Page 35 - Zone Magazine Issue 008

When you signed your first record deal as Bizarre Inc, did you imagine that what you were creating was going to become such a massive influence to other people?
No. There was no way we could have known. I was still working as a part time cleaner in a mental health hospital, I was still working there when we were on top of the pops for the first time. I didn’t expect much more to come of it. It’s only when we had to start gigging every weekend that I had to give up my day job. I loved what I was doing in the studio, and was really lucky to have done the right thing at the right time. The fact that our work has had such longevity is really gratifying, as it probably means that there is something more than luck behind what we were doing.
The fact that people still talk of Bizarre Inc at all is quite impressive and still boggles me a bit. It’s been 20 years.
You had some big hits in the UK and around the world. Did you get to travel outside the UK or was the Rave scene just a UK phenomenon in the early days?
When we signed to Vinyl Solution, a brilliant independent label, we toured America a bit, played the Limelight in New York a few times, San Francisco, Texas (which was really good).
Other than that the furthest we made it from the UK was Jersey. In all our years touring we were never booked to play Ireland. The Rave scene was a UK phenomenon but in the early days it had a had a following in the States and Jersey! Playing with Knifes took us abroad, but by the time we were playing abroad the music was slightly more vocal based “I’m gonna get you”. I think we appeared on the back end of the rave scene maybe.
When Bizarre Inc eventually split and you formed Chicken Lips with Dean Meredith, was there an intention to make more underground sounds or did you both think that the industry was heading in a more leftfield way as a whole?
Bizarre Inc were dropped by Mercury (after a brief spell with Warner Brothers) when we had a difference of opinion. They wanted us to produce more of what we had done, and we wanted to do something different. We were young, we were arrogant and we wanted to return to producing underground tracks again. I regretted the decision for a while, when the money dried up, but we were absolutely right in what we did. 'He Not In' was a big track for Chicken Lips at the time.
I’ve said it before in interviews and will stand by what I say about our decisions. I think that the reason that I still have any career at all in music, is because we broke away when we did and did our own thing. I don’t think that we had an intention to go leftfield. We just didn’t want to record with a vocalist anymore, and wanted to be able to do what we fancied, and take our inspiration from where we found it.
Explain your creative process as a duo. did you have specific roles like one would
come up with the melodies and the other the percussion or did you work on whatever was needed as a team always?
Very specific roles with a very fixed routine! Dean would come over the studio based at my house with his sandwiches and a bag of records every day to work on the beats . I would play synths and we would just let things happen.
We both had input in relation to the melodies and the direction, I think I am more of the studio hunchback and Dean is more out there.
Dean and I had a partnership, that I don’t think I will ever be able to recreate. I don’t think anyone could put up with my meticulous way of working - everything has to be perfect.
When Chicken Lips came to an end and you decided to produce as The Emperor Machine, you were only using one synth the Roland SH-3a. What was the reasoning behind that?
I went solo because no one else could work with me and The Emperor Machine - once described in a rather self indulgent my space post - was my love child. With The Emperor Machine you just get me, whatever is inside my head at the time, it’s whatever I want to do.
DC Recordings and the late (still hurts to say that) great James Dyer, gave me the freedom and license to produce stuff whether or not people were going to listen to it or not, and that is why made James was so great. He believed in me and I trusted him, it’s that attitude that also spawned the Big 200 side project on DC.
I only used the Roland SH-3a on the first ep because I read somewhere some one’s review of the Sh3a. They said it was a poor man’s synth and was no good for anything. I know it’s a really capable synth, if you know what you’re doing. So that is when I decided to write a track just using that synth, I wanted to push the boundaries to see what I could actually do.
Limiting myself to only one synth really which makes you work the synth. It;s a theme I went on to develop when I recorded the Monophonic Lp for Nang Records.
Didn’t you find it limiting in any way?
Yes - very limiting and deliberate which in turn was liberating.
And now do you still only use the one synth on current material?
No - I think I worked that kink out of my system. I am fortunate enough to be sharing a studio now based at Llama Farm - search Vertical Tones website, Llama Farm if you are interested. If you have a look at those pictures, I think you will see why I now diversify. I am like a kid in a sweetshop.
Problem is I now spend days just twiddling and playing, and not getting as much music recorded at all!
You have produced three albums, a number of singles and have remixed some of the biggest names in the industry. Would you say that you were happier working on your own material or was it
equally enjoyable remixing others material as well?
It depends who I am working with, to be honest. The only person I am prepared to name as not being a happy experience is Madonna. I’m not doing this to name drop it’s just a really good example. There are loads of amazing artists that I have worked with, and some of those I rate the highest, may be the ones that are very much lesser known.
We worked with Madonna twice, I don’t know why because I think she actually hated what we did. She did accept the Bizarre Inc remix of Secret, but she dropped kicked our mix of "Hung Up”. The pressure of working for someone like that is just unbelievably unpleasant - I don’t think she is unpleasant - don’t know her, never met her, but the pressure of trying to be true to ourselves whilst delivering something mainstream nearly broke us. When we did the “Hung Up” mix our backroom mentality meant, that we decided to deliver a remix without using the Abba sample, which she has probably paid squillions for, but we didn’t want to use. Can’t think why she didn’t accept it.
When it’s not too mainstream or contrary, when I can be true to myself I love remixing. If you listen to my remixes they usually bear very little resemblance to the originals. This isn’t because I didn’t like the original (I can’t really work on something I don’t like these days) I just get completely uninspired and end up going off and doing something completely different. Listen carefully and the original is always very much at the heart of the remix though.
My own material is what keeps me going. It’s useful to have a break sometimes though and at least remixing brings the outside world
in for a while. I work on a farm in the middle of the countryside, in a town with very little night life. I don’t get out much when I’m recording. Gigging and remixing are probably the only things that prevent me from being a hermit.
And when you look back at your discography, is there anything that you are particularly proud of over and above the rest of your productions and equally anything that you wish you had done differently?
No regrets. I have had my fair share of poor decision making, but nothing I didn’t learn from!
I am very proud of Emperor Machine. The Emperor Machine is as close to the inside of my head as you are going to get. I will always be thankful for Bizarre Inc, and after spending the last 20 years leaving it alone and wishing that other people would stop pretending to be Bizarre Inc, and trying to gig in our name I think I’m ready to embrace it. I think I have moved on enough to be able to go back, if that makes sense?
" My career as a DJ started at 8 with a push button tape recorder, continued at school when myself and Dean were fierce competitors in our selling of mixtapes to our school friends before it all got a bit more formal and official after I got (blagged) a job at Stafford’s only recording studio at the time - Blue Chip. "
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