Tracklisting
1. Vinyl
2. Ladies and Gentlemen
3. Shining Through
4. Sahara
5. We Met Last Night
6. Mainlining
7. Let the Good Times Roll
8. All Night Long
9. Strike
10. Sleepy Language
11. Blind Tiger
12. Automate
13. Love Story
14. 2MRW
Web Links
Listen to and download tracks from
Night Works and watch the "Love Story" video:
http://www.xlrecordings.com
Photos
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"We both believe in the same
things: good people, good parties, good music. Acid house,
basically." Idealists, hedonists, prophets, call them what you
will, but Layo & Bushwacka!'s love affair with music started
as teenagers under 1988’s strobe lights and its led the both
of them through techno, breakbeat, electro, dub and
electronica, emerging blinking into the light a decade later
with a sound that fuses all their influences and channeling
them into 2002’s most anticipated dance floor album.
It's the same outlaw spirit of eclecticism that still informs
their five hour DJs sets, whether at their spiritual home in
London's The End, or on a beach in Brazil or a state of the
art superclub in Ibiza or Argentina. Layo seamlessly segueing
cutting edge sounds, while Bushwacka! tears the arse out of
the cross-fade, turning nondescript breakbeat battle weapons
into a compulsive collage of beats and breaks. The same spirit
that took the "for the fans" thousand-copy only 12" Untitled
into a global club anthem. It's now “Love Story” - renamed
with the title given to it by the fans in Argentina who sit
down rather than dance through the track as a mark of respect
for its majesty. "I thought that track was a bit cheesy
initially," muses the ever-analytical Layo. "Of course now
everyone loves it, I've warmed to it a bit." And you can't get
much more acid house than the legal minefield that is
Bushwacka!'s much bootlegged remix of Michael Jackson's
“Billie Jean”- surely the biggest bootleg mix in a year
inundated with white label remixes of dubious legality. If
only, as Matthew shrugs, he'd done the bootlegs himself, as
everyone assumes.
Layo and Bushwhacka! have come a long way from the teenager
who frequented Clink Street's infamous acid parties and the
kid who dropped classical music to hang out on the hardcore
scene: two motor-mouthed refugees from the underground
enjoying their position as new leaders of clubland's cutting
edge. Layo & Bushwacka! have both served their time supporting
British underground music when no-one wanted to know. Layo
opening The End, a purpose-built club dedicated to breaking
new music to the right people. Matthew jacking in a lucrative
career as a rave circuit DJ when the moody music had gone too
far for him, both taking the emergent strains of techno,
tech-house, electro and breakbeat and forcing them together
with the blues, classical and film soundtracks of the last
hundred years to create the dance floor sound of the new
century.
Matthew 'Bushwacka!' Benjamin has always been into music: as a
schoolboy in Ladbroke Grove, West London, he was playing
percussion in the London School Symphony Orchestra." I played
the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican. We toured Italy when I
was 13. It was a magical time of my life." It was 1988, and
hooked on hip-hop and DJing, his life was about to take a
sharp left turn. "In August '88 I went to a Rat Pack warehouse
party. I left there at 11 o'clock the next morning and come
home to an angry mum." Handing out flyers by night and working
in Harrods by day, he began working for the Rat Pack. By
1989's summer of orbital rave he was DJing for them, as well
as on London's legendary ‘Radio Rental’ pirate station Sunrise
FM.
Graduating from a studio engineering course, Matthew - now
widely held in awe by other producers for his crisp beats and
heavyweight production techniques - went to work at Mr. C's
new studio "making cups of tea 80 hours a week". The Shaman
front man had ploughed his pop earnings back into the studio,
and he was also planning on opening a club with another young
protégé of his: "That's where I met Layo," Matthew remembers.
"About the same time as the End idea was coming about."
Layo Paskin had a different upbringing in a liberal North
London household: the son of an architect and a writer, he was
putting on funk parties at sixteen while working at weekends
in Camden Market. "When I was 17," he recalls, "I went to my
first acid house party, and straight away I was blown away by
this thing." From then on he too was immersed in underground
dance and within a couple of years he was throwing warehouse
parties with Mr. C. "We found this site for a party," he
explains, "and that became The End." The End was designed by
his father, and became Layo's life... taking in nights from
future superstars like Fatboy Slim and Roni Size it quickly
became the leading underground music club in the capital and
one of the most influential dance clubs worldwide.
By the time Layo and Bushwacka! started working together it
was the mid-90s and dance music was changing. The hardcore
scene that Matthew had been such an integral part of was
already shifting into drum & bass, while new hybrids - that
would later be termed tech-house and breakbeat - were emerging
out of clubs like The End. Matthew had started his own Plank
records, and was making and playing what he terms "good
quality music to go out and dance to."
In 1998 Layo and Bushwacka! released their first album Low
Life on End Recordings, the label that had begun life the day
The End opened. A deceptively smooth collection that mashed
together electro, techno, underground house and old skool
breakbeat, but stretched into delta blues and dub reggae for
inspiration, for a trippy down-tempo atmospheric breakbeat
sound. It was rather brilliant.
They also started DJing together more often - first at the
End's Subterrain nights, later across the country and beyond.
They make a good combination: Matthew tearing his crossfade
through anonymous tech tunes and electro breaks Layo taking a
more considered approach to playing "proper" tunes. Now, a
year since they released the half-jokey “Untitled” as a 1000
copy only Christmas present to their fans, their DJing has
gone supernova. They can afford to play only clubs that allow
them a five hour slot, so they can play an hour each at a
time, building the intensity then dropping the tempo to play
the odd vocal or hip-hop track.
Now their second album, Night Works, takes their blueprint
onto a bigger, broader canvas. All the elements we loved about
Low Life and singles like the breakbeat blues of “Deep South”
are still there - there’s still the adherence to low end
theory bass lines, but this time wrapped in a comfort blanket
of synapse-tweaking soft chords. Once again its edited and
tweaked into a non-stop collage that lulls you into a false
sense of security at home, where you can't feel the monster
bass lines these tracks unleash over a club sound system.
Already planning to take their live performance on the road,
the garrulous odd couple are keeping their hardcore fans happy
by starting a monthly club night (at the End, where else?)
where they will be the only DJs. Not to mention residencies at
Space in Ibiza and Sirena in Brazil – two more of the finest
clubs in the world.
"The music industry is an industry where the best business
people do the best and the most creative people don't,"
reflects Layo, "that's life I suppose. But I'm hungry for that
creativity. I'd like to be really good at what I do, rather
than hugely successful. You need to be able to look yourself
in the eye and say the route you’re taking is a good route, be
proud of what you do, and on the other hand also enjoy it. I'd
be much more happy if this album had good reviews, rather than
sell a million copies. Something I can visit in a few years
and be really proud of."
Release date: September 10, 2002
# # #
For more information please contact Charles Carroll at 323-466-5141 or
charles@greengalactic.com. |
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