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The Homosexuals - Latest News!
SXSW review from The Washington Post
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:36:00 -0700SXSW: The Homosexuals Provide the Festival Highlight AUSTIN - I just had the closest thing to a religious experience since my bar mitzvah. The Homosexuals played the most dynamic, explosive set I’ve seen in a couple years. For the half hour immediately following their set at Spiro’s all I could think to myself was, "Holy (expletive), I cannot believe I just saw that!" Before you think this is some kind of joke, it’s not. The Homosexuals are a real band, albeit one without a very Google-friendly name. But that wasn’t really a concern when the trio formed in the U.K. in the 1970s. Over the course of a couple years the band released a handful of spiky, DIY, post-punk singles that were eventually collected onto something called "The Homosexuals Record." That record is one of the greatest records ever. No doubt, no debate, 100% great. Free-form radio station WFMU, which sponsored this showcase, put it best when describing the band on its consistently awesome blog: "Crammed with more ideas in a song than most bands deliver in a discography, the Homosexuals were the collision point of urgent punk attack, sideways pop hooks, dub dementia and literally anything else that might exist in a British kitchen at the time." The songs zigged and zagged, abruptly shifted tempos and employed "random snippets of sound" while always maintaining a pop base. The band imploded without making any real impact except on a handful of record collectors and the album (and its eventual re-release on CD) became one of those rare lost classics that was more classic than lost. Principal songwriter Bruno Wizard has been back on the radar recently, playing a handful of one-off shows in New York and dabbling in electronic-based new music. My expectations were low going in, but there was absolutely no chance I was going to miss the Homosexuals. Bruno was backed by a four-piece band from New York, Apache Beat, and older frontmen looking to recreate glories should use his approach. Find some young superfans who can probably play the songs better than the original members ever could and let their youthful energy be a driving force. It didn’t take long to realize this was going to work out beautifully. They launched into "Hearts in Exile," a slow-building, dubbed-out gem from "The Homosexuals Record," and it sounded perfect. The band was locked in, the 57-year-old Wizard had the energy and voice of a man half his age and, simply put, it just killed. Wizard, wearing a Batboy tank-top and looking like a skinnier, gaunter version of Jeremy Irons, babbled semi-coherently between songs but was all business when performing. He sashayed across the stage, throwing his arms out for emphasis during certain lines. As for the set list, it was "hit" after "hit" - "Soft South Africans," then "Neutron Lover," then "Walk Before Imitate," then "False Sentiments." These titles probably mean nothing to you but they are all 5-stars in my iTunes, songs I never dreamed of hearing played live, let alone with all the vitality of the original recordings. Not enough can be said of the job Apache Beat did. The band hit every cue, not missing a single note. They let Bruno (deservedly) have the spotlight but still made it feel like we were watching a band, not just a dude and some hired hands. I rarely bop around at shows - after all, I am white - and I especially avoid it when I’m ostensibly working. But there was no containing myself on this night. Jumping, fist-pumping, singing along, "Woo!"-ing. I broke out the entire arsenal for this occasion. When the band wrapped up its half-hour set with a jarring version of "You’re Not Moving the Way You’re Supposed To," I just stood there in awe. I went up to some random person who I noticed was also jumping around for most of the set and said, "Oh my god!" I just needed to share this moment with someone who was feeling the same thing. We exchanged a few gleeful "Oh my gods!" and "Did we really just see thats?!" before going our separate ways. I stayed at the venue for another four hours, partly because WFMU put together a killer lineup (including underground heroes Half Japanese) but also because I just felt the need to stay in the space where I’djust witnessed that performance. It was that great. By David Malitz | March 15, 2008; 9:38 AM ET SXSW
Previous: SXSW: Friday Haiku-Reviews | Next: SXSW: Wrap Up Astral Glamour Pitchfork Media Review
Posted on: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 04:25:00 -0700Homosexuals
Astral Glamour [box set]
[ReR/Morphius Archives; 2004]
Rating: 8.0
