The UNABOMBERS & ELECTRIC SOUL

THE UNABOMBERS & ELECTRIC SOUL

(This article originally appeared on the now defunct webzine Speakers Push the Air)

"We're the Lulu of the underground: It's taken us a lot of time to get
where we're going".

Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts; we're presently 400 fathoms and dropping. If you look out of the left window, you might see a Rare Groove Shark, shaking its dorsal fin. Brace yourselves: we're on a vertical dive now; oh my God! Can it be? Over to your right: a giant Funk Squid! We've never been this deep before! What can be attracting these elusive creatures? Aha! Transmitting from the deepest regions of aqua boogie,it's The Unabombers - exceptional purveyors of boundary smashing, floorshaking music.

Products of the rich musical heritage of Manchester, The Unabombers (Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford) are justly famed for their refreshingly Catholic attitudes towards all forms of funky music. Their Electric Chair club nights in the rainy city have become legendary, due to a heady combination of their consistently surprising and wickedly eclectic DJ sets, a hedonistic music freak crowd, and a venue with just the right amount of lowdown dirt. Together they've produced numerous illicit disco edits,and rather more official remixes for the likes of Truby Trio and NSM, and solo, Justin records hip hop and classy deep house as Only Child for the fine Mancunian imprint Grand Central Records. And most recently, they've had their biggest exposure due to a series of increasingly excellent mix albums, 'Electric Chair 1&2' and'Electric Soul 1-3'.  Such a fine pedigree has to have roots.

For Luke, it all started back in the wildly fertile musical days of the mid 80s, in a city that was to give birth to the seminal Warp imprint several years later. "Sheffield 1984. DJs Winston & Parrot, who to me are probably the most underrated demigods in the UK music scene. They were playing mid 80s electronic funk music. That inspired me, everything always had the funk in it - tracks like Adonis' 'No Way Back'". Indeed, there was no way back for this convert to the phuture boogie. Pilgrimages to legendary clubs like Occasions and Giant Turkey in Sheffield and the ubiquitous Hacienda in Manchester followed, until the funk force was well and truly strong in this one. Justin, meanwhile, was raised on a steady diet of NorthernSoul in his Yorkshire environs, before embracing hip hop, and meeting Luke to discover a shared appreciation of all things groove fuelled. From there, nights in sticky floored flea pits followed, and the idea for Electric Chair naturally evolved from these nights.

No one could predict the leviathanic proportions this club would expand to. Not in literal size, but in its immense passion, atmosphere, sound and influence. Certainly, the Electric Chair has little in common with the super clubs that recently and so famously became extinct. It's perhaps the underground vivacity of clubs such as this that has become the true home of club culture since ignorant sections of the press sounded it's death knell. But how did the Electric Chair nights become so special? Luke responds with a characteristic mixture of passion and humility: " If we were falsely humble that's as bad as being arrogant. I think if I said they weren't
special I'd be lying, but I don't wanna be a twat and think we're everything we're not. Really, all it is, is a dirty, underground basement with a good sound system, really awesome set of people who are there for the music and there isn't really a lot more to it than that. I think sometimes the best things in the world tend to be based in simplicity".


As well as DJing all over the UK and places as far afield as Thailand and Australia, they've also produced 5 awesome mix albums. Their first 2 mixes ('Electric Chair' and 'Saturday Night & Sunday Morning') were both based on the Electric Chair club nights, and ably managed to cram the excitement, surprises and sleazy basement grooves of the club into their superb sets. On the first, Mr. Scruff's obese dirty electrofunk sat next to Donna Summer's acidic gay disco; the second saw Vikter Duplaix getting his bruk beat on, whilst Craig Mack headnods like a hip hop hardnut against the wall. With a diverse selection of old and new, different styles and tempos, The Unabombers consistently push the envelope, and put things together that you never would have guessed would fit.

This isn't just wilful eclecticism for the sake of it - they believe in this music passionately. Luke is keen to stress that they've nothing to prove: "You can join the dots between R&B and techno, not in a novelty way or self conscious way, but everyone's record collection is a real mixture of music and it's exciting. It's fundamental and it's a continuation of something that's happened for a long time." As a reflection of their club nights, these mixes draw a line between the past and the future, both in terms of the history of dance music and the clubs that have played it. "Wigan Casino or Blackpool Mecca, The Loft, The Paradise Garage, Giant Turkey, the Hacienda... those clubs have always had a history of playing different forms of music. We like to think that that tradition's something that we hold dear to our hearts".

