RIP J. Saul Kane

 

Well, it had to be this one I posted, didn't it? 

That macabre sing-song sample - "did you ever think / when the hearse goes by / that some day you are going to die?"

Also on the theme

Younger than me, by a half-decade...  sobering, eh? 

I reviewed Depth Charge  - or is it Depthcharge? - a couple of times in a Melody Maker Singles column, and each time the release brightened that week's rather barren haul

from October 1989

DEPTHCHARGE

"Depthcharge"

(Vinyl Solution)

     Inconsequential but captivatingly labyrinthine "dance" record that reminds me vaguely of Arthur Russell's bathyscopic odyssey "Let's Go Swimming". Over a bubbling cauldron of deep-sea dub bass, drifts a sargasso sea of sonic flotsam, sonar blips, smeared Kung fu samples, anemones and polyps.  If Sun Ra thought he was from Atlantis rather than Saturn, was into Adrian Sherwood, and had an obsession with martial arts, he might make records like this. (That's a lot of "ifs", I s'pose, but there you go...)

Kind of Renegade Soundwave-y, without the grating Guy-Ritchie-movie voices.... 

Sort of anticipating trip hop, but not really... 

 And in some ways also anticipating Big Beat. 

The other Depthcharge single I reviewed, from early 1990

Bit Wu-y in his predilections...  

Vinyl Solution label mate  with the also-departed Eon a/k/a Ian Loveday. He went quite a while back.... 

Anticipating darkcore

This even earlier tune has quite a darkside title, if not the sound or vibe really

I guess it's just the Pulp Continuum - video-nasty bizniz

Also as The Octagon Man, this has neat beats

Here's an obituary for Jonathan Saul Kane by Carl Loben at DJ magazine

He seems to have rubbed shoulders with a lot of people from that "DJ Records" moment in the late '80s - Mark Moore, Tim Simenon - and also the aforementioned Renegade Soundwave. 

Here's a reminiscence / tribute I've borrowed wholesale from Danny Briotet of RSW. 

"One upon a time in West London, in a place called Ladbroke Grove, there was a band of (very) young brothers that went under the name of Krew.

"Krew, multi-racial, comprised of MCs, DJs, breakers and graffiti artists and were one of the 1st hip hop crews anywhere outside of the US (we’re talking early ‘80s). 

"At tangents from Krew there were myself and a kid called Jonathon. Jonathon began DJing mostly at local hip hop jams on the manor, which often descended into mayhem and violence. Jon (sometimes wearing a black cape) was unphased by this – as well as having DJ skills decades before the term ‘turntablist’ was even thought of, he was also well-versed in martial arts (a theme than ran throughout his career) and could look after himself. 

"When I first knew Jon he lived at his mum’s in Powis Sq and had a massive scaffolding construction in his room to house his decks and records...

"By the mid-80s we were both playing at illegal warehouse parties in places like Shoreditch (then a barren wasteland with just a few Bengali families living there) or under the Harrow Road roundabout at Paddington. 

"Jon started releasing records around the time of the 1st RSW releases, on the Vinyl Solution label (the original shop was opposite my flat), first as Grimm Death, with MC Tony Tone from Krew. 

"Then Jon brought out the 1st Depth Charge record at the same time as we released The Phantom, and the 2 records would find themselves together in so many DJs' boxes, although they sped DC up to fit with 120 bpms of the Rave scene, (although Jon was always tea-total and never went anywhere near a pill). 

"We used to talk, at the time, about how we’d both done these tunes, completely independently of each other, but kind of coming from the same place. The Depth Charge records were massive, and it goes without saying how big an influence they were on the Chemicals, Wall of Sound and so many others in that amazing post-acid house period when alternative became mainstream.

"As things progressed, Jon and I would find ourselves on the same bill in all sorts of weird and far-flung places and he was often late – I remember sitting on planes ages after they were meant to take off, only for Jon to stroll on, record box in hand.

"Jonathan’s approach to DJing was same as his approach to life – uncompromising. He didn’t suffer fools lightly and it wasn’t hard to lock horns with him over anything from samples to football, which he loved – when I first knew him, he played in a team of local Arab kids.

"I woke up this morning to see Zaf’s post about his passing, and I was deeply shocked and upset – it’s a strange sign of the times when you learn on social media of the death of someone you’ve been friends with for over 4 decades, and whose life ran parallel with yours in so many extraordinary ways. I knew he was ill, and only bumped into him very rarely – he became reclusive. I got a message from a mutual friend just now, that said they saw his house getting cleared out a while ago but didn’t put 2 and 2 together. I also heard he’s been gone for months, and no-one knew – well, tragic though that may be, I can’t help the feeling that Jon might get a chuckle out of that, as the enigma continues to grow. Respect, brother, really."

Dune dance

 Watched Dune .... what a lot of cobblers.  Was there a single cliche of the genre that they shirked and shied from? 

