The northern city of Sheffield is fertile ground as far as bands are English bands are concerned. Pulp, Arctic Monkeys, Richard Hawley, Jarvis Cocker, Cabaret Voltaire, Joe Cocker, Def Leppard… the list goes on, and on. In the early 1990s in particular, against the backdrop of harsh economic deprivation, the steel city produced some of the best music that the Britpop invasion had to offer.
One of the bands that rode this wave was rock quartet, Blameless. Formed of Jared Daley, guitarist Matt Pirt, bassist Jason Leggatt and drummer Jon Dodd, the group promised great things through their biggest single, Town Clowns. It was included in the Rough Trade Singles Club, and caught the attention of labels who were soon vying for the band’s attentions. They eventually signed with China Records, and were duly shipped to Boston to record their debut album. The LP, ‘The Signs Are All There’, failed to chart, and although the band had a little minor success with a follow up single, attempts to re-release their debut album failed. The band broke up in the mid 1990s, another casualty of the Britpop movement, who were destroyed by the hype almost before they had the chance to get started.
Though the band may have only left a limited body of work, their single Town Clowns remains one of the seminal anthems of the Britpop era. Long live Britpop!
Any band that’s named after a Japanese Manga series about an alien race who arrive on Earth to invade the planet have got to be worth listening to. Right? Especially if the band is Scottish, and play lo-fi indie rock.
In 1995, the wonderfully named Urusei Yatsura released a neon pink seven inch single of their track ‘Plastic Ashtray’ on Che Recordings, It’s thrashy indie brilliance from start to finish. The single was taken from arguably the band’s best album, ‘We Are Urusei Yatsura’ (released on Che in 1996) – which also featured cute and kitsch songs like ‘Kewpies Like Watermelon’ and ‘Hello Tiger’. Though the band released another album after that called ‘Everybody Loves Urusei Yatsura’, in fact, the reverse was true. The album received mixed reviews, and the band disappeared quietly, without trace, leaving a legacy of fantastic 7″ plastic in the record collections of Britpop nerds across the UK.
Forget that its 16 years later – watch the video below and relive the glory of the mid 90s!
Bristol producer/DJ Roni Size first learned the basics of music production at his local youth club. A wayward teenager, he was expelled from school at 16 and started attending parties in his native Bristol that were run by the Wild Bunch (an earlier incarnation of Massive Attack). A big reggae fan, Roni (born Ryan Owen Granville Williams) started making music in the late 80s. Then, in collaboration with fellow drum and bass artists Krust, Suv and DJ Die, Roni founded Full Cycle records – widely regarded as one of the major foundation labels for the jungle sound in the early 1990s.
Roni’s early productions – like ‘Box Of Tricks’ and ‘It’s Jazzy’ – hinted at the groundbreaking work he was set to release later in his career. But no-one was prepared for just how good his debut album with group Reprazent was going to be. Reprazent were a collective, made up of musicians, DJs and producers and vocalists (including Roni, Die, Siv, Krust, Onallee and Dynamite MC, though the current lineup has changed). At the time, drum and bass was hyping itself up to be the most cutting edge dance music on the British scene, and the genre-defining album ‘New Forms‘ smashed all other contenders into touch. Released in 1997, the album combined jungle with instrumental fusion and roughneck rhymes. Ravers listened to the album incessantly – in the car on the way to a night somewhere, the singles were played while you were on the dancefloor, and it was the first thing on the stereo at the afterparty. It was an album that changed the world of drum and bass forever and launched Roni Size to DJ superstardom, though many say Size and Reprazent’s future work failed to live up to New Forms.
Whatever your opinions about that, there’s no doubt that the Mercury-Prize winning album is fantastic, and the epic lead single ‘Brown Paper Bag’ became a classic of its time. The in and out vocals are distinctive, the drop is huge, it’s a banging track without sacrificing melody or musicality. “Step to the rhythm made out of brown paper,” says Onallee. And who are we to argue?
If you’ve ever been dancing in a field at around 6 in the morning, just as the sun starts coming up, then you’ll know how good minimal Detroit techno with an insanely funky synth line and screeching 80s sax over the top can sound. It can sound very good indeed. You have French DJ and all round nice guy Laurent Garnier to thank for that, for it was his tune ‘The Man With The Red Face’ that you were listening to.
