Renegade Soundwave: A Renegade Cocaine Extravaganza MegaMix

While Gosling himself lends his Mekon touch on the remixes, Hua Hua Plays For You (Vol.1) is also an exercise in collaborative curation, with each track reflecting a different facet of his expansive musical world. Distributed by Kate Bush’s revered state51 Conspiracy, the album hits shelves on 21st August 2024 in both vinyl and digital formats, offering fans of punk, industrial, hip-hop, and electronica a rare glimpse into Gosling’s new musical vision.

Step forth the mighty Renegade Soundwave – also featured on the compilation – with all the wit, cheek, and chaos that defined RSW, Asquith dips deep into their archives, pulling out tracks from the seminal Cocaine Sex sessions, Rhythm King’s dancefloor dubs, and RSW’s back catalogue, offering a true taste of a time when dub, industrial, and raw attitude collided. It’s a celebration of that unmistakable renegade spirit that never quite fit into any box – and wouldn’t have wanted to.

We made the Mix Collection Exclusive for Ransom Note with some previously unpublished material. Cocaine Sex was originally recorded & included, Sub Aqua Overdrive Dub for Rhythm King Records(Mute Records dance subsidiary) in 87. Later reissued on Mute Records. Cocaine Sex has spawned many children over the years through various recordings & I’ve included some of the many including Dragonbass Soundsystem & Renegade Soundmachine to exemplify its broad impact & bookended with a vocal & instrumental versions of our most recently released recording A.D.I.D.A.S… for the Hua Hua, Compilation album.”

We also may have a surprise release coming after the album, so keep your eyes and ears peeled.

Listen below and read the full interview with Asquith below:

Tell us about the mix you’ve done for us …

We made this mix for you with some previously unpublished material. When we were first approached with the idea of doing the mix I thought about the evolution of Renegade Soundwave’s seminal track Cocaine Sex. Tracking down the various mixes for the assembly line opened doors to recordings that I’d not listened to for ages & seemed musically appropriate & fitting with the vibe we were trying to create with the Ransom Note Mix.I’m personally very happy with the way the mix turned out & think it will be appreciated by those that are familiar with the group & haven’t given them much thought in recent years. There’s a fresh fluidity to the Renegade spectrum that incorporates some old classics with a recent recording for John Gosling’s Hua Hua compilation album & obscure & previously unheard tracks. Renegade Soundwave is a broad church & we’ve tried to encapsulate as many areas of our song writing abilities as possible in 27 minutes. Some are songs, some are mixes & some are interpretations of an original idea. Balanced for people with healthy & holy diets.

Can we talk about the whole soundclash that happened in the 80s, which resulted in Renegade Soundwave? The influence of dub, hip-hop and industrial noise on early dance music was, for me, probably one of the most exciting times in modern music.

There were a myriad of magical moments happening during the mid to late 80’s & far too many to mention. Genre hopping was something that came naturally to the members of Renegade Soundwave because we all had diverse tastes in pretty much all of the different varieties & musical styles. All the lights in the room were triggered except for the Heavy Metal Button. Anything goes & when we were told that something wouldn’t work we’d become more animated & attentive to the idea of making it work. What glued us together as a musical unit was our punk rock attitudes which we’d all garnered from our juvenile teenage upbringings in London & we applied those attitudes to our recordings. We touched on subject matters that were often ignored & rejected by mainstream media outlets. The double whammy of Cocaine Sex being two of those subjects. When there were no Punk Rock records made to be played early in 1976, DJ Don Letts played Reggae records @ the Roxy Club which acted as a panacea for the congregation…like an insulin for the tribe.

Probably a Robbery was a minor/major hit in 1990. What was the inspiration behind that track, and how did its success shape the future of Renegade Soundwave?

Robbery hovered around the mid-chart area for months like an unwanted child up for adoption in 1990. The track was written in the Mute Records studio while we were recording the first RSW album, Soundclash. It’s a novelty track which came out of nowhere and slowly burrowed itself into the subconscious, light-hearted thinking folk @ Radio 1. It’s a quirky reminder that the brain doesn’t always spit out the normal straight-thinking & sometimes antagonised thought processes your internal musical conveyor belt gets conditioned to do. Oh, you’ve got a sense of humour have you? It was an odd idea that became a song & is often the only Renegade Soundwave song people will know. It often makes me think about the Anthony Burgess book Clockwork Orange, which was written quickly among his many other books that never seem to have got the same attention, much to Mr Burgess’s disgust. I’m not sure if the song is a help or a hindrance. You Decide! I personally don’t think it has any special place in the Pantheon of Renegade Soundwave recordings & I’m the sort of fella who wears odd-coloured socks when my mind is in slack mode. Probably A Robbery might be Renegade Soundwave’s only dystopian satirical moment. You Decide!

