Stephen Mallinder
Since the early 1970s, when he began to make music with his childhood friend and Cabaret Voltaire partner Richard H Kirk, Stephen Mallinder has followed a uniquely crooked path. This route has taken him from tape loops and smashing up pianos to working with New York club luminaries and Chicago house pioneers such as Arthur Baker and Marshall Jefferson in the 1980s – and even gaining a PhD while living in Perth, Western Australia. In this talk at the 2006 Red Bull Music Academy, Mallinder breaks down how he went from Sheffield post-punk to cruising around Chicago in a stretch limo, all the while producing some of the most uncompromising art dance music the world has ever heard.
Hosted by Emma Warren Today we’re going to be rewinding ourselves back to Sheffield, in the industrial north of England, in the late 1970s. Punk had burst through and dance music, as we know it, hadn’t really happened yet. But Cabaret Voltaire, of whom Stephen Mallinder was a founding member, had started making electronic music. They went to New York to work with Arthur Baker and Afrika Bambaataa. And then also went to Chicago in 1980 to record with Chicago house folks like Marshall Jefferson and Ten City. So, we’re going to start now by talking about what was happening musically around you when you were starting the band? Stephen Mallinder Hello, good morning everyone. Hope you’re all right. Everyone is looking a bit frazzled. Nice to meet you all. Thank you… [applause] Thank you. When we started making music, which was about 1972, ’73, it wasn’t really music, we weren’t really into it, because the type of music that existed at that time was very much the chart music. It was very kind of pompous. And I would imagine that the bands who were around that time were Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and that kind of music, Queen or whatever, that came from that period. So, there wasn’t a tremendous matter we were into. Richard [H Kirk] and myself had known each other since we were about 12 or 13 years old. We were actually skinheads. We met at football matches and we were soul boys. So, we used to go to soul clubs from we were about 13 or 14. So our actual grounding in music was black music. We were both working-class kids, we grew up with that. And anything else that was in our world at that moment, it didn’t really matter to us. But kind of around that time, I suppose the tail end of music we were into was Roxy Music, Bowie, people like that. Glam rock stuff was kind of interesting to us. So, it broke that mold, so we went from sort of being soul boys to being interested in different kinds of music. People like Brian Eno were a massive influence on us, because he was actually integrating things that were non-musical and that appealed to us. We didn’t really want to be musicians, the idea of being technically proficient or learning a traditional instrument was kind of anathema to us. Emma Warren So, you, as a band, came together kind of to the point, where mainstream music was pretty pompous, pretty boring, pretty mainstream, but there were these artists coming from the outside, like Bowie and Brian Eno, who were doing stuff, and Roxy Music, who were doing stuff that was interesting to you. Stephen Mallinder Yeah. I mean, the fact that Eno was a non-musician, he was playing a Revox [reel-to-reel tape machine], he was playing VCS3 [synth] within a rock kind of format. We were not interested in the musical side so much, but in another side. But we were 16, 17 years old, so you know, Roxy at that time, if you lived in England, when they first appeared on Top Of The Pops, we thought they fucking landed from Mars. They did look completely different, so that appealed to us. And when you’re at that age, you’re more interested in exploring, you know, margins rather than mainstream, so we got into it. Emma Warren I definitely, at some point, want to take you back where you were a 13, 14-year-old boy, hanging out in soul clubs in Sheffield, which is an interesting parallel to what we had yesterday with Skream. You know, the whole thing about being really young and getting into music, definitely gives you a certain edge when you’re making stuff. But before we talk about that, you just mentioned something about musicianship being anathema to you. That your way of doing things wasn’t about being super proficient at piano, it was about something different. So, this is kind of punk/DIY, isn’t it? Your idea, you don’t have to have piano lessons all your life to be a musician. Stephen Mallinder We did once… I mean, this was before, this is back like four or five years before punk happened. We did, we did actually find a piano, but in true kind of anti-art tradition, we didn’t actually play it. We miked it up with contact mics and then smashed it to pieces with a sledgehammer, and recorded it. And we used that for about three years. We go banging it. It was an extreme version of John Cage’s [Works For] Prepared Piano, we kind of completely destroyed it, we didn’t prepare it, we just fucking demolished it. “Ah! So that’s what we’re really into.” Because the other side of it was, we were fascinated by the whole Dada thing, this is where our name came from. Emma Warren So, could you just kind of give us a brief background on the band Cabaret Voltaire took their name from a Dadaist club night in Zürich, right? So what is Dada? Stephen Mallinder Oh, Dada kind of came just before the First World War, and it was really, I guess, an odd movement that really held itself up against the pomposity at that time, sort of the traditional art world, galleries, etc, and against kind of bourgeois ethic in art. So, we saw massive parallels with what we were listening to in music, and what we wanted to do, so it was an easy fit. It was probably a quite primitive way of doing it and taking the name literally, but we weren’t that old, so it seemed an obvious thing to us. Particularly nowadays people know about Dada and surrealism, etc, but not many people were aware of it. You know, we are living in a knowledge society, so it’s quite a well-known thing. But at that moment, in time of the ’70s, people weren’t really that aware of it outside traditional art circles anyway. So, plagiarizing that seemed quite appropriate to us. Emma Warren So, how did the band start? Stephen Mallinder We started literally taking that Eno ethic, we just used to buy tape recorders. We used to make tape loops, we got shitloads of tape recorders. We used to lug them into this attic, which was the pain in the arse, because some of the tape recorders we used to get back then... It’s interesting electronic music, at that moment in time. Emma Warren So, we’re talking 1978? Stephen Mallinder No, 1974 then. This is about ’73, ’74, when we first started. And if you wanted a tape recorder, you used to go to these trade magazines, called Exchange & Mart in England, and basically they were old government machines. Ex-World War II, military stuff and you buy them for like about £5 and they weighed about two tons. They were fucking massive things, you know? Emma Warren What did these things look like? Stephen Mallinder They were like big lumps of metal, you know? They were like enormous kind of industrial tape machines. We used to get all things like that because that’s where electronic music really came from. People now look at it in terms of Robert Moog and Léon Theremin, etc, but a lot of electronic music and stuff we were doing, actually, it came really from Second World War technology. It came from the whole notion that war obviously does do crap things, but they do certain things and accelerate certain aspects of technology. So, we were picking the things that really were probably used in a war. We got these, you know, really 20- or 30-year-old machines, lugged them up to the attic and made tape loops and things like that. Emma Warren That’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? War as a motor of modern music. Stephen Mallinder Yeah, completely. Well, it is, you know what I mean? Emma Warren Plus, war invented the Internet. Stephen Mallinder Yeah, I mean, that’s right. Kraftwerk resulted from a German culture from the postwar period. So, you got to remember electronic music is quite affected culturally by those things and we were as well, you know? Emma Warren So basically, it’s you and your friend Richard H Kirk who kind of went on to record electronic music with Warp Records, as Sweet Exorcist among another things. Stephen Mallinder Yeah. Emma Warren You and him, you’re teenagers, living in Sheffield, pretty grimy town in the North of England. Stephen Mallinder Uhhh, you make it sound so nice [laughs]. Emma Warren It’s a great place. Stephen Mallinder Ha, ha. Emma Warren And you decide you want to make some music with this art aesthetic, so you decide to buy kind of job lots of these tape machines. What did you start doing with them? Stephen Mallinder Erm, well, we used to use the tape machines partly for loops, partly for tape delays as well. This is the time before echo machines, which is a common thing now, but in that moment in time we used to use sound on sound and tape machines for the delay. So, we used to use it for that. Chris [Watson], who was the third member, he left earlier on in the piece, but Chris was an electronics guy, that was his job, he built a synth for us. Our first synth was the synth that he actually built. We used to make things ourselves. It was a DIY aesthetic. It wasn’t something you went down to the shop and bought. You know, we were actually corrupting hardware that was there in our everyday