Bomb the Bass

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Bomb The Bass
Genre(s)	Dance Electronica Hip-hop
Years active	1987-Present
Associated acts	Neneh Cherry Depeche Mode Justin Warfield Jah Wobble Sinead O'Connor Consolidated A.P.E. Lali Puna Jack Dangers
Website	www.bombthebass.com www.myspace.com/bombthebass

Bomb The Bass (formed 1987, in London, England) is the umbrella title for the output of British musician and DJ, Tim Simenon. The band, which has evolved its style over the years, has been classed as electronic or dance.

As a name, Bomb The Bass came from Simenon's approach to DJing. Whilst playing, he says "samples were either scratched in live or sampled and looped on top of the rhythm section. So the concept was one of bombing the bass line with different ideas, with a collage of sounds. Bombing was a graffiti term for writing, like people would 'bomb' trains or whatever."^[1]

Contents 1 Pushing the needle: The accelerated success of Beat Dis 2 Into Unknown Territory 3 New influences are... Clear 4 90s become 00s, become Electric Tones 5 Future Chaos: Bomb The Bass in the 21st century 6 The Future Is Now: The release of the Future Chaos album 7 Albums & EPs 8 Singles 9 Original material featured elsewhere 10 Acts remixed or produced by Bomb The Bass/Tim Simenon 11 External links 12 References 13 See also

[edit] Pushing the needle: The accelerated success of Beat Dis

Released in 1987, the band's debut single was Beat Dis, with composition credited to Emilio Pasquel / Captain Black / DJ Kid 33. Keenly 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.

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). The track has come to be referred to as proto-house - due to its leanings towards the then-emerging house dance style of aesthetics.

Having already taken a part-time sound course at The School Of Audio Engineering in Holloway, Simenon was in the enviable position of being able to build Beat Dis himself.^[1] And whilst the bass line and drum tracks were written by Simenon, the rest of the track was compiled from samples, presenting an aural mood board of where his influences were at. Samples used on Beat Dis included lifts from Public Enemy and Ennio Morricone, alongside dialogue clips from the television shows Dragnet, and Thunderbirds. Talking to Sound On Sound magazine many years later, Simenon said of the tracks construction, "I suppose I was tuned in to what was current at the time and was able to pick and choose what I wanted with some knowledge of how it should be applied."^[1]

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).

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 logo's meaning from then on.

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.

[edit] 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.

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 help push hip-hop orientated dance music in the direction that would become trip-hop.

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. Reviewing the album at the time, music writer and author, Simon Reynolds attempted to outline a new genre in the making: suggesting that, by moving beyond mere dance tracks into fully cohesive albums, the band were venturing into progressive dance.^[2] However, the term did not stick.

As usual on the album, 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 Rollerball, Blade Runner, David Cronenberg's Videodrome, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Marvel comics' Fantastic Four animated cartoon series; and Death Race 2000.

Having developed dance music's potential via debut single, Beat Dis in to a more song-based form of what the avant-garde would term musique concrete, with its complex use of hybrid hip-hop-inspired sound poaching (in place of actual played sounds) taken to logical extremes, Simenon pre-empted a style that would do well by several major acts in the years to come.

So, whilst the downbeat experimental Winter In July and Love So True would pave the way for trip-hop, the uptempo breakbeat-heavy side of Unknown Territory, would be taken into more punk-laced territory as the riotous sound of The Prodigy, from their Music for the Jilted Generation album onwards. Further to which, the style would also be explored further by - and prove infinitely more successful, commercially speaking, for - the likes of Fat Boy Slim as the genre known as bigbeat.

Interviewed for Sound On Sound magazine in 1995, Simenon agreed with the interviewer when it was suggested that, with this more frenetic side of his work, he was looking to "combine the art of sampling with the energy of rock and roll."^[1]

[edit] 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. Blending dub aesthetics into the mix, Clear is a more mature, yet far darker work - both tonally and through its subject matter - than previous offerings. Vocal contributions would come this time, courtesy of Justin Warfield, Sinéad O'Connor, Jah Wobble, Benjamin Zephaniah - and River (a pseudonym for Minnie Driver, the actress, who provided vocals on Tidal Wave). Instrumentally, the album would also feature contributions from Sugar Hill drummer, Keith LeBlanc (also Tackhead and On-U Sound), Doug Wimbish (also notable for having playing bass as part of the Sugar Hill backing band, for acts like Grandmaster Flash), and guitarist Skip McDonald (also On-U Sound).

