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Organ No. 32Webcore, one of the vitalbands of the '80s drifted away rather quietly as 1988 drew to a close... That is until three of them, frontman Mick, keyboard player Paul Chousmer and Didge player Phil turned up at the drawbridge of Castle Organ the other morning...
What do you want then?
W've come around to tell you about our new project Zuvuya...
We heard you were putting Webcore back together
Not as Webcore, no, but the spirit of Webcore is emerging as Zuvuya.
So what is this spirit then? a lot of people out there won't have been to a Webcore gig or even heard of Webcore so they won't know what we're talking about. What are Zuvuya about?
Well, it's not quite a band as such, but there's a nucleus, a core... Webcore was always very flexible too... I would say that the core members of Zuvuya is that same Webcore... core. We're not calling it Webcore because that has too many connotations with going back to something. I don't know how to describe what Webcore were...
It was before its time...
Several people have told us that. It was the right time for us...! But maybe we could have done with a little more recognition.
You seemed to disappear just as people were beginning to open up, you were gigging with Psychic TV just as they were beginning to experiment with dance and the bands around with you such as the Ozrics were about to break big.
That's kind of frustrating... They just didn't stop working though: we did...
The door seems to have opened now and it's much more acceptable to do what you were doing back then, whereas at the time you were doing it, it wasn't really accepted by anyone outside of the Club Dog / Free festival Underground thing. Is this the right time to come back?
It's not a case of coming back, it's a case of continuing. We were all doing different things after Webcore...
Phil: I was in Lights In A Fat City, Tribal Drift... and now it's come around to this new thing which is working together with old Webcore friends under the name of Zuvuya.
Are people going to recognise the same Webcore sound in Zuvuya...
Um - well, what do you think? This is it we're listening to now! (there's a tape of new stuff without vocals that they have already recorded running in the background)
It sounds a lot closer to Webcore than the reformation 'Webcore' that played Club Dog about three years ago!
Ah yes - we had a Webcore gig booked and advertised at Club Dog and it was going to be a Webcore gig and... um.. about three days beforehand it wasn't going to happen anymore, we didn't have a band together so it ended up as more of a Lights in A Fat City gig...
Are we going to hear old Webcore favourites?
Oh, not specific songs, nothing like that is planned...
So really this is a completely new project that just happens to involve some members of Webcore...
Yeah... except that it involves the working relationships that we always had - they were always established, the same spirit's there, smae sort of interest in different music that we had.
A lot of peple are going to be reading this who won't have aclue what you sound like...
We always always used to say that Webcore were head music for your feet... It's dangerous to try and describe music in words though...
I think you were the first band - and this really made an impression on us at the time - to use technology to make an extremely tribal, earthy, dance sound, but do you think it'll sound so unique now that it's such a contemporary thing to do?
Well, we haven't really thought about it from that point of view! We're doing it because... it's what we do. It's what we are driven to do! It's not a question of, er, what would somebody think of this; it's primarily for ourselves to get out these feelings that need to be expressed.
Well, it's that feeling that we remember most from Webcore and that still makes it stand out from everything happening in music now, everything that Webcore were a premonition of... the feeling in the lyrics that gave the music a focus...
Paul: I think that means over to you, Mick!
Mick: I think at that time, sort of the mid-80s there was a lot of things going on with a lot of people all trying to express something - not specifically within music: the way the rave thing came out of the squats and all the rest of it, the warehouse parties - everybody was trying to create... There was loads of good stuff coming out in that whole period, but lyrically you must take things from everywhere! There was this major feeling everywhere then, and if you look at this music today you can believe that it did accomplish something, it did break everything down again.
Does that spirit of creativity still exist today? People doing things themselves?
Mick: I think it does, but it's still very hard for people... What I did was leave music altogether - I went off into the country to see how the normals behaved! To live that life and see how the normals behaved! To live that life and see what was going on there... There's still major problems making alternative music and getting it across into the mainstream, for want of a better expression, but now that seems to matter less; people are looking at diversity of styles, the way rave met house, whatever - that's really healthy, a positive thing, it's got to progress.
