While it appears to have been a comparatively quiet 2019 for NINA, she has been busy touring the US and Canada with PARALLELS as well as recording.
At the start of the year, there was a brand new song called ‘The Calm Before The Storm’ which was coincidentally released during one of the coldest wettest spells in England. Then in the Autumn, she teamed up with FUTURECOP! for a collaboration entitled ‘Against The Tide’. But with the year almost up, the London-based Berliner has unleashed the vibrantly appealing magenta splash of ‘Automatic Call’.
Developing further her bridge between synthpop and synthwave, NINA said of her new creation: “’Automatic Call’ is about the challenges we encounter when going through a break up and how hard it is to let go and finally move on”. Uplifting but melancholic, the song is the result of another collaboration with Oscillian who produced seven songs on NINA’s 2018 debut long player ‘Sleepwalking’. The producer was also responsible for the song’s ‘Grand Theft Auto’ inspired cityscape video.
“Oscillian filmed, directed and edited the video as well as producing the music” NINA said, “We were inspired by synthwave aesthetics, late night driving, highways, LED lights, and we used a vintage Dodge Challenger car in the video. As soon as we started to film, torrential rain started and didn’t stop all night. Luckily we did have cover and in the end, it all played in our favour, as the light reflecting on the puddles on the ground tied in really well with the overall feel of the video”. But getting intimate with her romantic leading man provoked some unintended amusement as “there was a scene where I had to get really close to Tommy, the other actor in the video, and we just kept giggling. It was very hard to keep a straight face.”
While it appears to have been filmed is Los Angeles, the location of the video was actually a bit closer to home. “We filmed ‘Automatic Call’ in Sweden over 2 days. We discovered Tommy, the actor in a club in Malmö when we played a show there and he looked like he just came out of an 80s movie” NINA remembered, “so we approached him there and then and asked him if he wanted to be part of my music video. He loved the idea right away, even though he didn’t have any previous acting experience, so he flew from his home in Finland just to do the shoot.”
‘Automatic Call’ comes from NINA’s upcoming second album ‘Synthian’ due sometime in 2020.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to NINA
Sian Evans is best known as the front person / songwriter for electronic dance collective KOSHEEN.
Where many early 2000-era dance acts were lucky if they hit on a one-track formula or sound, KOSHEEN were comfortably able to straddle several genres and have multiple hits from their debut album ‘Resist’, most notably ‘Hide U’ and ‘Catch’ which was subsequently covered by German Trance duo BLANK & JONES.
Despite KOSHEEN going their separate ways in 2016, she has perpetuated a hugely successful career as a writer / solo artist scoring two UK No1 singles with DJ FRESH; one as an artist, the other as a co-writer.
Sian kindly spoke about her route into the music industry, the formation of KOSHEEN and collaborative work.
How important was your family’s musical influence on you, especially that of your mother and grandfather?
I was a member of a very big musical Welsh family. My grandfather’s house was the centre of our world and we would all be there, birthdays, Christmas and any other excuse for a gathering. It would inevitably turn into a musical occasion. Most of my cousins and relatives could play the piano or the violin.
I was very difficult to teach, so I was taught to sing by my grandfather who was a conductor for the male voice choir, a musical arranger for choral music in the community. It all sounds very grand but actually the working class of Wales was and historically has been very musical culture for which I am extremely grateful.
Music was normalized in my childhood and put within my grasp, which is something that I try to do with my workshops and with my youth-work and my outreach work with young people and make music accessible to them.
In 1991, you gave birth to your son Yves at the peak of Rave culture. You ended up raising him in a teepee whilst formulating songs which would eventually form the first KOSHEEN album. What kind of an experience was this and what drove you to write the songs that you eventually came up with?
When my son was born, I found myself with one foot in the party scene and rave culture that was exploding across the country on so many levels, and the other foot in young parenting, trying to balance those two worlds, was impossible!
I moved to a community where there were older parents who supported me and helped me parent. It was nestled on the side of a mountain in a beautiful place. The children ran wild and free having the best early childhood I could offer my son as I had no money. The forest was our playground and classroom. We all took responsibility for the kids that lived with us. And we even built a traveller school there with the help of the traveller’s school charity. They were happy, mucky, kids. And happy kids make for happy parents!
This support and freedom allowed me to be creative and to have enough time to sit down and write the songs that had been floating around in my head for many years. To be in a nature, you know, surrounded by nature was just perfect, it was inspirational.
You eventually hooked up with Darren Beale and Mark Davies to form KOSHEEN, how was the transition from writing songs solo to being in more of a band dynamic?
Before I had my son, and when I was growing up in Cardiff, I was in and out of bands, backing singing and eventually coming forward and singing front main vocal. I worked in a cabaret band as well, I was broke, this was the best way that I could make some money to be able to support myself and Yves.
I could see electronic music was really happening in Bristol (where my son’s father lived) so we decamped and moved into the City. I knew that my songs would translate to this genre so it was just a matter of finding the right producers who would share my vision.
I met Markee (Mark Davies) and went to try out in the studio. He loved what I brought to the table, introduced me to Darren and we began making an album.
KOSHEEN was self-managed, what were the pros and cons of that arrangement?
I was very trusting and I believed that the guys knew what was best for us. Darren and Mark had run their own labels in the past and I believed they / we could run KOSHEEN. However, management do a very specific role. They are the buffer zone between you and the label, the buffer zone between you and the agency. And we didn’t have that buffer so the majority of our time on the road was gruelling and really hard work physically because there was nobody organising a humane way for us to travel.
So in hindsight, I would say that management would have been beneficial to us especially as the band took off at the rate that we did. One minute we’re writing songs on the backs of bus tickets, and next we’re on a private jet, so it was very fast and very difficult to manage, personally and professionally.
How was the period when ‘Hide U’ took off and how much did your life change at this point?
