Newbuild

 

After the last post about A Guy called Gerald, something from 808 State just had to come here. The band he was a member of for that first album. Well, I don't know what the relationship with the band is like today, there were court hearings because of missing author credits for "Pacific State", the first 808 State hit, swipes and "Specific Hate".

Perhaps Gerald Simpson would prefer not to live next door to his old colleagues, even in a text about the past. But maybe it is just that: the past.

Gerald Simpson doesn't just stand only for “Voodoo Ray”. He delivered incredible albums. “Automanikk” is fantastic and the later jungle albums were simply different than others in this genre. His tracks have hardly aged at all, I personally prefer the years up to 1989/1991, simply because so much happened there musically and I certainly romanticize that time. His credits for 808 State are also well known, perhaps there was some satisfaction afterwards, also in the form of outstanding payments. Maybe there was the agreement with 808 State that it had with Rham! because of “Voodoo Ray” never existed. Gerald Simpson never got any money for “Voodoo Ray,” which seems incredible and impossible. This is my level of knowledge.

As far as I know, I actually read all the interviews and texts about AGCG, I have always perceived Mr. Simpson as a calm, reflected, emphatic, thoughtful artist who was happy to pass on his knowledge of the machines, his irritation to this time is absolutely understandable.

I first heard “Flow Coma”, of course, in one of Monika Dietl’s shows on SFB, in an exclusive Coldcut mix. A raw, wild, groovy acid piece. One of the two Coldcuts fades out briefly in the middle, chatters briefly about the piece, but rather loudly, and then cranks it up again. What is otherwise annoying comes across as completely effective here and has stuck in my ears in such a way that when I hear the piece without that voice, which is more the norm these days, I think something is missing. Wild, important acid album.

„“NEWBUILD" was made before computers dominated production. All the sounds on this album, bar a few, are triggered by the drum machine. This is why you can hear mistakes on the album as it was laid down live to two-track tape recorder. Incidentally, the master tape, long-since disintegrated, was nicked out of a skip from the back of the BBC, Manchester. It had been spliced and diced heavily enough to get binned, even before 808 got their hands on it.

The great thing about "NEWBUILD" now is that it hasn't been diminished by the passage of time. It's still dirty, cavernous, messy, full of mistakes and profoundly f***ed up - Acid house from a brief period before it all went loved-up, blissed-out, whatever. "NEWBUILD" is unhinged, genuinely lysergic, made all the more vivid by the overwhelming sense of optimism that a new music was being formed right here and right now. The tyranny of formula had not yet made its presence felt on the scene.“

• Richard Hector-Jones -

„Newbuild is a testament to the band's stop- at- nothing enthusiasm for their music, and is also the guts and determination of fiercely independent music. The tape they recorded the album on was removed from a dumpster 'round the back of the Manchester studios of the BBC; it'd been thrown away because it had been cut and spliced so often that it no longer met the quality thresholds of BBC engineers. But these three Mancunian scallywags saw an essential resource and seized it.

And it's with this spirit that 808 State imbued their debut record. The instruments were crappy and severely dated (remember, this was 1988, and the vogue for the Roland TB303 was five years in the future). Simpson, Massey, and Price recognized that the acidic spikes and snarls of the 303 and the synthetic percussion of the Roland 808 were exact replicas of the sounds they heard in their mindspaces. The trio then recorded an album that, after more than ten years of technological progression, still kicks away every other attempt at the definitive acid house album. And I mean "album," not just a collection of individual tracks sequenced together.

Newbuild takes you on an excursion through the jacked up sounds of dendrites firing, quasars spinning, and the piezoelectric sounds of an electron mist. From the opener "Sync/Swim" through the body- tingling bass pulses of "Flow Coma" and the percussive frenzy of "Headhunters" to the closing tribal techno funk of "Compulsion," 808 State challenge your preconception of how music should be and prove just how damn funky three tearaways with a beat-up drum machine can be.“

• Paul Cooper -

„There used to be a time when Newbuild could be considered the ultimate in freaky shit stuff, and there have been rumors (actively supported by 808 State themselves) that the album was a huge influence on none other than Mr. Richard D. James. But look for user reviews these days, and many of them will express disappointment. «It's almost as if I camped out in a Casio forest», a guy complains on Amazon, and he's far from the only unlucky camper. In retrospect, Grand Historians of Elec­tronica usually throw out the required five-star patches, but the rest of the crowds have simply moved on, discarding the past in favor of more «relevant», instantly gratifying pleasures.

