Dark luminosity, p.37
Dark Luminosity, page 37
This picture of Zi-Lan, John T, Charlie and me was taken in China in 2007
Epilogue
Stockport, Chelsea, Tottenham, The Bus Routes of South London, Ancoats, London Borough of Merton, Recording
Well, I’ve been up north for twenty-four years now. Somehow coming up here was a ‘good luck move’ for us (he says, tempting providence). We have earned a living and been happy. I don’t regret not moving to Essex or the Home Counties. I still get down to London regularly. I stay in Chelsea when I come down. I owe that fact to my good mate, the artist and fellow (now deceased) Londoner, John Freeman, who forwarded me for membership at the Chelsea Arts Club back in the late nineties. That was just about the nicest thing anyone ever did for me. John, like myself, was a cockney (he was out of Pimlico via Clissold Park way). I would normally stay there whenever I was in London. We were the only cockney members at that time. So that was my base, I would have a room there, and the staff really looked after me. It truly was a home from home. I still stay in the Chelsea area, and I still frequent the Chelsea Arts Club. You’ll often find me strolling by the river in that neck of the woods. I often walk up to Putney and sometimes on to Richmond. I find it very inspiring, walking by the Thames. That stretch of the river was, of course, beloved to both Turner and Whistler, two of my favourite artists. I often think of Harold Budd (who passed away in 2020), when I stroll there. Harold loved that stretch of the river, especially by Barnes Bridge (right by where Holst, the composer, lived), and he also loved the vision of the impressionist painters. When I look at the shimmering surface of the Thames and the play of light I am reminded of Harold’s diffused piano chords.
I take the iPhone and iPad with me on my walks. I take a lot of photographs, plus I record quick sketches, normally on the top-deck, front-row seats on the various bus routes of south-west London, as I return back to base. Indeed, I released The Bus Routes of South London in 2023. I used to creep over to the East End from time to time, sometimes to work (at Intimate Studios) and sometimes to socialise. However, most of the people that I knew have now left. In fact, I probably know fewer than a dozen people in the borough. To be honest, I feel like a ghost when I wander around there, so I tend to stay away.
I now only know about five people in the borough of Tower Hamlets. All the pubs we used to go to have closed. The change in demographic is staggering. Intimate Studios closed a few years back, so I really don’t have a reason to go back there, apart from popping into the odd AA meeting in that neck of the woods. It’s strange how life works out. I was like a homing pigeon in regards to the East End. I was so attached to it. But, then again, everywhere should be home. Your body is your mountain cave retreat as you move through life.
I do still go to watch Tottenham regularly. I often go with my sons. We now have a shiny new state of the art stadium. Most of the old guard, like me, miss the old ground, but you can’t stay stuck in the past. The team have had their moments over the last few years, but still leave the fans confounded and perplexed on a regular basis. Many of the fans, myself included, are not happy with the owners. They feel too many poor decisions have been made on the footballing side of things. I don’t do many away games any more. Maybe by the time this book is published things will have changed. Things do change quick at Tottenham.
These last few years, I now spend even more time in west London and south-west London, due to my involvement with a community project called Tuned In that I founded a few years ago, at first in Stockport, then in the London Borough of Merton. I run that with my good friends Anthony Hopkins (no relation to the actor, who I met once – what a nice bloke he was) and Jon Klein. Anthony is pretty senior at Merton council and runs London Libraries. He is a hands-on sort of person, who loves music and football (he played at a decent level). Without him the project (which at heart is about combating loneliness) would never have happened. Anthony is a smart cookie who is quite prepared to get his hands dirty and lead the charge. Jon Klein, ex-Banshees and Batcave, like Anthony, is a workaholic. He’s one of the brightest people I have ever come across. I did 2021s Metal Box – Rebuilt in Dub (Cleopatra Records) with him. We also tour that record. When Matt from Cleopatra Records in LA called me about making that record, I had no hesitation in saying yes because I knew those all-important guitar parts would be nailed, even bettered by Jon. He is an exceptionally talented post-punk/rock guitarist, but he also has great technical ability and knowledge in regards to audio-visual stuff, and is aesthetically astute and knowledgeable. We have jam sessions at Tuned In, plus we have built a studio. We have released digital records on the Cherry Red Records Label.
