Faceless techno Bolland
(tekst: Mike Shallcross, for Wax magazine)

He doesn't drink booze and he doesn't take drugs. But squeaky-clean CJ Bolland's new album is full of filthy beats and slezay vocals. The limelight beacons...

There's a buzz around CJ Bolland which suggests he could be techno's next pop star. On the face of it he is unqualified for the role. A tall regular looking bloke, with the awkward mannerisms of a shy teenager, he doesn't like drinking, and hates both drugs and airplanes. On tour in Australia he skived off his pop star responsibilities of snorting cocaine out of teenage girls' navels, and opted to spend his days off in the studio making 'Austral body', an Aphex-esque techno track. Spend half an hour with him and you come to the conclusion that he is only ever likely to throw a TV out a hotel bedroom if he could get a good sample from it.

His only pop credential is his music - which is quirky, catchy an often maddeningly danceable. True to his experimental reputation he has branched out from his usual banging techno style and hooked up with produced Kris Vanderheyden, who has previously recorded for cult Belgian labels Bonzai and Musicman, and shares both CJ's irrational fear of flying and his love of sleazy breakbeats. With a new record deal with London Records' dance subsidiary Internal, CJ and Kris have come up with 'The Analogue Theatre', an LP which combines techno with jungle, trip hop and even punk influences and which could put him up there with the Prodigy, Leftfield and Underworld.

But CJ seems unimpressed by it all. He is suprised when I bring up a report from Music Week in which the big boys at London Records have marked him down as one of their key acts, alongside dance music big hitters like Orbital and Goldie, but also alongside cartoon hooligans East 17 and the coffee table funk of the Brand New Heavies. But both CJ and Kris laugh at the prospect of becoming pop stars. "I love doing really down to earth, boring things like going to the pub and playing table football", says CJ. "If I had to cut that out because I was getting recognised all the time, it would do my head in."

They both describe the LP as "rock'n'roll" rather than techno or even pop. Kris, who with his leopard skin shirt and peculiar bobbed haircut looks as he could audiion for some glam metal outfit, says: "Even the techno tracks are like rock'n'roll, they kick ass!" Go easy on him readers, there's a whole generation of young Europeans who have learnt their English from Beavis and Butthead.

CJ takes up the point. "The Beatles were a big influence on this LP, not for their style of music, but the way they approached it, the idea of being able to do anything on a track".

He gives the example of 'The Prophet', a fast and furious techno track inspired by the film 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. CJ is a big fan of the movie, in particular the performance of Willem Dafoe as Jesus - one of whose speeches is sampled on the track. "When I listened to the build-up on his voice, it was like one of those techno tracks with a big breakdown", says CJ. "His voice was like one of those snare rolls that just get bigger and bigger, so we started with that as a crescendo and just built track around it basically."

Christian Jay Bolland was born in Stockton near Newcastle. Music was in the blood. CJ's dad looked after bands for a local nightclub, and can boast of having played golf with Roy Orbison. The family moved to Belgium when CJ was three, where his family ended up running a nightclub, Mr Bolland ran the doors and Mrs Bolland manned the decks. Eat your heart out Rachel Auburn!

"She used to play a lot of disco which I hated, and a lot of electro which I loved", recalls CJ, adding, "I always had a passion for electronic music. The first record I ever bought was the old 'Doctor Who' theme, the old pre 1981 version." He stresses the final point the way a London DJ might differentiate a rare groove original from a cheesy cover version.

His passion was further fuelled by the acquisition of a sampler, and he was soon making his own tracks. CJ was barely out of his teens when he made his mark with releases like 'Horsepower' on maximum quality label R&S. His style was often describes as "galloping" - because of the way his drumbeats strayed out of techno's traditional 4/4 gridlocks, creating complex and highly funky rhythms. His fast tempos and thick machine tones were combined with high production values. At a time when techno seemed to be splitting between the clever but sedentary sound of producers like B12 and the Black Dog, and the dumb but danceable sound of hardcore, CJ Bolland made inelligent techno with bollocks.

But as his career progressed he became more and more and more frustrated with the music he was releasing. "I was playing music sort of how I wanted it, but then I was changing it to fit in with what was happening... I used to envy people like the Aphex Twin because he was doing the sort of stuff I wanted to do, but couldn't get released", says CJ. "I've been listening to breakbeat right from the beginning, but it's been harder for me to do because of my reputatuion as a four-to-the-floor techno artist, especially one based on a Belgian record label."

