Ep: 26 Slowdive

Loud and Quiet Presents Midnight Chats.

Hello and welcome to the Loud and Quiet interview podcast Midnight Chats. We're up to episode twenty six now, and this week's interview is with early nineties Shuegas band Slowdie, who returned this week with their first album in twenty two years. Their last record was pig Melian in nineteen ninety five, which they managed to just about release before

We all went to bed qu early last night. I thought that was quite funny.

It was quite a civilized night.

What time did you sleep last night? What time did you get to bed.

Two, it's probably two. Yeah.

Last the night before was like four, which was kind of felt like, yeah, we're entering into that twilight world of being on tour, where like one o'clock in the afternoons, like six o'clock in the morning.

How dare you woke me up?

You know? Yeah, so you set so you woke up this morning? This morning you woke up on a.

Bus behind the garage.

On the garage at But was it by the shell garage on Holloway Road?

Now we're down side straight down side by the venue.

Aren't sort of the road on the road behind the garage, which is the venue by a little part. It was quite sweet actually, a bit of cherry bossom. It's nice and quiet, nice place to wake up. Yeah, yeah, right by up the street for a nice little coffee and a class or whatever it takes your fancy it one o'clock in the morning or in the afternoon, which is new.

Do you ever get used to the bus life sleeping on a bus?

No, I can't.

I don't really sleep very well on them at all. I used to twenty years ago, probably because I was very inebriated and I just passed out.

But I can't sleep on them. Now. I struggle when I go on tour.

And it's it's the movement of the bus that stops me from sleeping.

I can't generally sleep until it stops, right, which can be really unfortunate if you've got an eight hour drive after a gig.

Yeah, we have to look after Rachel on tour. Bless her, she's the only one out of.

Nights sleep. We've all got children.

So actually, to get on a tour bus, you know, have a little little kind of nightcap and go to sleep. You get a great night sleep. Apart from Rachel, she's unfortunate. You've got to sing and I.

Don't sleep well at home, or I don't sleep well on buses either.

That's just on stage while she's singing.

As long as I can get through that moments.

That's so other than the sleep patterns and back on their oad. How does it? How does it feel to be back on on slow dive duty after twenty two odd years?

It feels good, it's exciting.

Does it feel that it was that long ago? It does? It feels like a lifetime?

Okay, yeah, I think it does.

It does a long time ago. Yeah, everything's changed. We've changed. The whole music industry has changed massively. Yeah, but you know, the songs are still there and the songs still sound fresh. So that's the kind of really crazy thing. And obviously we never expected people, you know, twenty years from you know, nineteen ninety three for or whatever to kind of be even.

More into it.

You know, most bands they released a few records and they fade away and you know, they just live in aurocal collection.

But it was different for us. So that's really.

Amazing, you know, and it's super super exciting to be able to get together and have those same creative sparks flowing writing new trails.

So yeah, it's fantastic, isn't it.

We're lucky.

Yeah, we're lucky. I think the fact that you're still sleeping on a bus that's actually quite old school. That's one of that. That's one thing that in this whole cycle of you promoting another album you probably did last time that most a lot of bands, I don't know, have many bands get buses now these days? We do.

It depends logistically where you've got to go, because it's kind of the lesser.

Of two evils.

Yeah, sure, if.

You do festivals generally you tend to fly in and out and just take guitars and bare minimum ped awards, which is just a logistical thing that actually works and actually what makes more financial sense.

It does well, there's an element of it where we're going on. So we haven't played for eight months and actually for us all to get sort of sit around the table in the in the lounge.

You know, I don't know, I prefer a hotel in personally.

But you can be one.

But the rest of us, like you know, and with our crew as well, we've got the same crew we had back in the early nineties, so they went off and spiritualized and well we've got a few new people, you know, one off and did the kill and spiritualized and stuff. But they've come back to Slow Dive. So we kind of have that. We've kind of got a

But we do that when we're when we're.

In hotels, we all kind of go, right, we'll meet down in the bar in five minutes, or go and have dinner together. And you know, so it's even though we take it very seriously and we are a professional band, et cetera, we're still a bunch of you know, dibucks having a here and a chat and talking nonsense with one another and having a laugh.

