quête:cue various artists

Chapter four in the line of vinyl releases on Cue Line Records is also the beginning of something new. 'Elements Part 1' is the first piece in the Various Artists series on the label called 'Elements'. Driven by an urge to explore how elements can form something greater together, and the other way around, how anything can be broken into its elements, every single track on the V/A is by multiple artists. 100% collaborative content. RDG x Cessman, Gaze ill x 3WA, Binary x Zygos, Murk x Shiva ft. Rob. Nine minds, four tracks, one piece.

Way back in 1967, an animated superhero cartoon was released into the world. It was created by Grantray-Lawrence Animation and was based on a web-spinning, crime fighting blue and red dressed character that had originated in1962, in Marvel Comics by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. This amazing series (that we're not allowed to mention the name of for legal reasons) ran on ABC TV in the USA, then Canada, then a few years later started to spread its web further, running here in the UK throughout summer holidays, after school and possibly early mornings at weekends in the late 1970s. The series then got released on VHS video (and probably Betamax too) in the mid 1980s and still continues to spin its animated magic around the world through further broadcasts, YouTube and DVDs.

The series was notoriously low budget, with animated errors everywhere and numerous scenes, sequences and backgrounds being re-used all the time, often across the same episode. Even a certain spider logo on a costume would appear with six legs, then eight legs later on, then back to six again in the same show.

Series One opened with a newly written spider theme, a classic, hooky song all about doing whatever spiders can, and had, as Big George (RIP) once pointed out to me, a set of session singers falling slightly out of time with the backing track after the first verse. Series One also featured background music by jobbing composers Bob Harris and Ray Ellis but these cues and master tapes are now believed to be lost.

After Series One the company Grantray-Lawrence went bankrupt, so the amazing spider series (that we're not allowed to mention for legal reasons) was taken on by producer Steve Krantz. He brought in new talent, including animation director Ralph Bakshi who later went on to turn a Robert Crumb strip cartoon into the feature Fritz The Cat. Krantz also slashed the already cripplingly small spider budget, and brought in the idea of using economic library music. Here, thanks possibly to an independent sync agent (it has been suggested that a company called Music Sound Track Services may have been the one) production turned to the KPM catalogue. This was one of the few really established library catalogues around at the time with a modern edge, it was full of fabulous, modern dramatic music tracks - often all on the same LP. But more importantly all the tracks were far longer than the one minute musical cuts that many of the fledgling USA library companies were issuing at the time. Not only would this KPM music be efficient, affordable and very easy to use, it would also mean syndication worldwide would not be held up by any future musical issues. Krantz produced two amazing spider series (that we're not allowed to mention for legal reasons), and both were smothered with KPM music. In fact barely a spider second goes by without music playing in either the background or foreground.

For many years I - and many nostalgic others - have been thinking about putting this vinyl album together. For many enthusiasts this really is formative music - a junior foray into hip swinging crime jazz and esoteric musical grooviness. I've also read on line accounts by DJs from WFMU on the trail of original spider master tapes, and there's even a whole forum dedicated to Spidey-Jazz'. Then recently I was looking at an old spider tracklist and realized that several of my favourite KPM cues were there including Syd Dale's Hell Raisers' and Walk And Talk', both from one of the most elusive and desirable KPM albums of all time (yes, you just try and find yourself a copy of KPM 1002 right now), so I decided to push on and get the album made.

So, what features on this Spider-Jazz Lp Well it's music from the amazing TV series we are not allowed to mention for legal reasons, BUT, not music from Series One. No, but it is all from Series Two and Series Three. From looking at archival cue sheets, over 50 tracks from various early KPM 1000 series albums were used across episodes. I've distilled this down into one exciting and enthralling LP, and if this works a further Spider Jazz album may well swing in to production. If you're interested (and I'm sure you may well be) cues here came from KPM1001, KPM1002, KPM1015, KPM1017, KPM1018 and KPM1043 and were composed by master library composers of the era - Dale, Hawkshaw, Hawksworth, Mansfield etc.

And if you are listening over there in the USA, you may well recognize many of the cues here not just from the amazing TV series (that we're not allowed to mention for legal reasons) but also from classic 1960s and 1970s NFL highlight shows that we are allowed to mention.

Spatial Cues is a series of split singles sounding out main(void)'s and Kon Janson's shared musical space. Operating out of Berlin and London, the two artists join forces to showcase their mutual vision of techno music.

CUES003 explores the darker side of the series with a focus on low frequencies, echoing percussions, and vast spaces, evoking a deep introspective motion.

Diffracting a manifold of sounds around its massive kick drum, CUES003 A builds and releases tension through a dramatic sequence of smooth swells and intense surges.

Grounded by its captivating groove, CUES003 B evolves around the sinister funk of fierce FM bass stabs, leading up to a powerful break that introduces a razor-edged hi-hat.

POP AMBIENT - our longest-running compilation series after Total - sees a new instalment for 2017, featuring exclusive material from acclaimed genre veterans and series newcomers JENS-UWE BEYER, YUI ONODERA & SCANNER, MAX WÜRDEN, LEANDRO FRESCO, THORE PFEIFFER, KENNETH JAMES GIBSON and SOULSAVERS remixed by WOLFGANG VOIGT.
Following his own cues from preceding entries, Pop Ambient chief curator Voigt again strikes a perfect ratio of established producers and debuting guests: our complete Pop Ambient solo album crew makes an appearance, from JENS-UWE BEYERs atmospheric soundscapes on the tracks FINAL 9.1 and FINAL 10, to THORE PFEIFFERs glitch romance GOOD LIFE, LEANDRO FRESCOs beatific drone fests SONIDO ESPAÑOL and EL ABISMO, as well as KENNETH JAMES GIBSONs melancholic epic HER FLOOD KNOCKED ME TO THE GROUND (BUT I WAS ALREADY THERE. Other returning artists include ANTON KUBIKOV of SCSI-9 fame (with electronic reverie DEKKA) and Cologne soundsmith MAX WÜRDEN, who was last seen releasing wonderfully immersive albums on BineMusic and Wolfgang Voigt's very own Exponate series. His guitar-infused, dubbed-out cut FERNFELD and the mysterious electronic mantra 186.000 MILES PER SECOND are particularly striking renditions of the rich sonic narratives possible in Pop Ambient.
For the 2017 release, we welcome Tokyo-based Pop Ambient novice YUI ONODERA with his tracks CROMO1 and CROMO2, which both serve as opener: a trained musician and architectural acoustic designer by trade, Onodera embeds diverse influences from traditional sound design, film scores, contemporary composition and electro-acoustic experimentation in his work, resulting in intricate drone sculptures and sound skylines. This skill set gels naturally with the sonic sensibilities of iconic experimental composer SCANNER who teams up with Onodera for the cut LOCUS SOLUS - it's an incredible honour to have such a towering figure in advanced electronic music on board. Wolfgang Voigt himself makes an appearance as remixer, turning the track HAL from electronic-rock-gospel duo SOULSAVERS' 2015 album "Kubrick" into a voluptuous and immersive sound journey. It's the cherry on top of a particularly fluffy cake that will prove irresistible to any connoisseur of ambient music.