What we're listening to in the background at now sounds like rather interesting instrumental stuff, but is there a lyrical input to come...?
Mick: Yes, I think there's room for people to say something real right across the board in music at the moment - people want to hear something other than just these rhythms. There are things that need to be said.
Phil: We've been working on putting lyrics to these things for the past few days... And anyone who remembers Webcore, I'm sure when they hear this stuff it will... make sense to them, they'll hear the link - it's maybe 1993 instead of 1988 or whenever it was, but soon they'll be a live band called Zuvuya playing instead of us sitting here in your room listening to a rough tape, but I think that you could say that what we're hearing now, yeah, that's a Webcore song, a natural growth...
Mick: From the actual lyrical style of it, if that's what you're refferring to, I've only just come to work with this project very recently, within the last few weeks, so it's actually going to be interesting for me to see how things are going to work out.
There's a lot of things in Webcore lyrics, almost slogans like Contact And Switch The Other which for a lot of people, including us when The Organ started, were actively encouraging people to go out and do things...
Mick: Well, that was the idea...
Paul: Lot's of people did and then we stopped!
Phil: There was no work ethic in Webcore, you know, we weren't in it for the money or to achieve anything, we just drifted along, to the point that it worked against us in the end because we just drifted apart. If we had had some focus, sat down and said let's establish this, let's create a product and all that, we would have kept working, but we were freer to explore any ideas that happened to inspire us...
Mick: It didn't have any material motives involved, apart from just wanting to get some music out, put some tangible music on tape, and because that's where we came from it was almost engineered to inspire, to stir things up... Get people motivated. It's like standing on the roof tops and shouting instead of sitting in your armchair and moaning.
So when can we expect things to start happening with Zuvuya?
We've got an album coming out soon that we're doing with Terence McKenna probably in May - that's on Delerium Records. We've got a 12" happening around the same time and we're gigging sometime very soon.
Is being on Delerium Records a deliberate 'keeping it in the family' thing?
It's very much a family thing, keeping it with people who you meet over the years and have an affinity with - I mean we're here talking to you...
You were doing it all yourself at one point, you had your own label - was that a deliberate policy of doing it all yourselves instead of actively trying to get a deal?
It was about getting things happening without getting involved in the big machine, which may have been a little naive... We were just drifting along, we were just sort of... making it because we were alive. Now I think we're a little more in touch with reality...
Mick: This is something I was reading in a copy of The Organ: you were saying the cassette culture does exist and how strong it is - you were slagging off NME for only just noticing it - I mean how could these so called music papers not notice there's a massive underground of bands putting out tape albums? You've just got to get your stuff out, what are you supposed to do, sit there and wait for permission from the machine and their press?
The thing we wrote about the NME was a reaction to a recent feature they did where they were finding it a very radical thing that Back To The Planet had actually put a cassette album out and sold it directly at gigs... as if it had never happened before, as if it wasn't happening all around them - it can't be happening because the press agents didn't tell them
Paul: They aren't really needed, Ozrics have proved that, what the Ozrics have done is very laudible, they've become a bit more of a business operation now but still surrounded by their people, they've just become so popular through selling their tape albums, that they had organised, they did it all by themselves. I don't think any of their cassette albums got reviewed anywhere besides the 'zines and they've sold thousands, tens of thousands...
Do you see the underground as being as healthy now as it was when Webcore were at their height?
Yeah, oh yes! The underground is always going to be there; it's where the fertile growth of our evolution is - the compost that's rotting and growing... thee people who don't like it might try and stamp it out but it's not something they can get their hands on... radical thought, fringe thought.
But things have got harder, you can't even talk about festivals on the phone these days... you don't know who you're talking to... most of the sound systems are out of the country now...
