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Return to 769: sequential ignition, firing up a thrusting power source. Lean back and take control. The glide is smooth and liquid.The opening track on their "Just another number" album (Reinforced Records), "Return to 769," is, as the description from the sleeve (above) says, just the precursor, the overture to a flight of fancy with G-Force (Mark) and Seiji (Paul) in the pilots' seats. They number amongst their influences Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder and DJ Premier but the similarities between the duo's widescreen drum'n'bass and those three innovators lie not in the surface sound but in the timeless futurism, the groove and the crafted dynamics of their tracks. "Just another number," binds dark funk and some exceptionally jazzy moments to sleek, streamlined breakbeats and atmospheric electronics. The modest title belies the mesmerising stretch of languid, flowing jazz that ripples and bends in graceful ways, obeying only the whim and the influence of the occasional intruding sample or instrumental snatch. The Wire described "Just another number" as "a 52 minute Gene Krupa drum solo...the drums, threatening to go out of time, ...make this an interesting excursion through the remnants of drum'n'bass" which hits the nail on the head as far as the beats go, but fails to recognise the inherent beauty of the contexts into which they're placed.
There's little sonic likeness, but I've been listening to it a lot in tandem with the Bablicon album which also takes jazz as a base but, instead of stripping it down and reducing everything to a beat, spurts off in tentacular freneticism. "Just another number" is more relaxing, settling into its muse and looking for the low-down vibe. Even when nothing much appears to be happening, there's always the minimal variations to focus on. The similarity between this album and "In a different city" is that intangible quality: the feel, the knowledge transmitted from the players to the listeners through the grooves, knowledge that says these people care, and that none of these 9 tracks are just another number.
When I call, Paul has gone home after spending all night in the studio so only Mark is available to chat about what they were doing before their debut release ("Nothern exposure") in 1996 and the following series of singles which lead up to the album.
Paul was making house music before you got together, what were
you doing?
I was doing early hardcore, rave sort of stuff. We were both DJs and
we were put together by a mutual friend who knew Paul was producing
house and had started doing a few drum'n'bass bits. I thought they
were quite good so we just hooked up and ended up doing an ep for
Reinforced.
Wasn't it a change in direction for a house DJ to start doing
drum'n'bass?
Yeah! I'm not even sure why he decided to do that. I was always making
drum'n'bass, that's what I was into...but me and Paul getting together
worked quite well cos we're from two different backgrounds.
Something clicked between you straight away...
...yeah, Paul was at university up in Scotland and I went up there for
a week. I took my sampler and we sat down in this little 6x8 room,
blasting it and keeping all the people in the halls of residence
awake. Straight away there was a little spark and we were just
bouncing ideas off each other.The first two pieces we did together
were the first release.
Bad Dreams: Skimming the surface at the speed of light, the concrete softens to clay. Yet men still refuse the evidence and prefer alleyways to open skies and prevent the descent.Were you G-Force before that?
How about jazz?
Not really when I was younger. More when I was getting older, actually
even more through Seiji 'cos he's more into the jazz thing and plays
me records and bits and pieces, but my main thing is hip hop and
electro.
Circles and Lines: Created while you were sleeping, the co-ordinates of metamorphosis chart your lucidity, tempting you with distraction, destruction or development.When did you start getting into drum'n'bass then?
There's a lot of stuff I'd call jazz on the album, where do
you see the link between drum'n'bass, breakbeats and
jazz?
Well, that's pretty hard to say. Drum'n'bass doesn't come from jazz,
it just comes from breakbeats and they come from all over the
place. I've had some mad 70's rock thing with some wicked breaks in
it, and there's a break on that Elvis track and, you know what I mean,
it just comes from wherever the drum beats come from really. We don't
sit down and think we're going to write a jazzy drum'n'bass tune or
we're gonna do this or we're gonna do that, it's just whatever comes
out when we're writing the tracks.
How do you work? Do you swap tapes or sequencer discs or
jam?
We normally write together. Paul's a member of a collective called
Bugs in The Attic and they've got a studio complex in North Acton and
we're based in there at the moment. It's just a case of whatever:
someone might come up with a beat or a musical idea and we just work
off that. Most tracks we do are just a jam.
