Extraneous Terrain.

'There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man's needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.' Théophile Gautier, 1811-1872. RSS Feed: http://extraneousterrain.tumblr.com/rss

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Preview: Camden Crawl 2014

Camden Crawl: A setting as rich as they come for music and culture fans alike.

On 11 September 1907, Emily Dimmock, a part-time prostitute cheating on her partner Bertram Shaw, a railway man, was murdered in her home on St Paul’s Road in Camden Town. Having returned from The Eagle public house, after sex the man slit her throat open while she was asleep and left in the morning. After a failed court case against artist Robert Wood, the murder forever remained a mystery, and was the subject of Walter Sickert’s series The Camden Town Murder. Many people, including renowned author Patricia Cornwell, believe that the paintings reveal Sickert’s own identity as the real ‘Jack The Ripper’.

Nestled a convenient stone’s throw to the north of the capital’s central hub, Camden’s identity reads as a decadent history of the modernist human experience (drugs, pubs, music and sex) and everything that is quintessentially London; relentlessly renewed through the years with an embittered perseverance. With a small amount of recuperation time, the Camden Crawl returns this weekend with re-energised vigour and somewhat of a new direction.

There is an app, 22 venues, 250 artists, and traditional free mix tape (/digital giveaway) to be getting through. In the meantime however, here comes somewhat of a ‘starter for two’ for those of you making the trip up the Northern line this weekend...

Further to the lovely video playlist above, below are three things you might want to know about this year's Camden Crawl.

The Dark Horse: Dawn Golden Friday: Electric Ballroom, 7.30pm.

American producer Dexter Tortoriello has been making waves across his native continent for his solo work as Dawn Golden (as well as other project Houses) for some time now, and this Friday evening will see him play his first ever show in Europe.

Whilst his work does often come across on the gloomier side of the spectrum in regards to theme, it is without fail crafted with a devotion towards genuine experience. I hope that the live sound absorbs and shimmers as much as I had always assumed it would.

The Most Unique Venue: St Michael’s Church Saturday Only. Camden Road, NW1 9LQ.

This category is awarded with relative ease. Grade II listed, the Gothic church on Camden Road dates back to 1881, and is the first venture of renowned churchy architects Bodley and Garner. What’s more you can catch Adrian Crowley here on Saturday from 8.

It is also worth mentioning that this place of worship is excellently served by the Camden branch of J Sainsbury for those crucial festival amenities. The meal deal is fine, but the Holy Lord may take exception to you devouring the cans of Carling (that you clearly did not buy at the bar) in His establishment.

At What Point And Where Can I Listen To Anything But This Godawful Music: Shambles Saturday. The Camden Head, 3-6.30pm.

What’s not to like about meeting people who are funny for an actual living? Laugh nervously whilst praying to the gods that this isn't one of those comedy sketches that requires an audience participant, because it would obviously be you every time. You self-involved ponce, just enjoy it. Just try to enjoy it.

On the whole, the line-up is focussed on the new and is all the more competitive for it. But the likes of ABC, Atari Teenage Riot and Of Montreal make for suitable headliners for an esteemed weekend attraction such as the Crawl. It’ll be fun, and hopefully we’ll learn even more over the course weekend, and more importantly let’s hope we don’t ever grow quite old enough to resist the allure of a night spent in old Camden Town.

This preview was first published on 17th June 2014.

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Observations: Aidan Moffat

Image courtesy of Neil Jarvie.

The approach that Moffat takes to all of his material is as much about a forceful and explicit exposure to those most outrageous and honest human experiences, as it is about the intricacies of balance. ‘I don’t think either (comedy or discomfort) takes precedence no, it’s all about balance. I do like to challenge a little sometimes, and it’s certainly great to make people laugh, but I hope the lasting memory is something more emotional. What writers and songwriters try to do is articulate their experience into little nuggets, and if you write about yourself then you’re probably writing about everyone.’ There is an ongoing tale of the modern condition alive in his words, both in its ire and vulgarity, warmth and compassion. And I think that’s what keeps him going today. ‘I do wonder sometimes what would have happened if Arab Strap had done really well and made a shit-load of money – I don’t think I’d still be making records, to be honest. Who wants to hear someone singing about how brilliant their life is? I’m comfortable on the fringes.’ And there are clearly more than a few embers left in him yet, ‘I won’t be doing another set like this for at least a couple of years, I’ve got plans to move onto until about 2017.’ There is naturally some room left in the show for some Arab Strap, namely ‘Blood‘ and ‘I Would’ve Liked Me A Lot Last Night’. ‘I only do those two myself, I haven’t tried any others because it would be a waste of time without Malcolm.’ He explains, ‘I’ve always liked the words to Blood and it’s only got two chords. But aye, they fit the set well, and I can still sing them with feeling – especially Last Night because it’s all about a horrific hangover, and they get much worse when you reach 40.’

This was originally published on TV is Better on 14th Nov 2013.

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Conversations: León Siminiani

Mapa is your first venture into full-length feature film making, despite having an extensive back-catalogue of previous short films. What was it about this film that demanded the transition?

I spent fifteen years making short films and working in television, and had tried to make a full length fiction film about seven or eight years ago but it never came through. Then I was fired from one of the television series I was working on and became quite fed up. So I decided that I wanted to start a big feature film project that would give me more freedom. I was interested in pursuing something that was somewhere between fiction and non-fiction, and began experimenting with making short films as a diary of my own life. I was in quite a personal crisis, I was out of a job, out of a relationship, and so I decided to go on this trip to India and take a small camera with me. I started recording everything with no screenplay or plan whatsoever.

When I came back to Spain I just carried on filming, fell in love with a woman, which began a love story, and all of that became part of the film. So it’s about my life at that moment in time; it took a long time to shape the film, and the whole project took about four and a half years. Ten years ago I never would have thought that something like this would be my first feature length film.

One of the reasons it took so long to close it was that at the beginning there were 11 different cuts all covering completely different contents to each other. Eventually the film became about being a guy searching for a kind of sense for his life, being dumped, becoming alone and going through that but in the mean time there was a lot of other content within the film. The economic crisis, unemployment in Spain, the World Cup. I was trying to make a mirror between personal reality and social reality.

So do you think the film is more about finding yourself or getting lost?

It’s about both. One of the interesting things about making a story about yourself is that at some point you need to take some distance and see the person as a character and see the film as a story. You can’t continue to think of it just as your life, because you will always hold a little back from the audience.

So in the beginning it’s about this guy in a personal crisis trying to find some sense for his life, so it starts off about searching but in the search he gets completely lost. So after searching for all this time, and everything he encounters in the outside world in India in this supposed spiritual quest, he finds that whatever it was he was looking for was back in Madrid. He finds that it’s more at home that you have to find your way.

Do you think personal crisis is a necessary part of the process of finding yourself?

There are so many ways as people we may do that, in my case it was like that. I’m a guy that tends to be in crisis on an ongoing basis. But I do think that when you are in a difficult place, personal, monetary, family, health, it can be an open door to spaces or places of yourself that you never thought existed before.

