Darshan (translucent remix by The Grid)

It was at The Royal Albert Hall in London in December 1993 that I became aware that there was to be a mini-album release by Sylvian/Fripp, Darshan. This would be the only occasion that I would see David Sylvian and Robert Fripp share the stage, their earlier touring incarnation in a trio with Trey Gunn never having visited the UK. As we took our place in the stalls, full of anticipation for the first of two London shows on The Road to Graceland tour, set on each seat was a postcard announcing the new release – which would be in the shops the following week!

In addition to the original version of the track from The First Day, the disc would include remixes by both The Grid and The Future Sound of London. If we thought at the time that Sylvian’s work with the King Crimson guitarist was a step well outside his usual style, then here was a further one. Remixes from the world of electronic dance music were probably not what any of us was expecting.

‘The Grid’s music is atmospheric, ambient and electronic. It’s got dance elements in it but it’s also got soundtrack elements in it too,’ said Richard Norris, one half of the duo, during a short TV feature for The Beat in 1993. ‘We’re trying to get away from typical three-minute pop songs and into more atmospheric pieces, into a kind of music where the focus isn’t purely on the vocals.’

His partner in the line-up was Dave Ball, who had been the keyboard-playing foil to Marc Almond in Soft Cell before their ’80s break-up. The dance scene of the early ’90s created an environment where there was an openness to longer form instrumental music with driving beats as well as the ambient of the chill-out zones. ‘There’s definitely a new way of thinking about making music and it seems to be coming from the dance area,’ proclaimed Ball in the same interview.

‘People are getting into ambient music as a progression from the dance scene, not as a reaction to it,’ said Norris. ‘People are much more into sound than they used to be, because, since about 1988, they’ve been listening to more instrumental music in clubs, with its roots in dub and so on, and based on sampling and electronics…It’s more to do with sounds than it is to do with, say, vocals or guitar, or songs. It’s more mood, atmosphere, beats. And also the whole post-club sort of chill-out phenomenon, which is a reaction in a way, but it comes from the club scene where you have two rooms, one with beats and loud noise and one with pure ambience.’ (1992)

The link between The Grid and Sylvian/Fripp came through Robert, who had recently recorded with Norris and Ball for a record put out earlier in 1992. ‘Our manager at the time was David Enthoven,’ recalls Richard Norris. ‘He was the E in E.G. [records] and he was your typical old school King’s Road manager – he’d managed King Crimson, Roxy Music, T-Rex, Emerson Lake & Palmer…  And after us went on to manage Robbie Williams.’

After their debut album, Electric Head, The Grid signed to Virgin for the follow up and Enthoven was pivotal in gathering artists he knew for the project, taking full advantage of an expanded budget. Norris: ‘When we were doing 456, our second album, he got loads of amazing people in to work with us – Andy Mackay (Roxy Music), Phil Manzanera, people from Slapp Happy, mainly ’70s art rock people which was great because we’d taken a lot of inspiration from them.’

Robert Fripp was among those who accepted the invitation, causing some apprehension as the session began given The Grid’s impression of him as ‘a highly quality technician and a bit stern,’ and their own background being ‘pure art school, DIY, post-punk.’ However, chemistry was soon established. ‘He was really easy to work with,’ recalls Richard. ‘Having worked with people who had our approach, from art school, as well as working with very studious musicians and being a very studious musician himself, he kind of accepted the way we worked. Even though he was this amazing soloist, we could throw concepts at him and he would respond.’

Fripp’s enthusiasm for the engagement was inspiring. ‘We could say to him, “Make a sound that sounds like a nuclear war.” And he would! And would really enjoy trying to work out what that would be. So we did lots of things like that with him…’ (Richard would later note in correspondence with Robert, ‘at one point during the proceedings, you uttered “I’m now going to play a sound that will make your balls smack”.’)

