You can complicate dance music, if you must. Dress it up in sonic frills and audio gimmickry and desperate new genres. Alternatively, like Terminalhead, you can acknowledge that its only really the beats, the rhymes and the flavour that matter and take a stance accordingly.
And the stance here is to forge big, powerful, inclusive tunes that are as urban as towerblocks and as pointed as the multiple aerials on the top. As they put it themselves: Too many people have run out of ideas with breakbeats; theyre just regurgitating the same old shit. Were saying, Yeah-yeah, okay-okay, youve heard everyone else, now unblock your earoles because this is fuckin Terminalhead.
Formed in 1996, Terminalhead briefly took the shape of a seven piece, touring a live breakbeat sound which won them plaudits from the crowd and alarm among the supposedly more accomplished bands they supported. But life on the tour bus was crowded and, musically, there was a fiercer groove to explore. So Terminalhead scaled down to a three piece - Pete Marett (the beats), Mr Spee (the rhymes) and Lee Groves (the flavour; ie, production wizardry) and the band as we know it on the both party and politically-minded Weekend Warriors was on the rampage.
We understand each other as a trio, says Lee. That organic thing has happened where we can get on the same wavelength without fighting or swearing too much. Were there.
Back tracking to the beginning, Pete and Lee were the first to hook up. The former, raised in Fleet, learnt the trumpet at eight and got into new wave, romo and banging the shit out of a drum kit at 14. Involvement in dodgy bands, good bands and very dodgy bands, duly followed. Lee, from Canvey Island, is an unashamed technological boffin who knew his way round a sampler and sequencer when most others were just getting to grips with the Nintendo. He co-founded AMG, the sample CD company which released the worlds first ever drum loops disc, and one of the first projects he worked on with Pete was creating samples which have gone on to be used by everyone from Brandy to Madonna to Craig Armstrong.
The two of them formed the PuSH label and gained a rep on the nascent breakbeat scene. They sketched out the basics of the Terminalhead sound, got some impressive/amusing remix commissions Geri Halliwell, the Lightening Seeds, NSYNC - then figured it was time to amp it up a few notches. Enter Spee, a very big geezer on a mission and with quite some history.
The mission? To establish himself as a frontman with real front. The history? Colourful and varied: he grew up in south London, the only one of five brothers to avoid a stint at Her Majestys Pleasure. He was inspired by the deep rumble of sound systems coming across the estate but also by the sugar coated melodies of the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly! By the late Eighties he was in embryonic Brit hip-hop contenders the Lords Of Rap (Shit hot little band. Shellsuits and Kangols it was great.) Since then, there have been stints working with everyone from Boy George and Malcolm McLaren to Ed Case and Earl 16. Terminalhead, however, feels very much like home, even if he does expect us to believe he met up with Lee and Pete after flicking through a porno mag.
There was a advert in it asking, Do you want terminal head? he insists. I went to the arranged rendezvous and there were Lee and Pete. I was too embarrassed to say anything so Ive been with the band ever since.
And his rhymes what are they about? Honesty, reality. They have to be about stuff I know, otherwise I become a plum. Its pointless going out there fantasising. Its all about the human psyche, asking people if theyre willing to look at themselves before judging others.
The nucleus of their Weekend Warriors album was put in place when the three of them decamped to a studio located inside a converted hop kiln, We set up in there, got really drunk and fucked up, then played for about two weeks and recorded everything, says Pete.
Then it was back to town, to spend six months editing, reworking and repurposing the live recordings. Consequently, in tracks like Mind Of Your Own, How Does It Feel? and Dubious they crafted tunes that are as powerful and hardcore as they are willing to embrace all comers.
The breaks scene can be really snobby, acknowledges Lee. But the trainspotters are into us and so are the festival kids. So too are the garage kids, hip-hop heads and people who like old school rave. Our music is intense but its not elitist.
Outside of the studio, they deftly mix it up among high-ranking company, too. Theyre residents in the brilliant Star Bar space at John Digweeds Bedrock club, offering a dazzling modern take on sound system techniques. Playing live, meanwhile, theyve notched up over 30 dates in the UK, plus all the major European festivals.
Theyve survived an aborted deal with Sony (the usual story: the people who signed them and had faith in them left the label, leaving them temporarily adrift in corporate hell), they relish the fact that time appears to be up for those in dance music (the mafia, the control freaks, the boys clubs) whove made a small amount of talent go a very long way in the last decade and are determined, destined, to leave their own unique mark on dance music in 02 and beyond.
Over, finally, to the inimitable Mr Spee for the kind of sign off only he can muster. Theres no point anyone going out there and copying The Prodigy, otherwise you might as well be a tribute band and call yourselves The Porridgey, he reasons dryly. Theres no point in copying anyone else, either. Youve got to sow your own seeds, and weve done so much of that weve got a whole lawn on the go!
Hey we had a brilliant time in Austria bodypainting competition couldnt go on stage it started raining heavy rain and models paint was washing away It was wicked!
Thank you for adding me. Big fan of Spee since the More Protein years and I do hope everything will work out so you can get that record-deal. Lots of love and respect!!
Just HAD to drop OFI in my latest mix CD, hope u guyz dont mind, I dish em out free to friends and family. Tune sounds as fresh as the day I bought it (6 yrs ago!). Pce!!
