9
In the studio
Sarah Gregory speaks to Looking Glass Alice
Will Tyrer
How would you define your sound?
Music in boxes can be really reductive. Our music is unbounded. We're colliding the two summers of love. It's about unity. The power of music to bind and to heal.
What have been the major turning points in your career so far?
The first HypnoMagic session we did. It's a fun group with Mark Flunder and Julian House. It was all improvised, and was our first introduction to unbounded music, and working with music as a cut-up. It was amazing. Amongst many instruments, Julian had a Cassette sampler, and Mark, a Marxophone. It was broadcast on Soho Radio. We're going to do it again, but we've written a lot as stimulus songs to input this time.
David Holmes has kept us on our toes since our friend Shola first introduced us to his music. He booked us to perform at his legendary God's Waiting Room by simply announcing the show. He works incredibly hard and is utterly prolific. Those are the best friends and mentors you can ask for. We've found those who create for the sheer thrill of it and just for themselves end up producing the best art and sounds that really best illustrate and question the human condition.
That Belfast night was absolutely legendary. Decius are a force to behold. We caught them again opening for Underground Resistance. True immersive psychedelia.
Playing Deliaphonic was really magical. Again, it was a set produced entirely for the evening. Julian made all the visuals for the event as a whole and just being painted by his inimitable dreamscape made it all the more special. Coventry has become very close to our hearts. We'd thoroughly recommend that people watch the 'These Machines Haven't Finished' doc on YouTube featuring Martin, and how the festival came about.
Marc and Teagan run the brilliant Up! Club in Frankfurt. We've found at home, the UK psych scene has a lot of brown-nosing and a massive call for familiarity in the records played. Frankfurt is about discovery of new psych gems. The crowd is visibly different as well. Healthy gender and age-diversity. It's not bogged down by the insta-friendly orange brigade either. There are goths, alt girls, ravers, and psych freaks. Almost brings to life those brilliant Derek Ridgers photographs of Alice's and The Batcave from the 80s.
Immediately after my fall, there was a tremendous sense of pressure. There were a lot of people shouting in my ears. A lot of talk of losing momentum. We missed out on 100 Club and Moth Club. It was a shame, but I was being fed a lot of shit essentially. Without me, without my health, there is no band. Our promoters were good about it. While I was signed off, JB and Louis from Air got in touch and invited me for coffee and invited us to the Albert Hall. That was a one of the most inspiring, magical nights ever. Pure, blissed-out psychedelia. It was a lesson in patience and perseverance. It's just about good songs. You've got the songs? If you aren't putting on a character, all the songs are a part of you. It will all work out.
David was really good to us too. We caught up in Brighton and he made a comment about us carrying on from where Broadcast left off. Certainly high-praise, somewhat unfair, but it really invigorated our sense of belonging in this journey. We really rate Trish and James as two of the absolute greatest British songwriters ever. Trish Keenan is quoted by Panda Bear as describing the very real connection between hearing music and time-travel. That's an ethic we absolutely are aligned with.
Our musician friend Ben hyped me up saying we were pioneering in redefining what psychedelic music could be. Sometimes we all need that pick-me-up, and I've got a new sense of drive right now. We are producing and I'm singing every single day. The Heavenly family have been really good to us as well. We've done four remixes for them so far this year and we are talking about more.
FAITH. It's all about faith.
How did your spate of remixes come about? What's on the horizon?
James Endeacott has been having us on his wonderful Soho Radio show quite a bit since we started. Whenever we got the call we'd race to edit as many tracks as we could. It'd be things like David Holmes with Ogden's, Wet Leg and the Mary Chain, Holy Fuck, Jim Pepper, Father Yod, The Superimposers.
Carlota Cardana
No one was safe from the electronic scissors.
We got quite a few messages from listeners about particular cuts and know some of them have been bootleged on vinyl for club use. It was flattering. Liam (Gallagher)'s track came out on a Friday, and our remix was out by Sunday night.
Fellow Shindig reader and CLASH founder Robin took a punt on it with a piece and my gosh after that the other articles came, but like a broken telephone. The Virgin Radio one was the best as it suggested Looking Glass Alice were vying for the top spot in the charts. I mean we are. We really are.
It teaches you a bit about the music machine and how it works though. It's a beautiful place to be when you are creating with the radio in mind.
We'd really recommend the brilliant Chemical Brothers book out now on White Rabbit books, 'Paused in Cosmic Reflection.' It truly bridges the magnificence of their psychedelia on a musical pathway through Stockhausen, Revolver, Lothar and The Hand People to Tackhead.
One of the book's homework exercises is to mix Emmanuel Top's acid techno onslaught 'Lobotomie' with Tomorrow Never Knows. This was an absolute live staple at the Chems' early residency at the Heavenly Sunday Social. We played our take on it out for Valentine's day, natch. It turned a lot of heads and was immediately bootlegged. We did try to release on Soundcloud and it was instantly taken down. A couple more false starts and it's stayed up on YouTube. Ed and Tom actually shared it which felt a serious step for us.
So, have you rejected your 60s psych group roots?
Not really. Genesis P. Orridge said all great music is inherently psychedelic.
