Chapter 3: Space EKO
In which I journey across the cosmos to bring you the first of my Dubstack tracks, and a few thoughts about drum machines.
Hello, I can only apologise for the tardiness of chapter 3. It’s been a hectic few weeks with a lot to squeeze in between school runs. I’ve written a new piece for Bandcamp Daily which should be online soon, there’s another remix in the works, Spiky Dread volume 2 is up and running (again!), I’ve been interviewing some colourful characters for my book, and the first of my brand new Dubstack tracks is here (at the bottom of this chapter if you’re a paid up subscriber, aka one of my favourite people on Earth).
On the quiet half of the school run, of late, I’ve been thinking about space. The vast void. The celestial bodies. The pre-prophetic entities of the planes of never. The thisness. Yes, I’ve been watching Sun Ra’s 1984 concert movie Mystery Mr Ra again, and you can too, right here.
I’ve also been thinking about drum machines a lot recently, but not a lot of drum machines, mainly the venerable TR-808.
“An 808 kick drum makes the girlies get dumb” claimed Sir Mix-A-Lot on his 1988 single ‘Posse On Broadway’, and while you might dispute the science behind such claims, there’s no denying the mass appeal of Roland’s TR-808 which first hit the shops in 1980 for the handsome but comparatively affordable price of $1195. That’s roughly a 5th of Prince’s beloved Linn LM1.
The 808 is now probably the world’s most iconic drum machine, famous enough to merit it’s own documentary, though I was surprised to find they omitted the moment of happenstance which effectively made it the sound of electro. You might have to wait for the book for that one, sorry!
“Nobody really had a serious programmable drum machine that you could really step sequence and make your own patterns and shit with until this thing came out” suggests electro scholar Shauny B Fresh in his youtube video TR 808 The Untold Story, which is kind of true, but this brings me to the other drum machine I’ve been thinking about a fair bit recently, the EKO ComputeRhythm.
The ComputeRhythm was the first machine to use 16 step programming, allowing it’s user to punch in their own patterns on six lines of synthetic drum tracks, much like the 808, only this beast had been around for almost a decade before the 808 hit the market. Released in 1972 by Italian electronics company EKO, the ComputeRhythm’s groundbreaking interface was designed by engineers Aldo Paci and Urbano Mancinelli, utilizing punch cards for pre-programmed patterns, and, thanks to designer Giuseppe Censori, looked like it belonged on the starship Enterprise. In fact the ComputeRhythm was something of a movie star itself, having been used as a prop in a string of spaghetti sci-fi films starting with Alfonso Brescia’s 1977 film Anno Zero - Guerra Nello Spazio.
Anno Zero, or War Of The Planets outside of it’s native Italy, was one of a slurry of movies attempting to cash in on the meteoric success of Star Wars. Few were worth watching, but some had their charms. This one, not so much, but it does at least feature a decent fuzzy synth soundtrack by composer Marcello Giombini, which is presumably how EKO’s drum machine wound up in the picture.
Giombini had been experimenting with synthesizers for a few years before this cosmic atrocity. His albums Synthomania and Overground, both released in ‘73, and his 1974 concept album Transvistaexpress (notably predating Trans Europe Express by 3 years) all feature what I can only assume was the ComputeRhythm, due to what sounds like intricately programmed drum patterns, unlike the preset beats you’d hear at the time via machines like Gibson’s Maestro Rhythm Master.
Giombini was one of the lucky few. EKO only produced around 50 to 60 units, so Shauny B Fresh was almost right when he said nobody had a programmable drum machine until the 808. Almost nobody at least, but the tiny ComputeRhythm owners club boasted a few somebodies. Jean Michel-Jarre, Manuel Göttsching, and Chris Franke from Tangerine Dream were all in the club, and you can hear those EKO beats on Jarre’s Équinoxe, and Ashram’s New Age Of Earth. Franke mostly used his to trigger other synths, but he dragged it out for a live rendition of ‘Coldwater Canyon’ in 1977.
Trans-European synth experimentalists are no doubt exactly who you’d expect to find tinkering with this groundbreaking piece of hardware, but way across the ocean, another maverick was introducing the EKO to the world of reggae.
