The Three Stags

67-69 Kennington Road, Lambeth SE1 7PZ

Most places on t’internet will try to tell you that the Three Stags is old, ropey and cursed with staff ineptitude. But they haven’t seen the Three Stags: Mach 2. Three charismatic chefs have snaffled up the property as of late and driven a huge truckload of fresh ideas in through the front door. As such, the pub’s character now emanates directly from those characters who run it.

Victor - the Spaniard - is so chirpy he would probably laugh at his own funeral whilst Richard - the former owner of Holland Park’s Windsor Castle – could charm the ass out of a donkey. The ironically-named three stag partnership is completed by Mike, who isn’t a chirpy Spaniard but a token Kiwi. He is, however, so obsessive about food preparation that he even peels the butterbeans.

You cant mention the Three Stags without mentioning the Imperial War Museum because it stands, imperialistically, just across the road. Vic, Rich and Mike have their thinking caps fastened extra tight because they’ve made the clever tactical maneuver of going English. Tourists will now be able to immerse themselves in the patriotic blood-n-guts of historical English warfare before popping in to the Three Stags to immerse themselves in the cor-blimey-guvnor décor and bally-spiffing English nosh, what?!

SO old school English is the Three Stags that upon entering the establishment for a pint of best, an authentic Spitfire plane will whizz along the bar to serve you whilst sporting a rather fetching top hat and tails and doing a perfect impression of Churchill (the Prime Minister, not the jowly insurance hound). Plus, the beady gaze of Queen Victoria will be upon her former subjects at all times as a knowing bust of her has been positioned above the door. Even the polish that gives the dark wood its shining sparkle is sourced from that southern English colony just off the Kentish coast: France.

If that isn’t English enough for you, get this - they even have a selection of ENGLISH wines. Yes, English! And yes, wines! As alien as it might sound, we English actually make our own wine. And before jumping to conclusions about the quality, you’re wrong. It is actually pretty flippin’ fabulous. Yes, flippin’! And yes, fabulous! Chapel Down’s Pinot Reserva, although originating from the German Bacchus grape, is grown and bottled in Kent.

Part of the reason behind these Rieslings is that the Three Stags is attempting to show a little environmental integrity. This means the entire wine list is European to save on air freighting. It also means everything on the food menu is dictated by the time of year so if it’s not in season, it’s not happening (luckily, the vegetarian gnocchi doesn’t hybernate and is, thankfully, included all times. It’s yummy. So you should try it). All the food is free range and from renewable, sustainable resources (including the vegetarian gnocchi. Which is yummy. So you should try it). Even the gin is brewed locally and the loos have half-flush options (these last two aspects are not connected).

Thanks to the two large sides of window, there’s plenty of natural light in the Three Stags and if you’ve been there on previous occasions you’ll have been dazzled by its brightness because of the frightening cream-and-white colour scheme. This was only exacerbated by the 15 or so chandeliers hung from the ceiling. If you were a moth, you probably loved it. Now, thankfully, it’s darker, greener, browner and less shiny and the faux 1940s wallpaper and pendent lights help emphasise its Englishnessness. The large awnings outside are for the benefit of smokers, lovers of sunshine and those that enjoy shouting obscenities at passing traffic.

The good looking crowd is hip, but not ingratiatingly so. They are cool at being cool and adhere to the invisible sign floating above the bar that says “No pretention here. Frivolity, clinking glasses and big guffawing laughter only”. The subdued and inoffensive background music mixes well with the sound of Amstel, Scrumpy Jack, Old Speckled Hen and Peroni being poured from the taps (amongst others). And finding a better establishment in the area is as arduous as trying to explain the rules of cricket to an American. Who is deaf. And dead.

Recommended: by Charlie Chaplin’s pissed-up father who was in here so often they named a corner booth after him.

Avoid: if you have no friends. It’s a sharing kind of place.

Glow Lounge

6 Cavendish Parade, Clapham Common Southside SW4 9DW

Clapham South’s Glow Lounge is a little bit psycho. It cant make up its mind about what it really wants to be. See, it walks like a café – frothing coffees, purchaseable artwork, bare brick walls, serious chin-strokey conversations – but at the same time, it walks like a bar – frothing beers, purchaseable escapism, bare naked smiles, serious belly laughter.

