The Pyramids: Organic, Animal and Raw Rock and Roll

Dirty, raw guitars; powerful, visceral drums and a voice that gives the impression of a heart layered with pain, I was pleasantly surprised upon meeting lead singer Sam. Here in front of me was a quiet, unassuming if not shy man. Sipping a pint of Guinness in Anseo one evening a completely different persona begun to reveal itself from the one found on record.

The Pyramids are an offshoot of the masterful and compelling band from Wiltshire,The Archie Bronson Outfit. Comprising of members Mark Cleveland and Sam Wendett, this is a band with a skuzzier sound than T.A.B.O.. But how did The Pyramids come about? Disillusionment?“One of the ideas was to have an outlet” Sam tells me quietly. Earlier this year Sam and Mark headed into the countryside of their native England and in a converted barn of a friends house their eponymous album was brought into this world.Its gestation was brief and simple. “This would be a fun project. We are not going to do much with the Pyramids. It was really the idea of having something quick and not fussy. We are not going to tour. It’s more to make an album and that’s it”. Within two weeks the lads had created a batch of songs that have the heart of the Archie Bronson Outfit but with an edgier sound. “It was intentional to make it rougher and more garagey” explained Sam, wiping the froth from his beard slowly, “We had a more basic set up. It’s a bit more exciting to work that way”.

Basic is exactly what The Pyramids are. From their sound to their favoured themes of love and pain, they have sculpted a sound that harks back to the early days of vinyl. So are the band some form of musical luddites? “Not really” comes the reply. “It depends on what it is. I like some things like the Flaming Lips. That’s really produced stuff in a really good way. I’m not a fan of really over produced stuff”. So if the band were to put a bit of time into production, a twiddle here, more bass there, would that cause the songs to loose a bit of soul? “We thought that if we added some extra layers it would suck. I don’t think our songs are intelligent enough to be dealt that way.”. After another slow sip, savoring both the pint and question at large he continues. “Some of the soul gets sucked away if it’s overworked. There is nothing to keep you coming back if it’s overdone. It may sound impressive at first but there’s nothing there to get you going again”.

With a new Archie Bronson Outfit album eagerly awaited and the close relationship between the two bands I wonder if there will be some influence and experience from The Pyramids brought into their main band in the future. “I am sure some bits will make it into The Archie Bronson Outfit but hopefully the new Archie Bronson Outfit album will sound different from everything before but there’s definitely crossovers”.

Though they have a more cracked and jagged sound than one might expect, The Pyramids extol an organic rock n’ roll experience, one which may at times intentionally put some people off. “I am not that worried about people hating it” Sam states with quiet resolution. “Just a small amount of music fans get it and that’s good. I don’t mind getting slagged off by the NME crowd. It’s nice to have the hardcore people liking it”. Here is a band guttural and abrasive yet refreshing at the same time. So get your bottle of whiskey and rock out in the old way to The Pyramids.

King Tut

The sign on their Myspace says Asheville, North Carolina, but King Tut’s pyrotechnic psychedelia might be more at home in Scandinavia. An understated yet frenetic fusion of acoustic instrumentation and electro beats, Tut are perhaps closer to Sigur Ros or even Aussie improvisationalists Architecture in Helsinki, than American contemporaries ‘Explosions in the Sky’. From Appalachian guitars plucked over heavily sampled vocals on ‘Alone Together’, to cathedral electronica on ‘Luke’s Hymn’ – a slow-burning forest fire of a track, reminiscent of Agaetis Byrjun’s ‘Staralfur’, to the shoegaze theatre of ‘Somehow I Found You’, and the 8bit electroclash of ‘The Ocean of Motion’, Tut’s debut album ‘Chopping Wood and Carrying Water’ is an acid mouthful of fruity originality.

King Tut are Mark Boyd and Drew Veres, school friends out of Bay Village, Cleveland, who’ve taken time off from college to live and play music together. Tut are currently signed to Amaro Dolce, a tiny Boston indie label. Their upcoming album will be the label’s debut release. In July 2006 the boys struck out for Asheville, NC; a manicured Tuscany of the Mid-East, drawn by the area’s artistic community and outstanding natural beauty. The ‘self-consciously amateur’ music that’s emerged since, and from months before spent trading loops in isolation, is a complex fusion of folksy improv and electronic experimentalism. ‘Chopping Wood and Carrying Water’ was laid down in bedrooms, dorms and college studios, in Garageband on an aging Macintosh; while Mark and Drew worked minimum-wage jobs to fund recording. The album’s rustic origins, its stylistic variety, raw layered harmonies, and epic refrains (Mark calls them ‘Peak Moments’), bring to mind Mirah’s collaboration with Ginger Brooks Takahashi, 2003′s ‘Songs from the black Mountain Music Project’; and indeed Carrying Water shares the sizzling fury of Phil Elverum’s discordantly thrilling Microphones productions. Says Mark of such moments – “When it’s done right it’s a kind of holy thing to me, it really reaches out to you and into you and surrounds you and you just understand. There is a clear open channel of communication between you and the musician and it’s beautiful.”

There’s so much variety here that it’s hard to draw general comparisons, but fans of Mogwai, Broken Social Scene and even Grandaddy should all find something to enjoy. Likely to draw attention are the album’s spare but intricate drum loops. Drew cites the influence of everyone from John Stanier, to JoJo Mayer and Thelonius Monk. “A good drummer is able to sing through his instrument and compliment the parts of his fellow musicians. John Coltrane is a personal favorite. He literally sings through the tenor saxophone. His playing has influenced me to really hear the tonal qualities of the drum set and fit them with the guitar lines to create a fuller more distinct sound for a song.”

