Deluxe Issue Seven

Issue Seven: It’s a free periodical about record shops.

Deluxe.

Welcome to Issue Seven of Deluxe.

If you are picking this up for the first time, welcome to an independently produced, independently supported, independently distributed, independent newspaper about independent record shops… doubtless the world’s best in fact.

A lot of artists in this issue that we’re massive fans of, so it was an honor - for us at least - to interview them about their own record shopping histories and those iconic buildings that have inspired them.

Quite a few people are putting together websites that aim to list all of the record shops in the world, we are avoiding that largely insurmountable task. Deluxe is about personal recommendations, places that are good, not just addresses. What we will do from now on however is list a directory of all the establishments that get mentioned in each issue. I mean, you all have the ability to search the internet for for yourselves, but it is nice to see all those recommended outlets in print isn’t it.

Interviewed and Edited by Rupert Morrison Cover Illustration by Jeffrey Lewis Printed by Newspaper Club Distributed by Forte and Windsong International Whilst every care has been taken in the preparation of this newspaper, the publishers cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of information or any consequence arising from it.

Published in Devon by The Drift Record Shop. © 2015

Kurt Vile Philadelphia native Kurt Vile has been one of the biggest breakout stars of the city’s recent boom, alongside his close friends The War on Drugs. His evocative and winding guitar songs are the perfect framing for his lethargic vocals with his previous two albums (2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo and 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze) picking up huge critical praise, and bringing a slightly reluctant star to a much wider audience. Kurt was in the UK playing a few dates ahead of his fifth album ‘b’lieve i’m goin down…’ and he managed to take a few minutes out.

As you’d expect, he’s a mellow guy.

Deluxe: Your new album lands imminently and you’re touring pretty hard for the remainder of the year, are you looking forward to playing the new set of songs live?

Kurt Vile: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it but there’s plenty of anxiety because honestly we still have a lot of tackling to do. We’ll definitely get together and work it all out.

D: Have you tweaked the line up of the Violators?

KV: Well, my steady touring band is Rob (Laakso) and Jesse (Trbovich) who have been with me for a while, and now Kyle Spence is playing drums live. He lives down in Athens and we recorded a good chunk of the record with him down at his home studio, which is really awesome. I played a

bunch with my friends Farmer Dave and Stella (Mozgawa of Warpaint) on the West Coast, so the styles are pretty different leading into this new LP. There is still stuff to work out, we’ll mix it up… It’s good times.

D: With the live show are you looking to emulate the record or are you looking to go somewhere else?

KV: No, I really want to find new space. I don’t want to Karaoke it. It’s a balance because I also don’t want to bash away at it. I feel like too often the Violators have bashed things into oblivion and my ears are just shot from that. It’s still work in progress, but I feel like we’re getting closer all the time.

D: Have you got your chops back? Can you play all the solos right?

KV: (laughing) Yeah, getting my chops back. I’m playing all the time at the moment, it really helps.

D: In terms of recording the new LP, you moved around a lot. Do you feel like it has a transient vibe across the songs?

KV: It has a travelling vibe for sure, I think maybe the songs sound that way anyway, but I can see the whole trip when I listen to it. I had been travelling around a lot before we recorded but this period was way more laid back, less gruelling. No major rush, bouncing around.

D: I was reading about recording at Rancho De La Luna and in particular, finding time to jam with Tinariwen KV: It was awesome. Their manager had been getting in touch for a while and it all just fell into place. We’d been trying to hook up at all these little festivals and it just never quite fell into place. They were booked to jam at Rancho and it tied in with our session.

David Catching, who lives there, had me booked in the week after Tinariwen so I thought it had all fallen through, but when I got there he was like ‘nah, it’s cool, that’s all still happening’ and it was really awesome to play with them.

D: We interviewed Other in NYC a few issues back and they were saying that Tinariwen playing instore was an amazing experience for them. Their English isn’t particularly strong is it?

KV: No, not at all, that’s the thing their English really isn’t strong at all.

They speak French a lot but I don’t, so

we couldn’t really speak. I was nervous at first, I totally ate shit on the first day.

I got it together. You could tell they were all quiet, waiting for me to finally play, but I was nervous and totally blew it. The next song, I was playing along with it all day on the couch and it was definitely more in my vibe of playing.

The first track was too fast for me to keep up with. But the second one, I nailed it (laughing)… they loved it.

music. You have a lot of siblings, how much of an impact on your own musical enlightenment were your family?

KV: I think people have asked me this kind of thing in the past and I probably didn’t notice much, but I think the constant static and movement and noise of people in and out, and in close quarters, all sunk in. We all developed a knack so that we tuned each other out.

I guess I got lost in music that way. I

I guess I was about 16 or something when I made my first recordings, my friend’s brother recorded me and helped me make a cassette… hearing that back really blew my mind and I knew right away that was what I wanted to do.

I was going to do it.

D: (laughing) So you made them more mellow?

can also sleep through anything… that’s another skill I’ve developed.

KV: I guess so, yeah, I slowed them down.

D: Do you remember the first time you regarded yourself as someone that was ‘into music’?

D: So looking back at first getting into

KV: I was really into music at a young age, but not in that kind of aware way. I got my first string instrument at about 14 or something and that really moved it on.

D: So physical music is a big part of it for you?

D: Where else in Philly is good to shop?

KV: Yeah, totally, I am totally into physical music.

KV: Philadelphia Record Exchange and Bull Records are my couple of favourites.

I guess I was about 16 or something when I made my first recordings, my friend’s brother recorded me and helped me make a cassette… hearing that back really blew my mind and I knew right away that was what I wanted to do. I was going to do it.

D: I was tipped off that there are some unexpected avenues in your collection.

You’re pretty into traditional music right?

D: How about on your travels, where has really stood out?

KV: Sure, I was brought up on that sort of thing. My Dad was into Bluegrass and traditional and stuff and he gave me the folk anthology, and I definitely D: How about buying music, do you went in the primitive American music remember what you bought first? direction. That’s one of many avenues, KV: I guess…. For myself, it would have John Fahey by extension, but the early been a cassette and my dad would have primitives and all that style was my biggest influence early on. bought it for me. I think honestly it was a U2 tape, which, you know… U2 D: Do you remember seeing Constant are perfectly respectable but I do not Hitmaker or God Is Saying This to find myself playing that tape today You in a record store for the first time? (laughing) How did that feel?

D: (laughing) Thanks for being honest.

KV: Well, I did but I don’t remember I’m always amazed that people are where it was exactly. Those early so honest about that question… I am records I was probably hustling them always expecting them to make out like they were into Bauhaus or Conrad myself. I am sure they made it in there, but I was often taking them in on early Schnitzler or something… these hyper tours and trading them for records. I cool teenagers. can’t recall the first time I saw them at my local store, AKA Music in Philly, KV: (laughing) Oh…. mine was the Velvet Underground then… a cool guy. but once the Matador record came out in 2009 I would see all of the releases around.

D: On the last record I saw you doing promo where you played back a cut from the album from your living room. D: So AKA is your local. They know what you’re into? They’re good guys?

I am guessing that was your collection right there in the background?

KV: They were… they actually just closed.

KV: Yeah, and I have even way more than you can see there in that clip. I D: Damn… that sucks just didn’t have my (laughing) ‘custom made’ racks up yet. Our house is kinda KV: They were a really good store, I small so that whole wall is nowadays a knew all my friends from there. wall of music. I filled it right up.

KV: There is a really cool store in Phoenix Arizona called Revolver Records and I would obviously love to check out your store… that’s probably a favourite too…

D: (laughing) Yeah, stop by.

Okay, so last question. I know you are a family man, so with your kids, have you had to do any censoring yet?

KV: I feel like, honestly, the curses they don’t hear them. Maybe one day they will, they don’t repeat them anyway. We kinda just don’t say anything if one slips by, we obviously don’t play anything too graphic like some dark rap.

D: How about Frozen…has the Frozen soundtrack happened to you guys?

KV: Yeah, Frozen. Those songs are so annoying but they do really like them.

I like Brave though.

D: Yeah, Brave is pretty good, it’s got some good drumming going on.

KV: Yeah, that’s pretty awesome.

dominorecordco.com

Origami Vinyl Opened back in 2009, Origami is a vinyl-only record shop on Sunset Boulevard in the historic Echo Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles. LA Weekly have awarded them the ‘best record store in LA’ for the last four years, not bad when you are only six years old. We reached out to Neil Schield and Emily Twombly to talk about who has dug through their racks and scaled their nine foot high loft stage.

Deluxe. So what is the Origami Vinyl set-up? Who found the store? Who is involved day to day?

Emily Twombly: Neil is the owner. With the help of Sean and a few others, they opened the store in 2009. Day to day, I run the store with help from Thomas and Sean.

Neil Schield: Origami Vinyl is a highly curated vinyl-only record shop that focuses on new LPs from a wide mix of genres. In addition to carrying some of national and international new releases, we are very focused on our LA music scene, and showcase a lot of local bands with in-stores and a locals only section. We also carry a small amount of used records and accessories. The shop is 400 square feet and is a shoebox shape. We have a loft area where we host bands on the weekends who play 9ft above the people in the shop.

It’s a pretty cool/unique experience. I opened the shop in 2009 with the help of Sean and quite a few other friends and family. I had been laid off the previous year from a music industry job and wasn’t really sure I wanted to go back to that. Through my soul searching I stumbled upon the idea of living out my childhood dream of owning a record shop.

Armed with my savings and a lot of support from indie labels across the country, and my good friends who own the Echo, I jumped in with both feet and haven’t looked back.

D. Are you all L.A. natives? Which shops inspired you to open Origami?

ET: Neil and Sean are from Southern CA, I’m from Boston, and Thomas is from San Francisco.

NS: Sean and I were born about 25 miles from the shop and have lived here pretty much our whole lives. I’ve lived in

the Echo Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles for 14 years.

Shops like Mississippi Records in Portland, Aquarius Records in San Francisco, and Rhino Records in Claremont all played a part in the inspiration of Origami Vinyl.

D. Which other stores are you friendly with? who does what well?

NS: The camaraderie amongst the LA shops is great. We all speak to each other quite frequently and when we don’t have something in-stock we always encourage them to check out the other shops in the area, and vice-versa. Since we are all small shops, we all do something a little different.

Mount Analog has an awesome left-field, electronic and experimental shop, Permanent is more punk and garage, Vacation a bit heavier, Wombleton, Blue Bag, Mono, and Gimme Gimme are great used shops and Rockaway focuses on the high end collectible stuff.

ET: We are friendly with most of the independent record stores in the area. We love Vacation Vinyl in Silverlake. They have a really great hardcore and metal selection. Permanent Records in Highland Park is also a great shop with incredible used vinyl.

D. Los Angeles has always had a strong record buyers reputation, what did you want to do with your store that other outlets were perhaps missing? - From the outside looking in it sure feels like a labour of love.

NS: For us it has always been focused around supporting artists, creating a community center within our neighborhood, and give bands a platform to sell their music direct. We prefer selling new albums and promoting new

music. When we opened there really was only Amoeba and Rockaway. Where they do their thing really well, we saw an opportunity to create a true neighborhood record shop that was about the Echo Park/Silver Lake area where we live in.

from the get go? Did it just evolve that way?

ET: We are less about selling those super rare, out of print records and more about featuring a lot of local bands, and music that we really love.

NS: In-stores were a part of the plan since the beginning.

Sean and I grew up going to in-stores at record shops. A lot of the time it was the only way to go see some of our favorite bands, because it was all ages and free. I wanted to provide the same opportunity. It’s really a win for everyone involved and it will be a part of Origami’s DNA forever.

D. How about labels, who have been supportive of you, and which in turn do you really back?

Q. Give us your top three live appearances at Origami, and why?

ET: This is tough! We love and respect so many labels out there. There are locals like Innovative Leisure, New Professor, and Chain Letter Collective. But also Secretly Canadian, Don Giovanni, and Matador have also been super supportive. (To name a few)

ET: We all probably have different favorites. For me it was: 1. Jonathan Richman - He’s my number one favorite performer and we had been trying to get him to play for years. Finally, he was playing the Echo and agreed to do a couple of songs at the shop. He came in, played 4 songs on the stairs, and left without saying goodbye. It was perfect.

2. Downtown Boys - This band is a political punk band from Providence. What they’re doing right now is super important and they have such a positive vibe, while also saying some really smart things. They also put everything into their songs when they perform, so it was a pretty moving set.

3. Royal Headache - They’re from Australia and are most definitely breaking up when they get back there after their current tour. It was an honor to have them play one of their last shows here. They sounded incredible.

NS: I really couldn’t have opened this shop if it wasn’t for the encouragement and support of Touch & Go, Sub Pop, Domino, Matador, Merge, 4AD, Secretly Canadian, XL, Epitaph, Mute and Saddle Creek. I was friends with these labels prior to starting the shop and I called each of them individually and asked them, “Is This Crazy? Am I Crazy?

Would you guys support this if I did this?” All of them gave me the strength to make it happen and we still work closely with each of these labels today, which is awesome.

D. Considering your svelte floorspace, you are one of the city’s most active live venues for instores - was that the plan

NS: This is tough. We’ve probably done about 500 in-stores

at this point and it’s really hard to narrow it down. I bet if you asked me in a week I’d come up with another 3.

The ones that come to my mind right now are The Antlers, who played their first ever West Coast show at Origami.

Holy Fuck, who just made the whole place into a dance party, and Timber Timbre, who also played their first ever LA show at Origami.

But wow that leaves out J. Tillman who wanted to try out his new material that eventually became Father John Misty to like 10 people including me. Jonsi of Sigur Ros who planned a whole instore tour across the country, did the first one at Origami Vinyl, then was so freaked by the experience, cancelled the rest of them. Local Natives who had always planned to perform at Origami, but then blew up so quick they couldn’t come back for 3 years and make good on the promise. Love those guys for that. Florence & The Machine. Florence was a fan of the shop early on, and when she was asked where she wanted to do a secret show, she picked Origami Vinyl. It was crazy and it took 10 people to hoist a harp into the loft for that. Insane! Seriously the memories are endless.

