I don’t know how we skipped the usual suspects, but when talking about Blueneck’s influences, Rich throws a name at me that has me caught completely off-guard.
‘Phil Collins.‘
Pardon?
‘Phil Collins! You know Phil Collins?’
Yes, I know Phil Collins. Why are we talking about Phil Collins?
‘You’ve heard ‘In The Air Tonight’?’
Yes, I’ve heard ‘In The Air Tonight’. Why are we talking about Phil Collins?
‘Listen to the start of it again, and then listen to ‘Sirens’.’
I play ‘In The Air Tonight’ in my mind.
Dear god, it’s true.
—
The scourge of the One Song:
Rich calls on me to remember that dreadful ‘Rollercoaster’ track by Ronan Keating from a decade or two ago.
‘Do you remember how it went?’ he asks.
‘Yes, but I’d rather not.’
‘That’s OK. Do you know the New Radicals?’
‘Sure – that group with the one song.’
‘Yeah that’s them. Do you remember how that went?’
‘Sure,’ I’m about to start humming ‘You Get What You Give’ and it hits me.
‘It’s written by the same guy,’ he tells me.
‘They really only have the one song.’
—
The before-they-were-famous moment
‘I met Chris Martin’s parents,’ Rich tells me. I’ve been railing against Coldplay for about five minutes now. For a moment I feel like we’re two schoolteachers discussing a problem student. ‘I was at one of their early shows – there couldn’t have been more than 200 people there. There was this older couple sitting in the corner, and I got to talking with them. They told me their son was in the band. It was Chris Martin.’
—
Settling debates with Google:
‘My childhood dream was to be in a Right Said Fred video,’ I reveal.
‘Aren’t Right Said Fred gay?’
‘What? Surely not!’ I quote their lyrics to make my point.
Deeply dippy about those Spanish eyes, Sierra smile, Legs that go on for miles, and m…
‘Ah yes, one of them’s bisexual.’
—
On their name:
I’m so convinced about my own interpretation of Blueneck’s name, Rich doesn’t even get the chance to speak before I’ve launched into my exhaustive explanation the story behind their name. He hears me out patiently and after what must be a quarter of an hour tells me that I’m free to go with that as the story due to its overpowering glam factor. It’s not the real reason though. The Real Reason is so superbly unglamorous that I decide to keep my own illusions, and leave the truth shrouded in mystery.
“Don’t meet your heroes,” he tells me, taking a sip of wine.
I’m talking to Rich Sadler from Blueneck. We’re sitting across from each other 10,000 kilometres apart. He’s recounting a Radiohead-related tale of woe that befell his friend, and I’m pretending to be surprised to learn that Thom Yorke is a twat.
I joke – there’s never any need to convince me that Radiohead are a bunch of wankers. However, in keeping me from a life of shattered dreams and cynicism, Rich’s wisdomous advice appears to overlook one tiny detail:
I’m talking to Rich Sadler from Blueneck.
I refrain from telling him the damage is probably already done.
—-
Blueneck are not a group that frequents shoegaze circles. They aren’t even a name that pops up too frequently within the community. It could be because up until recently they hadn’t even the foggiest notion what to qualify their sound as. They’ve had the label ‘post-rock’ thrust upon them by over-enthusiastic third parties (independent publications not unlike this one, e.g.) but Blueneck never set out with any such intentions. No one in the group had even heard the term before having it stamped all over them.
Rich is one of the lucky few to have had the chance to be a fan of the band before being in the band. He recalls seeing them live before they’d released their first album, Scars of the Midwest, and wondering:
‘Why are they not huge?’
Then, when they toured for The Fallen Host, he toured with them.
‘Why are they not huge?’ – a standard reaction when you first hear Blueneck. I recall my own First Time; playing The Fallen Host while at work. Even under stark white light in the middle of the morning, ‘Low’ managed to stop my world. For a little over 9 minutes, it was just the two of us, spinning in infinity.
The live experience is a grandiosity that we scattered fans can only imagine.
How do they do it?
I can’t bring myself to ask the question, even though I’m longing to know the answer. Innate curiosity fights the urge to preserve the magic of the Blueneck sound by leaving technicalities shrouded in mystery.
Curiosity wins.
‘How do you do it?’
They live miles apart, the Bluenecks. They have lives and jobs. I can’t imagine how they find the time to be in the same room for more than a couple of hours every month. With both space and time against them, how is it even feasible for them to create anything at all?
