Tag: soundtrack

Soundtrack: The Sirens of Titan

Photography Andrew Hobbs Styling William Gilchrist Clothing by Favourbrook

Around the release of Age of Treason, John-Paul Pryor, frontman of The Sirens of Titan, writes on a life spent listening to Bob Dylan’s Bringing it all Back Home.

I’m a music junkie, and have been as long as I can remember. There are so many albums I return to again and again, and again, chasing the initial high I felt upon first listen. And while my sonic tastes could be said to span a pretty broad church, or cult, most of them probably fall into the ‘classic’ vein, spanning everything from the likes of Maggot Brainby Funkadelic to Beggars Banquet by The Stones and Music Has The Right to Children by Boards of Canada, with everything you can possibly imagine in-between. So, in terms of choosing one album to talk about, it’s been near impossible. After much deliberation it came down to the Velvet Underground’s Loaded and Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, and, in the end, I have chosen to talk about the latter, because I think it has genuinely soundtracked so much of my life, and meant so many different things to me at different times. 

I can distinctly recall the very first moment I became aware of Bob Dylan. I was about seven years old, and one of our neighbours was getting married and moving from our sleepy North London suburb to the incredibly exotic sounding United States. Although I can’t recall the reason he deigned to gift me his collection of vinyl records and cassette tapes, or indeed even his name, the offering proved to be an eclectic sonic treasure trove, with the likes of Bowie (Aladdin Sane, equally formative, but another story), to Suicidal Tendencies and Thin Lizzy among its riches. Nestled deep within this haul of sonic swag were three classic Dylan offerings, Slow Train Coming, Live At Budokan and, of course, Bringing It All Back Home. 

To say that this act of kindness changed my life would be an understatement. I was utterly mesmerised by rock’n’roll from the get-go. My journey into Dylan began distinctly with “Gotta Serve Somebody” from Slow Train Coming – the very first track by the troubadour I ever played in my suburban bedroom – but it was, and has always been, Bringing It All Back Home that immersed itself deep into my psyche.  Listening to the album at a very young age was very much like watching an animated cartoon in my head – all of these fascinatingly jumbled up words tumbling into my brain via a rasping drawl and the infectious rhythm of its opener, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. I also recall being taken with the album’s cover, and would spend hours imagining what the lives of the two bohemians caught in its fish-eye lens might actually be like – chilling with magazines, cigarettes and a fiercely beautiful woman in a red dress struck me as the perfect way to live.

By the time I was twelve years old, I was ferociously attempting to play “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” on a small acoustic guitar, which my parents had brought me for Christmas (I still write with it now). Imagine their surprise to hear their young child’s voice singing, “From toy guns that spark, to flesh-coloured Christ’s that glow in the dark, it’s easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred …” I didn’t understand the profound nature of the writing, of course, but I truly loved the song, and, in his way, Dylan was beginning to shape my consciousness. That view of the world, with a strange sort of mysticism, has stuck. His music was leading me to a deeper reality, fuelling my reverie.

Fast-forward some years to studying in Cheltenham. It was at this point that the depths of the album were being revealed to me so much further. I was studying English and Philosophy, and it’s fair to say I had simultaneously discovered various somewhat chemical habits, so mine was a head full of dreams (and nightmares). At that time, my mother was ill with the cancer that would soon enough see her slip this mortal coil, and Dylan’s words were becoming ever more entrenched in me, speaking to the tristesse and despondency I was carrying inside. 

I have a crystal clear memory of sitting in a park in the regency town early one rainy morning, having been up for days (this was, after all, the early 90s – the ecstasy drug culture was in full swing), and, as I came down hard, struggling with my perception of the real, I listened to the “The Gates of Eden” on a pair of battered headphones. Dylan’s words floated into my brain like the light and gentle rain that was soaking through my clothes: “The kingdoms of experience, in a precious winds they rot / While paupers change possessions / Each one wishing for what the other has got / And the princess and the prince discuss what’s real and what is not / It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden …” Although I knew the song backwards, somehow it was a wholly new experience to me once more, and it hit me like a freight train. It opened floodgates of emotion inside of me, and, while it sounds somewhat dark, the experience was immensely healing. I wept like a baby. 

