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Bomb The Bass
Bomb The Bass will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket infoBomb The Bass - Biography
Bomb The Bass is the umbrella title for the output of British musician and DJ, Tim Simenon. Tim Simenon's band has evolved its style since the late 80s, from the seminal proto-House of Beat Dis!, via the genre-defining Bug Powder Dust, to 2008's brand-new album and full AV show featuring visuals artists V-Scratch from Switzerland.
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Released in 1987, the band's debut single was Beat Dis, with composition credited to (Emilio Pasquel / Captain Black / DJ Kid 33). Initially disguised as a U.S. import in an attempt to conjure the mystique of Bomb The Bass being an underground New York act, the single exceeded mere expectations by eventually reaching number two on the UK charts.
NME champion Bomb The Bass, and kickstart DJ culture. (1987)The recording of Beat Dis, which cost a reputed £500 - funded by Simenon himself with money coming from DJ sets at London club, The Wag, and an odd-job stacking shelves in a supermarket - was one of the first hit singles to introduce the mainstream to sampling culture (along with releases by M/A/R/R/S and S'Express). Samples used on Beat Dis included lifts from Public Enemy and Ennio Morricone, alongside dialogue clips from the television shows Dragnet, and Thunderbirds.
Its roaring success put the then unknown Simenon on the front cover of Britain's highly influential NME music newspaper - an act rendered all the more surprising by the papers preference up until then for Indie bands. With Simenon recognised as a DJ first and foremost, rather than a musician, his expanding profile at the time would help kickstart the rise of DJ culture (as referenced in the NME front page headline of the time).
The fateful cover of Beat Dis.Beyond the inventive use of samples and breakbeats on Beat Dis, the single release would also go on to impact on the cultural landscape in a far bigger, yet inadvertent manner. By way of a homage, the single sleeve featured an aspect of a cartoon frame from the cult Alan Moore comic novel, Watchmen. The image used was of a smiley badge that had, in the story, been worn by a murdered man, pushed from a skyscraper window. As a result of the fall, the badge had become - ironically - splattered with blood. A simple, yet powerful image at the time, in both its Watchmen and isolated form, the smiley (without the ironic blood) would subsequently go on to become the icon of the emerging Rave scene, hijacking and overwriting the logos meaning from then on.
Into The Dragon.Jolted into action by the success of Beat Dis, Bomb The Bass moved from singles success to album act, with debut LP, Into the Dragon - the name of which aligned with Hip-hop cultures growing fondness for 70s kung-fu movies. Made up of ten tracks, the collection expanded further the band's fascination with Hip-hop breakbeats, Rap, and that musical sub-culture's creative mashing of multi-media pop culture references.
Second single, Megablast, took its bassline from the theme music to the John Carpenter film Assault on Precinct 13, and was also used in the Bitmap Brothers computer game Xenon 2 Megablast. Other early hits included Don't Make Me Wait (as a double-A side release with Megablast), and a cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David composition I Say a Little Prayer.
Proving much in demand, Simenon was drafted in to help produce a radical remake of Buffalo Stance, the debut hit single by Neneh Cherry (as featured on the album, Raw Like Sushi). The released version features Cherry paying homage to Simenon during the song's break ("Bomb the Bass, rock this place"), and reached number three on the UK singles chart and number 1 on the US dance chart. He also produced follow-up single, Manchild, and undertook 12" remix duties.
Into Unknown Territory
In 1991, Love So True, the first single of new Bomb The Bass material suffered under hastily imposed (and unofficial) censorship broadcast regulations, as the outbreak of the First Gulf War prompted UK broadcasters, especially the main national music station BBC Radio 1, to blacklist a variety of songs and acts deemed potentially controversial due to their content or titles. The band name Bomb the Bass was considered to fall in to this category, along with that of Massive Attack. Copies of the Love So True single were re-issued credited to Tim Simenon instead, but the resulting confusion may have impeded the singles chart chances.
Unknown Territory (Japanese edition).With the Bomb The Bass handle restored, and an album ready to go, band activity once again ground to a halt, when the collection, now titled Unknown Territory, was delayed when Pink Floyd refused to allow a section of Money to be sampled on one of the albums tracks.
