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SALMONELLA DUB |
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 On this page:
*Salmonella Dub interview
*Salmonella Dub Discography (all available on Whammo)
*Salmonella Dub Australian Tour dates
SALMONELLA DUB - THE WHAMMO INTERVIEW - JULY 18, 2003
Andrew Penman is reasonably relaxed considering he has a busy year ahead. As the guitarist/manager for Salmonella Dub, Andrew is enjoying the calm before the storm that promises to ensue as a result of their latest release One Drop East. It’s hard to tell exactly when these New Zealand dub merchants suddenly became one the most exciting ‘dance’ combos in the world. Maybe it was when they sold out the infamous Fabric club in the UK or when their Inside The Dub Plates album went double platinum in their homeland. It may have been the New Zealand Music Awards' recognition of Outside The Dub Plates as the 'best dance album' of 2002. In truth, there has been no sudden change, just a constant evolution and commitment to their craft. Salmonella Dub’s new album One Drop East is a perfect example of the act’s live sets and signals a temporary departure from the jungle/drum&bass; that has become a feature of recent releases. I recently caught up with Andrew Penman to discuss the band’s world domination plans, only to find that Salmonella Dub have no designs for domination- only dub…
Whammo: We road tested your last album (Inside The Dub Plates) at the Chocolate Factory on some very large speakers. I can tell you now that the neighbours are not happy with the depth of your bass.
Andrew: Excellent. The a-side of the vinyl (One Drop East) – I think it’s track 7 – it’s called Octopus and it’s got samples of this movie Utu – ‘utu’ is Maori for revenge – but the subs on that go down to 10 hertz. It’s way out there and quite interesting. We were sitting in the studio thinking: ‘do you think we’re going to get away with that?’. It holds up quite well.
Whammo: One Drop East reflects your live sets, like the great show you guys put on at The Metro in Sydney recently. Was that a conscious decision?
Andrew: I suppose it is a conscious process but it’s also one that is open-ended. We never actually sat down and said ‘we’re going to make an album that sounds like that’.
Whammo: Have you always started at the rhythm and worked your way up?
Andrew: When we were recording on reel to reel tape machines we had to write the tracks and work out how to play them because we recorded them live. After a while it caused quite a few arguments in the practice room. Getting into recording digitally has allowed us to start from scratch, arranging as we go. We put everything together in the studio and then have a practice to learn how to play it as a group. It makes it really fresh.
Whammo: The last two albums have established you as international stars on the dub scene. Considering how isolated you are in New Zealand, are you conscious of the fact that you’re on the edge of making an impact globally?
Andrew: Because we’re not in amongst the industry, we don’t really know what’s going on. We’ve expanded and gone out to Europe three or four times over the last few years and we’ve got releases in Brazil. I think the last tour, we worked out, was the twelve or thirteenth tour we did to Australia. It’s really rewarding seeing the audiences turn up and enjoy the live shows. It’s more on a street-level that we’ve noticed people taking note of what we’re doing, rather than on a global level.
Whammo: One Drop East has a few of what you could call ‘middle-weight’ songs. Did you think you were going a bit too far with the drum&bass; on Inside The Dubplates?
Andrew: We found that we had too much material, about 90 minutes of material, so we had to drop about four tracks. Among those tracks that we dropped there were a couple of the more jungle/drum&bass; tracks but it wasn’t so much about style, it was more about which tracks were developed at the time. What we’re looking at doing over the next few months is finishing off all the tracks we didn’t get finished and looking at using those for b-sides or for bonus tracks later on.
Whammo: Being in this region of the world has an isolating effect but you’ve isolated yourself even more recently.
Andrew: I’ve moved out of Christchurch and moved our studio a couple of hundred K's north to Kaikoura. It’s nice - when you’ve been touring as a group in cities and bars – that you can fall back and become a normal person again.
Whammo: Kaikoura sounds amazing. It must have influenced the recordings.
Andrew: It’s always something you’re reflecting on but it just reminds you of the enormity of the landscape. In the initial phases of recording we certainly thought it was having an effect on the spaciousness of the music and possibly why the album is a bit more downbeat than previous recordings.
Whammo: Will you put out another remix album?