Yes, a lot of people have been hounded out of the country, but when you try to suppress things that think becomes stronger doesn't it? If you try and hold the spirit down it pushes up more and more. I mean, I've often thought that this is why so much strong music comes out of England: becuase we're free to make it yet there's this sense of oppression, this sense of a battle with the system. Other countries where you have an easier time, Holland for example - they appreciate it there, but you don't get much good music coming out of Holland, because it's a lot easier for them. The people who suppress these things don't really have control, they like to think they have but...
Back to your current activities, tell us more about what you're doing with Terence McKenna
Phil: We had an affiliation with Evolution magazine for a while, Encyclopaedia Psychedelia and Frazer Clark: Richard of Freakbeat turned Frazer onto Terence and Frazer sort of got Terence over here, then set up a record label and set about putting out a Terence 12", which he approached me as Tribal Drift to collaborate on. Evolution never really got it together and ventually sold Terence's words to The Shamen, and then Evolution fell apart. We were left with all this Terence stuff that we've been doing and an association that we've built up with Terence over the last year or so. Now Richard from Delerium is into putting it out. I like Terence's ideas: some of his things I find I find subjective, I can take it or leave it, but the general area of where he's coming from and what he's motivated by is sound stuff.
Most of what we hear about Terence McKenna seems pretty trivialised by the media.
Phil: Yeah, it's inevitable that once it gets seen through the eyes of the media it will be trivialised because, the 'straight' world is a straight world simply because they won't face the boundaries of their reality.
Mick: The thing is that there's this desire for co-operation, some kind of unity in all this diversity. That's what I was always trying to express; you know, we talk about the straights and all the types and all the rest of it, but there's so much from the 'alternative' side that shys away from the 'straight' world - we should all be coming into some middle ground, because ultimately we're all worried about the same things. We're all running around looking for something to keep it all together, with all our religions and all our politics... Well, for me personally there's nobody between... We are, everything is, is one... but I don't know that any more than anybody else, we're all struggling to put a word on that intangible thing, whatever you call it.
Some would say it comes from the land...
Well, that's why I became an organic market-gardner... I got to a point where I was thinking, well, what is music actually doing, what does it achieve? So I went away from music actually doing, what does it achieve? So I went away from music, I became an organic market-gardener for three or four years, something I taught myself.
These are all things that are easy for others to shoot down, if you put them into words...
Getting in touch with the planet, even if sounds very cliched, that is essential. What's wrong with our states of mind and our cultures now is that we're so detached from our surroundings.
Mick: We should try and behave a bit more like animals...
Phil: Some of what Webcore lyrics were about is getting out of the cities., getting your hands in the soil - that's been happening recently in the House/Rave music scene, some of those people are beginning to realise these things... music can make people think...
Mick: The whole way the apparent 'green' thing happened - we're all driving on lead-free petrol now, which is apparently going to help, when obviously it doesn't. People buying lead-free petrol and being 'green'. People working as organic gardeners in their own little world, people doing all these things isn't really going to change anything... We need to communicate, we need a head of state who's going to say 'Ok, let's really face up to what's going on in the world' because if we don't all address it we are fucked...
Phil: This is why we do this, we could just leave the country, but we've got to keep creating and communicating, it seems like a big hurdle sometimes, as if you're up against the impossible... But for me, when I'm up against these things I just try and remember that what I'm doing is valid, is going to inspire, is for now...
Mick: There's a great power in simply sitting down and writing, or painting, whatever... explore...
Phil: It's a question of faith, you wonder whether you're going to still be dossing on peoples floors when you're fifty... all that is just static and leads to anxiety, it gets in the way of what you're doing - You've got to leap into the void, let it carry yoy... trust it!
