Jack: Hey, guys. Thank you very much for joining me. I've been looking forward to talking to you guys. I'll start out with Luke right off the bat. What was your early experience with music? Do you have early memories of music and how did you get interested? Was it parents, friends, etc.?
Luke: My parents were pretty active in the folk scene, so as a child I used to get taken to a lot of folk clubs and folk festivals and that's pretty much when I first became aware of music. I didn't really kind of take much of an interest in it myself until I was a teenager. But yeah, I was kind of exposed to it pretty early on. I can definitely appreciate it for what it is now, but definitely at the time, I was not a fan, you know, I hated it. There was nothing I'd rather be doing less. But as you kind of get older you start to look back on it and you see it with different eyes. I think there's a lot of things about that which kind of play into what I do now in terms of small DIY music scenes. The music's different, but...
Jack: Yeah, the sense of community is still there.
Luke: Yeah, exactly. And there was quite a big sense of community around the folk scene that my parents were involved in. That was pretty much their social group of friends.
Jack: And were they musicians as well or were they just fans?
Luke: Musicians. My dad played. They still play now, but he was a guitarist. Mandolin, concertina. And my mom sang and then played banjo later on as well.
Jack: At what point did you yourself start getting into music? I imagine that separate from your experience with your parents you got into your own.
Luke: It was only really around the age of 11 or 12, final year of primary school, really, when I started to take an interest in it, and it was mainly just through the charts, like pop music. But one of the first bands that really grabbed me was the Pet Shop Boys. It was around the time when the album Very came out and just seeing the videos for that on the chart show. I dunno if you've seen any of those videos, but they were really '90s graphics and computer animation I suppose. But there was just something about them that really resonated with me at the time. A lot of music now that people look back on, like early Human League and Soft Cell and stuff like that was actually massive pop music in the UK that was in the charts, you know. So I guess it was through seeing stuff like that on the TV, albeit in the '90s. I got to see electronic music a lot more quickly in my life, I suppose. I mean the Pet Shop Boys was the first one that really hooked me into music or at least made me feel like music was actually something that I could relate to. You know? It wasn't just this thing that my parents did that I thought was a bit shit or embarrassing. I could have my own music that would mean something to me. But I was really into Nirvana, Oasis, Green Day, a lot of bigger rock guitar bands as well. It was more a case of if I found it interesting or if it made an impression on me, I was happy to listen to it, regardless of it being electronic or guitar orientated, I wasn't really particularly too discriminating. And also around that time dance music was really big. Pirate radio was massive. I wasn't getting into it, but you would hear it growing up where I did, there'd be a lot of pirate radio stations around, just flicking through the radio. I grew up initially in Stratford, which is East London, and then we moved to just northeast, a place called Highams Park, when I was about ten. It's not not too far from Essex so there were a lot of places where you could run pirate radio stations, and just flicking through the dial on the radio, you'd pick up a lot of that stuff. Actually, funny enough, it wasn't really me listening to it. I remember my dads being quite curious about it at one point and I'd find him just listening to these jungle stations and just being like, "Will you listen to this?"
Jack: Would he be open minded enough to be interested in that? Or was it just like, "What the fuck is this?"
Luke: I think it was maybe a bit of the latter. But I guess it was an interesting cultural phenomenon as well, but by the end of the '90s, dance music was absolutely massive. But in a very commercial, mainstream way. I guess that's towards the end of the '90s. I was listening to a lot of bands like Orbital, Underworld, stuff like that, going to gigs when I was old enough to start going to gigs and then seeing support bands for the bigger bands. I remember going to see Sonic Youth and they had V/VM and Morphogenesis supporting. I guess that would have been my first experience of seeing stuff that was more subcultural or underground or at least things that I had completely no frame of reference for.
Jack: When did you start playing music yourself? How did you get into that?
Luke: I didn't really start playing until 2000, 2001. 16. I joined a band in the south of England. It was cool, I was just playing bass, but it wasn't really what I wanted to be doing. So I ended up starting a band with some friends of mine who I just met from going to gigs and stuff like that. And that band lasted for about a year, but that was I guess my first real experience of playing DIY shows up and down the country.
Jack: What was that band like?
Luke: We were really into a lot of the American kind of San Diego punk music. I guess we were essentially a rip off of a band like the VSS or something like that, you know? That was a band that we were really, really into. But then we were listening to a lot of other stuff like Clikitat Ikatowi, the more chaotic post-hardcore. So yeah, we sort of had a year with that band playing as many shows as possible until it imploded.
