by ben wilmot, mar 4 1995
The world that ambient music inhabits is a delicate one. One where the little fluffy clouds mentality rules and little, if anything, upsets a general veneer of genteel
serenity. Well, _Vibes_ says, "Bollocks to that!" And so does Luke Vibert, aka Rising High's rising star WAGON CHRIST. For starters he's dubbed his
forthcoming corker of an album Throbbing Pouch instead of 'Floaty Reefer', 'Opaque Fantasies' or 'For God's Sake Someone Put The Kettle On'. But then Luke -
"another fucking person from Cornwall" as MIDI chum Richard 'ZZ Top' Aphex would probably put it - is set to give the ailing chillout scene a serious boot in the
arse it has disappeared up.
Not that Luke even considers himself to be an ambient bod. His debut LP Phat Lab Nightmare was a superchilled epic that helped
many a zonked clubber stay conscious until sunrise and a greasy fry-up arrived. But then Luke's got a good excuse for such ambient behavior. "I lied," he says,
drawing on his recreational roll-up as a cheeky grin breaks across his eccentrically-bearded face. "Rising High hadn't heard any of my stuff when they rang me up -
they must have been so desperate. I hadn't even done anything on my own at the time, but I sent them an EP I recorded in three days on my own - they said they'd
put it out and asked me if I'd done any ambient stuff. I just lied and said I had - I'd never done an ambient track in my life."
Eager to please, Luke took to his
four-track and applied the warped aesthetics of his earlier electro-funk experiments to the ambient genre - and '... Nightmare' proved to be one of the most
individual and accomplished debuts of recent years. But Luke wasn't pleased. "I was a bit pissed off - everyone was saying I was an ambient artist and I wasn't
really," Luke says, resigned now to the turn of events. "But I couldn't say anything because even my record label thought I was!" The turning point came this
summer when Luke's first 'real' Wagon Christ EP, the _Vibes_ Single of the Week At Atmos, emerged. Fat, funky and underwired with slices of bonkers jazz,
hip-hop beats and general tongue-in-cheek experimentation, it established Wagon Christ (the name comes from an old comic book hero) as the missing link
between the post-Aphex generation's aural twiddlings and Mo'Wax's spliffed out grooves.
"I'd done lots of funky stuff before, but it was so loose because I didn't
have a sampler - I'd buy a breakbeat album, borrow a mate's Technics and scratch in the beats," Luke explains in his well-spoken tones. "But it was only after
'Phat Lab Nightmare' that I managed to get that side across - At Atmos was more like the music I want to make and Throbbing Pouch is a bit more like it. I'm
getting closer each time, but I'm still learning." The success of At Atmos prompted Luke to pack in his job at the local Our Price and head, to the metropolitan
delights of Stoke Newington, where he joined the already-influential community of ex-pat West Country knob-twiddlers. He set up his "crappy bedroom stuff" - a
sampler, a keyboard that works properly, three that don't and two drum machines - in his bedroom and began living out the myth of the bedroom artist scratching
emotion and humor out of the most rudimentary equipment. It's a myth that still holds true, he says. "The equipment doesn't matter - I'm the worst person to discuss
gear with," Luke admits, at odds with boffin culture's unhealthy technology obsession. "It all depends on the people really - you could make a good album with just
a guitar. Jeremy Simmonds, my original partner and I did Weirs (their joint LP as Vibert-Simmonds for Rephlex) with hundreds of quids worth of gear rather than
thousands."
Vibert's low-rent ingenuity has already paid off in the shape of a deal with Mo'Wax for one EP, with possibly an album to follow. But don't be tempted
to bracket Luke with the new school of trip-hopsters - unless you want an outburst of Cornish rage! "I hate trip-hop!" he says, getting uncharacteristically heated. "I
don't even know what trip-hop means - if it's The Dust Brothers then eat my shit, because they're the worst cunts ever. They just do samples, really, which I never
do. But I like some of the Mo'Wax stuff, some of that's quite deep."
Fortunately, though, Luke's no sonic sourpuss ready to diss anything and everything that comes
his way. As our interview ends he takes to the decks in preparation for his first proper DJ-ing date (last Friday's Megadog), mixing hip-wiggling hip-hop with
bombastic jungle and punctuating the tracks with some wholesome, wide-eyed enthusiasm. As long as it's good, unpretentious and contains a few gut-rupturing
beats, then he'll sing its praises. He talks excitedly about Aphex's new single Ventolin (which he's remixed), about the new drum 'n' bass tunes he's been working on
and how experimental guru Bill Laswell sampled a minute of 'Weirs' for a track on a forthcoming dub compilation on Virgin that he also appears on. Life looks rosy
- in fact you could say, Luke's got the whole world in his hands.
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