🫧 A Gentle Reminder: Greetings from The Gentle People
An interview with Dougee Dimensional & Honeymink, members of 90s glambient lounge pop group, The Gentle People
By chance, I recently began reading Full Metal Apache: Transactions Between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America (2006) which surveys the transcultural exchanges between Japan and the United States through comparative analyses of avant-garde art and pop culture, which is an applicable lens to view art, its appropriated source materials, and sensibilities between all nations in our hyperconnected globalist times.
In it, author and cultural critic Takayuki Tatsumi expands upon postmodern literary critic Larry McCaffery's theory of the "avant-pop" by deconstructing the collapsing of distinctions between high art and junk culture from these nations' post-war relationship and their mutual borrowings. At root, both critics agree that the late capitalism of the 1980s accelerated the logic of a mass global cultural data exchange effectively creating the ouroboros of hyperconsumption and hypermediation we are familiar with today. It follows that a hyperconsumerist culture breeds a society of over-commodification thereby turning everything into a commodity. An image is a product, an idea is a product, and so on. Okay, duh. This is a shopping world…Buy it, baby! But it got me thinking about how it relates to my focus on music of the 1990s & the turn of the millennium—namely the rise of sample culture in electronica and the blending of cross-cultural sounds it invites, as well as the practice of subverting mainstream boundaries and ideologies through play.
Enter the Gentle People, whose music sounds as if it were beamed down through a celestial portal. When you give yourself over to it, which is easy to do (try it), it bathes you in gauzy radiance. At once ethereal and familiar, the Gentle People embody this notion of the avant-pop as its members are a motley crew of individuals hailing from different parts of the globe who combined disparate cultural and musical borrowings ranging from the high and the low (depending on who you ask, of course) to create this distinctive project.
Aware of their cosmopolitan configuration, they managed to transcend the international to the intergalactic through their image and sound that closely situate them as chic star-children straight out of a colorful Unarius psychodrama. Indeed their spacey tranquility, cheeky vocal harmonies, and coordinated outfits lend them a cult-ish quality intimating a promise of life on gentle mode, or perhaps something beyond (advanced consciousness???) that is only knowable if you tune into their frequency. It’s also clear they have a sense of humor—striking a balance between genuine appreciation and playful irony—and a bit of a rebellious spirit through their embrace of a patchwork of influences, some of which were deemed “uncool” by the then-mainstream of the early 90s, and daring to be different.
Critics may reduce them to pastiche or kitsch, but I believe these words are tossed off dismissively when fragments of the past are not transformed with a level of panache. The Gentle People demonstrate a fluency in their aggregate of source materials by remixing them into an elegant and confident synthesis that is singular, enduring, and transcendent. With a discography characterized by a tight but fluid kaleidoscope of the loose and groovy "with-it" attitude of 60s psychedelia & Swinging London, the coquettish chanson of France, the dazzle of 70s disco, the shimmering orchestration of easy listening (and sometimes a new age bent), as well as the spectral unease of ambient electronic championed and popularized by their Rephlex label, they prove themselves as master alchemists of sound, style, and taste.
Their two LPs, Soundtracks for Living (Rephlex, 1996) and Simply Faboo (Rephlex/Flavour of Sound, 1999), are delightful tonics for the drooping human spirit, and I guarantee they will leave you hunting down their lesser-known remixes, demos, and singles or otherwise music by artists with a similar fabulous sensibility.
In an interview with De:Bug in May 2001, Rephlex co-founder Richard D. James (or better known as Aphex Twin) looks back fondly on the group and laments they did not achieve broader recognition, "When I met the Gentle People, I was fed up with boring techno. The Gentle People would rather be chic than rip off their clothes at the club and yell ‘Techno’. They thought that with their two records they would become pop stars, which unfortunately didn’t really work out. I still wonder what went wrong."
The faboo four were truly interdimensional in that they compressed space and time by occupying roles as both a product of and response to the era in which they were active as well as expanded conceptions of music and performance ahead of and outside of their time. They looked to the past for inspiration and used it to move forward in the 90s and early 2000s and, although their output was short-lived, their electronic lounge cocktail still sounds fresh and effervescent today. I adore the music they've gifted to us and I weave their tracks into my DJ sets any chance I get in order to share their gentle ethos and world of love with more people.
