Whether it be as a club or a label, Metalheadz has done more than most to advance the cause of contemporary music this decade. Core members like Goldie, Fabio and Grooverider can all trace their roots back to the 'ardcore scene of many years back, but it was with drum'n'bass (and in the way it seeped out from the underground) that they really made their mark. When they first set up camp in the Blue Note club in London a few years back, proof positive that they had arrived in the mainstream (whether they liked it or not) was a guest list that included David Bowie, Tricky, Malcolm McLaren - not forgetting assorted members of Duran Duran. Now that's class.
It was with their record label that they made their real contribution, though, (ignoring the sort of stuff that Goldie gets up to), where there was a real depth to their sound, as evidenced by Doc Scott's Here Comes The Drums, and Psychosis by Peshay. Real name Paul Pesce (he's half-Italian), Peshay got his first real break, and a dramatic one at that, at one of the now legendary Genesis dance events at Roller Express. Flexing his hardcore record collection, he released The Too Dope EP and then linked up with LTJ Bukem for 19.5, before going on to almost single-handedly invent the drum'n'bass genre (alongside Goldie) with his work for Metalheadz.
Also an in-demand producer and remixer (for the likes of DJ Shadow and Courtney Pine), Peshay is credited as the main driving force behind the "liquid funk" sub-movement, a sound which has yet to attain The Best Liquid Funk Album In The World . . . Ever status, but which can't be that far off it. With a richer musical background than most - at the age of 11, he was buying Miles Davis, Kraftwerk and Herbie Hancock albums - he was well primed for the electronic/hip-hop explosion in the 1980s. His real love, though, is jazz and he's on a bit of a mission at the moment to create a new fusion sound - something that might help people forget all about acid jazz.
If you get your head around a "John Coltrane meets The Orb" comparison, then you might be ready to see Peshay's point that drum'n'bass is the "new jazz". "The main inspiration behind all of my music is jazz," he says, "so with this album I've tried to do something that has the different flavours of jazz and anything else that's meant anything to me and to my sound. If anything, it's about every kind of music that's ever moved me."
His new album, Truly, is a juddering mix of drum'n'bass, funk and techno with the jazz sound holding everything together. A very fresh take on the whole breaks approach, away from the more contemporary sounds, there's some distinctly Chick Corea-type stuff going on here. There's a bit of Garage thrown in, too, as when Kim Mazelle pops up on one song, and a tune like 2.37 wouldn't be out of place on a Blue Note album. Ex-Galliano singer Valerie St Etienne also puts in an appearance, on the ambient and soulful Summer In The City. Very much the standout track on the album, Peshay says that "it's the kind of thing I could imagine myself hearing on a hot day". It's all very funky, jazzy and spacey and is a prime candidate to get cross-over radio play all over the shop, appealing as it does to many different musical tastes.
If nothing else, though, Truly will help move drum'n'bass along, the same way Photex did (and does) with his own idiosyncratic take on the sound. Not as commercial as early Goldie records, it'll probably be a club hit before anything else, but could well end up as one of those surprise hits, just like the man he's always being compared to: Roni Size. New forms, indeed.
Truly by Peshay is on the Universal label.