Where once Simenon had initially constructed tracks with frenetic layers of colourful samples from films and cartoons, real instrumentation, which had already factored as a large part of the production on Unknown Territory, was now playing an even greater role - albeit in heavily edited and/or effected forms, that saw them composited with other sounds to disguise or beef up their impact - along with song-orientated vocals. As a result, all but one of the albums tracks would fit into what could be considered a conventional structure. Whilst this would mark Simenon's leaps and bounds in his 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.

In lyrical terms, developing on from his previous reliance on exhilarating film dialogue samples, braggadocio-fuelled raps, and dance-friendly vocal hooks or ecstatic tomes of love, Clear saw Simenon developing very specific subject matter for his tracks. New influences, and, therefore, his fascinations, for this collection built up to become very obviously literature-based. Simenon had taken part in the spoken-word orientated Sahara Blue album project led by Hector Zazou, which was initially released in 1992 (before being briefly withdrawn for legal reasons). The album was inspired by, and built around, the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, setting spoken word performances to all manner of leftfield musical contributions from the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Sylvian and John Cale; but as to whether this was an inspiration on the direction of Clear is unknown.

Lead track on Clear, 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 failing to scale the upper reaches of the mainstream UK singles chart, 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.

[edit] 90s become 00s, become Electric Tones

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 Björk and David Arnold. The latter would prove a massive UK hit in 1994, and go some way towards establishing Björk 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. And 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 Tones 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 micro house, 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, and the first actual Bomb The Bass material to be released via Electric Tones. With all tracks co-credited to Bomb The Bass & Jack Dangers, the recording sessions were listed as having taken place years earlier, in 1998, suggesting the material had been pulled from the vaults. In time, it would transpire that the material with Dangers had originally been intended (as what would later prove to have been a false-start) for the fourth Bomb The Bass album.

Further to this, an additional remix of Clear Cut would feature as the fourth track on the Electric Tones compilation, Electric Tones 9101112. And several other cuts (Robot Finger and Ikara) would even come under the alternative name, Flow Creator (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.

[edit] 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 consists of nine tracks that are markedly more electronic and stripped down than previous efforts. In doing so, and with the strong use of the analogue Minimoog lending a cohesive feel across the set, Simenon appears to have reset Bomb The Bass back to dance musics sparse, machine-like origins. Out go the soulful aspects of house, in favour of amplifying the genre's more chilly European aspects of angular rhythms and simplified synth tones.^[3]

As with all previous Bomb The Bass albums, Future Chaos looks to be a collaborative outing. Simenon has teamed up with former Screaming Trees and Queens Of The Stone Age singer, Mark Lanegan, Fujiya & Miyagi, and Richard Thair and Jakeone of Toob. Most notable 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.^[4]

With Bomb The Bass now up and running as a viable live band, rather than production orientated studio entity, live concert dates are being slowly added to coincide with the intended autumn 2008 release of Future Chaos^[5]. 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 Europe - 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.

It is known that Butterfingers (featuring Fujiya & Miyagi) will be the first single released from Future Chaos, in an undetermined single format. ^[6] In the meantime - as of late March 2008 - an animated promotional video for the track had surfaced on the band's Myspace page. The clip, which was produced by Perish Factory visualizes the new minimal sound of the band by featuring an animated Minimoog - as used on the track.^[6]

Reviewing Butterfingers, Daily Music Guide described it as showing "the new Bomb The Bass plug straight into a place where scuffed Formica is sexier than leather, and red LED is the font of all knowledge. Having worked through all those zeroes and ones only to come up wanting, Bomb The Bass have seemingly gone back to come forwards once again, with the result being a track that easily lives up to the sum of its parts."^[7]

Bomb The Bass confirmed they would perform their first London gig in almost 20 years, at the Astoria on 4 June 2008; and are also billed as appearing at the UK dance music festival, The Big Chill, on 2 August 2008, in Ledbury, Herefordshire^[6] and the Zurich festival, Lethargy '08. ^[6]

In May 2008, a new Bomb The Bass film appeared on the internet, this time for So Special, a second Future Chaos track. Featuring vocals by Paul Conboy, the promotional short was directed by Nathalie Teirlinck whose award-winning short film Anemone was selected for Locarno and The Times BFI film festivals in 2007) and Ben Van Alboom (a member of the European photographers collective, Angels & Ghosts). The film featured hidden-camera footage of trans-sexual prostitutes working in Brussels ^[6].

