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© ukhh.com 2002
interview
0109 added 15.06.02 words
Matt G
Some artists make great tunes that embody the roots of hip-hop in every way whilst other artists gain their reputation for making great tunes that push the boundaries of the art form. The Herbaliser are one of the very few groups that can do both.
The new album 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' demonstrates this with an infectious blend of straight-up hip-hop bangers alongside challenging and original instrumentals. UKHH catches up with DJ Ollie Teeba for a chat before his appearance at Chibuku, Liverpool...
ukhh.com: How does the new album differ from your previous releases?
OT: As you go on and do more stuff you start to become aware of different ways of making and approaching your music. Over time your abilities become more refined and you can get closer to that sound you have in your mind. We've always had a similar sound in our minds but its just getting closer and closer to it and this album we feel is exactly how we wanted it to come out.
ukhh.com: So where does this album stand in the learning process?
OT: Well, I think you are always learning something new and figuring out a different way of doing something. Over the years we've been performing with our live band and we've done hundreds and hundreds of gigs - and on this album we've brought the sounds of what we were doing live and in the studio closer together. We did a little mini-album in between called Session One, which was on our own label. It was done to meet the demands we were getting at gigs where people were asking if there was a CD of what we were doing on stage because what we were doing on records was different. We just came hot off tour and recorded it like a band - playing our instruments together and reacting off each other. We were so satisfied with the quality of sound we were getting which was because we were recording in another much better studio with better equipment. We then improved the equipment in our own studio.
ukhh.com: So it was these studio improvements that marked the way for the use of live instruments...
OT: We have always had live instruments in all our albums but have never really gone for it in a big way because we have found it difficult to achieve the quality of sound that was needed to sit well with the samples. We would find when we first tried recording live instruments that they just wouldn't sound like recordings from the sixties and seventies which was the kind of music we was sampling - they sounded too new and wouldn't blend. Over the years we've also been improving our recording abilities. Well, I say our but it has been Jake because I haven't got a clue. I know how to operate a sampler and a sequencer on a computer but as for knob twiddling and sound engineering - that's the other guys.
ukhh.com: And where does sampling fit in this?
OT: We are not abandoning sampling because over the few years we have been touring and we've invested a large amount of money in crate digging. We're not going to throw that all away but sometimes you'll be playing around with an idea that you might have got from a record but you have a sample that is not working and so it may be best to get someone in to play it. Not literally copy it but do something on the same lines. You can do an awful lot these days with time stretching and recycling but there are still some samples that you won't get to go together. We are basically just expanding what we do. We were taking the sample as far as we could get with it. And now we just want to take our sound a bit further and add a more human element into the mix rather than everything been rigid and computer tight.
ukhh.com: Do you think this human element is missing in aspects of hip-hop?
OT: Not so much hip-hop because you have vocals and scratching which always give that raw human element but there is a place for everything. I mean, I don't think hip-hop should suddenly go all live instrument just like I don't think it should go all synthesiser although a lot of mainstream US producers, and some people here as well, use drum machines and synths and are not so interested in samples. But that's fine because the more different sounds there are in hip-hop, the more diverse it is and more interesting it is - there's more than one way to skin a cat. We do standard hip-hop tracks with our own quirky element but kept within the rule book's parameters. Then we have our instrumental tracks where we like to go all out and experiment and do whatever we feel like doing. Whether someone regards them as hip-hop songs or not is their own business - it no longer bothers me.
"...
the mainstream in American hip-hop has diversified so much that a lot of the underground kids relate probably more to some UK style hip-hop than US
stuff...."
ukhh.com: I've read that you start each record with a concept so would you say that the use of live instruments was set out as an idea before the record was made?
OT: Well, I think to say we start everything with a concept is probably not entirely accurate. We do conceptualise to a degree but not completely, we just loosely give ourselves concepts when we make songs. On this particular album we did come up with the title before coming up with any of the music. The title came first and image came after - so that much was conceptualised. We are quite inspired by soundtracks, which generally have a theme to them. They have one or two aspects that everything relates to, giving a complete listening experience rather than an album of singles - which is what we don't do. When we did our first album - which I didn't feel at the time and was not entirely satisfied with - we had just got a record deal and slung a load of stuff we had done over a long period together. From then we've sat down and created albums from scratch so everything builds up together and has a thread running through it.
ukhh.com: Why did you choose the title 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' and what's the meaning behind it?
OT: Well, it's always been a title or a phrase that I had in mind just in the back of my head. I saw a film when I was a kid called 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' - it's a Disney adaptation of a Bradway novel. I can't remember that much about it but the title was pretty good. I also read MacBeth when I was in fifth year at school and it's a line from a passage where he meets the witches. At that time, which would have been about 1984 or 1985, wicked was quite a new street word - the people used to go 'yeh wicked man' and that's always been something that I've always said whether its been fashionable or not. Its very much how The Herbaliser is in that wicked can mean quite a sinister or scary element, which there is to our music and the soundtrack styles we do. There's also wicked just as super, bad, wicked funk and we all say that. So we kind of felt that it represented The Herbaliser quite well really. I thought it was a suggestive title that was quite effective. As soon as we got thinking about it we started developing our ideas.
ukhh.com: I guess it's a title you can work around....
OT: Yes...
ukhh.com: How hard is it to make music that can transfer from the stereo in your home, to the DJ in the club and then to big-stage shows like Glastonbury?
