Arguably, your perception of any record is influenced by where you were in your life when you first heard it/bought it and thus, it can be difficult to unpick its musical merits from your nostalgia. Some records are pinned, like butterflies to a board, to circumstance – where our heart was at during that particular time, geography, the state of our wallets, the influence of our peers, which way the wind was blowing, etc, etc. In 1985, when Dif Juz’s third studio album, ‘Extractions’ was released, I may have been at college but getting a formal education was the last thing on my mind. My obsessions were love and music; I just happened to be showing my face in the dusty, echoey halls of an academic institution five days a week, my Sociology books, barely touched.
Although released in July of that year, I’ve always associated ‘Extractions’ with the bluster of Autumn, with the bending of trees, wind rippling through long grass in waves, with the mesmeric unraveling of colossal cloud fronts, the sun scything its way through them after a storm. That association is undoubtedly partially down to the poetic track titles here, ‘Crosswinds,’ ‘Echo Wreck,’ ‘Silver Passage’ and particularly, ‘Two Fine Days (And A Thunderstorm)’ but equally to the evocative, natural spirit of the music itself, which has always suggested (to me, at least), the restlessness of the seasons, the unsettled sea.
Arguably, what we have here is a modern jazz record, albeit one filtered through the prisms of Public Imagine Limited and well, Cocteau Twins, whose Robin Guthrie served as the album’s producer.
“I don’t think Dif Juz sounded too much like me but was the first time I’d worked with them and I was in complete awe of them. Looking back, I do cringe a bit.” – Robin Guthrie
In common with jazz, time signatures ebb and flow, the drums often slip on and off beat to dizzying effect, there’s even occasional (beautiful) alto sax but in Guthrie’s hands, despite his protestations, it’s unquestionably a mid-’80s 4AD release, translucent, bordering celestial.
‘Extractions’ was recorded over two weeks in April, 1985, at Palladium Studios in Edinburgh, obviously a favourite of not only Guthrie (Cocteau Twins recorded much of their early work there) but other 4AD notables – Pale Saints, Colourbox, This Mortal Coil, The Breeders, etc. The band is undeniably taut, honed by frequent jamming, their arrangements are often complex, songs multi-stanza and Guthrie, alongside sound engineer, Keith Mitchell, do a creditable job of not only capturing a band firing on all cylinders but augmenting their music with sensitive, constructive production.
Though predominantly instrumental, the much-cited album highlight for most 4AD fans is the singular vocal track, ‘Love Insane,’ a wistful piano/sax motif written by a recently heart-broken drummer/saxophonist, Richard (Richie) Thomas. According to Martin Aston’s excellent biography of 4AD, ‘Facing The Other Way,’ Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser, then Guthrie’s partner, visited the studio during recording and agreed to sing on the track.
“I think Liz agreed to cheer me up. She said, ‘Do you think I’ll do it justice, do you really want me to sing?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Give it a shot!’ She used her voice as an instrument anyway. But we didn’t ask Liz because we were trying to sell more records.” – Richie Thomas
It’s interesting that Dif Juz were, according to Aston’s book, keen not to be “typecast as a 4AD band.” Prior to recording ‘Extractions,’ they’d already jumped ship once, to Red Flame, for their ill-fated ‘Who Says So?’ mini-album in 1983. Thomas tells Aston, “We didn’t want to get pigeon-holed but equally Ivo (Watts-Russell) didn’t show us a great deal of encouragement to record again – or even say he really liked us.” And yet, the involvement of both Guthrie and Fraser couldn’t have been lost on the band – in the mid ’80s, 4AD buffs like myself were buying everything on the label, often without so much as hearing a note beforehand, so confident were we in Ivo’s taste. A year prior to the release of ‘Extractions,’ Dif Juz supported Cocteau Twins on a full UK tour which concluded at London’s 2500 capacity Royal Festival Hall (with Felt). I’d hazard that, without the 4AD connection, the band would’ve been consigned to much smaller stages and most likely dwindled into obscurity (which, of course, soon after, they did).