You know.

Yeah, how about things like obviously in nineteen ninety four whatever, there was no social media. How's that going.

I think it's great.

Yeah, online presence they call it.

Yeah, I think it's great.

You know, I think, oh God, on multiple levels. The Internet is an amazing invention, isn't it. I think it's I think it's a good thing for bands personally. It's a great way to be able.

To connect.

To connect with people and you know, and just listen to music and know what's going on in the world and you know, like everything, so instance, sometimes I kind of would like to turn everything off and just sit in a room with nothing, just because you get you get so bombarded, don't you get bombarded everywhere? You know, and it's very hard to I think, turn your phone off and just not read anything.

Or not check something.

And I think it's harder for young people having the internet in some ways, growing up and having their sort of there must be bigger pressure, don't you. Yeah, then you were just in a school playground.

So yeah, it was bad enough when I was at schools around the time that everyone started getting phones well okay, kind of fifteen sixteen pay as you go phones. Yeah, it was bad enough texting a girl and then they're.

Not getting to reply.

Yes, I can't.

Imagine what it must be like. I know they've got to check all of that. Oh, I've only got ten likes on that photo, I know, yeah, across everything. Yes, they've probably got you know, maybe five different digital platforms to basically not get replies from girls.

I feel even more crap about yourself.

Yeah, and vice versa.

I mean, we've we've all got we've got children, and a few of us have got daughters, you know, and when you know, yeah, trying to kind of get confidence and self validation as young teenagers and you know, as she said, not get enough likes. What's wrong with me?

You know, it's it's kind of dangerous.

But as long as you know, as long as they're made aware that not to take you know, snapchat or whatever too seriously.

You know, I think.

It's hard when you're that age because everything's bill and end all when you're a teenager. Absolutely, I remember thinking I knew everything when I was fifteen.

You know, just being really self right to someone you know you really know nothing about it, didn't have any doing, I think.

I mean with the internet.

Actually, I think one of the reasons why Slow Dive are playing the sold that show tonight because the internet is because yeah, and because you know, we released those songs and they went off into you know, the ether for a while, and they were put online and somebody mentioned slow Dive, somebody typed in Slowdive, google it or whatever, and we're on Spotify or we're on bleep or iTunes or whatever and YouTube and just thought, hey, this is really good music, you know, and that just spread.

And that's because of the Internet.

So we've kind of got the Internet to be thankful for for kind of reforming and getting sighted at oceans and being able to play live shows today seventeen.

It's great.

So tonight you're playing at the garage. Yeah, and that's talking of social media. It's going on. It's live streaming on Facebook.

It is, yes, but that's quite you're saying.

You were saying before we started that there's like kind of crew and it's quite down there at the venue at the moment, there's lots of Stewart.

You're making me feel very nervous now butterflies ago seriously, Yeah, but becafully. Actually, you know, we give a damn about it.

We care.

Yeah, I mean we've got feel right at the moment.

I'll give it, give it about well a few hours and I'm sure i'll be a bit.

It'll be fine. We'll leanrus, you know.

Yeah, and at least you're going to be there playing. So I don't know if you if you notice, but when you do a Facebook live video and you're doing it and it's in front of you, the computers in front of you, it shows you in real time how many people are watching at that moment. So at least you're not going to have that because you're you'll be blissfully unaware of because it's never a good size. If it's a million people, that's frightening as hell, and if

Right, So it could start with a million people if we were extremely lucky.

Halfway through there's yeah, there's one per level gone.

Loads of light cor mads, right, but.

It's a big What I was going to say, Well, so you were saying there's lots of people meaning around, so it's a big I didn't realize that when something like that happens, when a show is streamed, that there's a big kind of production value to it because.

We haven't done it before apart from festivals. Obviously some festivals live stream stuff. But then that's different, isn't it, because it's kind of generally quite big plays with you know, the boom camera and.

Cameras. It's a stage but at the garage, and it's the time really small.

So that's that's going to be quite.