Enter, the internet.
Spending hours in a studio writing, testing and recording tracks is a luxury most groups just cannot afford – least of all when they have to balance distance, families, work, and the basics of adult existence. Blueneck aren’t any different and Rich, being the furthest away from the others, makes a two and a half hour trek down to Bristol when the tracks are finally ready and it’s time to lay them down.
They’re not the first band to embrace the dropbox method of recording. Tears Run Rings rely on a similar technique, recording albums while divided by cities. Meanwhile, The Microdance make sure lyrics and composition are perfectly in place before they hit their Brick Lane studio (or Los Angeles) to churn out an album. Epilogue, Rich reveals, was recorded almost entirely remotely, and Rich and Duncan still have an album’s worth of songs waiting to be tracked.
‘They’re not Blueneck songs, though,’ he forewarns, pre-empting my apopleptic fit. The internet can only overcome the tyranny of distance by that much and Rich and Duncan’s project is both a resolution and an experiment. He seems intent on assuring me that Menace At The Dam has close to nothing to do with Blueneck, and I can’t tell whether to be excited or apprehensive about a potential departure from the established, accepted, worshipped norm.
Despite their elusiveness, Blueneck are far from unknown, scads of fans hang on to their every note, buy their albums, go to their gigs, and pick up their merch. Sure, it doesn’t hurt to be signed on by Denovali, but it does lead you to the obvious question:
File-sharing: good or bad?
It’s not a cut and dry question and Rich takes a while to respond. Understandably, he can’t take a definitive stance.
‘I’m torn,’ he tells me. ‘There wouldn’t be a Blueneck without file-sharing.’
I’m clearly not the only one who found out about Blueneck through word of virtual mouth before buying their album. Downloads, streams – whether legit or no – do little to further the economic ambitions of a band. But they’re what drive an audience to attend a gig, to buy a t-shirt, to invest in the vinyl.
‘We never expect to earn anything from album sales,’ he says. It makes me think of a ‘legal’ service like Spotify which may pay a cent for a thousand plays. Rich knows better than to expect to turn a profit from online services alone – I think they’d be lucky if they even managed to break even – but find me a 21st century band that does.
It’s a blessing, not a curse. Without the extrinsic motivation, or even the expectation, of making money off a recording, a band is free to focus on creating what they want to create, a listener less likely to be turned off by the ‘polish’ that coats anything released to achieve a commercial or economic result.
Rich concurs, even though I never say this out loud.
“We wouldn’t care if no one bought King Nine. It’s the album we wanted to make.”
There was a time in my infancy when the dream of one day being able to talk to the peddlers of the sonic amphetamines that ruled my life was nothing more than that – a dream. One that would, if all went well, be realised in the afterlife.
I must have been very, very good (or very, very insistent) because it came true in less than a decade, further fueling my unshakable belief that the internet is, in fact, The Great Beyond.
Blueneck were around when I was building these castles in the sky, but it was only when my shoegaze dealer sent me a link to The Fallen Host that I came to know of them. This is also when I established: they will be mine, oh yes, they will be mine.
I don’t know what my Echodrone SPOC, Eugene Suh, was on about when he introduced Five to me with those words, helpfully hooking me up with a download of the album a month before its official release.
(I realise I’m writing this two months AFTER the official release)
The announcement that Echodrone were coming out with a new album had been the highlight of my new year, but now I watched my download of Five near completion with increasing apprehension as E’s words reverberated in my skull forcing me to confront the awful possibility…
What if it sounds nothing like them?
I’d last listened to Echodrone when they released their marvelous album of cover songs, Mixtape for Duckie, in 2013. Their version of ‘Cry Little Sister’ is still my go-to mantra whenever I’m beset by rage, angst, or any emotion at all. In these moments, it’s Meredith’s voice that I need to say to me “Thou shalt not kill.”
But that version of Echodrone no longer exists. Original drummer, Mark Tarlton, and vocalist, Meredith Gibbons, have since moved on, and their absence is probably behind Eugene’s conviction that this version of Echodrone is nothing like the last. On Five we meet Mike Funk, Jim Hrabak and Rachel Lopez.
“We found Jim through his solo project, Slack Armada,” says Eugene. “he’s really added an electronic element that we were striving to achieve on previous albums.”
He goes on: “Rachel added a new set of vocal and vocal harmony ideas. She’s very much influenced by Siouxsie and the Banshees. And Mike’s drumming is just so solid – he really shaped the rhythmic backbone of Five.”
