Jesse Rae - Global 95

  • A reissue that highlights the Scottish funk artist's mid-'90s detour into techno.
  • Share
  • Jesse Rae's career in the mid-'90s was at a low ebb. The funk musician, who had moved back to Scotland after more than a decade in the States, was facing bankruptcy and irrelevancy. His financial difficulties arose in part from the substantial sums he'd sunk into the videos he'd made for his debut LP, The Thistle, which improbably fused funk and R&B jams with odes to "being your own funky self" in a Scottish accent. (The sleeve shows Rae in an archaic tartan battle outfit he still wears—whether at gigs, interviews or polling stations—to this day.) In the '80s, he'd worked with some of funk's most revered musicians, including Bernie Worrell and Roger Troutman. The prospect of doing so again must have seemed remote when, a decade on, he was living in a farmhouse in the Scottish Borders. But Rae was both resourceful and well connected, in more ways than one. His second LP, Compression, was apparently the first album to use ISDN, or digital telephone lines, through which he managed to set up a studio in his garden and collaborate remotely with musicians in London, New York and Johannesburg. The technology had a surprising impact on Rae's work, as shown by Global 95, which takes two tracks from that LP. The A-side's rich synth lines echo Detroit techno. The use of sampled and sung vocals—a mix of Scots and South African chant—has a plunderphonics feel. The resonant bass deep in the mix is subtle and supple. We can trace this change to the dub trio Tackhead, whose presence in Rae's virtual studio transformed his sound. The downtempo "Umhlaba Jikelele" is even better. A soothing synth tone hums over male vocal harmonies, another rubbery bassline, radio-style ad-libs and springy one-shots. It's essentially an Orb-like take on ambient techno, which is the last thing you might expect of a man who once strummed his sword like a guitar on top of Brooklyn Bridge.
  • Tracklist
      A Umhlaba Jikelele B Deil's Awa Wi Excisemen
RA