Christmas Parades; Efterklang on art, collaboration and puzzles.

For those uninitiated to Efterklang, they are a Danish five piece that look a lot like them right there. They're not really a five piece though, given the wealth of collaborating artists and musicians involved in their creative process. In fact, they're not really your average band. There's no need for three chord tricks or minor key middle 8's here. Theirs is an approach, yes, an aesthetic, that invites you into a multi sensory world far removed from our own, comprised of shapes and misshapes, logic and illogic, possibles and impossibles. Efterklang revel in combining the audio and the visual, creating an end product, an experience if you will, that's immersive and inclusive. And all the time whilst sounding like Heaven's own marching band.

Their new LP, Parades, is a particular case in point. There are a million ways of describing it in light of what it is not (Razorlight, for example), but Wikipedia labels it/them with the rather nifty tag, "Neo-Classical." This isn't massively wrong. The record is expansive, majestic, complex and dense, beautiful in its robust layers of sound, with horns, strings and whatnot all fighting for space, and equally in it's fragility. But enough of this. Over to Casper Clausen, the band's primary vocalist, with whom I managed make chats before their Brighton Pressure Point show last week.

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How's the tour been?

It's been great. Our first proper UK Tour, it's been so overwhelming, there have been so many big crowds, a lot of people.

You've been working on Parades for a while now. How does a commitment like that work practically? Do you have your own recording space?

Yeah, we've had our own studio since we did Tripper. Really, we've grown from a studio world. We spend more time in the studio than we spend playing live.

With regards to your new material, how have you gone about preparing your live show? With Parades, you have taken a more organic approach than Tripper. Has it been an easier record to take from the studio to the stage?

Well we built Parades up step by step, like a puzzle, but we’ve never got to play any of these songs live before. So when we prepare them, we have to restructure them. The record feels like a photograph, and we try and rebuild the music as something more simple, but with the same shapes. If we got lost in the process, we went back and looked at the photo. It was actually hard to tell when something was done, but it was actually pretty fun. This time we've been working with more composing musicians, more classically trained musicians. It's been nice working with people that really have these great ideas that fit with the style of the record.
Playing Tripper live...a lot of that came from the projections. It was a much more visual experience, so we had to deal with the films, and make music to suit them. We wanted to change that this time, to become a more physical experience.

You're music is very non-linear and expansive, with no conventional verse-chorus structure. I've seen the phrase 'post-pop' applied to your work...

It was in a review, yeah. We've also been called post-rock! We don’t feel that really applies to us.

There's a great attention to detail in your music, which seems more in line with classical composition that contemporary songwriting. How do you go about composing? Do you have any rules that you try and stick to?

Not really. We start out just going piece by piece. Something might start with us around a piano, and from there, we find something we like and build it up, getting people to come in, and work on the melodic structures. A lot of stuff we do is based not on one melody lines, but on a few. We do have lots of scoring, so we try and sort out how all these pieces fit together. We want to sound epic, but we don't want it to be two dimensional...or flat and grey. It's been a challenge, but a nice one.

It's been a long time in the making.

One and a half years. It is a long time. It's the longest we've worked on a project. It's definitely a long time to spend with the same songs. It's been annoying at some points, because it felt like these songs were talking back when we felt they we finished. We felt that...because we had this puzzle thing going on when we started, trying to build up songs from these small layers, then it could be hard to tell when a song was finished. But we found that sometimes when you had a bit of distance from a song, like standing outside the studio, having a cigarette, a coffee or whatever, and you were hearing it from three rooms away, it would then sound right.

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This idea of Parades working, in theory and in practice, as a puzzle, is certainly borne out by Efterklang's live show. At one point, the band, in full choral harmonic flight, come to a halt, standing frozen in position for a good minute. Perhaps the longest silence in the history of live music to not induce a single heckle, they come back, of course, piece by piece, swiftly and easily building into something where there are so many interesting sounds and phrases competing for your attention that it's almost overwhelming. Yes, it's potentially austere and overt, but the band, to their credit, temper this by injecting the show with character and humour. Decked out in sparkly shoes, short trousers and shirts, looking not unlike what Liberace may have dreamed up after a night on the meths, the band stamp and convulse unselfconsciously all over the tiny stage, violin bows at a face threatening height. Clausen himself engages constantly with the crowd, chatting and grinning in between bouts of thrashing his drum set up at the front of the stage.

