J Saul Kane (1967 - 2024)
[J Saul Kane tribute by Carl Lorben @ DJ Magazine, 19 November 2024] [Mixmag] [Music Week] [NME] [The Quietus] [Resident Advisor] [Tribute by Akio Nagase]
I was briefly in touch with him years ago when I kept for my own Website a sort of fanpage of his music and also the record labels, DC Recordings and Electron Industries, that he maintained. (I can’t say I knew him well, but I remember “Nutters but good nutters” was how he commented on the page.)
J Saul Kane biography
Jonathan Saul Kane was born on the 26th of January, 1967. He came of age in the era when the first wave of hip hop culture was just sweeping across the Atlantic from its original birthplace most historians now locate to Bronx, New York City, USA. It reached also Powis Square in the Notting Hill area of West London, UK, where a teenage kid called Jon lived with his mother Carol. She was a dancer and graphic designer who always supported Jon when he was taking his first tentative steps in the world of music and culture.
Notting Hill is traditionally known as a hub for bohemians, a place where artists, beatniks and hippies met immigrants from diverse ethnic backgrounds (it’s Powis Square where the infamous 1970 film Performance by Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell takes place), and though having undergone gentrification at the start of the millennium, the annual Notting Hill Carnival is still a reminder of the area’s Afro-Caribbean-Indo-boho history.
J Saul Kane's grandfather was Jack Kane (1911 – 1999), Edinburgh's first Labour Lord Provost, a miner's son and social campaigner who declined a knighthood in 1974 owing to his political beliefs. Other than that, there’s not much information about Jon’s childhood or his family background except that he was eleven when he found at a local cinema kung-fu films, an interest that would last for the rest of his lifetime, as he explained to AmbienTrance in 2000:
"Since I was a small boy, I went to the late night cinema near where I lived. The way these films were constructed and what they were trying to portray became part of my psyche... Thus came Depth Charge, the nature of heroes was born."
Having grown up in a multi-ethnic community himself, J Saul Kane also found some unifying cultural connections in his own interest to such genres as kung fu films or spaghetti westerns that he had seen at The Roxy cinema (which also showed porn during night time), which he explained to The Wire in 1997:
"It's a black culture thing to be into heroes. In these films you see people who are impoverished and have nothing, but they still have dignity and class."
In 1995 Kane told Swedish Pop magazine that:
"I think that kung fu in America and Europe has much more to do with black than with white culture. There is a clear connection between hip hop and these films. Hip hop has always been about heroes, about fantasizing, about imagining unbeatably cool, almost superhuman characters."
In his early teens, Jon had already found interest in the dub reggae music of such artists as Augustus Pablo and Lee "Scratch" Perry when in 1982 he started DJing at local hip-hop jams and quickly gained proficiency with turntables, unfazed by the fights and violence taking place around him at those illicit parties.
J Saul Kane to Jazid magazine about the UK hip hop community in 1996:
"My background is in hip hop and electro and I think there is definitely a community but it's changed a lot. In the beginning it was all very mixed up – I remember a Bambaataa gig in '81 and the audience were all punks. At the Def Jam parties all the people were white. There were hip hop crews but again, it was totally different – it was South London versus West London."
Also having a knowledge of martial arts, even though he was not physically large in stature, you didn’t mess with Jon, who would sometimes DJ wearing a black cape. J Saul Kane explained the London scene of those days to Vice in 2006:
"In the early 80s, there was nothing here. We picked up everything from New York or Jamaica and interpreted it in a London way which was quite interesting. The warehouse scene was interesting: people had to get off their arses and go and find it."
According to Yves Guillemot of Vinyl Solution, Jon was also a skilled breakdancer who appeared alongside Joseph Christophe (a.k.a. Waddy) at Sadler's Wells in 1987.
At his mum’s place Jon’s own room housed a massive scaffolding he had set up for his records and decks, as his friend in those days, Danny Briottet (later of Renegade Soundwave) recounts. The illegal warehouse parties took place in Shoreditch or under Paddington’s Harrow Road Roundabout.
Mark Moore (who gained fame in the late 1980s with S’Express) remembers having met Jonathan randomly on the street in Queensway. They got talking about music, breakbeats and hip hop. Jon invited Mark back to his place where he had two record decks, which was still quite rare those days. Mark Moore says he was astounded by Jon’s turntable and scratching skills and immediately got him to do a DJ spot at the Mud Club in Soho. The year was 1984. At the Mud Club Jon would play records four times a week. Moore and Kane became fast friends, checking out warehouse parties and catching live shows from bands like Mantronix, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, and LL Cool, also seeing loads of movies together at Scala Cinema.
In 1988 was released the very first 12” by J Saul Kane. It was under the moniker Grimm Death, featuring a MC called Joz One (a.k.a. Tony Tone of Ladbroke Grove’s Krew posse), and called 'Too Tuff to Rip'. Grimm Death was J Saul Kane's DJ name he had devised back in 1983. He used it also for his first remixes, including Bomb The Bass’s 1988 hit 'Megablast'. The Grimm Death moniker was discontinued when Depth Charge took off.
The label for the Grimm Death release was now-legendary Vinyl Solution. Yves Guillemot had run the Vinyl Solution shop on Hereford Road and decided to start the shop’s own record label, co-founded by fellow Frenchman, Alain de La Mata, and J Saul Kane, who also became the label's A&R. Officially launched in 1987, Vinyl Solution label started by releasing hardcore punk and garage rock records, soon diversifying into electronic dance music. From Kane's 1992 interview for Volume magazine:
"In those days Vinyl Solution were releasing rock and punk tracks and I just came in with the demo and said, 'Do you want to do a dance record?' They liked it, it went OK and then I brought Eon [a.k.a. Ian Loveday] in and he did another track. Then I started bringing other people in and the dance side of the label built like that, just by me bringing along friends of mine."