D. Without wanting to seem overly obsequious, I love your name, I love your logo, I love your totes… the design ethos comes over as very considered. Is this all in house? What inspires you?

NS: The inspiration for the name comes from growing up with a father who travelled to Japan six times a year during my childhood. He would bring me back all sorts of cool stuff from Japan - toys, electronics, art. At the age of 10 his company flew our family out to tour Japan and I fell in love with the place. It was so exotic and electrifying.

So in a way the name is an homage to those memories and my late father.

ET: All of our art has been designed by some of our talented friends. We try to have a different friend design each shirt we put out. Our love for local bands extends also to local artists, so we try to promote our friends as often as possible. I think we’re all suckers for good design, so we strive to make the shop align with our tastes in that sense as well.

D. Hate myself if I didn’t ask, are you actually any good at Origami? Tell me you can knock out that crane right?

NS: Agree with Emily. There’s only so much you can do with a rectangle of 400 square feet :)

NS: I actually suck at Origami. Emily is the probably the best at it.

D. You’re pretty active Instagramers, how big a part does social media play in your day to day success? Why do you think so many shops, like us, use instagram?

ET: I can knock out a crane but the unicorn, which is in our logo, is next to impossible.

I stumbled upon the idea of living out my childhood dream of owning a record shop.

Armed with my savings and a lot of support from indie labels across the country, and my good friends who own the Echo, I jumped in with both feet and haven’t looked back.

D. You ran a tote bag with a Dog on, who is that guy and what is his story?

ET: That was Ali, Neil’s boxer! She was the store mascot and Neil’s BFF. She sadly passed away last November but she lived such a long and happy life. We were all so lucky to have her in our lives.

NS: That dog was the best. When she passed the whole neighborhood came out in support. It was incredible to see how many lives that dog had touched.

There will never be another one like her.

D. Was the store always well laid out for your purposes… or did you have to get real good at DIY? ET: I think we’ve had to improvise a little bit but we make it work. We’re masters at using every possible inch of wall space that we can.

NS: Social media is a huge part of our identity. It enables us to communicate with our audience immediately and engage with them. Before that, you’d have to wait until someone walked in your door. Now we can let them know when new items have arrived, when pre-orders go up for sale, when we have in-stores. Seriously I don’t know how a store survives without being engaged with their customers.

D. Slightly more broadly from that last question, how have things changed for you guys in the last six years, what trends have you seen, where are you expecting to be in the next six years?

NS: The biggest change, or expansion I should say, was the launch of our online shop a couple years back. That’s enabled us to sell records to a much larger customer base. We are very limited with what we can bring in with inventory with our small shop. By

running an online store we are able to launch pre-orders and sell many more copies. The biggest trend we’ve seen is the opening of a lot more record shops.

When we first opened there were only a couple. Now I think there is more like 40 in the greater LA area. That’s awesome. Who knows what the next 6 years will bring. We just focus on the next few months and take it from there.

D. How about your own shopping histories - Which shops did you grow up with, and where?

ET: I grew up going to Newbury Comics in Boston.

NS: Tower Records in West Covina, Rhino Records in Claremont, and Bionic Records in Fullerton.

I was fascinated by the cover of Butthole Surfers’ Electriclarryland, with the pencil jammed in the kid’s ear. Someone gave me a CD for my birthday in 6th grade but I didn’t know what it was because I didn’t have a CD player. It was They Might Be Giants - John Henry. As for vinyl, I grew up listening to my parents’ records. They were obsessed with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and had all their records.

NS: My mom and I would go record shopping all the time together. It was a great hobby we shared. My first two record purchases were Metallica “…

And Justice For All” and Run D.M.C. “Raising Hell”

D. What was your first ever purchase?

D. What are you all really feeling at the moment? Early tips for record of the year?

ET: My first purchase with my own money was probably a Mariah Carey cassingle. I was really into those for some reason. I also had a lot of cassettes that my brother gave me.

ET: Downtown Boys! On repeat! Also loving the new Royal Headache, and Jeff Rosenstock’s record, We Cool?, is one of my favorite summer time records.

NS: Death and Vanilla “To Where The Wild Things Are”, Courtney Barnett “Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit”, Kendrick Lamar “To Pimp A Butterfly” D. Lastly, over the last six years, what has been the moment that most sticks in your mind … where you said, “holy shit… look at our record store” ET: Every time the shop is packed for an in-store or I see people getting stoked about our stock, it definitely makes me happy. Or when I go out of state and mention where I work, and people have heard of our tiny shop, it definitely makes me proud and makes our hard work worth the effort.

NS: Honestly it’s when people just come into the shop, and say thanks for being here. I’m just blown away that we get to do this and make friendships with other people who love music.

Jeffrey Lewis Over the last fifteen or so years, few artists have toured so constantly and so widely as native New Yorker Jeffrey Lewis. One of the leading lights of the antifolk scene in the nineties (although he does concede to not necessarily knowing what that means), he has a full history of record shop in stores.

Drift is one of many over the years and as we caught up with him in Shanghai he was on his way to play live at Uptown Records. He’s a record store connoisseur.

Deluxe: What was the recording process this time around?

Where, with who and how did it go?

Jeffrey Lewis: First I played a gig in Ramsgate UK and this guy Dan Lucas offered me some free recording time in his studio, Anchor Baby, in Kent. So the next time I was touring in the UK I added an extra week of time, to take him up on this generous offer. We didn’t end up using a whole lot from those sessions but that was the start of the record. It got me into a mental state of “I’m making an album.” So when my band got back home to New York City after the tour, I booked a couple days at my friend Brian’s place in Brooklyn, SpeakerSonic, and we banged out like 22 songs in two days. But then I spent about 5 or 6 months working with Brian in NYC to sift through the songs, re-recording some stuff. Not working steadily on it

but getting together once or twice a month, plenty of time to think, just slowly puttering around until I felt like I had about 45 minutes worth of really good material. After all of that nice prolonged relaxed gestation period I eventually felt like I was sitting on the best album I’d ever made, plus I realized I could sort of pick and choose and curate the song-selection to basically make it into a concept album about New York, or Manhattan specifically. At that point I thought I was done. Then I sort of let myself be talked into taking the recordings to John Agnello for a “professional” mix. I felt like I had already made the best album I could make, but I was willing to admit there are people who know how to mix and EQ and pan and all that stuff far better than I do. I’m not sure it was the right decision, because I was totally happy with the album before the fancy re-mix and mastering stuff, so to me it just sounds “different” now, but

Photographed by Tom Cops

not what I’d call “better” than the album I started out with. I’m not so trustworthy when it comes to that stuff though, because my tendency is to ignore the “nice” qualities that a “real” album has, in terms of a “professional” EQ, or a “fully polished” amount of panning or whatever. Anyway, at least I’m glad I did the best I could, from the initial work of writing a big pile of about 37 songs, to paring it down to about 10 of the better ones, to making the best recordings that I could make, and even to take the step to have it finished off by “real” mixing and mastering folks. I feel like I took as much time on it as I wanted, the opposite of making an album as quickly as possible, which is how I’ve made my last few albums. This new one is the first time since 2008 that I let myself take as much time as I wanted for the writing and for the recording.

D: With regards to the new LP, who are “Los Bolts” JL: Short answer: At the moment it’s Heather Wagner on drums and Mem Pahl on bass. Long answer: I’ve gone through so many different bass players and different drummers over the past 15 years of doing this, I could wish I had one solid band but I can’t control people’s lives so they just come and go.

People move to different cities, people get other jobs, I can’t expect anybody to stick with my “project” with the tenacity that I bring to it myself - it’s not an easy life, this kind of touring and existing. You have to really love it or else it becomes a drain rather than an invigorating thing. Personally I still love the challenge of it, the artistic challenge and the travel and organizational and financial challenge.

I get a sense of accomplishment and a sense of adventure out of it, and every new concert and every new song is a chance to maybe do something really great; but of course it’s probably easier for me to tackle the challenges of devoting my life to playing Jeffrey Lewis songs than it is for anybody else to devote their life to playing Jeffrey Lewis songs. Anyway, like I say, the new album started out with a week of recording in England. My drummer Heather couldn’t be there for any of that week, so my old drummer Dave who now lives in England came over and drummed on a few songs, and my

bass player Caitlin could only be there for one day of the recording week, so I got Franic of the Wave Pictures to play bass on the stuff that Caitlin couldn’t be there for. Then I got Jonny of the Wave Pictures to play drums on the stuff that neither Heather nor Dave could be there for. Then when I got back to NYC and continued recording, the foundation of the other tracks was all me and Heather and Caitlin. We’d been touring as a trio for about a year and a half and sounding great together, but then Caitlin got too busy touring with another band, so by the time the album was getting finished I had another bass player, and at this point I’m on tour in Asia with Heather on drums and Mem on bass. Mem’s fantastic and I hope she sticks around for a while. By the time the album comes out Heather will be busy with other stuff so I’ll be touring with a new drummer, it seems. It’s a pain, because I’ve got so many songs to teach people, it’s like three steps back for every one step forward every time the band gets reshuffled. But on the other hand, each new band lineup gets forged into a really great unit with a particular personality and particular strengths, which affects how the new songs come out, and also affects which songs from the back catalog work their way into the live sets night by night.

You know, one person might be a really great keyboard player and bass player but too timid on stage to fully rock out as much as another person. So I just let each person do what they’re into doing and each lineup takes things in a new direction with different strengths. It’s like any relationship, it gets deeper the more you stick with it, but when you find yourself single you can’t let yourself get depressed about it, you just keep looking forward to the better situation that might develop unexpectedly around the next corner. I feel like each time the band has reshuffled I’ve ultimately ended up better off for it. It becomes one more form of artistic challenge - like, first, what can you draw using this marker?

Then just when you’ve gotten good at making art with that marker the marker goes away and you have to start working with a paint brush. On the first day it seems impossible, but soon you find yourself making incredible new stuff you could never have done with the marker. Then the paintbrush

record it all live, mix, master, add a few home-demos, and walk out at the end of the day with a new album. From zero to finished in about eight hours, and we took it on tour with us the next week. A 40 minute album shouldn’t necessarily take any longer than that to make. But there’s also a nice thing that happens when you make an album with more time to think about it. I feel like the best albums I’ve made were the ones that took the least time, or the ones that took the most time. You either make a perfectly off-the-cuff album, or a perfectly thought-out album, but either way it D: I also thought ‘Manhattan’ was a great title. It’s a place needs to be perfect. It’s actually harder nowadays to make you know well right… so what story are you telling? a perfectly off-the-cuff album, everybody has way too much JL: I like the fact that it is confusingly un-hip, as if it ought opportunity to re-think things. It’s very hard to find an to be some kind of badge of pride but by putting it right out album that has not been thought about too much. That’s why it’s great to make records that are essentially a live in front like that, it sort of makes people realize that wait performance in the studio. You capture the real sound of a minute, there really isn’t anything cool about Manhattan the songs, of the room, of the spirit of it all. The concept at this point. I happen to still be living in Manhattan, but of lo-fi and hi-fi are inverted, really - a “high fidelity” everybody knows that all the cool young artists live in recording is supposed to have the highest “fidelity” or Brooklyn. There’s basically no NYC band that you can name who’s not a Brooklyn band, and I was getting sort of tired of everybody assuming that I’m Brooklyn-based.

I’ve been a life-long New Yorker but I’ve never fitted in with the music scene in NYC. The music scene is 99% comprised of people who have moved from other parts of America to Brooklyn. That’s really the NYC dream, that’s the 21st Century NYC adventure. I’m like this weird piece of furniture, I’m just there, these other bands pop up and disappear around me, but I’ve accidentally got a different NYC identity than all of that. I just figured I’d try to own that and figure out what that meant for me, to be tied to a place that has not been cool for a long long time. In fact, the only place on earth not in danger of becoming gentrified into the new hip East Village is the East Village itself. It’s sort of just over and dead and forgotten, hiding in plain sight. But it’s my life. It’s like a petrified forest and I’m a bit of moss. Also, there’s no real voice for that part of New York anymore, Lou Reed is gone, Tuli Kupferberg is gone. There’s no new voices because there’s no real contemporary need for that voice necessarily, but at this point I’m that remaining neighborhood voice anyway, even if it doesn’t represent any relevant contemporary cultural aspiration for anybody. You can still see Patti Smith and Suicide and Television, but they are all performing songs that they wrote like 35 years ago,. There aren’t really any bands carrying on the poet-punk Lower East Side thing as a contemporary voice. goes away and you have no choice but to start making art with a crayon, but after a little while you’re making such cool stuff with the crayon you can’t believe you were ever limiting yourself to a marker, or a paintbrush. Not to be dismissive of any of the markers or paintbrushes or crayons or bandmates I’ve worked with in the past, but it’s amazing how each time the level of challenge has changed, the new creative rewards have always been worth it.

D: As someone who has such a strong history of touring, do you enjoying the recording process? Do you think of it more as documenting or are you consciously creating something different to your live show?

JL: Different albums are different in that regard; the Jeffrey Lewis & the Jrams record that we made in 2014 was a oneday recording process. Walk into the studio in the morning,

it all started because there was this kid in my school who would steal tapes from Tower Records for a fee of $2 each, quite a good deal. I’d pay him a couple bucks to steal me the cassette of the first Led Zeppelin album, and a cassette of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, stuff like that.

truthfulness, to a crystal-clear presentation of reality, but usually the more “hi-fi” somebody’s album is, it just means the less of an honest portrayal it is of the way it really sounds when those people just plug in and play those songs all together in a room. A “lo-fi” recording, where you just hit the record button and play the song in one take, that’s actually the highest fidelity, the closest you can get to a snapshot of the exact place and time and space and heart of the performance.