This extra percussion certainly adds to the new material. Mirador in particular sounds like the previously mentioned marching band, its sprinkled pianos and weaving strings gaining poise and pulse in a live setting. It’s in these grander moments when Efterklang possess similarly euphoric qualities to the likes of Wolf Parade or Arcade Fire, bold and dramatic yet warm and inviting. Elsewhere, they display a great intuitiveness, the music slowing down and regressing to their composite parts in an effortless fashion. It’s a testament to the attention to detail in these compositions that the dynamic shifts sound as natural as they do. What with the chimes, rings and melodies, it’s also weirdly festive.

In light of this, material from Tripper perhaps suffers by comparison, not from a lack of quality, but because the more claustrophobic arrangements don’t move you as instantly as the newer songs. The pockets of sound and the nuances of the filtered beats of that record are harder to detect in performance, less dynamic than something like Cutting Ice To Snow. Still beautiful, but in a different, more introverted way.

LIVE VIDEO!



Efterklang - Step Aside


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You've mentioned the idea of it the record being approached conceptually as a puzzle. I've seen a video of the artwork being disassembled and reconstructed like a puzzle. This was an approach you decided on beforehand? How closely did you work with the people doing the artwork?

This was the first time we've been involved with the artists while doing the music. It was a rush, because they had this other project going on that they had to finish, but we just had to deal with it. We explained how we looked at the music, and how we felt it was structured. What we wanted was to create this otherworldly, very distinct world, something that you couldn't find anywhere else. I think they did a brilliant job. It was nice to see the finished image. It makes sense to us.

Your music is very cinematic, and lends itself well to visual accompaniment. The Mirador video for example...

That was done by a guy called UFEX. We're so used to working with other art forms that I don’t think we could make music without doing it (the videos). You're trying to build it bigger than you are.

Would you ever consider doing something like the Mirador video, but on a larger scale? Like a full audio-visual release as opposed to a CD?

We’ve been dreaming about it! We've wanted to do something like this for years, but things cost money, and take time. That would be nice, extremely nice. But when you've worked on a record for a year and a half, it's nice to let it stand on its own somehow. It feels like if we wanted to do a full audio-visual experience, we'd have had to have started it as an audio visual experience. I feel that we would have to collaborate with the other artists, so that it became a 50:50 thing. If we just made a piece of music and then put some visuals to it, your collaborators would be directed by you, whereas it would be preferable to do something together, entirely collaboratively.

It's quite an undertaking.

It is, and you have to have the right idea.

Collaboration is something that's clearly very important to Efterklang, and the way you work. Is there anyone i particular that, ideally, you'd like to work with?

Oh lot's of people. We meet new people everyday. Yesterday we were in a room with Akron/Family, and they're so sweet. Being in a band, you're meeting people all the time, and sometimes it's quite stressful, because you're thinking about all these possibilities available to you. It's the amazing thing about being a musician, to meet and work with other people. Music really is a universal language. You can achieve so much. With all these possibilities, like the internet, collaborate with a guy sitting in America. We've built the band up like this, recruiting people as we've gone along.

In terms of your influences, I read about this man called Moondog (pseudonym of blind American musician Louis Thomas Hardin, composer, inventor, helmet wearer) who you cited as an influence. What is it about him that appealed to you?

He's just fucking cool. We were amazed by his music.

Have you ever invented any instruments?

Not so much. We just try and use things we find for the purposes of making music, like a spring, or old tubes. We're more into using things we find, using raw sounds, to create music, if you could call it that! It's extremely interesting though.

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That’s it then. As they bring their show to a close, Efterklang exit through the crowd, looking, in their sparkly threads, like a group of prize fighters. It’s all part of the production and the performance of the ‘world’ of the record that makes the band and their music such an involving experience. Go on, invest some time in it, if only to hear what all the fuss about this ‘Neo Classical’ music is. It’s the new grime, I swear.

Parades is out now on The Leaf Label.

(above photo is courtesy of www.myspace.com/efterklang)

THE FIELD RECORDS ADVENT SPECIAL #1

You're an atheist. Or at least, you're not a devout theist. You're memories of Christmas are, most likely, not religiously based. The things you associate with Christmas are the things that you were treated to in your parents' house when you were between the ages of five and....fifteen? Maybe at a stretch. You remember the certain types of food, the anticipation, chocolate calendars and the last day of school as the parts that made up the sum.

