Issue #014 (July 2006) Mark N Selects - Part One Email this article to a friend Mark N is one of the under-appreciated renegade figures in Australian electronic music. Immensely hard-working and driven, he has more notoriety overseas than locally, having toured extensively through North America and Europe first with his now defunct trio Nasenbluten, and later solo as Overcast and as a fierce DJ. Growing up and running things from Newcastle, a city two hours drive north of Sydney once famous for its now-closed steel works, he has enormous pride in his roots. His ‘take no shit’ attitude and deadpan, self-deprecating humour have been responsible (together with Aaron Lubinski and Dave Melo) for Nasenbluten’s noisy, grating and harsh music, which has been released on labels all over the world, including Industrial Strength. Becoming frustrated with putting music out on other people’s labels, Mark set up Bloody Fist Records - a name that still gets him strange cold calls from telemarketers. Bloody Fist steadfastly refused to release music from anyone outside of the Newcastle region. His later solo productions as Overcast are for the most part dark, menacing relentless drum’n’bass, but also explore cut ups and other tempos, whilst his highly technical DJs skills, including wins at the DMC and ITF championships, have irritated many in the local hip hop community who see him, rightly, as an outsider and a threat. Original Nasenbluten records trade for ridiculous figures on eBay, and every release from his Bloody Fist label is a collectable. Mark ceremonially closed down Bloody Fist on its 10th anniversary and moved interstate. He vows to return to Newcastle to retire, and when he does maybe the Newcastle mayor will present him with the keys to the city. Mark was given the task of choosing ten records that have defined him over the years. He approached the task with such relish that we’ve decided to run the whole thing in interests of complete-ness. Here are his choices in his own words. COLDCUT: Beats + Pieces (Ahead Of Our Time : UK 1987 : CCUT1A/B : 12") Music by so-called ‘non-musicians’ was something I became interested in as a direct consequence of growing up throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s in the suffocating cock-rock guitar hell of suburban Newcastle. As far as I was concerned, the notion of people making contemporary music without using traditional instruments (especially guitars) was akin to ‘thinking outside the square’. Unsurprisingly, collecting records composed of fragmentary portions of pre-existing records became a nerdy obsession of mine, and during this period I was always on a keen lookout for these ‘cut up’ or ‘DJ’ records regardless of their origin or quality. Sample-based records seemed to be in abundance throughout the late ‘80s, as new production techniques were slowly being discovered, developed, and samplers became more affordable. Even some of the more commercially successful UK sample-house records appealed to me during that time; particularly ‘Pump Up The Volume’ by M/A/R/R/S and the ‘Beat Dis’ follow-up ‘Megablast’ by Bomb The Bass – both which have, in my opinion, dated rather well. The actual story behind ‘Pump Up The Volume’, the controversy surrounding its release and resulting legal action by Stock, Aitken & Waterman is fascinating enough in itself. But another thing that seemed peculiar to the ‘80s was that any hip hop album worth its salt would feature a ‘cut-up’ track where the artist or crew’s DJ would go solo and showcase his cutting and scratching skills. These were always the highlight of hip hop albums for me, and not only would I skip forward to those tracks whenever my attention span had been caught short by the rhyming, but I used to rate hip hop albums on the strength of their cut-up tracks alone. Each time I ran across new tracks that I liked the sound of, I would listen to them on repeat, paying extremely close attention to the edit points, structure and scratching techniques, scrupulously studying every aspect to death. One of the first cut-up records that I became really excited about was Coldcut’s debut 12” ‘Say Kids’, which sounded exactly like it had been assembled using nothing more than records, turntables, a mixer and four-track tape recorder. The all-encompassing sonic collage, slightly rough edits and primitive scratching gave the track a ‘live DJ’ feel. Although it came off far more dense and compact than an actual live DJ set – and it wasn’t like a regular scratch showcase track on a hip hop album either. This record consisted of actual slabs of other records - specifically, huge chunks of Kurtis Blow’s ‘Party Time’ - rather than purely manipulated fragments. It would even be fair to say that Coldcut’s ‘Say Kids’ sounded like a tightened-up, thrill-a-minute version of ‘The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel’. The simplistic use of multi-track recording had, in effect, stepped up the overall impact and density of the collage, thus restyling the slightly cumbersome and rough ‘quick mix’ technique that Grandmaster Flash had