From Robyn to Big Boi via Bristol: A Trip Down The Musical Rabbit Hole

Thom Bjorke

There’s never been a better time to be curious about music.

An hour or so ago I innocently followed a Pitchfork Twitter link to Robyn’s cover of Bjork’s ‘Hyperballad’.

It was so good, I had to go and watch the original in all its Gondry glory.

Listening again, I was struck by just how good the production on this track is. So I went looking for its producer and found Nellee Hooper.

It turns out that after starting life as a DJ for Wild Bunch (more on that later), Hooper went on to produce a slew of big records (Madonna, U2, Bjork, Smashing Pumpkins, Gwen Stefani), including one of my favourites, Massive Attack’s ‘Blue Lines’ and the score and soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo anf Juliet’.

One of Hooper’s most successful productions was ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’.

I only realised today that ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ was originally a Prince song.

Anyway, I’m fascinated by clusters of musical talent (like Madchester or CBGB’s in the 70s) and one of the things that made Bristol so unique was that a wave immigration in the 50s made it one of the most racially, culturally and therefore musically diverse cities in Britain.

Out of this mix came Wild Bunch, a sound system comprised of Hooper and other local DJs and producers. One of the Wild Bunch was Robert Del Naja who would go on to start Massive Attack. He described the music like this:

“It was more hip-hop in its center, but it went dub, it went soul, it went a bit New Wave, it went a bit retro film soundtrack-y—it was always a bit kind of strange, and I guess that’s how the reputation spread because we were doing something nobody else was doing at the time.”

Two songs that typify this period are The Wild Bunch’s ‘Look of Love’ and Smith & Mighty’s ‘Anyone’.

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They both sound so raw today but when Wild Bunch disbanded, Massive Attack formed, and trip-hop was born, serving up a more polished version of the Wild Bunch melange. There’s a good description of the time in Salon:

“Trip-hop came together in the bohemian, multi-ethnic city of Bristol, where restlessly inventive DJs had spent years assembling samples of various sounds that were floating around: groove-heavy acid jazz, dub reggae, neo-psychodelia, techno disco music, and the brainy art rap.”

Massive Attack spawned or inspired a wave of other trip-hop artists like Tricky, Portishead and Roni Size (whose ‘Brown Paper Bag’ has one of the best samples of all time).

I was too young to be aware of trip-hop and I listen to it infrequently now but there remain some incredible musical artifacts from the Bristol scene. The enduring one for me is ‘Unfinished Sympathy’.

So, back to Hooper (who was the whole reason I got sucked into this musical vortex). Before trip-hop blew up and he became U2 and Kylie’s producer, Hooper had a UK #1 with Soul II Soul’s – ‘Back To Life (However Do You Want Me)’.

When my ears hit ‘Back To Life’ I figured the rabbit hole had ended.

But the more I listened, the more it sounded strangely familiar. If I’d never heard it before today – why did it feel like an old favourite? Turns out, Big Boi pulls a chunky sample from it for ‘Shutterbugg’, a song I’ve had on loop lately.

So the Bristol underground gets reborn and repurposed on one of 2010′s best hip-hop records and I come kind of full circle from Robyn to Big Boi via Bristol.

When you’re in the web’s musical rabbit hole, everything’s connected and everybody’s happy.