When the mysterious Fireman album came out, it was largely ignored until rumors started floating that somehow Paul McCartney was involved with the project, à la Percy "Thrills" Thrillington's easy listening version of Ram in 1977. Capitol Records finally confirmed the rumors, with the result that a good number of aging Beatles fans bought their very first (and likely only) ambient house record. The thing is, it's a bit disingenuous to say that Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest is a Paul McCartney record in the strictest sense. The album's provenance is in a remix session for the first single from McCartney's Off the Ground album, "Hope of Deliverance." Ever mindful of current chart trends, McCartney invited former Killing Joke bassist and ambient house pioneer Youth to remix the track. In the course of four days in McCartney's studio in October 1992, Youth deconstructed the entire Off the Ground album into samples and created nine different mixes, incorporating material from new recordings by McCartney, old demos, found sound tapes, and even samples of the tracks "Reception" and "The Broadcast" from 1979's Back to the Egg. The performances are by McCartney, true, but it's Youth's sampling and remix skills that created the album. Youth later said that, had he realized at the time that McCartney was going to eventually release all nine tracks as a single album, he would have varied the proceedings a bit more. And that's the one flaw with this album; since all of the tracks have the same source material, they all sound more alike than they might otherwise. The tracks are solid ambient dance material, with beats and wisps of melody swirling around each other without ever quite coalescing into a recognizable tune, but there's a little bit too much sameness about the material for Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest to really hold together as an album the way that, say, the Orb's material does. The much more varied 1998 follow-up, Rushes, would be a far superior release. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest is a 1993 ambient electronic music album by The Fireman, a duo consisting of Paul McCartney and producer Youth, who is best known as a member of Killing Joke and the Orb.
Background
The album consists of samples of McCartney material, mostly from the sessions that spawned his Off the Ground album, as well as samples of "Reception" and "The Broadcast" from 1979's Back to the Egg, as remixed by Youth. Neither McCartney nor Youth are credited on the album; rumours of McCartney's involvement were eventually confirmed by EMI.
In a Melody Maker review, Michael Bonner wrote, "Paul McCartney has discovered dance music - and the results are as staggeringly brilliant as those that came from John Lydon's similar road-to-Damascus-like conversion last year. Truly, we live in an age of miracles. Eschewing the easy option of making a remix album, McCartney and his collaborator, Youth, have chosen to follow the likes of Brian Eno down a more experimental and cerebral path. They take a melody and, with dexterous genre-hopping through ambient, trance and house, evolve a number of breathtaking variations. Like snowflakes, each song seems identical to the last, until closer inspection reveals that it has its own unique shape."
The project began when McCartney asked Youth to remix several tracks from McCartney's Off the Ground album for use on possible 12" singles. McCartney stated, "The brief from me was that he should only use stuff from our recordings, because dance mixes often feature a kick-drum sample or a James Brown snare sound and, as a consequence, the record ends up sounding a bit like someone else's so I told Youth that I'd prefer any sound he might select to come off our recordings, mainly 'Off the Ground'."
Regarding the project, Youth has stated, "I didn't think it appropriate to remix any of the Off the Ground tracks the way I'd been briefed. I thought it would be better to do a more conceptual thing - that is, rather than remix a track I thought we should deconstruct the album into samples and then construct a new mix from those. And Paul liked the idea. He was into it, so I went for it."
Eventually, McCartney decided to join Youth in the studio to create new music to add to the tapestry along with the existing samples, and the project became a more collaborative effort. Although originally conceived as a series of 12" remixes, McCartney became so enamoured with the results of the sessions that the project became this full-length album, released in 1993 in the United Kingdom, and several months later in 1994 in the United States of America.
Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest, which never charted, is no longer in print. It is, however, available on iTunes.
