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Heavy Funk Bass, Hairy Fuzzy Balls, Hope Fun Baby, Hippy’s Full Brunch, Heavenly Fried Bananas, Hideous Face Bends, Highlands First Bank, Hydrogen Fart Bomb, Hen’s Breath Fixation, Hitchcock’s First Blunder…or a technical term regarding aural expansion developments called High Frequency Bandwidth.
These initials are important. ‘All our song titles fit the letters H. F. B.,’ says Dr Alex Paterson, who has embarked on the new High Frequency Bandwidth project with Dom Beken. The two men are about to make some Huge F***ing Broohaha with their mission to inject some original hiphop innovation, sonic anarchy and earth-level raunch into the electronic foragings they’ve become known for with, for starters, The Orb.
Dom also runs a music production company, making radio and TV commercials but also finding time for a band called Belka and Stelka with Ant Adams, who released last year’s "Tales From The Projector Room" album. He started as a drummer in Liverpool after finishing his history degree there, going on to the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. Dom started hanging out at the city’s Parr Street Studios, graduating from making tea to programming and engineering, working with artists including Manson, Echo and the Bunnymen, Pete Wiley and Graeme Park. Since relocating to London he has worked with names including Bowie, Lulu, Placebo’s Brian Molko, Liberty X and Pink Floyd’s Rick Wright. A long-term collaboration with Pink Floyd’s touring bassist Guy Pratt not only led to scoring TV programmes like Channel 4’s Spaced but to his old friend Dr Alex Paterson.
Alex is, of course, The Orb: for 20 years the ultimate embodiment of the acid house spirit, before and beyond, from early avant electronic and ambient to the furthest galaxies with major success. The Orb recently released acclaimed album The Dream while currently enjoying a flurry of reissues which now make all their albums up until 2001’s Cydonia available in deluxe form.
Alex loves a good satellite project: first himself, Dom and Guy formed the Transit Kings with original Orb member Jimmy Cauty, making the Living In A Giant Candle Winking At God album and touring festivals. After that, Alex and Dom’s Heavy Flapping Bollocks were inflamed with creative juices bursting to escape and, while Dom joined in Orb activities, H.F.B. started to materialise.
It cannot be overlooked that Dom’s studio, where the pair cooked up their intoxicating sonic stews, is the old projection room at Ealing Studios, legendary home of classic British comedy, horror and war movies since the 1930s. With the ghosts of Will Hay and Charles Hawtrey stalking the corridors, some spirit of mischief can’t fail to seep into the air, mixing with Dom’s live playing and production flights steered by the Head, Feet and Bonkers noise ratios of the good Doctor. ‘Horrific Bush Fire’ charts an a slow-boat to exotic hiphop climes complete with mutated guitar and wailing gospel vocal while ‘High Five Brother’ marks Alex singing, a throaty soul counterpart to the flying female vocals. ‘Hip Hop Blue Film’ takes a denser route through the sonic undergrowth.
They will be taking it to the stage by the end of the year. Meanwhile keep an ear cocked for High Frequency Bandwidth.
(Kris Needs 2008)
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