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C A M E R O N P I C T O N – M A P L E G L I D E R – YA T S E E N LON DON RECORD SHOPS – RON N EL R APHAEL
This current period of time is called “recovery”. We are recovering from the economic and sociocultural effects of a year in separation. There is still much adjusting and plenty of pivoting, shops are adapting and reimagining what purpose they serve. I know that you know all of this, this isn’t revelatory, these are all the buzzwords that we hear to backdrop the rolling news. The reason I repeat them, however, is for a little mood setter about how important shops are for all those reasons and why they have been so terribly missed, actually. Formats change, prices change, styles change and the entire process of selling a thing to another person changes, but what really rings true, in this edition especially, is that culture prevails. There will have been some guy in a shop somewhere that got the exact same chills selling someone a Pavement album in ‘92, that I got only this week selling someone a black midi LP. It’s a language that’s not clearly documented anywhere, but it’s one that loads of us speak. Is this all too deep? I mean, this is only all about record shops after all.
ISSUE 23. 4-9
Maple Glider Interview.
10 - 15
London Record Shops Feature.
16 - 21
Cameron Picton Interview.
22 - 27
Ronnel Raphael A Short Essay.
28 - 31
Ya Tseen Interview.
Editor: Rupert Morrison Contributing Writers: Garth Cartwright, Ronnel Raphael Sub Editor: Lu Overy Design: Jenny Frances Cover Image: Anthrox Studio for black midi Printed by Newspaper Club Distributed by Forte Music Distribution © 2021 Deluxe Newspaper
www.deluxenewspaper.com DELUXE 23 .
INTERVIEW:
MAPLE GLIDER Maple Glider is the nom de plume of Melbourne-based artist Tori Zietsch. Her excellent debut - To Enjoy is the Only Thing - arrives this summer via Partisan and we have the absolute pleasure of releasing it as a Dinked Edition. We phoned her at either end of the day in Melbourne (confusingly) and talked about browsing racks and going on dates.
Image: Bridgette Winten
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Deluxe: I wanted to start off by talking to you about the visual representation of your music. Do you enjoy that side of the process?
D: Thinking ahead to the physical release - have you thought about where you’ll see the physical album for the first time and how that might feel?
Maple Glider: Oh it’s so important to me, I really love the visual side of releasing music.
MG: I am so excited. It’s overwhelming to think about to be honest, it’s surreal as so much of the process has been recorded at home or created at home. Having the opportunity to see it as a physical thing that other people will have and touch is such an exciting experience. It feels very wholesome to me, it’s been such a warm experience and the release is going to really complete that process.
D: Your “visual identity” if you like is really striking. You appear to have struck up a strong creative partnership with Bridgette Winten, how did that relationship come together? MG: Working with Bridgette mostly came around by chance, we met when we were both broke and living in a different city. She’s actually my housemate (laughing). We’ve been living together for a year and a half now. She was taking these beautiful film photos that really blew my mind and when I got to be in them it was such a wonderful experience. This last year we’ve been in the house…
D: I think what is really interesting about the releasing music process is that although - in many ways - it feels like the end for you, it’s actually the start for everyone else; those songs you have created suddenly won’t just be just yours anymore. Are you ready to share? MG: I am ready, it’s something I love. I love performing. The songs are extremely personal and quite intimate, I am curious to see what the response is as I have always been so apprehensive about sharing them so publicly. When you are in a room performing you control that space, to a degree. You can lead that process, how you play a song or if you play a song even, but when it’s just out there, you lose control of that - it’s a very different experience, but I feel so ready to let go of them now.
D: (laughing)… quite a lot? MG: (laughing) Yes! I had recorded the music and I was like “I need to make a video”, so Bridgette grabbed her super-8 camera and we went to work. We filmed me at a party on my own because, well, that’s all we could do with the parameters. As we headed into lockdown we had about one hour per day to shoot the outside stuff, it just kept evolving from there. Bridgette has been so generous with her time and her art, there has been such a deep personal connection. I think it’s reflected, those experiences, in the images.
D: Being a shop and sharing releases like yours is a privilege and one of the most enjoyable parts of being a shop. We were able to work with you and Partisan on a Dinked Edition of To Enjoy is the Only Thing, how did that initial announcement energy feel?
D: Did she shoot your album cover?
MG: I was just blown away when I heard about the Dinked thing. I lived in Brighton and went to Resident a lot, imagining that my release will be on those walls. It really means a lot, I couldn’t believe it.
MG: Yes, she did. D: I thought that although it’s a very different style image to some of the press photos of you, there is something really coherent about them. They have a vibe for sure.
D: I am glad you mentioned Resident favourably. They are on my list of questions, having clocked you were at a time based in Brighton, they’re a great shop, right?
MG: We were shooting a video (within the allowed 5k radius of our house I’d note!) and it was just such a beautiful location, really stunning. I said that I am going to walk over to that tree and I think that something is going to happen (laughing).
MG: It’s so beautiful, they’re one of those places that make you feel homely. Seeing them support me has felt amazing, to be honest.
