aficionados: Craig Armstrong High Life August 2002 THE POP-MINDED, OSCAR-WINNING FILM SCORE COMPOSER (FOR MOULIN ROUGE) NOMINATES HIS FAVOURITE MUSIC SHOPS Interview by Paul Clements.
	MISSING I GLASGOW It feels more a boutique than the average grungy second-hand record shop that stocks a lot of old and obscure vinyl. Do they know me in there? Possibly I'm in there quite a bit 9-11 Wellington Street, Glasgow. Tel: +44 (0)141 2481661 ECHO I GLASGOW One for me, because it does a lot of old jazz and I'm a West Coast jazz fan. As well as the work I do with Massive Attack, I do a lot of soul tracks, and come here for background. But I often go in not knowing exactly what I want, or whether I'm going to come out with dance music or Debussy 305 Byres Road, Glasgow. Tel: +44 (0)141 339 2996 TOWER RECORDS I LONDON The megastore in Piccadilly Circus is one of the leading record shops of the world. I go there mostly for the avant-garde classical department, which has a range I really haven't found anywhere much else. I've bought CDs in there I've been looking for 20 or so years. But it's good on jazz, too. 1 Piccadilly Circus, London W1. Tel: +44 (0)20 7439 2500 COLLETTE I PARIS A place I go for film soundtracks. It only ever has five albums on sale - it's one of those shops that only sells the best of everything: the best chair, the best watch, the best whatever. They change the Five CDs they sell every week, so it could be new releases or just favourites of the assistants. I always buy all five - which, being a musician, isn't an abnormal amount for an evening's listening. 213 rue Saint-Honore, Paris, France. Tel: +331 55 35 33 90 TONY BINGHAM I LONDQN There are a few record shops amid the second-hand bookshops near Air Studios in Hampstead, where I record. But a shop I go into a lot is Tony Bingham, which stocks old musical instruments. They search out obscure things for museums and have their own great collection of ondiolines, the first electronic instrument. For me it's a bit like a kid's sweetie shop. 11 Pond Street. London NW3. Tel: +44 (0)20 7794 1596 EBAY.COM I INTERNET Another thing I do quite a lot is I get records and instruments from the auction website. I've also used it to buy a couple of drum machines, a Wurlitzer piano and a VCS3 synth. I've been trying to buy a Dan Martin electric sitar for ages, but no one wants to sell one. It was used on early Steely Dan tracks, but you can play it like a guitar

Q & A from Madonna to Plunkett & Macleane and beyond

How do you go about writing a soundtrack?
You normally get a script and then you see rushes of the film. Eventually you get a rough cut and that's really when you start writing seriously. I basically go through and make notes as to where I think there could be music. It;s quite a pressurised environment: Plunkett & Macleane was done in just two months.

What's next?
The new Al Pacino film, which hasn't got a title yet. The Americans are incredibly security-conscious: I couldn't even get the tapes until I'd signed the contract! When you're doing a British film like Plunkett & Macleane, no one cares, it's very relaxed.

And another solo album?
Yes. I'm going to try and work with some European musicians - Photek and Dimitri from Paris for example.

Are you in danger of overworking?
Compared to the Americans. we're positively taking it easy! I've heard of some American composers who do six or seven movies a year. Doing two isn't really a lot.

You've worked with Madonna on several occasions.
I'm a bit of a Madonna fan. I'd done a few things for her, like Take A Bow, and then did the arrangement for Frozen. All of a sudden, everyone's saying it's a great arrangement...but it seems so long ago.

What about Massive Attack?
I'll tell you a story about Massive Attack. When I started doing interviews, Daddy G gave me advice. He said, "Be polite, talk about things you find interesting." But then they were being interviewed in the room next door and all I could hear was "I'm not answering that fucking question."

All Back To Mine

Photek : Modus Operandi

Moondog: Stamping Ground
One of the first musicians to combine contemporary music with classicism.

Stockhausen: Trans
An early pioneer of electronic music. Every electronic musician is indebted to him.

Laub: Augenscheinlich

Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major
Carried on Mozart's tradition of very simple melodic lines creating an amazing sound of purity.

