Deluxe Issue Thirteen

Issue Thirteen: Helen Nianias, The Radio Dept.

AWVFTS, Kelly Lee Owens and Beach Fossils.

Deluxe.

Welcome to Deluxe issue 13.

In this edition we talked shop culture with Kelly Lee Owens, whose new album has really blown us away. We also spoke to the duo Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie of A Winged Victory for the Sullen on an eventful December afternoon; we finally caught up with one of our most favourite bands The Radio Dept; there’s also a shopping photo-story from our trip to Baltimore, thoughts on Piano Day, and excellent insight from journalist Helen Nianias and NYC-based Beach Fossils.

This issue has a theme running through it too, we wanted to investigate how big a part of our world Twitter has become.

This is the Twitter issue. One thing that did take me aback was that Ed Miliband has almost as many followers on Twitter as the Glastonbury Festival. If you throw in David Miliband, assume a few crossovers, they definitely have a better combined social reach than one of the world’s biggest festivals. Looking at the most followed Twitter accounts, they lean heavily towards pop music with a few Latin sports stars thrown into the mix. Without spending too much time dwelling, the sheer banality of most of the tweets did seem like a seismic missed opportunity to highlight equality, the gender gap, climate change and broader social conscience. Maybe that’s the point?

Is it supposed to be banal? Perhaps by the time you’re

Interviewed, edited and compiled by The Drift Record Shop.

Centerfold illustration by Brian Blomerth Sub edited by Louise Overy Printed by Newspaper Club Distributed by Forte Music Distribution www.fortedistribution.co.uk / 01600 891589

Whilst every care has been taken in the preparation of this newspaper, the publishers cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of information or any consequence arising from it.

Published in Devon by The Drift Record Shop. ©2017

done reading this we will have answered that. It is worth mentioning that five of the ten most interacted with tweets ever were posted by members of the band One Direction.

The timing of this issue also lands - in a little bit of a developing tradition - the week before Record Store Day. As a shop it’s a huge part of our year but we didn’t really have much more to add to the argument that we discussed last year, so even while celebrating its tenth birthday, #RSD is largely absence in this edition. It was fascinating to meet so many other shop owners out in Baltimore, where the whole concept was conceived.

“I was in the hotel room with Michael Kurtz and four other people when Eric Levin of Criminal Records in Atlanta said, ‘There’s this thing called Free Comic Book Day – we should do that with records!’ And that was the genesis of the whole thing. This was a bunch of stoned record store owners sitting a hotel room saying ‘man, we should do something cool’ – and that’s how it started.” - Paul Epstein, owner of Twist & Shout.

If nothing else, we are always stoned. #RSD17, can we just all agree that nothing bad can come from all of us buying something at a record shop on 22nd April?

The Radio Dept. @theradiodept are a band we have been trying to talk to pretty much since we started this newspaper.

Their music is positively indefinable: dreamy, tense, blurred, nostalgic post-shoegaze, always essential.

Clearly we are fans, and it was our pleasure to talk politics, art and inevitably @TheRealRoxette with Johan Duncanson and Martin Carlberg.

-207 Deluxe: When you announced Running Out of Love, you explained that it was “...an album about all the things that are moving in the wrong direction.” Are you specifically talking about Swedish Democrats or more the international climate in general?

Martin Carlberg: Mainly in Sweden, but you would have to be kind of blind not to see that this is a problem for all of Europe, now even in the States. It’s the same kind of feelings, the same kind of movements, ultraright wing style of politics. Mainly for us it is about Sweden and how we feel.

D: Was “Death to Fascism” the first gesture of you becoming overtly more political as a band? It felt all the more powerful as a statement as it was released on its own as a single.

were anxious about sounding corny or preachy the way political music can easily get when it’s not motivated properly, and poorly executed. It can become preachy.

MC: No accident, that was a very deliberate and strategic move by us to release just five days before the election for the government. It was a protest against them. We did the same things four years prior to that with the previous election. On that occasion it was aimed at the liberal right-wing instead of the fascist right-wing.

D: Post #Brexit, I have a lot of anxiety about how our European friends must see the UK… you don’t hate us right? I mean, (laughing) I love you guys.

D: I hadn’t really looked at the Democrats before we spoke but it was pretty bleak, it is so strange that we are experiencing, well, falling for the same problems. Bizarre.

D: I think it’s very important to use the elements in speaking to people on a creative level to talk to them about things on political level. Do you think maybe that has changed more with age? Do you feel more political now than when you were a younger band?

MC: It’s really bizarre. It’s frightening that this is supposed to be an extreme point of view to have those values.

Johan Duncanson: Not really, I think we always wanted to be a political band, it’s just that in the beginning we maybe couldn’t find the words, we

JD: (laughing) We know. It feels like every country is divided in Europe at least. I don’t know what to do about it? If people could see politicians as people who are trying to help them, instead of people who are trying to trick them all the time, we might forget about all these hoaxes. Racism will always exist but it will not be used as a flag for something else if people can see their lives working. Schools, hospitals, their life working.

D: Fear politics. It might sound a little bit “right-on”, but do you feel that music still has the power to heal?

JD: Yes! For me at least.

MC: Mainly for me when I listen to political music, it is comforting and empowering to listen to. Maybe that is the main hope for it to be. It might not change a Nazi’s mind (laughing) if they hear our music, but it can be empowering to listen to music that has a direction. The thought that ideas are bigger than talk, or us.

JD: Music can play a huge part in pushing ideas. Even if people don’t agree with the message, it can provoke them.

MC: Yes, I agree.

JD: Just raising the issue is important.

Everyone should do it, not just musicians. I heard an interview with #NinaSimone where she explained that the pure definition of an artist was “someone reacting to society around them”.

D: How about influences as a band?

JD: A lot of dance music, I had quite a long period with early house and techno music. Also new music too, we’ve been listening to @factoryfloor.

D: Man, love those quys.

JD: Especially the album prior to this one. The new one is very good, but that first one was excellent. We caught them live in Stockholm when they were on tour between the two albums and it was amazing, a really good show. So we are often listening to a lot of drum-based music, also dub, anything really that has made us feel.

D: I felt a gesture towards #FactoryRecords and the #Haçienda in the new songs.

Both: Yes, very much.

D: I didn’t pick up on any one thing, it was more the vibe…

MC: Yes, I think so, I think “Sloboda Narodu” is the closest to a sort of Manchester sound.

JD: “Committed to the Cause” also.

All those more clubby tracks you can track back to that scene. We were

really influenced by Inner City when we made “We Got Game”. We can still hear where it came from, but when I put my vocals onto the track it sounded more like British bands I guess? Maybe Factory bands, I guess?

We often don’t try for what we end up sounding like (laughing), we try for something else, it just ends up that way. We love all that Factory sound, even the earlier stuff that is more guitar-based.

D: I think that is it, this record sounds like it comes in between those scenes, it’s like people are just about to discover Ecstasy. It’s nice to hear you experiment sonically, it’s not like bands HAVE to sound like any one thing.

JD: I think we realised quite early on that you can do what you want.

It wasn’t necessarily obvious to me early on, I still felt like I had to work in some kind of tradition, some kind of guitar tradition? In time though I realised I could do anything, I could make any kind of music... any kind of sound. It just dawned on me you can do whatever you like. It helped to push, to try things.

MC: It became really obvious to us, the first album has influences from @TheOfficialMBV, @TheMaryChain

and stuff like that and people were saying we were a shoegaze band… we really had to live with that for three records and we were constantly trying to push it in a different direction, but people didn’t really, they didn’t….

JD: They didn’t notice what we were doing.

MC (laughing) Some of them, people who are actually listening can hear, it but it wasn’t always easy. Journalists don’t do their research… they just say things (laughing) “the shoegaze band”…

D: You mean you don’t like being told what sort of music you make? (laughing) I read that you are dream pop now… you are dream pop right?

MC: (laughing) Why not!

D: If you were working in my record shop for a week (by the way, that would be an excellent follow-up feature), where would you place your album?

MC: That’s not cool… that is mean (laughing).

JD: Good question. We of course realise that you have to label stuff – bands, artists - to be able to talk about

Just raising the issue is important. Everyone should do it, not just musicians.

I heard an interview with #NinaSimone where she explained that the pure definition of an artist was “someone reacting to society around them”.

music at all… but to be honest we always just label ourselves as a “pop group”. It is more open, it means we can do anything! I also don’t mind “indie” as that doesn’t really say anything. Independent?

D: Hey, the sleeve image really struck me. It was something that I couldn’t stop looking at when I first saw it.

Is it an original image? Or was it something that you found?

JD: I found it one night when I couldn’t sleep. I was searching for Socialist art, #Lenin, #Stalin and I was just scrolling and scrolling and

finally I found more poetic images and once I saw it I just couldn’t take my eyes off it. I did some research and became completely obsessed with it. (laughing) I actually decided that we wouldn’t put out that album if we couldn’t use that image. We managed to find the painter, well, his family as he died a few years back in 2012. He is a sort of known artist in Russia, in the Soviet Union originally. He painted this image sometime in the 1970s. It really is amazing.

D: Well I’m very glad to hear that you did manage to track him down, I would’ve been pretty bummed to have

still been waiting for your album to come out.

MC: (laughing) Me too!

D: How about artwork in general, do you see that as an extension of the musical side of the project?

JD: Yes, definitely. We have always felt that way, it is a very important part of it. Sometimes it’s formed from elements in the lyrics but sometimes it is more abstract and formed from the feelings. Sometimes both. I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting someone else create the artwork at all actually.

The painting by the way is called “Before a Long Journey” by Gely Korzhev.

D: How much of an impact on you as a band does critical response have?

JD: Hmmm, yeah, when people have negative things to say. Some of that can take a long time to shake. We do get really happy when we read a good review, but it’s the mean ones that stick with you.