D: So it was your idea.
D: Going further back, what was your first ever record shopping experience?
MG: That’s how most of the creative decisions are made, “that seems fun”. I think Bridgette could really see something and shot a few options on her film camera. We actually went back to the same location a little while later to get more options in different clothing or whatever. We kept going back to the first image as it was so much less inhibited, there was something quite free about the spontaneity of it.
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MG: Jack Black Cat in Brisbane. I would have been about 17. I hadn’t grown up listening to a wide range of contemporary music, especially not vinyl. My parents just had pop music on CD, but I had an aunty and uncle who were a bit hip and played my essentials like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. I remember the first ever vinyl experience was Neil Young, and I was really amazed at
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D: Melbourne has a pretty good scene for vinyl as I understand it. We have previously spoken about Dutch Vinyl, and I think Rocksteady has a good rep too. If you could head out today, where would you head?
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MG: Northside is pretty amazing.
“I lived in Brighton and went to Resident a lot, imagining that my release will be on those walls. It really means a lot, I couldn’t believe it.”
D: That’s the funk and soul shop right? Is that shop run by Chris? Big fella with massive hair? MG: (laughing) Yes!! He’s amazing. That is where I’d go and hang out. D: I am glad you reminded me about Northside. Chris and I ended up in Baltimore together for a few days years back, he’s such fun, a really good record head. MG: The shop has such a great vibe, it’s such a personal experience.
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D: How about on your travels over the years, which other shops have really resonated with you? MG: I really love Record Paradise in Melbourne. They are amazing because they support a lot of local music, it’s such an encouraging atmosphere and always an excellent time.
how it sounded. Immersing myself in vinyl at Jack Black Cat was everything, and when they spoke about my music on Twitter or whatever recently, that was just too emotional.
D: How about your favourite experiences in shops?
D: You have to go back and see them.
MG: I once went on (laughing) “a date” in a record shop.
MG: I will, I can’t wait. I have always romanticised about flipping through the racks and seeing something familiar.
D: Oh wow, okay... MG: Okay, hang on, let me say; “I went to a record shop with a friend”, and we chose each other a gift.
D: How is it going to feel if you go back there this summer and they have your poster up and racks of your record… What would you do? Would you take it to the counter and offer to sign it or would you try and cool it out?
D: That’s pretty dreamy.
MG: (laughing) Oh my goodness, of course I would go and say hi! I’d be like, (pointing) “it’s me”. I will want tosay thank you, I’d want to say that the support has been so… dreamy. I can’t believe how many people become part of your music, sharing it and connecting with it, it’s such a great way of meeting people.
MG: The process of choosing music for someone else is really special, you know? Thinking about someone else and what you want to give them. One of my good friends gave me a Joan Baez album as a birthday gift one year and it might seem quite throwaway to mention, but it was such a warm and beautiful gift; every time I listen to that album now, I go right back there in my mind to that friend and that kindness.
D: Do you remember your first purchase when you shopped there for the first time?
D: So with all of this in mind then, why do record shops still matter?
MG: …It might have been Cat Stevens, Tea for the Tillerman.
MG: Because people still matter! Because people who love music still matter and it’s important to connect with people in as many ways as you can. It’s such a beautiful way to do that and learn about your area, supporting local artists or businesses. It’s about forming a community, I just can’t imagine my world without them.
D: I was expecting way more pop as you were 17. MG: Around the same time I was given a Melanie Safka record too. I think they were the first couple I owned.
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London Record Shops. By Garth Cartwright Images: Quintina Valero.
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LONDON RECORD SHOPS
Whitechapel to Walthamstow, many of them brilliant. The UK has always been a hub for record shops – the world’s longest serving, Spillers Records in Cardiff, opened in 1894 – and London is now the world’s foremost record shop city. US metropolises once held this title, but New York City and New Orleans, Chicago and Los Angeles, have all been decimated. These days Tokyo, Paris, Melbourne and Lisbon all offer rich pickings, but none come close to the sheer variety available in London. Which is why, when not in lockdown, I spent 2020 cycling around the city they call “the Smoke”, with Spanish photojournalist Quintina Valero in tow.
My obsession with buying records began when I was a child in the 1970s – The Monkees’ TV show was being repeated on after school TV. Enamoured, I wanted nothing more than a Monkees record. My dad, no fan of pop music, dutifully took me to Marbecks in Auckland’s Queens Arcade. As with any great record shop, Marbecks kept deep stock and my pocket money purchased I’m A Believer. As soon as this 7-inch 45 spun I realised here was real magic! Since then record shops have always struck me as palaces stuffed full of wonder and delight - while exploring the world, I’ve sought them out in the same way some travellers go in search of baroque churches or old master paintings.
The result is our new book, London’s Record Shops. Celebrating the city’s record shops that survived lockdown, LRS honours the new and the old. Anyone familiar with London will be happy to know that Honest Jon’s and Rough Trade remain Ladbroke Grove institutions, Camden Town’s punk and rockabilly outlets continue, while reggae still rules Brixton (Supertone Records in Brixton – nearly 40 – was our first stop; our last were Hackney shops that opened in early March 2020). Family matters saw Quintina and I both returning to our home cities (me: Auckland, she: Barcelona) late last year, so designing London’s Record Shops happened via late night WhatsApp calls. Not an ideal way to collaborate, but we’re very happy with the results.
