Resonance 4: Global Communications

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#284263" VLINK="#9CB5D7" ALINK="#F4FF16"> <TABLE BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 WIDTH=470> <TR> <TD WIDTH=470 ALIGN=CENTER> <A HREF="resTopbar.map"><IMG BORDER=0 WIDTH=450 HEIGHT=32 ALT="Resonance Issue 4" SRC="resTopbar.gif" ISMAP></A> <FONT SIZE=2> <A HREF="index.html">[Contents]</A> <A HREF="gcStory.html">[Global Communications]</A> <A HREF="t8Story.html">[Taylor 808]</A> <A HREF="dctStory.html">[Darwin Chamber & DJ TRANCE]</A> <A HREF="resRev4.html">[Reviews]</A> <A HREF="resInfo4.html">[Credits]</A> </FONT> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> <BR> <TABLE BORDER=0 WIDTH=450> <TR> <TD ALIGN=RIGHT> <TABLE BORDER=0 WIDTH=400> <TR> <TD> <IMG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=280 ALT="Ear" SRC="gcEar.gif"> </TD> <TD VALIGN=MIDDLE> <B>As increasingly more of us are buying modems and getting on-line to join the enlightened millions collectively ascending toward a digital epiphany, little time passes <IMG WIDTH=75 HEIGHT=75 ALT="Earth" SRC="gcEarth.gif" ALIGN=LEFT HSPACE=5 VSPACE=5>before it is realized that, like any widespread and accessible medium, the vast realm of cyberspace often seems filled with a lot nothing-ness. To find anything of relative value one must be a super-sleuth with one finger devoted full-time to the delete key on their computer keyboard.</B> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </TD> <TR> <TD ALIGN=CENTER> <IMG BORDER=0 WIDTH=450 HEIGHT=89 ALT="Global Communication vs. The Theory of Evolution" SRC="gcTitle.gif"> <IMG BORDER=0 WIDTH=450 HEIGHT=18 ALT="by Andrew Monko" SRC="gcByline.gif"></TD> </TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN=LEFT> <TABLE WIDTH=400> <TR> <TD ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=MIDDLE> <B>It's no secret the same can be said of the music industry, electronic music in particular. Record labels and genre bandwagon-ners flood the market with mediocrity in pursuit <IMG WIDTH=75 HEIGHT=75 ALT="GC Guys" SRC="gcSuits.gif" ALIGN=LEFT HSPACE=5 VSPACE=5>of the elusive dollar or the chance at being heralded as the catalyst of a new trend, 'dumbing down' the layperson to believing that fashion-conscious drivel in the "techno" or "ambient" section of their local record store represents the best electronica has to offer.</B> </TD>  <TD> <IMG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=233 ALT="Discs" SRC="gcDiscs.gif"> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> <TABLE CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 WIDTH=470 BORDER=0 WIDTH=450> <TR> <TD> <BR> <P><B>Where, then, are the gems and how does one find them?</B></P> <P>A good place to start is a town on the southern tip of England to seek the likes of Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton. This duo, best known for their work as Global Communication, couldn't be more indifferent to the flavor-of-the-month among their musical peers; in fact, they're downright oblivious.</P> <P>Untethered by the incestuous trends of the large city, Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton shape their art in their own Evolution studio, two hours south of London in Somerset. As a production team, Pritchard and Middleton have simple goals: 1) ignore convention; 2) be creative without compromise. They are succeeding. Recent examples: last year as Global Communication, their best-known moniker, they released the critically acclaimed <I>76:14</I>, their long-anticipated follow-up to Pentamerous Metamorphosis, an astounding remix CD of Chapterhouse's <I>Blood Music</I> album of 1993. As Reload, Pritchard and Middleton released the refreshingly original <I>A Collection of Short Stories</I>, a dark and eclectic album of imagery that is accompanied by pieces of short prose written exclusively for the music. This year, Pritchard and Middleton have been misinterpreted as the leaders of an electro-revival with their Jedi Knights EP, put out the relentlessly throbbing "Antacid" as Link, and released Theory of Evolution here in the US on TVT, a collection of early tracks from their own Evolution label.