Sampling Spirituality: The Sound of Todd Edwards and UK Garage

Paul Harkins – Edinburgh Napier University and The University of Edinburgh

Within popular music, the study of digital sampling as a creative tool has been skewed towards its supposedly subversive qualities and dominated by a trio of discourses and theories: authorship, copyright and post-modernism. In his 1993 article ‘“Don’t Have to DJ no More”: Sampling and the “Autonomous” Creator’, David Sanjek addresses three questions: ‘first, what is sampling’s history…? Second, how has the sampling process necessitated a re-examination of copyright law and infringement litigation…Finally, is sampling the post-modernist artistic form par excellence…?’ (Sanjek: 1994, p. 345) Andrew Goodwin had already answered the final question, in his classic article ‘Sample and Hold: Pop Music in the Digital Age of Reproduction,’ (Goodwin: 1988) when he punctured the post-modern pretence that romantic notions of truth and creativity had been replaced by the irony and pastiche of digitally produced pop. Whilst the concepts of ‘authenticity, authorship and the aura’ (p. 271) were under attack, they were not defeated. Neither was the international system of intellectual property, which didn’t collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, despite the bold claims of academics like Thomas Porcello who described the way ‘rap musicians have come to use the sampler in an oppositional manner which contests capitalist notions of public and private property.’ (Porcello, 1991, p. 82) This obsession with opposition and resistance shows that the ghost of Adorno still hovers and haunts the imaginations of popular music studies scholars, but, without any empirical examples to support his argument, it is difficult to take Porcello’s Marxist-inflected claims seriously. Hip-hop artists are more likely to celebrate capitalism than contest it, and are often quick to assert their own private property rights: ‘Copywritten, so don’t copy me,’ Missy Elliott warned anyone thinking of imitating her style, on the 2001 space odyssey ‘Get Ur Freak On.’

What has often been missing in academic research is an emphasis on digital sampling as integral part of the music making process and the aesthetic choices made by composers and producers in the studio. Recent ethnographic work by Joseph Schloss (2004) has centred on these questions in relation to hip-hop but it’s important to examine and understand the different ways in which the sampler has been used, and continues to be used, by musicians in a wider variety of genres. Sanjek claims that ‘while sampling is most often associated with the genre of rap and hip-hop, it has in fact become common in the recording of all forms of music. Sampling is a process with a distinct history, a developed aesthetic, and a set of auteurs who have defined the parameters of its use.’ (Sanjek, p. 346) It now seems necessary to continue writing this history by turning our critical attention towards other genres and the work of some of those auteurs who have defined and re-defined the use of the sampler, not as an ideological or political tactic, but as a musical instrument.

As an influential, but relatively unknown, producer signed to a small independent record label called I Records in Clifton, New Jersey, sales chart success and wider recognition has eluded Todd Edwards. The biggest selling recording he has contributed to is not one of his own productions or remixes, but Daft Punk’s 2001 album Discovery on which he wrote and sang the lyrics to the song ‘Face to Face.’ While British journalists and critics like Kodwo Eshun and Simon Reynolds have recognised his vital role in the development of a key genre (or sub-genre) of popular music in the UK, other handbooks and histories of dance music have overlooked Edwards. Sean Bidder’s House: The Rough Guide (1999) is limited in its usefulness as a pocket-sized guide book and fails to deem him important enough to merit an entry, whilst an academic text like Kai Fikentscher’s (2000) study of underground dance music in New York makes no mention of his name despite close musical and geographical proximity to the field of research. This may be partly the result of Edwards’s ‘non-participation in the NYC scene’ (Edwards: 2008) but also the critically myopic consequence of being considered part of a mainstream cultural or economic space. (Rodgers: 2003) In the UK, Edwards is granted special status as the ‘Godfather of UK garage’ and referred to as Todd ‘the God’ Edwards by some fanatical followers. In the US, he does not have such a high profile and, according to one journalist, is ‘recognised as just another producer in the enormous House pantheon, paling in hype to the prolific Todd Terry and the extremely in-your-face Armand Van Helden.’ (Host: 2002, p. 18)