I can’t narrate the romantic trepidation with which I pulled the shrink wrap off before gingerly placing it into my hi-fidelity system and pressing play, because the only thing remotely retro about the entire experience was Winamp.
An hour later, I was typing out my response to Eugene. “Don’t take this the wrong way…” I found myself saying, “but Five sounds exactly like an Echodrone album.”
Someone more keen on picking a fight may have pulled me up for accusing them of unoriginality. Eugene, however, was stoked! “I’m blown away,” he said, “Honestly, it’s an extremely difficult genre to work in. Many shoegaze bands seem to want to rehash the past, and many fans want their favourite shoegaze bands to rehash the past. We always hope that our music comes across as a unique entry in the shoegaze arena.”
Uniqueness is all well and good, but there’s not much that emerges from a vacuum, so you have to wonder: what influences have to be fused together to create that uniquely Echodroney sound?
“It’s funny – we always start an idea based on an influence. ‘Disparate Numbers’ used to be called ‘Boards of Canada’, ‘Glacial Place’ used to be called ‘I Paddy’ cause I found a cool arpeggiator program on my iPad and built the song around it. ‘Less Than Imaginary’ used to be called ‘Vampire Weekendy’ (?!?!?!)). But I think we end up throwing all our influences into a melting pot and it always ends up sounding like Echodrone!”
Not one to ask a question without an ulterior motive I gently steer the conversation towards the more than passing resemblance I find ‘NoiseBed’ bears to a somewhat popular MBV track.
Here’s how you ask a subtle question:
So, um, did you ever listen to Andy Weatherall‘s remix of ‘Soon’?
It’s Mike Funk who responds: “I love that Andy Weatherall remix! It’s so hypnotic and groovy. Even Kevin Shields got caught up in the rave culture of the early 90s. He had that one famous quote back then: ‘The only innovation in music is in house music and rap music.’ ‘Soon’ definitely reflects that. Andy’s production is so distinct that you can’t imagine hearing classic tracks by Primal Scream and Happy Mondays heard in any other way.
“I have a funny story about playing the ‘Soon’ remix as a college radio DJ – a fellow DJ walked into the station MCR while I was on the air and spinning that 12″ single and he said, ‘Your record’s skipping.’ It wasn’t, of course, but that’s what’s great about ‘Soon’- it’s so strong in its rhythm and repetition that it’s almost euphoric but still loud and heavy.”
My cunning plan has fallen flat. I am left with no choice but to resort to open and honest dialogue. I mention the similarity between the two tracks and:
“Never even connected the two songs before, but I can hear what you’re talking about with the Soon remix! Jim was targeting a Fuck Buttons vibe with all his electronics…’Soon’ didn’t even cross our minds!”
I swear I’m not imagining it:
Moving on. I wonder about ‘Disparate Numbers’ – the synth-loaded opener with a vibe so electro, it could easily pull off being my age.
“‘Disparate Numbers’ is our first political-type song. It’s about how government and economic policies have created this huge, ever-expanding divide between the rich and the poor. We continue to let our governments and federal reserve representatives run free, implementing policies that extract money from the poor and provide risk-free capital to the rich (their friends). In essence, we end up ‘swinging lower, orbiting slower’ until we exist in a completely separate reality from the upper-class.
“I remember being really affected by the photos of Hong Kong’s underground city. Within a few city blocks, you have high rise luxury apartments filled with the city’s wealthy elite (Rurik Jutting is a perfect example of that excess lifestyle) and right underneath all that wealth and excess, you have some of the poorest people living a completely different life. So the people inhabiting the underground city and the people inhabiting the high-rise apartments – they are essentially disparate numbers, completely separated by an accumulation of wealth that’s really only a series of electronic ones and zeros. Just electronic numbers in a bank account.”
It’s fan favourite ‘Octopussy’ that steals the show on Five, though, proving (again) that Echodrone know just what to do with a cover. As a band, they’ve always been capable of exhibiting a muted magnificence – a superpower they do not reveal as frequently as I’d like. The last time they let the immensity of their sound shine through was on their crushing rendition of ‘Cry Little Sister’ on Mixtape for Duckie before which they could have knocked the breath out of a sizeable percentage of the world’s population with ‘Under an Impressive Sky’ and a good sound system.