In Spain for example, we have a really difficult situation now with the financial crisis, and there has been a lot of discourse going on about how fucked up everything is. But I think now things are starting to change in that perhaps this is the first chance for our generation to start building something new.

Do you see the film as a part of Spanish cinema, or something more universal?

I think what’s happening in Spanish cinema right now, both in mainstream and what you might call alternative cinema, is that films are tending to be more international. A film like Mapa can pretty much be understood everyhwere, I am a Spanish person and I belong to that culture but I don’t think too much on those terms, I think in terms of cinema.

What was your hope in bringing the film here tonight?

The film has had a long career, much more than we ever thought it might, but something we always resisted was the anglo market. It’s a film told entirely in the voice over, there’s a lot of narration, and a lot of subtitles, so people told us it would be very difficult as people are not too used to reading subtitles. It has been the case so far in the United States, but not in the UK; we’ve closed a distribution deal for general release and it will screen at the London International Documentary Film Festival next month, and I’m very interested in seeing English speaking audiences reactions, can they follow the film, and enter into what it proposes.

What comes next after something like this?

I need to make a decision on whether I turn back to fiction, or stay with non-fiction, personal stuff. So I think I’ve decided whatever I do will be on this border between fiction and non-fiction documentary film. I think a lot of people are working in this realm these days. So I will probably do a feature, whilst doing some shorts at the same time. I’ve done so many shorts that it’s like home for me. But I am looking for another big project; it’s so demanding, it’s like trying to tame a wild horse or something.

This was first published on God Is In The TV Magazine on 11th Oct 2013.

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Conversations: IS TROPICAL

I spoke to Simon and Dominic from IS TROPICAL at Reading the weekend before last, resulting in the following heavily edited transcript. Indulge...

Sorry I missed you guys earlier, when did you play?

Dominic Apa: We were in the dance tent at 3, which was cool because it was the time most people were probably waking up and coming out their campsites. If we’re going to be booked for a dance tent when actually our second album has a lot of punk in it then maybe it’s a good to be a bit of a mid-day surprise.

Simon : I’d even take being a disappointment as a kind of positive really.

Dominic: Well yeah, if everyone's been getting pumped listening to Disclosure and then comes to see us then it might be disappointing. But in reality we've been listening to a lot of Disclosure too this morning.

Simon: Perhaps if you play something that doesn't get an 'oggie oggie oggie' between every song or 'whoooop' between every bar it's not necessarily a bad thing?

Dominic: Well.... By all means do that. The hardest thing about playing a festival set is having to put yourself in the mind-set of someone who’s watching you in a really short space of time and that forces you to approach it differently and focus so much more into it. But once you do that there’s no looking back really and those sets always become the milestones, it may not always be the biggest thing when you’re playing it yourself but for those watching they are often the most telling moments.

Simon: Certainly in terms of press, it's festivals that become the big milestones of progression. There are certain magazines that would not come and watch our club shows.

Dominic: But fuck those magazines. Fuck the NME, they're bullshit. They'll go and tell you that 'Chocolate' by The 1975 is the best track of the year. I'm really sorry, that is not the best song of the year, I'm happy to go and put that on my own blog at least.

Fantastic start. So with all of that in mind, what do you think success really looks like these days?

Dominic: At least three people singing your words back to you? Every now and then you’ll come off-stage and someone will feel compelled to come up to you and say ‘I really enjoyed your set’, that’s what success should be really, personal perspectives.

That’s funny because us mere mortals often fear being tiresome or embarrassing ourselves with those kinds of compliments.

Dominic: I know, but someone wouldn’t over-ride the awkwardness of that exchange unless they really meant it. Fundamentally, it’s knowing that something you made in your bedroom six months ago has actually been enjoyed by someone else to the point of that kind of compulsion.

And we’re both idiots, me clearly more than you are, so don’t worry about that.

Do you ever think you'd have been better off ten or fifteen years ago?

Simon: No, I don't think we would've been given a chance.

Dominic: You can’t make money from music these days, so you’ll either be fucking rich because your mums paying the bills or just getting by because you really can’t envisage doing anything else whilst you still have the chance to do music. So I think we’re in a place now where bands are more likely to be passionate about what they do, and at the same time now anyone can make it from their bedroom.

That’s certainly true for music press too, blogs have taken a lot of power back.

Simon: Definitely, and we’re lucky enough to be one of those bands – because people in their rooms are writing about us but the magazines aren’t. We wouldn’t be anywhere without people in their room nerding out to our music.

Dominic: Respect to the nerds.

How many times do Deftones have to play mainstage before they headline?

Dominic: After White Pony came out, I would gladly wish for Deftones to headline every festival from now until Armageddon. What’s that song where the album was like a Jacuzzi? The single from that album was the soundtrack to me learning how to kickflip. 

Okay, do you think it's better to devote your life to one undivided cause or a million fleeting ideas?

Dominic: One cause, definitely. Don’t get me wrong, humans are really great and they can achieve great things in their lives. But like, turtles live longer than us, we can’t pretend that we can get that much done. There are a lot of people out there with great plans, but I’ve found that the ones who are most successful are the ones who know exactly what they want to achieve and can see it through.

We’ve got to go, but the reason we’re so good at interviews is because we feel like it’s the last chance we’ll have to get our voices recorded onto tape ever, so thank you.

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Conversations: Big Wave

I was lucky enough to be invited to this year’s Reading, and whilst a little too hungover and sleep-deprived for my own comfort on the Sunday afternoon I was introduced by a friend to one of the bands selected a couple of weeks before to play the BBC Introducing stage.

  So BBC Introducing has brought you from Devon to Reading, how did you find the whole process?

Mel: Well the only reason this all happened in the first place was because we uploaded a few songs to the Introducing web-site ages ago, and then got selected for BBC Introducing Devon. Then one night we got an email telling us we were being played on Radio One with Huw Stephens at this time, so I had to scramble to get everyone to wake up and listen!

We’d only done a few performances and one small interview with them before James Santer, who works at the BBC there, decided to put us forward for some festivals and we got to play here this afternoon.

So do you think the BBC Introducing model works?

Mel: Definitely. I think it’s the first year they’ve done it in Devon, so it’s proven to be a vital opportunity for us. Last year we played End of the Road, which again was through a competition that we entered. I think they chose three bands out of a thousand so it was a massive stroke of luck to get that one too. We were the first band on and then we stayed for the weekend, it’s an amazing festival.

Rikki: The band’s been going for about a year and a half and initially we just got our name out online, by uploading stuff to bandcamp. Through that we got picked up by a local label called Art Is Hard, we then released an EP with a small Scottish label called Soft Power, and then another couple of tracks which is when we started getting picked up by the BBC and from then onwards has been a real upward curve.

Mel: I don’t think we expected any of it, but every month that goes by we seem to be asked to do a better gig. We got asked to do one at the Old Blue Last recently which was great fun too.