Todd Terry is also deified by some observers for the influential role of his music on UK dance music or, more specifically, what Simon Reynolds refers to as the ‘hardcore continuum.’ He was one of the producers who inspired Todd Edwards when he first began making what he calls ‘club music’ in the period between 1989 and 1990. Introduced to the sounds of Todd Terry, and other New York artists like Masters at Work, by his friend ‘Filthy’ Rich Criso, Edwards was attracted by the apparent simplicity of dance music and saw it as an opportunity to gain entry to the music industry and achieve longer-term commercial success. After some early attempts to replicate a harder House sound, which was, according to Reynolds, ‘rooted in electro, old skool hip hop and the brash, crashing electro-funk style known as Latin Freestyle,’ (Reynolds: 1998, p. 31) Edwards was beginning to experiment with the sounds of cut-up samples as used by another US producer. This would soon develop into what might be described as his own unique sonic signature:

‘Around that time, [1992] Todd was getting deep into sampling, taking minute pieces of various tracks – mainly r&b and disco – and trying to reposition them into stuttering new 4/4 formats. “House producer Marc Kitchens [sic] – who went under MK – was the first to really inspire me,” Todd says. “He would cut up vocals and make phrases that didn’t make any sense. A light bulb went off in my head and I thought, ‘You know what? I don’t even have to find phrases that make sense anymore.’ The melody [in those songs] didn’t have anything to do with the words.”’ (Host: 2002)

This idea of meaningless melodies was also inspired by a more unlikely source: the Irish singer, Enya, whose synthesized vocal style is achieved by layering her voice as much as eighty times to create the sound of a virtual choir:

‘“I really enjoyed Enya’s music because she would use her vocals as the instrument,” Edwards explains. “She would sing a lot of ‘aahs’ and ‘oohs’ [in the background] and then she would sing on top of it. You couldn’t tell where her voice began and the music ended. Eventually, I combined these ideas. I did almost like a rhythmical version of [an Enya song] using vocal snippets for the musical elements. That’s when people started to take notice.”’ (Host: 2002)

The breakthrough for Edwards came when he realized he could sample the voice as a musical instrument, rather than piano or strings, and is in stark contrast to the sampling style of those hip-hop producers in search of the perfect beat, break or bassline. (Schloss: 2004) He began to develop an interest in the texture of vocals by artists like Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Carpenters, and the ability of the sampler to re-arrange them into new melodic patterns. However, the voices on the track, which had such a huge impact on the early UK garage scene, came not from one of these folk, rock and pop icons but the vocal chords of he and his father. When asked in an interview about the strangest thing he had ever sampled, he said ‘[Laughing]… my father’s voice! When I did ‘Saved My Life’…I sang half of the samples myself, but I needed a baritone voice to go in the little choir sound, so I had him come in and sing an ‘ooh’ for me!’ (Edwards: 1999)

‘Saved My Life’ begins as a House <track> before the introduction of vocals and saxophone and this and Edwards’s later productions would dismantle the dichotomy which Kodwo Eshun draws between the two tendencies within US house: ‘the metal machine music of the “track” and the gospel humanism of the “song.”’ (Eshun: 2000, p. 78) The repeated lyrics may give the impression of a secular love tribute but the gospel roots run deep and, according to its producer, the movement from track to song is a metaphorical expression of spiritual awakening. Edwards explains ‘that [the] track is about a man who’s going on a spiritual journey and he finds God. In the beginning in the music it’s very chaotic sounding and then all of a sudden there’s this crash and a gospelly sounding choir comes in. That’s the point where he found God. He starts to say the phrase ‘You gave me love, I just can’t get enough’.’ (Host: 2002) This meaning may have been lost on a London audience experiencing the music in a social context where an interpretation of insatiable and unfulfilled sexual desire may have seemed more appropriate.

The other two tracks from 1995 that are key to the Todd Edwards catalogue and his influence on UK garage are his remixes of St Germain’s ‘Alabama Blues’. In his short history of house in Peter Shapiro’s Modulations, Kodwo Eshun describes the original version as ‘a sombre, down-home blues sample with a vibrant hook of gospel chorale…Todd Edwards’ remix was U.K. underground garage before it had a name, extracting vowel sounds that were stretched enough to register but so transient that they teased and tugged, then crosshatching them with curlicues of guitar that licked your ear.’ (Eshun: 2000, p. 80) The word ‘crosshatching’ is used by both Eshun and Reynolds to describe the signature sound of Edwards but may be more appropriate to its origins in visual art as it doesn’t tell us very much about the mechanics of micro-rhythm. Assuming you view having your ear licked as a pleasurable experience, I’ll play you excerpts from both the original mix and the Todd Edwards vocal mix. It is quite a radical reorganization of the overly repetitive original, with the insertion of a bridge and chorus transforming a downbeat story about racial alienation into a sonic expression of overwhelming joy that invites readings of overcoming such adversity. As Edwards explains: ‘I improvised the song; if I think something needed a bridge, I’d make one.’ (Matos: 2003) This inverts the idea of the remix as a deconstruction of the song and also proves that the sampler didn’t lead to ‘the death of the song’ (Reynolds: 1990, p. 171) as critics schooled in post-structuralist subversion and heads buried in Barthes, had expected and hoped.