Here I am with John Klein on stage at the O2 in Islington, debuting Metal Box – Rebuilt in Dub
Obviously, there’s been a hell lot of water under the bridge since we moved out of London. Apart from writing this book, I made a ton of records, mainly for my label, 30 Hertz Records. The new millennium truly heralded a new way of working for me. At first I continued to use Intimate Studios (formally Smokehouse) in Wapping to record. Plus I also did lots of stuff with my old mate Mark Lusardi in his swanky new Mark Angelo Studios in Acton (now, like Intimate, sadly closed). But by around 2003 I had my own little home studio installed. A few years later I moved my equipment into a cosy little studio in Ancoats in central Manchester. I had always liked having my own set-up to make my own recordings, without having to rely on audio engineers. Indeed, the Bedroom album was recorded by me onto 4-track cassette in 1980. The digital revolution, in regards to recording and mixing, was a massive factor. When left to my own devices (literally), I didn’t want to use software to record. Instead, I used a Yamaha RS7000 sequencer that was connected by MIDI to two AW16G Yamaha workstations. I had all manner of outboard effects connected to that set-up. A lot of musicians of that time preferred digital workstations over using software. You could enjoy the benefits of digital technology, especially MIDI, while still having faders and buttons to push and knobs to twiddle (please, no cheap puns!). I started to get what I felt were the best bass sounds that I had ever had. I varied those bass sounds more than I had in the past. I utilised a Boss multi-effect processor to good effect. It made a nice contrast with my ‘straight signal bass’. Sometimes I would use that approach, of two or even three contrasting basses on the same track. The work station/mixing desk truly became an integrated part of the process for me. The demarcation line between recording, mixing and mastering became further diminished. I approached and utilised the mixing desk as if it was an instrument. I would push it to the absolute limit. ‘Happy Tibetan Girl’ from the Chinese Dub album is a good example of that. At times I felt completely and utterly at one with the tracks I was working on, more in control than I had ever been before. It really was a bit of a mystic experience – chills up the back, and all that – as I beavered away in the studio. There is a very good compilation of that period of ‘the Stockport Years’ on Cherry Red Records called Jah Wobble, Dark Luminosity – the 21st Century Collection.
Another studio that I used a lot in the mid-noughties was the house studio of the West End music publishers that I was signed to at the time. Their name was Campbell Connolly & Company. They were more prominent in the classical music sphere, as opposed to modern rock and pop, etc. They had a studio in the basement. The resident engineer was a Swedish bloke called Jonas Persson. Quite simply, he is one of the best audio engineers I have ever worked with: great on Pro Tools, but old school as well; also knows about the importance of moving fast. He now runs that studio as an independent venture. I did a cracking album called Kingdom of Fitzrovia with Bill Sharpe of Shakatak fame, with Jonas at my publisher’s studio. It’s pretty jazzy and was released on the jazz label Storyville. Bill is a very talented player. And a very nice fella too – great sense of humour. Another album that we recorded some of there was Psychic Life, with Julie Campbell of LoneLady fame. For me, that’s a proper post-punk album. When I initially met Julie it was totally under cross purposes; she thought I was looking for a singer, and I thought she was looking for a producer. So we beat around the bush for a while before deciding to give it a whirl. Although she is of the younger generation she is, to my mind, very old school. She has, I think, a very seventies sort of aesthetic. I saw her lyric book and thought it made powerful stand-alone poetry and prose, so encouraged her to do some spoken word. She is, of course, a great singer, so the combination of that and the narrated stuff is terrific. Being post-punk meant having a collaged sort of feel, as well as disco beats and grainy analogue drones. The album was great fun to make – a very stylish record and cover, if I say so myself. The artwork features blinding photos from my old friend Alex Hurst, the Liverpudlian photographer. Alex is the partner of Peasy, the manager of Echo and the Bunnymen. Peasy, along with his business partner Pete, is a very sound chap.
