Psyence Fiction – UNKLE – released on Mo Wax records August 24, 1998
Released back in 1998, Psyence Fiction was the debut release from UNKLE.
Or was it? 🤔
There’s actually quite a lot of debate about whether or not this album is really an UNKLE album or just another DJ Shadow album.
Ask DJ Shadow himself and you’ll likely get a gruff response. Ask James Lavelle and you’re likely to get a more extravagant answer, insisting that it was far more of a collaborative effort than is commonly accepted.
Regardless, the pair parted ways not long after this album’s release citing creative differences. Or perhaps more accurately, notable differences in creativity.
DJ Shadow – producer, turntablist and beatmaker.
James Lavelle – label founder, ringmaster and tastemaker.
Two very different sets of skills, to be fair, from two men with dramatically different personalities.
For the record, I believe both men contributed equally from a creative standpoint, but it’s clear that Shadow did all of the actual work.
Yes, James Lavelle had a clear vision, helping to bring more of a songwriting approach to the table, but take away the vocals and guitars and essentially what you have is Entroducing Part 2.
Shadow Play
This is evident from the get-go with the opener Guns Blazing (Drums Of Death Part 1). It features Kool G Rap on vocals, but the drums and production are 100% pure Shadow, reminiscent of tracks like Mutal Slump.
This is followed by UNKLE Main Theme, a short instrumental piece showcasing Shadow’s scratching skills, as though we needed any reminder.
The first real quality track on this album is track three, Bloodstain. Moody guitars and layers of feedback help give the track some extra atmos but it’s the vocals from Alice Temple which make this one of the standout tracks on the album.
And, on this track, as indeed the album as a whole, Shadow’s the rhythmical lynchpin with that distinctive drum programming style of his, ambling along at a languid pace, playing catchup, drifting back again and occasionally stuttering into overdrive as if to say, “I’m awake, I’m awake!”
Unreal is a decent instrumental piece, but again it’s just more indie guitars played over Shadow beats.
(Depending on the version of the album you have, this tune is reprised again at the end, on the track Be There, essentially the same track but also featuring vocals from the Stone Roses’ Ian Brown.)
Track five, Lonely Soul, is one of the standouts of the album though it doesn’t half trigger my cognitive dissonance.
See, the whole point of UNKLE, from what I could tell, was on account of James Lavelle’s indie envy. Indie envy was a common affliction in 90s Britain.
While the rest of us waited for Brit Pop to finally just fuck off and die in a corner, British producers remained obsessed with having indie band guest vocalists on their tracks.
Results varied wildly.
Chemical Brothers were probably the worst offenders, culminating in the release of Setting Sun with Noel Gallagher the previous year. It was a hard thing to process that. Oasis were (are, and always will be) the enemy, the most useless overrated fucking band in history, and yet 97’s Setting Sun was a bit of a banger.
Very confusing.
The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony, which also came out in 97, is easily one of my most detested songs of all time. The repetitive string melody is so intensely irritating I walked out of a shop recently because it was playing. I couldn’t bear more than 20 seconds of it, put all my shit back on the shelf and walked out.
Just thinking of it now makes me want to chew glass. Argh! Get out of my head!
When I think of Richard Ashcroft, I think of that video of him walking down the street bumping into people and how much I wanted to smack him. 👊
I know it’s 26 years ago, I should let it go, but I won’t.
And yet, put a stuttering Shadow beat in the background and suddenly that makes all the difference, all sins forgiven.
I love this track – I shouldn’t and there’s a part of me that hates myself for loving it – but it’s also one of the highlights from this album.
I should mention the orchestration on this one also, up there with David Arnold and Craig Armstrong as some of the best use of live strings in a dance music record.
So yeah, kudos to Richard Ashcroft, but if you ever bump into me when I’m walking down the street you’re still getting a headbutt.
We’re at the midway point with track six, “Getting Ahead In The Lucrative Field Of Artist Management “, it’s not a song, just an ad for a board game or whatever that’s been slightly edited. I’m guessing James Lavelle found it hilarious at the time but who cares, moving on…
Track seven, Nursery Rhyme, more guitars and vocals, this time from Badly Draw Boy’s Damon Gough, which is about the only thing I know from the guy other than that track Once Around The Block which was always playing on telly when you staggered home late in the 90s.
(Ok good, the Verve’s been purged from my buffers now and I got Once Around The Block jangling around in there instead. Booby-doody-do-ba-da-da-booby-doo!)
So yeah, this one I’d actually forgotten about completely. Listening back there were vague blips of familiarity until halfway through when the main chorus bit comes in, that’s when recollection properly clicked. Ah yes, I remember this now.
