INTERVIEW WITH SOUVARIS

Great name... Intelligent, attractive and fascinating music.They're not simply another band doing what is commonly known these days as instrumental postrock.They're really special.Trust me.

(John Simson -JS- and David Stockwell -DS-, members of the band answer intelligently my stupid questions)

1.Would you give us a short bio of Souvaris? Tell us who you are and what has happened with the band until now.
JS: Souvaris is:
Aaron Doyle - Drums
Dan Layton - Guitars, Noise, Keyboards
John Simson - Keyboards, Bass, Guitars
David Stockwell - Guitars, Noise
Ian Whitehead - Bass, Guitars

We live in Nottingham, Coventry and close to London. We've been playing together with various line-ups since 2001. We've gone through productive stages, we've had dry patches; we've had hiatuses, we've lost members and recruited new ones. We've recorded one album, released on Bearos in December 2004 (but recorded about 16 months prior to this), a 12" ep, released on Telesphere Recordings in late 2002, and a split 7" with the Workhouse, released on Awkward Silence. In the next month or two a CD ep, Matador of Shame, will be released in Japan; it's all our vinyl stuff collected on one CD. The best thing we ever did was go and play in continental Europe. The worst thing we ever did was.... hmmm..... play on bills with nu-metal bands, probably. But even that was fun.

2.How would you describe your music to someone who hasn't heard it? What do you think you sound like?

DS: "Stars of the Lid go heavy metal" and "erudite instrumental rock" are the two best descriptions other people have said to us after shows in 2004. "We sound like Mogwai" is what I inevitably end up saying to those uneducated in the ways of instrumental rock music…

3.What does "post-rock" mean to you?

DS: Not much. Ian our bassist uses it to describe any instrumental music created by musicians utilising guitar/bass and a 'rock' drum kit. This means he counts 'Arpeggiator' by Fugazi in the same bracket as "Hell0)))Ween" by Sunn 0))), and "Belted Sweater" by Don Caballero in the same bracket as "Be Little With Me" by Stars of the Lid. Or a thirty second Harry Pussy song/aural rape is lumped in with 25 minutes of free-improvising with sticks and bark by Thuja. Clearly (as is the case with any genre identifier), it's a wholly inadequate term that becomes vaguer by the year. With that in mind, it has become something of a pejorative term within our ranks - usually used when trying to describe how pitifully dull the latest bunch of Mogwai/GY!BE copyists that we've had the misfortune of hearing are.

4.I think that you could be compared to bands such Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky, GSYBE, etc. What are your thoughts on this?

DS: The Explosions comparisons tickle me pink, as only one song on the album was written after anyone else other than me had heard them, and that was 'A Summer Spent Observing Green Leaves' - which I'm fairly confident sounds fuck-all like EITS. That said, it's an honour to be mentioned in the same breath as such a lovely bunch of gentlemen, and we do like their music a lot. It's quite funny too, because we've talked about song-writing processes with them, and their approach to creating music comes from almost the exact opposite point from ours.
The other bands you mention hold little or no interest to me personally - none of them have done anything I've found remotely interesting since the turn of the millennium (well, actually I'm not sure Sigur Ros have done anything that's managed to hold my attention), though I'm sure other members of the band would disagree. We like to argue about this kind of thing a lot.
But at the end of the day, who are we to say who we should be compared to? We are just the music makers (and the dreamers of dreams). It's the poor souls who get our "music" inflicted upon them who have to make the value judgements, and they can couch our music in whatever terms they like.

5.What does it mean to be "independent" these days? What motivates people to make "rock music" today?

JS: I guess independence is to the individual or band however much they value it. We feel a strong need to be in control of pretty much every element of the band. There's the noble side of it: we want to give people a good deal when they buy our releases; we want to support alternative arts communities because they make what we love possible; we want to communicate with people, be close to and honest with our audience (though that's probably just because we're lonely). There's the less pretty side of it: we're control freaks, obsessives and clumsy with trust.

Everyone has their own motivations for making art or artefacts, and as long as those motivations are gratified by what you do and are compatible with your sense of morality, then I suppose you'll feel as independent as you need or want to. Given that we're liberal leftist-types, we have our motivations for avoiding the corporate music industry. You can "do rock" any which way you like. The best motivation for doing it is wanting to for its own sake. All other motivations are secondary.

