Public Enemy and their original production unit, The Bomb Squad, were a very special thing in the late 80s/early 90s. They combined politically charged lyrics with dense, sample and loop based tracks. Their influence on Hip Hop was immediate. Their first couple of albums being sampled on influential albums by N.W.A. and The Beastie Boys. Here’s the opening to their third, possibly most incidiary album, Fear of a Black Planet. Enjoy!
Talk Talk is a very rare specimen of a band, in that they got progressively better as they went along. Orginally something of a new wave twin to Duran Duran, they quickly broke away into more and more experimental material. By their fourth LP, “Spirit of Eden”, they proposed zero singles from it to their record label. A compromise was made in making a song about heroin addiction available, but there isn’t a lot of room in the charts for such material. “Ascension Day” is from their final LP, “Laughing Stock”. By this point they were not really recording songs anymore, but bringing in studio musicians to record them jamming with certain perimeters in place (tempo, key, etc.). They would then build songs out of hundreds of hours of music recorded this way. The results are astounding. While “Laughing Stock” was a flop at the time, it has since been heralded by critics and musician alike. It is considered one of the cornerstones of the “post-rock” genre. Singer-songwriter Mark Hollis retired from music after recording one solo album after the demise of Talk Talk and died in 2019. Let the ethereal vibes on this one be a tribute to his musical legacy.
Lee “Scratch” Perry is a certified reggae legend. He has remained relevant from ska inception until present day. He helped Bob Marley and the Wailers ascend to greatness. He revolutionized dub music. He built his own studio and then burned it down. He made a record with techno poppers Yello. He is a self made mystic and larger than life personality. This tune features howling wolves, ladies yelling, Augustus Pablo on melodica and an awesomely boastful line, “When I shit my enemies cry/When I speak they die”. Vibrate on!
Mouse on Mars are an electronic music duo from Düsseldorf, Germany. To say they are creative would be a massive understatement! For over 25 years they have pushed their sound to its most experimental limits. They also help develop music making apps that are super cool. They’ve made one-off records with members of Kraftwerk, The Fall and Stereolab. They are studio wizards as well as one of the best live electronic acts you can go see. Here’s a song a from their 1995 album, Iaora Tahiti. It features more than a modest dose of reggae influence. Turn it up and vibe out!
Greater Than One were a husband and wife duo from London who are best known for their early rave hits. Before that they made music in the more industrial/EBM mode. With track titles such as “All the Masters Licked You” and “I Don’t Need God” Greater Than One were in a much more into social criticism than their party loving peers. Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Keep striving for that mountain top!
Tangerine Dream is one of the first electronic groups to break into the Rock genre. Founded by the late, great Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream has gone through many line-up changes. It continues to function to this day through his son, Jerome. They went on to provide soundtracks for many Hollywood films, most notably for “Risky Business”. From their first recordings in 1969, they operated on the cutting edge of synthesis technology into the 1990s. Technology aside, Froese never abandoned his first love, the guitar. Here is the the title cut from their 1976 North American breakout record “Stratosphere”. Kick back and enjoy the trip!
Dimensional Holofonic Sound is the audio brainchild of video wizard Ben Stokes. DHS is very much in the industrial/EBM sampling beat vein of Front 242 and the like. Being from Chicago, Stokes also exhibits a healthy dose of House music influence here. This song went from an underground, self-released tune to international dance hit. Scores of remixes have been birthed from it. While money grubbing evangelists may be an easy comedy target, Stokes’ sampling proves well structured and witty. Follow the bouncing synth!
The end of the year always seems to bring with it a near intolerable amount of reflection. Even though we here at Spacey King HQ don’t really believe that decades begin on year zero, this year seems particularly loaded with sentiment with the end of the teens and beginning of the twenties.
This week, it seems fitting to present one of the most haunting songs ever released. “Decades” is the last song on “Closer”, Joy Division’s second and last LP. It was released two months after singer-songwriter Ian Curtis hung himself in his home on the eve of their first North America tour.
Awash in Martin Hannett styled reverb, Curtis’ voice seem to be recalling life from the hereafter. The imagery of lost young men is very poignant. The sparse instrumentation, heavy on the electronics, add to the cold and still atmosphere. Turn out the lights for this one. See you in 2020!
