neil and rob in conversation






Neil Campbell (solo, A-Band, Vibracathedral Orchestra etc.) And Rob Hayler (midwich, truant, fencing flatworm recordings) in conversation 26th June 2000 Rob writes: Neil met me at my workplace (Waterstone's) and we walked down to The Palace, a pub just outside Leeds town centre. We sat in the courtyard and started to get drunk. Subjects we covered before the tape was switched on included the new Sex Pistols film, why we don't want to vote and the abject failure of my marriage a few years ago. A good story but not one I want published… Rob's dialogue is italicised, Neil's is left standing. Neil kicks off: I want to ask you about your obsessive archiving. You spent all weekend archiving the back catalogue of some record label. 80 CDs…! I did (I was mp3-ing stuff) When are you going to listen to 80 CDs? It's insane! I know. Listening to it isn't the point of obsessive archiving (laughs). It's a means unto itself. I'll listen to most of it…My friend Andy, another obsessive, buys the stuff. Does he listen to it? Yeah, yeah, big fan. There are certain things he's compelled to buy Does he have a large disposable income? Well… So what do you do? You compress it down to how many CDs? It's tragically geeky (pressing the point) 5 CDs, 8 CDs? Yeah But they release 12" singles that won't be on CD. What do you do about that? Yeah, it's hard to be… mellow about that (Neil laughs). I'll call on traders to fill gaps But you don't actually have to own the original? Ah, object fetishism! I can't be bothered… I hate objects! I like… Data? Microfiche… Information (laughs), anonymous looking CDrs. I like having access to the music. It's comforting to know that you can put your hand on it in ten years time: 'oh I just wanna hear…'. I've got rid of records. I don't do it too much anymore, every now and again. When I was younger I used to buy records and then if they started to annoy me or if there was something I didn't like about it or if I had too many records by one artist I'd just get shot of a bunch of them. Do you regret that? Oh yeah. I do that with books. It would be so nice just to put my hand on… the first Magazine LP, or something that I got 15 years ago. I could go and buy it but I can't be bothered. I dunno. See, now I keep things because I think this might be useful in years to come. I just acquire shit-loads of old vinyl now. I'm fed up with vinyl because I've moved house so many times and packing it up… It's nice to caress though! That's old-fashioned object fetishism! There are certain objects that I fetishise like the Philip K. Dick stuff I collect. Old '50s pulps, stuff like that. I love the smell of rotting paper. Sure, who doesn't?! There's a bookshop in North London that specialises in this stuff (note: Fantasy Centre, Holloway Road) and the atmosphere in there is heady, it knocks you out. Well, you get that with vinyl too. I don't. It annoys me. (tape recorder cuts off due to its extremely knackered state. Neil attempts to fix it) This tape recorder is going to keep cutting out plus there is an interview under this one (the tape was used before to record a jazzfinger interview, Rob laughs). Back to obsessive archiving. It's because I've been a lifelong geek Did you collect things as a kid? Yeah, but the thing about being a ludicrous archivist nowadays is that with a computer you can wedge it all so small it is like science fiction. Having 400 albums in this amount of space (Rob indicates about 4 inches) amuses me. It's like food pills! (Neil laughs) But that's a horrible idea! I know, but it's a funny one. Do you ever find yourself in the midst of a huge archiving session, all this data and information, and think I don't even like this… I did with (well-known label X) records when I realised that only about a quarter of it was worth having. You didn't want to weed it? Well, there were other motives to keeping it complete. It's a trading device, a means to an even greater archive… Sure, Sure If you can talk to other lunatics and say I've got the complete (label X) then this is incredible leverage in getting access to whatever lunatic archive that they've amassed You don't talk to these people, you do it all via e-mail right? That is talking! (Much laughter) That's probably quite pertinent for dddd… we shouldn't ignore the fact that this all hinges on the net I got a slagging in dddd… Of course! (sly) That's why I sent it to them Now I'm 'nicest guy on the planet' which is gratifying Do you think this technology is going to bring down the music industry? Napster and Metallica… Why is it the people getting uptight about this are Metallica? What assholes! Kid Rock… Yeah, people who have a veneer of being anti-establishment. I know they're not but… It's just greedy rich whining But it's not Elton John of George Michael, it's Metallica, Eminem I dunno. I don't really care (laughs)… I just don't care. Do you think it will change