​Guy Andrews' 'Our Spaces' LP Is Apocalyptic Post-Rock For the Dancefloor

London-based producer Guy Andrews found himself at a crossroads last year when sitting down to write his debut album Our Spaces. He'd spent years exploring the outer reaches of minimal, ambient electronic soundscapes with his Moving Dawn Orchestra project and the mellower, jazzier edges of post-rock under the name iambic, but his biggest successes came under his own name, producing dancefloor-ready techno with releases on Scuba's Hotflush and newfangled avant-tech label Pennyroyal.

So when it came time for Guy Andrews to define himself with an LP, he had a choice to make: stick to the more palatable dancefloor sonics that have brought him success or return to his more abstract beginnings. The answer, in some ways, was both. Our Spaces blends all of the elements of his disparate projects, the ecstasy and the ether, and it does so with a newfound edge, a loud, aggressive, boisterous voice that feels like a cinematic introduction to an impending alien army more than something that might elicit wiggling hips or nodding heads.

Using live instrumentation, analog and soft synths, and echoing styles as varied as noise rock (think Japanese avant-metal band Boris or the most aggressive Godspeed! breakdown ever) and grinding techno (a la Alan Fitzpatrick) to put together an assault on the senses that's as multifarious as it is concussive.

Most labels would have no idea what to do with such a gloriously baffling release, but the LP found its way into the hands of perhaps the one boundary pushing London imprint that did—Houndstooth. London clubbing institution Fabric's in-house enterprise that's catalogue is tied together by dark tones and progressive intentions, but because _Our Spaces _is__ so reflective of its creator's wonderfully divergent impulses,the LP still belongs to a realm all its own. Listen to the whole record here in advance of its March 4 release date, and read on for Andrews explanations of the reinventions and re-imagining that spawned the record.

Tell us about the reinvention you undertook prior to writing this album.
I think it was a case of just realizing that writing bass and techno music was actually a struggle, and not something that particularly came naturally to me. I found it hard to express myself musically in these genres, so needed to start bringing in other influences to do so, which naturally led me away from writing for a dancefloor.

You're approaching novel terrain--post-rock, cinematic atmospherics--with a dance palate. What was that like?
That description quite accurately describes my taste in music, and I suppose the music I write is a reflection of that. The creative process to the album is quite long. I can come up with chord progressions, melodies and so on quite quickly, but producing the right sounds to work with is the challenging part. In the context of my music, the "live" elements of instrumentation often have an equal weighting to the purely electronic parts, so the hard bit is getting both to merge into one sonic aesthetic. When synthesizing sounds, you have to strike this mid-point between it clearly being electronic, and there being enough perceived "movement" in the sound for someone to deem it as potentially being organic. If you can't hit that sweet spot, then everything sounds really disjointed and generally quite awful.

Is this a dance album?
I wouldn't really say so, and I definitely didn't write it intending to be a dance album, but interestingly I heard one of the most guitar-based tracks from the album, "Higher Waters," included in a Techno mix the other week. Despite the drums having an almost a live, post-rock feel to them, I suppose there is still the rigidity in the drum programming that lends itself to perhaps being received better by dance/electronic music fans than post-rock fans.

Does dance music often take it too easy in terms of concept?
I think often it does, but there are valid reasons for this. There are many exceptions but dance music is ultimately built for a function, which as the name suggests, is to make people dance. I feel in terms of song arrangements there definitely are unwritten rules for constructing techno music. For example, bringing elements like hi-hats in at the wrong time - or the hi-hats being too unquantised - can make a DJ sound pretty awful when mixing… and when producers are often forced to DJ (which is commonly outside of their comfort zone), they generally don't want to make things hard for themselves. However, the producers bending these rules are the ones doing the most interesting things… and generally tend to be the better DJs as well. However, over recent years a lot of dance floor music has become far more experimental in its approach - but this is still very niche.

Houndstooth puts out some crazy shit. How do they keep finding you weirdos?
I think it's mainly because the people who run the label have a really high level of understanding about a very wide variety of music genres. Knowing that Houndstooth started from a predominantly dance music background, I was really surprised when the demo feedback from the album I sent them picked up on references from post-rock bands and more abstract electronic producers. Rob Booth (Houndstooth's A&R) really has had a lifetime of submerging himself with underground music, so little goes unnoticed with him.

In a live setting, how do you expect people will respond?
So far the response for my live act has been positive, which has been really flattering, but I feel the show will evolve a lot over the next year or two. Performing live is new territory for me, so it's quite strange to see how people react to me playing an instrument in front of them, rather than DJing in front of them. The whole process of performing electronic music is quite a weird one - there is so much that can go wrong during a performance that it makes the whole process pretty scary… but I've yet to have my first on-stage computer crash, so fingers crossed that won't happen any time soon.

Our Spaces is out on Houndstooth on March 4th

Find Guy Andrews on Facebook // SoundCloud

Jemayel Khawaja is THUMP's Editor-at-Large - @JemayelK