‘Hide U’ was an absolute surprise to everybody, it was so simple and so beautiful. But I think that people really wanted to hear a voice in drum-n-bass, a full song maybe, and this is what ‘Hide U’ did. We went from poor as church mice to being able to buy my own house. That’s massive for somebody with a history of homelessness and an alternative lifestyle. For a single mum, in the inner city to suddenly be able to say to my son: “Yves, we can buy a house!” It was an incredible feeling.
The album cover design and sleeves for the singles circa ‘Resist’ still look stunning, how much involvement did you have with the artwork surrounding the band and what do you think of them now?
I’m extremely proud of the artwork for ‘Resist’. We wanted something iconic, something strong. We didn’t necessarily want our faces on the covers, we wanted to represent as a sound rather than as individual people. And I think that artwork for ‘Resist’ did that amazingly well and still stands the test of time. We were with BMG at the time and they helped us with designers who listened to us, so we were very lucky that we were represented that way. And yeah, to this day, I love that cover.
At the heart of ‘Catch’ is a drum pattern which sounds suspiciously like it’s fleeced from ‘Numbers’ by KRAFTWERK; as the German electronic masters are notoriously ‘legal’ when it comes to such things, what was the gestation of this track?
I’m not aware of that being the same, but then you can’t really play anything you haven’t heard, so we’re all as you say fleecing beats and pieces from all the music that we’ve been influenced by! And I know that Mark is a KRAFTWERK fan so the chances are there are some bits and bobs that will be reminiscing of that genre of music, I mean KRAFTWERK were a movement really rather than a genre, and they just blazed a trail that all electronic music is kind of influenced by.
For its time, ‘Resist’ was a very eclectic album, were you concerned that dance-heads who’d only been previously exposed to club oriented tracks such as ‘Hide U’ might not “get it”?
I never doubted ‘Resist’ in any way. Darren and Mark, Mark not so much. Darren was much more of a tech head than any of us. I mean, he was like “Wow, this is weird!” and a few DJ friends of ours were like “Who the f*ck is gonna play this?”
But personally I knew that it was right, and I knew my songs were taking on a different shape, but the songs were brilliant and it was standing out, they were in a good place. And I knew that they would attract attention and they certainly did.
The promo video to ‘Hungry’ is interesting, did you personally do any filming in the Natural History Museum or were you added in via CGI?
I don’t think there was much CGI going on. When we did that video we spent two nights in the Natural History Museum. It is me jumping through that glass, it is me being chased by wolves, although, there weren’t as many of them in the museum as there are on the video. Yeah, I loved it, I really enjoyed it, I wanted to be an actress when I was growing up. I wanted to be on the stage. I got to flex that part of my character, my personality and yeah, I loved it!
In 2001 you played to 20,000 people in Serbia, this must have been quite an experience? How did this come about and what were your recollections of this show in an area that had only recently seen such huge turmoil?
Playing ‘Exit’ in Serbia was such a massive highlight for me and for us, I mean we were unaware of selling any records in Serbia, but when we played ‘Exit’ there were 20 thousand people there and they knew the songs, so it was just incredible. There is something incredible about the young people there, they’d been through so much in their short lifetimes and seen so much suffering. Yet they were taking their lives by the horns and by their hands, it was a euphoric experience. They’ve invited us back to play next year which will be the 20th Anniversary of the festival.
The follow-up ‘Kokopelli’ was a far less electronic album, how much pressure was there at the time to deliver a ‘Resist – Part 2’ and what made you release such a different sounding set of songs?
After the success of ‘Resist’, KOSHEEN went from bedroom recording to touring around the world. I had more songs in the bank, which with the platform of ‘Resist’ seemed ready to record and release.
We’d created an environment, we‘d created a sound and a space where we could get away with anything. And so we did, I became more confident as a writer and we started to really become ourselves in ‘Kokopelli’.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK has often felt a bit cheated when going to see an electronic band ‘live’ when it’s sometimes a person sheepishly prodding MIDI controllers behind a laptop. With KOSHEEN and your current set-up (which features several live musicians), what’s your viewpoint on the best ways of performing electronic music to an audience?
You do the best you can, with whatever is at your fingertips. We’ve got great material, it’s melodic, it lends itself to live musicians. I have amazing musicians. We’ve got great producers to update the tracks, to make them fit and make them more exciting for audiences today.
I’m a performer, I was born a performer, I think. I’m in my element when I’m on stage in front of people, not because it’s a “Look at me!” scenario, but because I love that sense of excitement and community. It really feels like the songs come to life when there is an audience and the band with me.
And if I’m gonna go to a gig I want to see a performance, I want to feel the energy, the passion of the musicians and the writers and try to get a window into where they found their inspiration and relate to my own interpretation. And then I feel as if I’ve got my money’s worth.
The two collaborations with DJ Fresh, ‘Louder’ and your co-write with him for Rita Ora ’Hot Right Now’ brilliantly helped propel you back into the public eye with both tracks becoming UK No1 singles. This must have been an incredibly exciting and invigorating musical period for you, how did it feel to have a massive second bite of the musical cherry?
I’ve always loved to collaborate. To me collaboration is a living art and it excites me to take something that I have and put it with somebody else’s property and to mix that together and create something brand new that neither of us could’ve done single-handedly, is an exceptional feeling. So writing these songs with Dan Stein (DJ FRESH) was in itself a fabulous experience.
The success of it was amazing! It was during a hiatus that KOSHEEN were having due to personal issues between us in the band. The guys weren’t very supportive of me collaborating with other artists, but it was brilliant for me and for my confidence. And yes, it put me into position where other people were asking me to collaborate and it was the continuum of my creative process.
After returning to a more electronic aesthetic with ‘Independence’ and ‘Solitude’, KOSHEEN eventually parted ways in 2016… looking back, what was the musical highlight of being part of KOSHEEN?
The highlight of being a part of KOSHEEN has been watching KOSHEEN go from someone’s bedroom to enormous stages and reaching so many people and having such a great time with it. There have been some very, very difficult times. The relationship between Darren and Mark and myself broke down irreparably due to pressures and family situations and the lack of management.