the way people acquire music, the way they think about it, and, take it ten years down the line, that there won't be any megastars. They're so dull nowadays anyway. Did you see any of Glastonbury? I caught maybe an hour of it over the course of two days. It all sounded so fucking boring. It was the most tedious thing, I just couldn't believe it. Did you see the Beta Band? They were incredibly tedious! I'd heard they were really good! So had I! They were directionless, not even jamming. The guy did a bongo solo (much laughter). It was just terrible! It might change the way people make a living from music. People will focus on access. Vinyl, like that V/VM thing (Rob has, totally hypocritically, bought an overpriced white-vinyl 7" single on V/VM today) sells to a fetishist market. Soon it will be like that with all the objects, not just deluxe vinyl. Even CDRs will be for fetishists and everyone else will just pay for access. Like shareware. Any attempt to be strict about remuneration is fucked. Getting paid will have to become different from selling units. You'll download it and if you like it you'll make some kind of donation to the artist. If anyone says 'before you download this track I want your credit card details' then they can fuck off. I mean, ffr is in part a joke - making them homogenous, using the same font, making them as nice as I can given my limited circumstance That's just a corporate house style! Yeah, it partly appeals to my anal nature but partly it is a joke about this time being the end of that kind of thing. Aaah! Well, is it? You mention object fetishism as if that is some kind of bad thing. A nicely screened record sleeve is a lovely thing. Like when people bought Crass records the sleeve notes were an extra thing. Now it's going to hack right down to the music and some music's not going to stand up I think. Yeah, well… good. (Laughter) I used to paw over liner notes… Liner notes are a fine thing! Now I'm not even that bothered about track titles… I never know what anything is called. I get too much music without using these channels. People send me tapes, the odd thing, I get a shitload of cheap vinyl. It's too much to listen to. It pains me that I'm not paying enough attention. You have all this stuff, there must be something that you want to obsess on and play over and over again. Sure! There are things that really repay your attention. Does it devalue that, that everyone could have access to everything? No!! Exactly the opposite! The more you listen to the better able you are to judge what is good because you've got more context. I might spend three weeks listening to nothing but free jazz… I bet you're popular with Cath (Rob's girlfriend)! (Neil laughs) … on my walkman! Or whatever, you know Betley-type noise, and at the end of the three weeks you know what's shit and you know what's good or at least you know what you like and what you don't which is a different thing. Also, you get to know the scene. But the things that must have turned you on and blown you away would have been things that you'd heard in isolation. Like when I first heard the Velvet Underground, or anything. It was an effort to go and buy the record, and to find the record, and so you clung onto it more. It probably is fetishistic. This would define you: you were thirteen years old, and you had two records and they were your world. I was very much like that as a teenager. I read Melody Maker every week. This was in the 80s right? What were you listening to? Butthole Surfers, My Bloody Valentine, Skinny Puppy, Young Gods. All the Melody Maker cover acts. I'd take the train to Brighton (nearest big town to where I was brought up) and tragically I'd see people like Bobby Gillespie in town and see what they'd been looking at (Neil laughs, quite rightly). I'd fish stuff out, take it home and fetishise it. … and be disappointed? Well, you couldn't allow yourself to be disappointed I know! Because you'd spent all this money… Because you'd invested so much in believing in Melody Maker, and travelled… There are a few things that I feel that I've forced myself to like whereas now I can make an informed judgement. But now you're older… I'm thinking of kids, 12, 13, 14, who are just discovering stuff and will have access to all this… I guess it's about knowing where to look. Yeah, that's shifted the goalposts. Before you might have had to travel… Sure, I lived in a small town, with the odd weird record… You might not have to get out and about so much but you've got to find Forced Exposure and know what to look for and your mates are always going to be listening to something fucking shit. I don't envy people all this access. I kinda like my own little retarded thing (Rob laughs). Pawing over a Throbbing Gristle LP when I was 14 of 15 in the shop I had a £5 record token and it cost £5. It was weird, I didn't know whether I wanted this thing. It took about a month to pluck up