Finding commercial success with its releases such as those of Bizarre Inc. and needing more shop space, Vinyl Solution's move to 231 Portobello Road followed. Vinyl Solution would form the genesis of J Saul Kane’s own DC Recordings and Electron Industries, but more about that later on.
1988 saw also the release of Into the Dragon, the debut album by Bomb the Bass, a.k.a. Tim Simenon, whose 'Beat Dis', out the previous year, had become a massive hit. Simenon and J Saul Kane had both been DJing at the Wag club of Wardour Street, Soho. As Grimm Death, Kane provided for the album's 'Megablast Rap' his turntable skills and "sound FX". The album featured also 'Beat Dis (Freestyle Scratch Mix)' by Simenon and J Saul Kane. Kane was part of Bomb the Bass live entourage around the world. He told to Vice in 2006:
"I did a remix of 'Beat Dis' on the first album and then did a lot of the second album [Unknown Territory, 1991]. I played live with them in Europe too, which I wouldn't say was fun. I'm glad I did it but I don't want to be in a band again."
The rise of UK acid house craze in 1988 didn't go well with J Saul Kane as he explained to Volume in 1992. For him, the music was OK, but...
"I just decided not to be a DJ anymore. I love acid house but I couldn't take all the crap that went with it. That whole big love thing became really false and all that tripped out hippy crap... plus, I couldn't just stick to 120 bpm all night. It used to be really mixed, different styles and fast rotation. But Mark Moore and Colin Faver, who were DJing at the Pyramid (At Heaven) started playing 120 bpm all night."
"At the time there was a real reaction against it. Colin Dale used to play straight hip hop, he really hated house music and now he's like a real rave DJ. Fabio's another one – I used to know them in '84, and they were like, 'Oh God, I hate this House shit, it drives me mad', you know – and now they're like up to 130, 140 bpm. They must be going totally crazy. But I wasn't into that vibe at all – I like things a bit more laid back. Depth Charge was a direct result of that. A bit of rebellion."
In January 1989 J Saul Kane released on Vinyl Solution the eponymous first 12" from Depth Charge, the moniker which was to become his best-known guise. Kane told Volume how the name was based on a sonar blip, the sort of sound that would become familiar in the late-80s/early-90s "bleep" rave records:
"'Depth Charge' was based entirely on that sonar blip. The name, the sound, the whole thing was just based on the idea of the blip combined with dub reggae and a heavy, slow rhythm."
"The whole of that track was done in one day. I just went into the studio with a cassette with some samples on it."
(JSK to The Wire, 1997.)
The A-side of the 12" featured 'Depth Charge (Han Do Jin Version)' with a vocal sample from Cymande's 1974 track 'The Recluse', and some dialogue taken from Incredible Shaolin Thunderkick, a 1982 South Korean kung-fu movie directed by Godfey Ho. 'Depth Charge' begins with a sample from a film depicting a character avenging the death of his father who was killed by Shun Tai: "Do you remember a small waterboy? I'm gonna do what you did to my father in the woods ten years ago. I will die after you, I will see to that."
In 1995 Kane told in an interview for Trance Europe Express:
"I've had several people come up to me in the street and ask, ‘Are you Shun Tai?' The first record was, I suppose, quite a cult record in a sense."
This 12" saw the start J Saul Kane's use of film samples on Depth Charge's records which was to be become a sort of trademark of his best-remembered works. Kane further explained in that same interview:
"By using dialogue I put an identity on what I did. I like having things you can remember and want to hear again. I don't repeat things like choruses and verses because, yeah, it makes you want to hear the track again – but if you hear a chorus too many times it becomes monotonous very quickly."
For Kane there was a clear connection in between his music and kung fu films, often perceived merely as cheap trash (and repeatedly suffering from the poor dubbing of dialogue in their international versions, too), which he was always ready to defend, nevertheless, as in this 1995 interview for Pop:
"Sure, there are lots of trashy kung fu movies. But there are also many who are very good. I think it's the dubbing that's the big culprit, it's the crazy Italians who ruin everything with their voiceovers. That's when it gets comical. I think people would have perceived the films in a completely different way if they had seen them with the original soundtracks."
"As for my music, I think you can compare the structure itself to kung fu movies. I want things to happen all the time, I squeeze hundreds of ideas into every song. I try to combine the ideas in a good way, but sometimes they rub against each other a little and then it has to be that way. As long as it's not boring, it doesn't matter much if it's not perfect."
The 'Depth Charge' release was cut and labelled at 33 rpm but the DJs playing it decided otherwise as Kane told in the Volume interview of 1992:
"The reason that first one did so well was because everyone was playing it at the wrong speed. The first time I heard it at 45, it was coming out of this car and I thought, 'What the fuck's this? I know those samples...' I thought someone had sampled my record at first, then I realised it was my track being played at the wrong speed. At 45 you could mix it in with most of the tracks that were around at that time, so the sonar blip ended up being a backing noise for a lot of the DJs and then got sampled on a ton of records that came after it."
J Saul Kane’s film obsession took him next to the world of spaghetti westerns, with another 1989 Depth Charge 12” on Vinyl Solution, called ‘Bounty Killers’. Kane created the track with two record decks and a videocassette recorder. It featured samples from Mad Professor’s 1985 ‘Fast Forward Into Dub’ (the same one The Orb would also use for ‘Blue Room’ in 1992), Ennio Morricone, Aisha, Bizarre Inc., Simtec & Wylie, Xena, Herman Kelly & Life and snippets of dialogue from such Clint Eastwood films as For a Few Dollars More and High Plains Drifter. The foundations of trip-hop sound which became trendy some years later can already be found here.
The release was dedicated to the memory of Sergio Leone. ‘Bounty Killers’ reached No. 84 on UK Chart. Snub TV’s UK version (Season 2 Episode 4, 1990) featured a short video clip of the track with J Saul Kane himself as a gunslinger. He reminisced the video and its shooting in 2022:
“After they told me I couldn’t take a horse on the underground, I was mentally out. So, none of this is my idea (got the male dancers). I was just there. Still, fun to see.”
