What was going on in your life when you wrote "Flashlight Seasons?" How do you think it differs from your debut "Internal Travels?
With Internal Travels I had no idea who was going to put the record out. My previous band Assembly Communications had just broken up. A year earlier our friend and bass player Luke Gale had been killed by a reckless driver and we tried to continue without him, getting our freind Richard Radford in to play guitar and I took up the bass parts Luke had played. But we couldn't go on. The grief just pulled it all apart. I had already been doing Gravenhurst for a while, just solo stuff, and I wanted to get a record done. I had a summer off after finishing my degree and my friend Simon Grant who is in a band called Azalea City Penis Club engineered it in the basement of the house I was in at the time. I aready had some of the tracks for Flashlight, some dating back to Assembly, but just concentrated on the most minimal stuff I had which reflected how I felt at the time. Then I sat on the record for a year because I got really ill, and couldn't play the guitar due to the constant pain (entirely psychosomatic and anxiety induced) in my right arm. I played some shows with Simon actually playing all my guitar parts - he can play anything, he had all my fingerpicking down note for note, and I just played harmonica, sang and hit a glockenspiel. To be honest, Simon is priobably a much better fingerpicker than me. But he's one of these errant geniuses who never gets round to recording much stuff. That wll change with his new band though, ACPC, who share a drummer with Gravenhurst, Dave Collingwood. Anyway, we played in that format at a Mobstar Pop Frenzy party in Bristol with Boyracer and lots of ex-Beatnik Filmstars people, and Jen Turrel (solo, and in Boyracer) saw us and offered to put my record out.
So she put it out on her Red Square label, and it sold out in France, but sold next to nothing in England, where Mobstar put it out. It wasn't their fault, it just reflects the market. So I set up Silent Age so we could do another pressing, Jen could sell more in the US and Europe and I could sell my copies over the net and at shows.
When I made Flashlight a good while later (a year and a half or so) I'd dropped out of my masters degree in Philosophy of Science because I was really fucked in the head, but got down to recording Flashlight. Some tracks went back to Assembly; Bluebeard, Hopechapel Hill, Tunnels. But I'd never really arranged or recorded them so I started afresh with hem. I wanted to make a fuller album with more noise and drones. I got really into Low, and continued listening to Flying Saucer Attack, Matt Elliott, John Fahey, same stuff as before, but wanted to make something that people would find very accessible but also something that conveyed a lot of the anger I was feeling at the world and at myself. It's like if Minor Threat, The Smiths, Joy Division, My Bloody Valentine and Simon and Garfunkel tried to make a record together. It couldn't possibly work, they'd just end up having a fight. But it might work as a blueprint. I think I half-managed to achieve it. Maybe. At least, it's a much better record than IT. I might put a sticker on IT that says 'Not as good as Flashlight Seasons!) like Big Black did with their ep.
What's your favorite track on "Flashlight Seasons?
Maybe Tunnels, because of the droning middle eight breakdown with 5 guitar, clarinet and organ overlays. Should have done that more. The new EP is more like that. 'I Turn My Face to the Forest Floor' is an important one for me. Lyrically it's about a particular thing I loathe in the UK media. 'Lad Mags' portray old-school thugs like Mad Frankie Frazer or the Kray twins as cheeky, loveable rogues with a quintessentially English charm. I think Jarvis Cocker was pointing that out in 'Common People', it's a form of class tourism; a middle class wank-fantasy; pretending to be working class and simultaneously patronising those from less privileged backgrounds by painting crime and squalor as romantic. It's all a load of fucking bullshit. It's so typical of white English men; we let class-stereotypes and a confused conception of masculinity conduct our sense of identity..
So you just toured Europe, where all the history is from. I heard you played the legendary Troubadour in West London? How was that?
It was cool to play a place where, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Grafunkel and Jackson C. Frank used to play. It's hardly changed. It's amazing, frozen in time. The food is great too. There are covers of old folk LPs on the walls with old folk stars photgraphed in front of the venue, ad it looks exactly the same.
You opened for Mouse on Mars in NYC as a solo performer. Did you open for Mouse on Mars for other shows and/or in Europe as well? Did you do the tour solo or with your band mates in Europe?
I only played that one show with MoM. It was all solo; we'll play as a trio in the autumn.
What did you think of the US, besides our president? Have you performed in the states before?
I've performed in the US before, with my friends Black Forest/Black Sea. They are from Providence, and we played shows there and in Philly, NYC, Baltimore, Yale and a few places in Mass. With Fursaxa, Landing, Bardo Pond and others. My wife is from Kansas and I've spent rather more time in the Midwest than most sane Americans have. Having said that, I really like some of the Midwest; Lawrence, Kansas is great. I've also been to St Louis which is unremarkable and New Orleans which is very, very strange; simultaneously laid back and extremely threatening.