Rikki: Being on a local label like Art is Hard is great because even though many of the artists on it are now from all over the country there is a community feel and we all know each other and often gig together, everyone supports each other.Best Friends and Black Tambourines are good examples, they’re both amazing bands.

Has music ever been a career aspiration?

Rikki: Doing it for the money is kind of out the window for us, playing this weekend will cost us money but it’s so worth it because when we’re old and grey we can say we played Reading and Leeds. We all work full time to make the music thing happen, so on weekends like this where you get to play Reading and Leeds there’s a real feeling of having earned it and worked your way up in a lot of ways. You know, the driving’s a pain but you just get on with it!

I went to University in Bournemouth, I had perhaps a bit too much fun and need to go back and finish my third year now. I plan to be a primary school teacher in a couple of years, I might have to lose the beard for it but it will be alright.

Mel: I had never been in a band before this, other than playing keyboard at school. But I’m a hairdresser and have recently opened my own salon so that’s going great.

How is the transition from every-day life to the stage?

Mel: I think our first gig together was in the SU bar at Plymouth University, and that was such a scary experience. Now I’ve become more confident with it all and have been able to be a lot more creative as a result. We all write our own parts, and that is the bit I really struggled with at the start, I mean I can’t really play many songs other than our songs. But I feel a lot more expressive in it now.

Has playing Reading and Leeds been what you expected it to be?

Rikki: I’ve never been on the guest side of a festival before, which is interesting. Flushing toilets, that freaked me out! It’s perhaps not as glamorous for us as others but we got free food vouchers and were over the moon!

I’ll have a couple of beers before-hand to calm the nerves, and hope for the best really. I’m just focussing on enjoying it really, it might be the only time we ever get to play Reading and Leeds.

Big Wave are on Facebook, Twitter and have a lovely website www.wearebigwave.com.

This interview was originally published on Crack In The Road.

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Observations: Japandroids - Dingwalls, Camden 18/07/2013

It was a set which by all means blew my shit in multiple directions, all over the sweat clad walls of yet another classic underground Camden bar venue, but that did not surpass my expectations in the slightest. It was everything I knew Japandroids to be, delivered to my face, and it felt weird. What do I say about something like that, ‘thank you’?

So there we have it, nothing. I will say nothing. Is this malaise of confusion that I now feel some kind of delicious and deliberate execution of ‘Post-Nothing’ as a concept? If so it is quite possibly the most audacious artistic delivery of existentialism the world is yet to see. A master-plan of four years in the making that even Beckett himself could nay have fathomed, laboriously scrawling self-conscious insanities over page after page, for little did he perceive the future power of Canadian rock. Well done you have silenced a British live music ‘critic’ (very loose application of the term) in London. Now we don’t have to listen to anything they have to say ever again. Fuck yeah Brian.

In reality, I will have been alone in feeling confounded afterwards, because I am the one that feels a certain pressure to try and dissect something about an experience that is so self-evidently the embodiment of what it is. It is a performance and it is music that is totally affirming to the fan. And that is why in truth the title of their second album, Celebration Rock, is a whole lot more to the point.

Japandroids are the kind of band that make you feel silly for taking life too seriously, or escaping its most fundamental purpose with divergent excuses that lead to nothing but an after-thought. To me at least, they are about what is in the room now. ‘Remember that night you were already in bed, said fuck it and got up to drink with me instead.’ You can never go wrong with what is in the room now. The most relieving thing I found watching them live, was to see that this spirit and vigour that you envisaged through their music was alive in these two people, and that they could deliver it in equally summoning force onstage.

After playing Latitude on Friday, Japandroids will have headed back to homely Canada to ponder what comes next after a solid four years of aggressively living in front of people’s faces. They said it would be their last stint in the UK for a long time, and they asked us to help them make it count. I guess the fact that I lost all sense of tally or measure means that we both succeeded with that one, bravo boys.

Originally published on Crack In The Road.

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The biggest clouds make for the biggest storms - What Glastonbury can do for us today

It’s June 2013 and the UK is buckling under the weight of a sixth year in economic mega-doom, scouring back over a culture of banker’s bonuses and corporate tax avoidance as if it’s something that just came out of nowhere. With that third and most dreaded deadly sin tight upon everybody’s lips, it’s quite frankly been embarrassingly difficult for the Left to organise itself of late. The question I found myself asking on my way down to Somerset two Wednesdays ago was, ‘is there even any room for free love anymore?’

In short; no. Glastonbury today is designed around the reality it inhabits. Subversively setting the dystopian (not so distant) futures of Block 9 and Shangri-La against an idyllic Somerset backdrop, we are cruelly reminded in the midst of our 3am raves just how off-course we have really gone. Heaven and Hell are explored with a playful and knowing gurn, amid a toy-town of such exhilarating abundance. In the immediacy of the event, and the rush party-goers might find racing through their bloodstreams, it attaches an absolute glory to this image of ultimate doom. Because let’s not beat about the bush, apocalypse in a controlled environment is bloody good fun. But the reasons why it gives us such an earthly thrill, and what impression it might still imprint on us in the long-run now that we have returned a little light headed to our desks, may just dig at that underlying pertinence. That kicking deep down we know a kind of truth in all this madness.

It certainly seems like a long way from the days of a carefree spill across the fields of sunny Somerset for a pound a ticket. Liberty stumbled upon in the uncovering of distorted guitars and lysergic acids. Or so the story goes. Now it feels like the hangover from hell, all of our parents’ ambitions and dreams fostered in the immediate splendour of youth culture, exponentially imploding under the cruel and unwavering finger of Cameron’s austerity.

Amid the ongoing drear of mass youth unemployment and with a weary consumer pallet that is no longer able to support an overpriced UK festival industry, you’d be forgiven for thinking it wasn’t summer at all. But of course it is, and Glastonbury unlike many of its peers sold out in record time last October because we still believe in this most romantic tale of hippy congregation to solve everything. But can a music festival in 2013 actually change anything?

Going to Glastonbury for my first time, among everything else there was to learn and uncover, it was this fundamental question that I most wanted to try to answer. Rhetoric of ideology, movement and change are plentiful in music, and that’s certainly not unique to a place like this. They get people moving and they get people shouting, but ultimately can they bring action?

Planted in the middle of this temporary city of free-flowing energy, we find a place for much more serious discussion and collective contemplation (during the day at least). The Leftfield is considered the live pulse of Glastonbury’s political component, and for many who sit here the weekend still has an important purpose in political discussion, maintained behind the overgrown lust for music and cider. Here you will find the wearier heads a little more cautious in conversation.

On talking about his own awakening to social activism as a young man, Billy Bragg recalls going to the Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park in 1978, as a twenty year-old. ‘I remember being a young man and going to work, and hearing racism and homophobia between colleagues that made me feel sick. It wasn’t until I went to that concert and saw thousands of other young people who felt the same as me that I felt that I could do something about it. That was a great moment, but you see whilst it was my love of The Clash that brought me to Victoria Park, it was the people I met there that ultimately empowered me to stand up for change. Music can inspire people, but it’s up to people to act.’

