Salad, a Brit-pop band with a difference

Salad at the Beat Factory, left to right: Rob Walker, Marijne, Paul, Pete Brown

Salad, a Brit-Pop band with a difference

In the early 90s I was producing and engineering bands and artists in my recording studio, the Beat Factory, which was situated down a little mews a stone’s throw away from the Shaw Theatre in London’s Euston road.

During the 80s I cut my engineering teeth with many artists, some well-known, some not so much, artists who had just been signed, and were full of the vim of young dudes who had (they thought) the world at their feet.

As well as the above, who were all ‘commercial clients’, whose record companies had hired us to do specific recording tasks, for a record company, or occasionally a band intent on self-releasing a record, we did our own productions.

So we worked with a number of artists, including Damon Albarn, of whom more will be written elsewhere

By the 90s, that period was over. We were a reasonably well-respected studio, and I had a few interesting recordings out in the maelstrom of the music marketplace but the market had changed. Computer sequencing of music had come in, and it was possible, with very little outlay, to buy drum-machine and sequencer equipment that you could write and record music all by yourself. The point was, apart from better quality microphones, you can do 90% of the work in your own bedroom, and many artists did just that, and the writing was on the wall for our type of studio, which was a mid-range studio, with relatively modest facilities. We weren’t Sarm West, Trevor Horn’s fabled studio, or Abbey Road, where the Beatles had recorded, and even they were realising that there were hits in the charts that had been produced and recorded in the aforesaid bedrooms, which was a great democratic leveller.

At this moment in time, I got a phone call, from a very earnest lady, who said she was looking for a ‘production deal’. I wasn’t doing much that day, apart from studio maintenance, as I recall, so I suggested she come down with the other member of the band she had with her.

Now, it is interesting to note, when I chatted to Marijne Van der Vlugt and Paul Kennedy, the two members of the band called Salad who turned up, that they had phoned many studios and production companies before they got to us, and all, without exception had said, ‘well, yeah, send us a tape and we’ll think about it’ but I thought that they, or to be exact, she, sounded interesting, and I preferred to eyeball people and hear what they had to say, rather than trawl through endless cassette tapes. Marijne and Paul turned up that afternoon. I listened to their tape, and can’t really remember which songs it had on it, but I guess it would have included a rehearsal or gig tape of their songs ‘Diminished Clothes’ and possibly ‘Kent’, which I later recorded with them.

They were right up my street. I am probably in of the last generation of recording engineers who learned, as a matter of course, the hard way how to record drums, and one of the the things I liked about Salad was that they had an excellent drummer, Rob Wakeman, who I knew I had had a fighting chance of getting a great drum sound with.

Rob knew how to set up his kit, and he made my job very easy, at least in the drum department. All the band were good, and all were very focussed on their own tasks within the band. They were, in the parlance of the day, hungry, by which I mean they were up for it, they wanted to get their records right, and they were a team, they talked about stuff, and they were intelligent and perceptive. In all, a most unusual band!

So, the meeting with Salad went well, I liked their ideas, I liked their music, especially that they seemed, for the time, un-clichéd, and refreshing, yet still with the power of grunge from Wakeman’s unfussy, hard-hit drums, Pete Brown’s solid yet elegant bass lines, and Paul Kennedy’s delicate guitar lines, and unleashed chordal power in the choruses, reminiscent of the Quiet-Loud format with which Nirvana changed the game with their first single for all time and dispatched the legions of poodle-haired rock bands to history in what seemed like about a week. They also had very interesting lyrics, for which Paul Kennedy was one of, but certainly not the exclusive, source. Their song arrangements weren’t like anyone else’s, either, although Marijne and Paul (mainly Marijne!) have pointed out that this was because Paul hadn’t really learned the conventional structure of contemporary music, and insisted in going far off the beaten track. I don’t quite buy that, as their music was, and is, refreshingly different from the crowd, although there is in that the possible reason why the main record-buying crowd in the Brit-Pop era just didn’t get them, which is perhaps they remained relatively on the sidelines where other bands sold records by the shed-load. A dangerous word that-‘eclectic’

I went to rehearsals, I went to gigs, and it became clear to me that all I needed to do with the band was make sure their sound could be heard in all its parts, apart the odd tweak and addition to the arrangements here and there.

