UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE
Mar 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Ken Micallef
In the mid-'90s, everyone was talking about how the electronic-music revolution was going to change music forever. Well, except for some cool TV ads and a new section at Tower Records, the so-called electronica revolution was the next big thing that wasn't. Since then, dance-music culture has been free to cross-pollinate, morph and breed, resulting in unique styles and sounds that might not have been born in an MTV-dominated dance market.
But it could have turned out entirely different. Different, that is, if Kosheen had been making music in the tumultuous '90s. With their massive crossover hit “Hide U,” the UK-based trio has touched Britney's buttocks at the Number 2 spot on the Belgian and Dutch charts (Number 6 in the UK) and won Drum 'n' Bass Single of the Year at the 2001 Drum 'n' Bass Awards. Their second single, “Catch,” hit the top spot on the UK Music Week chart. Kosheen managed all that while maintaining their creative integrity and street cred.
Despite their breakout success, Kosheen's story reeks of authenticity. The members come from the Bristol streets and the English countryside. Magic occurred when two Bristol-based drum 'n' bass producers and record-label owners, Markee Morrison (aka Substance) and Darren Beale (aka Decoder), collaborated with former Island Records session singer/songwriter Sian Evans. Decoder and Substance already had produced drum 'n' bass tracks such as “Dimension,” “Circuit Breaker” and “Damn Right,” while Evans had spent years roaming around England's free party scene and writing songs on acoustic guitar.
With Evans' headstrong vocals adorning powerfully clever production, the outfit's new album, Resist, shows the trio headed for the pop charts — dance music be damned. “Hide U” kicks off with a massive drum 'n' bass whir. “I Want It All” is gloomy downtempo while “Catch” resonates to buzzing electro. “Cover,” “Harder,” “Hungry” and “Face in a Crowd” are contemporary pop darkened by wizened vocals and production that includes corny piano trinkles, fluffy string pads and friendly acoustic guitars.
“The free party scene was our resistance,” explains Welsh-born Evans, sucking on a milk shake in Manhattan's meat-packing district. “We resisted the status quo or being Thatcher's children. Music has been our form of resistance ever since.”
Morrison concurs: “We have a side where there is meaning behind the music, but often it is just down to the feeling the music gives us. We try to get that vibe and that warmth in the music. It is more doing it from the heart than the head.”
Beale says Kosheen's songwriting comes from a variety of inspirations. “Markee and myself wrote a lot of the stuff for the album because we like a lot of music,” he says. “We like The Jam, The Verve, Oasis, Radiohead, Pink Floyd and Prodigy. Even the Sex Pistols had great structure to their songs. We continue to write nu-skool break stuff. We are working on a drum 'n' bass mix CD for Mixmag that will include exclusive tracks from us as well as other artists. But we don't really have time to spin; we are so busy with Kosheen.”
What does Kosheen mean, and where will it lead?
Evans: In Japan, we asked some people to write out Kosheen in Japanese characters. Ko is the character for old; sheen is the character for new. It is like old and new, just what we do. We take the old; we structure songs, but we live with the new technology. The name is a permutation on Cochise, the Apache warrior.
How did it feel to be on Top of the Pops one night and to win Drum 'n' Bass Single of the Year the next?
Morrison: We look at the charts for real pop. We felt like odd ones out there.
Why has “Hide U” become such a massive crossover hit?
Evans: It is not a one-line “baby, baby” song; it is a full vocal. It has enough of a message to be a song, but with the elements of a dance track. Darren and Markee had that doom-doom, doom-doom-doom thing at first. It came easily for me to sing over it; dance music has been part of our culture for the last 10 years.
Morrison: Those opening cello riffs were just a little sound from a module, like a pad sound taken from a string sound, but then we layered it and put a lot of bass on it. It is a sampled cello from a module; then, I played the chords. We put some reverb on it, did some background stuff, and it turned into this heinous stab.
Beale: It has that good tribal sound. The drumbeat is all live drum sounds; we just constructed the beat from different loops. We take bits we like, layer them and build our own drum sound. We still use the breaks — we don't want to lose that dance-loop element.
What is your reaction to “Hide U” being copied illegally in the United States?
Morrison: There were loads of remixes, but we really liked the one by John Creamer. Then this other record company in New York [Peter Rauhofer's Star 69 label] got hold of it, and they did a sneaky one using the backing track and some other vocalist. They wanted to cash in quickly 'cause the tune was getting big.
Evans: They will be getting their ass sued.
