The guns of Brixton

>> The Stereo MCs haven't broken their connections

by KRISTA

It's been about nine years since anyone outside of Brixton, South London, has seen or heard of the Stereo MCs. Shortly after picking up a Brit Award in 1992, the band disappeared, retreating underground to the studio they had built for themselves under the streets of Brixton in what used to be an illegal nightclub.

"It's not like we've been taking a break all this time!" The very serious Nick Hallam (aka the Head, Stereo MCs deckman) tells me this in the kind of loud voice that is meant to imply I could be in trouble.

"We were back in the studio right away working on lots of music. But we didn't want to just put something out for the sake of saying that we had a new record out. We didn't put a record out because we chose not to."

The Stereo MCs are definitely an anomaly in the music biz. When Hallam and partner Rob Birch (the frighteningly thin rapper) moved down to London from Nottingham the two had little more then a passion for U.S. hip hop going for them. But within a year the duo had set up a very small studio and started to mess around trying to make hip hop, and then began playing small gigs around town. At the end of 1987 Nick and Rob set up Gee Street Records with another friend and added a live DJ and a vocalist to their live act. They released their first album, 33, 45, 78, at the end of '88.

And then they were swept away by the tornado of the major label deal. Within three years of their first album the five-some had managed to get a hit song in the U.S. ("Elevate My Mind"), won Brit Awards for Best Band and Best Album (the big blow-up Connected) and toured with U2, EMF and Happy Mondays. Moreover, they achieved all of this despite not fitting into any of the music industry's preset pigeonholes.

"We're not the kind of band who can just turn on smiles and happily commit commercial suicide. The Stereo MCs has a thing of its own. We do what we feel.

"New music these days is all about the sheep mentality, about making a fast buck and ripping people off. We wanted the next album we put out to be as true as the first one. We want to create the kind of lasting impression that bands like the Clash have made."

Hip hop, rock, rap, rave--the Stereo MCs' sound has traces of all of those elements and yet not enough of any one of them to be "filed under" at the local HMV. They toured with rock groups to gain credibility, but they have no guitarist, just a couple of sequencers throwing out hip hop loops and dubbed-out basslines, a sassy background vocalist and a skinny, white Brit delivering a half-spoken rap--a distinctly London combination that has survived nine years under the pavement.

"We never pandered to any one market more than another, we just made the music we wanted to make," Nick says in a matter-of-fact tone. "That is what has kept us alive."

With guests at Club Soda on Saturday, June 9, 9pm, $19.50, all ages