Laurent Garnier was a pioneer of the dance scene in Paris in the late 1980s, and continued to raise musical hell throughout the 90s and 2000s, making crowds across the globe shake their booty to his flavoursome mixture of techno, disco, jazz, house, African grooves and jungle and dubstep. In 2011 he was nominated for best DJ of all time, and is currently concentrating on live performances with his musical collective, LBS (Live Booth Sessions or Loud Bass and Samples, whichever you prefer). As well as being a red-hot DJ, Garnier is also an accomplished instrumentalist and LBS – which was launched in 2010 – allows him to really get his groove on in the live environment. It’s a trio, comprising of Garnier (DJing and playing keyboards), Benjamin Rippert (keyboards) and San X (machines), playing experimental live sets lasting five hours, and flitting between techno, jazz and breaks; it is a true electronic beat feast.
But back to the matter at hand – one of the tunes that launched Garnier into the superstar DJ he is today. ‘The Man With The Red Face’ is a pure Detroit techno monster with added soul and jazz flair. Written in the late 90s and released in 2000, today there are so many remixes, versions and edits of this that if you played them back to back, they’d go from the Earth to the moon five times over. But the original still holds a certain something – why else would people bother to continually release versions with such miniscule changes? It’s one of the key dance tracks of the past two decades that effortlessly crosses genre: played in sets by techno, house, breaks, and even garage DJs. Listen and enjoy!
Grand Puba saw critical and commercial success with Brand Nubian- one of the most innovative, political and controversial hip hop crews of the ‘90s. The band split in 1995 and Puba went onto release his debut solo album ‘2000’ in the same year. Commercially it was to be the most successful venture from an artist who never really got the fame he deserved: this despite the fact he collaborated with stars like Missy Elliot and was also sampled by Tupac.
Puba laid down his trademark flow as early as 1992 in the song ‘Reel to Reel’. The style was picked up by Cypress Hill, reworking the slow hip-hop MC signature of the 80s into a more jagged, sample-rich, digression-filled style that would have many emulators but few as slick and effortless as Puba himself. ‘I Like It’ is the stand-out track on the album that hits the buttons as a floor-filler and a stand-out masterpiece of old-school chilled-out mid-Nineties rap.
The lo-fi music video brings back memories of a time where a few television screens and a basement house party could cut the mustard on MTV. In it Puba talks about the pitfalls of fame, warns a man leaving the party with a lady about the dangers of gold-diggers then lectures us about his lyrical prowess: ‘I’menergetic, poetic, athletic, with good credit; so move like I’m Simon and I said it.’ It still stands up as a great rhyme almost two decades after it was first thrown down.
Formed in London in 1976, The Only Ones were brought together by lead singer and guitarist Peter Perrett, who assembled the band during Punk’s British inception. Despite links to the scene, it would be unjust to label The Only Ones a punk band. Their breadth of influences and level of musicianship set them far apart from the gulf of bands that were hastily formed at this time. While the band released four albums between 1978-1980, the shadow of drug abuse often hung over them; as referenced in the song’s lyrics “I always flirt with death, I look ill but I don’t care about it”. Despite the grim subject matter, the track remains one of the most joyous three minutes ever committed to pop music. Any hidden meanings didn’t put off UK mobile network Vodafone, who used it in a 2006 advert.
The track has been covered by a range of artists including The Replacements, Blink-182 and Babyshambles. Clearly a lasting influence on Pete Doherty, Perrett joined The Libertines onstage in 2004; his first notable public appearance in years. The experience clearly ignited something within the singer, who reformed the original lineup of The Only Ones in 2007. While the band played a handful of new tracks in 2009, but as yet there’s been no word of a new album. As welcome as it would be, it’s unlikely that could ever top this gem.
Betty Davis, formerly Betty Mabry, was a successful 22 year old model when she met Miles Davis in 1967, a chance occurrence that lead to her becoming his second wife and introducing him to the world of rock and funk. She also introduced Davis to her friend Jimi Hendrix who went on to become quite an influence on his work on albums such as 1970′s ‘Bitches Brew’. While their marriage only lasted a year the effects would resonate for quite some time. Keeping her married name, Davis launched her own singing career helped out by a stellar line-up of backing musicians including the rhythm section of Larry Graham and Greg Errico from Sly & The Family Stone and The Pointer Sisters on backing vocals.