D: I don’t really feel like you’ve ever really had bad press though? Is the anticipation almost worse?

JD: Well, yes, we are always scared before releasing something new… to the point where we want to scrap it and just make a new album. Hey, look, we’re really insecure, that’s one of the reasons that everything takes a long time. When we are writing and recording it has no effect on us at all, but when we get to the stage where we are mixing and mastering the record, closer to release, then we start to think about what people will think. I get scared.

MC: Yeah, me too.

D: Did you ever feel prior to this

record like you might be done as a band?

JD: Yes because of the legal issues with the record label, but never because of the band, we never got tired of making music. We got tired of all the capitalism surrounding it.

We lost it for a while, it stopped being fun.

MC: Every time the music became fun again, it felt wrong to us to give that song away, it felt like we wanted to keep it for ourselves… maybe to keep it for another album? Once you’ve done that with nine or ten songs, then

Photographed by Per Vikström

you realise that it is just not going to work...

JD: It’s not like we had lots of complete albums, we had fragments or parts of albums. We reached a compromise and a breakthrough with the label where we felt ready to move on and that would have been with the song “Death to Fascism”. After a period of time though the song felt too old to include on this new album, it was an end point and a start point.

D: I didn’t mention earlier that I wanted to talk to you about Twitter.

You have a band account right?

JD: Yes we do, but we don’t tweet very much though. We say things like “We have a new song” but we don’t want to say too much, we actually don’t want to be too available.

D: Do you feel some people are too available?

“Before a Long Journey” by Gely Korzhev.

JD: Yes, no mystery. It kind of kills it for me when… well, when I know a band and artists are normal people who do normal things like… eat a sandwich!

MC: (laughing) Yes! JD: They don’t have to tell me each time they do… it might make their music appeal less to me.

D: How about good experiences?

Making contact or discovering?

JD: Well, I lurk on Twitter a lot, following political discussion and music and things. You can get very good tips for news articles or bands, so I think on that level it is a very good experience for discovering things. It is too easy to see the bad side too, look at politics. People can say anything now and just hide behind an egg.

MC: (laughing) Egg… I personally don’t like Twitter as much as Johan does, it is just a giant click hole for me… I just get stuck.

JD: You just have to develop some kind of sensitivity to know what is shit and what is not I guess, it is about setting an ecosystem of who you follow.

D: Talking shops, where did you grow up and first shop?

JD: Well, we are from just outside of Lund in the south of Sweden. We’re from the countryside, both of us, just dreaming of the city. My dad is actually from Scotland and sometimes during summer we went there for a week with my family and sisters. If we went to a town and there was a town with no record shop, I considered it cannot be a proper town. Record shops have always been very important to me.

MC: We had a good one just beside my school called #Doolittle, you know, from the Pixies record?

@RealAliceCooper quite early also.

JD: Sounds entirely random...

D: I love it when record shops are named after albums.

MC: (laughing) Oh yeah, it could be anything.

JD: I spent a lot of time there too. Martin and I spent a lot of time there when we had just met at the end of the nineties. We’d go for coffee nearby for hours, cutting classes and talking about music and records.

JD: For me it was @michaeljackson’s Thriller.

Then, you know the Swedish band @TheRealRoxette?

MC: (laughing)

MC: Even though Lund is quite a small town, there were quite a few record shops. I think there is one left now. It was a really good community for music, really good live shows.

JD: … I really liked them when I was nine, ten… older?

MC: (laughing)… they sold millions of records!

D: In your earliest shopping experiences, do you remember the first thing you bought?

D: How about travelling around, what shops have really impressed you?

MC: The first record? Yes… (laughing)…. It was this (laughing) radio music channel, commercial collection… like a pop compilation.

MC: I really liked @AmoebaSF in San Francisco.

JD: In the UK you have @NOWMusic.

JD: I love @Monorail_Music in Glasgow. Stephen is so nice, very friendly. I remember coming there for the first time and buying a few records. I asked him if anything was happening in Glasgow that weekend. He opened a magazine (which he didn’t sell to me, just opened to show me) and he told me about absolutely everything that was happening that weekend, like every gig and why it was good or why it was not good. Really incredible. Amazing tips, made my weekend.

MC: Exactly, it was really bad. @erasureinfo was on there; I think that is what I really liked. I bought

D: Those stores are so big, man!

D: They are such a good example of being vital to their community, so very important. I am jealous of Monorail, it is a great store.

It kind of kills it for me when… well, when I know a band and artists are normal people who do normal things like… eat a sandwich!

JD: It is a great place.

D: What makes a shop good for you?

JD: Engaged people who make a good selection, having it all there so that the shop has an identity… Amoeba for example can put almost anything in, they can present almost any genre at the same time. It is more exciting to me when the smaller shop makes a selection.

D: I totally agree.

MC: Good…

D: (laughing) Yeah, sounded like I was congratulating you on giving me the right answer.

JD: (laughing) We are all right.

Helen Nianias Journalist @helennianias is regularly one of the most clicked links on our @Twitter timeline, acting as a sociological and political compass between what is otherwise just pictures of records. She has just started the most magnificent newsletter called “Getting Cleverer with Helen Nianias”, already covering the Hijra people, helium, David Hockney’s first trip to California, the non-Bantu click languages and the Obscene Publications Act 1857. But what could she tell us about record shops?

- 352 Deluxe: We’re Twitter friends, so I wanted to be in touch to talk about record shops and the world in under 140 characters…

Helen Nianias: But you do know that I’m actually not very good on Twitter? Some of my close journalist friends are absolutely fantastic at it. @dollyalderton is unbelievable using Twitter and also my good friend @sophwilkinson, to be honest I actually find it makes me feel very selfconscious.

Twitter presence should be. You don’t want to present a really rounded representation of yourself, you have to present certain aspects, a certain side. Another good example would be @caitlinmoran who can’t possibly be like that all of the time, but in terms of Twitter you certainly know what you can get from her every time. I think I am just not very good at knowing what it is I want to say.

D: So you’re in some way using Twitter as a portfolio of you as a person and a writer?

D: I know Dolly, well I follow her on Twitter if that makes any sense, so I feel like I have a bit of a gauge of her. She seems very extrovert, I don’t know how different she is in person to her Twitter profile?

HN: Oh yeah, absolutely, I definitely would have nothing to do with Twitter if I didn’t use it for work.

HN: I don’t know, I think Dolly is a very good example because she built herself on social media – and I would add by being extremely hard-working and very talented – I don’t think she really is the same online as she is in real life, which is actually a very important thing. I think people who are really good using Twitter know exactly what their

HN: When you’re self-employed and work from home as a freelance, it is very easy to feel quite lonely. It is a good way to feel like people are reading your work and engaging with what you’re writing and the stories you do. That aspect is really nice. I like also that you get to interact with people more directly which can be really useful. I think

D: How big a part of your work is it?

sadly it is quite a big part of my work… also shouting out for case studies when you’re writing is essential.

D: What would you say is the best thing, or certainly memorable thing that happened to you on Twitter?

D: I feel like there is a very strong and close-knit community of journalists that I follow on Twitter, of which you’re part, and there seems to be a lot of support and mutual admiration.

Does it feel that way?

HN: There have been a few things over the years that made my heart leapt a little bit. (laughing) @DMiliband once said that something I had written about the refugee crisis was “worth reading”. At the time I was like “oh my god he’s recommending my article!” but when I looked back on that tweet a few months later I thought “worth reading”?... that’s not high praise.

HN: I think that when the only connection is the outlet for what you write, or perhaps a similar content, then there will always be writers or people whose Twitter feeds you don’t really agree with and don’t like, but I do agree with you and I think there is an understanding that we all in many ways are in the same boat. If you build somebody up, then they in turn are likely to build you up and I think ultimately if you are kind to each other – at least publicly (laughing) – then it helps everyone.

D: Bands are the polar opposite… (laughing) I am always taken aback at just how much they want their “competitors” to fail… it’s almost like someone else fucking up is as good as getting your own break…

HN: I think there is fundamentally competition, ultimately there are only a certain number – quite a small number - who do exactly what you do, so there is an element of needing to stand out, particularly to commissioning editors to highlight that perhaps you are the best candidate. I think trashing other people just tends to make you look like a dick rather than prove that you are good. I think perhaps with bands that a lot of them who are starting out in the music industry are quite young, I have seen younger people I know get into a massive beef with other people on Twitter, but I think that when you are in your late 20s as I am, you tend to have chilled out a little bit… maybe even when you feel a little more secure in your position?

You can perhaps be more generous.

D: I don’t know, the poor guy seems ever so noncommittal… apart from his stone tablet I suppose.

HN: (pause) (laughing) No! David, not @Ed_Miliband!! The other Miliband, the refugee Miliband!!

The one who works with at the International Rescue Committee, an NGO for refugees.

D: (laughing) Poor Ed, even in remembering him it was an accidental reference to his brother.

HN: … arguably the fitter Miliband. I thought “I have really fucking made it now”. I think that looking back on it

now it was muted praise at best.

D: I think it certainly is high praise, perhaps a little lost on someone who can’t differentiate between the two brothers…

HN: (laughing) Well, that said whenever I hear #Miliband I always think of Ed first.

D: Sadly then, how about the worst part of Twitter?

HN: I think when you’re sending letters in effect out there and you’re not getting a reply. It can be pretty embarrassing when you put out a call for case studies and you literally get no reply at all. I hate that. Especially when you are whingeing about working at home - which I really shouldn’t be as I had a bath today at 4pm – I think at that point when you’re feeling quite lonely anyway, then you really cement in your own mind that everybody thinks you are rubbish, and everybody must really think you were so sad. That, alongside people not picking up your pitches for articles and having to endlessly chase invoices for payment, can really make for a very miserable freelance day. Icing on a lonely cake.

I thought “I have really fucking made it now”. I think that looking back on it now it was muted praise at best.

