Apollo Four Forty - Red Alert Promotions

"We tried being post-modern prophets last time with `Millennium Fever' and nobody took a blind bit of notice. All we got was, "Your track's bangin' mate!" so were not too bothered about that now. We're trying to get into the musically aspect of making great records. Everything's created and manipulated in the cyber-world, and we're well aware of that, but we do want to present ourselves as traditional musicians and producers, plying our craft" - Howard Gray.

Swinging Camden, Summer 1996. High above the crossroads where many a diabolical deal has been struck for a career on the pop scene, a tiny studio is grooving on a new and very different kind of blues. Its creators are Noko and brothers Howard and Trevor Gray - a trio of compulsive and multi-talented music heads who operate under the collective name, Apollo Four Forty. They're putting the finishing touches to what will soon be recognised as a work of genius - their insanely eclectic, omni-morphing second album, `Electro Glide In Blue'.

The group were first established in Liverpool in 1990 amid the exploding rave scene, where they quickly gained a reputation for compelling dance tunes and rock 'n' roll dynamics. The result was numerous remix collaborations - with U2, EMF, PWEI, Scritti Politti and Shabba Ranks to name but a few.

They signed their Stealth Sonic label to Epic Records and made their debut LP, 1995's `Millennium Fever'. A concerted blitz on the live arena culminated at last year's Tribal Gathering, but afterwards, Apollo Four Forty took time out to reassess the direction of their music. Back at their Camden HQ, Apollo Control, changes started happening over a series of gruelling and largely spontaneous recording sessions.

"We all felt that we wanted to do something different this time around", says Noko."We didn't have any agenda. I decided I didn't really want to be a frontman anymore. We just followed the material as each track emerged".

Much of the album harks back to the roots of dance music in blues and jazz `Krupa' for example, an instant end-of-night fave at the Liverpool superclub Cream, hitches vintage techno sounds to syncopated jazz drumming.

"Everything goes back to the blues really", Noko collaborates. "We had this facetious catchphrase, `Hey, it's all Robert Johnson really!' In fact, that was almost what we called the album. Also featured is Apollo Four Forty's alter ego as the Stealth Sonic Orchestra, where they get their exercise their orchestral and soundtrack inclinations. On their recent tour, Manic Street Preachers recently used the Stealth Sonic remix of A Design For Life' as an aural backdrop for screened images of the miners' strike, bloodsports and classic moments in football. It's in this styling that `Electro Glide In Blue' opens with `Stealth Overture'.

Explains Trevor "Right from the start, we wanted to get across that there's no longer any pretence about being a rock band, or DJ s or techno or some dodgy take on "in-yer-face" cultural analysis. We re not that anymore. We’re more John Coltrane or John Barry than Jean Baudrillard". By the second track, `Ain't Talkin' `Bout Dub', these free-roaming mavericks have already tuned into something else, as they harness the opening riff from `Ain't Talkin' `Bout Love' off Van Halen's first album to a drum `n' bass breakbeat. "It's the ultimate Bill and Ted fantasy", confesses Howard, "let's get Eddie Van Halen in the band!" "It's the ragga metal collision to end them all!" Noko explains.

By `Altamont Super=Highway Revisited', they've swept on somewhere else again. "It's Escape from New York, riding on Peter Fonda's chopper across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan as night's falling...As for the title, we got the idea of the end of the Summer Of Love. Altamont was the last straw of the hippy dream. It all turned sour after that, so Super-Highway seemed like an interesting twist on that".

Howard notes with laughter, "All this stuff is as loaded as fuck! and `Electro Glide In Blue' is no exception". Howard again: "This is the one that starts with a kind of Zeppelin feel on the Fender Rhodes". The singer's a Scottish guy called Euan Wilson. It's a total stream of consciousness thing, a one-take live vocal where we wrote the rough lyrics on the stairs with him in half an hour. First take, that's the vocal. It's a total performance tune".

Noko has an offbeat angle on it: "It's an opium travelogue, like a street scumbag boy giving his all against the ethereal, opiate haze of his life". By contrast again ‘Vanishing Point’ is pure drum ‘n’ bass with beautiful chord changes over it. "This guy came in to do the Noko remembers, and we basically told him to moan over it like Marvin Gaye. Y'know, don't sing any words! It just doodles about in a soul atmosphere".

Next, it's collision they're calling Bebop Handbag! `Krupa' features the albums only four-on-the-floor beat, but with the unique syncopated style reminiscent of legendary jazz drummer, Gene Krupa. "Somebody said it was Rave Jazz," jokes Howard, "so is it Razz or Jave?! It's Art Blakey meets early Belgian hardcore. It's reclaiming drums, and the natural syncopations of drumming, back into 90's dance music".

The influence from jazz extends into `White Man's Throat' says Noko, "The title comes from something Miles Davies is meant to have said, that he didn't die the way he wanted to, with his hands around a white man's throat. So, it's about Miles, about the white man stealing the black man's music"....Musically, he adds, "It's twisted - a blues riff at house tempo with jazz trumpet!"

`Tears Of The Gods' was very much a jam", says Howard of the next song's background. `There's a DJ on there, Harry K out of Law One, so it's scratching for real. The space guitar was a total studio moment, because it was sitting on the multitrack for another track, and I pushed the fader up and it sort of made sense! It's based on a Dr. John riff"...The working title was actually `Future Blues'.

Moving onto the torch-song tradition, `Pain In Any Language' is a testament to love's twisted effects, bristling with torture and revenge. "There's been so many people flirting with that John Barry-esque mood recently," Noko explains, "but we really wanted to do it without any sense of pastiche. It's that whole thing of singer as central protagonist in angst-ridden voyage of desolate romance. Billy McKenzie (ex-Associates) seemed like the obvious person to get in for that. The song will be credited as the Stealth Sonic Orchestra featuring Billy McKenzie and it’s under the Stealth Sonic flag that Apollo Four Forty steer their breath-taking musical voyage into its final port of call for a piece of stunning, church-worthy beauty. "The title, `Stealth mass In F*m', is a little musicianly conceit", grins Howard. "The voice is my sister, Elizabeth Gray. She sings lead soprano in a choral group. Handel, Mozart, Gorecki, she sings all those guys. She's the real deal".

So there, `Electro Glide In Blue' isn't your average dance album. It's not even your average album. It's everything you ever wanted, all at once. Dive in.