Jack: As they always do, for high school bands.
Luke: Yeah, exactly.
Jack: It's a funny era. I've also talked to a lot of people about it. I think maybe - not to date anyone - our general age group feels like the last people to get into weird music from the "rock band" format being the starting point for it and then getting into stuff from there.
Luke: Yeah, I mean also '90s rock music was pretty strange as well, you know? Hearing a band like the Butthole Surfers on the radio, you know, when they had that song "Pepper."
Jack: "Pepper," yeah.
Luke: I used to hear that song on the radio quite a lot. I remember hearing that and reading about the Butthole Surfers in magazines but it was only really probably about eight years later when I actually really got the actual context of the band, you know what I mean?
Jack: You see the big hit, the one that made it, and then there's this whole ten year history before.
Luke: Yeah, exactly, and how that then links up with a lot of other music or bands that you've been into as well. You were hearing things back then, but not necessarily getting the wider picture or the full context, which is completely different to now I feel.
Jack: Yeah, so this is the high school band and then the scene that is important to all of us, the noise scene, quote unquote, of the early '00s. I'm curious what that transition was, from the more Gravity Records kind of thing into getting more into the scene that facilitated Birds of Delay, etc.
Luke: It was kind of easy. Steve could probably jump in there as well because we definitely knew each other by this point and we were hanging out a lot.
[Birds of Delay "Live from Mind Avalanche"]
Jack: So I'm curious, Steve, why don't we real quick go back and then for you, what was your early experience with music and where did you grow up?
Steven: I grew up in a town called Spalding, like the basketball, and it's in South Lincolnshire. It's a small market town. But all of my family for hundreds of years is from London. I'm the only family member not born in London. My dad had a bike shop, which was a joke shop as well, in South London, New Cross. And he literally fixed your bike and then sold you practical jokes. My family are very artsy. But anyway, musically my family weren't into music like Luke's parents were. But basically I remember when I was five, my mum, for my present, I joined the Masters of the Universe - like He-Man - fan club, and with that you get a record. And it was just like, "He-Man! He-Man! Da da da," and it kind of sounded a bit like Gary Glitter. But my mum was playing the record and it was my fifth birthday and I had no fucking idea what a record was. She was just playing it and I just was like, "What?" And I just started crying because I had no idea what any of this was and it freaked me out. So that was my first encounter with music, but then I really enjoyed it. In my primary school we had school discos in the assembly hall. That would be late '80s, '88, kind of era because I was born in '81. And basically when we were kids you'd hear these acid house songs or the kind of pop version of acid house. You would hear the commercialized parts of Chicago house. It was in the charts. And I just remember drinking loads of Panda Pops and dancing like a maniac to these songs and thinking that it was incredible. I used to really dance really hard as a kid and I felt like music for me was... I don't know, I just kind of lost it. It was great. So that was my introduction to music. And also I remember as a kid, my mum took me to see Moonwalker by Michael Jackson and there's a part in the film where he turns into a cheetah, a spaceship and a rocket or something. I was just like, "Whoa, anything is possible." That film totally blew my mind. So I think those three things made me think that music's really amazing. And then also I used to sing in the choir when I was in primary school. Me and my mates always used to play football and then go and sing in the choir. But we did it as a money making venture because you'd actually get paid quite a lot of money. You'd do three weddings and then a funeral and get paid, like, 12 quid, which was quite a lot when you're a kid. And I guess if that I would go to Peterborough and buy cassettes, I bought Metallica or whatever.
Jack: In school, did you have to take an instrument in addition to the choir? Did you learn an instrument?
Steven: Just recorder. Not really, but I taught myself guitar.
Jack: At what point did you start making your own music or decide you wanted to?
Steven: Ten.
Jack: Ten! Wow, that's young.
Steven: Yeah, I was ten and I formed a band. I just wanted to sound like Metallica. Me and two friends just formed a band.
Jack: Are there any recordings of that?
Steven: Mmm... Of the first band, no. But there are recordings of my other band when we were 12. We were called Downfall. The drummer was really into Rush. [laughter] I always was in these bands with incredibly technical drummers. And then the other guitarist was really into Nirvana and stuff. And then I was just into anything. I was always trying to push the envelope, so I guess when I was younger I was into Sonic Youth but then of course, as soon as I could hear Fushitsusha... You know what it's like. You just like anything like that...
