THE GREEN MAN - SOUND POWER

The Green Man’s Sound Power is “Bass Music” with a lot of soul. Its 30 tracks are a sound journey from melancholy to euphoria, covering both speedy and half-time beats, coolness and emotion. It features mainly drum & bass, but also dubstep, ambient, jazz, soul, techno, trap and trip hop. It switches between lush arrangements and minimal simplicity, between wide spaces in sound and the intimacy of a drummer’s booth – with a big final at the end, featuring three of Green Man’s former biggest hits at the end of CD2. “Sound Power” is a sound adventure – which is supposed to be experienced from the beginning to the end.

“Sound Power” is “Bass Music” with a touch of Air or Massive Attack. Singers like Peter Boucner (I’m a Junglist, UK Top 10 with Shut Up & dance’s I’m Ravin I’m Ravin), Demolition Man, MC Navigator, Mystic Dan and Ras Abraham are performing on Green Man’s sound, resulting in tracks with soul like “Face the Father”, “Word Sound Power” (both on Basswerk 38 limited edition vinyl), “Junglist Soldier”, “Keep Trying” or “Playing In The Dark”. Shut Up & Dance’s “The Green Man” once was the spark initiating “The Green Man”‘s artist career delivered the artist name, so having Peter Bouncer to sing the opening track matches not only soundwise. It’s the positive energy of his singinig – in Jamaica they call it “Word, Sound, Power” – which became a hook for the whole album, which is about “Sound” that lets you smile, gives power or also makes you wonder. Besides the groovy material tracks like “Chainsmoker”, “Apokalypse” or “We Destroy The World” show Green Man’s “dark” side.

TGM’s first album “You Decide” on Duesseldorf’s electronic crossover label Combination (who also released SEBA and Kabuki albums) back then convinced the fans not only with the music (“Infinity” entered the MTV Dance Charts and was #1 in the German DCC club charts), but also with its accompanying little written essay in the artwork. “You Decide” was loved by drum & bass nerds and Elle magazine at the same time. It is a coincidence that Heiner Kruse a.k.a The Green Man (or in short “TGM”) has his birthday on the same day with Matthew Herbert. Nevertheless it is no surprise one can find allusions or political statements in track names, colours and pictures plus another little essay also in “Sound Power”, they are not so much hidden though and feel quite personal. The Green Man does not only enjoy details when it comes to sound design but also when it comes to writing down his “TGM” moniker as a logo on the album the same way he does it with an Edding waterproof pen on self-burnt dubplate CD’s, developping a fonts out of it and doing the whole artwork.

While currently “Bass Music” is the new word for drum & bass and dubstep, the borders between genres seem to “blur”. TGM and Basswerk are known for running one of Germany’s most famous drum & bass events called “Basswerk Sessions”, being an absolute term in the scene featuring a wide musical variety of drum & bass since 1995, featuring artists such as Intalex, D-Bridge, State Of Mind, BSE, Doc Scott, Spectrasoul, Enei, Calibre or Dub Phizix recently. With over 40 Vinyl and CD releases including regular musical contributions by The Green Man’s own Basswerk label, founded 1997, soon developed to become one of Germany’s most famous drum & bass labels receiving various Future Music Awards for the best label, which were the German equivalent to the UK’s D&B Arena votings.

As an artist TGM is known to enjoy surprises, be it within his dj sets, productionwise with “crossover” tracks like “Easy” or “Infinity”, or with his dark “Chainsmoker”, released on Big Bud’s UK’s Soundtrax label played by DJ’s like Rockwell, Phace, Naibu or Intalex – or long ago producing a coop with Klute called “Chicks” in his Cologne studio. He covers a variety of electronic music and drum & bass. No wonder his music was used for various films and performances like CSI Miami, BBC Blue Peter, Sky, Arte, CreativeReview.co.uk, Current TV, Holiday On Ice and more, including his works as a composer for the “Lichtfaktor” lightwriting artist collective and its movies.

The Green Man has been performing dj and live sets internationally including overseas gigs and in 2008 also contributed a DJ Mix on behalf of Groove Attack for Knowledge Magazine’s CD. In 2011 UK Mixmag has chosen his Basswerk dc2 digital compilation including a TGM dj mix to be compilation of the month. He also does music videos and artist tutorials on www.youtube.com/basswerkrec. He is also known as an author of various books on music production in German language and teaches music production and beatdesign lessons in an engineering school once a week in Cologne.

www.basswerk.de

Tracklisting:
CD1
01. Word Sound Power (feat. Peter Bouncer)
02. Keep On Movin
03. Face The Father (feat. Demolitian Man)
04. Reasonjazz
05. Can We Change
06. Shy Conversations (with Sam KDC)
07. The Black & White Walkways
08. Keep Trying (feat. MC Navigator)
09. Automation
10. Somehow You Know When It’s Right
11. Stay Tune
12. Junglist Soldier (TGM Remix)
13. Love,Change Or Leave It
14. A Deeper Love
15. A Song for Chloe

CD2
01. Playing In The Dark (feat. Mystic Dan)
02. I Go (Subz Heatwave RMX) (feat. Ufo! & Sage)
03. Mindless
04. Polaroid
05. I’ve Got It in My Head (feat. Mystic Dan)
06. Electronic Supersymphonic
07. Passage To India
08. A Greater Hood (My Lady Dub Vocal)
09. Poona
10. Apocalypse
11. We Destroy The World
12. Information
13. Chainsmoker
14. Euphoria (with Dizplay)
15. Easy (Video Version) (feat. MC Dragoon & Chevy)

~ groove attack