. And hip hop, as an example, makes a lot of money, drum n bass music made a lot of money. So to have one of your old records blow up – anywhere from Goldie to Squarepusher to Trent Reznor to Dr. Dre, to everybody you can think of has used the amen break at one point or another, and yet you haven’t really seen any money from that, it’s a little strange.

We’re talking potentially thousands and thousands of tracks. You’ve talked about entire scenes being based almost solely on this drum loop. I think it’s that aspect that fascinates me particularly

Yeah, in terms of how the scenes developed around the amen, it’s a really amazing trajectory, where we have rave music in the mid to late 80s, then the tempos of the music start getting faster, and then gradually breakbeats, again because of sampling technology get introduced, so rave music kind of morphs into what you might call hardcore techno or hardcore breakbeat music, then the amen is introduced and that kind of morphs into early jungle, then that gets maybe a little bit sanitised, some people might say, and turns into drum ‘n’ bass music, and then that splinters off into all sorts of places like drill n bass and breakcore and even today’s dubstep. There’s so many permutations at this point, it keeps subdividing into little genres.

I was trying to think of other examples of this phenomenon in modern culture, the only one that sprung readily to mind (more so, even, than other breakbeats) was The Wilhelm Scream?

Absolutely – it’s the Wilhelm Scream of breakbeat music!

To the extent that it’s became almost expected of any contemporary producer, a sort of tipping of the hat?

One of my favourites is Luke Vibert’s alias Amen Andrews. [The name] is obviously a take on [erstwhile This is Your Life presenter] Eamon Andrews, but it’s nothing but music composed with the amen. And he made those [records] later, a few years ago, but they reference early rave music, they sound like they should like they should be from the early 90s, when in fact they’re from the early-mid 2000s. But he’s intentionally making this kind of old, nostalgic amen rave sound. So there’s definitely this kind of self-consciousness about it. The US musician Keith Whitman aka Hrvatski made an entire album basically with nothing but the amen, Squarepusher, I would say, about 80% of his music incorporates the amen in some way. So there’s definitely this sense of – on the one hand, maybe, over-use, but on the other such an over-use that it becomes this right of passage, you have to if you’re serious electronic musician, you have to do an amen track if not an amen record.

What are your thoughts on this campaign to give something back to the surviving original member of the band?

I think it’s great! When I saw it – a friend of mine forwarded it to me – I kind of kicked myself for not having the same idea! I think it’s really great, I think it’s awesome that they’ve raised … what is it, over £16,000 now? [NB – currently over £22,00] As much as that’s awesome, I think it’s super awesome, that’s really pennies compared to how much the track has been used. And if Richard Spencer and the rest of The Winstons had actually collected royalties in the first place, it would have gone way beyond that. But at the same time, it’s this kind of paradoxical situation, it’s precisely the lack of control over the amen that allowed for it to spread and mutate and to develop into all these sub-genres. That’s the argument for this kind-of ‘copy-left’ argument, that if you regulate all this stuff, if you make it so you have to get permission all the time, that kind of impedes the progress of culture. And in some ways the amen story bares that out, it’s precisely because no-one stopped anybody from using it that it grew so much and it’s become such a huge thing in culture today.

It appears that a lot of DJs and producers who achieved success using the break have also been helping to spread the word and also donated themselves. 

Absolutely – as they should!

I was also going to include a longer interview with Steve Theobald aka DJ Deluxe, the campaign’s co-founder, but we ended up talking for over an hour on the subject, and I was hoping to have this cranked out by teatime. Besides, actions speaking louder than words, I thought it might be a better idea to share a couple of his own productions with you, released on legendary hardcore label Knite Force and – of course – with chopped up amens proudly in place. Ear goggles at the ready:

Pretty banging, right? Have another: With so many hundreds and thousands of tracks out there, picking the ultimate ‘amen roller’ would leave even the most devout junglist scratching their head, but here’s my personal favourite – Shy FX’s ‘Simple Tings’ from 1995, in which Andre Williams slices G.C. Coleman’s legacy into ribbons before recombining and twisting it into wild yet intricately syncopated patterns without losing any of it’s robotic funkiness. Play loud:

And finally, if you haven’t donated to the campaign yet, might I urge you to visit http://www.gofundme.com/amenbrother and just do whatever feels good and right?

