Bassheads

Bassheads was a British house duo from Wirral. This consisted of Nick Murphy and Eamonn Anthony Deery (Desa). The group had a big European hit with "Is There Anybody Out There?"[1]

History

Murphy and Deery started to produce house music in Nick Murphy's home studio in 1989. Their first recording was the white label "The Defhouse Vol. 1"[2] and their third release, "Is There Anybody Out There?", was picked up by Deconstruction Records for national distribution. In November 1991 it got to number 5 in the UK Singles Chart,[3] and charted in other European countries. The original white label resulted in threats of legal proceedings for illegal use of samples from Afrika Bambaataa's "Just Get Up and Dance", Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" and Pink Floyd's "Is There Anybody Out There?".[4] Therefore the Deconstruction version contained re-recorded versions of the sampled tracks, other than the Pink Floyd sample. The use of samples for Africka Bambaataa was cleared by giving 25% of the publishing. Pink Floyd allowed Bassheads to use their sample on the promo but not for full release, so Nick Murphy (Bassheads) re-wrote that opening section also replaying the Talking Heads sample. The Osmonds' "Crazy Horses" guitar riff was replaced by a session player.

Nick Murphy was the engineer and main programmer on most of, or all of the Bassheads material commercially released / white labels, apart from a major contribution on "Is There Anybody Out There" from Shaun Imre. It was recorded mixed and mastered by Nick Murphy at his home studio, with the exception of a handful of tracks on the Bassheads album C.O.D.E.S, which where co-produced and mixed by Dave Eringa at Konk Studios in London (owned by The Kinks). These tracks also originated from Nick Murphy's new studio called "The Lodge" in Neston.

Over the next three years Bassheads had three more hit singles,[5] and remixed tracks for Oceanic, Björk and Visage. In 1993, Deconstruction released the album C.O.D.E.S. which contained ambient influences but did not chart.[1] This proved to be Bassheads' last release.

After being dropped by EMI for failing to pay the mixing/production costs at Konk studios, which their management had booked thus not implicating the Basshead directly, Deconstruction records then offered a new deal to Bassheads thru mother label BMG...But the effort put in by Nick Murphy was not matched by his partner who had lost the Passion for running a professional Band....and Nick Murphy felt it better to call it a day, even though there was a deal on the table for Bassheads to continue!

Nick Murphy has released recordings under the name "Angel" and more recently been involved in film score/ambient work, also some live Bassheads gigs recreating the original recordings from Baked Tapes from the original recordings (done on an old Fostex E16 multi track Tape Machine) to play live PAs with Ableton Live.

Discography

Singles and EPs
  • The Defhouse Vol. 1 (white label)
  • The Defhouse Vol. 2 (white label)
  • "Is There Anybody Out There?" (Deconstruction), UK Singles Chart no. 5
  • "Back To The Old School" (Deconstruction), UK Singles Chart no. 12
  • "Who Can Make Me Feel Good?" (Deconstruction), UK Singles Chart no. 38
  • "Start A Brand New Life (Save Me)" (Deconstruction), UK Singles Chart no. 49

Albums
  • C.O.D.E.S. (Deconstruction)

Remixes
  • Oceanic "Controller Me"
  • Visage "Fade to Grey"
  • Bjork "Human Behaviour"
gollark: I really hate pjals sometimes.
gollark: What GTech mining program?
gollark: All traffic, correlated with IPs.
gollark: Also, I have a cool modem/skynet universal monitor, but nobody uses it.
gollark: ShutdownOS has `uploadprivateinfo` to help.

References
  1. Colin Larkin, ed. (1998). The Virgin Encyclopedia of Dance Music (First ed.). Virgin Books. p. 28. ISBN 0-7535-0252-6.
  2. "Bassheads - The Defhouse EP Vol 1". Discogs. Retrieved 2018-08-23.
  3. "is there anybody out there? | full Official Chart History | Official Charts Company". Retrieved 2018-08-23.
  4. "Bassheads | Biography & History | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 2018-08-23.
  5. "BASSHEADS | full Official Chart History | Official Charts Company". Officialcharts.com. Retrieved 2018-08-23.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.