Tut have arrived at an understanding of the contemporary music market that often eludes more established acts. Aware that obscurity is a far greater threat to young artists than piracy, the band have gone beyond using MySpace (where Analogue heard first heard them), and set about directly emailing songs to a growing list of fans. Mark is particularly positive about P2P, “I love peer to peer sharing.  I think it’s got corporate big guys in a bundle and that’s great.  At least some of the reason people don’t buy records any more is that they know it’s not going to the band. Why should we require people to toss some paper with imaginary value into our hat? Music has real value. Emotions have real value. That’s what matters.”
I ask him to explain how the birth of the net and the drawn out passage of the ‘industry’ proper have affected the bands promotional decisions.
“Being able to spread music so easily and to such a large audience is a beautiful thing.  We have the ability to play our music for someone on the other side of the world, by just clicking away from the comfort of our own home. As for the death of the major labels?  Well it’s about fucking time… It’s so easy for people to overlook one of the true meanings of making music, self expression. The idea that there are corporate know-it-alls deciding what the general public should be listening to is a joke. Now there’s finally a way for damn good musicians to get their music out, and it has these big types on edge.”
Mark is similarly dismissive of Radiohead’s latest foray into digital marketing, ‘In Rainbows’.
“I think what Radiohead did was great, but it’s by no means revolutionary. Big bands in Japan and other countries had done this years before, figuring that if people like them enough, they’ll buy the CD, but they’ll definitely go to see them in concert.”
King Tut are the kind of band we’re seeing more and more right now; a potpourri of influences, keener on developing as musicians than aspiring to a traditional major label recording career. With independent releases this year from everyone from M.I.A to Prince and indeed Radiohead; the group’s independence shouldn’t prevent them from making a splash deserved by this fiery, original and charming release.

It might be a while before they tour, but King Tut release their album ‘Chopping Wood and Carrying Water’ (title taken from ‘Be Here Now’) soon. If you’re in the neighbourhood of Asheville, you would do well to catch them. Otherwise, hit the band up for demos at keepyourkingsinthebackrow@gmail.com or check out their new material on MySpace.

How can something that sounds this shit be this good?

A brief history of Lo Fi indie rock

A friend once asked me, “how come so many of your favourite records sound so shite? Its like they were recorded for 50p!” And he was right, they do. In fact, not only do they sound like they were recorded for 50p but at least one of them (‘Vampire on Titus’ by Guided by Voices) is so shoddily recorded it may as well have been screamed into a banjaxed Fisherprice tape recorder on a windy cliff. Well, its ‘cos a large chunk of my CD collection is devoted to the crackly magic and haphazard musical charms cast by lo-fi recording artists.

What exactly is lo-fi then? Well, if you were dreary and took the term at face value, you might say it simply means low fidelity, as in music that was recorded on equipment by bands who for financial or other reasons could not afford to record their music on high fidelity equipment. Lo-fi, you might then argue, has been around for as long as recording itself. You might argue that all the great bockety garage rock from the 60s and the scuzzy DIY stylings of punk were lo-fi because of the cheap way in which such music was recorded. But its not as simple as that. Otherwise lo-fi would be merely a style of music determined by practical necessity, whereas in reality it quickly grew beyond that to become an aesthetic for bands to wilfully aspire towards. It became a genre in and of itself that flourished and peaked in a whoosh of cassette tape hiss in the early to mid-nineties. Indeed, looking back to the genre’s early-nineties peak, practically all the best American indie records, including Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, Guided By Voices’ Bee Thousand and Sebadoh’s III, seem like they are barely held together by sellotape and pritt-stick. If these bands were plasterers they wouldn’t bother with polyfila because hey, the cracks in the plasterwork were more interesting. Lo-fi was also a bit political. It was a determined kick against the bloated belly of mainstream alternative rock, which in those days was all post-grunge MTV drivel padded out by millions of dollars worth of big studio turd polishing. As Stephen Malkmus aptly sang about some big grunge bands of the day on Pavement’s lo-fi call to arms, ‘Range Life’ “I don’t understand what they mean/ And I could really give a fuck.”

Unlike other more tightly defined genres like shoegaze, there is no real unifying lo-fi sound. Rather, it’s the way in which things were recorded that holds the genre together. The musical styles vary from the detuned and decidedly wonky guitar fuzz that ultimately makes Pavement such a sublime acquired taste to Calvin Johnson’s baritone singing over Beat Happening’s austere musical structures. However, for my money, if there is one band that could speak for them all and represent the genre in some sort of United Nations style musical Security Council (hah, imagine that!), then that band is Guided By Voices (Sebadoh fans are bound to disagree with this, but if they want to really work this out I am willing to meet them in the car-park of Whelans to sort it out properly). Here was a band of seedy looking thirty-something dudes with beer-guts who recorded most of their best material while they were blind drunk in a laundry room below one of their gafs. Led by The Who and Beatles obsessed primary school teacher Robert Pollard, Guided By Voices used some unbelievably ropey equipment to record music that at its best, climbs to the rarified heights of the best work from those 1960s bands he idolized so much. Although it takes some leap of the imagination to describe much of their polished later material as lo-fi, Guided by Voices’ blinding early run of four wonderful albums from ‘Propeller’ through ‘Alien Lanes’ are shot through with the idiosyncrasies and imperfections that make lo-fi such a love it or hate it genre. You see, one man’s imperfection is another’s accidental wonder. The fact is that Bee Thousand (to take one Guided By Voices release) sounds positively destroyed with tape hiss, badly overdubbed vocals, too much treble, out of tune guitar parts, unfiltered sounds of studio doors slamming, and (half way through one track) a band member snoring drunkenly. Yet these things only add to the record’s legend. Its hard to explain, but all that ramshackle madness eventually worms its way into how you experience the album, finally becoming as important a part of the listening experience as the fine music itself. It gives things textures, depths, and a unique sense of time and place that crackles and sparks. In fact, Bee Thousand is miraculous in that a huge part of its brilliance is wrapped up in how shite it sounds. As a musical statement it is a million miles from the edgeless studio polish and easy to digest radio-friendly mixes that characterize much so-called ‘alternative rock,’ which are little more than mushed up liga for your ear-drums.