With the contentious Pink Floyd sample removed, the album campaign revved up once again. Second single Winter in July faired much better, subsequently becoming a summer-fuelled UK Top 10 hit. The track featured several prominent samples from the Japan track Ghosts (as featured on the band's final studio album, Tin Drum). This act of inclusion-by-sampling saw Simenon following the Hip-hop ethos of paying homage to heroes on record. By referencing the David Sylvian-led band's influential textual and ambient work many years before, Simenon was giving notice of his intention to push Hip-hop orientated Dance music in the direction that would become Trip-hop.
Winter In July CD single.Once again pioneering new sounds in the public arena, and following the success of Winter In July, Unknown Territory would be the band's most well received release to date, creating a style of Hip-hop inspired and breakbeat heavy Dance music that also pre-empted what would eventually come to be known as Big Beat many years later (and prove infinitely more successful commercially for the likes of Fat Boy Slim). As usual, a great deal of Simenon's Hip-hop fascination would shine through (most notably, the production work of The Bomb Squad with Public Enemy) via the use of multi-media samples, with the album containing dialogue or soundtrack clips from Blade Runner, David Cronenberg's Videodrome, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Marvel comics' Fantastic Four animated cartoon series; and Death Race 2000.
New influences are... Clear
In 1995, Bomb The Bass released their third album, Clear, on the Stoned Heights imprint of Island Records, the outer sleeve of which bore striking similarity to the poster advertising the David Cronenberg movie, Naked Lunch. A more mature, yet far darker work, both tonally and through its subject matter, than previous offerings, contributions would come courtesy of Justin Warfield, Sinéad O'Connor, Jah Wobble, and Benjamin Zephaniah.
Where once Simenon had initially constructed tracks with frenetic layers of colourful samples from films and cartoons, real instrumentation and vocals were now to the fore. Whilst this would mark the band's leaps and bounds in their progression from DJ-based music to actual song-based composition, this may have also been accelerated by the rise in frequency of music industry legal disputes over sampling. With legal problems becoming an increasingly regular inevitability, the consequential knock-on effect meant the actual cost of including extracts from other people's copyrighted material rendered the creative payback of sampling-based composition more trouble than it might be worth to a small, or commercially savvy, act.
Simenon's new influences, and, therefore, his fascinations on Clear were very obviously more literature-based. Lead track, and first single Bug Powder Dust, was a blatant homage to the life and impact of William Burroughs, specifically his Naked Lunch novel. In a nod to old ways, Simenon starts the track with a dialogue sample from the hybrid-Burroughs character in the Naked Lunch film ("I think it's time to discuss your, err... philosophy of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavour.")
On later track, 5ml Barrel, controversial novelist Will Self contributed a rare vocal performance, providing dark spoken-word lyrics that relayed an opiate addict's delusion of his collapsing veins being like motorways, due to the amount of impurities that had invaded his body. While If You Reach The Border features beat-poet Leslie Weiner on the other end of a telephone, drifting in and out of the song, as she vents through a drug-haze on the supposed ups and downs of a toxic relationship.
The album launched various singles after Bug Powder Dust, including Sandcastles, 1 To 1 Religion, and Darkheart, but critical acclaim failed to translate into commercial success. However, despite Bug Powder Dust fairing poorly on the singles charts, the track has since proved enduring, featuring on many lists of key British Hip-hop tracks. Remixes of the track by Chemical Brothers, and much slower, trippier versions by Kruder & Dorfmeister and La Funk Mob would keep Bomb The Bass in the public eye for longer, becoming staples of many Chill Out and Trip-hop compilation albums around the time.
90s become 00s, become Electric Tones
Clear Cut EP.As a headlining act, Bomb The Bass would remain dormant throughout the rest of the 1990s, with Simenon concentrating upon his work as a producer and remixer for other artists, such as Depeche Mode, U2 and David Bowie among others. So, whilst the Bomb The Bass handle would be removed from commercially successful releases, Simenon would appear to be happier leasing the brand out to others. Key works would be the Ultra album for Depeche Mode, with Simenon's textural skills replacing those of exiting Mode member Alan Wilder. Plus additional production and remixing duties on the one-off soundtrack single Play Dead by Bjork and David Arnold. The latter would prove a massive UK hit in 1994, and go some way towards establishing Bjork as a mainstream artist, and an introduction to many of Arnold, the man that would go on to achieve huge acclaim composing new James Bond scores.
