Moon Room TV

Jon Kelly from our good friends and local music champions The Moon Room Club has shared this great

OK – so ‘Metal’ Steve Ellis might have a slightly mis-leading moniker as, although he has an (un)healthy passion for massive guitar noise he has also looked after the studio and live audio duties for some of the regions most prestigious bands regardless of music genre. After knowing Steve for around 15 years I thought it was time I caught up with him at his studio to see what’s been keeping his busy all these years.

Tell us a bit about you and your music journey.

Playing guitar got me into this mess that is now my life! The next step was buying a drum machine and borrowing a friend’s 4 track cassette recorder ( he got sick of me turning up every other day to record my new riffs)

I then saw an advert in the free making music magazine ( is this still in print?) & went over to Hull for a week to do a recording course – that was it, I was hooked – I now had a career direction.

I was working in a crappy dead end job & got fired went back to college & studied music. I did a Btec in pop music, HND in music Tech & 2 more years Degree top up. During this time I worked the live circuit to pay my way, gained experience & started buying recording equipment. I got a break engineering at the Leopard & met Matt Elliss (Axis) through engineering Kiosk ( Evo later became guitarist for Tiny Dancers) – he gave me some great advice & set me off in the right direction.

Is it just studio work you do now, or are you still doing live engineering?

I still do both & I’m fortunate enough to be asked by bands to go out & take control of their show. On the live front I get out with Alvarez Kings & The Hosts, Elephant Keys who are all great live bands with quality songs. I have done the last 3 Babybird tours (remember them)? & did Tiny Dancers for nearly 3 years when they were signed to Parlophone. I Also got a call from Pete to do the 2008 Euro tour with Black Spiders which was great fun. I can still be seen doing stuff at the Leopard & did the Boardwalk before the doors closed!!

The Studio recording tend to come from word of mouth, but recently It’s come from my previous body of work – which makes me think I must be doing something right.

Last year I got offered some work on the Channel 4 documentary The DJ set which lasted nearly a month. I was doing the live sound during the rehearsals, & I recorded & mixed one of the gig perfomances at Dingwalls, this opened my eyes to other avenues of work. This enabled me to buy a mobile recording service, I can now offer 16 channels of mulit- track of location recording ( & can be expanded to 24 if desired), this could be in a venue or anyspace that has a 13amp socket!

Tell us about the studio and what you see as it strengths over other smaller and home studios…

Hmm where do I start? I would like to think my recording space is band friendly & has a laid back atmosphere.

I record in Pro Tools on a Mac through a nice selection of modern-meets-vintage gear. I have a wide variety of the equipment the bands are free to use, & they always love the option to try out different amps / speakers / pedals when they are in the creative zone. The studio has one live room & the control room which works well for the majority of the music I record. Sometimes I would love to have a little more space, but this would raise my overheads & the cost then would ultimately be passed onto the artist. I try to keep my rates down & hope everyone takes away a good quality product for a reasonable price.

Why should people use you as an engineer?

Because I’m honest with people & always strive to achieve a high standard of work. I’m in this game for the long haul, so I feel people can tell when an engineer is sincere & relistic with time & budget restraints. There is no point trying to pull a fast one, word will eventually get around – I work on my reputation.

What are your proudest moments (studio work and live work)

The only goal I ever set was to improve, and with this the goal post widened.
In the studio I think some of my earliest recordings to get replicated to CD was satisfying ( J*R, Bug, PSP all total D.I.Y ethos)

It was also nice to get the seal of aproval from a label and Undergroove booked me for the debut 3 Stages of Pain CD ( great feeling when the cheque arrived) Any of my recording to get pressed to Vinyl is a wonderfull feeling – nothing better to have a record in your hands. MP3′s leave me pretty empty, it typifies todays throw away culture – but you have to move with the times.

On the live front I did some great festivals with Tiny Dancers & loved the life tour support enabled ( things have since crashed back to earth hahaha), I think we did near to 20 festivals during the short time the band were together. I really enjoyed T in the Park, The John Peel stage at Glastonbury ( I got a massive thumbs up from John Leckie who produced the album) Brixton Academy,The Key Club in LA, Paradiso in Asterdam & my fave venue King Tuts up in Glasgow who really know how look after the bands. But without a doubt I would say doing Birmingham NEC with The Hosts when they supported Paul Weller, I was so nervous doing the sound on the 1st night to 7000 people (not a bad mini tour for an unsigned band – but Tom has an amazing voice, go check them out)

So what are you up to now and what’s next?

I recently completed work on the 2nd album for Leeds based ‘Deal With It’ that has come out on the dutch label Reflections records. This is the 3rd release I’ve done with the band, so we know to get the best out of each other. Sheffield based grazes have a 7” Ep which is a co release between holy Roar & another label. The Lines In Sand recording just needs to get the all clear from Alex & Adam, then we can put this to bed. It sounds great in my opinion & has been a real labour of love – hopefully the scenesters at Inhaler will love it just as much. (scenesters, ha! – ED) A 6 track EP for Steel Trees is now complete, this recording ( done over 2 quick sessions) has a real energy & shows the guys have a wonderful dynamic vibe going on.

I also hooked up with Goatleaf who I did live sound for many moons ago, they reformed & blasted out a 9 track album, so if you like a bit of Kyuss/ Fu Manchoo ( Dave makes fuzz pedals so check out his DAM website @ http://www.stompboxes.co.uk/ ). I did a 3 song session with Skeletons and mixed 3 songs from another studio for them – I hope the songs eventually see the light of day. Sessions coming up include Girl Spit who always entertain, they plan to put together an albums worth of material, so it will be good to work with Thom & Rob again, A great duo called Hot soles from rotherham, Black Lamps from Barnsley who feature graphic novelist dean Ormston & thats about it off the top of my head………………..

So, we began bouncing ideas off each other and eventually we needed a bass player, so my ex girlfriend filled in for a year or so and we made a record (Community Exploitation) right as she was leaving to go study in Mexico. After she left we jammed with a handful of bass players and played some shows, but nothing really worked out or materialized until we found ourselves without a bass player again. We moved back to Chapel Hill NC and met Lee Shaw in a local bar. We struck up a conversation about music and he mentioned he played bass, so we asked him what he was listening to and he said “Mostly Sebadoh.” We knew we’d found the right guy when he showed up at practice a few days later and could already play the songs better than anyone else we’d played with. The rest is history…

Q2: You’re new album ‘Frontier Justice’ has just been released and I must say it has not left my ears since I got hold of it. Although it still has much of the signature sound of an Embarrassing Fruits release,  it also seems at times to be a full on rock record with a more rounded and dare I say ‘grown up’ sound than the bands previous output. Did you consciously decide to make any definite changes prior to the recording or was it all a happy, fortunate accident?