It's going to be great because we only announced it yesterday, didn't we We just we kind of announced it with the album news in the video and stuff, and to know it's sold out. You know, it's sold out the day the tickets went on sale. It will be really vibey. Once we get up there and plug in and start playing, it will be like, okay, you know, we'll just forget about that. We'll be playing to the audience and really kind of starting to get into them exactly.

I think that's that's all you can do, isn't it.

Yeah, that's all I'm going to do. Yeah, it's live music as well. So if it's not, it's kind of no perfect. It's live music.

You know, it never is. No perfect, never is.

But that's the beauty you've been seeing a well. I mean some bands are immaculate, you know.

It were not bad, it's not.

It's always for improvements, like yeah.

It's a feel life of course.

That was of course. Yeah.

But the garage where you played your last London show as your fall lineup, yeah.

In ninety four, I think ninety three, December nineteen ninety three.

Yeah, we went on and did We did an American tour after that in ninety four. So the last, the final show completely was actually in Toronto, but we didn't know that at the time. We didn't know that was the final show. But the last u K show was of the garage.

I don't really remember much about it.

I do it was empty.

Yeah, it was really strange, said.

Yeah, it was.

That whole tour was when the press had kind of said, you know, Shoe Gaze is awful and it's all about Nirvana and Jimmy Roquai and God. Yeah, and I remember it's it was seven hundred capacity back then. It's a bit smaller now because I've referbed it, but it's it's much much nicer, with much better pa and I remember sitting there. Yeah, they've done a good job inside.

It's nice.

I think it's recently reopened. Yeah, pretty new refurb Ye.

Yeah, looks it looks squeaky clean, but it definitely doesn't look like it used to. But yeah, that was it was half empty. I think there was about two hundred and fifty people there and people were just chatting at the bar.

So it wasn't It wasn't great.

He's hoping for us slightly better kind of, I think.

So it's a good sign.

It's sold out in a day, so at least there'll be a few more people in there.

It'll be full, It'll be full.

Yeah, but you don't remember Rech you don't remember much of the show.

No, but I don't remember a lot of the early nineties anyway.

Just because I think that means you were there.

I was there, I was there present.

Yeah, well, there's a big nostalgia at the moment for the nineties. Everything about it was. It as kind of crazy as people imagine, if from the point of view of being in a band at that time.

Yeah, well, I guess the early we were really young.

So you were you giving.

Signed to Creation? Yeah, I think initially the first year or two it.

Was Creation were rowdy.

They were, Yeah, they were That was party HQ and it was the rave culture thing had blown up in the eighties, so that kind of there were there were a lot of drugs knocking knocking around, not necessarily in the band, but that whole thing was quite hedonistic and like trance was a big thing, and it was sort of influencing bands like Primal, Scream, Screaming Delica, and you know,

Just kind of pop up for meetings and there would still be people there high on drugs that had been up all night.

We kind of observed they're all a bit older than us.

We weren't straight by any Yeah, that's.

It, just a little bit older.

The Creation office around here here, Yeah, it was above.

It was above, Yeah, just at the top of the road to left and it was a walk up there, just by the railway bridge on the left hand side. Yeah, and you go up there and people will be knocking white powder off the table.

And so it really was what people kind of imagine of the Creation.

People lying up the stairs with their pupils dilated, shaking, staring at you like, you know, because they're hallucinating. It was like that, and we'd be walking in the cans of Coca cola.

You know, it must be quite especially like as eighteen nineteen year olds, that's probably quite. That must have been quite an overwhelming experience.

I think we were just really excited to be excited.

Yeah, excited.

Records were they were the best indie label at that time.

There's so many good bands and you'd go in, Yeah, be Bobby Gillespie and Kevin Shields and you know, stopping the current. Yeah, just fantastic, really great label, great heritage. And Alan McGee was was is a really nice man.

Because Creation were your favorite, they were your favorite label. They would label that you wanted to sign to, right, Yeah, And then managed to sign to them. And at such a young age, at like nineteen or whatever. Did it feel at the time that everything was just balling into place and it was all did it feel kind of easy?

I guess it kind of?

Did?

I mean it?

You know, we did that.