Then you start feeling guilty. BBC News runs pieces with local Parish clerks decrying the loss of the true meaning of Christmas. The media as a whole in fact, goes into something of an overstimulated, reactionary frenzy, most often by gazing un-ironically over their own past festive experiences whilst pouring scorn upon the way you celebrate, you commercialised bastard. Every strand of tinsel that you put up is another betrayal. Just go and dig Jesus up and poke him in the eyes why don't you?

I certainly used to feel guilty, and quite jaded as a consequence. All the best things I associated with Christmas were things from my childhood, things that I, theoretically at least, had grown out of. The fact that some things felt different, and that other things didn't elicit the same excitement they once did made me feel sad, and old.

I could blame The Corporations for marketing Christmas more and more at children at the expense of there being any real point to the season beyond toys, but that would be fairly pointless. No, my malaise was rooted in the fact that, with those childish things swept by the wayside, Christmas was left to bear the blunt side of my atheism. It didn't take to it too well. If you find the ideas raised in The Bible a little hard to swallow, chances are the solemnity attached to the occasion by certain, organised sections of society is not going to appeal either. I can't celebrate Christmas like I did when I was eight. That would be weird. The sailors' outfit doesn't fit anymore, and besides, I feel pretty bad receiving gifts these days.

So how can I celebrate, merrily and guiltlessly!? The media (yes, them again) observe, muse, pontificate, critique and ultimately maul the PURE SHALLOWNESS OF IT ALL, the scrapping hordes at Topshop and Tesco, gouging and pinching in order to lap up every last drop of the experience. It's all fairly exaggerated, and anyone who runs around like a mad twat at Christmas is probably a bit unhinged anyway, but how can I not listen to TV!? It's been so good to me, you, us, all these years, with it's Noel Edmonds and it's Sam and Mark. It's hard to believe that there is any other way. Dowdy, black and white conformism or multi coloured soullessness, singing and swigging merrily on your journey to the fire. I end up hating Christmas simply because I'm being told that I can't celebrate it right.

But then you do some research. Turns out that the end of the year, according to the Gregorian Calendar, has always been a traditional time of celebration, with feasting, general revelry and in Saturnalian (December 17th) Rome, public nudity. The New Testament does not give an exact date as to Christ's birth. Furthermore, before December 25th became the popular sausage that it is now, Christ's birth was traditionally celebrated on March 25th, known as the Incarnation. So it could easily be argued that the Church simply co-opted society at large's yearly festivities as a means of making us feel bad.

That's pretty damning. I'm sure that at some, if not most Churches, the Christmas sermon makes a point of celebrating the message rather than the implied 'birth'. Also, what of it? So Christmas isn't inherently religious. Is the end of the Calendar year therefore worthy cause for merriment? Is the dominance of good times and good cheer celebratory, or placatory?

This is probably way over my head. The point remains that the revelation of Christmas as a time always intended for nonsense has made me a lot less guilty about enjoying the aesthetics and cosmetics of this time of year. And what are we atheists to truly enjoy if not the visually appealing nature and indulgences of the season? Festive lights are pretty, cranberry muffins, mince pies, brandy and mulled wine will always have a certain social appeal, and church choirs will always be almost impossibly moving, regardless of what they are singing.

Which is where we arrive at the point of this non-diatribe. The following MP3's are of Canterbury Cathedral's Choir, recorded last week at the annual Service. I felt these were the particular highlights of the evening, although the whole thing was pretty amazing, the place being lit, and heated, solely by candles. Turns out Canterbury Cathedral has pretty good acoustics too. It also turns out that you don't have to be religious to get a spiritual lift from this sort of thing.
The first one is the choir a capella, which, it turns out, is called an antiphon. The second features some great use of a violin, and the third is a short one of The Catanta Choir singing as they walked, in a fairly spooky, deathly slow procession, out of the Cathedral.

O Israel (antiphon)

The Choral Society

The Catanta Choir

And that, for me, is Christmas.

nice noise

You've obviously heard of My Bloody Valentine. Good band. One proper 'mazin album. Very much of a status now that wouldn't be ill referred to as revered. Impending, potentially soul crushingly disappointing reunion and Alan McGee connections notwithstanding, they have a fairly unblemished reputation, with Loveless standing as pretty much the high water mark for all things navel gazey and melodic. Such is the sheer, unapologetic melodiousness of said album, that playing music in a major key seems fairly redundant in it's wake.
As if to underscore said melodiousness, Athens based JapanCakes (yep) have covered the album in it's entirety. Out goes whammy pedal, in comes pedal steel. It's certainly more.....polite than the original, but in some places the style proves itself very adept at bringing to the fore the floaty-ness of the compositions.

