Samplesonic
Samplesonic is one of many pseudonyms of British electronic musician and artist Steve Haw. Hailing from Smethwick, near Birmingham in the West Midlands, Samplesonic came to prominence in 1992.
Throughout the 90's, Steve (under various names but mainly under the "Samplesonic" banner) recorded and released around a hundred tracks on singles and albums. He only ever achieved cult, underground success.
Along with The Prodigy and Smart E's, Samplesonic was one of the originators of the early 90's "toytown techno" rave music scene which itself was spawned from the ashes of the "acid house" music scene. Toytown techno, as it was known, was so-called because it sampled music and sounds from old British children's television shows.
Samplesonic's major debut and popular underground rave hit was a remix of the BBC pre-school children's television show Play School in March 1992. Renamed "Playskool", the Samplesonic release, in particular the "Sinister" mix which featured samples of laughing demons and crying babies, was especially popular with college students throughout the UK who were at the forefront of the toytown techno scene as it not only encompassed the tv theme-inspired dance music but also the growing interest in cult television shows of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s such as The Prisoner, Doctor Who, The Saint, Banana Splits and Rainbow and old TV personalities such as Sid James, Benny Hill and Rolf Harris. Samplesonic's debut album, a collection of toytown techno tunes was released in Summer 1992 and was called "Toytown Tekno". A sequel would be released in 1994 called "Toytown Tekno II: Terror TV!"
As the 90's progressed, so did Samplesonic with a string of cult hits based on TV shows. In 1993, Samplesonic released "Porridge", containing samples of Ronnie Barker from the hit mid-70's prison sitcom Porridge. In 1994, Samplesonic scored big again with a largely publicised track based on the character Jimmy Corkhill from the popular British soap Brookside called "Corkhill's Last Dance". Another big success came in 1995 with "Doctor Who Enters The Jungle" - a tune based on the BBC cult sci-fi tv show Doctor Who. Both "Corkhill's Last Dance" and "Doctor Who Enters The Jungle" were inspired by the growing jungle and tribal music scene which would eventually evolve into the music scene known as drum and bass.
Also in 1995, Steve Haw appeared on Jeremy Beadle's radio show on Talk Radio and had a surprise in store for Jeremy as he played his latest track recorded specially for the show called "Beadle's A Lout". The track featured the theme tune and spoken samples of Jeremy's infamous prank tv show "Beadle's AbOUT". The title, as Jeremy pointed out, was taken from a past front cover headline to an EDition of the Sunday newspaper News of the World in which the tabloid had made some untrue allegations about Jeremy's personal life. This was the first of five separate appearances on Jeremy Beadle's Talk Radio show and Steve also appeared on numerous other radio shows around the same time between late-Summer and Autumn 1995 at the height of Samplesonic's popularity.
In early 1996, Samplesonic remixed Babylon Zoo's big hit "Spaceman" and turned it into a very fast and noisy techno tune inspired by the German happy hardcore techno music scene. Soon afterwards, more happy hardcore inspired music came with the tracks "TeknoZod 1 & 2" which featured samples of Terence Stamp as General Zod in the movies Superman and Superman 2. An image of Stamp's Zod would later adorn the (2002) cover of the "Samplesonic Greatest Hits Volume 1" collection.
1997 basically marked the end of Samplesonic as an act (until 2002) as Steve Haw, at this point being inspired by the likes of Aphex Twin, Beck and Michael Nyman, began to venture into the world of strange and avant-garde music. The drum and bass "Rising Damp" based on the Leonard Rossiter sitcom of the same name was released in January 1997 and was a moderate success. February 1997 saw the release of the penultimate Samplesonic record "Mister Pleasant" which was a strange remix of the same titled song by The Kinks and foreshadowed the idea of looping sampled verses from old pop records which have become popular in the year 2005. Three mixes of Mister Pleasant were released: "Pleasant Enough Mix", "Much More Pleasant Mix" and "Mister Pleasant's Journey Into Drum N Bass Mix".
Early 1999 saw the very last original Samplesonic release called "3:35 (Only Fools & Horses Mix)". It featured samples from the massively popular BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses and a phone call from Steve's old Parceline supervisor Terry Woods! Later in 1999, Steve Haw would change MusicAL direction again with "DJ Spaceboy".
Samplesonic returned in 2003 with two "greatest hits" collections and an "Anthology" box set which collected up all the infamous tracks and numerous alternate mixes and demos and is now a sought after item amongst collectors. Also, a few new remixes were released under the Samplesonic banner to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Samplesonic's existence.
To cut a long story short... In late 1999, Steve started his second major musical phase as "DJ Spaceboy" (later to change just "Spaceboy") and remixed the likes of David Bowie (his idol), Blur, Suede and Gary Numan. In 2000, he set up a website to promote his music and would eventually ditch the Spaceboy title (as more people started using that name) and work under his own name and the moniker "X-Y-Z-Cosmonaut". From late 2000 onwards, Steve would record his own compositions and focused less on remix work which would culminate in his first album of original music "Kidney Bean Skin" which featured special guests William Shatner and Jimmy Tarbuck. The album was only released in Germany through independent record stores and sold through the internet. A 2-disc "special edition" which featured bonus material was released in 2004. In 2001, Steve set up the "Spaceboy Intergalaktic Muzik Limited" record label.
Between mid-2003 and 2004, a new Samplesonic album was planned and a few tracks were for what was to be called "Samplesonic - The Trip". One track, "It's The Mind" featured samples of Michael Palin and Terry Jones from a comedy sketch from the classic Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy series. Another track featured dialogue taken from the Nicholas Roeg sci-fi classic The Man Who Fell to Earth. "The Trip" was to be Samplesonic's masterpiece - a mix of spoken word, sound effects, instrumental music of a trance and ambient nature very much inspired by The KLF's "Chill Out". Unfortunately, too many things were hindering Steve's creative thought and so "The Trip" was left unfinished. Some of the tracks from the aborted album were featured as bonus tracks on the second disc of the limited edition 2-disc "Kidney Bean Skin" 2004 release and is worth hunting down if you can find it.
Steve's long-running website (which featured many of his tracks for download) no longer exists due to the collapse of IUMA. A new site was recently set up at Soundlick1. This site will only feature some of Steve's original electronic tracks and no remix works due to copyright rules.
Samplesonic has often been compared to The KLF - most probably due to the similarity in music genres and the illegality of a lot of their music as samples were often not cleared and tracks were released without consent of copyright owners. At the end of the day though, The KLF became world famous at some point and scored massive chart topping hits whilst Samplesonic never made it beyond a few appearances on "Talk Radio" and plays on independent and pirate radio stations. Steve would go on to wider success as the internet age began to kick in but that's another story.