Melody Maker 25th Dec '93A Goatee-weirdo bloke blows on his didge, and Zuvuya's placid journey begins. "Crow Road" is riddled with wibbly tabla and trickly bits. Another geezer, with a Davy lamp on, kicks in the computer-driven bass, and the ironically named JuJu Midget (ironic because he's called Mike really and he's about seven foot three) whispers "Keep away from the edge." More irony: he's squatting at the edge of the stage. Jungle beats and jungle noises like elephants and kookaburras abound.
This off-shoot of deep trancers Tribal Drift have been working with Sixties psychedelic-prophet / acid casualty Terence McKenna. And it shows on "Dream Matrix Telemetry". JuJu recites banal Paul Daniels philosophy like "seeing is believing". Flashback-twaddle is upon us. Two Day-Glo dancers flounce on, doing lots of ace mirror ritualising. The hot didge bubbles, "Doctor Who" music phases in, tablas tabble, and we're "Grabbing Nandi By The Horn". Too right. The Day-Glo women kneel down and roll their heads around for about five minutes.
Yip, it's 3am Megadog time, except it's about half-nine and it's Nation Records festive bash. Carl Loben
Melody Maker Nov 13th '93The Megadog crew may have little to do with the travellers anymore, but listen to the bands playing tonight and you'll notice how much of the ethos has survived. Dance's leading edge is mutating into a profusion of inter-relating, yet dispalced, travelogues. The essence of nomadism has been shorn of its reactionary inclinations, and the impulse now isn't to turn the clock back, but to do away with it for good, to transgress all mental and geographical boundaries.
Zuvuya are the latest (and best) incarnation of Nation Records' cultural cross-breeding policy, another case where "World music" becomes just that, a unity embodied, not an isolated fragment. On stage, there's a half-naked hairy bouncing around, behaving like a caveman who discovered mushrooms. Sub-bass and high frequency signals pulsate throughout the hall, reminiscent of veteran arcane-ologists Clock DVA, and there's the same attraction to the ancient, and bringing the background to the fore.
Another track starts off as weightless, spine-tingling ambience, carrying a chorus of female (east European? Far Eastern? African?) voices almost as an afterthought, before it finally formulates a beat that goes through several stages of evolution, while fingers of light flicker across the stage.
"Grabbing Nandi By The Horn" is their finest moment, Indian polyrhythms, a HUGE didgeridoo that plunges you into the bowels of the earth, and fluorescent Aboriginal-style dancers, all flashing past in a peyote-like rush, as though they'd wired Carlos Castaneda's mind to the amps. Zuvuya make connections that send you reeling off the map, their discourse of fleeting worldwide refernces initiating a very personal heaven.
A passing Ben Turner thinks I'm off my head, but it's not drug taking, it's a part of me I've just rediscovered. Tonight was the perfect opportunity. Jonathan Selzer.
NME 18th Dec '93Tonight's Christmas party for Nation Records seems like an odd idea because Christianity is probably the least represented religion here. There are pagans at the bar, sons of Sikhs backstage, daughters of Islam on the dancefloor and rasta rhythms in the bass bin, but carol singers are thin on the ground. On a night where you start off watching a pair of day-glo voodoo dancers and end up listening to a demonstration of the Arabic chromatic scale (apparently) the real celebration is, of course, multiculturalism. Santa would only get in if he was wearing a bindi-dot.
Nation's determination to place the golden mongrel of pan-ethnic pop in the mainstream has made it one of the most exciting labels this year, partly because label stars Fun-Da-Mental and Transglobal Underground have made such poerful records. But it's also based on the evidence of the three lesser known bands on show tonight and an audience that embraces everyone from hippy travellers to Japanese business men. Nation will have no trouble staying in credit next year.
ZUVUYA are the label's digita cavemen. Their regular body-painted frontman Ju Ju Midget has gone native without leave tonight, so his place is taken by a skeletal figure who murmurs in tongues over the stormy brew of tribal beats and birthing groans emitting from two banks of synths and a didgeridoo. It isn't the most immidiate pop thrill.