There was a conscious feeling of doing something that we could really be proud of and taking our time with this record (Oddly enough we tracked and mixed the thing in only 4 days!). Lee was beginning to get the itch to write more songs and incorporate those into the band’s repertoire instead of me always being the principal songwriter in the band. We took some older songs he had recorded on his own and updated them for our sound, and additionally he wrote some brand new ones. I had some new and some old songs…we had a record. We did it at Jerry Kee’s studio out in Mebane, NC and it was just a really natural, no pressure situation where we could get stuff down. Our sound probably has a more “grown up” feel because we are all growing up and realizing what it means to be adults who have jobs and yet have a creative tendency. It’s pretty hard and I think that comes out in a lot of the material on the record – “What am I doing with my life?” etc.

Q3: Jerry Kee has a long and impressive history when it comes to recording local bands, his work with bands such as Superchunk,  Small 23 and Polvo has gone on to be the stuff of legend. How was it working with Jerry, and what was it about him that led you to record the album at Duck Kee?

Jerry seems to take everything in stride; he’s like this undiscovered gentle genius type of guy. No ego and just really really easy to work with…and AFFORDABLE! Working at his home studio allowed us to record to 2″ tape, which we’d never been able to do before and I think that really benefits the sound of the record. It has this really warm, no frills kinda sound which is what we were going for with this one. Plus, we’d heard good things from a number of bands in the area about working with him. I came into my own listening to a lot of the very records he had done over the years, so it was just a perfect situation for us. Cor Crane Secret by Polvo is one of the best records to come out of NC period.

Q4: The album is out on the consistently good and prolific Chapel Hill label, Trekky Records.  You seem to have an excellent relationship with the folks there, and they always appear to work really hard for the bands on their roster. With bands like Lost in the Trees, The Love Language and Megafaun now gaining significant national press do you feel the time is right for more bands from your area to strike out and get the wider recognition they deserve?

I think the time is definitely right for our scene here in the Triangle. There are so many good, ambitious bands, too many to name. To top it off, there are a lot of people who work really hard to sustain live local music in this area, from awesome club owners who help bands get their start, to local writers, promoters and fans who have helped organize some great festivals (Troika, Hopscotch, Trk Fest, etc). It’s neat to see a lot of bands really going for it, and I feel like in general, musicians are getting back the effort they put into it for once. Our label are just a group of friends and they have been really selfless when it comes to the music they promote and help foster. We are lucky to work with people who believe in what we are doing and have supported us for so long. And sometimes we even have a little cash to put out a record every once and a while

Q5: So what are the plans for the band and what do you have planned for the remainder of 2010 and the forthcoming new year?

We have plans to keep pushing our new record “Frontier Justice”. Right now we’re doing focused weekend or 3-4 day stints on the east coast, but I feel like a tour could possibly be in the works sometime in the Spring. We are gonna continue to release new music here and there on compilations and maybe a 7″ so look out for that stuff! Mostly just keep having fun.

Andy Maddison

Embarrassing Fruits – “Vanishing Frontier” from Trekky Records on Vimeo.

The irrepressible Andy Maddison grabs the living legend that is Eric bachmann for a chat about his solo work, cover versions and moving to Europe…

AM: Hi Eric, you are currently putting together ‘Reservoir Songs Volume II’; a follow up to the original 2002 album of covers. Was it your idea to revisit this? how did it come about?

EB: All of these cover songs are songs that we have performed on tour at some point. After a while, enough folks request that you release some version of the song. Then the Catholic school upbringing I had begins to instill guilt and I feel the need to appease these nice people. It’s also rewarding to make a recording that you are less connected to as a writer. You don’t have to concern yourself too much with the songwriting quality and what the lyrics are bringing into the universe because that’s not your problem. And if you felt compelled to cover a song then it’s likely that releasing these great songs isn’t any form of pollution, hopefully.

Eric Bachmann

The last Crooked Fingers album ‘Forfeit / Fortune’ was a self released affair, why was this? Did you feel you were unsatisfied with the deal you were getting from the labels you had been working with in the past? Was it hard work to get everything off the ground?

I had never put out my own record. I thought it would be a worthy challenge and wanted to give it a try. I would do it again, although it’s nice to be a part of a family. The hardest part for me is that the amount of time it takes to run the label eats up songwriting and recording time. Running a label is also a very social thing. Talk, talk, talk. I am an introverted pansyman.

And as far as any of the labels I have been on in the past: I think Merge, Warm and Saddle Creek are great and I would work with any of them again, which I most likely will. In Europe I was on Fargo for one record. They were cool people as well. I think Houston Party in Spain released Red Devil Dawn, too. Other folks were doing this for me, though, so things get lost in the shuffle. I’m lucky in that Crooked Fingers has never been screwed over by any record labels or managers or anything, really.

‘Forfeit / Fortune’ seemed to herald a return to a very ‘full band’ sound for you, was this a conscious effort in the writing or just the way it turned out? Will future Crooked Fingers output feature the same approach?

Forfeit/Fortune was really a musical house cleaning. Eight of those songs were out takes from previous records I had recorded. I was originally going to release a rarities, out takes and B-sides record with those songs, but they were too well put together to present that way, so I decided to re-record everything and make a proper album with them. In hindsight, I think the record sounds a bit bizarre because there are all these really good songs on there that don’t really fit together conceptually. Maybe I should have just done 12 singles over the course of the year or something. Or maybe it was the right thing to do because it’s done and those songs have a home; even if that home is an orphanage of sorts.

Where are you currently residing and why? You have spent time living in Asheville, Chapel Hill and Seattle – the last place I have you down for is Denver? Do you get ‘itchy feet’? Some of those places are thousands of miles apart – it must cost you a fortune in removal bills!

Well, I don’t own anything except for my bicycle, my guitars, my amps and my pedals; so everything I own can fit in my car. Right now I’m in Athens, GA. I like to move because I want to see and experience as much as I can before I die. If I didn’t move a lot it would feel a bit like going to an amusement park, paying full price, then not riding every ride. I’d feel ripped off or something.

Eric Bachmann

With the slew of reunions by bands such as Polvo and Pavement I have no doubt that there have been offers on the table for an Archers of Loaf tour? Are you ever tempted to dig out the electric guitar and play the hot sweaty clubs again? Is it something that you would ever seriously consider, and do you have much (or any) contact with Matt Gentling, Mark Price and Eric Johnson?

I play electric guitar in hot sweaty clubs now, too. The only difference is that more females are in attendance. And perhaps I lose a bit less hearing during a Crooked Fingers show.

But the Archers would consider it. It was 12 years ago since we last played together and logistically it would be hard for a few band members to get out of work as they have real jobs and such. But I never say never about these kinds of things. It’s highly unlikely, but I don’t think it’s an impossibility.

And I saw Matt yesterday. I bought a tent from him and he’s letting me borrow an amp. I haven’t seen Mark or Eric in a while.