We got signed because we'd supported five thirteen Reading and they they're publishing guy Steve Waters from me and I was there to see them, who was a friend of Alan's, and he caught arset and then and I had I remember, we got there to do our sound check and we hadn't brought any demo tapes and so I had to run home lived in Ready at that point, and sort of ran home and got a demo tape just in

And you just kind of just riding on it.

Really won't mean we had really positive press and all that sort of stuff for a bit.

He just kind of went with a flow.

And then I think by the time we got to Demo and Sue Flarky, it was it was already going a little bit more difficult at creation because I don't think they weren't as interested. Alan was wasn't well, you know, he was in rehab and different people came in and all the Sony staff.

And who were palmed off to s b K in America.

Who were pretty terrible, and the press that that were terrible for us, and the press were on down or about us completely. And you had Richie from the mannisk of saying slow Diver worse than Hitler. You know, really he said that we hate slow Dive more than we hate Hitler. I mean, what a stupid thing to say, but we kind of laughed at that it was pathetic talk about your band, not about us.

So there was this big kind of backlash.

And was that that backlash was even though sometimes you were kind of on the end of it, was it was it not more that kind of the shoegaze thing, And.

I think it was. Yeah. I mean like grungeur coming, isn't it?

And then you had bit pop and what we were doing wasn't also wasn't fashionable. But I remember going into Creation when Sue Flaky was coming out, and I remember just feeling that pretty much most people work and they just weren't interested, and I was, you know, I found that quite depressing. I still remember that, Yeah, are still kind of going in there to do press stuff. I'm just thinking nobody cares.

Really, Yeah, and.

By pig Malion, credit to them for putting it out because that record is so far removed from everything else at that time that was that was coming out, you know, But yeah, kind of got I've got mixed memories. But I think it's probably saying for any band on you know, I think all bands go through that.

Do you think that your youth at that time kind of protected you from that kind of criticism or I think maybe it could have gone either way, because I think when you're when you're really young and you go through that kind of you know, someone in a band saying your band worse than Hitler, you can when you're a certain age, when you're young, I think you can either more easily laugh it off or more easily be absolutely destroyed by a comment like that and kind of bad press.

I guess, yeah, we weren't destroyed by it. We kind of laughed it often and just sort you.

Know, I think the I think the bad press did affect.

The eventually, did I think now for me, I don't care what people write, and I haven't thought the last twenty years.

Just don't care.

From that experience, you know, O care less. As you get older, I think I think you have to. You prioritize your life more and you you kind of understand. I think a lot more about life and what's important.

Yeah, how everything's subjective to you know, someone's going to love it, someone's going to hate it. You know, we don't all order the same dish off the menu. Do we we like different things? But I think we we definitely kind of thought for a while, we'll just be over here and do our own thing and write our music.

It was like, hang on a minute, But we were still really proud of the records that we've made at the time. At the times, we were like, you know, we loved what we'd done, and that was I think that's the aim of any musician, is that you have to love what you do and.

And be proud of what you put out. And we were, you know, and we stood by that. We still stand by that.

Now clearly a lot of other people have cottoned onto it, which is fantastic, and.

That's probably why that's probably why you sold out tonight's show in a day, and essentially why you're more popular now. Like the records stand up.

Now, Yeah, I think we are definitely is the.

Key to it. And you're playing are you playing bigger shows now than you would have played back there?

Not in this particular one, because these are all small club shows and that was for the reason of making them a bit different. But I mean yeah, I mean we you know, the American Tour we did a couple of years ago Terminal five in your three thousand capacity.

That's way more than we would have done. We always did okay out there, but not nowhere near that.

Well, so it's we are definitely playing bigger venues than we would have done then, and I think we only did. We did Slough Festival in the nineties, legendary nineteen ninety one, thousand yards stare.

I would love a Slough Festival t shirt. I bet that's probably wasn't quite a bit of money, was there? What was there? One? Was there just one day once?

Yeah?

It was only that one time, wasn't it. I don't think they.

Repeated just that one time and someone lost an awful lot of money.

I think it was anyone at slow Fest.

There was a lot of people there. I was really drunk.

I can't remember, but by two o'clock I was really drunk, and by the time we went on, I was.

Really really drunk.

I'm a bit of a theme here. Children.

Well that's what I don't remember much year from that time. Yeah, I was young and enjoying myself.

