Buzzin Electronic Music

International Peoples Gang - Up

Not what you might call prolific, this is the third album from The International Peoples Gang since 1995’s debut 3395, their second Action Painting was released in 2006.

Up is the first IPG album to be released through Amsterdam’s Hi-Phi Music and it finds the gang expanding their hybrid sound even further than before, creating a sumptuous mix of kaleidoscopic house, funk, folk, down-tempo and pop music.

Inspired by a lyric from David Bowie’s Panic In Detroit, The International Peoples Gang was formed by Nottingham (UK) residents Martyn Watson and Ric Peet who have since created their own sublime sound through their IPG albums and masses of production work and remixes.

Martyn and Ric use concepts of sound as their material, throwing them at blank spaces and watching abstract images and audio-visual beauty take shape. The result combines warm, organic dub soundscapes with classical stylings, elements of folk with fuzzed guitars, creating a manipulation of language with electronic experimentation.

Up kicks off with the anthemic and uplifting Second (featuring elements of The Who’s “Blue, Red and Grey”) showing off the pair’s impeccable taste for beautiful sound but as the name also suggests, this album was produced by Martyn & Ric with much valued contributions from their gang.

The pair have brought out fantastic vocal performances from Jay Thomas (daughter of house producer Tony Thomas) on Angel Delight and Katty Heath (who has also sung for Mylo, Bent and breakbeat duo Slyde among others) on the tracks Caught Up In Something which features Crazy P producer Jim Baron on Trombone and 271 The Trencherman, with upright bass by Arwel Hughes.

From the shimmering and hypnotic Son of Still to the more upbeat stance of Instant Sideways and Chika Woodward’s spoken word diatribe on the sparsely beautiful Nascent, International Peoples Gang continue their musical ascent with Up.

The sleevenotes give a valuable track by track insight into how the album evolved from none other than the The International Peoples Gang themselves;

Up Sleevenotes:

Junior Cycle
Due to a love affair with the fuzz-tone noise of Johnny Thunders and Mick Jones I’d always fancied a Les Paul Junior and, after treating myself to one as a birthday present, I played it non-stop for about a month…riff, riff, riff and then another riff. Eventually I formulated this pretty little cyclic tune that has alternating bars of 6/4 and 5/4 but; please don’t go scratching that ‘prog’ rash y’all, it grooves.

Second
I’ve always loved the ‘me against the world’ sentiment of Townshend’s lyrics to ‘Blue Red and Grey’ and, with its sonic-palette of ukulele and brass, it’s certainly an odd sounding Who record. The track has been a nagging inspiration since autumn ’75 and Ric and I were so made up when Pete let us use it.

Caught Up In Something
Featuring an ace vocal interlude from Katty Heath, a woozy, boozy coda courtesy of Jim Baron’s trombone (Fa fa faah…), an experiment with mutating room-ambience and a lawn-mower solo; this is the latest in a long line of IPG ‘musique-concrete’ melodic creations.

Place des Abbesses
Whilst living in Paris during the late ‘80s I often found myself ‘people watching’ at the Café St Jean and the art-nouveau splendour of Metro Abbesses. This tune, with its reflective clarinet theme, accordion splashes and heat-haze Algerian buzz takes me right back there.

Son of Still
Anyone remember ‘Still’ from em:t 3395? Check it out. I love the way that the nagging sequencer resonates with the naïve, piano part to create a kind of theatrical suspension between aggression and humility. Yin and Yang.

Instant Sideways
This one’s got a disorientating party vibe as it lurches from one idea to another…never quite making its mind up…like most Friday nights. The joyous kids were recorded on a carousel in Paris, the bells are from a June wedding in Derbyshire and the harmony guitars are totally 1973.

Angel Delight
The centrepiece of the record for us. This track has got a spacey, loopy, bluesy quality that Jay Thomas absolutely nails with a totally gorgeous vocal performance. I’d demoed this in falsetto so Jay sings it in an unusual register for her but still reckons that she’s never sounded better. Love on ya baby.

Spacebook
Dave Morton squeezes out a gorgeous violin tone from his electric guitar and sucks the listener into a propulsive electro groove. Ric’s orchestral collage has a disassociative quality and, when I close my eyes, I get a similar vibe to the stylings of ‘Aeroplane’ from our first album. Lush and dreamlike.

Nascent
I woke up from one of those mad semi-lucid dreams with a template for this in my head. I scribbled down as much as I could and stuck it on the studio wall. Ric spent the best part of six months sound-designing and it ended up as a sprawling monster; a soundtrack looking for a narrative. Independently, Japanese artist Chika Woodward had written a poem musing on the Hiroshima bombing from the perspective of a young mother taking her child to school that morning. We put them together and it worked. Just like that. Synergy.

Astronomy
Dedicated to Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

Easy
This was written, late at night, during a snowstorm and is my reflection on a brand-new relationship. If Bowie hadn’t done it first this would be called ‘A New Career In A New Town’. I dig what Ric did with the scratchy, flanging, phasing guitar sounds and the breakdown to silence. “Of course you can…”

271 The Trencherman
This one’s a collision between a desire for love and peace and a more prosaic, gritty realism. Kind of like a Hippy v Punk wars being fought in your mind. The title is the address of a Chelsea restaurant owned by ‘60s hipster Terence Stamp…the building seen being bombed with graffiti in The Stones/Godard film ‘Sympathy for The Devil’. The lyrics are a paean to dream state of pre-Manson California and Arwel Hughes’ upright bass cunningly avoids jazz. Phew.

Up
Ric and I worked hard at establishing a sense of order/disorder by the use of pop-art/action-painting/mixed-media collage techniques. We love shaking things up and there are no rules. We did a lot of field recording (aren’t mobile phones ace?) and cared not one jot if we found ourselves ‘doin’ our thang’ in a ‘studio’ or not. Indeed, Isobel’s front room, post-fracture morphine, Ric’s sunlit yard and serene interludes amidst episodes of mid-tour mayhem all played their part. All in all, ‘Up’ took about 3 years to put together…we’d write and record in chunks and then spend ages reviewing and editing material…attention to detail and all that. We guarantee that this record will reward careful listening. You know us.

ARTIST: INTERNATIONAL PEOPLES GANG
TITLE: UP (LP)
FORMAT: CD / DIGITAL DOWNLOAD
LABEL: HI-PHI MUSIC
CAT NO: HIPHILP1
RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW DIGITAL / CD COMING SOON