Where do you see Eric Bachmann 5 years from now? Do you plan to continue with Crooked Fingers or can we expect to see more releases like the stripped down solo release ‘To the Races’?

I can’t see exactly where I’ll be, of course, but Crooked Fingers is feeling pretty strong now. I don’t know how to do anything else so I’m sure I’ll be pulling some excuse of a living out of music then, too, I suspect…

You have been seriously neglecting us over in the UK of late, any plans to come over here anytime soon?

I want to! I’d like to move to Europe and give it a serious round of touring for a few years. I’ve worked that angle here in the States for years and I feel like I’ve never really had the opportunity to build her up in Europe like I have in the US. Can you get me and my girlfriend EU visas?

Andy Maddison

Crooked Fingers – Let’s Not Pretend (To Be New Men)

Archers of Loaf – Might

Lemuria

Lemuria are from Buffalo, New York and have been a well respected member of the US indie-rock scene since 2004. Andy Maddison (who else?) caught up with drummer Alex Kerns to chat about the latest full length, ‘Get Better’, and life on the road…

Myspace: www.myspace.com/lemuria

Official site: http://www.lemuriapop.com/

AM: You are one of those bands that is forever out on tour, describe your typical mode of transport, accommodation whilst on the road and more importantly how you all manage to not kill each other whilst living in such close proximity for extended periods of time.

AK: We tour a lot, but then again…there are some bands that tour about 10 months of the year…so compared to those bands, we don’t tour nearly as much.  But yes, still a great amount!  We travel around in our dodge van.  It’s name is Gary Gas Hands.  Ever since we bought the vehicle, after you drive it the steering wheel makes your hands smell like gasoline.  Its a very comfortable van though…I was napping in it earlier.  We’re a trio, so we fit pretty well inside it.  Sometimes we feel like we’re going to kill each other…but at the same time we all are great friends, and that’s just inevitable when you’re in a van together and you’re constantly having to compromise your decisions every day. We always get over whatever little bickering match we have.

AM: Nobody can ever deny that you have all put the work in, do you ever see a time when you will be able to make a living from the band or at least gain wider recognition from the more mainstream areas of the media? Or do you feel that this door is currently closed to your particular type of music.

AK: I don’t really think the door is closed.  It’s a touchy subject because a lot of people consider bands who start getting more recognized and start making more money to be “sellouts”.  I don’t really think that’s exactly how it is.  Some bands just end up gaining a larger audience and start selling more records and getting paid more at shows because they have been doing the band for a long time and are putting out music that pleases peoples ears.  That isn’t a crime.  Our plan as a band is to keep writing the music that we love, and continue to express ourselves the way we always have.  If more people start listening to us, great!  If we don’t have to have jobs back home and have more time to write more music and tour more, incredible!  We’re not going to shamelessly exploit ourselves to reach a level of accessibility to mainstream media, but people are people and I don’t care if you’re a punk, hippie, or an accountant from Iowa…if you like our music then I’m happy that you’re getting something out of it.

AM: Comparisons are often drawn between yourselves and bands such as The Breeders, Superchunk or Belly. Are these bands that you feel close too musically? What and who influences your sound?

AK: Superchunk is definitely a big influence, and we also like The Breeders, Pixies, Sebadoh, Lemonheads, etc.  I’ve never really listened to Belly, but now that you bring them up I’ll check them out.  That name sounds familiar.  These bands not only influence our sound, but they’re great representations of bands not having to act like rockstars on stage and they just get to be themselves and it’s refreshing.  I’m generally turned off by bands that try to “work the crowd”.  I just like to see some genuine characters up there.

AM: You have been over and toured the UK, and your current album ‘Get Better’ is out over here on Kingston up on Thames label Banquet Records. How did you hook up with Banquet and are there any plans for you to return to the UK?

AK: Mike Park at Asian Man Records had contacted them about releasing the album, because they had released some other Asian Man releases prior to ours.  It worked out very well for us because we had the opportunity to come back and play a handful of shows with Dave House who is such a great musician and person that we all immediately felt close to.  I’m really happy about the people we’ve met through this band…it’s pretty magical how many good friends we’ve made through music.

AM: With you being out on the road so much, you must come across some bands that are both awful and amazing. Who would you recommend that we check out?

AK: Tin Armor, The Arteries, Bangers, The Marked Men, Orphan Choir, Gordon Gano’s Army, Delay, and so many more.  I could go on and on…

AM: Finally, what is the plan for Lemuria? What will you be doing for the remainder of 2010?

AK: We just started our tour, and we’re out for pretty much the whole summer touring the US.  We’ll be recording a new full length this summer with J. Robbins in Baltimore.  Bridge 9 Records is going to release it, so we’re very excited about that!  This fall we’ll probably just take it easy and play some weekend shows and wait for the album to be pressed.  We really need to come back to the UK soon though!

Andy Maddison

www.inhalerrecords.co.uk

Andy Maddison caught up with Cheap Girls ahead of their split release with Yorkshire’s Above Them….

AM: For those not familiar with Cheap Girls could you tell us a little about the band, your sound and what it is like in your home town of Lansing, Michigan?

CG: Our sound is simple. Mid-tempo pop songs with loud guitars. The line up is brothers Ian and Ben Graham and myself Adam Aymor. Our home town is one of those towns where it can be difficult to have shows and a scene that stays around all the time. The city itself isn’t very big and most people live in the suburbs outside it growing up. There are lots of bands, but not very many of them tour, that’s why it’s easy to wear yourself thin if you only play in town. But it has been great for touring bands, people do come out and support in Lansing.

You came over to the UK recently to play a series of shows, was it your first trip to the UK and how did it go? Also are you planning to return any time soon?

It was our first time ever in the UK as a band. It was the best time ever, We did about a twelve day tour with Chillerton. Tim from You, Me and the Atom Bomb set it all up for everyone and Tom from Attack Vipers drove us all around. We are planning on being back in September or November time I think with Bomb the Music Industry. Trying to get that set up right now.

Cheap Girls

You have a split 7″ single coming out soon with West Yorkshires Above Them, how did that come about?

Above Them played a few of the shows in the north UK when we were over there. They were great and then we saw each other again at Fest 8 in Florida. I believe we started talking about it then and started getting new songs together since then.

You were recently named as one of the top ’100 bands you need to know’ by US magazine Alternative Press – do you feel that musical tastes are changing over there in favour of bands like yourselves?

I personally have never really kept up with that specific magazine, but I have noticed that they are getting a little more diverse in the bands that they do stories on and such. Either way, we are happy and thankful to be put on the list.

What does the rest of 2010 hold for Cheap girls?

Lots of touring. We head down to Rad Fest in Wilmington, NC in May. Then we head to Chicago for the Windy City Sound Clash where we begin a US west coast tour with the Menzingers. Some more things are on the agenda as well including Europe/ UK w/ Bomb the Music Industry as i mentioned before. Working on new songs when were home. There are a couple of releases up in the air on release date and if they are happening or not but mainly we are just focused on the next full length LP.

