| The New Blak
Blakamix makes an early bid for album of the year |
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"It's hard out there, but it's always been tough." With so much doom and gloom around it's great to hear some fighting talk from Dennis 'Mixman' Bedeau. It seems appropriate that he's up for a skirmish as he looks a lot more like a super middleweight boxer than a musician. Mixman's home town does indeed have a champion boxer at the moment. Recent world title challenger Matt Skelton is known as the 'Bedford Banger'. It's an epithet that could easily have been applied to Mixman for much of his musical career. Blakamix productions are synonymous with the hard and heavy digital style of UK Dub. His tunes have been banging out of the sound system scene since the late eighties. However, the new album from Prince Malachi might be about to cause a serious re-evaluation and a change in image for its producer.
As soon as I heard 'One Perfect Love' I couldn't wait to congratulate Mixman for a job well done. I hot-tailed it to Bedford to be met by a man who isn't in any kind of hurry at all. "We started working on the album in about 2003! I weren't in a rush. We took time to make sure it sounded good. I've known of Malachi for years cause he used to live down the road in Luton. When he came back from Jamaica he called me a few times; still I wasn't in any hurry to do anything. But when he finally come here and I heard how good he was... I thought, that sound good man, sound international." We spoke in the control room of his studio. I had been surprised to find that Garvey House was actually a house. The Blakamix HQ is in a terraced house in a quiet residential street in Bedford. The converted semi has the famous recording studio and storage on the ground floor with offices for the label and on-line shop upstairs. It felt a lot more friendly than the industrial unit I had half expected. Although that may also be down to the fact that Mixman is one perfect host. It became clear that he wasn't working to a grand business plan of any kind. Instead he has created a fertile environment where musical projects can evolve and take shape themselves. Much depends on the kind of artist he is working with. "Originally the Prince Malachi album was going to be a vocal and dub showcase, but because it sounded so good I thought we should record more and go for a more commercial sound. I was working with an artist that can sing at that level, so I created tracks that made sense of our collaboration together. Malachi complements what I was doing. He's got lyrics and he can sing. He'd come and do a couple of tracks in a day. Then we'd wait a while, depending on how busy he was and how much time I had. Sometimes we'd do one track in a day and spend more time talking and reasoning. A track I really loved was '1966'. He'd been sitting talking about the Bobo Dread out in Jamaica. Then he went in there and started singing that song. It was a song he'd written down before and I must admit it kinda touched me. I just love that track still, and that's why I released it on a vinyl." '1966' is a song in which Prince Malachi reflects on the impact of Haile Selassie's visit to Jamaica in that year. Blakamix released different mixes on 7" and 10" soon after it was recorded in 2004. Michael Rose was also in the studio at that time and his presence contributed to the eventual direction of 'One Perfect Love'. Having two 'international' artists around at the same time meant that Mixman was even more focused on producing rhythms that could hold their own in any arena. The first indication of what was going on was the Michael Rose song 'Bingi Man A Come' which was also released in 2004. It featured killer live horns from Winston 'Saxton' Rose. The rhythm was also used for Prince Malachi's 'Burning', although Mixman points out that the sound of each track was made to fit the vocal. "'Burning' was sung different, so we gave it a different arrangement. The sax on 'Bingi Man A Come' was blown directly for the Michael Rose track. Specifically for the way Michael Rose sang it."
