On what it means to put Africa into something. I guess it means a deeper history, one that has nothing to do with maps or borders. To me it suggests a place where our higher instincts exist, communicate, feel. Any African culture I’ve ever been exposed to has always left me with a strong sense of its self, in the way that my perception of Canadians is exactly opposite. Don’t get me wrong: I love Canada and its population but we tend to defer to whatever the strongest influence in the room is, somehow subjugating ourselves to others. I love the pride and confidence in African cultures that revels in its power and ancient traditions but gladly participates in the present. They make no bones about who or what they are and urge you to either do the same for yourself or to join in their celebration.
I think putting more Africa into something suggests connecting with the root of the matter, finding the deeper mystical history of things, the soul connection (to use a hackneyed expression). Because we’ve learned over the years that the history of African cultures is long and deep, I feel the notion of something having ‘more Africa in it’ acts as a beautiful metaphor for any deeper, indescribable connection to another place, person, feeling, etc.
On working in dub. Dub is something I’ve just been unwittingly drawn to over the last 10-15 years. I love the cinematic, organic and slightly unhinged qualities of dub mixology. I love the notion of dub being borne out of the need for instrumental mixes to enable early DJs or sound systems the opportunity to stretch out a song to keep the ecstatic dancers on the floor. It feels a bit like impressionistic painting to me because it’s so much about space and depth, intensity and release in terms of how the elements are fused and mutated. Very much like if you looked at an early 20th century painter, where the figures or subjects are sometimes dramatically or subtly implied. You’re left to wonder just what the heck that is.
Long delays, exaggerated reverbs, cut and paste editing effects are all hallmarks of dub. Spartan arrangements where you only hear one or two instruments is also a classic dub approach. To me the definition of dub is constantly changing, in effect being consistent with the unpredictable nature of the production approach itself. I’ve heard dub ideas in the most unlikely musical settings. I’m also starting to see a lot of dub sensibilities in the way people are working with video. Losing this restrictive sense of context and appropriateness to allow for the truly synergistic to happen. I like that dub is a little wild in that the tape echoes that are a mainstay in any dub producer’s stable are funky machines, as in they don’t always work right. Basically it’s a small tape machine that records whatever you put thru it and then reproduces based on whatever parameters of feedback or repetition you apply to it. But like anything organic, it does things you couldn’t tell it to do, which is half the black magic of dub. I remember doing a number of mixes of each track on the album and having a hell of a time deciding which mixes to go with for the final sequence because I’d done some killer treatments with the tape delay (a.k.a., eccodek -- echo deck, get it?) on everyone that I didn’t wanna pass up on. In the end, decisions were made but there was no way I could repeat what I’d done on each mix. That’s cool.
On the influence of Brian Eno. Eno exists in the rarified space where the art and philosophy seem to be almost inseparable. I’ve always appreciated the way he turns the conventional on its head and forces the viewer, listener, observer to think in ways they wouldn’t normally. He comes from a place of familiar but takes you to the unfamiliar just because he’s so bored and uninterested in covering the territory the rest of the world already has. I suppose his unconventional artistic sensibilities spoke to me very early on because my life seemed to be guided by a desire to take things in odd directions, whether musically, ecologically, spiritually, what have you. Watching Eno rise to such prominence as a producer made me feel like it was ok to be different in the sounds I chose to work with, the musical structures I employ and odd choices of harmony. He is famous for something called ‘oblique strategies’ which I find a strangely fascinating, almost contradictory concept: the notion that something that is oblique is still founded in intention or a ‘strategy.’ I think when I first heard of this concept I thought well yeah, my whole life seems to be an oblique strategy, so being the weird kid in the class actually has value and a place in the general dynamic of life as well as art.
Very early on I read that when Eno would buy a new audio toy (synthesizer, reverb unit etc), he’d all but toss out the manual for the device, just so he’d be naively exposed to the machine’s potential and not bogged down in what it’s supposed to do. In other words, he wanted nothing to do with what the masses perceived to be the useful qualities of said piece of gear. He was much more interested in what the thing would do by sheer chance or unpredictability. That was very appealing to me as a young creative mind. I most certainly had one foot in the camp of education and preparation for a life in music but also one foot in the camp of: let’s just see what happens when we apply this set of circumstances to the situation.