Leon Russell: Carney

Massive Attack : Protection

Janacek: Intimate Pages

King Crimson: Red
As a teenager I was a King Crimson fan. The track Starless has an outstandingly beautiful melody and I have always wanted to collaborate with him.

Joni Mitchell: Blue

Mozart: The Dissonant Quartet (String Quartet in C Minor)

Berg: Violin Concerto (Dem Andenken eines Engels)

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
The first time I heard this was in a car and it was an amazing experience to hear such a different approach to modern classical music away from intellectualism and the Viennese avant garde, but with the same musical complexity.

Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel

Chic: I Want Your Love
I defy anybody not to feel happy after listening to this music. Play regularly if feeling a bit down....

Marvin Gaye: What's Going On

Stevie Wonder: Music Of My Mind
One of the great albums of all time. He plays all the instruments himself making this one of the most complete albums, emotionally.

Cornelius Cardew: Treatise
He was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and briefly taught me before his death.

Ennio Morricone: Cinema Paradiso

Scores to settle
He spent his youth tinkling the ivories in a cocktail bar and slogging away in dead-end pop bands. Now composer Craig Armstrong hears his work at the Barbican and hires Bono to do his vocals.
As interruptions go, it's forgivable. The man in the swanky Mayfair members club wants to fill Craig Armstrong's gin decanter. Five minutes later, he's back with a rattling tray of bone china. Armstrong, a gentle Glaswegian bear of a man, pours. On either side of his chair are three shopping bags - stuff for his five- week-old daughter. 'A Leo Blair scenario,' beams the surprised parent. 'The next youngest is nine.'
Unlike most composers, Armstrong hasn't had to wait until his own death before the world agrees he was all right really. And unlike almost all composers, the 43-year-old doesn't even have to choose between high-concept, poor-selling critical kudos or the more lucrative approval of the pop fraternity. He's the first person Baz Luhrmann turns to when he's looking for someone to score his films - yet last year (the Barbican invited him to put together an experimental performance basedaround an eight-bar loop of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. When asked to identify a down-side to his job, Armstrong explains that some-times he gets a little lonely in the studio. Which is why, on his first 'proper' album The Space Between Us', he enlisted Liz Fraser from The Cocteau Twins and The Blue Nile's Paul Buchanan to sing vocals. On his new one, "As If To Nothing', Armstrong has drafted in the likes of Bono and Evan Dando.
If Armstrong feels untroubled by the comforts of his current lifestyle, perhaps that's because he survived for an inconveniently long time without them. Between 1977 and 1981, the young pianist moved from Glasgow to study composition at the Royal Academy of Music, his head 'ready to be filled with big ideas'. Like Dorothy on her final day in Oz, he got almost too much of what he was after. One of his lecturers was English composer and Stockhausen prodigy Cornelius Cardew, who suggested that his students reject all formal ways of working. "At the age of 18, when you're looking for systems and certainty, this was just a little over-whelming.'
The youngster allowed his formal teaching to 'incubate' inside him, while getting on with more pressing business. Desperate to supplement his paltry grant, Armstrong got a job as a pianist in a Covent Garden cocktail bar. He played while people talked. As the evenings wore on, punters would make requests: The choices would get more interesting the drunker people got. There'd be people looking to apologise to their girlfriends, stuff like that. By midnight, though, you were always in Sinatraland.'
Armstrong's twenties were directionless, the kind of twenties many graduates experience before cutting their losses and deciding to become teachers. Had his hometown not been enjoying a purple patch as the epicentre of '80s pop, a similar fate may have awaited him. 'Suddenly I knew loads of people in bands, and they all wanted a keyboard player.' Remember 501-clad, white-funk makeweights Hipsway? Armstrong was in them for a while, but don't raid your old Smash Hits cupboard just yet: 'I wasn't in any of the pictures, because they'd already signed the contract.'
Not even Top Of The Pops'?
'Sadly, no. It wasn't a very glamorous life. I remember playing in Milan in front of ten people. It was hard work.' Remember mildly successful lit-poppers The Big Dish, who... um, appeared on 'Wogan' once? He was in them too! That was really good, but their singer Steven Lindsay wrote all the songs, and when I told him 1 also wanted to compose, he said he was uncomfortable co-writing with other people.'
This rather calls to mind the infamous time a young James Dyson contacted Hoover and asked them if they'd like to help him develop a bagless vacuum cleaner. Lindsay, who actually does a turn on Armstrong's new album, is now a graphic designer. Remember early-'90s American rockers The Kindness Of Strangers? Of course you don't. Even Armstrong appears to have forgotten them during our chat, but he was briefly in them too. Dark days, but when the band's producer Nellee Hooper ran out of money to finish a string arrangement and Armstrong offered to lend a hand, Hooper remembered the favour. A year later, when the producer embarked on a solo album with the lead singer of an Icelandic indie band, he took Armstrong with him. The result? Bjork's 'Debut'. Co-writes on Massive Attack's "Protection' followed, then a solo deal on the Bristol trio's Melankolic label. The rest is almost guessable. Given Madonna's well documented affection for Massive Attack, it was only a matter of time before she phoned. 'She eats a lot of sushi,' observes Armstrong, who did the arrangements on 'Frozen'.
Beyond the fact that he's a bit of a boffin yet looks like he came to fix the fridge, what is it about Armstrong that so draws other artists to him? Baz Luhrmann's refusal to acknowledge a distinction between high and low art is certainly echoed in Armstrong's own approach. There's little to separate a stark, nocturnal version of U2's 'Stay' on the one hand from, on the other, 'Miracle', which divines a hitherto hidden capacity for incandescence from Scottish squall-merchants Mogwai. What becomes obvious, though, is that all the 'big ideas' which intimidated the young student have gradually found their place inside the man. Indeed, the most affect- ing song is also the one of which his old lec- turer would have approved. It features Andre Greie-Fuchs of Berlin experimentalists Laub. Armstrong suggested she intone the com- puter code of the loop she was playing, inter- spersing it once in a while with the words 'I miss you'. What emerges sounds something like a computer having a nervous breakdown. 'She just turned up to my studio with a laptop. She opened it up and started playing. It really felt like she'd been beamed in from the future.' Armstrong's wilderness years may not have made much sense to him at the time, but it's hard to imagine his music sounding quite so beautiful without them. 'I do feel sorry for some young bands,' he says, 'because when you're in you're early twenties, you don't really know anything. And yet there's this pressure to seem worldly. Or at least to have some sense of a masterplan. You can never say, "I'm just winging it and I'm petrified that everyone will think I'm an imposter".' But it would be so cool if a band did just that! 'Well exactly. But you only realise that 20 years later. By which time...'
Modesty forbids him from finishing that sentence. But his record, as it were, speaks for itself.

