Australia gets the mushroom treatment

Simple music for thinking minds is the Massive Attack formula. Their multi-layered sounds and stream-of-consciousness wordplay inspire a listening pleasure that’s hard to define. Together, DJ’s Mushroom and Daddy Gee and vocalists 3D and Shara Nelson (plus a few distinguished guests) have created music that should make history. For once, you can believe the hype, because their debut album Blue Lines really is that good.

And I’m sure Mushroom would agree with me—if I could get him on to the subject for long enough. Settled back in his Bristol flat, he just wants to have a good old chinwag with some Aussies. Questions about the business of hit records, remixes, and the Bristol sound elicit replies that point to a distinct disregard for the politics of making music. But then, Mushroom isn’t your average band spokesperson and Massive Attack isn’t your average band.

“Who’s paying for this call?” he asks me in his amiable west country accent.

“Virgin Australia,” is my reply.

“Well Richard Branson can afford it so let’s talk about Australia, man. It’s not often I get to chat with people 12,000 miles away!”

Get the picture?

Although Blue Lines is the first album under the name Massive Attack, Mushroom, Daddy Gee, and 3D have a long history together as the Wild Bunch: a loose Bristol-based collective that included DJs, rappers, and any other would-be’s around an original nucleus of Nelle Hooper and Milo Johnson. Through late night parties in disused car showrooms, warehouses, and any other inviting open spaces, the collective’s reputation for fearsome grooves grew.

When Nelle wandered off to mix it up with Soul II Soul and Milo left for Japan, it was the future members of Massive Attack who were left to carry on the legacy. If there’s one thing they have retained from the Wild Bunch, it’s a sense of individuality that consistently crops up not just in their music but in their visuals and videos as well.

“Much to my dismay of the suits in the corridors of Virgin, Massive Attack makes music we personally want to hear and that’s really it. To a large degree we don’t really care what anyone else wants to hear,” says Mushroom, matter-of-factly. “In the Wild Bunch days, we all came from so many different backgrounds. Some of us were punks and some of us were into jazz, soul and reggae. We used to hold parties and we’d play all the music that we individually wanted to hear so you’d have like six DJs coming on the set just playing what they themselves wanted to hear. It was all about being natural.”

It’s hard to pigeonhole Massive Attack and that’s the way Mushroom likes it. 

“We’re not a club act that spews out twelve inches for the hell of it. In fact, we want to pull ourselves out from that dance category. We don’t want any label, we just want to be ourselves.”

Overlaying everything from old Studio One sounds with a forty-piece orchestra and mixing in some hop with 3D’s soothing overlapping raps, Massive Attack makes the current wave of post-rave techno sound like the soulless shit that it is. But the icing is their controversial lyrics that wander through each track, waxing lyrical about Thatcher, Studio One, or their prized Sony ‘Boodo Khan’ Walkmans (which get a mention in more than one track).

“With our lyrics, we’ve never said we’re the greatest writers. We’ve just talked about the things were interested in like Boodo Khan Walkmans and Pink Floyd albums. Sony came out with this incredible Walkman, which is the ultimate bass Walkman—they even give you this cushion to sit on when you listen to it—and it’s a prize thing in our life, so we bring it up in a song like we do in conversation. We’re not pushing anything on people; were just talking about what’s important in our lives.

“You know, I don’t watch television ’cause I refuse to pay my license. I don’t have a radio and I don’t read magazines. I’m not really happy going out these days because I don’t hear the music I want to hear and all I see is just bunch of pop-crazed zombies. I’d rather sit in my front room and listen through headphones When our album was at number thirteen in the British charts, someone had to keep reminding me because I was more interested in getting the seats of my car cleaned.”

Before Massive Attack came to such car-cleaning prominence, Mushroom had already made a name for his remixing work with the likes of Neneh Cherry, Lisa Stanfield, and Boy George. But when I bring up the subject of Nelle Hooper’s remixes of Massive Attack, Mushroom doesn’t mince his words.

“Nelle did the job and he did it well, but I’ve got this phobia about remixes. It’s like building a wall and then someone coming along and knocking it down and rebuilding it because the public won’t accept yours. So it makes me wonder why we are doing it in the first place if people won’t accept our individual art? It’s just an example of how money and politics always seem to get in the way.”

Apart from his apparent interest in Australian flora and fauna, Mushroom’s penchant is sound. It’s something that shines through time and again on Blue Lines: an incredible layering of weird but complementary sounds emerges with each listen. 

“I’m really into sounds of the world and the concept of sound amazes me. I was in the bath the other day and I was listening to my heart beating so I taped it. I know that sounds weird, but I think it’s an interesting thing. Just recently, I’ve been chatting to this guy that used to operate sonar for the navy and he was telling me about the science behind it. To me that’s absolutely fascinating.”

It’s getting late and Mushroom has decided he’s had enough of talking about music. Besides, he has some pressing geography questions and he’s not putting down the phone until he gets some straight answers.

“I know people that have come out from Australia and they tell me these atrocious spider stories. They lifted up a stone and there was a funnel web and it came up and attacked them. I’ve heard stories that you can’t even tread on a spider cause they’re so big. I don’t know how you lot can accept venomous spiders living right in your own back gardens!”

It’s not something you think about all that often.

“What about those red kangaroos? Man! Is it true they can kill you with one swipe of their tail? And I’ve been told that people try and keep them as pets! You know, I’d really like to come to Australia and just hang out in the countryside, but there’s no way I could handle crocodiles trying to eat me or huge kangaroos jumping all over me.”

Don’t worry, Mushroom. We’ll keep our kangaroos on a leash while you’re here.

Notes:

The WM-DD100 ‘Boodo Khan’ Walkman was Sony’s mid-eighties audiophile stereo, notable for its bass boost loudness and oversize ‘can’ headphones. 

A few hilarious British stereotypes on Australia.

I wonder whether other artists are resentful at remixes, especially ones that achieve better sales while the band’s original languishes.

Words: Emma Marlin. (July 1991)