Labradford: Recovering Lost Anthems
Labradford makes the sort of music that can define a space, that can overwhelm it. This music is like experiencing
the most dramatic, highest moment of your life, while you’re too wasted or too exhausted to notice. This is the
smugness of the recently sexed up, having a smoke more interested in the drifting clouds on both sides of a window
than their lover beside them. This is stop-motion photography, or the cars that fly by so quickly that the street
is illuminated by pipes of light in yellow, orange, and red, like the effects in the Spice Girls’ "2 Become
1" video, but without the pretty girls (all five girls are on best form ever in this video) and rich, glossy
colors. There’s something disproportionate about Labradford’s music. To hear it on your headphones is like that
suspension of the senses upon waking, when you’re caught between the realm of dreams and everyday life. Willing
partners or not, Labradford is a joy to write around. It is a truism that the best music brings with it a flurry
of writing, which is sometimes equally exciting. The reason is that the music is so evocative, so vast, so compelling,
and so mesmerizing.
Mark Nelson (vocalist, guitarist, amongst other roles) feels most comfortable with using the word ‘ambient’ to
describe Labradford’s music, defining it as something ‘that is halfway between places.’ It’s a simple description,
but it’s fitting. Listening to Labradford at mid-volume, one experiences this impression of being between different
places. It’s a peculiarly affecting blend of diverse textures coming and going, isolated sounds, and slow, lulling
melodies that somehow infiltrates the unconscious. Every now and then, when I am busy about my apartment in the
midst of some banal task, there is that rare piece of music that suddenly breaks the plane of my thought, and forces
me to stop doing what I’m doing. Up until a certain moment I’m unaware of it, and after this moment I’m overwhelmed
by it. A distant thought begs to be brought back to life, to have the echo returned to its source. Labradford’s
music is one that can force you to listen, yet never forces. Says Nelson, "I think of ambience as engaging
without being demanding of your attention. It has the listener do more than 50% of the work. It can go either way.
You have to be able to do both." A continual interchange between background and foreground, inside and outside.
The greatest strength on Mi Media Naranja, Labradford’s second album, is its subtlety. "I think it’s the most
confident album," says Nelson. "It doesn’t have the loose edges that the other ones did. Everything is
more controlled, in the sense that we’ve grown to be able to control. That rock’n’roll notion of chaos is something
that we’re not that interested in. Maybe the first album had more of that noise." At first, it seems to be
a non-eventful sort of music, but eventually it becomes more clearly a music built up from small gestures and minor
incidences, which slowly but surely multiply themselves. Each album seems to possess a unity without having a centre.
"Well, we try to have them be self-contained, if that’s sort of what you mean," says Nelson. "It’s
usually a process of stumbling across a couple of little things that are really small, but spur a whole flurry
of writing. I don’t think we do anything until it feels like there is a whole new direction in place." But
the music is always open, always changing. "Like everytime I get a really strong idea, something comes around
to show me that there’s this prejudice that its developed," says Nelson. Simultaneously, the music wants for
nothing -- thorough to a high degree and fully satisfying. Any samples or loops are immaculately shaped, and immersed
so deeply into the music that it is only on close inspection that certain mechanics of the music are discovered.
Nelson is intrigued by Panasonic’s ‘deceptively simple’ rhythms, and the hidden complexities of dub ("The
way they can zero in on just one part of the drum set. And there’s so much happenning with any one element. Lately,
I’ve been into the hi-hat especially. It’s just wizardry."). These influences come through even stronger in
Nelson’s recent, low-key solo effort, in which he goes under the name of Panamerican. In this project, the subtle,
barely there rhythms of Labradford songs are brought to the foreground and further explored. "Part of it is
just being really really wary about doing anything half baked -- well, the fear of doing something that is like
a really lame acid jazz kind of beat," says Nelson.
Labradford somehow avoid so many of the cliches lying in both the beats and the analogue synth sounds that dominate
so many other releases in recent memory. In Labradford’s hands, these prehistoric instruments are not treated in
the tongue-in-cheek, kitschy manner, nor are they used in the tacky retro-futuristic manner with the silly outer
space imagery, but instead fascinating textures, essentially urban and inherently now, are formed. For me, the
mix of soft bass sounds, high frequencies, reverbed guitars, and isolated incidences evokes the silvery glow of
city skies, street lights illuminating the rain that runs down a window pane, and the ever present sounds of city
life.
In this sense, Labradford records also recall Bark Psychosis’ classic and quite overlooked Hex. Says Nelson, "I
think that’s a pretty amazing record, and there’s a lot of dub influence in the bass. It’s really digitally edited,
and there’s some really weird things in the mix." Tracing this influence, one can map Labradford’s progress.
Their second album, A Stable Reference, sounded fairly inferior to Hex, but the subsequent self-titled album and
Mi Media Naranja sound more like logical points of departure from Hex. Bark Psychosis broke up, and frontman Graham
Sutton now makes drum’n’bass under the name of Boymerang. He has said that drum’n’bass is the best style to convey
urban life. I think it depends on what side of the city (or club culture) you’re on. For me, Hex and Labradford
records represent the sound of alienation, about being on the outside looking in, of being up too late. Club culture
is about a oneness with the city achieved by the intoxication of being in a crowd or substances. On the other side,
the crowd is gone and you’re all alone, because you’ve forgot to leave or forgot to come. Or the substances are
fading, and only working in half measures, like waking up from a night of drinking, and realizing a few hours later
that you’re still drunk, when the simplest things are just so hard to do.
