Seb Chan is a man with many fingers in a wide variety of pies. Breakfast Radio Host for Skid Row, The veritable backbone of the altogether too legendary Sydney party outfit Sub Bass Snarl, and the man whose hand you just HAD to shake if you’ve been lucky enough to attend Sound Summit. Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you, Seb Chan!!! (*cue audience roar*)...
I dropped a few questions Sebs way because I’d always wanted to ask him a few things and was very keen to discover just how amazingly talented this man really is.
“Sub Bass Snarl started when Luke Dearnley and I met at university in 1991. I was doing a radio show on Radio Skid Row, which I began whilst doing Year 12 at high school. I was into the Sydney indie rock scene at the time and I was writing an inflammatory music column in the school newspaper rallying against Bros and all the other manufactured pop of the time. At the same time at school I was hanging out with the nerds who happened to all have
reasonable taste in music. In between lunchtime handball games we’d be swapping tapes of either the British indie/new wave/postpunk – New Order, Depeche Mode, The Smiths; Madchester crossover stuff like Happy Mondays,
Stone Roses, Pop Will Eat Itself; or American hip hop – Public Enemy, De La Soul, and all listening to Triple J (in the final years before it went national). I would shop at Red Eye Records, Waterfront and Metropolis (which was underneath Mid City Centre) after school and get recommendations from the staff”.
“When Luke and I met at uni, he was into the same stuff and our bunch of mates would go out to the various indie and industrial clubs in the Cross. Sanctuary, Rollercoaster, and then electronic/industrial events like Elysium. Those nights, especially Elysium and its offshoots, were pretty important in an odd way because they’d mix Ministry with Meat Beat
Manifesto and Pop Will Eat Itself with Electribe 101”.
“It just so happened that 1991/2 was the time when rave hit. Both of us started going to these amazing warehouse parties in Alexandria and Mascot (Tribal, Psychosis, etc) and by the end of 1991 the music that I was playing on my breakfast radio show was all techno. Luke started coming in
to the show with me and brought his flatmate’s Ensoniq Mirage sampler and drum machine and he’d play along over the tracks. It was from there that we started doing this sort of ‘decks and effects’ thing. On Radio Skid Row at the time, Abel (el Toro) was doing a show as well as this long running
Saturday nighter called MDA (with Lance Kenneth from Disco City and Michael MD and others – later HiShock as well). People would call up and request tracks and I guess both of us were more into the weirder end of techno -
not so much the ‘hands in the air’ stuff – more acid techno, early proto-trance. This was still before Aztek – the huge Homebush rave which made the whole scene explode into the mainstream. By early 1992 we got involved in the free party scene as a result of our connections with Radio
Skid Row and Jellyheads (a punk collective). Then from there with Punos, the chill out specialists, who some readers might remember for their fly over over Happy Valley. From there, well, we continued through acid techno playing at heaps of the major underground and free party events as well as involving ourselves in Clan Analogue, into chill out and experimental phases with Punos and then with our own recovery club called Cryogenesis. Then into drum & bass and breakbeat, through to now. There’s a much longer story but that’s another interview…”
Having covered the recent Sound Summit events for ITM and being supremely impressed with the whole goings on down there, I felt it only fair to thank Seb extremely for not only holding this incredible event, but also for having the vision to import certain artists (Sutekh, com.a, machineDrum to name but a few!), as acknowledgement of their talents and what they are bringing to modern electronic music.
“In 2000 Kenny Sabir from Elefant Traks and I started Sound Summit. It was then called the National Independent Electronic Labels Conference. We started the conference as part of This Is Not Art largely because of both of our experiences in running a record label and mine in promoting local electronic music. At the time we felt that there was little opportunity for local artists to network and skillshare beyond their own little niche friendship groups. And forget about interstate”.
