THE SOUND OF NETTLE

Jace Clayton won’t admit it, but he likes to shake people up. With his two current projects, as DJ/Rupture and as part of the avant-garde trio Nettle, he wants to push “the elastic edges of what’s possible for DJs,” and with them, our expectations of what experimental music should sound like. DJ Rupture is hip hop, dancehall, reggae, the sounds of street music and the grime of urban beats. Nettle brews an eclectic mix of Middle Eastern and European instruments, noises, feedback, and samples, producing what Clayton calls “wrecked chamber music.” They are musical alchemists. As part of the Street Music Arabe festival that reached London in October of 2004, Clayton performed under both names along with the Lebanese rapper/producer Clotaire K and Nas El Ghiwane, the cult Moroccan folk band.

What these artists all have in common is an interest in “roots” music: the point where folk, classical, and popular meet. Clayton found that point when he first heard the driving rhythms of Morocco’s spiritual Gnawa musicians on a Boston college radio station. He started looking into the traditions and philosophies behind North African and Middle Eastern music, and what he found most compelling was Taqasim , the traditional art of improvisation that stresses thematic exploration above classical restraint. He explains, “With Nettle, I wanted to do this organic whole…and I kept thinking of this idea of Taqasim  composition. I was really interested in a band that makes music in the moment, trying to generate as many sounds as possible right then and there…”

With that in mind, Clayton arrived at the idea of incorporating Taqasim with hip hop. It’s an obscure arrangement, but he has no trouble making a convincing argument for it: Since it was born on the streets of the Bronx in the 1970’s, hip hop has always been about its elements. Pioneering DJs like Afrika Bambaataa started by mixing together every available genre to produce driving, energetic beats and loops and to compose what was essentially a new urban folk music. It took into account not only the music but the reaction of the crowd, the rhythms of live MCs and the movement of breakdancers: all improvising, communicating, collaborating. The hip hop movement was about the entire experience of creating the music, and it was to define the sound of the streets and of the black inner-city struggle. A world away, in North Africa and the Middle East, the same ideas have been in practice for centuries in the tradition of Taqasim. Performers engage each other in conversations through their music, reacting to one another and provoking new reactions all the time. With compositions based on myth and popular history, the audience has their role in anticipating and interpreting the exchanges. Every performance takes on unique and fluid characteristics based on the mood of the musicians and the responses of their listeners. It is in this overlap of two very different cultures that Nettle resides.

As a touring band, they have only recently formed. The first Nettle release was just Clayton’s solo production work, but with a British Arts Council commission to turn Nettle into a live band, Clayton invited Abdelaziz Hak and Grey Filastine into the ensemble. Grey, his percussionist, is known internationally for encouraging political activism through sonic experimentation, and Abdelaziz is a Moroccan violinist and ‘oud player with a background in classical Arabic music. Together, the three are storytellers of a world that doesn’t exist, piecing together sounds from a multitude of cultures and traditions, ultimately creating something- while not always easy to listen to- at least exciting and evocative. Considering the name of the first album, Bin Scrape Laden,  (prophetically released in February of 2001) and the inclusion of the renegade Filastine, and it would seem impossible for the band to avoid having a strong political agenda.  Clayton responds, “I think, in a funny way, all the political aspects are almost secondary. But it certainly is political music and some people said the first Nettle album was quite political even though there’s no vocals or anything like that. It just had certain shifts and textures and the grittiness to it…I think the forming of that space, there is something political about that. Taking three people from very disparate backgrounds and doing something collaborative.” 

It should be clear by now that Clayton is a rare type of performer, one who writes in earnest based on a very specific and assured approach- more than just an aesthetic goal, it is an attitude that colours the way he thinks and talks about music. He includes, as part of his press releases, his essay Feedback Loop that outlines his opinions on contemporary DJing and dance music. In it he explains “Nettle originated in my fascination with the concept of an album heavily influenced by Middle Eastern ideas, but not necessarily at the audible level.” He also mentions at various points “diasporic breakbeats,” “polydirectional influences,” “idiosyncratic unity,” and “desegregationism.” It sounds intimidating, but it gives you a good idea, before you even hear his music, of the level of intensity he’s aiming for. Rupture is not a DJ for the mindless clubber. Nettle is certainly not a band for those curious about fusion or interested in an introduction to East/West musical dialogues. What emerges from them is often more like performance art than mere performance. Their tracks include not only an extremely eclectic mix of music, but a barrage of noises: scraping metal, organic shuffles, abstract loops, scraps of dialogue, samples from old vinyl- almost anything Clayton can get his hands on and manipulate. The sound is harsh and uneasy, a result Clayton may not have intended, but one that he appreciates: “The way in which it was…twisting things around people did find to be almost shocking…That’s a good thing. Those side effects are welcome.”

There is certainly an unsettling surrealism to the sound of Nettle. The tracks often feature sparse percussion with no melody. A track might begin with a standard Middle Eastern drum beat, then quickly disintegrate into the chaos of an acoustic train wreck at the speed of drum n’ bass. The sound is sometimes disturbing in its alien-ness, but it is also playful. While maintaining the sincerity of cutting edge artists, the trio still manages to sound like they’re exploring along with their audience; as surprised by the sounds they produce as we are. “We’re trying to work towards this space where we can feel equally comfortable contributing and critiquing and building something,” Clayton explains, and what they’re building is more of an environment than a simple performance.

The fact that Clayton has a genuine respect for Middle Eastern music means he’s always weary of falling into the dreaded World Music genre. “World music,” he writes in Feedback Loop, “is foreign music with the distinctive features rubbed off…the exotic but never the extreme.” Clayton certainly wants to take his work to its extremes, but in doing so he comes up against the formidable challenge that all experimental musicians must face: Be too avant-garde and you risk losing your potential audience entirely. Play it safe, and there will be little to distinguish you from the leeches of the World Music swamp. Nettle, to their credit,  have chosen not to play it safe. As a result, they now find themselves balancing on a thin edge, close to obscurity but maintaining a cult following.

© Saeed Taji Farouky 2006

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