MAP OF AFRICA
Interview by Jaclyn Marinese
Images by MC Gaff E

Map Of Africa is a band featuring the legendary DJ and musician Harvey Bassett and production genius Thom Bullock of the Rub ‘n’ Tug DJ crew. The two grew up together in eastern England and have been making music together since they were old enough to play. Out on Whatever We Want Records, this self-titled album might be their first official album together as a group, but these musicians have layers of experience behind them, forming the foundation on which this album was built.

As a teen, Harvey began playing in bands and progressed into the DJ world after a trip to New York City
in the ‘80s sparked and furthered his interest in graffiti and sounds like hip-hop, electro, disco, house and garage. As part of the Tonka Hi Fi Soundsystem, he and Bullock,among others, are largely credited with bringing some of those sounds to England as a part of weekend-long “rave” parties in their native Cambridge as well as Brighton, London and on the festival circuit.

Additionally Harvey’s own event called Moist at the Gardening Club introduced names like Larry Levan, François Kevorkian and Kenny Carpenter to the British audience. He was the first British DJ invited to play at the Ministry of Sound and later became resident on both Friday and Saturday. This resulted in the release of his first compilation mix, Late Night Sessions.

After Tonka, Thom Bullock headed out to San Francisco as part of the Wicked crew, a DJ collective known for purveying the West Coast psychedelic house sound. He produced down-tempo music as Mammel,
a psychedelic album under the name Supergroup with Charles Uzzell Edwards and in 1996 moved to New York to start the band A.R.E. Weapons – though he no longer plays with them today. These days, aside from Map of Africa, Bullock is the producer behind other What Ever We Want releases like the group Bobbie Marie, Otterman Empire, Laughing Lights and Wedo. His gigs and remixes as part of New York City’s kings of sleeze, Rub ‘N” Tug, along with partner Eric Duncan, have ascended him to cult-like status among dirty disco lovers worldwide.

Together the two musicians enter into this Map of Africa album with heavy history and experience behind them. Having been described by party-goers as “God-like”, today Harvey has a strong following from New York to Japan, where there is a record store named after his “Black Cock” record releases (releases which were partially responsible for the current re-edit phenomenon). He has released tracks under various pseudonyms and has produced and remixed tracks for Jamiroquai, Brand New Heavies, Stereo MCs, Electronic and The Police, among many others.

Map of Africa is an album of sleazy, psychedelic rock that has an underlying sound of funk and blues emerging through the bottom of the music, unlike anything that’s been released in recent years. Recorded mostly in Bullock’s secluded upstate New York get away in the woods, the record embodies a sound and a direction all its own. The songs, and sonic stories told through them, are clearly the meeting of two like-minded friends who have journeyed together for some time through parties, through music and through life in general. This album is the result of much of that shared experience. ‘Sup caught up with the guys while they were upstate at Bullock’s secluded get away finishing the recording of the second Map of Africa album.

Is this the first time you guys have done a band-like project together?
Thom: No we’ve been doing this before most of your readers were born [laughs].

I mean as an album though.
Thom: We’ve been doing minor collaborations over many years but this is the most serious of those meetings. I mean we’ve DJ’d together and stuff but the Map of Africa is the most serious meetings of our minds thus far.

What do you think it is that brought you to this point to do the project?
Thom: We’ve been making music together for years here and there, but we’re not infamous go-getters. You know we’re just doing it. We’ve been making it together all this time. Then I’d go here and Harvey would go there. We finally end up in the same country together and we decided why not make some more music together. And we came up with the name on the spot, Map of Africa. Our friend, Carlos Arias, who runs the record label What Ever We Want Records, is a big fan and jumped at the chance to give us a ton of money so we could be doing what we want to do and that helped too. So that’s kind of why the record as a product came about. I mean me andHarv have been making music together for 20 years but there’s actually a product now. It’s become realized. It has a realization date.

Does it feel different to work this way as opposed to how you’ve done it in the past?
Harvey: Totally yeah. To actually have an advance on sales that allowed us to take the time and the facilities that it required to make this – and thanks to Carlos and his mind. But yes it was very different. And it’s not like being under a regular record label. We have complete freedom to indulge ourselves musically and emotionally through that recording medium as it were.

What does Map of Africa mean?
Thom: Map of Africa means what it means to your mind. We love it cause it reminds us of explorers and like the fuckin’ heart of the jungle. You know what I mean. But actually it’s really about sex.