Of course, lo-fi does not begin and end with Guided By Voices, Pavement and Sebadoh. The big three are a gateway drug into a scene crammed with dozens of lesser known but fascinating groups such as Silver Jews, The Mountain Goats, The Olivia Tremor Control and the grandaddy of them all, Daniel Johnston. On this side of the Atlantic lots of artists took the baton and ran with it too, most notably The Beta Band, Badly Drawn Boy when he was in his early bedroom phase (in other words when he was worth giving a frick about) and more recently, Graham Coxon and our own Jape. What ties all these groups together might not just be the homespun nature of their recordings but something else too. It’s the honesty that is inherent in recording music this way. Its impossible to cloak poor quality with the smoke and mirrors of studio trickery. Lo-fi brings the listener’s attention back to where it should be. Back to the song itself.

Efterklang

Contemplative and endearing music from the inspiring wilds of the Danish countryside.

There’s something to the wild, barren landscapes of Scandinavia and Iceland that seem to breed such beautiful and jaw-dropping music. The faintest sound of dripping water or the howl of the northern wind seems to inspire their natives into creating cascading walls of sound that bring shivers down one’s spine.

Efterklang hail from tamer wilds of Denmark. They have, over the years, released numerous mini-albums and their accomplished debut Tripper. October saw the release of their second album Parades. Efterklang has its genesis in the wilds of the Danish countryside, on the island of Als to be precise. “It’s extremely beautiful with many isolated places” local and lead singer Casper tells me. “It’s pretty desolate. I wouldn’t call it a cold place but it’s extremely beautiful”. Casper and fellow band members Mads and Rasmus grew up on Als but in time they felt this “common feeling that we were too big for this place”. So they left for the bright lights and cosmopolitan charms of Copenhagen. Over a few years they met fellow band members Rune and Thomas and with the addition of visual artist Karim Ghahwagi, Efterklang was brought into this world.

Efterklang are an odd bunch. “We are just curious about sounds in general”- Casper explains -and it shows in their music. Combining an orchestra of violins and electronic beats with harmonious vocals, it’s a rich mixture that tickles the mind and soothes the soul. “We don’t think we can find music that won’t fit into the Efterklang universe”. Would that include such things as garbage cans? Well maybe. “If we find a nice soda can we would generally bring it home and start a song with that one”. That’s what constitutes the Efterklang universe, and what a universe it is. This is no ordinary band churning out album after album, it is more of an overall sensual experience. The eye is treated just as handsomely as the ear. “We are all fascinated by cinema and visuals in general and we use it in our music” Casper continues. “Sometimes it is nice to have a visual to create a scene and story in picture to help to make the music. It felt like a natural way of making music”. Because Karim is an integral part of the band all this works to a mesmerizing degree. “We would make the music and he would create the universe”.

Debut album Tripper left many a critic salivating over its lavish musical texture. Comparisons with the aforementioned Sigur Ros made others sit up and take notice. The band embarked on a European tour and then it was time for a return to Copenhagen to create a new sensual experience. This time the band members decided to enlist an outsider to produce second album Parades. “We wanted to find a person who could deal with epic things, with both electronic and acoustics”. The band decided on Darren Allison- the man behind such classics as My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Spiritualized’s crowning glory Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. The result is an album more coherent and more lush than its predecessor.

Efterklang are not content with just music and visuals. They have taken it upon themselves to set up their own record label Rumraket. But what brought about this recent foray? “It was just a reaction” Casper tells me. “We wanted to release our first mini album and it was simply just nice to have a label behind it. We created it for that purpose and afterwards we used it to release some special editions of Tripper. Efterklang didn’t think much would come of it but opinions and fate soon changed. One day an email popped into the Rumraket inbox from none other than Grizzly Bear asking the band to remix one of their tracks. The band said yes,one thing led to another and Grizzly Bear ended up on Rumraket. Score!

So Efterklang are a band that want to wrap you up in a warm, sensual duvet and treat you to an overall experience bordering on the religious. Go catch them in Dublin in Whelans on November 28th.

A Day In The Life

It’s always been a mystery to our beloved readers as to how we at Analogue spend our time. In celebration of Issue Two’s arrival, we give you, A Day in the Life.

12:00 The truck arrives from Belfast! Containing Issue Two! 2,000 Copies! We carry it up 4 flights of stairs! Ailbhe whinges!

12:15 We begin searching for the trolley which will allow us to distribute all around town. The trolley has disappeared.

12:25 We give up searching for the trolley for the mean-time. Ailbhe brings copies of Analogue to the Buttery. Bren brings them to the Hamilton Building, and Gareth brings them to the Arts block.

12:30 The trolley is found! Paul, Bren and Ailbhe power on down along Wicklow St, George’s St, Camden St, finishing up at the Bernard Shaw.

