Around the junction of the 1970s and 1980s, brothers Clive and Mark Ives met up about three times a week to experiment with synthesizers. “We were having a real journey working with each other,” Clive recalls on a video call from his home in Brighton, England. “He had taken control of the tape recorders and I had the synthesizers and we would sit opposite each other and we were able to produce hundreds of little bits of music.”
Naming themselves Woo, the Ives brothers pulled from years of synth experiments to comprise their debut album, Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong, released in 1982. The end result was a collection that brought together psychedelic, minimal synth and jazz-tinged sounds in a way that was years ahead of its time. Now considered something of a cult classic, Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong, has been reissued on their Sunshine Series label and manufactured by Independent Project Records as an expanded edition with ten, previously unreleased bonus tracks and new cover art made in collaboration by Clive Ives and IPR’s Bruce Licher.
Growing up, the Ives brothers were exposed to music early through their uncle, a jazz saxophonist. “As children, we spent a lot of Sunday lunchtimes in the pubs in South London watching him play. Sometimes, he was with really classy people and sometimes they were wild characters,” Clive says. “We got quite immersed in the jazz world, but, particularly, that was Mark’s thing because he’s the clarinet player. He did for a while also play saxophone. Then he would join in sometimes in these pubs with these more traditional jazz bands.”
While the brothers had some shared influences, they also diverged in their musical interests. “Mark was more of the songwriter and more of a natural musician,” Clive explains. “I went more for the electronics and the synthesizers, so the more minimal tracks you’re hearing are most likely my sequences and the more composed pieces are most likely his work.” All this made for a fruitful collaboration.
“I think that’s why we ended up in such a bubble, because we had such a good experience working with each other,” Clive says. “Often, what we would do would be to put his guitar through the sequencer and then put tape recorders on it as he’s playing I would be morphing the sequences around, changing the tones, so it gave our recordings quite an organic structure. Then we would overlay with the three tracks that were left. The melodic lines and things. We just developed lots of different ways of approaching our music. Sometimes I would initiate, sometimes, he would initiate, but then we would work together. We would always just be recording together.”
The world was still early in the synthesizer era when Woo began working on what would become their debut album. Clive used a Roland, which he still owns, and a sequencer. “I remember getting a little drum machine,” he says. “In those days, you couldn’t tie the two together.” Eventually, though, he was able to find a guy to build him a unit to link the gear together. “That was quite a breakthrough,” he says. “So, for example, on ‘Razorblades,’ the first track on the second side, there was this quite simple drum box playing and the sequence is running in time with that.”
“Razorblades” is one of my own favorites on the album. It begins with an outer space vibe that’s simultaneously minimal and dramatic, then abruptly shifts into a jazz piece. You could easily imagine it as part of the score for a 1970s sci-fi noir film. “That first section we layered four of those Flying V guitars together and I did lots of sound effects with synthesizers,” says Clive. “Then we moved it into a different place and it became much more jazzy with clarinets and everything.”
Songs like “Razorblades” are a reminder of how limitations breed creativity. “I think that was the beauty of the early days,” says Clive. “In our early days, there was quite a limit to what we could do. I can look back and say, wow, there was a certain charm about that. It forced you to be more inventive.”
Even before he had a synthesizer, Clive recalls, the duo would experiment by taking a 45 that was comprised of just one tone— “eeeee,” he mimics in a high-pitched voice— and recording it at different speeds. “We wanted to do electronic music but we didn’t have any equipment to do it,” he says. “I think lots of inventiveness in all the worlds of creativity, science, music and art, comes from limitation.”
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
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