Now it is with great pleasure and honor that I can present to you this interview with Dougee Dimensional & Honeymink of The Gentle People. I am grateful for their kindness, patience, and effort in engaging so thoughtfully and thoroughly with my questions over email.
Let them take you on a journey, through your body and through your mind…!~
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First off, I want to send my condolences to the recent passing of Valentine Carnelian. Do you have any memories of him you would like to share? I understand if you’d rather not in this space.
Honeymink: Thank you—it really is a loss—he was a very talented person, clever, hilarious and entertaining. And always elusive!
Valentine showed me how to dance while balanced on the back of a chair at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin in the early hours of the morning after we’d performed a show there. That was wild fun. After, we stumbled outside, laid on the giant Nauga, blinking in the bright sunlight, before he disappeared off to continue the party with Mr Midnight and J2Vid. None of them came back til sometime the next day.
Valentine was actually a reluctant performer but was brilliant. He could ham it up completely and be really cheesy. Sometimes we’d have to ask him for more ham, less cheese. Hahahah.
The Gentle People formed in London in 1994 with members from the UK, South Africa, France, and the US. How did you all meet and are you still in contact with one another in some capacity today?
Dougee Dimensional: The Gentle People actually started off as an idea in our communal house back in Brixton in 1991. Honeymink and myself were living in a shared household with 6 other friends who were all creative people and we started throwing parties as The Gentle People. The name came from a song in one of our favorite films, Beyond The Valley of The Dolls (1970). We felt we embodied the hedonistic spirit of the film and pretty quickly, Honeymink and I decided that we were interested in making a new type of music as we were obsessed with quirky easy listening records and also ambient electronic style music and techno beats.
While living at this party house, we met The Karminksy Experience who were DJing at a local wine bar and brasserie. We quickly became regulars at the night and made friends who had the same interest and that is where we met Ms. Laurie LeMans who lived very close by.
Simultaneously, we were looking to work with a programmer who could take our song ideas and samples and try to work them into songs. We eventually met Valentine Carnelian through our friend who worked at a recording studio and then we started putting ideas together with him in his home studio. Honeymink, Laurie, and myself are still close friends even though we no longer live near one another.
Why did The Gentle People form? Was the group’s formation a direct response to the lounge revival that was taking place in the 90s or were you one of the early adopters and trailblazers at the helm of the whole phenomenon?
HM: We formed because it was a natural progression to make the music we wanted to listen to but also, we felt different to other people. We felt we could create a friendly, inclusive space for all the weirdos like us to enjoy the odd things we liked outside of the mainstream. We created parties and happenings with our collective of people all with a creative bent.
DD: We wanted to make music because there was nothing modern around that was as good as some of the older music we discovered on old soundtracks and junk shop records. We felt that the lost sounds of easy listening music were really lush and beautiful and we sought to bring this into the mainstream, so to speak. What better thing to piss off your rock and roll parents than playing easy listening records quietly in your bedroom?
HM: It was so anti-establishment at the time. The lounge scene was us and our friends creating these things all at the same time—there was a race to find the best old vinyl and the DJs like the Karminskys and us were hunting in jumble sales to find the newest old easy listening tunes to shock everyone with. There was no internet and so we all found each other through a mutual love of the avant-garde via places like Madam JoJo's or other queer venues in Soho. 90s London was fantastic—so many great venues, so much was possible—it felt really great and like the world was our oyster. We are all still as silly and ridiculous as ever and still hang out even though none of us live near each other.
In general, did you feel like people ‘got’ what the group was doing or were you mostly understood in underground spaces?
HM: Those who got us, totally got it. What's interesting is how many people around the world tuned in and turned on to it. Even now we are still in contact with people all over Europe, USA, Japan, etc. for whom it really resonated at the time. There were some who didn't—we played this festival at the Royal Festival Hall and I don't think it was the right venue or audience for us. But Japan was fantastic and we really had a groove with our Japanese fans.
DD: There was a bit of a media circus surrounding the easy listening scene when The Mike Flowers Pops almost achieved the Christmas #1 single slot losing out in the end to Michael Jackson’s "Earth Song".
Shortly after this, there was a frenzy of interest from UK television and magazine press. I was invited onto several TV shows which were doing pieces on the easy listening scene. For the most part, they were super serious and didn’t understand the irony.
