What graphic designer Ray Lowry portrayed in art with the cover of London Calling, ex-Clash guitarist/vocalist Mick Jones achieved in practice twelve years later with the release of Big Audio Dynamite II's The Globe. Jones's second album with group (after the UK-only Kool-Aid) is a masterpiece, presenting a joyous tapestry of genres and instruments that offers a new, thoroughly modern means of creating great popular music. In moving away from the traditional drums-bass-guitar model of rock, the '80s and early '90s brought us genres like hip-hop, techno, and house. The Globe (1991) provided something else still, transcending genre by taking these new types grooves and blending them with the approach of a rock band. Was it electronic music with a punk rock spirit, or was it an effortlessly catchy pop/rock group with a pulsating electronic foundation?
In an era where grunge was critically touted as the substitute for bloated popular music, BAD II were creating the true alternative. They challenged the traditional "rock band" paradigm, using sampling in a manner occasionally reminiscent of the work that would earn DJ Shadow universal praise...five years after The Globe was released. The former is today considered a shining achievement of hip-hop. The latter is almost totally forgotten.
The album begins with "Rush," a prime example of BAD II's postmodern brilliance, melding rock instruments, samples, and electronics together so seamlessly that it's not always clear which is which. Even the "Baba O'Riley" sample slides right in to the rockin' pulse of this anthem, which somehow manages to devolve momentarily into a hip-hop groove meditation on modern music and Mick Jones' wonky singing voice before jumping right back in to the irresistible chorus. Where previous efforts from Big Audio Dynamite had too often felt like dancey songs with clever samples played on top of them, songs like "Rush" demonstrate exemplary use of the "pirated" material, making the samples as essential to the music as every drum machine, guitar, or keyboard.
The Globe continues in this vein, marrying the uniquely untrained vocals of Mick Jones with hypnotizing soundscapes. On the tender "Innocent Child," he croons longingly with his acoustic guitar, all alone to start. However, the music evolves beneath him, moving back and forth between a rhythmic piano accompaniment and a sparse synthesized vocal melody without missing a beat. BAD II build melody upon melody in intoxicating tunes like "Kool-Aid" and "Can't Wait/Live." Meanwhile, "In My Dreams" is a triumph of chill-out music, complete with a surfy guitar and a steady rhythm. Once again, at moments in the song, Jones is joined only by samples of vocal scatting. At other times he finds himself enveloped beautifully in a sea of graceful synths. Many of these songs ease nonchalantly into funky and enchanting instrumental interludes. The collage of sounds and samples is wonderful, and they're sometimes even given extended solos, like instruments in a rock band. Nothing seems to fall out of place.
The album is a perfect crossover, with the raw rocker vocals of Mick Jones giving the music a unique personality, distinguishing The Globe from the clubby jams that inspired it. Meanwhile the dense electronic production is far more sophisticated than the modern rock of that era. The Globe succeeds because of how it seamlessly merges so many disparate elements, creating a sound that is both dated and classic, as well as instantly familiar. It's an album littered with background vocals, guitar riffs, and drum breaks that you just can't quite seem to place. When the drumbeat from "In The Air Tonight" appears in "Innocent Child," or the piano intro from "Wuthering Heights" in the breakdown of "Green Grass," we prick up our ears at a familiar sound that we can grasp. Yet soon enough, we lose ourselves once again in the captivating web of sound. Every type of music becomes boring when the formula for its creation becomes too apparent. Like the best of albums, The Globe resists being picked apart and categorized in that way.
Perhaps BAD II's greatest achievement in postmodernism is the album's title song. "The Globe" is a joyful anthem that mixes rap, rock, and electronica into a thoroughly enjoyable bundle. Most fascinating of all, the entire tune is built around a sample from Mick Jones' other band. The strangely familiar guitar riff of the intro gives way to the unmistakable opening chords and earnest vocal yelp of "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" BAD II continue on dutifully, cutting up the sample with a bubbling sequencer, a groovy organ riff, a goofy rapper, and of course, countless samples. During one remarkably cheeky verse, Jones' vocals are accompanied primarily by a sample of his own howling from the original tune. It may be the ultimate statement of a new kind of music: creating an entirely original song by deconstructing one you've already written. Jones put his own biggest hit in the blender and ended up with a fascinating pop confection that manages to sound entirely different from its source material without obscuring the apparentness of the homage. Such is music in the modern, post-electronic world. It's a constant collage and pastiche of what has gone before as electronic instruments, iPods, and the internet have continued to blur the lines between musical genres, and indeed, between musicians and listeners. The best of our music today is postmodern, building often literally from formulas of the past. The Globe epitomizes that musical philosophy, and in its seamless genre-bending, unabashed joy, uniqueness, and immense creativity, it stands today as a defining early landmark and masterpiece of postmodern popular music.