Morrison: We have been trying to get injunctions and spent loads of money on lawyers. We have to stop these idiots from trying to rip us off.
Evans: But I'm not bitter, because if you play the tracks together, you can hear the substance in our tune. For somebody to take that off, they don't have the same intention when they sing it; it is not the McCoy. You get a taste of toast with margarine and then toast and butter — you know which one is which, don't you?
How will fans react who expect similar house music on Resist?
Morrison: We are very breakbeat-oriented, but we have brought an almost original house element along with an old-school dance vibe. We like really organic music, and breakbeats feel more organic to us than a boom-boom house beat.
Beale: If you want to go out and buy a full-on house mix, you'll buy a Paul Oakenfold CD. But people want something different. I got this Royskopp album (Melody AM), I played one of their tunes; it is like house, but the music on it is very different. And the rest of the album is nothing like that, just like our album.
Evans: We put out drum 'n' bass first because these guys were already established in the drum 'n' bass world. We did that on the A-sides, but on the B-sides, we were doing tracks that DJs wouldn't go out and buy but would flick over and play. Pretty soon, Fabio and Grooverider and other DJs were playing the drum 'n' bass tracks because the records were on BBC's Radio 1. Since the beginning, we have been feeding this idea that it is okay — you can be song-based and still be cool.
Songs such as “Harder,” “Hungry” and “Face in the Crowd” are pop anthems that have little to do with dance music.
Evans: I do love the traditional songwriting formula: verse, chorus. It is simple; people understand it. I understand it. I like songs that circle around on themselves. “Hungry” is an example of that. “Cover” is more ecstasy-drenched, those maw-maw sounds. That sends you back in time to rave parties.
Do you have a set way of writing and recording tracks?
Beale: Sometimes it begins with one of us having a track, but then we really collaborate. There is no set formula.
Evans: In the beginning, I had the songs; they did the production. But that has changed. Now the guys feel more like composers and musicians rather than just producers, and I feel more like a producer. I have more ideas, though I don't touch anything just yet. But I can translate those ideas now; we have great communication.
How does writing traditional songs differ from writing dance tracks?
Morrison: A dance track has a short shelf life, whereas a song can work for decades. That is what we wanted to make: an album that would last for years and not be gone overnight. As Decoder and Substance, we were releasing records, and it was cool, but we also felt boxed in. A lot of dance producers feel that way. Somebody might make one house tune, and it will do well, and then they will stick to the same thing, whereas we were into doing something different with Kosheen.
Beale: It is nice to sit down and write a tune without any boundaries.
Evans: We brought in a vocal, wrote a great song, and that song has given us the license to cross over. We didn't play anything to anybody for at least a year — just a few people to get some feedback. We were making music that made us happy. But we also wondered if it would translate to the public, and it has.
Is the writing process different with song-based dance music?
Beale: They are very different. When you are working with a voice, you have to leave space, but there is more to do in how you construct the chords. In a lot of dance music, you don't really have to do that. The one process is more musical; the other is more technical. That is not to say that we don't use a lot of production techniques; obviously, we do. They are just different.
Morrison: The main thing is with the arrangements. We switched from drop, rollout, drum 'n' bass arrangements to verse and chorus. But our knowledge of being able to build things up and down in sections like you do in drum 'n' bass is still there. It is the same skills and ideas that we used, just applied differently. We'd already started doing a lot of downtempo and more eclectic stuff. We just had to get the right singer. Once we hooked up with Sian, it was clear what we had to do.
Were the songs written quickly?
Beale: We write quickly; we find it pretty easy to create when we are in the studio.
Morrison: We could probably write a tune a day, to be honest.
Beale: Then a couple days to pull it together. “Slip Slide Suicide” was done in a day. Some tunes are longer than others, but the creative spark can be very short, like 15 minutes. Sometimes production takes more time.
Evans: And sometimes the time is distorted. You go into a zone where it could be light when you go in and light when you leave, and 24 hours have passed.
You played acoustic guitars on Resist. Is there a balance of acoustic and programmed sources?
Beale: Halfway through the album, we switched to using the sounds inside the computer. If we have to do a different mix, we bring it up in the computer and the EQ and reverb settings are all saved. We just got Pro Tools, as well, so we are excited to use it. We want to use live instrumentation but use technology to give it that edge. We will be using more guitars and cello on the next album. With ReCycle and REX files, you have a REX player; you can fly in a drum loop and pitch it up and down, and it is still in real time. You are not spending too much time — you get in there, get it going. We did it all in our own Bristol studio on a small Mackie desk.