J Saul Kane explained his artist aliases to XLR8R in 2006:
“When I started out many moons ago, I wanted to have one character with many different facets. Octagon Man was the first and Depth Charge was part of that.”
"I did the first Octagon Man track the day after I did the first Depth Charge track. I really wanted to do Electro tracks.”
(The Wire, 1997.)
“Octagon Man was meant to be the main thing but Depth Charge took off and still gets the press."
(JSK to NME, 1999.)
"I've always listened to all sorts of stuff. When I was doing the early Octagon Man stuff, I was listening to Harold Budd, Brian Eno and a lot of soundtrack-based music and I've always wanted to combine that element with drums in a way which isn’t woolly and waffly."
(JSK to Jazid, 1996)
The first Octagon Man 12”, ‘Free-er Than Free’ (STORM 9) came out also as a 1989 release, replete with a trademark electro/breakbeat sound and the insistent drum programming with some sudden bursts of staccato breaks that this moniker of Kane would be known for, playable both at 33 or 45. With "Ooh baby" samples, sweeping synth strings and the type of piano sound that could be found on plenty of dance tracks of the era, the overall impression here was still more housey than on the subsequent Octagon Man releases.
Kane elaborated to Soul Underground magazine in 1990:
"The Octagon Man is a kind of backing music. There is a very strong song arrangement on it. It’s a listening track you can dance to. The reactions to it have been: 'It’s the same as the last one', but all the stuff in it, drum patterns etc., are completely different."
"It’s all about sounds. I don’t like nice tunes so much. I don’t really think about the music – I go for the sounds rather than melody. I don’t know enough technical terms to say more than that. When I’m happy with it, then it’s done. It’s not necessarily a progressive thing."
And when asked about the difference in between Depth Charge and The Octagon Man, Kane explained to Jazid in 1996:
"Depth Charge has a really immediate identity, it's very English. There's a bit of taking something, analysing it a little bit and giving it back in a stupid way with a bit of piss-taking involved. But The Octagon Man is just electronic music which I like doing. I like appealing to people who have nothing to do with music, people who aren't into dance music and don’t buy records. I want them to hear a record of mine and think: 'Oh, that’s interesting'. I want the people who work in farms in Tennessee to be into my music."
The Octagon Man swiftly returned with ‘The Demented Spirit’ (STORM 11) of 1990. J Saul Kane decribed this as "later versions of Free-er Than Free”, with three versions of the same track, called ‘Spiritos Demento’ and ‘Okugai Eigakan' / '屋外映画館’ (translates as “Outdoor movie theatre”). Starting with an irascible staccato drum roll and banging percussive snare sound, joined by an angrily pulsing bass synth and gloomy futuristic strings, and haunted by some wandering electric guitar sounds, this release was already more evolved than its predecessor, and unlike many other electronic dance tracks of the same era, doesn’t sound dated even after three decades since its release. Kane’s collaborator here is Japanese musician Gota Yashiki who provides the programming and some guitar sounds.
‘Dead by Dawn’ (STORM 15), recorded in April 1990, was the next Depth Charge 12”, further exploring J Saul Kane’s cinematic obsessions. This time the theme was horror. Samples were taken from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left.
Kane’s enthusiasm for movies was matched only by his fanaticism for football, not only as fan but also being a gifted player himself, who in his later years was often witnessed frequenting online football forums and sharing his firm opinions on the state of the game. Recorded approximately in the same timeframe as ‘Dead by Dawn’, ’Goal’ (STORM 19) was a very different beast from the previous release, featuring a Latin groove with a hip-shaking fluid bassline and samples from crazed football commentators and stadium crowd, made in honour of 1990 Italian World Cup.
J Saul Kane had started already in 1988 his collaboration with Eon, a.k.a. Ian Loveday (1954 – 2009), another Vinyl Solution artist. With Loveday, who was to become Kane’s close friend, he worked as a co-producer, provided samples and mixing. I interviewed Loveday in 2002 when he also shed some light on his collaboration with J Saul Kane:
"I met JSK through Mark Moore (S'Express), when I was DJing at the Mud club; later we both started producing tracks and he introduced me to Vinyl Solution, who signed the first Eon track, 'Light, Colour, Sound'. We worked together on a lot of the early studio tracks; these days [2002] we don't often work together as we both have our own studios and have developed different production styles."
For Eon’s 'Spice' 12” (STORM 22, 1990), with samples taken from David Lynch’s 1984 film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel Dune, J Saul Kane provided two remixes, 'The Baron's Dub' and 'J. Saul Kane Version', with his trademark banging breakbeats. J Saul Kane was involved with most Eon releases up until the mid-1990s, including the 1992 album Void Dweller. Eon also released two twelve-inches for Kane's own Electron Industries label, more of which later.
"I was with Eon and decided to make a funny rave record 'round his house." (JSK about The Spider, XLR8R, 2006.)
'Help' by The Spider (STORM 41, 1991) was a collaboration of J Saul Kane and Ian Loveday, featuring buzzing if not abrasive, ravey "everybody-hands-in-the-air" type of synth riffs, intense breakbeats and samples from 'Iron Leg' (1969) by Mickey & the Soul Generation and 'Two, Three, Break' (1983) by The B-Boys.
"This was another off-the-cuff, crazy idea." (JSK about Mr Selfish, XLR8R, 2006.)
The Spider was a one-off moniker as was also J Saul Kane's another alias, called Mr Selfish, with a self-titled 12” of three tracks (STORM 35, 1991). The sound of the title track, with its synth strings, was clearly more four-to-the-floor disco techno whereas 'Gonna Gonna' with its burping bass and breakbeats was familiar JSK fodder. 'Gonna Make It' is a peculiarly catchy breakbeat excursion one could easily mistake for something out of a samba carnival in Rio, with helium vocals and a ringing synth.