</P> <P>I speak with Mark Pritchard for over an hour. He's been incredibly difficult to contact, but it's been a busy summer: supporting the Global and Jedi Knights releases, playing festivals in Norway, England, and Europe at large, doing Evolution DJ tours, constantly working on new material, and, in case they were getting bored, a live performance on a Norwegian children's environmental awareness television show.</P> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> <H3>The Chapterhouse Connection</H3> <P>A few years ago, the dizzying array of project names under which Pritchard and Middleton record would not have raised many eyebrows, at least not here in the US where they were practically unheard of. Not at least, until 1993, when a mysterious CD was quietly included with the UK release of Chapterhouse's album, <I>Blood Music</I>. In a modest cardboard sleeve plainly titled: <I>Blood Music</I> retranslated by Global Communication into <I>Blood Music: Pentamorous Metamorphosis</I>, was a remix work so radical in approach it not only was unrecognizable compared to <I>Blood Music</I>, but was a true interpretive deconstruction of the Chapterhouse album. Pentamerous Metamorphosis had set a new precedent, breaking the mold of how remixing is perceived (MuZiq soon after released a remix work similar in concept of the Auteurs).</P> <P>Chapterhouse approached Pritchard and Middleton after running into them a few times at a local record store and hearing a few tracks released on Evolution. Apart from being a masterpiece ambient album in its own right, the novelty, as well as controversy , of <I>Pentamerous Metamorphosis</I> is the absence of any sound immediately recognizable as originally belonging to Chapterhouse. On the Chapterhouse project in general, and the haunting "Epsilon Phase", the only track with a bittersweet vocal snippet from Blood Music, Pritchard explains: "We went up to their place and listened to the album and told them which sounds and parts we wanted, and they put it all onto DAT. Then we took it all away and sampled bits and pieces, deconstructed it and messed around with the sounds, experimented, trying to make new sounds out of them. We took some melodies and played them on different instruments. With the last track ["Epsilon Phase"], we felt the emotion in it and knew straight away that we could enhance it more so it was even more emotional. It was a love song that Andy the lead singer had written, and we took the melodies and sampled the guitars, experimented, and deconstructed it with effects".</P> <P>Quite pleased with the end result, Chapterhouse took Global Communication, along with Seefeel, on several tour dates. Unfortunately, lukewarm record sales and a good thrashing from the British press caused Chapterhouse to be dropped from their label, Dedicated. Ironically, and in some bad taste as well, Pritchard and Middleton were signed to Dedicated based on their work for Chapterhouse and began work on their first proper Global Communication album. In the meantime, the buzz was spreading. Questions frequently started arising on the Intelligent Dance Music and Ambient internet mailing lists such as: "Has anyone heard of Global Communication? I bought a Chapterhouse album and there was this CD..."; or, "Who are these Global Communication guys...?" While trainspotters and music fans did their research, it was discovered that these mystery boys were not, in fact, fly-by-night newcomers, but serious and unassuming artists simultaneously busy with a number of satellite projects.</P> <P>But what would Global Communication sound like outside of the Chapterhouse context? Expectations were high, very high. Global Communication was in a hot seat, as their forthcoming album was being simultaneously eyeballed by critics in two ways: as a group's first album in the traditional sense; and more frighteningly as a sophomore release, a dreaded rite-of-passage for any musician. In the summer of 1994 Dedicated finally released Global Communication's album: rhythmic, warm, and spacious. We all stopped to listen. The anticipated <I>76:14</I> came complete with album graphics and song titles that reflect Pritchard and Middleton's intent of making music that transcends language, border, and preconception: a simple icon of an ear graces the plain white cover, album and individual tracks entitled only by their length.