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As cultural constructs such as "punk" traverse the dimming corridor of history, they're revised in unfathomable ways. Temporal distance hews away their ambiguities until they fall into orderly, narrative rank and file. In our collective memory of historical events, some players are canonized, others are diminished, and the process that separates them often seems arbitrary. With punk rock, this process of selective forgetting has at least one discernible component-- the most heralded old punk bands are the ones that mainstream rock critics ordained as the movement's standard-bearers. Most of us remember The Sex Pistols, The Clash, X, The Germs, The Ramones, Wire, The Fall, and Black Flag. But how many remember Crime? What about The Adverts? What about The Homosexuals? Perhaps The Homosexuals, who evolved from a band called The Rejects, were never in the right place at the right time. But this seems unlikely, considering that The Rejects were opening The Roxy for The Damned, The Jam and Wire in the late '70s, which is pretty prime in terms of the punk zeitgeist. Perhaps their name scared away cultural dilettantes slumming for a more mannered radical idiom, but this is also improbable: The Sex Pistols didn't seem to have much trouble cementing their legacy. Perhaps The Ramones' tri-chord sing-alongs were just more memorable than The Homosexuals' adventurous, eclectic song structures (and "Gabba gabba hey" does stick in the brain a bit more than "Ivory elbows/ Deny shads edge"). Nevertheless, in our current climate of rampant historical salvaging, it seems likely that every shooting star in the fleeting firestorm that was punk will be plucked from the obscuring swarm and bronzed for posterity. The Homosexuals are the latest to come (back) down the pike, clothed in new fire: reissued, remastered, repackaged, and finally, remembered. The triple-disc Astral Glamour clocks in at a whopping 81 tracks, and documents every salvageable mote of music The Homosexuals committed to tape or vinyl from 1977 to 1984, including multiple versions of many tracks (guitar mixes, vocal mixes, live versions, instrumentals). Most of the first disc's songs appeared on the posthumous 1984 Homosexuals LP and The Homosexuals' CD reissue that was released earlier this year. So it's the second and third discs that will get exhaustive collectors all hot and bothered-- they're brimming with tracks restored from decaying LPs and an ultra-rare tape of which 10 known copies exist, plus demos, singles, unreleased tracks and alternate versions unavailable anywhere else. Handsomely packaged in a gate-fold case with a 32-page booklet of photos, posters, lyrics, and commentary, Astral Glamour might be the collection by which the best punk band that no one heard finally get their due. The Homosexuals epitomize the British post-punk style of the late '70s (why didn't Rough Trade pick this up?), combining the brainy word collages and winding guitars of Scritti Politti with the manic energy and bizarre flourishes of The Pop Group. Even remastered, Astral Glamour raises shitty production to an artform, and the tinny guitars one associates with old punk records achieve effects of depth, texture and distortion that are startling. But what really distinguishes The Homosexuals from their numerous peers is the remarkable diversity of their output, which maintains its vigor and cohesive mien while exploring different methods of construction and tone: ramshackle pop, mangled dub, rock shredding, garage funk, Afrobeat, and gutter psychedelia. "My Night Out" blasts off with chaotic guitars and babbling, affected vocals reminiscent of The Pop Group's "We Are All Prostitutes", before collapsing into a streamlined pop/punk anthem. The title track evokes Entertainment!-era Gang of Four, with its melodic bass licks and trash-funk guitars. "Hearts in Exile" has a squalid grandeur as it moves in and out of the speakers, a ghostly, vanishing version of the Psychedelic Furs' sweeping paranoia. "You're Not Moving the Way You're Supposed To" reworks New Age Steppers-style ragga-punk with plinking harmonics and euphoric rock breakdowns. The twinkling piano and amorphous atmosphere of "Nursery Chymes" predict The Walkmen 25 years before their advent, just as "In Search of the Perfect Baby" seems to auger the disturbed and dilapidated opulence of Frog Eyes. The complete songs are strung together with wispy motes of ephemera, such as the fractured dub of "Symbols I Love" or the electric stutter and flux of "Black Noise", which rolls into the twangy, laddering funk of "Ants on Parade". Taken alone, any song on Astral Glamour is engaging. Taken together, in all their multiplicity and ambition, they cohere into a monstrous and shambling mutant before which one just collapses slack-jawed and cowers. As David Berman put it, "Punk rock died when the first kid said/ 'Punk's not dead.'" Maybe so, but as limb after limb is plucked from the wreckage, it's leaving behind one exquisite corpse. The three-plus hours of material ranging over Astral Glamour unites The Homosexuals' fragmentary oeuvre to reveal them as punk visionaries who were at least as questing, untamed, and ultimately listenable as any of their more renowned contemporaries. This is the sound of history revising itself toward perfection. -Brian Howe, August 18, 2004 The Homosexuals: Astral Glamour Reviews
Posted on: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 04:23:00 -0700The Homosexuals: Astral Glamour Reviews Pitchfork Media Brian Howe writes: "Astral Glamour might be the collection by which the best punk band that no one heard finally get their due...