I find his comments and views on the role of the artist in our society quite refreshing and liberating. His notion that the cultural experience is something that can’t be reproduced is absolutely spot on. He suggests (and I agree) that because our world is constantly changing, whether geographically, soulfully, chemically, that it is impossible to experience the same piece of music, art, video with each subsequent exposure. In other words, a certain piece of music will resonate radically different each time because we are in different moods, there is more distraction, the room is colder than the last time, etc. etc.
What a relief to an artist who is ultimately always at the mercy of their ego, to know that if someone doesn’t dig their art today that the conditions coming to bear tomorrow might make for a radically different reaction by the same observer. Fascinating!
On an even more basic level, when I first heard his ambient work and the still highly regarded collaboration with David Byrne (My Life in the Bush of Ghosts) I realised I’d found a musical still point in my life to always force me to raise my game. Eno’s sense of texture and space has had a huge impact on the textural approach to the eccodek sound.
On reading the Wired magazine interview with Brian Eno in 1995. I thought that’s the coolest thing I’d read in a long time. I was really just starting to dabble in computers from a creative perspective at the time of reading and was constantly frustrated by the technology. I realise their immense contribution to my and other’s lives but, being a schooled musician I somehow felt that using a computer was cheating creatively speaking. Knowing Eno was in a way frustrated by their potential or lack thereof made me think, “Well, right… if he’s cheesed off about them and he’s world renowned producer Brian Eno then it’s ok for me to kind of hate the darn things too.” Right when I read his comment about Africa, I decided I had to hold onto the magazine because I knew there was wisdom in his words that would serve me well past the newsstand date.
On the reason for creating this album. When I began to work with vocal performances that Rwandan singer Ignace had let me use, I was reacquainted with that indescribable “wow” feeling I had when we were working on his solo album a year before. I remembered how the grooves and the buoyant, almost playful juju rhythms of the guitar just immediately snapped my head and hips around. You see, having just completed a very draining, cathartic solo record documenting turmoil in my life I was jonesing for something to bring me back into my body and away from my head. But also something to remind me of the joy, passion and power in life, qualities I’ve always felt in the midst of African cultures. In a kind of idiot savant fashion, I clearly didn’t want to be encumbered by the meaning of lyrics as well - which stands in stark contrast to how I approach my own lyric writing, a detailed process. I had done so much processing and letting go of my old life that somehow not having to be guided by the meaning of the words but rather the sound and their melodic framework, was so perfect. It allowed me to take the music anywhere I wanted and, as was being reflected in my personal life, feel free and powerful again.
In addition, the idea was also not to linger on the songs unnecessarily long. I wanted to be very immediate and present with the album so consequently it was one of the quickest records I’ve ever made. It was always a matter of asking “are the vocals becoming secondary to the music around them?” and if so, they must be made more of a priority.
I suppose the big question is why a dub based, global groove project steeped in African influences? The answer to that I think lies somewhat in the hands of the cosmos. I knew I needed to work on something strongly anchored in groove, my interest in world music was really peaking at that point and I also wanted to be the ‘man behind the curtain’ on this project. I wanted to basically create and control the thing but wanted to be as invisible in the process as I could and just let the beautiful rhythms and stirring vocals seduce the listener and take them wherever they decided. No front man singer or prima donna lead guitarist. This was about creating a little musical diasporic universe and paying it much respect along the way. The good news is that Samba who is the other featured vocalist and still lives in Mali, said the album was overwhelmingly received in his music community. What a validation for me that I did the right thing and respected the culture.
On eccodek as band. I have a wicked band consisting of bass, drums, congas, alto sax, electronics, and keyboards. These guys are all locally based and I’d worked with almost all of them before forming the live component. I basically approached people that I liked first and whose musicianship was of great calibre. Quite simply, it came down to asking people to develop my vision as it had unfolded on the record. That’s not an easy task when only one of them had really played this kind of music before. But the sheer willingness to immerse themselves in this soulful and to a large extent, improvisational musical mindset was very gutsy and committed. I think we all began to realise how freeing this experience and project could be for all our abilities. The other thing that is unique about this band, and I can only think of people like Dub Syndicate and perhaps a phase of African Headcharge that have done this (bound to be others), is the absence of a live vocalist on stage despite being a very vocal driven band. The geographic impossibility of having either vocalist in the band meant that we just had to weather the potential resistance a live audience might give to a vacant spot in the front man position. We decided early on that this thing was just going to be about immersing yourself in the music, no matter what technology was used to bring to the stage. People would just feel the beautiful vibes coming from the speakers and forget that the vocalist was coming out of a sampler. It seems to be working.
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