We believe you don't have to sound like your heroes, but you do have to SEE like them.
Soulwax are the only band I can think of to get Children of The Sun, Fleur De Lys and The Nazz on Radio 1. Music is better without the walls.
We recently heard an established 60s scene DJ on the radio talking about how there hadn't been a youth movement in this country since 1986, and then bemoaning lack of youth at their own events...
We are each responsible for bringing down walls in music, and making music-centric environments more welcoming.
We've not played the same set twice, Looking Glass Alice is a remembered dream. Every time you visit and open that box, the songs themselves change. The cabaret of touring bands doesn't really matter to us.
We are firmly against elitism based on materialism and Record collecting has certainly become incredibly pay-to-play.
We have played a lot with scarcity with our releases. We look after the community who come to our shows. We share links with our core international audiences and that's about it. The initial concept of Spotify is pretty egalitarian. Music available to EVERY kid the world over for FREE. It's a beautiful thing. That said, their CEO is a dope, and we wouldn't be surprised if the recent deadmau5 strike encouraged other artists to reconsider. Accessibility will play a part in our decisions with future releases.
How do you plan to realise your music on the stage?
We're strictly a four-piece band. I sing. A band needs a front. Alfie switches between a multitrack sampler, guitar and synth. Ava plays the MS20, guitar and sings, and Steph plays drums and we've been experimenting with triggers. Every swirl, every tape loop and shimmer is a part of what makes our tracks special and unique. It's a lot more work to make it happen live than a rock band, but it's infinitely more rewarding. We lean on our Hip hop influences in that way. Paten Locke and Edan really opened our ears to just how psychedelic a live show could be. Similarly, Kid Koala, Dan The Automator, Hieroglyphics show how psychedelic a performance can be without dress-code, gratuitous guitar and drum solos, prog, and the general cabaret that stops the average person in the street from otherwise enjoying psychedelic music.
Are there any artists on the scene at the moment who you look up to or feel aligned with?
HAAi. Teneil had a great band project called Dark Bells a few years back that definitely graced Shindig pages. Since, she cut her teeth at Fabric and has become the essential Psychedelic DJ of our time. She has done one live show at EartH. It's truly the psych of the future. Beyond compare. Her vocals are beautiful, her production is quite unlike anyone else. Accompanied by friends on strings and synced visuals, we've not experienced a live performance as immersive.
Down At The Front
Obviously the standard guitar band thing has nostalgia value but the World's moved on.
Have you found other artists/DJs etc to be supportive?
J.B. (Dunckel) has guided us a lot, especially in the early days. We are very privileged in that sense. Jagz Kooner listens to a lot of our mixes for us and gives us advice. There are really good people out there. Our friends Ben and James are both from bands we adore and guide us a lot. David is the voice in the back of our head that keeps us going and going and going. Local friends Julian and Mark are the most incredible mentors as well. They have taught us a lot and always inform our music. Realising that our heroes are so on the pulse with new music, new movements and styles really educated us on the the importance of supporting the next artists coming through as well.
What's the plan with this recording? What releases can we look forward to?
We've got a couple of collaborations on a record Iraina Mancini is working on. My god is it going to be something. It's been a lovely process. We're all very 'music first' which has made it particularly fast and a lot of fun. We threw nearly 50 songs her way, and my gosh, she went through everything. It was a bit like crate-digging, picking the grooves and ideas that connected the most. We supplied instrumentals of those parts and then she wrote over the top. It was beautiful to hear these new visions that way. Iraina's sets and her Soho show are always laden with gold. She's definitely on a Wizzz!!! buzz at the minute and you can hear it in the material. Really excited to hear where she turns next. It'll be a great record.
Is there any equipment that defines your sound?
This project was always more about connection for us than tools. Producers can get a little bit crusty and set in their ways about particular equipment. Getting to know what you have is infinitely more valuable than some 'secret weapon'.
That said the Korg MS-20 synth really does end up on everything we touch. It's a real workhorse. Though it's a 70s instrument there are a lot of zany characteristics that make it perfect for capturing those more wild 60s sound effects like the records we love like Kiriae Crucible, Graf Zepplin and United States of America.
We read about Broadcast using an Octave Cat a lot. That inspired us to get a cheap copy that we use a lot. It's a really strange synthesizer. Whereas with a Moog or a Korg, or most synthesizers in general you sort of read them left to right. They are mostly designed to be understandable and have controls in places more useful to perform with. Instead, this instrument has a focus on controls that interact with each other. It can make it quite difficult to get more standard sounds but if you go in without expectations, just letting it breathe and relinquish control to the space-ship, it invariably gives you quite unique results, quite 60s West Coast Buchla-like sounds.
From The Hypnotic Eye days Alfie has hung onto a few interesting bits. He has a 60s Grampian Reverb. Back when he was at Metropolis Studios, it lived in Tom Elmhirst's room and found it's way onto some of the last Amy Winehouse record and the Mark Ronson produced Black Lips record.
We have an original Space Echo too, but again, we work as much as possible through the computer, trusting our ears and steering the sound as quickly and methodically as possible to maintain a true sense of the the bigger picture of the music and not get lost in the rabbit holes.
