Stereo MC's - Collected
- Written by Benjamin McNair
Some times in the race for chart success, a band’s full worth can be overlooked. Greatest Hits albums are packed with the big songs from a band’s career, and many many fine songs don’t get a second listen.
In this technological age, though, this is not the case, if it was, a release like Collected would never have seen the light of day, which would have been a loss.
The band, Stereo MC’s formed in the late 1980s and they still have a large live and recorded, following, and are shortly off on an international tour to promote Collected. Their best known songs, ‘Connected’ and ‘Ground Level’ became big hits, and are still regularly heard on the radio, although in the early 2000s ‘Connected’ in particular was over-used in many mobile phone adverts.
On the surface ‘Connected’ and ‘Ground Level’ contain elements that sounded new at the time. Hip-Hop beats and bass mix with jazz and rock tinged guitars, and a sharp brass section that add up to a catchy and immediate sound that had dancefloors and radios going in 1992. Piano and soulful female vocals also add a lot to the sound and immediacy of the songs, so it is not really that much of a surprise that they are the band’s signature songs.
The group met in Nottingham, and spent many hours and years honing their live sets, and moved from the punk-hiphop roots of their early material to cover many genres and styles. The 121 tracks that make up Collected range from commercial pop and rock, to industrial noisescapes and experimental instrumentals that range in mood and timbre from light and upbeat to brooding and dark in tone.
This is particularly the case on ‘Emperor’s Nightingale’ from 2011 with tracks ranging from the brevity of ‘Far Out Feeling’ to ‘Levitation’. It is to the groups’ credit that they were more than willing to work and collaborate with other musicians. The jazz pianist Jamie Cullum plays on ‘Boy’, even getting a writer’s credit.
The main players in the Stereo Mc’s story, Rob Birch, and Nick Hallam, have writer’s credits on most of the material, working alongside a large number of other musicians and writers. As well as this, they were one of the first bands to successfully use so many samples in their music, and it is an aural treat to hear so many ideas from other songs used in completely different genres.
In the booklet the duo speak of not being able to follow up the commercial success of ‘Connected’. Although ‘Connected’ was their biggest selling album they were nowhere creatively or musically bankrupt. Indeed, quite the opposite, their success probably gave them more freedom to produce the type of music they wanted to, taking their loyal fans and followers with them.
A disc of remixes also shows the esteem in which the band are held by other musicians. All of the remixes bring something new to the table, whilst also respecting the integrity of the original material.
A final DVD disc of the band’s videos ranges from the original footage of ‘Connected’ from back in 1992 to videos from 2008 in the shape of ‘Soul Girl’ and ‘Black Gold’.
Although some of this music is more than 25 years old, it all hangs together as one piece. This is partly due to the singular vision and talent of the band, but it also shows a willingness to experiment, to get lost in the creative process, and see what is there. It seems almost that the band took their commercial appeal in their stride, and were always career musicians rather than pop-stars. Although for those of us who took an interest in the charts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, their sound was catchy and immediate, but the weight of their work is only really apparent with the passage of time.