After my last post, there was a comment left which queried the authenticity of the white Bjango vinyl. As a result, I contacted Jon Fugler of Fluke/The Lucky Monkeys, asking if he could confirm its validity. He did that, and more. It turns out that the female vocals are by none other than Björk!
\r\nSo, without further ado, here’s the history of the track Bjango.
\r\n\r\n\r\nWell, story, long, where to begin…
\r\nWe were at Real World Studios for their recording week, ’95 I think, where all the artists from Womad get together and record, as everyone is in the country from far flung places and RW has loads of space to work it makes a lot of sense.
\r\nAnyway, not that productive for us but we did get this amazing piece by a berimbau recorded, weird instrument, sounds like Rez on a stick.
\r\nWe were asked to do a mix for Björk the following year, track was Hyperballad, OLI wanted something big, progressive and Fluke like, unsurprisingly, so we duly delivered, using the berimbau from RealWorld. Björk wasn’t so convinced by our mix, so we did another one, halftime, which she loved and was duly used, this is one of my favorite mixes we did.
\r\nSo, what to do with the original, we chatted and decided there would be no harm in releasing a cheeky white label of say 1000 copies and with the tacit agreement of OLI this is what we did, this is what I think you have, just can’t remember the colour. Well, 1000 quickly became 3000 and we were then approached by Hi-Life for a release, which we did, with pleasure, although still signed to Circa. Everyone was so much more relaxed in the 90′s….
\r\nAs for Björk……. well, there was a comedy meeting at an MTV party, small ballistic Icelandic diva told me in no uncertain terms that all we had to do “was fucking ask”!
\r\nThere you go, it was sort of “collaborative” just not everyone knew they were collaborating.
\r\n