APRIL 2010
POSITION NORMAL
Photography: Chris Bailiff
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Gibson ES295 is my museum piece. I never play it. I know it’s weird but sometimes I open the case – it’s the only guitar I have with a hard case – and admire it. That’s it. “I would definitely feel the loss if I had to sell or get rid of any of my guitars, apart from my 12-string – it’s too loud for home playing but it sounds so different to all the others so I keep it just in case. My Sharp GF777 boombox… I look at it and go into a trance. The early keyboard version of the Novation Bass Station. Not used it much at all and got to try and get it fixed. I looked at reviews of it recently when I was trying to find a repairer and it got a constant slagging off. Now I like it even more.” Bailiff’s stubborn penchant for obsolete technology is also demonstrated by his decision to issue the third Position Normal album on one format only – cassette. He admits that this move was urged as much by financial constraints as
conceptual consistency, although given that so much of the music engages with ideas of decay and degradation, both in terms of psyche and sonics, it seems entirely apt. “I really like the underdog feeling about tapes. They’ve always been seen as the poor relative of vinyl’s wax stamp of approval. Even years ago I thought that cassingles and cassette albums were ridiculous. Just blank tapes with music dubbed onto them. But they’re built to be reusable and portably playable, a completely different concept to vinyl. I love them aesthetically. When you shake them, they rattle as if they’re broken already.” Sound and Music present live performances from Position Normal and People Like Us at the Static Gallery, Liverpool on 19 May, as part of Liverpool Sound City. Joseph Stannard takes part in the Wire hauntology salon at Café Oto on 1 April.