Dub Vendor have made 'One Perfect Love' their album of the month for March 2008, stating that it is "an entirely successful marriage of the two talents that should reach a wider audience than the usual nu-roots fare." Mixman isn't getting carried away with any hype though. The choice of musical direction was an artistic rather than a commercial one. Now that he's got material that might allow him to reach a wider audience, he's certainly going to try, but he knows how difficult it can be. "People put me into this UK Roots category but I just do my thing. I've always done a lot of vocals and mixed it up. I realise that to get out of that bracket I'll have to work with more Jamaican artists. I've already worked with a few. I did the 'Seek And You Will Find' album with Horace Andy. The thing with that album was that I intentionally put him on some hard rhythms. It sold well in Europe and the UK but mainly to committed Roots people. When I tried to push it into the mainstream I got a fight. I couldn't cross it over to more conventional radio, magazines etc. They were saying the UK sound was mechanical or like a production line." Nobody could say such things about tracks like 'Protect Your Home' from the new album. It's a beautifully crafted piece of quality Reggae music that stands up alongside anything that's being produced in Jamaica or elsewhere. "Yeah the mainstream have picked up on that. Rodigan and any of the guys who'll play Jamaican Roots tunes have been playing it. Producing stuff like those guys in Jamaica is not such a hard thing to do. It's just that with the market I'm in I haven't been catering for that."
Blakamix has a solid fanbase that revolves around the UK Dub soundsystem scene. I wondered what their response to the album has been so far. "It was 'Burning' and 'Keep On Talking' that did the rounds on the soundsystems like Iration Steppas and Jah Voice. They like the steppy kind of thing, so it was those two tracks really. One response I've had is "why we ago buy an album that ain't got no dub, what kinda talk is that?" So I guess I'll have to do a dub album." 'Keep On Talking' utilises the same rhythm as D Maximillian's 'Moses', one of the Blakamix releases that has become a collectors item. "Gotta re-press that! It got a good response and sold out straight away. I've got a lot of re-pressing that I need to do. My old tracks go for thirty or forty pound on e-bay. People will pay that if they can't get a track and they really want it. It just tells me that I should re-press and get it on the road. The good thing is that if you record something today, people will still be asking for it in five years time. It's a long lasting ting. People still coming to enquire about the old tunes is good but you have to have a catalogue, to be able to make sense of it; as a business, as a label." Just getting on with business seems to suit Mixman. He was open to being interviewed and keen to help me achieve what I wanted with the time I had in town; but he's got nothing to prove. He's been around the block and would rather just do his thing than worry too much what anyone's got to say about it. I asked him how it all began. "It started in Gladstone Street on the other side of town. My Mum and Dad's house in a bedroom converted into a studio. In the early eighties I bought my first bass guitar, then I bought some electronic equipment. I got a Studio Master desk and it went from there. Three main guys were inspiring me, Shaka, Twinkle and Mad Professor. That kinda vibe, you know what I'm saying. Initially it was with my cousin Randolph, but he didn't sort of last the pace. He dropped out so I was on my own. I learned by recording all the local guys. At that time, coming with the kind of hard Roots stuff that I love, people round here were saying "you cyan't put out dem kinda jump up ting, you must put out nice tune"!" They couldn't have been more wrong. Blakamix really began to make its name when the right kind of UK production could attract record sales that can only be dreamt of today. A series of releases in the early nineties signalled that Dennis 'Mixman' Bedeau had arrived. "I put out those three tunes. 'My Story', 'King David's Melody' and 'King Nebuchadnezzar'. After that the album 'Dub Like Wild Fire' and it took off from there. Shaka played a lot of my music, respects to him. Those three tracks he bust hard. At that time all the UK was getting noticed. It was an exciting time you know what I mean. My bredrin Mark Iration call it "the renaissance" for the UK kind of vibe!" Since that time Blakamix has been UK Dub's most consistent label. I suggested that this may have lead to his work being taken for granted or under-rated. Mixman doesn't seem too concerned, he only has one slight issue. "I find it kind of difficult being outside of London. Even though I'm only sixty miles down the road. People down there are more contactable, more approachable. You always find that they get the first blies. When people come from foreign looking for me, sometimes people don't want them to know where I'm at. So they say "oh he lives in Bradford two hundred miles away". I've had guys who made it here telling me that!" The hallway that leads from the front door, past the live room, to the control room of Blakamix Studio is covered with graffiti from all the artists and soundmen who have found their way there. Seek and you will find!
March 2008
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