You're having a good time.

I was having a great time.

You're at slow Fest. What do you expect exactly?

You know, we got there early in the morning. What else is there to do. I don't know what time we went on, but it was a few hours drinking.

It certainly wasn't Primavera, okay, which we played in fourteen.

Yeah, so I don't think we did any other festival's apart from Sloud.

Well, we got off to Glastonbury and their manager said, yeah, I would love to play Glastonbury, which we obviously would. The thing was, he said, but Slide I want their own stage.

And this is exactly.

Ridiculous thing ever, and.

They sort of went, Okay, we'll probably someone else. And we found out about that a few months later.

We were.

A great demand.

So that is so mortified. Even now, I think that's really more.

Really embarrassing for us because it makes us.

Whatever because they would have they would have thought that would have been your demand.

Do they think they are?

You know?

Is Sting?

Who does that?

Even Sting wouldn't ask for his own stage.

At maybe like a tent like him and truly could yoga?

Yeah tent yet stuff the Sting?

Yet it makes me it so the new album was announced yesterday. Yes, how was the Has the reaction been?

I think it's been good.

Great.

We've come back to the internet again, haven't we. Where the reaction?

Yeah, I think it's been good.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.

It's nice to actually have the news out there because we've we've known the release dates since last year December January.

Bish mixing in November and there was a schedule we were we signed the Dead Oceans and stuff.

And it's been that kind of floating interim period where you're not allowed to say.

Things, but you really want to tell people but you can't.

Then you want people to hear the record, but I can't or some can, you know, but it's quite strict.

So it's been funny. But I'm glad it's I'm glad the news is out. So it's exciting.

It's nice that it's Yeah, in the same way, it's been brilliant to do these two shows we did Monday and Tuesday, Glasgow and Liverpool to play the new songs for the first time ever live.

You know.

It's like we want to get them out there, you know, because we really care about the songs and obviously we wouldn't put out a new record. If we thought it was pretty good or quite good. We believe in it and we think it's brilliant. So it's really exciting for.

The Premiverse show that you mentioned. I was at that show actually were you, And that was like the first big one back, wasn't it. I think maybe you've done like a couple of small huge Yeah.

Yeah.

Twenty five thousand people the promoted told us came to see us, which was unbelievable because as you were there, you know about the rain Yeah, until about twenty minutes before, Yeah, I.

Felt so sorry.

Cool, Yeah, well I felt Yeah, I felt really sorry for oursel.

It's just really ship.

That came in the rainbow, and.

It was I still look back on that and it was still a very magical experience for me that I just was amazing.

I don't think we really we didn't really know what to expect, and they were like, you know, you've been off with this.

Yeah, maybe there'll be one hundred people there to see us, something we genuinely saw.

And you probably thought, did you Maybe you also think you'd be honest because you're like one of the main stages.

We were really high.

We were like they've made a mistake, seriously going to regret that.

But right, But the penny didn't really trot. I didn't even drop it because we sound checked at nine o'clock in the morning there, it didn't even drop. Then, my penny didn't drop in my brain. Then it was only when the backdrop went down just before we went on stage. And then you know, the audience were cheering, and then I kind of poked my head out and went, oh my god, non swearing that this is huge, and I felt, you know.

Quite emotional, teary. It was kind of strange.

And then but then and also that was the first experience of having the cameras and all, because that was all films. We'd never had that before either. So it was like a double whammy of there's a massive audience, it's a huge stage, and you've got cameras everywhere.

The sun was going down. You started on sunset and it didn't That's the perfect.

Sense, absolutely, Yeah, of course.

Yeah, I was just like this between some selfie taking, I was I'm glad you took photographs qundreds of them and all those different kind of color.

Changes in the sky.

Yeah, it was amazing at that point in time, obviously, So that's twenty fourteen, and you'd got back together with the intention of playing some shows that summer and kind of seeing where you were at at the end of that and make some new music if it felt like you should do that when you first met, just to kind of get in a room and start perhapicing the old music, and made that decision to like, let's do some reunions just to do some shows with the oldster.

Yeah?

