Raising a glass to...Billie Ray Martin

"These were the days of sleepless nights"

It’s easy to fall in love with Billie Ray Martin. Arriving in London in the mid-80s straight from 1930s Weimar Germany she hooked up with Electribe 101 and chemistry ensued. The only album they made together - Electribal Memories - remains a classic of the early house music scene in the UK and, nearly 30 years later, it remains unique, with a sound and vibe unlike anything produced since.

At first glance the marriage of Billie's jazz-inflected torch-song vocals with Electribe 101's sparse, dubby house beats might have initially seemed incongruous, but of course therein lies it genius. The explosion of creativity in underground UK dance music at the time rewarded such experimentation. Let’s not forget, around about the same time, DNA were in the process of splicing house with classical music on La Serenissima. 

Ultimately, what really sets Electribal Memories apart is Billie's sophisticated, other-wordly vocals. At times tantalising aloof (Talking With Myself – a track Marshall Jefferson apparently refused to remix because he thought it was already perfect), at others urgently intimate (Lipstick On My Lover), the album peaks with the sprawling, dreamlike Electribal Memories itself, a track that transports the listener to another surreal time and place. It’s a wonderful piece of music that, despite is 10 minute plus length, still feels like it ends too soon. 

Perhaps its uniqueness has contributed to the fact the album, remains something of a hidden treasure, under-played and seemingly under-appreciated. For sure, the 1998 reissue, with the unnecessary and largely unloved remixes of Talking With Myself (the masterful Frankie Knuckles version excepted) perhaps has not helped and probably contributed to the album being filed away under 'chill out', a genre that was becoming ubiquitous by the late 1990s. All of which if course is a great shame as the album is so much better than that. That said, and somewhat ironically, it may also be that Billie's own post-Electribe career may well have inadvertently overshadowed her earlier work. 

Deadline For My Memories was released in 1996, three years after Billie collaborated with Spooky on a brilliant but oft-forgotten cover of Throbbing Gristle’s Persuasion, a perfect time to ride the dance music zeitgeist. By this time, innovation and experimentation may have given way to crowd-pleasing anthems and feelgood unit shifters, but there was still space for quality if you picked the right collaborators. 

The singles released from DFMM have all stood the test of time, in large part down to the quality of the remixes. The twice-released Your Loving Arms is a case in point, with outstanding reworkings from Junior Vasquez and Brothers in Rhythm – the latter remix surely being one the greatest Dave Seaman and Steve Anderson ever produced. Meanwhile, Running Around Town and Space Oasis received a full progressive house makeover from BT who was arguably at the peak of his powers only a year or so after gate crashing the UK dance music scene with the epic Loving You More, a track played to death by Sasha, Digweed, Oakenfold and everyone else. Meanwhile, Imitation of Life received another monumental makeover from the Brothers in Rhythm.

Much like Annie Lennox’s reported extreme dislike of the Utah Saints and N’Joi remixes of Little Bird, there are rumours that Billie herself was not that keen on the BT remixes. If true this would be something of a shame as they really do make the most of her vocals and lyrics.

Regardless, Deadline For My Memories remains Billie’s high watermark, from a commercial perspective. Not as groundbreaking or iconic as Electribal Memories, it is still an album that repays repeat listens, and rewards in different ways. It’s perhaps also worth mentioning that, in addition to this work. Billie also worked with Mark Moore (S-Express) and helped create the lost early gem that is Hey Music Lover. But is will always be Electribal Memories that defines Billie Ray Martin. Ice-cool aloofness never sounded so perfect and rarely has since. If Billie had never made anything else, that would have been enough, so let’s be thankful for small mercies and raise a glass of schnapps to the gloriously underrated Billie Ray Martin.