I mean, I would have never created such an incredible sound and such an amazing life, if it weren’t for the three of us being together, and that collaboration will always be incredibly precious to me. But there is more for me to do and there is more, for me to achieve. I feel as if it is a responsibility to continue, to take these great tracks out on the road again, to perform them and share the love.
You are touring at the moment with original KOSHEEN drummer Mitchell Glover, what can audiences expect from these shows?
Mitchell Glover and I have been friends since long before KOSHEEN. I met him in a squat party in Bristol when at first moved back and I was planning to make a band. I saw him drumming in this basement party. I just was transfixed by his machine-like timing and incredible passion for his instrument. He’s been my drummer ever since. It was very difficult for him, I know, with breakdown of the band but he’s very happy to be back playing. His signatures are all over KOSHEEN and he is KOSHEEN as far as I’m concerned. And it’s wonderful to be on stage with him again.
You also do youth work and some coaching, what do you personally get out of this and what are your reasons for doing this alongside your musical work?
I was lucky to grow up surrounded by music, music was always around me. It has been my saving grace. Not just because it has afforded me a good lifestyle, but also it has helped me with my mental health.
My singing has always helped me express my feelings, my pain, my confusion, my happiness, my love. Everything has always been explained through my singing. And I believe that if you make that accessible to young people that maybe haven’t had an outlet for emotions and expression, that it can be helpful.
I don’t go into a youth group expecting to make them famous or deliver them an ‘X-Factor’ kind of scenario, it’s more about showing that music is for everyone. You don’t have to be able to read and write, you don’t have to be able to sing, to be able to use your voice, you don’t have to be able to read music, to be a musician. I want to dispel these myths and make music more accessible to people who it would benefit most.
Are there plans for a Sian Evans solo album in the works or do you think you’ll continue down the collaboration route?
I’ve collaborated over the last four years, with many, many amazing producers, male and female. And I’m correlating those tracks and bringing them together into a solo album, I’m hoping very soon.
But for the time being I want to focus on the live show, I want to get up and running for the 20th Anniversary of ‘Resist’ which is in 2021. I’m working on a classic adaptation of the whole ‘Resist’ album, which I’d like to start touring at the end of next year.
Things don’t happen as quickly as they did in the beginning, but things are happening. And I’m very proud to still be here, still be selling-out shows around the country and around Europe. So keep an eye out for us and we’ll keep you posted on any developments with the releases!
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Sian Evans
Special thanks to Maria Kon and James Knights
The albums ‘Resist’ and ‘Kokopelli’ are still available on CD via Sony Music
2020 live dates include:
Brighton Chalk (22nd February), Lucerna Music Bar (23rd February), Prague Lucerna Music Bar (25th February), Brno Zoner Bobyhall (26th February), Ostrava Bonver Aréna (27th February), Pardubice Ideon Pardubice (28th February), Southampton The 1865 (6th March), Budapest Barba Negra Track (2nd May), Nottingham Rescue Rooms (10th May), Zwolle Hedon Zwolle (14th May), Leeuwarden Neushoorn (15th May), Tilburg Poppodium 013 (16th May), Amsterdam Q-Factory (17th May), Cardiff The Globe (21st May), Birmingham The Mill (22nd May), Manchester Gorilla (24th May), London Garage (30th May)
To celebrate the four decade legacy of Factory Records, Rhino / Warner Music Group have released two lavish boxed sets.
‘Use Hearing Protection: Factory Records 1978-1979’ gathers facsimile editions of the first 10 Factory items issued with a catalogue number.
It includes the first music releases ‘A Factory Sample’ (Fac 2), ‘All Night Party’ by A CERTAIN RATIO (Fac 5), ‘Electricity’ by OMD (Fac 6) and ‘Unknown Pleasures’ by JOY DIVISION (Fact 10).
Meanwhile, the early history of Factory Records is told in its accompanying 60 page book with text by label historian / biographer James Nice and photos by Kevin Cummins, while presented on DVD is the 8mm short film ‘No City Fun’ (Fac 9) featuring music by JOY DIVISION.
Additional items in ‘Use Hearing Protection: Factory Records 1978-1979’ include a white label 12” single by THE TILLER BOYS (originally intended as FAC3 but not released) and a previously unheard audio interview with Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton and JOY DIVISION from 1979 conducted by journalist Mary Harron restored across two CDs.
Featuring booklet notes by James Nice and Paul Morley, the second boxed set ‘Factory Records: Communications 1978-92’ is a reissue of the 4CD collection originally released in 2009 featuring JOY DIVISION, NEW ORDER, OMD, SECTION 25, JAMES, THE RAILWAY CHILDREN, ELECTRONIC and HAPPY MONDAYS among many as a set of 8 coloured vinyl LPs.
The ‘Use Hearing Protection’ exhibition premiered at London’s Chelsea Space for a limited period in the Autumn featuring the first 50 Factory items, but an expanded version will open in July 2020 at The Science & Industry Museum in Manchester.
James Nice took time out to chat about all things Factory…
How important were Factory Records?
That’s a huge question! Can I defer to all 546 pages of my book ‘Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records’, published in 2010? I still maintain that Factory has more influence and cultural capital than any other record label since.
The design sensibility counts for as much as the music, but having said that I’ve played ‘Unknown Pleasures’ many times in 2019, and even with the passage of 40 years it still sounds utterly fresh and contemporary. Hats off to Martin Hannett as well as the band.
Are you happy with how the ‘Use Hearing Protection: Factory Records 1978-1979’ box turned out?
Yes, very much so. When WMG asked in 2018 whether there was something we could do to mark the 40th anniversary of the founding of the label, I suggested a mixed media ‘exhibition in a box’ containing the first 10 numbered artefacts because it seemed like an impossible challenge.
Aside from some complex licensing issues, some of the sleeves are exceptionally hard to reproduce. I don’t think any other label could have realised ‘Use Hearing Protection’, to be honest. At no time did Warners veto any element as being too costly, or object to bonus items such as THE TILLER BOYS 12” or the double CD interview with JOY DIVISION, Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson.