‘He just kept saying, “Have you got any more tracks?” So we said, “Ok, we’ve got a new one for you. For this one we want you to play just your Les Paul,” – he had this beautiful, I don’t know what year – probably 1957 Les Paul, absolutely amazing instrument – so we said, “Turn off all of the racks and we want you to play just the Les Paul, and we only want you to play four notes.” He was a bit puzzled, because it was quite a simple song, it was this track on 456 called ‘Aquarium’, and we just wanted him to play something very simple where there’s piano on it, and it’s quite a slow 98 bpm sort of vibe. So he had a little think and said, “I’m going to have a little walk around the block.” So he walked round the block and he came back, and he’d got the four notes. He was really excited and said, “There are only four notes but they’re the right four notes!”‘

It’s fun to listen to the track with the benefit of this anecdote, and ultimately Fripp does get to turn on his effects rack towards the end of the song, albeit still working within the restriction on musical notes imposed. ‘Ice Machine’, featuring vocals from Yello’s Dieter Meier, boasts both soundscape passages and some frenzied lead playing from the guest guitarist.

Robert would also go on to appear on The Grid’s next full-length disc, 1994’s Evolver. (Norris: ‘We initially had no plans to include him, but he was very keen, and rang us up saying that he was looking forward to working on our next album!’ (1994)). That cd would spawn an unlikely million-selling single in the shape of the bluegrass-meets-dancefloor ‘Swamp Thing’. By this time Norris & Bell had taken on remix duties for an impressive roster of contemporary artists including the Pet Shop Boys for ‘DJ Culture’ and Erasure’s ‘Am I Right?’. Comparing The Grid’s version of the latter with the original mix brings to life the pair’s approach of bringing a new angle to the song’s arrangement whilst not destroying it.

Asked about their philosophy regarding remixing at the time, Richard Norris explained: ‘We turn most things down, at least half, because we get offered a lot of stuff that is either real pop, or is stuff from a genre that isn’t already dance music and all they want is a dance remix. And we tend to turn most of that down, because there’s nothing in there to use.

‘We go for a more sympathetic approach than most remixers, where they’ll just take two things and build a new track. We like to keep a lot of the original elements, because if you appreciate the music that you’re being given and you like the sounds, then you should have some respect for them, rather than totally trashing the whole thing and making a new track.’

Dave Ball expanded on the timescale and process adopted when they do take on an assignment: ‘A couple of days. The first day is spent re‑recording and sampling from the multitrack, and then we have a day for the mixing. Recently we’ve done Sophie B Hawkins, Neil Arthur, Carter USM’s last single, Leigh Bowery, and Sylvian/Fripp (the Darshan EP), which, at 17 minutes, must be one of the longest remixes in history.’ (1994)

The Grid’s ‘translucent remix’ of ‘Darshan’ begins with a motif of three descending notes, taking us back to the economy of ‘Aquarium’, with Sylvian’s voice uttering the track name. Then the new drum beat kicks in with a re-arranged and isolated bass line forming the foundation for the re-imagined track, with Fripp’s individual guitar lines heavily panned in the stereo mix. The fills of the original drum part are absent as are the adornments of Marc Anderson’s percussion. There are, however, some additions, such as the bright synth line that interjects with an attack akin to that of a xylophone around the seven-minute mark and later repeats. As the track reaches its culmination, the rhythms fade suddenly leaving just the longer lines which themselves then dissolve to silence.

Norris: ‘That EP shows two completely different approaches to remixing. On our version, we really had some respect for the vocal and what Fripp was doing on it. What we didn’t like was the drums, so we beefed them up, and gave the track a sound that was more dancefloor orientated. Future Sound Of London, who did the other mix, took two sounds off it and created a completely new track — which is OK, but it’s like that’s a FSOL track now, it’s got little to do with Fripp and Sylvian.

‘There’s a lot more to remixing than just doing a dance 12‑inch. There’s the whole spectrum of music out there…The palette of sounds available through samplers is so much wider than it would be with a traditional instrument.’ (1994)

Dave Ball tells us in his autobiography Electronic Boy (2020) that, despite the increased funding available to The Grid for 456, Robert Fripp did not take a payment for his session for the album. He and Norris therefore created the ‘Darshan’ remix for free in a kind of musical barter that was of benefit to each party.

Fripp’s contemporaneous sessions with The Grid would later form the basis for another project, triggered by the discovery of a stash of DATs. ‘I played them to David,’ says Norris, ‘and neither of us could remember making them. I was like, “hold on, have we made an extra album with Robert Fripp without even knowing?!”