12.35 Bren tries to give Ailbhe a lift back in the trolley. She gets very worried and won’t stay on it. She may have squealed.

14.00 – 16.00 We all break up to go to classes. We are all very intelligent.

16.00 Dan joins in and we visit Freebird Records. Bren and Gareth return. The trolley is loaded once more, and the exodus to Harcourt St begins.

17.00 Loaded trolley + Dame St + Christmas Shoppers = Bad Idea.

17.15 Gareth and Ailbhe formulate a concept for a sitcom. They reference it constantly for the next 10 minutes before it gets too annoying to carry on.

17.25 The trolley breaks. Then it’s fixed. We cross our fingers it won’t break again.

17.30 Dan carrying more than one stack of magazines = Bad Idea. They fall all over the street.

18:00 We arrive at Tripod, leave the rest of the magazines and return to Trinity. Too early to start drinking? No.

9:00 Having bought sundries in the shop, and being in possession of a stack of envelopes to fill and post, we settle into Gareth’s.

19.15 We listen to some Pavement.
19:30 Gareth plays most of Guns ‘n’ Roses’ hits on the kazoo.

20.00 We argue for far too long while trying to decipher whether we’re in the middle of listening to The Field/Fields/Feels/Feedz. Seriously. It goes on for about 15 minutes.

20.30 Nicola arrives! She has a torch that is also a pen that is also a torch. We are amazed.

21.00 We write some poetry. In a race. It’s a poetry race.

21.05 We all read out our new poems. They’re pretty awful.

21.15 We post the envelopes and go to the pub.

There’s a reason why the phrase is ‘party like a rockstar’ and not ‘party like a music journalist’….

O’Death: Appalachian Art-House meets Analogue

It’s an hour before O’Death tear a blistering live set out of Whelan’s impressive new soundsystem and three of the guys from the band are holding court on everything from murderous cats, beards, blogging, grunge and Yeats. It would seem banter comes as naturally to these lads as one of their dirty jugband banjo riffs. Guitarist and ukele thumper Gabe is doing a comic piece of interpretive physical theatre that casts the influential music website pitchforkmedia as a giant robo-monster (replete with terrifying robotic voice) zapping bands with its judgemental death-rays. “BZZZZZ BRRURRRR. You get an 8.2! You get a 6.5. RARRRRR, YOU GET ZERO. Pitchfork has spoken!” But first, the music.

O’Death are a New York based band that trade in a wild ‘n’ rootsy American style of music that sounds like Tom Waits and a bunch of pissed-up skeletons at an Appalachian barn dance. When asked to describe their music, fiddle player Bob tells me: “Dirt. Our common influence is dirty sounding music, we want to sound dirty. I think you can hear that we are influenced by that kind of stuff, punk rock whether it’s the misfits or something, or old tradtional American music, like old roots, gospel or the blues. Old dirty recordings, old dirty performances of that.” Lead singer Greg agrees, “we like dirt.” They also told me later that they like the Alice in Chains record Dirt. Thankfully, in spite of this dirt-talk they all looked rather clean (if bearded) and there was even a mild smell of deodorant in the room.

Greg tells me “Death is inevitable. Death is gonna happen. We’ve always sort of embraced death in our music. Y’know dark matter as it were.” Gabe adds “right, like the New Orleans funeral march or the Irish wake. Its sort of like, yeah when granpa died we all partied down. That sort of thing.” You can see what they are talking about in the barmy but brill video for their single ‘down to rest’ which is literally crawling with stop motion ghoulies and skeletons. According to Greg, “Oh Death is an old poem by Yeats I think. [Its] also an old folk song, something that’s been around for a long time.” Bob adds “its also a little Biblical, its in the Bible I think. Its everywhere”
Continuing to talk about their sound the guys tell me about how vital the live aspect of their art is to them. “It’s the most raw and immediate thing” says Greg. Bob elaborates “when you record a group you tend to lose certain energy. Listening to the record, you can’t pick up or see what people are doing. Its gets lost. You get so used to recording effects, thinking that stuff is overdubbed.” Greg then explains the live feel of their records “We try to stay as close and true to our live performance on our records for the most part, and there might be just the odd bit, the odd few minutes where it just doesn’t carry over or we want to add a little something else. This is important because our live show is just really where people are affected by it, and we have the most fun there.” Later on at the gig proper, this makes sense. At the end of the set, the band are giving it socks in the midst of the audience and everyone is swept right up in the experience. Greg’s voice is a versatile thing, manufacturing guttural and raspy vocal lowdown tumbles one minute, high and yelpy somersaults the next. It’s a Tom Waits versus David Byrne vibe. Bob tells me about Greg’s singing, “you’ll hear a lot of traditional sort of vocal stylings in Greg’s voice. And he uses his real voice, other than his vocal inflections there are no other effects.”

In keeping with the zeitgeist, and considering that Analogue magazine has a large online component, I ask the band about blogs. “It gives a lot of exposure to new bands. It hypes up new bands”. Gabe explains. Though, Greg sees a bit of a downside to this “they might not be ready for it. Bands get hyped now before they even bring out their first recording. With all that pressure, there is a danger it might not be good for them. They might just peter out under the pressure.” He mentions fledgling US band Black Kids, who are swamped in hype despite having barely played a gig outside of Florida and only releasing a few demos. However, the guys generally agree that blogs have been good to O’Death. “I’ve read blogs where some dude has posted a much more accurate description of what we’re about than one of these internet journalists.” It was this comment that prompted Gabe’s impromptu pitchfork spoof.