MR.POPULAR
Craig Armstrong discusses some of his impressive list of collaborators.

EVAN DANDO 'The record company were absolutely baffled when they heard I was flying him out to do the vocals on 'Wake Up In New York'. It's as though the fact that he had hits in the early '90s makes him damaged goods. But he's got one of my favourite voices in the world. To hear someone like that singing-it's better than any instrument you can buy in a shop. It's just amazing.'



MADONNA "With someone like her, you think. "Oh will she be in the studio?" But actually, she's there all the time-from morning to morning. She doesn't get enough credit in my book for being a great songwriter. I've got a lot of respect for her. I mean, how many albums has she done? And the quality control is always prettygood. What's my favourite? Well, it has to be the "Ray Of Light" album. I worked on "Frozen". I put a lot of work into that and I think it came out really well. She's doing a new album at the moment. I asked her what it was like. What did she say? She said it's good! Hahahaha!

MCALMONT 'He's a really good example of how you can get in touch with someone expecting one thing. Then they arrive and proceed to blow your mind in a completely different way. When I thought of getting him into the studio, it was his flamboyancy that appealed to me. I had a song called 'Snow' which I imagined as a real Scott Walkertype number. But then became here and did a really dark interpretation of the song. Instead of having this triumphal sense of despair, I ended up with something a lot more chilling.'

Interview Peter Paphides
Photograph Barry J Holmes
TIME OUT LONDON I April 3 -10 2002

ONLY CONNECT

LINKS

Horace Andy is Mr Good Vibes.

As a featured vocalist with Massive Attack, affectionately known by fans as "Sleepy", he has won a whole new audience over to his intimate, smoky way with a song - tunes like Light My Fire and Spying Glass are highlights of Massive's live set. Horace's legendary status in reggae is already assured mind, as he has recorded a lot of tunes for the world famous Studio One. He is surely the possessor of one of Jamaica's most distinctive voices and a Reggae Superstar.