The first Factory Records music release FAC2 ‘A Factory Sample’ had a now iconic sleeve design, what was the process to ensure this reproduction was as close to the original as possible?
That was a significant challenge. The originals were hand-folded, hand-assembled – and even heat-sealed by hand using some sort of contraption no-one could identify 40 years later. The process took Factory several weeks back in 1979. The new edition was produced by a specialist printer in Italy and uses a heavier gauge polythene, but otherwise it’s faithful. Actually that’s not true – we corrected all the spelling errors on the sleeves and posters also. Hopefully that will stop anyone trying to sell these as originals.
Legend has it that the thermographic process used on FAC6 ‘Electricity’ by OMD set the black-on-black sleeve on fire during the original manufacturing run, how was the effect achieved this time round?
Well, that’s what Peter Saville says. The black–on-black design concept of Fac 6 is fantastic, but I think the original thermographed sleeves ended up looking more ‘interesting’ than beautiful. The new version uses embossing and a spot varnish, and actually I think it looks better. That’s just my opinion though. Several classic Factory sleeves are pretty much impossible to replicate exactly now because the old technology is gone.
Fac 6 is one. Another is Fact 14, DURUTTI COLUMN’S first album. No-one makes 12-inch square glasspaper sheets any more. In fact no-one in Europe even makes glasspaper.
There has also been the 40th Anniversary of FAC10 ‘Unknown Pleasures’ by JOY DIVISION recently, is this the key release that allowed Factory Records to become a sustainable entity for the next few years?
Fact 10 was the logical endpoint to the UHP box, for sure. ‘Unknown Pleasures’ sold quite well at the time, although in June 1979 indie distribution was still in its infancy and it took a while to actually recoup. Obviously Ian Curtis died in May 1980, and sales of JOY DIVISION and NEW ORDER subsequently underwrote Factory for a long time afterwards.
Here’s what Tony Wilson had to say: “It began slowly. We did ‘Unknown Pleasures’, pressed 10,000, sold 5,000 off the back of the truck. The other 5,000 came home to Palatine Road. As soon as you’d got going, suddenly the mood changed, and by the end of ‘79 there was Rough Trade distribution, and that political identity you felt about being an independent label had arrived. But it wasn’t until maybe six months after Unknown Pleasures. By the time you got to ‘Closer’, it was all there.”
What’s inside the 60 page hardback book that is part of the ‘Use Hearing Protection: Factory Records 1978-1979’ box?
The book is in the style of an exhibition catalogue, so each of the items included – records, posters, films, stationary, egg-timers – is given several pages. The explanatory text for each item take the form of first person quotes from those involved.
I also wrote an introductory essay about the formation of Factory, and there’s also a highly perceptive Melody Maker piece by Mary Harron from 1979 which keys into the interview CDs. All the photos are by Kevin Cummins and provide an acute sense of time and place. It really was a joy to work with Howard Wakefield and Peter Saville on the whole project, and cut the singles at Abbey Road.
‘Factory Records: Communications 1978-1992’ has been reissued as a boxed set of 8 coloured vinyl LPs, what are your favourite five tracks from it and why?
In no particular order: ‘True Faith’ by NEW ORDER, which I think is their best pop song; ‘Mercy Theme (aka Duet)’ by DURUTTI COLUMN, very composed and classical yet warm and emotive; ‘Baader Meinhof’ by CABARET VOLTAIRE, because it still sounds terrifying; ‘Nightshift’ by THE NAMES, dark, understated pop by an underrated band; ‘Flight’ by ACR, thin boys punching above their weight to great effect.
Is there something you feel should have been included on it that isn’t?
ESG; they asked for silly money 10 years ago when the original CD version appeared. I don’t think anyone was very keen to try again this time. It’s a great shame though, as their Factory single is a timeless gem. I love ‘Can’t Afford’ by 52ND STREET too, but there wasn’t space to include it on this comp.
Factory Records were known for their great artwork and sleeves, which were the five that you liked best?
I like pretty much every sleeve design by Peter Saville, 8vo, Martyn Atkins and Mark Farrow. My five favourites are probably ‘Unknown Pleasures’ (Fact 10), the tracing paper sleeve for the first SECTION 25 single (Fac 18), ‘Without Mercy’ by DURUTTI COLUMN (Fact 84), ‘Always Now’ by SECTION 25 (Fact 45) and ‘Power, Corruption & Lies’ by New Order (Fact 75). Ben Kelly worked on a couple of excellent Factory sleeves too – Fac 18, and ‘Sextet’ by ACR – as well as The Haçienda.
The ‘Use Hearing Protection FAC 1 – 50 / 40’ exhibition made its debut at Chelsea Space in London, where is it heading next?
It will open in Manchester in 2020, and will be slightly bigger too. I liked the merchandising WMG produced with Saville – the SECTION 25 ‘Always Now’ tea towel in particular.
The ‘Use Hearing Protection’ T-shirts are only available in yellow in childrens’ sizes, I don’t wear T-shirts much but I’d have bought an adult one of those… do you think an opportunity may have been missed there?
Nothing to do with me!
However our ‘Drifting Cowboys’ DURUTTI COLUMN tee doubles as an ‘early’ Factory shirt, and is available in all sizes from Factory Benelux.
Why does Factory Records continue to be of cultural fascination in the 21st Century?
I’m going to be lazy and paraphrase from my text in the UHP book. According to Peter Saville, the remarkable Factory saga is one of the last authentic stories in pop music. “Because for 14 years nobody ever made a decision based on profitability”. Rather, as Saville points out with admirable candour, the equity invested in the company was death.
