March 18–25, 1999

music

Mad About the Noise

DJ Andrea Parker puts sounds before songs.

By a.d. amorosi

		Dark and Lovely: British DJ Andrea Parker took cues from Steve Reich and Philip Glass.

Andrea Parker may be a girl in a DJ world filled with boys, but she isn't intimidated. Nor is she concerned that her training as a cellist makes her an anomaly in that world. Why should she care? She makes her ambient-horror-electro Muzak for herself, using dark strings and bone-rattling bass lines.

Since 1993, she's been remixing, spinning and releasing tracks under the pseudonyms Inky Blacknuss and Two Sandwiches Short Of A Lunchbox as well as her own name. Obsessed by astronomy and sound effects, she began fiddling around in a studio at age 16, making brooding, experimental electronic music. Later on, she fell deeper into electro, hip-hop and Chicago and Detroit house.

"But it's always been sound before tunes with me," the 27-year-old explains, which is apparent in the car wash sounds, squeaking sneakers and sneezing samples on her track "Just The Normal Thinker."

"I carry a tape recorder everywhere, I grab sound effects from secondhand shops and the BBC library. I'm mad about the noise."

Before working at Fat Cat Records in London's Covent Gardens and DJing at clubs, she worked in nursing, caring for "elderly, insane people."

"It's good practice for dealing with people in the music biz," she considers.

Inspired by the Jaws soundtrack, she studied cello, knowing that it can make a cinematic moment. Yet she's never studied anything very long, opting to make music using her instinct, employing the roar of 808 drums and old synths.

Her moody techno doesn't exactly jibe with her upbeat personality. "I don't see my music as dark… necessarily," she says. "More atmospheric, like in a horror film where your hair stands on end."

She laughs about her reputation for being dark: "People expect me to have bats in my hair."

Her DJing career started off in chill-out rooms, matching sound-effects records to "mad beats."

"Electro's my favorite sound," says Parker. "It's got the most amazing kicks and 808s. When you hear the rattling on those old records, the sound of America for me, really—it's murder."

On the remix compilation Kicks (K7!), she combines old electro classics by Man Parrish and Afrika Bambaataa with new electro god G-File and hip-hop's Dr. Octagon as well as her own moody tunes, "Too Good To Be Strange" and "Unconnected."

She uses analog to connect the dots—the key to Parker's magic.

"The sound you get is much heavier, weightier," she says "You have to turn it on and wait 20 minutes for it to heat up. You always get some sound that comes out that's really weird—and that's what made Steve Reich and Philip Glass so mad. They were making their own sounds—organic, rough and heavy—that's why I bother making music at all."

Her love for Reich can be heard on the new tribute album new Reich Remixed (Nonesuch) where DJs Spooky, Howie B and Coldcut and Parker all rework his spare lines of discordant melody.

"All of us of who are doing electronic music owe Reich a great deal," figures Parker. "He's got an amazing sense of strings, spirituality and piano sounds but there's no bottom end. The beats aren't weird enough."

As for her American debut Kiss My ARP, it's been delayed due to the problematic Polygram-Universal merger.

"I think of what I do on Kiss as the blues, something sad more for listening to at home, really. I write whatever is in my head: dissolving images, stuff that doesn't mean anything to anyone else. When a painter thinks a mad thing in his head, he puts it on paper. I put it on vinyl."

Andrea Parker will appear Sat., March 20, 9 p.m., at Silk City, Fifth and Spring Garden Sts., 215-592-8838.