In-between the mental breakdowns caused by finishing off our album I’ve been working with some 'yoof' from Tower Hamlets recently – running some classes on music technology and production. Apart from being asked if I know the Beatles and whether I qualify for free travel we’ve had some amazing sessions.

The current crop of music makers, particularly from this culturally rich area of London, are making some amazing tracks – completely indefinable at times with a huge mixture of styles and influences. During the course of these sessions we’ve been listening to some classic tracks to try and get an idea of what they rate and the kind of sounds they’re after. These kids are 100% of the digital age – they download songs onto their retinas and store them in their cyber trousers – all the music they are making is made on phones / computers / laptops – its all digital. And yet they have been going mad for James Brown, Fela Kuti, King Tubby and possibly the biggest cheer of all…… Led Zeppelin!!! Honestly. When I played the start of 'When The Levee Breaks' I thought there was going to be a riot!

We started to talk about what it was that they all reacted to. ‘Heavy’, ‘off key’ ‘under serious manners’ ‘sick’ and various other phrases that I partially understood. After a while we agreed that it was the sound of these records that they felt. On the whole these are records that have been recorded hot to tape, they have some dirt and filth and dissonance to them, which the human ear seems to like.

The digital age is a stunning thing – the democracy of music making being more available to more of the population than ever before is brilliant and cant be overstated – but there is the sound of old things being turned up too loud and squeezed on to pieces of magnetic tape that still feels good to the soul!  A reminder perhaps that at heart we are all a bit dirty, a bit analogue in our nature, where things cant necessarily be broken down into 1’s and 0’s.

Either that or they were just humouring me and are now, as we speak, cussing my ‘‘buckle legged old man-ness’’ – ‘‘check out sir – he closes his eyes when he listens to music – do you think he’s high?’’

Sam

This piece has also been published by This Is Fake DIY:

www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/columns/lucky-elephant-why-we-like-a-bit-of-filth