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With their debut Silence Yourself pricking 2013’s indie bubble, SAVAGES continue to shut the world up from all its crippling noise. Their shows’ rules: No instagramming, no video, no tweets. What’s left then is that rattling realization that life is but a scream. By Kristine Dabbay
You did a Sonic Simultaneous poem with Bo Ningen titled “Words to the Blind” last May. Have you ever done something like this before? It was while we were recording our album that Johnny Hostile (producer of our album along with Rodaidh McDonald) was imagining Savages and Bo Ningen playing at the same time. So we wrote a 40 minute-piece based on the idea of the simultaneous poetry created by Hugo Ball in 1916—the voice against the world, each sound vying for its own position, working against and with each other.
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hile the rest of the world zig, Jehnny Beth (vocals), Gemma Thompson (guitars), Ayse Hassan (bass), and Fay Milton (drums) of Savages zag through the slithery sheen of the music scene. They would rather unsubscribe from trends and come up with an original approach to songwriting. Comparisons to Patti Smith, Joy Division, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, among other acts associated to the post-punk era are inevitable, but Savages manage to define their sound and mission with manifesto gravity. As STATUS catches up with Gemma, she says, “I can’t really speak for other bands or contemporary music in general, but I think many bands miss an intent behind what they are doing and integrity to themselves.” If anybody can “Shut Up” the world, it’s got to be them. After all, human behavior validate their verity: “And I’m cold, and I’m stubborn… leaden like a bullet to the sun.” Your live shows have been known to deliver life-affirming sets,
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what do you think makes your lives so different from other bands? From our first rehearsals together, we only thought of writing for a live environment. It seems like a simple thing to say, but I think it requires a certain kind of energy, a physicality when you know what you have written is only completed through a live performance. There is quite a primal, primitive energy required with such a set-up. You have varying artistic influences such as filmmaking and poetry. How do these affect your music? Each of us has different influences and comes from different backgrounds, but we inform each other continuously. It is hard to close in to individual influences, but much of the influence is from the intent behind the action, music, and word.
In your search for different ways of performing music, what has been the most interesting performance yet? During one of our early shows, we played in a wooden cage in a warehouse just on the outskirts of Manchester, surrounded by the audience—their limbs stretching through the bars above us. It was only a small space, with just 150 people, but it’s such an intense experience that we have always sought ways to recreate it by performing “in the round,” surrounded by the audience. Emancipation seems to play a big part in your creative process. What’s with your fascination with emancipation? By playing this kind of music, you are already seeking your own idea of emancipation, you are trying to find out more about yourself, the time and place that you live in to free yourself from restrictions and distractions. We use repetition in word and music; there is this idea of an exorcism though repetition, an understanding of yourself. Genesis P-Orridge, through the group Psychic TV, and the writer Henri Michaux are interesting influences for this idea.
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