'Depth Charge vs. Silver Fox' (FOX 001, 1991) was one of the two releases of Silver Fox Records, a short-lived imprint of Vinyl Solution. To Kane's usual fierce delivery of breaks and sub-bass, samples were this time taken from Eagle vs. Silver Fox (original title: Bicheongwon), a 1980 kung-fu movie directed by Yun-Kyo Park and ‘The Assassinator (Killer Mix)' by Style (1990). On the B-side (or "Fluffy Side") was found the track 'Under The Eye Of The Electric Storm' which, with its bleeps and breakbeats, was J Saul Kane's excursion into the currently-popular rave techno sound.
The A-side ("Foxy Side") title track also featured raps from MC Alkaline (a.k.a. D. Hart, who died in 2023), a member of Gunshot, a hip hop group from Leyton in East London.
As A&R for Vinyl Solution J Saul Kane had been instrumental in signing the act to the label. In 1990 Gunshot had brought their demo tape to Vinyl Solution shop, played it to Kane who had liked it but suggested they come up with a new demo in a month’s time. They did and subsequently got a deal for one 12", 'Battle Creek Brawl' (with 'Apocalypse Bass' remix by J Saul Kane), followed later by Compilation (1992), an LP collected from their singles, only after which there was a first album proper, Patriot Games (1993), all Vinyl Solution releases.
In 1995 J Saul Kane explained to Trance Europe Express his relationship to hip hop, which had played an important part in his early musical formation as a DJ for the illegal warehouse parties of 1980s London scene, and which had by the early 1990s evolved into different styles, some of them militant like Public Enemy, or in contrast, the "Daisy Age" ethos of the acts like De La Soul, after the genre's 1970s origins as a ghetto soundsystem soundtrack for New York City street parties:
"It did get a bit political, didn't it? People like LL Cool J and Schoolly D were pioneering new rap styles but Public Enemy somehow just blew them away. After that nearly every rap act wanted to sound like them. I was always into the more abstract, instrumental side of hip hop right from the beginning."
"I remember when 'Plug Tuning' (De La Soul) and 'Public Enemy No. 1' [Public Enemy's debut] came out, I was like straight away, 'Give me that'. Whereas a lot of hip hop purists weren't really into it. When I DJed at warehouse parties in the 80s I remember people then didn't really like the stuff I was playing. As far as styles go I suppose hip hop has diversified now, but not so much as individual records go – it's all pretty samey."
After having taken a break from DJing, J Saul Kane returned to spinning records in public and visited Japan with Ian Loveday as he told Volume in 1992:
"They invited us over to go and DJ, but I thought we should do more than that. So I asked them to get a computer and a sampler and a few extra bits, and it sounds good, actually. It sounds like a rave record that lasts for an hour and a half, changing all the time – all automated by computers. It's amazing how easy it is. I don't know anything about music, I'm not a musician. People say to me, 'What do yo play?' And I say, 'Well, everything and nothing.' It's just an idea to me – if you can take an idea from A to B, that's what makes a record good."
1992 also saw J Saul Kane returning to the world of Italowesterns with 'Bounty Killer (The Sequel)' (a.k.a. 'Bounty Killer II') 12", catalogue number STORM 50. Featuring both dialogue and music samples from Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965) and Ennio Morricone's score for the film: 'La Resa Dei Conti' (a.k.a. 'The Musical Pocket Watch') for the memorable final duel scene, 'Il Vizio D’Uccidere', 'Il Colpo' and 'Indio! Listen to Me...'; also some dialogue from 'Two Kinds of Spurs' of The Good, Bad and the Ugly (1966) by Leone.
Out of these samples and with his skilled use of effects, and also space and silence when applying the breakbeats, Kane creates an eerie if not downright psychedelic soundscape, justifying his reputation as a true pioneer of the style which music press, a year or two later, would call trip hop. 'Nectar' on the B-side of 'Bounty Killer (The Sequel)' 12" is a full-fledged drum'n'bass excursion, making one somehow think of The Prodigy, with a sample taken from 'Mama Get Yourself Together' (1971) by Baby Huey.
For over a year there was no new material from J Saul Kane. The only explanation he would give in the 1995 interview for Trance Europe Express was:
"I just couldn't be bothered. I didn't feel inspired."
In any case, he came back with a vengeance in 1994 with a slew of new releases. One of them was 'Hubba Hubba Hubba' / 'Number 9' (12", STORM 99), out in the last months of the year. By now the film samples had become somewhat a trademark of J Saul Kane’s recordings. This tradition was faithfully continued by the four-track EP.
Marked by intense dub-informed breakbeats, the EP has two versions of the title track. 'Hubba Hubba Hubba (What’s in the Bag)' features samples from Dirty Harry (1971), directed by Don Siegel, the first installment in the film series where Clint Eastwood played a violent antihero cop: with the lines such as "What’s in the bag, man?", and the sarcastic quips "Hubba hubba hubba" and "My, that’s a big one" from the film’s psychopathic villain, Scorpio, memorably played by Andrew Robinson. The sample "You're so sly... but so am I" is from a character called Lloyd Bowman, played by Bill Smitrovich in Manhunter (1986) by Michael Mann.
'Hubba Hubba Hubba [Knife in the Bag]' samples Audrey Hepburn going into hysterics in Wait Until Dark (1967), directed by Terence Young. 'Number 9' features samples from 'Super Shine #9' (1973) by Sister Goose and the Ducklings, '”T” Stands for Trouble' (1972) by Marvin Gaye, from the blaxploitation film Trouble Man, and also samples from the films Puppet on a Chain (1970) by Geoffrey Reeve and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) by William Friedkin. 'The Guide' starts out with a slow and menacing hip hop beat but end ups being a more serene affair.
