In the Mother of all interviews Michael Gira (legendary frontman of Swans) talks to journalist and music-enthusiastic John Doran of The Quietus (a legend in his own right). This is an extensive and fascinating interview which covers everything from Howlin’ Wolf to Haiti to Francis Bacon and well beyond…

Get a glimpse into Michael Gira head by reading the interview in full over at The Quietus. For fun, we’ve picked out a couple of quotes for you below. Swans bring their monolithic live show to Supersonic’s main stage in just a few weeks. Having just released their thirteenth album in just over three decades, To Be Kind, (which has been received rave reviews: 10/10 – LouderThanWar ; 4/5 – TimeOut etc.) our audience can expect a bold and uncompromising show from one of the world’s most powerful live bands. Don’t miss your chance to see these musical titans, the last few Supersonic tickets are available from HERE.

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JD: Having attended Swans gigs between albums and the Kickstarter-style demo albums, you can hear this natural kind of evolutionary process taking place. What’s interesting to me is that although it’s undeniably an organic growth, there are things that do stand out to me on the new album. Yeah, sure, it’s still monolithic, but I think the grooves are maybe funkier, maybe even sexier… is that kind of a fair comment?

MG: Yeah, that was the intent, we did sit down and say ‘lets make a sexy groove’ because we’re so sexy…[laughs]

JD: Like Alexander O’Neal or something…

MG: What I discovered on the last record was that I wanted to push forward on this one. It was about this groove and how I could really focus on that, not necessarily these big sheets of sound, but more about the possibility to find something that could just keep going forever, without feeling mechanical. So we pushed that aspect. We often focused in on the rhythms, but the idea of us actually getting funky is pretty preposterous. It’s some kind of idiosyncratic version of that I guess, but it’s a fine line for us to tread, because I don’t want to be a white boy trying desperately to grow a big butt.

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JD: Something that I think is really interesting about Swans, is that you clearly came out of New York City, but if you asked most music fans, 99 out of 100 to talk about the continuum of New York groups, people would say Velvet Underground, Television, Modern Lovers, Suicide, Sonic Youth, maybe Glenn Branca, maybe Philip Glass, people usually wouldn’t say Swans. You were obviously from New York but you weren’t really a New York group, if you see the distinction?

MG: Well, I made a point of that. Whether it was career suicide or not, I don’t know, but I made a point of separating ourselves from other people in the scene, very quickly. At first we played with Sonic Youth quite a bit, we were friends, but that didn’t work out after a while and I just wanted to separate ourselves from that because I felt that was just another straitjacket, another cliché, and I wanted to make something that was ‘us’ or ‘me’ and not be attached to that.

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Read in full here. The last few Supersonic tickets can be bought HERE.

The fine folk over at the Quietus just had a quick word with sound artist and original Napalm Death bassist/vocalist, Nicholas Bullen, about all things Supersonic. For those curious as to what Bullen has in store for them this weekend, Nic dropped this tantalising little hint –

[It’s] predominately geared towards sound – the development of my electronic composition, which is what I focus on in the main – so I’ll be playing a 35 minute composition which has a loose base structure, but for the most part is live improvisation and processing. And that ties into the film which I’m going to show which is an excerpt of a much longer film called The Inverse Heliograph, which is predominately constructed from super 8 film, which is re-photographed, processed, overlaid and altered in terms of duration. Really it’s an audio-visual set I suppose.

Bullen goes on to discuss The Inverse Heliograph in more detail, his early days with Napalm Death, and who else he’s looking forward to seeing at Supersonic this year in the rest of the interview, which you can read in full here.

Nicholas Bullen will perform on Saturday 20th at 20:45 in the Theatre at Supersonic.

Nottingham’s Grey Hairs have been causing quite a racket of late with their raucous, grungy rock’n’roll, leading some critics to describe them as sounding like “Pissed Jeans ripping off Status Quo!” Featuring ex-members of Skull Tanker, Harvey Half Devoured and Nervebomb, the band have paid their dues on the live circuit and are currently gearing up to put out their debut release. We caught up with vocalist James Finlay to find out what they’re looking forward to at this year’s festival…

Supersonic – Could you tell us briefly about how Grey Hairs came into being?
James Finlay – Grey Hairs came into being through just having lots of stuff in common. We all live really close to each other. We go to the same shows; we watch each others bands, we like having beers together and we’re all the same sort of age so it just kind of made sense for us to try and turn that common ground in to some sort of document of this part of our lives.