Horace Andy, real name Horace Hinds, was born on 19th February 1951 in Kingston, Jamaica. Some twenty years later he was taking his first tentative steps in the fast-moving, hard-hustling Kingston music business, when he recorded for George "Phil" Pratt. Soon after he found himself at Studio One on Brentford Road. Two albums and
thunderous singles galore - among them the classic "Skylarking" - he left Studio One. Horace, a studio regular during '72-'76, worked for all the leading producers. Among those who worked with him were Keith Hudson, Augustus Pablo and Winston "Niney the Observer" Holness, but the producer he returned to time and again in the mid-'70s was Bunny "Striker" Lee. In the '80s Horace travelled extensively , recording in London, New York and back in Kingston. Finally a wider stardom arrived in the '90s thanks to the intervention of Massive Attack who brought Horace to a new generation of roots ravers.

A Cultural Singer

Virtually from the beginning of his career in the early 1970s, Horace Andy has cut a fair share of tunes on social conditions. His Studio One oeuvre had included, alongside strong love songs like 'Fever' and Al Wilson soul hit 'Show and Tell', self-penned 'reality' titles such as 'Illiteracy', 'Every Tongue Shall Tell', 'Help The Children', 'Government Land', 'Conscious Dreadlocks', and 'Skylarking', about the unemployed youth who waste their time idling on the street. After Brentford Road, Andy's unique falsetto voice only ever needed placing in the right setting, and this was provided by numerous producers, most notably Bunny Lee, Leonard 'Santic' Chin, Keith Hudson, Derrick Harriott and Winston 'Niney' Holness in Jamaica, and the Bullwackie and Hungry Town setups based in New York.

60
SECOND
INTERVIEW

• Jamaican singer Horace Andy, 51, is a reggae legend, Joining the world-famous Studio One in 1970 and sealing his stardom with 1972's Skylarking. But those who haven't heard Andy's original songs will recognise his distinctive quavering voice from a collaboration with Massive Attack that has lasted through all three of the group's albums from Blue Lines - Hymn Of The Big Wheel and One Love - to a reworking of one of Andy's own tunes, Spy Glass, on Protection.

Horace Andy

• Your new album's called Mek It Burn. What's that about, then?
It's purely about smoking the herb. Nothing bad, really. It's not about drugs, it's just the music.
• You did an album of Bob Marley songs. What was it like singing his stuff?
It was great. We love and respect Marley - he's the king.
• Your new album has some covers, too..
Yeah, I loved doing Night Nurse: I love that song. There's also a ska tune which I didn't want to do as I thought I didn't know how. Reggae's what I know. I grew up singing reggae music.
• Did you always know you wanted to be a singer?
Well, when I was a kid in Kingston, we used to sing in this park every day and my friends always said I should make a career of it. But I never thought I'd be a singer; I wanted to play the guitar. Then this guy passed one day and heard me, and he took me to Phil Pratt, the producer. He taught me to sing. But it was years before I learned to do it properly. Even when I joined Studio One in 1970, I still couldn't sing. I had to go back to my Jah roots to learn how.
• So when do you feel you became a singer?
When I released Skylarking. The songs I'd felt I couldn't sing before then, I went back and sang them over again.
• After Studio One, you went to Connecticut...
Yes. But I didn't give up on my music. I couldn't have tried anything else - the only thing I know is music. If I'd tried to get another job, I'd have lost all of my musical ability. After a few years, I felt like it was time to move on, so I came to England.
• How did you get involved with Massive Attack?
I was waiting for a bus to Peckham one day and I met an old friend who said he knew this group who wanted singers. At that time, I didn't know It but I was one of Daddy G's favourite singers. So when they heard my name, they sent the track One Love.
• Did your singing change when you sang with them?
No, it stays the same - it's just different music. It was weird, with the different style, but I love listening to various styles - I love Chinese music.
• Have you ever tried singing Chinese music?
[Laughs] No.
• How important is spirituality to your music?
Very important. It's important that people are listening to that. Even in love songs, when I'm singing about the ladies, you can hear it - like in One Love.
• Which other musicians do you think are spiritual?
Miriam Makeba is great, a very spiritual singer. When I listen to her, I can draw inspiration for my own music. That's what music should be - written for the oppressed people of the world.
• Do you think music is a good way for political messages to be expressed?
Yes, I think so. But I'm not here to judge anyone. I just write and sing what I see.
• What was it like working with Joe Strummer on the song Living In The Flood?
He's a very down-to-earth guy. He'd chat to anyone and be the same to someone if they were standing at the bus stop or if they were famous.
• What do you think about the British reggae scene?
It's strange. I hear so much music by Jamaicans on the radio in London but the British guys making this music don't get any support - I never hear their music being played. It's quite sad.
• Do you think reggae's shaped by the weather?
[Laughs] Well, there's some rain in Jamaica but there's always reggae there. I think reggae makes good weather every time it's played, wherever you are. It just shines out.