This week’s tune might seem a bit obvious, but don’t be a Grinch! Vince Guaraldi’s buoyant writing and playing style is exemplified on this one. If you like his stuff he did for this show, you should definitely check out his other works. His discography is as varied as it is wonderful. A healthy dose of Brasilian influence as well as pseudo choral works all sit beside some of that laid back bay area style. Not a jazz-head favorite, but his first full-length with his trio is worth a spin. Happy holidays!
We’ve got another intense live performance this week. This time it’s the Talking Heads from their masterpiece concert film “Stop Making Sense”. Part of the brilliance of this film is the structure of it. Everything builds from the beginning: the staging, the band, the lighting, the performance. This song is the apex of the structure’s arc. The dramatic lighting and vocal swells give this a haunting, almost religious, feel while the driving rhythm helps propel you towards the second half of the film. Apologies for the closed caption clip, but this seems to be the finest sound and video quality available for now. Feel free to sing along! If you dig it and haven’t seen the whole film, DO IT NOW!
Creative sampling is definitely a cornerstone of the Spacey King sound and here is a perfect example. In the late 80s De La Soul and producer Prince Paul came out of the Long Island suburbs and disrupted hip hop culture. Throwing away the tough guy antics of gun posturing and boasting De La embraced flowers, doves, inclusivity and creativity. On their debut album they sampled Hall and Oates and Steely Dan while rhyming about relationships and being oneself. They were labeled as “hippies” and “punks” by the media and Hiphop World. This pidgeon-holing did not sit well with the group and they subsequently released their second, and angriest, album “De La Soul is Dead”. Here we take a listen to the first proper track off that release. It features a dizzying array of samples, including an expertly flipped Tom Waits bassline. If you like this kind of production definitely check the rest of their discography as well as Prince Paul’s!
We’ll pick up the energy here with The Who really going off in a television studio setting. Here they do their first rock and roll opera, “A Quick One (While He’s Away), a predecessor to their classic “Tommy” long player. It would seem this is before excess became much of an issue for their members. Energy positively seethes through Townsend and Moon. I think they were perhaps trying to make an impression amongst the amazing group of musicians in the studio: Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Taj Mahal, Mitch Mitchell and John Lennon with Yoko to name a few! You may recognize the end of the song from a particularly memorable scene from the film “Rushmore”, or maybe you saw this back in the day in the Who clip film, “The Kids are Alright”. If you didn’t YOU ARE FORGIVEN.
The holidays are coming up fast and everyone needs a little break from the family and social obligations at times. Give yourself 40 minutes to take in this remix, the longest one we’ve ever heard. This is straight from The Orb’s heyday with a proper mix of ambient, dance and reggae music. Guaranteed to refresh and rejuvenate the mind, body and spirit!
This week we’ll take another classic band and showcase a different shade of tune from them. “Faith In This Colour” was the B side to “Is There Something I Should Know?”, which was a very intentional (and successful) attempt to have a #1 hit in the UK. Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes had just produced the #1 “Too Shy” by his initial band signing, Kajagoogoo. Well, Nick must’ve been on some high octane fuel at this time, because this B side is almost exclusively his production. While drums and guitar are present, it’s not obvious whether or not they or played or sampled. Nick went on to become a master of the computerized samplers and synths of the era. It is very likely he formulated this song all on his own with such technology. This song also presents lots of signposts for future singles off the third Duran Duran LP, “Seven and The Ragged Tiger” (“Union of the Snake” and “New Moon on Monday”, namely). Compared to other Duran Duran instrumental numbers, this is the most upbeat and groovy, so dig in!
Hello and welcome to a new weekly feature on the site: the Tune of the Week. Here we will be focusing on some influences on the Spacey King sound as well as some good, clean fun.
This week we shine a light on a bit of an oddity from the Depeche Mode catalog. By the time “Master and Servant” came out in May of 1984 Depeche had racked up seven top 20 singles in the UK. With this success came more product, including bonus 12”s for singles. In this case they decided to take a chance and recruited UK reggae pioneer and studio wizard Adrian Sherwood to not only provide a hardcore remix for “Master and Servant”, but also this demented take on their previous smash “People Are People”.
“People Are People” is an incredibly dense production, with over two dozen layers of samples and sounds. Sherwood takes a few of these a intersperses them with sound experiments he had been conjuring for contemporary African Head Charge productions. Not only does this predict his subsequent industrial productions for the likes of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, but also predates the 90s remix culture wherein artists such as Aphex Twin and Brian Eno would almost completely ignore the original material and provide a much more abstract interpretation of a song.
BOP BOP BOP!