Jamie Taylor discussing his book Studio Electrophonique: Sheffield’s Space Age, from The Human League to Pulp with Deb Grant, BBC Radio 6 host and journalist, was a fascinating and valuable evening. The story we were told was incredible, and showed his book as not just a story about an “ordinary bloke” but a love story to Sheffield itself.
Taylor began by introducing Ken Patten, now sadly passed away, the protagonist of his book. Active during the 1970s, Patten was an ex-RAF car mechanic during the week, but when he had the time, he opened up his house as a recording studio for embryonic formations of some of the country’s most beloved bands, including a Sixth Form Pulp. Living in a council house estate, Patten filled every room with the most interesting recording equipment of the day, including, according to Jarvis Cocker, a homemade vocoder cobbled together with microphones nicked from the army. Taylor joked that he “had the drum kit in the marital bedroom”, highlighting the quite surreal element of Patten’s hobby. Due to this amateur setup, Taylor explained that many small bands came to him for recording – he didn’t charge as much as the proper studios.
The talk then turned to the documentary that came before the book, which the book is mostly based on: A Film About Studio Electrophonique, and Taylor’s sometimes ridiculous, often incredible, journey of discovery. Grant highlighted that the book felt more like a “caper” than an academic text, which Taylor agreed with. He said the documentary that started it all had been a rather amateur affair: “we used to rock up in my Nissan Micra”, with nothing but an ipad. The characters and stories he came across still managed to be amazing, as we heard about John Marsden who recorded some of the first tracks at Studio Electrophonique, who has one of the biggest and rarest collections of Polynesian and Hawaiian music in the world – but will only communicate with fans and academics through written correspondence. “Halfway up his stairs”, Taylor explained rather awkwardly, “there was just this massive poster of Girls Aloud”. Characters like this, along with famous names, appear on the documentary, including Jarvis Cocker and Sean Bean – also Taylor’s two top contenders to play Patten himself in the newly written screenplay of the story, describing Patten’s life from his own point of view.
Taylor, when expanding on the style of his book, also referenced its value as not just a memoir of Patten, but of Sheffield and its people at that time. Calling Sheffield’s brutalist, post-war architecture “conducive to dystopia”, he highlighted the way in which the music Ken was making and the bands that came to him were largely interested in synthesisers and electronica, producing sounds like that of Wendy Carlos’s A Clockwork Orange soundtrack. Apparently, many of the individuals who formed the bands that recorded at Ken’s began their time at a youth arts project funded by the council called “Meatwhistle”, which Electronic Sound magazine called an important thread in “Sheffield’s long history of Labour-dominated municipal socialism”. Indeed, Taylor highlighted that many of the bands such as The Human League and Vice Versa, coming out of Sheffield, cited its “Soviet Russia”-esque architecture, in particular Broomhall Flats. This monolith sat between where the ring road and Devonshire Green are today, towering over the city of Sheffield and the musicians who would eventually come to use its brutal, unflinching nature as inspiration.
Taylor’s talk was an incredible and enlightening peek into the rich and multifaceted history of electronic music in Sheffield. Patten’s job in making it happen cannot be overstated, and neither can the electric, proto-punk youth culture that he enabled through his recording sessions with local bands.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
