Influences: Simian Mobile Disco

Much has been said about the radiophonic workshop and rightly so. It’s one of those improbable stories that is so heartwarming it makes you sad to know that it could never occur under Sky and that it would be a seriously difficult sell to the BBC now. A group of technicians and academics with an interest in music, concrete and sound design, before it was a well established thing, got funded by the UK taxpayer to make batshit synth and tape experiments for use as jingles or mood music. This was not just for the virtuous late night highbrow stuff either, it was used on kids shows, on stuff that had the highest ratings. This is the equivalent to seeing Matmos do the sounds on Bake Off. I would love that, and they would do a top job of it too.

I could choose a track from any of the releases and hold it up as a fine example of a response to the excuse that people use when ripping off other artists or sticking to tried and tested formulas; ‘there’s only so many notes and ways to put them together’. Bullshit, there’s loads of notes, there are loads of patterns, there’s an endless array of possible textures and arrangements. If you you want to construct something that’s tried and tested then I can’t blame you but don’t claim you had no choice.

I love how they went from making weaponised pop ballads that I can’t find any way to like to making the most inquisitive, dreamy wildness that still sounds like it’s held together by nothing but blind faith in the magic of music. I’ve done a bit of reading about the recording sessions for Laughing Stock and it doesn’t sound like it was a laugh: more driven by compulsion than a light hearted let’s-have-a-go spirit. But what they have captured for us is that moment when it happens – not a rendition of it, the actual moment – when something lovely comes into existence from nothing. It’s enough to make you want to want to go and make a record right now.

Much of the music I come back to again and again is engaging and interesting and wonderful but not that much fun, perhaps there’s a tradeoff between immediacy and longevity? This seems to live in the corpus callosum between those two worlds, it’s clearly a banger, but somehow it’s not become cloying over time. The simplicity of the instrumentation and arrangement works so well in a club but also when you hear it at home it sounds forward thinking, it sounds adventurous but it sounds like it was a laugh to make.

This is one of those records that sounds like a concept was rigorously followed to its logical conclusion. In many ways it’s the opposite of what I often look for in a record, it’s texturally simple, almost boring in fact. And in terms of synthesis it sounds like one synth patch, barely fiddled with. There is nothing ornate or rich sounding about this record, it’s dry. This is, of course, its genius. Over the course of the album it becomes clear that this isn’t lazy, it’s the opposite, the process of mix/fix/edit has been taken to its ludicrous illogical end – the tracks are not just similar, they are almost the same. It’s difficult to explain why this is good, it looks bad on paper. But when you sit with this record for a while it gets better and better despite its lack of range. It starts to seem somehow iconic, like the Socratic ideal of electronic music.
In other news, it also makes a cracking dj tool for when you need to reset the room.

I recently warmed up for Jeff Mills and watched him harass 4 CDJs and a 909 for slightly over 4 hours. It was pretty humbling, not least because he calmly pulled the musical pants down on virtually everyone who plays techno and there behind him was his entire rider, one bottle of water and one can of coke. And, he didn’t even open the coke. He played a range of stuff and integrated the 909 in a way that I’ve never seem anyone else manage but what was most impressive was when he hit his stride about two thirds of the way in, coarsely cutting up decades of techno and each of the tracks sounded like one of his when he played them. This is partly because he’s a distinctive dj, with very much his own aesthetic, but also it’s partly because all those tracks have a bit of him in them, we all owe Jeff a drink; not that he seems to need one.

Sometimes I can listen to a whole Can record and just hear the drums, hell, I can just listen to the snare. Steady, unflashy, relentless and yet when the track ends you always wish it was a little longer, and Can were not known for brevity.

All artists rail against how they are perceived, we are certainly guilty of it, greedily trying to put a finger in all the pies. Look, you say, we are not just this, we are also this too. Why do we do this? Ironically, it’s often those artists who dig in and really drill into their own world that are the most interesting. A fine example of this would be Robert Hood, certainly he’s not just done minimal techno but he’s amassed a serious body of records that live within a few block of each other. The result is not that he’s a less interesting artist, the result is that he’s more or less untouchable here. Yes, anyone can take a ‘Detroity’ stab and sparse drums and let them run for a bit but there’s a fluency to the flow when he’s involved, it’s similar but somehow just way better.

I feel like I should get Eno to write this paragraph, he would, we all know, turn in something that’s more ambitious, more provocative and yet seems like it’s probably right. Something that, when you think about it, was sitting there all along and now it’s obvious, obviously right. Perhaps leave a bit of space here for him to chip in?…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Obvious, I know, but when it comes to classic records I’ll have any of the early Kraftwerk records over a Fleetwood Mac record. Certainly they didn’t invent everything-electronic-ever, as sometimes gets claimed and the records are patchy, the vocals are silly, but let’s just have a listen to Metal on Metal, that’s unfuckable with. Franz Schubert is perfect, as simple as it can be but no simpler.