But, of course, Bringing It All Back Home is not an album solely of thoughtful reflection, it is also a record that contains an absurd and celebratory hedonism at its heart, and, to this day, “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” can still put me in the mood to say fuck it all, up sticks, burn a credit card and take off for a new horizon, for better or worse. For those who are not initiated in its singular brilliance, the song documents a wildly surreal trip that says something to me about being solely devoted to the energy of the moment, and ricocheting through life, quite literally, like a rolling stone: “I decided to flip a coin / Like either heads or tails / Would let me know, if I should go / Back to ship or back to jail / So I, hocked my sailor suit / And I got a coin to flip / It came up tails, it rhymed with sails / So I made it back to the ship…”It’s also a wry comment on the foundation of America – a country I love, despite all of its evangelism and gun-toting right-wing kooks. 

There is so much more on the record than I can possibly get into here, but I hope I have given at least a glimmer of how much it has meant to me over the years. If I can say anything overall about Bringing it All Back Home, it’s that it made me fall in love with the outlaw archetype, because Dylan is, to me, the very epitome of an outlaw, and has obviously loved them all of his life. “I got my dark sunglasses / I’m carrying for good luck, my black tooth / Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’ / I just might tell you the truth,” he sings on the driving splendour of “Outlaw Blues”, which namechecks both Jesse James and his killer Robert Ford, encapsulating, as ever in his work, yin and yang, light and darkness. In short, I absolutely love Bringing It All Back Home and I always shall, perhaps in large part because this society will always need its outlaws – more often than not, it is the outsider who can show us the way to salvation. 

thesirensoftitanband.com

Soundtrack: Esperanza Spalding

The Grammy-award winning bassist, cellist and singer recalls how a cult album by New York Duo Cibo Matto helped shape her music career

Photo – Tawni Bannister
Photo – Tawni Bannister

When I was a teenager, my family didn’t have a car so I’d have to get everywhere by public transport. The Discman had just become a phenomenon, and I had mine on me wherever I went – for the walk to the bus stop and the journey onwards.

At about 15, I stopped playing classical violin and started playing bass. It was a very transformative age for me. It was also the first time I heard Cibo Matto’s Stereo Type A – that record completely changed my life. It’s playing in my head now… It takes me back to field trips and trying to avoid other people so I could just be in my own space. Or to being alone in my room. Or to all that time spent on the bus.

But even more, it takes me back to how I felt living in the world at that time. I thought I was really bad-ass. Walking down the street, Stereo Type A was my soundtrack to Portland. Everything looked cinematic and beautiful with it playing. The way the light came through the half-overcast sky on to the damp sidewalks. It made me think this world is my fucking oyster and I’m going to crack it.

At that age, I had this compulsive enthusiasm about what I was going to make of my life. I thought I was so smart and cool and it was only a matter of time before everyone else figured it out. As soon as I got to school, though, I didn’t feel that great. I was very insecure as a teenager.

But the fact that Stereo Type A was so beautiful, so sophisticated, and so bad-ass, and that I got it, that I liked it, to me meant that I also had to be sophisticated, cool and bad-ass. That I could even perceive how amazing it was meant that I must have shared those qualities.

That album influenced me two ways. First, it sounded so different to Viva La Woman. It was the first time I realised that bands and artists could sound completely different, album to album. That was part of my initial fascination: how can the same people make something that sounds so very different? I try to have that eclectic, unafraid approach with what I do. I’ll do a hundred different things and they’ll all sound different, Cibo Matto gave me that.