Why should Supersonic attendees check out your set?
Supersonic is as much about new discovery as it is about watching stuff that you already know. I only know about 50% of the acts on the line-up this year but that’s what’s so exciting about the festival. You know that there’s going to be a load of totally mental, uncompromising, underground music that you never knew you loved until it’s melting your face off. I’d like to encourage the attendees this year to embrace Supersonic’s spirit of adventure and allow us the chance to hopefully melt your face off. We’ll be treading the boards at the Old Library at approximately 10pm on Sunday.

If time, money and space were no object, what would you do with your performance?
I’ve always wanted to try out some crazy quadraphonic sound system stuff with noise coming at the crowd from all around so that you feel kind of wrapped up in the chaos of the music. Other than that probably just sensible stuff like buying a gym membership and using it so I don’t feel like puking 15 minutes into our set.

Who else are you looking forward to seeing at the festival this year?
I’m really looking forward to catching up with my old friend John who I haven’t seen since Supersonic last year (another plus of the festival: catching up with old friends). Musically: Goat, Drunk in Hell, Hey Colossus, Hookworms, Oxbow, Merzbow, Dylan Carlson, The Bug, loads of stuff. I’m praying that we don’t clash with any of it.

Who would be the ideal artist for you to collaborate with at Supersonic 2012?
The Bug.

If you were curating Supersonic, which three artists would you most want to have on board?
I’d love to see Naked City era John Zorn, Lungfish, Pissed Jeans…I could go on.

Which items would you say are essential for festival survival?
For Supersonic, a hotel! I almost slept in the back of a white van last year with our drummer just outside The Paragon. It wasn’t an especially exciting prospect for two, middle aged men. Thankfully we managed to sort something out.  Money and Alka Seltzer of course. Fuck earplugs. Actually maybe bring earplugs.

Finally, what does the future have in store for Grey Hairs?
We’ve just finished recording this week and plan to have the fruits of that session out on 7” through Gringo Records hopefully in time for Christmas. We’ve also got plans for a couple of split 7s early in the New Year and I expect we’ll be traversing the M1 quite a lot over the coming months for live shows too.

Grey Hairs will play at Supersonic Festival on Sunday 21st October.

Hey Colossus are extremely busy right now; in addition to putting out their new record (‘Witchfinder General Hospital’), preparing for their set at Supersonic and being interrogated by us recently, they’ve somehow found the time to give some more interviews, for Trebuchet and The Quietus respectively. The Quietus asked guitarist Joe Thompson about clotted cream, the music industry and what we can expect from their Supersonic performance, to which Joe replied –

Crunkkkkkk…screeeeeeee, grrrrrrrrrr, eeeeeeeeeeek, thunkkkk, clunk clunk clunk…..muted clapping…..unplugging guitar leads, packing guitars away, carrying of amps.

You can read the full Quietus interview here, and head on over to the Trebuchet site to read their interview and find out what prompted vocalist Paul Sykes to utter the immortal line –

It’s not a show if people don’t enjoy it, it’s just a bunch of people turning up somewhere.

You can rest assured that Hey Colossus will be putting on quite a show indeed at Supersonic this year. You can catch the band perform on Friday 19th.

Supersonic’s 10th anniversary celebrations are drawing ever nearer, with only a week and a half remaining until the all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza of avant-garde art that is Supersonic 2012! To mark the occasion, UK music and fashion magazine Clash recently caught up with Capsule co-founder and Supersonic organiser Lisa Meyer to discuss the inner workings of the festival, the inspiration behind Supersonic and what the future has in store for Capsule over the next decade! When discussing the ethos of the festival, Lisa had these wise words to impart –

It’s really important that we make everyone feel welcome. It’s very much at the core of what we do. Ultimately, people are giving up a weekend to come to this, so it shouldn’t feel like a hard slog. They should leave elated that they had a good time and listened to some interesting music.

Given the absolutely stunning lineup that Capsule have prepared for us this year, it’s hard to imagine that the audience will leave feeling anything other than ecstatic! You can read the full interview here, and if you still haven’t secured your Supersonic ticket yet, you can purchase one here.