‘No, I’m recording at the moment, and in any case that’s not nearly enough money!’

The main focus of the band in performances was, of course, on Ms Van der Vlugt, which, for the uninitiated, is pronounced ‘Fon Duh Flucht, with the ‘ch’ a soft sound made at the back of the throat, which I know because my ex-partner is Dutch, Marijne was surprised when I began a conversation with her, in Dutch, while we were seated at the mixing desk in the studio control room together. She had no idea what to do with it, and she actually looked so seriously disturbed that I never tried to repeat it, until two days ago, to which she was far more amenable than she had been in 1993, as she smiled at me this time, and complemented me on my accent.

Marijne has what is known in the trade as ‘charisma’. She has that rare ability to take everything she is, everything she’s learned, everything she’s ever felt, everything that’s ever happened to her and pour it, changing the mix of these elements where necessary to suit particular songs, into the performance of each song, either live or in a recording.

It didn’t hurt that as well as having been an MTV ‘video jockey’, which was a very 80s concept, she had also been a model, and she knew how to look good on the dance-floor, if you don’t mind a reference from later times

As I write this, I’m listening to the Lennon and McCartney song ‘It’s For You’, covered by Salad, one of their only covers, as far as I am aware, and thus a useful yardstick, on one of the EP releases of Granite Statue, and she makes it her own, floating above the drums, bass, and Kennedy’s Lennon-esque strumming, floating ethereally, with swoops and turns, and getting to the turnaround in a near-whisper, and letting rip on the bridge section, expertly throttling her voice up and down like a twin-engined motorbike negotiating hairpin bends on an Alpine road, and ending on a line near the top of her range on the final ‘It’s for you’. Her vocals are delivered on the recordings, at least the ones I did with them, with a perfect mix of feeling and expertise. Even on full-on rock tracks, like on the track ‘Kent’, of the eponymous single, although she caresses on the verses, she turns up the juice on the choruses and rocks with the best of them, but her artistry is in the range of power she utilises, and also in the quirky approach to what I can best describe as the ‘incidentals’ of vocalising in the songs, as in the same song’s end, the repetition of the word ‘move’, led into by the line ‘don’t ever move’, which turns into the whole outro repetition of the word ‘move’ sung over and over and which turns into a shamanistic chant that intrigues and becomes a part of the atmosphere on the song, and subverts the feeling that you are listening to a recording of a band, and it becomes something else.

One of, or even the first song I recorded with the band was ‘Diminished Clothes’, which eschews the usual rock approach for an tom-tom motif. It is different, it doesn’t sound like anyone else, the lyrics are clever, the title refers to ‘admiring of those in diminished clothes’, ie, women in bikinis, but it remains enigmatic, and you can puzzle over those lyrics, but they won’t let you in, like one of those annoying puzzle rings, when you think you’re on the right track, but realise you’re not.

I did those recordings with Salad, I found it a very enlightening experience, to work with a focussed band, with a lot of talent, some good, yet original, and interesting songs and arrangements, who could own a stage, and get a crowd going with the best of them.

Not normally this shy

Their original recordings were on a tiny label, Waldorf, which had a rather fetching ducks-head-through-a Frisbee logo, which I think they had set up themselves, although they had publishing and got management, and were then signed by Island Red, and they landed a support slot on one of Blur’s tours, Salad were great live, and it was brilliant to be seeing them play a large venue.

I had by this time moved to another studio, I was playing in bands myself, including a London band, and Sonja Kristina, and an American artist, Anne Hudspeth under the name Pace Bend, all of whom I recorded albums with, and toured with, and scratched the itch which had been growing for some years, to get out there and play live music myself.

I recorded a couple more songs with Salad, in West Heath Studios, West Hampstead, London, and then we went our separate ways

I didn’t know it then, but my full-time recording, touring, production and music-writing life was soon to change. By 1998 I was married, I had a son, and I began to embrace the corporate and governmental world, with the technical skills I had accrued in building studios, wiring them up, recording in them, and employing the psychology of the recording process to new arenas. I never stopped recording, playing, listening to and writing music, but it was now fitted in around technical management jobs.