lives to make music or make sounds. Emma Warren In the early period when you were working out what your sound is, was there someone who you kind of you were trying to emulate? Stephen Mallinder Erm, no. I think we literally wanted to annoy. In the very first instance we wanted to actually use sound almost like a weapon. We found the shock of sounds taken out of context fascinated us. I mean, we used to do mad Situationist stuff, you know? We’d construct tape loops and have them on tape machines. Just go into shops and play them. People were queueing at the bus stops and we just blast them with tape loops and things like that. We were fucking bored, you know? We lived in Sheffield! Like you said, it’s a grey industrial town. We were making our own entertainment, particularly at that moment of time. Emma Warren It’s funny because that’s something The KLF did very well in the ’90s. But give us an example, what happened when you stood at the bus stop playing tape loops to bemused people? Stephen Mallinder People used to think that we were freaks. We were actually on BBC really early on about the’70s and they just thought we were complete lunatics. But that’s where we came from and there was no outlet for that kind of music. When I think the first things we ever did – because we used to make films as well, we used to do collages and things like that – one of the first things we ever did was a performance piece for the Edinburgh Festival and we couldn’t afford to go. So, we sent a tape up that they had to play. There was a Super 8 film that they showed, there was collage kind of the material that went with it, so there was the whole performance package. Well, actually there was instructions to Super Glue people to the seats, but they didn’t do it [laughter]. Emma Warren There is something I’m a little bit confused about, or maybe I haven’t quite got the link. How did you go from sort of being 14-year-old soul boys on the terraces at football matches to being quite heavily into avant-garde art and music? How did that happen? Stephen Mallinder I don’t know, really. Richard went to art college. By that time, ’74, I was studying philosophy and politics. So, we got the other side where we were pretty working-class, you know? Richard’s dad was kind of high up in the Communist party. We were actually from that background, you know? The notion that working-class people are thick and they don’t want to do anything, we hated that, so we quite liked the idea that we could be kind of sound terrorists as well. So, I guess it was just a growing up thing. We never lost interest in popular music. I guess we just morphed into that as an age thing as we were doing it, really. Emma Warren I mean, there is a funny thing, there is an interesting thing about class and British music. That idea that working-class kids are thick and don’t want to do anything is still pervasive now. You can see that in all sorts of artists. I don’t know, it’s probably not the right place to talk about it, but it’s an interesting thing for another conversation about the way it has influenced British music. There is really a lot of the most interesting things that have happened have been made by the kids who weren’t supposed to be doing well, who weren’t supposed to be doing anything, who’ve gone on to do really incredible music. Stephen Mallinder Yeah, and I think there is a belief through class that people then automatically move to a populist form and that’s the only thing that satisfies them. Mass music or mass culture, but that’s not always the way. Emma Warren So basically, the missing link between your skinhead terrace soul boys and your kind of Situationist people who were blasting people at bus stops with music, is the fact that you went to art college and university. So, it’s basically during your student days that you were starting doing this kind of stuff. Stephen Mallinder I think we were just interested in things. I think anyone who goes through life, even all these guys [motions to audience], wherever you came from you are all here because you’re interested in things, you want to find out more, we wanted to know more. And to be fair, you know, people like Eno and Bowie when we were at that stage, that turned us onto William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, you got into John Cage, you got into all this kind of stuff, Cornelius Cardew, etc. So that was actually a window to a whole other world. And for a brief while we were actually associated with quite serious sort of avant-garde musicians, who came from the Stockhausen and John Cage era. We were quite involved with that. We kind of got booted out of that, ‘because we were... Well, we did a performance, when we were completely drunk, and we were ostracized by these serious musicians, so we didn’t fit anywhere. These serious avant-garde musicians, this side of music, the French composers. We were ostracized because we turned up and did a performance blind drunk. You know, we kind of liked that idea of not fitting anywhere. We just wanted to make our own space and that’s what we were doing. Emma Warren So, let’s bring this up to your first release. And interestingly, you had your first release on Factory Records, a very influential [label]. Stephen Mallinder That was the second actually, yeah. Emma Warren OK, so an early release on Factory Records, that went on to release records by New Order and other people. And also Rough Trade, kind of the original British independent music label. So, let’s talk a little bit about those records. Stephen Mallinder Yeah, well. The first one was on Rough Trade. We were the first actual domestic release on Rough Trade. They brought out Augustus Pablo’s “[Pablo Meets] Mr Bassie.” They licensed stuff from Jamaica and they licensed an EP by a French punk band, called Metal Urbain, who were like a punk band with a drum machine, which I thought were really good, actually. And then we were the first release that Rough Trade actually had, which was an extended play. So, I think we’ve kind of been forgotten in the mist of time, but we were the first domestic release on Rough Trade. I guess, the link there was that punk happened, and even though we weren’t a punk band, it did open doors for us. It did give us context for what we were doing, so we started playing around that time. We started to be able to play gigs. And that’s what happened. We had a lot of support from those people like Richard Boon, who’s the Buzzcocks manager, we did the Buzzcocks tour. We did a [Siouxsie & The] Banshees tour. We got thrown off the Banshees tour. Emma Warren Why did you get thrown off a tour with the Banshees? Stephen Mallinder We were too difficult. It was too hard, I mean it was just a practical thing. Because we weren’t making music or actually just doing stuff in a live way people weren’t used to it. I mean, people now can rock up with the laptop and do whatever they want to do and integrate it with the live instruments. But at that moment in time sound engineers were like, “Where’s your drum kit?” “We haven’t got a drum kit.” “Where’s your bass cabinet?” “We haven’t got a bass cabinet, we just DI it.” And they were like, “Oh fuck! We don’t understand this.” So we think that’s why we got kicked off. Maybe we got kicked off because we were crap. We actually shared that tour with Human League and they did a few more days, so... Emma Warren OK, so we can imagine what Human League looked like on stage when they were touring with you, but what did you have on stage? Stephen Mallinder We used to actually use cassettes, we used to prepare loops. We used to actually make specific sets of rhythms based around tapes. So, we used to use those as drum tracks, and construct those for various things. We had about two drum machines that we used to use live. We used bass, Richard played guitar and Chris played keyboards but we processed a lot of it as well. And I used to have a primitive vocoder that I used to sort of do vocals through. So, I mean, nowadays it probably wouldn’t seem that bizarre, but at that moment in time it actually did, yeah. Emma Warren So this is late ’70s? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, this is about then. Well, the first EP came out about ‘78. By that time we had a fair number of things written about us. Jon Savage was probably instrumental in a lot of things. Jon Savage, I don’t know if you know this guy, but I mean John Savage was a famous writer in England, wrote England’s