But it was precisely because that concert did take place in that time of intense social tension that Bragg found his calling, his ultimate cause and from this seed grows another.  A panellist on Sunday’s line-up, Beans On Toast explains ‘I saw Billy play the Leftfield at Glasto many, many years ago; it’s what inspired me to do what I do. Today was a great honour. I’ve been to Glastonbury fourteen times and I can tell you this weekend has changed me, I’ve learned things here now that will affect the course of my life from here on in.’

One can certainly suggest, and many do, that Glastonbury is itself a manifestation of the over-priced, capitalist merry go-round that many of its attendees so despise. That it is more exclusive than inclusive. That whilst the rest of the population are only shown as far as the Rolling Stones, Arctic Monkeys and Azealia Banks on iplayer, it has absolutely no potency to stir wider social discourse, let alone force change inside Westminster.

But of course they weren’t there, and there is a summoning force that seems to hit many visitors by the fourth or fifth day, a kind of awakening that forces the individual into a new and much more personal contemplation. If those of us attending have learned anything it should be that what hope there is still left on Monday morning should be clung to and adorned, not thrown away to return to again next year with another two-hundred-pound-plus ticket for a weekend’s pleasant distraction. However much we may romanticise the past, change is difficult and the very first Glastonbury was itself a slap in the face. What seeming social norms Billy Bragg (and thousands of other teenagers) stood up to in April 1978 are in the most part abhorred in 2013. Whatever your cause is, that cause is still needed today, and what embodiment there is in the people we find ourselves becoming at a place as vibrant as Glastonbury are worth living a life-time to defend.

  - Beans on Toast will be touring the UK this September.

  Originally published on ArtRocker.

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Conversations: Jagwar Ma

You could be forgiven for thinking that Jagwar Ma were formed a few months ago, such has been the rapidity of their rise in 2013. In fact their debut record Howlin’ is the culmination of two years’ work, a carefully plotted techni-colour explosion that shall see them play an eye-watering amount of festivals all across Europe this summer.

  Are there certain kinds of festivals that you look to play?

Gabriel: I don’t have any discretion as long as the line-up’s cool and the people that put it on are really nice. There are a few in Australia that I really want to play, like Harvest and another called Splendour, which we are actually playing, that’s near Byron Bay. It’s nice to play places that are so nice, like Calvi on the Rocks and even Glastonbury, it’s just such a beautiful area.

Jack:  This is our first festival run so I haven’t really forged my opinion yet. Obviously in Australia we grew up going to those festivals, but it’s our first time playing festivals in Europe and Glastonbury is our first festival in the UK.

    Got a lot booked for the summer then?

G: Yeah, pretty full for the six months, I can’t remember all of them off the top of my head. All the obvious ones, Reading/Leeds, Bestival, Latitude, Ibiza Rocks, Number 6, T in the Park.

  How long have you guys been playing together?

G: We all used to play in different bands, but all of our bands used to tour together, and we’ve all known each other since we were about 16. Me and Jono started it about two years ago and then Jack joined about a year ago.

  When you sat down to write this record (Howlin’) was there a conscious idea of how you wanted it to sound?

G: I have sometimes sat down and thought I want to write a song that sounds like this. The song Four was very pre-meditated in that way, we’d just got back from Berlin, and I’d been to Berghain for the first time, so we tried to capture that feeling we had whilst we were there.

But then there are other songs, like The Throw and Come Save Me which came about in a much more natural process.

  What was the idea that motivated the start of Jagwar Ma, compared to previous projects?

G: I think we wanted to simplify it, mostly. It started with just me and Jono in a room, other than that we didn’t really think about it too much.

Jack wasn’t in the room for most of the record, but now he’s jumped in to play the bass live, which definitely adds a new dimension as far as what it sounds like live. So in that sense it has grown. I’d like it to grow even more as well. With most electronic acts you find them constantly trying to confine it, but we’d like more people playing more things.

J: It’s trying to delegate as much stuff to human beings as possible so it has much more of an earthy quality to it. We don’t see why dance music should necessarily be electronic, because dance music has been around for much longer than all this technology.

  Do you think it’s difficult to traverse that line between something gratifying that gets the tent going, with something that is more human perhaps?

G: Well I think it’s fairly easy to bring reality to the music, and to make sure that there are people at the front of the music. It’s about soul.

J: But that is how we would approach it, because we’re all players originally, not DJs. Whilst Jono in particular has gone quite far down that route, when we were teenagers we were all playing in punk bands. So that is the challenge, bringing our skill-set into the electronic world.

  Is your music happy music?

G: I think so. But without going too personal, I was going through a break-up through the album so there’s definitely part of that in the lyrics, it can’t be more obvious than a song called That Loneliness?!

J: Yeah, there’s melancholy in there but overall I think the attitude of the band is of optimism.

G: We’re optimistic people, and I like that.

  Have you ever considered not playing music?

G: No, I was born like this. My Dad played music, his Dad played music, his Dad played music. It didn’t feel like a choice, not that we were forced.

  What would be the first thing you made sure you always brought with you to a festival?

J: A bottle of water and a good attitude. A map which is circled and underlined.

But as you do more festivals that desire to see all the bands you love just slowly drains away. We were on our way to see the Stones last night, and we were on the trek, and then just saw Public Enemy to our right, and there was this kind of magnetism that just sort of drew us away. We just started dancing and thought ‘I guess we’re watching Public Enemy!’ I don’t know, what do you bring to a festival?

G: Just vibes.

Originally published on Crack In The Road.

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Conversations: Scott Hutchinson [Frightened Rabbit]

How many times is this playing Glastonbury?

This is our second, the first being three years ago now. The joy of it hasn’t gone away, and my experience of it is that it’s unlike anywhere else.

  Pedestrian Verse landed earlier this year, what have you guys been up to since?

We’ve toured pretty relentlessly. Started off in the UK and then went to the US, Australia and Europe and so it continues. Traditionally, we’ve always used touring as the main method of getting the word out about our band, so we’ve been really happy to play as many shows as we have and get those songs played in front of people.

There’s a certain amount of adrenaline playing live, but something I always have to get over is the imperfections of live performance, something that is usually at odds with what would happen in the studio. But even then, I now find that something that has energy can actually be preferable to something that sounds more technically ‘right’. So in many ways we used our live experience in this record. We played some of the songs live before recording them, and that was the first time we’ve ever done that. It was a conscious decision to practice together and give the album more of a collective feel, rather than it traditionally being me writing all the songs and taking them into the studio.

It felt as if it was the right time to involve everybody else. When you’re so involved in something for such a long time it’s difficult to step away from it, so it’s certainly made it easier to have many more opinions flying around, someone else can see something that I can’t. It’s just become a lot more enjoyable, it’s nice to have company!

  The album certainly sounds different.

Yeah I think that’s a big part of it. I don’t like it when bands make this big conscious move in another direction that’s never going to work out. A process of development however will always be natural, and it’s something we started as a band 8 or 9 years ago. But I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and be electro, I don’t think that’s genuine.

