March 2009
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Space Kittens made a couple of stomping remixes of the single Stay With Me Tonight that was released by Virgin Records in early 1996 to continue to promote the Greatest Hits album released some months earlier. I got hold of Sam Tierney from the now defunct group to learn more about his work for and interest in The Human League. |
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Interview by Niels Kolling |
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First a little background. How did you become involved in the music
business?
Our first EP was played
by Radio 1's Pete Tong and in his A&R role for FFFR he asked us to remix
'By Your Side' by Jimmy Somerville. We quickly became known in the music
industry and did music production work for labels like XL, London and
Perfecto.
What was your prior knowledge of the bands history? Would you label
yourself a fan?
They were a great band to be into at the time because as well as all the
great singles that were hitting the charts, you also had an amazing back
catalogue of the darker more avant garde synthesizer stuff on Travelogue
and Reproduction. I used to go round other kids houses just so I could
listen to tunes like 'Empire State Human' and 'Being Boiled'.
How did it come about that you were hired to remix Stay With Me
Tonight?
We were asked to do a dub too, most remixers would just mute the vocals
and record that, but we were eager to impress and the deadline was a week
away, so we constructed a whole new, darker tranced out groove based
around a time-stretched sample of the girls' backing vocals.
No, both mixes we did were used on the release.
Do you have any idea about the track’s origin? Like if it was part of the recording sessions for the 1995 album Octopus, but was left out, since it doesn’t really sound like the rest of that album?
At the time I thought it might be a single from a new album, but then when
I saw it on the Greatest Hits album that was released around the same time
I |
realised it was probably a one-off.
If you could pick any Human league song, which one would you like the
most to remix?
The band has admitted not being great live in the 80s, but has evolved
into an amazing live band through the last 10 years and put on a really
good show. Have you experienced a Human League concert? And if you have,
when was it and what was your impression?
You actually sort of share label with The Human League, since Hooj
Choons released some of your output in the 90s and recently relaunched the
label with a unique single release of The Things That Dreams Are Made Of.
A label with impeccable taste?
For the single, maybe The Dignity of Labour, I've been listening to that
again recently.
What are the future plans for Sam Tierney?
I'm starting a new record label called Music For The People and I plan to put out some funky stuff on 7" this year. |