SPACE CADETS

THE JOHN DOE'S AND GENETIX UK LIVE AT THE STARMS

An anonymous memebr of the
audience, Mr David Boyes

26 : 06 : 15

A balmy, hot day in Whitby, and no sign of the evening being any cooler. At nine o'clock Mr Corner and I walked down Station Avenue, cut across Stakesby Road and through the trees (which felt like a tropical rain forest, with birds singing and wood pigeons hooting. A monkey swinging through the branches wouldn't have been too much of a shock) to The Stakesby Arms.

Last time I was at a gig there the little back room the bands played in was a sweatbox and it was necessary to keep coming out into the main bar for fresh air. There was football on the telly that night, so missing the odd song wasn't too much of a chore. It gave me a chance to keep up to date with the score.

On this occasion there was some sort of function on in the back room, possibly a wedding do, so the gig took place in the second bar. It was like playing in someone's living room. The drummers sat in the frame of the fire place and behind the amps was a cabinet of  posh glasses, which were in danger of shattering if the correct note was hit and sustained for long enough. Emily out of Genetix UK got closest.

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I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM HERE

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Swirling with the John Doe's

It was the first time I'd seen the new line up of The John Doe's with Jason on bass and Dave Corner on guitar. They kicked off with Space Cadets and the difference was immediately apparent. The sound has a lot more depth to it and the songs are countoured with dynamics  and layers. Previously the band were pretty heavy, but now some of the headlong onslaught has been lost and in its place is an allegiance to the songs.

Dave wrings some interesting sounds from his guitar and Jason adds a fluidity to the basslines that was never there before. At times there is a surprising tenderness in the lyrics, as in White Feathers or You are my Everything. Rob has become much more comfortable front of stage and no longer feels the need to bury the vocals in swathes of reverb. Again this is to the advantage of the song delivery and vocal clarity. He also has a big new red van.

At one point Alan played a very mechanical, almost drum machine beat, but I can't recall the title of the song. That bit stood out for me. Thankfully it never got as hot as it might have done, and he kept his shirt on. Another innovation.

Jason, Rob, Alan and Dave ( Photo: Chris Corner )

The space was perhaps not the best for PA performance. The Starm's small back room, which is
enclosed and perfectly rectangular in shape, probably contains the sound far more consistently. In contrast the bar room had lots of places for the sound to escape from, The PA itself included a very thin pair of speakers. They looked like two blackboards. As Chris pointed out later, almost, but not quite, as weird as the totem pole shaped PA speakers Mark Liddell used in The Buck once.

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WATCH JOEL SHAKE IT

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Emily ( Photo: Chris Corner )

I am such a poor photographer, maybe because I don't read the instruction manuals beyond the macro lens bit so I can take pictures of sea anemones and barnacles, that I spent a lot of time trying to catch Genetix UK in full flow, but failed miserably. They were however great, although hampered a bit by what we professional music technology people call microphone quietness, although Emily's was louder. Either that or she belts it out good style.

What I love about this band is that each song is a little self contained gem of energetic joy. Even when they're angry and accusative they never become self-pitying or leaden. The bass sound was a huge rasping foundation that held the structure together. Genetix UK were maybe not as wound up and cross as they were before their performance in The Wellington on April 26th.

On that occasion the demands of ridiculous goths fostered a frustration that needed releasing. Genetix UK never disappoint, but maybe we should employ a drippy goth to whine on a bit about a disco he's doing just to get Keeley, Steve , Emily and Rachael spitting feathers up before they go on?

Emily, Steve, Keeley and Rachael ( Photo: Chris Corner )

After standing outside and talking about old times whilst amps were packed into vans, we set off home. Just off Stakesby Road there was a notice made up of seperate bits of paper very kindly asking people not to park in front of it. Describing it doesn't do it justice, so here's a photo.

In Whitby the art never stops!

Photo: Chris Corner

IRON HENRY

Iron Henry is an album released in 2007 concerning Whitby Museum. It's as much about the cabinets as the exhibits within, and it captures that feeling of being surrounded by strange and ancient artifacts. It has the gleam of polished brass and the ornate fuctionality of victorian invention. It contains objects of arcane folklore that have spells and legends woven through them.

It was Gareth S. Brown's first solo release since leaving the band Hood, and I asked him about the origins of this extraordinary album...

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Gareth S. Brown: I'd had other solo releases doing noise stuff before Hood split up. I'd been doing this project for a few years before the split though, so I always thought of it as more of a side project.

Popwatch: Is Hood officially no more, or is it just temporarily inactive?

GSB: I think it's technically still a hiatus with Hood, although I can't imagine in a million years that we'll ever do anything together again. Most of us are still close (in fact I'm going to Chris Adams' stag do this very evening) but we have very different lives now.

PW: Are you sometimes involved with The Declining Winter?

GSB: That's right. I sort of occupy a 'general utility man' role for Richard Adams' musical endeavours. I play in Memory Drawings too, which is his other thing with American dulicmer player Joel. I'm occasionally roped in to play on recordings but by and large it's a question of helping to make those things work in a live context. 

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CABINETS AND TOYS

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PW: Did you first visit Whitby Museum as a child, because the memories in the music seem very vivid?

GSB: I did, but I actually have very few memories of it from childhood. I grew up just outside Leeds, so Whitby was often the first choice for trips to the seaside. As an adult I started going back over reasonably regularly and when I 'rediscovered' the museum I wasn't even sure I'd ever been there before, until I went in and was hit with that sense of familiarity. I can now picture myself there as a child, but it's one of those spaces that brings that sort of child-like wonder out, so it's possible some of my memories are products of my imagination.