Last night a CJ saved my life... CJ's favourite productions 'Horsepower' (from Ravesignal 3 EP) (R&S) 1991 "Obviosly..." 'Nightbreed' (from the Fourth Sign LP) (R&S) 1992 "I spent three days of programming all the subtleties on this track. I feel really relaxed with complicated music, if music is too simple, I get nervous. Same way that if I drive my car too slow, I feel nervous. It's weird." 'Lush' (Remix for Orbital) (Internal) 1993 "I really like this, it's a shame that Orbital don't." 'The Electronic Highway' LP (R&S) 1995 "When I'm in a bad mood or have had a hard meeting or something, I still listen to chill out." 'Turbulence' - Sonic Solution (R&S) 1994 "Sonic Solution was me and a Belgian DJ called Steve Cop. He couldn't do any programming or play any music himself, he would just come in and say 'This track is working well', or 'I've got a good sample here', which isn't really how I like to work, but we got some good tracks done quickly."

Both of them believe that part of Belgium's antipathy towards breakbeat is part of the legacy of nu beat, a style of dance music which broke in Belgium around the same time as acid house first hit Britain. Nu beat producers responded to a trend among Belgian DJs for playing high energy tracks at 33 rpm, so that they were slowed down to around 100 bpm. They were characterised by comical growling vocals and a frankly embarrassing overuse of porn film samples.

"Nu beat probably put Belgian dance music on the map, but I wish it hadn't. It didn't need to be on the map that desperately", thunders CJ. "I was so happy when it died off. It was to slow, it wasn' funky, the riffs were cheesy, the sounds were cheap..."

"It wasn't really out cup of tea", inserts Kris, before CJ can work himself up into a fit. Although he is less passionate about it, Kris shares CJ's frustration with the Belgian scene. "The problem with Belgium is that if you want to make club material you have to make it sound a certain way", he says.

CJ nods in agreement, adding: " That's why I signed to an English label, because you get carte blanche to do what you want."

If the style of CJ's music has changed through the move to Internal, so has the way which it it presented. In the same way that 'Anon' is the world's most prolific poet, CJ has entered a world where 'Radio Edit' is the busiest remixer. Alongside the ubiquitious Mr Edit, tribal house spinner Armand van Helden has had a go at CJ's new track 'Sugar is Sweeter'. CJ seems uninterested in it. He hasn't acctualy heard the mix and asks me what's it like. I tell him I think it sounds too smooth. "To be honest I'll probably think the same thing", he says. "The remixes had nothing to do with me, the record company decided all that."

"It's the first time I worked for a major record company. I don't know how they go about their thing, but I do know they've been pretty successful with everything they've put out so far, so..."

If CJ is to make a commercial breakthrogh, it will probably come through 'Sugar is Sweeter', which, in its superior, original form, is an eccentric but strangely catchy trip (hop) through the last 30 years of pop, taking in punk, jungle and the Beatles.

"About three years ago Kriss used to drop the strings from the Beatles' 'I am the Walrus' into a breakdown in his live set and the crowd would go mental, so we tried this and it worked really well", says CJ. "The record company has said: 'Please sample as much as you want and we'll clear it all'.

"We take them our first and only sample and they say: 'We can't clear it'. So we had to take it out." Through some studio trickery, CJ and Kris have succeeded in simulating the sound without offending anyone's lawyers.

The frankly 'not all there' vocals on the tracks comes courtesy of Jade 4U, a mate of Kris's once described as 'The Madonna of nu beat', and the best known on this side of the Channel for being the voice behind Praga Khan's rave anthem 'Injected With a Poison'.

"I wanted to make a track which sounded like a naive girl trying to be a porno star", says Kris, unburdened by any considerations of political correctness. Jade certainly seems to have warmed to the task, moaning, shrieking and only occasionally singing her way through the track. Suffice to say, your mom won't like it.

"She's (Jade) very experienced in that field as well", says CJ. "She knows hoe to use the right word so nothing will be censored, I mean you know what the point is when she says 'Sugar daddy, c'mon and sugar me'."

I ask CJ if the track is meant to take the piss out of Secrets Knowledge's trancey torch song 'Sugar Daddy' and his face drops.