‘Octopussy’ is undoubtedly the gloriousest track on Five. It makes you wonder – does having a set format make Echodrone bolder? Looking at Mixtape for Duckie and Five, I’d hazard a ‘yes’, but this is the band that made the sonic trump card ‘Under an Impressive Sky.’ What could possibly stop them from doing it again?
The bandmance between Whirr and Nothing is legendary, and the friendly rivalry/imminent bloodshed between Whirr fans and Nothing fans maybe even more so. Hop over to either band’s page on last.fm and you’ll find comment after pointless comment fighting the interminable fight to answer the question that has haunted mankind for the last four months.
Guilty of Everything or Sway?
At AE, we pride ourselves on being a beacon of unwavering objectivity. If it’s emotionless appraisal you’re after, you’ve come to right place. Aglet Eaters never allows its opinions to be swayed by even the most dogged of majorities, least of all by a majority that erroneously believes Nothing’s Guilty of Everything is a better album than Whirr’s Sway. Such a majority is not only mistaken, but also partially deaf.
I say they are only ‘partially deaf’ because there is no doubt that Guilty of Everything is the second-strongest album to come out of 2014. Who can even count the number of babies that were conceived to the outro of ‘Bent Nail’? Who hasn’t abruptly deserted a significant other in favour of a life of solitary prayer and devotion to ‘Beat Around the Bush’? How many wars have we prevented by simply seguing from ‘Endlessly’ into ‘Somersault’?
But to say it is superior to Sway? Impossible! NOTHING is better than anything by Whirr.
(…OK I see what might have happened.)
Whirr aren’t receiving a whole lot of love at the moment, owing to their slightly abrasive online personas. You’re not supposed to mistreat your fans, apparently, but if you don’t, then how can you tell apart the ones who really, really, really, legitimately love you always and forever <3 <3 <3 ?
See, you couldn’t pay me to not listen to Whirr. You could try, though, if you’re the kind that enjoys a challenge. Whirr could run over my foot with a stretch Hummer and I would ignore the crushed appendage as well as the wanton destruction of the ozone layer and still limp loyally behind them. Whirr could sleep with my best friend and hold me responsible for their lapse in judgment and I would still love them more than my own useless life. Whirr could put out a restraining order against me and I would remain stolidly convinced that they’re just playing hard to get. Under pain of death, the absolute worst I can say about Whirr is that the first 15 seconds of ‘Swoon‘ are probably unnecessary.
Despite Sway not being Distressor, who wouldn’t give up the rest of their lives for a day with the 20 second bridge at the end of ‘Press’ (2:22 – 2:42)? Lovers have died waiting for each other on either side of war-torn borders with “I like the theme of you and me swaying slowly” on their lips. And the day Hope leaves you, her parting words are “weigh me down and cry”.
I’ve played Sway so often, even Whirr have told me to get a life.
Every online publication has its darlings. Drowned in Sound unfailingly raves about the National. The Quietus will never get over Swans. NME is still hung up on anything that sounds remotely like Oasis. And I remember my budding hatred for Pitchfork came into full bloom when they removed MBV from the #1 Spot on their “Top 100 Albums of the 90s” replacing Loveless with OK Computer (which, till then, had sat at the equally undeserved #2 position).
This is where I would usually launch into my rant about the hypocrisy of ‘independent’ music publications that are meant to serve as stalwarts of taste but instead end up catering to audience expectations, and their own set preferences, but let’s accept it – advertisers want eyeballs, not originality.
Me, I’m no innocent. The Microdance are Æ’s babies which is why I’m stoked that Alex is down to talk about their new album New Waves of Hope months before its official release.
It’s TMD’s very first LP – they’ve been a singles group so far and I’m a big fan of their before-they-were-famous stuff (‘Fucking Fucker’ is fucking phenomenal). However, given this, er, DYNAMIC era of music production and consumption we’re living in, why put an album out? What purpose does it serve? Does the end justify the means? Why are we even here?
Existential crises rule. OK, here we go:
Æ: FINALLY we have an album! Thank [higher power of choice] New Waves of Hope releases in 2015 because if not I’d have to make room for it in my best of 2014 list and I really don’t want to do that. How does it feel to have an actual long play album out and why did it take you so long to put one together?
Firstly, it feels great to have New Waves of Hope ready to go. I’m confident that this one will feature in your best of 2015! I’d say it’s ten years overdue – not for this band, but for me personally.