It’s ok I guess, but I always thought it was filler, even at the time.
Which I guess is the issue I have with this album as a whole, really. It’s well produced, it has some brilliant moments, but the indie-meets-dance ship had already sailed (and imo sunk) by the time it came out as we all moved on to more interesting soundscapes.
Track eight, Celestial Annihilation, it’s an interesting instrumental piece this, but again even at the time of release it was showing its age. Given my love for electro I should probably give this more of a glowing review but, well, if you ever wondered what a Paul Hardcastle B-side with a string section would sound like, well wonder no more.
Completely unrelated, but the DX7 preset-sounding slap bass on this one always reminded me of the music from the Super Nintendo game Shadow Run and all the hours I wasted playing it in the early 90s. Anyone remember that game? Seriously none of yee… ah fuck it so, moving on…
The Knock (Drums Of Death Part 2) – again this one seems like a HUGE missed opportunity here. It’s Mike D from the Beastie Boys and DJ Shadow together on a track.
Now a Beasties / Shadow team-up should have been a slam dunk, except for the fact that the Beasties dropped Hello Nasty that same year which, imo, completely blows this album out of the water in terms of production and innovation.
Chaos is a nice sweet acoustic song, no beats, weird atmospherics. I can’t fault it as a piece of songwriting but again, like so much of this album, it just feels like filler.
But then we get to the main event – Rabbit In Your Headlights.
This is the track we all remember and with good reason, it’s transcendental.
It’s one of the best things DJ Shadow’s ever done and, far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best things Thom Yorke has ever done. (Might be drawing ire with that statement from fans but that’s because Radiohead is one of those bands I appreciate, yet never actively wanted to listen to.)
Yorke’s distinctive voice works so well on this track, especially when combined with that mournful Satie-esque piano progression. Then along comes that weird jazzy backbeat, slow at first, fading in slightly, then the bassline…
The components are all perfect in isolation, but in true Shadow style they don’t quite snap together, not yet at least, which makes the overall effect all the more unsettling.
And then at the halfway mark, when the beat changes – pure 100% saturated Shadow – the drums bringing that trademark crunchiness, the head starts nodding and then Yorke’s voice rips like thunder across the sky… “awaaaaaaayyyyyy!”
It’s as gut-wrenching as any Radiohead track yet as dope as anything ever released on Mo Wax.
A classic for all time.
And let’s all be honest with one another here and all admit to it right now. This is the only reason any of us bought this album when it first came out and it’s the one (and most likely only) track we keep coming back to.
It’s DJ Shadow at his peak with a post-OK Computer Thom Yorke – that’s a combo none of us saw coming but fuck me does it work, a masterpiece.
And, credit where credit’s due, it’s also a testament to James Lavelle’s talent (even if he did fuck all else on the album) for bringing people together and releasing the results.
The album ends with “Outro (Mandatory)”, something that could easily have been a leftover “Transmission” from Endtroducing, in fact, it more than likely was.
And it’s also the last UNKLE-related thing that Shadow done. No longer content with being the Mo Wax Wozniak, Shadow stepped into the light, releasing a further five albums, with his seventh album set to drop in October of this year.
The Middle Ground Between Light And Shadow
As you can no doubt tell, I have conflicting feelings about this album. It’s a (cliché trigger warning) mixed bag.
I love DJ Shadow and I love Mo Wax, but (with very few exceptions) I’ve never been a fan of the whole indie crossover thing.
Rock-wise I’ve always been more of a headbanger and Brit Pop was anathema to me. Besides, the album always felt like it had arrived a couple of years too late so most of the tracks on here were stillborn.
Rabbit In Your Headlights is what makes this album a classic, with Bloodstain and Lonely Soul also helping to elevate it further, and they’re the main reasons why we remember this album more fondly than we otherwise would do.
The follow-up, Never Never Land, is pretty much the same. I remember thinking it was ok at the time, but honestly the only track I can remember is Reign.
And that’s always been my issue with UNKLE.
Much of UNKLE’s output I find myself skipping, there’s a couple of tracks from each album I really like but the majority are forgettable.
Psyence Fiction was certainly an interesting experiment, one that spawned lots of follow-ups and its fair share of imitators, but, while listening back, I realised that whenever I did listen to these songs I was actually listening to the versions performed by Shadow on his live album In Tune And On Time.
I never really listened to it though from start to finish. I just took a couple of the songs I liked and burned them to CD. (As was the style at the time.)
The only track on this album I listened to incessantly is Rabbit In Your Headlights. It’s the main supporting pillar that continues to hold this album up and it’s the main reason why so many people consider this album a classic.
So if you see this in a record shop it’s still worth buying a copy for that track alone.