the courage to buy it because you know no one else would buy it… Just hearing you say that: it is exciting. Sure! It can be quite exciting to get things now but, shit, I don't have £5 pocket money. I have a job, I've got money, I can buy whatever I wanted, pretty much, so that takes a bit away… I dunno. I think when you're a teen the 'getting' part of it is really exciting but now when you're a boring adult the getting part is no problem unless you collect Sun Ra albums or something so what is really exciting is hearing something that knocks you out. See, I absolutely love getting really good post… …Sometimes I groan: 'oh, it's from them, I don't want to listen to it' (Rob thinks this is hysterical) Go on, name names! No, no… You might find there's something good in there amongst the shite. I dunno. I'm more vicious with my forward-fast (sic) button and eject button than I ever was. I had a friend, Phil, who used to help run the Termite Club. He was young and would listen to everything and he would say 'no music ever surprises me and there's nothing that's really blown me away' That's terrible! 'Cos things blow me away, like, twice a week! Less for me but when they do it's… solid. Despite the fact that I acquire so much there are things I listen to over and over again. It's quite surprising some of it. Recently… there's this Japanese Playstation game called Vib Ribbon and the soundtrack to that is fantastic. Just really stupid pop. I can't stop listening to it. Amon Tobin too. I finally got a copy of the first La Dusseldorf album last week as a trade which I've been playing over and over again. (Rob tries to explain about someone sending him a pretty good CD but totally fails to get any of the details right) Some people have said to me: 'don't send me anymore stuff, I don't like it, you're a nice person, I like you, but no more!' (laughter) I figure that's OK, you can say that to me. It's not easy music is it? If I was a singer-songwriter and I was presenting chunks of my life… I wanted to talk about this later… Bring it up now! If I wrote songs about my life… … I wouldn't wanna hear them! Actually I might do you having filled me in earlier with the tale of your marriage (much laughter again). They'd be full of woe. Anyway, if I did perform them and people hated them I'd be upset. It would be like if you cooked a meal for someone and they went 'bleuurgh'. I'd be gutted! But I don't feel the same about the sort of music we do. I think that is more egotism on the part of singer-songwriters. You're paying for a lifetime's work when you get one of my CDs. It's more to do with being philosophical… singer-songwriters must be so disappointed when not everybody loves them. People aren't going to like it but that's OK. I feel fortunate that the path I've chosen is of no interest to so many people. You're just left alone and you don't have to worry about being commercial, being liked - any of that crap. You do it yourself. I'm not saying that it makes you a better person… …it makes you a happier person! You gotta get used to being laughed at… it's nice! I remember being irate when I was younger and we played live and somebody pulled the plugs on us. Now I can see why they might want to. What I was going to ask was is the music that you do about something? It's largely instrumental and abstract. Do you think any music has a subject? Yeah, yeah. A subject can be straightforwardly given by lyrics: a lovesong is about love. I don't want to get wanky about it, just: do you have something in mind? No, of course not. I don't think that any music is about or should be about anything. Anything that is put upon it is just a decoration because it's just pretty universal. I can pick up a piece of music that was made in Mongolia and that you'd never heard the form of before and relate to it as music without having to ask what it's about. But it could be about something Well, if it's a song then it is probably about something. I agree that you don't have to know about something in order to appreciate it. It can be about something and it doesn't matter if this is private to the musician or worn on the sleeve like they were Joan Baez or something. It's purely visceral. Well, I have done music with lyrics before. Maybe when I was trying to prove something. But less and less. (pause) Mine is. Yeah?! No one is going to get it! I don't mind. I dig it when people like my stuff. I was thrilled when people clapped at the end of the truant gig (truant are Rob and Cloughy from Klunk, they supported Vibracathedral at their last gig) and when dddd gave 'life underwater' a good review I was thrilled with that too. Even to the detriment of Straight Outta Mongolia? Well, they liked that too! You can't have everything (laughter). The stuff I do is instrumental and abstract, no real form. It's rehearsed but it's all recorded live. There is a subject matter. It doesn't matter if nobody gets it. So