But somehow, it makes me a little sad, even if I am by no means a fan of machine loop music, and, normally, the slightest talk about «Acid House», which 808 State allegedly helped bring around into European public consciousness or both, makes me scream in terror and run to my Bessie Smith recordings. Because, loops and rhythms and obsolete recording technology aside, Newbuild is really an excellent musical album. And, furthermore, I do not quiteunderstand what all the fuss is about: to my untrained ears, Newbuild still sounds sufficiently modern. I've certain­ly heard Aphex Twin tracks that were far crappier from a straightforward sonic point of view.

What these three merry guys from Manchester (Graham Massey, Martin Price and Gerald Simp­son) are doing here is making house music from an alien standpoint, borrowing the basics, cros­sing them with an artistic mindset that is influenced both by the astral dreams of Tangerine Dream and the industrial nightmares of Nurse With Wound, and coming up with enough in­di­vi­dual ideas to make nearly each track a stand-out. Sure, they would probably work best as top-le­vel soundtracks for arcade games — but if you find that demeaning, you can choose «sonic equi­valents of looking out the window in a spaceship flying close to light speed». That's acid house for you all right, if you are really in need of labeling.

The album never relents or slows down: it is fourty minutes of pounding grooves, seven different landscapes that shift form and color, but never speed, lest you lose the proper momentum. And what they lack in the ability to program a real tricky rhythm or polyrhythm, they gain in the pure art of invention. 'Sync/Swim' is all based around the bizarre interaction between the funky (but al­so quite heavy-metallic) bassline and the cute (but dangerous!) synthy double-note chomp-chomp that may represent little alien battleships speeding past that window of yours in regular formation — or, in a microcosmic manner, batches of viruses speeding up and down your arteries. 'Flow Coma' is less heavy, but equally mind-blowing, a real delight to see these synth patterns flow into and out of one another, weaving harmoniously melodic psychedelic patterns. And so on. The on­ly thing I am not sold on are the vocal loop overdubs — their presence on 'Dr. Lowfruit' and especi­ally 'Compulsion' is grating and distracting.“

• George Starostin / Only Solitaire -

https://www.discogs.com/master/25427-State-808-Newbuild

Trip City

 

When Trip City was released in 1989, there wasn't the slightest chance of getting hold of a copy.

Although the Berlin Wall had just fallen, I began to explore the record stores in the west of the city with a modest budget, but the method of choice was to make recordings from the radio for a while. Monika Dietl played “Voodoo Ray” in the SFB, of course, but also tracks like “Time waits for no Man” and “Rockin Ricky”. And at some point, not too long later, the albums “Automanikk” and “Hot Lemonade” were in the record cabinet. But on “Trip City,” I first came across Discogs, but everything was already there.

Almost 3 years ago, Velocity Press took pity and brought a new edition of the book onto the market. This time the music came not from tape, which would have been appealing, but from vinyl. “Valentines Theme” is an absolute hit here for me. A typical, groovy Gerald Simpson track as you know it from “Time waits…” or “Subscape”. You already know “FX” from the Automanikk album. In general, we're listening to A Guy called Gerald 1989. The album has fewer melodic moments than Automanikk, but has that AGCG sound from that time throughout. Put on Trip City and go back to back then. Feel free to read later the Book.   

„In the summer of 1989, when Trip City was first released with a five track cassette EP by A Guy Called Gerald, there had been no other British novel like it. This was the down and dirty side of London nightclubs, dance music and the kind of hallucinogenic drug sub-culture that hadn't really been explored since Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Maybe this is why Trip City is still known as "The Acid House novel" and an underground literary landmark.