I think being in contact pretty much with everyone apart from Simon, But also I did my Harvey three with Neil for ten years after that, and we kept in touch when that finished as well, just occasionally, and he asked me to do some singing with him Accessful Sharp Pass in twenty thirteen, so I.

Went and did that, and the idea.

Was floated then because Premium of everything had come up then, and Nick and Christian came to that as well, and because we said, you know, coming up, they came to the show and then we got in contact with Simon, Nick and Christian and I'd not been in touch with massively and occasionally dip in and out of contact with some simon. We'd lost contact over the years, hadn't we.

Yeah, we bumped into each other occasion.

You know, it wasn't like we all fell out or anything like that. But you know, twenty years is a long time and you go off and get married and have kids and then get divorced and you know, all that stuff happens.

But that first came into the rehearse the first time, the first time we did with Slow Dive, and it was just like.

Yeah, it just felt really easy and very comfortable.

We went for lunch and had a beer and hung out and it was just like that.

Twenty years went really quickly because it was exactly like it was before, you know, yeah, but we were really better, but much more quite exactly before, not exactly a.

Few things under the bridge, yeah yeah.

And how about at the end of so, at the end of that kind of run of shows, that original run from Premium Are onwards, that what was it? When was that moment when you thought we should make we should go and make some music.

Now, well, we discussed it at the beginning, because we didn't we did, I remember we did sit down and discuss it right at the beginning, and we were a bit like didn't want to come back. We didn't want to come back just to be a nostalgia band and just to play old songs. It was kind of like, and see why, you know, why brands do it, you know, and that's fine, but I think for all of us

Because we really did one point like we've got Premavera and like the warm up show and we're doing Premia in Porto and maybe one other thing, and we were like, there's not a lot of gigs coming in, there's not a lot of excitement.

Is anybody going to show up?

And then as soon as we did like Village Underground and then Premifera, it was like there was a couple more and then a couple more and then do you want to go to Asia?

You should go to America. There's all these offers and its good. Yeah. Great.

I think that at the end of that year, it was kind of you know, we all took a couple of months off, have a breather, you know, reconnect with your home life, and and.

Then we started checking checking our Google calendar, like when can we all get together to try and do some stuff.

So we just we had like little weekends here and there and going into studios and just recording stuff to see what.

Comeing out of it. And it was quite a slow process over twenty fifteen.

It took a a while for the songs to come together, but then it kind of really flowed once we went back to Courtyard where we did recorded the other albums. Funnily enough, we had a great engineer that we worked really kind of quickly and creatively with and that's how the album came together.

So it was kind of last year, wasn't it.

I Mean I remember going in in July.

Last year and I bashed out about seven vocals in two days. Because everything else was finished. It was kind of was relying on everyone else doing music just coming and.

Which is which is historically what I've always done.

And Neil produced it, and I mean Neil's the core songwriter and even though we've all co written other bits on the album, he was in the driving scene produced it, and yeah, it took him a little while to kind of find the flavor, but once we got.

It, it was sweet. We had the record on yesterday. We've heard it. You've heard it, okay.

It sounds to me more vocally a bit just a bit clearer, a bit less cloudy.

That word, yes, and.

Maybe a bit more up tempo as well, the first two things that I kind of.

Took from you.

Yeah, there's definitely more up tempo there. They are definitely more up tempo.

On their poppy album in a way, not all of it. Fallen Ash is very.

Ambient spy in a slow dive way.

In a slow diveway, yeah, more like soup Flerky than pig Melian.

But there are nods to Pygmalion.

Yeah, and there's nods to the future.

There's a track that I wrote with Neil called fall and Ashes right at the end of the song, and that's me. I use this signal process in software called max MSP and Neil was struggling with this piano piece, so I was just like looping him and in real time, and then he kind of was like, I don't know what to do, and I played him and he was like, that's it exactly that, you know, and that is something

Perhaps in the future.

Yeah, you know, I think new was very excited by that, but it's a very sort of as you said, it's a very sort of poppy kind of up or recording places.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you feel like all this time on and having a really dedicated following and new followers obviously, but having people who have kind of been waiting for more solid dive music, especially since twenty and fourteen, now it's finally hit. When you're making that your first record in twenty two years, do you feel any kind of pressure to sound like slow dive.

