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Making Music Oct 1995 | Classic FM Magazine Oct 1995
 Karl Jenkins, Mike Ratledge and Miriam Stockley Image © 1995 Jenkins Ratledge Ltd |
If you watch television at all, you'll have heard their music, whether you realise it or not. Steve Lodder relates the curious story of two old Softs, a Welsh choir, an African singer and an international airline.
One of the big hits in the Classic FM album charts this summer (despite precious little airplay) was called Adiemus - Songs Of Sanctuary. It was mainly the work of two musicians, Karl Jenkins and Mike Ratledge. Names ring a bell? Imagine the late 1960s, early 1970s and through the haze of joss-stick smoke wafts the sound of the "jazz-rock" band (they almost invented the category), Soft Machine.
The 'Softs' as they were to their admirers (and I count myself here), were founded by Mike Ratledge along with Kevin Ayers and members of Caravan, another band on the so-called Canterbury scene. Elton Dean (yes, the man who gave Elton John the inspiration) was responsible for horn duties until Karl Jenkins took over in 1972. Along with John Marshall on drums and assorted guitar and bass players, including Hugh Hopper, Allan Holdsworth and John Etheridge, they turned out a highly respectible 13 albums over the band's full career. For anybody who's never heard the band I think the best description is minimalism (Steve Reich before Steve Reich), two electric pianos a la Miles Davis 'Bitches Brew,' bass riffs in odd time signatures, and a Lowrey organ soloing over the top.
My copy of Soft Machine Volume 6 which is a double album has a Nice Price sticker of £2.83 on it; worth every penny. Not that it douns amazingly fresh these days - some of the improvisation is a little meandering and production values have gone up in the last 20 years, but hey, this was ground-breaking stuff.
After much touring, though, largely on the continent and particularly Germany, the Softs gradually disintegrated and went their separate ways - except they didn't quite.
For the last ten years or so Karl and Mike have been running a hugely successful music company providing scores for TV commercials like British Airways, Levi's, Volvo, Organics ... and winning awards for it to boot.
Everyone's heard their product at some couch potato session of another. Their re-creation of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," an exercise in faithfully reproducing existing songs, spawned a host of 'sound-alikes.' Jack Bruce worked with them on a reworking of the old Ceam number "I Feel Free."
So far so good. The next stage of the chronicle is that they produced a commercial for Delta Airlines, using an idea Karl had up his sleeve - combining a classically influenced composition with a more "ethnic" vocal sound. First time around the result was just a mite too European so they made a second version with more of a "tribal" sound to the voices. This time the response was immediate and work began on writing the extended piece, Karl composing while Mike handled percussion, sequencing and production duties.
Karl is well qualified for this kind of task. Having studied music at the University of Wales, he moved to London's Royal Academy for a post-graduate course. By this time he was composing, orchestrating and playing saxophone in addition to oboe and piano. So although Soft Machine and classical music sound a long way apart, for Karl the Softs were "just one step along the way." In fact he views his recent work as a return to his musical roots, even comparing the tribal chorus sound of Adiemus with the Welsh chapel choirs he worked with: "their behaviour was sometimes quite tribal too."
In the years after Soft Machine, Mike was soldering together anything he could find to produce sequencers capable of doing what he wanted. That meant writing programs for the Atari and eventually PCs using machine code and assembly language. He found it very satisfying, as the end result is so much more oriented to personal needs. (Rather him than me -- I have enough trouble using the programs let along writing them.)
But the knowledge gained has obviously stood him in good stead. He keeps up with developments in computing - that only when instruements have some sort of artificial intelligence built in will they be capable of responding in the same way as an acoustic instrument. He hasn't tried any of the current 'virtual' instruments, but he sees that as a step in the right direction.
Strangely (or perhaps not) he has no interest in playing any more - the grand piano now lies neglected. But he seems absorbed in his production role on this project. After three months of recording (spaced around other recording commitments) the album certainly sounds impressive. Big drum sounds, massed overdubbed vocals and sumptuous strings make for an attractive sound.
