It is often said that it takes a thief to catch a thief so we applied that logic to musicians and sent Nick from Manchester’s Trojan Horse to talk to David from Sunderland’s Field Music, the results were most enlightening.
They always say never meet your heroes, and it’s become a cliché because, for the most part, it’s usually true. It’s not in this case, but the same can be said for the phrase I invented recently, which is “Never hastily throw together some questions for an interview with a band that you are into, just because you can, when you’ve never done anything like this before in your life (or if you do, at least plan it a bit better Nick)”. It’s got a bit of a niche target audience, but I think it’s got a nice ring to it.
I recently got chatting to David from Field Music over the wonderful social networking site/waffle stand/soap box that is twitter. As such, my excitement at the fact someone in a band I like and respect, actually has time for a self confessed fan boy/peasant pestering them, in between snorting lines of coke off a lady’s foof and necking bottles of JD and the other rock and roll stuff people in bands do on a daily basis, kind of got the better of my usually semi-rational mind. In a stroke of ‘genius’ my brain decided it would be “AWESOME!”(I’m quoting my seemingly 12 year old inner self who came up with the idea, now) to think of some questions to ask. Firstly, I attempt to ask stuff I felt hadn’t be adequately answered in previous stuff I’d read, and secondly I had some burning issues I wanted to ask in a purely selfish way.
After a lot of reading and realising that most of the really good questions had been asked, I panicked somewhat, and what follows is my paltry attempt at interviewing David. With my fully cringe-able Smash Hits/Just17 style questions, which I refuse to edit to make myself look any semblance of cool, because people need to see that I’m really not, and to learn from my embarrassment. However David was really cool about it and had a right good go at giving some meaningful answers to the car crash of vocabulary that lay before him. So many thanks to him, and you lot be gentle, he was my first…
(((o))): Ok so let’s get the lame, SMASH HITS-esque questions out of the way first. If you had to describe Field Music to someone who has never heard you before, how would you describe your music?
These days I’ve been telling people we make weird, arty, pop music.
(((o))): Where does the name come from?
From a long list. Way back when, in the dim and distant past, when we needed a name to put on the first record, it appealed to us to have a name which didn’t particularly sound like a band. It sounds more like a publishing company or a music shop. We never really thought about the pastoral associations of the word ‘field’ – we were probably thinking more scientifically.
(((o))): You’ve garnered a lot of glowing reviews of the new album, ‘Plumb’, from the press, what’s the reception of the new material been like from fans?
It’s incredibly difficult for us to tell. People generally don’t get in touch on twitter or facebook to tell us it’s not as good as the last one so we have no sense of perspective. And that’s probably a good thing – it’s better to be motivated by your own personal whims or obsessions.
(((o))): …And you’ve recently been touring the album, how’s that been? Any interesting, or “ROCK AND ROLL!!!!”, stories?
The UK tour was really good but we don’t really do extra-curricular rock and roll behavior. Partly because we’ve got work to do so we don’t have time (driving, loading in, parking, setting-up, sound checking, merch, set-lists, emailing, vocal warm-ups, playing, packing-up, more merch, loading out, more driving) and partly because we’re just not like that. We’re good mates so we always have a laugh when we’re away but the things we find hilarious don’t really translate well outside of a Travelodge room. This time round we did a lot of competitive crosswording (inspired by our sound engineer) and we do continually compare our lives to Alan Partridge with his travel taverns and his service station food.
(((o))): Anyone with an ear for music can hear the artists that influence your own output. Although the signposts of some of it are familiar, there must be a vast wealth of stuff you are into. What are your biggest loves, and are there any skeletons in the collective Field Music closet of influences that people may be surprised to hear you like?
A lot of the music I love is pretty obvious – The Beatles, David Bowie, The Velvet Underground, Prince, Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin, The Band, Roxy Music, Fleetwood Mac – but there are a lot of more obscure records I love that have been really influential on us – ‘Song Cycle’ by Van Dyke Parks, Jim O’Rourke’s solo albums and the last Gastr Del Sol album, Big Star and some Alex Chilton solo stuff, The Roches’ first album, ‘Oar’ by Skip Spence, The Left Banke, Suicide’s first album. I think people quite enjoy trying to spot or interpret the influences on our records which is a bit weird for us because we’ve been influenced by so much music and that reductionism always seems to miss! There’s a huge element of hip-hop influence in our approach to drum parts for instance (especially those Neptunes and Timbaland productions from the first half of the 00s), but because it’s combined with a love of John Bonham and The Beatles, it seems to pass people by. I’m not really embarrassed by any of the music I like – there’s no guilt involved – but I think people would be surprised at how influential the 3rd Black Crowes album is for us.