LISTEN:

JapanCakes - Loomer



JapanCakes - Touched



Two decent examples I suppose.


POINT OF COMPARISON:


My Bloody Valentine - To Here Knows When



The difference being the NOISE. Neat little article about noise in music, and MBV's implementation of it, right here.

So does removing the subtleties and innovations of MBV's style render the covers irrelevant? Or is JapanCakes' interpretation an interesting new angle, showing that the unconventional sounds and production method of Loveless can be presented in a more musically more conventional format and arrangement and still be aurally worthwhile?

Whatever, it all sounds nice.

further to this...

...and because I'm on a bit of a Professsor Louie tip at the moment, have a gander here.



He just makes it look EASY. Actually makes me want to age about 40 years, just so's I can rant about stuff as convincingly as he does. I probably wouldn't be as eloquent, but y'know, whatevs.
Whoever filmed these videos is clearly getting mad props from me.

I strongly encourage you to go here and buy some Professor Louie tapes (tapes!). Not convinced? Shut your face and listen to this then.

professor louie - the walking dead



Art attack here and here.

Man I wanna move to New Yoik.

"the chick who sed it looks like an alien's vagina"

never underestimate the comic ability of your average YouTuber.

aaah. that's better.

of hibernation

I haven't updated this in over a month! Cripes!

This being a blog, actually writing on it is something I should probably do a lot more. Yeah? Yeah.

But what to say?

I was supposed to interview Jeffrey Lewis on his last UK tour. For various reasons, largely stemming from poor, poor time management skills, I didn't get to. Which is a shame of face melting proportions. He plays a mean show though, so go check him out through the usual sources. You know it makes sense.

So the purpose of this? Jeff Lewis' support act, who also happens to be Jeff Lewis' uncle, is called Professor Louie. He's a spoken word performer, who plays with a backing consisting of the aforementioned nephew and his brother, Jack. He talks, rhymes, coughs and wheezes, his words detailing/critiquing/lambasting the BIG STUFF, such as politics, societal decline, drugs, crime, love and yes indeed, life itself. Jack and Jeff lay down some super low key, ambient vibes, courtesy of some woodwind and extra subtle percussion . It's quite something.



That right there is the Prof performing 'The Walking Dead.' The song is on a two track, tour exclusive cd that this travelling folk-a-rama were selling, so maybe it's the most appropriate for our purposes here.
www.myspace.com/professorlouienyc
You know the drill.

Other news? I'm interviewing Efterklang next week. Gonna learn their secrets, and then plagiarize them hard.

Oh god these guys too. Unbelievable. They make all other music seem completely retarded.

BYEEEEEEEEEES

12.10.07

(the forum, tunbridge wells)


Getting there is the first hurdle. Miles upon miles of rural English country roads, thousands of arched tree's making for a menacing nocturnal canopy. Worth it though, for the respective sets from Adam Gnade's and Youthmovies', the former's dense narratives as bewitching as ever, and the latter pulverising with their swollen, convoluted epics.
Adam has a new record out soon, called Palaces/Whidbey Island. Youthmovies are releasing their first LP, Good Nature, in the new year. The two of them have just released a collaborative EP, the super lush Honey Slides, and they have been on a joint tour ostensibly to promote said CD. I interviewed Adam after his set on Friday night, and found him to be an interesting and engaging kind of guy. He even shows us a pile of ravaged books he picked up earlier in the day, including one he bought for Andrew from Youthmovies, which is well sweet. The things below are everything else that was said.

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So how's the tour been going to this point?

It's been pretty good so far. We've had a couple of shows that were really weird or bad, that we shouldn't have done, shows that were just ridiculous.

How so?

We played at this one venue, in a small town where no one lives I guess. We get to the venue and it's like this auditorium, this huge fucking venue, and they have a smoke machine already going, and this huge lighting set up. We go backstage, and it's this massive area just for us, with piles of booze. They gave us a lot of money to play and 5 people showed up. And they were there just to watch a movie that was playing downstairs. So we went crazy and turned it into a weird New Year's Eve party. We found all these balloons and covered the stage with them and a bunch of toilet paper. It was just fucking weird. We sang happy birthday, and we were lying to everyone...