6.What are the best ways for an independent band to gain exposure to a crowd that cares? Do you have any particular policies on how to get it?

JS: Collectives are the way forward. The only way independent music can survive is through people's good will and cooperation. The internet is a wonderful tool as well; mp3s, webzines, forums have all helped us gain exposure, gotten us gigs. I'd say the best thing for an independent band wanting to gain exposure to do would be get online, make a site, record some mp3s, search for collectives, webzines, internet radio stations, sympathetic people. Be friendly, helpful, willing to scratch a back or put yourself out, and you'll get along just fine.

7.What kind of role has the internet regarding music?

JS: A very important one. To make an obvious, dad-style statement, it's amazing the things that exist now that could never have ten years ago. Internet radio stations, forums, p2p file sharing, mp3s, webzines, collectives, mailing lists are all more than a little useful to us and our friends. That we're releasing an ep in Japan, we sell records in the US, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, Mexico and Indonesia is all thanks to the net. I know it's a far from perfect organ - it's hardly free from the market dynamics that commidify everything else - but I couldn't give a shit if you gave me a colostomy bag, there's room enough for us arty types.

8.Have you been really inspired/influenced by anyone?

JS: Too many people to mention. But I'll probably end up trying anyway. For me, if I like art, I just do find it inspirational. It makes me want to create. I can never work out if that's some sort-of noble, giving, humanitarian sentiment evoked in me, or just an ego trip. Oh well.
I suppose more specifically, bands that I've heard in the last ten years and been blown away by would be, in rough chronological order: Nirvana, Aphex Twin, Mogwai, GY!BE, Slint, Grandaddy, Yo La Tengo, Palace, Boards of Canada, The Dirty Three, Smog, The For Carnation, Shellac, Explosions in the Sky, Stars of the Lid, Steve Reich, Hella, Dilute, Captain Beefheart, Bedhead, Lungfish. There's hundreds more bands I love and listen to obsessively, across a wide range of genres and eras, and I'd be lying to say that I don't steal their ideas. There are always ways to subtly rip someone off.

9.Is there any kind of "concept" behind your records?

JS: This is a really difficult question to answer. There are certainly often concepts behind the songs, albeit pretty rudimentary ones. A way of writing which we seem to have stumbled across is to come up with an abstract idea, just a rhythm perhaps, or a sketch of the dynamic development of a piece, and then explore that very, very thoroughly. There's a couple of examples of this on the album; with Art as Survival... we pretty much just wanted to strip down to ludicrous minimalism for a long time, indulge ourselves completely in one chord and one rhythm, so we experimented with how to execute that; with A Summer spent... we'd got this bloodthirsty desire to work in a very obscure time sequence, yet create something that still flowed and had forward energy.

As for concepts behind entire records, I don't think that for us, they really exist other than that they were written at a certain time and have emotions specific to that time invested in them. All I mean to say is that I felt nothing at all, for example, is very much about the the times we were having and the relationship we had with the environment we were living in when we wrote it, but in a way which is quite obscure, or at least very personal to us.

10.Is the visual element (in record's packaging, in live performances, etc) important to you?

JS: We all fancy ourselves as learned aesthetes. Of course, what this really equates to is an arrogant belief that we're right. But when it's good, I love album artwork. I love stuff. Books, films, comics, drawings, paintings, any unusual artefact. I buy second-hand books just because I like their covers, old records simply because they're entirely in Russian and the letters please me. We really wanted the artwork for our album to be pretty special, and I think it is (entirely thanks to the artist, John Porcellino). I'm really happy with and proud of it.
As for live performances, we don't usually have the time or the scope to use visual projections. On a personal level, I generally don't find them all that interesting when a band uses them. In terms of our performance, I think we're very conscious of the fact that an instrumental (or indeed, any) band can appear very lifeless, dull, uninteresting on stage. We like to move about a bit and have a dance. We've all got rhythm, and some damn good dance moves too. We have a lot of fun onstage, and I think if that's expressed visually as well as sonically then the audience will take more from the music.