Also, it’s got that ‘fuck it’ quality. That attitude of ‘this is what I’m hearing, this is what I’m interested in, this is what I have to say. Fuck it, I’m going to do it and make it great’. That’s the fundamental energy I received from Cibo Matto. That approach to work – to refine, to tweak, to edit it and to not stop until it’s right. There are moments that we all go ‘fuck it, I hear this and I’m going to keep on working on it – in its lyrics, in its production, in its melodies… it sounds satisfying and completely beautiful.’

This article is taken from PORT issue 19, out now.

Words Esperanza Spalding

 

Soundtrack: Taylor McFerrin

Following his performance at Drambuie’s penultimate Brass and Crimson session, the music producer and keyboardist recalls discovering a life-changing album while searching through records owned by his father, Bobby McFerrin

Taylor McFerrin performing at Dramuie's Brass and Crimson session in Oct 2016, at Hoxton Hall, London.
Taylor McFerrin performing at Dramuie’s Brass and Crimson session in Oct 2016, at Hoxton Hall, London.

I grew up in San Francisco and, like most kids, I was into hip-hop. I remember listening to Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 chambers and Outkast’s first record Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. It was weird because I was more attracted to east-coast hip-hop even though I was on the west coast…

I was pretty young when Snoop Dogg’s first solo record, Doggy Style, came out and, of course, my friends and I wanted to listen it. It got so popular that there were conferences at my school about letting parents know what this music was about. My dad was not into it at all. He didn’t want me to listen that kind of stuff, and, before I was able to fully get into hip-hop, he threw away all of my records. But the outcome of that, was that I started to look into my parent’s CD collection for the first time, and that’s when I discovered Stevie Wonder’s early solo work.

Fulfillingness’ First Finale was the first album I borrowed from them, because I was like ‘oh this looks interesting’. Then I just played it over and over on the way to school, which was at least a one-hour bus ride in the morning. It was the perfect amount of time to listen to a whole album, and I was in this kind of barely-awake, headphones-on state, which is one of the best times of listening to music, because it’s almost like you’re in a dream and the music is the whole soundtrack to your dream.

That was when I got into the sounds from that era, the Moog analogue synthesiser, and non-real instrumentation; that’s just the sound that I’ve always loved, to this day. That whole album opened me up to that era. ‘Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away’ is a song that you don’t really hear on any classic soul station – lyrically and musically, that song is probably my favourite from that record.

I remember I had a gig in Jakarta Jazz Festival in Indonesia and Stevie was part of the lineup. All of the artists were staying at the same hotel and when I was outside waiting for the van to take me to the venue, he came out with his entourage. He was standing basically right next to me and I was totally freaking out. It literally felt like I was around an angel. I wanted to say something to him, but at the same time it was just enough to be around him.

Soundtrack: Oliver Spencer

Exclusive image of Singer/Songwriter Seye Adelekan, from Oliver Spencer's AW16 campaign
Exclusive image of Singer/Songwriter Seye Adelekan, from Oliver Spencer’s AW16 campaign

Menswear designer Oliver Spencer reflects on the enduring influence of Talking Heads’ breakthrough album 

The album that has influenced me throughout my entire life has been Talking Heads’ ‘Speaking in Tongues’. I think I was introduced to their music at school; the first time I ever listened to them was ‘Psycho Killer’. From then I watched David Byrne do this amazing concert where he deconstructs and reconstructs a living room on stage. I just think at the time he was doing music that was so far and away, so forward in its sound and its theatrics compared to the time in which we were living. Even if you were to launch an album like that right now, it would just be a phenomenal thing – I really believe it’s an album without boundaries.

Oliver Spencer portrait
Oliver Spencer

I always think being a musician is quite a luxury, because you can take two years to do an album. Being a designer you have to do two collections a year minimum, so we’re just constantly creating and producing. I must say, sometimes I’d like to have more time and not to be on the treadmill, but in a lot of ways I enjoy the schedule. I’m that type of person that needs to be busy, so I’m not sure I’ll be good with myself taking so long over one thing.