Jack: How did you hear Fushitsusha at that point?
Steven: John Peel.
Jack: Really? Oh man, that's truly an experience that is not an American experience. The closest thing is listening to WFMU, if you grew up in the tri-state area.
Luke: It's kind of insane to think about it now. But yeah, John Peel was such a kind of mental thing for so many people here because it was mainstream radio and you just turn it on and in just two hours you could hear something that would just change your life, you know, at that point in time.
Steven: Yeah, John Peel was really mental because he would play Fushitsusha, drum & bass, Spring Heeled Jack or whatever, then he would play, like...
Luke: Grindcore.
Steven: Grindcore, then he would play The Yummy Fur, then he would play a britpop band, then he would play, I don't know, some obscure funk song. He just played whatever. And that was a really good education, I think, of just really just "There's no rules."
Luke: Yeah, absolutely.
Steven: I used to listen to Radio 1. Radio 1, you know, is a major station in Britain. But I always remember once I fell asleep and then I woke up and it was basically an early episode of Blue Jam by Chris Morris.
Jack: I'm not familiar with that.
Steven: Oh, so Chris Morris is this kind of satirist/comedian, but he used to do a radio show and it was one of the weirdest things I've ever come across in my life.
Luke: Like an experimental radio play or something like that.
Steven: Yeah, and he also did stuff like Nathan Barley, the Day Today, Brass Eye, do you know that kind of stuff?
Jack: I'm not familiar with that, no. Please talk about that, I'm not familiar.
Steven: It was really extreme, basically. It was genuine surrealism. But I feel like that deeply influenced all of my friends, all of my friends who make visual art and all of my friends who make music. Everyone I like likes Chris Morris. I think it's like a huge marker, You know, you're 14 years old and you're like, "This is absolutely bonkers." Yeah, late '90s television and radio was absolutely bonkers.
Luke: Yeah, it was a lot weirder then.
Steven: Everyone was on cocaine, basically. [laughter].
Steven: So how did we meet, Luke? We were at a gig in London, at the Garage, maybe?
Luke: Yeah, that's the one. And do you remember how we started talking?
Steven: Was it Chris who introduced us?
Luke: So basically, Steve's friend Greg I'd been talking to on the Internet.
Steven: Oh really?
Luke: Yeah, because he sent me a message on a message board or something and was like, "My friend Steve has a fanzine, would you like a copy?" So he sent me a copy of Steve's fanzine.
Jack: What was the fanzine?
Luke: Was it "Crowdsurf my Soul," Steve?
Steven: It changed the name of the issue each time. [laughter]
Luke: Right. It had a live review of a Fushitsusha gig, a live review of a Slipknot gig [laughter] and it had a story about going to see...
Steven: Oh, ATP. Luke: Yeah, going to ATP without a ticket and meeting Sonic Youth on the beach and managing to get on the guest list and get in. [laughter] So I had Steve's fanzine but didn't know who he was and then we ended up meeting randomly at a Trans Am gig at the Garage.
Jack: What year was this?
Steven: 2000. Yeah, because there's a 2000 ATP. Actually it's kind of funny that Greg introduced you to that because Greg didn't come to the ATP and I was kind of bitching about him in the review [laughter] because I was so pissed because I basically wanted to go to ATP and... I mean, I can tell you the story if you want because it is quite funny.
Jack: Please.
Steven: It was still when I was still living in Lincolnshire and I was in high school and I wanted to go to this but you had to buy tickets in fall and it was at a chalet and I was like, "Oh, fuck." None of my friends wanted to go. I was really pissed off. But then I met these two girls at a festival the year before and I wrote to them and was like, "Hey, do you want to go?" And they said yeah. They lived in the Forest of Dean, which is near Wales, and I just got a bus and went all the way to Wales, met them, stayed over at their house, and then we all went down. Jesus, such a crazy journey, actually, to go from Wales back down to Hastings, which is quite far. It's really far actually.
Luke: Yeah, that's a mission.