The short answer to your second question is: ADHD. It’s a term that’s being thrown around quite liberally at the moment to describe the cultural and artistic shifts of this generation – you know, instant gratification, the death of the album: what we’re calling the iPod shuffle generation. Referring to that cultural change – which has as much to do with new business models as it does the people buying into it – as ADHD is a lazy misnomer. I’ve lived my whole adult life with no executive function. It’s a pretty pernicious and insidious disorder and my diagnosis this year certainly explained to me why I have been functioning at something like 5% of my capacity in every element of my life, including music.
Anyway, we got it done and I really hope that it will open the floodgates for this band to be as prolific in releasing material as I am in writing it. This is not in any way a reflection of my band-mates – it’s not their fault I never finished and sent them the 1,200 song ideas I’ve had in the last three years. They are fucking fantastic – they just have to deal with this dawdling idiot!
Æ: Is there really a point to putting out an album at all? Why not just stick to EPs and single tracks? Don’t get me wrong – I think full albums are manna from heaven, but who else does?
That’s a tough one for me to answer because I think I’d need to divorce my romantic idealism from the cold truth. New Waves of Hope is 70 minutes long; there is no dip in quality anywhere – we made damn sure that it’s A* TMD throughout. So, in theory, it does its job for those people who still want to be immersed taking in an opus and I’m happy about that. I also truly believe that we’ve made an album of the sort that not many bands out there are even capable of making – notwithstanding whether or not they would choose to, whether their label thought it a good idea etc. So, given that it’s ten years late, given that it’s 14 songs from a pool of hundreds, and given that we would want our favourite bands to release something as expansive as this, we’ve justified it.
The album format also gave us the opportunity to go a bit deeper with a particular sound. We were very conscious that it should be a cohesive work – just because we think albums work best that way – so it allowed us to explore and mine that territory as deeply as we could. What we have lined up next could be material that we didn’t feel was congruous. We’ll probably put out a gothy, new wave, shoegaze type EP within 9 months of the album’s release. I’m also super keen to go heavier – like crushingly heavy! (zomg a Jesu version of Devour! – ed)
The cold truth may be that no one gives a shit! But at least Gavin, our amazing producer Frankie Siragusa (who played a huge part in guiding the album’s vision) and I can say that were integrious and didn’t pander to some low common denominator even if we were being somewhat quixotic!
Æ: I don’t blog as much anymore, because I’ve got a job now and it leaves me with not much time to put my thoughts together. Do you feel the luxury of time to introspect or come up with ideas is where creativity comes from or am I just being a slacker who should get off my bum and go write something amazing?
Ha ha! Maybe a bit of both. I have no idea how I create – none whatsoever! I’m amazed that people think I’m a productive guy because it feels like I’m doing nothing 95% of the time; especially during the depressive periods since my diagnosis. I think what actually happens is that those flashes of inspiration and what becomes of them are somewhat out of your control on a cognisant level. That’s not to say that we are not responsible for them – more that we are a conduit for an energy that we did not create consciously. I know people who allot time to write – as in ‘I’ll sit down to write my album from 3-6pm every day’. That’s alien to me. Maybe you’re the same. Don’t think about it too much!
Æ: What makes you WANT to make music every day? Are there days where you feel like going ‘fuck it, this is pointless, no one cares”? (aka: what are the best and worst things about the music industry today?)
I don’t want to make band music every day. If it wasn’t for Gavin (the longest serving member of TMD besides me), I’d have gone solo a couple of years ago because being in a band this good in London in 2014 is a thankless task. There is no reward commensurate to our quality. There is nothing good about the music industry these days. People can argue that there is more opportunity and freedom for emerging artists. That is bullshit. The open market that is the internet has completely removed any filtering system and so we’re competing with 100,000 bedroom artists for a write up in a blog that has 50 readers [gee, thanks – ed]. In the old days, you listened to what was played on 120 minutes because there was no other means for bands to reach you – there was a quality filter that at the very least ensured that what you heard what fit for public consumption. I’ve also noticed that the model is now predicated on giving people what they expect; whereas there was a time when it was about spirit – the spirit and life of something new.
Æ: I have asked you nothing at all about New Waves of Hope. What are more than one and less than five things you feel everyone should know about the album?
1: It’s a grower not a shower. It has depth and that will lend itself to longevity.
2:It features Nicole Fiorentino (Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, The Cold & Lovely) on backing vocals and Eric Gardner (Morrissey, Tom Morello, Tegan & Sara, Cyprus Hill, Moby, Iggy Pop) on drums.
