Rewind: Max Duley on “Napalm Death – The Peel Sessions”

In discussion with Max Duley on “The Peel Sessions” by Napalm Death (1989).

Although I suspect it was a moment with long lasting consequences, can you tell where and when you first heard Napalm Death? Was it these very sessions when John Peel played them on his show?

I didn’t hear them on Peel’s show. I can’t remember the exact details of where I was when I first heard ND, but it was the compiled cassette release of the first two Peel Sessions (originally broadcast in 1987 & 1988) that I heard, and I can relate the background story: I grew up listening to music from my parents’ collection which included stuff like Frank Zappa, Springsteen, 10cc, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Pretenders, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Peter Gabriel and stuff like that. When I started high school at about 12 years old I made new friends and started to listen to a bit of pop and briefly got into some of the early acid house hits that made it into the UK pop charts around 1987-88. But all the while I was continuing to hear the music my dad was into. Being a guitarist himself, he would listen to virtuoso artists such as Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Alan Holdsworth. I found myself attracted to much of that, but in particular the heavier sounding tracks.

I clearly remember one day in a maths class in 1989, my old friend Alex with whom I’d also been at middle school called my name from behind me, and when I turned around he handed me a cassette tape: Iron Maiden’s “The Number Of The Beast”. I spent a weekend listening to it over and over, loving the attitude and pace. I think I then borrowed a Guns’n’Roses tape which I also enjoyed for a couple of days but which didn’t leave any lasting impression. Then a week or so later he lent me another tape: Metallica’s “Ride The Lightening”. I was sold. This was intense, angry stuff. I was 14, and probably a bit angry myself, I don’t know. About another week later again, Alex had introduced me to a couple of messy looking guys from the year above us who had longish hair and wore denim jackets. One of them lent me a new tape: Napalm Death’s first two Peel Sessions recordings.

Like I said, I don’t remember exactly the first time I listened to it. Doubtless I listened to it many, many times over just that first day. What I do know is that from that point on, everything I had heard previously seemed thin, weak, and vapid. Iron Maiden? No thanks! Metallica? A bit lightweight!

Within two weeks I had gone through a kind of musical rebirth and “other music” seemed to be from a previous existence. That was temporary (although long lasting) and I’ve long since gone back to most of the music I was into before that experience, but for several years I was unable to listen to and appreciate anything which did not attempt a similar intensity.

What made you opt for the Peel Sessions out of their back catalogue? Is it because you think it is the epitome of their work, or is it because you were introduced to the band by these recordings?

Primarily I chose it because of its significance in my musical evolution. It was the life-changing release, the springboard release that turned me from a music enthusiast into a music obsessive, despite having a couple of logical steps up to that springboard which whetted my appetite. But yes, I also consider these to be their finest recordings.

Some time in the late 1990s I remember reading an article by a musician who had been in a band which had recorded a John Peel session. He described arriving at the BBC studios to be greeted by a grumpy producer and engineer who treated them a bit roughly and hurried them into the recording booth telling them they only had an hour or so to do the whole thing. He also described how this treatment got the band a bit angry and how this resulted in the most intense and powerful studio performance his band ever achieved, and how he later came to understand and appreciate the way in which the producer and engineer had deliberately “produced” and “engineered” this intensity in them with their behaviour as well as their technical prowess. Relating this to the Napalm Death recordings, it’s interesting to imagine a band whose music was already so intense going through a similar sort of experience. At that time the label releasing their work, Earache Records, was a fledgling project, not the hugely successful international monster it later became. This meant that they could never have otherwise afforded access to the level of technology and studio expertise/experience available at the BBC. Of course, their other major studio recordings from that time (”Scum”, and “From Enslavement To Obliteration”) are partly defined by the rough quality, but the Peel sessions are on another level in terms of production and the band are incredibly tight, too. In particular the levels of the ridiculously distorted bass guitar and the use of reverb add a quality which is unheard on any of their other releases from around that time.

I should probably point out at this stage that I am only into the first few ND releases, up to “Mentally Murdered”.

Playing Favourites: Shed

White Noise – Black Mass: Electric Storm In Hell

This is very early electronic music, from White Noise’s first album from 1969. They were among the first to use synthesizers in a rock context and their music became very influential later on. This particular track seems indeed way ahead of its contemporaries, and it is pretty wild.

I didn’t know that at all. I had problems listening through it, it is almost disturbing. From today’s point of view it maybe is not that overtly experimental anymore, but setting it into the time of its production, it is very cool.

There certainly was not much comparable music back then.

The sound is very good. They already had synthesizers? There is a lot of space in the production. If you would not have told me, I would never have guessed that it is so old. The arrangement and the noisy parts reminded me of destructed Amen breaks, totally distorted. Very interesting.

Quartz – Chaos

The next one is by Quartz from France . Also early synthesizer music, but within a disco context.

I was not into that at all. My calendar does not really start before 1990 or so. Even stuff like early Model 500, Cybotron, it is ok, but it’s not mine. I also can’t get into Kraftwerk. What has been called techno from 1990 on was what got me to listen to music consciously for the first time. I was never the one to check the influences on music that I like. I know Disco only from TV, Saturday Night Fever and such. I was never really interested in it.

Is that based on a basic antipathy towards the sounds of disco music?

There was a short period I found it exciting, around the time the filter and cut-up disco house arrived with DJ Sneak, all the sample stuff. But that was over pretty soon when all the records started to sound the same. So yes, it is based on principle that I don’t like the sounds too much.

So you were more interested in how a track was built on samples than where they came from?

Exactly. It was fascinating to me how all could be said in a loop that went for three minutes, if it was a cool one. Longer than that it could get boring. Of course you can’t compare that to what happens in the original disco track, there was more happening there than in house tracks, which only used bits. It was interesting that many people used the same samples and you became aware that there must some source for it. But sample based productions are not my philosophy. I never wanted to just use bits of other people’s music.

Those disco house records also did not always pay tribute to disco, they deconstructed it, and often in a not very respectful manner.

Not at all. It’s strange how American producers often deal with each other, all that stealing amongst themselves. But in the end we all benefited from that (laughs). Read the rest of this entry »

@ Soul Shakers International

Finn Johannsen – Space Evaders Part 1

I’ve met a fine Englishman on the Discogs message boards named Craig Birmingham aka EvilJack who had excellent taste in music. We corresponded regularly and he asked me to contribute a mix for his blog Special Needs, now defunct as most blogs. Sadly we lost touch over the years but looking back he was one of those fine persons you obsessed together with over music and then get to know better personally, a phenomenon I encountered often on Discogs then, and later in other places. This was before social media went big, mind. But likeminded souls often find their way to each other, no matter how.

John Carpenter – Walking Out
Link – Amenity
In Sync – Subway Route
Hey O Hansen – Moon
Robot DJs – Remote Control
Brian Harris – Chemistry
Unknown DJ – Basstronic
Vitamin B – A Headache
Terrace – Seventh City
Pod – Vanguard
Loosefingers – What Is House?