Steven: We did it because I really wanted to go and then we turned up and it was three of us and you know, you needed four. Basically we turned up and it was sold out. And I just walked in and we were like, "Hi, we really want to get a ticket." And they well, "I think it's sold out." And I said, "Well, can we just talk to the office? There must be a ticket sale or something." And then we turned up and then we're like, "Hi, we really want to come." And then they were like, "No, you can't. It's all sold out." And we were like, "But we've come all this way. I've literally gone all the way across England." And they were like, "Yeah, sorry." So then we were like, "Okay, we'll leave." And we just kind of walked. It was on this theme park, this postwar holiday camp where families would go on holiday by the seaside. So it's a holiday camp and we're walking around and basically security started following us. And just behind us they were like, "Security, security, three people walking around. One guy, two girls. Girl wearing t-shirt saying, 'William Hague is a wanker,'" or something like that. Oh, no, "Jack Straw is a twat." He was a Tory politician. And then I was like, "Oh shit." Then they basically escorted out and I was like, "Fuck." I was so bummed out, I was really sad, I really wanted to go to this. And then we were on the beach, drinking. We just literally found sand dunes on a beach. We just sat there drinking and then you could hear these American voices. I was just like, "For fuck's sake, these fucking Americans can come over and they can go to this bloody festival and I can't get a fucking ticket." I went over to them because I was just like, "How did you get a ticket?" And then it was Kim Gordon. And I said, "Whoa. You're Sonic Youth." It was Lee Gamble... No, Lee Ranaldo. [laughter] Basically I was like, "Whoa!" And they were like, "Hi." And I said, "I've come all the way to see your band." And they were like, "Really?" I said, "Yeah, I really like your band, I've wanted to see since I was 15." And they were like, "You came all the way to see us?" And I was like, "Fucking yeah, of course I did." And they were just like, "Oh." And then I was like, "Yeah, we actually missed school." Oh, this was really cheesy. I was like, "We missed school to come and see." And he was like, "This is your education." And I was like, "Lol." [laughter] So boomer, I love it. Anyway, basically Kim Gordon was like, "Hey, if you want, we could put you on our guest list." And I was like, "What?" And I was like, "No, no, it's okay, I don't mind paying." And she was just like, "No, really." She didn't even reply to it, she was just like, "Give us half an hour and then walk back in." And I was like, "Well, you better do it because we've already been thrown out and they're really not gonna let me back in, so you kind of have to make sure that we can get back in." You know what I mean? I was like, "Don't fool me around." So then we go again and obviously this time they have security and they were like, "Hello?" And I said, "I'm on the guest list." And they were like, "Yeah, right." And I was like, "Sonic Youth's guest list." And then they checked, and it was the same guy who had thrown us out, and then they were just like, "Oh, you appear to be on Sonic Youth's guest list." And I was like, "Fuck yeah I am." And then I was just like, "Enjoy the job, babe." [laughter]
Jack: "Enjoy the rest of your day." [laughter] So then you just had met through a show and then you became friends?
Luke: Yeah, just became friends. Steve was living up in Derby at the time, but we had a lot of friends in Nottingham. There were a lot of gigs happening in Nottingham so I'd go up to Nottingham a lot just to see people and see shows or whatever and Steve would come to Nottingham too.
Steven: Yeah.
Luke: We just ended up staying at friends' houses and stuff like that.
Steven: Yeah, we'd always crash at the same house. I was doing a foundation course in Derby, I was doing a film and video course there, but it was the next town over from Nottingham and that's where all the cool gigs were. So me and Luke used to just go and stay at different people's houses. We kind of also became friends because we would both sleep on mattresses or sofas.
Jack: Yeah, more just a functional friendship.
Luke: Yeah, floor buddies.
Steven: We were both flat bumming off people.
Jack: What gigs were you seeing up there? Can you think of any notable ones?
Steven: We'd just got whatever, really.
Luke: Yeah, I mean there were a lot of just touring American bands of the time, I guess. You know, that kind of ATP world. A lot of punk and hardcore bands as well, because that was pretty big around that time. The Locust played once.
Steven: Yeah, we went to see, like... Oh, I don't know, just so those bands on Seven Distribution. But I remember I organized a gig for when Sightings first ever came to the UK.
Jack: Amazing. I'm curious, what brought you to the decision to start a band together?
Steven: Well, I had a band called Birds of Prey.
Jack: The precursor to Birds of Delay.