Morrison: For the earlier stuff, we mixed it down direct to a 2-channel Mackie 8-bus board. We didn't have enough money to have an 8-track recording machine. We just used our ears and mixed it straight down at Ledge Studio.
Did you put a lot of effects on Sian's voice?
Morrison: Not really. We tried to build more voice in the track. We had never recorded vocals before. We just mixed her as we felt it, maybe used a different reverb on each track to make it blend. Sian's voice is so great; it doesn't really need any more than a good EQ and some reverb. I don't really like the sound of a heavily processed voice. You can get so bogged down.
Sian, was singing over drum 'n' bass difficult?
Evans: My grandfather would always make me use the metronome when I practiced singing Welsh folk songs. That helped with my timing a lot, especially with drum 'n' bass, which is all counter-rhythm.
Where do you find the various sounds for each track?
Morrison: It is just a process of elimination. I go through a lot of CDs, and if something really catches your ear, you use it. The keyboard riff in “Face in a Crowd” is a piano layered with something else and EQ'd strangely. We don't really play drums, but Darren is wicked at building drum sounds; he just plays the drums with the sampler. That dribbling sound on “Slip Slide Suicide” is just a Roland keyboard. The thing is, we have a huge sample library. We have been writing music for 15 years.
How important is having all the latest gear?
Beale: You can write a decent tune on an old Atari computer as long as you've got ideas. It is not about having the best gear in the world. A lot of people get fooled; they think, “I need all this great stuff to make a good song.” That is not true.
Morrison: At our record shop, we used to get these demos, and every time it would have a little note: “The production is bad because I have a really bad kit.” They were always apologizing about the tune before we even listened to it. C'mon, just put your thing down and be confident.
Beale: When we began, it was all hardcore rave music. I was writing with an Akai S950 and an old Atari. I wrote some of my best tunes then. The most important thing is ideas and sound sources. Liam Howlett from Prodigy still uses two Roland W30s; he uses the sequencers inside them, as well. I like the low-tech sound. Sometimes you need a good standard of recording, but other times, noise and filth can actually work to give the song some character. If you want the old sound, you may want noise with some huge compression on it. That can work wonders. Filth can give you some edge.
Did you print the effects or add them later?
Morrison: When Sian is singing, we will add a bit of reverb just to create a little vibe. Then afterwards, we will go into detail. The main thing when tracks are going down is to capture the vibe. Don't concentrate on too much detail, things like flanging and delay. We just try to concentrate more in the moment. We just use effects to create the vibe we want. On some songs, the vocals are really dry; on other songs, like “Resist,” the vocal is flooded in reverb.
What advice can you give to those producers who have not yet found their Sian?
Beale: You make your own luck. We had a good idea, and we knew what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go. Hooking up with Sian was lucky for all of us. I think you can sense with a musician, when you work with somebody, and it takes on a different level and rises above. The three of us together are wicked. From the first day, it was wicked. You've got to trust your instincts.
And what do you say to those who think you have sold out, that Kosheen is watered-down dance music for the masses?
Beale: At the end of the day, if we want to sit down and write the most weird-as-fuck, left-field album in the world, we can do that. If we want to write an ambient album, we can do that. We can do whatever the hell we want. That is the beauty with music, really. We have written an album that a lot of people can get into. Me, the left-field side of me, if you listen to what I have done in the past, there is some weird shit there. It was quite fulfilling writing something that was a bit lighter with nice production and good songs. But it all comes down to good ideas and putting that through your equipment.
KOSHEEN GEAR LIST
MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF GEAR?
Darren Beale:Our brains!
Markee Morrison: Our ears!
Sian Evans: My voice!
(2) Alesis QuadraVerbs
(2) E-mu keyboards
Akai S3000 sampler
Apple Macintosh G4, G3 and laptops
Dynaudio BM15 monitors
Emagic Logic Audio
Ensoniq DP/2 outboard effects unit
Lexicon MXP-1
Line 6 Pod guitar amp simulator
Mackie 24-track 8-bus console
Pioneer DJM-500 DJ mixer
Propellerhead Software Reason
Propellerhead Software ReCycle
RODE NT2 mic
Roland Juno-6 synth
Roland Juno-106 synth
Roland SH-101 synth
Roland XP-60 synth
Samson Servo 160 power amp
Sony CD player
Technics turntables
TL Audio C1 compressor
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