Presented for your approval, my report on the magnificent Konono No.1‘s three-day residency at Cafe Oto in London, as broadcast this week on the BBC World Service programme ‘Focus On Africa‘. Freshly arrived from Kinshasha, and with translation provided by Ata Ahli of BBC Afrique, band leader Augustin Mawangu talks about his reaction to London crowds and the history of the band he now leads, originally founded by his father back in the late sixties:

I was lucky enough to snag a ticket for the opening performance before their unprecedented five-show run sold out, and to interview this relaxed and talkative chap enjoying an entirely justified after-show high – who could blame him? But the path of the broadcast journalist is seldom paved evenly and this first commission of the year came with a minor caveat: along with my usual list of questions, I had been asked by the Focus editorial team to obtain ‘vox-pops’ from members of the crowd after the group came off stage, just in case the following afternoon’s interview should fall-through and the package need fleshing out. Now, I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I am most certainly not a fan of our on-going mania with soundbite culture, encouraging random passers by to engage in idle conjecture in lieu of actual meaningful or factual content. In fact, I object to it all rather strongly. But, as you may have noticed, the BBC are all for it, and I like to think I’m mature enough to put my own mis-givings aside and go with something vaguely resembling the flow, especially when finances are tight and my editor is calling the shots – ‘bitch gotta make rent’ as Caitlin Moran might have put it.

Of course, walking up to complete strangers brandishing a recorder is seldom an agreeable position to find yourself in, so as I strode semi-purposefully through a venue packed to capacity with post-gig revellers, I resolved to ease myself gently into the proceedings by starting with someone I recognised. Quickly spotting an old acquaintance whom I knew to be something of a music expert, I reasoned he would be as good a place to start as any.

Or so I thought. In hindsight, my polite request for his thoughts on the evening proved to be quite an error, for they opened up some kind of internal flood-gate, resulting in a rather unexpected torrent of vitriol about just how much he hated soundbites and interviews of this nature and mainstream broadcasting in general; finishing with the suggestion that I go stick the whole endeavour up my proverbial – not quite what I was looking for. Attempting to pour oil over these ridiculously over-troubled waters, I explained that I wasn’t terribly keen on this approach myself, but had an editor to answer to; which was met with the snarky riposte ‘No you don’t. You design your life how you want it to be!’ While I was momentarily trying to figure out what the hell that actually meant, my subject then delivered what he clearly considered the killer blow by proceeding to ruminate for the benefit of my recorder on just how harrowing the holocaust must have been – his idea of a compromise, presumably. Such thoughts off his chest, and with no apparent plans on the horizon to design a life other than that of the pretentious, self-righteous ass-hat he had apparently become since our last meeting, I decided to leave him to it. Surely one of the strangest ever responses to a polite ‘How did you enioy the show?’

The funny thing is that in principle we appear to agree on both the subject of soundbites in journalism and the horror of Hitler’s final solution, but I can’t help thinking that it’s a little unsporting to try and shoe-horn the latter into an item that, given the current state of world-affairs, was presumably one of the very few remotely positive or light-hearted news stories Focus On Africa ran that day. I also like to imagine that I can maintain such opinions without having to resort to being a complete dick about them when probed on the subject.  This is after all a report on a concert, an enjoyable and friendly social event, not the scene of some unholy apocalyptic massacre. Thankfully all this nonsense was rendered entirely immaterial the following afternoon, when Augustin gave such a fine interview that everything else was deemed superflous to requirements. I had originally decided that this encounter was the single most ridiculous thing to have happened in 2015 thus far until a bizarre incident this morning in which some mad old trout branded me a ‘Popinjay Hipster’. Now THAT is how you do soundbites! Or at least it would be, had I been recording her…

These minor quibbles aside, thanks must go to Augustin Mawangu for being such a candid and interesting interviewee, Ata Ahli for the translation from French, Kim Chakanetsa for being super and tour manager Michel Winter for his help in arranging everything. I should also thank Vincent Luttman of Nostalgie Ya Mboka for providing an equally fascinating history of the band that was very sadly cut for time. I shall have to make use of his contribution one day, but meanwhile you can take advantage of his expertise on Congolese music for yourself by tuning to Resonance FM every Saturday at 1330. He was also the very first person in the UK to host a live performance by Konono No.1 way back in 2004, though everybody else seems to have forgotten this fact.