"There's another track called 'Sugar Daddy' out?" he asks. I nod and he mutters something in Flemish. "I swear to God, I've never eard of it. Don't tell me it sonds like it as well!"

CJ and Kris, as you might have gathered, are not great dance music trainspotters. "We never listen to techno", says Kris. "I like Rage against the Machine, the Beatles, stuff like that." While CJ says his favourite current artists is Alannis Morrissette.

"That's why our stuff doesn't sound like stuff in the clubs. I've never been into the music that gets played in normal techno clubs", says CJ. "When I go and DJ, I usually leave after I finnish my set, because I don't want to hear the same thing all night."

So no hanging around the VIP room talking white labels? It appears not. Unlike many current producers on the dance scene, CJ sees DJ-ing as a sideline. "Producing always come first for me, DJ-ing I couldn't care less about, I never practice or anything", he admits. "The only thing I like about it is contact with the public. I like to see people going mad and I know I can make people go mad. I know how to make it work, but I'd much rather be in the studio or doing a live show representing my own music rather than someone else's."

He doesn't even stick around for the groupies. "All the girlfriends I've ever had didn't even know I was a DJ or a producer, and I don't think I'd want it any other way", he says. And indifference turns into loathing if asked about drugs.

"I do some stupid, dangerous things", he admits. "I've got my racing motorbike which I ride too fast sometimes, but I won't touch any drugs, I won't even smoke a joint because I can't stand loosing any type of control over my body."

"I hate going to a club and seeing people anortin these lines and going (puts on speedfreak Londoner voice) 'Hey CJ, you're fucking wicked man'. It makes me feel really bad. I like seeing people have a good time, but there's a difference", he screws up his face in disgust, adding, "I was in Copenhagen a couple of days ago, and there were heroin syringes lying everywhere, it was really gross. People had just gone to this club to do drugs, it had nothing o do with music."

"I like to make music and listen to music that sounds good when you are sober", he says.

Music that sounds great, but not ultimately music that sounds sober. Although artists like Goldie have chalked up huge sales without making excessive musical compromises, it remains to be seen whether Bolland's own brand of though, underground grooves will take him as far. In the meantime, he has given us one of the most enjoyable LPs of the year. Love it for however long it lasts.

R & S CJ's name is almost synonymous with R&S, the first European label to gain the same kudos as US imprints like Trax and Strictly Rhythm. Founded in Ghent, Belgium by former hairdresser and all-round eccentric Renaat Vandepepeliere and his partner Sabine (hence the name) as a nu beat label in the late 1980's, the label really took off in 1991 with releases like Joey Beltram's 'Energy Flash', Human Resource's 'Dominator', and CJ's own 'Ravesignal' series; and later with the Aphex Twin's classic 'Digeridoo'. The label has also arranged European releases for Detroit luminaries like Juan Atkins and Kenny Larkin. Ironically for the leading Belgian techno label, none of its main artists were from Belgium. Beltram is New Yorker, Marcus Salon (Outlander) is Spanish, David Morley and the Aphex Twin are British, even Bolland himself, despite having spent most of his life in Belgium, is British by birth. CJ was 16 years-old when he started to work in the R&S studio in 1988. In those days it was located in Renaat's flat. "I used to fall asleep on the couch there at about eight in the morning, and Sabine used to wake me up at one or two with some breakfast. I was just round there all the time getting on their nerves", laughs CJ. "It was a very warm friendly atmosphere in those days." But as the label flourished, so did disagreements. German trancers Jam and Spoon and the Aphex Twin both left the label complaining that Renaat could not fully serve their interests. And after a while CJ came to the same conclusion. "Renaat had a lot of good ideas, but they didn't seem to happen", says CJ. "Everyone on R&S got a lot of good write-ups, but they only got big once they left the label." CJ also claims to have felt artistically constrained by the R&S boss's force of personality. "Renaat likes to release a lot of different stuff, but he likes individual artists to sound a certain way. He never says anything, but he makes you feel that he really has to like a track, regardless of how you feel about it", he says. Loosing CJ will be a blow to the label, but with a roster of artists including Japanese techster Ken Ishii and the Source Experience, and a new found interest in drum'n'bass, it is likely that R&S's star will be in ascendancy for some time yet.