employed on ‘Adventures’. I also found that I much preferred Coldcut’s style over Double Dee & Steinski’s ‘master mix’ collage technique that, although remarkably clever, was more about clean and tight tape edits rather than the ‘live DJ’ feel. Later on in 1987, Coldcut became affiliated with the UK label Big Life, and they released a cracking 12” by the name of ‘Beats + Pieces’. On this single, they had actually taken more of a structured and focused approach, basing the track around a looped drum break with slightly more emphasis on sound manipulation and scratching. The scratching itself is very primitive, old-school, and a little sloppy compared to what was going on in the US and elsewhere in the UK at the time, but it works in the context of this track so damn well. The drum break that ‘Beats + Pieces’ is based around is the famous first bar of Led Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’, from their fourth album Zoso. I had heard rumours about how these particular drums were originally recorded and I eventually read that they were recorded in a three-storey concrete stairwell. [Drummer] John Bonham sat at the bottom of the stairwell hammering away in his distinct ‘muscular drumming’ style and a single microphone captured the performance from above, creating the ultra-heavy, muffled but immense resonance that makes the break so distinct and dynamic even when sped up. Although the Led Zeppelin break formed the backbone of ‘Beats + Pieces’, Coldcut’s original collage technique had not been entirely discarded - the Zeppelin break regularly gives way throughout the track to extended drop-ins from several other records. At one point a bold eight bar slab of Chubukos’ ‘House Of Rising Funk’ is scratched in twice, then further on through the track four bars of ‘Soul, Soul, Soul’ by The Wild Magnolias is roughly cut back and forth, extending it into a sixteen-bar chunk. I still think that the sample and breakbeat selections featured in this track put it a notch above the many other cut-up tracks of the time. Coldcut seemed to take a slightly more cerebral approach - their aim being to continually excite and surprise the listener with a clever cut-and-paste sound collage, rather than boring them with a dull six-minute scratchathon. And by crikey, they nailed it. Following this, Coldcut went on to put together one of the most legendary and best selling hip hop remixes of all time – the ‘Seven Minutes Of Madness’ version of Eric B & Rakim’s ‘Paid In Full’. After hearing their remix, Eric B famously dismissed it as ‘girly disco music’ but was obviously more than happy to collect the royalties on its sales. Coldcut cheekily replied by re-releasing the seven-minute remix independently on their own label - with Rakim’s vocals removed - and calling it ‘Not Paid Enough’. (Legend has it that Island Records paid Coldcut a measly one-off fee of £750 for the remix). In any case, a veritable flood of pedestrian ‘girly disco music’ then followed from Coldcut as they went on to collaborate with and produce records for both Yazz and Lisa sodding Stansfield, spawning a handful of chart-soiling pop singles throughout ’88 and ‘89. Obviously the record company game was well and truly in full effect by this stage. Nonetheless, back in ‘87 when Coldcut were apparently looking for a record deal by shopping ‘Beats + Pieces’ around to several labels, they were told by one label in particular: ‘Sorry, but this just isn’t music’. The quote immediately became Coldcut’s catchphrase – and when ‘Beats + Pieces’ was finally released the catchphrase appeared on the 12” sleeve, and regularly in large bold type on their record sleeves for a long time thereafter. Even if ‘Beats + Pieces’ wasn’t ‘music’ – it’s still one hell of an incredible six-minute racket almost 20 years on. THE ART OF NOISE : (Who's Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise! (Zang Tumb Tuum : UK 1984 : ZTT-IQ2 : LP) In late 1984 I was a fresh faced 11-year-old. My parents had just bought me a small AKAI radio/cassette player for my birthday. The radio fascinated me as it had shortwave bands 1 and 2 which meant hours locked in my bedroom twiddling the dial listening to static ridden broadcasts from as far away as Russia and South America. One rainy Sunday night I was idly twiddling the dial when I decided to see what was on the FM band. As I turned the dial around the 104 mark, a station locked on which seemed to be broadcasting footsteps and thunder. The footsteps were panning from one speaker to the other - FM stereo was incredible the first time I experienced it! I was dead impressed but wondered why a radio station would be broadcasting this. The combination of thunder and panning footsteps was creepy as hell to my 11-year-old ears, but I persevered. After a while came what sounded like church bells and organ music. Following this was a weird loop of a voice saying ‘It stopped’, accompanied by a strange synthesizer arrangement and what sounded like some sort of wounded monster groaning in pain. At this point I freaked right out and almost switched the radio