</P> <P>Beneath the visual ambiguities of <I>76:14</I> is an expanding plain, a playground for thoughts and emotions to unfold in a number of colors. The liner notes inside <I>76:14</I> explain it all: "Use your imagination: Numbers are chosen to identify separate tracks because names tend to bias the listener by pre-defining images, places and feelings. This gives the listener the freedom of imagination to derive whatever he/she wishes from the music." Although intended to be an open canvas for the listener, ghosts of the artists travel in the shadows of <I>76:14</I>, and one can't help but wonder how much of them remained behind in the mix?</P> <P>"There were a few things going on in our lives at the time, sort of personal things, which happened a bit on the last album [<I>76:14</I>], Pritchard admits. "Parts of <I>76:14</I> were written during a hard time in the summer after Tom's uncle died, and that sort of thing is obviously going to come out in the music. The music we've made in the past year and a half has been a certain way because of certain events happening in our lives..."</P> <P>Few were disappointed or left wondering about Global Communication with <I>76:14</I> spinning in their CD players. There is yet another twist of irony, however, to Global Communication: attempting to defy categorization resulted in their The music being blindly associated with the top-40 buzzword "ambient", a music style and label so bastardized by the music industry and exploited by anyone who can plug a keyboard into a reverb that it ultimately has lost its true meaning. "The main reason we're not happy about it [the "ambient" label]", Pritchard says, "is because most ambient music being made recently over the last three or four years we really didn't like".</P> <P>Judging from what Pritchard cites as influences, it's no wonder current "ambient" offerings leave a queer taste: "We've been inspired a lot by 70's fusion, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. Though not really ambient, some of the treatments they used we learned a lot from in our music." He continues: Passion by Peter Gabriel, and Tomita, he's Japanese. He re-created classical pieces with Moog synthesizers in the 70's. His stuff is unbelievable and he did it all live... definitely worth looking out for. Loads of Brian Eno music, David Sylvian, and Vangelis. Some of Vangelis' tracks are cheesy, but then others are unbelievable and have such power and emotion. The sounds come in and they're enormous!"</P> <P>For Pritchard and Middleton, Global Communication is a concept, a vehicle of expression, and not necessarily a definable type of music. "The next Global album is going to be a bit of everything that we do: ambient, jungle tracks, more Reload-style tracks... there's going to be a bit of everything", Pritchard assures.</P> <H3>More bullets, please...</H3> <P>If anything can be said in general about the Global sound so far, it usually evokes emotion within a relatively pleasant range. What of the days when the boys wake up with the angst of life anchoring their mood? For Pritchard, he does what William Burroughs does often: Reload. Primarily Pritchard's project, Reload is dark and industrial electronics, and often just plain aggressive - Global's evil twin. Two years ago, Reload released <I>A Collection of Short Stories</I>, "a contemporary anthology of dub-sensory fiction". The industrial influence on A Collection... coming from sources such as Meat Beat Manifesto and Keith LaBlanc, the album alternates between fury and calm; but above all, conjures rich imagery and intriguing scenes in a collage of aural cinematography. <I>A Collection...</I> is brilliant, but what makes the release even more unique is its inclusion of several well-written and engaging pieces of prose that, like the album, can stand on their own. Experienced together, <I>A Collection...</I> becomes multi-sensory and absorbing.</P> <IMG WIDTH=150 HEIGHT=253 ALIGN=RIGHT ALT="Pull Quote 1" SRC="gcPull1.gif"><P>Pritchard elaborates: "When I was making the album, I had a friend from school who wanted to be a writer who was there with me almost the whole time. When people heard the tracks they said they could see things visually and actually imagine stories happening, and from that we tried to get Dom [Fripp] to write some stories to go along with the tracks, not every track because we didn't have much time since the idea came rather late on when the album was actually finished. So he wrote stories to go with the tracks that he thought most appropriate, like the "1642" track, which works really well. We wanted to make it so the choice was there to listen to it with or without the stories. Some people thought it worked, others didn't, but we thought it'd be a nice idea".