Dreaming and did a lot of stuff. But John was very supportive and so he was the one who actually got us a deal with Rough Trade. He just badgered Geoff [Travis] and said: “You should bring out the Cabs’ stuff.” Emma Warren Well, shall we have a listen to something from this era? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, we should. That’s “Nag Nag Nag,” isn’t it? So yeah, play that. Emma Warren So we got “Nag Nag Nag,” which actually interestingly went on in the same way as you took your name from a nightclub in Zürich, was taken by the nightclub in London, in sort of about 2001, which kind of pioneered us again to some type of bizarre nightclub music. Anyway, let’s listen to it. (music: Cabaret Voltaire – “Nag Nag Nag”) Emma Warren So what kind of reaction did you get from people, when you rolled up on stage doing this kind of thing? Stephen Mallinder Staging by this time, we probably were less sort of confrontational. Well, not less confrontational, I guess we put it in the space that was more acceptable in terms of performances and things like that. And that particular track was done more for the joke than actually anything else, because it is complete rip-off of a Seeds track. On the first album we did a cover of a Seeds track. The Seeds being a ’60s sort of California garage band. And it’s just real straightforward sort of, you know, verse, chorus, verse, chorus. We didn’t want to bring out The Seeds track as a single, so we were like, “We’ll do our own version of ‘No Escape…’” So we did. And we wanted to record it straight with Geoff. It was done actually really to go well. That was probably the most accessible thing on the album. But we never believed in bringing out singles from the albums at that point, so we just went and recorded that. And it was more as a lift from a kind of, you know, ’60s garage sound. And again that’s kind of very contextualized by punk in the sense of that that really was done at that moment in time. Really, that angled our stuff into what was going on, in the musical scene at that time. Emma Warren There is a story passing into urban legend, about you being dragged off stage by disco fans [laughter] and beaten up because they didn’t like what you were doing. So tell us what happened? Stephen Mallinder Actually, the fun thing was – and this is what was even weirder – they were actually environmentalists. That was way before this. That was about 1975. These people, who were like an equivalent to Friends Of The Earth, they were having a fundraiser and they just said they wanted a band. I don’t know, it wasn’t me, it was Chris, and Chris must have known one of them, and he said, “You got a band, Chris, haven’t you?” Chris went, “Yeah.” And he went, “Can you play disco? Can you play funk?” “Yeah, of course we can play disco, we can play funk.” When we turned up playing tape loops and sledgehammers and things like this, they got really pissed off. More because we said, “Oh yeah, we can play disco.” So they went, “No, you can’t play disco,” to all these environmentalists and, I guess, they showed their true colors. And yeah, it was a big fight and I got pushed off stage by a couple of people and it’s, you know, one of these things. We didn’t mind, we were quite happy to annoy people. Like I said, that was before this period. It was the first gig that we did, but we were just happy to annoy people. These are the consequences of pissing people off sometimes, you get battered for it, really. Emma Warren So, I want to just take it back a minute to this thing about releasing records on independent labels; how important it was for you to work with independents rather than the majors? Stephen Mallinder Well, firstly a major label wouldn’t have taken us anyway. We certainly wouldn’t have wanted or been capable of kind of adapting what we wanted or what we were doing for commercial kind of purposes in that sense. It was important, you know? That whole independent thing, even if there’s been a massive history about independent labels through soul, etc. At that moment in time it was representative of the music culture in Britain, so we were really lucky, you know? We did stuff with Rough Trade, the early stuff. We did albums for them and then we were on the first Factory sampler as well. It was just because we wanted to work with people, just like these guys. You know, you work within a kind of supportive environment. And I don’t think we would have ever felt signing initially at that moment to EMI or whatever it would have been sympathetic. You worked with people who were supportive of you, people like Tony Wilson and all those guys who wanted to do it. You were pushing against a whole culture and a whole industry. That’s what you wanted to do, so we were happy to do it. Emma Warren You just mentioned Tony Wilson, who ran Factory Records, and opened The Haçienda in Manchester. If you’re thinking about that period, where does Cabaret Voltaire fit into Manchester music, which again went on to become a massive influence on dance music and everything what happened since? Stephen Mallinder Well, because of where we were from, it was only 50 miles from Manchester. Even from being quite a kid, I used to go, Rich and I used to go to clubs in Manchester, when we were really young. I’ll tell you that Manchester is just a suburb of Sheffield and people from Sheffield will tell you the same. So it’s not that dissimilar. So, we were always going over and playing. We played at Russell’s club lots of times. We toured loads with Joy Division, we played a lot with Joy Division. So we were just part of the whole thing. The reason we didn’t do an album for Factory was because when we were getting ready to do an album, Tony didn’t have enough money. And Jeff did, so it was whoever had the money to bring it out. We did one release on Factory, one on Rough Trade and then Rough Trade had the money to bring the album out so we did “Nag Nag Nag” and the album with them. Just because Tony was strapped for cash. And then they put their money into Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division and did their album instead. It worked out really nicely. Emma Warren So you probably know, Joy Division went to become New Order, what was it like touring with Joy Division? Stephen Mallinder It was fucking hilarious, you know? Ian was a lovely guy and they were all great people. We were friends with New Order for a long time. Again, it’s just a music community. People now see New Order or Joy Division as these iconic acts, but for us it was just people that we knew. I was big friends with the [A Certain] Ratio [guys] and all that stuff. Music now has expanded so much that there are so many pockets in music of so many areas, but at that moment in time there weren’t as many bands around and there weren’t as many people making music. So, you were naturally gravitating towards each other, you naturally did gigs together and naturally you knew each other, really. Emma Warren That’s quite an interesting thing, talking about… in those days, it was much harder to be into music, wasn’t it? You had to really put graft in and effort in to find music that you were into… so, what was that like, then… say, the music you were into when you were younger – what did you have to do to get the records? Stephen Mallinder Well, I guess… with soul music, it was something that unless you were a collector – and I wasn’t a collector – it’s not something you consumed in that way… you listened to it. It was something you didn’t buy as much of, and we were young… we didn’t have any money; we didn’t have disposable income, like people do now, so you were part of that culture but you weren’t, as people are now, collectors and consumers of it in that way… Emma Warren So, you wouldn’t actually buy the records… Stephen Mallinder No, we just used to go to all the clubs. We were like 13, 14, 15 years old. I mean, to be fair, I got busted a few times for shoplifting. I got caught stealing Prince Buster records, because I couldn’t afford to buy them. I feel really bad about that now, because… respect to Prince Buster, but it was the only way I could get the records, because I couldn’t afford to buy them. And there were only one or two records shops that would do that – now, with eBay and importers etc, people can buy that stuff so easily, but in the early 1970s, there were only two or three shops where you could get that from, so you used to steal them sometimes… stealing’s bad, don’t do it, but it’s what I did then. Emma Warren That whole idea about getting out what you put in has to have some impact on the music, because in many ways it’s brilliant that if you suddenly decide you’re into reggae, you can go and download as much Prince Buster, as much King Tubby or whatever you want at the press of a button, but there’s something you gain from having to put effort in, surely? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, I mean that’s why I’m sure a lot of guys here are diggers. I’m sure the thrill is finding something that isn’t as accessible. People like to search for things. We invest a lot in music emotionally, so therefore we want to feel a connection with its, so sometimes the fact that music is very accessible – I’m not saying it’s not special, it’s a lot nicer… if you make that effort and you find something, you’ve got that connection, so what you’ve invested in it is returned. It’s elitist in some ways, but music is driven by people who are searching on a separate path, so it’s all part of it, really. Emma Warren So, what do you think of the whole iTunes nation that we’re all living in now, where you can download anything you want, everything is accessible, you can cherry-pick from all eras of music and from all types of music, do you think that’s OK? Stephen Mallinder Oh, we’re gluttons now for it. But no, I mean everything is accessible now, everything is there, time sort of doesn’t exist in the same way any more – it’s an interesting space where we’re at. I certainly don’t knock it, because it’s just the way it is – the platforms that have arisen that we can access music from and the way we can get them is fantastic. You can’t knock it. It’s just a different time now. I still think people are looking to find margins – obviously the margins where interesting things are happening have contracted, but I still think people try to find those margins to try to find that kind of music. Emma Warren So, you mean that people who are interested in music are always going to look for those little spaces – the tiny, hidden holes where good stuff is happening. Stephen Mallinder Yeah, it’s just those margins have disappeared a little bit, because everything is so accessible, but I still think people want to find that. They