Let us count the seen-before / heard-before a hundred times... 

Vast, majestic yet forbiddingly austere interiors, shrouded in shadow (hmmm they’ve colonized the galaxy but can’t afford some extra 140 watt bulbs?!). 

Haute couture-like, sculpted and dimensional garments, in sombre hues of black and grey, exquisitely tailored (how about a bit of hot pink for variety's sake, or some fluorescent multi-colored futuristic fabric of the far future?). 

Portentous drum-clattery music, swoops of lustrously dark abstract sound-texture, not unlike a poncified high-def version of Mover-style gloomcore at times... i.e. the usual Zimmerbombast. 

Faintly fascistic massing of troops, serried and regimented formations, huge chants of soldierly loyalty rising up with a vaguely Zulu-like quality... 

A priestly caste that gives off an eerie aura of gnosis. 

LOTR-style, much intense holding of the mutual gaze, shining eyes, plighting of troth, words of honor and glory, destiny and dynasty... 

A prince reunited with his older mentor, who schooled and schools him still in the manly arts of hand-to-hand combat. 

Still fighting with swords for some reason…

Despite being a s.f. nut in my teens, I never read the book.  I was put off by the cover I think - and never liked those sort of quasi-Medieval space sagas, galactic empires struggling for dominance, confederations of alien races etc. In fact vastly prefer s.f. that is terrestial and near-future (10 to 200 years ahead, that sort of range).  Never seen more than 20 minutes here and there of the Lynch Dune when it's been shown on TV. The book does sound vastly more interesting and potentially impressive, from what I've read about it online, than either of the two filmic versions (although this current one does seem to be immaculately executed, albeit within its utterly cliched and played-out terms). 

(And maybe Dune invented those cliches? But that doesn't really help the current viewer, can't be made allowance for).

Just about the only value I gleaned from watching it was realising that not one but two Eon songs derive their soundbite and title from (I assume) the Lynch Dune... 

The phrase "fear - the mindkiller" cropped up twice in the movie, in fact. But I don't recall "the spice must flow" coming up. But then again, I did actually fall asleep towards the final stretch. 

postscript: good to see that Gio Makyo has similar feelings, and even more informed ones having once dug the book:

-Lawrence of Arabia in space. Colonialist fantasy of a white savior coming to lead the brown people to freedom. 

-Yet another sci-fi film that is heavily stuck on Judeo Christian ideas of a “chosen one” Messiah, which I am so over at this point. 

-Ditto for any paranormal mental powers like “the force“. 

-Evil bad empire like that’s totally new… (Starship Troopers remains the only Hollywood film to suggest that maybe we are the big bad empire and not the rebels) 

-Stupid character name of the year: Duncan Idaho. (And I thought Philip K Dick was bad at coming up with character names!) 

-Typical fascination with militaristic iconography. 

-Dialogue mixed really low so they have the headroom to clobber you with the Zimmernator and the special effects sounds.

Another thing that’s really getting overdone is the use of digital filters to give a color tint to almost every scene now. Each location has to be differentiated by Ia pervasive color... gray, green, yellow, whatever. Steven Soderbergh‘s Traffic was really the first to do this Way back when with the saturated dusty yellow Mexico... it definitely has its usage, but it’s just knee-jerk almost every single freaking scene now.

About the Zimmerbombast, Makyo comments:

"So much of the Zimmer score just seems to be multi-synth versions of risers and impacts".

I don't know what that means exactly but it sounds authoritatively dismissive!

Makyo's final observation is telling: 

"Given that the whole allure of science fiction is that we can create entirely new worlds and situations beyond our imagination, why is it that we keep ending up in the same f—king scenario over and over? This wants to position itself between Star Wars and Game of Thrones so badly it hurts"

Indeed, indeed... 

We travel into the far future or the remote reaches of the galaxy - and find only our own past, the same old-old saga narratives, talk of destiny and dynasty...

postscript

eon's ago

another h-core classic never realised there was a video for

darkside before darkside

this one is Ian Loveday's masterpiece though



Think I reviewed this for the Melody Maker Singles Page. Had this pre-rave-conversion phase of loving and buying and writing about techno whenever it swam into my ken (DHS "House of God", heard on Peel, bought at Brixton record store Red) or turned up in the MM box of singles and 12s to review. But I was writing from a position not fully inside the music, let's say.




Losing it, a bit



"white coat mix", tee hee. but forgot, or never knew, there was a "black coat mix"



interesting version by J. Saul Kane of "Spice" - loping and ninja



don't remember this one at all



nor knew about this Eon single that Discogs places between "Inner Mind" and "Basket Case"




complete with a Juan Atkins rmx on the flip



or is it two versions?




yet another version of "Spice"



and some early efforts in an acieed tekno new beat bass'n' bleepy zone






   

RIP Ian Loveday aka Eon - talented geezer