I do hate it when people who are freelance journalists aren’t kind to each other in similar positions because ultimately it just creates a bad feeling for everybody.

Illustrated by Rose Blake

D: I think when you get that interaction with an artist that you really admire, that does feel pretty exciting, but we have had a couple of notable no-response tweets. I think we had one test pressing for a band who shall remain nameless and not a single person interacted with the offer of a free record…

HN: Fuck… I hate that.

D: I did feel very sad when reading your website and you were talking about “poorly punctuated abuse”. I guess that is what I was getting at, I have been so stunned by some of the online abuse that seems to be aimed so specifically at women.

HN: I think online abuse is fairly new, as the Internet in relative terms is fairly new, but I think a lot of these feelings have existed for a very long time and people have just not been able to express them so directly before. Misogyny is as old as the hills, I don’t think any of those opinions are especially novel, they are just able to get them to you really efficiently (laughing).

I think one of the strangest ones I had was when I worked at the

Independent Online, and I wasn’t necessarily a very good fit for that job, I think it was a lot “newsier” then I was expecting. When you are an online journalist like that you’re very customer-facing I suppose, you are writing maybe six or seven articles a day for immediate consumption.

Rather than writing something and submitting it and going through the process of going online, you are very much more involved in the whole process and you see the comments coming back directly at you. Constant feedback. You’d get criticism, sometimes polite but some of it was… well, genuinely bizarre.

D: Out of context?

HN: Well it was a piece about @ KimKardashian and she is Armenian.

I managed to include a section about the Armenian genocide, the Kardashians either lost people or certainly left Armenia in the genocide which was perpetrated by the Turks, the Ottoman empire, and although it is not officially recognized as genocide because the term only came into play post-WW2, it was an ethnic cleansing and it was certainly huge and absolutely horrible. I was particularly proud that I had managed to put in

a small piece about the genocide, almost tricking people into reading about it when they thought they were just reading about the #Kardashians (laughing). The comments I got were so bizarre, things like (as I have a Greek father and grandfather) “She is a Greek-originated princess and she can’t possibly be writing objective news”. I hadn’t even considered being Greek when I wrote it!!

Worse was when I wrote about @ tsipras_eu being elected as Greek prime minister in 2015. He’s very liberal and a very far left politician, it was just supposed to be light, a very light explanation of who he was and the result, which I think I managed to accomplish, was essentially just presenting the facts more or less without sounding dry. The amount of criticism I got was absolutely mental, all sorts of people from the far left criticizing that I had not been supportive enough? Of a fucking politician I thought? (laughing).

Greece is a very small country and my father ended up getting phone calls from people about this article in the Independent, and loads of emails from people saying that I was being disloyal. My grandfather was the minister of Arts & Culture in Greece

BONNIE PRINCE BILLY Best Troubador

JOE GODDARD Electric Lines

JULIA HOLTER In The Same Room

L.A. TAKEDOWN II

LITTLE CUB Still Life

(SANDY) ALEX G Rocket

YORKSTON THORNE KHAN Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars

in the 1980s and they were ranting that “the granddaughter of Dimitrios Nianias had ‘gone to live the good life in the UK and had abandoned us all’”. I am very used to being criticized for being a woman, but this new form of, well I suppose the xenophobia was an eye-opener, how stupid of me to have been born a woman and a quarter Greek.

D: You hit the nail on the head, it really is such an efficient way to say something unpleasant to somebody…

HN: The total banality of it!

D: Well fuck man, @realDonaldTrump is ‘”leader of the free world” and takes so regularly to Twitter to rant personal vendettas.

HN: I think he has made a certain type of social media user feel represented. It is interesting though, Twitter isn’t actually that big. The company has never turned a profit and if it wasn’t that celebrities and politicians use it to have interaction with people, then you question whether it would have such a profile. The sort of people that use it are the sort of people that REALLY have an opinion and REALLY give a shit… hardly any of the population actually use it.

D: How much was physical music apart of your life growing up?

HN: Oh my god, huge! I grew up attending a very stuffy all-girl school in Chelsea where I was definitely the least posh girl there, I really didn’t fit in at all. I had a few friends and luckily we all stuck together, but we were very much on our own. One of them was @iamroseblake whose Dad was #PeterBlake who famously made the # SgtPepper album sleeve, so Rose was always quite cool. She certainly had a more Bohemian - well certainly a cooler upbringing then I’d had - and when we were about 15 she suggested we went to @GlastoFest.

I was very nervous but my parents let me go and we all went as a little gang and were very well-behaved and had a very nice time, but one of the bands playing was the @libertines.

This was 2003 and it very genuinely, slightly changed my life. It made such a big impact. When we got home we bought all the albums of the bands we’d seen, @radiohead, The Thrills I think? But the Libertines were just a band me and Rose absolutely loved. They played at the Kentish Town Forum for three nights running and we managed to go twice, we got backstage one time as Rose knew the compere Jock Scott. I think from that moment of nervously hanging out near them backstage we just really got into it.

We started going on Libertines.org, which I still remember the URL for by heart (laughing) it was http://www. network54.com/forums/1a020. We were properly obsessed, we went to all the secret gigs, we saw @babyshamblesuk before that was really a thing that had started properly as a band, we went to gigs in Peter’s flat. Sometimes out several times a week. Such an exciting time, it felt so exciting to be a teenager in London.

D: What about purchasing? Do you remember the first time that you actually chose to go out and buy something for yourself?

HN: I don’t think I do. I think the first CD I was given was the first #SpiceGirls album. I don’t remember specifically the first time going on my own. There was a Virgin Megastore on the Kings Road that I used to go to, sometimes a couple of times week after school. The amount of money I spent on CDs… something like £9 on a @YYY’s CD EP. D: Are you a regular frequenter of record shops now?

HN: I have to admit, that I am not really. My boyfriend is a bit of a geek and I kind of mooch recommendations off of him to be honest. I am nowhere near as into it as I used to be. I do buy things though, I’m really not into this whole streaming thing. It’s just unsustainable with music and journalism.

D: Which shops do you like?

HN: I recently did a traipse all around Soho trying to find something very specific. Didn’t manage it. I like the @RoughTrade off Brick Lane, it’s very approachable. It is important for them to be approachable, I remember when I was younger it felt very much like if you didn’t know everything, you knew nothing. Perhaps feeling a bit silly to even be there? It’s the equivalent of having to talk to a sommelier if you just like Jacob’s Creek.

D: Don’t make people feel like a dick right?

HN: You need to have a community feel to it.

D: Would that be the most important aspect if you were to start a shop?

HN: Yeah, make sure the staff are happy and hopefully they would in turn make everybody else happy. They need to really know their stuff, that’s the most important I think. Nothing snobby, knowledgeable and authoritative… without being a dick? I think once you know loads of stuff there is a tendency to try and tell people that you know a load of stuff. That is very off-putting.

D: Yeah… it grates on me (laughing).

HN: Yes, but I am sure it is very frustrating to know a lot of stuff and not be able to talk to people about a load of stuff.

Piano Day As part of the worldwide celebration of #PianoDay founded by composer @nilsfrahm, @floatpr brought us a unique evening at @UnionChapelUK, where piano, jazz, grime and dance came together.

Event organiser and founder of Float, Sofia Ilyas, alongside the artists who performed, talk us through five piano-based tracks that highlight what the instrument means to them.

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@sofiailyas @TheRealKano “T-shirt Weather In The Manor” Leading up to our #PianoDay event I was listening to a lot of hip-hop and grime tracks that use the piano. We used a few of those tracks in the mix of music that @frankiejplague of @Neon_Dance improvised to on the night.

This is currently my favourite piano track that represents what our Piano Day event was about, which brings together grime and piano and shows the different ways in which the piano can be used. The track opens with uplifting piano chords, which drive everything forward, and Kano’s lyrics and delivery fit so well with the instrument.

@deadlightmusic #HaroldBudd “Nec Spero” We listen to Harold Budd a lot, there’s such space in his music, and the fragility and subtlety with which he plays is so gently immersive; perfect for resetting after long sessions in the studio. His album Perhaps is definitely the most played “piano record” in our house.

Recorded live in 2006 at a memorial event for his friend, Perhaps is Harold Budd at his most sublimely succinct and focused. It must have been incredibly emotional for him to perform this work, but there is such restraint & simplicity in his playing and the record is never just “sad”, instead it evokes a quiet space that is both contemplative and alive.

Beautifully played (and recorded), Perhaps is profoundly resonant and filled with moments of genuine joy and wonder.

@AndreaBelfi #CharlemagnePalestine “Strumming Music”

@MatthewBourne_ #KeithJarrett “The Moth and the Flame Part 2” The tracks on The Moth and the Flame accompanied me on a spontaneous visit to Scotland, sometime in 2005. It was the only CD I had in the car.

After being invited to a birthday celebration in Leeds, in yet another familiar haunt, surrounded by the same familiar people, I despaired and, without thinking, picked up a road map, sleeping bag, blankets and a coat, and hit the road at approximately 18:00 - heading northward via the A65, Kendal, and eventually, to the M6/M74 towards Glasgow. I almost stopped in Glasgow, as, a few years before, I had had an incredible musical experience with brothers Adam and Mark Melvin, Steve Davis, and Dave Kane in the old Rennie Mackintosh Glasgow School of Art atrium. That and I met the enigmatic Anja Titova who, at a time when I was at my lowest ebb, gave me my confidence back…

Continuing on, I passed Loch Lomond, and took a left turn, driving along a moonlit Gare Loch and Loch Long, to Garelochhead, and eventually towards Inverary. Parking up to sleep in the back of the car at a rest point, I woke at first light to be confronted by stunning views, stillness and the incredible beauty of Scotland. As I journeyed around this landscape, the aforementioned track accompanied me pretty much every mile there and back - constantly pressing the reverse skip button to restart the track. It’s an incredibly beautiful, crystalline piano improvisation.

