Monday, October 07, 2024

Soul Jazz DJ's Pete Reilly and Abi Clarke interviewed, 1999

100% Dynamite! Soul Jazz DJ's Pete Reilly and Abi Clarke

Interview by Big Matt and Peter McLennan for Real Groove, 1999.

DJ's Pete Reilly and Abi Clarke look a little jaded, after flying halfway round the world. They're here in New Zealand to showcase their London-based label, Soul Jazz Records, then it's off to Australia for some more gigs. Abi's mum gave her some exercises for avoiding deep vain thrombosis - "she cut them out of the paper for me", says Abi - but they've had other worries on their minds. 

"It was a real cock up with the flights," says Pete, while making the tea, polite lad that he is. "Then the records didn't turn up for a few days. But they arrived today, thank god. It was lovely when we got picked up yesterday, we got taken straight out to Piha, that was fantastic, and we went up that volcano, Mt Eden, whats the Maori name for that?" Maungawhau. "Yeah, we were quite taken aback by how amazing the scenery is, especially Piha." Welcome to Aotearoa.

Soul Jazz Records grew out of a second hand record shop in London that sold soul and jazz, funnily enough. They have developed a fine reputation for the quality of their reissues of rare funk, Latin, reggae, jazz and soul. As the name suggests, the label started out specialising in jazz and soul, but has branched out in all directions, even releasing new recordings alongside the reissues. As well as travelling the globe representing the label behind the decks, Abi and Pete also work for the label.

"I work in the shop," says Abi, "that's my thing. Pete works downstairs on the label. He does the remastering, and promotes the clubs and the live things. There's eight of us downstairs, and everybody does a little of everything really. We all muck in a bit."

They both arrived at dj'ing through very different paths. "I used to have the misfortune, you might call it, to do a jazz warmup at a Northern Soul night," says Abi,"and they were just waiting for the northern soul, really! That was my first ever gig. I started DJing when these friends of mine hired a house one xmas. their families didn't really celebrate Xmas, so they hired this big old house, and the cd player broke, and they said anyone got any tapes? And I'd done a compilation just for myself in the car, and I said 'yeah, I got a tape'. It had a track on it by Webster Lewis, and this bloke Tim was there, he was a northern soul promoter, and it totally blew him away. He said 'when I start my club up again in a few weeks, will you play there?', and I just laughed, and went 'oh yeah!' My friend rang me the next week and said 'you know you're playing at Tim's club on Thursday, don't you?' and I'd never used decks, so I went round to my friends house that had some and had a little go."

Pete says he had quite a lot of records as a teenager, "and I left school, and just after that acid house broke out, and me and my mates started doing parties, and I was the one playing Baleric, and it was an excuse to play a mix of stuff. My mates were getting into House, and at the time the music you would hear was the Clash, and Gil Scott Heron and King Tubbys all mixed in, and I was the one trying to do more of a mix of stuff, and from there, I just got more into the funk and soul stuff."

The label grew out of record buying trips by shop owner Stuart Baker. "Stuart and this guy called Alec started a shop," says Pete, warming to his history lesson, "called Sounds of the Universe, in 1988 (the name changed along the way to Soul Jazz). Stuart started the label in 1991. At the time he was selling soul, jazz, funk, Latin, a little reggae but not a lot, and they'd noticed there was a demand for certain records, so they decided to reissue them. They had met a lot of people from going out on buying trips to the States, and not a lot of people were doing that back then, and you could like go to Eddie Bo's house and just buy records from them, and then, for the guys that own the rights, it was like 'well, why don't we reissue your album?' kind of thing. It was a reasonably easy thing to do."

However, finding the people who own the rights to these great tunes is not always so simple. "It gets easier in one respect," says Pete, "in that we've been doing it for quite a long time, so you get to know the people and who owns what, and make contacts with people at record labels. Quite often it involves a lot of international directory enquiries, and just phoning round saying have you ever heard of this guy, apparently he was the guy who ran the label. Stuart will have read anything that there is to read on it, so he's usually got a list of leads, like this person owned the label, and last he was in Houston or something, stuff like that. It's a bit of detective work.

