3 posts tagged “chakk”

Here starts at last my Crooners thread, and I will state right here at the beginning that no songs posted will contain the MMc Factor.  In this case MMc stands not for Microsoft Management Console, but Michael McDonald.  Just as there are certain flavors I can't stand (wintergreen), and certain smells (whatever the key scent in scented toilet paper is), and certain textures (eggplant), so are there sounds I don't like, and one of them is Michael McDonald's voice.  That is the sound I call the MMc Factor.  Other singers have it, too, and that has prevented me from liking music that I would have enjoyed otherwise.  XTC is a prime example; I have a hard time getting past Andy Partridge's MMc Factor.

So with that out of the way I'll segue from Sheffield into Crooners with a Sheffield crooner, John Stuart.  Richard Hawley is currently riding a wave of popularity in the UK as the "Sheffield Sinatra," but in 1987 he played guitar behind velvet-voiced ex-Chakk singer John Stuart on Stuart's only solo single, a cover of Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze."  You will never hear a lusher version:

(There's that unmistakable Designers Republic graphic style again.)  Rounding out the backing band, billed as The Heavenly Music Corporation, are Dee Boyle (drums, also from Chakk), Darrell de Silva (sax), Jon Quarmby (keyboards), Justin Bennett (percussion), and Heather Allen (backing vocals), with production by Rob Gordon. 
Alas, that was all from The Heavenly Music Corporation as such.  Stuart would go on to be a member of the Lovebirds (with Hawley) and Magic Bullets.  He now lives in Barcelona and continues making lovely music as one-half of Forgetting, and on his own as, once again, The Heavenly Music Corporation.  (Hooray again for MySpace!)

Back once more to Sheffield and Damon Fairclough's "Destroyed by gods" annotated musical tour.  Fairclough writes:

As the Designers Republic made their first assault on Sheffield's graphics/music interface - in tandem with Leeds' Age Of Chance, it has to be said - they seemed to usher in, or at least popularise to a degree, an age of shouty slogans, sub-graffito clamour and statements smartly-dressed: 'Release the heat'; 'You can live forever'; 'Work Buy Consume Die'.

"Release the heat" comes from Chakk's first single, "Out of the Flesh," released in three mixes as a 12" on Cabaret Voltaire's Doublevision label in 1984.  Mark Brydon's rumbling, elastic bassline is really the song's central motif, echoed by Sim Lister's sax, then there is the other shouty slogan, "Out of the flesh, out of the flesh, taste the sweat!",  followed by the vocal "Ooooh oo-eee-ooooo ooooh" referenced by Fairclough, and bashing along above everything is the gated snare turned up to eleven that marred nearly every single song of the 80s.  Listen closely to the four-tap drum bit at the beginning of the song: isn't that the sound that MTV used between ads and clips for years, along with samples of "There Is No Love Between Us Anymore" by Pop Will Eat Itself and "Peace Sells" by Megadeth?

The way I recall it, music journalist Amrik Rai was so taken with the Sheffield scene in general and Chakk in particular that he started a record label in Sheffield, FON Records.  FON released Chakk's second single, "You," then Chakk got signed to MCA, got a huge advance, spent it all (?) to build FON Studios, added John Stuart as a second vocalist, recorded their album for MCA, Ten Days in an Elevator, the album tanked (it just wasn't that great, they completely lost whatever it was that gave their independent singles a sense of urgency), released two more singles on FON, one as Chakk ("Timebomb," which did recapture the spark) and one as the backing band for South African band Swanhunters ("Bloodsport") (why did a band need a backing bad?  I never understood that), then split up.  FON released a John Stuart solo single ("Black and Blue" backed with a gorgeous version of Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze").  Mark Brydon became a producer and then formed Moloko (way too camp for me) in the 90s with singer Roisin Murphy (now a solo artist, recently seen bashing her head on a chair on PerezHilton.com); other members joined other bands that I've never heard at all.  In other words, it all just fizzled out.  But it was great fun there at the beginning!  You can stream a few more Chakk songs at the Chakk MySpace page.

Following up on the "bands with a self-titled theme song" thread from two posts ago, here is Sheffield band Chakk with "Chakk Theme."  It did not appear on any Chakk release, only on the Audio Visual LP companion to Rob Deacon's Abstract Magazine 6, a 1985 Sweatbox Records release.  "Chakk Theme" is mostly instrumental, with nothing for singer Jake Harries to do except shout "Chakk" once in a while (I don't think second singer John Stuart was in the band yet); it may be the straight-ahead grooviest track they ever recorded:

I frequently ponder my fixation on the music of Sheffield from the 80s.  Was it really that special, or am I just exhibiting a symptom of middle age, whereby the favorite music of one's youth or young adulthood is elevated onto a pedestal and becomes the "best ever" that no contemporary music can possibly equal, leaving one stuck in an outdated aesthetic, listening to oldies and decrying the crap that passes for music these days?  I think I'm safe on the latter count; there's enough music I like coming out all the time that I don't have time to listen to it all, so I don't really care about the crappiness of the music I'm not listening to.  That leaves the first part of the question to deal with: was the Sheffield music scene in the 80s special?  Observing it from afar, participating vicariously, it seemed special to me at the time.  Back then, and even to this day, I had never been part of a local music "scene," mainly because I never lived anywhere where there was more than one band making music that I liked (often there was less than one band making music I liked), and I never had the initiative to start one.  But across the ocean in bleak, postindustrial Sheffield, bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Hula, Chakk, ClockDVA, The Box, The Human League, and more were funking, bleeping, and skronking up a storm.  I am pleased to report that it wasn't just romanticization on my part, there really was some magic happening there, and it has been chronicled in several books and at least one film, Made in Sheffield.  And thankfully for the cash-impaired, Damon Fairclough has compiled a comprehensive mp3 mix of Sheffield bands, Destroyed by gods, and paired it with extensive commentary on each track, available for free download and reading from his Noise Heat Power website.  He paints a firsthand portrait of Sheffield as revealed through its music scene, and manages to make me nostalgic for something I never actually lived through in the first place.  Chakk are represented in Fairclough's mix by their first single, "Out of the Flesh" (from a FON reissue not the original Doublevision release).  Martin Lilleker, who has written two books about Sheffield music (so far), drops an interesting Chakk tidbit in an interview with Pete Mella:

People actually moved to Sheffield because of it, that's why Chakk ended up forming a band in Sheffield specifically, because of the music. They'd heard the Cabs [Cabaret Voltaire], and would go to the city where that music was being played. Quite a lot of people came to Sheffield University for that very reason.

Fairclough's written piece is the online equivalent of liner notes; remember all the text that used to come with an album, or a CD, that you could read while listening to the music to enhance the experience?  I tried listening to a Rhino Records podcast once, but the guy wouldn't play the music until he was done talking about it, slowly, and I couldn't sit through it.  The beauty of liner notes, and the 21st century equivalent that I'll call "blog accompaniment," is that you don't have to stop the music to get the information.  And it doesn't get any better than Destroyed by gods.

I'm not done with Chakk--I like them more than Fairclough does--but I'm done for today.  Stay tuned for more at a later date.