So, should you ever journey into the heart of Scotland, be sure to take a copy of this album with you, and, when you’re passing alongside one of the many lochs on the West Coast, play The Moth and The Flame Part 2, and you’ll see what I’m going on about…

Palestine’s “Strumming Music” is more than a mere composition, it’s an immersive experience. Played on a Bosendorfer piano in 1974, it’s based on the very simple concept of repeating over and over chords with a percussive approach, until resonances and overtones become The Sound. It’s a form of meditation. It’s diving into a sound environment. Its beauty lies in the subtle chord and rhythm variations that the listener perceives during its 52 minutes long slow progression. Pure magic.

@Adrienne__Hart #GabrielFauré “Clair de lune” (#RégineCrespin, 1966) Verlaine’s poem “Clair de Lune” is best known for inspiring Debussy to compose a work of the same name, however Fauré’s lyrical rendering remains by far my personal favourite. It captures the essence of the poem, which I find achingly beautiful and sad.

Fauré’s composition stays with you long after the first listen...

FERAL OHMS Feral Ohms

HERE LIES MAN Here Lies Man

CFM Dichotomy Desaturated

"Comets On Fire frontman's unhinged speaker-frying new project" - MOJO ****

"What if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat?

What if Goat played those heavier Beastie Boys instrumentals?"

Latest solo album by Charles Moothart, part of the supergroup Fuzz and frequent collaborator with Mikal Cronin and Ty Segall

DAMAGED BUG Bunker Funk

TARA JANE O'NEIL Tara Jane O'Neil

GUIDED BY VOICES August By Cake

Latest solo album by John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees Synths, alien globules, urgent falsettos, and syncopating lush landscapes all contained herein.

"Jim James & Joan Shelly assist on US polymath's ninth" - 8/10 UNCUT

"100 not out for indie's most prolific man, with Robert Pollard's band producing their first double LP" - 8/10 UNCUT

PENGUIN CAFÉ The Imperfect Sea

MOLLY NILSSON Imaginations

WOODS Love Is Love

The iconic Penguin Cafe join the Erased Tapes family and open a brand new chapter to their unique world.

Imaginations dreams big, recasting storming, stadium-sized pop into the internal language of the solo auteur.

Brand new album recorded in the months following the US election “a meditation on love, and what life means right now”

Silver Current LP/CD

Castle Face 2LP / CD

Erased Tapes Ltd LP / LP / CD

Riding Easy LP/CD

Gnomonsong LP/CD

Night School LP/CD

In The Red LP/CD

GBV Inc. 2LP / CD

Woodsist LP/CD

info@fortedistribution.co.uk

“It is with deep honor and humility that I accept this ambassadorship. Rest assured I do not take my duties lightly.� - @st_vincent Record Store Day. 22nd April, 2017. Playing worldwide in all good record shops.

Beach Fossils On the eve of their third album – Somersault – Brooklyn’s @beachfossils stole their label manager, married her, started their own @bayonetrecs imprint and in turn, the next phase of their journey. We spoke to the band (primarily Dustin Payseur) about making records, logos and the twenty-year cycle.

- 160 Deluxe: I think the first thing that I wanted to mention was that besides being excited for a new Beach Fossils record, I was very interested to see @RachelAGoswell’s name in the credits.

Beach Fossils: My wife Katie works for the Secretly Group, who look after @slowdiveband as part of their roster now for the @DeadOceans label. My friend Caroline (Polachek) from the band @Chairlifted had helped me with a vocal melody in that song and we were tying to figure out who would be the perfect person to sing that song and my wife just suggested Rachel. She had been emailing with her and she said “Look, she is really sweet, we should just ask her”. We sent her the song and luckily she really liked it. It actually all came together really easily.

D: I am really glad that that is the story, as soon as I had asked you I was freaking out that you would have this long list of people you had approached (laughing) you know, like, you just ended up with Rachel?

BF: (laughing) No, not all… she was the only choice.

D: Interesting that you mention Chairlift, I wonder for you how supportive is the network of bands and musicians in New York?

BF: There are loads and loads of bands, but I do feel like everybody knows each other a bit. Caroline actually lives literally across the street, I can see her apartment from my window. It does feel like there is a community, that part of it is really nice. When I first moved here I knew that there was a community, but I had no idea what a small world it would be and how much the bands would all form community. After a while you just know everyone in every band… in spite of things like genre or style.

D: How competitive are you all? It always feels to me that in the UK there is a certain element that underlines how bands interact where they are not necessarily happy if their friends - in many ways competitors - seem to catch a break?

BF: That’s interesting to us, I have seen that a little bit.

Some of the UK bands that we’ve met for example seem to have a manager and stuff in place before they had even cut their first single, you know? They all seem to be thinking about their “career”.

D: You guys have made a very bold move recently in starting your own imprint with @bayonetrecs. Has that felt liberating?

BF: Liberating for sure, but I have to say I never felt

constricted with @capturedtracks. I was never made to feel like I couldn’t do anything, or couldn’t record anything.

You know, I would just turn in a record and that would be that, I was never worried that they would make me cut songs or anything like that, I certainly had complete creative control. Captured Tracks was an amazing and very positive experience for the whole journey, but I just wanted to do it alone, in many ways that’s just how function, how I operate. There is no bad blood! (all laughing) The timing was just right, it felt like the right time.

D: You have to have passion for sure. I think is interesting talking about bands and having that professional element, because you certainly have to be pretty driven to run your own label, or run a record shop for that matter, it certainly can feel like a fairly thankless operation.

BF: (laughing) It is exactly the same with running a band, you just have to accept that you are going to be sleeping on floors, it can be a fairly tough ride if you’re not prepared for that.

D: From our perspective it certainly doesn’t feel like your band is still sleeping on floors though, I think people are pretty hyped to have you back with this new record. How long is it been since the last album?

BF: Four years!

D: That feels like a long time.

BF: Yeah, that’s 28 dog years! (laughing) D: Has it felt like a long time? Did this time around feel different?

BF: It felt like a fairly crazy experience recording this record, because we ended up not using a lot of stuff that we taped. The way we made this record was certainly irregular, in fact none of us have really heard of anyone else working this way (laughing).

We actually created fragments of songs, we would write a bit that would form a chorus, and another bit that was like a middle section. We write snippets instead of writing songs.

“This bridge could maybe work with this chorus”… it was a little bit like a maths problem you know? We were having to do all sorts of weird things like change tuning halfway through a song because the two parts didn’t quite meet together.

D: (laughing) Man, I guess you can’t get confused doing that live. I guess you could make an app with all the

fragments on? Firing off buttons on an iPad or something?

BF: We only ended up keeping the parts that we really really love, you know, all of us had to be really into it. We were writing the whole thing together. There were sections that we went with for periods of time where one of us was really into it and everyone else kind of followed the lead, but ultimately there is nothing on record that we didn’t all absolutely love and believe was the right way to form it.

D: Do you find that on things like, say artwork, you work as a democracy?

BF: I (Dustin) pretty much took the reins on the artwork.

We did all agree on the photo that was going to be on the gatefold. We all came together as one on that and ultimately ended up going with this really nice photograph of Chinatown, shot on a really long exposure.

D: That’s the funny thing about being a record shop in this part of the cycle, the album isn’t out yet, and we are definitely the last guys to get it. Intricacies of the artwork, like photographs on the inner gatefold, liner notes and other nice gestures to the sleeves pretty much lost on us until it arrives. All we see is a jpeg of the cover!

BF: The cover artwork actually came together really quickly on this one, I knew that I just wanted it to be really simple, just like a white texture. When I was about to start producing the artwork we remembered that as far back as the first record (which was a painted white wooden texture) I wanted every album to be a different kind of white texture. We forgot about it, but it was nice to bring that theme back for this project. So this time out we had the design screen printed onto linen. When you have the physical copy you will be able to see much better on the front and the back that that is what is.

D: Oh hey, I saw on your website that you guys have splatter vinyl copies that look pretty magnificent! When do you think you’ll have copies?

BF: Well hopefully pretty soon, we actually just approved the test pressing [reaching backwards over their shoulders they wave it around for me]. That said, the CDs have actually already arrived so it is starting to feel pretty real.

D: The physical part is very much the end of the first cycle of the album isn’t it? I’m assuming you guys are going to tour, but the whole writing composing and recording part comes to an end and stops being yours once you have committed it.

BF: When the record finally arrives, there is no feeling like it, it really is the best.

D: I am fairly obsessed with typography and logos, the one thing I did want to mention was how much I liked the Bayonet logo and also to ask how that process went together… (laughing) I am actually a fairly firm believer that the very best part of running a record label is coming up with the name and the logo...

BF: It took six months! (laughing) We had so many weird conversations at night or during lunch, one of us would be on vacation, “I like this”, “how about this”, “nah, that sucks, this?” We’re pretty happy with how it all came together in the end, but there was a part where I think it was driving us all pretty mad.

D: Last bit about the album, I hadn’t come across @CitiesAviv who guests for you. I really like that track, how did that come about?

BF: Oh, he’s a really good friend of ours, we’re known him for years, he’s a really good dude. At one point I actually had a nu-metal DJ night with him (laughing). We were playing stuff like Korn and stuff like that. We have a very nostalgic place in our hearts for that night… we bonded over that stuff you know.

D: Nu-Metal is RIPE for a come back right?

BF: Exactly man!! I am always saying to people that music is a 20 year cycle and that scene was really at its height in about 1998, so the next twelve months are really where we can start seeing it coming back hard.

I was just hanging with Gavin (Cities Aviv) and he was playing the stuff that he was working on, and I would play him stuff that we were working on, and we were all just like “You should be on this record”. He just came into the studio and it was really relaxed, he did a bunch of spoken word and we just cut it down to fit with the song.

