CLASSIC ALBUM
Steve Bug
The Other Day
Poker Flat Recordings, 2000
Words by Roy Spencer
© Robert Schlesinger
Steve Bugg’s third album, was definitely a tale of two cities. Work began in Hamburg, where he was living at the time, before he took the plunge and relocated to the dark lights of Berlin.
“Tracks like Loverboy and Soulin’ Deep were done before the move,” he says. “They have more of that deep house Hamburg kinda vibe. But, when I got to Berlin, I got more into being techy and minimal and much more experimental.”
Digging deep into the underground scenes of the German capital, Bug’s music started to soak up a new kind of atmosphere.
“Before, I was making this classic, soulful and jazzy stuff,” he says. “Hamburg was clean, and had space – I lived near a park! And there were old people walking around [laughs].
“But, if you looked at Berlin at the time, in the mid-’90s, you had houses that were grey and dark, with bullet holes in the walls. It could be depressing. Especially in the winter. And that vibe influenced the sound of the album.”
Hunkering down with his samplers and record collection, Bug started to micro-chop loops, and rework riffs across his keyboards. And, fresh to the city, he didn’t have the luxury of contacts to call on, or vocalists to collaborate with. So, he built his tracks from snippets of samples, and vocals recorded off the TV.
“There was no internet,” he says. “It was very difficult to find someone to do vocals for you, back then. For tracks like Cocaine, I taped stuff from documentaries. It seemed like a very good, and free, source for samples.”
This economic approach ran across the album, with tracks being pruned, and relying on a few strong and simple ideas, which made it all the better.
“I was looking for something hypnotising, in a way,” he says. “Some way to keep you in the track. With a lot of music, so many things get built up so the stories are too big. It’s good to strip things back. That approach was influenced by the city. Just by being here.”