Nam Shub of Enki interview by Dan Cameron

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The Nam Shub of Enki, according to Neal Stephenson’ post-cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, was a linguistic virus engineered by a Sumerian god. Designed to overcome the innate monosyllabic human language, exploited by religious leaders as a tool of control, the virus granted intellectual freedom by necessitating the use of acquired languages. Brisbane’ Nam Shub of Enki is Phil Thomson, a rave mentalist trading in sonic chaos. His compositions drag audiences off the beaten track of dance music and have them reaching for the heavens whilst gut-churning bass drags them in the opposite direction.

Al Ferguson, Thomson’ collaborator in the formative days of Nam Shub chose the distinctive moniker. Diverting from a live free-for-all band called Adam and the Ambience, the duo amassed a sonic arsenal, borrowing hardware from friends in the punk and rave scenes, and acquiring their own collection of synths. “We had a couple of Korg Mono/Polys, power Mono/Polys,” he laughs, miming playing both at once, “the 909, heaps of drum machines, WX11 (wind MIDI controller), Pearl Syncussion, (Roland) SH9, the Arp. Al bought 15Mb of memory for the Amiga for $500. Second hand! It was a bargain. We started recording stuff into the computer and cutting it all up; it was pretty primitive.”

Nam Shub of Enki

Devoted to partying, but cynical of the sound that came to dominate electronic music events in the nineties, Thomson’ mission became the creation of viscous beats that avoided genre-bound ruts. “A lot of people rave on about how good the early rave scene was, but it was mainly the drugs. A lot of the music was pretty shit. I’d always end up in the chillout room – and they’d be playing good music in there; Future Sound of London, Detroit electro, acid stuff.”

“I was in Goa in 1991 when I first got into electronic dance music. I was in a punk rock band that turned into a distorted noise band, then I went to India,” Thomson says, though he’ quick to differentiate his experience from the clichés of the psychedelic movement that came to be associated with Goa. “It has that whole bullshit, spiritual heartbeat sort of shit. I love repetitive music, but there’ something about it that really drives me to hate that, or any sort of music that becomes a formula. Even dubstep, all this music I listen to now, once everyone does the same thing, it just becomes Goa trance. I guess trance was the first thing I heard that just became totally shit within a month, or less…”

With Brisbane and its adjacent coasts providing verdant territory for outdoor parties, Nam Shub’ loopy electronica was in demand. Honed across dozens of dance floors over two years, the sound of their first and only album as a duo, 1998′ Consciousness Encoder, evaded straight doof with mental breakbeat, nauseating synth lines and an ever-ready dose of industrial noise. By 2001′ Fuck Piece, Thomson was a solo operator, keeping the Nam Shub moniker as Ferguson moved south and further into the visual arts.

Thomson already had a long association with Brisbane’ only alternative radio station, 4ZZZ. With a tumultuous history bedded in Queensland’ conservative Bjelke-Petersen premiership, the anarchic station has long been a hub for underground musicians, promoters and shit stirrers. Nam Shub was soon performing frequently with 4ZZZ promoter and DJ Sam Kretschmann and industrial performance art duo Kunt, whose bump-and-angle-grind stage shows he often soundtracked.

“We all loved being at outdoor parties, but we hated the music. That’s why we were doing our own parties, warehouse parties. Through that I met Tara and Laura (Kunt). After a couple of years it was Kunt, Sam and myself playing frequently together. Sam would be playing crazy ’60s music, then Kunt would come out and do all this grinding noise stuff. I’d wind up all the noise and play heavy industrial music of varying speeds.”

At a launch for outlandish Brisbane electrotrash group Team Plastique, Nam Shub, Sam and Kunt had to fit all their sets into one 40-minute support slot. Their response was the only realistic option: forming a band. “As soon as we walked off stage, people were offering us gigs,” laughs Thomson. Monster Zoku Onsomb was born. Phil took on the persona of Kiki iLL, the beat reanimator, Sam became Miss Penelope Leisure, purveyor of refined retrotronica. Since then, Kunt has departed for adventures abroad and other members have been drafted in; lubricious ringmaster Senor Tasty Taste, bass-driven booty shaker Sharkie Bubba and visual maestro Fluff Daddy.