‘At that time we were in studios non-stop, we were doing a remix a week, we’d kind of forgotten there was all this extra stuff. I put one on Soundcloud and Bill Brewster really liked it and he put it on a Late Night Tales album in 2014. There were a couple more tracks, and we went back to Robert and his management and asked if there was other material from that period that we could use. Then we added our bits to that. So it was kind of a hybrid of old and new.’

Robert’s approach to building up atmospherics in those ’90s interactions was particularly memorable and formed the basis of the project. Norris: ‘We had some great sessions with Fripp in Eastcote studios in West London where he came in loaded up with two massive racks of Eventide and TC Electronic type equipment. And some of the delays he had were like 72 seconds long or something, these customised things. So he would play some mad sound and it would come back like a minute and a bit later! So he just created these amazing soundscapes.’

Dave Ball’s admiration for the combination of Fripp’s technical wizardry and his playing technique was evident when speaking soon after the session: ‘We couldn’t quite figure out how he does it, but he does these loops; he’ll make a loop with one note and build it up by adding a harmony on it, until it’s this great sequence. He had a couple of digital delays, which were somehow connected so that he builds up this spiralling chord, and he gets it in time, too, which is the really clever bit.’

Richard also marvelled at the results which, he said, had a ‘keyboard ambience…which is all off his guitar. It’s a really distinctive sound.’ (1992)

The resulting album, Leviathan by The Grid/Fripp, was released on DGM in 2021. Robert is credited with guitar and soundscapes, Richard Norris with keyboards, drum machines and programming, and it’s notable that Dave Ball, for all the array of electronics that he had mastered in the intervening period, reverts purely to the use of the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 synthesiser. It was, of course, a synth whose possibilities Japan explored extensively on 1981’s Tin Drum, and which Ball used in Soft Cell, appearing that same year on the BBC’s Top of the Pops programme playing it.

In combining these past recordings with new sounds, Norris says, ‘you’re experimenting to see what happens and see what works, and it’s a very layered approach. It’s a bit more like abstract painting than anything really. So you get a bit of that and then as the record develops it’s a got a few more beats and bit more structure. We kind of wanted to have that development in the record so it starts very abstract and then moves towards dance.’

I enjoy following their mix of ‘Darshan’ with the beat-less ‘Loom’, then into ‘After the Rain’ which propels the album towards its dance-oriented final movement.

And the title? Norris: ‘I like Philip Hoare’s book Leviathan, which is about his obsession with whales and whale watching and the awe of coming into contact with such massive creatures. They are quite mysterious. Their brains are enormous, and we don’t quite know what all the brain power is doing… A bit like Robert, really.’

‘Darshan – the road to graceland’

Marc Anderson – percussion; David Bottrill – treatments, sampled percussion, computer programming; Ingrid Chavez – vocals; Robert Fripp – guitar, frippertronics; Trey Gunn – grand and tenor sticks, vocals; Jerry Marotta – drums, percussion; David Sylvian – guitar, keyboards, tapes, vocals 

from The First Day full album credits

Music by David Sylvian, Robert Fripp, Trey Gunn and David Bottrill. Lyrics by David Sylvian.

Recorded at Dreamland Studios, Woodstock, N.Y., and Kingsway Studios, New Orleans. Mixed at Electric Lady Studios, New York, N.Y.
December ’92 to March ’93

Lyrics © samadhisound publishing

‘Translucent remix’ by The Grid – Dave Ball and Richard Norris

From Darshan by David Sylvian and Robert Fripp, Virgin, 1993

‘Dedicated to the memory of Edie Fripp and the birth of Ameera-Daya Sylvian.’

All artist quotes are from interviews in 2021/2 unless otherwise stated. Full sources and acknowledgments can be found here.

The featured album cover image is by Jim Friedman.

Dave Ball’s book Electronic Boy is available here. Richard Norris has just announced the publication of his music memoir Strange Things Are Happening, available for pre order here.

Download links: ‘Aquarium’ (Apple); ‘Loom’ (Apple); ‘After the Rain’ (Apple)

Physical media links: Darshan (Amazon); Leviathan (burningshed) (Amazon)

‘So sometimes it would start with our track and sometimes it would just be these mad improvisations. He was a very generous and fun person to work with.’ Richard Norris on The Grid’s early ’90s collaboration with Robert Fripp, 2021

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