I love record shops not simply because they sell me music – more they represent an underground empire trading in human happiness: bands and record labels are formed in them, knowledge is shared, friendships shaped, unknown pleasures discovered. Actually, record shops play such a pivotal role in British music history I wrote a book about such, Going For A Song: A Chronicle Of The UK Record Shop, in 2018. Here I told tall tales of the UK record shop’s heyday, detailing how great men (Brian Epstein, Geoff Travis) and wretches (Richard Branson) all got their start running record shops. Living in London I used to work for Tower Records in Kensington and, by 2000, it was obvious things were in trouble. Then I got a part-time job in Rat Records, Camberwell, a newly opened used vinyl/CD shop that quickly became a Mecca for crate diggers, so fresh was the stock. I literally witnessed the crash of the old record shop empires (Tower, Virgin, Fopp, HMV) and the rise of the new independent shops. Whereas the West End has been gutted, East London now heaves with record shops from
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London’s record shops are thriving; the two examples below – Hidden Records and Crypt Of The Wizard – demonstrate how niche music traders can thrive. I believe further afield this is also true; across summer in NZ I found several great shops, while the likes of Drift Records in Totnes demonstrate that even in a small town a visionary shop run with passion and imagination can survive. And why not? The internet can never replace a temple trading in human happiness!
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LONDON RECORD SHOPS
HIDDEN SOUNDS
music here then you need to be a) extremely rich and/or b) extremely talented. As I’m neither I worked in various jobs including managing Mixed Carriage, a Hackney Wick venue that has been put out of business by Covid.”
Until recently Melodi Muzik, at 121 Green Lanes, was London’s foremost Turkish music shop: alongside CDs and cassettes it sold instruments (saz, oud, darbuka), football club T-shirts, framed posters of Mecca and more. It closed in 2018; record shops were once as essential to migrant communities as their restaurants and grocers, but the availability of free music online has rendered almost all such traders extinct.
They began hosting a monthly internet radio show on Netil Radio (this continues), and venturing into record shops on their travels inspired them to open Hidden Sounds. They were offered the Bethnal Green basement beneath a cafe in a block of artist studios, but it was poorly thought out by the landlords, with neither cafe nor shop attracting foot traffic. In Ridley Road Social Club they again share their first floor space with a cafe – a spacious, well lit one – and are visible to the outside world.
As one business closes another opens and Hackney is, even post-pandemic, fecund with record shops. Heading back into Dalston, we cross the A10 near Dalston Kingsland Station and cycle carefully through Ridley Road Market (alas, no longer home to the once omnipresent stalls selling Jamaican reggae and gospel 45s and CDs) to 89 Ridley Road, E8 2NH. Here is the Ridley Road Social Club, a “guardianship” building (ie short life so operating as an arts hub on low rent before being demolished) and on the first floor sits Hidden Sounds, a record shop that only opened in this space once lockdown ended in July.
Hidden Sounds stocks a large selection of used LPs and 12 inch singles plus a decent selection of used 7 inch 45s. It has a selection of new vinyl releases – largely from local producers making dance music. Being Italian, they have a great selection of music from across Europe as well as a decent selection of soul/ funk/jazz/rock/folk/African LPs. For dance fans they have a large stock of techno and house – sourced from DJ friends. Once lockdown’s restrictions on gatherings have relaxed, these hirsute Italians promise that they will host DJ events here; they certainly have the sound system required. Hidden also sells used turntables, amplifiers, speakers, cassette decks, many sourced via Audio Gold. Their cabinets also stock, alongside new vinyl releases, carving boards designed by an artist and copious quantities of ganja, making me wonder if they had another side business. Francesco smiles wryly, I obviously not being the first to ask, ands says its THC free so the legal stuff you can’t get stoned on. I found LPs here by Betty Wright and Denise La Salle. Here’s hoping Hidden is found by many music lovers.
Hidden Sounds first opened in a Bethnal Green basement in October 2019 but, after less that a year, the proprietors found this unsuitable so went looking for a new location. They found the Social Club space just prior to the pandemic hitting, a disaster for any new business. Luckily Francesco Ferrari and Alesandro Porchedu are young and agile, surfing the ensuring chaos so to survive and trade today (“We weren’t entitled to any government help,” says Francesco, “so times were really tough. I did manage to do some internet selling just to keep us afloat.”). As their names suggest, they’re Italians - “We met at Genova university,” says Ferrari. “Both of us were involved in events and DJing parties. I came to London in 2013 with the idea of studying music but I soon realised that if you want to succeed with your
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CRYPT OF THE WIZARD
from thee very depths. False mystics and seers art divided on what it may portent, but thee true acolytes know it can mean’th but one thing... thee return of thee Wizard is imminent.” I think this means Crypt Of The Wizard will soon reopen. When it does and your inner goblin want to hear the likes of Antichrist Siege Machine, Ulcerot, Bloody Head, United Mutation and other such noise boys that are unlikely to get airplay on radio (or much coverage in whatever music media still exists), then Crypt is the record shop from hell that should sate your cravings.