Really happy with how that came together.

D: I really liked that you have

different textures and tones vocally on the record, particularly with Rachel being on there, It just adds an extra facet.

hand he has this psychedelic 1960s vibe, where everything is more than just a little bit deranged.

D: I got a Fritz The Cat vibe from it…

BF: Totally, I am all about features.

You get that a lot in electronic music and also in rap music, where you are able to go to a different place and bring something different into the mix, you really don’t see that so much in rock music. I really don’t understand that, I love the idea of collaborating with people and I do not understand why you don’t see that more.

BF: Totally. We gave him the most rough idea of what it should be. I think we just said it should be some cats hanging out in the room, like smoking and drinking and partying and dancing and whatever. That was the first draft and he just sent it back… we were like… man, that’s it, that is done!

We gave him the most rough idea of what it should be. I think we just said it should be some cats hanging out in the room, like smoking and drinking and partying and dancing and whatever. That was the first draft and he just sent it back… we were like… man, that’s it, that is done!

D: I also love that poster you guys did with Brian Blomerth (@pupsintrouble).

D: I wanted to talk to you about shops… as that’s what we do. Are you all native New Yorkers?

BF: Yeah man, that was such a great thing and it came together really quickly too. I had seen his artwork and I had an idea in my head. We wanted to make a poster and he was totally the best guy to work with as he combined a couple of my favourite things. On the one hand he’s really got that old nineteen twenties style, rubbery looking, but on the other

BF: No, we are from different places.

But we’ve been here for like four to five years and nine years individually now.

D: Pulling no punches, which shops are the best?

BF: I am a little spoilt because I live in Greenpoint and there are a huge

If I am going to shop at a record store I want to be able to leave with jazz, metal, electronic or anything else under my arm at the same time you know. You feel like you did it right.

Photographed by Kohei Kawashima

number of stores here. I live only a couple of blocks away from the Captured Tracks store. Not being biased or anything, considering that I have a relationship with them, but they really are one of my favourite stores. @MikeSniper has amazing and very varied taste so there is always an amazing selection of things to find there. All kinds of rare things from post-punk to gospel and jazz. He does need to do some work on the rap and electronic sections… but In their defence it’s not really their area of expertise or interest necessarily. Not their forte. But it’s amazing for used records. The prices are good too, a lot stores are kind of a rip-off but Captured Tracks has great pricing.

D: I think the used market, the pre-loved market in the States is really strong. In the UK it is actually pretty hard to buy decent collections of records these days. Everyone has access to @discogs or @eBay or whatever and they are generally pretty convinced that the attic is worth solid gold money.

BF: I don’t even shop at record stores that don’t have a used section. Obviously I’m in love with 100 new records every week, but I think any store that doesn’t have both new and old records is kind of weird… actually, it’s weirder when stores JUST have new stuff, that is weird.

D: I always mention @othermusic to folk from NYC… does it feel like anyone has moved partially into the space they left behind?

BF: I don’t think so, no. The weird thing about Other Music was that everything around them changed so fast, I mean they were in Manhattan. Manhattan just isn’t a place that I would consider going, especially to go record shopping, and now that they are not there it is just not a place that would occur to me at all.

There are just so many good stores in Brooklyn. @ AcademyRecords is amazing, @COOP87Records also in Greenpoint… they’re all kinda clustered in my neighbourhood in Greenpoint.

in Europe, in Amsterdam specifically I got some really good records over there. Early Crass original prints. It was actually kind of frustrating, going to all those places, the UK in particular not really having any time to go to stores all do any shopping at all. I love a lot of British music, post-punk and jangle music is actually really hard to find over here in the States. It wasn’t that big over here so it has always been hard to find. Being around those records, no matter how briefly, kind of blew my mind.

D: I think finding a record from a different time and different place is still amazing… like a time capsule you know?

BF: Exactly, it’s like you own a piece of history.

D: So lastly if you were to start your own store, what would be the most important thing for you to install?

BF: A sense of community. Diversity, community. A place where people can get together and hangout. Obviously space is limited in NYC and London, but if you watch documentaries about old record stores, like the original @ RoughTrade for example, and it was just a place the people went to hangout. So diverse, and so important to its scene.

I think also it’s really important for a store to carry lots of different styles of music, lots of genres. I think a shop that only stocks a certain type of music … well it’s not that type of shop that I would frequent.

D: A genre shop does feel quite antiquated.

BF: If I am going to shop at a record store I want to be able to leave with jazz, metal, electronic or anything else under my arm at the same time you know. You feel like you did it right.

D: Oh man, I’d die if I didn’t ask… what was the name of your Nu-Metal club night?

BF: (laughing) “Issues”.

D: How about on your travels, what record stores have absolutely blown your mind?

BF: Man, I have picked up some amazing records down in Mexico, but there is just the worst kind of tax thing going on and they are so expensive. I bought three records and it came to over $100, I have never spent that and can’t imagine spending that again on three records… it was crazy. Great records, but still… the first time we were over

D: Oh man (laughing), that is so perfect!

Illustration by Brian Blomerth @pupsintrouble

Shopping in Bawlmer Back at the start of September last year, we travelled out to Baltimore Maryland for the first ever Independent Record Store convention. Shops from across the States and a handful of us internationals coming together to talk shop, the future, the past. You only need to spend a few minutes with the American stores (crassly generalizing here) to see why #RSD has remained such a vibrant and celebrated part of the calendar; excited, passionate, nerdy people who still play huge parts in their local scenes. They also all smoke really strong weed.

- 407 The record-buying scene in the United States is very different to the UK. For one thing, aside from trading on @Discogs, @Amazon and @eBay, the online market is years behind Europe. People go to buildings. They have @Kmart, @Target and a bunch of other squalid-sounding factory outlet stores, but there is a very clear division between what they do and what record

stores do. I am paraphrasing wildly because I had been fumigated in Californian grass, but Doyle Davis of @Grimeys in Nashville explained it as “On the one hand you have passionate people running record stores for the love of what they do, and on the other hand you have malls that sell bullets… there is little common ground”. I can’t evangelise about all of them,

there are over fourteen hundred U.S.-based stores that participate in #RSD alone, so there are bound to be some pretty crappy people amongst them. However, the ones who carry the torch for the principles of why it all started are a super positive bunch, and seeing as my only experience of Baltimore stems from having watched all five seasons of The Wire, I got

them to take me out shopping. Local guides included @landlockedmusic of Bloomington, @twistDenver of Denver, @radioactiverecs of Fort Lauderdale, @CriminalRecords or Atlanta, @Waitingroomrec of Normal IL, @seasickbham of Birmingham, @neatx3records of Fort Wayne and @GuestroomLouis of Louisville.

The international delegation was Shinya Miyamoto and Sayaka Yoshikawa from @rsdjapan, Chris Gill of @RSDAustralia and Esther Vollebregt from @rsdnl.

Nice variety to what we saw. @TheSoundGarden stock a wide and well-represented base of new

music, with a svelte, well curated used section. Staff were cleaning up records on an #OkkiNokki which is good to see. #ElSuprimoRecords was warm and chaotic, everything anywhere.

Great to dig. @CSRecordshop was a real highlight. Immaculately laid out and really specialising in punk, hardcore and metal, with some incredible #OG posters and zines.

It was a wonderful space to spend some time. Did you hear the joke about the nine record shop owners who turned up with cash to burn at #TrueVine? The punchline is the owner was hungover and never turned up. #lol.

Much as I love rooting through the racks of the more chaotic variety of second hand store, it has to be said that I did not find an elusive #Ardant September Gurls 7” or the #Vertigo pressing of 666, instead I discovered new additions to the Pat Boone and Fabian back catalogues… neither of which it has to be said particularly horrify me, but it does highlight that I left Baltimore instead with a framed screen print of #JohnWaters, Baltimore’s favourite son.

BE LLA U N ION

Father John Misty

PURE COMEDY The new album featuring the singles Ballad Of The Dying Man & Total Entertainment Forever

“a modern-day classic” MOJO

OUT NOW C D, L P, D E L U X E L P

BNQT

VOLUME 1.

Founded by members of Midlake with Ben Bridwell of Band Of Horses Jason Lytle of Grandaddy, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand & Fran Healy of Travis

“immensely pleasurable” UNCUT

28 APRIL. bellaunion.com

The Sound Garden @TheSoundGarden 1616 Thames St El Suprimo Records 1709 Aliceanna St Celebrated Summer @CSRecordshop 3616 Falls Rd

True Vine 3544 Hickory Ave Strawberry Fields @AntiquesHampden 3554 Roland Ave, MD 21211

Protean Books & Records 836 Leadenhall St, Baltimore, MD 21230 Dimensions In Music 233 Park Ave, Baltimore, MD 21201 Trax On Wax 709 Frederick Rd, Catonsville, MD 21228

A Winged Victory for the Sullen @AWVFTS is the combined sonic forces of @DustinOHalloran and @AdamWiltzie, epic, lush and remarkably human-sounding music, with one foot in the contemporary classical world, taking influence from everything around them. They are responsible for three Twitter accounts, so they were bound to know the score...

Mid-afternoon GMT on 12th December 2016, the 74th Golden Globe Awards nominations were announced, including a “Best Original Score” nomination for @DustinOHalloran and @hauschkamusic for their work on the film #Lion (which would also go on to be nominated for the Best Original Score at the 89th Academy Awards in

February 2017). It was much deserved, and totally out of the blue. “It’s been a very surreal start to the day in Los Angeles” Dustin explained, “well wishers ringing the phone off the hook, all asking why I hadn’t told them… I assure you, this is all news to me!” With Adam and myself in Europe, we all liaised on @Skype.

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Adam Wiltzie: Hey Dustin, congratulations man!

Dustin O’Halloran: Ah, thank you very much!

Deluxe: (laughing) So you really haven’t managed to speak to everyone yet?