Firstly that of troubled JOY DIVISION singer Ian Curtis, who took his own life in May 1980, and in ‘Unknown Pleasures’ left behind him perhaps the best debut album of all time. Those record sales underwrote The Haçienda, another astonishing story embracing druggy excess and gangland drama. Ultimately the label collapsed in spectacular style, and Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton and Martin Hannett also died far too young. Forget ‘24 Hour Party People’ – the Factory story would make a great longform drama on Netflix or HBO.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to James Nice
Back in 2014, a mysterious Chinese combo named QUIETER THAN SPIDERS caught the ears of ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK
Fast forward to 2019 and after a few delays, QUIETER THAN SPIDERS have finally released their debut album ‘Signs Of Life’ on Anna Logue Records, the independent label based in Germany.
Their understated but richly melodic and emotive Shanghai synthpop is largely played by the hands of the anonymous family group of Leon, Yi Fan and Yao.
‘Signs Of Life’ possesses a timeless quality which manages to be simultaneously both futuristic and classic, and in common with records such as DAVID BOWIE’s ‘Low’, JOY DIVISION’s ‘Closer’ or MOBY’s ‘Play’, ‘Signs Of Life’ begins in an upbeat fashion but then gets increasingly slower, stranger and sadder.
Yi Fan from QUIETER THAN SPIDERS kindly chatted to answer a few questions about one of the best electronic albums of 2019.
How did QUIETER THAN SPIDERS become a musical entity and what is your creative dynamic?
It was a very gradual process which only formally came to fruition once we started to record the album.
Leon has been writing and recording songs since his teenage years while Yao and I both grew up playing traditional Chinese instruments such as erhu (a two-stringed fiddle) and guzheng (a type of zither). Over the years, we took an interest in each other’s music and tried to encourage each other. Eventually, Leon started to teach us how he wrote and recorded music on his synthesiser and, step by step, we became more involved with it.
We started by designing electronic sounds and making field-recordings which we would then experiment with. By the time Leon wrote ‘No Illusion’ we had started to perform with him during the recordings and, from thereon, we were officially a group. It didn’t take long to decide what to call our project. QUIETER THAN SPIDERS was an affectionate school nickname for one of us and, as we are all quiet people, we thought it would be a perfect name to use.
What was the key track that got QUIETER THAN SPIDERS rolling? Was it ‘Shanghai Metro’? What inspired it?
‘No Illusion’ was the first song that Yao and I were involved with, even though we still hadn’t quite officially formed QUIETER THAN SPIDERS at the point when Leon wrote it. Stefan Bornhorst aka THE SILICON SCIENTIST heard the song and recommended us to Marc Schaffer at Anna Logue Records who offered us the chance to record an album. It was such a special and unexpected thing to happen, particularly because Stefan’s own wonderful music had actually been such an important inspiration.
Another defining moment was when ‘Shanghai Metro’ was included on a compilation CD. That really was a lovely moment for us, not least because it was the first time any of our songs had been officially released. We wrote ‘Shanghai Metro’ with the simple idea of celebrating the city and its modern development. We first had the idea after a day out together at the Oriental Pearl Tower which is a radio tower that overlooks the city. The next morning, we went out again to travel around on the metro system and record some announcements. We knew someone who owned a Speak & Spell machine, so we borrowed it to spell out ‘Shanghai’ for the chorus.
QUIETER THAN SPIDERS have described themselves as “using home-made electronic sounds played by hand”, how much of that manifesto have you been able to maintain in the final realisation of ‘Signs Of Life’?
Our recording style stems from when Leon first started to create music in his youth. His first keyboard was an old second-hand Roland W-30 and most of the buttons and functions were broken. He therefore learnt to create songs without being able to use or learn any of the basic technical features.
His songs were simply layers of live recordings played entirely by hand. Even the metronome didn’t work, so he first had to play a freehand drum track to serve as the basis for the rest of the song. Later on, Yao and I also inherited the same recording method. When affordable software came along, it offered us the opportunity to record songs ‘properly’ for the very first time.
Some aspects, such as being able to programme the drums, were a welcome relief but, for the most part, we didn’t want to let go of the old recording style. The challenges and limitations had actually become part of the creative process and it gave us the intimacy of being ‘physically present’ at every little moment of a song.
When it comes to designing our own sounds; this is something we enjoy just as much as making the music. We distort basic electronic sounds and manipulate sounds from our field recordings as a way of recreating imagined atmospheres.
Of course, we occasionally used some standard sounds and other samples too on the album but, for the most part, we preferred to rely our own palette of sounds.
What are your tools as far as producing the music is concerned, are you vintage synth or software users?
We didn’t have the budget or space to acquire vintage synths and recording equipment, so we just embraced a modest set-up. We use software, mainly for the track recorder and the effect modules which enable reverbs and sound manipulations etc. We also use the software to programme basic percussion; we then add additional percussion sounds by hand as we record. For performing, we use midi keyboards and a microphone – that’s about it. With such limitations, it can sometimes be frustrating and we had to use a lot of trial and error to make things sound the way we wanted.
‘Arcade Eighty – Five’ opens and has a bouncy chiptune backbone, but that is almost a red herring for the album as it steadily slows and becomes more understated. What inspired this unusual concept as most albums are either primarily fast or primarily slow, or at least mix the tempos up within the tracklist?
Initially, we did think about mixing the tempos but, in the end, we decided that we preferred the songs to be surrounded by an appropriate context. We also wanted the album to build, or perhaps subside, towards a certain feeling. Although there are some exceptions, the songs are roughly in the order that we recorded them so, in that sense, there is a vague personal narrative which takes the album in a particular direction.
‘The Land Of Lost Content’ was inspired by a AE Housman poem, but it works on so many levels as a track…
Housman’s poem manages to express so much about the nature of memories and the passing of time. He laments the ability to remember a state of being that he can never return to. These are the types of themes which interest us because they seem to say something of life’s deeper meanings and mysteries.
When we adapted the poem into a song, we also wanted to include a notion of uncertainty about dreams and memory. The development of Shanghai has been spectacular over the past decades and many familiar old streets and buildings have now disappeared. When you can no longer revisit and verify particular things that you remember, you’re sometimes left wondering if it was just a dream.