It wasn't that considered. Really. It wasn't like we need to make a record that sounds like slow dive.

I think there was a little there was a small element of some things we did return that that's not quite.

I think there were small elements of keeping because we were all.

Right, and we've all written in different bands, and stuff I do is very different.

Stuff you do is very different. Outside Neil stuff is sing a song like acoustics, so quite a lot of different.

Dynamics within the band. But I don't think there was I don't think there was a pressure to make it a certain way.

No, it wasn't like, let's make a record that sounds like slow because side is like the five of us and Neil and Rachel's vocals are very sort of distinguishable always.

I mean, there is a classic sound to the band and that's that's the guitars, and there is definitely a certain classic element to it. I think that we have retained on this record to a certain extent.

The rhythmically as well. Knicks, baslines and stuff are very important.

I think drumming wise, it's quite different something exactly, which is good.

It's good.

It's good that it's not the same. It shouldn't be the same. Every record should be different, and I think that I think just for a days, Flaking Pigmarlin are all quite different records. And I like to think that this eponymous album is different again. I like to think, you know, it's different again, and I'm really pleased with it.

When you made the first record, I read that you told Ana McGee that you were ready to make a record, but you did actually have any songs.

Yeah, that's true.

And then they so you've got fooked into.

Six week courtyard.

Yeah yeah, panic, loads of Chinese food and smokes, cigarettes and went.

Lots of weed. So I don't remember much of it.

And our managers said, don't put your singles on it, like, don't put.

A manager that demanded their own state it is.

It is no longer managing. But yeah, that was hard. That was hard work.

That was it was Yeah, it was it was yeah.

Yeah, but you know we were we were nineteen, and they just kind of, yeah, we've got a record.

It's worth We had nothing?

Was it?

Because you were worried that if you didn't, if they would have wait around, and you just say no.

I think maybe we were a little bit scared.

I think it's a bit like your parents want to say, yeah, finished it finished.

It was exactly.

I think I think exactly that it was like yeah, your dad, but quite a fiery, feisty off all dad going.

Was it lucky where you worked with Brian? How was that expensive?

Well? Frustratingly for the four of us that didn't meet him.

Yeah, and he didn't.

He basically said, I just want like the songwriter, main songwriter to come on down. He plays guitar, right, and intend to bring a guitar. I'm really busy. I think it was like three days.

Come to my studio.

You've got like four hours. So they just recorded all this stuff really sort of free form, no metronome, click track.

It's just I just told Neil just plug in him.

Yeah.

Plug He put a clock on the mixing desk as well because he was timing stuff.

You've got to leave and pick my kids up sort of thing. So he was.

And it kind of takes a bit of the mystica.

At that time, like Neil had no idea. He was like the kind of godfather of ambient and then form DG did music for airports and all that stuff, and you know, Neil basically came back with all these cassettes because used to kind of put stuff in cassette, didn't you.

And we went into.

Protocol in on just behind Holloway Road, and it was it was all a mess, but just yeah, just loads of it.

Was just yeah, it was all quite quite New age a lot.

Yeah, but there was some beautiful ambient stuff and we found some loops and wrote sing.

Yeah.

I do remember that recording session, and I remember doing the vocals on that one, and I remember you doing the drums on that one because I wrote.

That, so I do. I do remember all that.

I remember staying in a flat in a high rise somewhere Swiss cottage. We had massive beds. Remember that separately obviously, But yeah, it was like.

This weird guys called Brian.

Think it was the idea, wasn't it.

I think he's we reckoned with Brian.

Didn't We We sent with our manager Faxes manager the same big fans producing our album, and he sent a fax back saying I don't want to produce it, but but you know, like I'd be happy to write some stuff with you.

And then then it was Neil that went in and then we yeah, I'll just say, got the stuff back and then jigged them around and then sing and if she comes.

Come out of those those sessions.

There's a load of really good stuff actually that I've still got on tape.

That I still listened to. There's some really beautiful stuff we have to We're big fans. We've got these tapes from those sessions. Can we use somebody you never know?

Yeah, we would have. Is a legendary well, yeah, clearly is a massive legend.

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