Steven: Exactly, and the format of it, I guess, was I wanted it to be a bit like the Fall and have loads of friends of mine who weren't musicians. So we played and also I was intoHijokaidan, so it's a bit like Hijokaidan meets the Fall. I used to go to hardcore shows, but I never really liked hardcore. I only really liked Bad Brains, Void and a bit of Black Flag, but for the most part I didn't really care about hardcore. But, you know, you go to the gigs just because it's a social activity and there was a guy who was this straight edge kid called Tom Campbell. He actually formed a band afterwards called Mob Rules. But he basically always wanted to be in a band and he was really hyper. And I was like, "Oh, why don't you join Birds of Prey?" So I basically formed a band to be in with him and he was so hyper. I used to sing as well and then I had a bunch of people play. Anyway, at one point Luke came to see it and then I was like, "Oh, why don't you join Luke?" So he did.
Jack: Did it sound like the Fall or was it just more that's the idea?
Steven: No, it was more like the Fall in the kind of non-musical sense, you know, like in a film having non-actors, having non-musicians.
Luke: It was essentially a noisecore band in sound.
Steven: Yeah, it had kind of a hardcore energy, like Siege or something, but actually just...
Jack: There was a live drummer.
Steven: There was a drummer, yeah. There was always a drummer, but it basically sounded like Hijokaidan or something. We had a song called "Work" and it was just us going "Work."
Jack: Did you record this? Are there any recordings of them?
Steven: Yes, there is. There's a CDr I put out once on my old CDr label.
Jack: Oh yeah, Alcoholic… Narcolepsy.
Steven: Narcolepsy, yes.
Jack: I'll have to find a rip on Soulseeker or something [laughter] Cue track.
Steven: Yeah, but then basically Birds of Delay started because I think at this point me and Luke are maybe, if not living together, at least in the same town a lot. And someone offered us to play a gig. We were maybe in Moog Bar in Nottingham and basically they were like, "Could you do Birds of Prey?" And we couldn't get it so we just were like, "Oh, why don't we do Birds of Delay?" And it was me and Luke with loop pedals, and that's how that band started.
Jack: I feel like that's always the story: the band is formed out of necessity, and then it's just like, "Oh, it worked, I guess we might as well do it again."
Steven: Yeah, I don't know... I remember quite early on, around 2000 or so, really getting into Whitehouse, which I didn't know before. He [Luke] showed that to me. I did know the other industrial bands but I didn't know them. We went to see a lot of those bands when we were younger too. That's what I mean, you know, we were around this hardcore-ish punk-ish kind of rock context, but we were more into that kind of electronic or industrial music. So when we lived in Nottingham, it has this history of cooperatives, like vegetarian cooperatives, satanic society, metal and then just general fucking weirdos. It was a really weird city.
Luke: Yeah, it's an odd city. It kind of doesn't really have an identity like a lot of other British cities do. I guess musically speaking anyway, you know?
Steven: I mean, well, you had Earache from Nottingham.
Luke: That's true, yeah. That's its biggest...
Steven: Rock City.
Luke: Yeah, Rock City. It was always kind of a bit all over the place, you know?
Steven: Yeah, it would be a bit indie and then quite metal and then that guy Steve... What was Steve's last name?
Luke: Underwood.
Steven: Steve Underwood, exactly. He would put on all the noise gigs. And our friend Chris worked in the record shop, so then Steve used to go in and then that's kind of how we met him. Because he was a generation older and then he was like, "Oh, do you like noise?" And we were like, "Yeah, we do, actually." And then we met him.
Jack: He booked the shows around...
Luke: So this kind of is around the time, I guess 2005 or so, when the No Fun era had kicked off and me and Steve had gone over to the first one.
Steven: Because of Mark Morgan.
Luke: Because of Mark Morgan, yeah.
Jack: Oh amazing. So it was from that Sightings gig that you booked, you became friends with them and then, through there...
Luke: Yeah, exactly.
Steven: We became friends and then Mark basically said to me, "Come to New York in 2004, there's this festival and you have to come. You can stay with me." And me, Luke and this guy Vincent went. It was when Mark was living with the guy from Black Dice and we just stayed on their sofa for a week.
Jack: This is 2004.
Steven: That was 2004, yeah.
Jack: So this is right when you guys started doing Birds of Delay.
Steven: More or less.
Luke: Yeah, it was like it was about five months later.
Steven: We went to that festival and we just met all of the American noise bands. It was actually ridiculous because we knew Sightings and we'd heard of Wolf Eyes, we obviously knew stuff like Black Dice, but we didn't really know... We just basically walked into this room and it was, like, 80 people all in bands.