(((o))): You’ve been quoted as saying “Field Music the band” is a by-product of what you want to do. What exactly do you mean by that? Is it purely a beast with which to create the music, or does it extend into other artistic endeavors we’ve yet to see/hear?
Ha! It’s the clumsiest quote we’ve ever had attributed to us! Essentially, all we’ve ever tried to say is that the music produced is way more important than ‘the band’. The music is more important than ideas of genre and it’s more important than the image we project as people. If the functioning of the band entity gets in the way of the two of us making the best music we can then we should ditch the band (or change it) in order to make the music.
(((o))): Listening to ‘Tones of Town’/’School of Language’/’The Week That Was’/’Measure’, there are definite threads running through the material you’ve produced over the last few years, and obviously that have extended into the tracks on ‘Plumb’. Is this a conscious “Grand Design” if you will, or do you feel it’s a more natural progression, with your approach to writing?
I don’t think we could manage an overarching 6 year long grand design! There are a bunch of things going on there – one is trying to get better at writing songs and making records. In lots of ways we’ve progressed but certain things get lost or obscured along the way (for instance, there’s a weirdness and spindly quality to the arrangements on the first two records which we haven’t been able to recapture and with the solo records there’s a devil-may-care defiance to the way they’ve been made which isn’t as apparent when we’re recording together). On the other side, once you’ve spent 6 months making a record and a year touring it, it’s natural to want to do something completely different when you start the process again. If you know your 19th century philosophy you might say it’s akin to a dialectic process as described by Hegel.
(((o))): In most of your releases so far you’ve managed to create something of a “world of Field Music” by incorporating found and ambient everyday sounds. Was this a conscious decision as well, to build up a world within each album, and give it a real grounding so each release is more than just “a bunch of songs”, an more of an experience?
Once you start to become conscious of how much sound is happening all the time it’s natural to want to use ‘non-musical’ sounds, whether that’s the squeak of a bass string or Northern Goldsmiths clock in Newcastle. I never really think of our records as just a bunch of songs!
(((o))): You were also recently quoted as earning “£5000” a year from F.M. Is this entirely true? Do you have to work outside of the band or does it pay for itself?
It’s not entirely true. Sometimes we’ve earned more and occasionally we’ve earned less. The basic point that we don’t earn very much is true though. We do do bits of work outside the band but they’re rarely money-spinners either and given the amount of time we put into Field Music it would be difficult even to maintain a part-time job. The money we make is a fairly direct function of the number of records we sell. We don’t waste a lot of money and we’re not in debt and we don’t need to spend much in order to make records. It might not be considered luxury but we make enough to get by. You should also bear in mind that most amateur musicians will spend a significant proportion of their real wage funding their hobby – for us, all that stuff is a business expense!
(((o))): You took part in the ‘One Copy’ Exhibition. How was that for you? What was the process behind that? And how did you get involved? And contrary to the entire ethos of the project, will there ever be any general/free release of this material?
The One Copy project was entirely Peter, Andy Hodson (from Warm Digits) and the community group. Andy had worked with the group for a while and asked Peter to come in as ‘composer’. I think Peter really enjoyed it but, given that he’d taken the group’s pieces of music and cut them to bits a little bit in order to make the record work, there was a little bit of tension at the end – understandably, people feel very protective of their songs. As there shouldn’t be a copy of the record anywhere, it’s basically impossible for there to be a wider release.
(((o))): The scene you’re originally from up in Sunderland has spawned yourselves, The Futureheads, and Maximo Park just to name some of the bigger ones. Evidently there’s something in the water up there, is it a very fertile community based vibe, or a huge artistic coincidence?
I would put it down to a series of personal coincidences – a combination of people who met each other and were inspired or spurred on at just the right time. There’s never been much musical infrastructure and there still isn’t a regular audience for new or esoteric music so most of what came out of Sunderland had to have a certain DIY impetus and fearlessness to it – both of those things have held us in good stead. One day I’ll write a book about it.
(((o))): Are there any standout acts you recommend people to check out from round there right now?
I think the huge failing of my musical generation is that we’ve done a rubbish job of inspiring the next generation. Most of what I’ve heard from new bands in Sunderland over the past couple of years is third-rate sub-Oasis mod posturing. That’s not to say there’s not good stuff – I’m just not sure I’d know about it. Hopefully there’s a thriving anti-Field Music scene bubbling under in a pub function room somewhere. (And hopefully that anti-Field Music scene doesn’t sound like an Oasis-knock-off)
(((o))): It’s probably a bit of a hasty question as you’ve only just released an album, but have you started writing material for the next record yet? What can we expect from the next chapter, if you’ve even begun to think that far ahead?
Both me and Pete are always trying to write new stuff. At the moment I doubt the next thing we do will be another straight, pop Field Music album, but as we probably won’t get round to doing any serious recording for another few months, It’s very difficult to say.