Four years ago, when still in its infancy, Glow was but a mere coffeehouse. Now, it’s done gone grown’d up and struts around like it owns the place. Some know-nothing bureaucrats recently tried to imply it was a nuisance to society with its loud noises and boozy whims, but they ended up being forced to change their minds and give it an extension on the license. Silly bureaucrats.

Only a frizbee-throw away from the edge of Common, and literal next-door neighbour to the sterile Gigulum, Glow Lounge does for Clapham what Home & Away did for the 90s – turned it all Aussie: rock is the only kind of music; everyone looks like Xavier Rudd or those girls from the Sheila’s Wheels ads; there’s neat piles of fresh TNTs everywhere; Cherry Ripes, Twisties and Burger Rings are on the menu; and there’s an all-year-round jandals and boardies dress code (apparently).

Even the refreshments are Aussie. Bottled varieties such as Coopers Sparkling Ale and James Boag from ‘Tazzy’ are on call, or there’s always the Aussie draught alternatives – Stello, Staro, Guinno and Beckso. For those not inclined towards hops and yeast, you could try your hand at an Aussie Pash, which is much like a normal pash, only with more raspberry Redskin-infused vodka and less tongue.

The Aussie hospitality ethos is adopted throughout. On Mondays and Tuesdays, rather than stay in with your TV dinner and TV partner, you could be out playing a delightful game of ‘Toss The Boss’ at Glow Lounge. Depending on where you’re originally from, a game of ‘Toss The Boss’ can mean a variety of different things. For some, it’s an automatic job promotion technique. For others, it’s a simply and enjoyable coin-related method of seeing who pays for the round you just ordered – you or the bar lady.

Going to Glow Lounge by yourself is not actively encouraged, although if you do expect to be pulled into a conversation with total strangers. The loners privilege is usually only allocated to students, freelancers and benefit blaggers needing to use the free wifi. However, even they have limited scope as it states quite clearly on a chalkboard above the bar that the t’internet webthingie is only available up until 6.30pm, after which time it then becomes a “work-free zone”. So don’t be squandering your time working when you’re obligated to use your free time for enjoyment purposes. You have been warned.

The 1970s retro leather décor aesthics of Glow give it an air of “G’day mate, how ya ga’in, take a load off”. Whilst Pimms drinkers and chain smokers will be shouting “By Crikey” when they set eyes upon the full frontal action.

Food-wise there’s….buurggerrr…..a fairly decent variety of homemade options on offer such as the……buuuuurrgggggerrrrr cous cous fritters, the…buuuuurrgggggerrrrr……Mexican Three Bean Wraps, the…buuuuurrgggggerrrrr….Lebanese mezze (with the World’s saltiest halloumi) or the…buuuuurrgggggerrrrr….brownies. And oh, apparently the burgers aren’t too shabby, either. Light and airy, they are like the Aero of the burger world. And the homemade cinnamon chutney accompanying it is proper bonza.

Breakfasts are also distinctly antipodean: Spirulina; all manner of fresh you-little-ripper smoothies and juices; Vegemite, the Shane Warne of toast companions (if you don’t know who Shane Warne is, Glow Lounge is not for you); and, probably most importantly, the Flat White. There is the breakfeast option of the Full Monty but that just wouldn’t be cricket now, would it?

The Atmos is one of approachable conviviality. A she-turntablist - Electric Beat Consignment - offers a monthly mashup for the ravers and, for the sports fans, there is a plasma screen mounted on the wall (which only operates when there is rugby showing, which is a godsend because those darn things can be awfully distracting when you’re trying to concentrate on a conversation about the surfing the Mediterraean but Rihanna keeps waving her umbrella around all over the screen).

Recommended: as a one-stop shop. Go there in the morning to read the paper, best intentions still intact, then get chatting to the bar staff and think “what the hell, I’ll stay for a pint, it’s after midday anyway”. Eight hours later, you’re dancing in the aisles. Next morning, you return to the scene of the crime for a flat white and your best intentions are sluggishly sulking behind you, having difficulty keeping up.

Avoid: if you still think The Walkabout is heaps fun.

The Exhibit

12 Balham Station Road SW12 9SG
Hold tight London. Fluid has found the best new/old bar in town. Have a pen and paper to hand, you’ll need to take this down. Actually, don’t bother. The less people that know, the better. In fact, The Exhibit is rubbish. London’s worst bar. Yuck!