Over the decades, Trip City became shrouded in scandal and mystery. The original London book launch literally descended into a riot - shut-down by the Metropolitan Police.

Everyone from the makers of Raiders Of The Lost Ark through the director of Candyman tried to adapt the book into a movie - but imploded in the process. And the galleys of the 25th anniversary edition were destroyed in a fire, before they could even be proofed or printed.

Perhaps Trip City is uniquely summed-up by the original publisher, dearly departed sci-fi legend Brian Aldiss, who wrote of the novel: "In the vintage of Thomas De Quincey's Confessions Of An English Opium Eater - but smack up to date.

It's about a young man's descent into hell - a hell that looks very much like London."

- Velocity Press -

„It was an overcast afternoon, early in 1989 when I went to visit A Guy Called Gerald at Moonraker Studios in Longsight, Manchester. The long bus ride felt quite strange. Plus for many people, the idea of a soundtrack for a novel was particularly absurd. I wanted to use the word 'visionary' myself. | wanted this process to be something that would kick the Trip City legend into overdrive, add a dense layer of atmosphere, like a smoke machine in a club - or at the very least make the story more accessible for the people who might read it... But, you have to imagine or cast your mind back to a time before electronic music was largely generated via software or complex apps. Drum machines and sequencers were the gold standard - or all there was. So, the early pioneers like Gerald Simpson were literally inventing a 'sound' that didn't totally exist, yet. More importantly, the kind of narrative multimedia you see every day now on Instagram hadn't been invented.

I must confess, I was a little sceptical at first when Gerald opened a few beat-up holdalls and started lifting out a weird collection of 808s, 303s and the like.

Still, he plugged them together like some mad genius and then literally conjured a soundtrack from thin air. I was staggered by his intuitive skill and virtuosity. I was energised by how he changed-up and dropped into different styles, without skipping a beat. From orchestral, through danceable, even the sombre power of Gregorian chants... He made a theme for the main character. A track emblematic of the

'Latin' club in my story. Then a longer piece that was allegedly inspired by the fictional designer drug, as depicted in the text. I wrote a few lines - which he used as lyrics - and five minutes later he called up a female vocalist and she was singing the Trip City theme. If you listen closely, it's Gerald's voice saying "you can feel the atmosphere - there is sound, everywhere..." on the Trip City title track.

Later on, a number of journalists came up with the idea that this music or soundtrack was created to listen to as you read the book. Somebody even said that the staccato writing of the novel is meant to emulate the 4/4 beat of Acid House. Maybe I even said that myself.

Thirty-plus years later, I would like to think that the soundtrack is important because it sets the story in a time and a place. It's an atmospheric companion piece that may well transport you back to those sweaty nights in a smoke-filled club when too many pills took hold. If it does - great. And if not, it doesn't really matter - because these are still terrific tunes that sound just as unique and emotive as when Gerald made them, all those years ago.

I remember back in the 80s, in my hometown, Tony Wilson (of Factory Records fame) was fond of calling Shaun Ryder the WB Yeats of his day. In that vein, whether or not I like to see myself in the canon of Anthony Burgess and Clockwork Orange - with these five tracks, AGCG feels very much like the Ludwig Van to my Alex DeLarge.

- Trevor Miller -

“I got the manuscript off Trevor, the book wasn’t out yet, I read bits of it and made music to go with what I’d read. I wouldn’t say I read the book and sound-tracked it. I read bits of the book which got me thinking and feeling and then went ahead and made the music. So, I’d have to say the book did influence the sounds. It’s what I was asked to do and I thought it was a really interesting concept and collaboration”

The music on the Trip City EP is relentless groove. There are no break downs or drops, just an undeniable dance beat, which goes on forever without any stops. The tracks coming out today mostly have break downs and build ups, drops and sections which show the crowd when to dance and what to do. It’s like wait for it, wait for it…..OK NOW!“

- Gerald Simpson -

https://www.discogs.com/release/19135738-A-Guy-Called-Gerald-Trip-City

Hurry up & Live

 

My acquaintance with Timm Sure & Ampo aka Coyote basically began about 10 years ago with a triple album or triple release. When I was looking for new music on Beatport, I came across Harlyn Bay, was completely excited about this new Balearic sound and was excited to discover that there were already 2 other LPs Half Man Half Coyote & Gliding Time.

