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| The
Herbaliser
It’s not every day that you
come across a duo like Jake
Wherry and Ollie
Teeba. They’ve been working
together for over a decade and continue
to progress and improve, to excel
in the competitive world of hip hop
production and beyond.
Jake Wherry grew up in South West
London. A diet of jazz and James Brown
provided the soundtrack of his childhood
and teenage years. He naturally found
himself getting into rare groove and
old school hiphop and played guitar
and bass in many jazz, funk and rock
bands. Ollie Teeba, meanwhile, was
strictly about the hip hop. He began
DJing at 15, was playing out in London
within a year and, in between collecting
sneakers.
Despite knowing of each other’s
rep at sixth form college it was only
to be years later that they would
convene at Jake’s now legendary
studio, Traintrax
to start their beat making careers.
The guys immediately hit it off and
began working on material of their
own, utilising the skills of seminal
collobrators DJ
Malachi, Kaidi
Tatham (Bugz
In The Attic) and Ralph
Lamb (Easy
Access Orchestra). Wherry had
played in school bands with PC
(DJ Food)
and when he heard the early Herbaliser
demos, he was quick to introduce them
to Ninja Tune;
just at the time of the mid-nineties
explosion of hip hop jazz breaks.
'Our instrumental style was born of
a necessity to produce hip hop music,
but without access to rappers we had
to develop a new approach.'
Their first album, the classic Remedies,
was released by Ninja in October ’95,
a sharp hit of hard breaks, jazz sampledelia
and funk, a record that could only
have come out of the UK. 1997’s
Blow Your
Headphones added more
vocals to the mix, in particular introducing
the world (outside of the New York
Underground scene) to the talents
of What What
(now Jean Grae).
Counteracting the prevalence of a
couple of DJ's and a bongo player
being the most common 'live' presentation
of dance music, and inspired by the
great funk bands of the previous decades
Wherry and Teeba decided it was time
to take the musicians they worked
with out on the road. With Tatham,
Lamb and Patrick
Dawes (percussion) already
on
board, it was a small step to making
a seven piece whose blend of hip hop
rawness and funk band tightness made
them a major fixture at festivals
across Europe.
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The
Generals (Herbaliser Approved) |
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| Tourdates
6.03 - Elysee Montmatre,
Paris, France
6.04 - 22° Art Rock Festival (open
air) Place Poulain Corbion, St Breiuc,
France
6.07 - Academy 2, Manchester, United
Kingdom
6.08 - The Arches, Glasgow, United
Kingdom
6.09 - Sage, Gateshead, United Kingdom
6.11 - The Forum,London, United Kingdom
(visuals by Mox)
6.29 - Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver,
Canada
7.02 - w/ Bonobo,
Ottawa International Jazz Festival,Ottawa,Canada
7.03 - w/ Bonobo
and DJ Food,
Metropolis, Montreal, Canada
7.14 - Dour Festival, Dour, Belgium
7.16 - Annecy Festival Muzilac, Annecy,
France
7.22 - Bluenote Festival, Gent, Belgium
7.23 - Brighton Racecourse, Brighton,
United Kingdom
9.23 - Marseille Marsatac Festival,
Marseille, France
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The
experience also caused Jake and Ollie to
re-think the process of making a record.
For 1999’s Very
Mercenary they also began sampling
their own playing partners, originating
new grooves and then splicing them in the
sampler as if they were off a piece dusty
rare vinyl. It lso featured a stellar cast
of guests, What What this time being joined
by Bahamadia,
Blade, and
Roots Manuva.
But it was the musical breakthrough that
fascinated them most and allowed them to
indulge a love of sixties soundtrack and
library records without merely chopping
and looping the originals. Hence, whilst
Something Wicked
This Way Comes (2002) featured
another fantastic batch of guest vocalists,
including MF Doom,
long before his current deification and
Rakaa Iriscience
(Dilated Peoples),
it was as music that it really fascinated,
a dark psych-funk underpinning being revealed.
The band went back out on the road and the
record's commercial and critical success
saw The Herbaliser rising to headline status
at many key UK and EU festivals with a live
show that by now left most other for dead.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the boys leapt
at the chance to produce last year's
Solid Steel Herbal
Blend mix and reassert their
prime skills as mixers and hip hop heads!
Meanwhile, their self-evident production
chops have got them gigs making music for
veryone from Motorola
to Guy Ritchie
(Snatch)
to PlayStation
(Tony Hawks Underground)
to writing NFL's
theme for the primetime "Sunday
Night Football" on ESPN.
All of which leads us to Take
London. As you'd expect, the
record shows further refinement and expansion
in sheer technique, while tracks like "The
Generals" show that the boys
have lost none of their edge, or sheer enjoyment
of fucked up, crazed hip hop tomfoolery.
And talking of the Generals (the most unusual
group to come out of US hip hop in a good
few years), it's great to see this album
putting back one woman centre stage. What
What may have morphed into Jean Grae, but
her skills have gone superhuman. But then
The Herbaliser have always been about progression.
That and being dope…
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