Julie Campbell and me, from the great Alex Hurst Psychic Life photo session
As I mentioned, when talking about Weatherall and Levene, around 2015 to 2017 I recorded quite a lot at the producer Youth’s studio in Wandsworth. The day after a show me and the band were booked into Intimate Studios, with my old mate Paul Madden engineering. Youth (Martin Glover) was very keen to produce me and the Invaders so I gave him all the backing tracks from that session. He did a fine job on it along with his talented engineer Michael Randall. The album Everything is Nothing is the entity that transpired from those sessions, featuring the wonderful Aurora Dawn (best known as a vocalist with the Alabama 3), singing lead vocals on ‘Cosmic Love’. Youth also encouraged me to use some of my paintings for the artwork of that record. It was a successful project and we continued to collaborate.
Me and Keith Levene share a joke shortly before going on stage at the Village Underground in Hoxton in 2022
Recording in Wandsworth was a very pleasant way to spend many an afternoon: a leisurely lunch at Chelsea Arts Club then a stroll over Chelsea Bridge to Youth’s studio. I played on an album called Celtic Vedic by a band called Dub Trees. It’s a very good record with some great players and remixers involved in it. Myself and Martin made a dub album called Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse. I also played on some tracks with the Alex Paterson from The Orb – the first time I had played with them since the ‘Blue Room’ era. One of the high points of that session was meeting and playing with Roger Eno (and discussing our shared love of both the holy minimalist school of music and the aesthetics of the impressionists – both painters and musicians). I also worked with a guy called Alex McGowan during that period. He was a really good old-school engineer. His studio was also situated near the Chelsea Arts Club, so was ideal for me. He later moved the studio to Forest Gate in east London. Among other recordings, myself and the Invaders made The Butterfly Effect album with Alex. Then there was the album I played on by the singer Holly Cook. What a delightful and talented person she is – as easy to talk to as her dad Paul. When Youth won a lifetime achievement award for his production work, I played in the band that he’d put together for the event. Paul was on drums, so me and the Sex Pistol’s drummer played together (at the Grosvener House Hotel). Richard Ashcroft from the Verve was on vocals (I kid you not). He was a nice geezer. For the life of me I can’t remember what we played! But, whatever, it was fun. And I had a proper luxurious shave before the gig at the barber shop in the Dorchester.
Live
I’ve done a ton of gigs with various line-ups over the last twenty-four years.
By 1999 I had started up a new touring band called Deep Space. As the name suggests, the music consisted of really quite ‘out there’ trance music. There wasn’t a sampler in sight.
In 2001 I toured with the fabulous Solaris group that I formed. Guy Morley who ran the Band on the Wall venue introduced me to Harold Budd. I got on with Harold like a house on fire. Guy asked me who else would fit in a band well with Harold. Immediately, I replied Bill Laswell and Jaki Liebezeit. I named it Solaris, after one of my favourite films (the Tarkovsky version). We needed a horn player and Bill suggested Graham Haynes, son of Roy Haynes. What a band that was. We got a great live record out of that tour as well. Cai did the mixing live. It’s pretty extreme. A great friend from the business called Sean Leonard came and tour managed the gig. Sean still looks after my interests in America.
I toured as Jah Wobble and Deep Space up to about 2008. The main members were Neville Murray (percussion), Clive Bell (flutes, pipes, woodwind), Jean-Pierre Rasle (bagpipes, woodwind), Chris Cookson (guitar) and Mark Sanders (drums). This was augmented by Mick Routledge, our mixer, doing dub and electronic effects. I had become really tired of working with onstage samplers by the turn of the millennium and wanted to play spontaneously, working primarily with drones, beats and B-lines to entrance the audience; feeling the groove and creating as we went, same as I had done in the past with groups such as the Human Condition and even with earlier incarnations of the Invaders of the Heart. With Deep Space I wanted to push time signatures to the limit; where we could at times stray into compound time. It helped that Mark Sanders was primarily a free-jazz drummer. I also utilised extreme tempo changes. As well as drones I wanted to employ old early music type modes – hence the bagpipes. I also loved playing with the late Philip Jeck, so drafted him in for the Five Beat album. Phil was a wonderful maker of musical collages. He utilised live decks and sampling. Phil also features with my dear friend, the master drummer, Jaki Liebezeit on Live in Leuven. That spontaneous ‘in the moment approach’ of Deep Space matched well, I thought, with the saxophonist Evan Parker, so we made an album with him called Passage to Hades.