still want to look for those things. Emma Warren OK, so let’s get back on the Cabaret Voltaire history train. When did you go to New York? Stephen Mallinder Funny thing was we didn’t go to New York until the early ‘80s, I don’t think. And in fact, by the time we’d gone there, I think “Sensoria” kind of topped the dance charts there. Arthur Baker and John Robie had done “Yashar” and so on. We went there after the records that we did were actually successful in New York. Emma Warren OK, so you had some New York hook-ups before actually going to New York. What happened? How did you hook up with Arthur Baker? How did your music start sounding more obviously danceable? Stephen Mallinder It kind of links with the idea of looking for margins and looking for spaces where there were interesting things happening. We were never really musically sonically part of the punk thing. We didn’t have any affinity particularly with that. We still were kind of very linked with club music in that sense, reggae and everything, that’s what we were interested in. That moment in time, in the early ’80s, in the very early ’80s, that’s where the interesting things were happening. When “Planet Rock” came out, that was something really different to what was happening. We were always interested in that. I think we were just naturally drawn to electro, naturally drawn as well to the 12” format. We were very much into repetition and loops and keeping things going. And all of a sudden, it became a format, which was more in vogue, that suited those kind of things. We were never into the four-minute single. We were not bothered about radio play, so therefore you want people to access your music. And all of the sudden, there was a kind of porthole into a world that wasn’t driven by the commercial considerations. Emma Warren Where did you first hear about “Planet Rock”? Stephen Mallinder I can’t remember, actually. It’s really interesting. I mean, all that Grandmaster Flash stuff… I guess, you were just interested in music and you buy on import. And it would have been very early days, when we found all that. And I think we were just listening to music and just dug all that stuff out. We just found it in the early days. And at the very same time that that happened, we were obviously pushing the idea using the drum machine using breaks and things like that. And it became reciprocal. John Robie heard the track of ours, “Yashar,” and this was just when he was doing “Planet Rock,” and he just got in touch and said: “I really want to do a mix of this track.” And we went, “Yeah, alright.” Emma Warren OK, so it wasn’t you hearing the music and then searching out people in New York? Stephen Mallinder No, no. Emma Warren It was electro people in New York heard your records and got in touch with you? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, I can’t remember in an actual fact. I think it was from Barney [Bernard Sumner of New Order] and Hookie and Tony [Wilson], because they knew Arthur Baker at that point, I can’t remember. John Robie heard the track and we did that actual track for Factory… I think it was just a sample, Robie liked the sample and said: “I really want to do a mix of it.” Emma Warren So how did you sample back then? Stephen Mallinder I’m trying to think, that was from TV. So it was actually put down to tape reel-to-reel. Everything we did was with reel-to-reel. And it was literally laid down and we would be using an eight-track at that time. So you would literally drop in and drop out. You would lay samples like that. You know, it was very physical. It was a very kind of tactile process. Emma Warren So, you say it was a very physical and tactile process to use tape in that way, what actually did you have to do? Stephen Mallinder You literally ran one machine and dropped in on the other and hopefully you hit the beat. And once you mastered it, you started editing and, you know, chopping on a tape. And so you actually do tape edits. Everything we did was tape edits. And that was a massive skill on its own, in its own way. Sometimes you have a track that was six minutes long and there would be hundreds of tape edits in it. You’d literally would be chopping it, chopping it and chopping it. You might start with a track which was 20 minutes long and edit it down to a six-minute track, like cutting into it and doing it that way. So it was very physical, yeah. Emma Warren And you mentioned drum machines as well. What were you using? Stephen Mallinder We just used to scour music shops. Because the reason drum machines were around was that before there was satellite TV, people used to play organs. And people used to play along, it was a big thing in the ’70s. If you lived in the suburbs, as well as the record player, you’d have a home organ. And people would play along, and they would have rhythm machines to play along with it, that played the bossa nova. Grandma, you know, would play along to the bossa nova. Emma Warren This is kind of family entertainment? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, and we used to pilfer for these drum machines, that’s how we used to do it. We had loads of them at one point, you know? So we just used to use those. So we used those mechanisms for rhythm. We did use drummers and we used them on all the albums. By the “Yashar” time we were using the live drummer anyway, the drummer and the percussionist. There’s no drummers in here are there? Because drummers were invariably a pain in the ass when we used a lot of drummers, so we just used a drum machine. Sorry guys, if there are drummers here. Emma Warren There are some drummers, yeah. Stephen Mallinder I love them all, I’m a closet drummer anyway so... Emma Warren OK, so it would be good to hear the track you’re talking about, “Yashar” or “Sensoria.” Stephen Mallinder I don’t know if “Sensoria” is here, actually. Thanks to Phil [inaudible] for bringing me some music down… I think this is the John Robie mix. This could be interesting. I think this is the original mix that Robie did. (music: Cabaret Voltaire – “Yashar (John Robie mix)”) I now remembered why Robie wanted to do it. A lot of the vibe for the track, the keys that we did, we used kind of Arabic scales and he was really into it. And he thought of the idea of doing something more electro, even if we did the breaks like that on it originally. That’s why he was attracted to it, so anyway, that’s that. Emma Warren So where did your music fit in the whole scene that was happening in New York at the time? Stephen Mallinder I have no idea, really. Although it was very funny when we went and played at the Palladium in the early ’80s. We were soundchecking, we looked out there while we were sound-checking, and there were just loads of people, kind of breaking to us. Then we kind of realized the way we did fit into it. Emma Warren So the same way Kraftwerk obviously, kind of were in there, Cabaret Voltaire were in there too. Stephen Mallinder Yeah. For a period it was, yeah. Emma Warren So tell us about what happened when you went to New York then? Stephen Mallinder We just did gigs over there. I mean, we didn’t actually record in New York. We did some stuff with Robie in the studio for a little while, but we worked in London with Robie, he flew to London. You know, we said: “Oh great, we’ll go to New York to record.” And he probably went, “I want to go to London and record.” So we actually did more stuff in London with him. I mean, we did quite a few tracks over there. We just literally played and did our stuff over there. So, I guess in some ways we were quite detached from what effect we had. We weren’t kind of living there doing it. We spent a fair amount of time in New York over a period of years, but at that moment in time we just went and did a couple of gigs and came back and that was it. You know, and you’d go to clubs and stuff like that. Emma Warren You just mentioned soundchecking at the Palladium and looking out and seeing people breakdancing to what you were doing? What other sort of experiences did you have like that where you suddenly realized that your music was somehow kind of in the hip-hop canon? Stephen Mallinder Like I say, it was really strange. We just opened a window, really, but it wasn’t something that we massively exploited or anything. It was just something played there at that moment in time. We used to go and play, you know, go to the clubs, Danceteria club or whatever. It was more of the social thing for us. We didn’t go over there like some sort of ethnologist or anthropologist going, “We found these interesting people in New York. I think we’ll work with them.” It was just more organic than that, so we just did stuff, did our own shit and they got
