John Peel’s programmes could get people to overcome all sorts of biases and ignorant attitudes towards music. Although there may be genres of music that one wouldn’t rush to embrace, Peel’s playlists invariably meant that there would always be something that would catch your attention and cause you to reassess your attitude towards the merits of that genre. Likewise, Peel shows could also help you to look more closely at artists and performers that you may previously have been dismissive of or inattentive towards. Such is the case here for me with John Parish and his band, Automatic Dlamini.
When I fell for the charms of PJ Harvey in 1995, John Parish was part of the picture and sound that helped sweep me along through the television appearances that Harvey made that year promoting tracks from her To Bring You My Love album, a record which Parish had co-produced with her. Standing to her left, in classic lead musician position and either playing the relentless, unstoppable riff on Meet Ze Monsta or playing the shaker on Working For the Man, he clearly played as much of a part in constructing the soundscapes and ambience of Harvey’s music in that period as she did herself. It shouldn’t be forgotten just how much of a stylistic shift To Bring You My Love was to those who remembered the PJ Harvey trio
sound of Dry and Rid of Me. But it paid off, critically and commercially, and this may have been what persuaded Island Records to sign off on their next PJ Harvey release being a collaboration between herself and Parish, in which he would set her lyrics to his music. It may also have been the label realising that this would probably be the only way in which they were liable to get any kind of timely follow up record from Harvey who had run herself into the ground during 1995 touring To Bring You My Love with the result that she ended up being signed off sick at the start of December 1995 and cancelling a string of live shows through that month, including the last show of the year in Bristol, which would have been the first ever “proper” gig that I was going to attend. In the circumstances, sharing the load on a new album seemed like a sensible idea.
When the album, Dance Hall at Louse Point was released in September 1996, I learnt a little more about the ties that had bound Harvey and Parish together and how Harvey had started her musical career by joining Parish’s band, Automatic Dlamini. He had clearly been a huge influence on her, yet if you had said to me then, “Would you like to listen to an Automatic Dlamini album so you can hear a bit more of John Parish’s music?” I’d have probably made my excuses that I had something more urgent to do. And this would have been purely down to snobbish incuriosity on my part. I didn't mind hearing him working behind PJ Harvey, but why would I have wanted to hear him on his own? She had the profile, he didn’t. And if he was so influential, why wasn’t his profile higher? Oh, such shallow thinking and as ever, thank God for John Peel providing an opportunity to learn some musical lessons which I would otherwise have been too ignorant to do.
Formed in 1982, Automatic Dlamini look to have been a frustrating band to have followed if you were hoping for regular material from them. Their first releases including debut album, The D is For Drum came out during 1986/87, but 5 years had passed by the time their second album, From a Diva to a Diver appeared. Not that they were inactive during that time. Harvey joined the band in 1988 and played on an unreleased album titled Here, Catch, Shouted His Father. But she left in early 1991 together with drummer, Rob Ellis, although she contributed to several tracks on From a Diva to Diver including Putty, which with its brushed drums, slide-acoustic guitar and dustbowl blues tone feels like a warm up for tracks on Dance Hall at Louse Point such as Rope Bridge Crossing. Lyrically, it has clear resonances towards the kind of music they were to make together on future projects with the sculptress of the song putting together the model of a feckless man and making cuts and slices into the clay like a voodoo sorceress. A role which Harvey seemed born to play on a future track. You can be sure that somewhere, some poor soul was experiencing a burning sensation somewhere painful as the sculptress uses fire to firm up the putty that she mutilates.
I had to take the opportunity to listen to other John Parish compositions on earlier Automatic Dlamini tracks and what struck me, from the admittedly limited sample I heard, was how Putty appeared to mark something of a departure for him from the predominant tone of Automatic Dlamini songs. In Putty, and through his future work with Harvey, he sounds like Nick Cave with songs which feel like they are set in small, dimly lit cabins in the middle of vast desert wildernesses. But with earlier tracks like Principles vs Feelings or Crazy Supper, he writes like Jarvis Cocker and sounds like Nick Heyward, by creating songs of intense but lyrical urban domestic disharmony. If ever you wanted to make a Spotify playlist titled YuppieKitchen Sink music, then Automatic Dlamini would need to feature on it. So, Putty represents quite a shift for Parish in the way that To Bring You My Love would be a shift for Harvey. Their artistic bond has lasted up to the present day, but ultimately, who influenced who?
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