The project which has really seen them come into their own, though, is their series of 'Electric Soul' mixes. A slight change of direction has taken The Unabombers into a deeper realm; although the groove remains all important, a greater focus on the song and a heavier emphasis on their soul side has flooded through, producing their most sublime concoctions yet. 'Electric Soul 2' featured the sampled symphonic soul splendour of D'Nell's 'This Thing' - the greatest hit that never was - coasted on future R&B flavours, housed us, and touched down with the Carl Craig's cyborg jazz funk remix of Incognito.

The subtlety of the mix makes it hard to pin down to either R&B or house or anything in between, giving it an appeal to open minded heads of both of these genres. The essential point is that all the music they play is rooted in the funk, and as Luke makes clear, Electric Soul really isn't such a departure: "It was a natural continuation - it wasn't really a tactical thing, it was more of a reflection of other music we play. A little more understated, not necessarily about some of the bigger
classics, and probably more upfront - a lot of newer music there. I guess it was more soul based, but not in an Aretha Franklin way".

The latest edition, Electric Soul 3, is undoubtedly their deepest and best yet, where the duo touch on some of the revolutionary hip hop/electro/funk hybrid emerging from the States, like the cosmic year 3000 R&B sheen of Platinum Pied Pipers, and P-funk warriors Plantlife. Luke enthuses: "It's linked to Parliament, hip hop, there are
connections to techno. It's just a brilliant example of modern underground dance music that has so many influences. The best music I've been hearing has been coming out in the last 5 years". Indeed, Luke sees hip hop as the most consistently futuristic music out there: "Timbaland and the Neptunes, on a production level, are miles ahead of Detroit... It's about having an open mind". Also present on the mix is the utterly
sublime piano led 'Samurai' by Jazztronik, a Japanese broken jazz classic, and corkers like King Kooba's 'Salvador', which samples The Average White Band with devastating results.


If this gets up the purists noses, then tough shit, reckons Luke. "I think purism, people that won't accept new forms of music, that's about a lack of confidence in what you like. If you're into Northern Soul and nothing after 1974, it's about things being safe. I'm not into the history of Larry Levan and where he went to the toilet. It just bores me". But Luke is also keen to express his belief that all clubs should be able to do their own thing. "There's room for everything. If people want to go to a commercial night, they can do it, and if people want to do their underground thing, they can do it. I like to hear different forms of music at a night, but sometimes it's good to hear six hours of lush house music. I don't think Electric Chair should be a blueprint for every other night".

The Unabombers are another product of the remarkably fertile music zone that is Manchester. It's often been a mystery why so much brilliance should emerge from the city, but Luke has his own theory. "The shittier the place you live, generally the more creative it becomes. That's not always the case, but when a city rains 80% of the time and it's a bit of a grey shit hole... Manchester is kind of a brutal city. The antithesis of that, is that it's got a real spirit and warmth to it, so people in
terms of the clubs and the music and the art are a reaction against the bad side of where you live. We reacted to a cocaine fuelled, gang filled city".

The next step for The Unabombers is their own music, which they're working on at present. Justin has already released 2 albums as Only Child, and together they've remixed and re-edited innumerable tracks. But working as a pair under your DJ name is something different. Does the anxiety of influence - all those great tracks they're famed for playing cast a shadow over their own productions? "For us, the process of it is completely and totally connected to what we're doing, without sounding too pompous. We've got a lot of inspiration to be doing our own material. It was really the stage we've wanted to arrive at, but literally, we're the Lulu of the underground, we've taken a lot of time to get where we're going". Ideally, Luke would like some heavyweight vocal and musical input: "Vocalists like Pete Simpson (from the Sunburst Band) who we're working with at the moment. Robert Owens, I wouldn't say no to working with Beyonce!" I bet you wouldn't, you devil.

The Unabombers open minded approach, passion and sheer good taste makes them one of the most exciting DJ/production duos in the world, let alone the UK. It's refreshing to talk to someone who clearly loves music and is always on the look out for the next classic or undiscovered gem: "It's like the cuisines of the world you taste. Oh, that's genius! You've discovered a new dish and you get stuck into that one". Undoubtedly, they're the bomb.