A true legend of the underground electronic world, Ken
Downie is partly responsible for the proliferation of
artists on the scene over the last ten years. Author,
with Ed Handley and Andy Turner, of the seminal Bytes,
third in Warp’s Artificial Intelligence series
of forward thinking albums in 1993, Downie had started
to become one of the most highly influential musician
of the post-acid area. After Handley and Turner left
Black Dog to concentrate on Plaid,
following the band’s second official album, Spanner
in 1995, Downie remained sole in control of the Black
Dog tower, releasing the over-looked Music Adverts
(& Short Films) in 1996. After years of apparent
semi-retirement, Downie re-emerged last year with his
most challenging and fascinating record to date. Recorded
with Scottish poet Black Sifichi and inspired by the
work of William S. Burroughs, Unsavoury
Products dug deep in the human conscience to
dislodge its most intimate fears and obsessions.
Beautiful and disturbing, Unsavoury
Products was a clear indicator that, despite
the lack of releases since he left Warp, Downie hadn’t
been inactive. Utterly contemporary, this album offered
a perfect combination of intricate electronic music
and spoken words. Yet, Unsavoury Products was
held not as the follow up to Music Adverts (&
Short Films), but as a project in its own right,
giving Scottish poet Black Sifichi, who now lives in
Paris, an ideal platform to expose his own strange world.
Just a year on, Genetically Modified now gives
a chance to revisit Unsavoury
Products, as seen through the eyes of a wide
range of artists, from Jimmy Cauty, of KLF fame, with
whom Downie hung out for a while in the mid eighties,
to the Beloved, CJ Bolland, A1 People, 808 State or
Laub. Taken out of their original context, these tracks
are now given some interesting new dimensions, from
the almost debilitating trancey excursion of CJ Bolland’s
version of Mental Health Line or the classy
deep electro-house Beloved mix of Wishing Well
to the dub-infected Technova revision of Interview
or the A1 People’s electro version of Dogbite,
Genetically Modified’s oblique and unexpected
take on Unsavoury
Products alters its intrinsic perverse nature,
sometimes shamelessly obliterating the original, as
on the rather dated 808 State’s version of Let’s
Talk Music. Yet, on most occasions, the new versions
provide an interesting alternative to the originals.
Leaving their creation in the hands of these musicians,
Downie and Black Sifichi don’t however distance
themselves from this unique project. Providing revised
versions of Unsavoury Products and Voodoo,
Downie refreshes once again his scope by injecting some
new flavours to his sound, while the additions of a
series of unlikely adds expands on the pair’s
unsettling universe and perverse sense of humour.
Perhaps not as essential as the original album, Genetically
Modified is nevertheless a worthy companion to
Unsavoury
Products. Challenging both Downie’s and
Black Sifichi’s oblique vision of the world, this
collection of remixes reveals the thought-provoking
scope of the original piece of work.
3.7/5 |
