In ‘You’re An Ocean Deep, My Brother’ Sheffield based Firesuite produced one of our favourite albums of 2011. So, in advance of them coming down to play our Knowledge As Our Weapon night on November 26th, we had a chat with singer / guitarist Chris Anderson to find out a bit more about the band.
1. How long has the band been together and how did you all meet?
I (Chris Anderson) initially started the band whilst at Darnall Music Factory in Sheffield. The DNA of the band was formed there. I met Chris (Minor) and Sarah Griffiths through Darnall, Chris was in a band with Sarah’s sister, whom I also met Sarah through. Dik floated into our midst during one stormy night. We have had one major lineup change, but the band as it currently is has been together for around 2 or 3 years.
2. Where did you get your name from & what does it mean?
Our name is taken from Stravinsky’s “Firebird” suite. At the time of the band forming I was listening to Arvo Part, Goreki and Stravinsky as well as stuff like Mono, Sigur Ros and Mogwai. I wanted to be in a band desperately, and wanted to write music that impacted on the same level as all this tremendous music I was listening to at the time.
3. Describe your sound for us & who would you say were your biggest musical influences?
Our sound? It can vary dramatically from show to show, and rehearsal to rehearsal. We love distortion and texture and melody and I’d like to think, particularly with the newer material we’re working on, we’re getting better at building tension and layering sounds. We’re incorporating different elements such as more vocals and keys and playing around with structure in different ways. I really love our new stuff. We’ve got a song called “Sisters” which is starting to sound really interesting and one called “Red World” which is perhaps one of my favourite things we’ve done yet, and we’re only about half way done with it.
The way our band “works” is pretty odd. I’ll usually start writing something, which we’ll then work on in a piece meal fashion, generally recording a few rudimentary demos of a song and then figuring our way around it. It’s always (as it should be) a challenge, there is much procrastination that goes into writing new material. We all dance around it, sometimes for months and months. Richard will play it differently each time, Chris will write then re-write then re-write again a bass part which usually increases in difficulty exponentially each time, forcing me to improve my shambolic guitar playing. Me and Sarah play off each other over lead guitar parts and other melodies, be they vocal or guitar. It’s a convoluted, wonderful process.
My biggest musical influences are those which impacted on me during my late teens/early twenties. I devour music, but I don’t think any band will have as big an influence on me as those which hit me then. Smashing Pumpkins, Jeff Buckley, Mew, My Vitriol, Aereogramme, Poor Rich Ones, Cocteau Twins, Sigur Ros, Bjork, My Bloody Valentine, Deftones, Queen Adreena, Jeniferever, At The Drive In. I think, for me, they’re the major ones.
4. And what about non-musical influences?
Well, I’m reading “Habibi” at the minute which is a graphic novel by Craig Thompson. He wrote a book called “Blankets” which again, hit me at just the right time. His stuff is just magical. I’m a bit of a comic guy, always have been. I love the art and the writing. Guys like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Bryan Lee O’Malley, John Romita Jr, Joe Madureira, Jeph Loeb, Brian K Vaughan and Joss Whedon all had/have a huge impact on me in a creative sense. I’m partial to a good movie too, I’ve just re-worked my way through Wes Anderson’s back catalogue, which are all sensational.
5. Music can be a fickle mistress, what is your biggest high & low as a band so far?
There’ve been a number of dark periods during our trails. I think the recording of “Are You In Remission?” was a particularly tumultuous time. Lots of miscommunication and apathy all round. We had just lost a member of the band due to the stress of recording and we were in a weird, disjointed haze. It nearly broke us looking back, though I’m still really proud of the EP itself.
I think the high points have outweighed the low by far and away though. When we rehearsed “Beneath The Roses” in its complete form for the first time, when Sarah joined the band which gave us a renewed vigour. The key high point for us I would say however is our writing and recording “You’re An Ocean Deep, My Brother”. It was the culmination of years worth of being a band, and I am fantastically proud of the album.
6. What one fact about the band do you most want to share with the world?
During the night, usually after we have rehearsed, we each don a costume and take to the streets as a posse of superheroes. Either that or that we almost got banned from a venue due to Chris who turned up in a mini skirt, inebriated and proceeded to put his foot up on the monitors at regular intervals knowing full well he wasn’t wearing any underwear, thus revealing his member for all to see. And by “all” I mean a particularly offended bunch of ladies sat just in front of the stage!
7. The old model of record demo-do gigs-get signed-make millions is pretty broken these days, what’s your plan to deal with this?
I don’t think we’ve ever subscribed to a particular model in terms of treating our band as a brand or business. Obviously if you are in a band and want to reach an audience, which we do, there is an element of commerce which inevitably seeps in. The fact we’ve got a record on iTunes and Spotify means we don’t just want to make music in our respective bedrooms, but with that we have never written music to satisfy anything other than a compulsion within us to do so. We play shows when and where we can and we write and record material as and when we feel we need to. There has been, as I mentioned earlier, a renewed vigour in our band, in no small part to the pride we have in our record, but we don’t have thousands of pounds to sink into a PR firm which means we likely shant be appearing in the NME any time soon. Our plan is to write music we love and put it out into the world.
8. We journalists like to use easy labels to describe bands, what’s the worst thing you’ve seen yourselves described as?
We’ve been pretty fortunate in that the majority of press we’ve received we’ve done so as the journalist has seen something in us they love themselves, so they’ve picked up on the shoegaze thing or noise-pop thing. I do recall one review where we were dimissed as an emo band, which is sad as “emo” has now become a reductive term where once upon a time it was something to aspire to. Ah well.
9. We’re loving what you do but who’s floating your boat right now?
This year I have been mostly listening to and greatly enjoying “No Devolucion” by Thursday, “Gangs” by And So I Watch You From Afar, “Bon Iver” by Bon Iver and the new St Vincent record which is lovely, lovely. I haven’t been obsessed with a record like I was with the last Sufjan Stevens one for a while though.
10. What’s up next for you guys?
We have about ten to fifteen new songs we are slowly working on which I’m really excited about. We’ve one called “Rabbit” which we are playing live, and will be doing so at our forthcoming shows – Nov 6th with Airship at The Harley Sheffield, Nov 17th with Awooga @ West St Live Sheffield & Nov 26th The Urban Bar, Whitechapel London. We would, at some point soon like to get back in the studio to work on some of the new stuff, maybe an EP or something.