‘The Land of Lost Content’ was actually the most difficult song on the album to record and mix. We seriously considered giving up on it at one point. Aside from mastering the album, Stefan Bornhorst also kindly mixed this track for us and performed some additional synths. It is entirely thanks to him that the song survived and made it onto the album.
The interlude side of your music provides an important aspect of ‘Signs Of Life’ which has coincidentally fallen into that ‘Stranger Things’ soundtrack realm, is it a TV show that you have seen and followed?
With many of our songs, we try to convey certain images and moods that we imagine. I suppose we approach things a bit like a soundtrack because we are trying to capture a particular atmosphere. This was certainly the case with the interludes and also the later songs on the album.
Are QUIETER THAN SPIDERS influenced much by TV or cinema??
Soundtracks certainly do inspire us, whether it’s just the pure use of sounds or beautiful pieces of music from people such Angelo Badalamenti, Johann Johansson and Max Richter etc. We hadn’t seen ‘Stranger Things’, but we recently had the opportunity to watch all three series in one go. We really enjoyed it and, needless to say, we absolutely loved the wonderful synth soundtrack by Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon!
On ‘Brave New World’ and ‘The Statues’, Vangelis is looming…
For all of us, our first real experience of electronic music was mostly through artists such as Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre. For Leon especially, these were the kinds of artists which made him first dream of having a synthesiser. As a child, he had a compilation album of instrumental synthesiser music and, looking back, those songs must have formed his first ideas of what electronic music should sound like and what components it should have.
‘Hibakusha’ is a haunting song about the aftermath of Hiroshima, had this been a difficult song to write?
Whenever we have an idea for a song theme, it usually takes several attempts to find the right song melody and structure. However, with ‘Hibakusha’, it all seemed to develop and fit together quite naturally. In terms of the lyrics, Leon wanted to link them to small details which appeared in the hibakusha’s testimonies. He also wanted the words to form a double narrative so that they could be from both the perspective of a hibakusha but also from the perspective of someone reading the testimonies and fearing them to be a premonition. We have no desire to ever include any politics in our songs; we just like to focus in on human feelings and the thoughts they inspire, that’s all.
Musically, ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK can hear SOLVENT and the solo work of Michael Rother from NEU! in ‘Hibakusha’. Had they been reference points in the final arrangement?
It is a real honour to be compared with either of them but I must admit that we didn’t consciously have any particular reference points for ‘Hibakusha’. We generally approach our songs in a very abstract and intuitive way but I think it’s inevitable that many music influences from across the years will weave themselves into the fabric of anything we do.
What inspired you to produce a piece of music about the tragic cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov? There’s one hell of a backstory behind Soyuz 1 with him and Yuri Gagarin, both literally prepared to die for the other, knowing that this mission was likely to fail?
As with ‘Hibakusha’, we were moved by the human story behind it all together with the haunting backdrop of primitive space experimentation.
I can’t actually remember how I came to be reading about Komarov in the first place but, when I shared the story with Leon and Yao, they were equally captivated by it. We actually recorded ‘Komarov’ during the same autumn that we recorded ‘Hibakusha’.
There is a lot of sadness in the album, but is ‘The Signs Of Life’ song referring to something much more personal?
‘The Signs of Life’ was written as a personal memorial for a special person we knew. It was also a way for us to process our feelings in relation to the nature of loss. There are so many little signs of life which go unnoticed because they seem mundane or unimportant. When they suddenly disappear, they take on a heart-breaking significance.
While writing the song, Leon went for an evening walk and saw a rusty old vintage car hidden away in the long grass near the edge of a forest. It made him think about things disappearing from everyday life but still secretly existing somewhere else. Although songs such as ‘The Signs of Life’ and ‘The Statues’ are melancholy, they also convey a deep sense of hope; a feeling that all is not lost somehow.
What have been your own highlights on ‘Signs Of Life’?
We are really pleased with the whole album but, if we have to choose, I think that ‘Hibakusha’ and ‘Komarov’ are the songs that we are most pleased with. We felt very deeply immersed in the feelings and imagery of the subjects when we recorded those and it felt a bit like re-entering a vivid dream each time that we returned to work on them. The same was also true for ‘The Signs of Life’ and ‘The Statues’ which had the added dimension of having a personal connection. They will always be very precious songs for us because they captured the way things felt at a specific moment of time.
It’s been a long time coming, but ‘Signs Of Life’ has been worth the wait, how do you look back on the journey?
Yes, quite a long time has passed since we originally recorded the songs. When we listen to the album now, it lets us retrace our footsteps but in the comfortable knowledge that we arrived safely in the end despite the setbacks.
The main feeling we have when looking back is ‘gratitude’ simply because, without the kindness of people such as Stefan Bornhorst and Marc Schaffer, we would probably never have made this album. Along with Steve Lippert who designed the artwork, they all put so much love and effort into the project to ensure that it reached the light of day. We are now inspired to write more songs to keep the journey going; but let’s wait and see!
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to QUIETER THAN SPIDERS
Special thanks to Marc Schaffer at Anna Logue Records
‘Signs Of Life’ is released by Anna Logue Records in 2CD and double vinyl LP formats featuring a bonus album of 10 remixes by artists including Kevin Komoda from RATIONAL YOUTH, VILE ELECTRODES and THE SILICON SCIENTIST – please email [email protected]
Lauded by Drowned in Sound as “probably the most underrated band of the last 25 years”, NO-MAN have had a career that has stylistically covered pop, art rock and TALK TALK flavoured balladeering.
This breadth of musical output should hardly come as a surprise given the group is made up of Tim Bowness and Prog powerhouse Steven Wilson whose work has included not only his own solo output but also PORCUPINE TREE, BLACKFIELD, STORM CORROSION with OPETH’s Mikael Akerfeldt and critically acclaimed 5.1 surround remixes for acts as diverse as KING CRIMSON, XTC, MARILLION and TEARS FOR FEARS
Now more than a decade since the ‘Schoolyard Ghosts’ album, NO-MAN have reconvened with a return to their electronic roots, ‘Love You To Bits’.