"Astral Glamour unites The Homosexuals' fragmentary oeuvre to reveal them as punk visionaries who were at least as questing, untamed, and ultimately listenable as any of their more renowned contemporaries. This is the sound of history revising itself toward perfection." Dusted Magazine Alexander Provan : "The sounds on Astral Glamour show an amazing disregard for limitation. Besides producing a prolific amount of music, the band incorporated so many disparate elements in an effort to create their own sound, they collapsed boundaries all together, a figurative black hole absorbing matter, mangling it and regurgitating it anew." The Village Voice Douglas Wolk: "The Homosexuals lived and played in London in the late '70s and early '80s, and the evidence suggests that they were magnificent. So how come nobody's ever heard of them? In part because they'd do anything to avoid the obvious, to the point of perversity...
"Most of these songs are deliberately broken; possibility spills out of their fractures." WFMU "The New Bin" "Simply put, one of the most flawlessly great British punk/post-punk bands. And you've been told that many times by people with lots more collectable records than you or I, but in this case, believe the hype." Hear interviews with Bruno in their MP3/RealAudio audio archives. What We Do Is Secret / MAXIMUMROCKNROLL 257
Henry Yu: "forever our lives will never be the sameA one sitting listen is mind bending. Television Personalities, Desperate Bicycles and Wire are guide posts, but then a left fielder like the nearly 6 minute instrumental "Re Entry" evoke flashes of Discipline era (King) Crimson in the best way...
"Certainly the best reissue of the year, if not the last few." Esculpiendo milagros Norberto: "Ahora que se editan (y reeditan) decenas de discos por semana, afirmaciones del tipo "lo mejor del año" suenan cada vez más tajantes y categóricas. Ni siquiera basta un equipo de gente bien informada para indagar con suerte en la extendida cacofonía de nuestro mundo ancho y ajeno. Sin contar con que este 2004 apenas está promediando su primera mitad...
"The Homosexuals fue el secreto mejor guardado de la escena do it yourself en los agitados tiempos del post-punk británico. No me quiero extender demasiado porque les dedicaré un post más específico en cuanto logre digerir del todo estas 81 gemas de genio en su máximo estado de esplendor." INTERVIEWS FROM ABOVE-MAGAZINE SPRING/SUMMER2007 ISSUE 6
Posted on: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:06:00 -0800NAMBUCCA: As you know Bruno, I have had many lovers over the past four years. I felt that stiffening sensuality when you walked through my front door 18 months ago. Was it love at first sight for you too?
BRUNO: well, I feel as if I knew you before we physically encountered each other. I was meeting your wayward rock spawn wherever I went in London ? scenesters, meansters, lipsters and fingerpopping crackpots. I was seduced by their lyrical wayward bent and felt there was some kind of homecoming involved in finally meeting you.
NAMBUCCA: Was it anything like you were feeling when you first went to New York?
