...Two sides of the same coin, double top, two sixes or a double edged sword even, Mono is all about duality. Mono is a marriage of opposites where the music combines heady nostalgia with headstrong futurism to create sonic romantic tragedies which would sit as naturally in a Sixties French art film as a James Bond flick. Grooves which would be as happy on the decks at an easy listening soiree as a backroom freestyling breakbeat session.
Mono are Martin Virgo and Siobhan Di Mare, two people with distinctly different backgrounds.
To Martin things are much more straight forward though. "Mono is all about music which I like. Its as simple as that. There's music from the past as much as there's stuff from the present because I'm into alot of different stuff "
Martin first started working on the concept of Mono a few years ago intending it to be an outlet for the ideas which he was unable to explore in his nine to five life as a session musician and programmer. Not that he was working with any old produce you understand. Indeed, since graduating from music college he has worked alongside some of dance music's legends: Nellee Hooper, Howie B, Frankie Foncett and Femi Williams. Subsequently he's been involved with the production of some classic releases of recent years like Bjork's "Debut" album, Shara Nelson's "Friendly Fire" collection and remixes of the seminal "Safe from Harm" and "Unfinished Symphony" singles by Massive Attack. Indeed it could be said that Martin Virgo has already made a very real and lasting contribution to contemporary dance culture.
Siobhan on the other hand comes from what she herself describes as a "Show Biz Background". Her grandfather is the guy who bangs the gong in the Rank trailers film, her grandmother was a Cuban dancer who performed with Shirley Bassey, all of her brothers and sisters are in bands and her dad was the original drummer in The Shadows.
Siobhan's musical career started off in the hip hop scene of the eighties. Working as a rapper she achieved small successes which ended up with her working in L.A. on a hard-core rap album with Shello. However Siobhan's heart lay in the more soulful vibes of old motown stuff and swing and inevitably she found herself working as an R&B style backing singer on a lot of dance, house and jungle tracks. And then she met Martin who introduced her to a whole new world of sound.
A few months in the studio and Siobhan had swapped her old swing CD collection for albums by Dusty Springfield and Astrud Gilberto.
The result was the sound of a nonchalant Sixties pop chanteuse with the passion of an R&B great. The perfect companion to Martin's breakbeat dubs, and the final all important ingredient in Mono.
"Life In Mono" on The Echo Label was the first introduction to the seductive nature of the Mono sound. Like a "Girl from Ipenema" from the nineties it licks the spirit of club culture while stroking the underbelly of nostalgia.
Mono is the sound of Retro-futurism where so many dualities exist they could have Stereo.
Explore.
"I thought what I wanted to do would be so far away from what people wanted to hear." says Mono's Martin Virgo. "It was such a shock to learn that wasn't true after all." Who could have predicted that the modest songwriter producer Virgo and singer Siobhan De Mare would have arrived so fully formed back in Autumn 1996? Their debut single "Life In Mono" was an elegant three minute synopsis of the Mono universe, pure pop class that juggled sixties film music, contemporary beats and seductive vocals. Their debut album, "Formica Blues", expands on that startling genesis and rubs the old (crease-sharp pop songs, the ghosts of Burt Bacharach and John Barry), against the present (the joys of technology, hip hop and drum and bass beats). The distinctly cinematic result dips the modern world in the kind of black and white drama associated with Dusty Springfield and the old French New Wave films. "It's romantic," chuckles Martin. "I don't know why, because I'm not romantic at all."
The original idea for Mono was that the sound would be based on some of Martin's fiercest musical obsessions and nothing else, "Which sounds simple," he says, "but is actually harder than you'd think." Initial demos were recorded largely for fun. "I'd put Parliament breaks under bits of Serge Gainsbourg, just to see what happened," says Martin, "and everything we did seemed to work".
Record company interest arrived so quickly that not only did the group not have a name (Siobhan: "We were gonna be called Tremelux, but that sounded like an Italian vibrator"), the pair didn't even know each other's surnames. Siobhan disappeared to Los Angeles on holiday, leaving Martin to beat the A&R gibbons off with a stick. "He said, you've got to come back, the whole of London wants to sign us," she says, "I said, they'll have to wait."
Martin grew up in Brighton and Woking, moving to London when he hit twenty. After a music degree at London's Guildhall, he soon drifted into studio work. "Being trained in middle class piano was useful," he says. "But I was always a frustrated rock'n'roller, right from when I was made to have violin lessons as a kid."
After a period on the studio scene, he was recruited as part of Nellee Hooper's production team, working on a remix of Massive Attack's landmark "Unfinished Sympathy" and Bjork's solo-career launching "Debut" album. Then, after playing on Shara Nelson's solo work, Martin struck out on his own, launching Mono.
Siobhan's route to Mono couldn't have been more different. Her grandmother was a Cuban dancer who worked with Shirley Bassey and her grandfather was the oiled giant who banged the gong before the start of the old Rank movies. "Nowadays, he is a nice, big, decent old guy and a Jehovah's Witness in Camberley," she says. "But he was a bit of totty in his day. When we say 'ooh I saw you on Sunday before that film', he laughs and then we talk about the weather."
Although her dad was a drummer in the Shadows, Siobhan's teenage years were spent absorbing soul, R&B and hip hop in London. Eventually, she also drifted into studio work as a vocalist, "Which was funny", she laughs, "Because I didn't actually have a clue about singing. You blag your way in because you've got to survive.
She did more than that working with a variety of artists (including hardcore rapper Shello in the US) on various dance and R&B tracks "I've done loads and loads of things" she says "Not too many that I'd really care to acknowledge right now because I'm in denial - no, it wasn't that bad, they were all contributing factors."
"Who knows why it works," says Martin, of he and Siobhan's contrasting personalities. He's almost bookishly reserved and she's as fierce as he is reticent. So do they finish each other's sentences, in the musical sense at least.
Martin: "Yes"
Siobhan: "No"
Martin: "We do have completely different influences..."
Siobhan: "...But we seem to end up at the same conclusion."
Martin insists Formica Blues simply evolved from the most played records in his collection, meshing past and future contained within clear pop parameters, "It's just about the way that the styles have collided." he says. "I actually probably like more new music than old, I'm quite happy listening to techno all day. I don't romanticise the past at all."
