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Slits are back Up and running

Posted Nov 9, 2009 by Clarisa Gerlach

Updated Nov 9, 2009 at 04:03 PM

Ari Up is on the phone to talk about “Trapped Animal,” the first new album in 28 years by her pioneering punk outfit, The Slits.

Up, gregarious, opinionated and a natural raconteur, also discusses Disney, Jamaica, Michael Jackson (the news of his physician’s arrest was audible from the television in Up’s abode), male roles in the tribes of Borneo and which Japanese animated characters The Slits are most like.

“It’s like Pokémon,” she says. “We’ve had three evolutions.”

The first was the early incarnation as a caterwauling outfit which lacked technical ability even by punk standards. The second was the far more skilled group which made 1979’s “Cut” and 1981’s “The Return of the Giant Slits,” forward-thinking works which confidently appropriated dub reggae and Tribal rhythms, respectively.

The third is the latest, featuring original Slits Up and Tessa Pollitt, plus Hollie Cook (daughter of Sex Pistols’ drummer Paul), Anna Schulte and Adele Wilson. 

“We got to draw from a lot of areas,” Up says. “More and more stuff accumulates. It just keeps coming in.”

Reggae continues to be a source of inspiration to the Slits on “Trapped Animal,” and the disc also incorporates jazz, funk, hip-hop and World beat.

Up agrees to a point that the album is more melodic that earlier Slits releases, but points out that cuts such as “Ping Pong Affair,” from “Cut,” weren’t lacking in that area.

More likely, perhaps, it’s the more technically skilled musicianship the 21st Century Slits bring to the process.

On an early tour supporting The Clash, The Slits reportedly had to have the headliner’s guitarist Mick Jones tune their instruments for them. A John Peel session is the only document of this period, which Up calls “raw and as close to punk as the Slits ever sounded.”

By “Cut,” the band had mastered its instruments and, crucially, discovered reggae. With producer Dennis Bovell (Linton Kwesi Johnson, Prince Far-I, U-Roy), they fashioned a haunting, skeletal take on dub reggae that was unlike anything heard before or since.

With “Return,” the Slits anticipated world beat with an album immersed in tribal rhythms. 

The second album seemed to take its musical cues from the photo of the band on the cover of “Cut,” covered in mud, looking like warriors.
“I don’t know if it was conceived as a tribal idea,” Up says. “In the punk days you had this incredible freedom but you couldn’t get away form being a girl, of what society imposes on you, like what’s the latest hairstyle and always having to wear high heels.

“Punk was about breaking down barriers and rejecting the preconditioning and preconceptions of what a girl was suppose to be in the modern world,” Up says. “So to become tribal was a natural rebellious reaction.”

Up embraced tribalism so much that she left England – and civilization – to live in the jungles of Borneo for a time in the 1980s.

Her frustration with the ‘80s music scene influenced her decision as well.

“I found it really necessary to hit the jungle.” Up says. The ‘80s were consumed with such fake stuff after what we’d been through. We were witness to real revolution.

“What happened was there was a lack of musical motivation,” Up says. “I needed to find something musically inspiring going on and that was hard in the ‘80s.

“Also there was the continuation of what The Slits were relevant to tribal ethnic living in a modern sense – borrowing from the ancient tribal ways of ancient women,” Up says.

“Guys are very conditioned as well. Partly why I went to the jungle was to find and discover how other males would live,” Up says.

Up, her boyfriend and their twins moved to Borneo, living with a tribe that hunted with bows and arrows, not only observing the society’s culture but participating in it as well.

“They didn’t take women on hunt, but that was not necessarily chauvinistic,” Up says. “It’s really dangerous. No place for women, I didn’t want to go quite frankly. It really is scary, all those snakes and all the jaguars in the jungle. There was a headhunter tribe next door, Far away but near enough. I wasn’t leaving the village.”

Up was impressed with the overall egalitarianism of the female and male roles.

“The guys were so into participating in family life, child rearing, cooking and all the pain in the ##### jobs that put so much strain on women,” Up says. “It was profoundly refreshing.”

Up now divides her time between Brooklyn and Jamaica. She’s a frequent visitor to Florida as well.

“I love Disney World,” she exclaims. “I’m a fanatic because of the kids. And I love Miami. I’ve never been to South America, so I think of it as my little South American getaway.”

She’s thrilled to have The Slits back in action in the 21st Century, when they may be needed even more than they were the first time around.

“Stuff like “American Idol” is total image-making,” Up says. “It’s a gimmick for making industry-controlled acts. Sadly for most women – and guys too – in the industry, they’re being groomed.

“Not everything is pop music diluted every step of the way. There should be room for people like us. There HAS to be room for people like us.”