DbR readers are always on the look out for good new music, are there any bands that you have played with that you can recommend they check out?

New Creases, Tin Armor, Spraynard, Lemuria, Little Lungs, Failures’ Union, Glossary, Iron Chic, Kudrow, The Measure, Ninja Gun, Shellshag, Magrudergrind, Two Hand Fools and Cavalcade. Among many, but those are some in my head right now.

Cheap Girls on MySpace

Photo credit: Matthew Yake

Less than a year after their acclaimed, dark triumph The Knot, Baltimore’s Wye Oak offer My Neighbor/My Creator, a vibrant EP that brims with melody and creative detours over five new recordings.

Collaborating with outside producers for the first time, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack’s four new songs feel loose and direct, from the tumbling opener “My Neighbor” to the propulsive “Emmylou.” “My Creator” and “I Hope You Die” begin like ballads but soon reveal unexpected layers of saxophone and percussion over Wasner’s cascading vocals. Chris and Mickey Freeland, brothers with ties to everything from Oxes’ math-rock explorations … [read more]to Baltimore’s indie hip-hop scene, helmed the new EP’s recordings in their own Beat Babies studio, and they bring new textures to Wye Oak’s ever-expanding sound. There’s a heavier reliance on keyboards, culminating in Mickey’s own stunning remix of The Knot’s “That I Do” which must be heard to be believed.

“I hope you die” from My Neightbour / My Creator

AM: You’re on a pretty extensive tour at the moment, taking in much of the US – is this the largest string of dates that you have undertaken as a band so far?

WO: Nah, this is probably the third or fourth US tour that we’ve done in the past couple of years that has hovered around 8 or 9 weeks. We’re always trying to tour as much as we possibly can.

You must be pretty pleased with the way that things are going for Wye Oak at the moment? Did you ever imagine that the band would achieve what it has when you first began to play together?

Andy and I both try to be very careful to have grounded, realistic expectations about our band and our futures. We’re extremely pleased and grateful that some people have taken to the music that we make, but we don’t have any desires more complicated than simply being able to continue to make music we’re excited about and share it with anyone interested in listening. Honestly, I have several moments every single day when I sit back and marvel at what we’ve been able to do with our lives so far. We’re very, very grateful

Release Date: March 12, 2010
© (c) & (p) Merge Records

You have a new ep due out in June, how would you describe the sound of My Neighbor / My Creator? Is it a departure from the sound that fans are now familiar, or is it treading new ground for Wye Oak?

I think the brevity and ease with which we recorded the EP shows through in the songs and arrangements. Not that we didn’t take great care with the process, but I think we felt a bit more free to experiment with unfamiliar sounds and ideas because we were working with a very different batch of songs. I’ve been writing the next full length for a while, and the songs on the EP were ones that I was certainly proud of, but that didn’t quite fit in with my vision of what the next full length was about. It was great fun to try on a few different musical personalities, and although I think of the EP as a bit of a departure for us, I feel that we really hit upon arrangements that were right for the songs we were working with.

Are there any other bands that you can think of from the Baltimore area that we should check out? Is there much of a scene in your home town?

Baltimore’s music scene is extremely vibrant and exciting right now, haven’t you heard? Aside from the big, obvious names (Dan Deacon, Beach House, Ponytail, etc etc) there is a whole slew of talented, inspired people creating unique and incredible music and art. Right now, there’s no place I’d rather be.

What does the future hold for Wye Oak? Do you have any plans to visit the UK?

After the tour we’re currently on, we’ll be settling in for a bit to finish writing and recording the next full length. And we’re planning a trip to the UK and EU in August. Stay tuned.

Andy Maddison

ndy Maddison caught up with Lou Barlow for a brief chat about his latest album release “Goodnight Unknown”

In the four years since his career-redefining, mostly acoustic record Emoh, Lou Barlow has reunited with Dinosaur Jr. and reissued three of Sebadoh’s classic albums. But as the brilliant new Goodnight Unknown illustrates, he’s hardly living in the past. Borrowing the live-band energy of Dinosaur Jr. and the stylistic reach of Sebadoh, Barlow has built on Emoh’s full production and written a set of immediate, melodic pop songs that Lou describes as, “a cross between my later work with Folk Implosion and my earlier work with Sebadoh…to my ears, anyway.” Merge Records

AM: You have been and appear to still be on what seems like a never ending tour with Dinosaur Jnr, how is that going? You all appear to be having fun playing together again, does that mean all the old gripes that previously marred the relationship between yourself and J have finally been put to bed?

LB: The music is great … we are the same people, the problems are the same..but now i understand that the music is more important than my ego ..so i get on with it ..

AM: Your new solo record ‘Goodnight Unknown’ is was released in October, how would you describe the songwriting and sound of the album?
that’s up to the listener, plus i’m terrible at describing my own music..
If anyone is curious they can hear a sample on-line here: http://www.mergerecords.com…

AM: The record is out on Merge, you seem to have a good relationship with the label? What is it about them that appeals to you?
LB: They are fair..if my records makes money,we split the profits.. no bullshit, no pressure.. a very pure operation..i love them and hope they don’t drop me..

AM: Do you ever envisage a time when you will not write and play music? I cannot think of anyone else that writes, records and puts out as many songs/half songs/ideas for songs as you do. Is there a tape machine constantly running in the Barlow household that captures everything you do?

LB: ..I assume i will never be successful enough to even consider stopping..this is all i know how to do..i have no fall-back.. i am a high school educated music-obsessed survivor .. i have released only 3 records in the last decade ..i have made small contributions to 2 dinosaur jr records..that’s it.. i used to be prolific back in the 80′s and 90′s.. not now , not at all..it’s been 5 years since my last solo release..

AM: So now to the question that everyone must ask, and the one which you must be thoroughly sick of…will Sebadoh ever play or record together again?

LB: I hope so..i’d like to do a ‘bakesale’ reissue and tour playing those songs.. jason loewenstein and i have kept the dream alive ..

Andy Maddison

Watch the fantastic Goodnight Unknown documentary below…

Lou Barlow – Goodnight Unknown Documentary from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Devin DiMattia has updated the trailer to the fantastic Firewall of Sound

Firewall of Sound is a documentary looking at how the digital revolution has changed the way we receive and distribute the music we listen to. From bands promoting themselves on Myspace and Facebook, to major labels and record stores looking for relevance in the digital age, the music industry is constantly evolving. This film is an attempt to document the different ways people are evolving with it.

Original post can be found here.

DbR speaks to Mr Andy Abbott about life, art and the DIY music scene – If you like your rock geezers with their fingers in many pies – tuck in!

1: Hey Andy, introduce yourself… a little history maybe ?