</P> <P>Pritchard hopes to be able to invert the approach and write an interpretive soundtrack to a literary work already written. An intoxicating idea simmering with possibilities: Reload does Dante's <I>Inferno</I>? <I>On the Road</I>? <I>Alice in Wonderland</I>? "To find the right book... that's the difficult part," Pritchard says, "We definitely want to do it at some stage".</P> <P>Time constraints due to the success of the Global album and other recent diversions keep the next Reload album in the background. But the manner in which Pritchard and Middleton hyperactively pursue their creative muses has resulted in what critics ridicule as too many projects on too many labels. What if a choice had to be made? Among all of their various projects, however, Pritchard reluctantly, in his Somerset accent, confesses: "If I had to choose, if I had a gun to my head, it'd have to be... Reload. The emotion on the Reload album is a lot more uneasy, unnerving. I'm not sure, but I think Reload is just more me..."</P> <H3>Funk the protocol...</H3> <P>Sometimes dissatisfaction with the status quo can push people to extremes to break away from it. It pushed Pritchard and Middleton to... electro? The 1995 Jedi Knights' <I>May the Funk be with You EP</I> - with all the bizarre quirkiness of a vintage Grandmaster Flash record - dropped its robotic-voiced, funky ass in the middle of what was getting to be a very boring Tupperware party: dance music.</P> <P>Groove kids and DJ's on both sides of the Atlantic, and even the carnivorous British press, ate it up. It's clear that originality has been absent from the club/rave scene for a long time, DJ's seemingly more concerned with being worshipped by adolescents in floppy trousers than venturing beyond the expected parameters of the current techno-Zeitgeist. If the intent of this endeavor was to offer a novel tribute to a bygone era of funk and throw something with actual character on the turntables of DJ's worldwide, then mission accomplished. But as other artists followed their lead and the press hoped to be the first to predict the birth of a supposed "movement", it appears that Pritchard and Middleton have no aspirations to be in the driver's seat of a bandwagon. Was it all just a joke, or what?</P> <P>Comfortable with the interrogation, Pritchard explains: "Well, the plan for the Jedi Knights was to kill them off after a couple more EP's because we had to think of another name due to label reasons, but we didn't want to have any more names since we have too many anyway. We want to do two more EP's and then stop them completely. Also because of all the hype of electro over here in the press and people expecting us to start an electro revival when there's only one EP. The press created a revival when it wasn't even happening! Link is always going to stay, but we're trying to cut the number of names down, really. It's getting so confusing for everyone and for ourselves."</P>  <IMG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=220 ALT="Pull Quote 2"ALIGN=LEFT SRC="gcPull2.gif"><P>He continues: "Things have gone off a bit quality-wise in electronic music the past couple of years, that's my personal view, anyway. The reason we did the Jedi Knights EP was because the whole electronic scene over here was getting a bit too serious, really elitist, losing all of its funk, and its soul as well. A lot of the music being made is lacking everything, really. The reason why the Jedi Knights EP was so over the top, sort of funky with the riffs quite quirky, was because people were starting to lose their roots in this music, it was all getting watered down. The stuff that inspired us, techno-wise, was club music, early Derrick May stuff, P-Funk, Kraftwerk, all the early roots of it which seems to have been completely forgotten. In the past two or three years there have been loads of music that's so mediocre - home listening. I like ambient music a lot but a lot of the stuff being made has no emotion or fresh sounds in it. They'll put a beat in the music as a background thing just to sort of roll it along a little bit and it was really doing our heads in. That's why we did the Jedi Knights EP to say, hey look people, you need to listen to some other things besides just what's happening now and make music from that."