“The first one was very successful so we did it again in 2001 and started to bring international speakers to the event. In 2001 we brought over Anticon from San Francisco (which resulted in Clue To Kalo and Curse Ov Dialect being signed to Mush), Hrvatski (Planet Mu etc) who had many years of
experience producing and writing about music in the USA, and Dave Cawley and Dave Howell from Fat Cat Records in the UK, amongst others. We also tried to get the editor of The Wire over but he pulled out after September 11. The 2001 event started to properly realise our initial goals and there was a bit of a uniting of the independent hip hop and electronic worlds”.
“After 2001 Kenny went overseas and I continued the event in 2002 and 2003 with pretty much the same formula – a mix of high quality locals and some internationals chosen for what they could contribute to the local scene in terms of knowledge and skills. In 2004, Chloe Sasson from Inertia will be taking over the event. She worked on 2002 and 2003 with me and is committed to growing it (and allowing me to focus on other projects)”.
This year saw Sub Bass Snarl head overseas to Europe and Asia to spread their own version of ‘The Gospel according to:’, but as would happen things didn’t always run smoothly, with a few equipment issues raising their nasty little heads.
“It was pretty amusing actually. I was heading over to speak on a panel at Mutek in Montreal and then to Sonar in Barcelona and I made sure my ticket went through Tokyo (probably my favourite city). Luke decided a bit later to come along and visit his girlfriend in Spain. He was really undecided and didn’t have enough money to do the whole trip so he flew on a different airline to me. I arrived in Tokyo and he was to arrive the next day. This was his first non-family trip overseas further than New Zealand, so he was really concerned about baggage weights and thought he would just bring his laptop – no mixer, no fx, no sampler! Anyway, he arrives in Tokyo and I’m like “where’s all the gear?”. We had a show two days later followed by one
in Osaka and another one in Tokyo”.
“Fortunately we hooked up with Com.A, a local laptop producer, who took us down into the heart of Shibuya where there were these very cheap music gear shops and after about three hours Luke had spent half his entire holiday
savings and had a new suite of gear! The real problems came when the CD decks at two of the venues were on the blink and I had to make the best of bad situation. Then in Europe, Luke bought a Spanish power convertor (to
convert from the 110V Japanese to the 220V European power). The Spaniards aren’t known for the electronic manufacturing prowess so by the London show
Luke ended up blowing up almost all the gear he’d bought (and lugged) from Japan”.
“Often this sort of stuff can be avoided if you go through managers and middlemen, but with Sub Bass Snarl we’ve always done thing ourselves – and still managed to get the same deals and opportunities as our friends who now have ‘professional’ management. It’s all part of the fun”.
Being as heavily involved in promoting, furthering and expanding the incredibly rich and diverse sounds he’s discovering and loving, I felt it necessary to put the following question to Seb, and get it straight from the horses mouth (so to speak) – “What concerns (if any) do you currently have about the Music Industry?”
“Its a business. And if you understand that and separate it from any pre-conceptions about ‘art’ or ‘music’ then everything is totally logical. For me, music is a side project – one that I do consider a business, but its not what pays the bills. Both Luke and I prefer to work in ‘real’ jobs rather than commit fulltime to music or related pursuits. In part its about keeping the freedom to take risks. I’ve got plenty of concerns about the ‘industry’ but nothing too remarkable. Let’s just say I don’t think iTunes or any pay-per-view system is going to change how artists are paid. These schemes simply replicate the same inequities and contractual problems between labels and artists – they do nothing to pass money directly to artists”.
Strangely enough (as if there hasn’t been enough so far to keep young Seb Chan occupied), Seb’s been composing (freestyling?), soundtracks for some of the best-known cult movies of all time.
“This was something that we’ve done on and off from about 1995 onwards. The biggest of these soundtrack remix screenings would have been at the Freaky Loops fundraisers we organised for 2SER (1996-2001), and with Neotropic at
the Metro (2001) where we were remixing The Running Man. Unlike a lot of other people who have been doing this (most recently the Vinyl Projections nights), we’ve always approached this from an improvisational view. Rather
than ‘rehearse’ a set we’ve tried to allow the film’s narrative to influence the moods of our music accompaniments (much like the way an audience watches a film). We also keep the dialogue in the film intact as much as possible”.
