Globo are here. They aren't fighting any battles, they simply want to make a point. Globo are Mark Wernhen, Paul Thomson, Ian McGregor and Steve Appleton. That is their core anyway. Globo are actually part of World Net Productions which is an all encompassing group involving another four people. DJ's Push and DJ Overhaul (from Nation Records) provide backup, and all visuals are provided by Ambulance 313.

So they are Globo, but what is Globo? Globo derived there name from the Globo TV station which is a prime example of government influenced propaganda broadcasting.

Globo produce a sound which they haven't quite decided on yet. They formed with an idea, and this is still their direction, but they are still very much at a formative stage. Their initial ideas, however, still form the backbone of what they are doing.

A Globo experience is an interesting one. Their records vary from track to track in style,, escaping the pigeonholes so easily; "Globo Conspiracy (experience)" is a wonderful ambient-dub track, with a hip hop leaning - but the title track from the same 12" "AutoSleeper" specifically part 2 has a more scary and disturbing feel, somewhat similar to Scanner. "... that was extraordinary, I actually came home one day and started listening through my messages, and you know when you normally rewind your answering messages it rewinds for maybe 10 seconds, well it rewound for minutes and minutes, and this guy... he must of rung me 30 times and he was just totally confused and he obviously had never come across an answer machine before, didn't understand that it wasn't actually a real person ... here was a poor block in some sort of toxic state on the verge of dying, leaving loads of messages on my answering machine... that was very distressing" commented Mark.

In a similar approach their live performances, ".. installations as we tend to call them, pretentiously...", consist of a set up where they work in conjunction with DJ's, interspersing records with live performance seamlessly. The aim is to create an atmosphere, and as such the band only wish to perform within their own constraints. " We are constantly being invited to do gigs, we just have to keep turning them down. We were invited to play with Consolidated, a while back, who are band who we greatly admire - but we had to turn that down because we knew what it would be like, we would be treated like a rock band, where we would have to come up and do a half hour support slot, and that's just not what we are about."

"The way we work with our own DJ's, there is live music that we play on top of what the DJ's are playing." They do not want to play gigs, not because they don't like other bands, but because it is their evening, and they want to play that way, but they are interested in other people coming in and working with them. "The nature of what we do - I don't know how many people are going to accept those constraints. We play maybe four fifteen minute sets throughout a night, and I don't know how many bands you could talk into coming all the way over to a club, setting their gear up and doing a big old sound check just for fifteen minutes." Well, Andy Warhol said everyone could have 15 minutes of fame.

As part of the live performance they also use projections to emphasise the atmosphere. "We are not going to be just a techno act, we are not going to be a trance act, we are not going to be a rock and roll band. We want to include things in the overall scheme of things which people are going to find interesting like censorship stuff or the addresses". "We show the addresses of all kinds of organisations, The Houses of Parliament, anything we can get our hands on which we think are interesting and we think people will put in their phone books, we put on the wall. We were going to put the BNP's address and phone number up - we made the slide up and everything and we looked at it and we looked at it and we though 'Oh fuck, is it worth it, is it worth putting this up because people will just say to us 'you're just fascists.'".

"We're not fascists, but you can't deny that the BNP doesn't exist. I find what they say absolutely disgusting, but we live in a democracy - you can't deny them their voice, you can't deny their ideas. We wondered if we wanted to get in that deep that quickly... perhaps this is an example of self-censorship." Censorship is another topic which the band are greatly interested in. "We are probably less interested in political censorship than we are in more artistic and erotic censorship, for example pornography. We would fight tooth and nail against the obscenity laws in this country."

The Criminal Justice Bill can pass without particular comment, which is what happened when they did pass it. "... it's some of the most vile Anti-British unpatriotic pieces of legislation that have ever managed to get through."

"We are going to be doing stuff which is illegal, not least repetitive beats, quite apart from all that stuff, which is one argument entirely, we will be showing pornography at our next set of shows, and we will be celebrating it as well." All this is to be covered in a limited edition book which is to be released in future times, available through their P.O. Box address.

As well as this Globo are also working as remixers, waiting for release are mixes of the band Immersion - on Colin Newman's Swim label. "They are doing a peculiar sort of rolling remix project, where they have released an LP called 'Oscillating', the whole album is being remixed by a large amount of people." Names also involved in this remixing are Mark Gage of VapourSpace fame and Girl's Against Boys.

Globo are currently working on their debut album, which although still unnamed is just about finished, and hold-ups barred should be ready for release in February/March 95. "When our album comes out it is going to be a non genre-specific record"

As for a second album "We've got a monthly residency at this Norwich club called The Waterfront, and basically we are going to write sketch kind of tracks which we will basically test out on the audience... We are planning on making it a bit more dance-floor oriented." This will make an appearance later in 95.

Globo are keeping an open mind, and want to hear from anyone who has anything to say. Send articles, videos, tapes, pictures, disks or any other medium to

Globo at :
PO Box 3892, London, SW2 2XW.
Their debut album is out now on Hydrogen Dukebox Records

written by Dorian F. Moore Why not check out the Globo site?