Let’s look at The Exhibit in an imaginary scenario. Fictious Bloke – we’ll call him Bob for now – is a junior manager at ‘The Firm’. He likes hanging out with Jenny, Jo and Dave from his department. He likes bubbles in his booze. He wants his pint and he wants it pronto, capiche? He doesn’t want to be baffled by big cocktail lists. And oh, a few biggish DJs doing the occasional weekend set wouldn’t go amiss. Bob would love Exhibit A – the ground floor. Down there he can marvel at the huge aquarium and the minor alterations that make it look brighter, cosier and more colourful than before.

Secretly, Bob has eyes on the bigger prize and starts to work a little harder. A few months later he gets promoted into middle management. He starts calling himself Robbie and ditches his old pals on the ground floor. Now, he’s hanging out with Victoria, Michael and Penelope, the heads of Finance, HR and Sales. He craves seclusion and a wine list that covers every varietal. He wants chill out music and oil candles. He wants dim lighting. He wants unusal menu entries like ‘venison haunch’. With this in mind, he looks to Exhibit B – the first floor restaurant. Here, he tells his new friends that a glass of the light, teasing Tramonto is perfect as an aperitif, especially in summer and especially as the literal translation means ‘sunset’. Later, he’ll be able to coerce them into bypassing the dessert in favour of the cheese platter. This is so they can order a variety of digestifs instead. Their sweetness usurps the accompanying chutney for flavour enhancement. Robbie’s created a talking point and loves how they seem so very impressed.

But Robbie is still not entirely satisfied. He wants upper class. He doesn’t want a waitress to ask for his order, he wants a bar tender to teach and recommend. He wants extreme intimacy. He wants it even darker. He wants blinds and tinted windows, windows of opportunity, that he can look through at the sad despondent faces on the busy platform across the way. He’ll think to himself “it’s great being me, in here, and not them, out there”. Sure enough, he gets lucky and lands a partnership at ‘The Firm’. Victoria, Michael and Penelope are gone. Now, he’s out with Astrid and Jemima, the boss’s daughters and he’s calling himself Roberto, because that’s what his Italian forefathers would’ve wanted. Now, he on Exhibit C – the second floor. Here, Roberto can really come into his own. Up here he’s surrounded by jaaaaazzzzzzz. He likes the ‘no standing room’ policy and the way it makes it feel like a members bar without actually being so. He likes how they keep his personal glass behind the bar. He likes that there isn’t a cocktail list, but a tasting menu. He likes that the cocktails are still cheap, considering the quality. He likes that he doesn’t have to venture into the West End for a superior cocktail because they have an additional ‘Stolen Drinks’ menu which was pilfered by the bar manager when he worked for Trailer Happiness, Milk & Honey and Lab. Roberto will be pleased with himself because his guests will be suitably amazed.

What Roberto doesn’t know is that there is yet MORE to The Exhibit. There’s the 24-seat movie theatre on the top floor as well which comes with waiter service and recent movies (tip: £16 will get the movie plus a two-course meal. Even the Electric doesn’t do that). There’s also weekly comedy and a summer plan to make the side garden into a beach bar by shipping in several tons of sand. Basically, this is pure escapism on EVERY level.

Recommended: if you are an agoraphobic with a split personality. Having three venues in one big Lego block should help clear that up.

Avoid: only if you live far away. Like, in the Gobi Desert.

Autechre

The intricate digital tones and scattered synths that fill Autechre’s elaborate sequences are for “people who can handle ambiguity without losing it”. This is how Sean Booth perceives his listeners. Speaking with me about the forthcoming release, Quaristice, Booth admits the project was deliberately uncertain in its approach. “Because we were doing a lot of the tracks live we probably weren’t considering as much” he says, signifying the purity of the moment and the essence of Quaristice. “I don’t know what goes on unconsciously – is it feeling, is it just unconscious thought or what the fuck? I don’t think anyone really knows. When you’re doing live stuff you don’t really get much time to think. You just do it”.

Booth adamantly eschews all standard formation techniques when dealing with thematic ideas. Instead, he allows the landscape to permeate his thoughts. “Sometimes I do tracks for people, places, vibes or a situation. Sometimes I’m just drawing on lots of those to try and create an imaginary one. A bit like dreaming”.

Quaristice is the ninth album release for Booth and his working partner, Rob Brown, meaning collaboration is now almost second nature. “There’s benefits in that familiarity. The last album was about a third each and a third with us together. This album was almost all done with us in the same room. It took a bit longer but the method was quite different”.