[edit] The Future Is Now: The release of the Future Chaos album

In an online interview with Tim Simenon^[8] in May 2008, it was remarked that Future Chaos would finally be released in August 2008. In the same interview, Simenon commented that the album had taken so long to be completed partly because he had wanted to change direction - necessitating a restart and re-record.

The same week, a new track, Fuzzbox, apparently the last to be completed for the album ^[9] was made available as a free download at the website of the UK radio station, Xfm. A single sleeve was also made available free as part of the download. This being the first sighting of new Bomb the Bass artwork/branding, the style suggested the album will be packaged with collage.

[edit] Albums & EPs

• Into The Dragon (Rhythm King Records, 1988)
• Unknown Territory (Rhythm King Records, 1991)
• Clear (Fourth and Broadway, 1995)
• Beat Dis - The Very Best of Bomb The Bass (Camden, 1999)
• Clear Cut (EP) (Morr Music, 2001)
• Tracks (12-inch EP) (with Jack Dangers) (Electric Tones, 2001)
• Future Chaos (Electric Tones, 2008)

[edit] Singles

• Beat Dis (1987) UK #2
• Megablast/Don't Make Me Wait (1988) UK #6
• Say A Little Prayer (feat. Maureen) (1988) UK #10
• Love So True (1991) (withdrawn, see above)
• Winter In July (1991) UK #7
• The Air You Breathe (1991) UK #52
• Keep Giving Me Love (1992) UK #62 [a re-recording of Love So True]
• Bug Powder Dust (feat. Justin Warfield) (1994) UK #24
• Darkheart (feat. Spikey Tee) (1994) UK #35
• 1 To 1 Religion (feat. Carlton) (1995) UK #53
• Sandcastles (1995) UK #54
• Empire (1996) promo only
• Butterfingers (feat. Fujiya & Miyagi) (2008) TBC

[edit] Original material featured elsewhere

• Sahara Blue - Hector Zazou & The Sahara Blue Orchestra (album) features I'll Strangle You produced, and with programming, by Tim Simenon (Made To Measure, 1992 - reissued in 1998)
• We Love You... So Love Us Too - Various Artists (12-inch EP) features Fast by Bomb The Bass feat. Shawn Lee (We Love You, 2001)
• Electric Tones 1234 - Various Artists (12-inch EP) features Ikara and Robot Finger (as Flow Creator) (Electric Tones, 2001)
• Electric Tones 9101112 - Various Artists (12-inch EP) (Electric Tones, 2001)

[edit] Acts remixed or produced by Bomb The Bass/Tim Simenon

• Dot Allison
• Biggi
• COIL
• Neneh Cherry
• Bjork
• Massive Attack
• Primal Scream
• Michael Hutchence
• Ash
• Seal
• Consolidated
• Hector Zazou
• Gavin Friday
• Depeche Mode
• Futon
• Naomi Campbell
• Sinead O'Connor
• David Bowie
• Sandii & The Sunsetz
• Jamie J. Morgan
• Khaled
• Charles & Eddie
• Bim Sherman
• Booth & The Bad Angel
• Annie Lennox
• The Whooliganz

[edit] External links

• http://www.bombthebass.com
• http://www.myspace.com/bombthebass
• http://www.electrictones.com
• http://www.myspace.com/electrictones
• http://www.brainwashed.com/btb/
• http://www.canvasmag.net/p/bomb_the_bass_310308.php

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Tingen, Paul. "Tim Simenon: Bomb The Bass", Sound On Sound, 1995-03-01. Retrieved on 2008-03-11. 
2. ^ Reynolds, Simon. "Energy Flash", Picador, 2008-02-08. Retrieved on 2008-03-11. 
3. ^ bomb the bass myspace page
4. ^ bomb the bass myspace page
5. ^ bomb the bass myspace page
6. ^ ^{a b c d e} Simenon, Tim. "Myspace page: Bomb The Bass", Tim Simenon, 2008-03-01. Retrieved on 2008-03-01. 
7. ^ Jansen, Steve. "Review of Butterfingers by Bomb The Bsss", Daily Music Guide, 2008-04-21. Retrieved on 2008-05-10. 
8. ^ Jansen, Steve. "Interview with Tim Simenon", Daily Music Guide, 2008-03-29. Retrieved on 2008-03-29. 
9. ^ bomb the bass myspace blog

[edit] See also

• List of Number 1 Dance Hits (United States)
• List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart