B-Side the Leeside: Bass Odyssey's '90s drum 'n' bass classics
Bass Odyssey: Alan O'Keeffe, Chris O’Driscoll and Graham Finn.
One morning in the summer of 1999, Graham Finn woke up in the childhood bedroom of rapper LL Cool J, in Queens, New York. A question flashed through his mind: how did I get here?
“LL Cool J had kept the house he grew up in,” says Cork-born Finn from his home in Green County in Upstate New York. “There was a studio in the basement. If he was working with an artist he would put them up there for the week. I slept in his childhood bed. It was very surreal.”
As one third of electro pioneers Bass Odyssey, Finn is a central figure in one of the most fascinating chapters in Leeside music. Blending break beats, the Bristol trip hop sound and an experimental spirit that was uniquely Cork, the trio had one foot in the future. But were also an instant time-capsule for the drum and bass scene that had recently made landfall in Cork.
Drum and bass swept through the music world in the mid-Nineties, when stars such as Fabio and Grooverider were frequent headliners, and Comet Records on Washington Street heaved with “white label” 12 inches.
Bass Odyssey’s music created reverberations that travelled all the way to New York. It was there I Need Love rapper LL Cool J tapped them up to contribute to the soundtrack to 1999 guilty pleasure shark movie Deep Blue Sea (in which he was starring). You may remember it as the one where Samuel L Jackson is eaten by a CGI Jaws 20 minutes in.
Remote Control Soul had already become a headphones favourite back home. And now here it was, literally lit up in Hollywood lights and featuring both on the Deep Blue Sea soundtrack and in the film itself (playing in the background as LL Cool J’s character bonds with his parrot). This is the story of that tune – how it came to be and its impact on Irish clubbing culture.
Finn, originally from Ballyvolane in Cork, had played guitar in indie band Emperor of Ice Cream. Bass Odyssey began when Finn struck up a writing partnership with producer and DJ Alan O’Keeffe, from Pouladuff Road. Their friendship went back to their school days at Coláiste Chríost Rí (Finn’s family having made the fateful journey from the Northside to the Southside). This was the mid-Nineties, by which time Cork music was evolving.
“Corkchester”, as the UK music press dubbed it, was dead. But something new was filling the void. With Sir Henry’s on South Main Street and Greg Dowling and Shane Johnson’s Sweat night, in particular, at the epicentre of Irish electronic music, Cork was already plugged into global club culture. And now a new music was coming out of London: drum and bass. This was characterised by fast breakbeats and heavy bass and sub-bass lines. Around Cork, it quickly become an obsession for many former indie-heads.
“I was buying a lot of drum and bass, atmospheric jazz and jungle stuff,” recalls O’Keeffe, who today works in set production in New York on shows such as The Affair and Narcos. “I was DJing at a cafe on Washington Street Thursday and Fridays. And I would often be in the Bróg [a bar on Oliver Plunkett Street], where all the Emperor lads hung out.”
Finn and O’Keeffe started DJing together around town, and came to the attention of local promoter and mover/shaker Joe Kelly. “Joe said why don’t you do something in the back room in the Half Moon,” says O’Keeffe. “It was a night called Cabaret Deluxe.”
“I was only supposed to be a one off soundsystem,” recalls. Finn. “It all came out of Joe Kelly and that gig at the Half Moon Club.”
The Half Moon show in 1996 brought Bass Odyssey to the attention of Donal Scannell, Brian Spollen and Ray O’Donoghue, who had worked with U2 on their Kitchen nightclub in Dublin and were in the process of launching the Quadraphonic drum and bass label. Along the way, the promoters also struck up an unlikely association with David Bowie, who had become obsessed with drum and bass and would regularly attend Quadraphonic gigs in Dublin. But now here was something new to dazzle them: an O’Keeffe and Finn composition called Twilight.
“If the idea to start the label didn't come from hearing the Twilight track it was definitely accelerated by it,” recalls Scannell. “Having a label was just what drum and bass people did. It was the culture, so this track coming into our orbit was a 'wow this is real' moment and it led to great things for everyone. SXSW and shows in New York and beyond plus their music ending up in LL Cool J’s Deep Blue Sea.”
Drum and bass was still relatively niche. Yet for those in the thick of it, it seemed as if they were taking on the world. “It felt huge when you were in it but it was very underground,” continues Scannell. “All of the world's top DJs came and played here but the biggest gigs were for about 800 people. It never crossed over, nor did it ever try to. Bass Odyssey playing the Cork Opera House was one of the biggest Irish drum and bass gigs ever.
While Bowie was showing up at other Quadraphonic events, it was a different pioneer who impressed Bass Odyssey. "I have to mention that Alan's hero was Fabio. Meeting him was bigger than Bowie. One of the Quadraphonic catchphrases was a line Alan said to him that we repeated ad infinitum - ‘I Love You Fabio’.”
The core duo of Finn and O’Keeffe expanded to a trio as they brought in Chris O’Driscoll, aka MC Strict, as frontman. “We knew it was going to be a hit and planned it that way,” says Scannell of Remote Control Soul. “You have to remember that drum and bass is speeded up hip-hop so there was such strong links between them. I think we all realised that for Bass Odyssey to be bigger they needed songs so they brought in Chris/Mc Strict and he added a whole new dimension.
"He would have already been MCing at their live gigs so having him on record was going to happen anyway. But we knew that radio wouldn't happen with instrumentals. We didn't really see it a hip-hop track, though – we just saw it as Bass Odyssey.”
“Remote Control Soul was originally recorded in 1998 at Spector Studios - which no longer exists – in Cork,” says Finn. “We basically lived in that place. The song happened by accident when I loaded the wrong sampler patch on a song and it played back the samples at the wrong speed. It sounded really cool, so I refined it and it became the song we now know as Remote Control Soul. MC Strict did an incredible job with the lyrics, this was his first real chance to shine on a Bass Odyssey record and he nailed it! Malvina McCarthy sang a stunning vocal for the chorus.”
Remote Control Soul generated huge airplay and is a fitting legacy for the group, who drifted apart in the early 2000s owing to “creative differences” after a farewell gig in the Lobby, Cork (“Not everyone was comfortable with the direction it was going in,” says Finn). The song had by then come to the attention of LL Cool J, via Cork-born, New York-based producer and engineer John O’Mahony.
“I was on vacation in Spain and I got a call,” recalls Finn. “They said, ‘what are you doing?’. I was like, ‘I’m in Spain’. And they said, ‘well you’re in New York next week’. Alan was supposed to come but he had broken his leg.”
And with that he was off to meet LL Cool J (and stay in his childhood home). “Bass Odyssey's energy, enthusiasm and wit was what set them apart,” says Donal Scannell. “They were infectious and unforgettable. They were the most fun people you'll ever meet. Being around them was sheer joy. No one who ever met them in full flight will ever forget that experience so we never thought about genres or anything like that with them. They were Bass Odyssey and that was that. I hope this article kicks off a comeback. Who wouldn't want to go to a Bass Odyssey gig?”
- works in New York managing a number of bars. He has also played and recorded with Depeche Mode’s David Gahan. He recently finished an album with former Rollerskate Skinny / August Wells frontman Ken Griffin, as The High Leaves; and his old Cork band, Emperor of Ice Cream, have been rereleasing their music.
- is involved in set production in New York, and has worked on shows such as The Affair and Narcos. He has recently started producing drum and bass tracks again.
- went on to front rap-rock crossover group Arm the Elderly.