3: A digital download will cost you less than a round of beers at the pub and will lead to you owning an emotionally edifying work of art that will live under your skin like an internal comfort blanket for the rest of your life.
—-
Up until the album’s release, I find I can afford to buy a pint AND invest in a TMD track without burning a hole in my pocket. Who knew? ‘Making Plans for the End’ off New Waves of Hope is up for purchase over at Boxing Clever Records. Click here to pick it up.
I don’t know if you already know Shauna McLarnon at all. She’s the tireless singer/songwriter/PR person/mother who, together with husband/composer/co-frontperson Alexx Kretov make up Ukrainian stargazing duo Ummagma.
Not unlike Tears Run Rings, Shauna and I have been trying madly to get Ummagma on AE with a success rate hovering around zero. It could be due to sheer laziness, mutual distraction, my subliminal aversion to Pink Floyd, or, most likely, the simple absence of a musical moment to capitalise on.
Fear no more, dear readers, for that moment is now. AE, along with a couple dozen other blogs from around the world, has been selected to premiere Ummagma’s newest video – a trippy wander through time and down ‘The Road to Lees’
We feels speshul.
Far be it for us to simply thwack an embed code into a post and call it a completed entry – at AE, we’re all about analysis, critique, debate, and poking our nose into other people’s business. And how kind of Shauna to comply.
Coming up – “Why would you reference Pink Floyd, are you out to get me?”, “What’s a music video do, anyway?” and “So…. Ukraine, huh?”.
But first – ‘The Road to Lees’
—–
It sounds innocuous enough – ‘where’s your name from?’. But I’m asking YOU specifically, because “Ummagma” sounds a lot like the first Pink Floyd album I heard. Ummagumma, the album, caused a dull, persistent cranial throb the instant I turned it on and from that day forth PF and I have been unable to make nice. So my question to you is – WHY? Why are you Ummagma?
That’s a good question – I’m not sure I ever heard an explanation of why Cocteau Twins decided to call themselves that, or even Pink Floyd for that matter – that name must have sounded pretty faggy at that time (now you’ve got me wondering about that) but I do recall hearing the story about Duran Duran being named after a comics character. I must admit, our story is likely just as silly as that.
There is indeed a link between the name Ummagma and Pink Floyd’s fourth studio album – the short version is that, yes, Ummagma is a shortened and much easier-to-pronounce version of Ummagumma. Go figure.
The long version goes like this: Once upon a time when Alexx was a boy, his dad was big time into Pink Floyd, slyly managing to obtain such recordings when many could not. He shared that love with Alexx, who, you might notice, was inspired by Pink Floyd more than most – you can hear that their effect on a lot of our music today. Pink Floyd were among the first groups to treat songs as if they were soundscapes worth exploring and they took the listener on that journey with them. Now Alexx was using this nickname on various photography and sound forums (it seems a bunch of those old messages will be on the net forever now) and we both considered this name for our duo, along with “Antigravity”. Ummagma won out and thus were born the name of the band, the self-titled album and the accompanying “other” debut release issued on the same day.
What is the story behind ‘The Road to Lees’? How come you chose to make a video for it?
‘The Road to Lees’ was composed a few years ago, when Alexx wasn’t sleeping well. At about 5 a.m. one morning, he was out having a cup of coffee on the balcony of our apartment when birds started to sing. He grabbed a recording device to capture the sound and that is what you hear at the beginning of this track. The rest of the song was inspired by a vision of a journey from there to a fantastical timeless place called Lees and the brilliant experience en route.
We thought about the ‘timeless’ element of the song in its audio form and we wanted, in making the video, to somehow translate that into something related to time and its meaning. We didn’t see this so much about the future as about the past and present and the connection between the two. We wanted nostalgia and the intangibility of time and past events to be part of the concept for this new video.
Unfortunately however, apart from that which was familial or community-based, what we knew as the “good old days” were based on a faulty foundation, which we’re only figuring out now. Just the same, this is still a happy place for many. It is this happy place, these memories, that help us to overcome all the crap we’ve experienced on the way, letting us move forward.
ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: How is the situation in Ukraine affecting your music making or musical direction? Or, more broadly, what do you find the effect of politics on art to be?