DO’H: No! (laughing) it has been very hectic. Our good friend @JohannJohannss has also been nominated for his soundtrack to Denis Villeneuve’s very big film #Arrival.

AW: So great for both of you, so happy!

D: Are you going to go to the awards?

DO’H: Well, I think so… you never know how many times you will be asked to, do you?

D: I was going to start by talking to you both about the digital world, how you find music, how people find you and streaming… but seeing as it’s been pretty intense so far with the phone ringing off the hook, maybe we should talk about listening to music before the Internet drove it?

AW: We are both offline guys.

DO’H: I love being able to put on a record and just listen to one or two records and that’s it. Kind of have a cut-off point. When I am doing research or when I am really looking for something I am getting into @Spotify too. I got my grandfather’s record player repaired and my Mum brought over this record collection her neighbour was throwing away. I realised there’s all these great records that kinda don’t get reproduced you know? She brought over all this cool 70s stuff. It was nice to just find music like that, not having to know a name and type it in. It was just like going through these old records and – “Hey what does this sound like?” and putting it on. Like, some old @motown record.

AW: Absolutely.

DO’H: I’ve been going through this weird collection that my Mum dropped off and it’s been really fun.

AW: I would also say that this is absolutely connected with the generation that Dustin and I grew up in. The first thing that I ever listed to

was a vinyl you know. That’s what my parents listened to, although there were a couple of eight-tracks running around at the time, but it’s still connected to my youth, so I have a really deep emotional connection with vinyl, and it will never go away.

there’s no pops and it’s going to be reproduced just right, and that’s painful (laughing) for me, to sit and have to listen to it, and, you know it’s like this one last phase of – “Is this right? does the bass sound OK? is the high end crunching? is there a pop?”

DO’H: Its very important to us, it’s a good thing it’s come back, you know?

It’s also the social connection with the vinyl and the artwork. Having friends over and listening to a record, you can pass the sleeve around, you can look at it. It’s an extremely weird social connection I have always had with this, and it’s never gone away.

Although I do have to say the one thing I don’t like is listening to test pressings. You have been listening to your own music for so long, and you have to do this really… you have to make sure the vinyl’s OK, that

D: It’s a very kind of anatomical listen to it.

DO’H: Yeah, I feel like, if there was just some kid out there would listen to your record for, like, ten bucks an hour and tell you it sounds OK, I feel like he could make a lot of money.

AW: Dustin I can take over that, its no problems (laughing). Just give me the $10 and I will make the executive decision for you. I don’t mind doing it.

when Dustin and myself, we were young, we had to try to find music. You couldn’t just click any button. It was such a process.

You had these magazines you read to find out about things, and then you had to find it through your local record store. Or I used to listen to #JohnPeel on short wave radio to find out about things, and it was really like you had to dig a hole, and go into this cave to try to find something.

It was really not easy.

DUKE GARWOOD Garden Of Ashes

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD Flying Microtonal Banana

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

TEMPLES Volcano

MARK LANEGAN BAND Gargoyle

OUT NOW

OUT 28th APRIL

H HAWKLINE I Romanticize

AMBER ARCADES Cannonball EP

OUT 2nd JUNE

OUT 2nd JUNE

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD Murder Of The Universe OUT 23rd JUNE

DO’H: (laughing) I just want to have some kid in a room being paid to listen to everybody’s test pressing.

D: I was very lucky. Both parents into pretty diverse channels and they turned me onto a lot of different things.

AW: You can channel this to me and I’ll do it (both laughing).

AW: That’s special, a pretty amazing memory. I love 45s, I love 7”s. Those are the things I bought when I was a kid.

It so hard to… well I don’t know. My nephew, I tried to show him what a record was once, and he did not get it at all.

D: So talking about vinyl as this kind of zeitgeist, there has been this incredible surge of awareness over the last five/ten years. I’ve actually had a couple of bands come into my shop to play their test pressing on records they are putting out because their stereo was something like a @CrosleyRadio suitcase player. How, or why, can you possibly be in bands and putting out records and you don’t have a turntable? I think they went away with their tails between their legs.

AW: Yeah, they should be embarrassed.

DO’H: Their manager has to pay some clown $10 to listen to the test pressing and they don’t even know what it sounds like (laughing).

AW: It’s like bands are barely able to pay enough gas to go on tour, not buy a hifi system. (laughing) It’s tough times.

D: These are tough times. I feel like that was something people talked about quite openly a while ago, but people don’t say it as much any more, but I feel like things have got worse, not better. I mean, I hope you guys are OK? DO’H: I think that if Adam and I hadn’t started in an age when people were buying records still… to start now with no history, from zero as an artist? Seems pretty inconceivable.

AW: We had an emotional connection with physical music since childhood.

DO’H: It’s like nostalgia through childhood. It’s such a powerful thing. You are now having kids growing up with parents who didn’t even have physical music, so where’s their connection going to come from? So I understand, it’s the way it is.

D: Well I like being a record shop. I like it when people come in, don’t just turn up on the internet.

AW: How old are you Rupert?

D: I am 35.

AW: So you are ten years younger than us. But you still had a little bit of that when you were young. You must have had a parent who was listening to vinyl, otherwise you might not be there.

D: Yeah, I was super lucky. Amongst other things we had a jukebox with a bunch of old 45s and they were very liberal to let us play with them.

AW: Exactly…

D: Funny isn’t it.

AW: You can’t really blame him. I was also thinking about the funny thing when Dustin and myself, we were young, we had to try to find music. You couldn’t just click any button. It was such a process. You had these magazines you read to find out about things, and then you had to find it through your local record store. Or I used to listen to #JohnPeel on short wave radio to find out about things, and it was really like you had to dig a hole, and go into this cave to try to find something. It was really not easy. It took days and weeks to find that record that you were searching for because it just was not readily available and you couldn’t just click a button and buy it, but that also made it much more fun…

DO’H: It was part of the fun.

AW: Yeah, hunting down the records.

DO’H: I remember there was a small record shop in Santa Monica that used to carry a lot of British stuff and when I was a teen I was listening to mostly British stuff. I was listening to @4AD_Official and there was this one little shop that carried a lot of that. It was all import, so it was really expensive. Buying an old #CocteauTwins single was such a big deal!

AW: Absolutely. But man, when you got it, it was such a satisfying thing. It was beautiful, it made the listening experience that much more grounded and connected to the music you were listening to.

D: This one is a bit of a double-edged sword for me then. @JalilLespert was talking about discovering your work when he was writing #Iris. He was just searching around and found you guys online and was instantly like – “these guys get me, and this is what I am doing”. You then worked together on the soundtrack, so that is amazing and quite thrilling that he can find you like that, but is it not a bit frustrating that anybody can hear anything from recorded music history at any given time? Shouldn’t people should have to work for that? – put a bit of research in?

AW: I think if you are going to get frustrated over that man… Sheeezzus… think about the rest.

You can’t control that, that’s just the way the world is.

DO’H: I meet these 25-year-old kids who have basically listened to … Well, their knowledge of music is so much more advanced than when I was growing up. They can get into an artist and immediately have access to his entire catalogue and listen to it in a week, or whatever.

Photographed by Scott Irvine

Whether they are taking it in and absorbing it as much, that’s another thing. I am happy to have grown up in the time I did but now that I am listening to music more in a research way I will look for really weird, rare, orchestral recordings and the fact that I can find them so quickly is really pretty cool.

own imagination and trying to explore ideas. I think it helped the score feel like us and more unique. The temp music is a big problem in film these days.

D: I think searching for something specific might be different, I guess browsing is being lost.

DO’H: Basically, editors will put in other music to edit to, but what inevitably happens is that they are either editing to either a tempo or the way the music changes, and then they get attached to it. As a composer you come in and basically have to pull them away from this idea they have got in their heads that the music should be like that, because they edited to it. It can be a painful process to get them away from it.

DO’H: I don’t know man. I was thinking about this yesterday. I got home and this crazy traffic jam was happening because of the Christmas markets. I just realised when the Zombie apocalypse happens we are so unprepared for this (laughing).

It’s going to happen soon. So these things are the easy part. But for record stores… I am not a record store. It may be that you have a level of frustration that we cannot relate to because… Yeah, you have got to sell this physical product.

D: I completely get the discovering argument, but I do not firmly believe that it adds up necessarily to people investing at the other end… for shops, artists and labels, that’s where I see the trap door.

DO’H: I can’t complain if Jalil found us on @iTunes and that’s how we got to do his film because it was a good experience. I’m glad we did it and we made some beautiful music out of it (laughing). So good things come from evil devices like Apple music!

D: In terms of when you are talking about recording the Iris soundtrack, you made a couple of references to it still being filmed and created whilst you were making the music. That feels like quite a rare opportunity?

Did it feel collaborative in that way?

AW: Absolutely. It’s pretty rare that that happens, that you get involved so early. Most people I think do the score at the end. There was never a temp score, we were always working with original music and shaping it, trying to find the right balance of everything, but we did it together. It’s just more creative and you are never influenced by anything else but your

DO’H: Absolutely.

D: For a layman, what is temp music?

AW: Dustin needs to explain the next level of this, which becomes “temp love”. Dustin can you explain?

At that point there are distant rumbles from LA as Dustin’s plumber starts quizzing him about stopcocks and pipes.

the plumbing bit, I can explain #TempLove. When they start using temp music, they bring in the people that they hired - like us - and they just cannot let go of the temp music. You don’t know why because they hired you to do it but they just can’t get this temp music out their head. So, a lot of times - which has happened a lot of times in our history - you are basically ripping off an artist to recreate a sort of emotion to edit to, which thank god didn’t happen with Iris because we did not have any temp music, but this happens all the time.

D: What sort of thing?

AW: “Can you please just basically recreate this emotion and this tempo as it feels”, and you are thinking – “Why don’t you just licence this?” (laughing) Generally they can’t afford to licence the stuff.