Jack: Yeah, exactly, probably 60 of them are playing the festival. [laughter]
Steven: Exactly.
Luke: It was quite overwhelming, but really exciting as well at the same time. I just remember coming back from that, just feeling super energized that we'd actually got to experience something really special.
Steven: It was also really funny because, if you remember, me and Luke had been going to these British noise gigs where we were 20 and then everyone else was 40 minimum. [laughter]
Jack: Yeah, there was no bridge between generations.
Steven: Yeah, literally we were the only people under 40 at those gigs and then...
Jack: That's how the Excepter show felt last night. [laughter]
Steven: Right! But you'd see, like, Con Dom or, what's it called, Current 93 and all these kind of bands and they were just, like, '80s bands. We would go to those gigs, even Whitehouse, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But it was all these people dressed in that industrial, military kind of stuff. Everyone stood at gigs, they didn't dance. And then we went to No Fun and it was sort of rock & roll, you know? It's really like the Stooges or something. And me and Luke were shocked because it was like, "Oh my God, people like crowdsurf to noise here, that's so weird." [laughter] We were also some of the only British people there so I think we were just novelties to them. It was just so weird.
Jack: So from meeting everybody there, who did you stay in touch with after that?
Luke: Well, we kind of kept in touch with everyone just because after this, around this time, it became quite transatlantic. So all these people that we saw play at No Fun started to come to the UK play. And then to go back to Steve Underwood again, he booked this crazy two week UK tour for Emil Beaulieau, Prurient and Jessica Rylan and we ended up playing quite a few shows on that tour. Wolf Eyes would play, then we would play with them. We did a few shows with Hair Police.
Steven: But when Wolf Eyes first came to Britain, I remember they played at ATP and it was when [Aaron] Dilloway was still in them and we just walked up and were like, "Yo!" And they were like, "Hey." We were just very lucky to have gone to No Fun because we just knew all those people suddenly. I mean, it was, like, 50 people in America just selling each other cassettes. And then I guess after 2004, obviously that music became, I would say viable, but it definitely became more transatlantic. I guess because of Steve they would start to tour more. But basically what was really funny is when Birds of Delay started, we were kind of playing these punk-ish kind of places, but we just got so much shit like, "Oh, have you started playing yet?" That kind of thing, just all that kind of crap.
Luke: "Is this the soundcheck?"
Steven: Yeah, all these kind of, like... And then literally six months later, all these motherfuckers had drone bands and you'd just be like, "Lol."
Luke: Yeah, it did kind of start to catch on after a while.
Steven: But no one did a Birds of Display. [laughter] That was a one-off band I did.
Jack: With you and Luke?
Steven: Yeah, it was four of us. That was literally one of my art projects. It was so stupid.
Jack: What was the concept?
Steven: We put paint brushes on the ends of guitars and we were doing action painting, but really taking the piss. [laughter] And we did it in a nightclub.
Luke: We played with Deerhoof. [laughter]
Steven: That was our first gig.
Jack: I'm sure they liked it.
Steven: No, they did, they loved it. It was really funny. We also played at, I think, Liars Club in Nottingham and I feel like Franz Ferdinand were DJing and then we played.
Jack: That's an era.
Steven: Yeah. It was that phase, it was just bonkers. I don't know. Yeah, it was a weird time.
[Birds of Delay "Summer Tour Cassette 2007"]
Jack: What was the first thing that you guys released? You started your label, but then other people started asking you for CDs.
Steven: Yeah. I think that Luke would release some stuff and then I would release some stuff, but I just remember, John Olson thought that Alcoholic Narcolepsy was the best name for a label. So he was very heavily promoting. He was very supportive, shall we say. I'd say he was incredibly supportive. That's the other thing about all this stuff, you know, we really just used to do copies of, like, 30 CDs, which was of course totally normal back then because there really wasn't much of an audience either.
Luke: Yeah, there weren't more than 30 people realistically that you were going to be able to get to listen to it, you know?
Steven: So yeah, you know, Ashtray Navigations would make CDrs of, like, ten and basically give them to their friends and that was it.
Luke: That's a release.
Steven: Yeah, I was thinking about it, we have SoundCloud now, but back then you had CDs, so it was really just that. I always remember when there was ATP 2006, which was kind of the most crazy one because that's when literally every noise band we know got into it. Lambsbread played.