You live now on separate coasts. Harvey in California, and Thom on the East Coast. Do you find that more difficult as far as collaborating creatively or does it give you a stronger inspiration when you do see each other?
Thom: It’s not an issue because we are both gypsies. I keep my record collection here in upstate New York.
Harvey keeps his there in Los Angeles. But other than that the life is a gypsy life. We’re around each other when we need to be.

Do you do most of the recording in New York?
Thom: We do a lot of it there.
Harvey: The second album that we’re working on at the moment has been a bi-costal recording process.
Thom: [laughing] Yeah we’re bi.
Harvey: [laughing] He said that.

I hear you have an interesting studio upstate in New York in the country. Does that make a difference in how you record – sort of isolating yourself from other people?
Thom: Yeah, totally. Like at first all the music we’ve done involved synthesizers and beatboxes. And when we started to get the band together I think I still lived in the city. But then I bought this place in the country here in the middle of nowhere, on two acres of land, by the river and this 150-year-old barn. We thought what better than here to start making a record? That made a difference on how the record sounded. We got in drum kits and amps and guitars and that’s why the record went that way.

What is your opinion about recording digitally versus the more analog style you tend to use? What is the difference for you?
Harvey: Well the difference is the sound isn’t it? If the music’s good it’s good. And I love it all. I love a bunch
of digital crap and I love smooth analog. But I prefer to hit something. And make the sound by hitting it. You know what I mean? I like the sound to move through the air before it gets to the machine and becomes digital.

Harvey, you first started by playing drums?
Harvey: I suppose so, yeah. A long time ago. I was playing drums in bands and in caves [laughs]. I’ve been playing drums all my life, really. Yeah, just bands and even through my DJ wave I’d often play drums on different projects or remixes I’d be doing.

Are you playing all the drums on this album pretty much? What about other instruments?
Harvey: The drums are pretty much all me. And T’s on some shakers and clappers and stuff. We kinda share the jobs. Guitar is me. Keyboards and bass is Thom. Vocals are predominately me. Yeah and it works very well. What one of us can’t manage to do, the other one usually can so we get it done. And Thom is a master in the studio so he engineers the projects and makes sure the sound gets done nice. Um, he can’t sing particularly well, but I wouldn’t say I could either so… [laughs]. We write the lyrics together so it’s
a 50/50 endeavor.
Thom: Yeah, we auditioned each other for vocalists in the band and it was Harv.

Was this album stuff you had from years of playing together or did you create it solely for this project or was it a combination of the two?
Harvey: When we decided to go on the mission of Map of Africa, everything was written from that point on. I didn’t have any books of lyrics or chord progressions or whatever. We did it all from scratch as Map.
Thom: Yeah most of the songs were all written up in one day actually. Day started there was nothing there. End of the day a new song was made. Then we’d sit there finish a bottle and listen to it over and over.

So you’ve begun the second album?
Harvey: Yeah that’s what we’re up to right now. Completing the second Map Of Africa album. It’s recorded. It hasn’t been mixed or mastered but recording is only half of getting the album out really. On top of artwork and all that other fun stuff.

Did you encounter anything different during the making of this as opposed to the last album?
Harvey: We’re a bit better now at doing what it was we were doing songs so its actually flowing a little easier than before. We have more experience on how to structure, play and produce. I think you’ll enjoy the results.

Harvey I know you have a son who is in his teenage years. Do you ever talk to him about music? What is
it that he’s into? Is he into your stuff? Do you get any inspiration off of what he’s listening to?
Harvey: The last little hang out we had he made me a doo-wop CD. He likes doo-wop. He likes real hip-hop. He likes real rock music. And yeah, I definitely listen to his opinion. When I ask him what’s happening he plays me a new record and that’s good. We share music all the time. I don’t know if he particularly appreciates any of my disco or the soft rock sounds but I think that you get into that when you’re a little older maybe. But he’s totally got a head for music and has thousands and thousands of tunes on his hard drive. I don’t know if he likes Map of Africa. He’s never commented on it.
Thom: My daughter does.

How old is your daughter Thomas?
Thom: Six.

And she likes the album?
Thom: She loves it. She has her own names for each of the songs. She doesn’t know what they’re called.
She takes a couple of words from the lyrics and calls it that and often they aren’t the actual words to the song. A cute one is the Darth Vader Song which is “Gonna Ride” on the album. The words say “The ol’ cross fader” and she’s says, “Oh Darth Vader!”

What else do you guys do besides this music thing?
Harvey: [Lets out a funny menacing yet playful laugh] We laugh like Scooby Doo. We lead incredible lifestyles. We eat well. We love cooking. We like splashing around in water. We like water. Actually we’re close to getting a movie funded. A short film as a sort of wishful vision of our lifestyles. It’s actually going to be a documentary [again both burst out laughing]. We’re gonna make a short documentary about our lifestyles.