For karl there was three months of writing before recording started; when it finally did, the first thing to go down was the vocals.
Using guide tracks for strings and percussion, South African singer Miriam Stockley filled up tape machines with tracks of vocal virtuousity. Her voice is at times African, Celtic and then intimately ecclesiastical. Karl and Mike find her a joy to work with, mainly because tuning and control are taken for granted. That allows them to concentrate on the exact effect a certain passage is trying to create, and so decide which type of vocal texture is best suited.
Vocal duties are shared by Miriam and Mary Carewe, who also sang on the tribal sections. The vocal sound is really clean, partly down to the almost complete absence of the dreaded (by some) operatically trained vibrado. The ethnic sections are recorded very loud and without vibrado to give that hard edge.
After the vocals were recorded, the London Philharmonic was hired to replace the guide strings. The plan of recording vocals first apparently paid off in that the orchestra was able to react to them, and give much more in terms of performance than they would have done if they'd had no reference to the singing.
When I mentioned the typical knee-jerk reaction to working with strings - the lagging behind the click - Mike was quick to fend off any implied criticism: "They're well used to that these days," he points out.
The end result certainly sounds sharp. And the writing clearly exploits the emotionalism a string section can provide. The intro to the second track, "Tintinnabulum," is a searing passage of Shotakovichian chromatiicism, and the closing "Hymn" displays a knowledge of orchestration that maximises mood.
Apart from programmed percussion samples there are actually some live percussion parts, played by sessioneer Frank Ricotti; p[lus there's the extra acoustic qualities added by some quena and baroque recorders in the wind department.
Although the titles of tunes are mostly in Latin (eg "Cantus Inequalis," meaning uneven song, because of the odd time signature), the lyrics are made up of sounds unrelated to a specific language, but are emotive all the same in context. As Mike says, "The made-up language works so you think you should understand what's being sung, but they you realise you can't." The theory is you have the rhythmic character of language wtihout the distractions of content.
The word 'Adiemus' refers to "a place of refuge - this music is somewhere to escape to." And so it is. It has the resonances of Gregorian plainsong, Celtic folk music (don't say Enya - I did onece but I think I got away with it), symphonic string writing, as well as the rawness of the tribal chants. All in all a guaranteed winner ... but there's still no official answer as to why Classic FM wouldn't play it. Must be all those clattering drums - far too rocky. I don't suppose the album's creators are losing too much sleep over that, though - they're already starting to chew over some ideas for the next project.
In between times, it's back to the cut and thrust of the advertising world, and the bread and butter of Karl and Mike's existence, the jingle. Maybe their next album will take its inspiration from a brand of dog food ... ('Songs Of Pedigree'?) On the other hand, maybe not.
© 1995 Making Music
Can you tell us more about Karl Jenkins, composer of Songs of Sanctuary, and what other works by him are available?
Stanley Glasser replies to your musical queries.
Songs of Sanctuary is a big hit. It was released in the UK in May of this year. "Adiemus," the first track of the CD, is what quickens the pulse but the other eight tracks are nearly as good. The composer, Karl Jenkins, has a special talent for imaginatively mixing live and studio sound, assisted by his partner, Mike Ratledge. As a single, "Adiemus" sold 350,000 copies. Believe it! While the royalties may be tinkling pleasantly into Jenkins' piggy bank, he isn't allowing his muse any rest. His next magnum opus, just released, is called Palladio.
Jenkins took his BMus at the Unversity of Wales and also studied at the Royal Academy of Music. He was a member of an outstanding pop group called Soft Machine which was popular in the 1960s. He has composed music for a whole string of successful commercial including Pirelli tyres, British Airways, Nat West and De Beers diamonds. Take my word for it, Karl Jenkins is here to stay. And the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which he uses frequently for his recordings, is highly delighted by this thought.
© 1995 Classic FM Magazine