Ramones first album - Ramones Plaza Sound, NY 1976. Craig Leon is on the right.
Craig Leon has produced ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ by the Ramones, ‘Ghost Rider’ by Suicide, ‘Blank Generation’ by Richard Hell, and Blondie’s eponymous first album. It might seem hard to believe but promise, we’re not making this up. Although, that’s not all of it. He also co-produced – with Bob Marley and Lee Scratch Perry – Martha Velez and The Wailers’s LP Escape From Babylon. He has worked with Link Wray, The Bangles, The Pogues, Cowboy Junkies, and produced 3 albums for The Fall (Code Selfish, Shiftwork and Extricate) in the early 90s.
In 1999, Craig Leon produced the single Maria for Blondie
and the album Libera Me for Izzy. Both
went number 1 that year.
Of course there is
an infinite amount of questions we could ask him about his collaborations but
we thought you might have already found your answers somewhere else.
So what interest
us in this interview is Craig Leon’s own albums. The three albums are seminal
confabulations of Minimalist compositions and metallic rhythms, at times bestial
and repetitive. Nommos (1981), Visiting (1982) and Tape From
Atoya (1984) feat. Arthur Brown.
We heard in these albums
an echo of Harmonia’s Musik Von Harmonia
and De
Luxe. We discovered the possible origins of VVV (the musical
collaboration between Alan Vega and Pan Sonic; Endless and Resurrection River)
and Autechre’s melancholic
machines. Compare Autechre’s “Tewe” (Chiastic Slide)
and Leon’s "Three Small Coins" and you will find the same
rhythmic complexity soothed by synthetic drones, only 15 years earlier.
We are publishing this weekend the first part of Craig
Leon’s interview about his music, later followed by his answers to the blog’s
20 questions.
Craig Leon - Three Small Coins from Visiting (1982)
Craig Leon & Arthur Brown - Not fade away from Tape from Atoya (1984)
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