Well, speaking for myself, my psyche has taken a real beating during this time. It’s really hard to be in the kind of mindset I need to be in for creating – that applies to melodies and lyrics both. Writer’s block, you know? Alexx has been prolific in making music, as he always is, but it takes forever to complete & perfect a song when you are not motivated to hang out in the recording studio very often. Protests, unrest, mobilization, Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea, mercenary clandestine activity, tons of violence, information overload, and now conscription. None of this has been very positive for our mindset or anybody else’s here in Ukraine. I’m sure you can imagine.
We’ve had to apply ourselves to living this dream however we can – basically whenever inspiration finds its way in. And for me, there has been a lot of networking, research and organizational stuff happening in the background when songwriting escapes me, which basically has been for the past four months. Once in a while, we manage to pull a song off – either just involving Alexx or us both. In all of this, we’ve tried our best to muster up strength to create something beautiful despite all the ugliness surrounding us. Isn’t the light supposed to ultimately win out?
—–
Ukraine’s not the greatest place to be at the moment, so you can hardly fault Shauna and Alexx for their retreat into memories and nostalgia. You’ve already got my constant call to support music ringing in your ears. As it happens, a lot of Ummagma’s stuff you’ll find for free, but if you feel it’s worth it, buy it.
I have to apologise for being so slack. I wouldn’t normally, because it’s my blog and I can do what I want, but the thing is I have had what, in journalistic terms is called a SCOOP, for close to two months now and I have selfishly kept it all to myself.
Tears Run Rings are, as we speak, in the process of putting together their third album – In Surges
Ed, Dwayne, Laura and Matthew aka the very mysterious, very beautiful Tears Run Rings came out with their A Question and An Answer EP in 2007 – classic shoegaze: all Slowdive reverb and MBV percussion. They followed it rapidly enough with the Always, Sometimes, Seldom, Never full-length in 2008 on which you’ll find the unforgettable ‘Mind The Wires’. Their third album, Distance, is bags sweeter than these two and came out in 2010. You can read all about it here.
Before getting to the good stuff, I’d just like to give a shoutout to fellow TRR-fanatic Jim Payne who helped my staid little brain think outside the box and gave me the thoughtful, tailored questions that I would never have managed to think up myself.
I’d also like to thank Jeff Ware of Deep Space Recordingsfor getting me in touch with this ostensibly elusive group and starting this whole interview process… in 2012. No excuses, Ed and I were both super slack (see, we’re made for each other) but it’s all kismat, because the delay means that we’ve now got answers from the entire band, except to the most crucial question.
I tried, but we’ll never know the lyrics to ‘Mind The Wires’.
Mind The Wires was a track we originally wrote back in the late 90s, but never had a chance to record it. We only played it live a few times with our noisy Autocollants-side project, Diplomat Haircuts.
There are three cities between the four members of the band. On your website, Tears Run Rings are described as a long distance relationship. So how does it work? do each of you independently record your sections of the track and then email them over to the others? Where does the final product come out of?
We start by recording drums and bass as a “live band.” Then we usually record parts over that, sometimes independently and sometimes when we get together 3 or 4 times a year. We used to use CDs and mail them, but now we can share tracks over Dropbox. The final product is usually a result of a long weekend of all of us sitting around together and scrutinizing each song.
What does it take to bring a Tears Run Rings album together? Is it a long spell of recording and ‘oh, we have a dozen songs, we’re ready for an album’ kind of thing, or is it a ‘let’s make an album that sounds like [this]’ kind of thing?
We get together over a week or two and write as many songs as possible as a full band. We don’t try to sound like anything in particular. Then we take the next few years to shape the songs in the studio. It is not surprising that most of our songs get rewritten two or three times before we are happy with them and really love listening to them.
Are there tracks that have been recorded that have not yet made it onto Tears Run Rings albums and may see the light of day in the future?
We have a lot of unfinished tracks that we ended up not completing for all sorts of reasons. Every so often we’ll revisit them to see if they are salvageable or can morph into an entirely new idea. As far as a future release of bonus/unreleased tracks, doubt that will be happening any time soon. We are more focused on moving forward with new material.
What’s the scene with live shows? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a poster for a Tears Run Rings gig, but I could have missed it. Do you perform?
We did have the wonderful opportunity to tour with Secret Shine in 2008. It was an awesome experience and we love them! However, since then we all have such limited time that we spend together, it’s a challenge for us to actually practice as a band. We tend to focus our time more on creating and recording our music. We would love to play and someday we will. World Tour 2025 maybe?
Who are the bands that originally inspired the type of music played by Tears Run Rings? Are there any bands on the horizon that have just recently been discovered by yourself or other band members that really stand out?