D: As you have gotten older you seem to be more interested in documenting folk, roots, traditional music (alongside punk) - Has this progressively become something you are more and more interested in?

JL: I don’t think I’m a particular documenter of folk or punk music, though I’m definitely a record nerd, and with an interest in digging through the music of my neighborhood in New York, which encompasses folk and punk and weird stuff, but in a particular way that seemed like a blind spot for most people. It’s like people usually know about the existence of the early 60s NYC folk scene, and people of course know about the mid-late 70s punk scene and the rap that came after, but the whole period of bands from about 1965-1975 in NYC was kind of a fascinating mystery to me for years. It’s a period of time in which people were paying attention to music from California, and paying attention to music from England, but NYC was left out of the spotlight, to develop all these unique strains of music from the Fugs to the Silver Apples to David Peel to the Last Poets, and all of that stuff. But that period is suddenly not quite as much of a total mystery - in just the past couple years there’s been the Richard Hell autobiography, the Patti Smith autobiography, the Ed Sanders book “Fug You” and the Will Hermes book “Love Goes to Buildings on Fire”, all four of which really fill in a huge amount of that historical blank space.

D: Do you think of yourself as a documentarian or librarian alongside an artist and performer? Maybe just a passionate fan?

JL: Passionate fan I guess. You get excited about stuff and you want other people to get excited about it too, for some reason.

D: What was your first record store experience? was it a good one?

JL: I’m not sure if I can really remember a first record store experience., but when I was around 13 or 14 years old, and just starting to actively get into music, and actively getting into wanting to own classic rock albums, it all started because there was this kid in my school who would steal tapes from Tower Records for a fee of $2 each, quite a good

deal. I’d pay him a couple bucks to steal me the cassette of the first Led Zeppelin album, and a cassette of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, stuff like that. So, yes, I guess that was a good experience! Then I learned how to steal them myself, which worked okay until I got busted. And most of the music I was discovering was via taping other people’s records, mostly. I’d make tapes of my parents’ Bob Dylan albums, and make tapes of my friends’ Black Sabbath and Grateful Dead albums. Taping was the cheapest way to go, definitely.

Then I could draw my own covers on them, too. Then at some point I started getting into buying used records, which were also very cheap at that time. In the 90s, everybody was getting rid of their vinyl so it was a lucky and perfect time for a broke teenager to be getting into classic rock.

D: Do you remember your very first purchase and on what format?

JL: It was either “Scarecrow” by John Cougar Mellencamp, or “Escape” by Whodini, those were the first tapes I bought, probably from Tower Records, and maybe I was 12 or something. “Escape” is a great and overlooked early rap album, it’s full of hits and great songs that were popular at the time but are now mostly forgotten for some reason. I still love that tape!

D: Which are the best record stores you have found on your World travels?

JL: It’s hard to say, because so many disappear, I don’t know what still exists! Rockin’ Rudy’s in Missoula Montana was a great discovery when I stumbled on it while on a roadtrip in 1997, and every time I’ve been on a tour that passes through Montana I try to go back there. It was still there the last time I went, but I haven’t been there since about 2012, so who knows. I recently found a little place in Salt Lake City called Diabolical Records. I went there to play a gig and discovered that it’s a very cool record shop. I also like the one that’s in my neighborhood in NYC, on East 12th St, - is it Academy Records? I haven’t had as much luck finding used stuff to buy there but they’ve got a very good section of vinyl reissues of 60s psychedelic/garage stuff at the most affordable prices I’ve ever seen. I also really like Other Music, also near there, on East 4th St. I haven’t found any good used vinyl there in years but I always find good used CDs there. There’s a record shop in Hamburg Germany that I’ve been to a couple times that I like, but I forget the name. I absolutely love the tiny prog/psychedelic CD shop in Hebden Bridge UK. It’s such a weird and tiny and specialized shop, in an unlikely location, I always find interesting stuff to buy there, but actually I think maybe they don’t exist anymore. I remember some great used record shops in Manchester UK too, but not sure where they were or if they’re still there. Armadillo Records in Toulouse, France is also a really cool little shop, and they’ve

been putting out a zine for decades. The more I think about it, the more good record shops come to mind.

D: And following on, why? What makes for a good shop?

JL: Good psychedelic records at cheap prices! That’s basically my criteria. I have a personal rule never to spend more than $15 on a record, so I have to find things cheap if I’m going to buy anything. But sometimes even if the stuff is expensive and out of my price range, it’s still really cool just to see a good collection of records, it’s like being at a museum. I love going to those rare record shops on Portobello Road in London, like Love Minus Zero, or another one whose name I forget… they’ve got original Monks 45s on the wall for like £600 GBP, or the original Fapardokly album. I remember once seeing an original COB “Spirit of Love” LP at a shop on Berwick St in London for £100. It’s just a thrill for me to see that stuff in the flesh, and any other outrageously rare and expensive pieces of vinyl, I love to just gape at that stuff. Sometimes it’s even cooler when it’s stuff that I have no idea what it even is… just to see an insanely expensive and weird looking LP, it fills me with a sense of mystery and desire. I just have

to know what that record sounds like, and it’s just not as satisfying to hear an MP3 re-issue, you want to hear the original scratchy disc,. It’s like a radio signal beamed from a lost universe.

D: I feel as if you have been playing in-store shows for pretty much all of your career. Without suggesting you necessarily invented them, it seems to be a structure that people understand a great deal more and are very much more common now. Do you feel like a pioneer in that way? What appealed to you originally about playing such initimate or micro shows?

JL: There’s no way I’m any kind of pioneer in that field, but I’m lucky in the sense that I do have plenty of songs that can work just fine as unplugged solo acoustic performances.

Even some of my illustrated songs, all of that stuff can work perfectly well or even better in the kind of intimate environment of an unplugged house gig or an in-store appearance. It’s also hard for people outside of America to understand how pervasive and restrictive the 21+ rules are in America. The majority of regular rock clubs are 21-and-up only, for entry. So the only chance you ever have to play to

... Armadillo Records in Toulouse, France is also a really cool little shop, and they’ve been putting out a zine for decades. The more I think about it, the more good record shops come to mind. anybody under the age of 21 is if you’re playing house gigs or underground gigs, like barns and basements and in-stores and stuff like that. But of course the conditions of those sorts of gigs make it impossible for complicated bands to do them. So that’s where it really pays to be able to be flexible and to be able to play in any environment.

D: What are you favourite memories of playing in shops?

JL: Sometimes they give you a discount! I think I did some kind of art talk in the Rough Trade East shop in London when A Turn in the Dream-Songs came out, and they gave me a really good discount, so I bought a bunch of stuff, like the Pebbles box set… Actually one of my best-ever

Record shops are completely important to me, but I’m an old man and I’m out of the loop! I’m in my late 30s! What the hell do kids these days care about record shops?

whole LP thing is more for collectors than for broke kids.

There are cheaper ways to hear music just by listening with Youtube or stuff like that. But record shops are still great places, and there are still great record shops around. It’s not like the complete genocide of movie-rental shops, THAT is a culture that has been completely erased from the map, and that’s a real loss. I don’t even know how to watch movies anymore. I was never a big movie buff, certainly not like my love of records, but still, why the hell can’t I just go out and rent a movie? I live in the heart of NYC, and you’d D: Have you had any real disasters? think that wouldn’t be too much to ask. The great comic book shops and the great record shops have all dwindled JL: Of course, but it depends what you mean! Record quite a lot in number, but they have not been totally wiped buying disasters? out the way the movie-rental places have been. I had an idea for a business - somebody could open a shop that’s just D: Well I meant more playing disasters, but I want to hear a download shop. You wouldn’t have to stock any physical about your accidental purchases now… merchandise, you would just need like laminated cards for all of the albums or all of the movies. But you would have that JL: I’ve learned that you only really regret the records that you don’t buy… Like, that first time I was in Rockin’ Rudy’s “shop” interface. You’d have employees to talk to, you’d have the kind of cool personalised decour of those shops, Records in Missoula Montana in 1997, I bought a bunch of great 60s albums for great prices, like the first HP Lovecraft and you’d have the experience of browsing through shelves or through binders of some sort, stumbling on interestingLP for only $3.99, incredible! But they had the first two looking things. When you find something you want, you Chocolate Watch Band LPs for $25 each, and I didn’t buy just bring it to the counter and you can download it, and them - it was out of my price range, for one thing, and also the shop would get a percentage of the sales money just this was pre-internet and I had absolutely no idea how rare these albums were, or what prices they would go for. I really like any retailer. I think this should exist. The experience of “browsing” on the internet just does not compare to the thought “oh, I’ll just wait until I find them again for $15 or experience of browsing at a weird cool local shop, even if less, it’ll happen someday”, and there’s no way that’s ever the end result is not the physical taking-home of a CD or going to happen, those albums sell for hundreds of dollars.

DVD. I think a brick-and-mortar “download store” could Also I could have bought original copies of the second and really be a cool thing, and the proprietors wouldn’t even third Godz LPs for $16 each, at Bleecker Street Records need to rent very much space because there wouldn’t be in NYC in the late 90s, but it was one dollar higher than physical items to keep in stock, just sort of binders full of my personal price-limit so I figured I’d wait till I saw them cue-card type things. again for a bit cheaper - good luck!! And there are other albums that I wish I had taken a chance on but didn’t, it really burns me out to think about it. You never have those opportunities again, you create a lifetime of regret just for the sake of saving $10! However, I never really have disasters with the records that I DO buy, because I just buy cheap stuff. Yes, sometimes you get albums that are horrible, but it’s not like I ever spent $50 on a record that was terrible, it’s more like $5 here or $10 there. shop memories was a gig in the great comic book shop Jim Hanley’s Universe in New York City. There was a small but appreciative crowd, including a couple of great artists like Gabrielle Belle and Michel Gondry and Jon Lewis, and the store did give me a great discount price, which I used the heck out of . It was my opportunity to buy the big hardcover collection of Alan Moore’s Lost Girls at an affordable price, one of those now-or-never situations.

D: Across your career, the role of the record shop has changed quite drastically; do you feel that record shops are still important?

JL: Record shops are completely important to me, but I’m an old man and I’m out of the loop! I’m in my late 30s!

What the hell do kids these days care about record shops?

When I was a teenager the record shops happened to be the absolute cheapest and most accessible way to learn about music and to get to hear and own all these records, especially as a teenager into 60s music. For like $2-$7 each you could slowly acquire every Rolling Stones album, every Animals album, every Simon & Garfunkel album, every Jefferson Airplane album, all of that stuff, even slightly rarer albums like the Incredible String Band or Syd Barrett. It was all right there and it was all at prices that a kid could afford.

Now all those same records are more expensive, and the

Georgia At just 21, Georgia Barnes has packed a hell of a lot in already. At one point (bizarrely) a pro football career seemed the most likely trajectory, but after working at the iconic Rough Trade West, stints drumming for Kwes and Kate Tempest and ultimately crafting every beat and pulse on her glistening debut album for Domino, she is a young woman totally obsessed and clearly focused. As you might have guessed, it always starts with a record shop.

Deluxe: After spending the last couple of years sculpting your record, are you excited about getting out now and playing live?

Georgia: Yeah, that is what I’ve gotta do now. I feel like I have to make the live show as integral a part of me as an artist. I come from the London background of going to see shows in clubs, a lot of live music.

D: Is it quite different to the record?

G: It was at first. I had to play a few shows to spread the word and get people out. It was quite different. My goal was simply to perform the songs live and get past that hurdle. Now it is to concentrate on getting the sound as much like the record as possible, but give it it’s own space to be a live thing, entertain the audience. It’s been a process of making sure you’re happy with all the sounds, and also people like front of house engineers. With what I do if you can’t hear yourself up on the stage, it’s kind of…. well, you have to really wing it. So tech is the new hurdle. It’s basically a lot of

planning and loads of effort. It’s not like I can walk up and plug in a guitar and smash it like Nirvana...

D: Knowing that you have made all the noises on your record, how about delegating things live?

G: (laughing) You’d have to speak to the band really…, they know that I am the only one that knows exactly how it should sound. They’re all fantastic players, and all really passionate about the music, but I have to lead it and be quite up front. I’ve found it quite challenging, if I am honest, but I have enjoyed it and I am lucky to be working with people who are working with me, not against me.

D: In terms of the physical side of your album, How was working with Jamie Hawkesworth and MMParis?

G: I was kind of taken back. I had a body of work but, I didn’t exactly struggle with visual aspect. I definitely felt under confident about the decisions I was going to have to make.

I was actually very lucky that M and

M Paris started following me on Twitter and sort of knocked on my door. They dropped me messages saying how much they liked the music. I reached out saying “do you think it might be a possibility that you’d want to get involved” – and they said they’d be involved in any shape or form. I know about their relationship with Bjork, but I had no idea that they had been working with her for like 16 years, and just how much they loved music and created such amazing artwork. Michael (Amzalag) is a massive music enthusiast. You go into the studio and there is music everywhere always on the stereo.

They really consider it to be an integral part of M and M Paris.

Going back, I was really shocked that they wanted to work with an unknown girl from London, I was in awe. They managed to subtly extract ideas and brainstormed about how we should be presented.

I think they liked working with someone who didn’t have a massive team behind them, or a massive name and expectation. Michael

Photographed by Jamie Hawkesworth

then just said “I have this great guy, a real up and coming photographer who should do the photos for you” – it turned out to be Jamie.