Hi Rob, I’m Andy, I’m a 28 year-old man; I like to eat hot meals in the evening but can handle something straight out of the fridge or at room temperature for lunch. I play guitar in the rock duo That Fucking Tank, am a member of the art collective Black Dogs, study a PhD in socially engaged art practice at the University of Leeds, do a bit of teaching at Leeds College of Art, and live in Saltaire, West Yorkshire with my girlfriend Yvonne. That’s my life.

I was born in the Highlands of Scotland to a young mother and older dad where some of our meals during Winter months were poached off of the local moors. As a youngster I was particularly interested in field sports; air rifle target-shooting, archery, training kestrels and other birds of prey, ferreting and baseball. Around 8-10 years old I got addicted to ZX spectrum and NES games. Upon starting secondary school in Matlock, Derbyshire I got into alternative rock music, learning how to play guitar and bass by ‘borrowing’ other student’s instruments at break-times with my friend James.

I moved to Leeds at 18 to do music ‘properly’ with my post-grunge band Viagra but ended up working in warehouses and call-centres that drained me of any juice necessary to play music. After a year I decided to take an easier option and attended art-college where I met some inspirational chaps from differing backgrounds including Giles Bailey with whom I formed the band Real Fucky Fucky. Around this time I really got into the DIY music scene in Leeds – seeing it as a natural continuation from the gigs I’d been organising in Village Halls and Youth Clubs in Matlock – and started putting on gigs as a guaranteed way of making sure Real Fucky Fucky got to play live. One of the first gigs we put on with our art school collective of friends was for J*R and a band from Stoke called Truckdriver.

Following this life-changing experience I carried on playing in bands with more vim and vigour, including the very Shellac-y Kill Yourself, and decided to carry on studying art because it was much easier than working. Since then I’ve pretty much studied art and played music in equal measure, somehow scraping an existence out of both. Life is sweet.

2: Quite a history… onto music… That Fucking Tank seem to be going from strength to strength, a new album, UK tour etc – what next?

That Fucking Tank came about initially as a joke band – we formed it in 2004 because Giles from Kill Yourself was living in Glasgow and we needed another band to play a gig of only two-piece bands we were organising in Leeds, so James and I wrote some tracks as a duo. The fact that it has ‘progressed’ in anyway from this pointless beginning is purely down to chance.

Tank seems to go down well with people because, I believe, it has a degree of sincerity to it. We never intended to achieve anything with the band other than write some music that would keep us entertained whilst playing it, and I think this translates into an enjoyable spectacle. We have certainly done much more with the band than I ever anticipated. That could be down to the fashionable element of noisy rock duos or our ‘outrageous’ name but I like to think it’s because people like to see two people that have known each other for a very long time go at it hard on their respective instruments. As far as I’m concerned that’s all (punk) rock music has to offer in social terms – some outright honesty.

Did you ever snare a vocalist?

A year or two ago we invited Giles to come and do some singing with us to spice up the tracks a little as he had finished Uni and we saw it as a way of getting us three lads back together. We’ve had some very fun gigs playing as a trio. Giles, however, is an incredibly busy man with some very exciting pots on the boil at all times, so it has only ever been an informal arrangement, coming together when the stars align.

As it turns out there are a lot of practical benefits to being an instrumental duo – you never have to bother the sound engineer, you can travel in a transit van without doing anything illegal, you only ever have to ask promoters for a double bed and a hot meal for two, rounds are easily held in two hands and so on. We recorded our most recent album, Tanknology, without vocals due to time constraints and the logistics in getting three people in a room together. We do have plans to perhaps release the version with singing at some point though, although this might end up in the same swamp as the ‘lost’ Kill Yourself album.

Tank continue to operate on the same principles we started the band with; we do what we feel like. This has meant we’ve done some pretty unexpected things, like playing at Leeds and Reading festivals last year on the same day as Metallica as well as the more self-organised activities like touring Europe regularly. At the moment f writing we are trying to book ourselves a tour along the West Coast of America and get a gig with our heroes Therapy?. Reef still haven’t responded to our requests for a support tour.

3: Any planned releases for OBA label ?

Obscene Baby Auction is something we’ve not felt the need to do for a while. At the start of this decade (that’s the way to phrase it to make you feel ancient) it felt like someone really needed to document the excellent music that was coming out of Leeds’ DIY music community. We loved buying records and we also really wanted to be on one so we started a record label that released music by our bands and others that we liked (including J*R, Bilge Pump, Humanfly and the like).

The landscape in Leeds has changed drastically since then. There are loads more bedroom record labels like OBA – surprising, given the decline in people actually buying physical-format releases – and it felt to us like the ‘scene’ was getting documented without our needing to do so. So really we just slowed down. I think other people offering to release our records, like Jealous and Gringo, contributed to our declining motivation too.

I’m now really interested in revisiting the vinyl format just because of the perversity of it. It’s so hard to sell records at the moment because music is freely available – which I see as a good thing – that the whole idea of selling a physical object that contains music really has to be rethought. I think it can still be relevant and worthwhile. With Black Dogs we’re currently working on an ‘audio almanac’ which is meant to be like an exhibition on a record. Each track will correspond to a page in the accompanying booklet and audio and visuals should be experienced simultaneously. I’m not sure what submissions we’re going to get for it (we tend to do a call out for contributions from artists and friends) but I think it’ll include some spoken word, music, field recordings, comedy sketches and the like. Its going to be on gatefold vinyl so you can have that immersive experience you used to get with the War of the Worlds vinyl as a child.

As for OBA, I’d really like to document the current European DIY network that we tour on. There are some incredible bands from Italy (like GI Joe and Nervous Kid), France (Sincabeza and Pneu) and elsewhere that, as far as I’m concerned, play much more interesting music and go about things in a much more interesting way than their American counterparts. There’s a stigma attached to European bands that stops people checking them out in the same way they might a band with (USA) after their name on a flyer. I don’t know if releasing a record that compiles those bands would make any difference to that but it would certainly ‘immortalise’ something that is very important to me; I guess that’s the best way to approach releasing a record at the moment – at least I want it even if no-one else does.

4: To most people reading this you will be known for your work with TFT and previously Kill Yourself – how/when did the transition to art come about or is it something you always had in you?

Well. I kind of explained how I ‘got into’ art earlier. It was really just because I used to be good at drawing so got a reasonable A-level which meant I was accepted to do a foundation course at LCAD when I applied after being scared shitless by the thought of having to work for a living. I never had an interest in art properly – never went to any galleries or paid attention to the art scene – but I enjoyed drawing.

At art college I had my eyes opened to forms of artistic practice that I had been naïve of previously – things like Arte Povera or the time-sensitive sculptures of Anya Gallacio – and ended up doing a lot more object or performance based work that referenced my time working in warehouses and call centres. I still didn’t think much to the ‘Art World’ though – just seeing it as a big commercial industry that feeds off people’s creativity and operates on rules of fashion and styles (which it is!).

