Formerly referred to as the Godfather of breaks and pioneer of the “nu-school” sound, things have gone full circle for former saxophone player Rennie Pilgrem. Speaking from his home in London on the eve of the release of his latest artist album Pilgremage, Rennie seems very much at ease with life and very excited about the direction in which his beloved break beat is heading.
Pilgrem is famed for emerging from his hardcore background and helping shape the early days of the breaks genre along side fellow UK breakbeat heavyweights Tayo and Adam Freeland. The coining of the term “nu-school” to describe the sound they were pushing seemed very appropriate at the time, however, all three have had difficulties shaking the tag since. Whilst sometimes a taboo word in interviews, Rennie quite happily puts things into perspective, explaining his simple desire to expand his audience and musical interests.
“In my own mind I broke free of the nu-school tag a few years ago. It was very relevant at the time to separate us from big beat. The nu-school thing was very blokeish, very techy, you start playing around and doing gigs and the last thing you want to be doing is just playing gigs for a group of trainspottery boys. I’ve started making music for girls as well as boys, and I’ve been doing that for a while now.”
As he further explains, this has all come about from going back to his roots and rediscovering what got him excited about dance music in the first place. “I don’t like to repeat myself and get bored, the last thing you want to do if you’re making a career in something like music, which is a labour of love, is bashing out the same old stuff. My first love, dance music wise, was funk and so I’ve tried to inject more of that back into what I’m doing as much as possible.”
Pilgrem continues, making it clear that when producing for the dancefloor he relies whole-heartedly on his instincts as a DJ. Whilst by no means unheard of, his uncanny success in being able to produce or remix dancefloor smash after smash seems indicative of strong perceptive powers. “You DJ around and you see that certain sorts of music can scare away girls, certain music can attract them on the dancefloor. I think DJing is very important if you’re making dance music as it helps you understand what works and what doesn’t. Kinda more going back to ‘is it musical or is it hooky?’ ‘Is it something that’s going to engage a crowd?’
Drawing on his musical past, with Pilgremage Rennie wanted to incorporate more live instrumentation. Most of the tracks began life on his laptop on planes as a means of distraction to combat a fear of flying coupled with an in-demand-wanted-the-world-over touring schedule. However finishing production work saw guitar, double bass, saxophone and drums added to various tracks. Not bad for someone who at one stage was associated with glitchy basslines obtained from sampling the sound of a distorted computer fart (you know what I mean!).
The first taste of the new Pilgrem was his late 2003 release Defender; a track he used to fulfil his desire to learn to play bass guitar. It would mark a transition not just in sound, but more importantly attitude. “I had a hankering to learn to play the bass and a friend leant me pretty much the Rolls Royce of bass guitars, the 1969 Fender Precision. I just enjoyed playing something again; I played keyboards and I used to play saxophone. It’s actually really nice learning an instrument. In my music bass has always been really important so to actually learn to play a real one has been a challenge and I’m sort of coming to the conclusion that electronic music where you ad a few real elements makes it a bit warmer and more organic.”
It was the warm feel of Defender that helped make it a stand out track of the summer of 2003/2004. A feel that had even some of his most esteemed colleagues doubting its dancefloor potential. “Yeah it’s weird cause to start with the DJs were not sure about that tune at all. They said ‘I’ll give it a go cause it’s you’ but then they pretty much all came back and really liked it. They thought it might not be dancefloor enough because it sounded like that. That was the first time I’d played the bass and what I played was fairly simple, however what I was getting was a different sound. Paul Arnold, who runs the label Fat, when he heard my press guy, who he shares an office with, playing it he thought it was a band. It’s just adding something real and trying to take it somewhere else, which can be a little too machine like if your just doing a lap top and playing the note.”
It seems that Rennie has had a bit of fun along the way in raising a few eyebrows of surprised listeners. “Yeah, especially the first track. I think a lot of people were checking their CD players thinking they had the wrong album. I like the fact that someone might be going ‘what the fuck is this?’ I don’t want to necessarily give people an album where they know what they’re going to get before they hear it. I think that was the most important thing.”
When asked on what albums had earned repeated listens from Rennie this year it certainly hasn’t been those from his fellow DJs. “Personally the best album I’ve heard all year has been the Amp Fidler album. It’s quite medium paced funk but brought up to date in a sort of Princey type way. It’s an album I’ve quite enjoyed and put on again and again. Most peoples breakbeat albums I’m not going to be listening to at home. It’s great to have a one off 12” but a whole album done by someone who’s not even particularly musical is not going to hold my interest. The Amp Fidler one is just kinda funk, but in a psychedelic style, I’ve seen them live and they’re really wicked, that sort of thing, that’s my favourite thing of the year to be listening to.”
The northern winter sees Rennie breaking his once a week gigging limit to promote Pilgremage extensively over the UK, Europe and the USA. His next major project finally sees him teaming up with Meat Katie to release a double mix album celebrating their successful monthly London breaks night HUM; an album that should see Pilgrem and Meat Katie touring to promote in April 2005.
Make sure you check out Pilgremage, available locally through Inertia at all good musical retailers. Featuring the aforementioned Defender, the Sarah Whittaker-Gilbey collaboration Coming Up For Air (which apparently went down a treat when Pilgrem road tested it for the first time at Field Day 2004) and the MC Chickaboo collaboration Celleb.
