Dubstar: Haunted
The final public Dubstar album was Make It Better, released in August 2000. But what exactly was the Dubstar EP from later that year?
Following my first departure from the act in June 2000, Parlophone released Make It Better and an accompanying EP. I hadn’t officially informed anyone except Chris that I had departed, but the fact that I was not around for the Self Same Thing video sent a pretty clear message. I hadn’t kept it secret that I was working with other acts either…
Despite the anaemic first week sales of Make It Better, Tommy Manzi, our American manager had managed to convince Parlophone to appraise some new material from the act. Although he didn’t put it this way it was clear: this was the last opportunity for Dubstar to stay on the label.
Which put me in an odd position: as far as I was concerned I’d left Dubstar, but here was an opportunity to write and record more material to test if there was a future for the act with EMI. I didn’t expect them to want another album, and I definitely didn’t want to make one…but why not give it a go? What was there to lose?
So we recorded six tracks. I wrote four new songs, reused ‘Leaving in the Morning’ that I’d written for Jo Morgan earlier that year and threw in a cover of Fiat Lux’s ‘Secrets’. There was a clear sonic progression between these tunes and those on Make It Better. There was a return to the lyric led writing that characterised Disgraceful and Goodbye and was sorely missing from Make It Better. The heavy guitars were gone, as was the vitriol. The synthesisers were back, and as these were the first recordings I’d made using internal software instruments…suddenly Dubstar sounded millennial.
And like the arrangements on Disgraceful, Haunted was inspired by the songs I was DJing at the time. I was fascinated by UK Garage and Breakbeat and wondered if there was a way of incorporating those awkward rhythms into my own work.
Haunted is the result. I think it almost works, in fact there’s a lot going on here that’s promising. Sarah’s disconnected vocal sits nicely with the floating progressive pads, the beats are good. What lets the tune down is the song itself…the verses are fine and include the word ‘frothing’ complete with a repeat of the word as a callback. I didn’t realise it was funny at the time but Chris and I would fall about laughing at it later…
But the chorus isn’t up to much. All of the components are there but it doesn’t take off… ultimately the implied excitement isn’t earned. And lyrically, it feels like a songwriter’s song. More about that problem another time.
Overall I like Haunted, and if there was to be a future for Dubstar in the early 2000s I do think these millennial beats could have been a fruitful approach.
But it was not to be.
On the morning of November 17th 2000, Tommy was on the phone again. Parlophone were not picking up the option for another Dubstar album. No explanation needed. It was over.
I knew what I had to do.
I took a taxi from my apartment on the seafront in Hove to Brighton station, rain crashing down on the windscreen from a slate-grey sky. The driver wondered where I was going?
Me: ’London’
Driver: ’Doing anything exciting?’
Me: ’Yes. I’m off to tell everyone in my company they’re out of a job’
He went quiet, I think he was expecting a jollier response.
Driver: ‘…not a great day then’
Me: ‘Not exactly’
The rest of the ride passed in silence, as did the train journey.
Musicians hope their day in the sun will last forever, but nearly every act is dropped eventually. It’s actually not that big an event, it’s not really an event at all. There are no summons to the record company, no fights, no solicitor’s letters, not even a rejection… just a decision made at a meeting whether or not to ‘pick up the option’ for more of your music. It took seconds. You’re not there so you don’t even get taken to the pub in commiseration. The clear disintegration that had occurred and Dubstar’s lack of sales, meant it would have been a brave decision to pay for more.
And no one was being brave.
So I made it to Chris and Sarah’s flat in Belsize Park and broke the news. I think they were saddened but not shocked. After all, the writing had been on the wall for years. There wasn’t much to say…there was no discussion of getting another record deal, playing gigs or keeping the act going in any form. We’d come to the end of the line. I don’t remember much else about that afternoon except I didn’t hang around for long, and it was raining as hard in London as in Brighton.
And that was it, Dubstar was over. Two days later I was invited up to Cumbria to write with Mark Owen for his solo album, and another chapter began…
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Twenty one years have passed since that day, plenty of time to reflect. I discovered about a year later in 2001 that there had been significant surprise and some disappointment that Dubstar had folded at that point. On paper it might have made sense to keep going…we were still getting into the UK charts, Stars, Manic and No More Talk were still being played on the radio (and remain on repeat to this very day). The ‘brand’ was still strong and apparently considered ‘cool’…
But by the end of 2000 Dubstar had no label, no manager, no agent, no producer, no songwriter and no publisher. There was nothing to keep going. It would remain that way for six years.