One of Britain’s most unusual and innovative bands, Guillemots have had a busy year even by their own productive standards.
Lead by Fyfe Dangerfield, the group released their second album ‘Red’ to huge critical and commercial success before embarking on a typically unusual tour to promote it. Never ones to rest on their laurels, Guillemots then scored the David Lynch film ‘Eraserhead’, visited a few festivals, supported US giants REM and are about to head out on their most unusual tour yet. Phew!
…there’s a lot of darkness in some of the stuff we do anyway
Guillemots are to play some very off the beaten track venues, and will be performing to a series of short films. Fyfe Dangerfield joined us for a chat to mull over recent developments for the band, and explain how playing in a Cornish cave may just provide them with a new musical direction.
Q – You played a lot of festivals this summer, how did they go?
Really good, yeah, really enjoyed the festivals this summer. I think Latitude was a really good one – it was just a really good festival anyway. We improvised the soundtrack to ‘Eraserhead’ – the David Lynch film – which has given way to the film ideas on our new tour.
Q – How did the ‘Eraserhead’ project come about? Its quite a bizarre, dark movie – how did this affect your music?
Well we were just asked, by the company Future Shorts really. It wasn’t a score, we just improvised. We set up, watched the film and played – that’s how it happened really. We’ve always loved improvising so it was quite a natural thing to do, in that climate. It is a dark film, but there’s a lot of darkness in some of the stuff we do anyway. Even though we do a lot of upbeat pop songs, when we get together and play a lot of the stuff we do is quite dark. We haven’t really explored that, on the two records with the sound of them. Its probably something we’re going to do more in the future. I love both sides – tremendously uplifting pop music and then something dark creeping through. There’s always that balance in our music, it’s there if you look for it.
Q – The new tour features a number of strange venues, did you have a hand in this?
We certainly did. In terms of wanting to do something different on this tour, we really wanted to play some places that were off the beaten track a bit, and not your standard Academies and so on. So it’s a case of finding a routine that we really like.
Q – What will the new venues add to the performance?
It will make it fresher I think. It will be a different type of venue each night and that great because it means the tour can’t get into any kind of rut. It’s hard to understand what it will be like until we actually get to the venue and see it all. It should be really interesting, and in some gigs – like the caves, for example – we’ll probably do an acoustic gig. We’ll be able to change what we do each night.
Q – How does playing to a film affect your composition? Do you play to match the film, for example?
Well we’re improvising so it always changing. We’re not going to be playing the same songs each night, we’ll be doing different stuff each evening. We’re just going to watch the film and play – its not really a conscious thing. You always improvise best when you’re not thinking about what you’re playing, it’s a knee jerk reaction really. That’s the way we’ve always looked at improvisation really – its not about making technically great music, its about atmosphere. Thinking too much about it would kill it really.
The films are the main thing and hopefully the music adds a bit of atmosphere
Q – That seems an unusual attitude, where did this love of improvisation come from?
Well its not that unusual! The word ‘improvisation’ seems a bit intellectual, and slightly high-brow but I mean most bands write their songs by jamming. I suppose we’re more into exploring sounds and so on, so it doesn’t always have to have a beat to it, or chords, it could just be us concentrating on the noises rather than the actual musical structure. It sounds superficially like an intellectual thing, but most bands dick around and make stuff up and that’s all we do. We just love doing it when we meet up – that’s what we do for fun. Rehearsing things, memorizing them and doing them over and over again seems more like work. The bit we enjoy is meeting up, plugging in and starting to play, just to see what happens.
Q – What does the visual element add to the music?
It’s the other way round I think, on this tour. The films are the main thing and hopefully the music adds a bit of atmosphere, something a bit individual to that moment. That’s the way we see it. Its not like improvising music to visuals – its more like there’s some films on and we’re hoping that we can be invisible behind the screen. Its that way round, definitely.
Q – Are you writing new material just now?
We have been writing one or two things, yeah. Definitely next year we’re going to start it more intensely, in January we’re going to do four or five days a week just writing and then see what happens really.
Q – Will you be playing it on the tour?
I think so yeah, I think we’re going to be playing one or two things.
Q – Given the acclaim heaped on your first two albums do you feel under pressure at all?
No, I think we’re trying to rid ourselves of any pressure next time and just work completely on our own terms. No one is rushing us to get a record out, and we just want to get back to how we felt before we had a record deal really. Meeting up, playing for fun and seeing what makes us excited. On this record we challenged ourselves to make a modern pop record, and on this one we want to challenge ourselves and see what we come up with really.