I was kind of dreading the shoot on the Friday. I was expecting a this really diva-ish photographer, but he turns up at my door and he was just like, ‘alright, I’m Jamie’ – this guy from Preston., totally the opposite of what I thought. It was such a relief and we just got on like a house on fire, very natural. So overall I stepped back and let them all kind of lead the project, it was really amazing, the help I needed and it was so funny that it kind of came from the best in the game…

D: (laughing) If you can manage to be objective, they are the best in the game…

G: (laughing) Yeah, they are pretty incredible. It’s been such a compliment but first and foremost it was so important that they liked the music, and Michael in particular really got the music. He knew instantly that it was

I grew up on mainstream pop. I remember feeling so proud that I had bought it with my own money. something that he could really help with. I hope it goes on and lasts as a working relationship.

D: Have you seen your album inside a record shop yet?

G: Well (laughing) I used to work at Rough Trade West in Portobello for about two years behind the counter selling records, so that shop is like a home from home to me. Walking in, seeing it as album of the month was like…. it was pretty surreal and overwhelmingly emotional. That was pretty special. Seeing it as a digital

package having just seen it for so long on a computer screen was pretty special. I don’t feel like it’s quite settled in yet.

D: I always like talking to people who are actually on their front cover, how do you feel about so literally seeing you everywhere? – it is of course now globally released on the same day…

G: (laughing) I know! It’s pretty amazing, very surreal obviously. In some way though I kind of wanted this from a very early age, so I know it sounds twisted, but I am a bit like…

Photographed by Laura Coulson

okay, done that, onto the next thing. I went to my local just to have a pint the other day and there is a really big poster outside the pub – all my friends were naturally taking the piss out of me.

D: So talking shops then, Rough Trade West has had such a massive impact on so many people’s lives. It is a special place right?

G: Oh, it’s incredibly special. If I hadn’t worked at Rough Trade I don’t think I would be in the position I am in now.

It’s been there for so long, and when you work there it’s seeing the people come into the shop who have come into the shop for twenty years, the locals, the people that travel in every month for their monthly collection. That is when you realise how impactful it is and always has been. For me, it’s a shop where you can take in the counter-culture…

You’re behind the counter, talking to people about music and music related things… it makes peoples day, it’s very unique.

D: It has adapted though…

G: Very much, always inventing new ways to promote compilations, doing creative things with record shopping.

I recently went into the New York shop and I thought it was a wonderful place to buy records. For kids who are now starting out, they can take booth pictures, have a hot chocolate, buy a book… it’s clever, it feels special.

D: Do you think that record shop culture has become a big part of young people and young producers lives again?

G: Just working in a record shop I would wholly agree that it has changed the lives of young producers. The amount of young aspiring musicians that came into our shop was incredible, people like Jamie xx and Jungle. The age difference as well, fifteen-year-old gangs coming in and buying an actual physical record. It changed over the last ten years and buying records and crate digging has become a cool thing to do. There is a strong resurgence in kids coming in, it’s getting bigger and bigger. Certainly for me, just being around all those records was just an incredible education. If it hadn’t been for those two and a half years, I certainly don’t think I would have released my own stuff, it was a major part of my development.

D: What is you most poignant memory of that period in your life?

G: (laughing) This is a memory I will have for the rest of my life, honestly. It was a surreal Sunday. I used to work on Sunday with my colleague Cordelia, We were big house and techno heads, so we’d be racking through them, and this one day, at the start of the summer, we opened the shop up at eleven and pretty early on Colin Firth walks in. He came up to us and said “I’m having a diner party, can you help me to with some Jazz”. So me and Cordelia really went to town playing stuff and he probably only really wanted one CD but we managed to get him to buy about ten.

D: Good Girls!

G: (laughing) Yeah, exactly, Nige trained us well. So an hour or two passes and it’s lunch time and it was bit busier and amongst it all this woman walks in and I was like ‘Cords, come here, she’s really familiar’. Cords turns round and said “George… that’s Nicole Kidman”… I was like, NO WAY, but she came right up to the counter and said “can you recommended some records, we want to buy some records”. So I ended up pulling out some old stuff, some new stuff and they’re looking through. Her husband (Keith Urban) was pulling out all these soul records and they’re having a good listen at the counter. So she is stood there, very Hollywood like, very delicate and stuff, and suddenly, at the same time, this real Character from Ladbroke Grove called Cyrille (likes a drink, real geezer, about 72 or something) walks in right up to the counter. So I stood back and it hit me, I was like ‘Fucking Hell, Nicole Kidman and Cyrille are stood at the counter… he was totally oblivious of what was going on.

So they bought a load of records and left and I got talking to Cyrille and I said “did you know who that was that was just standing next to you?” And he said “No no darling, no idea”. So I said it was Nicole Kidman, and he said “Nooooo! God, if I’d have know that I’d have given her a nice big kiss” (laughing) It was such a picture of the mix of Rough Trade. It was so comical, it represented how much Ladbroke Grove had changed.

D: I guess it’s endlessly lucky that he didn’t realise it was Nicole?

G: Exactly! It was just such a fond memory of working there. I think that day ended up taking more money than any other Sunday in years.

D: So I guess last question, honestly… what was your first record shop purchase.

G: (laughing) You know what, it was probably a Britney Spears single.

D: I am glad you were honest…

G: Totally. I remember going into Woolworths, I grew up on mainstream pop. I remember feeling so proud that I had bought it with my own money. Then it was just little steps to going to Fopp, then going to Rough Trade, then going to Sounds of the Universe and Honest Jon’s. It was Woolworths first, but it did kick of my obsession with buying records.

D: You’d be amazed how many people would have also gone to Woolworths first… or Our Price or Boots… I guess that is going to now become Urban Outfitters.

G: Totally. But I definitely served a lot of people their first music in Rough Trade. But then before, that generation had so many more to go to. My Dad’s would have been Honest Jon’s as he worked there D: So you’re a second generation record shop worker then?

G: Yeah, I guess it was weird working at Rough Trade because I had such a good relationship with Honest Jon’s. I feel like I have to creep in and creep out of there now.

DEBUT ALBUM OUT 25TH SEPTEMBER

Low One of the best bits about Deluxe (and I guess perhaps it’s initial design) is reaching out to bands we love and admire. Low are a band we have always felt very strongly about and they have just released one of their most intimate and sonically adventurous albums in a fine career. We nagged and got lucky, utterly psyched to speak to Alan Sparhawk.

Deluxe: “Hello, this is Mimi, Alan, and Steve from Low. Ask us anything!” - I really enjoyed your Reddit session this week.

We’re you apprehensive? Did you have an idea of what to expect?

Alan Sparhawk: It was fun, and probably a good thing we didn’t know much about what we were getting into.

D: It felt like people were as inspired by, and interested in your personal lives as much as your tunings, harmonies and relationship with Sub Pop - that must have felt pretty overwhelming… or intrusive perhaps? hahaha AS: There was nothing too strange. It is expected - people want to know all kinds of things.

D: Do you enjoy running your own social media? is that immediate level of interaction something you enjoy? Are you anxious that there is no off period?

AS: We are not very aggressive with social media, but I do like it. Twitter fits me better because I am not organized enough for Facebook - just thoughts and moments. I go on social media for a while, then step away. I can see how it can become an obsession and can change your artistic perception.

D: Can I ask about the “guitar to keep your warm” photos?

- I’ve been enjoying the pictures for a couple of years now but wasn’t sure how it all started?

AS: It was a cold night and it started with just a quick thought and “hello” to followers, but then it kept going.

D: The new album is produced with BJ Burton. You’ve previously worked with Steve Fisk, Steve Albini, Dave Fridmann and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy - do you enjoy the aspect of bringing in someone external to the band to help in actualising the album? Do you have a fairly clear idea of what you want the work to sound like before you pick up tools?

AS: Yes, we like having another person to work with - sort of a bridge between us and the technology. I think we get confidence from knowing we are working with and through someone we trust and respect. Sometimes it’s just nice having someone else there to listen and tell you if the take you just did was good, or if you need to try another. We go in with a pretty good idea of how things are going to go, so we rely on the engineer/producer for technical things, and for unexpected perspective and accidents.

D: Who has brought the most sonically different ideas to the

Photographed by Zoran Orlic

table? Was that a liberating situation or did it take you out of your comfort zones?

AS: When we were making drums and guns, Dave Fridmann worked hard to keep us out of our comfort zone, but that was because we told him to do that.

When we started second-guessing ourselves, pulling back to familiar tools, he would remind us of our goals and push us to find something new.

This new record pushed our comfort zone, but it was still self-induced.

D: The artwork (for Ones and Sixes) is perhaps your most minimal yet… very beautiful. Who created it? How did that come together?

AS: The artist is Peter Liversage and we have worked with him on a few things now...

D: There has always been a very strong visual aesthetic with the band, how important is the visual side of releasing music to you?

AS: Very important. I think most musicians at least respect the power and skill of a good visual presentation.

Everyone in the band has some visual art aspirations, so things just fall where they fall, depending on who worked on it. There are bands who do a way better job than we do with visual presentation.

I think most musicians at least respect the power and skill of a good visual presentation.

They are a great band and they already had their shit together, so mostly I was just helping them get the best takes they could, (sometimes you are the coach, sometimes you are the cheerleader...) and keeping them from overthinking their first steps. I enjoy doing that. I like to leave room for the artist to do what they are great at, but then help them avoid common mistakes and second-guessing. I know when something is really there. I think I’m a good singing coach, too.

D: Do you recall the first time you saw a Low release physically in a record store? How did it feel and do you still get a buzz of seeing your album in the D: Over the last eighteen months we’ve racks with each new release? been really into both Haley Bonar and AS: Yes, seeing our records in stores Hippo Campus without realising that you had produced them. How did those the first time was quite a shock, but hearing ourselves the first time on projects come together? Is producing the radio was more memorable, I other people’s work something you see yourself falling into more? Are you think. It’s still a thrill to see the new able to be more objective when it’s not record done and in someone’s hands.

It’s a direct connect to that teenage necessarily your music? dreamer section of the brain. There’s something primal about something AS: Haley lived in Duluth for a few tangible that represents something you years and I worked with her on some love and worked hard on. of her early recordings. She’s a great writer and performer, which was obvious from the beginning. There are D: You’re based in Duluth, Minnesota - am i’m right in thinking that the some very talented people here who I Electric Fetus store is very highly wish the World could hear, so it’s nice regarded? Are there any other stores when someone who deserves it gets you visit regularly? out and known a little more. Hippo Campus is a young band, and I think AS: Yeah, the Fetus is the only record the people around them were wanting someone with some experience to help store in town. It’s been an anchor. them with their first studio recordings. D: How about on your travels, which

stores have impressed you, and broadly speaking why? What makes for a good record store?

AS: Luna Music in Indianapolis, for some reason, have become dear friends.

Places like Other Music in NYC, Amoeba on the West Coast, and the Electric Fetus chain are some of the big ones who have supported us forever, but the small ones in small places over the years, like Brass City Records, are a vital part of our lives and memories.

D: Do you remember your first record shop purchase? What release? What format? and Where?

AS: It was probably a ‘45 - Electric Avenue by Eddie Grant, in the only music shop in Bemidji Minnesota. I think it was called The Music Shop.

D: In the release notes for your new album, Dee Dee from Dum Dum Girls (your Sub Pop label mates) explains “I have Napster to thank for my love of Low”.

Can I wade right in and ask, as artists, what have been the major advantages and disadvantages of the digital revolution for you?

AS: More people can hear your music, but it’s not an extraordinary amount of people. Is it worth it to sell half, but twice as many people hear you?

Maybe. I think it has been good for us, eventually, but it has been bad for a lot of others.

D: You are a band whose lifetime supersedes the MP3 and the Stream… do they feel like mechanisms you want your music consumed by?

AS: We work very hard and spend money making records. If it just ends up being a free promotional tool to get you to come to the show or buy our app, then so be it, but when your great grandchildren are soulless slaves to the corporate construct, devoid of even the notion of empathy, you can safely blame this generation for selling off quality for convenience.

Ample Play Ample Play is a fine independent label. They release primarily new music, of no particular persuasion, linked only by the curatorial whims of it’s founders. Established in London by Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres from the band Cornershop. In their own words they are “Purveyors of independent music but not plinky plonky independent music”. We met at their North London HQ to talk shops and records.

Deluxe: How did the Ample Play label come together and if it doesn’t seem like a weird question... why?

Ben Ayers: We’ve always been fascinated with vinyl records.

We’re collectors. For me, I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do when I left polytechnic, but I did know that I loved records. So after I graduated I came down to London to be with my girlfriend. She heard an advert on the radio and I ended up working at Vinyl Factory in the early days of Cornershop. We realised how easy it would be to put out our own records. This was on our initial label Meccico which we released The Toes (London garage band), Rachel Lipson (New York folk singer) and some Clinton singles (our electronic project) Tjinder Singh: We hadn’t released anything (as Cornershop) since about 2002. We didn’t really think about putting anything else out until about 2009, and after we spoke to a lot of people about it, we thought it best to just do it ourselves, which wasn’t actually that different to what we had always done. It was just distribution really. All other aspects of the day to day we had always made ourselves as involved as we could. Plus, at that point it didn’t really feel like there was much incentive to be on the labels that were around.

D: Can you recognise, looking back, the tipping point where independent labels started to turn into something a little less naïve? Perhaps less idealistic and more, purely, about commerce?

TS: I felt that back even in the nineties, like labels were being built up to be sold. It was the dot.com boom. You could build up that company to a certain stature and know that a big company would take it. That was happening in publishing too, but that was back when there was money about…. Mid sort of zeroes was when people started talking about boutique labels.

BA: It has been affected by the amount of records people are buying, and subsequently what people are able to sell.

It’s really hard to sell one thousand copies of a record these days.

D: There seems to be a mind boggling disparity between what bands were able to sell back in the early nineties to now. Did it feel like there was a point where it wouldn’t stop freefalling?

TS: I don’t think it has stopped falling… Unfortunately, during the zeroes, people kept saying ‘don’t worry about

record sales because live is where it is at’… but that was utter bollocks. True if you’re Elton John or Michael Jackson, even if he was dead. Now the script is ‘streaming is going to fill the gap’… it just an excuse and the industry has never dealt with it. It’s one of the big reason why we set the label up. We felt that artists weren’t getting anything.

