Shriekback - A whole little universe with its own laws, smells and colors

AÑO: 5 | NÚMERO 46

THE 13th UN A R E V IS TA IM A GINA RIA

SHRIEKBACK A WHOLE LITTLE UNIVERSE WITH ITS OWN LAWS, SMELLS AND COLORS

[ Interview with Barry Andrews and Carl Marsh from Shriekback by Diego Centuriรณn Photographs: Howard Davidson, Fit For Moshing and Karen Moskowitz. ]

A WHOLE LITTLE UNIVERSE WITH ITS OWN LAWS, SMELLS AND COLORS

3 There are bands that have been making music for several decades and continue to find ways so that their story does not come to an end. How do they do it? Releasing new albums has been the solution for Shriekback, A legendary post-punk band led by Barry Andrews (XTC y League of Gentlemen) y Carl Marsh (Out On Blue Six), who, for three decades, have been working hard and leaving a string of very good records behind them. Their 14th album releases at the end of May, "Why Anything? Why This?"

On, with the different reverbs and the delayed bass, and realised that, hey, it's not just a few blokes in a room playing the tune. Of course, to justify a lifetime of mucking about in recording studios, you have to, y'know, produce something, so the noises we come up with eventually get shaped into something more or less song-like. And I love being immersed in and playing with language as well, so hey, best job in the world.

You got your start in a time when everything was more difficult, including production, recording, promotion, distriHello Barry and Carl thanks for chatting bution, and much more. The Internet was with us today. To start with, I wanted to ask the tool that changed the game in the reyou where your band name came from? cord industry, allowing bands to reach C: As I recall, it was a brainstorming ses- more people. We all had to accommodate sion with the original, extended line-up of the a generational change and customs. How band, including Dave Allen, singer Emma was the change for you from those earBurnham and drummer Brian Nevill, all sitting ly years of the band to these days whearound free-forming ideas, cutting up bits of re everything has become immediate and paper and whatever. I wasn't there, I was dri- ephemeral? ving around doing a gardening job, phoning in B: Well I wouldn't agree that it's made to see how it was going – no mobiles then, of everything more ephemeral – it's certainly course. Eventually they made up Shriekback, more fluid and fast. It's swings and roundawhich, slightly ungainly though it is, seems to bouts I think – it's cheaper and easier to make have done the job. an album partly because of new technology but also there aren't the record company gaWith an extensive career and so many tekeepers as there used to be. But then that albums released, what is it that motivates means that there are loads more records, that you today to continue writing songs? they're harder to monetise and you can easily B: I like songs – they're a way to make a be lost in the great ocean of Product. whole little universe with its own laws and Infernally hard to launch new things now I smells and colours. I like the weirdly exciting think. place you have to go to to mine them from your head. The collaboration with other peoC: Yes, things have certainly changed sinple that adds these other unexpected things ce the days when making a record involved that make the spooky extra stuff happen. As a studio that cost £1,000 a day or something, Orson Welles said, It's just the best train set which in turn necessitated becoming indeba boy could have. ted to a record label entirely on their terms.

That's clearly a good change. When Punk C: I always had a fascination with making came along, it became acceptable to record records, rather than writing songs, ever sin- in cheap 8-track studios and release material ce I heard records like David Essex's Rock that kept all the rough edges; the removal of

the financial filter, though, did mean that a lot more stuff came out – great in terms of artistic freedom, sometimes not so great in terms of quality. Though, of course, the major label/ big budget system was by no means a guarantee of quality either.

So, yeah, as Barry says, you can be independent and take the time to make the record you really want to make – but so can everyone else, which seems to mean that everyone gets a much thinner slice of the same pie.

Still, the internet means that, if you're making some weird shit that only 400 people in the world are ever going to like, you at least have a chance of finding those 400 people... I suppose. It is what it is and, as Geoff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm says in Jurassic Park, “Life, uh, finds a way”.

B: I usually say (if I want to avoid extending the conversation) 'wordy funk with lots of weird noises' – not totally inaccurate, imaginable and reasonably concrete. Shuts em up usually.

C: Can't really improve on that! Except that the funk sometimes exists deep underwater and sometimes way out in space.