The cover of this release which features a disco mirrorball gives a clue to the content within, a fantastic mix of GOLDFRAPP, KRAFTWERK and ROBERT FRIPP which underpins a wonderful vocal performance from Tim Bowness who took time out to discuss the album.
‘Love You To Bits’ was one of the great ‘lost’ NO-MAN tracks, the demo being some 25 years old. Why is now the right time to finish and release it?
It was originally written at the same time as a track called ‘Lighthouse’ in 1994. Both songs were intended to be part of a follow-up to ‘Flowermouth’. At that stage, the tracks were very much in their infancy and though we had grand ideas for them, only the opening song sections existed. In another universe, the successor to ‘Flowermouth’ could have been more stylistically logical and just consisted of extended versions of those two tracks.
Due to the band getting dropped by its labels in the UK and US, publishing company and manager, we pursued the more aggressive ‘Wild Opera’ material. It suited our, by then bleak, mood better!
Over the years, we continued to work on ‘Love You To Bits’ and there were a number of versions which varied in length from 4 minutes to 12 minutes (some including significant contributions from saxophonist Theo Travis). The truth is that it didn’t seem right for anything we were working on. Post-‘Wild Opera’, the band’s sound became more organic and we’d abandoned using samples and beats, so ‘Love You To Bits’ seemed out of place for a very long time.
In October of last year, we decided that we were finally going to make the ‘Love You To Bits’ album we’d always wanted to. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to do an album length exploration of the piece and we also knew that it was going to deal with the different perspectives in a break-up. It was great to find time to make the dream a reality and truly dedicate ourselves to the project.
Does revisiting an older demo as the launch point of this project mean the album is a nostalgic look back or a taste of what’s to come?
Perhaps it’s both? A lot of the album was written over the last year and the vast majority of the recording was done this year. It was constantly being re-written and added to up to the point of completion in July of this year. As such, it feels fresh.
Listening to the earlier demos shows that it’s changed a lot since its inception. One 10 minute version from 2008 was surprisingly Industrial, while a much earlier version was considerably lighter in tone than it is now.
The sessions in October of last year were intense and exciting and I’d say that during that time we finally created a framework that seemed complete. I spent a fair bit of this year, writing new lyrics, re-writing old ones and re-recording the vocals. All the overdubs from the guest players were also recorded this year. One of my favourite sections – the brass band coda to ‘Love You To Bits’ – came about when I could hear a brass tone in the synths and suggested a far more elegiac ending that would more effortlessly merge into ‘Love You To Pieces’. Luckily, Steven really liked the idea so we pursued it. The whole process was surprisingly flexible.
‘Love You to Bits’ is a self-described return to your more synthpop roots, was there anything in particular that has lead you back down that path?
I think both of us, for different reasons, had been gravitating towards more dynamic and more electronic music in our solo projects of late. In 2018, Steven released ‘To The Bone’ and I released an album by my pre-NO-MAN 1980s band PLENTY. Accidentally, we’d ended up in a similar creative place / space.
PLENTY was very much an electronic orientated Art Pop band that had aspects of THE BLUE NILE, IT’S IMMATERIAL and other bands of the era. Although we kept the electronic soundscapes intact, on the 2018 re-recordings I changed some of the words and vocal lines to suit my current style. It was a great fusion of the past and the present and I felt it was something of a wake-up call.
Returning to the older material challenged me in terms of my voice and my vocal expression. I hope I managed to sing with a level of control I didn’t have in the 1980s, while shaking up my current approach with a more dramatic influence from my own past. The excitement of making the PLENTY album directly fed into my 2019 solo album ‘Flowers At The Scene’. Steven co-produced the album with me and PLENTY’s Brian Hulse and also mixed it and it was while we were making ‘Flowers At The Scene’ that we decided to properly pursue ‘Love You To Bits’.
Are you wary of existing fans of both the band’s more recent works and your respective solo output being unhappy with a possibly lighter tone from a ‘pop’ album?
To a degree, yes. I’ve genuinely got no idea how people are going to react to the album. And at this stage of my music making, that’s a good thing!
It is NO-MAN’s most direct album and does have a strong Pop element, but it’s also one of our most experimental and ambitious releases. The album evolves in several ways that I don’t think would be anticipated by its beginning.
Both the music and lyrics on the album are working a great deal with contrasts: light / darkness; energy / blissful release; brutality / beauty; simplicity / complexity etc. The latter contrast highlights the fact that as an album contains some of the band’s most simple work, yet as a whole it’s perhaps NO-MAN’s most compositionally sophisticated album.
As a band you have entrusted mixing this release to Bruno Ellingham, the first time you’ve gone externally. Any particular reason for this decision?
After we finished the album, Steven did several mixes. He felt that ‘Love You To Pieces’ was very nearly complete, but that ‘Love You To Bits’ was notably short of where it should be (mainly because some of the rhythm elements and guitar processing betrayed too much of the song’s mid-1990s roots). I agreed, though the dated processing bothered me less than it did Steven.
It was looking like the album could be abandoned due to Steven starting work on his forthcoming solo album, so I suggested we bring in another mixer to fully complete what was there. Steven agreed it was a good idea.
Bruno was at the top of my list of potential mixers. His experience of working with MASSIVE ATTACK, UNKLE, BEN WATT and GOLDFRAPP seemed ideal for what we wanted and although Bruno made his name with Dance and Indie music, he actually comes from a Classical background and is an accomplished violinist. As he also shared a love of the likes of TALK TALK, THE BLUE NILE, NICK DRAKE, PINK FLOYD, GRACE JONES and TANGERINE DREAM, he felt like a very good fit.
Bruno pulled together the programmed rhythms and real drums more effectively than Steven had done and gave some of the album a greater sense of groove, space and power. It was subtle and he didn’t overwhelm what we’d given him, but his involvement has meant that this is perhaps the best sounding NO-MAN album ever.
You are working with Carl Glover on the art for this release. How does your relationship with him work when pulling the cover concepts together?