Andrew: We almost feel like we’ve overdone it in New Zealand. Inside The Dubplates we did as a remix album (Outside The Dubplates) which went platinum here and got voted as ‘Best Dance Album’ at the New Zealand Music Awards which is quite a hard case. You might find that we each individually do our own remixes next time. The way we see the album is that it’s almost like the template or the score for the music. When we take it out live we’ll play those arrangements for the first few months and start messing with them, developing them further.
Whammo: I was at the last show you played in Sydney at the Metro. It was packed and everyone was loving it.
Andrew: The first time we were on at the Metro was about six years ago and we were supporting the Cruel Sea. I think we were on at about 7.30 (laughs). Forty people in the room. While the shows get better and better, we get more and more excited. We’ve matured as a live band. We went through a weak patch about a year ago because we’d been through a few engineers.
Whammo: Well if losing sound engineers means you gain a new member like Tiki (ex sound engineer, now a member of the band), it’s all good. His work on the Shapeshifter album (Realtime) is awesome.
Andrew: He’s a talented young man. Anything he puts his head to he’s brilliant at. It’s frustrating sometimes (laughs).
Whammo: Will you do a world tour to promote One Drop East?
Andrew: We’re all set to go. We’re just trying to get our heads around the best option. The more time you spend going out of the country and touring, the more taxing it is on the personal lives of the people in the band. We want it to last. Over the last 10 years, playing a large number of shows, we’ve worked out what our optimum is and we're pacing it so that everyone can enjoy it.
Whammo: I saw you a few years ago and I recently noticed an extra confidence; a bit of a swagger on stage.
Andrew: I think that’s from traveling overseas and playing to different audiences and seeing other people play as well. Through France we’ve done so many small provencial festivals, playing with a huge variety of acts. There’s a lot of reggae and afro-celtic stuff coming out and really good live bands in France. Mixing with different people has helped a lot.
Whammo: If the bio’s true, you’re about to mix with some pretty interesting people if you’re about to tour with the New Zealand Ballet.
Andrew: That’s a weird one. We did a show earlier in the year, the manager of the ballet came up, introduced himself and said he had this crazy idea. A few months later the orchestra and manager of the ballet came up and stayed with me for a weekend. We got reasonably toasted and it was quite good fun. We discussed all these possibilities and they’re working away on it with the government because they’ll need $1.5 million to do it. They’ve just got to find a time slot where everyone’s got a free 6 months to put it together. So, I think realistically it will be 2005. That’s all good. They’re going to fly us in on a stage that comes down from the ceiling. They’ll have the ballet on the stage and the orchestra in the pit. They’ve got WorldClothing, a design label from Aukland, doing all the costumes. It’s going to be quite interesting. |
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OUTSIDE THE DUB PLATE (REMIX ALBUM)
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 SALMONELLA DUB
Add to basket. Normally ships within 10 days $26.95 (US $18.13) (UK £9.80)
cd
The fattest dub release of the year comes courtesy of Kiwi pioneers Salmonella Dub...oh, and a few of their friends. That's right, it's a remix album but nothing too kooky spoils the flavour and why would you ever threaten the quality of Salmonella Dub's sound? It's all very tasteful on this collection and acts like Groove Corporation, 10 Sui, Adrian Sherwood, DLT and Mad Professor pay the ultimate respect by expertly enhancing and tweaking Salmonella Dub's Inside the Dubplates. The result is more suited to a Saturday evening warm-up rather than a Sunday afternoon chill and a few tracks like Love Your Ways (Magnetic version), Wytaliba (Dreadzone remix) and Ramblings From the Anatoki (Jagwah remix) are dance-floor bangers. I guarantree this cd will never be too far from the stereo. In fact, I plan to glue it to my walkman.
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KILLER VISION + BONUS DIS
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CALMING OF THE DRUNKEN MONKEY
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SALMONELLA DUB AUSTRALIAN TOUR
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May
13....Beach Road Hotel, Bondi NSW - Scribe with DJ D-Form show only
14....Metro Theatre, Sydney NSW
15....Metro Theatre, Sydney NSW
16....Beach Road Hotel, Bondi NSW - Salmonella DJ show only
17....Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay NSW
18....Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay NSW
19....Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay NSW
21....The Arena, Brisbane QLD
22....The Sands, Maroochydore QLD
June
3......Prince Of Wales, Melbourne VIC
5......Hi-Fi Bar, Melbourne VIC
6......Beach Road Hotel, Bondi NSW - Cornerstone Roots show only |
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