I look back on the period during which I recorded Salad as a highpoint. I had learned a lot about recording by then, I had been in studios since 1978, and had had the great experience of being present at recordings by two engineers, Neil Kernon, who had trained at Trident Studios recording the likes of Queen and Yes, and who went on to record hits for Hall and Oates, and many US rock bands once he got his green card, and whose discography looks like a who’s who of some of the best bands and artists of the 80s and 90s, and Rod Houison, who although more English-rock orientated, taught me a lot about how to conduct oneself in a recording environment.

I think what I’m saying is that, for me, those sessions with Salad were a culmination of everything I had learned up to that point, and both I, and, I think, the band, knew that we were doing something special, and I was slightly pinching myself that it was all going so well.

Fast forward (an analogue tape recording term) to late last year, and I had become aware that Salad, at least two if them, were active again, and I made contact.

They sent out a link to clips of their new album, and my musical antennae went berserk, and I immediately asked if I could hear the whole album, and Marijne very kindly obliged.

I listened to the album, pausing between each song so I could get my impressions down raw, as it were, and then sent them a draft of the review. They were very kind and enthusiastic, and we arranged to meet.

I met Marijne and Paul in a Soho bistro a few days ago. It was lovely to see them both, and we reminisced about our time in the studio together a long time ago, and they explained that they were were working with a producer, Donald Ross Skinner, who is in the band, on bass, and a few factual errors I had written in my review were thereby cleared up.

My review can be found here Salad Undressed album review

I intend to be at their album launch on the 29th March 2018, at 95 Feet East, 150 Brick Lane, Shoreditch, and if you’re into quirky, original, fairly un-quantifiable music played by great musicians, with an outstanding singer, all of whom are great songwriters, then I suggest you join me.

Here is a possibly-incomplete discography of Salads records:

Salad Discography

graemeholdaway.com

Salad Undressed Album Review

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Sounds Fantastic 56

Salad Undressed
Album Review – Good Love Bad Love, by Graeme Holdaway

Being Human

You know it’s quite rare that I smile while listening to music, as far as I am aware. Recently I went to a gig to see my erstwhile heroes Steely Dan, (what’s left of them) at the awful, awful venue that is the O2, Greenwich, but despite the damage that playing in that cavern does to the sound, I couldn’t help smiling when the excellent band of leading players of each category of instrument played a note–perfect version of Aja.
Similarly, while watching the eclectically excellent Field-Music at the Colston Hall a few days ago. Never heard of them, had only heard a couple of early tracks played on a phone before the gig, but boy! What a surprise! I hadn’t heard such deliciously complex music since (er…) Steely Dan (note to self, shut up about SD)
So, when I listened to a copy of the album kindly provided by the band so I could write this review, the very first track, Being Human, made me smile. Oh! the word-play! the nearly banal, but oh so understated verbal clichés, neatly and cleverly undermined by the dissonance of guitar, right from the first subversively flat last acoustic guitar note of the intro. The song takes you on a journey, and has such delicious musical and verbal twists and turns that I had to listen through it three times before I even went on to the second track. I loved the textures of the instruments, all of which fitted together like a Chinese box, with no visible joins, and the solo Melodica struck just the right note of pathos for the ensuing lyrics to jar against, and yet from Marijne, the succession of banal yet somehow menacing phrases that we all use every day ‘what a stroke of luck’ ‘I’m on your side’ ‘That’s off the page!’ make for a queer feeling of weightlessness that one might feel when the perfectly ordinary-looking passenger on the bus
next to you reveals herself to be an axe-murderer. Compelling, and only the first song.
I should probably mention that I have some history with Salad, the band that was launched in the 90s during the so-called Brit-Pop era, including the two members who are now Salad-Undressed, Marijne Van Der Vlugt, vocals, and keyboards and Paul Kennedy, guitars and vocals as I recorded several songs with them as engineer and co-producer in my London studio The Beat Factory. I’m not sure what Marijne thought of being described as ‘Brit-Pop’ being Dutch, as she is, although I’m pretty sure what her opinion would be about Brexit, but these are labels, and Salad then, and Salad Undressed now, transcend them.