How much do you think the sound of the band has changed over the years?

B: Maybe less than one might imagine – Tench (81) and 'Why Anything? Why This? (last week) have quite a few similarities I think. There have been divagations, of course: the increased plasticity of Go Bang, the World Music explorations of Naked Apes.

Then, I guess, the way the sonic palette just keeps getting bigger with all these new and If you had to explain your sound to a per- wonderfully addictive sound plug-ins (I'm trson who has never heard you, what would ying to persuade myself I need a new one at the moment - Gravity by Heavyocity – come you say?

5 on - enable me someone goddammit) C: The indefinable thing, the gene that makes Shriekback sound unlike anything else – I'm biased here, obviously – probably hasn't evolved that much. It's been manifested in different ways, as you point out, but there's something constant at the core. 'What is that?', you may reasonably ask? I dunno.

I was thinking about the time I remember that thirty years ago when you were releasing your fifth album, "Go Bang!" (1988).

How do you feel knowing that one of your albums has been around thirty years?

B: Old, obviously – though it's no more dizzying than realising that I've actually been on the planet for 61 years. Too much fucking perspective mate.

C: Hey, we're just warming up. I've been around for 58 years, Shriekback for 37, if

we're making 1981 Year Zero. That means that Shriekback has existed for very nearly two-thirds of my life, which either means I do indeed have 'too much fucking perspective' or that I can have no perspective at all. We're practically in Rolling Stones territory at this point.

Hmmm, 37... good name for a song...

Who has influenced you musically?

B: All the people I've worked with probably more than any of the giants n greats: them XTC boys, Restaurant for Dogs and of course Barker Marsh and Allen have influenced the living shit out of me.

C: Well, yes, he beast within which I have lived for so long has either made me the man I am today or scarred me for life... delete as applicable. Other than that, oh, T-Rex, John McLaughlin, Little Feat, The Velvet Un-

derground, Soft Machine, Roxy Music, Nick ting that the writing credits are split equally on Cave and the trinity of Bowie, Eno and Fripp. all the songs, the first time that's happened This is entirely off the top of my head – you'd since, er, Jam Science, I think. almost certainly get a different list if you asked me tomorrow Are there plans for a new recording after this? What other plans do you have for After several more albums and relea- the rest of 2018? Will you play some live sing "Without Real String Or Fish" in 2015 shows? comes your new album "Why Anything?

B: Yes, I think we will go a little further down Why This?". What can you tell us about this avenue of actually playing real shit. this latest work?

And shows we're planning to do only if we B: It's got a lot of live humans fibrillating in can radically reinvent ourselves.

Real Time. It has a Troll on the cover. It costs Though we do have a festival in August in £12 from shriekback.com.

Belgium in which we are radically the same C: It's the most collaborative Shriekback album for a long time, possibly ever. Easier, I suppose, when there's only three collaborators and no producers, record labels etc. etc.

It was a lot of fun to make and I'm very pleased with the result – I've sometimes found in the past that those two things can be mutually exclusive.

In "And The Rain", we can hear a sound that is closer to the post punk of Bad Seeds, but the album presents a wider mix of styles. What can you tell us about the sound of this album? How were the songs composed?

B: there's a more overall sound perhaps because Mart plays live drums on all but one track and that tends to flavour the soup.

Songs are composed the way we always have – find a groove, expand it, stalk it for a while then bring it back to the station till it spills its guts. They all break in the end..

C: That's pretty much it. Might be worth no-

C: Yeah, we're still wrestling with the Live Dilemma... and I think it's fair to say Live Dilemma has won the first round or two – it's proven highly unrealistic, not to say delusional, to think we'd be charging around the world with an 8-piece band. Live Dilemma has Unanswerable Logistics on its side, but we may be able to tag with Radical Ideas. Still in training for that one.

Apologies to any wrestling fans offended by my launching into this half-assed metaphor with absolutely no actual knowledge of your sport.

Thank you for this opportunity to ask these questions. Is there anything you’d like to share with our readers?

C: Currently, my favourite word is 'ptarmigan'.

Thank You!!!

C: You be welcome, innit.

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The13th U NA R EVISTA IMA GINA RIA