Running most of their equipment in Realtime, the duo built up momentum as they worked on this project. And when they worked apart, they were still mostly together. Extolling the wonders of the internet, Booth points out how they “quite often start stuff, then send it to each other. I can be running stuff live on Realtime, stream it to Rob, who can then check it and have input over the phone”.

The end product carves out an abstract, fragmented, complex and severe soundscape and emphasises the importance of tools in technique. “We spend all our time working but our view on it is extremely untheoretical” admits Booth, continuing, “it’s all based around experience of process”.

Autechre’s meticulous fusion formation is constantly at the whim of the unconscious mind. This is why the near-infinite range of their instruments is so intergral to their music. “You don’t always get on with the gear. You have to like it. If you were pushed, you could probably make music using an old shoe. But it’s nice to feel an affinity with the thing that you’re using. I quite like the setup that we’ve got at the moment because there’s a lot of range and flexibility. I feel that we haven’t really exhausted it”.

It was the pair’s fascination with 80s hip hop production that influenced their lean towards structured rhythms and dissected analogue resonance. Before closing, Booth muses admiringly, “they were all using the same old crap drum machines and effects units but in wildly different ways. It was nowhere near as conservative as it is now. 80s hip hop was really pushing it. People don’t realise how brutal the ‘Breaking Bells’ dub is, the edit by Omar Santana. It would fucking kill people if they heard it now”.

Ben Westbeech

Ben Westbeech is a man of many faces. He is a walking entertainment centre. He is the musical equivalent of a cinematic auteur, with fingers in all the pies. He writes the theme tune, he sings the theme tune, he produces the theme tune, he even plays the instruments on the theme tune. Classically trained as a cellist, vocalist and pianist, Westbeech and his many facets unite to make him the ultimate man of music. And it doesn’t end there either. He’s also the DJ who plays the theme tune.

Label boss and mentor, Gilles Peterson, is impressed with his abilities behind the decks. This is what he said about Westbeech in an interview I did with him recently. “It’s really refreshing to hear him play. He’s obviously a really good performer, but because he comes from that Bristol drum & bass sound culture he knows how to wobble a crowd”. Westbeech’s fortune as a singer/songwriter was sealed two years ago at Creamfields when a chancer friend forced Peterson to listen to his demo. Within a fortnight, Westbeech was signed to Peterson’s new label, Brownswood. “It’s been really helpful having him” he said, gratefully, “it’s really opened a lot of doors for me”. I was talking to him recently about the work he was doing on his second album.

“We’re going to make a dance record. It’s going to be a lot more dancey than the first one” he indicated. His debut album, Welcome To The Best Years Of Your Life, was a portrayal of young self-indulgent British urbanites. It cemented elements of modern soul, jazzy hip hop, muddled funk and derivative DnB.

For the second album, he’s opting for this new angle because he is a believer. According to him, dance music is about to make a stand. “That’s what is going to be key this year, the resurgence of dance music” he mused, touching briefly on the state of music’s current scene. “We’ve been pounded by the indie kids for too many years now. We’re on the cusp of something really good happening with dance music”.

Westbeech sees himself as a part of this comeback and is even willing to relocate to ensure it happens. Citing boredom as the reason, Westbeech is now making the move from Bristol. “It’s getting a bit stale for me. I want to get out of there, move to London and get back in the London vibe”. However, having spent the last six years of his life in Bristol’s musically vibrant city, he still insists it is “a great city for new ideas and creative energy. People are very forward thinking down there. They’re very original”.

Dave Pearce

Towards the end of February Dave Pearce’s monthly juggernaught trance night, Delirium, celebrated its first birthday at Ministry Of Sound. Pearce believes the main room at MOS “is probably the best one there is for trance. In terms of taking people on a journey with the music, there’s plenty of options to make it really dark and feel part of the sound”. I caught up with him briefly to chat about his euphoric new release, the coincidal Delirium Volume 2

How does Vol 2 differ from Vol 1, if at all?
It’s not completely different really. The way the album works is that it really is a compilation. I’ve tried to make it a recollection of the biggest tracks from the underground trance scene for the last couple of months as well as ones that I know are about to come out. Which is what we kind of did with the last album. Side one is more melodic and then it gets a little bit harder on side two, as we did on the first album. So it’s a similar format but we’re just introducing some new artists that weren’t featured on the last one.