off, but curiosity won out and I persisted. After a while some strange sounding drums began, underpinning a repeated fragmentary voice sample that I could not understand for the life of me. This was by far and away the weirdest thing I had heard on my radio since my 11th birthday, and I was scared. As the music faded, the announcer shed some light on what I had just been listening to. It was some weird band I’d never heard of called The Art Of Noise and it also turned out that the radio station I had locked onto was 2NUR-FM - Newcastle’s only community radio station at the time, based at Newcastle University. What I couldn’t quite grasp at that tender age was that there were people making music outside of the mainstream stuff that I heard on the AM radio stations. The ‘music’ I had just experienced was creepy, unsettling and sort of unpleasant – but above all had not resembled anything I had heard on the radio before. As an 11-year-old it really scared me and I distinctly remember having difficulty getting to sleep that night. After a week of trying to forget about it, curiosity got the better of me again and I found myself back at the radio the following Sunday night – unsuccessfully trying to find more of the same. It wasn’t until almost 18 months later, during my first year of high school that I saw a kid who had ‘ART OF NOISE’ scrawled across his school bag in black texta. I approached him and found out that his name was Anthony, he was two years older than I was and had all The Art Of Noise records including their new album of the time called In Visible Silence. He was miffed that someone else at his school even knew about this music and I told him of my unusual discovery on that rainy Sunday night in late ‘84. The next day he brought me a tape copy of the full Who’s Afraid album and as soon as I came home that afternoon I played it over and over and over again. It turns out that what I had heard on 2NUR-FM eighteen months prior was in fact the final three tracks of the album in sequence: ‘Memento’, ‘How To Kill’ and ‘Realisation’. The music didn’t exactly creep me out this time around – I was growing up and had begun to gradually learn about, and further investigate, things that were outside of the norm – especially in the music world. I played the cassette Anthony had dubbed for me until it wore out, at which time I also became a rabid collector of Art Of Noise records. The Who’s Afraid album was interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, the entire album heavily relied on the use of the Australian-developed Fairlight CMI. The album was mostly 8-bit sample-based as a result, and some keen trainspotting revealed several sound samples taken from one of the group member’s other bands: Yes. Secondly, the track ‘Beatbox’ which appeared on the album also existed in an earlier version on The Art Of Noise’s first EP entitled Into Battle. Legend has it that because so little was actually known about the members of the group, The Art Of Noise were actually voted ‘Best New Black Act’ by several US publications following the successful 1984 release of ‘Beatbox’ as a separate 12” in the USA – not an altogether bad result for five pasty white Londoners. The group itself originally consisted of five members, most of whom came together initially to work on Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Buffalo Gals’ in 1982 under the direction of Trevor Horn – who also ran their London based label Zang Tumb Tuum (ZTT). [Music journalist] Paul Morley was also an early member of the group, but had more to do with controlling The Art Of Noise’s non-image than anything musical. Their record sleeves were drenched in Morley’s cryptic ramblings alongside somewhat drab photography of spanners, statues and whatever else. They steadfastly refused to appear in photographs or on their record sleeves, preferring instead to maintain a degree of anonymity – in effect letting the music speak for itself. Some time during 1985, three of the band members split from Horn and Morley over creative differences, leaving ZTT and taking The Art Of Noise name with them. Novelty pop singles ensued, including collaborations with Max Headroom, Duane Eddy and Tom frigging Jones. By the time all of this happened I had reluctantly bailed on The Art Of Noise as a band, as I longed for a return to the more experimental sound and amazing presentation of the ZTT releases they produced in cahoots with Horn and Morley years earlier. Fast-forward to early 2005 – I am tarryhooting around London with an old friend and associate from my Bloody Fist days named Dan. He is working in London as a motorcycle courier risking life, limb and sanity on a day-to-day basis. We are sitting in a Stoke Newington cafe poring over a Rock Landmarks Of London book. Dan is keen to visit some of the important locations where musical history had been made. I was along for the ride with only a mild interest in these so called ‘landmarks’. We continually thumbed back and forth through the book, making a list of things we wanted to see and slowly nutting out the order in which we wanted to see them. I turned to the index and cast a lazy eye down the list of A’s…. …Almond, Marc / Animals, The / Ant, Adam / Arden, Don / Arriva / Art Of…. ‘HOLY FUCKBALLS!! It’s got Art Of Noise in here!!’ The café went dead silent. Everyone turned to look at me. I felt like a bit of a bell-end but my embarrassment was short lived once I found page 82. There it was – Sarm West Recording Studios on Basing Street in Notting Hill. I scanned the page and found out that this location was where Trevor Horn ran his ZTT label, and recorded stuff by loads of artists including all the early Art Of Noise material. Suddenly I revised my interest in this whole ‘rock landmarks’ visitation bollocks. So off we went – visiting The 100 Club which was the hub of the punk scene circa 1976, Gerrard Street near Leicester Square in Chinatown where Led Zeppelin formed, The Samarkand Hotel off Ladbroke Grove where Jimi Hendrix popped his clogs, Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren’s Kings Road Sex clothing store where The Sex Pistols formed – and a bunch of other famous locations along the way. All mildly interesting I suppose, but I knew where I wanted to be. 45 minutes later I was there, standing outside the amazing Sarm West complex on Basing Street just off Portobello Road. The building was originally constructed as a church and looked rather menacing in the day’s fading light, what with its security cameras dotted above the windows and doors. Dan waited patiently as I did the whole sad trainspotter photography routine. For me, this building was the place where the most important record in my collection was conceived, produced and recorded 20 or so years earlier. I had wasted so much of my life listening to the Who’s Afraid album that I desperately wanted to knock on the door at Sarm West and tell someone about it. However, the fear of being met with a steaming wall of indifference by whoever happened to be there working late was too much for me. Over the years I’ve never really given a fuck about Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin or The Sex Pistols – but I left Basing Street that evening in silent reverence. SEVERED HEADS : Clifford Darling Please Don't Live In The Past (Ink Records : UK 1985 : INK016D : 2xLP) Near the end of my time at high school I met a dude in my year that had relatively unusual taste in music. After a few conversations with him I discovered that we had a few things in common, including being fans of Severed Heads (although he was more of a fan than I was). Prior to meeting him I had only been familiar with a couple of Severed Heads releases on Volition – Hot With Fleas, Greater Reward and the like. Being more immersed in hip hop at the time I had a limited appreciation of them but knew that they were Australian, based in Sydney – and had the best band name on the planet. Ever. After spending a bit of time with this new-found high school friend, he introduced me to a number of Severed Heads' pre-Volition releases including one which had the most impressive title as far as I was concerned: Clifford Darling Please Don't Live In The Past. This Severed Heads album in particular was not entirely 'musical' – and certainly not 'musical' in the traditional sense – a lot of it seemed to be composed with tape loops and other bits of found sound, some of it quite jarring and uncomfortable to listen to. The experimental pieces on the album were interspersed with pieces that sounded a little more like left-of-centre synth pop. I found out soon enough that the album was a compilation of sorts released by the UK label INK Records in 1985, and consisted of older Severed Heads material from 1979-1983, recorded while [sound artist, later of mid-‘90s experimenters Size] Garry Bradbury was still a part of the band. My friend and I were amazed, amused and inspired by everything this record represented; to our ears this album was remarkably dense, unpredictable, industrial, sonically unusual and spectacular all at the same time. Even the band name 'Severed Heads' seemed to be a firm ‘thumb in the arse' of the 1980s music scene. And why were we so excited? Well, we were young, looking for trouble and surrounded by an endless barrage of boring, predictable 'traditional' pop music – Boom Crash Opera, 1927, Cold Chisel, INXS, Noiseworks, Screaming Jets, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Testament, Pseudo Echo, The Doors, Manowar, Bros, Def Leppard, Red Hot Chili Peppers, AC/DC, Megadeth, Metallica, Midnight Oil, Guns 'n Roses and The Angels were the most often scrawled band names found on our school's dunny walls, playground seats, textbooks and classroom desks. (One of the funniest misspellings I remember was when some deadshit had actually scrawled 'The Angles' instead of 'The Angels' on the back of one of the toilet cubicle doors). Apparently all these bands were to be the 'soundtrack' to our collective youth. Fuck that. I disapproved. In fact, my new friend and I both disapproved. Strongly. We wanted more of a challenging soundtrack ... perhaps something that we would