Oliver Spencer’s AW16 collection is available online now

Soundtrack: Madness (Lee Thompson)

Saxophonist and founder of the English ska band Madness Lee Thompson remembers a personal introduction to the second album by dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson

Lee Thompson
Lee Thompson

By 1979, Linton Kwesi Johnson had written and produced his second, eight-track album, Forces of Victory, in his mid-20s. He took me out one night – not just out, but ‘out-out’ – after I had just returned from an American tour with bags of Converse, Levi’s and Flip ’50s clobber. At the time, the latest accessory was the Sony Walkman: a cassette player that you could carry around with you; a stereo system in a matchbox, heaven on-the-go. Forces of Victory slid into the compartment, the sliders went up to 11, jazz woodbines in my top pocket, and a compass set southward with a pushbike to get me in the groove.

I had caught Linton supporting Ian Dury and the Blockheads in town. Linton never had a band with him, just some blokes either side vocally backing him, with a sound system. I couldn’t make out his lyrics, so when I pressed play, this album spun my nut. The mix of this record – by guitarist, bass player and record producer Dennis Bovell – was, to me, something else…It was groundbreaking, up there with David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Lee Scratch Perry’s Return Of Django. So much so, that I put Dennis forward to work on a Madness album many years later. Rico Rodriguez and Dick Cuthell supplied horns that tied together and fired off penetrating brass in all directions. Later that year, I was fortunate enough to jump up with Rico and Dick on the 2Tone tour: Scotty had Beamed Me Up!

The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra will play at the 100 Club, London, on 25 Aug 2016 to launch ‘Bite the Bullet’

Soundtrack: Soweto Kinch

We travel to Drambuie’s ‘Brass and Crimson’ session at Edinburgh Jazz Festival to meet saxophonist and MC Soweto Kinch, who reveals the tracks that influenced him while growing up in the West Midlands

Soweto Kinch performs at Drambuie's Brass and Crimson sessions, as part of Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2016
Soweto Kinch performs at Drambuie’s Brass and Crimson sessions, as part of Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2016

I can’t tell you one song alone that got me into music – it was always a combination. But I’d say with jazz, one of the first songs I learned to play was ‘St Thomas’ by Sonny Rollins from his Saxaphone Colossus record. It was around the point where I got the jazz bug; it was important for me.

I’d say hip-hop wise, maybe something by Das EFX. I remember it was ’94, or perhaps ’93 when I first heard their rhyming come through. All I wanted to do was emulate their multisyllabic style of hip-hop. I’ve been involved with both artforms from the same time, which is nearly 25 years ago now…ever since I started recording albums, I started combining hip-hop and jazz. And since 2001, I’ve been driving towards a more personal melding of the two forms.

I grew up in Birmingham, UK, and moved here when I was nine years old. Artistically and culturally, I really cut my teeth there and  started to love everything I’m doing now; it’s a diverse and vibrant music scene here.

There’s really two Birminghams for me, which is probably the same in lots of cities: there’s the mainstream culture that you can see when you walk down Broad Street, the high street, the club culture, all the fancy shopping, etc. ; and then there’s this other hidden network of interesting communities that have retained some of their immigrant culture and blended it with Birmingham. You’ve got the city’s Conservatoire, with music students and lots of jamming in the city centre, and then you’ve got pockets of reggae culture in Handsworth, as well as Punjabi culture. It’s an exciting place to be creative.

Soweto Kinch 2

There’s lots of times when hip-hop and jazz overlap – they’re not the same form of music, but they definitely have a common origin. At the time I was getting into jazz, the hip-hop artists were sampling a lot of great jazz records, like Low End Theory, the second album from A Tribe Called Quest, which featured Ron Carter.

I’ve always seen the connection between the two art forms, and endeavoured to make myself the most authentic MC I can be as well as the most authentic jazz musician.

The next Drambuie Brass and Crimson session is on 10 Aug in Bristol. Soweto Kinch’s free festival ‘The Fly Over’ will take place in Birmingham, UK on 20 August 2016.