Her debut album hit the shelves in 1973 and immediately showed Davis as a unique talent. Backed up by a slew of super funky riffs she teased and howled with an unabashed sexuality that was years ahead of its time and led to various boycotts by religious groups that contributed to her lack of commercial success. Although none of her three albums made much money at the time they have become highly regarded in hindsight and one listen to a track such as ‘Anti-Love Song’ will tell you why. Over a backing track with a bassline so groovy that it should come with a public health warning, Davis tells her man just how things are going to be – whether he likes it or not. It’s a powerhouse performance that oozes cool from every bar and makes one wonder just how she managed to avoid having the stratospheric career she so richly deserved
Formed in Washington DC in 1977 Bad Brains set the benchmark for hardcore bands with the release of their (cassette only) self-titled debut album and the follow-up ‘Rock For Light’ (strangely enough produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars). Originally starting as a jazz fusion outfit called Mind Power, the band already had one ear on the burgeoning punk scene and with the introduction of vocalist H.R. the stage was set for a major transformation. The combination of the group’s technical ability garnered from their jazz days and the fact that as Rastafarians they were heavily influenced by reggae music, particularly dub, meant they had the unique ability to segue from punk thrash into bass heavy roots at the drop of a hi hat.
The result was a brace of albums that meshed searing technical hardcore with melodic reggae rhythms in a manner that had never been done before. Released after the insanely intense non-album track ‘Pay To Cum’, ‘Attitude’ captured Bad Brains at their best, dishing out no-compromise high intensity hardcore punk. While the guitars, bass and drums knit together a furious sound-scape it’s H.R’s unique vocals that push the band to the next level, his ability to switch from falsetto to snarling to baritone and back in a flash marked him out as one of the scene’s most extraordinary singers.
Backed by the musical adeptness of his brother, drummer Earl Hudson, bassist Darryl Jennifer and guitarist Dr. Know the band made for the complete unit, becoming one of the most influential members of the US hardcore scene. Despite breaking up and making up on multiple occasions the band released eight albums, (of which the first three are now considered classics), and continued to tour and record well into the 2000′s.
‘White Horse’ is exactly the kind of track Shazam was made for, one that gets in your head and often favoured by DJs – but you can never recall who penned it. The song originates from Danish duo John Guldberg and Tim Stahl, otherwise known as Laid Back. The pair found success in their native country with their eponymous debut album, before their single ‘Sunshine Reggae’ went on to be a number one hit across Europe. However when the track found its way to the US, buyers were unimpressed with the predictable cod-reggae of the A-side and favoured the B-side ‘White Horse’.
The gulf between the tracks is so large you’d be forgiven for thinking they come from different bands. While ‘Sunshine Reggae’ has faded into obscurity, ‘White Horse’ is often heralded as one of the standout dance tracks of the 80’s. With it’s irresistible bass line and sly drug reference (‘White Horse’ is slang for Heroin) the track quickly became a club hit in the States.
‘White Horse’ has continued to influence electronic acts, with Hot Chip not only adopting Laid Back’s vocal harmony style, but also name checking the band in their 2006 single ‘Over & Over’.
Collectively known as Gang Starr, DJ Premier and Guru set up shop and started making music in the late 80’s after Guru split up with previous member DJ Mike Dee. Premier’s outstanding ear for samples attracted Guru and they were soon making outstanding mid-tempo, granular hip-hop. Gang Starr’s third and critically acclaimed album, ‘Daily Operation’, carried the iconic ‘Ex-Girl To The Next Girl’. The track revolves around a sample taken from Caesar Frazier’s 1978 track ‘Funk It Up’ and another from Slick Rick’s ‘La Di Da’. A simple drum beat accompanies the bass of the sample while Guru’s memorable vocals smoothly flow over the beat only to stop at the chorus which reignites the sample with a trademark scratch sequence from Premier.
The video to the classic song includes Guru and DJ Premier with an array of female models represented as Guru’s ex and current girlfriends. ‘Daily Operation’ reached #65 on the Billboard 200 and will remain a cherished piece of work in the Hip-Hop world. Unfortunately Guru passed away in 2010 suffering from a heart attack, a tremendous loss to Hip-Hop, but his legacy will continue on with his groundbreaking music.