In one word, disorientation would sum up this affair best. From their self-titled third album, "Lake Speed"
can be seen as something like the Labradford Manifesto. Amongst epic orchestral motifs, perfect bass loops, vinyl
crackle, strange interference, and twanging guitars that eventually swell into distortion as the echos overlap
on each other, from deep in the mix, Nelson delivers lyrics like, "The anthem lost to the clock. Like a watch
in pieces on the floor, and I try to fix it fast so I don’t lose too much time. And even precious memories feel
more like documentaries of someone else’s life." The music and the words speak of distance, of removal from
an event, and, more than anything else, removal from yourself.
In this sense, Labradford is part of the cinema of everyday life -- as in the BIG question that Jason asks Goldie
elsewhere in this issue. The best cinematic music has long ago discarded the image. Says Nelson, "There’s
sort of like loss of context. It can sometimes make a listening experience really weird. Like I’ve been listening
to the End of Violence soundtrack a lot lately, have you heard that? There’s two soundtracks -- one with a bunch
of songs by like Nick Cave and stuff, and then there’s the score that Ry Cooder did. That’s the one I’ve been listening
to. It’s mixed by Howie B, so there’s all these little dub tricks in there with Ry Cooder’s sense of composition
and guitar playing. So it’s really cool. Things just come in and out. A little beat thing will happen for like
15 seconds, and there’s no context for it at all. But I’m sure in the movie there’s some sort of reason why that
action happenned. But I would never think to have such small incidences become of such importance. Without the
context of the image, film music is amazing, because it’s like missing a dimension. Do you know what I mean?"
In other words, "Very strange things happen without explanation."
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From the Pulp Vaults:
(Previously unavailable online)
Bird People In China
The perfect time to take a nap is where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day, within the fleeting magic hour surrounding sunset...
The Institutionalization of Violence
It's the perfect setting. Somehow, as a city, L.A. is so now...
Broken Boulevards Still Dream of Havana
"We were going to outstrip Monte Carlo... the idea was to turn Havana into the world's biggest gambling paradise...
Listen Without Prejudice With Open Ears Volume 1
It's a sunny afternoon, and I'm on way from the Düsseldorf Hauptbahnof to St. Martins Studio...
How Deep Is The Ocean?
The Sinking of the Titanic, and the Burden of Recording
An interview with Christopher Doyle
Christopher Doyle, an Australian expatriate and one-time sailor, has done the cinematography for all but the first of Wong Kar-Wai’s movies...
What used to be paper, is now just skin
An open book with blank white paper makes the same shadow in the middle as two thighs pressed together.
Playing Once Upon A Time With Mercury Rev
Deserters songs, that’s what someone called the results of the basement sessions between the Band and Bob Dylan.
Sound without vision: Do soundtrack albums need movies?
In the last few years, one sentiment I've noticed often come from the mouths of musicians...
Chances Are: Bill Laswell’s Trip into the Vaults of Bob Marley and Miles Davis
It's impossible to write an introduction for Bill Laswell. He's been involved in over three hundred records since the early '70s, so I'm not going to even try.
Designers in the Attic
From the beginning I was convinced that an article about Attik wouldn't be entirely out of place in a magazine like SAB.
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The Often Beautiful Music of Richard Ashcroft
Former lead singer of the Verve, Richard Ashcroft, thinks out loud about his debut solo album, Alone With Everybody.
A Million Tiny Decisions Made By Alex Garland That Affect You and Me
"It surprises how much you can keep in your head while you're writing a book..."
Tezka Macoto's Hakuchi: Parallel Universes of the Mind
"I am powerless in the face of this pitiful reality," goes the voiceover of the main character Izawa, halfway through Hakuchi: the Innocent.
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps
The swaying of Maggie Cheung's hips becomes something like a musical refrain in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love.
After Life Directed By Kore-Eda Hirokazu -- To Die And Then Have Time
an edited version of a conversation from October 1998 with Japanese film director, Kore-eda Hirokazu, in which he talks about his 1998 film, After Life
Little Steven on Bruce Springsteen, Sun City, The Sopranos, and his friends in Bali
Jason Anderson's interview with Little Steven, a.k.a Steven Van Zandt
Palahniuk Has Entered The Produce Section … he's eating grapes
Jason Anderson talks to Chuck Palahniuk - the author of the Fight Club. His new novel, Choke, is being released in the Spring of 2001.
Scenes : One Particular Scene From The Limey directed by Stephen Soderbergh +++ some jumbled narrative techniques
Miike Takashi -- The City of Lost Souls
a Yakuza eats a blue Popsicle in the harbour, while bodies are packed into oil barrels.
The Angel : In The Realms of the Groove
It's more than likely that you haven't heard of her, but you have heard her. I could almost guarantee it.
Techno Animal Foam At The Mouth
An excerpt from an interview with Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick - musical collaborators in the groups Techno Animal, Sidewinder, Ice, and various other side projects - all of which makes it a full-time job to keep track of them.
Older articles can be found in The Archives
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