Soundtrack: David Adjaye

Celebrated British architect, David Adjaye OBE, shares the classic songs that soundtracked his childhood

Photo: Ed Reeve
David Adjaye – Photo: Ed Reeve

One of the first songs I remember hearing and enjoying was ‘Ghana Freedom’ by E.T. Mensah. It expressed all the energy of that moment, with Ghana becoming a free country, referencing military bands, churches and the general euphoria of independence. Later on, Message in a Bottle by The Police became the first record I ever bought. We were living in north London by then and it came out on my birthday, 21st September 1979. It was a collision with a new culture; the song resonated with all the influences that attracted me at the time really spoke about the diversity of London.

My parents introduced us to music, with tracks like ‘Ghana Freedom’ and then later I remember ‘Sweet Mother’ by Prince Nico Mbarga, for example. My family had moved to Saudi Arabia, which felt like a very closed place. We became transfixed by the story of “death of a princess”, which was highly topical at the time… The song was an ode to remembering. It symbolised our gaze back to Ghana and the sentimentality of the positive vibe of independence that we carried with us.

Dialogues by David Adjaye and his brother Peter Adjaye, is out now via The Vinyl Factory

adjaye.com

Soundtrack: Michael Kiwanuka

British soul musician Michael Kiwanuka on the risk-taking Funkadelic record that inspired his new album

MichaelKiwanuka_colour

A record that really influenced me creatively for my new album Love & Hate was Maggot Brain by Funkadelic. I knew I wanted to do more of a soul album than a ‘folky’ album, so I was listening to a lot of bands and artists that weren’t straightforward. Funkadelic were a kind of psychedelic-soul-rock band – they had their own sound and it didn’t really fit into any boxes. I remember re-listening to Maggot Brain around the time I was recording Love & Hate and being influenced by just how adventurous and courageous they were with the length of their songs, their lyrics, and the sound of the record, so I thought ‘that’s the way I should be adventurous with my own music’.

The first track on the album, which is the title track, is a 10-minute opener; on Love & Hate I have a 10-minute opener. I realised that it can be a good thing for songs to be just instrumental or to have long sections without lyrics or vocals. Listening to that happen on Maggot Brain was something that really spoke to me and inspired me to be that bold.

funkadelic maggot brain feature
© Funkadelic, Maggot Brain, Westbound Records

Funkadelic’s guitar player, Eddie Hazel, was hugely influential for me as I learned how to put my love of guitar into my own music. The emotion in Eddie’s guitar playing is insane… I’ve realised that you can get the same emotion that you get via lyrics into a conventional song through just guitar playing, so I tried to get the same phase guitar sounds as him. He also successfully managed to bring rock ‘n’roll into soul – that’s something that has really influenced me.

Overall, it’s the experimentation, the adventure, the emotion, the childishness, and the psychedelia, that’s so great about Maggot Brain. All of that really helped me find another sound and get to another place in my own music, so I pretty much owe that progression to Funkadelic.

Michael Kiwunaka’s album Love and Hate out on Polydor Records 15 July 2016

Soundtrack: Barney Ales (Motown)

Ex-Motown president Barney Ales remembers the making of Marvin Gaye’s seminal 1971 album What’s Going On

Marvin Gaye’s music moved me from the day I joined Motown Records in 1961. So did the man. He lacked confidence then, but not talent. In those days, he wanted to be Nat “King” Cole. I remember watching him at Bimbo’s, a nightclub in San Francisco, all fitted out in a white tuxedo, singing ballads. The audience didn’t really want another Nat Cole, and I think the gig contributed to Marvin’s lifelong stage fright.

His subsequent success in the 1960s gave Marvin confidence. What’s Going On was his masterpiece, although it didn’t come easily. I was Motown’s general manager by 1970, and we needed new music from him. But Marvin worked at his own pace, reshaping and remixing the song which eventually was the album’s title track. On first hearing, we weren’t sure. Motown wasn’t known for protest songs. It certainly wasn’t the Marvin of ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’.