Seriously, this band are one of the most incredible live acts I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing and I urge you to go if you happen to have access to any of the cities they’re visiting as part of their European tour this month. It’s a pity we couldn’t have had longer with Agustin as there were so many more questions I would have liked to put past him, but the interview had to be slightly curtailed – partly because it was freezing and partly due to the presence of two middle-aged men dropping C-bombs and borderline racist remarks within earshot of my recorder. Weirdly, they appeared to have actually attended and enjoyed the gig as well, which made their aggressive and confrontational posturing even harder to figure out. What a confusing mix of human nature I’ve encountered while compiling this report. I suppose we shall just have to chalk it up to people increasingly designing their lives how they want them to be, which may prove rather tiresome for the rest of us in the long-run…

POPINJAY HIPSTER x

Standing here on the threshold of a brand new year, it seems only good and right to take a moment to look back over the past twelve months, a truly fantastic year for music and a truly awful year for just about everything else in the world. To that effect I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a special commemorative mixtape of some favourite moments of the former in an attempt to drown out the horrific and enduring effects of the latter:

With so much great music to choose from, it was never going to be an easy task, so I’ve narrowed down my parameters by concentrating purely on new releases over reissues (regrettably leaving out superb releases on Buried Treasure, Public Information and Suzanne Ciani’s wondrous music for Atari in the process) and tried to focus predominately on records that were, in my opinion, rather unfairly overlooked in the end of year lists appearing elsewhere. Now it’s finished I’m constantly being reminded of amazing works I left out, but nevertheless at the time of writing I find myself scaling the dizzy heights of ranking 20th in the Mixcloud ‘Pop’ charts, a truly humbling accolade which suggests I haven’t done such a bad job after all. Wonder if there’s a trophy or cash prize?

It’s been an eventful year at Fog Towers as well, with much excitement, intrigue and sonic adventure, so I’d like to hereby present my top 10 personal highlights of 2014 in no particular order. I realise that much of the following could be classed as shameless self-promotion, but then this is my own shamelessly self-promoting website, and if I don’t blow my own trumpet, who will? Strap on your ear-goggles and let’s roll:

1. Releasing Howlround’s third album Torridon Gate, to almost universally positive feedback and some truly humbling reviews. Thanks once again to Steve at A Year In The Country for all his hard work and to everyone who listened to, invested in or wrote nice things about it – a long list all by itself!

Not forgetting, of course, to give extra special thanks to gate-owners Tony and Kath of Torridon Road, Hither Green, whose generosity during Resonance FM‘s 2014 fundraising campaign kick-started the whole business. Could they have imagined what a can of worms their winning bid would result in? Could we?

2. A final live performance of the year in a basement in the gothic quarter of Barcelona, complete with standing ovation, encore and late-night tapas. Huge thanks once again to JP and Ale of 4’33” Cafe. Can’t wait to see what they get up to in 2015!

3. Meeting my heroes of the Radiophonic Workshop and actually getting paid by The BBC to do it:

Affable and fascinating characters all. A new album by the group, blending new compositions with re-worked classics is reported to have been completed, a decidedly promising omen for 2015.

4. Boards Of Kanyeda’s ‘Everything You Dig Is A Gold Balloon’, which spectacularly failed to go viral and cause any kind of massively financially-crippling but promotionally-lucrative legal frenzy. Still reckon it’s the best thing to have Kanye’s name on it in ages, though:

5. An extract from Howlround’s first ever live appearance features as part of the excellent Touch Radio series, alongside some particulalry lovely works by Aino Tytti, Philip Jeck, Chris Watson and much more. All available online and for free. You are warmly advised to fill your boots:

6. Performing at both Cafe Oto and The Beacons Festival at the behest of our friends The Octopus Collective. This latter ‘headlining’ performance (we were the final act of the evening in the only tent left open) elicited two of my favourite reviews of the year: ”Uncanny, mesmerising, difficult and sublime’ (Jonny Mugwump, writing for The Quietus) and ‘This is [the] s**t!’ (Anon). Our thanks and gratitude once again to John, Glenn, Jonny and our vocal supporter in the third row. Take a bow, sirs.

7. This picture of my ear by typewriter-artist Keira Rathbone, to commemorate her summer showcase ‘Brink’ at The Vaults Gallery beneath Waterloo station.

The collaborative sound installation was produced by Lolita Laguna and myself using recordings of Keira’s typing played through an amplifier into the cavernous expanses of the gallery over and over again; creating a haunting song of the tunnels that was to become the recipient of my single favourite piece of feedback this year – an incredulous ‘…But this is supposed to be a HAPPY place!’ from a fellow exhibitor. I’m not sure if it’s just my mind playing tricks on me, but I think she might actually have had a tail. For both of these reasons, I’m contemplating asking her to pen the sleeve-notes for the next Howlround LP.