"The reggae stuff is a bit easier to find who owns it, but not always." Indeed, some of the great reggae producers are notoriously protective of their back catalogue. "Everyone told us we wouldn't get Studio One stuff (from producer Coxsone Dodd), but we thought we'd have a go anyway," says Pete, "and we sent him some of the albums that we'd done, and initially he said no, then he got the albums, and he liked the fact that we did other stuff, like we'd done jazz, cos he said that was his first love, and that seemed to swing it. We said that we wanted to present the music to people in the UK, and to people who might not know anything about Studio One. We really liked the music, and we thought that more people would too, if we could present it in the right way."

The very successful 100% Dynamite compilations grew out of the club night of the same name. "We'd been doing it for about a year, and we thought it'd be nice to do an album of tracks that were big at the club, and a lot of them were Studio One," says Pete. "The club started looking at the link between soul and reggae, and we'd always played a lot of cover versions, playing the soul version next to the reggae version, stuff like that. We have a lot of people that say 'I'm into techno, and I didn't think I liked reggae, but one of my mates has got all those Dynamite albums, and they're wicked'. Which is always nice, cos that was part of the reason for doing it, not to say this is better, but just have a listen to it for a night and give it a chance." Once they've got permission to use a track, the next step is the mastering. "We usually remaster from the vinyl," says Pete.

However, finding a good copy can sometimes prove difficult. Is there ever a tune that is just too hard to salvage? "I don't know," says Pete, "you'd probably be better judge of that, when you hear them on the album! When we went to do Prince Buster's 'Girl why don't you answer', the record had a hole in it, an actual hole in the record we had to try and patch it up. We usually phone a few other people too, like Pete Holdsworth from Pressure Sounds, he's good, he's always got like 4 copies of everything. Usually, a couple of us might have them, but they're knackered, so its like 'have you a copy and is it in good knick and can we borrow it for a couple of days?' And we tell then what it's for, and they just say sort us out with some records."

The whole process of the licensing can take a long time. "With Chicano Power," says Pete, "that one took ages, cos you couldn't do a Latin rock album without Santana on it. CBS wanted like $10,000 for an advance for one track, just ridiculous. We've also just finished a follow-up to New Orleans Funk, called Saturday Night Fish Fry." They also run a monthly all nighter club night under the same name. "With the Dynamite nights, we played a little funk and soul, but only a little bit," says Pete. "We just wanted somewhere to play a little more funk and soul stuff really. We get guests along, like Andy Weatherall, Andy Smith, Portishead's DJ, David Holmes., and Dean Rudland, who compiles stuff for Ace, and we've got Marco Nelson doing the next one - remember the Young Disciples? He was in them. He's the bass player for Paul Weller now. "

For 100% Dynamite we have guests too," says Abi. "We've done a lot of stuff with Jerry Dammers (formerly with ska band the Specials). We get more skinheads and mods turning up when Jerry rolls into town! He was like the first guest we had at the opening night. He took a fair bit of persuading. The pub we did in, years ago, was an NF (National Front - extreme right wing skinhead group), and Jerry was like 'that's an NF pub, I can't play there!' And we asked him when was that and he said 1978. Its been a gay pub since then, so its obviously changed a bit since then!"

They''ve also hauled Mr Dammers along with them on their travels too. "We went to Ireland with him," says Abi, "and all these Specials fans were there, and he hadn't played Specials records for years, and he played them that night. It was funny, he was having to sign peoples arms, and we couldn't actually leave the building for about an hour after that, it was great. We've done New Yorica nights - we did one in Ireland. It was in an arts festival in a theatre, and I think some of the older people were expecting it was going to be a band, but it was me and Pete behind the decks! It think they were expecting an 8 piece Latin band! But you know, we managed. That was quite funny."

The quality of their compilations is very important to them, which helps the records find their way into the crates of DJ's who might not normally give reggae or Latin a second glance. "I've been to other clubs where the other person has been playing house or r'n'b," says Abi, "and they might have a Dynamite album in there. I think part of the reason that DJ's like them is that you can play them out. Pete's pressings are nice and loud, so you can play them in clubs. That's the problem with compilations now, so many of them have got great tracks, but they've got so many tracks on them, they're too quiet to play out." Their audience is not just an exclusive club of trainspotters.