From the art rock haven of Columbia Road’s World of Echo to a metal mecca is only a very short distance: 264 Hackney Road is where I find London’s most exotically named record shop, Crypt Of The Wizard. Yes, you guessed right, Crypt is a rock shop specialising in selling metal. Co-founded by Marcus and Charlie in 2017, Marcus left just before lockdown for “pastures new” and Charlie now runs the Wizard, having shifted the shop from 324 to 264 Hackney Road. A short distance and, when I dropped by, Charlie was still setting up shop – he’s kept busy over lockdown serving his mail-order customers – and, as of writing, was opening only three days a week so to serve those who had ordered online and were dropping by to collect records. Named after a 1996 album by Norwegian black metal artist, Mortilis, Crypt Of The Wizard is London’s only specialist metal record shop andt one of only a handful of such anywhere. Which is bizarre, considering how metal has been one of rock’s most popular genres for the past 50 years and its many splinter sects – black/thrash/death et al – command extremely loyal fanbases. Anyway, Crypt is packed with vinyl, CDs (lots of CDs – metal fans still being happy with this format), cassettes (again, loads of cassettes), T-shirts, fanzines, stickers, badges, etc. For metal fans the Crypt must be something of a Mecca. Stock is both new and used (though largely new) and, being a specialist, ensures the Crypt gets stock of all kinds of limited edition pressings. Charlie’s a hirsute man of few words - preferring to let the music do the talking (or screaming, this being metal) – and his Facebook posts are extremely droll. Here’s a taster: “A strange sigil hath emerged upon thee Hackney Road, curious and grotesque as if risen
London’s Record Shops by Garth Cartwright and Quintina Valero is published by The History Press.
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Image: Anthrox Studio
INTERVIEW:
CAMERON PICTON
When black midi broke onto the scene a couple of years back, it was almost impossible to imagine that such dense, complicated and “difficult” music would reach such a wide and deserving audience. Fast forward to the fevered anticipation of their second studio LP, we caught up with Cameron Picton to talk about the ride so far.
show or been able to travel in six months, we all stayed together in an apartment in the Wicklow Mountains in Dublin and had much looser working hours. Sometimes finishing early, sometimes finishing quite late, depending on how everyone felt. D: Did that help the process? CP: We really tried to use the fact a lot of the songs hadn’t been toured to our advantage, we had no idea when we would be able to play live again so we didn’t think about how we would perform the new tracks live. The priority was just to make the record sound as good as possible. We could get to working out arrangements when we needed to later.
Deluxe: Firstly, tell me about the recording process for Cavalcade. How did it differ to that of Schlagenheim?
A lot of other stuff was different, on Schlagenheim almost all instruments were played by ourselves apart from some modular stuff by Dan and an extra vocal track by Katie Sherrard. This time round we got virtuoso session musicians to play parts we could only dream of being able to play. John “Spud” Murphy’s approach was also very different, Dan makes a decision quickly and sticks with it, it’s his own studio so he can just go by instinct whereas Spud and Ian Chestnutt were often switching microphones and being careful to make sure they got the right sound from every instrument. It was a very relaxed process and we could really take the time to make sure everything was as good as possible. Even though we initially only had five days there, it never felt like there was any sort of rush.
Cameron Picton: When we recorded Schlagenheim every track except Western had a clearly defined structure and parts, we’d been playing some of them for a while which meant it wasn’t easy to make the distinction between the live and studio versions we had previously planned to. We ended up managing to do it after the fact, by switching things up on tour. It was obviously also a very different world and environment to make a record. We went straight to Dan Carey’s Streatham studio from Heathrow after playing shows in Amsterdam, Reykjavik and Kortrijk and worked from 11-7 every day, going home afterwards. Before recording Cavalcade we hadn’t played a
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INTERVIEW and we stopped off at David’s on the way. He made us some pasta, we watched Liverpool play Southampton and spoke about the record and the kind of LP covers we like, what sort of thing we don’t like, all that stuff.
D: How have you found this waiting part of the process, are you ready for it to just be out there? CP: It’s not been too bad, It always comes around quicker than you think anyway. It wasn’t long ago the release date seemed a lifetime away, and now it’s just weeks out.
D: It must have been exciting to just pass over the themes and vibes and wait to see how someone else visualises it.
The more annoying part of this process has been the pressing plant delays due to COVID, it means there wasn’t space for problems at any stage of the manufacturing process. Even in normal times it takes a while and I wish it was quicker, but the label seems to make most of their money from vinyl sales. Doing the artwork and deciding on the name etc is quite a fun part of the process anyway so it was nice to get to take more time on it than we usually would. I’m glad this record is coming out when we can tour it though, even if it’s a strange, shitter version of it for a few more months.