How did the transition from being a trio to a duo after Karl Bonnie left influence the direction of the group’s later albums?

Hindsight is a beautiful thing…& With the benefit of hindsight not very well. Karl was the most gifted musician of the 3 of us & his musical ability & subtlety was underestimated & much missed in my opinion. If I could convince Elon Musk to ditch Tesla Electric car ideas & start making Electric chairs, I’d recommend myself for participation in his early experimentation processes. The Pyramid was better than the Straight Line & the first two albums, Soundclash & In Dub, are a testament to that. Both albums aren’t perfect but are closer to perfect than the second two studio albums. Small increments of imperfection. There are some fabulous tracks on Howyoudoin. & Next Chapter Of Dub but as a whole they’re both weaker than the first two albums. Blast Em Out & Blastik 1 are both excellent & the track Renegade Soundwave is a great single & the Mixes put together for the release are all great & Leftfields remixes are both outstanding even by their high standard. Flood’s Production is also a major factor on the first two albums. If its got Renegade Soundwave written on the box it’s always worth opening because it’s usually aurally stimulating.

Can you tell us about your post-Renegade Soundwave projects?

I kinda like all the projects I’ve involved myself with since Renegade Soundwave & before. I like them all for different reasons. My favourite is The Lavender Pill Mob because it’s wild & rough with Punk Rock elements & moments of creative beauty that have included some of my closest compadres & some cultural icons. Rammellzee & Adam Ant being two that you might be familiar with. These recordings are sometimes raw & masonic….but most are free thinking gems. Stories that might have been written by stray dogs from the roads you’ve travelled.

Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind “A.D.I.D.A.S.” and how it fits into the Hua Hua compilation album. How did the creative process for this track evolve, and what significance does it hold for you compared to your earlier work?

I don’t know about you, but my calendar stopped momentarially around the pandemic/plan-demic & lots of my good intentions turned to mush. I’m still trying to catch up with certain periods of time around 2020. Just before the outbreak I’d been communicating with Karl Bonnie again after decades of silent nights without him. We share a mutual friend & were communicating through this person & eventually exchanging comments through this person turned from telepathic to email & then telephone conversations every month or so. Karl mentioned that he was still playing drums enthusiastically & expressed an interest in meeting up. We both reminisced about our pasts & agreed that we’d like to Jam together like the old days when we first used to meet up in New York in the mid 80’s & Jam in a Soho loft space belonging to his then girlfriend’s drummer from a band called Live Skull . We’d decided we compliment each other’s styles & found writing songs together effortless & wondered what could/would happen if we were to rehearse together again. John Gosling of Hua Hua fame offered us an opportunity to use his studio for a couple of live sessions & we booked ourselves in & found we were still as compatible musically as we’d previously been and A.D.I.D.A.S was one of the song ideas that came to fruition during these live recordings. There’s several hours of great recordings and A.D.I.D.A.S seemed like an obvious candidate for a first release when later down the line John Gosling mentioned that he was compiling a compilation album & asked if we’d like to submit a recording. I had the acronym A.D.I. D.A.S from a conversation I’d had with a person who I was working with on my Dragonbass project decades previously “All Day I Dream About Sex” & the idea of writing a song around the acronym had been loitering in the back of my mind since 1998.

What previously unpublished material is featured in the mix, and how does it differ from earlier releases?

Get It On Us has never previously been released in commercial format & the techno sounding KOKA SX version. I’d previously done a project called Renegade Soundmachine for a couple of years & these particular recordings were never released.

Can you elaborate on the history of “Cocaine Sex” and its significance within your discography and the way it influenced the creation of tracks like those by Dragonbass Soundsystem and Renegade Soundmachine?

Cocaine Sex was originally recorded & included, Sub Aqua Overdrive Dub for Rhythm King Records(Mute Records dance subsidiary) in 87. Later reissued on Mute Records. Cocaine Sex has spawned many children over the years through various recordings & I’ve included some of the many including Dragonbass Soundsystem & Renegade Soundmachine to exemplify its broad impact & bookended with a vocal & instrumental versions of our most recently released recording A.D.I.D.A.S… for the Hua Hua, Compilation album.” When I first had some of the lyrical ideas for Cocaine Sex I was living with a girlfriend from the all girl band Malaria! in what was then known as West Berlin. Off Yorckstrasse, a couple of blocks away from the infamous Risiko Punk Club. Bettina was working at the Art Nouveau style theatre bar called Metropol in the afternoons & during these times I’d lazily scribble & draw pictures on the bedroom sheets & smoke joints and drink Russian schnapps shots if I was lucky. One afternoon I’d been out tracking down an English fella called Mark Reader who was residing in Berlin & on my return noticed that Bettina had changed all the bed linen. “Where’s the old bed linen gone?” I asked & thankfully the smudged dirty lyric ridden sheet I’d written the Cocaine Sex lyrics on was still in the washing machine due to Bettina needing more soap powder. I pulled out the sheet & copied what I could read of the smudged lyrics onto a pad for future developments.

I guess Cocaine Sex slowly became a signature tune and was always part of our Live Renegade Soundwave set…. Whenever/wherever we played live. When we were extradited from the Mute Records building it was the only song that I wanted all the AKAI floppy disks for. You can keep the rest & the Dragonbass version of Cocaine Sex was the first re-recording I did after leaving Mute Records.

What made Rhythm King Records and Mute Records a fitting home for your music in the late ’80s?

They both seemed like good ideas @ the time.Mark Moore of S Express fame was instrumental in our signing for Rhythm King & picked up on Karl’s independent 12 inch release, Underneath The Arches. He introduced us to Martin Heath & James Horrocks who were running the Rhythm King label & I think we had some demos already recorded that passed the test for us to cut our first single Kray Twins Unfortunately our relationship with Mute Records has hit an all time low. Our master recordings have been bought & sold like a Clapped out second hand Vauxhall Corsa & are currently languishing in the grubby hands of BMG who’ acquired our catalog after several years of mis-management from EMI. It’s a highly toxic industry where musical artists are thrown to the wolves like unwanted commodities & respect is in very short supply. I don’t think I could ever describe the disdain I have for some (not all) of the people that have sucked the creative blood from my veins after having tried my creative best to be so inclusive with my art. Bad Capitalism at its best.

Have you ever had a better press shot than the Rhythm King ones?!

The Rhythm King Promo picture seemed relevant due to the mix being set around a recording that we originally made for Rhythm King. The Great Ormond Street photos were from an early photo shoot with a friend of the group called John Herlihy, who sadly isn’t with us anymore & has a special place in our hearts. It seemed appropriate that he was part of the Ransom Note visual experience because John was an important part of the Renegade family history. We’re sentimental souls at heart.

What was the reason for including both vocal and instrumental versions of “A.D.I.D.A.S” in the mix?

That was John Gosling’s idea & I guess we thought it was a good way of bookending the mix.It loops the old & new perfectly.

Where next for Renegade Soundwave.

We’ll be scattering more seeds. There’s about 7 hours or so of great live recordings that we’ll eventually be going through & releasing at some stage. There’s plenty of quality songs that came about through these 2 days of live recordings that we did. There’s no particular plan except making sure the explosions are controlled, happening in places we’ve chosen with companies or individuals we’re happy to share our new musical adventures with. It’s a big bright beautiful world & I’m thankful for the endurance of those that collaborated & stayed on course over the years. “Thank You Mother Earth, Thank You For The Journey”

1. Ozone Breakdown (Intro) – Renegade Soundwave

2. Adidas – Renegade Soundwave

3. Cocaine Sex (Sub Aqua Overdrive Dub) – Renegade Soundwave

4. Cocaine Sex (Kamikaze Sniff Mix) – DragonBass

5. Are You crazy ? – DragonBass

6. Koka SX – Renegade SoundMachine

7. Get It On Us – Renegade SoundMachine

8. Thunder (7 inch edit) – Renegade Soundwave

9. Adidas (instrumental)b- Renegade Soundwave

order the album on huahua