"I think that a lot of the House DJs have got quite wide tastes too," says Pete. "Masters At Work really liked the New Yorica album (which is one of their topsellers), I think that's one of the reasons that sold so many, cos they bigged it up in interviews, saying this is our roots. That seems to cross over, that's a popular record in New York with the house guys."

We close the interview with a scan through the piles of vinyl Abi and Pete have bought from shops around our fair city. Abi has a pile of 45s, including Anita Baker -'great at weddings' she explains, and 3 eps by Aussie entertainer Rolf Harris with picture sleeves, which she is very excited about - 'My brother is going to love these!'

Friday, October 04, 2024

Flowerstream on tour across Aotearoa




via UTR: "After performing in Europe and touring in China, 花溪 Flowerstream are finally going on their first ever Aotearoa tour.

The Tāmaki Makaurau genre-fluid guzheng and drums duo released their debut EP Flowers Dream in April, toured China in May, and now they’re bringing their home-engineered electric guzheng, drums and distorted vocals dreamcore punk psychedelic sonic experience to super special venues around the country.

The duo of Huiming Wu on guitar / bass / ghuzheng (a Chinese plucked zither) and percussionist / multi-instrumentalist Maxwell Brown, 花溪 Flowerstream have been a sonically distinct presence on Tāmaki Makaurau's stages over the past few years.

Tour dates and tickets here on UTR

Thursday, October 03, 2024

New Painspeople tune, also out on 10" vinyl



New biz from Painspeople (Hallelujah Picassos' Johnny Pain): "A chirpy socialist popera as we look ahead to the rebound.

"Pressed on 10-inch vinyl and released as a double A side with Diem Redux (Wes Prince ex Danse Macabre and Nigel Russell ex Car Crash Set/DM) - 'Perseus' on the flip. There a few copies remaining so drop Mr Pain a line if you're interested.


Graham Reid wrote about it: In praise of the mid-sized (2024) The pleasures of the 10 inch record.

excerpt: John Pain "I have always been a fan of the 10'' 45 - great sound quality with a longer duration than a 7'' and just nice to handle. I recently illustrated Peter MacLennan’s forthcoming book about the Nineties Auckland label Deepgrooves and was reminded of their fantastic debut release, a double 10'' featuring Riot Riddum Sound System (Bobbylon and Roland with Teremoana), Sound Foundation (Dubhead and Angus McNaughton), DLT Meets The Projector etc, so there was also a format prompt there.

Neither Stebbings or Holiday does them in New Zealand, and Car Crash Set's Dave Bulog (RIP) had previously dealt with Dub Studio in Bristol, so I got in touch with Henry Bainbridge . . . and there you go.

... I started releasing electronic music as painspeople shortly after ‘leaving’ the Picassos in ’95, with a track on both of Stinky Jim’s Sideways compilations and a tune on a Froth 12” alongside Phase 5 and Nonplace Urban Field.

In 2006 I moved to South Asia to work in the animation industry and was away for more than a decade which took me out of the local scene. I played bass in a black metal band in Singapore, and continued composing as painspeople.

I write regularly for Audio Culture. I play music with (cinematographer) Fred Renata a fair bit (usually drums, intermittent piano or bass), he is a great Maungaturoto-based songwriter.

And I have an occasional improv-combo with Waipu-based Ronny Haynes (Show Me Where it Hurts, Serafin, Pash) called Special Filter at Bandcamp here.

Wednesday, October 02, 2024

Once Were Warriors soundtrack vinyl reissue out Oct 25

 Great tune from Upper Hutt Posse from 1992, this groover featured on the incredibly popular soundtrack for the movie Once Were Warriors. 

That soundtrack gets a vinyl reissue next month.... preorders up at Flying Out now, release date is Oct 25, 2024.


Tracklist

Theme From Once Were Warriors
Sunrise Flutes
Survivor - Rua Kenana
Grace In The Alley
Herbs - Home Grown
Grace Visiting Toot
Marie Sheehan - Kia Tu Mehea (To Be Free) (Bonus)
Paatere
Screaming Flutes / Haka
Radio Thief
Jake & Beth - Here Is My Heart
Southside of Bombay - What’s The Time Mr. Wolf
Gang Car
Ardijah - Gim’me Time
E Tu - Whakamutungia Tenei Mahi (Bonus)
Bully Gets His
Moana & The Moahunters - Tahi – Roots Mix (bonus)
Once Were Warriors

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

King Sunny Ade - 'Brilliant Paradise-Garage-if-it-had-a-Nigerian-branch funkiness'




Via Awesome Tapes from Africa... a cool YouTube playlist of an album by the King... "While I did not purchase this tape in Africa, it is certainly one of the most awesome tapes from Africa. King Sunny Adé, along with Fela Kuti, was a central player in bringing African pop music to the world. 