Evergreen

There was, and is, what sounds like on first listen, a slightly controlled and seemingly dispassionate quality to Marijne’s delivery in many of her songs, but this is subverted (there’s that word again) icily by the content of the lyrics, as in Evergreen, where she, on hearing the voice of the man with whom she has had a fling, remarks that his voice is soothing, but she doesn’t need saving, as she’s ‘an evergreen’. With the careful and evocative backing of drums, organ, with that reedy tone-wheel Hammond sound, like a fairground carousel, and a delicately played lead guitar with a strangled solid-state transistor distortion that nicely contradicts the delicacy of the playing, and a strumming acoustic guitar providing a rhythmic structure for thevoice to bounce off, the song has a sort of rise and fall like a trampoline.
It is as if the girl, feeling nothing, for either the man, ‘our love was damaged in the haze’
or her sister, riding across the sea ‘She can ride a million miles, but still she won’t be free’ can fall at her feet, but they can’t somehow touch her. ‘My leaves are never down, I’m an evergreen’. She is glad that she has their attention, it piques her interest, but it means nothing to her, apart from the realisation that she has ‘It’ because she is self-contained. We all know people like that.

Relationship Dust

This song is about that awful moment, possibly imagined, but never completely contemplated, when a relationship ends and (I know I said I wouldn’t mention them, but..) you have to decide ‘Who’s going to get the Steely Dan? Here’s a clue-I am! (sung by them both!). Neatly disturbing, (especially about the Steely Dan!) but funny at the same time. Quite short, but a lovely little vignette, nonetheless, and Paul singing more lead in this song, so it becomes two different points of view, rather than the personas within Marijne in other songs. There is a sly humour in the piece, which anyone who
has been in more than one relationship (all of us, surely?) will savour, like revenge served cold. There was one slightly jarring note in one of the lyrics, but I think you should buy the album to discover what that is, and see whether you agree. There’s also a rather good literary joke, but enough spoilers, already!
The backing is sparse, with acoustic guitar and a couple of other touches, which suits the song, as if the couple had already packed, and all that was left was a dusty acoustic with only five strings on it in the corner.

Nowhere Near

This is a great example of these composers’ wilful and adamant refusal to write and record a straight-ahead love song. It is a love song, it’s about a great, passionate love which would conquer all, and change your life completely, but that would be boring, now, wouldn’t it? I have no idea how they do it, with the ingredients of the instrumentation they use, nylon-string guitar, and a slightly Latin inflection in the beat, and ‘Desert Island Disks’-style strings, or like an alternative ‘Girl From Ipanema’, but the semi-tone shifts in the melody, and the doom-laden bass synth that comes in at the bridge, coupled with the feeling that the answer to ‘You think I like you, you’re nowhere near’ should be ‘Hate’, but it somehow turns into ‘Love’ while you’re thinking ‘She loves him, but she hates him for it’ Above all, it is Marijne’s ability to pack implied venom into an otherwise gracefully and perfectly delivered sung lyric that captures a listener’s heart, before freezing it solid and casting it aside.
She could whisper in your ear something that could make your blood run cold, I’m sure, not to mention what you imagine is happening during those heartbeats at the end, while nervously looking over your shoulder……. It’s all in the imagination, the hint of a tumultuous physical love affair, but that menace seeping around the edges, like ‘Shades of Grey’ directed by Hitchcock (shudder!)
Having met her, you’d never believe that such a warm person could sing such things, but that is one of the things that makes this lot different from the crowd, in my humble opinion.

