Feel the neat Lava Lava

Rip It Up, Issue 236, 1 April 1997, Page 11

Feel the neat Lava Lava

£(A willingness to cross fertilise and mutate,” is how Mike Nielsen sums up his and collaborator Benny Staples’ philosophy when it comes to Lava Lava, their two-man sound clash, which fuses funky, minimal beats, live instruments, and pulsing electronica. On a cold, rainy March afternoon that brings to mind the weather of England — where Nielsen and Staples have spent several years involved in the music business — the duo enthusiastically discuss the pending release of their debut album, Burnt, while drinking too much coffee at a cafe in Auckland’s Pitt Street. Burnt was mostly recorded at various studios around London, and has been in the can for almost a year. But listening to it now, Nielsen doesn’t feel like it’s a case of ‘that was where we were then’. “There is an element of that because it’s music and it’s about communicating, so it’s like having the same conversation again. But on the other hand the music isn’t written to a certain style — it’s not like an album of house tunes, or drum ’n’ bass tunes or whatever — it’s based on whatever ideas were good enough to filter through and make work.” Staples agrees; “It’s not like a trendy thing where you’re trying to jump on the latest band wagon, we’re just trying to make what Lava Lava feel like is a good tune, what moves us. That’s what we go with, whether it’s in a jazz style, or in a funky style, or whatever.” Given Lava Lava’s record label (huh!), it isn’t surprising to see a collaboration with Nathan Haines, on ‘Afterlife’, the sole track on Burnt recorded in New Zealand.

Nielsen: “We had a tune we released underground in London, and it had a bit too much Miles Davis on it to get away with for legal reasons. So, we wanted to do a version of that tune where we grabbed it by the horns. Being inspired by a tune we’d already done, the good effect is, we came up with something that was our own.”

Haines has also performed with Lava Lava in their high energy live shows, which are sonically, as well as visually enhanced by Staples’ live percussion. “It’s sort of the human to digital interface. And drumming’s so old, it goes right back to the beginning, so I think it’s just like the guts.”

Nielsen concurs, but is quick to justify his role in Lava Lava’s live set-up; “But doing the mixing and stuff is a human thing as well — if there wasn’t a human being there you wouldn’t hear bugger all, right? But the thing with Ben playing so in your face, in my view, is it lets you know unmistakably this is the product of people getting into something and doing it.” Nielsen and Staples’ obvious enjoyment of live performance is reflected in how their music is created — a process which, while being electronically based, still allows them considerable freedom.

Staples: “The way we write, we might just leave big sections where we’re not sure what’s going to happen there, but we know something’s going to happen there, and at the gig we can react to the people and give them more energy and see where we end up.

“The other night, two minutes before we went on stage, we said, ‘Right, we’ll do it a completely different way,’ and just completely changed everything around. After about the fifteenth or twentieth gig you’ve got to start pushing at more boundaries a bit, you’ve got to take it somewhere else.” It’s clear Lava Lava have a certainty of direction that can only come from experience — of which they have plenty. Staples’ credits include drumming for funky popsters the Woodentops, and work with Adrian Sherwood and other members of the On-U Sound posse. Nielsen, as an engineer with over 10 years experience, has worked for everyone from Underworld, Orbital and Bjork, to Naughty By Nature and Jamiroquai, and produced the Smoke City Group’s ‘Underwater Love’, which features in the new mermaid-filled Levis commercial). However, my favourite ‘I was there’ story has Nielsen present in the control room when the Prodigy’s Keef Flynt recorded the vocals for ‘Firestarter’ — through a wall of Marshall stacks.

So, having seen a few fads come and go, what do they think of dance music’s latest bandwagon, now seemingly the soundtrack of choice for advertisers going after that Gen X(stacy) market? Staples: “It’s interesting, with the jungle and the drum ’n’ bass thing: the people who were at the forefront of that a while ago (because it takes two or three years for things like that to go overground), they’re all moving off in another direction. They just keep going underground because as soon as too many people like it, they’re going to have to make something else.” Unfortunately local audiences will not have the chance to see Lava Lava perform live to support Burnfs release, as the pair have headed back to the UK. They’re sure to be back, though — they still consider New Zealand home. Besides, London has a noticeable lack of volcanoes.

JUSTIN REDDING