BRUNO: Most definitely, how well you have gotten to know me in such a short time. I first went to New York in 1986, and I felt it was my spiritual home. In the 60s, all my friends went to India to 'find myself man!' Many of them came back with shaved heads chanting various mantras, smelling of patchouli oil and sandalwood incense; but I did not feel there was a real change in their spiritual energy. It seemed more about an outward show, a kind of spiritual materialism. In New York, I felt that I could see every kind of human misbehaviour and folly, and the imminent and long-term consequence of that kind of behaviour. I did not need to sit and meditate about this for forty years in a cave in India, just sit outside a coffee shop in the East Village and watch it unfold. This was a Damascene moment for me. My robot was saved at that point, I realized that between the outer and inner universe was my own perception; and I had to take full responsibility for ALL my actions and thoughts, and apparently, unconnected events that befell me. I also realized I had a duty to transmit the things I had learned, but in a subtle almost imperceptible way.
NAMBUCCA: You are not going to start preaching are you Bruno, because you know I never sleep with preachers. Bearing in mind they say the devil has all the last tunes, how does music allow you to express yourself and 'transmit' as you say, without pontificating and boring people to tears?
BRUNO: Well, music is the only art form that contains the keys to the mysteries of the universe in its form, nature, content, and creation. Without music, there would be no life on this planet. When I was a child, I used to sit up all night listening to the stars singing and watching them dance. At that tender age, about six or seven, I used to think the stars were performing just for me. I also sensed that my real parents were out there and that the stars songs were messages that my parents were sending me to reassure me that one day they would come for me. As the dawn broke, I would close my eyes and see figures carrying lamps, illuminating a path for me to follow into the land of my child like dreams. I had a feeling then of being 'in the world yet not of it' which I reconnected with in a coherent conscious way in the Sinai desert, Egypt in 1981.
NAMBUCCA: Forgive me for asking my love, but what the fuck has this got to do with MUSIC!!
BRUNO: Well my dear, various things were revealed to me at that time that unlocked the doors to the Treasury in my own heart. I met a Poet there, found the key under his tongue, unlocked the door, and was able to decipher ancient texts that would allow me to make music that could take any form, whether rock, raga, new-rave, electrisco, the blues, what ever. It also enabled me to recognize real artists at work, not just career artists at work. In the same way a river will always try and find its way back to the sea, because it is in its nature, then real artists will always strive to connect with that divine source of creativity in their own hearts. This is why I work with artists of many regimens, ages, gender and persuasions. I find a space, put real artists in there, something beautiful and random occurs, and whilst there is nothing new under the sun, at the same time everything changes. Observing and charting these changes will always be as unique a moment as it is possible to witness or experience. These images and impressions captured in song, film, dance, poetry and photographs are all lyrical musical expressions of what drives me, ? fires my imagination ? feeds my soul. Does that answer your question missy?
NAMBUCCA Well, sort of, but is it relevant today?
BRUNO: As much as at anytime. If I sound pretentious, then please spell it correctly on my tombstone, because I want everyone to know ? and don't be surprised by the sounds emanating from my grave!
NAMBUCCA: ? Is that not a trifle morbid?
BRUNO: Au contraire mon frere, (now that IS Pretentious
Editor). By confronting my own physical mortality, I learn how to live
forever. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can merely be
unlocked and hopefully channelled in an appropriate direction.
With every chemical and physical reaction, energy is unlocked or
unleashed in one form or another. Witness the splitting of the atom, the
smallest particle of matter, invisible to the naked eye, and yet when split,
unleashes an energy which can enrich or destroy life itself! I like to
imagine the symphonies that I might hear if I had the ears to hear this
music of the spheres, both inner and outer, the music I might hear if I
could sit on the front of a beam of light. We measure time by the speed of
light, but what about things that travel faster than the speed of light, what
kind of hyper-dimensions do they inhabit, how does sound manifest itself
in those imperceptible places? in answer to your question, no I don't
think it is morbid to imagine sound both in and beyond the grave. I
simply can't conceive of anything else, otherwise there would be no
point in dying surely. At this point Nambucca, I must be on my way, no
more questions, life is passing, let's dance.