The Quietus recently spoke with Sir Richard Bishop about the new Rangda album, his decision to stream all his solo albums for free and of course, his upcoming Supersonic experience. Richard’s live performances are never less than incredible, and it sounds as though this is a musician who is truly firing on all cylinders at the moment –

[Rangda has] certainly become more confident working together since the first record came out. That only happens over time. You have to remember, the first time the three of us actually played music together was two days before the recording of False Flag, so we didn’t have much of a chance to get to know each other musically on a direct experiential level. That came later when we began touring, working things out on the battlefield, in the trenches, so to speak. But now, I know we’re capable of doing anything we want in a musical sense. It’s just up to us to determine what that will be.

You can read the entire interview here, and you can watch both Sir Richard Bishop and rangda perform at this year’s Supersonic festival on Saturday 20th October.

British mavericks Hey Colossus are one of the country’s most overlooked musical exports, with a fearlessly experimental and thrillingly visceral sound that occasionally sounds like Fudge Tunnel and Faust having a full-on fist fight whilst the Butthole Surfers jeer them on and hurl vintage loop pedals into the ensuing fracas. They’ve previously released splits with Nottingham’s riff worshippers Lords and Tokyo’s sludge lunatics dot(.), and their new 12″ (the awesomely titled ‘Witchfinder General Hospital’), is a bleary eyed kraut-noise odyssey deep into the heart of the sun, culminating in a gigantic sonic fireball as the group burns into a million tiny cinders upon impact. Put quite simply, this is a band you need in your life right now! Hey Colossus are currently preparing to ransack your grey matter with their performance at Supersonic on Friday 19th October, so we caught up with guitarist Joe Thompson to ask him a few questions about what you can expect…

Supersonic: Your new record (‘Witchfinder General Hospital’) is fantastic – is the title a loving tribute to the 1968 British horror film or the early 80’s NWOBHM band from Stourbridge (or neither?)
Joe Thompson: It’s where we all work aside from Dunc’, who is a butcher.

Why should Supersonic attendees check out your set?
We’re quite the party band, get yer glad rags on.

If time, money and space were no object, what would you do with your performance?
Get Mark E Smith to do our onstage sound.

Who else are you looking forward to seeing at the festival this year?
Drunk In Hell + Grey Hairs.

Who would be the ideal artist for you to collaborate with at Supersonic 2012?
Walter Hill needs to let us re-record, note for note, The Warriors Soundtrack. We’ll be back next year to perform it.

If you were curating Supersonic, which three artists would you most want to have on board?
Brainbombs, Carly Simon, Tusson.

Which items would you say are essential for festival survival?
Blankety Blank chequebook + pen.

Finally, what does the future have in store for Hey Colossus?
New album in March, shows in March and April. Book us, especially if you do shows in hot countries.

Hey Colossus will perform at Supersonic Festival on Friday 19th October 2012, and their new 12″ ‘Witchfinder General’ is available now from One C Records.

Oxbow fans have much to rejoice over at this year’s festival; in addition to their extremely special Oxbow Orchestra set and frontman Eugene S. Robinson’s appearance in our ‘You Can Be You’ panel discussion, Supersonic will also be screening ‘The Luxury Of Empire’, an enthralling and stylish glimpse at life on the road for one of the most polarising and unrestrained avant-rock bands to walk the Earth. A gripping, warts-and-all portrait of a band maturing whilst having to deal with the trials and tribulations of the touring process, the film features candid interviews and live footage, all wrapped up in a deliciously dark and cinematic aesthetic, informed by Oxbow’s music itself as much as it is by film making convention. The themes of coming-of-age and the difficulties of touring are sure to fascinate anyone with even the remotest interest in live music, but for Oxbow enthusiasts especially, this is mandatory viewing.

‘The Luxury of Empire’ is the work of French film-maker Mariexxme, a former animator who has also filmed the Melvins, Sleep, the Jesus Lizard, Lightning Bolt and Jello Biafra, to name but a few. We asked Marie a few questions about the film, and why it should be an essential part of your Supersonic experience…

Supersonic: What was it about Oxbow that inspired you to make them the focal point of your film?
Marie: It was the 20th anniversary of Oxbow the year I decided to make that film focused on them. A year before that I had interviewed them for a French magazine with a friend of mine and edited a 40 minute video based on the history of the band, which we cut in 4 parts and posted online. That video made me want to go further, 40 minutes of something more! It made me really want to enter their life and make them talk about themselves and their approach to art. That’s why I focused the film more on their way of seeing art and their work.