Is a major international release a strange choice for my usual showcase of rarities/oddities? This record combines the new and novel studio technologies (for 1983-84), like drum machines and synths, with traditional talking drums and good ol’ electric guitars, resulting in brilliant Paradise-Garage-if-it-had-a-Nigerian-branch funkiness. 

So many styles of African music have been enhanced by electronic instruments over the years, but few have risen to such sublime heights. I mean, juju music (of which Adé is considered one of the key pillars) gets pretty repetitive. 

I say if you’ve heard six juju records, you’ve heard them all. Aura, then, distinctly stands out. Fans of electro, techno and the like will find this cassette particuarly fascinating. While not a commercial smash, Aura is one of my all time favorite recordings from Nigeria. Buy this record somewhere. I found a clean copy on vinyl in Denver the other day for $3."

Here's King Sunny Ade live in 1983, what a great band...



plus here's an amazing dub version of that song, remixed by Paul Groucho Smykle, who worked with Sly and Robbie, Black Uhuru, Ini Kamoze amongst others...  Smykle was interviewed by David Katz in 2013, here's what he had to say about this remix...

Your King Sunny Ade remix is probably the first instance of African music being given the dub treatment.

I did a dub of “Ja Funmi” that everybody really liked, and I have some other dubs at home somewhere that I did for myself. With “Ja Funmi,” I listened to the tune and liked the tune, and just tried to get a different vibe on it.

You remixed records by other African artists in the 1980s, including Wally Badarou from the Compass Point All Stars.

"Oh yeah, “Chief Inspector.” I did that like a go-go tune, cause I was in Washington DC for a while, working with Trouble Funk. I liked DC at that time, even though it was the murder capital of the world, because in the clubs, it’s all live bands and no DJs: E.U., Trouble Funk, Chuck Brown, everybody’s playing live music and there’s people dancing to that. 

"So I came back, heard Wally Badarou’s tune, and they wanted a remix on it; a guy in New York said, “Groucho, do what you feel to do,” so when I said I was going to do a go-go tune, the English people said, “No, we just want it straight, as it is, a nice mix.” So I gave them their version, and then I did a go-go version, added percussions and everything, and when I sent it to New York, everybody knew: “This is the lick.”

Did you ever work at Compass Point?


"Yeah. I did some stuff with Larry Levan and Francois K in the ’80s. Very nice studio."


Monday, September 09, 2024

New Dub Asylum EP out now


New ep from yours truly. Deep bass kicks and spacey synths to wash out your mind and leave you with space. Or in space. Take your pick. Whatever works for you.

Wednesday, September 04, 2024

Pitch Black remixed by On-U Sound's Adrian Sherwood



Pitch Black's Mike Hodgson has been around the periphery of legendary reggae label On-U Sound for a little while now, so this news is very cool...  

I remember Mike telling me once about how when he lived in Christchurch in the late 1980s, every time his local record store got the latest On-U record release, he used to have to race into town because he had to beat Andrew Penman of Salmonella Dub in to get his hands on it. 

"They say you should never meet your heroes, but for Mike Hodgson of Pitch Black, meeting the legendary Adrian Sherwood has been a transformative experience, leading to creative collaborations that have benefited both of them.

Nearly 30 years after first being mesmerised by OnU Sound’s releases, a cheeky bit of radio ripping serendipitously led to Mike helping Pats Dokter, the label’s official archivist, with his work restoring master tapes, and eventually to him creating visual content for Adrian’s live shows.

A while after this collaboration began, Adrian offered to remix some of Mike’s music, either by his solo project Misled Convoy or his work as Pitch Black, and it’s four cuts by the latter that grace this heavyweight platter.

From the dreamy dub of Transient Transmission to the rolling rhythms of A Doubtful Sound, Pitch Black’s originals have been re-arranged and dubbed to $%># in Adrian’s signature style, with fluid melodies, pounding basslines and vocal samples awash in a wall of effects.

