Kosheen biography
However, the most important piece of the Kosheen jigsaw to emerge from the Ruffneck Ting nights was their singer/songwriter Sian Evans, then a young queue-jumping guestlist blagger. 'I always got in' she recounts proudly. 'I was never refused entry and I rarely had any money. I was top blagger.' Having moved through the free party scene, Sian found her musical tastes radically altered by a change in her personal life. 'I had a baby at the height of the rave scene which obviously puts a stop to going crazy. It started me thinking a lot more about songs and the music, and at the time I also got full on into jungle.' With a strong foundation in her mother's collection of Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell LPs, Sian began applying her combined tastes to a variety of dance music and funk/jazz projects, before retreating up a Welsh mountain to raise her little boy in a teepee. Whilst most people might find this a rather daunting experience, she was only driven back to regular life in Bristol by a growing collection of songs, and an increasing frustration at having nobody but a few sheep to play them to. Markee and Darren first heard Sian singing on a track by a friend of theirs, but - deciding that all's fair in love and war - pinched her for their own project. Their first studio meeting yielded instant results; 'I hadn't even taken my coat off when I heard their music and we started working. And it hasn't changed since then. We still fling things down that fast, it's a lovely chemistry. I still love what they do to my songs that I wrote up the mountain. I've been so encouraged to write by them I've been really prolific.'
The whole of 'Resist' is infused with this collaborative sense of stark, soulful compositions being rerubbed in the studio, never being stripped of their human quality but instead bringing a bit of much needed life to the sonic templates of drum and bass and beyond. 'What this band is NOT is two producers and a singer' states Darren emphatically. 'It's not the two bods locked in the computer who get the girl into sing at the end. Sometimes we can be round at her house messing around with a guitar, sometimes we'll do some loops in the studio and then she'll come in and work with that. We try and make it so the three of us are actively involved in everything we do.'
For the most impressive example of what happens when these opposing sensibilities come together, simply cock an ear at 'Hide U' a monolithic slab of a single that was voted single of the year at this year's Drum 'n' Bass Awards, but has also been shown love across the board from rave monkeys at Helter Skelter, to John Digweed at Bedrock and Sara Cox on Radio One's Breakfast Show. In one those curious quirks of fate that the pop world sporadically throws up, the track was a bona fide chart hit in Belgium and Holland, where it nestled in at No. 2 behind none other than Britney Spears with the group being invited to appear on the same pop festival billing as denim-clad cherub Ronan Keating. However, the group were originally unsure of its potential. 'When we first heard it through a sound system it was amazing' explains Markee. 'Originally it was written as very much a Kosheen track rather than a 'club' track, but I was at Lakota in Bristol and the place just went mad. Originally we were really unsure about sending it to DJs as it's pretty different. In the end we just thought 'if anyone's going to play it it'll be Fabio'. Then Fabio caned it. Although it's drum and bass speed, we weren't really writing it in 'tear the roof off' mode, but that's exactly what happened when it got played out.'
Other personal favourites for the trio include 'Hungry' - Sian's lament for a privileged friend's spiritual bankruptcy - and previous single 'Slip And Slide (Suicide)'. 'That's my wake up call to all the beautiful people that are busy trashing themselves on drink and drugs' she explains. 'Not to say that I'm an angel, but it upsets me how I've seen a few gorgeous, talented people destroy themselves with behaviour and drugs and putting themselves into dangerous situations over and over again. To me that's a form of suicide and a very painful one to watch' she rues. Markee also highlights 'I Want It All' as emblematic of the trio's working practices. 'Darren had this guitar riff and I was flicking through the sampler. I was just clicking these samples in and out, and the whole track came together really fast. Sian did her vocals in one take straight away. We recorded some more but ended up using the original takes.'
This sense of the three artists, their different styles and different influences being inexorably meshed together is the key to Kosheen, and helps to place them light years ahead of other contrived attempts to graft a credible studio treatment onto a frontperson. 'You can't take a wicked song that's 120 BPM, speed it up to 170 and expect it to work' stresses Markee. 'You've got to be prepared to experiment, try different things and see what works. We'll start working on breaks that sound quite clubby sometimes, then Sian'll come in and put her twist on it and it takes it into a whole different realm.' Whilst still giving props to the more inventive junglists (Krust, Dillinger) - and receiving them in return - the music of Kosheen implicitly trashes the narrow outlook that previously stifled the scene. 'Resist' presents yet more dimensions of Kosheen, with sparkling electronic breakbeat, deep chilled drum and bass torch songs and achingly beautiful downbeat melancholia allowing Sian's emotive voice full range. This is a killer debut album.