The dub mix of ‘Alabama Blues’ introduces another key element of Edwards’s musical meanings and the, almost subliminal, messages relating to religion and spirituality that he inserts into almost every track. He explains: ‘it wasn’t meant to be preachy, but I wanted to share something that helped me and maybe give that inspiration for other people. Even in remixes I would cut up vocals to say spiritual phrases, and if you listen closely you can hear them.’ (Matos: 2003) This may seem overly evangelical or incongruous within a style of music synonymous with hedonism and drug use and ‘despite house music’s gospel roots, Edwards’s unabashed faith in Jesus isn’t especially cool among clubland cognoscenti.’ (Matos: 2003) However, this may be one of the reasons why he has earned the nickname Todd the God among UK garage fans and it may not seem so contradictory if we bear in mind that the scene was started by groups of stylish spiritualists looking to indulge in a less formal kind of Sunday morning worship. (Eshun: 2001)

The manipulation of the voice by Todd Edwards has been referred to as a form of ‘vocal science,’ and has been imitated by UK garage producers, like Dem 2, who share his enthusiasm for simultaneously caressing and confusing listeners with a cut up technique which results in infectious lyrics that make little sense or are extremely difficult to understand. It has also led some critics to become a little overly Deleuzian in their analysis of what is happening to voices that are no longer linked to a body, even though this separation has occurred ever since Edison recorded ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ The disembodiment of the dancefloor diva by the sampler means that, according to Reynolds, vocals no longer ‘resemble a human being so much as an out-of-control desiring machine. What you’re hearing is literally a cyborg – a human enhanced and altered through symbiosis with technology.’ (Reynolds: 2007, p. 219) This, and the more Derridean concept that what is being deconstructed is ‘the very idea of the voice as the expression of a whole human subject,’ (ibid.) is linguistically attractive as a journalistic metaphor but is this type of theorisation helpful and is it supported by the kind of empirical evidence which Andrew Goodwin called for when discussing the sampler in relation to post-modern theories?

One of Reynolds’s strengths as a critic is his proximity to the music scenes he is writing about and the irony is that UK garage’s most insightful analyst has been based in New York for over a decade. As a recent correspondent to The Wire pointed out, ‘the greatest virtue that Simon has in all his journalism is that he’s there, understanding what he’s seeing before he looks up the relevant quote from Deleuze or Derrida.’ It is Kodwo Eshun who cautions against using theorists to give music a gravitas it doesn’t require: ‘Instead of theory saving music from itself…music [should be] heard as the pop analysis it already is. [If] producers are already pop theorists… TechnoTheory, CultStuds et al lose their flabby bulk, their lazy, pompous lard-arsed, top-down dominance…’ (Eshun: 1998, p. 004) So far, so intellectually invigorating but Eshun replaces these dictatorial discourses with fashionable theories and ideas like the rhizome and the meme, concepts drawn from the fields of botany and biology that cannot adequately describe the evolution of culture. As academics, it is important not to be seduced by these rhetorical tics and tricks in the analysis of musical trends. Goodwin showed that, despite some of the wildest projections of postmodernists, the rapid spread of digital technologies in the 1980s did not lead to the fulfilment of Walter Benjamin’s prediction about the disappearance of the aura and other Romantic ideas like authorship, truth, creativity and genius. They may have become more problematic but the veneration of an artist like Todd Edwards, by legions of true believers belonging to one of the many denominations of dance music, show that they won’t go away. The tools of the post-modern era are musical instruments that produce their very own virtuosos and can be used to create choirs and compose suburban hymns. They can’t, however, and I quote Reynolds, ‘democratize the unequal distribution of brilliance.’ (Reynolds: 1990, p.168)

Acknowledgements

A version of this paper was presented at the IASPM UK conference at the University of Glasgow in September 2008. It forms part of an article called ‘Microsampling: From Akufen’s Microhouse to Todd Edwards and the sound of UK Garage’ in Danielsen, A. ed. Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction which was published by Ashgate in 2010.

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Tags: Culture numérique, Equipements et technologies, sampling