Continuing into the early part of the 21st Century, material from Tim Simenon was rare, and mainstream exposure to the name Bomb The Bass non-existent. Rumours circulated that he had given up music. However, these rumours would be scotched in 2000 when Simenon launched an Amsterdam-based record label, called Electric Tones.
In 2001 Simenon broke cover, having been nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for the theme tune to the remake of the BBC television series Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), which he co-wrote with David Arnold.
The only new material to surface during what would prove to be a fourteen year break from mainstream view would come sporadically, with some even featured under a different name on on Simenon's own Electric Tone label. First out would be Fast, which featured Shawn Lee, and surfaced as a track on a 4-track compilation 12-inch single released on the We Love You label. Next would come the Clear Cut EP, which was released on Morr Music in 2001. The EP, which consisted of radical remixes of the same one track, presented a Simenon that had ditched his Hip-hop and pop leanings in favour of a radically different style that shimmered somewhere between the heavily edited Dance music sub-genre Glitch, and avant-garde electronic territories.
The release had its origins when Tim Simenon invited Markus Acher and Portuguese vocalist Valerie Trebeljah from German Indietronic act, Lali Puna, to collaborate on Clear Cut, when it was at demo stage. Having then farmed out remix duties to other friends, Simenon was so happy with the radical directions each mix took he released all five as a manifesto of contemporary Electronica possibilities. A full list of the included remixes reads like a who's who of progressive acts from the period, including versions by Herrmann and Kleine, Opiate, Arovane, Christian Kleine - and Bomb The Bass.
After which came the Tracks EP, recorded in collaboration with Jack Dangers, from Meat Beat Manifesto. Released via Electric Tones, with all tracks co-credited to 'Bomb The Bass & Jack Dangers, the recording session was listed as having taken place years earlier, in 1998, suggesting the material had been pulled from the vaults.
Further to which, an additional remix of Clear Cut would feature as the fourth track on the Electric Tone compilation, Electric Tones 9101112. And several other cuts would even come under the alternative name Flow Controller (on Electric Tones 1234). All were released as limited, numbered pressings on vinyl (perhaps purposefully) without mainstream fanfare, and received no promotion beyond reviews - albeit favourable ones - in specialist Dance music publications.
Future Chaos: Bomb The Bass in the 21st Century
Quietly in November 2006, news was posted by Simenon on the Bomb The Bass Myspace page that a new album had been recorded, and was about to be mixed. Much later, in January 2008, and again without fanfare through their Myspace page, it was announced that the Future Chaos album would indeed see the light of day - in May of the same year. Performed, for the best part, with Simenon working on a vintage Minimoog synth, the album, which consists of fourteen tracks is said to be more electronic than previous efforts, with the strong use of the Minimoog lending a cohesive feel across the set.
As with all previous Bomb The Bass albums, Future Chaos is a collaborative outing. This time, Simenon has teamed up with former Screaming Trees and Queens Of The Stone Age singer, Mark Lanegan, the Krautrock-loving and decidedly un-Japanese Fujiya & Miyagi, and Richard Thair and Jakeone of Toob. Most notable, however, is the appearance of Paul Conboy, who is best known for his partnership with Adrian Corker in A.P.E. and Corker Conboy. Conboy sings on six tracks, has co-written a great deal of the music, and also co-produces alongside Simenon, making this the most collaborative Bomb The Bass album to date. Adam Sky has also become involved with the project, by way of contributing remix duties to a track called Butterfingers.
With Bomb The Bass now up and running as a viable band, rather than production orientated studio entity, live concert dates are being finalised to coincide with the May release of Future Chaos. Again, Paul Conboy will feature, adding keyboards and vocals to the live set-up. Low key warm-up shows were undertaken in February 2008 in Holland - due, no doubt, to Simenon currently residing in Amsterdam. In keeping with the multi-media ethos of the band, video artists will be on hand to scratch video and animation projections over the stage.
Butterfingers will be the first single to be released, due in March 2008.
Bomb The Bass will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
Written: 5th Mar, 08
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