Day One's roots lie in regular jamming sessions wih mates in a basement on Park Row a few years back. Impromptu and often shambolic, their loose funk and hip hop improvising nonetheless helped Phelim and Donni realise that they had a musical future together. Donni's years of abusing the jazz and Dylan in his dad's record collection paid off and gave him a good grounding in arranging, while Phelim's laconic rapping boasts equal influences from the likes of The Jungle Brothers/Tribe Called Quest and the Irish storytelling tradition he was brought up with. "I think there's a tendency to go with something you know. There's a definite tradition of telling stories in Ireland, especially through song. If you listento traditional Irish songsm it's very much telling a history with a personal perspective, you know like a love song, a song about war. It's almost like a snippet of history with the title. Hip Hop's the same really, just updated, more urban."

Simulateously, Phelim began writing with Donni, honing their mixed bag of influences into the infectious slouch that is Dy One's sound. A frustrating lack of money and resources meant that it wasn't an easy ride, though. Nor was there a particularly solid master plan. "We just sort of decided to see what would happen," says Donni. "We knew we had something, but we really didn't know what we weredoing. This friend of ours had a studio set up in his bedroom, and just did a few basic songs. We didn't have any proper gear, we didn't have a penny. We used to go back to Donni's and write songs on his old piano. The instruments weren't important at the time, though."

Phelim agrees. "It's pretty much how we still write now, it's just us in the bedroom really. Sometimes with a guitar or piano or something, just a few different things...then we put it all together, arrangte it all together, and the productions by the both of us. Donni plays the instruments and I do teh lyrics. The songs come first, it's always been about songs. I think the way the songs are arranged is the most important. We've always structured them religiously."

With a couple of tracks eventually down and the name PhD (short-lived thanks to a US act of the same name), a mutual friend passed on a copy to Robert Del Naja. One listen convinced Del Naja and that the duo be signed. Like their Bristol contemporaries Monk & Canatella, Day One aren't concerned about being dubbed as trip-hoppers once their birth places are revealed. "It came up almost immediately when we did our first interview with one of the weekly papers in London," shrugs Phelim. "Even just coming from Bristol, you're going to get people asking you about trip hop, the Bristol scene and, to a certain extent, they're going to make you into a Bristol band. It's just not anissue for us:it was never a worry, because what we're doing musically is nowhere near that kind of tag. Bristol's just where we live."

Back home for a breather, Phelim and Donni are preparing for the release of their debut EP with a whirlwind round of press calls and photo shoots. "We wanted to release an EP rather than a single because we wanted to show that there are different elements to us, that you can't really pigeonhole the sound. The roots are in hip hop but that's a starting point."

The album Ordinary Man, which was due for release in September, was mixed by honary Beastie Boy Mario Caldeto in America, a bit of a legend as far as Day One are concerned. "He did Ill Communication, Paul's Boutique, and all teht," enthuses Donni. "It was wicked working with him, finishing the album in America, because it gave you a bit of distance from everything, it meant we could be a bit more judgmental about how we wante dthe album to sound. More so than if we'd done it over here. We'd been working so hard on the album we were worried we were losing sight of what we wanted it to sound it to sound like."

They've since developed a taste for live shows and can't wait to get out there in the autumn. "It gives everything an edge and it's so different from being in a studio. I like going to gigs when the band are really together but look like the could go over the edge any minute, it's exciting to watch as well as to listen to."