How Lee Perry came into possession of one of these beauties, I can’t tell you, but sometime in the mid ‘70s, a ComputeRhythm made its way from Italy to Jamaica where Scratch set about upsetting a few rhythms while working on material with Bob Marley. Various accounts of Bob’s drum machine recordings describe it as a “primitive rhythm box” which is doing a woeful disservice to Paci and Mancinelli’s innovation. Perhaps they assumed it was a Maestro Rhythm Master, which might be true of ‘So Jah S’eh’ from Natty Dread in ‘74, but you can spot the EKO on ‘Johnny Was’ from Rastaman Vibration in ‘76 thanks to that drum fill in the intro, triggered via its “rolling drum” button; the Gibson doesn’t have that feature. Perry isn’t credited with production on the album, but since a dubbed-out variation on the ‘Johnny Was’ rhythm track appears as the album opener on Revolution Dub from 1975, it’s safe to assume that Scratch had his hand in Marley’s version somewhere, somehow.
It would be nearly a decade before the ComputeRhythm featured prominently on another reggae track, namely, ‘Billy Jean’ the debut single by New York dancehall legend Shinehead.
‘Billy Jean’ is a strange record. Dropping in 1984, the beat seems to predict the Sleng Teng which pushed dancehall in it’s computerised direction the following year, but unlike it’s digital progeny, there’s organic instrumentation snaking around the drum machine. A minimal piano skanks over voluptuous bass which is so deep and subby that you might mistake it for a synth or a sinewave. In fact that’s the late Aston “Family Man” Barrett on bass guitar, and possibly keys too because, it turns out, this was another rhythm emanating from Perry’s Black Ark studio. It’s not clear exactly when they recorded it, but with the presence of the ComputeRhythm, and instrumental assistance from Family Man and his brother Carlton, aka The Wailers’ rhythm section, it’s safe to assume it was laid on tape around the same time as ‘Johnny Was’ and Bob’s posthumously released ‘Rainbow Country’.
The instrumental, known as ‘Chim Cherie’, and based on a 1966 rocksteady obscurity by Bumps Oakley, finally surfaced in 2010 via a collection of tracks lovingly restored from Lee Perry’s murky old dubplates, and released on Pressure Sounds as Sound System Scratch.
It’s journey from the Black Ark in 70s Jamaica to 80s New York is a little foggy, but it seems Scratch’s friend and painter Jah Wise, who decorated the Black Ark exterior, brought it with him when he uprooted to NYC.
In February ‘83 at a soundclash in an echoey sports hall in East Orange, NJ, Shinehead was watching local sound Papa Moke HiFi slaying African Love from South Bronx. He was out in the foyer when he heard African Love break out “this strange rhythm, like I felt someone tasered me”. A woozy dubplate of Perry’s ‘Chim Cherie’ was working its magic on the crowd, and as the shock subsided, Shinehead took to the mic, not with a lyric but instead whistling the melody from Morricone’s theme from The Good The Bad & The Ugly. African Love corked the dance, and the rest is history.
Soon Shinehead was in the studio cutting two versions on Perry’s rhythm. The first, a cover of Junior’s 1981 hit ‘Mama Used To Say’ which added horns to the mix, was an inspired move and a dancehall smash, but it was ‘Billy Jean’ on the flip which became Shinehead’s calling card. It rarely leaves my record box, testament to which, here I am below dubbing up those EKO snares on stage at Brixton Academy back in 2006.
Which finally brings me to the first of my promised Dubstack tracks. ‘An EKO In Space’ is a tribute to both Shinehead and Scratch’s tracks, and those spacious synth experimentalists mentioned above, not to mention the ComputeRhythm itself. I very rarely sample, but it seemed wrong to try and recreate the sound on an inferior machine, or with a sample pack, when half of ‘Billy Jean’s charm is it’s crunchy old sound, and the crackles from my well-used copy of Rough & Rugged somehow add to it. The rest of it is me messing around with various old synths on a journey beyond the stratosphere. Here’s a preview…
If you haven’t yet signed up for the full Dubstack subscription then what are you waiting for? Otherwise, the link is below, and I hope you enjoy it. Happy cosmic travels!
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