"Born of the gutters of 80s clubland… forged and fired in the sleazy cinema dives of London town…"
(J Saul Kane on Nine Deadly Venoms album in his Facebook post, 26 January 2015.)
J Saul Kane had been asked about a possible longplay album in the interview for Volume in 1992 and he pondered about it:
"At the moment I'm debating how to do it. It could be an album of single type things, but I don't really want to do that. If you put on an old [Augustus] Pablo album or an old Lee Perry album, they're very sparse, very dubby and musical and, if you play the whole album it sounds cool, it really works. An album of upfront dance tracks just sounds shite. It may be good to start with, but ten versions on an album doesn't really work. I think the idea of the concept album has to come into the dance field in a big way, purely to create more interest."
Finally, Nine Deadly Venoms (2x12"/CD, STEAM 100), out 21 November 1994, was that long-awaited debut album from Depth Charge, being actually a compilation of his earlier singles, added with some new material such as the soon-to-be-seminal track 'Shaolin Buddha Finger'. On the album there was also ‘Daughters of Darkness’ that was already released on Volume Three (a music magazine in booklet format featuring a CD) back in 1992; with a Dana Andrews sample from Night of the Demon (1957).
With all J Saul Kane's kung fu, spaghetti western and horror movie-themed tracks put together, Nine Deadly Venoms already felt like some concept album, a sleek, dubby excursion with hip hop beats into the cinematic netherworld specifically devised by Mr. Kane.
"The LP was all about four or five years old when it was released",
said J Saul Kane about the album in his 1997 interview in The Wire, adding:
"For your work to be still appealing to people after that length of time says something to me."
When Nine Deadly Venoms was released, in his November 1994 interview for Melody Maker, J Saul Kane's explanation of the work philosophy behind his records was somewhat mischievous:
"I’m always taking the piss out of things I’m doing, whatever I’m using. I mean, I’m not into making a serious football track or a serious kung fu record. The only reason I use samples is because I don’t know any vocalists who are weird enough for me."
Of the birth process behind the tune that would eventually become 'Shaolin Buddha Finger', J Saul Kane had already mentioned in his 1992 Volume interview:
"I'm doing a track with Tim [Simenon] at the moment. It's like an ongoing thing – we never manage to get it finished. It's a kind of Kung Fu-related Buddhist monk thing, but it never gets done. We've started it and I keep meaning to go back, but it's like he's doing Interference and Bomb The Bass and I'm doing various things with Midi Rain, Eon and a whole load of my own stuff. So it just doesn't get finished."
Despite Kane's dire prediction, the track did finally see the light of the day, sampling the 1983 Taiwanese kung fu film Shaolin vs Lama by Tso-Nan Lee. The track is named after the technique Sun Yu Ting uses to defeat Yao Feng Lin: "When facing your enemy, you have to aim for his weakest point. Use the Buddha Finger accurately and you’ll find you will win, whatever he should try to do". Another sample was taken from the finale of the film: "I am the Devil! I must die to prove that Buddha exists." The percussion sound on the track was sampled from 'Roasted or Fried' (1972) by St. Vincent's Supersound Latinaires Orchestra.
Like Kane, RZA, the leader of hip hop act Wu-Tang Clan from New York City had also utilised samples from kung fu films for the group's November 1993 debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). J Saul Kane had beat RZA to it by nearly five years, with 'Depth Charge' of 1989 having already used samples from the films of that genre. Kane remained philosophical about it, though, when this was mentioned in The Wire magazine’s November 1997 interview:
"I think they [Wu-Tang Clan] are really good, I think RZA is genius. I suppose somebody had the same idea and just did it in a different way. The main difference is they're part of a scene, whereas with me there's no market to sell to, there's just people who like Depth Charge records."
J Saul Kane elaborated to NME in 1998 when asked how he felt about Wu-Tang Clan also using kung fu film samples on their records:
"Everyone asks me that, but if that's the case, you might as well say I nicked Lee "Scratch" Perry's ideas. He was doing it years before any of us. He used to actually go to the cinema with a tape recorder."
In any case 'Shaolin Buddha Finger' became the track J Saul Kane is now probably best remembered for, with the people like the Chemical Brothers spinning it in their own sets. Previously he had often felt like an outsider as far as his own music was concerned, as he explained to Epigram in 1995:
"It was just not the right time, nobody was interested in it."
Suddenly, it all seemed to change. This was the era when J Saul Kane found out he had become influential in the formation of two new genres that were becoming popular in the 1990s, trip hop and big beat.
The first appearance of the term "trip hop" in print took place in June 1994 when Mixmag magazine's Andy Pemberton used it to describe DJ Shadow’s 12” 'In/Flux', and also UK’s RPM, the latter signed to James Lavelle’s Mo' Wax Records.
In fact, under the vast umbrella of "trip hop" (as a handy genre slot for music journalists and record stores) there were in existence at least two different strains of music. First, the more experimental, instrumental, sample-heavy, dub/ambient/psychedelia-influenced style of "abstract hip hop beats", represented by the labels such as Mo' Wax and Ninja Tune – and yes, Depth Charge, too, with his most far-out beat excursions. And second, the melancholic, soulful torch songs of Portishead and other bands of that ilk, that were perhaps set to hip hop beat but were, in essence, pop. Massive Attack, with their widely successful 1991 album Blue Lines, had already paved the way here.
Naturally media and the record-buying public found the latter strain easier to approach, and the mid-90s saw the mushrooming of trip hop/pop acts, some of them reaching charts, many soon to be forgotten.
Many of these artists themselves expressed their dislike of being labelled and marketed as "trip hop". Even though one can argue that as long as music is good, it doesn’t really matter whatever genre name or moniker one uses as its description, J Saul Kane, one of the true originators of the style, was not too impressed, either, as he told Trance Europe Express in 1995:
"The taste factor is quite low at the moment, unfortunately. There's so much shit that, unless you're really into the music and you understand why things are the way they are, you won't buy the really good stuff because you'll just assume it's the same as all the other crap."