8. Lots of fun with Aleks Kolkowski‘s installation of The Denman Horn at The Science Museum.

You can listen to my interview with Aleks for the BBC here or enjoy the special ‘horn-friendly’ edition of The OST show broadcast live from museum here. But I think this montage of Fog and Ship’s horns from the BBC Sound Effects archive recorded at the gigantic mouth of the horn is as good a place to start as any:

9. Speaking of Foghorns, here’s one of the greats. Immortalised in such classic works as Ingram Marshall’s Fog Tropes (reissued this year on Arc Light Editions) and Bill Fontana’s Landscape Sculpture With Foghorns (not reissued at all, but here’s hoping), the Golden Gate Bridge foghorns remain operational to this day. Part of a huge collection of sound recordings made in the US that I’ve so-far utterly failed to share with you all. Please be patient, all in good time:

10. Remixing a track from Brood Ma‘s excellent second album P O P U L O U S for the equally fine follow-up re P O P U L O U S. Expect to hear much more from this redoutable chap in 2015.

I’d like to close by wishing you all a Happy New Year and to propose a toast everyone who has supported my work in 2014, particularly that large and amazing collection of  writers, bloggers, DJs, musicians, nerds, weirdos and other associates that I’m very pleased to call friends. Cheers!

 

Good news this week from both the past and the future. First to the future, and please enjoy this video, the soundtrack of which may ring a bell – albeit the tolling of a particularly lonesome and desolate one:

Yes, we’re very excited to announce a new Howlround composition (although those of you who follow me on Soundcloud might find it familiar) is to be included on The Delaware Road, a brand new compilation scheduled for an early 2015 release on Alan Gubby’s Buried Treasure imprint – indeed you might remember their excellent Rare Psyche, Moogs and Brass LP of library obscurities from earlier this year. We’re decidedly chuffed to have been asked, and to be sharing the stage with such luminaries as Ian Helliwell, The Dandelion Set, Monoslapper et al. Your choice of vinyl, CD or DL and more details will follow in due course, but in the meantime I can reveal that this new work has been created entirely from the sound of a squeaky microphone cradle in a New Broadcasting House studio. You can even follow this very studio on Twitter, if that doesn’t feel like too ridiculous a pastime, and perhaps send it a congratulatory message or two for possessing such inordinately musical properties.

Now for the past. In an absurdly coincidental piece of good-timing, we’re equally chuffed to announce that this aforementioned new composition, as well as a couple of choice selections from Howlround’s growing back catalogue, were used to add a little chilly gravitas to BBC Radio 3’s Sunday feature ‘The Supernatural North’ last week. Presented by “New Generation Thinker” Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and produced by Philippa Ritchie, the programme ‘journeys to Arctic Norway in search of the supernatural world that haunts the imagination of writers such as Philip Pullman, A.S. Byatt, C.S. Lewis, Hans Christian Andersen and the authors of the medieval Icelandic sagas’.

As the dark winter nights draw in, our thoughts turn to all things Northern – roaring fires and woolly jumpers, snow, ice, and the faint jingle of Father Christmas’s sleigh. But across the centuries, a weirder, wilder North has lurked in the imaginative shadows: a North populated by mountain trolls, demons and direwolves, white witches and white walkers, snow queens and Sámi shamans. Following the trail of a 9th century Norseman called Ohthere, who travelled along the northern coast of Norway and down to the White Sea in Russia, Eleanor sets out from the coastal city of Tromsø in northern Norway. But whereas Ohthere wanted to survey the land and acquire walrus ivory, reindeer and exotic furs, Eleanor is looking for a stranger North – a place inhabited by mountain trolls, witches and giants.

I don’t know about you, but they had me at ‘dark winter nights’. Plus there’s an intriguing moment involving the penis-bone of a Walrus for added measure, surely something no self-respecting documentary can do without nowadays. At the time of writing, ‘The Supernatural North’ is still available here for your listening pleasure, but the BBC does have some funny ideas about just how long such material should be made available for general consumption; so you’re advised to dig in while you still can. And anyone else working on investigations into direwolves, white witches and the like that will require sound-tracking is warmly encouraged to get in touch. I think you’ll find our rates most competitive.

Oh, and Happy Christmas, Everyone! Festive tidings to you and your kin from the happy hearth here at Fog Towers. Hope your Christmas is restful and jolly and entirely free of televised Forsythian light-ent dancing atrocities. We can but hope…