What names should we be looking out for in 2008 in the world of underground trance?
John O’Callaghan, certainly with his performance in the last six months, is well on the way to breaking through. I would put my money on him as someone to look out for. I think he’ll develop the fact that he’s done a brilliant vocal trance record as well. This particular track, Big Sky, is so good that it shows his versatility. That will elevate him to the next level.

And looking ahead to the rest of the year for you personally, what are you most excited about?
I’m hoping to do a couple of gigs abroad and also a couple around the country aswell. I’m planning Ibiza at the moment and working out which DJs to work with in the summer. My main press for 2008 is building the whole Delerium thing and the other thing that I’m doing, which started on my radio show over the last few months, is the new Bedroom Producer where we get people to send in tracks that they’ve made at home and start to feature them on the Radio 1 show. We’ve had a really good reaction to that. It’s quite cool when you ring someone at home after they’ve sent you their track. It’s quite amazing actually because we also get people to text comments when we play the track on the radio. They tend to get quite a lot of feedback. In fact, one of the guys has got a label talking to him at the moment.

Now that the King’s Cross area and Turnmills are all closing down, do you think Ministry Of Sound has a bigger draw card?
It could well do. It’s terribly sad to see these venues going, even though I work at Ministry. You never want to see that situation happening. London should have, and always has had, a very vibrant clubbing scene. I think that people will at least know that if they’re into this sort of music that it is a great home. Maybe if they’ve been scared off because Ministry is traditionally known for its funky house. Plus you should come and see trance in this environment, it really is how it should be done. You get that amazing sound and that incredible atmosphere from the lack of lighting.

Gilles Peterson

“I’m going skiing in a couple of weeks” he says, cheerfully. “I’m quite excited about it. I’ve been doing some work for this company called Milk & Honey. They’ve got a few bars around the place and have one in Chamonix, France”.

I am locked into a candid chat with Gilles Peterson - global DJ, Arsenal supporter, Radio 1 presenter and close friend to Carl Cox – and the conversation is leaning towards the subject of snow. Peterson recently provided an article for Shortlist magazine in which he brooded over his top ten spots for winter activities. Curiously enough, Chamonix came first. And tenth!

“The one thing I always find weird when I go skiing is that that’s the one place I find really hard to combine work and skiing” remarks the former Snowbombing Festival DJ, almost abashedly. “For me, going skiing is all about getting up early and making a day of it. It doesn’t really work with nightlife”. Despite his long-standing association with skiing, Peterson is not on first name terms with all the winter sports. “I’m rubbish at snowboarding” he concedes, believing the in-line version to be “just too brutal. Snowboarding is great up until thirty”.

The talk has drifted into his dealings with the media because, of late, it almost seems as if it has become a sideline career for him. He had a similar travel-related piece published in The Guardian in the same week, this time a run down of his favourite clubbing venues across the globe. “I was just basically bigging up a load of clubs that I’ve got friends at and that are really good. I’d rather have precise information” he brags, proving that his worldwide traveller appeal seems appropriate for “filling everyone’s content pages”.

But all is not as it might seem at first glance. Peterson is not convinced that the reciprocation is just. “It’s cheap, man. I get a tiny little plug at the bottom of the article about an album that noone gives a fuck about. In the meantime, they get a few pages of glossy content for free. I’m sort of jesting a little but in a way, you are sort of filling in the pages. Some of this released stuff is just total crap. Absolute rubbish”.
Although Peterson is acutely aware of the element known as choice, he still insists “you’ve got to be careful”. Launching into another scathing attack, Peterson continues “some people approach you like ‘yeh, yeh, I wanna do a big thing about you and blah blah blah and it’s going to be in The Guardian or The Times or something’. It’ll be in a supplement. You’ve given them loads of stuff. Then you get it and you notice that the whole magazine is sponsored by Intel Computers or something. I want to say ‘hang on. That’s not cool at all’. I hate all that stuff that goes on”.

Equally, however, Peterson sees himself as a spokesperson for artists and musicians and appreciates “the way the business and the music scene are at the moment”. Basically, he is here to shout about it. “It’s important for the movement that I’m part of to get a little bit of space”. And although I enjoy nothing more than listening to artists releasing their demons, time constraints and word counts dictate that questions must steer towards his most recent release, Gilles Peterson In The House.

