Dubstar

[Pughie]

Dubstar have a new single ‘Hygiene Strip’

[Pughie]

New 25th Anniversary release
Not So Manic Now (Acoustic)



Free As A Bird

[Pughie]

[Pughie]

[Pughie]

[Pughie]

[Pughie]

’TOKEN’ IS OUT NOW. ’TWO’ IS RELEASED ON MAY 6TH.
Listen to ’Token’, or watch the video, here-




“I fell off the world, I guess I’d been holding on too long…” Relatable post-pandemic sentiments from the very first line of the new single, which happens to also be spectacular opening track of ’Two', Dubstar's fifth album, and the second since Sarah Blackwood and Chris Wilkie reunited in the mid-2010s. It’s all there in that first half-minute – that peculiar insight into worlds out of joint both external and internal, Sarah’s deceptively sweet and unapologetically Northern delivery, and above all that irresistible mix of electronic euphoria and delicious melancholy that set them apart from the 90s journeymen.

Stephen Hague, frequent producer of Dubstar touchstones New Order and Pet Shop Boys, returns for the first time since 1997 for a record of full-spectrum megapop, swooning synthesised orchestras, acutely observed kitchen sink dramas, and outright bangers. A mere 26 years since Stars and Not So Manic Now announced them as something disturbing and different in the pop firmament, Dubstar are themselves again – only more so.

Two’ will be released on May 6th. The band store has signed stuff, exclusive merchandise (“Tea For Two” / “Tee For Two”, anyone?), and exclusive bundles, including a limited edition flexi disc with a previously unreleased song called “I Held The Records". There’s a special coloured vinyl for independent retail. There’s a double CD, with 9 tracks on CD2, including some previously unreleased remixes and extended mixes, and some of the recent ones appearing on CD for the first time. Rough Trade East will have a short acoustic performance on the day of release, followed by a Q&A with the legendary Pete Paphides.

THE DUBSTAR ONLINE STORE
https://fanlink.to/dubstarstore

ROUGH TRADE
https://dubstar.fanlink.to/roughtradetwo

INDEPENDENT MUSIC RETAIL
https://dubstar.fanlink.to/indytwo

EVERYWHERE (WE CAN FIND SO FAR)
https://dubstar.fanlink.to/alltwo

[MikeyC]

Sounds like a signature Hague production! Glad he’s on board!

[Pughie]

This is my favourite version of Stars by far, it captures the moment when Dubstar was at its height, right at the end of 1995 and about to break through on radio and TV.

At that point we were known as a synth act, so why do acoustic versions of three songs from our debut album? Often when artists record acoustic versions of their hits it’s nothing but a marketing ploy, a way of redeploying songs their audience already knows to entice them into buying a new single, album, even a t-shirt. But that wasn’t the case with us. Like almost everything that happened with Dubstar, the acoustic versions emerged by way of a mad idea combining with a happy coincidence.

I wanted to position us a song led act rather than an electronic act. Despite Dubstar being all about the keyboards, I felt focussing on the songs would be better for our longevity. When Disgraceful was released the music press had repeatedly discussed my lyrics in ‘Stars’, ‘Day I See You Again’, ‘Disgraceful’, Sarah’s words in ‘Just A Girl She Said’ and of course our cover of Brick Supply’s ‘Not So Manic Now’. Maybe there was something to build on here? Rather than being another indie-dance act, we could aim a little higher? Stripping the songs right back could reveal a hidden depth to the act that was missing from so many of our contemporaries.

Also, we’d just completed our move into the Arts Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne. By end of November 1995 we’d completed the first wave of B-Sides for the release of Manic in January 1996, and we’re emboldened by the success of our version of Astrud Gilberto’s ‘A Certain Sadness’. I was listening to a lot of 1960s Brazilian and French music at the time and loved the sparse nature of the arrangements on these records, maybe we could do something like that with Dubstar as bonus tracks, a surprise for everyone who thought we were cute and electronic and 90s? The label said ‘go for it’, I distinctly remember Andy Ross telling me ‘if there’s ever a choice between recording or not recording, choose recording’. So we did.