I remember a meeting with Berry Gordy in Los Angeles, and he was complaining about Marvin being up in the mountains, talking to God, not finishing his album. By the start of ’71, we had nothing new, so I got together with our quality control head, Billie Jean Brown, and we decided to release ‘What’s Going On’ as a single. That’s all we had.

I was in Detroit when Berry called and said, “How could you release that record? It’s the worst I’ve ever heard.” But it exploded – we couldn’t keep up with the orders. Marvin had captured the mood of the time. When he delivered the album and we shipped it in May, the same thing happened. It went Top 10 in the pop charts in five weeks, which in those days was amazing.

If you listen to the party voices at the beginning of ‘What’s Going On’, you’ll hear a couple of football players from the Detroit Lions. We all used to love the Lions and I had season tickets. Marvin had become buddies with some of them; he wanted to be on the team. That was never going to happen, but I remember a few of us playing football at a Motown summer picnic. Phil Jones and I were the linebackers to stop Marvin, but as big as we were, we couldn’t. The next day, Phil and I had to fly to Europe, and we were all beaten up and bruised. That was Marvin – tough, stubborn, determined. A lion in his own way.

Motown: The Sound of Young America by Adam White with Barney Ales is published by Thames & Hudson, £39.95

This article is taken from PORT issue 18. Click here to buy single copies or to subscribe.

Soundtrack: Morcheeba (Ross Godfrey)

Morcheeba founder member and multi-instrumentalist Ross Godfrey reveals how Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Electric Ladyland’ helped shape his career

Morcheeba members Skye Edwards (left) and Ross Godfrey (right)
Morcheeba members Skye Edwards (left) and Ross Godfrey (right)

My dad had a great record collection and by the time I was 12 years old I was already working my way through it. On weekend visits, I ‘liberated’ the records I really wanted to take home… I was a bit slow getting to the Jimi Hendrix albums as I had traumatic memories of my dad, who, one night, scared the life out of me by blasting a terribly recorded live tune called Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead at crazy volumes and drunkenly yelled “You’ll get it one day!”

He was right, but it wasn’t until I started playing the guitar myself that I began to appreciate what the hell that noise was all about. Plus the cover art made Jimi look like a demented drug-addled weirdo, which I found a bit intimidating at that age.

I had started to play basic rock ‘n’ roll stuff on the guitar and I was really getting into Chuck Berry when I stumbled across a recording of Hendrix playing Johnny B. Goode live at Berkley. It was like discovering alien life on another planet; it freaked me out! As soon as I could, I permanently ‘borrowed’ Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland from my dad. I rushed home and listened to them in the order they were recorded. From the first creeping feedback intro of Foxy Lady, I knew my world had changed.

By the time I got to the self-produced Electric Ladyland I was floored. It was less constrained and much deeper and heavier. The cover, featuring a bunch of naked ladies, was interesting for me at that age too… There was so much going on in the music: delta blues, free jazz, The Impressions-type soul, rock, pop and spaced-out freeform psychedelia. The album stayed as my favourite throughout my teens and the first time I listened to it on acid was when I truly understood the power of it.

Quite simply, 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) is the best piece of recorded music ever. It pretty much fills up a whole side of the vinyl and takes you on a journey under the sea and through Jimi’s imagination. I love the shorter pop hits too: Crosstown Traffic and its funny, fuzzy breakbeat funk; All Along The Watchtower, which is probably the best cover version ever; and of course Voodoo Child (Slight Return), which is Jimi doing his thing – being the best electric guitar player there ever was.

Electric Ladyland has had the biggest influence on me as a guitar player, producer and songwriter, and will stay with me as my companion through life until the day I die. It still sounds fresh and I don’t think anybody will ever make a better record.

Skye & Ross will be playing Love Supreme on July 2 2016. Their new album, ‘Skye & Ross’, will be released September 2nd 2016.