It has been said that all is well that ends well.  What of all that begins well?  In this case it goes well.  Heed these words that I say to you, the 2020 Soundsystem starship is taking flight and you better clean out those bassbins, stack those speaker cabinets and mark that Aztec calendar you’ve got hanging up (cause it’s oh so retro to be B.C.).  When this starship lands, those ears of yours are gonna ring of electro-funk, of excessive-funk, elemental-energy-ecstasy-funk.

2020 Vision as a record label is clearly the common denominator behind this house-funk hybrid.  Or is it Ralph Lawson?  No, it’s the label.  Lawson is a peg in the wheel.  Lawson has been running this revered 2020 Vision for what seems like forever and he’s been DJing in a club called Back to Basics for over a decade and all of this is important, but is it?  It is.  More importantly though is that Lawson got together with a couple guys off of his label, hence the denominator, and formed this band. 

Hang on, two steps forward, but three need to go back.  Back the bus up.  What!?!  Why?  Why form a band?  You’re one of the hottest DJs in the world.  Everybody loves you.  Everybody wants to be you.  Everybody even thinks about you while they’re shagging!  (They do?  That’s some messed up junk.)  “I was not getting inspired by the club scene in the UK,” Lawson explains to ITM from his home in Leeds, UK.  “It had been so fuckin’ great with acid house and it just got so stale and corporate and cheesy.  I used to go to clubs as a kid and just get blown away, like ‘what the fuck is this!’  I just wanted to give that back to the next generation.  I think now three years later the club scene is very exciting again, London is going off off off!  But mainly because of clubs like Fabric and underground parties like Secret Sundaze who have gone back to the warehouse environment and ethos.  The super clubs are dead, thank God!”

So three years ago, Lawson got together with the drummer Danny ‘Double D’ Ward, whose pedigree reads similar to Lawson, including AIM, Rae and Christian, etc ad infinitum.  It all went down like this.  “It just happened one step at a time.  Danny and myself were working on a mix for Fat City Records and I wanted to play tracks from 1975 to 2005!  So we had all this stuff not done on computers, so you can’t beat match.  We got Danny to play kit while I busted beats and it worked out nice!” Rounding off the other third (that’s half to you earthlings), are Julian Sanza on keyboards and Fernando Pulichino on bass.  Together they’re also Silver City, signed to the 2020 Vision utopia.  They just got sucked into the vortex as Lawson remembers: “The guys joined as they sent in a demo and it was weird that they both added instruments we needed!”  Lawson’s own involvement is controlling the decks, the effects and the chaos.

From the get go, a credence was laid down even in the naming of the group.  “We wanted to set up more of a collective than a band.  I liked the name soundsystem as I used to go to soundsystems in London (Ashanti, Good Times, Lee Scratch Perry soundsystems) and it was just the mad sounds that came out of the speakers.  It’s not that we play reggae, it’s just more the idea of speaker stacks and sound getting thrown at the crowd!”  Coming from the length of time as a DJ and working with people from drastically different backgrounds and ideas and to try to write together, the Soundsystem has opted to just get together and to play in order to communicate via  musical frequencies.  “It is very important to have a code of writing,” explains Lawson in regards to writing songs.  “It suits us all to get together and jam and just throw things at each other.  Hooks and themes come out of the weirdest places and we make a whole track out of what was perhaps 2 minutes in an hour long jam!”  It is necessary to think of the music then as intuitive.  As emotion based.  Look on their recent LP release ‘No Order’ on 2020 Vision (of course) as such.

At this point, the real issue comes to light.  The issue that had been looming like the Ides of March.  The issue of whether the Soundsystem is foundationally based on an expression of collective output, or a means of individual expression within a group setting.  “Well, there are times we all start arguing and we do come from very different musical backgrounds,” muses Lawson.  “There is definitely push and pull most of the time, but that, in the end, is what gives a crew a different sound and edge in the long run.  When it works!  It has been a good experience to learn to listen to people’s opinions and not be such an egotistical f—-in’ DJ anyway!”  This is the golden age.

To give you perspective of what the Soundsystem is about, listen in on Lawson.  “We played a festival in Spain and it was hot as f—-, the sound check went on forever, but finally we got it done.  We got back to the hotel and it had a pool but it was closed and gated off!  We were dying for a swim, so we climbed over and jumped in.  It was one of those pools where the water comes right to the top and it was now getting dark.  Double D managed to swim straight into the side and busted his face open.  He just looked at me with his lip hanging off and for some reason I couldn’t stop laughing!  We then had to sneak back into the hotel in our cossies with D holding his face together with towels which were turning red instantly.  We realized we had to go to hospital so he went for stitiches as the time ticked by.  He got back just in time to play and still killed the gig!  He then downed a bottle of JD for the pain and passed out.  Genius.”

No longer is there one ring to rule them all.  All will be ruled by the ring in your ears of 2020’s spaced out dub echo chambers as George Clinton gets chucked in the blender with Larry ‘Mr. Fingers’ Heard.  Throw in a side of the entire Hacienda with a dash of Mitch Mitchell and presto!  Space disco!  E-Funk!  To add to the complexity is the commitment to the club-goer in that the soundsystem never ends.  Each song welds into the other as a DJ set would.  The party never stops; the starship never lands. 

Time to space out with 2020 Soundsystem, the e-funk all-stars, as they tour Australia in April for the very first time:

Fri Apr 14 – Digital, Melbourne (BUY TICKETS)
Sat Apr 15 – 360, Sydney (BUY TICKETS)
Sun Apr 16 – Innercity, Perth (BUY TICKETS)

2020 Soundsystem’s debut album ‘No Order’ is out now through 2020 Vision/Stomp.