Me and Paul are most happy when we're working together.It's easier to work with someone than working by yourself. You can be writing a track by yourself, you sit there all day and all night doing it and it comes to the morning and you just think: that's rubbish. But if there's someone there sitting with you, then if it's not working out then someone'll say so and you'll go onto the next thing. Normally, that's how you work off each other, you've always got someone to give you a critical point of view straight away.
Klipa: Hand in hand through the vortex and onto the sparkling path, going low with the topography, winding a familiar and well loved route.Do you make your records to be played out?
Do you play them out yourself?
I haven't DJ-ed for a while. The last proper thing we done was when we
went to Japan with Reinforced. That's something we've got to get back
on really. That was the whole reason we started making music. When
you're DJ-ing you listen to so much music and you think "I could do
that" so it's come full circle. It's about time we started DJ-ing
again and playing what we think is good music to people.
What records are you listening to at the moment?
Some of my friends have just done an album as Neon Phusion that's
coming out on Laws of Motion and that's wicked. I got Dego's Tek 9
thing recently, been checking that out...there's a new vocal thing
that Karen Wheeler's done...
...You don't use vocals much yourselves...
...no, we've just been getting into vocal production ourselves. It's a
lot more work trying to write a decent vocal production. We have been
doing some vocal stuff for a while. Seiji does a lot more with his
house stuff but there's going to be more from us as well. It's a
natural progression really, you can take an instrumental so far...but
yeah, it's getting the vocals right. There's a vocal track on the
album called "Clear vision" and that came out really well.
Clear Vision: Lowriders trawling horizons in search of the pure texture and the notes of a New Dawn.It's not verse-chorus-verse and the vocal's used more like an instrument. It's a weird arrangement and that's the way we'll go when we write more.
I wanted to ask you about writing, the drums on the album
sound very live...
...yeah, there's some old breaks in there and we had a couple of
session players in to play some drums but there are some tracks, I
mean "Circles and lines" has got live drums but they're all re-edited
anyway. Normally with the breaks, if we've got a groove that we like
we just get the guys to play along to it and then we just re-sample it
and chop it up and that's what we did with the drums.
Is "Just another number" a concept album? I'm thinking of the
little descriptions of each track on the sleeve. Did you make them up
and then write the music?
No. What it was, the guy who did the cover, M.A.D., that's just what
he wrote down to describe the tracks. We're quite into it, thought it
kind of summed it up quite well.
Just Another Number: Flora surviving In digital extremities. Fauna unfolding a thousand petals with the ease of a Sunrise.So has the title got anything to do with the descriptions?
The way I saw it, it was saying that none of the tracks on the
record are filler. Like, none of these is just another number, not
like some records that have 20 tracks of which 5 are worth anything
and the rest are filler.
I've never really thought about it, but that's a good one. Yeah. I can
use that one next time, I like that.
I read a quote from Paul ("The key to keep the music moving
forward is to forget thinking about it intellectually and for artists
to get back to making music that they feel") which really summed up
the album for me. You can really tell that the people who made this
record care
We weren't trying to be flash, it's just music that we felt, music
that we're into. Basically we're just trying to please ourselves, say
"yeah, we're proud of that," you know what I mean? Some of the tracks
were written 2 years ago, 3 years ago and with a lot of dance music
you listen to something written 3 years ago and...
...you think it sounds like it was written 3 years
ago...
...yeah, but listen to something on the album and it still sounds
fresh now. That's the objective really, just to make good music.
Vigorous Training: The War is waged by the Peacemaker, targets locked on and guided by Sensitivities. Explosions are heartbeats, the aftermath an unrealised memory of Unity.How was the album received?
How true... Next for G-Force and Seiji is another album which should be out in Summer next year and a co-op compilation album which returns money to the artists rather than a record label. They also record together (again for Reinforced) as Procedjure 769 and have provided music for a series of Japanese Manga cartoons. Paul records under a variety of aliases producing house and garage, but Mark can't remember what they are. Reinforced Records: www.reinforcedrecords.co.uk.
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