the subject matter is…? Christ, I'll sound really pretentious Good! It's about the everyday grind, it's about the worthlessness of most of the things we have to do, but also its about hope, and remaining creative in the face of it. Now do you tack that on afterward or while doing it are you constantly thinking 'this music is about…'? I bet you don't believe me, but I do think about it. Don't you ever get lost in music? Yeah, sometimes when I forget (laughs). I have an idea in mind and I want to reflect this idea and it doesn't matter if it's only me who knows it. I haven't really succeeded yet, that's what drives it because otherwise I'd just be taping two keys down and bubbling away for no reason. I just want to get lost, get crazy I appreciate that as well When I listen to good music that's what happens to me. That instant transportation that music can do. You don't have to know the language particularly. I guess there are some really abstract forms that don't consider themselves abstract like heavy metal or opera when you do have to know about their language, but you're playing pretty basic music. Caveman music! Like Vibracathedral. That's what we're doing! I just aim for complete derangement of the senses and intellect. Which again sounds pretentious. That could be really self indulgent couldn't it? There is a danger there. If you are performing live in front of a paying audience and you do that it could be wanky and pretentious. Sure. But I think the structures we build up… …they draw people in… They do, I think it works. But I've seen it happen when the audience just wants to leave the room. Improv can be the worst shit imaginable and noise has gone down that route as well. It's so easy for people to trot out. It's so unfortunate. Noise was really visceral and exciting 6, 7, 10 years ago. It has to have some subtlety Or a complete lack of subtlety like a couple of the Japanese people manage. I don't listen to it anymore. I really don't want to hear Cock ESP, thank you. They're shit Do you think that you attach all these concepts, well, they are pretty basic concepts… Wow, we're getting philosophical now… Do you think there is a connection to your collecting? I don't understand the question! You're quite intellectual aren't you? (big laugh from Rob) You're kind of a postgrad student. I am. Shall I admit to the full horror of it? I was studying part-time for a Ph.D. in philosophy of language. The horror of the vacuum! I doubt I'll finish it though… Do you have a horror of the vacuum? Like when you're playing these pieces you feel guilty that they might not be about anything? In a way what you're doing is tacking on linguistic ideas to something that works on a different level to language, a much baser level. Well, I don't think it is anything too complicated. You're concepts don't sound that complicated. The music is certainly basic, simple. But would you be guilty if there was no concept? Well, truant is more selfless than midwich because it is a duo. Our only idea is: 'keep it controlled' which is just a method of working. With midwich, the stuff I've put out has all been informed by the ideas that I've mentioned and that's what makes it midwich. That's what makes a midwich track a midwich track. That's quite conceptual, in its own little way. The piece I'm doing for the ffr-kestra (a collaboration taking place in July) is selfless - it's rhythmic. Like a metronome. So when you're playing midwich you don't ever get a bit drunk or stoned because that would preclude your concentration (laughs)? Midwich stuff is controlled So it's not really improvised? You can set parameters, if you don't you just get this meandering nonsense which doesn't work. I know that all too well! Yeah, I've had tapes from people who are really good but good once every ten minutes for a minute and a half and it's luck. I thought that if they'd set themselves a goal, or that they'd had parameters in mind - improv doesn't mean no rules… Yeah, what we do is similar. We have our tunings and our ways of playing but it's improvised within that. Plinky improvisers think: 'we're going to be plinky'! They're not about to start busting out powerchords, they have their own insane set of rules. You can be too strict. I'd need other people to be involved before I could lose myself. I'm envious of you if you can do that through your own actions. I don't like playing solo too much… (The first side of the tape runs out. It was turned over and restarted as Rob was explaining how the film of The Virgin Suicides was pretty good and how dipshit reviewers had got it wrong. This starts a conversation about 'blank' art.) It's easy to do, to make a piece of art that is blank, bleak, ill-fitting. I read this thing in the paper about young British painters and about how their art is rotting! There was one who was supposedly an upholder of traditional painterly values and her paintings are cracking and