Underpass: Disorienteering album launch
Wonky Disco is kicking off the new year in style by hooking up with local electronica wizard Underpass for a party to mark the release of his first full-length album, Disorienteering. If you’ve heard his stuff before, you’ll know that Underpass (AKA Lee Marshall) embraces everything from ambient soundscapes to lip-curling breaks n bleeps. And if you haven’t heard him before – well now’s your chance to see a live set from Underpass, plus DJ C++ and Wonky Disco residents playing records until 1am. Doors are at 9pm, but don’t be fooled – these are FREE doors, that open without you having to insert any coins! Hoorah!
You can check out Underpass here:
http://www.myspace.com/lee_underpass
…or on his bi-weekly radio show here:
And to celebrate such an auspicious start to 2010, here’s some words from Underpass himself:
Wonky Disco: “Electronic music has always been about contrasts – would you say your music embraces that?”
Underpass: “I think initially, there was no plan for what it was going to sound like at all. When I first started making electronic music I was just experimenting with four track tape recorders and computer programs on the Amiga and cheap drum machines, just trying to find a way to make music without having to have a band with me.
The first stuff I released as Underpass was more of a specific kind of electro breakbeat style, and I think I thought that was the way I was going to continue. There was a point where I had a bunch of mellow downtempo electronica stuff I was making as well, and looked at it and thought, well, ok, I enjoy making this kind of music just as much, what do I do with it?
I just decided that I’d keep it all under the same name. I think it’s kind of patronizing to your audience to say, well they like one thing, but they’re not going to like this other thing. People are welcome to pick and choose from it.”
WD: “This is your first full length album right?”
Underpass: “I actually recorded an album back in 2002, but due to various problems it never came out. I’m actually quite glad about that now, hehehe. It’s very different working on electronic music than it is going into a studio and recording an album, effectively I live in my studio, and can always work on it, so each track is always an ongoing process.
It’s not like I show up at Abbey Road on a Monday morning, like, ”crap, ok I have to write something now”!
I sat down in April of this year and just started going through everything on my hard drive. Once I’d figured out which bits I wanted to keep I pretty much spent a week on each track, pulling out all the bits I thought worked, and then writing new beats, recording new sections or re-recording parts, then brushing the whole thing up, and trying to get the production as good as I could.
Some of the tracks like ‘Zombies’, or ‘Hold Your Dreams In’ with Rhodri (from Right Hand, Left Hand), I knew absolutely had to be on there, because they’ve been knocking around for years, and have never seen a proper release for one reason or another. And it was great working with Hannah Biscombe who has been a good friend for a long time, and we had always talked about her doing a sleeve for me, because I love her stuff”
WD: “It seems like videos and visuals are a big part of Underpass. Is that something you do yourself or do you work with other people?”
Underpass: “My music has always been very visually orientated. Quite often a track comes from me trying to evoke the feeling of a certain situation that I remember, trying to kind of soundtrack events in my head. I watch movies and short films almost as much as I listen to music, so it was something that I always wanted to do.
If you look at the music videos of people like Chris Cunningham, they are just so stunning and perfectly suited to the music, to the extent that you almost think the music was made to compliment the video and not the other way around, and I knew we could never do anything that special, but in terms of making something that went with the music, I felt that I really wanted to be involved filming and making the video, even if it meant that it wasn’t going to look anywhere near as polished as getting someone in to do it for me, just because I wanted it to be something that was personal, not just some shiny promo clip to shift units that ultimately had nothing to do with where my head was at, so I hooked up with the talented Steven Hamer, who I was working with at the time, and we just took cameras out and started filming, built up a huge selection of stuff, and then just started editing it over a bunch of evenings together into something that we felt showed the kind of world that we live in and the things that surround us.”
WD: “What can we expect at the album launch?”
Well, I’m going to do a bunch of stuff off the record which is only the second time any of the mellow stuff will get a live showing. I always think that live people are more interested in the danceable stuff, so this is going to be a different kind of show for me, showcasing the other side of what I do for a change. Of course, I’m planning on building the set up so we get to some dirty electro by the end of it, it just wouldn’t be an Underpass gig without some filthy bassline wrongness to end the night!
We’ll be showing the videos too, so hopefully it will be somewhere between a gig, a film showing and a visual installation if it all comes together. Fingers crossed.”
So – there you have it. Underpass at Wonky Disco on the 14th Jan, 9-1. Delicious, dissolvable dance music.