Before winding up I ask the band two last things. First off, with me being a proponent of the virtues of facial hair (on men) I couldn’t help noticing that O’Death do a good line in beards. Do they have any beard care tips for Analogue readers with beards of their own? Greg (whose hardcore beard looks like impenetrable curls of black barbed wire) tells me he shampoos his. So does Gabe. I’m flabbergasted. I never thought of a beard as something that might need shampooing, and being told this by a band who are describing themselves as dirty? Yikes. But Greg has a good excuse, his wrought iron follicles need softening. “My beard shaves razors,” he tells me. Finally, I ask what to expect from tonight’s show. Gabe says “Its gonna be about ten minutes long. We’re all gonna be naked and I’m gonna sing lying down.” Greg chips in “Yeah and I bring face paint and paint everybody in the audience’s faces.” Well, there was no face-paint, but three of the band did take their their tops off, and everyone who was there with me agreed that it was a proper hoe-down. Just before I switch off the recorder and wish them luck, Greg sums the O’Death experience up nicely: “actually how about a bunch of hairy sweaty guys who really care about the music they play.”

You’re Only Massive

Up and coming bands play gigs, do interviews where they extol the massive influence Bowie has had on their lives and how they want to make it big and tour America all while they glaze behind you to the mirror to fix their angular haircut or to-scraggly-to-be-natural hair. So when someone says to you “I really wanna play every county in Ireland!” and with such playful eagerness you sit up and take notice. Comprising of two bezzie mates Meabh and Megan they have combined a love of techno with the added spice of rap to create something, which stands out from the normal swathe of Irish bands.

Meabh and Megan are an odd mix. Meabh has spent many a month over the past few years in Berlin soaking up the avant garde lifestyle that city uniquely has to offer. She learnt how to MC and get into German rap there among other things. Megan on the other hand is still in school. In fact our interview was delayed so that Megan could finish supervised study! However as it is in all such cases it was a love of music and mutual friends that brought them together. They met each other at a friend’s club in Waterford. “Our eyes met across a crowded room and we knew that it was meant to be!” jokes Megan on that fateful night. So a few weeks later in June just past they met up, found out they both loved the same music and so in Megan’s bedroom over Alex Gopher’s Motorcycle Clutch they decided to join forces and unleash You’re Only Massive on the country.

So what are they like? Well think Chicks on Speed without the pretentiousness. Add in some rap and a bit of techno with some girly charm and there you have it. Since June they have toured relentlessly and although they havn’t yet made it to every county in Ireland (I’m still dubious about Longford) they have garnered a lot of praise for their tongue in cheek style and music. “ we don’t have the knowledge to sound like a proper group” Megan explains, “I don’t really know how to mix properly so it [our sound] just sounds like this out of necessity”. Nevertheless as a band live they seamlessly and flirtatiously rap over their favorite vinyls. Justice’s Phantom becomes a saucy, slinky number while Alex Gopher is transformed into the whimsical ‘SugarShake The Cool Away’. It seems all so odd. It shouldn’t work but somehow it does and it has taken them around the country to Hard Working Class Heroes, Kilkenny, Dublin Fringe and em, Navan. “That was a really weird gig” Megan giggles “Girls were coming up to us afterwards and going ‘that was the best fun we ever had!’”

This all seems quite a lot for such a budding band, especially when Megan is busy preparing for the Leaving Cert. How does it all work? “Its kind of really hard actually” Megan tells me “not that it affects school really but in terms of playing gigs”. A recent gig in Limerick on a school night resulted in Meabh roping in a friend to take the reigns for that show. So nothing will stop this band. A possible brief pause coming up to the exams will be followed by a massive burst of shows around the country. Gigs-a-plenty will occur. “We really like playing shitty little towns” Meabh eagerly tells me. So watch out Longford.

You’re Only Massive may not be the most professional band out there. They may not think much about what they are doing or care about how they are perceived but as they rap in SugarShake The Cool Away “I’m tearing it up/Get ready to rave/Right here/Right now” it’s all fun and games to Megan and Meabh. So catch them the next time they hit, um, Ballina.

Andrew Bird

The phone rings out a half dozen times. Finally, he answers, his voice soft and weary, unenthusiastic. Andrew Bird has been composing; fusing the seeds of separate musical ideas into an overarching medley. “This happens a lot, where I don?t realise that I?ve been writing the same song in three different songs, so then I take the best parts of the song, see how they fit together and distill it into one song.” Such compositional deconstruction is analogous to Bird?s famed looped performances. The man adores playing live, “I pretty much hate the rest of the day”, and
has turned looping into an indispensable instrument of interpretation. Building a melody around a pizzicato rhythmic frame, he layers on more amorphous flourishes “a gaseous state, you can almost visualise in front of you”, “this blob of sound that you?re trying to carve and shape”. “The songs have a certain amount of built-in room, I try to make sure I don?t write songs that are gonna pin me down too much, but even the most conceptually overburdened arrangement, it?s up to you to make it live and breathe again.”

Working with percussionist Martin (Luther King Chavez) Dosh and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Ylvisaker, Bird creates an intricate vertical landscape, traversed by eerie whistled riffs and his trademark ?apocrypha’ of concrete imagery.