into it. Emma Warren I mean, these clubs that you’re talking about, Danceteria, The Palladium, they were really key clubs at that time, you know? Give us a window into what they were like. What were their clubs like? Stephen Mallinder Danceteria was really funny, actually. It used to be four floors with an open lift. I was always terrified I’d fucking fall down the lift shaft. We even saw Madonna in there, when Jellybean was playing in there. It’s kind of funny actually because clubs are clubs, you know? Particularly that people look back on it, obviously, hindsight is an amazing thing when you go out and you go, “Wow! We were hanging out in these clubs.” But at the time it was like, “Let’s go have a drink,” and it was the place to go and you’d go down and you’d hang out and it was fun. Emma Warren So what they were playing at Danceteria in the early ’80s? Stephen Mallinder I can’t remember what it was when we were there. I think it was a time when Jellybean was there, but I can’t remember. It was very Latin, it was very electro. It was all 808s, you know? Coming to the ’80s it was all 808s by that time. Emma Warren This is Jellybean Benitez? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, you know, New York was mad in those days. New York at that time in the mid-‘80s was crazy, you know? Some of the area clubs and things like that you would go to was quite mad, you know? It was that sort of glam scene that was there. A bit arty, you know? Emma Warren Any other New York night life moments you’d wish to share with us? Stephen Mallinder I met Andy Warhol once. It was a cliche, though. He was actually with Bianca Jagger. It’s like, “Fucking hell!” I thought it was his stuntman. I thought Andy Warhol’s stand-in’s there in the club with a stand-in Bianca Jagger! But it was actually him, yeah. Emma Warren Were there any other New York hook-ups that happened to you during this time? Stephen Mallinder I mean, to be quite honest, we just went back and did our own thing after that. We weren’t there constantly, because we were based in England. We were recording, we were touring in Europe, we were gigging around Europe and doing all that. I’m trying to think. Probably the next time. We used to go back to New York a little bit, but the next time I started to get involved, I actually went to New York trying to find Todd Terry. This is a little bit later. I couldn’t find him. He didn’t answer his phone. So that’s how we ended up in Chicago, so that links to Chicago, actually, because by the late ’80s obviously, we were interested in all that, that was what fascinated us. And in that moment in time, when Todd Terry started doing some stuff, the Frankie Bones period and all that, we really wanted to work with Todd Terry. But he never picked up the phone. And in the meantime while I was there, I hooked up with Marshall [Jefferson] and then we ended up in Chicago and one year later we were doing stuff in Chicago. So it was a strange kind of connection. Probably, my New York days ended at that moment in time. Emma Warren And some Chicago days started. Before we talk about that and the whole sort of late ‘80s house period, let’s just go back a little bit. Because there was a period when the music got overtly dub-influenced and you worked with Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound. Tell us a bit about him. Stephen Mallinder How did I meet Adrian? Well, prior to Adrian we did three albums from Flood. I don’t know if you guys know Flood, U2’s producer. We actually did quite a lot of work with Flood. Adrian came after that. So we did quite a lot of work with Flood. Flood did actually all that electro stuff with us, “Sensoria” and all those things, so that was the period when we were working there. The reason we worked with Adrian was we left Virgin. We were with Some Bizarre and managed by the guy called Stevo [Pearce], which was a crazy period of all our lives, because it was brilliant. Stevo looked after us, Yello, Soft Cell, The The, Neubauten, that was kind of very interesting period. That’s when you were saying, talking about New York and things like that, there were probably as interesting things going on in London, where I was living by that time so... Emma Warren So those were the bands you had the same management with, Talk Talk and... Stephen Mallinder No, The The, sorry. Emma Warren The The. Were there any musical exchanges that happened between you guys? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, Dave [Ball] from The Grid and Soft Cell. Dave and I did a band and Dave played on some of our albums and I played on Marc Almond’s solo stuff. I played with The The a couple of times and Zeke Manyika, because he was drumming with them. In London it was kind of an an interesting time around then, there was a lot of things going on at that moment in time. Emma Warren Is there anything you can play us from that period? Stephen Mallinder Shit. No, I don’t think so. Hang on, but there should be something in there, shouldn’t there? Let me find something. Talk amongst yourselves guys [laughs]. There is a Kevorkian dub, which was done around that time… that was the track we did with Flood and Kevorkian did a mix of it. Do you want to hear that? Emma Warren What is the track called? Stephen Mallinder “Sex, Money, Freaks.” Emma Warren So, did you meet François Kevorkian in New York? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, we did actually. We did meet François in New York. We did work with John Luongo, who was a DJ around the time, one of the first DJs who kind of were getting involved in the production and we were working with him in New York. By this time, actually, we had left. (music: Cabaret Voltaire – “Sex, Money, Freaks (François Kevorkian 12” Remix)”) I think it’s about another 48 bars before the bass comes in [laughs]. I tell a lie, this is a track we did with Adrian, Kevorkian mix. I mean, we wanted to work with Kevorkian because Kraftwerk worked with him and we were big Kraftwerk fans. And we thought he is the only producer that Kraftwerk would work with. He is literally the only person they would work with. So we went, “We would really like to meet him,” and he was really cool and he knew all our stuff. I think François did about three mixes for us in the end over the period of a year. Emma Warren So where did you meet him? Stephen Mallinder Just met him in New York. I mean, François is great, he is a dude. He lived there with his family and we just hung out, all that kind of stuff. People probably would like to imagine that it’s some sort of amazingly nocturnal debauched scene and all that. But no, we just met François in a kind of social situation. He is just a lovely guy and it was great, you know? But at that moment in time he was probably not as known as he is now. But I mean, it was great for us, we liked him. So we were really happy that he had done stuff for us. Emma Warren So let’s talk about the kind of house stuff you did because it’s quite interesting. You went to New York to find Todd Terry. What turned you on to Todd Terry? Stephen Mallinder I mean, I loved the very first Todd Terry stuff. It was very cool. I loved the way he just jammed on the samples and things like that. So I guess, at that moment in time, his very early stuff, I thought he was doing really interesting things. Emma Warren What records are you talking about exactly? Stephen Mallinder I’m trying to remember, actually. The early Todd Terry stuff. I mean [“Bango”] and all that kind of stuff. I mean, obviously this was kind of early days just as Shoom and places like that were starting. I mean, I’d been going down to Danny and Jenni [Rampling]’s club and all that in the early days so... Emma Warren Basically you were coming down to Shoom, this is a particular club in London. Stephen Mallinder Shoom was really where, I suppose, the acid house thing started. In that sense when they brought it all back from Ibiza and the whole thing. But I mean, that was interesting [laughs]. There was a number of people who said they went to Shoom, that if they did actually go to Shoom, you’d fill Wembley Arena because you could actually fit only about 50 people in there really at the end. But you know all that kind of stuff was filtering through. The early house stuff and things like that. Emma Warren And that was kind of a very dark, sweaty, strobey club. Again, it was a kind of back-to-basics club, wasn’t it? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, it was a fitness center, the one, the original down near London Bridge. But I mean, that wasn’t the only club. I mean, Cafe de Paris had been going for a while as well and that music started to filter through to clubs that were actually happening in London. And the Todd Terry stuff was there as well as the early house stuff. Emma Warren So you got turned onto early house stuff. What kind of music were you making at this point? Stephen Mallinder That kind of stuff, really. That probably was around that time. That’s probably bridging into that period. Emma Warren So you go to New York to find Todd Terry, because you were into what he was doing. Todd hasn’t got his phone on, but you meet Marshall Jefferson instead. How? Stephen Mallinder I can’t remember the guy’s name. He was head of Atlantic Records in New York, and he said: “Marshall is in town, you should meet him.” And that’s how it came about. Marshall hated flying at that time. He actually flew to London, we had some meetings and we kind of sorted it out. It took about a year, I think, to sort it out at the end. We did some basic pre-production stuff and then went to Chicago and lived in Chicago for about a month and worked with Marshall and all the guys over there. Emma Warren So who are exactly the guys you’re talking about? Who did you meet? Stephen Mallinder Oh, I mean, that was like a little clique of a lot of people. So, I mean, Ten City, Kym Mazelle, because they were all managed by sort of same guy. I mean, Paris Brightledge was on the album, who worked with Sterling Void. You know, Lil’ Louis, not Vega, the other Lil’ Louis. People like that. So you know, we just sort of spent quite a bit of time there. In the middle of winter it was freezing but it was fun. And Marshall is a dude, you know? He’s such a great guy. Emma Warren He is a funny guy. So did you sample the influences of Chicago nightlife at this period? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, you know, it was too cold to go out too often. But yeah, we went to clubs Lil’ Louis was doing and things like that. But it was really, we’d go out with Sleezy D, Mike Dunn and all those guys, but it’s kind of interesting because we were English and we were white and it was an entirely black sort of culture, really. And people were lovely to us and it was great. We had a great time, yeah. Emma Warren I mean, a lot of those records still sound insane now. If you’d listen to Sleezy D “I’ve Lost Control,” they are just crazy records. They must have sounded incredible on the big sound systems in the kind of warehouse parties that were happening, no? Stephen Mallinder My fun memories actually, stuck in my head, actually going to the club where Lil’ Louis was playing and he did play the version of his own... They all played their own versions and he did play the version of “French Kiss” that would have gone for about 20 minutes with trains and airplanes and everything going through in a really fucking small club, but on a really fucking boss sort of sound system. You sit there and going, “A fucking train just went past through the middle of ‘French Kiss,’” and you’d go, “Wow!” Yeah, they were pretty mad, those clubs. Yeah, we were very lucky to have a little insight of those clubs at that time, yeah. Emma Warren Yeah, because I saw him DJing the Haçienda, probably around 1990 and his set completely blew me away. When he did all that, with lots of effects going on, he played some crazy sort of Glenn Miller jazz band thing at the end, which was absolutely insane. He was doing things other DJs really, really weren’t doing. But yeah, so which clubs you were going to? Stephen Mallinder I can’t remember, I wouldn’t have a clue. They were just clubs. Marshall didn’t go out very often. Emma Warren He kind of prefers to play computer games, doesn’t he? Stephen Mallinder Oh yeah, Marshall is mad as fuck. Marshall wouldn’t go out, apart from a couple of times. We said: “Come on, Marshall. We got to go out.” So we would just hire a stretch limo and we would just cruise around Chicago and go to clubs and this, you know? Emma Warren In a limo? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, we actually did a video, we went back and filmed. When we did “Hypnotised” we went back to Chicago and we shot a video in Chicago and we got everybody in it. It was loads of film, we kind of documented at that point. But obviously, they were doing very well by that time. Yeah. Emma Warren So, you made an album with them. Have you got something to play us from that record? Stephen Mallinder Got some stuff on vinyl, I think, hang on. I’ll tell you what, I will play “Hypnotised.” It was kind of more commercial by that time actually but let’s have a look. I’ll play Gerald’s mix, actually. I mean, this got Ten City on it, it’s got Kym [Mazelle] on as well. I’m not sure, but this one Marshall did. It was an interesting kind of thing, because we were doing a lot of work with Robert Gordon and Mark Brydon. Robert Gordon is Forgemasters on Warp, and Mark Brydon is Moloko. And we did a lot of recording with them, did some of the vocals over in England and, you know, we had Ten City working with us. Strangely enough, a lot of vocals we did was with Ten City in England. We did it in Sheffield and we mixed it there and then we went back to Chicago. So it’s done in a kind of strange kind of piecemeal way. Emma Warren So the mix that you’re talking about is a Gerald mix? Stephen Mallinder This is A Guy Called Gerald mix, yeah. I haven’t heard this for ages, so let’s have a listen. This will be nice for me. (music: Cabaret Voltaire – “Hypnotised (Gerald’s Vocal Mix)” / applause) Emma Warren You just said to me, “It’s Byron Stingily’s vocals all fucked up. Is this the link between what you were doing in the ’70s and what you were doing then? Stephen Mallinder Interestingly enough, I suppose the stuff that Gerald was doing then and we were doing then, it’s acceptable now. I don’t know whether the stuff we were doing in the ’70s is ever going to be acceptable, but… at that moment in time, in fact I think that mix was the first one Gerald had done of anything. He’d just done “Voodoo Ray” and he’d just done “Pacific State,” and he’d just left 808 State. We toured quite a lot with Gerald and he was just great, he toured with us for quite a long time… Emma Warren Greg Wilson had a funny story about him. He said he used to go to Legends when he was 15, and he used to get dressed up in a trenchcoat to try and look older than he really was to get in. I don’t know why a trenchcoat would make you look older, but I like this idea of A Guy Called Gerald rifling through his parents’ cupboards for a trenchcoat… Stephen Mallinder I’d like to have seen that… Emma Warren Obviously, A Guy Called Gerald did loads of amazing music and he’s still doing stuff now, so what was it about his style that you liked? Stephen Mallinder I just thought he was making a really interesting English kind of take on that kind of music at that moment in time, and “Voodoo Ray” is one of the all-time classics, and it was just around the time he did that that he did that for us. It was great, he used to jam on stage and do 20-minute versions of “Voodoo Ray” live on stage. He was just a great guy and I liked what he was doing… Emma Warren So, you said you toured with him. Was he DJing? Stephen Mallinder No, he played live. He had a singer. In fact, he had two singers and him, using a little microprocessor and playing along… Emma Warren Yeah, Gerald… he rocks… So, let’s take it forwards, let’s fast-forward through the ’90s… when did you move to Perth? Stephen Mallinder I moved to Perth in the mid-’90s… ’95, I think… ’95, ’96… Actually, after that album, we’d amassed such a debt at EMI that they kicked us off the label – we’d left Virgin and gone to EMI… We were quite happy to go to EMI, but we made sure we did it on our terms. We said, “If we sign to the label, we have complete control of who we work with,” and we did. We did an album with Marshall, we did an album with Adrian Sherwood, Derrick May remixed us, Gerald… We never made any money, so they just told us to fuck off, eventually, which is the way the industry works, but we didn’t mind. We felt that at least we’d made good use of our money. We set up our own label and did three albums in the early ’90s… Emma Warren You just said you went to EMI on the basis that you had complete control over who you worked with. Do you have any tips for people here who might be inking deals about how best to maintain control of your work. Stephen Mallinder I think, really, you’ve just got to be smart. I mean, I don’t know, these days there are so many buffers between you and the public, there are so many ways of getting your music out there that I don’t know… I think record labels are probably wondering how they can deal with the music that’s out there; I think you’re in a stronger position in thinking about how you want people to access your music now – the platforms and the means of accessing music require major labels probably less and less in some ways, unless, of course, you are a commercial act, and, in that case, you’re going to deal with them on your own terms anyway, so… Emma Warren We established that the avant-garde route is never going to make you a lot of money. Obviously, money is not what it’s all about, but why have you sort of stuck so strongly to that aesthetic? What is it that appeals to you about it? Stephen Mallinder I think that you’ve got to live with yourself. You have to make music that reflects you as a person, as a personality. I mean, I grew up with popular music. I don’t have a problem with it. It’s not an issue with me. But it’s kind of not what a) I was capable of making or, b) particularly wanted to make. And to be honest with you, that’s the reason I eventually came to Australia: we were having to make albums purely to pay the rent and to eat. Which was fine, which was alright, but then I just had this thing when I didn’t want to make music. I even didn’t feel like making music in those terms. I just wanted to make music purely if I wanted to do it myself and not feel as though it was a career, and it has been a career for more than 20 years. I was quite happy to go “Mmmh.” I don’t want to have those commercial or financial pressures put on me, because I felt it wasn’t the reason I started making music. That’s why I went back to that. Emma Warren So what did you start doing when you came to Perth? Stephen Mallinder I stopped making music [laughs]. I’ve actually done bits of study, and I’m kind of right at the moment doing that. And I set up Off World, the label Off World Sounds which was... I suppose, it was probably indicative not the market but of the music culture that existed at that moment, and how it’s changed. I mean, we brought out, I think Off World has had 15, 16, whatever, maybe more releases, often as pieces of vinyl, but we don’t sell anything, you know? It reflects probably the infrastructure in Australia, the fact that I live in Perth and it’s miles away. So, it makes it difficult in Australia to operate under those terms. But also the way the whole music culture has changed. And obviously now, you know? We think about just doing a new album and we just go, “Well, do I even want to release it as a CD, or is it just downloads?” You just let people have it. Emma Warren Can you play us something from the label, or something that shows us what is happening? Stephen Mallinder I’ll tell you what, I’ll play Sassi & Loco, which is the stuff that I did. And I think that sold a vast total of about 300 copies… so there you go. Don’t do the label, guys. I’ll