11.What are your views about independent labels/and the music industry in general? How do you see the future of music?

DS: I could give a shit about the music industry. For the people I know of who manage to make a living from making music, I am happy for them. For the independent labels who are always struggling in an increasingly monopolised market, I feel sorry for them. But other than that, it means virtually nothing. I personally prefer to have nothing to do with it. I buy about 95% of my music direct from the labels or bands, pay little attention to media outlets outside of fanzines by enthusiasts. I prefer gigs put on by people who love the bands, not people who want to make money by overcharging on the door - purely because the atmosphere is friendlier.

12.How does John Peel's death affect the British music scene? What decent media is left in the UK?

DS: At the time of writing, the BBC have just announced that a rotating cast of 3 DJs will be doing John's show in the same format from now on, but it's pretty hard not to be sceptical. There's a few magazines styled like glossy fanzines that can be worth dipping into: Plan B, Artrocker, and Loose Lips all get the thumbs up from friends of mine. The Wire always has the odd interesting article and cover CD too.

13.How did you get in touch with the labels that have released your stuff?

JS: They came to us, we got lucky. As for journalists, promoters, collectives, radio stations, we devote a massive amount of time to contacting them and establishing a relationship which helps both them and us. The only way indie music can survive is through goodwill and a bit of selflessness, things which we have certainly been on the receiving end of, and so try to display a little of ourselves. If anyone reading this is looking for help getting in touch with labels, promoters or radio stations, just drop us an email (givemeyourloving@souvaris.com) and I'll get back to you.... in six month's time, sucker! Sorry, I joke, but I'm kinda useless in that way.

14.Tell us a little bit about the process of writing songs.

JS: Oh dear. It's best described as ridiculous and obsessive. Someone comes up with an idea - a drumbeat, a riff, a concept - then fiddles around with it privately for a while, until it's achieved some kind of communicable form. He then introduces it to the rest of the band, and gets in a sulk whilst it takes them a few weeks to get their head round it. Riffs and rhythms change and develop; someone suggests another section; someone's got one idea and another person has another, and we think they should be in the same song, but we can't quite work out how. After about 3 months we'll have a rough sketch of the song. We then play it live a few times, see if that goes ok; inevitably we find we're unhappy with aspects of it, so we make a few key structural changes, abandon a section or add another. Then comes the really dull part where we start picking apart the relationship between each melody, whether a snare drum should hit on that beat or that beat, whether that break should be for a specific length of time or just an abstract stretch. About a year on from when one of us first had the idea lying in bed at night, it might be finished. Of course, we'll make further changes once we get in the studio. It's a process that is in turn exciting , stupefyingly dull and overly analytic. But it's the only way we know how to work.

15.Do you feel the need to express yourselves with long songs? Why is that?

JS: The length of the songs, that was something that just came naturally. We never sat down and said, "hey, let's make immense, flabby, bloated pieces of music that go on forever!". I'm not exactly sure why we do it, but I would guess that it's a combination of the following factors: we're too clumsy to express ourselves succinctly; we become like little kids when we're writing and just pack things in willy-nilly. It just seems so much fun to make these pompous beasts. Also, we listen to way too many other bands who aren't shy to write a song of well over 10 minutes; we just like long songs. We do write short songs for solo projects/other bands, don't worry.

16.Obviously I'm a fan of your music as a whole but if I had to choose some of your best qualities, I would say: sound textures and the way you handle intensity. What do you think?

JS: This is a horrible question to answer. Like everyone else in the band, I'm really no good at talking about the things I do in positive terms. We feel much more comfortable hiding behind a veneer of self-doubt and cynicism. Of course the truth is that we all love being in the band and are proud of what we make, otherwise we wouldn't be in it. My personal favourite thing is that we never let our decidedly average musicianship get in the way of trying to pull off enormously ambitious things. We like to take risks and evolve.

17.Song titles. Where do you get them?

JS: We steal them from books, magazines, spiritualist websites, dictionaries, philosophy text books, conceptual frameworks and bad translations, create them through moments of divine inspiration, sleep deprivation or a pathological propensity for self-analysis, or stumble across them thanks to alcohol or misheard phrases (our hearing's not so good).