There is very little to get admittedly, but we have given some of our artists more in two years than we ever had for being on a label for sixteen years.

BA: If you look at the income that some of the Simon Cowell sized artists are bringing in for the economy, for the UK, it’s massive. It’s very hard to imagine someone in Government worrying about smaller labels and artists struggling. You are an artists but you have to do two or three other jobs.

That has become the norm.

D: How about technology. So looking back to 2009, straddling stuff like BandCamp, Soundcloud, postNapster, pre-Shopify…

BA: It’s given us great pride to be completely fair with our artists. We treat people as we want to be treated.

BA: The ‘everything was free years’

D: Has the music industry adapted at all?

D: … now that the horse has bolted, and pulling no punches, how does digital music work? Does it, in any way, support you or your artists?

TS: It’s a bit like the Labour Government… it doesn’t need to react. It is looking after the top cream and that is it. Historically it would be careful of what was going on with forward planning, but with these super artists it just doesn’t need to look at anyone else. Little artists just don’t stand a chance.

TS: … It does bring in a certain amount of revenue. We don’t even think about it until it arrives. Anything it fetches in is a little bit of a bonus… but it really is a little bit of a bonus.

BA: You reach millions of people worldwide, but you’re just not getting

anything like the amounts of money back, as when people would have been listening to a record. It’s just not translating. Someone is getting the money, it’s just not the label of the artist.

D: I always found it interesting that, looking at someone like Spotify, the technology was built to deliver audio, and in that they created the technology, they are in charge and really hold all of the cards.

BA: It’s such a mess. It’s incredible really, such an absolute mess in the way that music and the internet collided.

There is a lot of catching up to do.

TS: There needs to be a revolution… but I don’t think it is going to come.

Ben was talking about work to do but I think that time has gone. Look back to the early nineties… who would have ever let a guy like Simon Cowell take control?

D: So before we talk about shops, I wanted to ask… knowing all that we know, why do you still do this?

BA: We’ve always done a lot of our own stuff, like getting our own records pressed, knowing the processes, commissioning art. It just seemed like a natural progression and quite a small step to turn that into our own label.

D: That’s quite interesting. As a shop we have to keep stock rolling over quite regularly to fit in each new week of releases, or you’ll just hit critical mass pretty quickly. Have you noticed changes in the ‘lifetime’ of an album?

TS: All of it…. It’s one little tweet saying “I’ve just got onto the Masaki Hanakata album, and it’s great.”… or if Cerys plays a track on 6Music… that is what it is all about.

TS: I think a record these days can last for an… hour before it has been done online… but we don’t care about that, because we believe in records and we believe that they’ll always be good. We don’t mind keeping hold of them, as we know that they will always sell. Ultimately, if you play it, and they hear it, it will click.

BA: It’s the direct communication with fans of the music we are putting out… it’s encouragement really.

TS: Also the little things that you didn’t think would happen. People really getting into it when you didn’t expect it. It’s taken a really long time and we’re still taking babies steps, but what we do on a day to day basis we really feel like we know what we’re doing. There are only three of us and we do all of it.

BA: When we first ran the pop up shop, that was one of the big breakthroughs, when we had a stereo. We used to have to explain what things were, but people made an instant connection when hearing things.

The defining factor is that we only put out music that we absolutely love. It’s never based on how many they might sell, or that they might get big… we just put it out because we want to put it out.

D: Talking shops… who have been particularly good supporters of Ample Play?

BA: The defining factor is that we only put out music that we absolutely love. It’s never based on how many they might sell, or that they might get big… we just put it out because we want to put it out.

BA: Sean said he was an old Cornershop fan and wanted to do a comp on cassette. He also absolutely loved the Sufis record and insisted on doing that in the US.

D: How about stuff like Twitter….that has surely had a massive impact on your ability to… well, speak to people?

BA: I remember seeing loads of great feedback for the Smoking Trees record that we put out. They are from LA and it’s amazing to see all the love coming in. We wouldn’t have heard about it fifteen years back. The Sufis keep popping up on Twitter too.

TS: They would invariably buy more things, certainly a lot quicker.

TS: Rough Trade we’ve always had a good relationship with.

BA: Rough Trade West in particular obviously, a lot of history as we were on Wiiija Records who were based in the basement there. So we have been visiting that little space since 1992. It’s basically a lot of the same faces since then.

Nigel, big Sean.

TS: Action have been pretty great…. and obviously yourselves (laughing) D: (laughing) it’s nice that you said it so I don’t have to try and shoe horn us in the piece some other way TS: The nicest thing perhaps was… well, Norman Records hated us… but they’ve turned right around on it. I guess they probably hated Cornershop but they’ve been giving out some great reviews for Ample Play lately.

BA: That’s the lovely thing, seeing people’s different reactions to different records. Resident and Piccadilly have been really supportive as well. Our heart is obviously with the independent shops and labels.

D: How did the Burger Records link up come about?

TS: Sometimes it’s a good thing we were in Cornershop and sometimes it really is not, which is a shame, as I don’t think we could ever be pinned down to a particular sound, even.

D: How about your own individual relationships with record shops… do you remember the first time?

TS: Max Millward’s in Wolverhampton. He’s sadly not around anymore, but he was a great chap. A Rock N’

Roller, always had a fag, always played whatever the fuck he wanted. All the kids would go there after school… stagger between there, the chip shop and the arcade. He’d write down what you were after and go and get it.

His Northern Soul was immaculate.

He DJ’d, he was the whole package.

There was also a Revolver shop in Wolverhampton. Also bigger stores like Beatties that had a record section too. Before that it was mostly Asian shops that had records out the back.

BA: I used to pick up cheap 7” singles in the Woolworths sale section in Paignton D: (laughing) me to!

BA: I also used to go to Soundz in Paignton and the one in Torquay too.

The place I think I bought my first record was the card shop in Paignton.

Do you remember that?

D: I think it was Paul Pinch… I have one

of the old paper bags back at the office.

BA: It was a card shop and they had records in the back. I remember one Saturday my Uncle encouraged me and my three sisters to buy a 7” each.

I genuinely can’t remember what I bought, but we got four records and I know one was Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel and one was The Beatles Revolution reissue with Hey Jude on the other side.

D: How about the first time you actively thought, ‘I am a guy who likes records… this is my scene’?

BA: I think it was on a trip to London going into a second hand shop on Hanway Street. There was a shop there that had loads and loads of 7”s.

I spent a whole afternoon, literally, going through the racks. It was a whole different world where you could find this music. It was pretty overwhelming, that’s actually been a reoccurring feeling for me. When we were on tour

in America, part of our daily routine would be to find the nearby record shop. You’d occasionally find a really good store and you’d have less than an hour… it was devastating, all those thousands of records to look through and having to leave them.

D: Do you remember the very first release that you owned Tjinder?

TS: I actually don’t, but it would have been a cassette and it would have been Punjabi folk. Also devotional music, that was our first piece of vinyl. My brother got hold of Manfred Mann ‘Blinded By The Light’ on 7” and we all played that a lot. It was number one wasn’t it?

BA: If it wasn’t it should have been TS: I thought it was lovely. Then there was ABBA, ‘Knowing Me Knowing You’ and on the B-side it had ‘Happy Hawaii’ and that had that amazing shhhhhhhh of the sea coming in, it was

wonderful. I’m a big ABBA fan, I think their production is amazing. Within both of them are things I always look out for. Great production, great harmonies, great baselines.

My collection really started when we got to Preston. My brother, who is a little bit older than me, collected records much more avidly than me to start with, but he collected very specific things, whereas I wanted everything and anything. Because of that I never really felt like a record collector as such, I would rather pay less money for something I don’t know than lots of money for something I do.

D: What is important for you in a record shop? What do you seek out?

TS: I think hearing stuff, the ability to have headphones and the freedom to listen to stuff is really important.

Advice when people need it.

BA: Really good variety of stock, and a lot of vinyl for me. One of the other crucial things is behind the counter staff. Not necessarily how nice they are, but how helpful they are. I think one of the things that historically the Rough Trade shop has done well is if you go in and ask for something, even really poppy, they won’t ridicule you, you know? Something uncool, they won’t take the piss. And if they didn’t have it they’ll probably advise you on other stuff that you might like. I think that is the best thing, if you’re into music and someone says “if you like this, you’ll like that” – it’s a way to find things TS: Again, it’s all about listening and making human connections to the music.

“Ample Play is truly a label of love, bringing you new rock in the great explorer’s tradition of Elektra, Island and Apple.”

David Fricke -

Waddle, Marseille and a Frenchman called Le Tissier Surely one of the best football kits of all time was the Olympic Marseille white and sky blue outfit from the early 90’s. A simple but elegant number made all the more appealing as it was worn by one Christopher Roland Waddle. By Garmon Gruffydd Waddle’s style of play – all feints, dribbles and a maverick’s commitment to attack, was always at odds with British football’s rather Presbyterian attitude to the beautiful game.

Although a popular player in England, he was never quite revered to the level his talent deserved. However, one of the rare players to brave the ‘huge cultural shock’ of moving to a club

outside the UK, he found his natural home in Marseille. Here, all the things that were mistrusted about him in England were celebrated by those in the Stade Vélodrome. The club’s motto Droit au But (Straight to the Goal) was a mantra that Waddle himself could have coined. But it’s not just a simple belief that football is about attacking that so endeared him to the faithful,

but the personality with which he played. Christened ‘Magic Chris’ by the fans, they named him the 2nd best OM player of the 20th century. Take a few minutes to watch the compilation of his time in Marseille, marveling at the joie de vivre of his displays, full of audacious moves and playfulness that would have been frowned upon in England.

To English football’s shame, he’s remembered more for his missed penalty in Italia 90 that what he offered as a player. Personally, rather than seeing a tame shot saved by the keeper, or the agony of hitting the woodwork, if you’re going to eliminate your country from the semi final of the World Cup you might as well do it in style. I cannot help but think the French would have applauded Waddle for the sheer gay abandon with which he slammed his penalty skywards, displaying a cavalier disregard for the restrictions of the goal frame. There was a certain freedom about the strike that saw Waddle flicking a Gallic two fingers at English football. The French took him to their hearts seeing a kindred spirit whose philosophy for playing football chimed with their approach to life in general.

Waddle himself said “It’s curious I was considered a luxury player until I went to France. I was never expected to defend at Marseille; my role was to make goals for Papin and entertain.”

Ah yes, the dreaded ‘luxury player’ tag.

A label that in most other countries would be seen as a good thing, but perplexingly in British football, it’s a kind of insult. Perhaps the most famous ‘luxury player’ was Matt Le Tissier. A British player by quirk of geography only, the nonchalance with which he played the game meant he was very much French by name, French by nature. Ignoring the ridiculous fact that he only gained 8 caps for England (born in Guernsey he was eligible to play for any of the 4 nations), what was absurd was the way he was marginalised in British football as a player who entertaining enough, couldn’t be relied upon to play a

‘proper’ game of football. It riles that Gasgcoine is always labeled the most naturally talented English player of his generation. While he had undoubted ability, his style was far too bustling and labored for my liking. Le Tissier’s many outrageous goals screamed God given talent. And all delivered in the manner of a man mowing the lawn on a Sunday afternoon.

Had he popped over on a ferry from Southampton to France he would surely have been more appreciated. It’s telling that a player as committed to playing the football the right way as Xavi, talks of Le Tissier as such “His talent was simply out of the norm.

He could simply dribble past seven or eight players but without speed – he just walked past them. For me he was sensational”. I doubt Iniesta is saying the same about Carlton Palmer.

Regardless of whether Southampton managers wanted him to or not, Le Tisser issued himself the same instructions that Marseille gave to Waddle, to entertain.

through the agony of pretending we have a chance to qualify for major tournaments year after year. Surely the wait is now over? Surely they won’t fail again?

I’ve often thought Wales should adopt a completely different way of playing, always playing with nothing to lose.

Positions, staid formations and safe tactics could be discarded, and the Welsh players told to got out and play with absolute freedom. Imagine a side consisting of a few bright talents and a handful of mediocre players going all out to entertain and attack. The result would not matter, and any failure would be glorious. Losing 8-4 to Norway would be a defiant statement for the aesthetic. A new way of playing football would bring us admirers from fields beyond football, and allow Wales to move away from the dour shadow of English football.

Modern sport and its more professional attitude has in many ways quelled the more instinctive way of playing. The French rugby team is a case in point, a team who during the amateur days Here in Wales, the debate about played according to their mood, which luxury players is rather mute. By our fluctuated not from game to game but very geographical proximity, Welsh from minute to minute. Now, only football is tied like an umbilical cord flickers of the old musketeer style of to English football, meaning we are rugby is seen. But notice, when the linked to its way of playing from the backs starting throwing the ball around grassroots upwards. Players wise, we at will, the Parisiens in the Stade de tend to feed ourselves on whatever France rise and cheer. Of course, scraps come our way. Occasionally we it’s possible to over romanticise the unearth genuine pure footballers such as Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey, but French, let us not forget that this was usually our players consist of those who a nation who failed to indulge the majestical play of Cantona and Ginola, have a faint Welsh connection and can muster a forward pass (with the notable although it’s this contradiction that is the very essence of the complex French exception of Mark Pembridge of course). Given the dearth of players we psyche. There are other more ‘true’ footballing nations that Wales can have, its peculiar that we put ourselves ally with. But it’s the way the French’s philosophy on life permeates into their sporting arenas that we can draw inspiration from.

I cannot help but think the French would have applauded Waddle for the sheer gay abandon with which he slammed his penalty skywards

Playing like this, maybe Le Tissier would have chosen to play for Wales.

And perhaps Waddle would have had a quiet look to see if his grandmother came from Rhyl.