He writes words “speaking in tongues”, that “stand in to fill the crevices of the melody”. Like Owen Pallet, Bird’s loops build epic soundscapes and shivering violent crescendos. I ask him how much further such techniques can be pushed. “The variables keep multiplying, because I’m playing with Martin, who’s also developed his own technique in a vacuum with drums and keyboards. But what’s really cool, in the year and a half I’ve played with him, every time we get together we try something that kind of multiplies the possibilities. All three of us on stage, Jeremy Ylvisaker as well, we’re all manipulating sound or noise and shaping it with looping.” “I came up with my approach to it in my own vacuum. It was during a time when I was very isolated, and just saw it asa tool to turn a linear instrument into a vertical instrument. I just kind of stumbled into using it live. I was vaguely aware of people like [Ohio born singer songwriter] Joseph Arthur, Jon Brion and people like that using the same technology, but I think it’s the ultimate tool for someone who enjoys solitude. So it’s interesting to see everyone using it in different ways.”

Educated under the Suzuki method, playing violin from the age of four, Bird has developed an organic relationship to performance and composition. He describes Suzuki as “this prefab oral tradition”, which turns children into natural musicians, “teaching kids to play music like they’re learning a language, when they’re really young and their brains are still developing” but one that leaves them ill-equipped to deal with the formal elements and pressures of the classical world. “Suddenly there’s this rude awakening when you’re thirteen or fourteen and you’re supposed to play in an orchestra and read music. That was kind of a nightmare. It was very competitive, I couldn’t read music at all, but I could learn entire concertos by ear.” Bird almost burnt out during his early twenties, “playing eight to ten hours a day trying to prove that I could make a living as a musician.” Surmounting the experience, he made a conscious decision to never again allow a performance to feel empty, “like a wasted moment.” “Whenever I’m in a musical situation and it starts to feel jammy or futile, I get really uncomfortable. So every moment I’m making music, I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself to make it ?musical’.”

With a head full of melodies (“One thing I never worry about, is that drying up. It’ll happen as a result of being alive”), Bird is sceptical of semantics; “Words are trickier, words fill you with self doubt”. Lately he’s been seeking a way to escape language entirely, looking for “some sort of springboard into just making sounds with my mouth”. So far his experiments have made themselves known in coruscating logos, lyrics that bring to mind the tongue twisting impenetrability of poly-rhythmic naturalismo nymphet, Joanna Newsom. On this years ?Armchair Apocrypha?LP, his eighth studio album and third solo outing, lyrics drift from references to neuroscience ?they’ll fight for your neural walls and plasticities’ [Plasticities], ?as if you lack the proper chemicals to know’ [Armchairs], to subtle scientific wordplay, ?despite what all his studies had shown / what’s mistaken for closeness / is just a case of mitosis’ [Imitosis]. Pitchfork’s review speaks of the album exhibiting a distrust of science and psychology, but I find here more a fascination with uncertainty, a yearning for unknowable things. Bird insists that any such coherence is emergent, not a deliberate commentary or theme.

“I have words that sort of stand in to fill the crevices of the melody and I just wait till something starts to make a little more sense or seems emotionally true. But more or less the beginning of the process is not concerned with meaning or intention at all. At theend of the process I’m like ?now I see what I was talking about’. I find the common threads. People have suggested doing an instrumental record, and for some reason the words feel really important none the less. One gives the other a reason to exist. Armchair Apocrypha, I guess the Apocrypha part for me has revealed itself to be about the origin of ideas being a little more dubious.”

?Apocrypha’ is an explosion of fury in contrast to Bird’s last, more experimental record, the wonderfully titled ?Mysterious Production of Eggs’ (“a nod toward ?Where do these ideas come from?’ The mysteriousness of the creative process”). The albums didactic melodrama grew out of the process of live collaboration with Dosh, “I went from a couple of years of playing solo and kind of more subtle textured stuff, to playing with a drummer again, and I was doing songs from ?Eggs’ like ?Tables and Chairs’ where I sing ?We were tired of being mild’ and the song became so extroverted compared to the record, and I heard the record for the first time in a while, and I head
that line, and I thought, well Jesus if I’m so tired of being mild, why do I sound so restrained? So I’ve tried to get closer to that kind of fever, that kind of intensity, that comes over me in a live show”. According to Bird there are two species of album and “You’re going to either make a decidedly living room or bedroom type record, which is carefully balanced and measured, or you’re going to make a live type record, that goes for it.” Despite his protests to the contrary, ?Apocrypha’ manages to scupper such divides, seeming both energetic and perfectly controlled. The record mixes the scratchy veracity of Buckley’s ?Sketches’ LP, with the tightly measured pop of a Ziggy-Era Bowie album, and the unselfconscious classical flourishes of Final Fantasy.

A love of touring has insulated Bird somewhat from the fear currently coursing through the recording industry. “My bread and butter has been playing live, and I’ve always written off the recorded product – never expecting to see anything come of that – except being this reason to tour and play live.” I ask about rumoured plans to toy with the visual aspect of performance, a favoured tactic amongst independent musicians of all means these days. Bird’s reply is typically understated. “We’re dabbling in a little bit in the projection thing lately, but it’s a different way of experiencing music and it can be slightly less personal. Really what I’m trying to do is to think of the stage as a thirty five mill’ frame, and how are you going to fill that frame with as much cool functional stuff as possible. I’ve been working with a lot of artists in Chicago to make the actual instruments on stage visually interesting.” One such practically elegant gizmo is Bird’s twirling double headed Victrola speaker, built by Chicago sculptor and instrument maker Ian Schneller’s ?Specimen Products’. Despite a fear of overwhelming the performance, Bird plans to extend such visual elements, “We’re trying to use projections as just an interesting way of casting light.” Fans in Ireland had the pleasure of Birds visuals at his November 3rd show in Tripod, but missed out on the spinning ?Janus Horn’. “Right now I’m trying to figure out how to get that stuff over seas, it’s really sad but it’s almost impossible at this stage. But yeah, I really enjoy employing really creative people. It’s been my diversion, I don’t like to hang out with other musicians, I like to hang out with visual artists mostly and to collaborate with them on stuff.” Such a collaboration was evident on ?Eggs’, where Bird worked with musician and artist Jay Ryan to build narrative illustrations for each song. “Jay?s a good friend of mine, and we just hung out and joked around, and he was just sketching while we were talking and that was it.I love it when things are that easy.”