PW: I think the sense of wonder is apparent in Iron Henry. Some of the instruments even sound like toys. Little bells etc.

GSB: Yeah. That's partly because I have a real love of toy instruments. I had quite a few as a child and definitely used to spend a lot of quality time with the pots and pans in the kitchen. I think there's something about the lack of range or the lack of options with toy instruments that helps to bring out more creative solutions - a river flows fastest at its narrowest point etc.Partly though, I must admit, it's a pragmattic response to the fact that sythesised or sampled versions of toy instruments tend to sound way better than the aproximaitons of 'proper' instruments do.

PW: Yes. I think that sadly a lot of musicians lose that sense of playfulness and become kind of wedded to a mature mindset.The tunes reference the cabinets in the museum specifically don't they? I remember the one with the coral in. I'm from Sheffield and I loved Whitby as a kid, particularly the rocks, the rockpools and the museum.

There's a track about the Sea Bishop, for instance. What a strange object that is?

GSB: Yeah. Some of them reference actual exhibits at the museum and some of them are imagined exhibits. So, for example, I don't recall there being any 'Frozen Charlottes' there (which, in case you didn't know are little dolls people used to put in christmas puddings), but the Sea Bishop, The Tempest Prognosticator, and the Hand of Glory are all jewels in Whitby Museum's crown.

Yes, the sea bishop is very strange isn't it? I've read of examples in other collections too. I just love the idea of a conspiracy of pranking sailors bringing these things back to shore. Of course it's difficult to say whether they were actually ever received as genuine or whether it was a joke everyone was in on.

PW: It's like the snake's heads they used to carve on ammonites to sell to hapless visitors, claiming them to be fossilized snakes.

GSB: I suppose that one has a whole local myth around it doesn't it? Isn't there a story about St Hilda hurling snakes off the cliff? Seems totally unreasonable, but I imagine she would have been under a lot of stress?

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HENRY AND THE FROG PRINCE

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PW:I wanted to ask you who the Iron Henry in question is? Is it the servant from the Grimm's fairy tale of The Frog Prince?

GSB: That's right. I'm struggling to remember what the specific significance was, or even if there was one. I enjoy the incongruousness of the character in connection to the rest of the fairy tale though. Obviously in most retellings Iron Henry is entirely absent. If you read the Grimm version it sort of seems like it's probably an amalgamation of two entirely separate folk tales.

PW: From what I've read, he had iron bands round his heart. Not a medical treatment approved of these days.

'The next morning a splendid coach arrived drawn by eight horses with feathers and glistening gold harnesses. The prince’s Faithful Henry accompanied them. He had been so distressed when he had learned his master had been turned into a frog that he had ordered three iron bands to be wrapped around his heart to keep it from bursting from grief.'  From The Frog Prince by The Brothers Grimm.

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AUTOMATONS AND GLASS

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PW: The composition is a bit like systems music, layers of repeated motifs. This makes it sound dually modern and yet also like an automaton's playing sometimes. I really like that approach.

GSB: I'm very drawn to that approach too. Often when I performed that stuff and other things from the same project live I'd get people telling me (not in an unkind way), how much it would be improved by being played by some sort of chamber ensemble, but that mechanical aspect, the idea of setting something off going and then just leaving it, and adding more stuff on the top that you can also just set off and leave, was always really central for me. Again there's a clear link with toy instruments. The whole project was quite consciously influenced by things like Reich and early Glass.

PW: Audiences tend to have a band that plays every note in real time mentality fixed as a default setting I think, but making the mechanical repetition obvious is part of Iron Henry's charm. The way it sounds like a machine, a machine from the age of the Tempest Prognosticator.

GSB: That's very kind of you. It's a funny balance with the live/non-live thing. On the one hand I think you're right that the default setting is the band that plays every note. On the other hand, the norm for maybe more dance-based electronic projects is still the laptop set, and often with very little of a live aspect to it.

I kind of felt like I was stuck in a bit of a grey zone between the two, where people would perhaps associate me more closely with the former whilst I had a technical set-up more closely associated with the latter. I would tend to play sets that were half pre-recorded, but with stuff played live over the top. I'm not sure anyone (including me) was ever truly satisfied with it.

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TAPE AND TREES

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GSB: I've been discussing the possibility of releasing the majority of my unreleased recordings with a cassette label, so we'll see where that goes.

PW: Sounds very interesting, except I don't have a cassette player. Arse! I should get one. lots of good stuff gets released on that format these days.

GSB: Yeah, I'm slightly worried that cassettes are only for hipsters nowadays, but it's true that there's a lot of good stuff coming out. I'm pretty free and easy with CDRs and MP3s though, and it's hard to make a case that someone without a cassette player not buying a cassette is a missed sale. Maybe the thing to do would be to release a tape with a download code.

PW: I remember the culture of passing tapes around in Whitby in the 80s. Local bands you could play in the car, until the tape all got chewed up and you had to hang it from a tree. Remember all that tape hanging from branches?

GSB: I was pretty immersed in the noise and improv tape scene in the late nineties. I do miss it a bit. Cassettes sound great.

PW: They did, and indeed still do, but the hipsterness might wear off. Mind you some CDRs I've had for a while are unplayable now. The digital info on them has vanished.

GSB: I agree. I have a number of commerically pressed CDs about which the same is true. I'm pretty sure CDs were just a big con.

PW: Vinyl seems to be the one.

GSB: Always.

Iron Henry on YouTube

The Declining Winter

Memory Drawings

Hood

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