We have a wide variety of inspirations. We obviously make music that we like to listen to ourselves, so clearly classic shoegaze bands are high on the list (for example, Pale Saints, Blind Mr. Jones, and maybe a little Slowdive – heh). However, each of us have totally different ideas that we bring to our music. As for newer bands, some of the groups that we have been collectively listening to are Flyying Colours, Chris Cohen, Lower Dens, Violens, and Frankie Rose.
Do you find inspiration from artists on an ongoing basis that finds itself being incorporated in any way into current recordings of your own, or do you purposefully make an effort to avoid using any sounds that you feel may sound too similar to others?
Sometimes when we write songs, it ends up sounding too familiar to us, so we try and change it up to be more reflective of our own sound. We try to sound like ourselves, not any other band so we just do what we want to do. We’re totally happy in our own little shell.
Did the band start with an idea to have a series of ‘Happiness’ songs or was that just something that occurred over time through natural inspiration? Do you foresee further ‘Happiness’ installments on future albums?
Yeah it happened over time. We liked how the songs framed the first album as intro and outros, so we continued the idea on our second and soon third album. We like bookends. There’s also a secret embedded within each Happiness track, but we’re not tellin’.
Do you ever gain inspiration from a song that is of a completely different genre/style, but that which speaks to you on an emotional level and then inspires a song in the musical style of Tears Run Rings?
Yep. For example, The Knife has inspired us in many ways, although we sound nothing like them. Also, a lot of our vocal harmonies are not inspired by shoegaze bands.
We can tell there’s a difference in style between Always, Sometimes… and Distance, but have there ever been times in which band members (or the band as a whole) have discussed incorporating different – unexpected, maybe – musical styles into a song or an album, kind of like what Slowdive did with Pygmalion?
We’ve been using a lot more electronic instrumentation lately, and experimenting with changing sound textures. The new album is probably more ethereal than the last two. However, we didn’t make a conscious decision to do it this way; it just evolved. We probably won’t make a change to our sound intentionally because we like the music we make and we are still enjoying the process.
Do you or any of the other band members listen to artists that others may be surprised to hear are in your own personal musical collections?
Absolutely.
Matthew – I listen to a lot of obscure arcane pop, and classic country music. Louvin Brothers are one of my favorite bands.
Laura – I hate country. But I love 80’s music of almost any kind.
Dwayne – I’m big into Swedish dance music and Britpop. The new Suede record is excellent.
Ed- ‘Send the Pain Below’ by Chevelle, and I’m not afraid to admit it.
Have you identified a track that’s a fan favourite? What’s the band favourite?
The fan favorite seems to be ‘Mind the Wires.’ We like that one too. We also like ‘Weight of Love,’ ‘Waiting for the End,’ ‘Distance,’ and ‘Divided.’ There are some tracks on the new album that we’re all especially pleased with as well.
Are you big in Japan? The Japanese version of ‘Distance’ contained two additional exclusive tracks. Have you found those tracks to be remarked upon or requested by fans outside of Japan? Any backlash from the local fans?
We don’t really know! We love our fans wherever they are!
Do you have day-jobs, and if so can we ask what you do?
Ed – Yes, I work as a designer and I run Shelflife Recordson the side. [Home to AE favourite Airiel – ed]
Matthew -Yes, I am a very successful inventor and also run Shelflife.
Dwayne – Yes, I am a teacher and a father.
Laura – Yes, I work an office job.
What do each of you like to listen to that we wouldn’t expect you to listen to?
Matthew – Abba, Andy Gibb, Perry and Kingsley, Herb Alpert, Hall and Oates, Ministry, Lee Hazelwood, Everly Brothers
Ed – Claudio Rocchi, J. C. Pierric, Belbury Poly, Alan Parsons Project, UTFO
Dwayne – Erasure, Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra, Man Without Country, Hood
Laura – The Sea and Cake, Benoit Pioulard, Royksopp, Robyn, The Knife
If not shoegaze, Tears Run Rings would be a _____ band.
Matthew – Pop
Ed – Rubber
D – Spacerock [cheater – ed]
L – Electronica
Finally – Who do I have to bribe to get the lyrics to Mind The Wires?
How about you tell us what you think the they are and then we’ll make them the official lyrics. I’m sure they’ll be better than ours.
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OK.
Here we go – ‘Mind The Wires’ as interpreted by AE