It was no-one's birthday was it.

No! We lied to everyone, said the guy from Jonquil had had a baby. It was great.

How are you finding the English audiences? With the exception of the small ones?

Yeah, they've been really good so far. Well, we played Scotland and that wasn't so good. I don't think Scotland like me very much. but English audiences so far have been pretty good.

You're playing a song with Youthmovies later...?

Yeah, we'll be finishing the set with Honey Slides, a dance song. We did it last night in Kingston, and we all got really fucked up. I ended up climbing onto the barrier, and security guards were grabbing me, and I fell into the audience (laughs), and then Andrew (Mears, Youthmovies singer) jumped into the audience. I think some girl broke her arm. Graham from Youthmovies did a flip, and landed on her. He's a killer.

Will he be busting any of that out tonight?

The works! The lot. Even though he feels really bad.

So the Youthmovies EP, who initiated that?

I have NO idea. We toured last year and Drowned In Sound set it up. We didn't know each other, but just kind of got together, and (Youthmovies' guitarist) Al came up with the idea. We had the day off, so we recorded two songs really fast, and it was gonna be a 7", and then for whatever reason it ended up being a 5 song record. I recorded the other songs at my house.

How did you find that way of working? Writing and recording words for music you couldn't hear?

Yeah, it's weird. I recorded three sets of lyrics and...it's a lot more freeform than the two songs we recorded together.

It works really well, given that you didn't know each other before. It seems like a good match.

It could have been horrible. I mean I was really worried, 'cos the chances of us getting along as well as we did were pretty slim

It seems a lot more direct than anything you or they have ever done.

Yeah, the two tracks we did in the studio are like, some of my favourite stuff that we've ever done. They have a lot of immediacy...ah it feels really bad to say shit about your own songs. They feel a lot more natural, and it just seems like those two songs work really well. The other ones are really cool but I think those two we did together...maybe because we were locked in a van for two weeks together and we just bonded really well (laughs).

I really like the third song, "We Walk Unknowing In The Cross Hairs".

Oh yeah. I haven't heard the record yet. I mean, I've heard the rough mixes and stuff, but I just got over here and haven't had a chance to listen to it. It feels bad listening to it in front of other people, like, "Come on, let's listen to our record! We rock!"

Yeah, it's kind of something you want to do on your own.

Oh yeah (laughs).

I wanted to talk about your writing. You've said about your lyrics, that they come from prose, not spoken word or poetry. Who influences you as an author?

Oh man. That's tough. Uh, I read a lot. I like Saul Bellow a lot, especially "The Adventures Of Augie March" and Steinbeck, just 'cos I grew up on the West Coast, so that's almost a cultural thing. Hemingway too, he's pretty good. I've been reading Hemingway for years, and it finally clicked in with me like how good he is.

What is it about Hemingway that you like?

It's just...he knows what not to say. It's kind of like...his sentences are really sparse, but it's more than that. He'll describe something, like this wall or something, but the things he leaves out are the things he knows people are gonna fill in. Maybe that's like a cultural thing, where he knows Americans will fill that in and so on. I don't if that's actually how he worked, but he'll describe a setting in a way that makes your brain do all the work, and you have this five word sentence about this place that he's at and it's vivid as hell, y'know, it's really clear. He kind of has this reputation as being a thug, but I think he's a lot smarter than people thought.
I don't think I've ever read a modern author, not that they're bad. There's just so much stuff out there. Going to that book store was amazing. There was all this Kipling and Dickens and Twain and stuff, and it would take me my entire life to read it all, and it's all a lot better than I know a lot of contemporary stuff is.

Have you been indulging in more English Literature while you've been over here?

(pause) No (laughs). I didn't bring any books. Last time I didn't read at all 'cos we were raising hell the entire time, but we've been here for so long that eveyone's starting to acquire their old hobbies back. And I've been freaking out, reading the NME, or the Gideon Bible in the hotel rooms.

Whoa. That's a really unholy mixture. What are your opinions on the NME?

Oh...so much hype y'know? Like, I like the fact that there's a lot of positive stuff, because I have a hard time dealing with criticism, where writers think they have to say something positive and negative to have a valid opinion. But the NME is kind of ultra positive. I think it's too much.

It's positive perhaps about the wrong things, or positive about things for the wrong reasons. ...like always claiming something defines something.