DO’H: Sometimes they have these beautiful classical pieces of music in temp recorded with full orchestra and you are somehow supposed to demo something, and inevitably they always feel disappointed and you have to

I would be totally happy to go back to the 80s. I remember not having internet, having no cell phone, it was awesome. We did tours, we found everything, we communicated, we set up times to meet people, everything happened totally fine.

DO’H: I was nominated for a @goldenglobes at the same time as having a plumbing leak... just to keep it real!

AW: (laughing) Dustin, you do

explain, look, this has been recorded as a finished piece of music.

AW: Yeah, this is a 1950s release recorded with a full orchestra, and you want me to do this with my computer

in a box?! It’s incredible how much it happens, over and over and over again.

D: When a particularly successful score or something genuinely different comes along, do you feel that changes the reaction or is there still too much industry in place? Is this going to be a bit of a rare occurrence?

DO’H: @JohannJohannss’ score for #Arrival is a really unique situation, because he has got the trust of the directors and the producers after three films, and he created this really unique score that doesn’t sound like anything that’s been in film music.

AW: It sounds like other things but it’s a pretty rare score for this moment in time I would say. It’s a result of not having temp music and getting to explore, be involved early. With us too with Iris it was the same. We started working with modular synth, working with pulsating sounds and synths. We started really simply, sending super simple sketches in the beginning, really simple building blocks to see what was working, and some motifs. Once we had a few pillars of sound and a musical motif then the rest of the score started to come together.

D: You have recorded with a string orchestra and it’s such rousing music, it must have felt pretty overwhelming to hear that for the first time. Something that you have written down to be fully actualised. How was that experience?

DO’H: For me it’s a little bit of a relief more than anything, because you spend so much time, and so many small details that have to happen, like this strange puzzle that has to fit together. If the puzzle has somehow been cut wrong, when you get to that last process things can get a little bit wonky. So for me there’s always a little bit of a relief because the director will sometimes show up and he is there fist-pumping in the back and this sort of stuff, you know? I just feel incredible relief and satisfaction. I don’t know how to describe it any other way AW: It’s also the moment it becomes human. You create demos using samples and there’s this moment where you get the beautiful imperfections, and you get real people playing and it becomes emotional, and it becomes dynamic and does take it to another level. The orchestra is a beautiful machine to see it all come together, see how detailed these players are and how hard they work. Having them play your music is super satisfying.

D: One of the interesting things today over here, with regard to the #GoldenGlobes, is people talking about the two sides of the industry, where television has caught up so quickly. In particular, talking about streaming services.

As that platform has the ability to produce so many more hours of content, do you think that has opened up the possibility to do something different with soundtracks?

DO’H: I think - yeah, absolutely. I am working on a show

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called #Transparent, with a pianodriven, organic type of theme, and have been given a lot of freedom to experiment.

D: I think the combination of the title credits and your music for that show is absolutely astounding stuff. Me and my wife are huge fans.

DO’H: Thanks! Television music was this background obscure thing or it was really over-produced. I am recording a lot of stuff really lo-fi in a way for the TV show, and doing stuff that has much more character, and I am recording sometimes with my windows open and there’s noise in the recording. I don’t always treat it so pristine, which gives it much more character. I think it’s nice that TV is allowing it to be more creative.

listening to side A and Side B? I don’t know, something has changed for sure…

D: Talking specifically about @starsofthelid, we have actually sold a lot of reissues of that over the last 18 months and I wonder whether, in your perception, that has anything to do with vinyl?

DO’H: I honestly have no idea.

an anonymous person who endured time. The bottom line is he just wrote beautiful music and that transcends everything else, so there’s not really a formula to it.

D: I totally agree. Awareness can be very finite, I like the odd occurrence of something like #Rodriguez on the @lightintheattic label being refound and brought to attention, it feels like a genuine archeological dig.

DO’H: I wouldn’t really put him on the same level as Nick Drake, but that is an interesting story on its own, but a totally different situation.

D: Is TV more experimental or is there just more opportunity?

AW: I think the difference is that if it’s a song or anywhere close to a pop structure people are happier to just take the song they like, but I think the kind of records we make, you are not going to listen to just one track.

We are making records and you have to sort of listen to the whole record to experience it, especially Stars of the Lid. You are not going to listen to just one track. You’ve gotta put it on and listen to the whole thing.

DO’H: The truly daring stuff you see seems to be on television, with the exception of the occasional film here and there.

DO’H: I really don’t know. Also there’s a connection with the vinyl having been out of print for a long time perhaps?

D: We’re talking about @Twitter today as that plays a big part in discovery...

AW: Well there’s a lot more screens with TV than there are film now.

Like, everybody literally has a TV in their house but there are not as many cinemas as there used to be and the big cinemas are playing only big films on three screens. So with TV there’s a lot more chances for things to be made, and a lot of filmmakers who have been frustrated with Hollywood are turning to TV, because they are seeing that they can’t tell a story anymore if it doesn’t have something blowing up or some CGI. I think storytellers are going to TV, and that is why TV has got so good.

AW: There’s more pressure to make records quicker and stay relevant, so the records simply aren’t as good.

They will have one or two songs but when was the last time - talking specifically about music with vocals on - that from start to finish it was a great album? They’re out there, there are some great records but it seems like for me it’s a more rare occurrence.

Then when you look at all these old records in the 60s and 70s, where people had a lot more time to work and write their songs and hone their craft, on these records it’s like, top to bottom, it’s unbelievable how good they are.

D: Another thing I have found fascinating is - with the “rebirth of vinyl” that everybody keeps telling me about - one of the genres that has really benefitted most is ambient and experimental music. I wondered, as people who have made ambient and experimental music scores, music that perhaps does not grab people by the collar and demand attention, do you feel like you are being given more time?

AW: Do you mean as far as people

DO’H: What is that thing that makes a record have longevity? Who knows.

I don’t think there is a formula. It either works or it doesn’t and only time can tell. It’s not down to a review, because we certainly never had great reviews or either of us had any kind of popularity, but sometimes things just work and they have longevity. I am not trying to compare myself with #NickDrake or anything but I think he is another kind of example, you know, kind of

D: I think it’s about things being lost and things being found, isn’t it?

DO’H: Yeah, maybe you are right, but I think this is a bit like comparing apples and oranges (laughing) but I do agree with what you are saying.

AW: Well it definitely fucked us up because we have just voted for a shitty president because of Twitter. (laughing) So I am not high on Twitter right now...

D: You both have personal Twitters and you also have a band Twitter… do you handle them differently?

AW: We are a little bit late. We had a Twitter account that I think our record label started. Six months ago I opened my own personal one because our manager was saying – “Dude come on it’s the 21st century, let’s do this”. I am not super active on it.

It’s more like, how much time and energy can I spend on social media in my day? And a weird by-product of the new century is that artists are now in charge of dealing with all this interaction, which is incredibly draining and time consuming. We also have to find time to live our lives and make music. Compare 24 hours now to 24 hours in the 80s… we don’t have as much time because we are spending so much time doing these little things with social media. I find it pretty exhausting just trying to keep it to the bare minimum.

D: I think the direct interactions thing is a really fascinating point. Seeing @realDonaldTrump and @ kanyewest both have very obvious psychological episodes in public the last few days has been…

DO’H: I think they are both very special train wrecks.

AW: I was opening up the news the other day and the news was actually quoting random Twitter comments from people on something Trump had tweeted. I thought - at what point in time is some random person sitting on their couch commenting on Twitter actually making it onto CNN news?!

It’s an interesting moment in time, where the comments of people are affecting how news stories are being told.

Opinions are out of control, in some weird way. Because everyone is just shooting off, it has created so much confusion in the way news and commentary mix.

D: What’s the best thing that has happened to you both, individually, on Twitter?

DO’H: Nothing for me. (laughing)I can’t really say anything good has happened...

AW: I would be totally happy to go back to the 80s. I remember not having internet, having no cell phone, it

was awesome. We did tours, we found everything, we communicated, we set up times to meet people, everything happened totally fine.

DO’H: This may sound strange, or maybe not, this may be quite normal. I found the Democratic Republic of North Korea’s Twitter feed @DPRK_News and it’s an absolute joy. (laughing) That’s the only thing good I have found.

Oh, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s @instagram.

D: I have been following Arnold, but North Korea is news on me.

DO’H: If you want to feel better about your life (laughing), get your Twitter in order my friend!

D: I want your record shop CVs. Where was the first time?

Where did you grow up?

AW: I grew up in NY City so I used to go to #SoundWarehouse and #Peaches. Back in the 70s they were the main two chains. We had small independent record shops in New York but it was mostly the big ones I went to, because I was a tennis player and more into soundtrack music when I would go and buy something.

But now I go to the local one. Brussels has a bunch of really good used record stores plus for new music we have #CarolineMusic. We still buy CDs in Belgium. CDs and

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are going to find stuff.

DO’H: Some of the best record stores are in Brussels – my favourite.

DO’H: Such a shame it has gone now.

AW: Across the board I will find great new records, really great old jazz records.

Fantastic old records, especially classical records, we are into that.

DO’H: Yeah, classical and jazz. The history of music in Belgium has been so strong. They are such music lovers, even today they are some of the biggest supporters of live music probably outside of England. I feel like the UK is always really strong. But in Belgium, people come out.

Older people come out, they stay on top of it. At our shows, a 70-year-old couple will come up like, “I bought your record at the record store”... its so cool, they still enjoy it.

D: How about your first ever purchases. Do you remember what they were?

DO’H: The first record I bought or the first one given to me?

D: They are often quite different so give us both...

DO’H: The records we had in our house that I would put on – I was listening to a lot of @YusufCatStevens. When me and my brother really started liking music we had some @KISSOnline records. Looking at those record covers Kiss #Destroyer. That was a record like - what is going on? The first record I bought was Close Encounters of the Third Kind – the Steven Spielberg movie. The first 7” I bought was Heart of Glass by @BlondieOfficial.