Since then, I've actually blindly bought every single one of their releases, often on vinyl, but always at least digitally. There are also countless remixes and mixes regularly published on SoundCloud.

Here, too, we are basically dealing with workaholics, but workaholics who always have maximum fun in mind and signal pure joy in life.

They actually found their sound straight away and have been refining and confirming it again and again for 15 years. The voice samples they often build around their tracks are exquisite. In their recognizability they remind me of the BBC Workshop Samples by the Orb. Completely different, but immediately recognizable.

“Hurry up and Live“ is a new mini album from the beginning of the year with 6 tracks full of Balearic pearls of all kinds. “We got Lost”, “Show me” & „Cirrus“ are classic Coyote tracks that you can find on all their long players and never get enough of. Male and female voice samples, Spanish guitars, dubby house rhythms ….. 

The album was detailed and aptly written as always by Adam Turner for the wonderful Ban Ban Ton Ton, here:

https://banbantonton.com/2023/12/04/coyote-hurry-up-and-live-is-it-balearic-by-adam-turner/

If you are looking for old & new music, if you want to remember and be inspired, you are best advised to look here:

https://banbantonton.com

http://baggingarea.blogspot.com

https://dubhed.blogspot.com

File under: Balearic I House I  Downtempo

Freediving in the Tropical Zone

 

This Sunday service comes from The Isle of Jura with the Jura Soundsystem.

Return to the Island offers the finest Balearic ambient house.

„The label is called Isle Of Jura. I`m assuming this is a KLF reference. But why?

The KLF are inextricably linked to my youth and University days. The Chill Out album particularly. That album was like nothing I’d heard before, and as well as the mind-blowing music, I was really drawn to the personality of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, and the branding of it all. Their whole approach was really in the spirit of Punk, and doing things 100% their own way. I loved that edginess. Their mystique and legend just continues to grow, and I wanted to tap into that vibe with the new label, which is named after the place where they burned a million quid in cash.“

„As a listener, you will have to imagine the palm trees.  For Australian label owner and producer Kevin Griffiths aka Jura Soundsystem they provide the backdrop when he works on new tracks in his home studio in Adelaide.  Added to this are the calls of tropical birds, some of which have also made it onto the album thanks to the open studio doors, for example on the opener »An Interlude in Paradise«.  

Composed during the quiet and isolation provided by Covid and the pandemic, the selections add up to a perhaps predictably chilled-out, but varied album, ranging in tempo from beatless ambient, to seductive, slo-mo house. The opening An Interlude In Paradise, for example, could be a clipping from Virginia Astley`s cult classic, „From Gardens where we feel Secure“. 

„A happy memory captured on tape, accompanied by pretty piano, and rich with reverb. Meanwhile, Crystal Voyager is a bumping and skipping mid-tempo mover that mixes acidic twists with its mellow marimba and feather-like, Fairlight-like cries and whispers. Whatever Happens, Happens, similarly, is a cool take on the template of firm loved-up favourites, such as Culturebeat`s „Cherry Lips“.

More important are the main ingredients, soft synthesizer chords on »Return To The Island« with bright bell-like melodies and a beat kept at a moderate tempo.  Griffiths combines them in the style of the tried and tested Balearic sound with basically minor variations, but still varied enough to avoid becoming monotonous.

The breaks and bubbling b-line of Freediving In The Tropical Zone invoke the still in vogue sound of early `90s street soul. With its clipped guitar, congas, cowbell, and 80s electro-boogie bass, King Of Aldinga could almost be classified as spaced-out jazz-funk. Romantic strings off-setting its ping-ponging programmed melody. Love Always Wins constructs its beats from collaged breathing – with edits a la Art Of Noise – while borrowing an instantly recognizable Tom Clay, spoken word sample (once made famous by Deee-Lite). 