“Part of the reason why we started doing these remixes was to explore the importance of a film’s soundtrack to the narrative. If you change the soundtrack, what happens to the story? Using ‘films’ as visual wallpaper never really appealed and I think that people doing soundtracks to stuff
like Baraka is a cop out. When Frigid was at the Dendy Cinema (1997/8) we used to screen cult films each week – 70s blaxploitation, heist movies, Jet Li & Jackie Chan, and seminal sci-fi – and this proved a fertile ground for
material. Also, around the same time there was a great series of reissues and remasters of Roy Budd soundtracks coming out through a British label. Then John Saul Kane (Depth Charge) started reissuing some classic soundtracks also, alongside his Made In Hong Kong video label (Shaw
Brothers reissues etc)”.
“In a live setting, we’ve done Hellraiser, The Running Man, Moon Warriors (a Samo Hung directed kung fu/supernatural action flick), Tetsuo II (a Japanese man-becomes-machine thriller), The Thing (John Carpenter’s sci fi remake), Once Upon A Time In China, and several others. Since the explosion of DVD it has become much easier to do this film remixing and the next stage for us I think will be actual narrative remixing possible with our regular video collaborators Superlight. The idea being to remix the visuals and well as the music – live, and improvised”.
This year, the Sydney night Frigid, which became not only an institution but a second home to yours truly, and was host to an incredible number and diversity of not only local and Australian talent, but also some of the worlds most sensational artists – ceased to function. The reasons for this are many and valid however if you’ve just learned of this through reading this piece, sit tight, take a deep breath and relax, because Noodle is here to save the day!
“Noodle is here to continue to provide a space for electronic artists to perform live and to collaborate with video artists. Unlike Frigid, Noodle is more focussed on explicitly electronic things whilst the other monthly nights carry the hip hop and reggae elements. At the same time we are
remaining firmly committed to promoting new leftfield electronics and anyone who went to Frigid over the years would know that we prefer to put on artists that no-one knows than ‘crowd pleasers’. I went to raves to hear
new music not anthems, and when i go out that’s still what I want to hear – and so Noodle is still about hearing new music and encouraging people to get back to wanting to hear music they don’t know or own (rather than the
tunes everyone knows and owns on some bodgy mix cd)”.
“I know that since September 11 a lot of young people have become pretty conservative, scared, frightened of strangers, or each other, of new things. And I think its really important to fight against this across all areas of your life – the choices you make when you go out to the choices
you make when you vote or purchase products”.
So, we now understand where Seb Chan came from, where he’s been, and what he’s upto. So what’s turning him on these days, musically? (*pay attention! you’re about to learn something!*)
“There’s such a lot of good music out there at the moment, but at the same time it can be incredibly hard to find. Volumes are up but the ratio of good to crap has stayed pretty much static. Fortunately through my magazine, Cyclic Defrost, I get exposed to a lot of new music and get sent
packages from around the world daily with odd little releases coming from Eastern Europe as frequently as from eastern Australia. At the same time, our reviewers and writers are always recommending music to me. And Luke and I often get exposed to each other’s latest music through our joint weekly radio show on 2SER”.
“Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of instrumental rock – Jackie O Motherfucker on Thurston Moore’s label, Do Make Say Think on Constellation; abstract hip hop – Diverse on Chocolate Industries, Buck65, Ghislain Poirier on Intr_Version; electronic/folk hybrids – the new Mice Parade on Bubblecore, Sora on Japanese label Plop; electronic dub – Rhythm & Sound’s latest EP collections on Burial Mix, DJ Olive’s Bodega on theAgriculture; old school revivalism from Luke Vibert/Amen Andrews, Remarc, and Rewind Records; as well as exploring a lot of old reggae and jazz”.
After reading all of the above, you’re likely to be sitting there assuming that Seb Chan is some variation on the Superman theme. Not quite. He’s just a man. An incredibly talented man with some pretty keen vision, but ask him what he loves most in the world, and it’s a simple request :
“If I leave out particular people, it would have used to have been chocolate. But now it’s more like ‘time’”.