BLAGGING SCENESTERS. CAFÉ ESPANA.
BRUNO: Well boys, you know I don't have to ask you too many questions because you talk almost as much as I do, and of course it's all sense. Your story is a modern day tale of Robin Hood meets Andy Warhol. So chat away chaps.
RICK: Basically, we met four years ago and hit it off immediately. We started going to clubs and it was a classic thing of "we could do better than this, we could run this place better." Then we came up with a band idea, then film?
DANIEL: ?first time we met, we had an idea to rob a bank. We downloaded blue prints from the internet? then developed a film idea?we didn't meet that often but was like a ideas factory every time we did?where we're from in East London, it's a bit dingy?everyone's in the rat race, trying to get on?proud of who they are, whether on welfare or not. So we got into this thing of wanting to do something different...to what we were used to. Everyone we knew was either, doing a standard issue job, on probation, in prison? or some nonsense?we were both thinking that we could not face a life of just working nine to five for some faceless organisation just for money. To us it seemed like a living death?life is full of so many rich possibilities and we wanted to capture them now, not tomorrow. So Rick and I then started to go out and about on the club scene a couple of years ago, checking out bands and the odd bit of female company! ?We used to sit on the wall outside Ricks house saying 'wouldn't it be good if we could do this?do that", then we would spend the next two days trying to make it happen or just dreaming about it. Where we come from, kids are breaking car windows, stealing, getting stoned?and it would have been really easy to fall into that. From the age of fifteen, I was determined to stay away from that and make a life for myself.
BRUNO: It's obvious you have individual ideas yet complementary energy and appreciation of each others ideas?a deep friendship that brings it's own reward. At what point did these aspirations and ideas start to mentate?
DANIEL: Once we started going out to clubs, we took every opportunity that presented itself. One night, we were standing outside a club in the pissing rain, waiting to pay big money to see a band that were not really that good. We saw some geezer stroll in with about ten people saying, "we're with the band, we are on the guest list". The light went on in our heads at that point. All we had to do was find a band to be able to say the same thing ourselves and gain entry to Aladdin's cave. One night, not too long after that, we saw a band called The Little'Ans, on a bus, on their way to a club called Trash, which was the hottest indie, electro club in London. We went with them and just waltzed into the club for free?very nice?lets have some more of this?stroll on, stroll on. This was the beginning for us. The blag had started.
BRUNO: Blag is very much an East London gangster word, originally for armed robbery, then latterly for any kind of confidence trick, criminal activity or deceptive act executed with panache and style, hence to blag ones way into a club for example or, daresay, polite society. You have now blagged your way into your first club and are about to become 'faces' on the scene. When did you actually come up with the name Blaggin' Scenesters?
RICK: We were in a club called Koko, and we just walked into the DJ booth and said hi to the DJ. He said 'who are you' and we said 'we are blaggers'. He laughed and said brilliant?gave us his number and invited us to Frog (the spawning ground for Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Larriken Luv, just everybody), the next evening, but most importantly ON THE GUEST LIST. We had just introduced ourselves to Tom The Man, the most influential DJ and event organizer on the rapidly emerging scene. At Frog the next night, we were sitting down thinking "why don't we do our own club"?we had been talking to Peaches (Geldof)?
DANIEL: ?move on, move on, forget about Peaches, don't give her any credit, she's got enough going on. (Raucous laughter.) We came up with the name Blaggin' Scenesters that night at Frog, both for our club and our activities?we had an idea to make up some badges for the club we wanted to do. We thought just make the badges ourselves individually and just give them out to interesting people on the scene. We started to do that and suddenly we were getting noticed on our terms?soon everybody on the scene and the Blaggin' Scenesters had a profile?with that came respect and recognition for our self-promotion. 'The boys with the badges?no badge, no entry.'
BRUNO: The blag had started; you were on the scene getting noticed in the right places almost like 'IT boys' but with your own style and nouse. Teenage dream becomes living performance art?scheme it, mean it, scene it?we ARE the news.
