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Smith & Mighty production of composer Erik Satie s
Gymnopedie Number 1. 46
In 1989 Smith & Mighty produced Wishing on a
Star with rap group Fresh 4: the Rose Royce song set
against a wispy, hazy sample from Faze-O s 1977 Riding
High and the immortal Funky Drummer break. The
song reached #10 in the U.K. singles chart. They also
co-produced Daddy G s Any Love (the first single
credited to Massive Attack): tighter, funkier, but still
paced behind a swooningly gorgeous vocal. The vocalist
was Carlton McCarthy whose debut album, The Call
is Strong, is, in the words of Phil Johnson, the great lost
album of the Bristol sound. 47
Tim Saul remembers the influence of Smith &
Mighty:
when I moved to Bristol as a 17-year-old, 18-year-old,
I used to go and hang out outside their studio in St.
Paul s in Bristol actually over the road. And sit by the
rubbish bins of some flats and actually in the summer
you could hear what they were doing they would have
the windows open and that was part of my education,
musically.
46
Johnson 1996, p. 69.
47
Johnson 1996, p. 106.
" 30 "
R. J . WHEATON
Dave McDonald was exposed to the material at its
inception, and in a sense felt immunized from its
nonetheless enormous influence:
It s hard for me because I lived in the same house as Rob
Smith he was a really really good friend. Even before
we lived in the same house I used to go to his house every
night and listen to records. And then I ended up living
in the same house as him and there was all this musical
equipment in there. And I can remember hearing those
tunes very very early in their early early stages. I don t
think so much of an influence on me as I think they
would have been more of an influence on Geoff, because
Geoff, living outside of Bristol, was very interested in
what was going on in Bristol. It was like a whole sort of
exotic world I think.
* * *
Neneh Cherry was a former singer in Rip Rig + Panic,
and step-daughter of American free-jazz trumpeter Don
Cherry. She and future husband Cameron McVey were
both, by 1987, closely associated with the Buffalo
fashion movement of stylist Ray Petri and U.K. magazines
including Face and i-D. She and McVey Booga Bear
became central figures in the Bristol music scene,
and the production credits to her first album, Raw Like
Sushi, read like a who s who of the formative years of
U.K. downtempo music: McVey himself; Nellee Hooper;
Massive Attack s Mushroom and 3D; Bomb the Bass s
Tim Simenon; future Tricky producer Mark Saunders;
future Massive Attack producer Jonny Dollar. The album
" 31 "
DUMMY
was an international success, led by singles including
Manchild, and Buffalo Stance, and Kisses on the
Wind, which showcased the same mix of soul, hip-hop,
and dance as the various Bacharach covers.
There is a uniquely British timbre to these songs: an
optimistic, carefree quality with a particular pop sensi-
bility. The open-minded feel albeit shaded with a
slightly self-conscious hipness animated Soul II Soul s
first album, Club Classics Vol. One. The same sentiment
was to show through, years later, in M.I.A. s debut album,
Arular. It is a weightlessness somehow associated with
the carefree blending of diverse influences, but also
the feeling of operating within a particular look, a set
of visuals, a fashion. Of working within a complete and
uncontested aesthetic envelope.
* * *
1994. Sour Times is the song that signaled Dummy s
commercial potential. To unsuspecting listeners there was
the attention-grabbing opening: a barreling tornado of
descending strings, loping bassline, a jangling instrument
of indistinct origin, and a fistful of jagged guitar; a
combination that seemed to epitomize the Portishead
sound.
That jangling sound is a cimbalom, a kind of central
European dulcimer ancient instruments, strings
strapped and bound over a trapezoid board, strings struck
with hammers. The theremin is modern and spectral,
its functioning obscure and mysterious in the inter-
action between atmosphere and operator. The dulcimer
is ancient, material in its operation. Substantial where
" 32 "
R. J . WHEATON
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