Monday, July 24, 2023

Paul Oldfield - the house / techno writing - Melody Maker, 1987-1990

Although the two of us once operated a not-very-successful deejay "company" back when we were students, I don't think Paul Oldfield ever spent much time in clubs. I'm pretty certain he never got  anywhere near a rave. Still, for someone who never got "right on one, matey," it seems to me that Paul got deeper into the essence of acid house, techno, etc, than anyone else covering that beat at that time in the music papers, style press, and what then passed for dance magazines. 

Below you will find near enough his complete Melody Maker works on house, techno, acieeed, New Beat, chill-out etc in approximately chronological sequence. I just wish he had stuck around at the Melody Maker long enough for the ardkore / darkcore / jungle years. 

















































"All David Stubbs's metaphors" - Paul probably riffing off this recent review by Stubbsy




















Back to the PO-verdose













 




















Paul Oldfield, Royal House, Melody Maker, autumn 1988















A GUY CALLED GERALD

ULU, LONDON
Melody Maker, 1990

by Paul Oldfield


Put A Guy Called Gerald beside the beatmasters, radical rap and survivalist electrodub that make up the rest of tonight's acts, and you'll see that he's somewhere else. Their urgency and agency, their in-your-face imperatives are replaced by his new narcosis and lotus-eating, becalmed passivity. It's all embodied in Gerald himself. There's none of the "front" or danger of the crews that precede him, just a familiar, somnolent Mancunian accent and patient behind-the-scenes programming. If it weren't for his singer up front, and the crowd downstairs setting up an incongruous terrace chant for ''Voo-doo Ray", it'd be more ambience than act.

That's appropriate. Gerald and his northern satellites launched New Age", aka "ambient" house, the phenomenon that emphasises the trance in trance dance, and should reconcile House music with "head" rock. Both musics can offer the same fix, or rather un-fixing of consciousness. Both can free you from the co-ordinates of the here and now, and let you attain oneness with the world and peace.

Gerald translates House music from urban night-life to paradisial, pacific (often literally Pacific, with a capital P) scenes. Tonight there's "Eyes Of Sorrow", with its rainforest percussion and pipes; or 'Voodoo Ray", with its slow-scanning ritual limbo from the tropics; or, as an encore, Gerald's own reading of the halcyon surf of "Pacific State". While rock, rap, dub have kept faith in Africa's heartland, the place of origins and history, House has escaped to the southern hemisphere's soporific, out-of-time innocence and unworldly primitivism.

That shows in the minimalist fluctuations and meander of "Subtopia", a serenity you can lose yourself in. Gerald's visual effects confirm this mesmerising tranquility at the heart of House too. They look as if they're influenced by the new model for the natural sciences, chaos theory (very much a buzz concept in club culture): instead of predictable forces and counter-forces (the grammar of "techno" music), there's indeterminacy and turbulence, back-projections of vapour, clouds, shoals of fish, self-ordering but unpredictable organic forms that fascinate.

But Gerald doesn't celebrate just nature or an Edenic past (none of rock's third-world heritage industry here). He's an unrepentant futurist. Just hear "Automanic", his preview of the forthcoming album: all print-out chatter, split-second samples and arc—light strobes on stage. Or "FX", an ascent through a Lloyds-building ziggurat of glass and steel. Think Tokyo, think Ridley Scott. It doesn't contradict his Pacific states, though. He's found tomorrow's paradise, where hi-tech achieves voodoo's instantaneity of communication, and where cities dematerialise into flows of light and information (think Kraftwerk), a mosaic of signals as mesmerising as the time-lapse record of city life in the film "Kooanisquatsi", but without that film's technophobic undertones.

Gerald's performance is "plastic", as his music's often been called. Plastic in the original sense, of course: adapting to all kinds of shapes, a hypnotic, becalming changeability. Go with the flow.


 
















8 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting all these up Simon. Have already read some of them via Nothingelseon but great to have them collected here. What happened to Paul Oldfield after his MM days? Can’t seem to find anything about him on the web. I’m hoping he’s still alive? Did he leave music journalism completely in 1990/91?

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    1. He worked for a while at the Potato Marketing Board, would you believe. I think he sneaked some subtly surreal stuff into the newsletter they sent out to farmers.

      But for most of the past 30 years he has worked in software - encryption and data safety and that kind of thing. I believe he has published a book or two in that specialist field.

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    2. By the way, talking of Nothingelseon, you must have seen the Backlash from early '94 he posted recently - the lead letter by you!

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  2. Ah Jesus, no I haven’t!! Don’t think I could face the cringefest! I got a slagging off from a few mates in college when that shite got published — one of whom was a big Reynolds head. He worked (still does) in the Cork City library so photocopied the entirety of his Blissed Out edition for me, complete with all his sarky little witticisms in the margins. You’ll be glad to know I’ve since purchased the actual book itself, only about three years ago mind you. Sourced an English library Vaughan Oliver cover edition on Amazon.

    Have sort of ignored Nothingelseon recently while he was doing 1993. Just seemed too familiar and recent even though it’s 30 years ago! Have all those editions in the parents attic still. I’ll tune in again soon for 1994 as better memories of that year. Complete fascination though when he was putting up all the 87 & 88 issues as hadn’t been buying those back at the time. MM throughout 1988/9 is some sort of high point for western civilisation surely! The gradual fading of those peaks seemed to coincide with the change away from the broadsheet format to the stapled tabloid sized paper. Just didn’t look as good for starters. Happened around early 1990 right? Nothingelseon is doing amazing work but the Twitter search function is a bit shitty and convoluted to use to say the least. However he is also storing all the mags on Flickr so I must use that more for the older ones. Must admit i also really enjoyed reading all the 1987 NMEs that he obtained and posted up late last year.

    Anyway, that’s interesting to hear about Paul Oldfield. I had seen references to the software related Paul Oldfield alright when googling and had kinda suspected that was him. He’s obviously a very smart guy. Do you still keep in touch? Does he still follow music closely I wonder?

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  3. I do keep in touch, although it's sporadic because of living in different lands. I don't think he follows contemporary music much - sometimes I'll send him a link - but he always seem to have some unusual thing from the past he's got into.

    Yes Nothingelseon is doing God's work for sure. I think he missed 1987 for MM though - they didn't have it in the New Zealand public library.

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  4. Don’t think he had the end of decade MM Christmas 89 double issue either. Would have liked to have seen that one although I did likely buy it so probably still have it in storage.

    Incidentally, Karl Eldridge’s Peel show archive on Mixcloud has had tonnes of 1987 & 88 shows added to it over the last few months. Fantastic listening to them all these years later as we wouldn’t have been able to in Ireland back then. Maybe they could be heard on very poor signal medium wave but that was it.

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  5. email me and i can sort out some of those gaps if you want

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  6. Hey great music, check out this new deep house track "Frequencies" by Odesa for more new house music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KyYjwSTSd8

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