Interview: Founder of Sublime Frequencies Alan Bishop
Here is an interview with Alan Bishop: Original Sun City Girl and founder of the colourful world label Sublime Frequencies, a label dedicated to showing the world what ‘world music’ is really about. Bishop has spent the best part of his life traveling in constant pursuit of music our western ears just aren’t ready for, music that don’t follow rules. And true to Bishop’s conviction that ‘All one needs to do is hear it to become interested’, Sublime Frequencies has succeeded to attract more than just interest. This month I pestered him with emails to try and squeeze a few questions out of him I hoped he hadn’t been asked a hundred times before…
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Alan do you see yourself as somewhat of a hunter?
Only in the literal use of the word. Yes I hunt for music but I certainly don’t want to kill it. I liberate it and spread it to others who may never get the opportunity to experience it and who may appreciate it for the same reasons I do. This gives it an extended life… If I decided to re-process the music and “produce” it in a way that destroys the original intent, then I’d be a killer, but that’s not what I’m interested in doing. I’d rather present it in the original form it was meant to be presented in and let others decide the merit of this music for themselves. The process is more like gravedigging–exhuming a body of work pronounced dead by many yet when it is free to walk the grounds again proves to be far from dead!
When and how did Sublime Frequencies start?
Officially our first releases (3 CDs and 2 DVDs) were released in October of 2003 so the label is 6 years old. How it started is a combination of several factors including all the work we’d been doing for many years on these projects without knowing they would ever appear on our own label. We decided to start a label due to the fact that no other label seemed as if they would release this type of material. Radio Morocco is the oldest project, created in 1983. Many projects that eventually appeared on the label were done in the 80’s and 90’s.
One of the best things about your label is that the music isn’t tidied or reproduced before release. I heard someone say on the radio that they’d love to make a proper recording of Group Doueh, and I thought… please don’t! Do you hear that a lot?
We don’t hear too much of that these days, as more and more people seem to be interested in how we are presenting the music in its raw and unfiltered form.
I think for the average westerner, ‘world music’ is often only understood to be so much: a fairly predictable body of music that won’t really shock or exceed our expectations. Usually world music is confined to the Hi-fi recording of fairly traditional music. Does the way world music is marketed and perceived by the west annoy you, or is that something I’m imagining, from reading other interviews of yours?
It doesn’t “annoy” me anymore than many other things these days. Getting caught up in some kind of analytical debate about terminology and presentation is a distraction and an unproductive process. There’s always going to be different camps with their own philosophy on how something should be defined, curated, presented, interpreted, etc.
There is a limited amount of music that makes it over here. Did you feel you had some sort of duty, to let this music be heard?
I wouldn’t call it a “duty” because I’m not working for anyone—I am simply passionate about the music and want others who will dig it to hear it. And I want those musicians and the scenes they come from who’ve been ignored for all these years to get some respect and recognition, to bring them into the “discussion” of what’s happening now and what happened historically because right now, they are not even in the discussion and the great musical legacies they represent are unknown for the most part, which is almost criminal in the year 2010.
I remember reading you say: ’All those American kids interested in foreign rock are not any different than today’s young Thai kids interested in modern R&B and hip-hop and pop music like Green Day and Blink 182′. Is there a scene in the U.S. for this music? I can more easily imagine Blink 182 being listened to in Thailand because those countries seem to have an infatuation with the west on a more commercial scale than the other way round.
Yes that is true but I think the quote was taken from the context of a fascination with foreign music in general, not how the music is presented in either place commercially or otherwise—just the basic fascination and how it relates to NOT needing to understand the language to be interested in it. As for any “scene” in the US for obscure music from Sublime Frequencies releases, I would rather describe it as an “informed fascination” because those who seem to be interested are a bit above the normal curve in adventurous listening.
Do you think it’s changed at all recently? There seems to be a surge of artists coming out of Africa and becoming pretty big here.
It’s been in-vogue to like African music my entire life but now it seems to be more universal. It used to be artists like Olatunji in the 1960’s, then it was Fela and many others in the 1970’s and 80’s and now with the internet and many reissues being available, anyone can find a wide range of the music today. But there is still so much more to be experienced.
So I’m assuming your music collection back home is pretty eclectic. Lots of cassettes?
Yes of course—lots of vinyl and lots of cassettes.
Was a lot of the music on compilations such as ‘Folk and Pop Sound of Sumatra’ found on random cassettes that you then compiled?
Yes there were some random cassettes on that particular release—and then I hunted down the artist names and titles on most of them before releasing it—each of our 51 releases have entirely different stories behind them.
You’ve released a collection of records that are your own collages, made in the 80′s from recording various radio stations around the world. from Java, Algeria, Morocco, amongst others. Were you influenced at the time by other types of audio cut ups?
I was familiar with the Burroughs/Gyson techniques and music collage in general but I was also employing these ideas with my own music at the time. Selective and geographical location Radio collage is a very practical idea that should have been widely utilized long before I did it but unfortunately that’s not the case.
…To me they appear to be almost as abstract representations of the culture, like if you were to make one image from many photographs.
Yes—collage is collage any way you wanna slice it
You’re an artist as well as a label owner. What kind of music/art are you making right now?
I’m recording with several different entities these days—all of which remain anonymous until a release or announcement comes. I use as much of my spare time to write, play, assemble, or arrange my own music. Where it all leads is never clear until something finds a home. I spend almost every waking hour of every single day with musical projects whether they are mine or others so you can imagine there are many things I’m doing that I forget about until it’s in front of me at the time.
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Alan also creates under the names Uncle Jim and Alvarius B. If you type Uncle Jim into Youtube, you’ll come across something called Uncle Jim and Climax Golden Twins: a video of Bishop in a dark room smashing vinyl and muttering incoherently…
Can you tell me what Uncle Jim and Climax Golden Twins is about?
Uncle Jim is a Sun City Girls character based on my Uncle. The Climax Golden Twins are close friends of mine who decided to employ Uncle Jim for their record advertising campaign if that’s the connection you were referring to?
ok…
What music did you listen to as a kid?
I was born in 1959 so I was a kid during the 1960s. I mostly listened to Pop music on the radio and music that was on TV—I started buying records when I was 5 yrs old. My parents listened to Elvis, Sinatra, and older popular, jazz and country standards and some of that seeped in. My grandparents played records and performed Arabic songs in their home and during the 70’s I started to listen to Arabic music more seriously.
Artists such as Omar Souleyman and Group Doueh have grown quite a following here in London. Was that something you imagined would happen, if only people were to hear this music?
Yes it was obvious to us. All one needs to do is hear it or experience it live to become interested.
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If you haven’t already, go listen to Sublime Frequencies’ releases at myspace.com/sublimefrequencies
or buy a record at sublimefrequencies.com
Interview by Joe Wensley, Main photo by Mark Sullo