Garmon Gruffydd is one of the founders of Cardiff’s Peski Records.

Youth Lagoon Under the name Youth Lagoon, Idaho based songwriter Trevor Powers has delivered two albums of substantial wooze, somewhere between hallucinogenic notebooks and love letters. His new album ‘Savage Hills Ballroom’ is an album of rich textures, sounds and striking emotions, all pulled into sharp focus. Besides which, it was recorded just up the road from us.

Deluxe: Early feedback is calling your new album ‘expansive’ and your most ‘open’ to date. Being as objective as possible, how do you feel about it at this stage? Does it feel expansive to you? Are you ready for everyone to hear it?

Trevor Powers: I approach writing by not trying to overthink anything and just acting on impulse -- which is ironically very different from the recording process because, in that, I’m consumed by details. So with any album being ‘finished,’ it’s a strange thought, because nothing ever feels perfect. You kind of just hit a point where you know if you tinker with it any more you will become certifiably insane.

Once you feel that, you know an album is done. I’ve been ready for people to hear these songs for a long time because there’s a lot I want to say through them. There’s a lot I went through in my personal life while writing this album that I’d never talk about in person, but I feel like it comes out in the music. I never want to make the same album twice. So I push myself in ways that make me uncomfortable -- whether that’s limiting the kinds of instruments I write on or even just changing my daily routines so nothing feels habitual.

D: Do you feel like you have conveyed everything you wanted to with Savage Hills Ballroom?

TP: I feel like it’s all there where it should be. There’s definitely nothing I would replace. I’m not one for looking back at anything and wishing I would have done things differently. I’m more concerned with the present, and unhealthily consumed by the future.

D: So long as people pick up on an emotion in your work, do you mind if they don’t necessarily get what you’re saying? - Your work can mean something entirely different to someone else now - it’s in the public conscious, how does it feel to have people feel ownership on your music?

TP: That’s the way it always should be. Art has never been about the artist. It’s all about passing ideas along in your own method, and letting people take those and interpret them however they see fit. A song should never have a meaning, but rather an infinite amount of translations.

D: For me it is quite direct (lyrically), but I didn’t feel you necessarily gave everything away. It’s the role of the listener to fill the gaps right?

TP: I’ll say it’s definitely not as lyrically direct as it seems.

It’s all sort of a colossal puzzle. I’m curious to see what people pull from it and how parallel those themes will run, with what I originally intended. That’s the charm of interpretation.

D: Do you enjoy the recording process? and how about specifically this time around in Bristol?

TP: Recording is the most rewarding aspect in my opinion because you finally get to bring everything to life.

Especially for someone like me, because the only demos I record before going into a studio are just shitty ones on my phone. I used to record demos only on cassette tapes for years, but then slowly transitioned into using my

phone, because it’s easier to organize everything, and I usually have it on me.

The reason that I don’t try to record more expansive demos is because I feel like it takes away from the whole mystery of what exactly a skeleton will sound like when flesh is added to it. If a demo is sparse, then you have to use your imagination and force yourself to hear things that aren’t there -- and when you have to do that for an extended period of time, before finally starting to actually track it in a studio, it makes the final version all the more surprising and unpredictable. That’s what excites me.

The entire experience in Bristol was spectacular. I worked with a coproducer named Ali Chant, and we had started chatting via webcam months before I got there to start hashing out ideas. A major reason we worked so well together was because we both had different musical backgrounds, so we brought contrasting concepts to the table. He understood my vision for things, and I feel like we both pushed each other to extreme lengths. Every day was different. We’d have sessions where we would just experiment

D: The city has a rich musical legacy, as someone foreign to it, does it feel like a vibrant place?

TP: Definitely. Every place has it’s own spirit, and the spirit of wherever you record always casts a large shadow over the way an album sounds. Bristol is gorgeous and very brooding.

Especially during the winter. That’s what attracted me to it in the first place. The musical legacy that comes out of that city is no surprise to me at all. Everyone I met seemed creative in a different way. It was bizarre. It seems like a breeding ground for enlightened art.

This is the first album where I have worked with an art director on the presentation. Previously, it had just been me coming up with the visual D: Had you spent much time in the UK aspects totally on my own. I decided to work with Matt de Jong, a director out before? of London, on Savage Hills Ballroom because I was drawn to the way he TP: Only coming and going on tour. interpreted previous albums optically, The time I spent in Bristol was by far and wanted someone to work together the longest period of time I’d been with on it. It’s easy to get stuck in there at one time. your own head and not progress or D: The custom ‘Savage Hills Ballroom’ move forward, so it’s important to have another person you trust to help with embroidery is dope man…. how that process. important a part of your work is the artwork? Who have you worked with D: Your rise to prominence back in previously?

2011 was very swift off the back of placing ‘July’ (in particular) online for free. Did you feel prepared for that influx of attention?

The local record stores that have proven they can blossom even in this harsh digital climate, are validating to everyone how integral the physicality of music is to the lives of artists and consumers. with running synths through pedals for hours to see what kinds of tones we could get, and the whole process was a bit erratic. It also helped that we’re both obsessed by details, ..so we embraced working slowly and deliberately.

it on is spend time with the packaging and try to get more of a feel for what the artist is trying to communicate.

People say you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but I couldn’t disagree more. It’s the same concept as human physical attraction. Before we really get to know someone, what draws us to them is their appearance, because it’s all we can see at the time. Art is absolutely no different. Before you hear an album or read a book, all you have to go on is the way it looks.

TP: To me the presentation of an album is just as important as the music itself, because it should all convey the same message. I’m such a visual person when it comes to albums. When I buy a record, the first thing I do when I put

TP: Not at all prepared, but I always intensely hoped. And when I say ‘intensely,’ I mean it to the greatest degree of the word. There were so many times when I freaked out at the thought of never being able to pursue music full time. Writing music is so much a part of me that it absolutely petrified me to think that I may not be able to devote my life to it, because I couldn’t pay my bills. I was going to a local university at the time studying English literature, because it was one of the only other things that fascinated me. I believe it’s at those moments when we are so consumed with something that it finally starts to hit a tipping point.

D: As someone who has benefited first hand in how the ‘internet’ and blogs can break music and artists, what is your relationship with digital music?

TP: In some ways it’s great because the universe of music is at our fingertips,

but in other ways it is the absolute worst. I feel like when everything first started happening for me in the internet realm, there were so many blogs with individual voices that were worth hearing. Obviously the major media monsters have always been around but about 5 years ago there were still a lot of small blogs that people paid attention to. More people thought for themselves about music, about art, about culture, about everything. As the years go on, the world as a whole is getting lazier and no one wants to have their own opinions. We wait for critics to decide on what we should or shouldn’t listen to, rather than exploring for ourselves and drawing our own conclusions.

Critics have obviously been around since the dawn of time, but it hasn’t always been the case where people are just completely spoon fed and are content with it. The media can completely dictate what people do or don’t listen to, and it’s a scary place

for a society to be. Have an original opinion. Have a voice. It’s the same concept as major search engines such as Google actually censoring our searches to include only what they want us to see -- or what they think we want to see. We might think we are making our own decisions when we’re actually just slaves to technology.

D: Back in July you released a mysterious gold 7” single to indie record shops across the world and advertised it with a hashtag #THEKNOWER - how did this all come together? Was it your idea? Was it a fun thing to coordinate?

TP: The concept was based around inviting people into Savage Hills Ballroom and creating a real-life, chaotic experience around it. It came together when Stephen Pietrzykowski at Fat Possum called me after hearing the album, and we started brainstorming ways we could create a

small universe around it. The way it all played out too was perfect because it created a shitstorm. Lots of people were upset they didn’t get one, and so there was chatter everywhere. It also forced people to get off their computers and go into their local record stores and show them some love.

Independent record stores are the glue that holds together the entire physical realm of music.

D: A lot of us indie shops all follow eachother on instagram, so on and around 10th July there were an awful lot of excited hands clasping your gold 7” - Broadly, are indie shops important to you? What part have they played in your success as an artist? How, if at all, have they changed you as an artist?

TP: They are not only important, but so vital. The fact that digital music has taken over the market has forced indie shops to adapt and change the way they do business, but it has also compelled

I’d say it needs an environment that you feel welcome to roam for as long as you want and explore so that you can stumble on new music or find some hidden gem that you’ve never heard of. listeners to recognize how much we would miss out on, if the physical realm of music no longer existed. The local record stores that have proven they can blossom even in this harsh digital climate, are validating to everyone how integral the physicality of music is to the lives of artists and consumers.

The influence of record shops goes so far beyond just selling albums, but also in the overall support of independent artists. I’ve seen that to a large degree in my music, and that support is so crucial. Whether record stores throw their own listening parties or have social media campaigns directed toward new releases or have elaborate window displays to advertise albums they are personally excited about, indie stores are always pushing listeners to go beyond just streaming an album on their computer and then forgetting about it. They are helping people fall in love with music. If that’s not important, I don’t know what is.

D: Which record shop do you call home?

TP: The Record Exchange in Boise, Idaho is my mothership. They’re literally the best in the World, and I don’t think I’m being biased. Every single employee knows their shit, and never makes inexperienced listeners

feel foolish for asking questions. The owner Michael Bunnell is the Colonel Sanders of music.

D: Which other artists and releases have you been feeling recently? Any tips?

TP: I’ve been really into a lot of avantgarde stuff from the 80’s, like Glenn Branca’s The Ascension and The Red Crayola’s Three Songs on a Trip to the United States. As far as newer records, I’m a huge fan of Swans’ To Be Kind which came out last year.

D: In the simplest terms, what makes (for you) a good record shop?

TP: I’d say the intelligence of the employees is always number 1, but it’s gotta be inviting and not arrogant.

If you have questions to ask about a certain artist or album, there’s nothing worse than getting a cocksure response. Obviously having a diverse and organized catalogue is key because you want them to have whatever you’re looking for, but if they do, you also want to be able to find it. Lastly, I’d say it needs an environment that you feel welcome to roam for as long as you want and explore so that you can stumble on new music or find some hidden gem that you’ve never heard of.

Trevor Jackson I used to work at a record shop in Edgware, where I grew up. I ended up working there for 5 or 6 years, from the ages of about 16 to 21. It was quite a legendary suburban record store for that part of North London.

It was an interesting one because it was my first experience of seeing the music industry at first hand, and the guy who ran it was a complete crook. It was at the time they would do chart-rigging, so he would buy in hundreds of copies of certain records and run them through the tills, as well as get multiple limited edition picture disc type releases and sell them for inflated prices abroad. I’m not sure exactly how he did it, but he was heavily involved in lots of dodgy deals. In the beginning it was really fun, working in a record shop was like my dream come true, but then I began to see the bad side of it. When old people come in and they didn’t know the prices he always used to tell us to charge an extra 1 or 2 quid on top - really shady. It was so bad. He’d literally be behind me going “see that old guy there, he has no idea how much it costs, stick an extra 3 quid on top, he won’t even realise”. He’d have floods all the time to get rid of stock, and when we had stock left over that we couldn’t sell he’d have us scratch them so we could send them back as faulty, or we’d have to damage covers. Any trick in the book - I’d see all the shifty goings on of how record shops used to work in that period of time. All the staff at the shop were so pissed off that they used to steal records. I had a great scam with record tokens. I’d basically just nick record tokens and go up the west end to favourite shops like Groove Records in Greek Street and get all the imports that I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford or order into the shop. I got 1000s of records from the shop by getting my own back on the boss that was totally crooked - I basically built my record collection from what we used to order in and steal! It was just chaos.

Richard Russell who runs XL used to work there, he was like my Sunday boy. I used to give him a bit of hard time sometimes. The shop had these big security grilles outside, and it would take you ages at the start and end of each day to get them on or off. A real pain in the arse to do, so I would take great satisfaction in getting Richard to do the grilles as much as possible. At the time I was young, I was a teenager, and I always used to work on a Sunday managing the shop, so I’d go out, get completely battered on Saturday night, raving until 4 or 5am and then have to open the shop up at 9 in the morning. Pretty insane. The good thing about working on a Sunday though was the boss hardly ever came in, so I could play whatever I wanted. In the week he had a strict policy, like you had to play Wham!, Elton John, Bill Withers Greatest Hits, specific albums. The odd times he did come in on a Sunday I would get a bollocking - I’d probably be playing Run DMCs first album really loud.

We had quite famous people come in - I used to sell records to George Michael and Trevor Horn. When Trevor used to come in, I’d always try and tell him about exciting new underground records - try and sell him hip-hop records and weird interesting things I’d heard out clubbing the night before. Because it was an important chart return shop, record companies would always send us all the upfront copies of most releases and crazy promotional items, which was great - I used to keep everything - posters, badges, loads of special items. I was a huge fan of ZTT and I think we got a Frankie Goes To Hollywood dildo once!

Science Fiction Dancehall Classics, a Trevor Jackson-compiled selection of classics, rarities and unreleased tracks from the On-U Sound label is out on 2 October. His latest artist album, FORMAT, has recently been released by The Vinyl Factory

Masayoshi Fujita In a hugely busy year of releases, it kind of feels like everyone is shouting for your attention. Masayoshi Fujita isn’t shouting, he’s hardly even whispering on his astonishingly beautiful Apologues album. Berlin-based Masayoshi is a Japanese vibraphone player and his music paints swooning, evocative mind trips. Besides, anyone with a song called ‘Tears Of Unicorn’ is a shoe-in for a Deluxe interview.

Deluxe: I read that you were previously based in Kanagawa Prefecture, your music feels miles away from a busy metropolis? How much of an impact did the city have on your music?

Masayoshi Fujita: I was born and grew up in Chigasaki-city, Kanagawa, Japan which is about an hour away from Tokyo by train. Since I lived there for nearly 30 years, I think it gave a lot of influence on me and my music. When I make music I always have images of birds, like a black kite, mountains, forest and other natures in my mind.