DANIEL: Yeah, right. And now we have our own night, called Badge in central London?from that night April the 1st 2006, we have moved very quickly in establishing a base for ourselves in London. Everyday brings fresh opportunities, we just take it as it comes?a new day?another door opens?we can aim high but we don't know what we are aiming at. Like Oscar Wilde said, 'we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars', but in our case we are in the gutter having fun. (Loud laughter.)
BRUNO: Is that how you met the delectable Kate Moss from Croydon?
DANIEL: I suppose you could say that. We had gone to Ireland for a BabyShambles gig having heard a whisper that Kate might show up. In the afternoon of the gig, we went to their rehearsal?very nice?no sign of Kate?off to the gig?
RICK: ?outside the gig, Daniel is mistaken for the Holloways drummer, Dave (by now a friend of ours through the connection with Tom The Man who was DJ-ing on the tour). Daniel proceeds to sign autographs for all and sundry.
DANIEL: At the gig we were sitting at the side of the stage and suddenly I was aware of a presence?Kate Moss, super model, is sitting next to ME?mmn?now there's no way I'm sitting next to Kate Moss and not chatting to her?nice gel?ten minutes later, nice gel invites me to dance?I'm dancing with Kate Moss on stage at a BabyShambles gig in September 2006 less than five months after first crashing the scene at Koko?blag par excellence.
RICK: Next day, we are with The Holloways (by now our friends and also the support act for the tour)? I pick up a guitar, start playing 'Albion' and Pete Doherty walks in with The Noisettes and starts singing along. Blag complete?
And so ends the first thrilling chapter in the lives of performance artists extraordinaire, The Blaggin' Scenesters?my life is my art, is my business is my life?no one does it better than my boys. You saw it here first. Life is and will remain such a sweet mystery.
JIM WARBOYS.
BRUNO: You wear many hats Jim, DJ, promoter, producer and general man about town. Is it a problem remembering which one you are wearing?
Jim: It's a constant dilemma?I've always been one those multi-tasking people, and for many years I felt inadequate because of it. I felt I never had one thing in particular. Now it's actually in my favour. I realize, in order to survive, the more flexible you are the better your chances?It's also in my nature, I get bored very quickly, I need to be fed quite a lot to keep me stimulated. Now, I'm in a fortunate position of being able to switch my attention from one area to another as boredom sets in?doing All You Can Eat (London's hottest one off party spectacular), with Fay, AKA K-Tron, has been an opportunity to wear all these hats. 2006 was a phenomenal year of activity. I'm just realizing that socially, people who know me see me as someone who talks constantly, put me in a social situation and I'm quite nervous, feeling a bit awkward, and socially inept at times. Yet the moment I have something to promote, I'm in my element chatting to everyone passionately. Not so much in a brash way, it's more about promoting something successful and interesting, that INVOLVES people, as opposed to blatant self-promotion.
BRUNO: You want them to feel your excitement and set up that chain reaction within them, you are not just selling a product.?....
JIM: Yeah, exactly, I promote other peoples products all the time. They tell me something they are passionate about and I tell everyone about it, carrying the idea forward whether practically or simply by encouraging them. I love making the connection, introducing different people to each other?two experiences colliding and colluding.
BRUNO: Do you feel that your own personal identity is emerging along with the events you are promoting and DJ-ing at?
JIM: Yeah, there's definitely something coming out of it that I didn't previously know that much about. I grew up in my families' pub, and saw my mother and father running every aspect of the business beautifully. Now, I'm realizing that growing up like that they had the right balance between, a sense of theatre and a sense of intimacy involved in identifying different characters' specific needs?In the 90s there was a club culture that was a little faceless, the soap opera element of club characters was missing, (for various reasons, not least of which the integral part that drugs played in dance music). It was more about mega-clubs, it lacked the personalities that had previously played a huge role in giving London club land such a highly individual profile since the birth of pop culture in the 60s. The 21st century saw the emergence of micro-clubs with quite a bitchy hostile attitude, which has prevailed these last few years. They know who they are, but these days I have less and less of a need to go to these kind of places?I refuse to subject myself to that kind of disrespect. My idea of running a club is to welcome people and showing them respect. Yes, I challenge people, but through the music, through the art but even within that, I always try to make sure that by the end of the night, they have had fun. Very often they have worked so hard for their money, or have little money, and they have chosen to come to my event and spend their money with me?I always respect that. A lot of this attitude comes from my up bringing and I'm increasingly realizing that, these things I thought I walked away from twenty years ago, are inherent in the way I deal with people, and my promotions.