warping and her riposte to this was, like, 'it doesn't detract from what it's about and, anyway, it's about decay!' (much laughter). I thought that was the worst trite bunch of shit I'd ever heard. Imagine being an artist and being about decay. Oh thanks, cheers! That reading of existentialism is so retarded. The Virgin Suicides is more complicated than that. It's part of a genre of American art about the 70s when there was Vietnam, Nixon, the 60s had failed, the hippies had grown up, the kids didn't know what to do, punk hadn't happened. America 70-75 was psychologically fucked and there is a lot of good stuff being made about this period. Rick Moody (note: author of The Ice Storm) is a good example. (Rob suddenly distracted) Sorry, I've just got to comment on the incredible.....there's all this stuff blowing around the courtyard of this pub. There's a lot of it! There's fluff from a plant and little green bugs are dancing about and landing in my drink. It's nice. In Summer the air is very much alive. You brought up painting earlier. Something that I wanted to ask - I actually wrote some questions down at work this afternoon… Wow, I didn't… (laughs) Are there any non-musical influences on what you do? Well, as much as they'd influence me as a person. That'll do. I might think this, but I've never acted on it: that it might be interesting to do the aural equivalent of Turner's 'Sunrise', or something. Name names! No, no, nothing I can think of. There are things in art that might correlate. The first painting I saw in a gallery that had any kind of visceral impact on me was Yves Klein. It completely side-stepped any intellectual shit. It had a massive effect on me. Similarly Turner. I don't know much about painting but hitting Turner… I like medieval painting… I'm sure there's an aesthetic but aesthetics are made to be broken! I used to like Gertrude Stein but I'm buggered if I want to read it now. Maybe that's the literary equivalent of the drone, the pulse that never stops, is to read Stein… People are encouraged to say how their music relates to literature or whatever due to lifted track titles or whatever. It can be pretentious… I ask this partly because whenever I see Vibracathedral I think of the Velvets at the Factory (this gets a big laugh from Neil) Because we wear sunglasses and dress in black, huh? (note: they don't) Especially at 'Glitch' (an event where Vibracathedral provided a live soundtrack to an abstract student film). I thought that had to be tongue in cheek! Well, I like the Velvets… No, no, it's not like you sound like them. It's not a bad thing! But it is like Vibracathedral are a soundtrack to something. That's such a cliched thing to say! I know, on reflection its embarrassing to have said that but I don't mean like it's a soundtrack to a film or an approximation of visual art, it's like what I said about meaning… I think music is really advanced. It's the easiest method of communication, it cuts through the shit. Yeah, music is the highest… film is childish. Too much going on. You've got to escape the intellect somehow. Literature ain't gonna do it. Painting maybe. I guess there is visceral painting and sculpture Yeah, it bypasses language. Are you influenced by painting or books or film? Not film. I mean I like film but I don't think it's one of the higher arts. I don't. There are certain ways of thinking in this society that say the more complicated and baroque a piece of art is the better it is - the cleverer it is the better it is. But I don't think that. I hesitate to say that I think the opposite but I probably do! I'm a fan of Miro. In contemporary stuff… (Rob tries to explain why some Damien Hirst stuff is OK but gets confused and boring about it) I guess my gripe is that some of these people aren't crazy and demented about it, they seem so calculating and careerist. I don't care about it. They're just playing a game. Where are the outsiders? It ain't gonna lift you up. It might be better if people like Hirst said: 'never mind about fucking art this is just what I want to show you'. I'd have more respect. Fuck theory. I hope that this thin strand will become so thin that it'll just evaporate out of our culture. Irony on irony isn't going to get us anywhere. To go back to your question there is a link with midwich. It's very untheoretical. It is musical Well, thank you, but it's not like it's intentionally musical it is just - this is what I want to show you. There is a meaning if you want it but it doesn't matter if you don't. I'm just waiting for that culture to die its own little death. I'm an old romantic! I was reading Wordsworth on the train! (a bird starts singing on the roof above the courtyard) Now birdsong is a musical influence on me! More so as I get older. It's gorgeously harmonic and loose and unintentional. (We sit in silence for a couple of minutes and listen to the bird. That's as good a place as any to finish.)