Peterson and compilations are like Kylie and Olivier - they just cant stay away from one another - and In The House is their latest liaison. However, asked if he himself is a fan of the In The House series, Peterson is as blunt as James. “Not really. I don’t listen to these sorts of records” he confides, trailing off into playful giggles. Shifting and squirming to get back onside, he adds “I’m not a guy who will go out and buy the latest Todd Terry mix album but I will check what they play”.

The In The House execs shouldn’t pack up shop just yet as Peterson carefully reconsiders his thoughts with honesty. “When I was asked to do that particular series it was the one that I really wanted to do the most because it is the one that has got the most kudos and the best DJs”. Narrowly missing the head-on collision with self-sabotage, he then veers back onto the press-yielding path. “When Defected came in, I was really pleased because they have a good way of getting me to a wider audience. It’s a different audience to the people who know me and buy my other records. It’s been really interesting”. Whether these latter statements are believeable is a trivial point, but the excitement his displays when mentioning his own label, Brownswood Recordings, is palpably genuine.

Launched only two years ago, and named after the North London road he once lived on, Brownswood is the current home to of-the-moment singer/songwriter Ben Westbeech, Japanese jazz punks Soil & ‘Pimp’ Sessions and the Brooklyn based jazz and bluesman, José James. “It is a struggle, to a degree, running a label at the moment so we’re not throwing everything into it because it would be absolutely suicidal” believes Peterson choosing, instead, to focus on a select few acts that show great potential. “He’s a really good DJ aswell” he says of Westbeech, “it’s really refreshing to hear him play. He comes from that Bristol drum & bass sound culture so he knows how to wobble a crowd. He also knows how to have a bit of a laugh. He’ll throw ‘Hit The Road Jack’-Ray Charles bang in the middle of some really mental records. I love that”. Oddly enough, Westbeech’s recent and highly acclaimed album is entitled Welcome To The Best Years Of Your Life.

Although he is enjoyably opinionated, Peterson only grants relationships second place. “One of the things with me is that I’ve always been really adamant about not allowing personalities to get in the way of the music. Meaning, if I don’t like someone but they make a great record, I’ll always play it”. This could be part of the reason he has become a cult in his own right. His understanding of jazz, funk, soul, hip hop, latin, house and drum&bass gives credence to his stock. Without it, could he hold his very own annual awards ceremony (The Worldwide Winners Awards) or even expand his Worldwide Festival into China, Japan and Germany? Well, he does and is.

Kraak & Smaak

A bigger, brighter future is dawning over Dutchmen Wim Plug, Mark Kneppers and Oscar De Jong. Over the last few years, Kraak & Smaak, as a collectively, have slowly funked their way up the currency ladder, notching up Bestival, Coachella, SXSW and Pinkpop along the way. The year 2008 is primed, ready to catapult them into the orbit of triumph.

Speaking from his hideout in Leiden, Holland, Vim Plug tells Base that the distinguished Kraak & Smaak moniker is not as conspicuous as it might first appear. “It’s a Dutch proverb” he explains, exuding a prolific Flemish accent, “it means ‘crunchy and tasty’. It seemed to reflect our music”.

Late in 2007, the Dutch trio spewed forth the double headed, club-funking EP beast, Funk Ass Rotator/Mad As Hell. Where as Funk Ass Rotator was heritage - “the Kraak & Smaak breakbeat club song” - Mad As Hell was grittier, dub-smacked house. Plug sees Mad As Hell as “not your sweet house music”, but “very jumpy, very itchy” and infested with “heavy basslines”. Basically, it was “underground stuff. The stuff you hear at parties”.

And now, K&S are at it again. Wafting huge hints about the content of their forthcoming album, Plug & co have launched another direction-distorting EP. It’s name is That’s Our Word and it’s a three-pronged attack of vocal dexterity. The eponymous title track is funk-heavy hip hop delivered by Dudley Perkins’ (Stones Throw) “stream of consciousness flow of rapping”. Plug reveals there was a concerted effort amongst the group to focus this new work more on songs and vocalists. “We’re not very good at lyrical writing and singing ourselves. So we thought of the people whose albums we’d bought and then we came up with people like Dudley”.

This simplistic approach also lead K&S in the direction of Carmel, the popular 80s boogie jazz vocalist. They were very keen to utilise her dynamic voice so as to balance the EP’s leftfield track, Why Do People Fall? According to Plug, Carmel’s singing “has a very meloncholic timbre of it” which is why the track has been likened to Massive Attack, Portishead and the darker, seedier elements of David Lynch’s cinematic world.