Also, I’d heard that they were looking for somebody to make a film about ‘The Narcotic Story’, which for me is one of the most brilliant albums of the last few years and one of the reasons I wanted everybody to know about Oxbow! I couldn’t work on a film like that by myself but that’s the reason why my documentary has been filmed in the dark, I wanted it to look like a movie, I wanted it to look like ‘The Narcotic Story’.

‘The Luxury of Empire’ was partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign. Would you recommend this way of funding to other aspiring artists?
I’d never heard about Kickstarter before ‘The Luxury of Empire’, I think it was Niko Wenner who told me about it. At first I thought it was crazy and would never work, but it’s been a nice surprise! Since then I’ve seen lots of other projects reaching their goals, I myself pledged on 2 different projects involving my friend David Yow (The Jesus Lizard), I must admit it works perfectly well. Yes I would definitely recommend it to others, and maybe even use this way myself next time if needed.

Why should Supersonic attendees check out ‘The Luxury of Empire’?
Why? Because I think people coming to a festival like Supersonic are passionate and curious people. Because this film is about one of the most brilliant bands existing and one of the most unrecognized (this film was made for Oxbow’s fans but also, and this is really important to me, for others to discover). Because this film is about Oxbow but more than a film about one band, it’s a film talking about what makes an artist live. Something I got myself inside like anybody involved in any kind of Art, something you could never live without, something that makes you play or paint, write or sing everyday and until the end of your life – whatever happened, even if you know you ‘ll never get rich by this, even if it means doing the same things everyday and living hard times most of the time.

‘The Luxury of Empire’ shows the inside, what the audience and fans never see, the reality of being an artist, the reality of being on tour, it also includes uncut live performances because it’s important to see the result of the process. It has been made to go with a whole live show filmed in Paris at the same time, my idea was to make a film to explain the inside and one to show the result without talking anymore, like Darkness and Light. It has been planed like that and it’s on the DVD like that with Manuel Libeskind’s tour diary about Oxbow ‘Still Before’ as a wonderful bonus.

Who else are you looking forward to seeing at the festival this year?
Zeni Geva, I haven’t seen them for years, Ufommammut (they are friends of mine), and then Grey Hairs, Dope Body, Bohren und der Club of Gore, Jarboe, Goat, Body /Head, Mothertrucker. But I will have to film Oxbow’s Orchestra experience and rehearsal during the week too, I’m waiting to see the schedules to organize my weekend at the festival.

You’ve filmed a great number of awesome bands, but are there any left that you would like to work with?
I’ve started working with Amenra and I’m really happy about this, they’re one of the bands I really wanted to make a film about. I would have loved working with Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, I talked about it but unfortunately they don’t exist anymore. Melvins are second, I really want to work with them. All those bands have their own unique world and that’s what I’m looking for.

I would have loved making a film about Alice Donut but it’s already been done. I must admit I’ve filmed a lot of bands, and since I’ve started working on small video interviews for the Canadian/French website Pelecanus, I’ve been making a short film about a band every month! I just finished one about Converge and will start one for Wovenhand. I had to film Baroness in July but had technical troubles with my camera, so I definitely have to do something with them again soon! I also did Sleep, I must say I’m overjoyed!

If you were curating Supersonic, which three artists would you most want to have on board?
Maybe Amenra, Oxbow and the Melvins, but I could easily find 10 bands I’d most want…..

Which items would you say are essential for festival survival?
For me : a camera, a pair of confortable shoes and a pint. That’s it!

‘The Luxury Of Empire’ will be screening at this year’s Supersonic Festival. For more information about Mariexxme, you can visit her official website and Vimeo page.

John Doran of The Quietus has recently interviewed Baltimore’s noise rock heroes Dope Body about their musical influences, their creative process and their upcoming set at Supersonic this year –

We all do our own thing and we’re all into different stuff. The songs come out of very long protracted jams, for maybe three hours while we change and change it. Each of us has different musical taste though. David is into hip hop, so you get different rhythms than you’d expect to get. The same with the guitar playing [Zachary Utz], it gets really classic rock at times but overall we try and keep things sludgy and heavy. And our band is also inspired by all Baltimore sounds, concentrated into one format: the rock band. Garage, hardcore, electronic music. It’s actually weirder for us not to use all these influences. It’s natural and organic and it just comes out this way.

 

You can read the whole interview over at The Quietus website, and catch Dope Body on Sunday 21st October at Supersonic.