pweination

Crustacean Under a Groove

Oh no, not again! Barely have we recovered from the potato frenxy of The Orb's 'Pomme Fritz' when along comes another album with a concept cheesier than a Double Gloucester sarnie

Fortunately, the man responsible - GRAHAM CRABB, the green haired one in Pop Will Eat Itself - is being less than po-faced about the aquatic link flowing through his solo 'ambient' album 'All Blue Revue'.

 

"Most of it felt very aquatic and bubbly, floaty and all that kind of guff," Crab confesses. "I thought it'd be quite nice in a cheesy kind of way to have some kind of concept to it, and not take it all too seriously.

 

"Instrumental music is quite intense but you can disappear up your own arse too."

 

But can we really condone titles like 'The Mermaid's Tale' and 'Whistle While You Swim', let alone naming the project GOLDEN CLAW MUSICS after an episode of Tin Tin? Oh, go on then.

 

It's no surprise that Graham went all floaty on us after experiencing the ethereal delights of Peter Gabriel's Real World studio, where Crabb and Eno engineer Marcus Dravs put the LP together.

 

"It's in this massive room - you could go hang-gliding in it - set in the middle of a man-made lake, with swans drifting past," Graham recalls, his Brummie accent sounding somewhat less than cosmic. "It was like being in a big spaceship or something. Usually studios are just brick walls - this was the perfect environment."

 

Surprisingly, especially for anyone ready to write Graham off as an ambient bandwagon jumper, most of the tracks on 'All Blue Revue' are up to five years old. It wasn't until he remixed the Poppies' Top Ten smasheroonie 'Get The Girl, Kill The Baddies' into ambient soundtrack bliss 18 months ago that he really considered airing his own work.

 

"This isn't an album I'm making to be fashionable - you can't take any notice of that, you have to just get on and do it. Right from the beginning I was putting bits of guitar on the tracks and that's probably very off-putting to your purists. But you've got to do it and be true to the idea."

 

And despite hanging out with Brummie big boys like Higher Intelligence Agency and Banco De Gaia, he's keen to play down any similarities in style.

 

"I think it's more that we've all been influenced by the same stuff, rather than trying to copy each other. Stuff like Banco De Gaia, you can tell it's very influenced by soundtracks rather than the ambient scene. That's where I come from a lot - watching films and listening to soundtracks that just drift along. That's what put the whole thing into motion.

 

He's far more likely to heap praise on former Bad Seed Barry Adamson, whose dark soundtracks are admired by moody goths and chilled out bobbers alike. So if 'All Blue Revue' is the soundtrack, what's the film?

 

"Oh, Marine Boy definitely! I wanted to call one of the songs 'Marine Boy' but I ran out of tracks."

 

Graham promises to take this deep sea madness on the road - he and Marcus were to play at Phoenix and then tour Japan with Underworld and Alex Paterson but "didn't get it together in time".

 

"I want to do it," he says, "because playing live's important and I want to keep the thing going. I don't want it to be a one-off."

 

And is that so he can escape the sometimes oppressive environment of being in a band as democratic as the Poppies? Apparently so.

 

"We are very democratic, which if you're kind of strong-minded like me, you can get very pissed off. You don't want to be a Hitler about it, but if you've got a strong idea you want to see it through.

 

"It can end up very frustrating, to be honest. I wanted to get away from all that and just be Hitler for a while."