Clare Marie Bailey
How come you went back to your first recordings with recent release First Flights?
A couple of years ago, Alfie and I fell into a habit of writing music together as a form of entertainment for ourselves. It became a union we'd look forward to each day, emulating records we loved, using the most minimal equipment, a £15 mic, a 2012 Dell laptop and a Line 6 pod for everything. When the music made us laugh or smile it was complete. Our friend Justin heard our version of Dan Nix & The Teen Sound's 'I Know', and we agreed its release as a playable vinyl postcard for his new imprint. This connected us to Shindig and Record Collector and the underbelly of recreational recreators. It ultimately turned us onto lo-fi magicians like The Pastels, The Television Personalities, Young Marble Giants, Beat Happening, The Clean and Marine Girls... All-whom seemed to forge the gap between the toytown first wave psychedelia and Broadcast, all present as an underlying soundtrack to our time. We understood our jangly beginnings have their own imperfect charm. So we mastered the first album from the start of our Sonic Adventure. Rather than rewrite the story, we've left a lot of the strangeness unchanged, from the oddly balanced drums to the scratchy guitars. It's a naive homemade ride that's taken on its own life and that dances between first-wave 60s popsike and inadvertently a lot of the magical DIY scene.
Was everything for First Flights recorded here in Hertford?
All except for the drums, we work a lot with a friend in Boston who sends us the multi-tracks and we edit them into our sessions and go from there. Some of the birdsong and string samples are from vinyl recordings. We find it quite a magical place to work. It's an old building from the 1600s. We have really understanding and patient neighbours. Working in a wooden building is always nice. We became friends with Mark Daniels from the Acid Jazz group Marden Hill. It turned out he used to live here and he got into producing Trip Hop from this room too. There must be something psychedelic in the woodworm.
Sarah MacQueen
So what's Next?
When you work on so much music, you really cut your teeth on the production side. First Flights came together really quite quickly. We took a fair bit of time after the fact to learn a bit more about production and challenge ourselves. As a consequence, we've ended up with an astounding amount of complete, but unmixed songs . The remixes alone we've done just this year so far include three for Temples, Halo Maud, Gruff Rhys, The Horrors, Liam Gallagher/John Squire, Picture This, and Jenny Lewis. It's arguably this work that's given credence to ourselves. Now we know we are there. We're READY.
For a lot of bands, it's a case of pick the fan favourites, or the 'better' songs and that's the record. I think that's a fast way of ending up with longform with less meaning.
We grew up with records with cohesion and still really feel a connection to that, even though online is steering the market more towards singles. We're juggling about 50 songs at the moment.
We've considered a bit of an onslaught of regular singles starting from September.
We've also grouped a lot of the material into different vibes:
- The first collection of thirteen songs that will become are first general release album, is how our sound has developed on the stage and modernised over the past couple of years. It's a deeply psychedelic pop album that teases through Trip-Hop and is our attempt at remixing ourselves so to speak. With First Flights flown, nothing is sacred and we can really be ruthless.
- The next set of thirteen is what our fans have come to expect from us. It reeks of colliding the two summers of love. It is strewn with future-pop, is hugely indebted to The Chemical Brothers uniting flavours of acid-Techno, Motorik-beats, and inspirations from Vitalic to Silver Apples, via William Orbit Madonna.
- The third collection is a meagre ten originals so far. It harks back to the Sonic Boom-produced MGMT record, Congratulations. We have a bunch of tunes that are just crying for that Balearic meets Alan Vega heavy-swung gothic rhythm that ensnares you on the dancefloor at God's Waiting Room. It's VERY 1AM-3AM. There's lairy peaks and abrasion in there that will leave you with a hangover.
- For HypnoMagic, we put together the songs written especially for Deliaphonic with our more library-inspired and dream-pop affairs. We've also taken a stack of records we love to thieve from. The OG Psych list includes: Bruno Leys, Optical Sound, Ron Wray Light Show, Why Don't You Smile Now, Mazy, Lovefingers, Fantastic Zoo, Fifty Foot Hose. The grooves list is the more expected Morricone and Gainsbourg vibe, and also the Swedish singer Doris. We have an electronic pioneers list tracklist too with John Jacques Perry, Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan, and Ron Geesin for example. We'll liberally collage parts and ideas into new compositions. Then as we write and record over the top gradually abandon the underlying samples and puzzle pieces. The instant process partnered with collaboration in this way really brings the fun out. We can't wait.
Bruce Grove
Writing is part of our life-blood and recently we've started collaborating with some new friends. Ava, a singer in her own right plays guitar and MS20, and Steph is a brilliant drummer who many will know from Yassassin, TTRRUUCES and Sidney Jones. We've all been a bit united by a love of Ladytron. It's already having a healthy effect on our plans. The Hypnotic Eye supported Pop Levi when Ladytron were the backing band and Daniel Hunt DJed at a show we played last year. There's something so special about what they created. Writing such timeless iconic electro pop in an era when synths and drum machines were being thrown out. Idiosyncratic Icons. It's been great to revisit their music and analyse deeply what it is that makes the single such earworms. Brilliant words.