Jules did backing vocals on Miss Alleluia
Jules has been an anchor for me… the persuader, the stirrer, the sideways necromancer, the thorn in my side, for a long, long time.
His brother Simon (who’s just made a cool-as-you-like lo-fi record) was in my class at school, always a little different to everyone else, and on retrospect, just that little bit cooler, although at the time he just seemed like a quiet bloke. When I met Jules, he was already a bit of a guru on the Northern Irish music scene, whatever that means. Any cool project that was going on, he’d be there, working with all the funky bears of the day.
We soon became friends, and he ask me to join him working on a contemporary dance piece called ‘Hard Shoulder’ which was going to be performed with a live band in Belgium and London. It was the best recording experience of my life to date… four of us went into the studio with a blank slate, and through various inspirations and displays of random genius, fuelled by cheap coffee and Marlboro lights, came out the other end with five hours of stuff on DAT. Jules took it away, put it together in a way none of us would have imagined, and presented each of us with a CD a month later, saying ‘Learn that, lads…”
The show was a great success, so Jules and I continued to work together on various bits and pieces. He is a master of the sideways approach. His albums, ‘Bolt’ (1997) and ‘Candyfloss’ (2000) were both great pieces of work, using ordinary people’s speech, old fitness records, and vice-presidential speeches reformed into new music. There’s one of my favourite samples in the EXTRAS box… he recorded it in San Francisco and in the south of France (the 90 year-old blind aunt of one of his friends) Apparently his website isn’t quite running properly yet so the link doesn’t work, but its still good fun.
He was AWOL during the making of ‘Angels In Drag’. I was quite distraught not to have him on the record – after all, he was one of the main inspirations behind doing it in the first place. I used his Wurlitzer piano on a few tracks, recording ‘Cheapskate Rainbow’ up in the heights of the Greenwich Dance Agency the night England beat Germany 5-1. You could hear the cheers emanate and echo all around London on that sultry summer evening… it was quite magical, a great night to record.
The last track to be finished was ‘Miss Alleluia’… there’s a snippet of it in the EXTRAS box. Jules had re-appeared from his self-imposed exile, and arrived at my house in West London for a cup of tea. I suggested he put down some backing vocals, even though he’s not really a singer as such. His vibe was great and the track lives to tell the tale!! I can’t really express my gratitude to Jules, but I miss him being around since he was here in March, and look forward to some new recording when I return to London next year.