Me and Bill Laswell, c. 2016, at a festival in Holland
I was still well into making world music/fusion records, which very much included the English folk album English Roots Music. There was a feeling among many folk fans and musicians that English folk had been made rather anaemic from the Victorian era onwards, and that it generally, with some notable exceptions, lacked the spirit of its Celtic counterparts. Liz Carter sang lead vocals on the album. We recorded it at the Studio (a sort of community hub) in Hartlepool. Liz managed the centre. We played a few gigs at the Studios and I took quite a shine to the town. I enjoyed my time staying there immensely. We also recorded part of a live album, largely live in Hartlepool and Manchester. I also watched Porto beat Celtic in the UEFA Cup final on the telly in the bar of the Marine Hotel in Hartlepool. It was, I think, José Mourinho’s first major trophy outside Portugal. Everyone in the bar was wound up at Mourinho’s shithousing (yet winning) tactics. I used to jog or walk every morning there along the sea front, past the gaff where the geezer who faked his disappearance at sea in a canoe lived.
English Roots Music led to the formation of the touring group the English Roots Band, which featured Clea Llewellyn on vocals as well as Liz Carter. We also released an eponymously titled album with that band. Both covers feature terrific artwork by the late John Freeman. On the English Roots Music album the band are presented as deserters from the Napoleonic wars, hiding away from the authorities in a tavern.
In 2008 I augmented my regular line-up with a number of Chinese performers, musicians and singers for the Chinese Dub tour. I did it in collaboration with Zi-Lan. It was initiated by the Liverpool Capital of Culture company, and we also got support from the Arts Council. The project really seemed to strike a chord with audiences. Westerners, so it seemed, were finally ready to brave the unfamiliar waters of Chinese tonality, albeit a tonality set in a rocking dub context. I recorded some of the music that we performed on the tour for the 30 Hertz Records album Chinese Dub. I also added some other compositions. The album won the 2008 BBC/Songlines World Music Award. Obviously having a Chinese-born wife and in-laws was the major factor in me being able to take on a project like that.
Chinese Dub
Then, around 2009, I decided that I needed to start from scratch with a new band. I fancied playing in a good modern electric jazz–funk fusion style, so formed Jah Wobble and the Modern Jazz Ensemble. That is when I first hired Marc Layton-Bennett and George King. We released an album called 7. No disrespect to the players that I had been playing with up to that point, but I wanted to get a very tight, punchy unit together that would be comfortable with all genres of music, as well as jazz. In any case, I needed different instrumentation. As was typical in those recruitment situations, I turned to Neville Murray. Nev recommended Marc – somehow he knew him via musician circles. Seadna (McPhail), my Manchester engineer, recommended George. Chungy (Martin Chung), I saw a couple of years later, on a DVD that I had been sent re. a singer. I was impressed with the singer all right, but Chungy ‘caught my ear’. Conveniently he lived near Marc in Huddersfield and Marc was well acquainted with him, so that was very handy. Huddersfield is a hotbed of good musicians: Sean Corby hails from there too; he’s a terrific trumpet player, great with both jazz and reggae, and has played a lot of shows with us over the years, both in the Modern Jazz Ensemble and the Invaders. Obviously, it made life much easier for me, having a band that all lived in the north. Mark Hubbard, who runs a studio complex in Leeds, is another Yorkshireman on the firm; he’s my ever dependable bass tech. Chris Connolly, a professional chef and pro drummer, who’s out of Oldham, tour managed for a good while, as did Adam Masters, who also set me up with some great endorsements which, amazingly, was a first for me. Steve Rigby (Mancunian) and Jamie Crossley (Bolton) both spent time in the band, running loops and playing keys. Steve has a good voice as well. He’s good mates with legendary Manchester percussionist Lea Mullen, who was on the firm with George Michael for a good few years. Neal is my driver come tour manager. He’s very good, always fully in control of the vehicle. Heather (Hedge) handles the merch with aplomb.
