Some time between 1998 and 2000, I worked with Dan Harvey on the Unsound album. To some extent, we thought it was going to be the making of us. I don’t know how we ended up making music together, but we did. It was a mostly stoned affair, with a good deal of travelling and learning in between. If anything, the album shows how talented a programmer Dan was. He probably still is but, like most of my musical sojourns, Unsound resulted in an acrimonious split. I went on to form rubbish rock group after rubbish rock group and lost touch with Dan altogether.
What Everything For A Reason represents is a recorded musical snapshot of our teen years spilling into early twenties. Many of the faces adorning the insert of the CD had made significant impact on our lives.
So, a decade has passed and much has changed. There was to be no ‘Ten Year Anniversary’ digipack edition of our only album. No pundits have lauded over its ingenuity, depth of songwriting or sense of adventure. No, hundreds of CDs went unsold; gigs went unheard; opportunities went unseized. We played a gig in Switzerland. It was mostly a mess. There’s probably a recording of it somewhere in the country – on minidisk.
Well, here is the whole album available for download in whatever format you choose. Yes, it has dated. But you can still hear a raw, confused passion for music in there. I remember the day I got a response from James Endeacott at Rough Trade asking to hear more. We sent the whole album and never heard back again. I remember calling up labels asking what they thought of the album and getting one response that simply said, “Disgusting. It’s terrible.” Hard times.
After cashing in my dole cheque in Selly Oak, I’d frequently walk over to Dan’s with nothing but bad news, afraid to share it. Our dreams fell away, as did our friendship.
So, seeing as no-one else cares about the album, here’s my track-by-track listing as I imagined appearing in that glorious digipack:
Induction: Dan found a trumpet riff and, as we were both heavily influenced by hip-hop, we wanted to have an intro to the album. This was it, really. It features a sample from Bill and Ted’s Excellent adventure. That about sums it up.
Innocence Released: I was listening to a lot of hardcore at this time, and had been given a CD by Buddhist punks, Shelter. One of the tracks featured the line “And pray that the innocents be released”. I think that got taken out, but the name stuck. I recall Dan moved into my London flat in Wanstead when we recorded this. The acoustic guitar lick was played on an Ovation I had at the time. The front room was a mess.
Interlude: Featuring drum n’ bass MC Shyan. He was pretty popular on the Birmingham club scene and there was a link between him and Dan – so he appeared on this track, making it a sort of dedication to his children. Dan recorded the vocals in someplace called the ‘C-Low’ which is why you hear Shyan say it – and rhyming it with ‘kilo’. I stuck in a descending guitar riff in D and played a naff blues-based solo. Dan included a sample from Devil’s Advocate.
Zanzibar: When I worked at South Tottenham’s Job Centre, I met a girl named Ruth. She introduced me to Bob because I told her I was a ‘musician’. I wrote this tune (heavily influenced by Paul McCartney’s chord work on ‘Blackbird’) when I worked as a cleaner at the LSE. Depressing time, but I had free board. I just wanted to get away and had heard about this island called Zanzibar. I’ve still never been.
Seven Ages: Mostly Dan’s tune – features a bit of Shyan’s vocal in there too. Based around Shakespeare’s poem. It goes on for a bit – a weird bit of prog electronica. I was always bemused by the track and could never really wangle much guitar in there.
Gone Fishin’: Probably one of the best tracks on the album. Taken from Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, this spoken word of ‘The Dust Blows Forward ‘n The Dust Blows Back’ was turned into a rapidly accelerating piece of music with the help of some lovely fretless bass work by Marcus Cornall (a brilliant bassist – then with the Jupiter Collision) and cymbal work from drummer Shay (who I was also in a band with for a while).
Skit: Recorded in Birmingham while I was on the phone to Bob in London. The background noise is sampled from a café in Amsterdam. Yes, that sort of café.
August: The first song I ever co-wrote with Bob and we wrote this in my flat in Crouch Lane. The solo on the song is as I played it on that very first day. It’s a love song. That’s about it.
Floating Rhodes: Co-written with the help of the twinkling fingers of Andy over at Different Drummer studios in Birmingham (them chaps from Rockers Hi-Fi). I think there was a vague possibility of them releasing the album at one stage, but – clearly – that never happened. Quite a stoner number influenced by DJ Shadow, I suspect. You can tell that by the dodgy scratch solo.
Japanese Shoes: When I was growing up, I saw a Hindi film called ‘Sri 420’ starring Raj Kapoor. It’s a lovely film and the sample here comes from ‘Mera Joota hai Japani’. The lyrics mean: “My shoes are Japanese, These trousers are English, The red hat on my head is Russian, But even so, my heart is Indian.” It was a vague claim at trying to state my heritage. Dan stuck quite a famous tune underneath it. I still like it, though.
DJ Kwong’s Ferocious Shinogi Style: Yes, I wanted to be a DJ. But not just any DJ. A DJ like Q-Bert or Mix Master Mike or DJ Craze. But I couldn’t be, cos I was mostly rubbish. Anyway, this was that kind of DJ track you’d always hear on every Hip-Hop album at the time. I played the bass in the first part (I know, it’s hella original) and we sampled Soul Coughing’s ‘Zoom Zip’ for part II. The cuts took a while to create. I think I have a copy of this track on vinyl somewhere. The A-side was a track called ‘Budz and Lovez’.
Bleeding Heart ’99: After Hendrix’s Blues album came out, I just took the name Bleeding Heart and stuck the year I wrote this song after it. It’s quite an embarrassing punk song in the idiom of NOFX – a band that I now cannot stand. It’s horribly dated and, yes, that’s me singing.
Red was the colour: God, the shame continues. I cringe at these lyrics, though the production is quite tasty. The female voice in the background is Dee, who was Dan’s girlfriend at the time. I remember her appearance in here was a slight bone of contention, but she’s there: echoing four words that I say. No malcontent, but I can’t listen to this song at all.
Adagio for sampler: All Dan and all talent. Cooked up before Bill Orbit released his version and inspired by some battered moron in Dan’s front room – sorry, studio – rambling on about Platoon and Mean Streets. I think. I mean, I wasn’t there. The moron was not me – let’s be clear. Nice beats and great work with the strings and choir. Dan was always more diverse in his listening than I was.
Technology: Another good showcase for Dan. He messed around with a lot of found sounds and linked this up with a track the LADP (the initials of Liam, Ash, Dan and someone whose name began with P) had sort of written. I can’t remember much about it, but I always liked the beat.
Ehsan Kutir: The background sounds are recorded by me in Bangladesh – at what was my Nan’s house. A personal tune, so it was left sparse. Just a solo guitar piece recorded in Crouch End on a Peavey amp and another tune that shouldn’t have been on the album.
Another: This features Liam’s guitar playing and me scratching using a mixer that was great for transforming. It features a sample from Gang Starr’s DWYK. Timely, I suppose given his sad death earlier this year. Very much another dreamy song for stoners, it was one of the earliest tracks committed to Dan’s Akai sampler.
The Zanzibar Suite: A surprise remix by Dan. A half time mood piece of ethereality shifted into drum n’ bass enmeshed with noise. The last segment with the mash up of the Amen break is particularly good (I didn’t do it, but I admire it). Much like Tom Jenkinson’s deconstruction of that break, Dan makes it his own. A fitting ending. After the annoying squall, there’s a hidden track worth waiting for. I was always puzzled by how Dan made it, but it’s obvious once you know how.