It is no surprise to learn, therefore, that K&S are no strangers to celluloid distraction. Producing and DJing are just part of the story. They also supply scores for films (I Embrace You With A Thousand Arms), TV (Grays Anatomy) and computer giants (Microsoft Zune music and video player). Asked if these alternative money-earners are intrinsically linked with a career in DJing, Plug insists “most DJs would hope so. What we’ve learned as DJs is that we wouldn’t have that status if we didn’t put out records ourselves”.

The addition of the K&S live band has broadened their appeal and is key to protecting their rank. “It sort of all intertwines from that” says Plug, “all these other things come because our interests are quite broad. We’ve come to learn that being a DJ these days is not enough”.

Parameters are obsolete in the K&S domain, which is a catalyst for developing new and exciting things. Debut album, Boogie Angst, was widely regarded as a fine piece of futuristic breakbeat. That was followed swiftly by The Remix Sessions, an anthology of their emphatic recrafting of artists like Jamiroquai, Junkie XL and Richard Dorfmeister.

The new album is set for release any day now and Plug promises “more electronic sounds” and featured collaborations. “For the very traditional K&S style of funky breakbeats we got Ben Westerbeech” he says, adding, “this was also something where we thought ‘let’s just try it out and see what happens’”. Thankfully for us all, “it worked very well”.

Plug, De Jong and Kneppers each have their own field of expertise and provide elements that produce raw broken house beats and rolling energetic grooves. “Only one of us, Oscar, is a real musician who knows the studio technical stuff inside out” explains Plug, “he’s a very good keyboard player and studied musical production so knows his way around”. Kneppers and Plug himself, however, are DJs and, as such, both are habitual vinyl junkies. “We’ve DJ-ed for quite some time and we are enormous record collectors. We still buy every dance style from D&B to hip hop to house to breakbeat, but also alternative stuff”. Allegedly, Kneppers’ collection has already reached the 50,000 mark.

Plug sees the consumption of these styles as pivotal to “the sounds in the record”. The procedure is self-evident and involves simply messing around a bit. “We contribute to it further by looking at arrangement, putting in the samples and trying it out” he confesses, even going so far as to use the “organic” word. “One way or the other, that seems to work”.

The trajectory of Kraak & Smaak’s success appears to be calculated, yet in actual fact it only ever began just for kicks. “It all started just as being fun and seeing what happened next, nothing serious” Plug remembers, concluding, “from the first album onwards it has just gone up all the time”.

Underworld

Whatever is in the Essex water it must be affecting the subconscious psyche out there. Plugging into Gaia ‘s zen-like mainframe seems somehow easier for them than it does for us Londoners. The wifi distortion of our metropolis is blurring the frequency. It must be, why else would Underworld’s oblique lyricist, Karl Hyde, claim the county as the home of his spirituality?

Underworld are synonymous with emotive melodies and tribal energy. They are also intrinsically tuned to fanatical demands and the consumption of art, where communication is unquestionably paramount. Hyde, and his partner Rick Smith, are exponents of diversified publishing. And now, he wants a chat with me. But not an old-fashioned tête-à-tête, or even over the age-old telephone. He’d rather convey his thoughts through a veil of cyber anonymity. Responses prepared and edited. Choosing not to adhere to the whim of spontineity. An Email conversation, futuristic Underworld at its trademark best.

Describing the aspects of his past that have guided him towards today, Hyde’s definitions are strikingly reminscent of his former “lager, lager, lager” approach. “Love of music of all genres & of groove & electronic sounds & film music & dub reggae & desert blues & delta blues & Miles Davis & great DJ’s” he begins, further adding, “& field recordings & radio noises & music of the street & street poetry & graffiti & marks on the roads & street language & conversations overheard & the noise of nothing & the noise of everything”. Obviously, the now world of Underworld lies eons away from yester-15-year, and yet the tone of the transmission is vaguely similar.

Firstly, he claims that Underworld are regular “two arm, two leg, two head” punters who love “ice hockey, football, motor racing, art, film, stuff of magic”. He even has “the scarf to prove it”. It’s clear the giddy complexities of his mood are as fleeting as they are important. I’ve caught him at his most playful. Delivering animated answers like he’s playing with Lego: “waking up” is what excites him; “No. 42, Planet Earth, The Real World, Today” is where he most likes to hang out; and, when pressed about guilty pleasures, he mockingly replies, “not guilty until proven innocent m’lord. Anyway, I was nowhere near it when it happened”. Watch out readers, we have a live one here.

In terms of productivity and creative exploration, Underworld’s electronic output is second to none. It exist side-by-side on a plain with Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk, standing knee-deep in an electic current.

The fifth studio album, Oblivion With Bells, was released last October and is meant, as Hyde adamantly entertains, for “people who like it enough to turn people onto it”. The lyrical content of his answers and the album are as meandering as one another.

Hyde’s stream of consciousness is seen throughout Oblivion’s epic tumult. His signature cloud of introspection wafts through ‘Faxed Invitation’ with the opening, “I don’t wanna get dirty, with two scoops, and white flakes and jelly, wrestling would do it, go down with the body, hugger stroking”. It also canters through the faculties of the mind in ‘Ring Road’, where punctuation and thought never meet and ideas are endlessly intertwined - “I want you to be the way I want you to be and when you're not it hurts me like shredded tape”.

The process of creating these lyrics and a melody are “all being worked on continually” Hyde reveals. “The music is being written and the words are being gathered daily”. Yet Hyde, when writing music, claims he does not transport to a cerebral time or place, instead staying “rooted in the moment – the groove – the melody – the sound – the vibe – the mood – the journey – now – as it is”.

Oblivion does not shy from the universal Underworldisms: the orchestral ambience, the rolling synths, the thumping basslines, the voyages of the mind, the compulsive intimacy of German minimal techno, it’s all there. Their most recent single, ‘Beautiful Burnout’, was the second to be dispensed from the album and its robotic whisperings are hypnotically caught in the realm of Kraftwerk and Laurie Anderson. As a swirling 8-minute endorphin rush it embodies, as Hyde explains, “a dark tube train ride out’ve the belly of the city to the outskirts. Trackside decorated with burned out cars”.

Painting images with sound and making words into pictures is symptomatic of an album that is riddled with cinematic references. From the interchangeable soundscapes of ‘Glam Bucket’ to the graceful orchestrated synths of ‘To Heal’, Underworld’s tendancies are enveloped by drama. The distance between 2002’s One Hundred Days Off and this studio album was partly, but not entirely, occupied by a resolute involvement with the cinematic arts.

Hyde - whose favourite movies include Rock n Roll Highschool simply because “the Ramones rule!” and 2001: A Space Odyssey for its “amazing” and “deeply influential” soundtrack – recently gave two movies the Underworld treatment. With back-to-back momentum, he and Rick Smith helped both Danny Boyle (whom they knew from previous work, Trainspotting and The Beach) on Sunshine and Anthony Minghella with Breaking and Entering.

Their involvement prior to writing the score has always depended on the director, as well as the timing of joining the project. Hyde says, “with Breaking And Entering we were brought in during the writing of the script and involved throughout the shooting”. Whereas, with Sunshine, they only saw a rough screening but were still “very excited by what Danny Boyle wanted” from them. He always sees their roll as support for the director’s vision and, as such, “what ends up on screen is always what the director wants and needs to underscore the action”.

Running concurrent to their work with these directors was their ongoing thirst for exploring new publishing methods, of making the journey more inclusive to their fans and kinship. The completion of their contract with V2 enabled them to break free, out on their own, to fully embrace the various distribution vehicles that stir them. For Hyde, it is simply “answering a powerful desire to have many ways of getting our work out to the world”. This materialised into many forms: the digital project, Riverrun, which proffered new tracks to their fans via the web only; plus, the launch of Underworldlive.com which enables users to have exclusive access to free audio dowloads, video downloads, live web radio shows, Quicktime TV casts and hi-resolution artwork.

A catalyst for this research was their eternal hero, John Peel, whom they stood in for at the BBC on occasion. “We grew up listening to John Peel & that’s the way we still listen to music – with open eyes & ears continually asking anyone we meet what new/old sounds their into…..often to play out on our web radio show. It’s what John taught us to do.”

Hyde and Smith are conclusively obsessed with the notion of journeymen, of how they feel in the current moment. The gently soulful and not just anthemic Balearic dance of Oblivion…assists the journey, but does not end it. There is more beyond. There is more in everything.

“I get better thoughts on trains, in café’s & walking down the street” says Hyde, providing proof that most good ideas don’t come whilst staring at a computer. “The best thoughts come from hearing other people’s conversations”. Eavesdropping seems to be the key. So watch out, whatever you say now might just end up in a song.