A version of Stars that owed as much to Dead Can Dance as King Tubby was a left turn that I don’t think anyone saw coming. I loved the sound of their ‘Within the Realms of a Dying Sun’ album, it had been a big influence on our early recordings (as the currently unavailable demo of Danilo Moscardini’s song ‘She’s Still Sad’ evidences). Maybe Stars could thrive with a dark orchestral approach. I had a sampler full of samples, it wouldn’t cost us anything…choose recording.

So the acoustic versions were completed in the freezing cold room at the Art’s Centre in late 1995 and early 1996 and were released eighteen months later as the B-Sides with No More Talk. They became the most treasured B-sides of that era.

THE TECHNICAL STUFF

This version of Stars isn’t strictly acoustic. All the string and choir sounds came from a CD-ROM and my trusty Roland S-760 sampler. I’d bought a sample library called Gigapack from BestService and loved it…it provides the monks you can hear throughout this version (it also features on The View From Here). The violin is from Roland’s superb sample library CD-ROM. Chris plays his guitar too, there are some great ebow moments and I think that’s an acoustic you can hear in the choruses and first verse.

However, unlike the other two acoustic versions, Sarah didn’t re-sing the vocal. For some reason Sarah wasn’t around to come into the studio, I’d already recorded all the samples and guitars onto ADAT and realised too late that this version ran at 83BPM, whereas the original was at 87BPM. So I used the take from the Stephen Hague version and time stretched it in the sampler, which is why on the original acoustic version the vocal sounds a little sleepy and manipulated.

On this renovation I had the opportunity to use the Hague vocal again but on this occasion I retimed it by hand just as I did on the Glitterball remix. This means the vocal is exactly as Sarah sang it in RAK studios and so retains all of its original sparkle. I think it makes a big difference, finally the voice comes to life.

Also, the mixing desk on the original was a Yamaha Promix01, wonderful and cheap but crunchy and unfriendly sounding, even in 1995. Combine that with the grainy feel of the ADAT cassette machines (they used VHS tape!) you have a sound that’s so digital it would horrify an engineer in 2022 in a similar way as it amused the mastering engineers in 1997. All of the Disgraceful B-Sides were recorded this way, and I think you can tell.

Those ADAT cassettes are long gone, but today’s technology enables me to separate the original components of the song and remove or hide much of that crunch, replacing it with a delightful analogue warmth. Or at least digitally simulated analogue warmth, a big improvement on the sound of 1995.

In this voyage through the archives I have been regularly surprised by reactions to the tracks I’ve discovered, and this song is no different. With so many people loving the Stephen Hague version of Stars, the Way Out West version and of course Steve Rodway’s Motiv8 version, I assumed this acoustic version had been ignored. But I ‘m delighted to have discovered this is not the case: among a vocal minority of fans this is their favourite. Twenty six years on it remains my favourite too.

[Pughie]

This is the earliest recording of a new song called ‘The Stars Go Out’. But that’s not Sarah on vocals, that’s me in my earlier incarnation as the singer in The Joans.

This recording was made in the late Summer of 1992 at The Arena in Middlesbrough.

I’m fascinated how the Stars that made it into the charts three years later was nearly identical to the song we can hear in this live recording. The bassline is almost exactly the same, the Yamaha DX100 twinkles are there, you can hear the funky drum roll in the background and there’s me playing on guitar what would later become a string part in the Dubstar version. The greatest difference to my ears is the slight change in the rhythm of the phrase ‘I’ll watch the stars go out’ which was altered when we demoed it with Graeme Robinson in nearby Darlington a couple of years later.

As you can hear, apart from me repeatedly forgetting my own words, this is the same Stars that we would perform on Top of the Pops four years later…albeit with a much better singer. Remarkable.

WHO ON EARTH WERE THE JOANS?

