|
Pop: Hold Out Your Hands, And the Sky's the Limit Sushil K Dade Is A Pioneer of Anglo-Asian Electronica. But Now, He Tells Andy Gill, He's Making Music with A Human Face
By: Andy Gill - The Independent - London
January 26th 2001 6:06am
About 16 months ago, I was interviewing Cornershop's Ben Ayres and
Tjinder Singh shortly after the Mercury Prize nominations. For the
second year running, there were two Asian acts on the shortlist,
Black Star Liner and the eventual winner, Talvin Singh, echoing the
previous year's pioneering inclusion of Cornershop and Asian Dub
Foundation. Like ADF, Ben and Tjinder felt there was something
patronising about the situation, that the nominations devalued their
own and ADF's hard-won achievements. "There's the question of whether
every year they have to find two acts fronted by Asians," mused Ben,
adding, "Anyway, I think if they were looking for an Asian artist to
nominate, they should have nominated Sushil K Dade." He has a point. Sushil K Dade is the true pioneer of Anglo-Asian
pop, the first of his kind to make real inroads into the notoriously
passive- racist territory of British indie music. Before Cornershop
and Apache Indian, before Bally Sagoo and FunDaMental, Sushil K Dade
was appearing on Top of the Pops, playing bass with The Soup Dragons
as their 1990 indie/dance crossover single "I'm Free" climbed into
the Top 5. Dade had been with the group since their inception in 1985
and would remain with them until their split in 1992, after one
gruelling US tour too many. "There's only so much you can get from doing the same set every
night for 10 weeks, even if you juggle the set around," he explains,
his mild Glasgow brogue battling gently with his baby's squeals on
the telephone line. "It's not conducive to the most inventive of
performances - you switch on autopilot and slip into repetition.
Eventually, I wanted to get involved in something a bit more
challenging, music that questioned or redefined things more." For a while, those desires were satisfied by playing with BMX
Bandits, whose laid-back approach gave him room to experiment by
plugging his bass into effects boxes. At the same time, he was
working on his own tapes, intrigued by the new sampling technology
that was transforming pop music. A series of singles credited to
Future Pilot AKA started to appear on tiny indie labels, followed in
1998 by a collaboration with the Scots jazz-man Bill Wells (The Bill
Wells Octet Vs Future Pilot AKA) and a year later by Future Pilot AKA
Vs a Galaxy of Sound, a double album of collaborations with the likes
of Cornershop, Suicide's frontman, Alan Vega, the Scots indie
pioneers The Pastels and the US rock legend Kim Fowley. Acclaimed for the breadth and subtlety of its collaborations,
Galaxy of Sound won Sushil a reputation as an innovative soundscaper
refreshingly free of the breakbeat allegiance anchoring most sample-
driven music. Most artists establishing themselves in a different
genre would reinforce their reputation with at least one more album
of similar cast, but the creatively restless Dade has metamorphosed
yet further on the latest Future Pilot AKA release, Tiny Waves,
Mighty Sea. It reflects his Scots/Indian roots through a series of
densely layered chants and instrumentals, including the traditional
Indian songs "Darshan", "Shree Ram, Jai Ram" and "Om Namah Shivaya". Recorded over three days, the album represents a deliberate
attempt to get away from the solo studio exercises of Galaxy of Sound
by developing a more community-based method of making music. Its vast
cast of musicians is drawn from the Scottish music scene (including
members of Teenage Fanclub, The Delgados, The Pastels, V-Twin, BMX
Bandits, The Vaselines and Belle & Sebastian) and also features a
psychology lecturer, a six-year-old girl, a 96-year-old woman Dade
met through his work with Alzheimer's Scotland, and even two or three
pupils of his driving school. "For this new LP, I was keen to get away from using too much
machinery, to come face to face with human beings instead - being in
a room with people, and seeing how the chemistry developed."
Invitations were sent out to a host of friends to drop into the
studio at any time during the recordings, whereupon Dade would allot
them not just their parts but their instruments, too. "It was a case of making use of available resources," he explains.
"If two bassists turned up, one would be asked to play the keyboard,
even if they'd never done it before. For example, Teenage Fanclub's
guitarist Norman Blake plays drums on half of the LP, and Alun
Woodward from The Delgados plays hammer dulcimer on `Radhika'." Despite the different working methods, Dade believes there's not
that much distance between the loops of Galaxy of Sound and the
drones of Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea. "If anything, it's acknowledging
the history and tradition of loop music even more," he explains,
"going back to the birth of the loop, which would have been in caves
or on top of mountains, or in meditation prayer-halls: the mantra `Om
Namah Shivaya', for instance, is in effect a loop. I wanted to show
that these chants could be performed on electric guitars and still
have that grace and dignity. It was just my love of those simple
pieces of music, and an acknowledgement that they were basically
cyclical pieces like my earlier work." The end result is a lovely, soothing album of unhurried grace and
delicate harmonies, which celebrates both Dade's Indian heritage and
the diversity of the Glasgow music scene. It doesn't fit into any
neat pigeonholes, but that's no problem for its architect. "I don't want to be playing for just a specific market; that's
never interested me," Dade says. "If my record gets played in airport
lounges, on hospital radio, whatever, that gives me a buzz - music
can reach crazy places these days." So, too, can Sushil himself,
thanks to a clause in his contract obligating the record label to pay
for flying lessons. Future Pilot, coming soon to a sky near you. `Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea' is out next Monday on Geographic Records
(C) 2001 The Independent - London. via Bell&Howell Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
|