</P> <P>"A reminder?"</P> <P>"Yeah, yeah definitely," he answers emphatically. "We've always loved club music and mainly buy house music and jungle, that's most of the music I buy - that's it. The techno thing now and again is OK, but some of the new electro I've heard I've liked - Drecxia - they're doing something fresh. On the Evolution nights that we do, we've done a little UK Evolution DJ'ing tour and basically take people through absolutely everything. In London last week, we started with an hour and a half of jungle, then went into some electro and Chicago house, Detroit techno classics, and then did some early Euro R & S stuff to finish it off and it was really good. What I really miss about the whole club scene [is] when I started playing around 1990 we could play all of it in one night because we fancied it all. We've tried to do that with Evolution because that's what we're about, we don't like just one style, we like everything. I mean there's good in everything and that's what we try to play for people. People that like techno think house music is handbag and cheesy. They think house beats are not hard and macho enough, which is a load of rubbish, complete rubbish. That's the message on the Evolution tour release: open your ears, because there's so much music out there and people are just missing it because they're closing their minds and their ears. People just have to hear this music. If we do come over to the States, we'll play a mixture of everything of what we have over here."</P> <P>A US Evolution/Global PA tour would be an enjoyable shot in the arm, indeed, but Pritchard doesn't expect it to happen soon - as usual, there's too much to do. For starters, they are currently jumping through the appropriate hoops to have Evolution, in addition to their Global material, backed by Dedicated. Already supporting unique and experimental artists, such as Wish Mountain and The Rebus Project, along with their own material on Evolution, Pritchard hopes the label becomes a virtual smorgasbord: "Evolution will be techno, jungle, ambient, experimental, jazz, hip-hop, and there's going to be a side label for house".</P> <P>Did he say JAZZ? Judging from their past impulses, a "retranslation" of <I>The Rebirth of Cool</I> would be well within the range. Although finding work by Pritchard and Middleton can be an investigative process that reveals a selection of odd suspects, discovering a palette of music as original and varied as theirs is worth the research. What is lacking within the current fray of modern music - innovation, originality - can be found in artists insulated from the industry's homogenizing influence. Like creatures in the Galapogos Islands unique in form because of their geographic isolation, maybe someday artists floundering in the musical gene pool will look to a little studio in Somerset, England and understand what real evolution is. <IMG WIDTH=5 HEIGHT=5 BORDER=0 ALIGN=ABSMIDDLE SRC="resCloseDot.gif"></P> </TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN=CENTER> <IMG WIDTH=450 HEIGHT=50 BORDER=0 ALT="Discography" SRC="gcDiscTitle.gif"> <TABLE WIDTH=450> <TR> <TD WIDTH=150 VALIGN=TOP> <FONT SIZE=2> <I>Remotion</I> (Hit It/Dedicated) <I>Theory of Evolution</I> compilation (WARP/TVT)<BR> <BR> <B>Global Communication:</B><BR> <I>76:14</I> LP (Dedicated)<BR> <I>Pentamerous Metamorphosis</I> LP (Dedicated)<BR> <I>Maiden Voyage</I> EP (Dedicated)<BR> <I>Keongaku</I> EP (Evolution)<BR> </FONT> </TD> <TD WIDTH=150 VALIGN=TOP> <FONT SIZE=2> <B>Reload:</B><BR> <I>A Collection of Short Stories</I> LP (Infonet)<BR> <I>Reload</I> EP (Evolution)<BR> <I>Autoreload</I> EP (Evolution)<BR> <I>Autoreload</I> Vol. 2 EP (Infonet)<BR> <I>Mystic Institute: Reload remixes</I> EP (Evolution)<BR> <I>Bioshpere</I> EP (with EG21) (Evolution)<BR> </FONT> </TD> <TD WIDTH=150 VALIGN=TOP> <FONT SIZE=2> <B>Link:</B> <I>Antacid</I> EP (with EG21) (Evolution)<BR> <I>Antacid + remixes</I> EP (with EG21) (Evolution)<BR> <BR> <B>Jedi Knights:</B><BR> <I>May the Funk be with you</I> (Clear)<BR> <BR> <B>The Chameleon:</B><BR> <I>The Chameleon</I> EP (Good Looking)<BR> </FONT> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </BODY>