Listing Ships arrived on our shores unannounced earlier this year, making waves with their nautically themed Tortoise-inspired post-rock stylings and all-star cast of musicians. Or perhaps not. True, the original line-up of the band was made up of former members of such bands as Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element and Witches but bassist Stuart Fowkes was more bemused than anything else by the attention this gave the band.
“The funniest thing from the beginning was a couple of people calling us a ‘local supergroup’, given that Jim’s never played a gig before this band, Mike’s last band played live about three times, and none of the bands Dave or I have been in have exactly set the world alight. Still, helped us get a few gigs...”
A few high profile gigs too, one should add. As well as doing the rounds in Oxford and London, this summer saw the band play slots at the Truck and Supernormal Festivals. As guitarist Mike Bingham recalls: “I loved every minute of Truck. It was probably our most energetic performance so far and went down really well. Such a shame it was the last Truck. I hope it re-emerges in another guise next year. Supernormal was an odd one, we didn’t all fit on the hay bale stage so we spread out all our synths on the grass in front.”
Stuart continues: “I absolutely love festivals, and playing them is a treat. Festival audiences are great, they’re all full of cider and enthusiasm so it’s a load more fun than a wet Wednesday at a shitty venue in north London.”
But they do concede that it's not always easy to play for an audience who are expecting a band with vocals. “Most music from the last 60 years or so has relied heavily on vocals so people can find it difficult to accept music without them in,” says Mike. “We have to work a lot harder without vocals though as they tend to carry a lot of musical deadweight which you only notice when they’re absent.”
“The criticism of our band I find the most difficult is ‘you need a singer’, which drives me mad,” Stuart admits. “I can understand people feeling that they personally need a vocal hook to get into a piece of music, but to suggest that instrumental music is somehow incomplete or even irrelevant is missing a trick.”
Drummer David Balch elaborates: “Writing instrumental music gives us space for the songs to be their own stories, rather than having direct exposition through lyrics.”
The band are now readying their next release, The 100 Gun Ship EP, which will expand upon the 3 tracks from their demo, Maiden Voyage, adding 3 new songs and a remix along with 2 new videos and a hand-printed sleeve. Mike says that he is “really pleased with [the new songs] and can’t wait for the launch,” while Stuart hopes that the record will be their “defining opening statement before we move on to recording our even newer stuff.” The mini-album will be the maiden release on their own American Steam Company Recordings
Before we parted ways I asked the band about their feelings on the local music scene, considering their part in it and Stuart's roles as a music writer and an organiser of Audioscope. Mike admitted that while he had “not been blown away by a local band for a while” he still tries to “see as many as [he] can.” Stuart was a bit more optimistic:
“There’s not much instrumental guitar stuff around these days as it’s not quite as in fashion. But the scene in Oxford seems to rise and fall in waves and right now it’s definitely at one of its peaks – there’s loads of interesting stuff and great bands doing things across a load of genres, and seemingly a lot of people up for doing more interesting stuff than just regular gigs. So yeah, it’s in a pretty healthy state right now.”
The 100 Gun Ship EP is released on American Steam Company Recordings on 21 November 2011.
[Originally published in Oxford Music Scene magazine, issue 16]
No comments:
Post a Comment