Also, we had met with several major record labels who wanted to get in on the easy listening scene and a few wanted to sign us with the understanding that we would probably dumb down what we were doing or at least make it a bit more palatable for the mainstream. They wanted us to get together with songwriters and we were like, you don’t get it. We don’t want to write any more cheesy songs. We had already stripped out many of the lyrics from our songs as we felt that most topics in pop music were hackneyed.
I was honestly surprised to see your website is still up. You’ve done an amazing job of archiving the band’s legacy online. A lot of times some artists don’t make the digital migration, whether by choice or otherwise. Why was it important to you to upload photos, magazine scans, and videos and in what ways did you embrace the net during the time the group was active?
HM: We redid the site when we made "H2O" as a vehicle for that video really because of all the time and effort JM put into making it. I was really into 90s cyberpunk like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Mondo 2000, etc., and we had visions early on for virtual reality experiences of Gentle World. We simply never had the budget to realize it. In many ways we were ahead of our time on that front.
DD: Essentially, we had champagne taste on beer money so the vision we had in our heads for how we would present ourselves was never really able to be realized due to a lack of money and lack of label support. We had to pretty much do everything ourselves.
From the props used in your live shows and music videos to the presumably self-styled coordinated outfits, there is a strong but refined DIY quality to the group. Very confident and detail-oriented. What can you say about the need or importance for tactility and resourcefulness within available venues or spaces as performers? Do you think the DIY element gave you an advantage or edge when it came down to creative control and overall presentation?
HM: DIY was necessary! With no label or backing, everything we did was created either by us or our collective of beautiful friends. People like Roja Von Galaxy who designed and made all our outfits, Robert, Cate and Marie-Louise who created the choreography and a lot of the props, Jaime who created all the video visuals for our shows—the people we made videos with—everyone put in time and effort and enjoyed the events with us. How we made the music was totally DIY too! No fancy studios for us—ever! Just a council flat in Waterloo!
What’s the story behind the Gentle People’s mascot, Naughty Nauga? I really like him because he communicates a mischievous and childlike spirit and I think he fulfills the position of an eye-catching character good that reminds me of Paul Frank’s characters and feels linked to Japan’s kawaii culture, which in turn contributes to the global image The Gentle People project.
HM: Nauga sheds his skin to give us Naugahyde to make furniture. Fake leather-like material—it's all fake—the world is filled with fakeness yet Nauga is glorious. Nauga allowed us to be even wilder and sillier than ever. He is also super kawaii indeed and comes in many sizes from tiny to a giant dancing Nauga on stage.
DD: Nauga is actually an advertising product from Uniroyal in the 1960s who we adopted into our family. We felt he was the perfect space pet for The Gentle People and he along with Jonson the cat made it to our Gentle Universe.
Can you talk a bit about gear and samples you pulled from to use as foundations for your music? You don’t have to reveal any samples because identifying samples is part of the fun of being a listener! I’m really fascinated by the way you were able to combine and articulate the range of influences detectable in your music. There’s the far-out space-age bachelor pad pops & loops and the romantic, cinematic strings of easy-listening and the wistful, hopeful, and dreamy cultural cache those sounds connote, but the use of time-stretched vocals and spiraling ambience hint at a dark and knowing humor that feels distinctly English in its cheekiness and bent for paranoia. I’m curious how you negotiated these elements, techniques, and influences and managed to synthesize them into something that sounds future-facing and right at home in our present musical landscape.
DD: One of the really important things we wanted to do with the samples was to treat them as instruments if possible. We didn’t have a real violinist, brass section, or harpist, but these were the types of instruments we wished we could have. A symphony orchestra would be great if we could afford it but being bedroom musicians and DJs that we were, the next best thing was to try to find pieces of music we could use that hopefully weren’t too recognizable.
Also, if we were using something that could be recognized, the ideal thing would be to completely hide it. We sneaked in samples from things like Foreigner and The Carpenters partly to play with people because they’d like it and not realize what they were liking—people were really anti-that-kind-of-stuff. To most ears, you can’t really hear them in their original form. Valentine was the true manipulating genius when it came to all of the technical things like time stretch and disguising samples, as well as playing guitar or live bass.
HM: We called it the primula aesthetic! It's not just cheese, it's fake cheese. It's both serious and comedic, deep yet ridiculous. Mixing the old with the new, new with the old. We loved juxtaposing those things and confusing the hell out of everything.