Trumpets by David “Ital Horns” Fullwood bookend the release, haunting in the first track and celebratory in the last, while Doug Wimbish (Tackhead) added an extra bassline to the heaving version of 1000 Mile Drift, which also features the voice of the iconic Lee “Scratch” Perry.

Reflecting on the collaboration, Mike Hodgson says, “the whole experience has been slightly unreal, from working on Adrian’s videos to being in the OnU studio and watching him dub-mixing the tracks I’ve made, something I could never have imagined happening!”

Mike isn’t the only OnU fan in Pitch Black, as a pivotal moment for Paddy was “watching Adrian mixing Tack>head at the Powerstation in 1995 and seeing the cause-and-effect of what he was doing and hearing the unbelievable sounds coming out of the speakers. It was the first time I’d ever seen somebody dub mix like that.”  Out Sept 6, 2024, digital and 10" vinyl 

Dr Tree: amazing NZ 70s jazz funk gets LP reissue




Dr Tree only made one album but it's a hell of a groover. My big fave is Eugino D, which has a drum break with steel drums that just KILLS. It's getting a vinyl reissue, after being restored and remastered at Abbey Rd with extra bonus tracks added. Out October 4, 2024 on WallenBink.

Formed in the early 1970s by Frank Gibson (drums) and Murray McNabb (keyboards), wth Kim Paterson (trumpet), Bob Jackson (bass), Martin Winch (guitar), and John Banks on percussion, with guest Colin Hemmingsen on soprano saxophone

Murray McNabb talked about how the group came together to NZ Musician's Trevor Reekie in 2013:

Murray McNabb: "Dr Tree started because I got hold of a record called The Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Inner Mounting Flame [1971]. The story’s been told many times. I played a track to Frank and he said, “You’ve got it on the wrong speed, you’ve got it on 45,” and I said, “Nah, it’s 33″ – and he couldn’t believe how fast Billy Cobham was playing. Anyway, I said, “That’s what we’re going to do, okay?” and, it went from there.

We did a few concerts and some very firey music came out of that, we were very much an energy band. We did our own things and a few covers of what was then new in the jazz-fusion idiom and just progressed until we conned EMI into making a record. We recorded the whole thing in about three days with Julian Lee and Alan Galbraith as producers.

That seemed to be quite successful that year, possibly because there were no outstanding rock bands that year. We won a couple of awards, Record of the Year and Fastest Rising Group. Not long after that people started moving in different directions so that was the end of Dr Tree.

They re-released it in 2007 [on CD for the first time], buggered if I know why. I certainly never made any money out of Dr Tree, apart from selling one of my songs to TVNZ for a current affairs programme. I got $200 for the music, that’s the only accounting of any sort I’ve ever seen from Dr Tree. I suppose someone must’ve made some money somewhere but I don’t believe anyone in the band did.

It was basically as always with jazz in this country, it’s not about the money it’s about playing the music and getting it out there so someone else might hear it and like it. You just keep doing what youre doing and you dont expect anything. It was good fun and a high energy band – that was the main thing about our music, we always played high energy music."

Local jazz historian Aleisha Ward notes that the album was done at RNZ's studio in Auckland, over three Sunday mornings. "The best way to describe Dr Tree is ‘space jazz’. It fits well into that slightly out there 1970s experimentalist jazz fusion ... Dr Tree is a very easy and fun album to listen to. It’s deceptively simple on the surface, with easily followed melodies and riffs, driving rhythms and killer grooves; but repeated listening makes you aware of the subtleness and the complexities involved ... 

"No matter how many times I listen to it it always takes me by surprise at how well it's done, and how effective their supporting melody line is in driving the piece along. There are subtleties like this all over the album- simple (or seemingly so) but so incredibly effective at building on motives.

"Although McNabb wondered at the point of a 30th anniversary reissue of the album in 2007 (as he said in interviews, it’s not like he ever saw any money from it), its availability digitally and on CD meant that it was now available to a new generation of listeners. 

"Reissues are also vitally important for the preservation of New Zealand music because so much from the 1950s through to the 1980s had a small and finite pressing, which means it is very easy for it to completely disappear as people throw out LPs on an alarmingly regular basis. Albums like Dr Tree are important but fragile and ephemeral documents of New Zealand jazz history, which are easily lost."