Almighty jungle pounders like the climatic "Grabbing Nandi By The Horn" should, ideally, be experienced in an Apocalypse Now - type scenario, preferably just before you meet Colonel Kurtz. Their dayglo cave-girl dancers may make their tribal point a little too forcibly, but Zuvuya are exploring a form of extreme dreamtime hypno-pop that might in time yield treasure. Roger Morton.
Shamania - Press ReleaseFollowing the highly praised "Shaman I Am" 12", Zuvuya's second album launches into a tribal dance dream that skims on the edge of Psychedelic plant guru Terence McKenna's far out universe. Voices from other dimensions and self-transforming machine elves jive around in a space that taps on the thin walls of the psychedelic dimension. Even if this sounds like so much drugged out bullshit, the stomping rhythms and cyberspace head sounds will guarantee a weird trip for all. Zuvuya's previous CD release "D.M.T." (also with McKenna) was an ambient trance wave into chill out territory. This time Zuvuya kick alien ass.
Previous press quotes:
Shaman I Am - Press ReleaseAs a taster for their new CD only "Shamania" album on Delerium, here's a powerful 12" dose that not only wraps weird ideas in a roll of stomping tranced out tribal imagery, but also lifts the spirit and expands the stereo spectrum. If there is truly an archaic revival as Terence McKenna believes, then this piece of music is prehistory alive inside a digital vortex of anthropological speculation. Put on your head dress, summon your ancestors and dance.
Extra Blurb: Zuvuya have their roots in "Webcore", who released LP's and 12's on Jungle in the late 80s, and Tribal Drift, who put out a 12" on Nation. "Shamania"'s diverse material dates from 1991 when Zuvuya got together with Natural Psychedelic guru McKenna on his first visit to the Uk. The Shamen used the same spoken material but managed to release their experiment on "Boss Drum". Zuvuya's composition "Shaman I Am" remained unreleased due to the collapse of Evolution Records ("Shamanarchy In The UK"), but finally Delerium have come to the rescue & this awesome piece of tribal psych trance is available to all, with extra material, & an album to follow. Considering it's recording date "Shaman I Am" is certainly well ahead of it's time with regards to stylistic execution & rhythmic composition.
Dream Matrix Telemetry - Press ReleaseTerence McKenna has been described as "The most psychedelic mind on the planet today" and as "The Tim Leary of the 90s". These media descriptions, however, do little justice to the man who has brought the subject of psychedelic drugs back into an area of serious discussion. Author of a number of books including "Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Growers Guide" (with his brother Dennis: And/Or Press '76), "Food of The Gods" (Rider '92), "The Archaic Revival" (Harper '92) and "True Hallucinations" (Due for UK release by Rider in 1994) McKenna presents a well balanced, reasoned and evidenced argument for psychedelic that has rapidly gained an audience amongst academics and joe public alike.
Over the last year or so, Terence has also been featured / interviewed in UK broad-sheet's such as The Independant & The Observer, given a series of sell-out talks to an audience of young-ravers & academia alike, and appeared on various scientific TV programs about virtual reality and the Amazonian rainforest. He is also director & co-founder of "Botanical Dimensions", a charity which is dedicated to the preservation of endangered amazonian plant-life & associated folk-lore.
Together with The Shamen, Terence has been collaborating with Zuvuya, a trio of musicians who recently released a 12" single "Grabbing Nandi by The Horn" on Nation Records and have worked with bands such as Webcore, Tribal Drift and Another Green World. Utilising especially recorded material by McKenna - about the visions and experiences of a D.M.T. trip - they have created the ultimate audio voyage for the mind. "Dream Matrix Telemetry" is possibly the strangest audio journey of 1993... an informational nugget, packed with the vibrant lucid details of the effects of this most powerful of hallucinogens over which Zuvuya paint ambient landscapes of sound vibrating with ancient images and echoes from the primal swamps, forests and depths of the unknown.
Altogether this is a high intensity mind-bomb, and a truly psychedelic experience for the '90s.
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