CP: He put the cover together really quickly and incorporated a lot of images we picked out from the piles of books in his flat/studio. I think it took about a week and a half and basically cut right down to the tightest deadline possible. We saw him again a few times after that, once in London and once on the last night of a tour in Brussels, and he made a few merchandise designs for us plus that Sweater / 7 Eleven single cover in early 2020. For Cavalcade there was no real deadline and everything took a lot longer. David happened to be in London in early December 2020 so he came to meet us where we played him an unmastered version of the album, explained what each song was about and the whole thing about how it was very character-driven lyrically. We hadn’t decided on a title at that point, which seemed the most important thing to him when it came to actually making any decisions. I think the final art came through in late January 2021.
D: I love the title. How did that come about? I always find it really interesting when an album title isn’t a trackname, it makes it feel all the more pertinent and deliberate. CP: Thanks! It was much harder than Schlagenheim, we all had very strong feelings for names that others of us disliked. This time everything was more considered, it needed to be something that tied each song together properly since there’s such a range of musical styles on this record, much more than on the previous. We noticed the lyrics are all generally stories about characters so we tried to base it around that, there were a few that fit the criteria but Cavalcade was the best. There was a lot of time to work it out, almost a month, and there were lots of rejects but this time around they were a lot better than the Schlagenheim ones.
Hopefully for LP3 we can go back to Ghent and get some more of that pasta. D: Do you remember when you saw the final images for the Cavalcade sleeve? Did it feel like it represented the album’s music to you? CP: Yeah, he was pretty open about the whole process, sending pictures of collages or drawings every week or so. Once we finally got to see the full, scanned collage it was incredible to see all of those colours vividly. We were all at home during the worst part of the January lockdown so it was great to finally have something to get excited about in the midst of that hell. It fits the music really well, it does the thing of the whole being more than the sum of its parts but the parts themselves being so wildly different and all coming together in a really pleasing and satisfying way that we’ve tried to do with the music. My favourite one of the sleeves he’s done so far excluding the Cavalcade cover is the Slow cover, it’s perfect for that song.
D: How does the artwork process work between you as a band? Do you all bring in ideas and discuss the visual direction/theme? CP: In terms of “proper” stuff, we’ve got the best results when we’ve found someone else to do it. We try not to give too many notes to artists we work with because they know more about graphic design/making music videos/ illustration than we do, and in the end you get a final product that’s the undiluted vision of that one person. There’s a big jump in the quality of the design when you find the right person to do press shots/a music video/ an album cover rather than winging it yourself. There are definitely times when there’ll be a strong idea for something we’re all into, but then it’s just a case of getting someone to execute it, who’ll do 20x the job we can.
D: I was reading about David last month as he was one of the most prominent early, contemporary NFT sales. I am not sure that is a question necessarily and it does bring up the danger that I don’t really know what a nonfungible token is. But, does the idea of selling digital art seem like an interesting new future to you?
D: You have worked with David Rudnick, how was that experience? CP: I can’t remember who initiated it, but David and our manager Calum exchanged emails, and he was very enthusiastic but preferred to discuss the artwork in person in Ghent. Luckily we had a show in Brussels
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CP: I don’t know if I’ve read enough to confidently put ALL of my incoherent opinions here on public record and I don’t think anyone wants that so in short: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
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INTERVIEW let him at it. It’s a lot more rewarding because placing your trust in someone else means they’ll always put more effort and thought into it and less likely to treat it like any other cheque.
D: (laughing) I’ll print a little shruggy text thing... CP: I won’t fully cop out though: almost all of the value of music is based in the real world, selling physical records, live shows, etc. People like Daniel Ek have helped make sure that music in the digital world has no value whatsoever so I don’t see the reason for selling a song specifically - aside from the environmental concerns - it just seems pointless. In general I’m not too hot or cold about NFTs and crypto stuff. On one hand there are hacks and charlatans who see an easy way to consolidate wealth and power in the naffest of ways without concern for its energy use, and on the other it seems important to wrestle control of this new world away from people like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban. The internet is now a nightmare to use because it’s slowly been lost to these people over the course of my lifetime, and whether you love or hate it, blockchain stuff is clearly not going to magically disappear any time soon, as much as some people might hope it does.
D: As part of the release you’ve agreed to record a cover song and have it pressed to a flexi disc available to indie shops. Thanks! The winning track was Love Story by Taylor Swift, was it fun to record?
“It’s nice to relinquish control and just get something because you trust the taste of the people that work there.”
D: The permanence of the internet is fascinating as it’s so young but so documented. CP: Another big problem is both the people selling NFTs and those with the biggest stake in the game are almost all men between ~25-40. Nothing good is ever coming from something controlled exclusively by that demographic. One project I’ve heard of that seems cool is Circles UBI developed by Sarah Friend which is a sort of digital version of local currencies like the Brixton Pound and the Eusko crossed with Universal Basic Income, if I remember right.
CP: We recorded it the same week the polls closed, it was really fun to record, yeah. This version is a bit different to the original but hopefully we’ve done it justice. I’m not sure there’s a massive crossover between TS fans and our fans but I think we’ve done something with it that all can appreciate.