One thing I think a lot about in relation to music, particularly 90s & early 00s electronica and the luxurious, jet-set image it often projects, is its potential to persuade listeners into a lifestyle or image to aspire toward. With artists and groups that present themselves as larger than life, there’s usually a story they’re trying to tell that’s complementary to their music. Did you ever feel like you were making music to forecast an idyllic lifestyle or to manifest different attitudes to shake up the status quo? Were there any concepts or narratives the Gentle People wanted to explore or convey but never got the chance to?
HM: I think the main thing we were doing was trying to create a space in which we could be free to be ourselves and we'd invite anyone to come and be themselves with us—Join Us! Sunioj! We transcended the idea of the jet-set into idealized intergalactic travel and a new culture where anything goes and anyone can be anyone. We always loved "Different" by Mama Cass—that was a mantra.
It would have been great to have created a global club or movement for grooving and acceptance, plus the virtual reality experience.
DD: I think that the music was evocative of a lifestyle we wish we had. Working hard to make music that sounded very expensive as if we created it in a proper studio was always the goal. Not an easy task with the limited technology of the time and also the lack of funds.
Some of the great things about being an artist at the time was the ability to get to travel and get paid for DJ gigs and live shows. It certainly felt at times that you could be living the life of a real jet setter. For instance, Laurie and I DJ’ed several times in Moscow and we had our own driver while we were there. When we would return to the UK we would be back to catching buses in the rain and walking to get where we needed to go and exist on a shoestring budget.
Have you heard your influence on any artists either at the height of your activity or in recent years?
HM: I am sure we must have—I suppose I'd just think ‘that's really Gentle’ if I heard something that had similar influences or sounded like we might have made it! It's weird going somewhere if they are playing the music—on compilations in restaurants or in shops for example. Also, I hear samples we used also used by others, but I'd say current people like the Soundcarriers are very us, plus Vanishing Twin.
DD: Just the other day I was listening to the radio and I heard a song that was a direct copy of "Groovin' With You (Intergalactic Harbour Mix)". There have also been a few commercials that copied some of our mixes like "Journey" remixed by The Aphex Twin.
Where was one of the most memorable places you performed?
HM: Club Yellow in Japan because the audience were so polite! They listened and then when a track was over, they’d applaud.
Tempelhof because the audience were not! The crowd were pressed up to the stage and grabbing at us which was both a little scary but also annoying.
DD: My most memorable performance that I found to be truly magical is when we did a performance at The Talk of London which was an old supper club that was next to the theatre where Cats used to be shown in Central London. The venue was large and had a circular stage which would literally push forward into the dance floor at the front of the stage. With loads of smoke and lights, The Gentle People were able to pretend surf on the stage as it propelled forward. And as for the rest of the gig, I remember it being very dreamlike and surreal. It was over as quickly as it began.
What were the clubs like during the early 90s nearing the new millennium? There seemed to have been more emphasis on themed spots, an embrace of new technologies, and distinctive architecture and interior design so I imagine they were more inventive at the height of the dot-com bubble. I’d love to hear any thoughts, impressions, and experiences of the night life during this time.
DD: The 90s were a great decade because London hadn’t been turned into a shiny, expensive corporate place. We were lucky to live right in the centre along with lots of our friends—it was possible to find affordable places to live there back then if you put your mind to it. There were also plenty of great venues that could be used for party nights and record launches. So, even if you didn’t have a lot of money, it was still possible to put on great nights for people.
There was definitely a focus on finding places to perform or play music that were unique and hopefully vintage and untouched by the modern world. We had a Rephlex Records party at an old, over the top gentleman’s club in Mayfair called the Iceni which was super fun. Our friends were throwing parties at the St. Moritz Club which was a groovy Swiss fondue restaurant upstairs with a basement bar that used to feature some groovy 60s bands and 70s metal bands back in the day.
Also I used to host fun easy listening nights (EZ-PZ and Tasty Treat) in bars in Kingly Street and a 1980s style karaoke bar on Monmouth Street in Covent Garden. It had lots of cool green velvet-style banquet seating with video monitors spread throughout the place.
The Karminsky DJs hosted nights like The Tender Trap which was more of a swinging 60s vibe and the Bamboo Curtain which was more tiki-themed in an old wood-paneled club off St. James.
