Green picks the music he loved with 5 year intervals for Pitchfork’s 5-10-15-20

Interesting choice, to say the least.

Photo by Richard Skidmore

We haven’t dissected the lyrics yet, but according to our history book Robert E. Lee was a prominent confederate general. Any suggestions about the lyrics are welcome.

Robert-e-lee-live.mp3

Recently (well, er, uhm 3 months ago, which is actually not too long calculated in Scritti time) a rather nice cover of Scritti Politti’s Oh Patti surfaced on YouTube, done by a band called “The Soil Scientists”. We got into contact with Al, who basically is “The Soil Scientists” on his own and asked him about his fascination with Scritti Politti.

Why the fascination with Scritti Politti ? Good question! Well, I first started listening to their early stuff when I was quite young, perhaps around 13 or 14 years old (I’m now 24). Around then I was very much into he early ‘Brit funk’ records from that era, such as Shakatak, Level 42 etc. What struck me straight away about Scritti was the uniqueness of their sound, and how completely different their approach to song writing was to most of the other Brit funk records at that time. Wheras bands such as Level 42 seemed to take much of their influence from the very esoteric 70′s jazz funk scene (Weather Report, Miles Davis and such), tunes like ‘Wood Beez’ were very influenced by American r&b, break-beat and early hip hop records. In essence, I admired them for experimenting with the type of music that no other English artist of the time was willing to dabble with. I love most of their stuff, but for that reason those records that are most special to me are the mid 80′s ones.

As for The soil scientists, the ‘band’ as such at the moment is really just me – all of the songs on youtube were overdubbed on a digital 8 track, with me playing all the instruments. The album as such isn’t quite finished; I’ve just started a Phd in Southampton, so could be a rather long time (red : we are pretty much used to that phenomenon) The ‘Soil Scientists’ comes from the name of a jazz group I was in in sixth form. We used to do an instrumental cover of ‘oh patti’ that I arranged, so I thought I’d re-record it under the same band name for old time’s sake!

More Soil Scientists : Sugar and Spice & Sally Says

Fresh in from Rough Trade  :

“Green has been writing with Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip and this may result in something collaborative being recorded”

Rough Trade has no news on any upcoming gigs (as rumoured on Larks’ MySpace page)

Green Gartside is announced to be playing on Saturday June 2nd at the Venn Festival in Bristol UK . The Festival lasts 4 days, from May 31st until June 3rd and is held in different venues in Bristol. More info here and here. Thanks Richard W.

Found this while surfing. An interview with Green for a Canadian internet radiostation called Iceberg Radio. There is no date with the article but the interview is recorded on the day of the announcement of the Mercury Prize nomination (july 2006).

An interview with Green in the All Things To All People podcast. It’s divided in 3 parts spread over the podcast. Shownotes here. Thanks to Steve Schwartz for pointing it out to us.

p.s. for some melodious (and Scritti related) christmas tunes check out Sufjan Stevens’ Songs For Christmas and Brian Wilsons’ What I Really Want for Christmas