Luke: That was the Thurston Moore curated one.
Steven: Yeah, that was so ridiculous. Literally everyone we know was over. Oh God, that was ridiculous.
Luke: That was when the whole thing, that whole scene, peaked.
Steven: I would say that was definitely also the last really cool ATP.
Luke: Yeah.
Jack: That was 2006.
Steven: Yeah, it was bonkers. Very anarchic one. But there was just funny thing of in the program that Thurston wrote, it was like, "There's all these bands we wish we could have invited" and there were maybe 15 bands he mentioned and one was Birds of Delay. And there's just all these British people, and they were like, "How did you do this?!" That kind of thing. We're like, "Well, I mean, it's actually quite small." You know, like, it sounds crazy on paper or on the Internet, but actually if you go to those gigs, no one really likes it. [laughter] And it's literally just the same ten people. I remember on the Emeralds tour Birds of Delay did in, what, 2007? You get Michigan and there would be literally five people there. You play at the Wolf Eyes house and Greh would jam and there's five people there.
Jack: Who weren't playing.
Luke: Yeah, these were the gigs. Or the Lambsbread basement, same thing, five people.
Steven: Five people. Or Cincinnati, that was probably one of the first times we properly hung out with Spencer Yeh. Oh my God, that was really crazy, because we were playing in Cincinnati in basically a crack den. No, it was next door. It was an art space. But there was one flier advertising the gig and it was facing inwards. [laughter] And we were like, "Jesus Christ." I just remember it was like, you'd arrive and then people would be like, "We can help you unload," and obviously it was all people in this den. And we're like, "No, it's okay, we're all right." I mean, you’re not going to make a song and dance about it. You would be like, "No, it's okay." And then they'd be like, "Oh, you're English." And then you're like, "Yep." And they'll be like, "What are you doing here?" And then you'd be like, God, this is such a crazy story, isn't it? So you just go, "We're playing noise music, we make cassettes and we're from England." [laughter] Because you're like, how is anyone going to pass that?
Jack: Yeah, it's like, "Hope that works out for you!"
Steven: People just thought it was hilarious and they would be like, "So what are you into?" And I was like, "It's kind of rock & roll but noisy." Yeah, but it was really interesting to go through the Rust Belt.
Jack: Was that the first time you had been?
Luke: To that part.
Steven: To that part, yeah. We'd only ever been to New York before, so to go there was really different because it was really quite bleak actually, it still is, in this kind of interesting way. It just felt like, wow, you really are seeing the real America.
Jack: This is the Emeralds tour?
Luke: Yeah.
Jack: I don't know, Steve, if you heard the John Elliott/Mike Pollard podcast, but John said that the Birds of Delay/Emeralds tour was the most fun he's ever had on tour.
Steven: Oh God, yeah, that was a really funny tour. Because also we'd met Emeralds the year before at No Fun. Basically I was with James Ferraro and we were walking around trying to bum a cigarette from people and then these people who were really high on acid were like, "Thank you for existing." And it's like, "Okay, cheers." And then it turns out that there were Emeralds later on. [laughter]
Jack: That checks out.
Steven: Yeah, that was, like, their first tour. But anyway, it was also our first experience of really going to the Bible Belt. You'd go to petrol stations and it would be, you know, God Squad cassettes everywhere. I always remember once we went to, like, a Pizza Hut and us eating and then John put on Britney Spears ten times in a row on the jukebox and we left. [laughter] Which I thought was quite funny.
Jack: Yeah, that sounds like John. The endearing thing about that era and crew of people is those are some of the funniest people I've ever met, still to this day. I mean, maybe it's just a particular sense of humor, but still to this day I don't know if I've met funnier people.
Steven: Oh God, yeah. I think it really was kind of the time. It was this weird Bush era of, like, I don't know... I don't want to get too theoretical, but I just feel after 9/11, between the days until the financial crisis, it was just a weird fucking freefall of just chaos. I really enjoyed all of those No Fun Fests because they were so demented.
Luke: I mean, it kind of feels in a way like a lot of these bigger events kind of helped to facilitate a lot of what was going on around then as well. You know, it would be kind of like the yearly meet up where you would see everyone and then off the back of that would come all sorts of stuff.
Steven: And it wasn't calculated. It was just...
