“I became friends with a lot of that group through going to Jazzi B’s Soul II Soul club. They ran a local DJ battle night, where anyone could show off their skills or just hang out.” Like them, Tim was driven by the potential of a new music style created utilising samplers. “I was the guy with the records, basically,” he laughs. “I had been collecting since I was about 8 or 9 years old, and when I started mucking about with samplers I had a shit load of music already to work with, which was essential if you were serious about live DJing.” Simenon adopted the title Bomb The Bass to DJ under, and like his mates in Massive Attack, the emphasis was on devastation; specifically the ‘annihilation’ of hundreds of recorded works for use in samples. However, where Massive Attack became known for the somber, subtle approach, Bomb The Bass’s debut single, Beat Dis! hit the listener with a montage of over 50 samples, kicking open the door for a whole new wave of sample-heavy dance 12”s. The release effectively shook-up The Wild Bunch crew – most of who were yet to release any of their music/mixes. Tim explains, “DJing was still a new thing, and a lot of the artists on that scene wanted to release records, but nobody knew if what we were doing would have any kind of appeal beyond our little club nights,” he shrugs. “That’s the beauty of what was happening in that scene, we were just friends doing what we enjoyed doing. Nobody thought it would become this massive thing.”
One of the first of the Bristol crew to get a record out was Afro-Swedish MC Neneh Cherry. She and Tim collaborated on the sweet and sassy Buffalo Stance in 1988, which became so huge that supposedly it was the prompt for Madonna to write Express Yourself. “I have to say, that was one of the most enjoyable records to make, primarily because Neneh was such a breeze to work with. I’ll always remember that powerful attitude she brought to everything; I mean Buffalo Stance was her through and through. That was her personality, you know.” From that single, the scene began to grow as more and more names linked to The Wild Bunch turned out records that seemed incapable of failure. Bomb The Bass’s second album, Unknown Territory, surfaced around the same time as Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, prompting talk of an ‘exciting new movement’ in music. However, Tim was a far less stationary act, flirting only briefly with trip hop. His next release would begin to develop from a meeting with Russian/American hip hop artist Justin Warfield (whose album, My Field Trip To Planet 9, Tim was enamored with), who importantly, also shared Tim’s love of William S. Burroughs.
“I remember at our first meeting, Justin and I talked a lot about Burroughs, and straight after he went off and wrote these fantastic lyrics based around Naked Lunch.” Simenon’s Bug Powder Dust began as a collection of dialogue samples from the David Cronenberg film adaption, before blossoming into a full collaborative rap. The track – a massive hit – pre-empted 1995’s Clear, and a newly acquired use of live instrumentation. Tim was beginning to scratch the surface of Bomb The Bass’s potential as a live band, but it would take a further 13 years for him to fully realise it. “I hadn’t had a break in over ten years.” He recalls, “I spent a couple of years in my room in front of the speakers just listening to music instead of working with it. I needed to be inspired again, you know?” Simenon’s silence was finally broken in 2008 with a dramatic new album, Future Chaos. His ambitions for Bomb The Bass – ‘the live band’ along with collaborator Paul Conboy – finally began to take shape.
”The key to getting back into music was writing the Future Chaos album,” he explains. “That album came together with such momentum that I found I had regained a kind of excitement about making music which had been missing for some time.” For his appearance at the Future Music Festival, Tim promises fans ‘a few exclusives’. “Paul and I have been writing the follow-up to Future Chaos, so we’ll be premiering about five or six of those songs in Australia.” The new album, he explains, is again further from the sample-based work he mastered in his formative years. “On this tour Paul will be singing and playing live bass, and I’ll be making the beats and just playing around with the BPM’s a lot more. It’s exciting for us to have the sort of ‘raw edge’ of a live band. I’ve been building up to this for a long time, so I think it’s going to be fun.”
BY LEIGH SALTER