just play, because I don’t know what’s on here. (music: Sassi & Loco – “Shatter” / applause) Emma Warren So what drives you musically now, then? Stephen Mallinder [Laughs] Well, that was just Sassi & Loco, that’s just my stuff that I did couple of years ago. I’m still doing the Ku-Ling Bros. because I kind of enjoy the social, interactive and cooperative thing about it doing music, and Ku-Ling has always been like that. It’s chiefly myself and a guy called Shane Norton, who did Soundlab, and our guitarist Jack. There’s been times when we played with about 11 people on the stage and sometimes just two people. I suppose, it’s just an act that’s a work in progress. I suppose, we change the way we perform or the way we present it with the change in circumstances. But musically, I don’t know, I’m still... You just fuck around. Music is still a matter of juxtaposing, sort of sounds and rhythms and actually seeing what operates for you. I like the Ku-Ling’s purely because it’s an input from a lot of people and I enjoy that now. I don’t particularly… I am not that bothered about going, “This is the world according to my life.” I like the social aspects. I’m involved with other things, so music then can become something that I enjoy doing so I just do that. Emma Warren So if you think about the stuff that you’re doing kind of at the beginning, you and your peers were doing, what do you think has been the biggest impact on what you did then on music or what’s possible today? Stephen Mallinder Well, I mean, it is kind of arrogant to sort of say, “This is what we gave to music or what I gave to music.” So, it is really in other people’s hands to see, sort of really attest to that. I suppose we were part of that process of democratizing music. We were part of that process saying, you know, “You can do it yourself. You don’t need that level of proficiency. You don’t need to go into the studio and spend thousands of dollars.” If you want to make music and you do have ideas, we were continually pushing for people to actually take control of that process of making music, actually getting it out there and really sort of following the whole thing through. You know, the independent labels, people developing, I mean… that’s what we did. When we got an advance from the record label, we didn’t go and spend it in the studio, most of the time we just used it to increase our own studio. So we went from a 4-track to an 8-track to a 16-track to a 16-track studio. We just kept re-investing our money. Obviously now, that was an analog period, now it’s a digital age and so therefore you know the whole process has been democratized. I guess, we were just a part of that, really. Emma Warren So, I guess maybe the key point is you don’t have to have the shiniest, glossiest, flashiest studio. You just need like an attic full of tape machines. Stephen Mallinder Yeah, and I suppose the other thing is: everything is valid with the context of music anyway. Probably the other thing we did, we were one of the first people to sort of... again, that’s arrogant, but sort of integrate found sounds, use TV sounds, spoken word, things like that. Basically, integrate your environment and particularly the media environment into the music and the sounds you’re making. It was a part of it, it was just a reflection of us. If we heard it on TV, it was just as valid as the vocals or the keyboards to us.
So we kind of made sure to integrate those in there. Emma Warren So the guys like Herbert, who was sampling packets of crisps and, you know, dropping spoons... Stephen Mallinder Yeah, God bless him, good old man, yeah. Emma Warren Absolutely, but you know, sort of 20 years before that you were smashing up pianos and using those sounds. Stephen Mallinder Yeah, I mean, we are all part of that whole chronology, you know? Matthew is obviously doing it his own way, we did it our own way. John Cage, Brian Eno, they are all part of it. I wouldn’t lay claim to any of these things. I think it’s just everybody puts together their own version of the musical world they want to create and that was ours. But ours has never been purely limited to music in that sense. We used sound, sound is as interesting to us as music. Emma Warren I mean, I know that you’re obviously still involved with music and you’re still making music. You got your label, radio stuff and all these things, but if you detach yourself for a minute as a consumer and fan of music, and you take the long view, and tell us what pleases you about music in 2006? Stephen Mallinder I think what I find interesting about music in 2006 is that 2006 doesn’t exist. Time is irrelevant, you know? Like Eno said, “As soon as music became recorded, then time ceased to exist, space is the only parameter.” And now, probably because of communication, space doesn’t really exist anymore. So, the here and now in 2006 is irrelevant. We can make whatever space we are in, we can create it from any time or any space. So it’s kind of the morphing of time and space. You know, everything is accessible now. I’m not saying it’s the end of history, like people are saying, it is interesting that it’s all there, you know? Sort of the music that we all buy, we are looking for new sounds, etc, but it’s made from something that is 30 to 40 years old but also maybe something that Skream made last week. I find that fascinating, I find it really fascinating. Emma Warren So what sort of music, what sort of artists you are feeling? Stephen Mallinder I mean, again it’s really hard, because I could probably go, everything from Zero dB to an old soul track that I probably bought or whatever. So again, it’s not something I would say, this is the newest thing I’m listening to. I don’t have it. I don’t have any rules, parameters like that. Emma Warren So that’s the living embodiment of the interesting thing about today. The gap between old and new has been broken down. So it doesn’t really matter whether it’s old or new, or cool, or not cool, rave or soul. It’s all in front of us, isn’t it? Stephen Mallinder It’s all happening now. It always will. It will continue to happen. Emma Warren Kind of maintaining this vantage point of looking at what’s happening now. What disappoints you about music now? Stephen Mallinder Well, I stopped DJing, because I’m fucking pissed off with people who have grown up… I was just talking about this the other day with Lorna [Clarkson] and Mark Pritchard… with iPod culture and people. It’s what we’ve just been talking about, people want to hear things as they see them. Almost like DJing has become irrelevant. They just want to hear what’s in their head at that moment in time. I got really bored of DJing, so I don’t really DJ anymore. That’s probably my experience in Perth. I stopped doing it. I mean, I still play occasionally. I think that probably everybody thinks they know everything and in that sense people are closing their ears and their eyes, and I don’t think you should do that. I think, if somebody is playing a piece of music and people are making the piece of music you should fucking pay respect and listen to it and not go, “Excuse me, can you play this or can I listen to that?” I think the danger is people… and that is one of the other problems: we are the generation that looks down. We’ve atomized our lives. It’s part of the technology, it’s part of digital world we are living in. We atomized our music experiences we brought it in completely to ourselves. I am interested really in breaking that into more of the social mold. The social part of the way we hear music should be really encouraged a lot more, rather than a Generation Y, closed, looking-down, atomized existence. Emma Warren So you are basically saying, “Kids, take out your iPod earbuds and go to a club and hear some music there. So you hear the music as a shared experience rather than just your own personal soundtrack.” Stephen Mallinder Yeah, I’m pissed off sitting in the car talking to my kids, and after five minutes they haven’t responded because they’re both listening to completely different tracks on their iPods and MP3 players. And you just go, “Well, that was a waste of time, wasn’t it?” But that’s cool, it means I can listen to the stereo in the car and they don’t bug me, so it’s cool. Emma Warren OK then, so to finish up, what’s next for you? What’s happening? Stephen Mallinder Just doing a new Ku-Ling Bros album. There were still a few things I was still going to play because we did a track on the Shaun Ryder album and I never got a chance to play that. I’m just doing that. I mean, at the moment I’m writing, so I got about 10 months left of my doctorate to do, so I am writing on that. So I kind of shifted a little bit writing about sound as much as listening to sound so that’s kind of where I am at the moment, I am kind of doing that. Music’s still important. I get really irritable if we don’t go and make music, so I make sure I get a day a week in the studio. And that’s my kind of musical contribution, and that’s just for me, really, more than anything else. But yeah, new Ku-Lings album should be finished by the end of the year and it took about 18 months to do. So that’s what I am doing, yeah. Emma Warren Have we got any questions from anyone here? Stephen Mallinder Hello: Audience member [Inaudible] Stephen Mallinder Well, I mean, interestingly, that’s what I’ve been writing about… we are… interested in the other, we’re interested in otherness, so what we aren’t fascinates us. So, therefore, that’s why Kraftwerk were so important to the electro scene in New York, because it wasn’t produced in that scene. We’re always fascinated by the things that we don’t produce, that’s the way it goes… I mean, I was shocked when I got to Chicago to find out that Marshall Jefferson is a massive Led Zeppelin fan… you know, I was quite surprised by that, because I’m not, but he was… so… I think we’re always interested in the things that we don’t make ourselves; we’re fascinated by other music cultures. Emma Warren But also, that music was being played in clubs in England massively, so if you were around and you were interested in music and you were interested in dancefloor culture, then you were going to be exposed to that music, so it was very much in your territory, wasn’t it? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, yeah… it was probably getting more exposure in England than it was over there. If you speak to Derrick May or any of those guys, that’s why they wanted to go to England, because they were more appreciated over there. That was just the way that Europe and England were at that time. Maybe ecstasy had got a lot to do with it, because it was part of that thing… Audience member Because at that time in Detroit, Jeff Mills was listening to the Electrifying Mojo, legendary radio DJ, and he was playing Genesis P Orridge from Throbbing Gristle and some of your music and Holger Czukay from Can, and you were interested in that raw sound… Emma Warren There was kind of a reciprocal agreement, because even though those scenes hadn’t connected at that point, at that time people in England were jacking to Chicago house music, as part of England’s own background of black music and they were doing the same thing with European music. Maybe that’s what you’re talking about, about being interested in the other. We had that music in England and they had something of ours and when the two things came together a whole new area of music could explode. Stephen Mallinder But you also have to understand that club cultures, particularly in Britain, are a lot more embedded than they are in America. They’re a lot more circumscribed in America… Like I said. we’d go to clubs in Chicago and it was very specific, the type of people… it wasn’t a broad base, whereas in Britain what you’ve got is an embedded “disc” culture, because jazz, northern soul, funk were really very popular, so it’s just a continuation of that kind of cultural thing. That’s why it works in Britain, because it had a club culture that was quite extensive and had been going on – particularly after the second world war, soul and reggae were really well embedded into British popular culture, and that’s why it worked over there, really. Emma Warren Any other questions? Audience Member I thought it was really interesting, like the progression of using noise and sounds to what you have now. Can you talk about your creative process now? Where you are getting your sounds from? Are you still using abstract kinds of sources? Stephen Mallinder Yeah, I mean to be quite honest, the sources are probably not that different, it’s just the process. The processing is different, really. Audience Member Like really distorting stuff? Stephen Mallinder I find it a lot easier to utilize sounds and chop them up and mash things up in ProTools or Logic, like it was when you were just using tape machines. It allows a more sophisticated process but at the same time the sounds we are using are probably not radically different. Just on the first Ku-Lings album we used a tap-dancing solo from a 1930s jazz film and sort of environmental noises. And that’s probably what we would have done in the ’70s and ’80s. But the thing is you can get it to sync up, which probably is the only difference. The technology that we now have really has an impact on the way we use those sounds. That’s the only difference, really. Emma Warren Anything else? Audience Member Hi, you were saying earlier that you were doing things in your career that people weren’t doing at the time and you weren’t really accepted. How do you deal with those kind of insecurities at your work and things like that. How did you deal with it? Stephen Mallinder We didn’t really have insecurities, I think. Maybe if you’re a solo artist it’s probably a little bit harder, but when you’re a band you kind of have that collective consensus that you believe in what you do, so you get that mutual support. So it didn’t really worry us. And also in some ways any reaction was a good reaction. We didn’t see the negative in anything, you know? We were trying to be transgressive in those early periods, therefore a reaction was good. No reaction would have meant we hadn’t actually achieved anything. So we didn’t mind if people sort of responded to what they saw in a negative way, because we took heart in that anyway. It works, because we were trying really to affect people and make some kind of impact there. Whatever way we saw it, it was working. And when it’s two or three of you in the group, you know, you’re equal and you’re able to go that’s fine, that’s cool. We think it’s OK, and as long as we think it’s OK, then that’s cool. Emma Warren: Did I see someone else? Any other questions or are we done? Participant: Here is one more. You mentioned a question, how do you see your contribution to the world scene or whatever? So, my personal opinion would be whatever you have contributed to the musical scene, you have the most stylish covers. I mean, many designers and fashion people have used it so many times, so at least in this area you contributed a lot. Stephen Mallinder Obviously packaging, that’s the thing. I mean, we did music and, like I said, in the early stages we also used to make our own films. We made Super 8 stuff, we did all that. We were very involved with that side, because we felt that the visual representation was just as important or it was important to support the sounds that we were doing. So we took a lot of consideration in what we were doing. And it was lucky because again, I mean probably around the time, probably really early ’80s, a guy came to one of our gigs, he was student at the London School of Printing and he said: “I love the music, can I design the sleeve for you?” And we went, “Will you do it for free?” And he went, “Yeah, alright.” And that was Neville Brody, who designed The Face. So, we became good friends. We were lucky that we had those things. You know, I guess it was just the right moment. You know, music is chance and causality. A lot of things kind of intend to happen. Some things are pure accident. And meeting Neville at the gig was one of those things. Again, Ian Anderson from Designers Republic, they hadn’t done anything, you know? When we knew him he was in a band and he just said: “Can we do the sleeve?” And they are just mates from Sheffield. It’s Designers Republic that do all Warp and everything. So, we were lucky because we actually didn’t have to go, “Can you design stuff for us?” We just had people who were really cool and we were really lucky to get the benefit, you know? To benefit from their kind of contribution. So yeah, we were lucky like that. Emma Warren So, that’s kind of point two of the master class: maximize your hook-ups. Stephen Mallinder Yeah, be very careful though, because it doesn’t always work. Sometimes somethings there is a chance you... I mean, Pete Saville when we did one of our first Factory Records, wanted to design our sleeve and we said “No,” we didn’t really like his stuff. But we went like, “Actually, Mal’s doing that,” and I did the next sleeve. So, how crap is that? I turned down Pete Saville, and did it myself with a bit of Letraset. That was pretty shit, wasn’t it? But I’m sure, you know, Pete is a great guy. You know these things happen. When we Doublevision, our label in England, Sonic Youth wanted to sign to the label and we went, “Nah, I don’t think so.” [Laughs] You know, that’s really shit, we should’ve probably done that, shouldn’t we? [Laughs]. Emma Warren I suppose these things happen, don’t they? It’s good chance things happen but there’s bad chance too. Stephen Mallinder You do things that are comfortable for you and feel right for you. So that’s the way it works. You should know yourself better than anyone. So you just do that. Emma Warren OK, so if there are any more questions? OK? Audience Member Your early stuff particularly had a pretty big influence on the California hardcore scene. Did you ever get into those records? Stephen Mallinder Not particularly, no. Just like I said, it wasn’t something that we really considered, no. It was just one of those things... You mean what? The kind of heavy stuff that came out there? Audience Member Yeah. Black Flag… Stephen Mallinder No, not really. I mean, some of the Canadian bands like Skinny Puppy and all those things we were influenced, but strangely enough, we found that a little bit, too, what people called, industrial. I suppose, at that time we were more into the stuff like Grandmaster Flash and all that stuff and they were going that way. So we probably wouldn’t have been good, we never had those rock influences despite playing “Nag Nag Nag.” We didn’t really have rock influences. It was one thing we weren’t into, you know? It was the thing that didn’t work for us. For me, the ultimate rock band is Public Image, you know, and they were about the destruction of that rock kind of iconography. So, no I didn’t... You know, I respect them and it’s really cool and that’s great and at one point we were going to do some stuff with Sub Pop and I respect all that, but it wasn’t really us. Emma Warren OK, I think that’s it. So Stephen Mallinder, we would like to say thank you very much.