BRUNO: Tell me more about how All You Can Eat has developed and where it goes from here?
JIM: The next phase is all about pushing and abusing the technical side taking it out of the club. Fay and I have started All You Can Eat TV? an online TV environment with artist Stuart Semple?People make movies, they send them to us, we put them up, a bit like YouTube, but ours is more editorially controlled, is more niched, more about our kind of people, whether in this country or any other?our kind of people, our crowd, wherever they are.
BRUNO: More OurTube than YouTube, our crowd in cyber space and the shared world. (Laughter)
JIM: Yeah, OurTube. (Again laughter) It's got that kind of angle to it, it's exciting. And that's where I think things are going to go. We have lots of things going on in the actual club environment, it's now about getting that out to a wider audience, like people in the States who can't actually get to the club. Also, not everything on All You Can Eat TV is about the club, but it all has the sensibility of All You Can Eat. It's a very interesting area like internet-radio, but obviously with a visual aspect.
BRUNO: And you can incorporate internet-radio, streamed through internet-TV, but not the other way.
JIM: Yeah, exactly?we are going to be developing lots of different shows hopefully becoming a production house doing chart shows, people turning up in the studio, audience participation?what you get on regular TV but with more of a club culture approach to it?a kind of DIY interactive approach. It's all possible, if you have the right team people around you. As we acquire the technical support around us, hopefully A.Y.C.E. can become a truly global club. The difficulty for us at the moment is that it is largely Fay and I handling all the organizational, technical and admin stuff?not in terms of DJ-ing or input from artists. We have just recently met a great guy from Prick Image.com who has taken all that on board. He has taken responsibility for all the visual images, it is his specialised field and we need to get more people like that who can help us take art beyond the technical and give our wider audience a creative inter-active experience
BRUNO: This idea of a Global Club in cyber-space is great as a complementary experience, but not to the detriment of actually travelling to places in the shared world and experiencing a warm, human exchange. Do you feel places like New York calling you Jim?
JIM: ?I have never actually been there, but I keep an eye on it through friends and the internet. I know a lot of interesting places got closed down during Mayor Guiliani's reign and then 911 happened and things went underground. This can often have a beneficial, though unintended effect, in that it can create a hive of activity. I get the intuitive feeling that this is what has been happening in New York these past five years or more and that it must be at the point now where it is about to explode?if we can bounce off each other and precipitate some kind of reaction, be a catalyst for each other, then THAT would be really exciting.
BRUNO: ?It is interesting that you sense something intuitively of what has been brewing in New York these last five years or more for someone who has not actually been. I have been travelling to New York since 1986 and my feeling of what is happening there mirrors yours?
JIM: ?Well one of the things that I learnt when I was 21 is that nothing stays the same. I was working on Capital Gay at the time (leading London gay newspaper) and I came to the realisation that people very quickly become passive and apathetic when they feel they cannot make a difference through their individual action. Well, I believe I CAN make a difference?I believe everyone around me can make a difference?.If you don't like what is going on around you CHANGE IT?stop whingeing, its boring? make your own tracks on your computer, burn your own c.d.'s, utilise Myspace?start your own club...make your own films, put them on YouTube, create your own thing?get up and bloody well do it. What I realised working on Capital Gay was you CAN change things?I mean it changed the landscape of sexuality in this country, (the United Kingdom) and the attitude to queer politics, hopefully in a way that's for good. I said to Fay at the end of 2005, lets do something together, lets change things and we have so far and continue to do so...its working? it is very important to realise that when something significant happens and then appears to go into decline, that there are people who believe in change, who made that thing happen, and can do so again? you only need a few of those people working together to create a spark for other people to pick up on, and before you know it you have a bonfire (an impish, throaty chuckle follows these delicious words from Jim Warboy's treasure chest!)
