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ShriekbackArticle from One Two Testing, February 1985 |
could your instruments stand Jam Science?
A fairlight, a sore throat, a theory and a threat. All part of the Shriekback story. Paul Colbert writes, Peter Anderson develops.
In the past, Shriekback freely admit, they have had problems with producers and engineers. A personable quartet of intelligent musicians, clean in their habits, fascinated by sound and healthy in their disregard of constraining tradition — how can this be? What is it about such wild mannered gentlemen that makes engineers whiten.
Perhaps, and I'm only guessing wildly here, it's because they like taking the backs off very expensive pieces of equipment and messing around with the insides.
"No user serviceable parts", offers keyboard player Barry Andrews. "Fuck that."
This, as Barry goes on to explain, backed by guitarist/vocalist Carl Marsh and drummer Martyn Baker, is one of the theorems behind Jam Science — the album and the A-level course.
'Jam Science' the LP is now one album into history as Shriekback are currently recording new material with the help of Fairlight pilot Hans Zimmer (one half of the Helden project, the other being Ultravox drummer Warren Cann). On the Sunday afternoon of the interview all five were bent over a DX1, Fairlight and Roland Super Jupiter beginning to build on some basic rhythm tracks. 'Basic' when computer power is spilling out of your percolator, takes on an unusual definition.
There is a more sensible section of the populus already familiar with the lightning charge of Shriekback's music, but 'Jam Science' educated a wider audience to the glories. A seductive blast of funk called "Hand On My Heart" was sliced off the album to become a single.
Almost a chart smash, it fascinated thousands by its unsettling blend of solid Linn; wispy, conspiratorial vocals and outfield approach to guitar and bass strumming. What it unsettled most of all were the feet which felt an irresistible desire to get up and do something.
But back to Jam Science the theorem. Barry Andrews expounds, "Um... really an approach to technology in that it's implying irreverence, and bodging it up, and having the back off things you shouldn't because you're NOT A QUALIFIED PERSON. There is a conventional view, especially held by people like engineers, that this is the way it's always been done and this is the way it will carry on.
"Technique is about getting the result you want, and if that involves setting fire to the guitar or driving a car over it, then that's what you do. If it gets the sound you want, then you've got good technique."
You also start with the science. Carl Marsh picks up the tutorial: "We do that with the writing as well because we do make a lot of it up in the studio as we go along. The standard process is that you write some songs and do a demo. Producers will then listen to them and say: 'I'm the right man because I've had hit records'. And your record company says: 'here are some nice songs which we think could be more hit records. Go into the studio, put them down and don't do anything weird.' We've flirted with the demo idea but it doesn't work for us."
Can understand how certain very successful producers might grow nervy at the prospect of associating with a band who are waiting for the inspiration to strike. Such reputations are based on the legend of miracle transformations. More often than not, it might be a case of turning silver, not lead, into gold.
What do the Shriekers do when inspiration fails to call?
"Go down the pub", confides Andrews, "do the washing up. That's what's exciting about the element of risk and I'm interested in putting myself in situations where you get that element out of yourself. It takes something like stress to produce the goods. Personally, I'm very lazy, and I find it really difficult to work unless I think, 'I am going to fuck up badly if I don't get this done'."
On the inside sleeve of 'Jam Science', apart from a fetching snap of the team all looking in different directions, was a graphic guide to who'd played what and where in each song — an unusual degree of instrumental explanation. Shriekback had appended some of their descriptions and definitions to the quoted noises.
"Yob Vox", "Harmonised Brush Guitar", "The Bass They Couldn't Hang", and so forth. Expand my vocabulary, boys, what does it all mean starting with a simple one, the Sennheiser Vocoder in 'Hand On My Heart'. Barry?
"The Sennheiser, that's marvellous, really pleased with it Groucho (Paul Smykle) got hold of that. It's a big black box, incredibly expensive, and loads of little buttons to push that are kind of like a graphic — pure Jam Science, the application of sticking things in various holes and fiddling around until it sounds good.
"We had the big brass sound of the Jupiter 8 going through it and being shaped by yelling into the mike. In fact the mike was inside someone's mouth. Screaming. The sound was covered in sweat at the end of it. It goes all the way through, this great sprawling sound, a nice expressionist element, a brush stroke."
Pert bass and Gank bass?
