Chapter 50: No Dub Required
In which I invite you to take home my Phil Collins dub after a year in the wilderness.
Around this time last year I was in the studio at Soho Radio, a few episodes into my monthly show, and I’d invited my old mate Richard Archer in for a chat. Aside celebrating 20 years of Hard-Fi’s debut album, we went down a few unexpected rabbit holes of synth pop, free jazz, cumbia and Richard’s lesser mentioned b-movie soundtrack career in the years before the band took off.
It also marked exactly 40 years since the release of ‘Take Me Home’ by Phil Collins, an artist who, despite decades of unwavering success, still seems to polarise audiences, with many posturing trendies turning their noses up, and plenty regurgitating the myth that Collins once dumped his wife via fax. For me, however, Phil’s music holds a special place, and has done so since my brother brought home a 7” of ‘Take Me Home’ in the summer of 1985, and I was instantly hooked by the sound of stuttering mechanical hi-hats and synths bubbling away in the background.
In fact Collins produced the bare bones of his No Jacket Required album surrounded by state of the art analogue gear in his home studio on the outskirts of Guildford. Synth enthusiasts can now look back in awe at the banks of Rolands, Korgs Oberheims and Sequential Circuits, while there’s some gratuitous tank top material for the knitwear lovers amongst you too.
At the heart of the above photo is a Roland TR-909, the favoured drum machine of Detroit techno’s pioneers, but while the gargantuan pop hits which percolated from Phil’s studio in deepest Surrey might seem like a far cry from the Afro-futurist beatscapes of Motor City, there’s a subtle funk to a fair few tracks.
As a kid immersed in the glacial world of electro, it mattered little that ‘Take Me Home’ was produced in the “there be dragons” lands beyond the M25, in fact I had no idea where most of this music came from, and I love it more knowing that Phil was programming that infectious half-time beat on his 909 in a room not far from where we’d sometimes take a shopping sojourn, including a wander round Guildford’s record shops, and a stop off for tea in the cafe at Debenhams where I’d leaf through my vinyl purchases (a couple of years later you might’ve spotted me admiring the copy of BDP’s ‘The Bridge Is Over’ I’d just picked up, while enjoying a nice biccy with my mum, and it surely doesn’t get more hip hop than that).
So, for it’s 40th anniversary, I took a sonic razor to the track, warping the synths through various filters and echo units, and smothering Phil’s 909 in reverb. I previewed a bit of it on my radio show with Richard last year, but it’s been sat festering in my hard drive ever since. I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not, or why I’d made it, or who might actually want to hear ‘Take Me Home’ in dub, but it turns out a few good folks are interested, so you can preview it in the video clip below, and my esteemed full subscribers (go on, you know you want to) can grab it on MP3 or WAV at the bottom after the slightly remixed artwork which now features a haphazardly collaged shot of Phil and I hanging out on his tourbus.
Before I go, I’d just like to give a nod to my fellow Phil Collins lover, Adam Scrimshire whose latest album Bring Our Light To Every Corner hit the shops a few weeks back, featuring 6 tracks of gorgeous jazz and folk-infused beats. Adam and I once spent a lovely evening chatting away about Phil while enjoying gelatos on the beach in Croatia where we’d both been booked to play Soundwave festival back in 2010.
Cherished memories aside, I can’t leave you without mentioning my latest piece for The Quietus, a long essay which looks at the summer of discontent in the UK back in 1981, and the tracks which soundtracked it. One you all know, but the story of the other song might surprise a few of you.
Now, get subscribing if you haven’t already, head to the bottom to find my Phil Collins dub, and take it home.
