APOLLO 440 - THE M3 HAS LANDED

Following several years of relative inactivity, British rock-dance pioneers Apollo 440 are back, with a successful European tour and a new album in the pipeline. John Andrews catches up with co-founder Trevor Gray and discovers how his Korg M3-M synth module has revitalised his live set-up…

Apollo 440 have been together for an incredible 17 years, during which time they’ve had dozens of worldwide hit singles, such as Don’t Stop The Rock and Ain’t Talkin’‘bout Dub, produced the themes for Hollywood blockbusters such as Charlie’s Angels and Lost In Space, written soundtracks for smash hit video games, and remixed everyone from U2 to Depeche Mode. Their music has also graced several big sporting events over the years…

“Yes, there does seem to be a theme doesn’t there!” laughs Trevor Gray, one of the band’s founder members. “We did the Liverpool 2006 cup final record, a cover of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire. We did the World Cup theme in 1998 with Jean Michel Jarre and we did the F1 theme for ITV. I guess a lot of our music lends itself to dynamic sport stuff like that. The wrestler The Rock even used to come out to our track Stop The Rock!”

It’s been four years since the band’s last release, the double album Dude Descending A Staircase, so what have the band been doing during that time, and why the long break?

“We’ve been doing all sorts of bits: video games and some music for TV programmess like CSI, plus the three of us were working with other people,” says Trevor, before revealing his own more surprising line of work. “I qualified as a pro football coach and now work part-time as a youth development coach for Fulham FC’s Academy, and run an elite soccer school that I started with [Neil] Razor Ruddock.”

Reunion and tour
It was a very special gig at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire in March of this year that got Apollo 440 co-founders Trevor, his brother Howard, and Norman ‘Noko’ Fisher-Jones back on stage for the first time since a world tour during 2000. The concert was a charity tribute gig to the late Associates linchpin Billy MacKenzie, who tragically took his own life during 1997, shortly after appearing on Apollo 440’s second album, Electro Glide In Blue. The tune to which Mackenzie contributed, Pain In Any Language, was the last song that he ever recorded.

“We couldn’t not do the show – it was an honour to be asked,” says Trevor, “so we closed the gig with that tune, Pain In Any Language. We enjoyed the gig, getting back together, so asked our agent if he could get us any other gigs and he came back with a ton of festivals in Europe so now we’re in the middle of our tour going all over the place. We did a gig in Moscow and have seven dates in the Ukraine lined up. We sold a lot of records in Eastern Europe so played the Czech Republic, Poland, Albania, Slovakia, and so on.”

New rig, old tricks
Despite having not toured with Apollo 440 since 1990, Trevor thought he could just dust down his old rig – five keyboards and a rack full of modules – and simply take it on the road again…

“The roadies were asking if I really should take the rig out as it was so old but I said, ‘it will be fine’. The first gigs we played were dodgy and bits went down. The techs said I should simplify it, and that there are now keyboards that can do everything my old lot did. I had a look round and researched the Korg M3. We’d used the Korg MS2000 on our last album – it was all over it – so we got the M3-M in and I’ve managed to sample everything on it!”

“I had an Akai S6000 that was fully loaded so I transferred that over. It took some time to do every keyboard, like I sampled every note on my old Vox organ into it, but it did it perfectly and the sound on it and the effects have been great. So I’ve been able to put absolutely everything on it, that’s five keyboards and a rack, all sampled and put on the M3 Module.”

It’s not just the sampling side of the M3 that Trevor likes. The extra performance functionality works well, too. “A certain amount of what I was doing was triggering sound effects and little samples,” he says. “Now I don’t need a keyboard for that as I can do it with the pads on the M3-M.”

M3-M saves the day
During the early stages of the tour, the M3 Module proved to be a saviour…

“We played Albania after we’d just transferred a lot of the sounds over to the M3-M from the old set-up. I took it over in my suitcase to finish off the programming in my hotel room.” Trevor remembers. “But then the tour manager phoned us to say that the rest of the gear had been stopped in customs in Italy, so we didn’t have anything apart from the M3-M and the other player’s Akai MPC! We managed to borrow some drums, a guitar and bass and I sampled intros of songs from my iPod into the M3-M so we managed to get through it!”

Fortunately, the rest of the tour is running much more smoothly – so well, in fact, that the band has started recording some new material. “Yes, once we finish the tour off we’ll get to finish new album,” confirms Trevor.

More at www.apollo440.com