not easily forget. And on a purely personal level, the best possible spanner in the works was perfectly represented (at the time) by hip hop – which to a Newcastle cock rocker's ear was the absolute antichrist of music – drum machines instead of real drums, shouting instead of singing, and record scratching sounds instead of guitars. I was also on a keen lookout for anything else which made long-haired precious 'muso' types fly into an over the top dignified rage, spewing forth ill-informed tirades in passionate defence of 'real music'. I've always detested 'musicians' and their fucking persistent 'holier than thou' whining about somebody else's form of expression. Back in 1980's Newcastle I was surrounded by many of these people and it wasn't unusual for me to often wake up in a cold sweat - heart beating wildly - having just vividly dreamt of dragging a kicking and screaming 'muso' out of his ivory tower, removing his ponytail with a blunt knife and stuffing it down his fucking throat. On the other hand of course, I was probably just an arrogant and elitist little prick who liked to think of myself as being above my peers because I had now discovered something which no one else could (or wanted to) understand . . . pffft . . . whatever… What I am 100% sure about is that the Clifford Darling album of early Severed Heads material stood as one of the lonely beacons of intrigue amongst the steaming quagmire of musical dogshit that I found myself wading through during my final days of high school. Clifford even became the proudly touted soundtrack to my entire [Higher School Certificate] study sessions. As a whole, the album also opened my ears up to other sonic possibilities beyond the realms of cock rock, unchallenging pop and 'metal up your ass!' – all of which my largely insipid peers seemed enthralled by. And the high-school friend who introduced me to all this? That was one Aaron Lubinski, with whom I would go on to form Nasenbluten a few years later. Over the years we both maintained an interest in Severed Heads, particularly the early material that Garry Bradbury was involved in. We also learnt of Tom Ellard’s amusing disdain for what he referred to as 'Cliffords'. These were people who apparently only liked the ‘early’ Severed Heads stuff. That definitely described us and we (somewhat childishly) revelled in it. We kept up with Ellard's Severed Heads activities but became increasingly disillusioned, particularly when [the seminal] 'Dead Eyes Opened' was remixed and reissued in the mid-‘90s. It had been turned into a horribly effeminate little affair with its limp-wristed skipping percussion; all of the gritty elements that made the original 1983 version so quirky and interesting had been well and truly strained out. Even though the remix was not directly Ellard's doing, I guess we were pissed off that a much revered track had been turned into exactly the sort of wimpy unchallenging fruity dance music that we (as Nasenbluten) wanted to pulverise. After this particular remix of ‘Dead Eyes Opened’ hit the Australian charts, Severed Heads went on tour around the country. The live act consisted of Tom Ellard and Paul Mac playing keyboards on stage with video accompaniment. They were booked to play with [Melbourne industrial band] Snog at the Newcastle University "Bar On The Hill" on some lost Thursday night in 1994. Someone at the Newcastle Uni Student Union thought it would be funny to book Nasenbluten as the 'warm up' act. Needless to say we dived at the opportunity to warm up for an act that had meant so much to us during a certain period of our lives (even though we were in the advanced stages of Clifford-style disillusionment). We arrived for sound check sometime late in the afternoon to witness several big heavy-duty road cases full of equipment being hauled backstage and unpacked. We casually strolled in with a couple of Amiga 600s wrapped in ratty bath towels and plastic shopping bags. Aaron may have even been using a picnic basket as his road case at the time. Our warm up set was booked at 8:30 and we made a point of playing our least palatable and most extreme pieces – to a slightly miffed and largely indifferent crowd of drinkers. Before we did this we made quite a dent in the Severed Heads/Snog 'refreshments rider' which was backstage – much to their chagrin. By the time we finished, all of us were extremely drunk and keen to try and stir up some shit with the headlining visitor and his predictably aloof entourage. There were a few friends who had come along with us to the show (also proud Cliffords), and one had brought his copy of Clifford Darling Please Don't Live In The Past to try and get Tom to sign it. We knew that Tom probably wouldn’t take too kindly to this request and we were keen to see how he would react. After plucking up the courage, we approached Tom with the album and made the request. Amazingly, Tom regained our instant respect without saying anything. He simply rolled his eyes, snatched up a black marker and wrote on the back of the cover in very small letters: 'I Disapprove' T.Ellard.