Take That and Shove It (2000)Four track audio CDR with inkjet printed paper sleeve

The title is a paraphrase on Take Thatʼs debut album “Take That & Party” (1992). Although the second Hard Shoulder “release”, chronologically speaking, the music was created earlier but not finished.

The real problem track was “Cathedral” which was still not finished as recorded, but I decided to draw a line under it in order to move on. This was part of my New Order period where Hard Shoulder was unnamed and unexplained.

The name Hard Shoulder came out of a combination of ideas. The word “hard” reflects the industrial influence in the music, but a hard shoulder is where you end up when you break down, so it was an intentionally self-deprecating, and hopefully enigmatic name.These four tracks were created almost entirely with a Yamaha DJX keyboard and an Apple PowerMac 4400 on which I could up to record eight stereo tracks with a program called (reference missing). “Teach Yourself” also includes some samples from movies. This is directly influenced by Cabaret Voltaire, a prominent part of my formative years. A memorable example of theirs is “Yashar” (1983) “The 70 billion people of Earth - Where are they hiding?”, although “Seconds Too Late” (1980) is about as perfect a blending of audio styles as I can think of.

Having spent most of the 1990ʼs running a business, I completely missed out on the rave scene and only really got into dance music when it was all over. I used to buy up cut-price multi-CD collections from Woolworthʼs in Rotherham, and this easily explains my need to make some dance music.

The two-track Hard Shoulder CD “Chaos” (2000) was released earlier but is music that was created later than this CD, and itʼs apparent. You can clearly hear my move away from straight dance music in “Chaos” although I am still using some very familiar motifs. “Take That and Shove It” is much more mainstream dance influenced.

The Yamaha DJX was one of the first “instant music” keyboards and I still have mine. Along with the Korg Electribes, I still think it is one of the best pieces of music hardware I have ever owned.

Track two “Downtime” still sounds good to me, although the recording of all of them is pretty mediocre. Itʼs kind of slow-tempo dance-minimalism.Track three “Cathedral” is one of those tracks where you know youʼve got something good but no idea how to round it of into a finished piece of music. Eventually I decided to just record the two sequences that I had composed and leave it hanging in a manner reminiscent of Michael Nymanʼs movie scores, although it was not that cleverly informed. Maybe Iʼll develop it more one day.

Track four “Take That” is, to my ears, by far the best and still sounds good, although Iʼd like to re-record it and do something about those weedy drums. This was kind of a cross-over track where I started to get into the lengthy development of minimalism. Whilst I cannot claim to be from the same stable as Glass, Nyman and Reich, I was certainly influenced by them, and the restrained development marks Hard Shoulderʼs movement from dance music to industrial minimalism.

Thematically, it was heavily influenced by the fact that, at the time, I was taking Prozac as medication for stress-related depression, hence the graphic, and having seen the self- obsessed and autobigraphical work of people like Tracey Emin, I thought I needed to do something personal. Itʼs enlightening to acknowledge the direct influence of such work and it definitely added something to my repertoire.

Prozac didnʼt really work for me but Effexor (aka Venlafaxine) did, and I felt better the first day I took them, although it made me nauseous every morning. I took Effexor for 13 months and came off it with no side-effects.According to Wikipedia (sic).“A study conducted in Finland followed more than 15,000 patients for 3.4 years. Venlafaxine [effexor] increased suicide risk 1.6-fold (statistically significant), as compared to no treatment. At the same time,fluoxetine (Prozac) halved the suicide risk.”I think I got off lightly.

The title “Teach Yourself” is a contraction of “Teach Yourself Depression”, a mock on the Teach Yourself books. “Downtime” is also a play on the depression theme. However, whilst I never thought that this was was in any way a therapy, I did find the process of identifying a work around a theme to be very productive.I consider later Hard Shoulder music to be much more artistically successful, although probably less accessible.The original audio recordings are available online.http://soundcloud.com/hardshoulder/sets/take-that-and-shove-it-2000

Richard Bolam, September 2012http://richardbolamat50.wordpress.com