Big beat surrender

>> Lo Fidelity Allstars fly the white flag

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

There are those DJs who have record shopping down to an anal-retentive science. And then there's those like Phil Ward, aka "The Albino Priest" of London, England's Lo Fidelity Allstars, whose technique is a bit more relaxed.

"When it comes to soul and funk," he explains, "unless you know the artist, song titles and funky album covers are always good. If the title includes the words 'get up,' 'get down,' 'funk,' funky this, funky that, you know you're going to get something mad on there."

Despite this "close enough for (excuse me) rock 'n' roll" approach, Ward is a DJ with solid dance club credentials, so funk is his bread and butter. But ask him about said rock 'n' roll and he picks up the ball with ease.

"I was listening to the radio," he says, "and Guns N' Roses 'Sweet Child of Mine' came on. I absolutely love that song. When it breaks down in the middle and gets down and dirty, and then picks up, that's a great bit of rock."

Nice catch. How about hip hop? "It was massive," Ward recalls from his youth in Leeds. "The breakdance era, the early '80s, when I was 13 or 14, that was all I listened to. A lot of my mates stopped and moved on to other things, but I stuck with it, because it was so exciting."

On to house, techno, jungle, dub, whatever. Ward carries the rally comfortably, despite the nasty hangover he's nursing in the band's house-cum-studio (the bathroom doubles as the vocal booth, so I hope he kept his take-away curry down the night before).

Ward's "it's all good, baby" approach to pop is not only a breath of fresh air, it's mandatory for admission to the ranks of the U.K.'s big beat battalion. The big beat sound is all the rage right now, and with good reason. The tunes slapped together by Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Propellerheads and now the Lo Fis are a white flag on the battlefield of musical styles. Triangulating the repetitiveness of house, the bumpy jump of hip hop and the asskick hooks of dumb ol' rock, with reggae, ragga, and spy movie cool on the side, it's the "something for everyone" principle in full effect.

Unfortunately, the nearly half a decade that big beat's been around has allowed the fakes, phonies and fly-by-nighters time to scramble aboard the bandwagon. "I get sent about 10 records a month, and only one of them I choose to play out when I DJ," Ward grumbles. "There's some terrible dross around, really bad Fatboy Slim copies. There's been a few bands over here that have tried to rip off Norman's sound, and they just can't do it like he can."

To the Lo Fis' credit, they've got their own angle, a dose of drug-damaged spooky juice due in no small part to vocalist Dave "Wrekked Train" Randall's foamy rant/raps. "It comes from living in London for seven years," notes Ward. "It's quite a mad place to live, really, if you haven't got any money. The paranoia is bound to affect your music."

That may be, but then so do "get up," "get down," "funky this" and "funky that." And it doesn't take an anal-retentive scientist to tell you how essential that is.

With Grooverider, Fabio, MC Flux, Dub Pistols and DJ Punk Roc, at Sona, Friday, March 5, midnight, $20