W hen we came up with that name for a group, I believe we felt quite clever. The etymology was Southwark discotheque Ministry of Sound and the folky air of the East Sussex weald.
James, the Huskmaster, and I, the Plinth-Type Dude, became friends during math class, so the music was, of course, electronic. FruityLoops on a 486 was not a seamless audio creation experience. He had a Pentium, I believe, that enabled him to actually play back sequences in full as he was working on them.
Like most musical partnerships, this one was wildly unbalanced in terms of talent. James’ feedback to me was usually some form of an observation that my tracks never… went anywhere. This was correct, but I could do nothing about it. The idea of dynamics, of building then resolving tension, deeply eluded me. Then, as now, I’d sit on loops and tweak, repeat, and try to instantiate some kind of chorus.
He was also much better at sampling. He had a good ear for the rhythm and texture of records, while I had a tendency to just slap sounds on each other in a Wall of Sound approach that was somewhat more reminiscent of Phil Spector’s crimes than his art. A case in point:
Ministry of Folk — Excessive Use
0:00
0:00
Compare this to the sole Ministry of Folk “hit”, as judged by plays on the school common room stereo, James’ reworking of notable Jungle trailblazer, Enya:
Ministry of Folk — theFLOW
0:00
0:00
The overriding musical notes I remember from that part of my life were the jingle for KSV “…for your coffee and tea, your local vending experts” which played on the radio in the common room, where the same company stocked the vending machine with 20p coffee (and tea). I don’t think either of us created a hook that good. The second was being judged at a party for trying to play OK Computer which I thought to be the best record I had ever heard, but was pronounced “depressing”.
I read once that Chad and Pharrell had come up as musicians through a school marching band, and that provided a musical foundation to their work together as the Neptunes. It shows up in the percussion and high, catchy melodies. I did not go on to craft Hollaback Girl, and (as far as I know) neither did James. We both did some things though.
···
Big Wheel Race, San Francisco
···
Held
T he room is warm. Not hot, a kind of warm that unclenches your jaw before you even notice it was clenched. There’s a window, it doesn’t open. The light that comes through is always from late afternoon in October. Your favorite books are here. Coffee is here when you want it, exactly the right temperature, as if it’s been waiting.
You could stay here.
You have been staying here.
Sometimes the walls are closer than you remember. You reach out to measure them and get different numbers each time. You start sleeping on your side, then curled up, and tell yourself you’ve always slept this way.
There are doors. You’ve known about them for a while. One smells like cut grass and, sometimes, creosote. One hums at a frequency you can feel in your teeth. One is open, just slightly, and through the gap you can feel the weather. One is perfectly ordinary: plain wood, brass handle. You never see it from the corner of your eye, only when you look straight at it. Once you put your hand on the brass handle. It was warm, the way skin is warm.
The coffee is good. The light is good. You are lying on your side with your knees drawn up, and the wall is right there, steady and close, like a hand at your back. Like it’s holding you. You can hear yourself breathing. You match your breath to the room, and the room matches its breath to you, and you are so comfortable, so held, you cannot turn over.
