“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”

Raoul Vaneigem – The Revolution of Everyday Life

“Meaningful action, for revolutionaries, is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self-activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others – even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.”

Solidarity – As We See It

“It was s’posed to be so eeeeasy.”

Late as ever, I didn’t hear A Grand Don’t Come For Free until 2005 – thanks to my sister getting it me for Christmas. (This isn’t bad when you consider that I didn’t hear Black Cherry until Autumn 2004…)

I love it, probably for all the reasons Mark K-Punk hates it. Not being a reader of Loaded, or someone who fraternises with whining “indie-windies” I’ll have to confine myself to why I like the album, and not worry about who else does. (How very mature of me.)

Mark, with all his political denunciations of emotion, ends up being a bit confused when the theme deviates from his usual dead-pan pop-robotics. He thinks Skinner is glorifying what he sees as “laddish”, whereas to me he the whole point of the album is the transition between passivity and taking some responsibility for your life – the corner being turned during the rewind on the last track. I’ve never seen myself as “a lad” but I’ve fallen for some of the same traps described so well here…

For most of the album things happen to Mike – he is a “victim” of circumstance. His only victories being:

a) His total inertia preventing him even from leaving the flat to put on a doomed bet.

b) Getting the girl – which is a glimpse of the endgame, not in the sense of happily ever after – but in that getting off your arse and striking it lucky is a way of crawling out of a lethargic swamp.

It comes down to your interpretation, but it seems to me that the obsessions with weed AND with sitting on the sofa watching telly are actually presented as being the wholly negative dead ends (rather than means to ends, when used sparingly) which they can be – and have been, for me.

Similarly, the use of cliché is not, for me, evidence for the prosecution but an example of how we all try to get through the hard times – platitudes don’t actually do anything productive but are a way of temporarily escaping from the pain of being chucked or whatever. It doesn’t mean they are “real”, or desirable, or even useful in the healing process, but it is a hole which people retreat into. It’s those little observations about life (in all its messiness) along with phones going wrong, mumbling to yourself, being a drunken dick, etc which make it for me.

“It’s the end of something I did not want to end – the beginning of hard times to come.”

With tongue firmly wedged in cheek, I will argue that A Grand Don’t Come For Free is profoundly Nietzschean.

Zarathustra/Skinner has descended from his cave in the mountains after ten years of roaching spliffs in front of the TV. He wants to tell us about the overman, about overcoming. About joy, about having the strength of will to take responsibility for every moment in your life and to wish nothing more than for each moment to be repeated.

By the end of 2001 I’d completely fallen under the spell of Rhythm & Sound’s Burial Mix incarnation. There was something so perfect about those 10″ releases – exactly the correct intersection between the dreamy end of dub and techno. I played them over and over, scanned the web for more information. And tried to find similar fixes elsewhere.

Of course, I couldn’t. Because nobody came close. Only Pole’s 2nd album really did it for me, and whilst I had a lot of fun with the Chain Reaction and Basic Channel releases I got hold of, it was too techno and not enough dub for me.

Previously I’d been a devotee of Kevin Martin’s Macro Dub Infection compilations and it seemed like there were one-off releases out there, b-sides, remixes, etc, which needed to be collected together in that manner… if only you could find them.

A couple of years later I’m none the wiser, but some stuff has recently crossed my palms which reminded me of those times.

Sandoz – Scientific Exploitation (Soul Jazz 12″ 2002)

Cabaret Voltaire were going on about dub being an influence back in the 70s, way before most people in the industrial scene caught on (or let on?). Despite dub’s dread darkness and sonic experimentation there’s still something righteous and life-affirming about most orthodox reggae versions from that time. So perhaps it just didn’t fit into the identikit genre-specific imagery of black & white photos of old warehouses, etc.

This release came out as a taster for the album and my copy came courtesty of the man like Dubversion.

It’s… alright (Nick Gutterbreakz will kill me!) – very much “Richard H Kirk does electronic dub”, which is what it is. It sounds very “meaty” – a full sound which mixes up squiddly acid b-lines with skanking, and manages to sound… alright. A rasta floats in and out of the mix talking about technology, capitalism and being a rebel.

I guess this suffers from my personal bias – techno artists simply incapable of escaping the confines of the genre and simply chucking in some dub elements rather than producing a terrifying mongrel of the two. I think that’s what I was reacting against when I did the first Shake The Foundations mix. If Sandoz lost all the contemporary “dancefloor” bits and just went industrial dub I’d be in seventh heaven. But this will do for now. The version is far too restrained, though.

Bandulu – Jahquarius (Music Man Special 7″ 2002)
Bandulu – Detention (Music Man Special 7″ 2002)

I saw Bandulu at one of the free festivals at Finsbury Park and didn’t quite “get” them. Perfectly good techno marred by cod-patois vocals. I was intrigued by these two when they came out but was shocked (Shocked, I tell you!) to see that they retailed at something stupid like six quid each. I recently picked them up for 50p a pop in and end of year sale (ha!). Anyway – I think the plan was that these were uber-limited promos for an album.

Jahquarius is the same story as my first encounter: “Cos it’s a new age – it’s the dawning of Jahquarius, so live it up now, and never make no fuss” – all delivered in crisp tones which should probably leave patois well alone. The female backing vocals are alright though.

But… the version side is a nice bit of funked up swirly Chain Reaction-esque stuff, with good horns which I think must be synths but-sound-alright-shock-horror. (It can be done! They don’t have to sound like a piss poor binatone keyboard! Touring reggae bands take note! Or get some proper hornsmen in FFS.)

It’s what I guess you’d call “tracky” – a linear endless groove. But it’s a good one, only broken up by the occasional hint of echo or a rimshot.

“Detention” is about being banged up. “Free up my brothers one by one […] Lord it a go rough in here”. So, immediately better in terms of subject matter, but still let down by delivery. Tune’s a good ‘un though: shaka-esque minor chordage. The dub is more warm tracky dubbed out business with some good percussion fills. Close… so close…

There are probably a lot of frustrated DJs who want these on 12″.

FSOL – We Have Explosive [Pt 5] (off Virgin Promo 12″ 1997)

I have no idea when Future Sound of London signed to Virgin, but they were slinging this single out like music was about to go out of fashion. It was impossible to walk into any central London charity shop for a while without the staff begging you to take at least one copy of the other promo 12″ of this with the Mantronix remixes on it.

I saw FSOL at one of the Essential Festivals in Brighton around this time, doing a “live” set via an ISDN line from their studio. I thought it was really alienating. Like – watching people play instruments is (visually) more involving than watching (some) people play records, which is more involving than watching people tap stuff into a laptop. But to watch someone, on a screen, twiddle with knobs 50 miles away was just a bit crap really. I suspect that probably put me off for a while, though of course “Papua” is wicked.

This remix is pretty fine. It’s more “ambient” than dub, but qualifies because it is bass heavy and does remove virtually all traces of the original to make it chilled out rather than quite good boshing sub-tackhead breakbeat bizness. Plus there are echoey bits and all that. (oh, and somebody once told me that you needed 3 examples to construct a decent article. Writing tips as well today in yer uncarved update!). In some ways this track is more ambient prog than anything (don’t let that put you off!) which I think is what FSOL have moved towards now.