I much preferred the DIY music-scene which seemed to offer a genuine alternative to market-based mechanisms and was much easier to participate in. The idea of becoming a famous artist and having work in galleries was never an ambition of mine. Nevertheless I decided to continue studying art at the University of Leeds as a way to defer the world of work and to allow me more time to concentrate on the bands I was in and the gigs we were organising.

The course was really disappointing and I felt very frustrated, but mostly despondent, towards it. It contained a large theory element (which I liked because I enjoy writing) but I didn’t really come across anything that I felt an affinity with historically or in the contemporary art world. That was until I came across the Situationist International (a French radical political group of the 50s and 60s) and a lot of the stuff I’d been doing within the DIY music scene and some of the more labour-critical art works I’d been making at Uni started to fit together.

Around the same time a group of us that were in the same year group of the course decided that, as the Uni wasn’t providing us with the space, resources and critical feedback we felt we needed, that we’d start working autonomously outside of the Uni. That was how Black Dogs started. We began having meetings in the pub just between the six of us (there were only six original members) to talk about each other’s work and plan an exhibition that would happen somewhere in Leeds.

This was a really massive step for us because it was, for me at least, very much informed by the DIY ethos learned from the music scene. We realised that we didn’t need to wait around for some gallery owner or agent to pick us up after we graduated in order to have an exhibition. Instead we could just find an empty space in Leeds and between the six of us we had all the necessary skills and energy to make a good job of organising our own. The first few things we did outside the Uni (whilst still students) created quite a buzz in the, very small, art scene in Leeds and we got a lot of support.

Over time we realised that the way we were doing art was probably more interesting than the actual objects we were making and our practice become much more process-based and allowed room for the audience to participate in it. Over time I started to realise that the history of art was in fact much more radical and interesting than I had previously imagined – that underneath the whole art-as-commodity and museums-and-galleries-for-the-bourgeois-cattle there was in fact an incredibly subversive current that makes the DIY music scene look conservative and inward-looking by comparison.

I got much more into art as public interventions and working with ‘communities’ (for want of a better word), or socially-engaged practice as it is commonly referred to. The good thing about art is that it can be anything so the parameters are much less fixed than they are with music. You can just keep following a thread or an idea into a form that is most appropriate to it. My PhD research, which is practice-led, is about ‘facilitating self-organisation’, which is art-speak for encouraging or allowing space for DIY activity; for people to learn how to do things their own way, to create their own paths and to challenge the established order of things. So really, I think my art practice has been completely born out of my experience in music but has allowed me to explore what I found interesting about it in much more detail and breadth.

Links:
AndyAbbott.co.uk
Black Dogs Art Projects
That Fucking Tank on myspace

Here we go with part two of our exclusive interview with Mac of Superchunk fame. We’re massive fans of Superchunk and Merge records here at DbR . . . Part one can be seen here

Q5. When a band ‘reforms’ the cynics amongst us see the lucrative festival circuit winding out in front of them… (The optimist hopes the band felt they had unfinished business)… Tell us about Polvo’s ‘regroup’…

Polvo is a really interesting case because there was never any acrimonious meltdown or anything…all those guys seemed to just kind of move on; i read recently where Ash or Dave said they just kind of felt they’d done all they could do with the band. they lived in different places for a long time and Dave still lives in NYC with the other guys down here in NC. we asked them to play our 15-year anniversary and they politely declined. when they first got back together, i was surprised that their reunion extended beyond ATP to the making of a new album, but i was not surprised that it sounds like Polvo. what is amazing though is that they took what they used to do and both solidified it but also took it to this other level of heaviness that’s really pretty incredible, it may be their best record.

Q6. In a time when global music sales are way down, T&G are feeling the pinch and independent record shops are closing every day, what are Merge doing to future-proof themselves?

i don’t think you can really future-proof yourself, because you don’t know what the landscape will be like at any point down the line. i think one reason we’re still here is because frankly we’ve never looked too far into the future, we’ve always focused on doing what we are doing, putting out great records and making sure people can get them. we’re kind of old-fashioned in a way which maybe isn’t the way to be these days but so far it’s served us well. i wish i knew how to save record stores though, both because Merge needs them and also personally i don’t know what i would do if i couldn’t go to a record store. hard to get excited about a new batch of files on my hard drive.

Q7. Historically music releases have been complemented with artwork and ‘B-Sides’. How important is the record artwork/packaging/additional songs to you in these days of the digital download – (a flip page PDF just doesn’t cut it for me, you?) and do you think artwork and the ‘B-Side’ will die with the physical release?

It’s hard for me to get excited about some files on my hard drive or a PDF of some artwork… stuff gets lost in my computer and i forget about it. i know i sound like an old man but at a certain point i think there’s something “real” about a physical object that creates a connection between a listener and the music and creates a fan. we started the label as fans and we need fans to survive as a label. mp3s sound terrible. listening to music on an ipod or a laptop is incredibly anti-social and one of the best things about music to me is listening to it with other people, whether it’s in the background or whether you’re sitting on the floor in front of the record player putting on 45s. i don’t see that as old-fashioned so much as human. perhaps as Corey from Touch and Go told me a couple years ago at a certain point there will still be record stores but they’ll literally just be selling records again like they used to… i wish i knew how it will all play out!

“It’s hard for me to get excited about some files on my hard drive or a PDF of some artwork… stuff gets lost in my computer and i forget about it!”

Q8. Anyway… enough doom and gloom… How did the Merge celebrations go? The footage on YouTube shows it to have been one hell of a party…

the XX Merge festival was amazing. exhausting and amazing. bands like the 3Ds that hadn’t played in over a decade came out and played incredible sets as if they’d never been gone. other artists that i’ve literally seen dozens of times like Lambchop played shows that ranked with their best ever. there will be official footage available soon!

]]> http://destroybeforereading.com/mac-mccaughan-interview-pt2/feed/ 0 http://destroybeforereading.com/mac-mccaughan-merge-records-superchunk-interview-pt1/ http://destroybeforereading.com/mac-mccaughan-merge-records-superchunk-interview-pt1/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:03:15 +0000 !_Destroy_Robot_! http://destroybeforereading.com/?p=997

Merge Records are twenty years old this year and still acting like teenagers. OK, so maybe the label are treading a little more carefully in the current economic climes but Mac McCaughan seems unaffected, honest and above all still in love with the music his label are putting out. The feeling you get from talking to Mac (Merge co-founder and lead singer with influential punk rock stalwarts Superchunk) is that he’s still having fun – he seems more teenage-fanzine-writer than a successful businessman.

