Kosheen biography
Album: Resist
Release date: 17th September 2001
Label: Moksha Recordings / BMG
Website: http://www.kosheen.com/
Kosheen are on their way. Born some two and half years ago, when Bristol drum 'n' bass faces Markee Substance and Darren Decoder hooked up with vocalist Sian Evans, their impact has been immediate and immense. After a run of hugely influential, independently released singles ('Hide U', 'Catch' & '(Slip & Slide) Suicide'), Kosheen are now on the verge of massive chart success - 'Hide U' is set for release on August 20th and is already being hammered on daytime radio . If this wasn't enough their debut LP 'Resist' presents yet more dimensions of Kosheen, with sparkling electronic breakbeat, deep chilled drum 'n' bass torch songs and achingly beautiful downbeat melancholia allowing Sian's emotive voice full range. This is a killer debut.
Few bands really change things. Many show promise, then wither in a flare of media hype and expectation. Since they breezed onto the scene a couple of years ago, Kosheen's heady melange of traditional songwriting and cutting edge dance production has displayed all the hallmarks of greatness.
Their anthemic track 'Hide U' is the sound of musical boundaries torn azunder; dark drum breaks rub sholders with gossamer electronic trimmings, sheets of live instrumentation and heartbreaking female vocals. Their highly anticipated debut album 'Resist' is a deceptively powerful collection that utilizes the primal production power of breakbeat whilst instilling it with the heady rush of enjoyment, electicism and even the odd acoustic moment.
Markee Substance, Darren Decoder and Sian Evans are the architects of this resurrection. Decoder - known to his mum as Darren Beale - had an enviably epiphanic conversion to the world of dance music. Originally a thrashing member of various ne'er do well guitar bands from Weston-Super-Mare's embryonic punk scene, in 1989 he crossed paths at university with a young Geoff Barrow, future overlord of Portishead. 'Geoff was working for Massive Attack in some capacity at the time' recalls Darren, 'and they'd got him some kit. I remember being at Geoff's house and he showed me this sampler he had, this old Akai. He played me some bits of music he'd started to put together and I was just like 'jee-sus!'' Sadly, Darren's 'road to Damascus' moment would signal the end of the line for him and his hard rockin' comrades. 'The next day it was 'see you lads, I've got my band in a box now.' I was about 17 then.'
Still, the guitar world's loss was the dance world's gain, and as Darren traded in his guitar strap for a Fantazia Rave Crew bomber jacket, the music started to emerge soon afterwards. 'I started off writing old Hardcore. There was a lot of those free parties - Spiral Tribe, Bedlam, that sort of thing- around the West country at the time. I got a deal really early, so I put off going to Bournemouth Uni to study computers and gave myself a year to make it with the music. It. I released a few tunes with a London label called Lucky Spin under the name Orca that went really well, and just carried on writing. The DJing came later - at the time I was more interested in the production side.'
Darren's fellow breakbeat musketeer Markee Substance followed a similar path to musical enlightenment. Relocating from his native Glasgow - and losing his original Mark Morrison moniker in the process - he met up with Darren in the early 90s and between them the pair helped to create the seminal Ruffneck Ting club nights which ran for five years around Bristol and the South West. 'People still come up to me now and tell me how much they loved the parties back then' he recalls. 'The club really helped mould our sound, makes you realise what sounds good.' It also convinced the pair that their true calling lay outside the narrow confines of one genre, but not in the sense of eclecticism-for-its-own-sake that the breaking down of musical boundaries has often led to. 'Both of us always wanted to do something really different, but it had to be up to a certain standard' Markee stresses. 'It's like a little jigsaw now - there's all these little pieces, and we compliment each other.'