Like Klaxons, the voice of a generation. Did you see that issue with them in all their crazy make up?

No. Sadly that issue was shrinkwrapped, which makes my practice of reading it in the shop a bit problematic.

That's the way to do it. I feel bad too, 'cos they have like 10 bands in it, two stories on Klaxons, a little blurb on Klaxons, on the back cover will be Klaxons. It's kinda cool, 'cos a lot of our friends in the Youthmovies circle are doing well with the NME, like Foals. They've been covering them a lot lately but, fuck man...

It's what they ascribe to the music, that it is something beyond what it is, beyond being a piece of music, like everything is a huge cultural event.

It's gonna change everything! Y'know, music's amazing and it gives you a lot of openings, but in the end, art is so secondary to so many other things, like having actual experiences in the world, having human interactions. I kind of wish it was back like how it was with Shakespeare, when he would write about the actors coming to the city, and they would be considered scum. People wouldn't be like, "Oh what does the artist have to say about politics! What does the artist have to say about the grand cultural scheme!" I mean, fuck, it's just a song.

Back to the lyrical thing, I read that your prose is never fiction, that it's all based on real experiences. Does that apply to the novels you have coming out?

Yeah, they're all... well there's a lot of stuff that I don't really want to admit is real, but I can't really not write non-fiction, 'cos there's so many good things to say about things that have actually happened.
I wrote a science fiction novel! Last summer, when I was really bored and living in the south..the southern united states man, it's so hot, and I didn't have anything to do but sit around waiting for my first tour to start, so I wrote this psychedelic science fiction novel. It was so bad.

So it won't be seeing a commercial release?

Oh I burned it (I laugh, like a fool). I've been writing books since I was really young and that's kind of what I've done, burned every manuscript until I've felt like it was ready. So the book that's coming out at Christmas, I felt that was the first one that was ok.

You sound like quite a perfectionist...

Oh I don't know about that, I just don't want any shit to come out.

So the science fiction novel. Shall we go there?

(laughs) It was like x-rated, psychedelic, surrealistic...it was just horrible.

It sounds like Scientology, like those novels...

Like Dianetics?

(cue a tangent about Scientology, specifically it's geographical proximity to our current location i.e. the worldwide centre of it being just down the road. This has been deleted for reasons of narrative cohesion, and for the fact that THEY MIGHT BE READING THIS.)

Yeah, I'm totally obsessed with cult religions, my Mum was in one. Well kind of a cult religion, not as crazy as Scientology.

What was it called?

The 7th Day Adventists. It's like a new religion that came out in 50's, with all this bullshit connected to aliens. Like vaguely Mormonist things, but not polygamy, cos that would be kind of cool. I just find cult religions so interesting. There are so many different sects, like so many that people don't know about. There's this part of the Catholic church called the Polmarian's (sic?). It's where everything is just really strict and puritanical...this isn't a really good story 'cos I can't remember any of the details.

That's ok, this is like a whole other conversation that we could theorise on for hours and hours. Back to the novels, do they continue the themes and characters from the last record?

Yeah definitely, all the characters from the records...it's almost not cool to call them characters cos they're barely referred to, they're characters as much as any song has characters, names, people and stuff like that...but a lot of the stories and characters are continued. A lot of songs came from prose stories. Some of those songs are like...a paragraph of prose story and then there's like 15 more pages about that character. It's all about the same universal characters and themes, and things that I kind of want to say.

What do you want to achieve as a writer of prose? Where do you see this going?

That's a good question. I guess I just want to do something I'm proud of and ...with the book, create something I feel that stands on its own that I really believe in, even if nobody reads it ever again. I don't think I've ever done anything that I'm completely 100% proud of that I can sit on the shelf and say, "that's a permanent thing," and er, that's kind of the main thing. I grew up being incredibly...not "inspired by," 'cos that's a cheesy thing, but a lot of the stuff I read when I was a kid...I guess this is pretty common, like everybody does this...it kind of kept me alive, kept me going. Reading certain people helped pull me through, and I feel it would be a good thing to make people feel a little less alone.
Certain things that I've experienced have made me feel that...maybe I'm not as a crazy as I seem to think, that there's other people doing things like this. I've always wanted to do what my heroes did for me.
A lot of people I know have a hard time with life. I mean, I've had a rough go of it, not because my life is hard but because I've got bad wiring in my brain or whatever, and there were certain things that kept me from not killing myself, or on the other side of things, not taking a 9 to 5 job that would crush my spirit. It's just about having a reason to carry on, and even if you can do that for one person then that's a noble thing.

