Dubstar: I AM THE CRIME demo

Steve Hillier

Friday 16th December 2022

Someone on Twitter asked me to put this song up, it’s one of his favourites. I didn't know it had already escaped into the wild, I thought it had sat lonely and obscure on my hard drives for twenty-five years. Apparewntly not, so OK, here we go.

'I Am The Crime' (IATC) is unusual for a Dubstar song. It may be unique in that it features both me and Chris on guitar for the first time since the end of The Joans in 1994. You can hear Chris’s playing through the song, but that’s me playing the Thin Lizzy lead parts. The lyrics are unusual for a Dubstar song too., there’s no clear direction for where we're heading. The lyric is a collection of phrases that expresses the frustration I was feeling in 1998. And there's some swearing. That must have been a difficult afternoon in the Hillier household.

IATC also has a special place in my heart as it’s one of the first tunes I produced using Logic Audio. This software enabled me to record audio into the new G3 Mac, not the ADATs we'd used for years. The two prior Dubstar albums were made using an ATARI ST, a platform I knew like the back of my hand. But with Logic Audio I was feeling my way. This is why you can hear so many ‘loops’ in this arrangement and many other songs on Make It Better. Also, this was the first time I experimented with building audio ‘blocks’. You can hear them in IATC, layers upon layers of takes of Sarah singing ‘I Am The Crime’. It sounds awesome! Twenty-five years of technological developments later it all feels rather quaint. But that’s how we made the music of the late 90s and early 00s.

Speaking of tech, I wonder what Steve of 1998 would have made of AI?

All of the image below Sarah’s right hand was generated by AI. It didn’t exist until this morning.

I NEED SOME FINE WINE, AND YOU NEED TO BE NICER

So it's 1998, in the middle of the first demo recording session for Dubstar’s final released album ‘Make It Better’. This was a difficult period for the act, not least because each of us were living in different cities. Hence I completed so much of the development for that album in total isolation in my flat in Hove. IATC grew from those sessions.

There were three compositional seeds to IATC. First, the whole song grew from that bass line, the first component I wrote. As was typical at the time, that’s not me playing my Fender Jazz bass but my Korg Prophecy. The synth provided a passable bass guitar sound, particularly for a demo, but it's not great. Hearing it now, it feels 'spongy', but you know? The Prophecy was sitting there waiting to be used. I did my best.

Secondly, I wrote IATC in the period when I thought Dubstar should make the kind of music The Cardigans were putting out. This explains why the lead guitar part sounds like something that could have featured on their seminal hit ‘Lovefool’. I later discovered that Tore Johansson, the Cardigans producer, was living in Sussex at the time. Should have invited him round to rescue me.

The third seed is that amazing title, which sadly is not my own work. I spent my teenage years growing up in London in the 1980s. I was able to see all of the featured bands from the weekly pages of Melody Maker…including pretty much every act signed to my favourite label 4AD. So that’s Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, AR Kane, Xymox, Dif Juz…and Wolfgang Press. Repeatedly. I was a Wolfgang Press fan, although I found some of their music difficult I always loved the lyrics and song titles. Mick Allen is an amazing writer. So when I read their third album would include another duet with Elizabeth Fraser I was excited beyond words (obscure pun intended).

And not disappointed. ‘I Am The Crime’ blew me away.

So, twelve years later and writing my own third album, I took their title and wrote a new song with it. Thinking back this seems a little bold, cheeky even? But when you’re in that writing space anything goes. You grab your inspiration from any and everywhere you can. And Tthere’s a good chance that your writing process will obscure and eclipse the source material by the time you release the song.

But I Am The Crime was never released. And in all the many ways Make It Better could have been made better, the inclusion of this song is top of the list.

Sucker by The Wolfgang Press. Simply because it’s awesome.

This article includes excerpts from DUBSTAR.COM. Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

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