D: Locally, we had a Totnes Pound funnily enough, I think it was one of the first local currencies in fact. CP: These are the projects I hope are the wild successes, rather than ones that increase the number of ways the wealthy can accumulate capital/launder money/avoid tax.
D: I am not sure whether i’ve heard the Taylor version tbh, so maybe I should hold off?
D: Your collaborations with Anthrox Studio are also amazing [of which a frame of the comic series is on this edition’s cover] - how has that collaboration been for you?
CP: It’s good. It’s awesome. It’s a banger. It’s a great track. It is a 2009 cultural monolith. D: (laughing) I thought the list that me and the guys at Drift sent was actually amazing;
CP: Before Schlagenheim we had the idea to do press shots that were just drawings/renderings of us. Once we’d got into contact with Anthrox and told them our ideas we mostly let them just take the ball and run with it. The only thing I think we said for the most recent ones was not to include speech bubbles, just to keep the solely environmental storytelling. For the John L video we wanted something choreographed, so when we found out Nina Mcneely was interested, it was just a case of sending what the words were about, and once she sent a treatment just saying a little more about our tastes and then letting her roll with it. Same with the Slow video, Gustaf Holtenäs had a great idea so we just
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David Bowie - Station to Station Prince - Controversy Babe Ruth - The Mexican Devo - Gut Feeling Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 Denis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue Soft Machine - Hazrd Profile Part 1 Aphrodite’s Child - The Four Horsemen
…I very much want to hear you guys tackle all of them. Any of them resonate with you?
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Images: Yis Kid
INTERVIEW
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INTERVIEW fair, I still listen to it every so often. Most of the songs are great (the bad ones at least have good moments), The Loving Kind was written by Pet Shop Boys and there’s a Johnny Marr harmonica solo on Love is the Key.
CP: I’d never heard that Babe Ruth track before, it’s epic. Our US tour manager messaged me after Love Story won and made me promise we’d do the Devo one at some point so you have that to look forward to in October as some sort of consolation (laughing) if you hate the TS one!
D: I did not know that. When times allow, are you a regular record shop frequenter?
My only criticism of the list is you chose two 9/10 minute songs and you can only fit 5-6 minutes on the flexis!
CP: If I pass one I like I’ll pop in but I wouldn’t say I’m a regular anywhere. I’ll usually have a look in World of Echo in Central London if I’m passing through, even if it’s only for a minute.
D: FFS. I should have known better… CP: To be fair, 21st Century Schizoid Man is like 8 minutes and we did that for one of them so we would’ve made it work.
D: How about on tour/travels, any shops you have visited that have particularly impressed you? CP: Dusty Groove in Chicago was a good one we visited, but we don’t really go to record shops on tour because you end up having to lug the records around with you and worry about them getting home safe etc. I guess you could post them back to yourself, but it’s a bit of a ballache. When touring comes back we should make the most of it though, especially when we go outside of Europe.
D: How about cover versions in general, it’s not really something that I would necessarily associate with you guys. Have you played other people’s work live before? CP: They’re really fun to do, we were on the verge of doing the thing where you do a cover of a band from the town you’re playing in before COVID hit fully. We did Message in a Bottle by The Police in Newcastle and we were gonna do Tainted Love in Leeds, but never did it. We’ll see when we get back to touring.
D: How about playing instores, is that something you like? Any particularly memorable experiences?
D: Who do you collectively and individually see as an influence on your work, both in and outside of music?
CP: We did a few the week Schlagenheim came out and it was horrible.
CP: We don’t really speak about specific influences etc a great deal together but we did make a playlist of records we liked the sound and production of when we were speaking to Spud. I won’t go through every track because it’s quite long but here’s 2 picks from each of us: Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, El Lebrijano, Astor Piazzola, Messiaen, James Blood Ulmer and Actress. I think these influences are more apparent on this record, on the last it was a bit strange because people would make fair comparisons to how other bands sound but then sometimes decide we were influenced by them which was a bit confusing because we hadn’t heard of most of them. It’s a good way to discover good new stuff though!
D: (laughing) Oh christ! CP: More because we had to cram two shows in a day at different venues than anything else. For one we got about 2 hours sleep after driving from Glasgow to Nottingham overnight to do a 9am soundcheck at Rough Trade Nottingham. I’m sure it’s something we could deal with now we’re a bit more experienced but that was early days and a big shock. We’ve done some long and difficult tours since then but that week long one is everyone’s least favourite. Geordie’s Dad reckons an instore we did that week at Rough Trade East was our best ever performance though, so maybe it was a bit worth it.
D: How about personally, what was your first record shopping experience?
D: What do record shops feel like to you and do they still matter?
CP: When I was about five years old in some secondhand CD exchange in either Wimbledon or Tooting, I was looking through the covers in the metal section and got traumatised as my Dad bought me a CD for my birthday. I can’t remember what the first purchase I personally made was but the first one I asked for for Christmas was the Girls Aloud album Out of Control.
