Biography

That English guy working at R&S. He used to run their studio. There from the start. Responsible for just a handful of tracks, a couple of classics, known by some journalists and DJs but a stranger to the mainstream. And hasn't he got something to do with Andrea Parker?

32-year old David Morley has never had a high profile. Instead his image is that of a shadow-figure, hidden in the background of Renaats' powerful label, occasionally surfacing with a record or remix before vanishing once again.

Morley explains: "I'm not really productive. I guess that's an understatement. Other people they have certain formulas. I don't mean to knock anyone but I sort of do things and I don't think I've really done the same thing twice. i've done the odd EP but the next one has always been different. I don't think I'm very music industry friendly."

But he has been an integral part of R&S ever since Renaat walked into a record shop in Gent ten years ago and heard a track he'd make. "Did you program it?" he asked. Yes I said. "I need someone who knows about synthesisers and stuff. I'd like you to come and help me out." Morley went along for the ride. And found himself in 1987 in Renaat and Sabine's tiny appartment wiring up a studio and making music with Renaat. "And things just carried on from there." smiles David. "we were making nu beat tracks and each one sold a certain amount. It was kind of an easy place to start."

Born in England his parents moved the family to Belgium and it was here that Morley's musical career began when he got a job in a studio. He cut some tracks, got ripped off but learned enough about the equipment to make the record that led him to Renaat. And those early days at R&S were something elese everyone squeezed into a tiny space, a teenage Cisco Ferreira (now half of The Advent) and CJ Bolland also working alongside David and Renaat on the foundations of R&S. "It was fun in that period. The office and studio were in the same room. I'd be doing a track and Renaat would be on the phone talking to someone and he'd walk over and do something on the machines, CJ and Cisco were around, it was a laugh."

It was also a learning experience : with the money they made from the nu beat recordings Renaat was flying in Detroit producers like Derrick May, Stacey Pullen and Darryl Wynn. And this was when Detroit was still an unknown quantity, not the chic cult of today, but a new set of sounds, ideas and heads coming into the Ghent studio. Other artists were turning up to work : Joey Beltram and Mundo Muzique, between them defining and redefining techno almost on a weekly basis. One track Morley cut with Renaat. Spectrum's 'Brasil' was an early techno classic, something that could have set David up with a career to parallel anyone's.

"It's was a buzz. We'd be in the studio, maybe knock off for an hour and go to the Boccaccio (the legendary Ghent club - imagine a fusion of Cream, Shoom and Hardcore) and I would hear that track played six or seven times. It was such a cool feeling. And then I went on holiday but I came back I was really ill and became diabetic. So I couldn't drive for 3 months, my eyes were fucked up and i was hard to deal with daily life. I couldn't stay up till 5am, sleem 2 hours and get back in the studio. You can't do drugs. And it's fun to be out of it and have a riot. I'm not saying we ever did it drastically but if you're completely healthy you can do what you want. If you're not...."

He quit the technocentre for some rest & relaxation, building his own studio, hunting for old analog synthesisers and eventually making music again, ar first contributing to R&S's underground TZ series then recording 'Evolution', the first release on R&S ambient off-shoot Apollo. "Renaat really liked it but said he couldn't put it out on the label so he created a special ambient sub-label for that track. Just to see what happened."

Atlantis was received as a classic, one of ambient techno's defining moments and proof as music critics suddenly realised that techno or 90s electronic might be part of a long and highly respected bloodline. Sebsequent Apollo releases bore this out when Ken Ishii joined the label similarily producing a free, abstract, hallucinatory and intense new techno.

Morley sort of agrees : 'I don't quite know where it comes from but I like Klaus Schultze, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. It's not always something specific but what got me into this music was the idea of sounds which nobody had ever heard before. Although I can't really think of specific artists that I like. I'm really very normal in my musical taste it goes from A to Z really. I like the Sundays, a bit of Black Sabbath. It would be absurd to say I hate everything except electronic music."

And he also has something to do with Andrea Parker. Quite a lot in fact. Ever since Renaat spotted her DJing in London with a copy of 'Evolution' and invited her to record with David. "She's a bit of a loony." he grins, "there can't be many girls who'd bop on a plane out of the blue to work with someone they've never met and not even spoken to. "Fortunately they got on well. A shared love of analog synthesis unique sounds and subtly hedonistic (tangential to club culture but not divorced from it) tracks serviced when they started to work together on projects like Two Sandwiches Short of A Lunchbox or the Infonet released Angular EP. And it was their combined work, the breathless anbience, fresh atmospherics and starkly inventive drum sounds and rhythm programs that led to Parker's major label deal with Mo'Wax A&M. Morley now regurlarly collaborates with her as engineer, co-writer and producer on tracks for Mo'Wax or remixes for Depeche Mode, The Orb and more recently the coolly modern composer Gavin Bryars.

Today he lives in Regensburg, a small University town about an hour from Munich. He doesn't go clubbing or anything like that. Although he does make music and like he said, genuinely tries to work with sounds that haven't been heard before an structures that aren't known. He's just finished a debut LP although his 'non-music business friendly' attitude to the art of making tracks means that it's also going to be a personal and subtle record, something that like his previous releases doesn't follow the same grotty, drug-tired paths but, as he hopes, plays the studio, old machines and new computers to find things that are beautiful, intuitive, probabilistic....

"I'm not in a hurry to do anything" ponders David "to be honest I'm very normal in my daily life. I'm exceptionally normal. I really like normality but I just love fucking around on a synthesiser or whatever. It's still for me the best thing. It does get slightly boring if you've been doing it for six months non-stop but no, it doesn't actually. I love it completely."

November 97


David Morley Tilted Apollo 1998
David Morley Tilt R&S 1997
David Morley Stardancer EP Apollo 1996
Andrea Parker / David Morley Angular Art Infonet 1995
Two Sandwiches Short of a Lunchbox Apollo 1994
Billie Ray Martin 4 Ambient Tales Apollo 1993
Soul Searchers Crystal Clear / Unity GainGlobal Cuts 1993
The Golden Girls Kinetic The Remix R&S 1993
Phuture Rise From Your Grave Remixes R&S 1993
David Morley The Shuttle EP R&S 1993
David Morley Evolution Apollo 1992
The Spectrum Remixes R&S 1991
The Spectrum s/t R&S 1991
Guaranteed Raw Ill Make Your Body Sweat R&S 1990
Space Opera Space 3001 R&S 1990
Space Opera Space 3001 Remixes R&S 1990
The Essentials Tonights The Night R&S 1990
The Spectrum Brazil R&S 1990
Digital Vamp You Can Take My Body Groove Records America 1989
B-Art Mystic Warrior R&S 1989
B-Art Prisen... Allright R&S 1989
B-Art Streetwise R&S 1989
Space Opera Electro Wave R&S 1989
B-Art Streetwise Remix R&S 1989
Digital Vamp You Can Take My Body R&S 1989
Spectrum Keep On Singing R&S 1989
B-Art Baby Wants To Ride R&S 1988
Spectrum Total Recall R&S 1988