"I like some of the Mo' Wax stuff; DJ Krush's 'Kemuri' remains a classic, '2000' by RPM I like, 'In/Flux' by DJ Shadow, but I don't like his more recent work. I find it all a bit waffly."
"I think it's going to be about three years before people realise what's good and what's crap. That's what I've always tried to achieve with my own stuff; making tracks that sound better three years later than they do at the time of release."
J Saul Kane went on record admitting he liked what Portishead, Tricky or Red Snapper were doing, all these artists finding themselves pigeonholed as representing the trendy trip hop sound. As for big beat, sound-wise, it was like a turbocharged version of trip hop, with added testosterone and "rockist" attitudes. Kane voiced his criticisms about the big beat genre for The Wire in 1997:
"There's a lot of energy but no content. It's like seeing an action film with no story. I find most of the Big Beat stuff very Radio Two: you hear it on car adverts. It's like Jungle, you get a lot that's like Easy Listening: in five years' time people will be laughing at it."
For Melody Maker's November 1994 interview J Saul Kane was giving some possible reasons why his releases were starting to find some belated success only now:
"I just think everybody has grown tired of fast music. People do everything they can in one genre and then they go back to something they knew about and loved before. I can even see electro coming in now. And why the hell not?"
1995 saw the start of DC Recordings, J Saul Kane's own label which came to replace Vinyl Solution as a homebase for his releases. Kane explained this in the 2008 interview for Thumped:
"Vinyl Solution had done its thing, run its course… It reached a hundred [releases], so it was a good time to kill it off in a legendary fashion."
The visual style of the Depth Charge and DC Recordings' "DC" logo was borrowed from that of Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers Film Studio who produced from the 1960s to 1980s many of those legendary kung fu films that J Saul Kane had been influenced by, and now also imported to England himself as VHS tapes, through his own Made In Hong Kong company.
1990s VHS Trailer Reel for Made In Hong Kong, a UK video import company run by J Saul Kane.
Made In Hong Kong was run from the same premises as Kane's record labels, 231 Portobello Road. Alongside kung fu films, also John Woo's Hong Kong action thrillers such as Bullet in the Head (1990) found their UK video release through Made In Hong Kong. The films on Made In Hong videos were presented as widescreen versions in the "letterbox" format. These days Made In Hong Kong VHS tapes are treasured among collectors, who are hunting them down from online marketplaces like eBay.
The launch of DC Recordings was strong, with some now-classic releases coming all through the year of 1995. The 10-inch release 'Queen of the Scorpion' (10DC06, 1995) starts with the track 'Queen Of The Scorpion Pt. I & II (vs The Snake Killers Daughter)'. Sound-wise, the loose description of this one could be "acid house meets electronic fusion jazz": it's an intense percussive rhythm workout with phat breakbeats and some squelchy, spiky 303-type of abrasive acid bursts, featuring flute and horns samples plus some helicopter-like oscillator sounds, too. The track starts with a sampled dialogue from a film (that I haven’t been able locate at the time of writing, as online sources gave no more information, either):
"About two miles north of here lives a witch."
"What do you mean, a witch?"
"Yes, she’s known as Queen of the Scorpion. She’s a vampire witch. She lives in a red castle and is thoroughly evil. Only this ring can destroy her magical power. You must be very careful."
And then from the same film:
"Now, on the fifteenth day of this month you must go to the castle… When you have arrived there, place the ring on the mystical ear(?). After that you should render the ring asunder with one stroke of a golden sword. Then, ram the golden sword into fire. When you have achieved all this, you have destroyed the magical power of vampire witch."
Even more weirdness ensues on the EP’s second track 'Searching for Records with Bongo Beats', being a trippy mêlée with a slow hip hop beat and some theremin-like haunted house sounds, interspersed with occasional spooky vocal samples and the oscillators bleeping like R2-D2 on acid or what sounds like that peculiar siren type of synth wail on Goblin's title track of Suspiria. The third track 'Bonus Beats' features more of the same. A great example of J Saul Kane dropping science, doing some serious sound research and not being afraid to experiment.
'Legend of the Golden Snake' EP (DC01, 1995) came with a stylish, fashion editorial type of cover photograph by Derek Ridgers, featuring four alluring Asian-looking ladies wielding firearms. The bass-heavy, dubby title track comes with an Oriental flavour, featuring the classical lutenist George Weigand playing an oud, a Middle Eastern string instrument. Another guest musician on the EP, Henry Twinch, plays keyboards. The second track, 'Poison Clan ’95', sounds like it’s straight out of some 1970s porn soundtrack, with drowsy wah-wah guitars and a sleazy Hammond organ, sampling 'Hot Wheels (The Chase)' of 1973 by Badder Than Evil. 'Five Deadly Venoms' with its banging, fat hip hop beats samples Five Shaolin Masters a.k.a. 5 Masters of Death, a Shaw Brothers kung fu production from 1974. The final track 'Asp' is also the most psychedelic one on the EP, featuring a thick effects-laden dub sound with some bubbly acid bass.
The 10-inch (with a special cover art glowing in the dark) 'Legend Of The Golden Snake (Version 2)' b/w 'Sex, Sluts & Heaven (Bordello Mix)' (10DC01, 1995) features a sparse, hypnotic and trippy dub version of the previous release's title track with some spacey effects. On the other side 'Sex, Sluts & Heaven (Bordello Mix)', with a sample from 'Rise' (1979) by Herb Alpert, is a sleazy, trance-inducing dub hop excursion with some echoing sonar bleeps and naughty female whispers. In 1996, Belgium’s R & S label also released a Depth Charge 10” (RS 96088) with 'Sex, Sluts & Heaven (Bordello Mix)’ and 'The Legend Of The Golden Snake (Dub Mix)', a very similar version to the one here.