18.How different is playing live to studio recording? Which do you prefer?

JS: So far, we've only really operated as a "live" band; all the songs we've written were at heart designed for live performance, and studio recordings have basically been live recordings, with a very minimal amount of overdubbing (with the notable exception of Art as Survival, which is awash with overdubs and I suppose constitutes the only "studio" song we've done so far). But that's great for us - we love the energy of live performance, and when we recorded I felt nothing at all, our priority was to capture that energy.

We've mainly had great experiences in the studio, bar one time that was a complete disaster and culminated in Ian vomiting all over himself due to illness/over-tiredness/insanity. Maybe we'll experiment more with less live-orientated tracks on the next record, but it's difficult to foresee because to create through live performance remains our prerogative - we only manage to practise once a week and, of course, we all have jobs, and it's not like a few hours a week in a basement constitutes the time or the place to investigate the subtleties of studio manipulation.

19.Do you like to improvise when performing live?

JS: Despite the fact that our songs are usually 15 or 20 minutes long, they're typically rigorously structured. The nature of many of their parts give little room to improvisation. However, there are some opportunities to experiment, some segments which are more free, and the more we play together the closer we get to lending our hands to a bit of free jazz. We all love abstract music done well. I think (hope) there'll be a little more chaos and stupidity hanging around when we're finished with the new set of songs we're writing.

20.What's your local scene in Nottingham like ? Is it a musically active city (with fanzines, venues, labels, etc)? Could you recommend some bands?

DS: Nottingham is a ridiculously populated place for local musicians and bands, especially considering it's got a population of a scant 350,000. Despite the fact that there are few half-decent venues for local artists to perform that are not owned by an entertainment monopoly with dubious links to shady organisations, somehow there continues to be a fantastic community of music-lovers. Both Fire Records and Gringo Records are run from bedrooms just around the corner from us. Rich who does Seren Records is a beautiful man that you always bump into when either party is inebriated. Our friend Andrew Doig started up his own 3" CDR label Olwyn Plant here on a whim, though he has since departed for the grimier surroundings of London. There are occasional accusations of a clique-infested "scene" in Nottingham, but the simple fact is that it's just a collection of friends variously united along different strands by music tastes. There is also a huge 'scene' of metal and goth music that I personally know next to nothing about in this city, but I'm sure has a similar community feel. Plus, all kinds of shitty local bands are always playing The Old Angel and Junktion7, which may be pretty rubbish in their attitude to sound (and occasionally poor DIY promoters), but represent fantastic opportunities for anyone looking to perform in front of a crowd for the first time. Off the top of my head, this is a list of bands and artists that we are lucky enough to be good friends with, or know from too many drunken encounters/random house parties/appropriately shambolic gigs:
Lords
Spin Spin the Dogs
Wolves (of Greece!)
Model Fighter
Designer Babies
Bury & Disinter
Great Bear
MusicForOne (relocated to London as of the new year, unfortunately)
Economy of Motion
The Murder of Rosa Luxembourg
The Death of Love (half Nottingham, half London-based now)
Last of the Real Hardmen
Shooting Victor Francis
Savoy Grand
The Chemistry Experiment
The Nordic Mile
Oh, and those Seachange fellas who recently did an album on Matador are fine chaps too.

21.I love to talk about music. So - what's on your stereo right now? What kind of bands/artists do you like at the moment? What were the last records you bought? Is there any other stuff that you like musically apart from "rock"?