Merge are currently still coming down from their 20 year Merge celebrations, dubbed XX Merge. We caught up with Mac this September to see what all the fuss was about and to talk business…

Q1. Merge is 20 years old this year, did you ever envisage the label becoming what it has back when you and Laura first started it as fresh faced 20 year olds? What were your hopes and expectations of Merge back then?

“i think all we could envision back then was holding the next release in our hands!
for some reason we did begin with the possibly naive expectation that people somewhere would buy the cassettes and singles we were putting out… but then again we were only pressing 500 or 1000 of each so we didn’t need a TON of people to buy them, just enough to get us on to the next record.”

Q2. What do you think has set you apart from the other numerous bedroom founded labels that started around the same time as Merge but have since met an untimely end?

“i think that has to be a different answer for each  label you’re thinking of…some we saw certainly trying to get too big too soon without any actual sales to back up the aspiration, but just as many were probably cases where the people starting the label lost interest or realized that they were going to have to have a “real” job as well and they didn’t want to be stuffing records in their spare time or living amongst the boxes. and then there’s luck which certainly has something to do with it.”

In February of this year, Touch and Go records announced that they were to shut their manufacturing and distribution arm as it was no longer financially viable to keep it running (see DbR post here). They provided this service for many smaller labels including Merge.

“we were only pressing 500 or 1000 of each so we didn’t need a TON of people to buy them, just enough to get us on to the next record.”

Q3. How have things changed and how have you adapted to the folding of T&G’s distribution arm?

i think we’re still learning how that affects us. so far i feel like it’s been pretty smooth but some of the records we’re putting out this fall will be a real test, because bands like The Clean and The Clientele have their strongest supporters in the world of independent retail, and that’s where Touch and Go really excelled and had great relationships because Touch and Go understood the music and loved it. if you’re selling records to Best Buy i don’t think that’s as much of a requirement. we just hope that Touch and Go the label continues on because Corey has a great history and is a person that the music industry (such as it is) should be without.

Part two coming soon…

]]> http://destroybeforereading.com/mac-mccaughan-merge-records-superchunk-interview-pt1/feed/ 0 http://destroybeforereading.com/nine-black-alps-in-doncaster/ http://destroybeforereading.com/nine-black-alps-in-doncaster/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:45:22 +0000 !_Destroy_Robot_! http://destroybeforereading.com/?p=718
Nine Black Alps are due to make their Doncaster debut at The Priory on Saturday July 18th.

Explaining where they had been for the two years since the last release, Martin (bass) from the band told DbR “We took about three months off doing anything after the end of our last tour. We then spent six months writing the third album, then a couple of months getting that album all recorded, mixed, mastered etc… and now we’ve just been twiddling our thumbs for a little while“.

The new album, due for release later in the year, has been recorded live in the studio, something the band hadn’t tried before. Gone is the poppy edge found on the second album being replaced by “…slower, darker, sludgier, weirder…” tracks.

So, what can we expect from the set at the Priory next week? “Extreme guitar volume and feedback with minimal crowd interaction” is to be expected from an average NBA set says Martin.

Tickets are available from The Music Week for £8.00 plus booking fee…

Download their track “Buy Nothing” for free here.
(Right click and save link/target as…)

You can listen to the track in the player below…

]]> http://destroybeforereading.com/nine-black-alps-in-doncaster/feed/ 0 http://destroybeforereading.com/hammer-no-more-the-fingers/ http://destroybeforereading.com/hammer-no-more-the-fingers/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:51:39 +0000 !_Destroy_Robot_! http://destroybeforereading.com/?p=705 North Carolina’s Hammer No More The Fingers have been credited with revitalising the Chapel Hill glory days when Polvo and Archers of Loaf reigned supreme. They are currently touring their J. Robins (him of Jawbox) produced debut “Looking for Bruce” but were kind enough to find time in their busy schedule to talk to Andy Maddison about their eagerly awaited debut and more…

Andy: The North Carolina area has a long and impressive musical history, are all of the band members local and why do you think it is that this particular area is so musically fertile?

HNMTF: Jeff, Joe, and I are all from Durham, NC. Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh make up the “Triangle” region of NC. Durham has always been known as the gritty, blue collar step brother to Raleigh and Chapel Hill. Raleigh is the big city, more conservative, but getting hipper everyday. Chapel Hill is the smaller college town with a big indie music scene. Durham is really coming into it’s own though. There are a lot of bands and music venues opening up in the area. I think one of the reasons this area is so musically fertile is because all three cities have large universities. Kids come from all over the country. There are a lot of transplants from New York and California. Many students just stay here after they graduate. Almost everyone plays an instrument, runs a venue or a label, or is a big time show goer. All three universities have great radio stations. WKNC 88.1 at NC State (Raleigh) is very proactive in the local music scene. I think the DJ’s are required to play a certain number or local music on the air per day. UNC (Chapel Hill) has a student paper called Diversions, which promotes local music like no other. WKNC and Diversions work together on a lot of projects. Durham is the city where a lot of younger artsy people move, because Raleigh and Chapel Hill have become fairly expensive. But all three cities work together to make one big scene. It’s an exciting place to be for music and art

For those not familiar with the sound of HNMTF, how would you best describe it and what are your influences?

I think our sound is reminiscent of the early days of Chapel Hill indie rock. Bands like Archers of Loaf and Superchunk are big influences. As are Pixies, They Might Be Giants, Deerhoof, Outkast, Foo Fighters, etc. We’re a three piece; guitar, bass, and drums. We try to make the backbeat as steady, punchy, and funky as can be. Then the guitar and vocals takeover the melody. Sometimes we get intricate, and sometimes we keep it simple. Sometimes we’re energetic, and sometimes we’re spacey. But basically we write three minute pop punk songs. It’s the Hammer version of pop, whatever that is…

You recently played with Superchunk at The Cats Cradle in Carrboro, how was that?

Opening for Superchunk was a blast. Probably my favorite show of the year. We practiced our asses off. They were on fire. They tore through their set, oldies and newies, and ended up playing three encores. They’re the nicest people too. I hadn’t seen them live in years before that. It was so cool to open for them at their home base, The Cat’s Cradle. Definitely an experience for us.

Your latest release ‘Looking For Bruce’ is packed with abstract, off the wall songs with titles such as ‘Mushrooms’, ‘Concrete’ and ‘Automobiles’. Who writes the songs and where does the inspiration come from?

All three of us write the songs in some form. Joe will write the music for a verse. I’ll write the music for a chorus, or vice versa. Jeff will determine the speed and feel of the overall song. We definitely piece together the songs in band practice. We’ll jam on one part for hours until it starts sounding right. Then we’ll jam on the next part, and try to piece everything together. Sometimes it works beautifully, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. Then it’s back to the drawing board. We’ll play a song live long before it’s complete, just to figure out what we need to change. I’m usually the main lyric writer. Jeff and Joe have a lot of input though. I usually just write about anything that I’ve been reading about or hear on the radio. The song “Radiation” is about a girl who rides her motorcycle through Chernobyl. I went through a big “urban decay” phase; “Automobiles” is about dying Detroit, “Fall Down, Play Dead” is about homeless people in LA, “Concrete” is about a homeless friend of ours in Durham. I went through a big John Lennon phase as well, the lyrics to “Poison Apple” are about him. “Mushrooms” is definitely about mushrooms. I try not to write about girls, although occasionally I have to. Maybe I should keep all this a secret though.