In places, such as Linn Fun`s combination of gentle tribal tom tom rhythms and afro / cosmic electronics, the music recalls Jasper Vant Hof`s „Pili Pili“ project. In others, like the standout closing cut, Inhale Exhale, it`s cinematic. Sighs and storms segueing through eruptions of echo and delay, and topped off by a sweet saxophone solo. 

What remains the same is the relaxed, summery optimism which each and every one of the eight numbers exudes.  This is always a good thing to have, perhaps even more so than usual at the moment.  Besides that, the term »downtempo« appear to fit in here unreservedly for once as well.  At the end there is thunder and rain, but even that is not threatening, but rather refreshing amidst the languorous sunshine sounds.“

sampled text passages from

Ban Ban Ton Ton

HHV Mag

File under: Ambient I Balearic I House

In this Forest all Problems become beautiful Birds

 I'm a little late, but at the end of April, 2 years ago I came back to the Nature Tales label after a 3 year break with “In this Forest all of your Problems become beautiful Birds”.

Markus (released as Respira) & Jakob (released as Ishtadi) contacted me in 2019 with a request for a contribution to their mix series. Nature Tales is based in Copenhagen. The two of them had spent some time in India and shortly afterwards started the label for various activities, their own releases, vibroacoustic, party series, soundscapes for yoga, etc. etc. That offers enough space for its own post. I was in a difficult personal situation at the time and the offer, the first of its kind at the time, was a good way to find distraction. I had recently started uploading my own mixes to SoundCloud and was pleased that there were actually people interested in it. In the end it was a double release at the end of 2019. I will definitely report on this later. As a result, there was always a lively exchange, many labels also released their music on tapes, so through the purchase I came into contact with some artists (Renan Rodriguez/Folest, Anthony Asher Yates/Balsam, Tom Lievens/Atmøsphäre), who I in turn recommended it for subsequent mixes on Nature Tales. I felt like an unofficial member of the label these days. I am still connected to them both today and very grateful. I think they got the ball rolling for all the following mixes I did for Deep Breakfast Series, Amateur Exotic, Dug up the Bongo, LYL Radio, Ambient Memory for Radio Grafhit, Ingrown Records (Aura Borealis), EMC - Atmospheres, & HOC Radio was then allowed to design.

In 2022 I spent some time in medical rehab and had enough time in my free time to concentrate more on my mixes again. At the same time I also had a request from Francesco Piunti for a mix for his successful Deep Breakfast series and so 2022 turned out to be, in my opinion, a good year for Echo and Rauschen. More about that at a later date.

My first mix for Nature Tales, “Tropical Mysteries”, a title I borrowed from an Atmøsphäre track, went pretty well for a newcomer I thought & so returning 3 years later felt pretty normal and natural and logical .

"Whenever I go into a forest: 
I experience relief, always. 
And usually new paths open up. 
Healing is also possible"

Poems by:

Jean-Michel Jarre I Atmøsphäre I Shuta Yasukochi & Carlos Ferreira I Yoyu I 

Heavenchord & Infinity Dots I Adzuki I Luna Monk I 태양이 내 얼굴에 입맞춤 I Zensō I WINDMILL
A I O N I N:L:E I Corben I Respira & Atmøsphäre I Halftribe I Amanita Phalloides & Heavenchord
Future Zen I Gates of Siam I Bubble Keiki I Heavenchord I Lorenz Weber & Å Asher-Yates
Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza I Atmøsphäre & Balsam I H-M O

Nature Tales · Nature Tales Mix #23: Echo and Rauschen - In This Forest All Your Problems Become Beautiful Birds

Ancient Ruins of the World

 

The posts scheduled for today and tomorrow have become independent and have all appeared on yesterday. So just a short post to end the day.

Voyage Futur is Wolfgang Möstl (Lehmann), a wondrous project from Austria, whose albums have already been released, mostly on cassette. I would like to write more about this.

“Ancient Ruins of the world” was published a few weeks ago.

A beautiful song to reconcile with the day at the latest and give it a peaceful smile.

Frame drum, tongue drum, bamboo flute - Beate

marimba, strings, synths - Wolfgang

Enjoy.

File under: Ambient I New Age I Meditation