DS: Hala Strana - Fielding. Steven R. Smith of Jewelled Antler/Thuja gathers lots of "ethnic" instruments and plays a bunch of traditional Eastern European folk songs and his own compositions, with the occasional helping hand from various cohorts. The 13-minute bonus track on the 2CD repress is a beauty.
Pumice - Raft. One fairly mad guy and his vision for what folk music should b,: as seen through a broken kaleidoscope. Genius or just unhinged; I'm still not sure.
Peter Wright - Distant Bombs reissue. Supposedly his best album of hazy guitar-based drones, though some of the uneasy textures make me feel queasy. I prefer his more recent work.
Pelt - Ayahuasca. Three men, a lot of gorgeous sounding instruments played, bowed, scratched and plucked for a very long time indeed.
Vibracathedral Orchestra - Pontiac Lady. Demi-legendary free-improvising motherfuckers from Leeds finally put something out without too much editing down of their ecstatic drone mindfucks: 3CDRs in a natty box thingy to commemorate their US tour.
Sunroof! - Delicate Autobahn Under Construction 2CD reissue. Matthew Bower of Skullflower (plus a million others) does it mainly solo, and as chilled out as he'll ever get with his shrill crackling and shimmering noise/feedback. Does my head in half the time if I listen to it all the way though. Which is most definitely the point.
James Blackshaw - Lost Prayers and Motionless Dances. One young man with some very dexterous fingers, a twelve-string guitar, and an extremely healthy enthusiasm for John Fahey and Robbie Basho.
The Skaters - Rippling Whispers. It's a phrase I find myself employing in increasingly regular fashion, but this may well be the epitome of what appears to be a burgeoning sub-genre in my piles of records: Really Fucked Up Shit. Really pretty amazing stuff too though.
Hush Arbors - Under Bent Limb Trees. Wonderfully mournful desolate folk, as played by a man alone in a bare field whilst gales howl around him.
The Lost Domain - Sailor, Home From The Sea. Really great minimalist music
V/A - Klang Spectrum 2 (Compilation of underground music from Madison, Wisconsin)
Davenport - Push 'Em Back. Davenport were the most exciting band I heard in 2004. Ridiculously prolific loose group of assorted lo-fi improvisers gathering in various spaces to perform a brand new ritual every time they play.
JS: I can only listen to a few records at a time, and when I find ones I like, I listen to them again and again and again. Recently, they've been Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender, Lungfish - Love is Love, The Van Pelt - Sultans of Sentiment, Charlie Parr - King Earl, anything by Will Oldham/Smog/Songs:Ohia, Cass McCombs, Birchville Cat Motel, Charley Patton, Skip James, Bukka White, old blues recordings in general and the new Snoop Dogg single. I've been lucky enough to hear an unmastered version of the MusicForOne album, and I can tell you it's pretty special.

22.Do you feel that your sound is evolving/stuff is improving every day? What do you think will be your natural evolution as a band?

JS: We're happy right now. New ideas seem to be coming together, and we're moving away from ideas previously exhausted with growing confidence. So yeah, we do think stuff is improving and we're getting better at playing together, which is a great feeling.

At the moment we've got about 90 minutes of music to attend to, several songs in various states, from the just forming to the very very nearly finished. Yes, they are still very long, most of them. If I had to pinpoint the ways in which what we're doing now is different to what we've done before, I guess I'd say that the new stuff is very rhythmic, often quite taut - after 4 years we've finally worked out how to play tightly and use abrupt silences - and more bass driven, a bit stupider and happier. We're drawing from a wider pool on influences, definitely. It all seems quite natural as well, which is really exciting. I'm hesitant to add any more about where we're headed for, but I'm quietly optimistic.

23.You're releasing an EP called "Matador of Shame" on a Japanese label - tell us about it. Will it include new stuff from the band?

DS: No new stuff this time around. Rather, it's an opportunity for those without turntables to listen to our previously vinyl-only releases. Probably not the cleverest idea considering that there's still 500 copies of our début 12" under a bed somewhere in London, but fuck it: it's an opportunity to draw a line and move on to newer pastures, as well as a further advert for the genius photographic skills of David Moult.

24.Finally, what are your upcoming plans?

DS: Practise, practise, practise. Despair. Then practise some more. We're taking a sabbatical from gigs for a while to concentrate on writing and finishing off new material until Easter or so. Hopefully, we might get around to getting in a studio before the end of the year, though we're not counting on it (unless we get that much-touted 70-minute version of Art as Survival/Survival as Art organised). We also would like to return to Europe to play some more shows, and maybe even organise some kind of coherent UK tour, though these are little more than pipe dreams at the moment. More realistic is the odd gig here and there, preferably in the company of bands we like and admire (note to self: remember to hassle The Shipping News about when they are gracing our shores).

Souvaris discography: Just check question #1.

Fernando Pérez Herrero