Easy riders
This month’s swinging slept-on: when lounge met ambient on the Sandoz space cruiser.
“The Gentle People give me all the love I need.” RICHARD D JAMES
THE REMIXES of Richard ‘Aphex Twin’ James could be atomising things, as he dynamited songs to remake them in his own image. But when he took on Journey, 1995’s galactic debut by The Gentle People, he seemed in awe. He built carefully on the vaporous original, adding extra dimensions to its Latin trance-into-infinity. Besotted, James told Rephlex Records artist P.P. Roy that the group “give me all the love I need.”
The group who made unsmiling RD James glow with love power had roots in a shared flat off Brixton’s Acre Lane, and a social circle that included DJs The Karminsky Experience, in 1991. Charity shops and carboot sales were full of the cast-off records, clothes and objets d’art of the ’60s and ’70s. This flotsam of a lost age of style and glamour would find new life on London’s easy listening scene. After throwing house parties, The Gentle People would evolve into a recording and performance entity. Taking their name from an aquarian go-go tune in Russ Meyer’s cult 1970 satire Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, the members took parallel identities. Californian Douglas Stoddard was Dougee Dimensional, Londoner Sarah Simonon was Honeymink (after the gas cooker), Normandy-born Laurence (surname withheld) was Laurie Lemans and, joining in 1992, programmer/producer Jeremy Leahy – who’d spent early years in South Africa – was Valentine Carnelian.
“I have always claimed to be an alien and I stand by that!” says Honeymink today. “DD and I definitely feel we came from Gentle World and are only temporarily here. I remember thinking, Laurie’s so perfect – a mini Brigitte Bardot. She brought a deeper philosophical angle and an excellent creative aesthetic. And Jer/Val was so hilarious and off the wall we knew he was right… he was clever and so talented.”
Their fashion-inverting in-house sound-tracks included such easy groovers as Norrie Paramor And His Orchestra’s Lovers In Latin, The Free Design’s You Could Be Born Again and the OST for Bedazzled. Also playing were contemporary ambient excursions: The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, The KLF’s Chill Out and Bassomatic’s Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Bass.
A demo reached Aphex’s
Rephlex Records – via Gentle designer/Aphex housemate Johnie Clayton and party-throwing pal Nahila – and Journey was released on the label in summer 1995. Excited coverage in the pop media often took in the wider easy listening revival, with talk of what The Gentle People called ‘The Primula Aesthetic’.
“When we talked about that Primula Aesthetic, we wanted it to be synthetic cheese,” says Dougee. “We knew people were going to perceive easy listening as a cheeseball thing, which is great if you want to, but we also knew we could do something really tasteful and cutting edge that could be appreciated on a different level.”
After early-’96’s blissedout Emotion Heater EP, and interest from labels like Echo, Warners and Sony, cash from Japan’s Flavour Of Sound imprint enabled work on
Soundtracks For Living to continue that summer. They recorded at Leahy’s Gentle Studio, in a bedroom in his flat on Lower Marsh Street, Waterloo. There were interruptions by noisy neighbours and trains, while Dougee, Honeymink and Laurie recorded their vocals in a wardrobe using a microphone cover made out of a coathanger and tights. “When we sang through the pantyhose on the mike we called it, Singing Through The Gusset,” notes Dougee, who says voice tuition came from Lorraine Bowen, AKA The Crumble Lady off Britain’s Got Talent.
Carefully selected samples, instrumentation and vocals were sifted and arranged using Cubase, an Akai sampler, and a Mac. “It was nuts,” says Dougee. “Valentine and I spent a lot of time on the production during the daytime and the ladies, who were holding down full-time jobs, would come a little later. We did it all collectively, but essentially Valentine was the mastermind who could bring it all into fruition.”
Transcending its limited circumstances, Soundtracks For Living wove phantom brass, strings and percussion into an electronic balm. The first phase has a hyperreal pop- lounge aspect, the cocktailhour title track stranding The Swingle Singers on Space Station V from Kubrick’s 2001. In the second chapter this cedes to cosmic outof-body-experiences like Relaxation Central, a celestial cascade of harps, strings and Theremin. The deepbrain travelogue also lands in the South Seas, on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and over at Liberace’s place. Listening, it’s curious to reflect that Honeymink’s sibling is Clash bassist Paul Simonon. She says that while “our music is not his cup of tea at all” he is always a “great, super- supportive” brother.
The release was marked by a Peel Session at Abbey Road in April 1997 and live shows in Japan. Later activities involved shows – with artificial leather mascot, the Nauga – in Berlin, St Petersburg and Barcelona, and 1999’s second album Simply Faboo. Transmissions from GentleWorld have continued, with Dougee, Honeymink and Laurie Lemans last being heard on Ursula 1000’s
Esoterique in 2019. Sadly, Leahy, who continued to work in library music, passed away in July. “He was a perfectionist, making sure that we got the best take and the best mix possible,” says Dougee of Leahy’s work on Soundtracks
For Living. “We always wanted to sound very expensive, and if you had actually seen where we recorded it, you’d be like, ‘Oh my God, how did you do this?’ Which goes to show you how good a producer he was.”
While a vinyl reissue of the LP is mooted, Honeymink wonders if The Gentle People’s story has now ended.
“I don’t know if we’d do anything again,” she says. “The purest form of us is no longer, now Jeremy has gone.”