Door

This is a continuation of the same theme, with linking heartbeats, although electronic ones instead of the ‘lub-dub’ human heart recorded of ‘Nowhere Near’, and this time you are certain there is going to be trouble, because the hapless partner is looking at the door with the thought of going through it, and leaving the woman, and you feel like screaming ‘Run! She’s got a knife!’ before you’ve even got through the first verse!
I love the fact that these songs get to you, as you sift through the inferences, catch the whiff of sulphur in an otherwise innocent lyric, or notice something, and have to rewind to find out if you were mistaken ‘Surely not..’ you think, and then it is confirmed and you are impressed and shocked in equal measure. I like that you cannot listen to this music while being indifferent to it, but I wouldn’t suggest listening to it in the attic of a lonely moorland house with the lights off! There were some of these elements in their music as Salad, when I recorded them last, in the 90s, but more of that elsewhere. Here, those elements have been developed, honed, brooded over, and stirred in a cauldron, and the long gap has been certainly, for me, been worth the wait. The meeting of minds between Kennedy and Van Der Vlugt*(and one other, read note at the end), with a potent blend of song-writing, instrumentation, talented playing, sublime singing, and their choice of sound-scape elements speak of a unit who have matured, experimented, and are very sure of their direction, and I have to say I am impressed.
To continue with Door, it’s a bouncy, rocky, two-step-with-piano, that sounds like it could have almost been a 70s novelty, one-hit-wonder backing track if it weren’t subverted (sorry!) by the inevitable lyric sung from another dimension at right-angles to the one that the jolly 70s musos are in. Also, the drop section is ultra-contemporary, and has the effect of juxtaposing the cool beauty of Marijne’s voice with the menace inherent in the lyrics. That dichotomy between the lyrics and their delivery is a fearsome weapon in the hands of such a good singer. It has the effect of ‘Oh, that’s such a lovely melody. Just a minute……..OMG! What’s she singing about!’ The drop section enhances this, but then the emotion implied is then underpinned by the guitars and a vamping keyboard, as well as an unexpected dead stop, followed by a deliciously incongruous minor sixth (I think?) end chord. One can imagine a
horror-film end scene end-stopped by that chord, as the male object of the song……………….!

I Love the Doctor

With all of the above, but not even halfway through the album yet, one’s suspicions are on full alert from the get-go with this one, Ok, where’s this one heading? You think, and then you get it, and it makes you smile, again. Once again, perfect instrumentation, slightly like the cotton-wool effect of an anti-depressant, I imagine. It is interesting that Marijne’s voice has a slight edge about it, in this one, and again, it is like little bread-crumbs of clues left just lying there for the
listener to discover, all by themselves, about what’s going on in the protagonist’s mind. Skilfully
executed.
Moonshine
Big 80s drums hammer into the intro of this one, with what sounds like a group of jazz
musicians jamming underneath, with a sepulchral walking bass and a half-sung, half-spoken lyric by Paul on lead. It’s a slice of sonic authority that swings with a massive groove, with a wordplay on ‘Moonshine’ when Marijne comes in on the chorus. It’s the atmosphere of the song that commands your attention in this one, it’s a big song, and compelling, as it rolls through its changes towards another chorus, and builds still more sonically towards its climax and fade. A song of a welcome change of gear at this point of the album, softening you up, no doubt, for
more vocal mind-games from Ms Van der Vlugt

We’ll Never Meet

I wasn’t wrong. A stalker’s anthem. There could be nothing more terrifying, I imagine, than a psychopath who is also attractive. It’s not that the lyrics themselves betray that, but it’s the extra leap of imagination that is demanded of you by this band. Everything in the track, the arrangement, the instrumentation, the chords, and that clear voice, singing about things that on the surface are somewhat benign, but what is actually going on beneath the surface of that cold, clear, limpid lake………?

Princes & Fools

This one is a simpler song, but no less compelling for all that. Stereo acoustic guitars drive the song, with Paul singing, as the woman ponders the complexities of a relationship borne of the choice of all ‘The Princes and Fools’, unaware of the reasons why she chose this particular fool, or prince. The fulcrum of the song, describing the woman’s reaction to the rules imposed by her partner: ‘Yah put me through’ is a delight. On this is hung the raison d’etre of the whole song, in a voice that shocks as it is a completely different from any voice, either on this album, or any of Salad’s I have heard before. She is a really, really good and expressive singer.

Blue Cold Eyes
A study in what it means to be under the influence of another who one is attracted to, with a Doors-like intro of electric piano and guitars. Favourite line: ‘Since we first met, you’ve had me in your grip, but here’s the thing: it doesn’t hurt a bit’. But just like ‘Riders on the Storm’ not all is well in paradise, and the chorus reveals that ‘but-I’m not free’ . Nonetheless she muses over and over on the situation she finds herself, twisting and turning, like a fish on a hook, underpinned by evocative slide guitar from Paul. A lovely section at the end reveals (I think) how the song may have been born.