OT: Our music seems to cross quite a lot of barriers and seems to meet different needs in people. It definitely has got the chill out, have a smoke listener. We also think its pretty good driving music that's why we put fast car chases in. We have a good live show able to perform at Glastonbury - we have done festivals as DJs although we much prefer doing it as a live show because they are prepared for bands where as clubs aren't the most ideal thing. We've kind of stopped touring the band because we were playing too many little clubs that weren't really equipped to deal with a band of our size. A lot of them weren't dealing with bands at all - they were just dealing with DJs. When you've got your subs underneath the stage it creates all sorts of feedback so we've kind of stopped doing shows like that because we want to give people the full works and not something that's half-arsed because clubs aren't able to deal with it.
ukhh.com: All in all, what feedback would you say you have had from the album?
OT: The press reactions have been really, really good. The DJ reactions have been the best I've ever seen. The feedback has been generally fantastic. There's been a couple of 'its just OK' reviews saying its nice and there's nothing to dislike about it but nothing to shout about - which is fair enough. Generally people have been like 'this is the best they've ever done' and 'it's incredible'. There has been a few bods on the Ninja Tunes website sitting in their offices chit chatting away all day going 'this one is OK but the last one was better' but I'm not going to diss people that go on websites and play around with the internet - although I have responded to a couple of things when it's amused me. There was one guy that I felt had a particularly bad attitude and kept saying really nasty things about us because he hadn't liked some of the new stuff we've done - he was like 'I'm a really big fan but all this new stuff's shit... it's shit!' I was talking to someone else on the site and then this guy had a query - I didn't respond because I don't like him! (chuckles)
ukhh.com: I've seen some very good reviews of the new album on American hip-hop websites, do you think the inclusion of talented American & British artists is a way of exporting homegrown hip-hop to the states?
OT: We always hope it will. It's certainly the case with a few American Indy artists that they come to Britain and realise what a wicked scene that we've got going on here and that we've got some really good emcees and producers. Some of them actually ask UK producers to go and make beats for their albums. If people from the UK are been asked to contribute to American records as well then there's a good kind of vibe and family thing happening because I think the mainstream in American hip-hop has diversified so much that a lot of the underground kids relate probably more to some UK style hip-hop than US stuff. The US kids who come over here really like the vibe and what's happening here like Rakaa from Dilated always has been really, really feeling it over in London.
"..
. I have never been completely 100% blown away by any of the remixes we've had
done...."
ukhh.com: For me, the track that stands out from my first few listens of the album is the one with MF Doom. Which track stands out for you as a favourite?
OT: I don't know, it's difficult to pick a favourite but I think 'Something Wicked' is one we've been particularly pleased with as it's a first for us to work with a singer. We've always wanted to work with a singer but we wanted to wait until we heard the voice that just blew us away. Seaming To was performing at a street festival, we heard her and rushed out of our tour bus to meet her. Compositionally, as a piece of production we are really pleased with it. For one it uses so few samples. Basically, the drumbeat is a drum sample along with snare and hi-hat - everything else is generated by musicians. To get that phat sound from just recording musicians and as something that will set next to a sample based track makes us really happy with it.
ukhh.com: How do you get to work with artists like Phi-Life, Rakaa
Iriscience , MF Doom and Blade. Is it Ninja Tunes that hooks you up with them?
OT: No, we always do it ourselves. Rakaa is someone I've actually been friends with for a few years now. T-Love introduced us and he would come to stay at my apartment a few times when he was doing shows with Vadim. We used to sit and watch videos and smoke weed - he's a friendly guy and a really good bloke. We always were feeling each other's music and so knew that at some point we would have to do something. Apart from Blade who we already knew because we worked with him before, the others were people we are fans of who we called up and asked to work with us. I don't think MF Doom had heard of The Herbaliser so we sent him some stuff and he was like 'yeh, I'm down...'
ukhh.com: I personally think you always bring out the best of Blade and highlight his ability. Would you say your long friendship with him gives you a greater understanding of his strengths?
OT: Maybe, I guess we do have a good relationship with Blade. I think on this particular track we just wanted to re-introduce a bit more of the old Blade that you used to hear on old tracks because Mark doesn't like to go too uptempo - about 98bpm is as high as he goes. So we thought fuck it lets get him some 108bpm... but Blade is the kind of emcee that could rip it at 125bpm!
ukhh.com: I really enjoyed the Craze re-mix of 'Missing Suitcase' - what re-mixes have you got lined up for this album?
OT: This album we have opted to do our own and not really have guest
re-mixes. With every other album we have done time management was really poor and we was always late so there was basically no time for us to do our own re-mixes. This time we have worked way ahead of schedule and we've had time to plan properly what singles we wanted to bring out and put together the re-mixes ourselves. To be quite honest, with a few exceptions, I have never been completely 100% blown away by any of the remixes we've had done. With a lot of the re-mixes that we've had done I thought we could do a re-mix as good or better and it wouldn't have cost us any money. So with this album we've done our own re-mix of 'Verbal Anime', we are also going to do a re-mix of 'Something Wicked' which is pretty much just a completely different version with all new instrumentation.
ukhh.com: On your last tour you visited 21 countries and played about 350 shows, was there a show or country that stood out as your favourite?
OT: I think we liked playing Canada the best actually. Montreal is where Ninja Tunes North America is based and the people there just love Ninja Tunes. I think because there is an element of Ninja Tunes actually within the city they take it up as their own. All the acts do really well out there. When we've played shows like the Montreal Jazz Festival it's just been fantastic - amazing, amazing reactions.
ukhh.com: Finally, what can Liverpool heads expect from tonight's show?
OT: They will be getting a bit of cutting and scratching but mostly just slamming tunes to dance to. They'll be getting some live emceeing from Wildflower - it will be super funky...
Matt G
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