When asked by Trance Europe Express in 1995 where the inspiration for 'Sex Sluts & Heaven' came from, J Saul Kane answered it was:
"All over the place, really. I mean, sex is used to sell everything, it exists everywhere. It's just whether people choose to see it or not."
On the 27th February, 1995 (or 20th February, according to DC Recordings promotional sheet), there was a “maximum level” 12-inch limited edition release of 'Shaolin Buddha Finger' b/w 'Vampyress (Demo Dub)' (catalogue number: DC05), "due to DJ demand and club reaction". However, it was also announced that "This disc will be deleted on the day of release", so you had to act fast to secure yourself a copy. On the flip side, 'Vampyress (Demo Dub)' gives some heavy contrast, being a morose track with a moody slow-tempo (88 bpm) hip hop beat, also featuring a melancholic violin, some slowed-down horror film-esque vocals and a bass sound thick enough to make the record player stylus jump out of the groove.
Remixes made by J Saul Kane for other artists are beyond the scope of this text (or perhaps just require a separate article in the future), but there’s at least one remix that deserves a mention: 'Tow Truck' by The Sabres of Paradise, a trio consisting of Andrew Weatherall (1963 – 2020), Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner. The original track was released in 1994 on the Sabres' album Haunted Dancehall for Warp Records. J Saul Kane’s remix of 'Tow Truck' appeared on a 12-inch (WAP62) released by Warp on the 17th of April, 1995, with The Chemical Brothers remix of the same track on the other side. J Saul Kane’s rendition was also found on Versus (WARP CD 31, 30 April 1995), a various artists collection CD of Haunted Dancehall remixes for The Sabres of Paradise.
Gary Burns and Jagz Kooner, the remaining two members of The Sabres of Paradise, wrote in their own November 2024 Instagram eulogy to J Saul Kane about his "truly jaw-dropping" 'Tow Truck' remix:
"When we first played the remix he delivered in Sabresonic Studios, we were absolutely gobsmacked and completely in awe of what Jon has created, so much so that we actually decided to incorporate his remix into our gigs by playing his remix live."
The late Andrew Weatherall, at the time one of the most appreciated personalities and creators in the UK dance scene, was known to have been heavily influenced by J Saul Kane’s dub vs. breakbeats sound, also helping to spread around the word about Kane’s productions.
1995 also witnessed the launch of another new label run by J Saul Kane, Electron Industries. This was coincided by a revived interest in electro, the style that Kane had been championing ever since his early DJing days in the 80s.
Jazid asked Kane in 1996 if the whole electro thing was just another fad which will die out when it's no longer fashionable. To which he retorted:
"No. I’ve always tried to make electro records, but at the time no one was interested. Just like Depth Charge, no one was into that when I started doing it. I sold loads of copies of 'Bounty Killers' and then it faded away a bit and I was sort of on my own because everyone was doing house. After the Chemical Brothers did their first record, everybody seemed to realise there could be something other than house."
It was only fitting that the first release on the Electron Industries label was by J Saul Kane's own Octagon Man project, with the 12" 'Biting the Dragon's Tail' coming out under the catalogue number TRON 1, featuring the tracks 'Biting the Dragon’s Tail', 'Klunk', and 'Teasing the Dragon’s Tail'.
J Saul Kane told to The Wire in 1997:
"I really wanted to do electro tracks, I've just been very sporadic with Octagon Man – it's got a very small following whereas Depth Charge has got more of an audience."
And to Trance Europe Express he elaborated in 1995:
"The reason why I hadn't done more in the style of Octagon Man was because I didn't think people would be interested, but now labels like Clear are making that electro style more popular."
UK's Clear Records had been launched in 1994 by Clair Poulton and Hal Udell. Though the label lasted only until 1998, in that short period their releases of "nu-electro" and jazzy IDM gained a cultish following.
By the late 1990s, the electro revival had reached the continental Europe, with the Netherlands and Germany having strong scenes of their own, not to talk about USA, where such artists as Afrika Bambaataa had been the originators of the style in the early 1980s when combining Kraftwerk’s electronic sound to hip hop.
J Saul Kane also namechecked the 1980 'Riot in Lagos' by Ryuichi Sakamoto (of Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra) as one of his all-time favourites, now generally considered a seminal track in the birth of electro.
[To be continued]
J Saul Kane interview in Vienna, Austria, 1999
Wikipedia on J. Saul Kane:
He was well known for his pioneering use of samples, particularly from cult films in the martial arts, Spaghetti Western and pornographic genres. He also made tracks celebrating his favourite football team (Brazil on the 1990 single "Goal") and player (on the 1998 single "Romário"). Kane was often credited with inventing "trip hop" and "big beat"; he used kung-fu film samples before Wu-Tang Clan. His other aliases include Alexander's Dark Band, T.E.T and Grimm Death.I followed J Saul Kane through his Facebook profile where he seemed to be most active for the last years of his life, often with snappy comments on the state of current culture, music, media and politics, and also posted his own London street photography. His friends have commented that he had been reclusive for some years and apparently there were some health problems, too. Also the deaths of J Saul Kane's friends and collaborators, Ian "Eon" Loveday in 2009 and James Dyer of DC Recordings in 2016, must have been a serious blow, both on a personal and professional level.As a confirmed kung-fu movie fan, Kane was involved in setting up the company Made in Hong Kong, which licensed Chinese movies, particularly those made by the Shaw Brothers. Many of these movies are examples of the heroic bloodshed genre (The Killer, A Moment of Romance). Made in Hong Kong was the first company to release Stephen Chow films on VHS in the UK.
Of course, we were expecting him to post at least some sort of clues to any possible new music of his, as there had been years since his last releases, but nothing seemed to be happen on that front. Fans were wondering why did he stop producing music after being extremely prolific for so many years, and did he possibly plan on getting back to it one day?
