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The Herbaliser.
 Talking to Jake Wherry from The Herbaliser is like talking to an old lecturer. You know he's willing to impart knowledge, but is a little peeved you don't already know about what he's talking about. However, we spoke at length about the Herbaliser's new album 'Take London', as well as their last visit to Australia. They remember Adelaide, but probably not the way Adelaide would like...
I began asking about their new single Generals, as on the Ninja Tune webpage for the video it read: "The Herbaliser and Jean Grae have been filming the video for the outstanding 'Generals' single in London - the rest of the Generals crew were not allowed on the plane at Dulles airport (USA) due (as far as we can tell) to dodgy passports". Wherry set me straight right away.
"I can now share with you," he begins conspiratorially, "Generals is all a big myth, a lie we created. Jean Grae did all the voices. I've got some stuff in my studio that can distort voices to make them sound more male or female. We told a Radio One DJ and he went 'so what?' and we were like 'what do you mean so what? You think it's normal we can make one woman sound like three men and three different women?'"
I asked about another favourite, Gadget Funk. It's a very groovy number, sounding, to me, like Quincy Jones. However, when I asked Wherry if Jones influenced this track, he bluntly states "No. Gadget Funk is very much inspired by the music of Washington DC."
Before I get to ask, he patiently explains. "When I was 14 and started going clubbing, Go-Go music was really big, we'd hear it along with early hip-hop, rare groove and funk. The music was funky, but it was a really percussive led music. Bands like Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Trouble Funk, EU, and for some reason Go-Go really broke out of Washington in '84 and lasted to '86 -'87. You heard it in the clubs in London and the States, and then it got forgotten about and people moved on.
"Some of these history of the DJ records - by Cut Chemist, Stienski's The Lesson, some of the beats Cold Cut use on Beats and Pieces - they're sampling Go-Go beats," he elucidates. "I think you'll find that young people these days have never heard about Go-Go, and it's such an awesome music that we decided to do a Go-Go Track to get people to talking about it and asking questions about it."
Then I mentioned how I really enjoy their DJ set last time they were in Adelaide. "Hey, that was one of the worst shows on the tour!" he snorts. "That was the show where the soundman thought it was better to fall asleep at the soundcheck and be totally asleep through the gig, and the lighting guy decided not to come until about an hour into the show."
But the rest of Australia isn't rated too highly either. "To be honest," he begins, "before we came out last, in the previous years I'd been turning down DJ offers from Australia. We wanted to bring our band over, and we felt that the more DJing jobs we took, the less they'd want the band. But last time we kind of gave in, and said 'we'll go over to big up our name and get ourselves more known' and it seemed it really worked against us. Olly [Parfitt, the other half of The Herbalizer] was only meant to play for an hour and and then I'd play, that was the show that was booked. And off our own backs we decided to go in to a rehearsal room and work out a four-deck set so we could both be doing something at the same time. It was beyond what we were contracted to do; we thought since we're not bringing the live band out, lets give them something a bit more than the regular 'one guy play after the other on turntables', you know?
"But after we did that tour we got a few really abusive emails, and there's some webpage in Australia where people were abusing us, saying how shit it was and that we're rubbish. We'd never had hate mail before!" he says incredulously.
"And all along people just wanted us to bring the band out. But unless our records start selling better I don't think there's a chance in hell we'll get the band out there, unless it's a big sponsored event."
Julian Cram
 | 'Take London' is out now through Ninja Tune/Inertia. |
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