You guys were instrumental in raves that were happening in England as part of the Tonka Sound System.
When was that?
Thom: There’s a rave in my living room right now [laughing]. Raving has not stopped. It’s a national pastime in England and in fact in most of Europe.
Thom: Well ’88 was when clubs were invented.
Both: [Laughing madly again].
Thom: 1988. I mean what people would now call raving though raving is never something I used to describe what I do.
Harvey: I mean we used to say it, ‘Where you going raving?’ And that was before the big raves, all those mega raves. And now I’m very happy to say that I can use that word again. I do go raving again. I’m happy
to get dressed up, get loaded and jump about all night.

For those that don’t know, what was the Tonka Sound System?
Thom: The Tonka Sound System was a huge collective of DJs and musicians. There were a bunch of buddies that wanted to have an identity like a Jamaica sound system. ‘Cause it takes a hell of a lot more than one person to play a record. There are people that carry the boxes and people that do the whole thing and make the party happen. So Tonka was a way of making a group identity for a family of party people. And we played with Tonka during the ‘90s and it was great. It was so great and I think we left a fun little old rave legacy.

Where were they taking place?
Thom: Pretty much in the south of England between London and Brighton. The guy that owned the sound system also owned a marquee so we could find an empty field somewhere and set up – on the beach, in a field, warehouse in a nightclub. We pretty much partied wherever we wanted. We were a mobile crew. We could party anywhere.

Guess that doesn’t happen as much anymore.
Thom: There was a law. It’s called the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 1994. Because some foolish people who thought violence was a way to have a good time, fought the police and basically ruined it for everybody. No one ever complained about a Tonka party. The cops never came and if they did come they realized that we weren’t a threat. The law changed and it made raves and warehouse parties a lot more difficult to put on. That’s why it doesn’t happen so much in Europe anymore. I’m sure that there are locations where people don’t complain and that’s the best way to do it.

Harvey – I know you play a residency at Love in New York City but not many other venues here. Why that decision?
Harvey: Love is a good spot for me. My friends can come down there and have a nice time. If someone made an offer somewhere else I might do it. I occasionally play the No Ordinary Monkey party and used to tag along with Thomas and Eric [Duncan] at the Passerby which is a wonderful, legendary moment in New York City club history. I do things here and there. I don’t like to work too much. A week is plenty. I visit New York about every three weeks. I need to go to Hawaii to get over the week I spend in New York.

Tell us about your place in Hawaii.
Harvey: Well I’m a partner in a multimedia space over there. It’s basically a disco pleasure palace.
It’s called Thirty Nine Hotel because it’s on 39 Hotel Street, Honolulu, Oahu Hawaii. It’s wonderful there.
It’s a really yin and yang, ya see. It’s a big, sad, lonely, drugs, drinks, disgusting, exploited, overweight,
smelly little town in the middle of paradise. I try to go every month. We have a new artist on the first Friday of every month and I try to go DJ that. It’s called First Fridays. I’ll often play the following Saturday which is Double Joint Disco.

Have there been any “stand out” moments for you guys together over the years?
Harvey: I think hilarious things happen with us all the time. We spend most of the time together laughing. I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to say one. OK – for example yesterday we tried on buffalo skin robes. We went to see a Native American and tried on buffalo hide robes. It was just incredible
to have a whole buffalo skin around you. It’s just starting to get cold out here and you can basically be in the snow naked with one of those things around you and you’d be sweating. We were basically just trying the thing out. It weighs about 40 or 50 pounds. It’s an incredible thing. It’s not something you wear lightly or even take on lightly because it carries heavy voodoo. It’s a special Native American artifact in a way. That’s just one epic thing that just happened to us and something happens every day.

Is there any advice you’d suggest to kids just starting out with their bands or who find themselves in music somehow?
Harvey: It’s totally worth being a musician even if you’re an out of work, broke bar musician. It’s totally worth the trip because you can always save your life with your own music. You can also save someone else’s life with the music. I’d advise them to go out and buy the Map Of Africa album, and copy it or something [both break out in roaring laughter]. Get inspired and see what happens. The path of a musician is an honorable one. I’d advise anyone that’s considering it to sort of do it, you know. You can be a musician and be
in a band and be cool! And that counts for a hell of a lot.
Thom: I say do it in your spare time. Save the whales. Make music on the weekends!
Harvey: Yeah, get a job in the city, make a fucking fortune, buy yourself a nightclub, and save some whales.
Thom: Yeah save the whales. That’s my answer to that question.