From his early forays into music with his first band The Innocent Vicars, Richard Norris never fit that easily into a tribe. “I was influenced by punk, that whole do it yourself attitude, but I liked both of the big records that came out in 1977 – ‘God Save The Queen’ and ‘I Feel Love’,” he tells tQ over video call. “I had one leg in the rock & roll camp and one in the dance camp.” The Zelig-like journey that followed (recounted deftly in his new memoir Strange Things Are Happening) would broaden things even further, from his work at the trailblazing psychedelic reissue label Bam-Caruso in the 1980s, to mainstream success with Soft Cell’s Dave Ball in The Grid, to capturing the zeitgeist for a second time with Erol Alkan in Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve a decade later.
It’s probably no surprise, then, Richard Norris’ choices for his Baker’s Dozen are eclectic. His process “was to pick way too many and chuck loads out” – a methodology he also applies to ideas when making music, his being a process of refined maximalism. They range from vintage blues to gothic rock, from dub to new wave, from English folk music to intensive experimental drone. And yet, he says, many of these albums elicit a similar response when he listens – a transformative effect that one might broadly call psychedelic. Going through the records he was going to select for the feature, “I realised that on a lot of them, there’s a sense of ritual,” he says. “There’s just something about ceremony, ritual, hypnosis and drone which seems to be my favourite thing.”
Norris speaks to tQ ahead of a ritual of his own – the first proper Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve DJ appearance in eight years, which takes place at The MOTH Club in Hackney this Friday (30 August). After resuming their working relationship for a slew of remixes (or re-animations as they call them), he and Alkan DJ’d together for the launch of Strange Things Are Happening in March. “I think we’d forgotten how much fun it was,” Norris says. The Grid, meanwhile, are also back in business, having played their first show in two decades this summer with more on the horizon.
Rosy as Norris’ current prospects look, both his book and his Baker’s Dozen also provide the soundtrack to less auspicious times. “There are many records I would have been better off not making,” he says, “but I’m very optimistic. Even if a project goes horribly wrong, there’s always something you can get out of it, even if it’s an idea that doesn’t turn up until years down the line.”
Richard Norris’ book Strange Things Are Happening is out now via White Rabbit. He and Erol Alkan perform their first DJ set as Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve in eight years at Hackney’s MOTH Club on 30 August, tickets for which can be found here.
To begin reading his Baker’s Dozen, click ‘First Record’ below.