CP: The best record shops are the ones that are highly curated and specialised, it’s nice to relinquish control and just get something because you trust the taste of the people that work there. And as long as people are still interested in physical media they’re important, and like I said earlier music has little to no value in the digital world so without the real world we’re fucked!
D: And why did you buy that? Did you go shopping with it in mind or did you make an impulse purchase? CP: I asked for it because my friend Louis liked it and I wanted to be like him. It was a good decision to be
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RONNEL RAPHAEL.
A SHORT ESSAY for DELUXE. I used to believe that the day my record player dies will be the day of my own death - now I realise there must be an afterlife.
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Image: Ronnel Raphael
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I have inherited a Dansette Stereophonic record player from my great grandfather- the Rolls-Royce of all record players. Some machines are better than some human beings; my Dansette is built like a tankits valves keep me warm in the winter and the Dansette logo lights up my room when it gets dark. It is not fond of many of the new records that are out now- it simply can not bear their lack of sophistication and over-compression and that is only understandable considering it was made in 1962. There are some exceptions nevertheless, one being our debut record: ‘Full-Throated Messianic Homage’. Our tough swaggering productions are not beyond the Dansette’s capabilities- it eats walls of sound for breakfast and even though the blending of an orchestra with fuzz guitars is not always a swiss picnic, my Dansette plays it as smooth as a billiard ball! Every now and then, nevertheless, a record player dies and there are very few surgeons that can treat a Dansette; some of them lay the old thug routine- they want your money and they know you are willing to pay, while others truly care about the welfare of your record player; I know a man from Brazil who traveled all the way to the US just to have his Dansette fixed- that man had since died but his record player is still alive. And perhaps this is a good time to discuss my will; you can really learn a lot about a young man from the items that he would like to leave in his will and my Dansette is undoubtedly my most prized item. You are probably thinking to yourself I should have my head examined but let me ask you: what is a man without his record player?
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SONS OF RAPHAEL FAVOURITE RECORDS:
Bikini Girls With Machine Guns - The Cramps My brother, Loral, got me this 12 inch for my birthday. It included a poster of Poison Ivy holding a machine gun! I loved it so much that I decided to hang it on the wall at my room in boarding school and although my teacher said: ‘Ronnel, you are going straight to hell for this’ and asked me to take it off, I never did!
Guilty of Love - Unloved This record was made by our good friendsJade, David and Keefus. It is the greatest record ever made since I was born and keeps music today from being a criminal felony.
Elvis NBC TV Special Once I’ve met a lady called Jackie in Paris. She was from Memphis and promised she will take me to Graceland - she didn’t.
Ronnel Raphael is one half of Sons Of Raphael alongside his brother Loral. Their maximal debut album, ‘Full-Throated Messianic Homage’, is out now on Because Music.
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Interview: With the sort of snowy Zoom call backdrop that looked almost too Alaskan to actually really be Alaska, we spoke to Nicholas Galanin about his superb Sub Pop debut as Ya Tseen (pronounced ‘yacht-seen’ so you know), culture, heritage and remote record buying.
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Photo: Merritt Johnson
YA TSEEN
INTERVIEW D: Have the last 18 months - specifically XR or the Black Lives Matter movement - felt like the conversations are being heard clearer?
Deluxe: I wanted to talk to you about your home town of Sitka. So firstly, what is the vibe? Nicholas Galanin: It’s a small island community, my ancestral home. The Tlingit community has lived here since time immemorial, so that’s 15,000 plus years of history from my indigenous perspective. There are 8,000 people that live here and you have to take a boat or an aeroplane to get here.
NG: Some of these things have been… ongoing conversations for generations. The movements in the 60s and 70s are articulated like they are separate, but they’re not, they are still ongoing. They are ongoing because change hasn’t been enough, simply. We have technology now to help communicate in all these ways, so knowledge moves differently and voices are amplified differently, but even then it’s all in the framing of how it’s controlled in the media.
D: It’s hard for me to get a perspective of the size? NG: It’s fourteen miles of road from end to end. Oh, there are two stoplights and one roundabout.
D: There was a line in your album PR that really resonated with me, that the album “reflects on the universal need for connection and the expression of desire across distances”.
D: (laughing) That is such good stats to give to someone British - “Excellent, yes, please do tell us about the road system?”
NG: It’s a reality that a lot of us are in. Engagement without being present. Spaces where you can have exchanges but they are between keys and screens. We didn’t have this before - I grew up pre-internet; my kids can’t say that. They are predisposed to understand systems and screens.
NG: (laughing) It was big news when the first stoplight hit. It’s a beautiful place, a coastal community of abundance. D: It is extraordinary talking about ancestry that spans that depth of time. Quite often when talking to people in North America, I’ll give Plymouth as a reference point, as I am only 20-odd miles away; that being a boat launch point for North America, Pilgrims etc. To then talk to you about a history that is maybe 20 or 30 times longer than the “known” American history is wild.