AW: I think the first record when I actually sought out and paid with my own money was a @thecure album.

D: Guys, these are both sounding pretty informed here… are you sure it wasn’t a novelty pop record?

AW: (laughing) It was because my brother was into heavy metal when I was growing up so I was basically assaulted by @judaspriest and @MotleyCrue. He was three years older and him and his butt rock buddies from high school were the biggest assholes. So it was like - get a life. I think it was part of a rebellion to go buy a Cure record. A middle finger up to my brother and his heavy metal friends who tortured me growing up!

D: For you, what for you makes a good record shop?

AW: I think right now for me, someone who takes care to curate. I feel like we are in this age where we need filters a little bit. There is so much available to us. So I really enjoy when there’s a small record shop that’s really well curated and it reflects someone’s taste. It’s like a label. I think even record labels have lost their identities. @othermusic in New York I loved because you’d go in and it was like a niche, but when you want a record like that you go in there are you

AW: Being able to talk to somebody at the record store and say I like this, could you recommend something else? And they know what they are talking about, rather than some kid who is working in a record store with so many different kinds of records he absolutely can’t help you.

So I like that. I like the conversation. I like the people who know. I like these music nerds, these guys who work in record shops who say – man you should listen to this.

That’s how I have found so much good music. That’s actually how I found Jóhann Jóhannsson, and we ended up becoming friends because of that. I was in Other Music and the nerdy guy behind the counter said “Oh man, you got to listen to Englabörn, it’s my favourite record”.

D: I am psyched you became friends with him, that’s a really cool end to it.

AW: It’s interesting how buying records can change the course of your life...

Kelly Lee Owens It took less than a full listen to know that @kellyleeowens’ self-titled album was one we were going to become obsessed with, beautifully minimal and very human electronic music. As soon as we twigged she worked in a record shop, we just had to get in touch.

Deluxe: How long did your album take to compose, both creatively and also in terms of its recording process?

Kelly Lee Owens: It spanned over a couple of years, but if I actually counted the hours for production and writing... not that long… My creative process usually happens at a thousand miles an hour, when I’m in it, (laughing) the ideas almost burst out of me! I’m very impatient in laying down the idea and crafting the sound, but also patient and happy to go in deep in terms of production,

controlling the automation and EQ’ing the shit out of everything.

D: You’ve previously played in “bands”... does electronic musicmaking feel like a different process or more a different set of tools?

KLO: I played in a band, but never wrote any of that music, so this really is the beginning for me. A learning curve and experience. I think it’s important to put across, that you CAN be new to this and make some kind of mark or connect to other

- 119

people with your music. Just give it a go! Be prepared to work hard and be obsessive and listen to your instincts.

D: Was there a point in writing or recording where you felt like you’d really achieved something? Where perhaps you stepped back from what you were making and heard it as a listener?

KLO: In a way, even though I make it for myself, I also always try to step back and take a listen of everything as a whole. But if you wanna be specific,

Photographed by Kim Hiorthøy

then “Keep Walking” was pretty special, in that it was the first track I ever wrote. To write it with friends in half a day also was pretty special. Those are the best tracks, the ones that just flow out.

D: Very nice credit to James (Greenwood of @ghostculture) in your liner notes. “Without you I would never have had the courage to start this album, never mind finish it.... the biggest thanks is to you”. Feels like a very supportive scene? Certainly a great team?

KLO: It really was. I was very lucky, and it’s true that without him I may not have even have had the courage to start writing anything. Also, I just want to say, in his own right he’s the best writer, producer, engineer I know. His music seriously deserves so much attention, and I’m sure the more he releases… that will happen.

D: Is the support exclusive to the electronic music scene?

Why are bands such dicks to each other?

KLO: I don’t think so… maybe it’s harder in bands because there’s ego times 5? I dunno… I feel like musicians and artists in general need to stop taking themselves so seriously. Take the music seriously, but don’t let the ego become bigger than the thing you’re trying to create. It should be about connecting with other people through the music.

a lot. In between mastering each track we talked about crystals and healing, and swore a lot. She’s an old punk, an amazing woman.

D: Following on, do you think the “vinyls” boom has ultimately had a positive effect? Do you think your beautiful mastering job will be slightly lost on a generation of @CrosleyRadio suitcase turntables? Does that matter?

KLO: OMG VINYLS. I feel a bit sick… it’s VINYL. ALWAYS VINYL. NO PLURAL PEOPLE. (laughing) I sound like a dick now, but yeah. Vinyl… ok, it’s been positive in that one of my favourite formats has stood the test of time & people are once again connecting with the tangibility of it. On the other hand, every major label fucker is reissuing every album that was ever released, clogging up the vinyl factories for a lot of new artists - the same for #RSD, so much rubbish is being pressed- a @LittleMix limited 7” !? NO THANKS. Vinyl perhaps now is feeling a little exploited by big business - so it’s hard to get the balance right.

D: How about playing live? Is that a part of music making you enjoy?

D: How was @jennyhval to work with? How did that come about?

KLO: She’s the loveliest, most interesting and intelligent artist I’ve come across. It was down to Joakim from @ supersound introducing us - before I did the Kingsize remix, I hadn’t heard her work.

D: We had the promo (which we trashed), so were really hyped to get hold of your LP just before it came out. As we tweeted at you, the mastering is immense... talk us through the final parts of mixing and mastering the album… how nerdy are you?

KLO: Mixing was hard for me at first because I was handing over (what I perceived as) an almost already mixed album! So for it to be taken apart again in order for it to be brought together in a better way was SO difficult. At first I was sat there 12 hours a day next to the mix engineer (who’s my good friend David) and inputting and feeling anxious and annoyed - then we had a huge chat, I communicated my feelings, and we decided to re-start the entire album.

There were a million revisions also per track because I’m such a perfectionist - but the detail matters so much to me.

The mastering was also hard & had lots of revisions, but to be able to master it with Mandy Parnell (@blacksaloon) was amazing, she’s pretty much mastered all my tracks from the start so to continue that relationship for the album meant

OMG VINYLS. I feel a bit sick… it’s VINYL. ALWAYS VINYL. NO PLURAL PEOPLE.

KLO: It is! Although this new setup is simply me, synths and singing… there’s pressure to carry a whole show by myself - but I’m also up for the challenge. Stripping it away to the bare bones and making it about the music.

D: Come on then... how important to you are record shops?

KLO: Super important, they are the hubs that anybody / weirdos / musicians can hang out in and not be bothered, we’re all equals - just music lovers - it’s where we connect and come together and it’s a place that harbours the past, present and future all in one place.

D: Following on as I read more of the liner notes, there are overt shout outs to shops... that’s cool man.

KLO: Yeah, they have helped me so much.

D: Most people we talk to have some experience of working in a record shop, occasionally behind the counter... but you’re something of a pro right?

KLO: Haha after eight or nine years you’d think so… I dunno. I think I’ll always want to work in one somehow. I’d miss it if I didn’t!

D: How important a shop in your musical experience was #PureGroove?

KLO: Super important in that it allowed me to be inspired, meet friends and make music with them. Myself, Dan & James all talk highly of it. It was some of the best times.

D: We’re good friends with @simon_singleton (who previously ran PureGroove). He just confirmed that “KLO is another of my disciples...”

D: I saw you racking up your LP on @Twitter, how did that feel? Had you seen finished copies before the stock arrived at the shop?

KLO: AMAZING. First question I asked though “Apart from ‘New Releases’, which section are you putting me in?”

I won’t be happy until I have my own section (laughing), but I better crack on and write more music first.

D: Touching back briefly on Twitter as this issue of the paper is kinda Twitter-themed, what is your take on it?

Good, bad, ugly?

KLO: It’s like everything, in moderation it’s fine.

D: Are you careful about how much you reveal? Have you had any moments of caution?

KLO: Yeah, I don’t like to be too personal on it, an element of distance is always there I guess.

D: Being more positive as I have slightly slagged off Twitter in this issue (I actually really like it) - what has been a really positive, unique and otherwise unlikely thing to have happened via Twitter?

KLO: Well it’s like all the other platforms of social media, people who are listening to your music being able to comment in that moment and share their connection to the music.

D: Is it possible to pick any one “best ever moment” in a record shop?

KLO: He’s a legend!

KLO: There are so many, chatting to music fans every day, putting my own record on the sound system or out in the racks and people always asking “What is this?”…. lockins at #PureGroove and @Roughtrade…. etc etc etc…

D: Was @goldpanda working there at the same time as you?

- it sounds more like a social club!

D: Which stores that you have NOT worked out do you highly recommend? Ones you’ve found on your travels?

KLO: He was one of the owner’s nephews (laughing), so he’d come in for a free cuppa and a moan every now and again.

KLO: @PiccadillyRecs and @luckyrecordsrvk in Reykjavik.

D: What for you makes a really great record shop? What are the most important things to bear in mind?

D: It’s the people that make the record shop right?

KLO: Always, every place I’ve worked at feels like an extended family.

D: Following on, shout out to Johnny @SisterRayAce who had me pestering him via phone and email last week about talking to you... he was dead nice about it. Good crew?

KLO: Yeah we have such a laugh together. He’s lucky I put up with him though.

KLO: For me personally: great quality second-hand records, the staff not being too snobby or distant, a feeling of openness and an air of lightness. I hate it when record shops or staff take themselves too seriously.

YOU’RE WORKING IN A FUCKING RECORD STORE - CHILL OUT!!

SOHN RUTH ETHEL

BING & FUTURE ISLANDS METHYL JOHN

MORELAND ALDOUS HARDING PIXX SUFJAN STEVENS, BRYCE DESSNER, NICO MUHLY, JAMES MCALISTER

SPRING

2017