  Do you think your music is pessimistic or optimistic?

I hope there’s a good balance of the two. I do tend to focus on the darker elements of my life, and in this record looking a little bit into the lives of others. However, I always try to temper that with a hopeful twist, doing that almost allows you to be as dark as you like in the build up. It’s like ‘yes it’s fucked, but it’s not that fucked and nothing can be that bad’. A lot of my favourite Scottish writers tend to write in that way, such as Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap), that’s very depressing music but there’s a sense of humour involved that sort of lightens it, and I think that’s essential really.

  Does every artist need a tragedy?

I would never do it on purpose but I must admit that I am quite drawn to that outlook, and almost revel in it. It’s certainly not a healthy way to be, and whilst I’m lucky I can set my music to an uplifting joyous background, many of the songs are actually about me being a dick and the worst types of human behaviour.

  Have you ever considered not playing music?

I certainly didn’t consider it as a career or way of life until fairly late on. I went to art school for four years and thought that would be my path, but over those four years the balance of my interests shifted massively. I found myself making art-work that didn’t feel like it was coming directly from the source, me. Whereas that’s exactly how I found music to be. So from that point on there was little question in my mind that it was what I needed to and wanted to do.

Art is something that is in the background for me right now, but it won’t necessarily go away and I can always come back to it later. I do also think that art school helped me in the sense that there are a lot of ideologies and ways of thinking that you learn there that you can apply to almost anything. I found that has helped me with my music. The main thing I learned was being self-critical, when a lot of people start telling you you’re great, you need to be aware that you’re not.

  Of course, everybody loves Glastonbury, but what are your favourite festivals abroad?

I love playing in Germany. It sounds like a cliché but German organisation is fantastic, everything just seems to work really well over there. Don't get me wrong, I love the chaos of a British festival but it’s very different there. The US is always good for us, Lollapalooza last time we played was a real eye-opener for us, just how many people were into our music.

  What is Snake really about?

It’s not about my knob, as some people obviously think. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those draft excluders that you could get from Ikea in the shape of a snake, they’re multi-coloured. Me and my girlfriend at the time had one of them as our pet, because I’m allergic to animals. So when she moved away to New York and left me, I went over there to try and win her back, and surprised her with only this snake in my back-pack.

It didn’t work, but snake still lives in New York now. He got donated to a girl of about three years old at the time, I think she’s now about ten. She’s got two gay dads, and he lives there with them, which she’s very happy about I think.

  Still keep in touch?

I can’t! Well, I still keep in touch with her, so I get updates from her. Maybe one day I could meet him again, it would be quite a momentous moment because I haven’t seen him for years and he was a big part of our lives.

  Frightened Rabbit will also play T in the Park and Reading/Leeds this summer.

Originally published on God Is In The TV.

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Old Stones and New Beginnings: Glastonbury 2013 Preview

In case you live in a news vacuum with God Is In The TV as your only servant (god help you), Sir Mick Jagger and co. are playing their first Glastonbury at the ripe old age of 69. Meanwhile festival favourites such as Dizzee Rascal will stop the Pyramid stage from becoming an overly complacent site of guitar-rock-pop four pieces.

Other old-timers of note will include Elvis Costello (& The Imposters), as well as Primal Scream and Rufus Wainwright. Hyperbole is as overused as ever in music today and I would hate for enthusiasm to descend into something contrived and unadulterated on my part. But, but but. Attracting such a collection of actual real-life music icons alongside an extensive list of new talent is what has kept this massive festival going after all these years, despite controversially rising ticket prices. The list for the latter is endless (exaggeration, the list is long); Foals, The Vaccines, Peace, Ben Howard, Alt-J, Tame Impala, Bastille, The 1975, Calexico, Disclosure, Swim Deep and Miles Kane are all hot properties in the 2013 music landscape playing a part. It won’t stop them from getting criticism, but let’s be fair Richard, they’re not the only ones topping the £200 mark and it’s a real shame you had to go and blab to a national newspaper about just how much money you turned down to play the festival to so beautifully prove a point about corporate mentality taking over.

It might not be what it used to be. But at this level, in this day and age, the industrious nature of the music business and entertainment media is stapled to the acts Glastonbury will put on year after year in a bid to maintain its pulling power and relevance to modern culture. Whether that is too much to stomach for some to attend shouldn’t necessarily invalidate the swaths of other things that some will congregate together for over the weekend. In many ways, having so many young people in and amongst it because they bought a ticket to see the Arctic Monkeys, or because Dad reeled off some vague long story about sixties nostalgia that made them think the Rolling Stones were still worth catching, gives a fresh audience to those wishing to use the coming together as an arena for performing arts, political discussion and social empowerment. Never before has politics been so pertinent to our young people, and never have they been as interested or vocal. The weekend will offer the temporary inhabitants of Worthy Farm an opportunity to renew that ‘liberal lefty’ cause amid the overbearing modern context.

As the old cliché goes, it is about so much more than the music, man. It's about forty years of history, and an unlistable list (apologies again) of extracurriculars that will pop up all over the festival site, as is touched upon by Billy Bragg's generously courteous repost.

But I shall finish (for now) where most discussion has started. For when the Rolling Stones pick up their guitars next Saturday, even if most of us weren’t even born at the time, we can all momentarily hark back to that special decade of cultural change, from which the Stones and Glastonbury were both born, even if in slightly divergent paths. We can raise a warm can to the success and glory of all that was once counter culture, and we can look forward too.

Originally published on God Is In The TV.

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Observations: On An On- Haus Ungarn, Berlin, 10/05/2013

So I've recently followed the tide of cultural enthusiasm now geared towards the German capital. Buried amongst the minutia of how to turn a one month trip into a potentially long-term residency in pursuit of what might be an easier lifestyle, I haven't had enough time for music of late. Tonight's venue is the old HBC, a multi disciplinary arts venue that has recently become Haus Ungarn (literally, Hungary House). It is part of a larger block of buildings that perch themselves onto Alexanderplatz, the home of the iconic Socialist TV Tower built by the East German government of the mid-sixties.

But it's not about that of course, is it? We're here for the music, I remind myself- that sacrilegious thing. On An On have been riding the crests of popular blogging opinion and all its questionable virtues since the release of The Hunter last November (below).

They open with this, which I guess suggests a certain anxiety to push beyond this track with the rest of the set (no one wants to be a one hit wonder after a year). And, do they achieve this? I can't say I'm convinced.

The band's performance is certainly tight and immaculate, but where the melodies of synth and voice may at first catch my ear, I often find that as the songs wind on I get a little lost, and ultimately feel a little less compelled than I did when those first drum beats propel in that song.

The band were formed in early 2012 by necessity, when said previous band (Scattered Trees) fell apart weeks before booked studio time and Nate Eiesland found himself needing to turn to a new slate, and write an entire album again. The opportunity was taken with a fresh grasp, and a new direction carved. Where Scattered Trees was perhaps a little colder, On An On buzzes and shimmers with outward-looking exuberance, and bleeds this re-found energy. What delicacy is contained in split seconds of tranquillity and glistening pauses, is ultimately carried by the overarching power of song; a rush forth.