Moments of ?Eggs’ were reminiscent of the swing-influenced Jon Brion cut of Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine LP. Perhaps this touch of bassy waltz was a shadow of Bird’s first brush with fame, collaborating with North Carolina 1920′s revivalists ?Squirrel Nut Zippers’. Off his own pressings Bird had made a habit of guesting on releases as various as Ani DiFranco’s 2005 ?Button Down’ and Neko Case’s early ?Canadian Amp’ EP. “Every Winter seems to be the season for side projects, and a more collaborative phase. So I’m starting to concoct different ideas to pull me out of my own universe and play other people songs. I like getting little homework assignments now and then. Even if I’m like not really into it at first, like getting asked to cover that Bob Dylan song for Mojo a year ago… I like to pick the most elemental songs I can find, that don’t really have too much of a stamp on them, and then totally rethink the whole thing.”

Andrew Birds latest album Armchair Apocrypha is available from all good music sellers. He is currently touring Europe.

Four Girls, Eight Hands and A Musical Saw

Ailbhe Malone talks with Hildur Ársælsdóttir from Amiina about Playing by the Rules, Instrument-Swopping and Sigur Ros

‘I think a lot of normal stuff influences us, like food and textures of things, and handcraft, stuff like that.’ No matter how Eyebrowy deem to classify Sigur Ros, ‘pretentious’ is not a word one could ever use in conjunction with Amiina. The group, comprising of Hildur Ársælsdóttir, Edda Rún Ólafsdóttir, Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, and Sólrún Sumarliðadóttir , originally worked as a classical string quartet before recording with Sigur Ros (on () and Takk) and finally releasing their first solo album Kurr in 2007. The quartet’s classical background is apparent, a fact which Hildur readily acknowledges- ‘Classical music- our education- has influenced us a lot. That’s the pillar, if you can say so. That’s where we come from, that’s a really big part.’ Whilst they embrace their classical training, they admit that, as a style, it is too constrictive-‘We come from a classical background where, you know, you’re not supposed to decide a lot of stuff for yourself, you’re supposed to play by the rules. When we met the guys (Sigur Ros) we started doing more creative work and we just found it fascinating.’

Though Amiina are quick to stress that they are a separate group, and not a side project of Sigur Ros, the effect that Sigur Ros has had on them is undeniable. Hildur speaks about the group as if she was a 16 year old girl describing her first boyfriend- ‘When we started working with them we realised that you can do whatever you want, that there are no rules.’ It would appear that ever since then, Amiina have been doing whatever they want. Their music mimics that of Sigur Ros in that it has no lyrics-. ‘It’s much more natural for us to write songs without lyrics, because of our background. We’re so used to inter-weaving melodies and that kind of focus on nuances and sound rather than lyrics. I think all of us kind of, when we listen to music, we don’t listen to the lyrics and remember them. We listen a lot more to other stuff, other factors in the music. So, it was something we didn’t even think about, it was just so natural for us to do instrumental music.’- but it has more drive, and an inherent sense of fun that their fellow Icelanders lack.

In keeping with their organic ethos, Hildur explains that- ‘when we create the song, we’re not really thinking of how to perform it live, so we use whatever instrument we want, not really thinking about it in practical terms. So when we then do live versions, arrangements, sometimes we have to sit down and discuss how we’re going to do it, practically. We would really love to have more hands than eight, but we don’t, so we have to figure out a way to make things work. It’s kind of our choreography.’ Watching Amiina perform is a singularly serene experience. It is clear Amiina are at ease in their current musical territory, during concerts they glide around the stage whilst swapping instruments at a ferocious pace- sometimes mid-song. . The group members dress similarly in long, pretty dresses and they alternately bop, sway and nod to the music as they play. Alarmingly self-contained, even when playing more upbeat tracks such as ‘ammaelis’, Amiina act like they’re all in on a big exciting secret- which they might, just might, let the audience in on. Hildur giggles that- ‘We like cosy little festivals. We’re not really fans of the big festivals with all the loud drunk people rolling around. We’re more into cosy indoor things.’ They shun projections and showy visuals, stating that – ‘We think there are so many details happening during the show, just in the performance. At the moment, we think that may be enough to look at. I think that’s what at least some people like about us, that there’s always something to watch.’

Quietly, Amiina are still building up their musical artillery – ‘We REALLY want to learn to play the Theremin. We have one and we’re trying to practise, but it’s hard to learn. That’s one of the instruments that we’ve been dreaming about for a long time. I’d also like to learn to play the clarinet, that’s a really fascinating instrument.’ Every member of the group is a multi-instrumentalist, and their list of instruments ranges from Viola, to Glassophone, to Musical Saw. The latter instrument shines on ‘Rugla’, transforming the melody from prosaic to hypnotic. Further on in the album, ‘Hilli’ swings gently by, allowing for Japanese influences, whistling, and ethereal vocals to happily co-exist within a waltz tempo. Lead single ‘Seoul’ showcases a Gideon Harp and Service Bells duet over the shadow of a Korg drumline. Amiina’s musical fearlessness seems to stem from, finally, being able to do exactly what they want to do. Hildur agrees-‘We always had it in the back of our heads this idea of doing something together that was our own thing, and we didn’t really have the time to do it until a few years ago-’, before mischievously adding that- ‘It’s much more fun making stuff up on your own than doing what people tell you to do.’