In the current musical climate and with the style of music the band plays, do you sometimes feel that HNMTF are swimming against the tide a little?

As far as local shows go, it couldn’t be better. This is a great area to be a band. We definitely feel like we’re swimming against the tide of musical trends though. You just don’t know what’s going to hit next. Seven years ago, it seemed like the media was praising garage rock, then the disco rock thing, then the Bruce Springsteen/Arcade Fire/Hold Steady thing, then it was the experimental noise Dan Deacon stuff, Now it’s the folky thing. Hopefully funky indie rawk will be one of the next things to catch. (Sorry, I’m being condescending as hell!!). I love all that stuff, I just wish there was more room in the blogosphere for the music that we play. But we’re having the time of our lives. And in the end, we’re just happy to be touring and writing music that we love. People seem to dig our jams for the most part!

What do the band have lined up for the future? and will we get to see you over in the UK any time soon?

We would absolutely love to play in the UK. We’ve thought about saving up for plane tickets and renting a car and music equipment when we get there. It’s definitely a huge, huge dream of ours. Hopefully in the next couple of years! I have a lot of family in northern England. I’m actually going to be there in September 09. We should meet up for a beer! Other than our imaginary UK tour, we’re getting music together for our next record. We have a gajillion parts, we’re just in the process of completing the songs. We’re planning a pretty extensive US tour for October/November 09. We’ll have new music and tour dates on our website soon. We’re helping some friends of ours open a new music venue in downtown Durham. We’re also going to start planning for the second anniversary of Viking Storm. It’s our giant viking themed music festival that takes place in April. We’re just trying to do as much as possible, even if it destroys us.

I’ll be over in NC in a couple of weeks, anything that you recommend I go see?

Hmmmm, good question. Our friend, Betsy, is having a big musical cookout at her place on July 25. You’re definitely invited. You should see a show at Cat’s Cradle, Local 506, and The Pinhook. Disc Golf is always fun. Take a visit to Merge Records. There are a bunch of hiking trails and places to do urban exploration. Plenty of good, cheap restaurants. Plenty of good, cheap vintage stores. Nasher Museum of Art is pretty funky. We drink a lot of beer and go swimming and what not. We’ll show you a good time!!

Andy Maddison
Inhaler Records

]]> http://destroybeforereading.com/hammer-no-more-the-fingers/feed/ 0 http://destroybeforereading.com/firewall-of-sound/ http://destroybeforereading.com/firewall-of-sound/#comments Sat, 16 May 2009 11:04:12 +0000 !_Destroy_Robot_! http://destroybeforereading.com/?p=683
Devin DiMattia graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with a degree in Film Studies in 2008. It’s been his dream to make movies ever since he saw 2001: A Space Odyssey when he was 15.

Q1. Devin, the subject of your new documentary is a very emotive one for a lot of people and particularly for those of an age that can remember a time before people held their entire collection of music on a hand held device. What inspired you to make this film and what kind of reaction are you receiving to it so far?

I guess my biggest inspiration for Firewall of Sound is just my love of music as a whole. I feel that, for the last fifteen years or so, the music industry has undergone this massive transition, and every aspect, from buying to selling, recording to listening, all of that has been changed. I ultimately want my documentary to act as a sort of snapshot of the independent music scene, to show what it has accomplished, what its current state is, and where it’s destined to go. So far, the reaction from people who I’ve told about the project and who’ve seen the trailer on YouTube has been very positive. I’ve been amazed at the number of people wanting to be interviewed for the film. Everyone wants to weigh in on this topic, and everyone has a different opinion on what the future will hold.

Q2. I have always been a massive admirer of the US underground scene which I believe to be unique to anywhere else on the planet in terms of local and national networking, self sustainability and freedom away from the influence of big business, do you think that if the decline of the independent store continues it will have a negative impact upon the local and national scenes?

As more and more record stores shut their doors, we will soon say goodbye to one of the most cherished retreats of the music lover. I fear it won’t be long before they build a replica of a record store at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, to show future generations how people used to buy their music, before the advent of iTunes and Myspace. But while that may seem like a negative attitude, I do feel like a lot has been gained. Local bands can now find a much wider audience than ever before. At the same time, fans can seek out an unprecedented amount of music on the web, and frankly, the weirder and more eclectic, the better. Whether its Belgian Satanic freak-folk or Japanese bikini-clad trombone players (both real; the latter played SXSW), I am constantly amazed at the wealth of bands I have found on the Internet, bands I would never have discovered otherwise. So while I am upset at what we are losing to the “digital revolution,” I am hopeful for the future of music.

“I ultimately want my documentary to act as a sort of snapshot of the independent music scene, to show what it has accomplished, what its current state is, and where it’s destined to go”

Q3. I agree that it is now easier to seek out bands than ever before, Music is available on demand via your laptop, cell phone and also through your tv at anytime anywhere, but do you not think that the quicker and more accessible(perhaps even disposable?) music becomes to purchase that it is in danger of being devalued as an art form in the eyes of the consumer?

I totally agree with that statement. As more and more music is made available to the consumer, it has become harder and harder to keep the attention of the public on any one band or album. Even in indie circles, there have been many “next big thing” bands that have turned out less-than-stellar results. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve downloaded a song off a music blog, only to have it collect virtual dust at the bottom of my iTunes library. And while I do think music’s been slowly losing its value as an art form ever since groups of teen heartthrobs got together to pop-and-lock and lip sync in unison, it’s up to the consumer to search out the bands and the songs that he or she finds merit with. Before you chuck that MP3 file in the trash, give it a couple more listens. Revisit albums you haven’t taken off the shelf in a long time. Don’t feel obligated to speed through all of Pitchfork’s Top 100 Albums of the Year. Music only loses its artistic value if we choose to treat it as something less than art.

Q4. What kind of release are you planning for the film and will you be doing the rounds of film festivals around the US and possibly in Europe?

My hope is to premiere the film at the Cucalorus Film Festival in my hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. From there, I would run the festival circuit here in the U.S., focusing mostly on documentary or music-based fests (SXSW, Full Frame, etc.) I can’t really go into any detail, mainly because I’m still focused on just finishing the film, which I hope to do before the end of 2009. The official website for Firewall of Sound (firewallofsound.com) will have any updates regarding the production and, ultimately, screenings of the film, so keep your eyes peeled.

www.firewallofsound.com

Andy Maddison

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