Nonetheless, GIVE IN was recorded in one creative push and upon the success of their singles, the band have been playing almost constantly (this is the second time they have played Berlin, after coming with Chad Valley in February). They are touring material wrote in a rush to fill a void, and whilst it shows more than enough sparks of promise, it perhaps doesn't take you on quite that journey that you might hope. And neither really does their live show, at this point.

Personally, I'd like to see them given a little more alone time to think this one out. Whether they'll get it or not is another matter.

The band play The Great Escape Festival later this month.

itsonanon.bandcamp.com

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Conversations: James Scarlett (ArcTanGent Festival)

This summer sees the launch of ArcTanGent Festival in a farm somewhere in the surrounding fields of Bristol. Here to explain a little bit about what to expect, and why on earth we should part with 59 of our very hard-earned British Pounds Sterling for a ticket, is James Scarlett- also of 2000 Trees super-fame.

When 2000 Trees was born, how confident were you that it would make it to its seventh year?

I wasn’t even confident it would get through its first year! We had no master plan for this at all and if you’d told me then where we would be today I’d have been the happiest person alive – Trees just seems to get more and more popular and we’ve even started to think about our 10th anniversary! And we also have our new baby ArcTanGent which I’m very excited about.

When did the idea for ArcTanGent first come about?

We’ve been kicking the idea around for a couple of years, mainly because we love running festivals and really didn’t want to make Trees any bigger than its current 5,000 capacity. So the obvious thing was to start something new.

Did you have any doubts about launching a new festival in the current climate?

To be honest, that’s not something I was worried about at all. If we were putting on a generic indie festival and trying to book the same bands everyone else is after then I’d definitely have been worried, but ArcTanGent is really something different. There isn’t another festival out there anything like it and it felt like the UK was crying out for something like this.

You’ve based ArcTanGent around a sort of breeding ground for post-rock, math-rock etc, why do you think this particular area of music needs a new platform? 

Because there is a dedicated fanbase out there that isn’t really being catered to properly. You’ll see some of these bands at other festivals but ArcTanGent is the only one where they are all in one place. It’s not all post-rock and math-rock though – we’ve got quite a few bands that sit outside of this definition like Future of the Left, Bo Ningen, Turbowolf and a few others still to announce.

One of the founding principles of 2000 Trees was featuring exclusively British artists. Is this the same for ArcTanGent, or have you given yourself licence to look beyond these shores? 

I’m 100% certain that we’ll be booking non-UK bands for ArcTanGent in the future – I’ve already put the feelers out for a couple for next year so watch this space! It will still be a very heavily British focussed festival because that’s what we love and what we believe in.

Which brand of music do you yourself most enjoy, that of 2000 Trees or ArcTanGent?

Great question – ha! I’m a metalhead at heart so anything with a heavy guitar is my usual love. Having said that, as the years have gone on I like weirder and weirder music and love stuff like Fuck Buttons and Three Trapped Tigers where there isn’t a heavy guitar anywhere in sight. So… in answer to your question, the Cave at 2000trees is the ultimate for me. Although having said that, we still have something very exciting to announce for ArcTanGent that will appeal to my more metal side. I think what I’m trying to say is that I love them both!

As a festival punter, what would be the first thing you’d be sure to pack?

Sorry, but the only answer to this is toilet roll!

What’s your best memory at a festival that wasn’t your own?

The first time I saw the Mars Volta was at Reading Festival – it may sound cheesy but it was like some sort of religious experience or awakening. I was completely and utterly spell bound. They are still my favourite band to this day.

Best British band at the moment?

There is so much good stuff out there that I can’t just give you one! Although if I had to, it would be Future of the Left. The best new band I’ve seen for a long time are The Physics House Band – utterly incredible live. Also, this week I’m particularly enjoying the latest stuff by Humnafly, Bovine, Empress and The Pirate Ship Quintet too.

Did any of the trees crew know anything about festival or music management before you guys started to put 2000 Trees together?

Nope, we knew nothing! We were all professionals working mostly in London – an accountant, a lawyer, a (legal!) drug salesman, a journalist and a furniture designer. The mix of skills works quite well I think! We didn’t really know what we were doing, but what we did know is that we wanted to make a festival that was the exact opposite of the massive corporate festivals like Reading etc.

  James organises ArcTanGent alongside friends and colleagues Goc and Si. It takes place for the first time this August (29th-31st), see line-up announcements here.

ArcTanGent Online.

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Thoughts: My First Tooth- Loves Makes Monsters

Your memory’s perception of music is a funny thing; we can all get carried away with big statements when we hear certain songs and see those performances that define our summer nights because it felt at the time like it defined our lifetimes. Even Zane Lowe changes his ‘Biggest Track In The World Right Now’ tag every week, and he’s like the biggest guy in music right?

My First Tooth are one of those bands that you can really just sit and appreciate, as very steady and progressive song structures move on and Witt divulges a little more of his tireless prose. I guess I do find their sound to be one of instant warmth, but not in a stupid way. There is at times a kind of doubtful if a little blissful emptiness, where echoes creep out of the gaps in percussion in accordance with the gentle chills it sends seeping through flesh. Like the times you spent in your youthful and unknowing days, looking out at a darkened sky with cigarette in hand. But this is something that, without fail, I ultimately feel is eschewed by the overall steadiness that makes it not just cathartic, but trustworthy also. Like a good friend that looks over you, that makes you ask difficult questions, but re-assures you that you’re doing so for the right reasons. And of course, it is someone you believe. That’s something I could feel only grow in its distinction with this record.

In this manner the album very much sticks with what really works about the group, and the at times soft, the at times vigorous constantina of expression; enhanced by the many rich instrumental accompaniments along the way. What makes this a particular triumph, in comparison to their previous EPs, is how seamlessly they pull this off over a full-length endeavour. The time and patience spent plotting this release was indeed well spent it seems.

It is with great regret sitting here typing this that I still can’t say I’ve managed to catch this band live. The stupid technicalities that have got in my way, train fares, social plans and plain laziness make me feel silly. But right now my appreciation of this band, however too often understated, lies in a soulful singular listening experience which feels to me like it could never be beaten. That said, I’m told they’re great live.

Loves Makes Monsters is released on Monday 4th March.

You can read the band’s interview with God Is In The TV’s very own Craig Taylor-Broad here.

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Thoughts: LVL UP

<a href="http://lvlup.bandcamp.com/track/walking-home" data-mce-href="http://lvlup.bandcamp.com/track/walking-home">WALKING HOME by LVL UP</a>

There's an ongoing abrasion throughout that ensures that the music is rooted into a sort of earthiness that won't let the listener pass by. It's got guts in all the right places (the kind that has served the likes of Japandroids so well); but yet this is all orchestrated with an acute sense of precision.

