(((o))): So, first and foremost, who are Big Naturals and what are your musical backgrounds?
Gareth is from the Bristol area and has been playing bass from an early age. He was in a band known as Lillydamwhite who were a notable Bristol band back in the day. Gareth also has been good friends with cult Bristol band The Heads for many years. In fact he engineered their 'Under the Stress of a Headlong Dive' LP. Lillydamwhite actually shared a couple of seven inch records with the band, one of which in 1997 was the very first release from Rocket Recordings, who have recently released the wildly successful Goat album. In more recent times Gareth has worked for various bands on the road such as High on Fire, Boredoms and also Melvins who Gareth has booked to play at Bristol venues the Croft and the Exchange several times over the past two or three years. A live recording of one of these shows is upcoming on limited vinyl on our Greasy Trucker label sometime soon.
Big Naturals was started by Gareth in 2005 or 6 I think and it's kept going ever since in one form or another. I joined the band in 2009. My musical background was formed partly through my family, as my dad and uncle have both toured as backing musicians for the blues guitarist Freddie King. Christine Perfect (later McVie of Fleetwood Mac fame), first started out playing in a group with the two of them. I suppose the music thing rubbed off on me through them. There was always cool music on in the house growing up. My stepdad was always playing blues and jazz and my Mum was always into music like Cream, The Who, Donovan and James Brown, stuff like that. I was in a band called Episonic for many years, from 1996 to about 2005. By the time that came to an end I'd already met Gareth through being at the same work house together and had been to see both the Big Naturals and The Heads perform several times, for me they were the best bands going at the time, so when Gareth offered me the gig I was straight in there.
(((o))): Has your local music scene had any impact on you as a band?
Well, the Bristol scene certainly had an impact on me in terms of me getting into what Gareth was doing with Big Naturals and stuff, but as a band now in 2013 I wouldn't say that we were impacted upon as such by anything happening in the local music scene. There are bands that we like and are friends with. Gareth runs some rehearsal spaces known as FAG in the Stokes Croft area and also had a hand in running The Croft before it closed which was just nearby and very DIY, so both of those elements have provided a continuous link between us and other Bristol bands. There's Thought Forms, Turbowolf, Pohl, The Naturals, Caves, Atonsk, Spectres, all of whom at one time or another we've played with or they've used the rehearsal spaces and all of them are super cool and just really nice people to know. There is the
Young Echo collective who have run nights out of the rehearsal space which they've live streamed and there's also Eloise and Olmo who are
Zam Zam Recs. They have put on a couple of very interesting nights down at FAG too. Big Naturals have performed in some incarnation or other as part of both of these nights so at least socially there probably is some subconscious influence there, but I think musically speaking we try to make sure that we don't follow any of our peers even though we dig what they're doing.
(((o))): Your debut full-length came out last year. Tell us a little bit about it...
I can tell you that it drove us mad recording it and I think that you can hear that! The record was a long time coming and was a big chunk of material to get through. We weren't sure whether or not we could get away with recording as a two piece so the pressure was on at some stages. We self recorded and mixed which also added to the intensity at times, mixing it until we went green! We certainly poured everything into it. The record itself is the material we'd been playing live up to that point with a few embellishments and little interludes here and there. I suppose it's like a hybrid of punk, white noise, psychedelic rock and krautrock influences. At the time we started doing the recording we were listening to a lot of Crass, Miles Davis fusion period and Hendrix actually, I'm not sure how much if any of that we harnessed but that was what was floating our boat at that particular point in time.
(((o))): You also play live with Paul Allen from The Heads as Anthroprophh I believe. How did that come about? How does your approach differ for those gigs?
Big Naturals were originally a three piece with Prof (Paul Allen) on guitar and electronics, for almost a year I think, so he's played with the band before and he'd been holed up doing his solo album and I think he wanted to get out and play, so he started getting up with us at gigs and doing the last few minutes of the set with us which would be a huge blow out and then he had a couple of launch gigs booked for his album launch and he asked us to back him up. That meant adapting his album material for a three piece which was quite tricky because Paul's record is actually quite introspective in some ways, but when the three of us play it's actually quite frenzied so the songs changed a bit and I think that we all had to adapt. In the Big Naturals Gareth and I had got used to playing as if we're at gunpoint, playing for our lives and Prof would get on that vibe, so the first few gigs must have sounded a bit schizophrenic or something. Gradually over the last six months we've started to level some of the dynamics out and I think we're starting to learn how to let it breathe a bit, the material has changed a bit too so it's more like the three of us as opposed to us trying to adapt Prof's solo album.
(((o))): What do you think is the most difficult challenge facing new bands starting out in the music industry today?
Getting your music heard. There's so much out there now.
(((o))): Every band has different aims. What would have to happen for Big Naturals to make you feel that you’d “made it”, so to speak?
More records, touring abroad, champagne bidet, sponsorship from Durex....
(((o))): Yours has to be one of the worst band names to google in the world. Have there ever been any unfortunate misunderstandings that have arisen as a result of it?
Not really, a band in Leeds apparently refused to play with us at our recent Brudenell Social Club booking because of our name, but neither of us think that censorship is cool either.
(((o))): We have another column called Echoes of the Past in which we get people to write about albums that have particularly influenced them. What would you guys choose to write about in that column?
Gareth would choose that first ROIR cassette by Bad Brains. I'd probably go for 'Bitches Brew' by Miles Davis.
(((o))): This is ostensibly a column for introducing new bands. Any suggestions as to who we ought to include in the near future?
Pohl, City Yelps and Unwave.
(((o))): What are the band’s plans for the near future?
We are about to embark on a new album which we're both looking forward to. We are hoping to get it done a bit quicker than the last one. We already have one pretty epic track written with lots of sections which will account for about half of the LP so it's definitely ambitious and will probably push us to the max again. We're hoping to retain a lot of the elements of the first record but also we're aiming to have a bit more space in there and stretch some of the ideas out a little more. There are gigs here and there over the summer as a two piece and with Anthroprophh: 29th July at the Bristol Exchange and 2nd August at the Blade Factory in Liverpool as Anthroprophh with Anta. 3rd August as Big Naturals with the mighty Gnod and Shit and Shine at the Crypt in Bristol and rounding off the summer there will be another Anthroprophh gig at Bristols Arc Tangent Festival 0n Friday 30th August.