Their show is the antithesis of the laptop electronicist. Kiki iLL operates a Macbook, but the resemblance ends there. MZO is a visual extravaganza, a vaguely retro horrorshow—Dario Argento directing a Mexican remake of Twin Peaks with a score by Alec Empire and the Tijuana Brass. Occasionally, Kiki emerges from behind his console, or mounts it, shrieking like a banshee into a heavily effected microphone. MZO landed support slots for twisted musicians like TISM and Tipper, and were equally at home leading up to both. The early MZO material stemmed from Kunt performances and contained a strong dose of sample-reliant parody. Prince’ ‘Controversy’, for example, was flipped into ‘Kuntroversy’ in the Queensland hinterland. “Living up on Mt Nebo, my studio was overlooking fucking rainforest. It was a wall of synths, leads running everywhere, onto the ground, out the door where we’d have more stuff hooked up. We’d just get really stoned, blaring this distorted, nasty shit straight into the rainforest.”

While it can’ quite do justice to their technicolour live show, MZO’ triumphantly raucous 2006 album Attack! hints at the musical depravity of Kiki iLL and his collaborators’ undead cocktail parties. Cute, eerie and disorienting, its key ingredients are “a myriad of sci-fi gadgetry and a bottle of tequila.” The CD also includes their limited run sample-heavy debut EP in a bonus section, along with thirsty vampires and pickled heads in the ecstatic video for ‘Valentines’.

Replace MZO’ lovable element with pure darkness, and you have Nam Shub of Enki’ latest album, Destroy Everything. It opens with a deceptively lulling ballad voiced by Snog’ David Thrussell, that descends into a madness of wobbling bass and diced profanity. Nam Shub also mortally chops vocals from Finnish hip hop stars Notkea Rotta and collaborates with kindred spirit Luke Kenny, better known as Melbourne metal artist Bezerker. Thomson’ other musical identities, the grime-influenced Croxton PK Raver and head-nodding glitch-hopper Key Phresch emerge in spirit if not name.

With his allergic reaction to genre stagnation, Thomson was wary when Nam Shub and MZO were booked for several breakcore parties during their 2006 European tour. Though a strong proponent of jackhammer, hyperdrive breaks, he’ not eager to be lumped in the breakcore basket. “When we first played overseas, everyone was talking “breakcore and breakcore and that’s so fucking hardcore breakcore’. It all sounded the same to me. I was flabbergasted how boring it was. Then, the last tour we did, we played a lot of breakcore parties, but they were really into such a diverse sound. We were playing, then Patric C, then there’d be Sickboy, then Luke Vibert. Such a broad spectrum of music, but all essentially fucking high energy. They really book interesting parties. The genre I was afraid it was going to turn into, avoided itself, but it’s still got that awful name.”

He’d prefer to be associated with electro, but thinks his own work isn’ cerebral enough to sit alongside most of the genre. “The essential core of electronic music is electro. The breakdance electro is the purest form; that stuff to me is the smoothest shit ever.” Of course, electro isn’ what it used to be. “ It’s done an R&B! I work in a record shop, so I’m used to people asking for electro. I’m not going to go and get them a Kraftwerk CD or an early Anthony Rother CD, or Drexciya or something. I’m going to Ed Banger or whatever,” he laments. “It’s the whole drug culture. No one gives a fuck what the music is. If I’m on drugs, and the music’ shit, it accentuates it. I can’ just be happy. It drives me a bit mental.”

Refusing to get comfortable with one sound, and not ready to give up his rave-driving agenda any time soon, Thomson continues to develop the Nam Shub sound. “There’ more programming. It’s not so minimal, it’s more driving underneath. It’s got a drum and bass attitude with an electro soul.” He plays a new tune, a diptych of ‘Spiders’ and ‘Ravens’ destined for a forthcoming 12 inch release. It opens with an arachnid techno crunch and a trembling bassline, then after a foreboding breakdown and a “forever build-up”, it explodes into a chaotic swirl of cascading screams. “All written on Crete, the most beautiful place on Earth,” notes Thomson with a chuckle. It has already slaughtered dance floors in Brisbane, and he clearly relishes the prospect of unleashing it again soon in his campaign against discotheque boredom. Ravers, consider yourselves warned!

The Nam Shub of Enki’ Destroy Everything is out now on Creative Space through Psyharmonics. Monster Zoku Onsomb’ Attack! is out now on Rats Milk Records through Psyharmonics.

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