I should mention that ‘Extractions’ does not sound like a Cocteau Twins record but merely, as it is, a record produced by Robin Guthrie with guest vocals by Elizabeth Fraser on one song. In an in-depth, interview with Dif Juz bass player, Gary Bromley on radiobombast in 2013, he’s clear that the ‘Extractions’ sound was ostensibly already in place before Guthrie made his entrance and that the band had, for instance, always used guitar FX pedals. This is very much an album by the brothers, Alan and David Curtis, Richard (Richie) Thomas and Gary Bromley, for its their playing and their arrangements that weave and soar, swift-like, these fifty six minutes, a welcome antidote to the three chord, post-punk indie thrash of the time. Arguably, Dif Juz were a little too clever to be more popular in an environment where The Jesus & Mary Chain (who Thomas later moonlighted for) were the Emperor’s New Clothes? As an indie-kid in the mid-’80s, both served their purpose of course (my first ever band took its inspiration from Dif Juz, Felt and The Durutti Column) but as time has passed, it’s Dif Juz’s records that I’ve continued to lose myself in, this maze of intricate passages and ornate courtyards.
Though the band’s origins in punk and post-punk are perhaps most evident in Bromley’s Jah Wobble-esque anchoring basslines (‘Marooned’ is the sleeker, less obnoxious cousin of PiL’s ‘Poptones’), compared with their earlier work, the Curtis’ brothers interweaving guitars regularly advance to centre-stage, understandable perhaps, given that this is a record produced by a guitarist, himself a genius of multilayered fretwork, of space, dynamic and ambience. That said, for me, Richard Thomas is what really sets Dif Juz aside from their contemporaries, bar perhaps the Guthrie-produced, Felt, with whom Thomas also guested on the sublime, ‘The Final Resting Of The Ark.’ Thomas’ drumming, ever imaginative, stays clear away from the traps of rock and roll, punctuating rather than back-beating the rest of the band. Likewise, his evocative use of alto saxophone has a pastoral sensitivity that even I, a self-professed hater of the instrument, can find joy in.
Even so, for all its splendour (and I can only speak from preference), Dif Juz’s peak comes not from ‘Extractions’ but in the shape of their swansong, ‘No Motion,’ for the 1987, virtually perfect 4AD compilation album, ‘Lonely Is An Eyesore.’ Recorded at 4AD’s other most-favoured studio, Blackwing, again with Guthrie at the helm, it’s somehow more passionate and fully-formed than anything on ‘Extractions.’ It’s also Ivo’s favourite Dif Juz track : “finally they captured themselves,” he says in the Martin Aston book and although, they appear torturously bored by having to mime through this video, I have taken more notes from it than from any Sociology book.
Remarkably, again with Guthrie at the controls, Dif Juz teamed up with Lee Scratch Perry but those (five track) sessions, although funded by 4AD, were dismissed by Ivo and consigned to the archive, perhaps never to be released?
“It didn’t fit the 4AD doctrine, which was much artier, prettier music, with lilies on the artwork, beautiful objects, quite precious. If Lee hadn’t been singing on it, I’m sure the session would have been released.” – Richie Thomas (Facing The Other Way : The Story Of 4AD)
The Curtis brothers and Richie Thomas both contributed to This Mortal Coil’s second album, ‘Filigree And Shadow’ (4AD, 1986), whilst Thomas would appear that year on the empyreal Cocteau Twins/Harold Budd collaboration, ‘The Moon And The Melodies,’ playing drums and saxophone. He and Dave Curtis contributed to The Wolfgang Press album, ‘Funky Little Demons’ (4AD, 1995). Thomas also played with Butterfly Child, live with A.R. Kane and The Jesus & Mary Chain, on Ivo Watts-Russell’s The Hope Blister studio project and most recently with Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde in Lost Horizons.
In the 2013 radiobombast interview, Gary Bromley reports that both Curtis brothers have “disappeared.” Some people have already said all they need to say.
Arcane Delights 