Everyone would find vintage clothes in jumble sales, charity shops, at Portobello Market, Brick Lane and put together a look to go with the night. We had the wonderful Roja Von Galaxy make our stage clothes and other outfits sometimes because we loved to dress up. The club nights were fun, friendly, and super groovy. We had a wide group of regular partygoers and we all loved hanging out, dancing, drinking and having a good time.
You were signed to Rephlex around ’94 or ’95, right? How did you get hooked up with Richard D. James?
HM: Our good friend Jonathan and Nahila were friends with Richard and his roommates over in Stoke Newington and we would frequent parties there. When we finished our demo, Nahila brought a copy over to Richard who basically dug us and then the rest was history.
I feel like some people digging through the Rephlex roster may be surprised to come across The Gentle People’s album art as it doesn’t necessarily visually align with the aesthetics of other artists on the label. I’m making an inference here, but it seems like it opened up opportunities to collaborate with and remix songs made by international artists such as Hyplar, Fantastic Plastic Machine, and Nav Katze. How would you describe your experience being signed to the label?
HM: Rephlex was a good label for us to be released on for the UK and Europe as it was recognized as a label that would take chances on releasing artists who were not necessarily mainstream. We signed a separate licensing deal with Flavour of Sound Records in Japan and this was a great introduction for us to work with several other Japanese artists as well as other likeminded musicians around the globe. Working with both labels in place, we met a lot of interesting artists creating interesting music and were able to reach a bigger audience than if we had signed with an unknown label.
I see that you’re [Dougee] a DJ and spin records around Los Angeles as well as on Twitch. What sorts of records do you collect? Do you have any words of wisdom to impart to aspiring vinyl DJs?
DD: I collect all sorts of records and I sometimes go through different phases of what I am buying. I have an extensive easy listening collection along with soundtracks but lately I have been really buying more weird disco music and 80s stuff which I might have missed the first time around or possibly tracks that came out in Europe which I may have missed. I also love a lot of groovy 70s music too.
My advice to aspiring vinyl DJs is to buy what you love. Don’t think about what other people think is cool. Also, it usually starts with an intriguing cover to get my interest and then you hope for the best that the cover might match the inside if you are just trolling around a thrift store or garage sale.
I actually have been purchasing most of my weird secondhand stuff on Discogs as I don’t really want to have to peruse a million record stores. That being said, my favorite record store at the moment is Permanent Records in Lincoln Heights as they have a bar and two separate store spaces along with a garage sale space. That’s my idea of a good time.
What are you listening to these days? Do you keep up with any current music? I wonder if you are familiar with contemporary styles that draw from the past and are electronically remixed and modified, like vaporwave and hyperpop.
DD: I am re-embracing my inner goth at the moment and getting back into a lot of the music that blew my mind as a teenager like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Christian Death, etc. but also listening to artists like Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul, Vanishing Twin, LA Drones, Todd Terje, but the list is endless. I am also retreating into a Kate Bush world which I never really seemed to have left in the first place.
HM: When it comes to current stuff, I have been listening to various Afrobeat playlists, some more folky music, dreampop like C Duncan and some more fun stuff like Warmduscher. I often listen to BBC 6 music—Cerys Matthews does a great show with a wide range of things that appeal to me. I have also been back in a 60s vibe—classic psychedelic and vocal harmony sounds plus my eternal love of reggae/ska but also discovering Motörhead!
Anything else you would like to add?
HM: I think it's an honor and privilege to have been able to write, release, perform, entertain and have so much fun doing it. It's funny because when you see a lot of our ethos in light of the cultural changes we are now seeing, things are kind of catching up with our thinking in some ways—the diversity and inclusivity we wanted to enable for example but on the other hand, the jet set is a no-no given the climate crisis! ❋
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I love the Gentle People. <3
🌸 🎧 You can listen to The Gentle People’s music on SoundCloud and Dougee tells me, reluctantly, that Spotify streaming may be on the horizon—but better yet, do yourself a favor and snag their old vinyl LPs while they’re still relatively affordable! Though, I have heard whisperings of a near-future vinyl repress of Soundtracks for Living…. ! 👀
🫧 Follow The Gentle People on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter for updates and archival material. 🧀 🥂
This interview has been edited for consistency and clarity.