Spirit if… Analogue presents Kevin Drew

Broken Social Scene have been keeping a secret from the world. Since You Forgot It In People established the band as indie pop champions in 2002 they have appeared a decentralized band, a band with no real leader, no chief songwriter, nobody in the driving seat. Sure, that guy with the shaggy beard was always at the front singing, smiling, and spontaneously hugging audience members. However, the recent release of Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew- Spirit If has destroyed a myth; Kevin Drew has been the beating heart and driving force of the collective from the start.

This is your third time in Ireland , do you feel you get a good reception over here?

I think so… Stars were here, Feist was here, we all help each other out in getting press and whatever.

You once said “We want to affect audience’s hearts and minds with honesty”. Do you draw a line on what’s too personal in your lyrics?

I don’t. I never really have. I never really wanted to take any personae to protect myself from myself on stage. I really wanted to get the people who could relate and take it to their own lives. I never wanted to tell personal stories, it wasn’t really a goal of mine, but I also didn’t want to hide anything from anyone who was giving me the time of day. And I never really have.

So you find it pretty cathartic writing songs?

Yeah I don’t really “write”, I just speak my mind, and I did that especially with this album. I didn’t write any lyrics, except for a couple, just made it up as we went along, and then we ended up keeping them.

How did the idea of the Presents series come about?

It kinda came at the end. Bernard (Canning, co-founder of Broken Social Scene) was making his own record, and I made this record with Ohad and Charlie (Benchetrit and Spearin, also of Do Make Say Think). We were wondering what to do because I made it as a solo record, and over the space of a couple of years everybody came in eventually. Once you have certain people come in, well, you’re like “I have to get everybody in”. These are my friends, and these are the people I make music with. And then once we chose the selection of what was going to be on the record we saw that some of these were band-written songs, songs that Ohad and Charlie had written, like Big Love which I just sang on top off. I started to see that it wasn’t so much my solo record anymore, but my stream of consciousness solo record. So we thought we’d start this Presents series 1. because Bernard had made his record, and 2. we didn’t want to veer off all the work we had done already with Bren, and our friends and this family we’d built up with Social Scene. And also because we have so much fucking music that we never know what the fuck to do with! So if we had another system to put things out, everything was great then.

What I think you’ll see more is more soundtrack work, or maybe we pull together a whole bunch of B-sides from everybody’s records and (re-do those with a Broken Social Scene line-up). And also, maybe we find some old guy who no-one ever heard of and he had these 16-track recordings of him and a banjo and I don’t know… Just somehow take it to the next level. It’s right there above you! (He points to a Buena Vista Social Club poster). That’s it! That’s it, man!

Spiral Stairs and J Mascis (Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. members) are on the new record. Do you think they’ll contribute again?

Yeah! I love both those guys now. I became friends with those two guys over the last few years.

How did that come about?

Both relationships were good men coming together, boyfriend-boyfriend. Scott (Spiral Stairs) was sweet, because I heard he was playing some of the You Forgot It In People record. I got that phone call, you know, the “DUDE! THE GUY FROM FUCKIN’ PAVEMENT’S PLAYING YOUR SONGS!” one. Then he asked to open for us in Atlanta, because he was on tour with Preston School Of Industry. So we met the Preston guys, they were all sweet, sweet guys, and then I stayed in touch with him, and then we stayed in touch more and we hung out in Australia when I was over. And we pretty much stayed in touch since. J Mascis was the same- We played with him, we met him, we stayed in touch and we did some shows together.
They say don’t meet your heroes, but you know what if they’re fun and sweet…

Get them in your band!

Yeah! Exactly!

And do you think the roster’s going to keep expanding?

I think it’s going to expand, increase, implode. I don’t know. All I know is I’m in it for life, and I’m excited to see what happens.

Who would be your dream guest to get in then?

There’s a lot of people I’d have liked to play with on this record, but I didn’t know them, and I didn’t want to reach out and ask them to play on it, in terms of I wanted to make this a really personal record, and wanted to know everybody who was doing it. There was only one person I didn’t know, and that was Tom Cochrane, but at the same time I knew he was the right choice. I grew up listening to his music as a kid, he’s a Canadian rock icon. I wanted to bring him in because nobody would’ve been expecting me to, and I wanted to throw in a bit of juxtaposition.

When do you think the next record will be released? There was a big gap between Spirit If and Broken Social Scene.

It’s pretty quick, it’s Brendan’s and it’ll be out in Spring. Then I think we’ll have the soundtrack work. We have shit we haven’t listened to in two years, on a hard drive somewhere. But also, we don’t take things so seriously, we might just release digital and vinyl releases from now on.

During the gig later that night, it’s obvious that some of the legend status of his album’s guests have been rubbing off on him. Commanding the stage, the band, and the crowd, he echoes Bruce Springsteen spearheading an E Street onslaught. The band even manage to come out the right side of a tongue-in-cheek U2 cover. It’s a testament to Drew’s charm and charisma that the 1000-plus die-hard indie heads comprising the crowd all sing along with him. Broken Social Scene’s big secret is out.

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