It varies. Sometimes – on albums such as ‘Flowermouth’, ‘Returning Jesus’ and ‘Dry Cleaning Ray’ – as I do with the artwork on my solo albums, I have a very clear idea of what I want and Carl realises the idea better than I ever could. At other times, Carl comes up with ideas of his own based on his interpretation of the music. ‘Love You To Bit’s – like two of my favourite Carl covers, ‘Together We’re Stranger’ and ‘Plenty’s It Could Be Home’ – is Carl’s visual interpretation of the music. As with ‘Together We’re Stranger’, I think he’s got it right. Glamour and glitter are pitched against grim reality and that’s a fairly accurate summation of the contents.
The advances in recording technology have been significant in past decade, has this changed how you and Steven approached the writing and recording of the album?
I guess so. We’ve always kept up with technological advances in studio recording and since we started ‘Love You To Bits’, Steven’s studio mastery has grown immeasurably and I’ve created a home studio set-up that enables me to produce results of an acceptable quality.
In terms of the way we work, ‘Love You To Bits’ has been one of the most hands-on and collaborative albums in the band’s history. As with ‘Wild Opera’ and the band’s very earliest experiments in the 1980s, we spent time in the studio together and traded ideas in real time. The likes of ‘Schoolyard Ghosts’ and ‘Together We’re Stranger’ were produced quite remotely with me bringing in compositions and recordings to Steven, and Steven sending me backing tracks to write to. Of course, we NO-MAN-ised the results in both cases, but outside of us writing the song ‘Wherever There Is Light’ together in real time in 2008, ‘Love You To Bits’ marked a return to a more traditional NO-MAN way of putting music together.
The success of your online label and store Burning Shed has been gratifying from my view point as a fan of a number of the acts you work with that wouldn’t possibly have an outlet for their releases otherwise. What do you look for in an artist when deciding to work with them?
Burning Shed started off as a label that focused on releasing obscure music cost-effectively (utilising on-demand CDRs).
Very quickly, the sales dictated us producing proper CDs and soon after that taking over the NO-MAN and then the PORCUPINE TREE stores. Everything evolved unexpectedly and grew through word of mouth. Some of the artists we deal with I actively pursued as a fan (sometimes for several years), some of the artists I already knew and had worked with, and some artists approached us due to the people we were already dealing with.
The good thing about the success of Burning Shed is that it’s meant that I’ve become even more bloody minded and idealistic concerning my own music. I only ever release what I believe in and what I believe deserves to be heard in the wider world.
As for what I look for, it varies and is difficult to define.
You’ve worked with a number of musicians that readers of ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK will know such as Richard Barbieri and Brian Eno. Did these collaborations have a starting point of you being a fan of their respective outputs?
In almost all cases, yes. I’ve been extremely lucky in being able to work with a large number of musicians who were amongst my teenage heroes, ROBERT FRIPP, PHIL MANZANERA, KEVIN GODLEY, ANDY PARTRIDGE, PETER HAMMILL, IAN ANDERSON, JANSEN BARBIERI & KARN and others.
That said, the important thing is that I feel they’re able to bring something to the songs they work on and that the songs they’re working on can bring out interesting qualities in their playing. There’s no point in people collaborating for the sake of collaborating (or just for the sake of adding a star name to a recording).
You were born in Cheshire between Liverpool and Manchester. Did this geography influence you musically?
I think it probably did! There’s a particular melancholy in my music that may well be a result of my Northern English background.
Although my upbringing was relatively middle class and suburban, it was still tough. That was partly down to difficulties in my own dysfunctional family, and partly because of the harshness of the environment as a whole. It was a wonderful place to be in terms of having easy access to great cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Chester, but when I was at school there was no encouragement regarding creative endeavours and absolutely no nurturing. Family and school colleagues alike considered the idea of wanting to make music to be a case of having ‘ideas above your station’.
The positives were that both Liverpool and Manchester had very active music scenes and truly supportive music media. Radio DJs – particularly Mark Radcliffe and Roger Eagle – and newspapers (especially Mick Middles at the Manchester Evening News) were fantastically helpful to many aspiring artists, including me. For that, I remain grateful.
The Bush Hall gig in 2008 is in my personal top 10 shows. Are there any plans for live shows to support this release?
Thank you. After such a long absence from performance, it was an emotional occasion for all of us!
We have discussed the idea of playing live. If it happens, it’ll be early in 2020 and it’ll be quite different from how we last played. I imagine it to be a more radical combination of acoustic and electronic elements. It would also be interesting to see a return to us utilising backing tracks in the way we did when we first started.
NO-MAN has been an interesting and varied musical journey, what have been the highlights for you?
As it’s been so enjoyable to make, ‘Love You To Bits’ is a definite highlight. Outside of that, I still have a strong attachment to all our studio albums, but ‘Flowermouth’ and ‘Together We’re Stranger’ particularly stand out for me.
Playing in Poland in 2012 was also a great experience and in some ways, as strange as it may sound, talking to fans after the gig was the first time I realised that I’d had something of a career.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Tim Bowness
Special thanks to Abi Skrypec at Caroline International
‘Love You To Bits’ is released by Caroline International on 22nd November 2019 in CD, vinyl LP, cassette and digital formats
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NINA’s 2020 Calendar is available from http://www.ninasounduk.com/store/calendar
and 
are still available on CD via Sony Music
is a reissue of the 4CD collection originally released in 2009 featuring JOY DIVISION, NEW ORDER, OMD, SECTION 25, JAMES, THE RAILWAY CHILDREN, ELECTRONIC and HAPPY MONDAYS among many as a set of 8 coloured vinyl LPs.
, published in 2010? I still maintain that Factory has more influence and cultural capital than any other record label since.
sold quite well at the time, although in June 1979 indie distribution was still in its infancy and it took a while to actually recoup. Obviously Ian Curtis died in May 1980, and sales of JOY DIVISION and NEW ORDER subsequently underwrote Factory for a long time afterwards.
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