Amongst the ongoing instrumental collisions of each beat, we are touched by a malign expression that is ultimately rather moving in a Bukowski kind of fashion.

The dynamic that at first may seem contradictory, between raw and real to nihilistic and empty, to me is provided by an innate honesty. Their expressions are seriously thoughtful and ruthlessly trimmed to help meet an uncompromising overall aim. In this manner, it is entirely forthright. I found them to be a refreshing listen and would wholly endorse them with whatever two pennies/cents I may have to throw into the game.

See their recently released video for Nightshade below:

The band will release their second EP Extra Worlds in April, you can listen to the first track to be released off the record here.

___

This was my 50th post on this blog. Whilst by no means prolific, that is quite a lot for an inane rambler with a patchy work-ethic. A labour of love alone (by necessity), this space has allowed me to write about the artists I feel compelled to speak about, and many of the things that I may take a fleeting interest in. I continue to enjoy it a great deal and sincerely thank any of you that may have followed along with my sporadic instalments on the way.

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Conversations: Lubomyr Melnyk

Lubomyr Melnyk is considered one of the most innovative pianists in the world. Having pioneered and defined his own genre of music from a young age, Melnyk has been unsigned for most of his career. He is in many ways considered a lost gem in the music world. Having now been brought under London/Berlin experimental label Erased Tapes, the sixty-five year old will release his forthcoming album Corollaries on April 15th with the full backing that he deserves. It was with great pleasure that I managed to get a little bit of down-time with Lubomyr before his sold-out show at Cafe Oto in Dalston last night.

You’ve been referred to as the inventor of continuous piano music. I know it may sound obvious, but I was wondering if you could outline what that is? Yes I can try; it’s quite complex, but also quite simple at the same time. I was trained as a classical pianist, the conservatory method; I then became quite enthralled by the music of Terry Riley and Steve Reich, and that opened up a huge new world for me. I considered this to be continuous music also, but I felt quite dissatisfied because I felt that this music deserved a higher level of piano playing. The piano is the most wonderfully well suited instrument for this type of music, I thought, and so I began playing it in this way. I think ultimately they showed me a road that I could take, and I went on that road but ended up discovering a different landscape to them, even though we had a common starting-point. I discovered as both a pianist and a composer that this rather simplistic music started to create quite a change in my body and in my mind, I discovered that the pianist can unite himself with the sound of the piano. It was a development on all fronts, it changed things for me mentally, it changed things for me physically, and it changed the sound of the piano; I feel that continuous music is the true voice of the piano. All of these things are, in a nutshell, the difference. There’s this constant and wonderful sound coming out of the piano, there’s the change in the actual flesh of the piano, and there’s the change in the mind. I’d also say that the continuous piano always has one foot in the fourth dimension, it’s a transcendental act that cannot be done with the normal physical body. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question, but I feel I’ve touched on some of the differences. You’ve written this music for some time now, how did you approach writing Corollaries? I was mainly looking forward to collaborating with other musicians, which I hadn’t done before; that was the only starting point. Musically it was a totally open landscape that we could explore, it was very much an adventure. Do you ever find it a challenge to turn a corner, and write something new? No, I find that playing is a fountain of musical ideas that never stops flowing. The only real problem is that music takes a great deal of time to write down, and with computer notation it’s 250 times longer, these large concert pieces are impossible to notate on the computer so they can only be done by hand and that takes a long time. So I have this runaway engine of creativity that’s racing down the track with all this music, and then there’s me lagging behind with a notepad trying to write it all down. It’s interesting to see you've collaborated with Peter Broderick with this record, and Nils Frahm also. I was curious as to where you most benefitted from having Peter onboard? They really brought a new dimension into my music, there are places where the piano is no longer the sole instrument and we become a trio. I think they’re quite used to playing with other people, but for me it was a real first, to sit down and let the piano go and have these other people adding other dimensions to the piano sound, it was truly exciting.

Lubomyr with Peter Broderick.

You’ve spoken in the past about focussing on the sounds of the individual notes, perhaps the more sensuous aspect of the music. Do you see composing music as a precise science or more of a sub-conscious intuitively driven feeling? It’s both a precise science and a freedom, to let the music run somewhat on its own. Continuous music is different from other kinds of music because the pianist becomes this motor which is driving this music, you point it in a direction but beyond that its never so clear cut. The scores may be written down but there’s always a sense of it being new each time it is played, the motor makes the notes rush forward, creating their own wind like a flock of birds, and though you may point them in one direction they will always weave off track each time you play. So I have the notation but sometimes a beautiful new sound will occur and I won’t kill it because it’s not on the page, I’ll let it go and continue in the music. Have you always been interested in minimalist music and the piano too? Well piano music has always been my interest, since childhood. Minimalism was an enormous revelation when it first came out, but I don’t listen to it anymore, I’m quite busy with these pieces. I find that minimalist is a small segment of continuous music, and there is often a misnomer about what that is. There is true minimalist music where the sound is changing minimally or hardly at all, that’s minimalist. But some things by Steve Reich, I wouldn’t call them minimalist and I certainly wouldn’t call my music minimalist at all. It’s a different form that we don’t really have a word for. Minimalism is such a bad misuse of the word, because originally it meant music with very few elements that were sustained through time. It’s like the word ‘icon’ for example, which originally meant a sacred and holy painting representing a saint, or the divinity. It has nothing to do with computers or stars. So I find it very sad when people start to misuse words. It breaks my heart, because their descriptions then become false. Is your music intended to move people, is there an emotional engagement in the writing process? Yes there is, the music has an emotional affect on me and I’m hoping it will on other people too. How much control do you have over that, because it’s just the instrument? I think a lot of people will respond to the emotional aspect of the pieces. I received a beautiful email just three days ago from a person who was at a concert and said that the music had created a huge catharsis in their heart and soul and that it had changed things for them. I know that it does that for me, often. As I say, this music reaches from other dimensions to the human person.

The artwork for Melnyk's forthcoming album Corollaries has been designed by Gregory Euclide.

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Conversations: This Town Needs Guns

I went to a cocktail bar in Shoreditch to talk to the delightful members of This Town Needs Guns prior to the launch show of their newest full-length, 13.0.0.0.0. Whilst professionally sipping over glasses of Coke, they had the following to say...

It’s great to see you guys back in London. Was there any reason in choosing to have the album launch at the Old Blue Last?

Henry Tremain: Well we decided we wanted to do a launch show pretty late in the day, and we got in contact with our friend Haruna who is a wonderful promoter. We asked her if she was up for putting a show on, and I think it was her suggestion to do the Old Blue. But personally, having been a Londoner, I really appreciate the Old Blue just for the fact that they have cheap and often free shows on, which in London is pretty rare.

Seeing as the new album comes out tomorrow, it makes sense to talk about that. I was wondering if you could outline when and how the new material started coming about?

Tim Collis: It’s been quite a long process in some ways. The ideas for some of the songs, and certain sections of songs came up to about three years ago. But we do have some stuff that was written more recently, like last year just before recording the album, and some of it during recording the album. We’d be experimenting and playing with stuff as we were in the studio.