The USA is such a fucked up place. It doesn't make any sense. It's the best idea anyone has ever had for a country; separate church and state, separate the legislative, judiciary and executive, increase local democracy, and devolve centralised power, but someow it doesn't seem to reflect that at all. In contrast, we still have a stupid royal family and our head of state is the Queen, who is the head of the Church of England. Yet we are an overwhelmingly secular people with generally liberal leanings. The USA is an overwhelmingly religious country with generally conservative leanings. Yet in other ways it is more progressive. The smoking bans in Cali and NY make total sense. But then there is totally corrupt hypocrisy; the obvious examples lying with the Christian Right such as the consistency of abortion and the death penalty. The health care system allows the poor to literally rot away.
Don't even begin to discuss the penal system. Go to the Midwest and people are incredibly friendly and wonderful hosts. Just don't talk about politics. Here I can pretty much walk down the street smoking a joint. In the USA I can't walk down the road drinking a beer. But this kind of thing just results in extremes of adversity. The US music scene has such an incredible DIY network that is lacking here. Because there are no safety nets people in te music scene get off their asses and do stuff; people are less apathetic and lethargic in the USA.
The UK and US music trends are like a ping pong game, batting ideas back and forth with increasing speed, but the US always takes it a stage more extreme. UK punk bands for the most part ended up signing to major labels. The US backlash resulted in the ferociously indiependent hardcore DIY scene. Dischord, SST, Touch and Go... Now we have these US bands who are influenced by Gang of Four. Then they came over here and influenced British bands who picked up on it and got into Gang of Four... who were British anyway! And so it goes on. I'd love to live in the US at some point; I really like Providence especially. But I have epilepsy so medical insurance would be astronomical. Here, of course, it's absolutely free.
I heard you have a new EP coming out. Is this related to the re-released "Flashlight Seasons," on Warp Records or is it new material altogether?
It's all new material. It's 6 tracks and clocks in at over half an hour so it's like a mini-album. It's longer than many albums.
Who is Will Schaff?
Will is an artist from Providence. We became friends because he drummed on the northeast tour I did with The Iditarod who mutated into Black Forest/Black Sea. His artwork has appeared on records by Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Sharon Krauss, Songs Ohia. He did the inside cover painting on Flashlight and I did the linocuts.
Whom are some of your musical influences?
Oh no, not that one! Too many.
Ok, you asked for it. Here's a list I've copied from a biog a few years ago. It's ever expanding.
low
joy division
simon and garfunkel
the cure
the smiths
nick drake
scott walker
the velvet undergound
nico
neu!
galaxie 500
can
red house painters
spacemen 3
crescent
flying saucer attack
movietone
third eye foundation (matt elliott)
stereolab
my bloody valentine
slowdive
ride
bert jansch
john fahey
slint
yo la tengo
husker du
r.e.m.
sonic youth
augustus pablo
guided by voices
elvis costello
the auteurs
talk talk
tim hardin
broadcast
big black
gorky's zygotic mynci
john carpenter
wendy carlos
fabio frizzi
tears for fears
neil young
the chameleons
pulp
michael nyman
kraftwerk
fairport convention
depeche mode
war against sleep
jackson c. frank
pet shop boys
What is your favorite album you're listening to right now (must be a 2004 band or to be fair a re-release)?
That's a tough one too! I fcan never remember what was released when. Reissue: That new Fall compilation is awesome." 50,000 fall Fans Can't Be Wrong."
New: War Against Sleep's Invitation to the Feast which will be released later this year on Fire Records. I'm fortunate enough to have an advance copy and it's astonishing. And Broadcast's Hah Ha Sound is just amazing, as expected.
Where did the band name Gravenhusrt come from? Is it a city name?
Apparently so. I got it from the song by Pullman.
What's your favorite book and film of this year?
Again, I can't remember what came out this year and I haven't read much contemporary writing. The most amazing films I've seen recently are Donnie Darko, Magdalene Sisters and Sexy Beast. I've seen so many average films recently, they all just dull into a blur of mediocrity. I really like dumb-ass stupid comedies with Owen Wilson. I think he has impeccable comic timing. I recall more of Starsky and Hutch than I do of mid-brow art-house-by-numbers crap like Magnolia. I often wait to see stuff on DVD because I am too lazy to go to the cinema. As for books, I just read Shakey the Neil Young Biog, Michael Azzerad's Our Band Could be Your Life, the Fall biog Hip Priest, and Orwell's 1984. None of which are contemporary, all of which are superb. The last contemporary book I read was the Lovely Bones, and it was utter drivel.
What do you do other than play tunes? Are you a bowling champion, heavy-weight boxer, or a Row Sham Bow expert?
I watch a lot of cheap, exploitative horror and sci-fi films, especially from the 70's and 80's. My friend Guy from Bronnt Industries Kapital and I share a love of John Carpenter films. I just watched a japanese zombie film called Junk. Guns, gangsters and flesh eating zombies; what more could you possibly want from a film? We go to yard sales and thrift stores and pick up cheap video trash like Steven Segal's Hard to Kill. It's much better than fucking Magnolia, I can tell you that much.
Sorry to put you on the spot. Could you please tell us a joke...?
Sorry... can't think of one.
Any closing comments?
Thankyou! |