Graham Reid wrote the liner notes for the 2007 CD reissue, observing "In the early 70s these were mature musicians who had been schooled in jazz and had honed their skills at literally hundreds of gigs, but they were still young enough to be as excited by the possibilities of jazz-rock fusion as their peers and mentors overseas.

"So here were some of New Zealand’s finest jazz musicians (then and now) bringing their collective skills to bear on adventurous music which had listeners and critics alike hailing them.

"In fact, although they seem to be written out of the texts on Kiwi rock history, it is worth being reminded that Dr Tree won two major music industry awards on the release of this album: most promising group and top group performance. And they were both in the “rock” category.

"Of course today we hear more jazz than rock in this music, which is understandable given who is on hand. But through Dr Tree, ventures under their own name or in other groups, these musicians made a contribution to New Zealand music in the 70s that should never be underestimated -- and most are still name-players in the local jazz scene today."

Tracklisting: (side one and two, original album)
Side one: Twilight zone / Vulcan worlds / Transition 
Side two: Eugino D / Affirmation / One for Dianne
Side three: Mood waltz / Affirmation (alt take) / The drum
Side four: Eugino D (alt take) /Fourth world / Wildlife

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Future Jaw-Clap: Book on Wgtn jazzers out Nov 7

Future Jaw Clap book cover

"Future Jaw-Clap tells the story of a highly influential movement in New Zealand music: the self-made musicians of pioneering free jazz ensemble Primitive Art Group, who carved out their own radical musical language in the cold, hard reality of 1980s Wellington, and have gone on to richly diverse careers in music.

From their beginnings as ‘the punks of jazz’ in small clubs and the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid protests of the early 1980s, through the heyday of the Braille Collective's many colourful groups, self-released records and intersections with dance, theatre and visual arts, to the Six Volts providing music for the iconic album Songs From the Front Lawn, and beyond, these musicians and the many others they have drawn into their orbit have done much to shape the music of Aotearoa.

Based on a deep oral history project and extensive archival research by Daniel Beban (Orchestra of Spheres), and vividly illustrated with photographs and other items, Future Jaw-Clap is a portal into an extraordinary musical world, and a celebration of a vibrant living tradition."

Cover photo: Primitive Art Group, c. 1983, clockwise from bottom: Stuart Porter, David Donaldson, David Watson, Neill Duncan, Anthony Donaldson. Stuart Porter collection (missing -  the other key member of Braille Collective, Janet Roddick, a member of Four Volts, Six Volts, Brainchilds, Jungle Suite). Cover design: Carla Schollum.


Watch: The trouble with music (1985)
A short film by Martin Long about the Wellington music scene based around the Braille Collective. Shot in 1985.
Features The Primitive Art Group – Anthony Donaldson, Stuart Porter, Neill Duncan, David Donaldson, David Watson. 
Jungle Suite – Janet Roddick, David Long, Neill Duncan. 
Family Mallet – Gerard Crewdson, Stuart Porter, Anthony Donaldson 
Three Volts – Peter Daly. Anthony Donaldson, David Donaldson


Saturday, August 24, 2024

BABON 7" debut on Batov Records



Great fruity bizz, out Aug 23 2024 on 7"/digital: "On their debut 45 for Batov Records, Indonesia-based BABON deliver two irresistible jams, cooked from a recipe full of Indonesian flavours, Afro Latin funk, Morricone grooves, Bollywood breaks and blues, they call “Tropical Desert Music”. A must-hear for fans of Surprise Chef, Khruangbin, or Sababa 5.

Drummer Wahyudi T. Raupp and multi-instrumentalist Rayi Raditia, friends since high school in Jakarta, via university life in Melbourne, formed BABON in 2023 to address environmental issues through instrumental music, thus combining two mutual passions.

Working in their home studio free of time restraints, Babon developed their “Tropical Desert Music’’ sound, mixing the energy and influences of Melbourne’s vibrant music scene, with traditional Indonesian forms, from the pulsating rhythms of dangdut, and gamelan, the ritualistic percussion ensemble music native to Java and Bali, to keroncong, a popular and melodic folk style; while addressing environmental concerns and societal complexities, such as the impact of ruthless exploitation on tropical regions."