Rettsounds – Shoegazer

In the early 90s my dirtbag friends and I spent most of our time loafing around in the basements of condos owned by my parents. Our chief concerns during that time were drugs, spinning Creation released records, and avoiding employment. Slowdive’s first two records (Just for a Day and Souvlaki) got a lot of spin time in those lackadaisical days, and I have to say, one of my best music-related memories is being pinned up against the back wall of Maxwell’s in Hoboken while Slowdive sent out wave after wave of disturbing tranquility across the dismally attended club. When the bulk of the band morphed into Mohave 3, I just wasn’t interested. If I wanted to hear a bunch of limies try to be cowboys, I’d listen to Help Yourself. But those first three Slowdive records have held up throughout time, whether this whole shoegaze revival my niece keeps going on about is happening or not.

The Cherry Red label is re-releasing the entire Slowdive discography this month in deluxe, two CD sets. I got in touch with Simon Scott, the drummer for most of the bands’ existence, and we spoke about stuff like bowl cuts, grunge, new gaze, and the Jerky Boys.

Slowdive

Vice: How did you end up playing in Slowdive?
Simon Scott: I was drumming for a Huntington band called The Charlottes at that time, and I was considering my future because half of the band had decided to go to university full time. When Slowdive supported us at a pub in Hampsted called The White Horse, I instantly fell in love with them–so when I overheard that they were less than impressed with their current drummer I decided to let them know I wanted to join. The next week I’d left the Charlottes, joined Slowdive, moved into Neil and Rachel’s house in Reading, and signed the recording contract.

Slowdive often gets lumped in with the shoegaze craze/genre of the early 90s. At the time, did it feel that there was an actual shoegaze scene happening in the UK? Did you feel this was an appropriate label for the band?
Shoegazing is just a term the press made up. We didn’t really care about it to be honest because we were busy touring, developing our sound, and writing songs. At the time it started off as “The scene that celebrates itself,” because we played on the same bill as Chapterhouse and Lush. What they failed to mention was that Blur, who we toured the US with in 1991, and Suede, were also at the same clubs. It didn’t feel like a scene, just a bunch of young bands hanging out together on tour or drinking at the same bars. We did know it was strange though, that everyone suddenly had reverb pedals.

In the early 90s my friends and I on the east coast of the States were buying up anything from the UK that was somewhat affiliated with Creation and reading all the British mags, as well as US fanzines, that were giving this shoegaze stuff press. In our tiny minds, we really wanted to believe there was a “scene” over there, where MBV, Chpaterhouse, and others chummed around together. Was it actually like that, or was there competitiveness among the bands?
Well, we did hang out with some of the other Creation bands like Swervedriver. We also met My Bloody Valentine and obviously played the same festivals as those bands, so I can see how it looked like a shoegaze scene was developing. I guess it was a scene in the press, but being at the heart of it we were just doing our thing musically and were slightly in awe of being on Creation with Primal Scream and MBV. When I was about 16 my ambition was to become a drummer signed to Creation, and that dream came true. So to me, personally, it was an amazing time. As far as competitiveness went, we were just trying to be ourselves, so we never considered the charts, unlike a few of those bands that we were playing with. 

It seemed at one point the UK music press turned on Slowdive as well as other shoegaze bands. Why do you think that was? Did you foresee it at all?
Yes. It’s inevitable if a huge new scene, in this case grunge, comes crashing down on the global music market. What could be more different to five young, middle class kids with bowl cuts and huge reverbs, than long-haired plaid-shirted rockers with six packs from Seattle? The irony is that we loved Nirvana and Soundgarden, and when we met Smashing Pumpkins in Chicago they told us we were a huge influence on them. We didn’t see the criticism coming, but just tried to ignored it until Creation suddenly became obsessed with chart positions and what the public thought.

What are some of your memories from recording those two Slowdive records?
Being at Courtyard Studios with the very talented engineer Chris Hufford, recording “Just for a Day,” and “Catch the Breeze.” We were all having fun and making incredible music without any form of backlash or negativity, so those were great days. Another amazing memory I have is being at Creation’s headquarters in Bethnal Green and blasting out the finished Souvlaki album, the one Brian Eno played on, and being incredibly proud of that record.