Hyacinth

This is, in my opinion, the most beautiful song on the album. That does not mean I don’t think most of the other songs on it are not equally as good. I mean it is beautiful. It is a love song, and it is one of the most beautiful and original love songs I have ever heard. The chorus does things to your endorphins, the last line of each verse lifts you into one of the most moving choruses of any song I’ve heard, it is truly lovely. This does not mean that any clichés are in evidence, it is original, and the more so in that most of the song is not sung by Marijne, but the effect when Marijne joins in on the chorus is sublime. The intro and the first verse do not prepare you for what comes next and it is startlingly effective. This was obviously a labour of love and there some poignant little details, a little whistled counter-melody, on the turnaround of the second verse, the descending organ motif and the glorious, yet understated strings complimenting the choruses. The end section with its Richard Hawley-esque guitar segues neatly into the last chorus, and then it is finished, and it leaves something behind it in your mind. I would buy the
album on the strength of this song alone.

Fine

Throughout the album thus far, I had a thought, or maybe an un-acknowledged feeling, that there was an influence, well actually one small influence amongst many others, that felt slightly familiar, amongst the varied influences that I sifted through, with delight, it has to be said. In this song, which is Marijne, alone at a piano, singing with a painful honesty, as if she is missing a layer of skin, about the aftermath of something awful that happened, almost too painful to bear, that is over now, unstated, not fully expressed, except for the sound of that naked emotion in her voice. It reminded me, not stylistically, not in the type of voice, but in the total commitment to expression of feeling, of Bjôrk. She delivers this, not so much from the heart, as from her soul, and it is a fitting coda to the album, woven as it is throughout with various types of scary, menacing, uplifting, beautiful and downright strange emotions. There is a fascinating story inherent in many of the songs, albeit a short and very scary story in some of them, put together with a musicality and a subtlety and sureness of musical touch, and If there was one word I could think of to describe the impact of this album, it is ‘cinematic’, there is plot, quite often a sinister one, there are wide open spaces, and claustrophobic ones, big, thrashing instrumentation, and delicate little touches that one barely hears, that nonetheless
make their mark because the arrangements, and the mixes are so carefully constructed, with such attention, that each song seems to be in a space all its own, and I have rarely had so many visions of environments triggered by not only the lyrics, but also the instrumentation, and the spaces draped around them. It is as as though the sound was somehow lit by a master cinematographer.

*I listened to this album cold, without knowing anything about how it was recorded, or produced, and who did what, apart from (I thought) who was singing, and I made some assumptions about who had written which songs, based on my experience from my own input to Salad’s 1990s discography, and also knowing Paul Kennedy’s guitar style, and that Marijne also played keyboards.

When I spoke to Paul and Marijne, face to face, for the first time in years, in a bistro in Soho, after I had written the above, I learned that there is another sonic auteur in the creative mix of this album, Donald Ross Skinner, a producer, engineer and musician, and I started to realise that there had been other elements that now began to coalesce in my dissection of this album. Firstly: I was completely fooled by the male vocal in Hyacinth, which turned out to be Donald, not Paul, secondly, he plays drums, and lots of other instruments. Thirdly, he writes songs, including co-writing Hyacinth, which you will have noted, is one of my favourite songs on the album, but is also perhaps the most different in style to the other songs. In terms of production, which is possibly a black art to anyone unfamiliar with the recording process, I, as a producer/engineer myself, am here to tell you that Mr Skinner knows what he is doing.

It was also interesting to find out that the songs were written by the three principals in various combinations. Van der Vlugt and Kennedy, the main team of old, are now augmented by Kennedy and Skinner with Kennedy writing some songs by himself, and there two songs by all three.

In the old days, as a producer, or co-producer, as I was with some of the Salad recordings I did with the band, one would have worried, possibly, about whether such-and-such song was ‘commercial’, and it was interesting to find a quote the other day in an interview from another musician I had once recorded, Alex James of Blur, saying ‘The record company said if we didn’t come up with a hit, we’d be kicked off the label’
You only have to listen to the dross on the TV, radio, and almost all over every streaming app to know what ‘commercial’ means these days.

There is room, however, in this musical internet-driven renaissance of multiplicities of style, and genre, for original, interesting outfits who have perhaps been ploughing their furrow for a long while. Bowie had eleven albums to go, before he had his first hit and he was supported by 60s and 70s record companies, who were more benign in those days and let artists develop at their own pace.

Salad Undressed are one such outfit, and if this album is anything to go by, they are there. Buy it. Buy it on Vinyl, CD, download it, whatever but buy it. I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed, and they need the sales so I can find out what they are going to come up with next.

I personally can’t wait.

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