Back when Microsoft was starting their multimedia thing with MSN and CD-ROMs, they had pulled together some artists to work on some projects. Were you involved in that?
No.
I thought I had read that you had been invited to Redmond to work on a CD-ROM.
Oh, no I wasn't. Rich Evans was, a little bit. Fellow that was playing bass at our gig. He works at Real World, and Real World were doing a project with... what's the name of the company, it's a Paul Allen Company, that started doing CD-ROMs...
Starwave, maybe?
Yeah that's right. So Rich was going to Redmond quite a bit to work with Starwave people on the Peter Gabriel... I guess it was the one called Eve.
Yes, I've seen that one. It's actually remarkable.
Yeah, really good artwork. And maybe there was some confusion about that? I think I played, what did I do? I know I did something on Eve. Maybe played some guitar on something, I can't remember, actually. So maybe there's some, you know, maybe I get a credit on it.
I'll go back and look again. How did you become involved with Real World, anyway?
I guess through... Peter Gabriel asked me to produce the first Real World Nusrat recordings, and I guess because he'd heard my solo work and thought... you know, picked up on the kind of Asian influences in my work, and though that I might be a kind of sympathetic producer to help do some sort of eastern-western fusion work with Nusrat.
Mustt Mustt, unless I'm mistaken, was one of the first overtly fusion records to come out of Real World, wasn't it?
I think it was, yeah.
So was that something Peter had in mind when he asked you to work on the album?
I think so, yeah. Nusrat had done some fairly diabolical collaborations with some other musicians in Manchester, or somewhere. It was kind of like cheesy dance stuff, you know, pretty low end, with him wailing on top of it. I think Peter had a lot of ambitions for Nusrat, and the label in general did. They wanted to bring out a kind of tasteful collaboration with Nusrat and western musicians.
Those are my favorite records of theirs, the ones where they team up people of various cultures, whether it's dance or not. A lot of them tend towards the dance end of things. What I find most interesting are the non-traditional recordings.
I think the thing is that... basically, most of us are not experts in most of those cultures. And if you're not an expert, I think one or two examples of some musical tradition, you pretty well get saturated. And unless you're really going to study it, you just mostly perceived the gross features of it. Beyond the third or fourth example of it, it's going to sound the same. And so I think that's what the label is finding as well. They're not sure that there's that much of a market for another Ganean guitar band. In the West, anyway. And so I think the label itself has kind of shifted direction to try and offer more unique combinations of things, and collaborations. And all the musicians are interested in it too. But I think they kind of found they saturated the sort of pure exotic music market, to some degree. I mean, of course there's still things coming out, but I think if you can create these novel combinations, people find it more interesting. And also, I think by incorporating some western elements you give a bit of a hook for western listeners to try and ease themselves into it.
One of the fairly controversial albums among the people I've spoken with because of Breakdown, is Star Rise. A lot of people commented that, while much of Nusrat remains, the original instrumental tracks have mostly been mixed out, and people are curious about what your involvement with the record was.
Zero.
Really?
Yeah. A bit of a source of frustration, quite honestly. I mean, I guess it kind of cuts both ways in that... on Mustt Mustt, I wasn't credited as an artist, and I think everybody felt, me included, in retrospect, in fact my involvement was as an artist as well as a producer. And it was through no malevolence on anyone's part, it was just I came in as a producer, but the role evolved into more me as an artist. And so on Night Song, I think Real World were quite sensitive to the fact that I should be credited as an artist on it, as a joint artist. On the remix album there are some tracks where I wasn't on the original album credited as an artist, so to some degree I'm coming out ahead by the fact that I'm joint artist on the remix album. But on the other hand, I do deeply regret that they did not consult me more about it, because I think some of the material is on the weak side. I kind of think, if my name is on the album, then I should have some choices as to what the material is that goes on the album.
Were the works commissioned?
Yes.
So I imagine the remix artists pretty much took the material and ran with it.
Yeah, that's kind of how it works, yeah. And I mean I have not objection to that process in general, but I do believe it's pretty common protocol that the artist is consulted. I thought some of it was pretty weak, and it should have been stronger.
Have you heard the new Joi album?
No, I haven't.
I really like it.
I actually don't remember if they were one of the better people, but I certainly heard a lot about them.
I actually got the album on the strength of what I heard in Star Rise, and they're very good.
There was another group, I think they were called something like... I get the two confused... it was either State of Bengal, or something with 808 in it.
I don't remember.
Yeah, I don't either. I was kind of a bit frustrated about that album.