J Saul Kane had admitted to NME in 1999:
"When I can see the end of something, I never want to go there. I become very good at something and then I'll give up because I know what's coming next. That's the problem. I just do the things I enjoy and if I know where it's going, I'm not gonna enjoy it, so I don't go there. I'm a martyr, but I'd rather be martyr than a hero."
Now we know he was ill with diabetes and multiple sclerosis, but we also learned from his Facebook posts he had rebuilt his studio some time before his death. With hindsight, there might have been cause for alarm with a Facebook post of his on the 6th of April, 2024, when he writes: "That Fukkin studio will be the death of me.. no joke.." He didn't elaborate any further except mentioning that he had had some problems with power and the erratic routing of the cables. On the 9th of June he posted a photo of an impressive-looking studio set-up. With J Saul Kane's frail medical condition, perhaps the laboursome work of building up a new studio on his own was too much for his ailing health. We can only conjecture.
J Saul Kane may have been absent from social events but regularly shared his opinions through his Facebook profile, sometimes coming off grumpy but often waxing nostalgic about what was for him the golden era of music in the 1970s and 80s, and also whenever mentioning London's warehouse party scene of the latter decade when he had started out as a DJ. In any case, he had been somewhat regular with his posts, so it was strange when after the 12th of June, 2024, there was suddenly nothing more on Facebook from him. Gradually, I got the feeling something was amiss. Sadly, I got the answer on Monday, the 18th of November, as there appeared on Facebook and X posts from several individuals of his passing.
Initially, there was some confusion in online posts about J Saul Kane’s actual age (claiming he was born in 1969) and how and when he had passed, but on Friday 22 November there appeared in Facebook a eulogy written by his former Vinyl Solution labelmates Alain de la Mata and Yves Guillemot which shed more light.
According to Yves Guillemot’s post, J Saul Kane had already died on the 12th of July, 2024, the cause of death being complications arising from diabetes and multiple sclerosis. Danny Briottet had mentioned in his own Facebook eulogy (19 November 2024) a mutual friend had seen J Saul Kane's house getting cleared out but "didn’t put two and two together". No details of his funeral service or memorial were given in Yves Guillemot's post.
On 23 November 2024, Mark Moore wrote an Instagram post sharing info that Jonathan Saul Kane was cremated. Moore added: “His ashes will be put over the place where he played football in Kensington Gardens at the entrance opposite Queensway tube, the part of Hyde Park where the Serpentine Galleries are. Jon went there to kick a ball around with friends. From now on that part will be known as J Saul Kane Park.”
There will be a celebration of his life held in January 2025 (for any further information, please contact Alain de la Mata: mata [at] bluelight.co.uk).
It’s sad but also somehow telling of J Saul Kane’s ultimate underground status that it took months after his passing before the news of his death could be shared outside the very small circle of people who actually knew him.
In his life, J Saul Kane had been a musical forerunner who kept creating his works often outside the public limelight and hype, remaining a cherished secret for “those in the know”, whereas other artists and record labels who followed in his wake took most media attention, with such crazes as trip hop and big beat making headlines in the 1990s music press.
The man himself, who couldn’t care less about these trends, increasingly preferred to stay somewhere under the radar, already having moved to some other place. With all the mystery shrouding also his passing, it can be said J Saul Kane retained his enigma until the end.
Rest in peace, Master, your music will live on.
[I hope to expand upon this text later on, so if interested, keep this blog entry in your bookmarks.]
Credits:
Thank you and respect to everyone from whose posts to social media or magazine/online interviews and articles I've collected the material for this text. A special mention must be given to the members of Celebrating J Saul Kane group at Facebook.
Sources:
AmbienTrance interview with Tom Tyler and J Saul Kane, 29 May 2000.
Bois, Theydon. Electric Independence. Vice, 31 July 2006.
Boris. Gunshot - A Retrospection. Underground United, 9 November 2017.
Braddock, Kevin. JSK interview. Jazid, July-August 1996.
Briottet, Danny. Facebook post, 19 November 2024.
Crysell, Andy. "Citizen Kane." NME, 14 March 1998.
Deacon, Rob. JSK interview. Volume Three, 1992.
Fielding, Tim. JSK and Ian Loveday interview. Soul Underground, 1990.
Forrest, Emma E. Epigram, Edition 063, 9 March 1995.
Guillemot, Yves. JSK eulogy, Facebook post, 22 November 2024.
Kane, J Saul. Facebook post by JSK on his grandfather, Edinburgh Lord Provost Jack Kane. 25 April 2013.
Kane, J Saul. Facebook post by JSK on Nine Deadly Venoms by Depth Charge. 26 January 2015.
Kane, J Saul. Facebook post by JSK on shooting the 'Bounty Killers' video for Snub TV. 23 January 2022.
Martin, Piers. "All Hail! ... The Man Who Invented Big Beat: Depth Charge." NME, 13 November 1999.
Kane, Siobhan. "J Saul Kane aka Depth Charge exclusive interview." Thumped, 6 May 2008.
Martin, Piers. "DC Recordings: High Voltage". XLR8R, 21 September 2006.
Melody Maker. "Dive! Dive! Dive!" JSK Interview. 19 November 1994.
Moore, Mark. Facebook post, 19 November 2024.
Moore, Mark. Instagram post, 23 November 2024.
The Sabres of Paradise (a.k.a. Gary Burns & Jagz Kooner). Instagram post, 19 November 2024.
Shallcross, Mike. "J Saul Kane: Martial Artist". The Wire #165, November 1997.
Stebe, Sebastian. JSK interview (in Swedish). Pop, 1995.
Rautio, Erkki. Ian Loveday interview. 5HT/pHinnWeb, 20 April 2002.
Wilson, Tony F. JSK interview. Trance Europe Express #4, 1995.
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