Once I wondered where those images came from. And when I went back to Japan for the first time after I had moved to Berlin, I noticed that everything was there. There were black kites, mountains and forest. Those images had accumulated in me since my childhood.

D: You are now Berlin based, in such a vibrant and well supported scene, which record shops do you frequent regularly and which is good for what?

MF: My favorite record store is Hard Wax. I was big fan of Basic Channel’s

and sometimes had a chance to see them creating music in their studio.

As I saw them, I could see how they dedicate themselves to strive for their own sound, even for one single sound.

Seeing it I started to think what is my characteristic or originality, and I thought it was the vibraphone. Also I D: I found Berlin, for a city, to have a very civilised pace of life. Did it have an learned how important to be honest and responsible for your music as instant impact on your music? seeing them. That was very important experience.

MF: Actually, the pace of life is much slower compared to Tokyo. It has D: Much has been made of the been changing a lot here, though. I vibraphone in your music, but it is was having hectic life in Japan and richly supported on Apologues by a struggling with making time to create wide range of other instruments - how music. Here it is more relaxed and you have more time and space to create the much of it is you? Who else is involved? music. Since I moved to Berlin, I found Did you enjoy the recording process? myself demanding less ambient music MF: I arranged and wrote music for all than when I lived in Japan. I guess I the instruments. Of course I didn’t play needed some relaxation from music because I was living in such a busy life. them except vibraphone. Recording was very much fun, even though it took so much time and effort. I used quite D: Following on, It is a city with a big nightlife, the same question, did Berlin new instruments (for me), so sometimes it was hard and sometimes it was very have an impact on your electronic beautiful experience to listen to them music as el fog? and talk to the players.

MF: Yes, I met a lot of great electronic musicians and saw a lot of gigs here, stuff and still love their sounds, and for those music the Hard Wax is the best place for sure. I also sometimes go to Staalplaat for more experimental music, where I met a lot of weird and interest music.

Photographed by Alexander Schneider

D: I found the album incredibly evocative throughout. Did any images surprise you whilst you were creating the album?

Did the songs taken on their own characters?

D: Who created your artwork for Apologues? How important to you is the physical side of releasing music?

Artwork, packaging, formats?

MF: I am very glad to hear that. I composed the song “Puppet’s Strange Dream Circus Band” for my last album (“Stories”) but I didn’t like my playing of the recording, and also had an idea of arrangement with other instruments, so I decided not to include that song in that album. Then as I made the arrangement with other instruments for this new album, it changed the story of the song. Before it was a story about a puppet pirate dreaming of treasure hunting in a pirate ship, but the new arrangement brought the story to somewhere else. It was quite interesting experience.

MF: Munich-based designer Bernd Kuchenbeiser made this beautiful image and design. Of course the artwork and packaging are very important for me. They are something that extend the expression of your aesthetic and give the listeners something additional, to feel what you are trying to express from different side than the sound. Actually I always tend to get involved in designing artwork too much and regret afterwards, so I tried not to do so this time. I am quite happy with the outcome.

D: Going back to record shopping, what are your earliest memories of record shops? What was your first purchase? and on what format?

A record shop is like a sommelier of music.

MF: My first purchase was a compilation CD of sound tracks of many famous movies at a music store in my hometown. I guess I was around 9 year-old or so. I loved the movie “Ghost Busters” and it had that theme song too, so I asked my father to buy me it. My father is a big fan of jazz and we used to go to music store when we went out.

Afterwards I became a big fan of Bon Jovi and then other hard-rock stuff and alternative rock and so on. So I kept buying CDs and it was a part of my life. I can’t remember what was my first purchase with my own money. Maybe a CD of Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion or something. I started to buy LPs when I began to listen to electronic music afterwards.

D: For you, what is the most important part of a record shop? What makes you want to go back again and again?

When I compose a song, it doesn’t come from my head in the first place. I just play the vibraphone and sometimes encounter a nice chord or phrase. Then I play it over and over. Then at one point an image come to my mind and I play it again and again with the image. Then I look for further chords or melody, according to that image or atmosphere, and new sound gives me wider image and then I look for further sound again… Repeating this process I make the seed of a song bigger and richer. I call it ‘cultivating’ the song.

D: Is it important to you that people take literal apologues from the tracks on your album, or is it enough to move the listener to feeling something with the music?

MF: I am not trying to tell a precise story to the listener. I call it story, but it is more like a picture in a book. Imagine you open a book which is written in the language you don’t understand but there are some pictures in the book. You can get some idea and feeling or atmosphere from those but you don’t really know precisely what the story is about.

My song is similar to that. It’s also different than “everyone has freedom to have their own imagination”. I would like to evoke the images in the listener, the images that have accumulated in them. I am not trying to give them new images but trying to evoke images that they already had in them.

MF: The selection and taste of the store is most important.

There is so many music out there that you can’t really know how to find really good ones or the ones you will really like.

A record shop is like a sommelier of music. In addition, a record shop has a function as a meeting point. There was a nice record shop in Berlin called Dense Record Shop. When I went there I met my friend musicians and the people worked there were also musicians or label owners and so on. And also, some stores give in-store shows or have a small venue in the other room or in the cellar. It is also a nice chance to meet people and find new music. Also sometimes a friendly and reliable owner or staff of the shop make me want to go back again.

AUTOBAHN Anyone who sites Martin Hannett as an influence gets our attention, and AUTOBAHN have consistently ticked boxes for us ever since. Soaked somewhere between Leed’s goth sensibility and Manchester’s industrial gloom, new album Dissemble is a heavy wave of post punk. We spoke to Craig Johnson from the band about recording the album, artwork and a bunch of good shops.

Deluxe: Reading into you guys, I thought it was really interesting that you recorded your new LP in a church.

Religion aside, was it an interesting place to record?

Craig Johnson: Yes, it was. It was pretty special. We recorded the first two records with Matt Peal and at the time he was in a small studio in Headingly (Leeds). Luckily over the last couple of years he has made this studio with a couple of other guys, one of them is the keyboard player from Kaiser Chiefs, sunk a lot of money into this lovely space. The best bit is that you’re in the control room and you can see the room in which Sisters of Mercy store their equipment and rehearse. I only found out at the end but that was nice.

D: Would it have psyched you out if you had known?

CJ: Yeah, it probably would have. I think the next record is just gonna sound like them. The best bit about being in a church is the reverb, which for our sound is so good. We had tall room mics set up and listening to the reverb on them is special. It feels really powerful. It doesn’t really look like a conventional church anymore.

D: If you can hear it heading into recording with such clarity, I guess the danger would be not achieving that?

CJ: Kind of. I’ve never been in a situation like it, it just takes over your life completely. I was coming home at night and waking at night dreaming about it. You get up again and head in and start again. The first big relief was when we had the album written, but then it was more intense work on recording it.

D: It feels pretty heavy as a piece of work, you’ve captured something.

CJ: It’s not a record that you pick and listen to and just get… it’s a very dense and not easy thing to listen to on first listen.

A few people have said to us that they’ll need to keep going back to it… I couldn’t listen to it twice in a row… the second half in particular.

D: Your instrumentation is pretty much as you’d expect, but you create some weird timbres in your music…

CJ: It’s something that we’ve always had really. I guess almost like a Spector wall of sound … thing someone described once, as a band where everyone is doing D: Do you enjoy recording? something different at the same time, but it kind of works.

It seems that when we write we all end up all playing CJ: We did it over six weeks, it was very intense. I was there something slightly different, but I think that is why it makes every day. I had a vision and idea of what the tracks should such a big noise and compliments each other. There were a sound like from when I started writing them. It was very important for me that every bit sounded like I’d imagined it lot of techniques we used recording that makes the album in my head. It was so intense. Looking back…. It was intense. sound the way it does. We researched it, we thought about

the albums and producers we liked. My favourite track on our record is Dissemble. That song was actually a different song that I felt wasn’t up to standard whilst we were recording it, and struck on the idea of turning over the tape and seeing what it sounded like backwards. So then me and Matt spend two days editing it and then we made Liam go back in and re-drum the track. I then sung over it forwards, so it was all effectively written in the studio.

D: So a real victory in terms of putting effort into studio time and technique? More than just grafting to get it taped?

CJ: For the next tour we’re aiming to replicate the song live… it’ll be difficult, but it’ll be a fun thing to do. Off the back of it I really got into reverbed sound. Reverbed guitars in that way sound so bizarre and big, like classical music, like Beethoven’s Ninth or something D: I thought the sequencing was really good, Missing In Action at the start in particular, it’s a staggered start to what follows right?

The album is about looking death in the eye. Although we are serious, you can’t take life too seriously.

CJ: The main reason for that to be first to be honest is that it was the closest to our older sound, it’s quite bratty.

That song is a good way to progress us along, it’s an introduction… the drums are a huge thanks to the church.

CJ: Yeah. We decided to start a band and I had in my head that it would be very Krauty… we were listening to lots of Neu!, so looping lots of stuff around – AUTOBAHN felt like the right sort of mechanical loop and it also had a link to that industrial side of things as well, which I think comes across in our songs a bit like industrial grinding guitars.

D: AUTOBAHN is such a powerful name. Did you settle on it really quickly?

D: Is AUTOBAHN capitalised by the way?

Yeah, it’s meant to be yes.

D: How about the artwork, it’s pretty dark, is that you guys? How important is the artwork side of things to you?

CJ: It is important to us, it needs to portray what we think the record is about. I put the idea across and it evolved into what the album looks like finished. The album is about looking death in the eye. Although we are serious, you can’t take life too seriously. We only saw it finished a couple of days ago and I am so happy with it. It’s gatefold and the inner spreads are versions of the artwork run through a VHS, loads of texture.

D: I’d really picked up on VHS, are you into the older formats?

CJ: I had to buy a tape deck the other day as so many bands are releasing cassettes these days. I didn’t think I’d have to do that five years ago. I like the ease of putting it in your pocket after a gig and not worrying about it getting bent and stuff.

D: Where did you grow up and with which shops?

CJ: Just outside of Leeds… record shops weren’t great. There was a little local one, mainly CD’s. I guess this would have been up to 13 or 14 years old. We’d go in on lunch breaks and stuff and listen to what we could, then I think we progressed probably onto nicking the cases…

D: (laughing) Well how about to even it out, the first actual purchase you made in a shop?

Yeah, it would have been with my Dad and it would have been What’s the Story? Morning Glory.

D: What Format?

CJ: CD. I’m trying to think, I wonder actually if it might have been an early verve album? Probably Oasis but I am looking at the cases here now and trying to remember. I don’t’ remember what shop it was exactly. I never actually bought vinyl as a kid as to be honest my Dad just had so much. You know when you’re at school up to like 14… no one had vinyl apart from your

parents. I loved going through it, but I couldn’t buy it. It was 7” singles that got me into it. I remember buying a couple and before you knew it you had quite a few and that is a way to get into it. I go through phases even now. I went pretty mad earlier in the year and now I’m having to ease it down… it gets expensive.

D: Which shops do you use now?

CJ: All of the Leeds shops, Jumbo, Crash... there was a really good one called Dragnet in the basement of

Crash… wherever we end up going I always try and have a look through. We played in Sound It Out in Stockton… that was great. Really funny, have you seen the film?

D: Yeah, very funny guys CJ: Some of the regulars were in the shop which was good, exactly what we wanted. We watched it as we wanted to recognise some locals. Otherwise, charity shops are pretty decent around Leeds, particularly the further out you get from the centre.

D: If you worked in a record store, where would you be filling your record?

CJ: Post punk… classic Post punk. We get a little noisy at times, but I think we’re pretty classic post punk. We’re playing Rough Trade East in the next couple of weeks and it’ll be great to see it in the shops, can’t wait to see it in the shops. Also seeing it in shops like Piccadilly… that’ll be really special for us.

D: Your LP is definitely gonna be up Piccadilly’s street… they’ll be playing it for sure. So I guess last question, what for you is key to a good record shop?

CJ: You need to leave the customer to their own devices… you need to completely leave them alone until they ask something. You need to be a friend, not a sales assistant… you know? It’s hard to get right. If you go into a shop to buy musical instruments for example, the guy selling guitars is probably the best player in the world… and he is showing you and telling you how good he is… Most record shops are just enthusiasts, they are not there to show you that they know every last … Polish… Reggea band in existence… you know? That for me is a good record shop.

Photographed by Juliet Orbach

Briana Marela Briana Marela’s music is a rich and vivid tapestry of noises and echoes. Sure the Seattle native is a music technology and composition graduate, but she has managed to capture something altogether more euphoric on her ‘All Around Us’ album. We spoke about recording and the various shops along the road.

Deluxe: How was recording with Alex Somers? Does Iceland feel like a special place to be making music?

Briana Marela: Recording with Alex was amazing! He is such a talented producer and we collaborated really well!

Iceland is a special place for sure. It was great to spend a little bit of time there.

D: Had you spent time in Iceland before? Did it feel like the sort of atmosphere to craft your album? What lead you there?

it without hearing the songs at all. They are amazing at improvising and interpreting a piece of music very fast.

They have such natural chemistry with each other that they achieve their vision pretty fast. For each song we gave them the rough idea of what we wanted and some loose direction and they really shone! The only song I told them exactly what I wanted on it was “Follow It” D: Did you get to visit 12 Tónar whilst you were in Iceland? I am after all assuming you were in Reykjavík…

BM: Such a cool record store!

BM: I had never left the U.S. before (except briefly Canada) so no I had never been to Iceland before. Reykjavik is a lovely city, it had the charm of a small town like Olympia, WA but with a more metropolitan European vibe. Alex led me there really through our email correspondence.

D: How about the process of working with Amiina? Did you give them a rough idea of what you wanted to achieve or did you just give them the space to do their thing?

BM: Working with Amiina was such a dream! We only had a couple hours in the studio with them and they went into

D: Those guys sure know how to run a store right?