By 1991 I was writing and singing songs alone after leaving Said Liquidator, a band from Jesmond that I’d joined within months of arriving in Newcastle. I’d played bongoes…not really my thing, but I’d stuck around as I was enjoying myself and liked everyone involved. After I left I’d played a few solo shows in Newcastle…I’d written a whole bunch of songs that revolved around samples that I’d made in my Roland W-30 (If It Isn’t You, Elevator Song and popDorian being prime examples) and played them out a few times with some covers, including my own version of Billy Bragg’s cover of The Smiths’ ‘Jeane’.

I felt a bit daft pressing ‘play’ on a keyboard then busking away on my Fender Squire and doing my best to sing, there was simultaneously too much for me to do and not enough that was entertaining. It was time to form a band.

So I’d advertised in the local paper Evening Chronicle for a bass player and met a few, none of whom had a clue what I meant when I said ‘Cocteau Twins’….the closest I got was ‘Thompson Twins’ which was not the same. I’d even scribbled an advert on the notice board at JG Windows music store and had exactly no replies. Things weren’t off to a great start.

However, one of the side effects of all the DJing I was doing was that I was unconsciously networking the Newcastle music scene. There was a point where on the block where I lived in Jesmond there were two members of the Kane Gang, Brianna Corrigan of the Anthill Runaways who would shortly go on to sing in The Beautiful South (more on this story another time), there was a rumour that Paddy McAloon had a place nearby and Tommy Caulker, the legendary nightclub and bar owner was a neighbour. Paul from the Lighthouse Family was playing piano in the bar at Walkers Nightclub where I was DJing, Duke was the boyfriend of a woman I worked with at HMV…oh, and at HMV I was on the tills with Martin Stephenson’s wife Angela. In 1990 I'd even DJed at Paul Gascoine’s World Cup homecoming home party at Macy’s in the Bigg Market. Surely one of these, probably not Gazza, would have an idea of modern indie and want to join me?

There was a young guy I’d spotted in Walkers nightclub pretty much every Wednesday night, hanging out with his mates by the bar at the back of the club. We got talking when I was doing the warm up set in the downstairs booth and discovered that not only did we have much in common with our music tastes, but he could play guitar. Would he like to join me and make some music together? I was a little disappointed that Chris Wilkie didn’t play bass, but we seemed to get on well and what’s wrong with two guitars? Maybe I could program the W-30 to play bass? This was the tale end of 1991. We started making music together in early 1992.

Several things became clear immediately: Chris was a far better guitarist than me and actually cared about his instrument, where I was far more interested in effect pedals and MIDI implementation charts. Also, this young man was funny, properly funny, the living reincarnation of Graham Chapman. One of the defining qualities of The Joans and then Dubstar was his all pervasive North Eastern sense of humour. We laughed regularly, and we laughed a lot. Not only did Chris have a unique way with words (which survives to this day) and a plethora of catch phrases, he would make comedy skits on cassette where he would voice all characters himself. And leave sketches lying around for me to discover later, sometimes years later. A pleasure to work with, and a dear friend.

The next step was to find a drummer. Gavin Lee was a friend of Stephen Bell who had been one of two singers in Said Liquidator (and erstwhile boyfriend of Kate Middlemiss, it’s a small world up North). Stevie had formed a new act called Vinnie Lynch, Gavin was his drummer. He and I got on famously and had a lot in common, we were a similar age, both were Londoners who had been encouraged to live in Jesmond by our respective girlfriends (who got on well too). Gav had been involved in Levitation, which was good enough for me and Chris. I don’t remember quite how he was recruited but Gavin started playing with us in the Summer of 1992 and we didn’t look back. Mark Greenwood joined us on bass for a couple of months too. We were The Joans.

AND THEN…

We played a lot of gigs in the North East in 1992, we even did a short tour with Sleepy People, an act from Wakefield living in Heaton who would splinter into Ultrasound a few years later. But problems were emerging, several in fact…