Henry: That was the most fun really, most of the inbetween tracks on the album were quite often an idea Tim would have, that was no more than some chords or a riff, and we built it up in the studio together and that collaborative process with Ed Rose (Producer) was thoroughly enjoyable. I think that’s when he enjoyed the session the most as well, getting to be creative himself rather than simply managing the mechanical process of recording pre-written songs.

Having listened to it through a few times, do you think it’s fair to say that it’s perhaps more varied and eclectic than previous works?

Chris Collis: Yeah I think we tried to do that, because some of the criticism for Animals was that it all sounded like the same kind of song. So we wanted to make it an album that went on a... not a journey, that sounds really cheesy...

Henry: It took you on a musical trip to another dimension!

Chris: But actually did something, so we’d hope that people listened to it in the order that it’s in.

Tim: Yeah we released a flock of herons live in the studio.

Henry: Yes, it’s very difficult to pick up, but if your ears are trained enough you can just about hear the flapping!

Well I was going to ask, if you did anything radically different this time round? 

Chris: With Animals we did the whole thing over about four weekends, where as with this we had a full block of three weeks. I also think we had a much better idea of what we were trying to achieve, and we understood what our sound was a lot better than we did when recording Animals.

Tim: I think with Animals we actually had very clear ideas because the songs were somehow simpler, in regards to instrumentation anyway. So we had songs that were written and rehearsed, ‘let’s just go record them like this’ kind of thing. So what was different this time round was going in and with some of the stuff, as Henry was saying, just having a riff or one idea that we developed while we were there. Henry’s done a lot of recording in different bands before that, so I don’t how he found it...

Henry: It was incredibly different; apart from anything else, it was a lot more serious than anything I’d done in the past. We were flying Ed Rose out from America and he’s one of my production heroes, so I had soiled my pants well and truly before going into the studio. Which was awkward... They are really cranking the tunes in here tonight!

Do you think that your music’s principally optimistic?

Tim: It depends who you are really, you can listen to a sad song with sad lyrics that is most definitely sad and yet find yourself feeling strangely uplifted by it. In this album there’s certainly some moodier bits of instrumentation, perhaps darker than the poppy-ness of Animals, but for me at least they’re not negative or linked to an upsetting experience.

Chris: People will always relate differently to the same song, which is kind of what we want I think.

Tim: Also, if a band has a sad song and it’s a song everyone can relate to, that experience in itself can be optimistic and uplifting.

Chris: We’ve had people write to us in the past and tell us that our music’s helped them through some really difficult times, and to know that is incredible.

Henry: It’s interesting because when you’re writing music you’re not really thinking about the function of it, you’re just interested in the artistic nature of it, so to hear afterwards how people have been influenced by it is wonderful.

Tim: I know I’ve felt quite pessimistic listening to chart music that is definitely supposed to be clearly uplifting party music.

Stu left in 2011, and you brought Henry in, and then Jamie left soon after then, both to fulfil other life commitments. Looking back over that, have you yourselves at points found it difficult to continually make the sacrifices you have to make?

Tim: Actually they were both physically removed from the band, bad guys. No not really, the sacrifices go with the territory really. If one person in a band doesn’t really want to do it anymore, it is going to effect the other people, but it shouldn’t necessarily stop them from carrying on. I think that’s how we felt when Jamie was leaving, it never felt ‘how are we going to do this anymore?’ it was just ‘okay, how are we going to carrying on doing this, because we want to do it’.

You guys have had quite a lot of success in far flung places like Australia and Asia. Do you think there’s a reason for that? 

Henry: In the nineties they discovered this thing called the internets! Without the internet, no one would have really heard of us. Well there are always these really interesting small scenes where really obscure bands from different places get known, but only in small cliques. But with the internet, it’s kind of expanded those cliques.

But it seems that you guys have been particularly successful elsewhere, more than a lot of other British bands... 

Chris: It might just be word of mouth, we’ve relied on that really heavily.

Henry: The main principle that we think about when it comes to musical promotion, is that it’s not important to the band, and what the band should do is focus on writing good music, so that the quality of the art will help it spread naturally. Hopefully the reason we’ve been so lucky as a band is because people have enjoyed the music, not because we’ve shoved it in their faces.

Plans for the rest of the year?

Henry: Sit back, relax and watch the money roll in! No, we’re off to do a little tour quite soon, our good friend Guillame’s booked us a tour round Germany and parts of Scandinavia as well. After that we hope to spend some time doing some writing, and then we go to America to do a tour with our label mates Tera Melos, who are incredible so we’re stoked about that... Then after that we’re breaking the band up yeah? 

Tim: Yep, time to get some new guys in!  

This Town Needs Guns also blog here.

[extraneousterrain]

Thoughts: Houses

Meet Dexter and Megan; they are Houses.

I came across Dexter the human being before the group, which is a rare and quite novel way to find out about someone's music these days. I started reading his residency diary (an artist writes a journal entry about what they've been up to every week for one month) on an American group-run music blog (which by the way is a fantastic website). I gained a view of someone with a gentile and inquisitive mind, that was whilst a little melancholic, quite at ease with its own expression; talking about different things that were happening around him, his cats, places he'd been, the music he'd listened to and haikus he'd attempted to write. There was a cerebral steadiness to it all. I was intrigued enough to go and find out more about his music, and found there to be a great many reflections.

It would be unfair to say that Dawn Golden and Rosy Cross is entirely atmospheric, but it does certainly come across as that sort of ongoing aural sound-scaping personal endeavour. What is really refreshing listening to Houses is how the entry of a second subject into Tortoriello's playground seems to have added a healthy sort of pressure to the music. The dynamics are more focussed on a singular, immediate moment, and meeting point between these two voices. It is a seamless collision in which together there seems to be less doubt. It comes across as holistic, rather than fragmentary.

The songs currently available have comparatively less tracks and layers, but with a more instrumentally substantial approach, to some of it at least. This breeds a deep sense of purity, from which I think much of its life springs from. There is indeed placed a great focus on nature, as Dexter explains; “I got laid off from my job at the end of last year and decided I needed a change. Megan put in her two weeks and we moved out to a little cabin in Papaikou, Hawaii. It’s a pretty remote place outside of Hilo (i.e no plumbing/electricity/gas). We worked for meals during the day cultivating indigenous microorganisms and learning the basics of sustainable living. We drank showered and cooked with rain water. It was a beautifully simple experience. In our downtime, she would paint and I would record. We’d have to light candles in an effort to save solar power to keep my computer running. We inspired each other a lot out there, and I think it shows in the music. She sings on a lot of the tracks on All Night. The music comes from a place of love and ease. The video for Endless Spring was shot there in our spare time, and the music was sketched out loosely over the course of a few months. We just kind of melted into one person."

From all that has been released so far, it is a deeply hopeful experience.

Houses are set to release more tracks online today, and a full-length album All Night is to follow in April. Watch a video preview of the album below.

Find out even more about them here.