"That's the Dave Allen style of bass playing." (Dave is still downstairs in the studio at this point, perfecting a few Ganks, or possibly a Pert.) "He uses a Musicman and 'Gank' is that slap bass sound you get when you really pull the strings. (Pert bass is, it transpires, the softer variety.) "He had a guy in Leeds called Micky Johnson build a bass and a six string for Carl. Dave had two really beautiful basses, one was a very light fretless and it got ripped off from a rehearsal room. It wasn't insured."
Shocking. Any identifying marks? "It's got 'Dave Allen' inlayed down the back of the neck." Incredible, isn't it, that somewhere out in the world is a bloke so dumb the only guitar he steals from a rehearsal room has its owner's name plastered, irremovably, over the rear of the neck.
Forward Looking Strings ('Newhome')?
"Did we say that? It felt like that track had a sort of bonehead positivism to it... soviet model workers... and the strings were particularly heroic."
Yob Vox (also 'Newhome')? A mutilated electric organ, maybe?
"No, a lot of yobs singing 'building up a new home'."
And Constructive Triggers?
"Emm, nothing really, just triggers with a particular character — the Linn drum driving the arpeggiator on the Jupiter or else being used with a gate so if you hold a chord, the click from the Linn will key the Jupiter through the gate."
Smug JP8 ('Achtung')?
"It just sounded very complacent, fat and satisfied like a big cat."
Martini Chords ('Partyline')?
"There was a section in the song that was quite harsh and brittle and a section that was very mellifluous... 'hey, everything's okay round here and we've taken a lot of cocaine'. That just reminded me of the Martini ads."
In hardware terms, Barry sticks to a Roland Jupiter 8 and a Roland JC120 amp. Carl goes for a Carlsbro Stingray combo and a Strat plus the Micky Johnson custom-built six string so far not stolen. Why the Strat, Carl?
"Well what actually happened was that I had an Aria and that was stolen in the middle of the album so I had to go out in the lunch break and buy a new guitar and the Strat was the only one in the shop I was satisfied with."
So you've been a lifelong admirer of the Stratocaster.
"Oh yes, the fulfilment of a great dream. I have a photograph of Leo Fender on the bedroom wall. I've also got a few new Boss toys — an octaver, flanger, chorus..."
"A pink one, red one and blue one", concludes interior decorator Andrews.
Most of the tracks on Jam Science featured the Linn.
"That album was all started off with the Linn", recalls Carl, "but now we've got a real drummer. He's downstairs at the moment... playing bass."
Another buttress in the cathedral of Jam Science. Territories. That's something Shriekback has thus far managed to avoid, opines Mr Andrews. "It's something I've found has poisoned a lot of other bands — the idea that you're the bass player or the drummer, and you don't overstep the mark otherwise next time it's your territory that will be threatened. With us, everything's up for grabs. In the end it's all about imagination and daring. If you'd rather be a competent technician then the day will come when someone says 'we've got a machine that can do that'."
Carl: "What interests me in recording guitar is getting noises. If there's an aesthetic, it's in playing as little as possible and achieving the maximum effect — sustaining one note all the way through, or a chord once a bar is my idea of a great guitar part. That idea of stringing chords together to find the right inversion doesn't really interest me. If it's a great noise, that's enough."
But we were talking about drummers and Linns... "You don't have to put Gaffa tape all over them for a start", is one of the major advantages to machine percussion championed by Carl. "I like using them because it means you can have complete fascist control over the rhythm of the song and that makes it easier to write the lyrics. A process, incidentally, invariably completed at 3.00 the morning before the recording session — as are all the best words.
"What we usually do is program the drum parts and then put in any extraneous toms on afterwards. We record everything on separate tracks and either dump stuff later on or bring it in on the mix. But it's always a one or two bar pattern — that's part of the Shriekback tradition."
Barry: "We break with it occasionally often with disastrous results."
Carl: "We're working with Martyn pretty much like a human Linn. We went down to a studio in Wales to record all the backing tracks — we've got about 20. We recorded Martyn playing the drums, sometimes to a click track, sometimes not, but it's always useful to put down a SMPTE code for later sequences.
"We recorded the actual kit miked up, then with ambient mikes in the corridor, and then took samples off his drums in the echo room." Enter the human Linn himself who has just been playing (manually) along with some Fairlight generated rhythms. Tell us about these boring old real drums, Martyn.
Shriek Back In Anger (Shriekback) |
Call Of The Wild (Shriekback) |
Carl Marsh (Carl Marsh) |
Interview by Paul Colbert
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