I never knew until recently that Souvlaki was a reference to a Jerky Boys skit. That’s great!
Contrary to popular belief we had a good sense of humor. We had a Jerky Boys tape on tour that kept us from going crazy if we had a bad day. We used to listen to it in the studio too, so Radiohead, who were managed by Chris Hufford, got a hold of it and they named their debut, Pablo Honey, after one of the sketches. I can’t remember who bought it or who gave us a copy, but it certainly affected us.

Wow, I never knew what a profound impact the Jerky Boys had on British music in the early 90s, but it sort of makes sense now. Shame you couldn’t get on the soundtrack to their horrible movie and be wedged between Helmet covering Sabbath and Tom Jones doing “Are You Gonna Go My Way” by Lenny Kravitz. Anywho, where did things start to wind down with you and the band? Was it a mutual break?
We’re all still friends and still speak today, but I just wanted to play and write music. So when we finished promoting Souvlaki I was left waiting for Neil to decide how he wanted the next record to sound. I decided to leave and found work with a few other bands, but in hindsight, it’s a shame we didn’t release a lot of the songs we wrote on tour, because we could have made a whole new record that would’ve had unreleased songs like “Joy” and “Sliver Screen.”

I always found it strange that you left Slowdive right before they released their most experimental album. Were they working on that material while you were in the band? What do you think of that record?
I didn’t hear any of the songs before I left and I don’t even have the record. It was almost all Neil and Rachel–Nick and Christian are hardly on it–so for them to continue to work together wasn’t a surprise to me. What I have heard is great, but I never expected it to sound like that because the 5 EP was very technology inspired.

Since leaving Slowdive you’ve worked on a lot of interesting projects. Why don’t you go down the list and explain what they mean to you.
The list of who I drummed for is too long to name, but eventually I began writing songs that led to the formation of Televise in 2000, where I sang and played guitar but had a band line up I found too restrictive for writing. I also wrote music for some television and film companies, and that led to some sound installations. From there, my interest in sound and ambient music continued to grow. We did some gigs with Isan, which led to me starting Seavault with Antony from Isan. We bonded over a shared passion for loud guitars, computers, and Morr music–we released a single in 2008. Then I became obsessed with using my laptop to make music combining drums, guitar, vocals, and the hard drive. I developed my programming in various software environments such as Max/MSP, that I feel is so creative and expressive for a musician, and began composing using technology-based tools alongside traditional instruments.

I really loved the solo disc you released last year Navigare. I was curious about the recording process. Was it analog? What was actually used in the recording?
Thank you so much! I started this album as a tribute to my uncle, who was a submarine officer before he died of alcohol and smoking related diseases, and the submergence of his life underwater resonated with me. Basically, I recorded some guitars, fed them into my self programmed Max/MSP patches, and added drums or strings. I also took programmed loops and formed the album around those in relation to the inspiration I found from my uncle’s life at sea. There are also found sounds, like rain, and as you mentioned an analogue tape hiss on the record, but it’s very much a mix of analogue and digital combined to form an ambient record. The same juxtaposition continues on the Traba mini LP that Immune recently released on vinyl, but my forthcoming releases vary. They go from totally digital, on the Silenne CD released on the Belgium label Slaapwel, to a totally analogue acoustic 7″ that is due out on Berlin’s Sonic Pieces.

Do you think Slowdive’s influence is seeping into today’s music?
For sure! I get so many talented musicians, and even record labels from many different genres telling me how Slowdive was a huge influence and inspiration. Many people are discovering our records today, and the songs and textures have stood the test of time pretty well, I think. I know we turned a lot of people from my generation on to listening closely to ambient guitar music, and that led to them listening to Eno, and then they followed it all the way back to sonic explorers like Pierre Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Cage, Satie, and Debussy.

Sometimes, in my drunker states, I think shoegaze might be the closest thing people of the past 30 years will ever get to having a psychedelic music scene like in the 60s. Do you think this idea is total crap?
Slowdive were signed to an independent label so we could experiment with ambient music, melodic pop, and anything else we wanted to do. So in some ways we were psychedelic, and we loved garage bands like The Seeds, and later The Stooges. The generation of young people discovering Slowdive through new gaze–which is a bit of a silly name really–with bands like Deer Hunter, Radio Department, and Ulrich Schnauss, is really flattering. They cite us as an influence, and that’s wonderful but yeah… I guess if I was a teenager now I’d be really into these new bands, but I’d be seeking out records by MBV, The Cocteau Twins, and Slowdive to find out the history.

TONY RETTMAN

http://www.cherryred.co.uk/

Buy Simon’s record, Navigare here.