That's a wonderful thing to aspire to. With the new record, you seem to have consciously moved away from the starker, barer sound of the last record. Was there any event that presaged that?

Yeah, I've always done these records for a group of friends, 'cos I didn't think anyone else would really give a shit. I did Run, Hide, Retreat, Surrender because I was in a really dark place and I really felt that this was the end, like I was slipping into some kind of...I don't know. I needed to do something....to not let go. I tried anti-depressants, partying really hard, traveling all over the country...and all these different things, and just nothing was working and I was getting sadder and sadder and I didn't know why. There was no reason whatsoever, I had an ok life, but I was getting really bad, so I decided if I could do this record about all this stuff that maybe I could heal from it a little bit, and for the first time in my life...I mean I've never been happy, I've never, ever been happy...but I've found a place where I can be. I mean, I keep slipping back into it, like every few months, something just pisses me off and I get really hopeless again, but it's not as bad as it used to be. Like what we were talking about earlier, I wanted to do stuff that was a little more positive to tell people that things aren't always gonna be that bad. All the new songs are like pep talks for people that I knew that weren't doing so well. For whatever reason I have friends and people around me that really have a hard time, and it's really tough to see them deal with life so badly, so all of the songs on Palaces are pep talks, to try to help...I don't know if it even articulates that way, 'cos it's so personal that it might not seem like it is, but that's the way it is.

Would you say they were easier to write and record than Run, Hide, Retreat, Surrender?

It was completely natural. It felt like the thing that I needed to be doing. But the last record was like improv. We recorded it in a week or something, and we were all really, really drunk and unhappy. I didn't play any music on it, I was too fucked up, and I was just like "play this!" and we tried to work it out. But these songs actually feel good to play. I can't listen to Run, Hide, Retreat, Surrender, I can't play any of those songs live. It just feels like listening to my own requiem or something (laughs). If that's the right word.

So what are your plans post-Palaces? Where's the rest of your year headed?

Well we've got a couple of weeks left on this tour. Me and one of the guys from the band Album Leaf were talking about doing a solo tour of California, but that'll probably be it for a while. I have another book that I want to write. I'm trying to do one a year for the publisher that I have. So I'll probably do that twelve hours a day for the next year, and that's pretty much it for now.

Do you see music as a finite thing? Do you see yourself continuing more as a writer/author?

Yeah, that'll be the thing I always fall back on. I mean, from the purely financial side of like feeding myself, it probably works better and has more of a shelf life, and I've been doing it for a long time. I've kind of had the feeling all along that when I make a record that I really like I'll probably stop, cos I think the style I do, the talking songs, like I've never felt that it's right. I just think that as soon as I figure out my shit and record a record that is completely done, I'll probably finish it. I'll probably keep playing it for myself, but not taking up so much of my fucking life! (laughs). I've been on tour all year man. It can be wearing.
You can call it fiction, but that's my real true love, trying to come up with something as good as one of the people that I really love. I mean, I like the book I've got coming out but it's not even near ready. I kind of look forward to being old and finally figuring out my shit. I mean, Henry Miller lived forever, and he wrote some amazing stuff in his twilight years, and I kind of like that idea. I mean, I never thought I'd live as long as I have, I always figured I'd be dead by 20 or something (laughs). Sometimes things are really shitty and hard but I think I'll live as long as my health sustains me. I like that a lot, and I want to be writing books for the rest of my life.

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And that's that. Adam also contributed a great performance of his song "We Live Nowhere, And Know No-one," to this little project-a-rama, the original of which is available on his mini album Shout The Rafters Down! which was released last year as a digital download by Drowned In Sound. Listen to it, in all it's brittle glory, there.


adam gnade - we live nowhere and know no-one (@ tunbridge wells forum).mp3


There'll be a review of the show at some point I guess, probably on Maps Magazine. Want to see some pictures? Course you do. HERE.

I also managed to get my sticky mitts on a copy of the new Adam Gnade/David Christian record. More info on that, and probably details about how to buy it from Bad Drone Media. I'll review it sometime, should that be of interest to anyone, but not for a while, cos I want to live with it for a bit, rather than blahhing out thoughts on it without due consideration. It sounds like something that deserves real attention. It looks proper lovely as well.

That's all for now. G'nite.