Soft Machine

Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury

Q&A: Portishead producer Geoff Barrow on hip hop, krautrock, and film scores

DROKKGeoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury: Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One (Invada, 5/1/12)

“Lawmaster Pursuit”

Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury: “Lawmaster Pursuit”

If there’s one band that pulled off the long, mysterious hiatus with mystique intact, it’s Bristol, England’s Portishead. Yet when the ’90s trip-hop act resurfaced in 2006, it had substantially changed — gone were the down-tempo beats and much of the melancholy, replaced with a new sound and sparse, driving rhythms that owed more to krautrock than Def Jam.

Beatsmith/songwriter Geoff Barrow was guiding it that way. Since the reunion, he’s been on fire, issuing music in a variety of guises with Beak> (a rock band), Quakers (a sprawling hip-hop project), and as Drokk (a soundtracking duo). That’s not including the records that Barrow has produced for others and released on his label, Invada.

With no shortage of topics in tow, we caught up with Barrow to talk about drum sounds, film scores, and writing music for Judge Dredd.

Ihsahn

Review: Ihsahn’s Eremita

Ihsahn: EremitaIhsahn: Eremita (Candlelight, 6/19/12)

“The Paranoid”

Ihsahn: “The Paranoid”

Though the hazy noise of 1992’s Wrath of the Tyrant may seem a far cry from the sleekly produced Eremita, the songwriting of former Emperor guitarist and vocalist Ihsahn always has been based upon a very specific melodic voice. There is a clear thread from the tremolo-picked intro to “I Am the Black Wizards” (from 1993’s Emperor) to the arpeggiated “Introspection” (from Eremita), even if one composition tends much more towards Celtic Frost and the other much more towards Gentle Giant. Eremita, or “The Hermit,” is Ihsahn’s fourth solo album, and it continues a hybrid of progressive rock and black metal that was heard on Emperor’s later albums such as IX Equilibrium and Prometheus.