BRUNO: ?It only took one person to imagine the possibilities of splitting the atom, but it took a team of people working together to achieve it?creating a chain reaction, unleashing an energy, which could both revolutionize and/or destroy life itself. I feel the analogy holds true for creative networks as well???.
JIM: ?I cant really get my head round that stuff?I find it all really incredible?splitting atoms, the physics of sound?the psychology and perception of music. I went to college and did sound engineering?the first lecture was on the basic principles of sound, the way sound is created through basically a speaker cone moving backwards and forwards creating sound waves through altering air pressure and then the little hairs inside your ears perceive that disturbance as noise, sound, music?I sit at home making music, I look at the speaker cone moving backwards and forwards and I am like "how fucking amazing is that!!!"?it's like radio as well?how do these sounds travel through the air and get picked up by antennae?it blows my mind, they can talk to me about the theory all they want to, I don't understand, I don't want to understand it?electricity, neutrons, protons?.what the fuck...give me K-Tron and A.Y.C.E.!!! ?(more incredulous laughter)
BRUNO: At the moment do you see A.Y.C.E fulfilling all of your immediate creative aspirations?
JIM: It is one part of what I want to do, it takes all my energy at the moment. Fay and I are both very emotional people?both creative and ambitious?who knows in six months time where our creative communal energies will flow. I am a DJ at All You Can Eat for example but I don't actually define the sound of the club, I am Jim Warboy, DJ and producer?the same with Fay, she is a performer, artist, DJ in her own right. Our separate abilities bounce off each other feeding into and off each other. I have other events I am getting involved in, other club events, setting
BRUNO: Pray tell more of your collaborations, productions and potential label?
JIM: Well as a producer, I am good at getting hooks. I have just done a track with Simone (from Mama Shamone and the luscious lady pictured with Jim Warboy). It's called "London's Gettin' Dirty." It's about hedonism, fucking and getting back to what the club dance floor is about. I am putting together a compilation of my own adventures and musical collaborations, but I also like the idea of a compilation of all the interesting things I see going on around me in London. I am not necessarily involved in them directly, if at all, but I find them interesting and relevant.
BRUNO: Friends of mine in New York have recently been asking me about a new sound coming out of London called Electrisco. Have you come across it yet in your journey through London's subterranean landscape?
JIM: I have heard faint whisperings of Electrisco. I don't think it is a clearly defined identifiable sound at the moment. Interestingly, I was on someone's site on MySpace the other day and the first musical influence he cited was Electrisco. One to keep an eye on and an ear out for, let's see how it develops if at all?the media may get hold of it and fuck it up the way they did Nu-Rave, but even if the media do that, it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that the idea comes through and gets turned over and at the moment Electrisco is not media driven, so lets keep quiet about it and just listen to, play, and enjoy it!
BRUNO: By the time this issue of Above Magazine is out, your new night Badge will be up and running. I know you had a sensational opening night last week, with the place packed out with Londons finest. Are you excited about or is it just another gig!!!
JIM: (Laughs and assumes a mock indignant hurt expression!) You should know me better than that.I don't do "just another gig!" especially when I play in London. I am very careful and selective where I play. I want it to be exciting and I don't want people to become bored with me. It seems that a lot of research and enthusiasm has gone into Badge, and hopefully it is a new self-replenishing environment. All You Can Eat developed a life of its own after half a dozen events. I think Badge has the potential to do the same. I hope so.
BRUNO: Thanks Jim for your many years sterling work in keeping London's club scene innovative challenging and stimulating. Long may it continue.
(Interview ends as Jim Warboy disappears into the welcoming night on his mission to delight, entrance elevate and entertain. This story will run and run. Jim Warboys, Marathon Man, one of a kind
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