D: Did you deliberately put that disparity into this new work or is that narrative there as it’s, well, your narrative? NG: Connection - or lack thereof - is inescapable and has entered this project for sure. It aims to humanise indigenous experience in the opposite way to how it has often been dehumanised by politics or history, removing us from community and land. It focuses on the realities that we control, like love and and tradition. People often try to define us in trauma, that has been pushed onto us
NG: Oh yeah, major. America is blip in the timeframe of relation to place. Even though it’s kind of a fucked up blip (laughing), but the connection we have is still here and held on through our songs and cultures and practices, also our understanding of land and community. D: Does Alaska feel different to the rest of North America?
D: Once the album is out it’s going to be down to people interpreting that, how does that weigh on you?
NG: Yes, it is. Everywhere in North America has its unique history, but Alaska most certainly is. It’s such a large space and the borders cut through our communities. For example, the Canadian border cuts through the Tlingit community. Only 150 years ago, Alaska was “purchased” from Russia and the exchange happened just over behind my old studio space on Castle Hill. In that exchange there were indigenous communities that we entirely left out of the transaction and that ever since have been fighting for basic human rights. That’s the story of America all over, but we do have such close ties to our cultures and the survival of our languages against the challenges of capitalism.
NG: I’m really excited, nervous too I guess. It’s been a long process with this album, but I feel like we really put everything we could into this piece and it represents that and I am excited to let the world have it and interpret it. Music for me has always provided so many more experiences than just the “album”, if this can enter into that space for people that will feel like a huge victory, for me. D: How about the physical part of this, the artwork for example? NG: I love making visuals, the connections to video and art and photography and performance is really entwined with music and I do not separate the two to be honest. For this album, the artwork was based on my partner Mary Johnson’s works. It’s our child.
D: …it’s so depressing to talk about having to fight for civil liberties and rights. NG: It can be, it can be, but hearing it and living it are two very different experiences, and when you are living in that environment you have to respond, to show resilience. The importance of the conversation does also talk about how these communities have lived viably in these spaces for thousands of years without destruction, and there is a lot to be learned there.
D: I did wonder, I knew you had young people! NG: Yeah. it’s a woven sweetgrass virtual-reality headset which is based on her work Mindset. Sweetgrass is
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symbolic and very ceremonial, it’s burned or used for good thoughts. I guess there was subconsciously a nod to Sub Pop and perhaps some of the iconic “baby” album artworks. Maybe even Notorious B.I.G. too, influential cultural images. D: I guess talking about seminal sleeves and influence, if I can drag you right back, what was your very first record shopping experience? NG: My dad is a musician and artist and we were very lucky to grow up with his love for art and music. His records, tapes, books. We used to have a little record store here in Sitka called Rock Rack. There was another one called Stereo North which showed up later, but Rock Rack was “the spot” .You’d go and get a wooden nickel for every tape or CD you bought and eventually you could cash them in for credit when you had enough. I forget how many? Anyways, I used to love hanging in there, all pre-download.
“A world of experience in new sounds. When you walk through the door it feels like possibility.”
D: What did you buy? NG: My first purchase was a tape, I want to say it was a double combo of U2 Joshua Tree and (laughing) Def Leppard Hysteria. D: (laughing) That is your yin and yang right there! NG: Oh man, so good. This was just pre-CD. I think my first CD might have been a Red Hot Chili Peppers album, maybe Beastie Boys? But Rock Rack was the spot, man. These days there is nothing in town. Stereo North still exists, which is sort of based on the old shop, but it’s homeware now. They might have a little bit of music, but it’s mostly pot plants and furniture. That’s the funny thing, in town all of the shops have a little bit of everything to survive.
Mississippi Fred McDowell or whatever, records you couldn’t get in the States, so I really enjoyed that part of hunting, the excitement.
D: How about on your travels, have you found any stores that really resonated with you?
D: I guess that leads neatly into my last question… What do record shops feel like and why do they matter?
NG: I’m not really as in tune into the scene as some of my friends and peers, but I am an appreciator for sure. I’ve always travelled for art and music, and I always make a point to drop into a shop. I was out in Japan with my friend Nep Sidhu, and Nep had all the spots nailed down on his little map, he just had it mapped and knew where to go. He was just piling through crates and pulling up all these records that were totally new to me. But that experience felt special, seeing the energy that they could feel.
NG: Feel like... Well, they feel like a whole other world of potential. A world of experience in new sounds. When you walk through the door it feels like possibility. It’s like a small good book store where you have access to such tangible things. Also community, a good store feels like community. D: And do they matter? NG: (laughing) In this era of Amazon and screens and disconnect, having a place and a space for that connection is so vital for everyone and everything. They can become other things too, like places for performance and gathering. That is special, you can’t buy that clicking on a screen. All of that stuff is appreciated for a reason.
D: The music isn’t necessarily always the culture in shops. NG: Yeah, it’s a language. You know, I was out there looking for other non-US editions of Delta Blues vinyl as my father is such a fan and I’ve always carried that influence. I was looking for Japanese editions of
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Photo: Merritt Johnson Art: Christian Petersen and Nicholas Galanin
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