BM: Yeah, definitely.

D: Are you still Seattle based? How supportive is that scene for playing live and developing your music?

BM: I still live in Seattle yes, but have been splitting a lot of time recently between there and Olympia. Seattle has a very supportive scene of musicians and artists. Lots of people doing really cool stuff! There is a cool range of

different performing opportunities,. You can play house shows or DIY spaces or actual venues. It is an inspiring place to develop music because I am often so inspired by people within the community!

D: Which artists, venues, stores and people do you want to flag up as being particularly righteous folk?

BM: Some great bands in Seattle include: Sick Sad World, Lilac, Heatwarmer, Bardo:Basho, Dude York, Iji, and Hoop! As a venue and space I love Cairo and the new related project Rose Gold that is popping up by two rad women in the community, Katherine and Lily. Trading Musician is a righteous music store, Sonic Boom is still a great record store!

Shout to my friend Michelle who plays with me in our duo band called Swooning. Shoutout to my amazing housemates who are all amazing artists in their own way!

D: From the outside, Seattle still has a legacy of being a hugely important musical city. Does it feel that way inside the scene? Is there a danger of it being oversaturated with bands?

BM: There are definitely a lot of bands in Seattle, and they can’t all be good... I think that is a danger in any big city, of just so many bands and shows happening that it feels overwhelming. I mostly only go to shows of people within my community of musician friends. Seattle is an important musical city, it is a big part of everyone’s lives I know.

D: Do you feel like ‘All Around Us’ is an overtly ‘sad’ record? - I tell you why I ask. I’ve read a couple of people saying in preview that ‘it’ll make you cry’, or its ‘heartbreaking’.... I actually found it pretty joyous on the first couple of listens. Did I pick up on a spirit that isn’t there?

BM: I wouldn’t say it was overtly sad, no. Yeah I wondered about that sort of clickbait sort of preview heading, I guess it makes people click who don’t know who I am, maybe people who are looking to cry. I would agree that it is mostly pretty joyous, I would describe my music as bittersweet, mostly sweet overtones but with sad heartbreaking undertones.

D: Do you expect people to find their own themes and emotions in your music? So long as somebody feels ‘something’, is it okay to miss the point?

BM: Yes, of course I imagine people will find their own themes and emotions. There isn’t a direct point

Things to avoid in a record shop? I guess avoid non-musical distractions within the store. necessary that you are obliged to feel. I’d rather create an understanding between myself and the listener than to try and lecture them on something.

D: I read a great interview where you talked about being subjected to Peruvian folk music early on. Do you remember your first conscious, deliberate investment in music? What did you buy? What format?

BM: I don’t remember my first records/CDs I bought, but I definitely bought many used cds when I was in high school from mostly two local record stores called Sonic Boom and Easy Street Records.

D: Besides the Peruvian folk, what are your earliest memories of physical music? artwork? formats?

BM: I remember the big record player cabinet at my grandma’s house. It could play 78s as well, and I loved sitting on top watching as my mom would put a record on.

D: How important to you have record stores been in your development as both a person and a musician?

BM: They were really important to me in high school as a way that I would find and buy new music. I’d also attend

a bunch of in stores at them, and see artists for free when they’d come to town! They are still such sacred spaces to be in and to pick up albums, it just feels more special to hold a record or CD in your hand and buy it, than to buy something online.

D: Tough one, but what do record stores feel like?

so important to me at a critical point in my musical taste development. Favorite memories are just browsing for records with my best friends from high school and trying to think of cool things to say to the cool people working there.

D: We always ask people what makes for a good record store, but how about this… your top three things to avoid in a new record shop?

BM: They have a similar quality to library’s, except a library where you can BM: Hmm, I don’t like to think buy and keep. Sacred spaces for sure. negatively and this question is really hard. Things to avoid in a record shop?

D: What have been your most favourite I guess avoid non-musical distractions memories in record stores and which within the store. Try and avoid huge ones have really stood out to you? box sets because they are expensive, and avoid sounding like a music snob BM: Like I mentioned, Sonic Boom and while you are there.

Easy Street Records in Seattle were both

Girl Band Dublin’s Girl Band have a fierce live reputation. Prolific tourers, industrious self promoters and a four piece who have really worked to craft their explosive and foreboding live set. Their debut album ‘Holding Hands With Jamie’ is a testament to their ferocity, so slightly apprehensively, we dug a little deeper.

Deluxe: Early reviews (live ones in particular) have made much of the bands you ‘sound a bit like’. It’s always complimentary, but are you looking forward to just sounding like you? I mean, you do already, but is the “sounds like…” just part of the territory with press and radio?

Daniel Fox: I think this kind of thing happens to most bands really. When you read reviews it’s rare you don’t see an ‘it’s like band x met band y.. on acid’. I think it’s kind of lazy in a way. It’s just a very easy way of getting quick digestible opinion of a band’s sound across. I can see why people do it, especially when the band is only starting off and hasn’t released much material. When the full record is released hopefully there will be a more rounded scope on the sound of the band.

D: The drum parts on your album drop in and out,. They’re not always playing traditionally rhythmic parts are they?

Likewise with the vocal phrasing, does your music require concentration, do you think?

DF: The main difference with a lot of the drums on the record are that Adam doesn’t play a lot of back beats, kick on the 1 and 3, snare on the 2 and 4, which is kind of your standard rock beat, which would explain their

unusual rhythmic feel. We tend to have a lot of the rhythm interlocked between the drums, bass and guitar, to create a groove, but I don’t think it requires more concentration to follow. A lot of the time it’s purposely hypnotic and even though it might sound kind of off kilter, a lot of it is rhythmically pretty straightforward. With the vocals, a lot of the time it’s weaving in around the rhythm and playing off it.

D: Well conversely, is it more primal listening? … it isn’t necessarily ‘straight forward’?

DF: Yeah kind of, like when you’re at a techno gig, a lot of the time you’re not actively concentrating on what’s happening and you’re lost in the groove of the track, your ears prick up and you notice the feel has totally shifted really subtly, pretty into that idea.

D: Do you think your music is frightening?

DF: I personally don’t, but it’s hard to be completely objective about it though. I often forget how aggressive the music can come across.

D: You released a really superb video for “Paul” from the album. Besides that, how involved were you and how did it all come together?

DF: I helped make some of the set, cutting and gluing some green paper hills, proper arts and crafts day. The concept was Bon Gallagher’s, who did our last video too. In terms of other band involvement, I know Bob and Dara went through the lyrics of the song, to incorporate references in the video.

D: Knowing that the album was recorded in just a couple of days, did it add pressure to complete the body or work? Did it create a vibe that would have been hard otherwise to replicate?

DF: The album wasn’t recorded in a few days. Including mixing, we worked on it pretty much every day for a month. The only pressure was what we put on ourselves to get it right, but the vibe in the studio was really good. It was fun, in our hometown and everyone involved in making it were old friends.

D: Following on, do you enjoying playing live?

DF: Yes, of course.

D: French Vice called you “le groupe le plus difficile à googler de 2014” Was that deliberate at all? Do bands give away too much?

DF: Pretty much nothing about the band name was deliberate. I dunno, the whole notion of band names is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

It kind of bugs me when you can tell exactly what something is going to be like based on the name. You can tell when it’s deliberate, like this whole abandonment of vowels thing.

D: Your releases to date have been hand-wrapped, hand-printed, housed in wooden boxes and set in unique card slips, how important to you is physicality?

DF: All of us are into collecting records, so from day one making

buying scene is stronger because it’s more of a niche. There were a lot of shops closing down a few years ago, but those that are still around are doing better stock. Except for Elastic Witch, which is missed dearly by all. I used to work in a call centre around the corner from it, and go in on my lunch break totally miserable and buy records to cheer myself up. It used D: After a pretty barren period, Dublin to have great oddball kind of records you’d take a punt on. To totally betray has a very strong record buying scene.

What do you think was responsible for my hometown however, I think Plugd in Cork might be my favourite in the the upturn in fortunes? Which shops country, such diverse and obscure do you frequent regularly? Who does records. The kind of place where you’d what well? something something you’d love to have in your own record collection was important. When you own a physical record it strengthens your connection with that music. You spend time with it, staring at the sleeve, reading the lyrics or whatever, so giving someone else that experience with your band is really nice thing to do.

I dunno, the whole notion of band names is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. It kind of bugs me when you can tell exactly what something is going to be like based on the name. You can tell when it’s deliberate, like this whole abandonment of vowels thing.

DF: The Record Spot would be my most visited. Myself and Adam used to work there when the whole shop was still called The Rage. My friend Nick owns it and Dave who did the artwork still works there, so I’m in there to hang out as well to buy records. Girl Band actually played our first gig in that basement. In a way I think the record

pick something weird up off the shelf that you like the look of and trust that it’s amazing, which it most likely is.

D: How about playing live in Dublin?

Is it a supportive scene? Do you feel part of something bigger?

DF: It’s funny, it’s really rare we play

in Dublin these days, so it’s really a special occasion for us, I really enjoy it. Dublin is a small town in many ways, especially in the music scene so we got to know a lot of people very quickly. I’ve always felt that it’s been supportive, but Ireland being a small place we were always really eager to tour abroad.

D: What are your earliest memories of record shops?

DF: The Record Spot kind of started off as a stall in the George’s Street arcade, known as Trout Records, and I used to work there. It’d flood and it was kinda semi outdoors, I spent a lot of time huddled over the radiator instead, organising records or whatever I was meant to be doing. It was a great job at the time just when we were starting the band, so there was a lot of time to spend listening to music and thinking, it was really helpful. Before Nick

opened it as Trout it was owned by a guy called Mac (and called Mac’s Records), who was kinda friends with my Dad. He would drop in and have a chat or whatever, and I would be in tow, probably bored and wondering if I could get some ice cream or something (I would’ve been around 6 or something at the time) So my earliest memories of a record shop were as a little kid legging it around the same tiny record stall where I’d later work.

D: Do you remember your first purchase? What shop? what format?

DF: I do, the cassette single of Bomfunk MC’s - Freestyler, in Golden Discs in the Omni Shopping Centre in Santry. That week’s pocket money well spent, still have it.

D: What makes for a good record shop?

DF: Well good records for a start, but I always like record shops to be somewhere where you can go and kind of hang around, talk shite about records to someone you don’t really know. I like collecting records of music I know and love just like anyone else, but I really like making new discoveries in the shop.

Directory 12 Tónar Skólavörðustígur 15, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland www.12tonar.is

Static Records 34 Hallgate, Wigan, WN11LR. www.staticrecordswigan.co.uk

Mono Records 1805 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026 www.monorecordsla.com

Armadillo 32 Rue Pharaon, 31400 Toulouse, France

Rough Trade + 130 Talbot Road, London, W11 1JA + 5 Broad Street, Nottingham, NG1 3AJ + Old Truman Brewery, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 6QL + 64 North 9th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11249 www.roughtrade.com

Crash Records 35 The Headrow, Leeds LS1 6PU www.crashrecords.co.uk

Aquarius Records 1055 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110 www.aquariusrecords.org

Other Music 15 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003 www.othermusic.com

Dense Petersburger Str. 81, 10247 Berlin, Germany www.dense.de

Amoeba + 2455 Telegraph Ave. Berkeley, CA 94704 + 1855 Haight St. San Francisco, CA 94117 + 6400 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90028 www.amoeba.com

Permanent Records 5116 York Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90042

Bionic Records 6012 Ball Rd, Buena Park, CA 90620

The Record Exchange 1105 W Idaho St, Boise, ID 83702, United States www.therecordexchange.com

Action Records 46 Church St, Lancashire, Preston PR1 3DH www.actionrecords.co.uk

Hard Wax Paul-Lincke-Ufer 44A, 10999 Berlin, Germany www.hardwax.com Honest Jon’s Records 278 Portobello Rd, London W10 5TE www.honestjons.com Jumbo Records St Johns Shopping Centre, 5-6 St Johns Centre, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS2 8LQ www.jumborecords.co.uk Piccadilly 53 Oldham St, Manchester M1 1JR www.piccadillyrecords.com The Record Spot 16B Fade Street, Dublin 2, Ireland www.therecordspot.com resident www.resident-music.com 28 Kensington Gardens, North Laine, Brighton BN1 4AL Sound it Out Records Yarm St, Stockton-on-Tees TS18 www.sounditoutrecords.co.uk Sounds of the Universe 7 Broadwick St, London W1F 0DA www.soundsoftheuniverse.com

Blue Bag Records 2149 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026 www.bluebagrecords.com Brass City Records [RIP] 489 Meadow St, Waterbury, CT 06702 www.brasscityrecords.com Burger Records 645 S State College Blvd #A, Fullerton, CA 92831 www.burgerrecords.org Easy Street Records 4559 California Ave SW, Seattle, WA 98116 easystreetonline.com Electric Fetus + 2000 4th Ave. S. Minneapolis, MN 55404 + 12 E Superior St. Duluth, MN 55802 www.electricfetus.com Luna Music 5202 N College Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46220 www.lunamusic.net

Mount Analog 5906 1/2 N Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90042 www.climbmountanalog.com Mississippi Records 5202 N Albina Ave, Portland, OR 97217

Philadelphia Record Exchange www.philarecx.com 1524 Frankford Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19125

Rhino Records 235 Yale Ave, Claremont, CA 91711 www.rhinorecords.cc Rockaway Records 2395 Glendale Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90039 www.rockaway.com Rockin’ Rudy’s 237 Blaine St, Missoula, MT 59801 www.rockinrudys.com Sonic Boom 2209 NW Market St, Seattle, WA 98107 www.sonicboomrecords.com Vacation Vinyl 3815 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026 www.vacationvinyl.com Wombleton Records 5123 York Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90042 wombletonrecords.com

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out now on CD LP & DL

out now on CD LP & DL

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out now on CD LP & DL

out now on CD LP & DL

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CD LP & DL

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