die!boredom

Born as a vehicle to release and push The Beautiful Girls and Mat McHugh’s records around the world, Die!Boredom has now moved into a place where it can start supporting and releasing music and bands that we believe in and love. The first release out side of TBG and Mat McHugh was Tanuki Dub – see more details below – and is soon to be followed up by the debut record from Dead Beat Band. Die!Boredom will keep the music coming as we cross paths with music and musicians that fit the bill.

Tanuki DUB’s Glad to be Glad is the premier solo offering from the versatile bassist of pop/rock bands The Beautiful Girls and George, former metal band Pangaea and Brisbane Jazz/World/Groove Allstars The Neighbourhood Groove Collective.

PaulieB is an Australian music gem, tucked away in his West End studio ‘The Tanuki Lounge’ when he isn’t touring internationally with The Beautiful Girls. As a producer and engineer, PaulieB has worked with the likes of Tyrone and Katie Noonan, Tim Freedman, Ash Grunwald, AFRO DIZZI ACT, Saritah, Rachael Brady, Le Josephine (from New Caledonia with Nicky Bomba), Kooii, The Chocolate Strings, Kafka and countless others. TanukiDUB is the project title for PaulieB’s solo record.

Glad to be Glad is a largely instrumental anthology of striking cinematic world music, sometimes reminiscent of the early Studio One releases, other times like a Tarantino soundtrack remixed by Bill Laswell. The album is brimming with beautifully recorded instruments - the only programmed track is the DJ KRUSH inspired down-tempo ‘Ombolek Tok Tok’ that closes the album. PaulieB offers us a glimpse of the multi instrumentalism resultant of over 20 years performing and producing by playing almost all the instruments himself.

A wonderfully organic sounding album that flows seamlessly between themes, Glad to be Glad showcases dub not only as a style of music, but a style of Audio Post Production, used to explore the spaces within all music. PaulieB explains:

“Recently I have been collaborating with a lot of Jazz and World musicians, particularly West African, and I see this release as more of a world music record than anything else. I am greatly influenced by the production work and styles of Bill Laswell and his ongoing world music Dub collaborations. I do believe DUB is a production style that can be applied to any style of music and that’s what I find in listening to these recordings.”

Why, then, would an artist with a notoriety for collaboration in such a vast array of genres embark on a project in which he plays almost every instrument himself: drums, percussion, electric bass, electric guitar, nylon string acoustic, ukulele, melodica, Fender Rhodes piano, synths and various toy keyboards. Paulie also did all the engineering, dub effects production, mixing and mastering himself.

“I woke up one morning during a break from touring and recording and was sitting on my sofa with my acoustic guitar and a cuppa tea and realised the bass line for Creamtop Dub - the opening track. I knew all the gear was still set up from a previous session so I went in to the studio to just put down that bass line and see what followed. 8 hours later I was back at home with my first mixdown. It all happened so fast. Each subsequent morning I committed to another simple bass line or nice chord grouping and headed in to repeat the process.

When I first began to record music everything was analog and we recorded on tape. That meant the player had to get it right, preferably from beginning to end without interruption. I think I wanted to remind myself that I still had those skills. So a lot of what I played on the album is unedited and often the very first take. It sometimes seems to me that digital editing has had an adverse affect on many young musicians ability to concentrate and commit to performing well in the studio. Pro-Tools has become a verb.”

Guests on the album include Kooii’s Peter Hunt on trumpet, and West African Griot ‘Lansana Camara’ on Belafon. Peter Golikov from Golden Sounds plays some wicked Sci-Fi Moog on ‘Ralmar’ and Australian-Samoan rhythm superstar Bobby Alu drops the drums on the title track ‘Glad to be Glad.’

Also on Die!Boredom: Dead Beat Band – Die!Bordom 2010