Luke: No, yeah, it's going to happen. It was very organic.
Steven: Yeah, it's not like we went to meet people in New York. We just went because our friend invited us and we actually had no idea what was going on. Also, this is kind of important to mention, at the time the pound was really strong, it was, like, 2 to 1. So I remember any time we got to New York, we'd be like, "Yeah!" It was half price.
Luke: Half price, everything, yeah.
Steven: Also it was 200 quid to fly with Virgin. It was this weirdly surveillance time, but at the same time it wasn't. It was just kind of lawless.
[Birds of Delay "wg_127_m_a_4 (Touching on Rock)"]
Jack: I am curious about the progression from there because you guys were a band for six years? Seven years?
Luke: It was longer than that, I think it was almost ten years when we were active in, I would say. From the first show to the last show we played it was probably nine years, perhaps.
Steven: We had this weird period as well towards the end where we stopped playing instruments. We got very pretentious.
Jack: Well, so what did you play?
Steven: We played cards. [laughter]
Luke: I can't even really remember why we started doing this, to be honest.
Steven: What it was was other people we knew were popularizing drone music and we felt like maybe it was getting a little bit formalized. So I felt that we were being partly reactionary to that. Not just reactionary, I felt we were just also like, "Oh, I don't want to do all this drone stuff. I'm bored."
Luke: We'd also kind of hit a bit of a wall with it.
Steven: Yeah, we'd just done it.
Luke: Yeah, we'd kind of done it as well as we could.
Steven: We'd been doing it for five or six, no, six years at that point. We were like, "You know what? It's fine, they can have it." [laughter]
Jack: Well, yeah, when you see something that you'd been doing for so long and it kind of just becomes this...
Steven: Hypnagogic pop. And you're like, "Yeah, it's fine, I don't care."
Jack: And by this point you guys were doing your own solo stuff in addition.
Luke: Yeah, I guess so. That was sort of going on around that time.
Steven: Yeah, it kind of happened at the same time because I'd moved to Berlin in 2006, so we both kind of inevitably started to be more solo. But then Birds of Delay would just literally be what I was doing in Heatsick and what he was doing in Helm, just playing together.
Jack: I assume this is documented on something, on some releases.
Luke: I don't think it is.
Jack: Really? Because I was going to say, I haven't really heard what that would sound like.
Luke: I don't think it ever really was because there were the last few shows... Yeah, it was kind of a funny time in a way, because you had that transition from the end of the 2000s into the early 2010s where I think everyone that was around the noise scene or whatever had sort of made this transition into doing something different. And then that started to get attention from the more kind of established electronic world. So then you had people like us, Pete Swanson, even Dominic [Fernow], you know, people who've known each other for years and now playing with each other again, but in this completely different context.
Jack: Ten years later, yeah. Ren [Schofield] too.
Luke: Yeah, and even Emeralds as well. It's kind of like that was the bridge from the noise world into this new kind of...
Steven: It was a really funny time, to be honest, because I remember, I mean, me personally, I think I just found the noise world was getting a bit too nihilistic for me and I just wanted to escape from it. And also I'd been living in Berlin for a while. I just got exposed to dance music in a different way, to be honest. I'd been aware of it, obviously, for a long time but I think socially it changed for me because when I was growing up, people in Lincolnshire listening to drum & bass were, like, Max Power kind of lads, and then you go to cool gay clubs in Berlin and you'd be like, "Oh, it's nice there and the music sounds good or the sound is good." For me it was a big thing of seeing Scion, that Chain Reaction band. They were playing at, like, three in the morning in Berghain once, and they just did an ambient set of these loops. And I remember being like, "Whoa, I play music like this, but it's possible to play this in a nightclub and the sound is way better and people dance to it." And I just find it super cool to be honest. When I made this effort for like Heatsick to be more beat-based or something, it was really like... Actually it was a gig I played in a record shop with Steve Hauschild and Mark McGuire. I organized the gig for them actually, and then it was the first time I played Heatsick where I was looping the drums on the Casio on my own. It had literally just been an experiment for me. I was like, "Oh, what if I had the same things but with a drum beat on top?" And then I just did it, and then I just kept doing it. But I guess what I'm trying to say and what Luke was saying earlier was it's just weird how, speaking for myself on this, but I feel like Luke also probably had a thing of, like, around that world a lot of things were getting very formalized and a bit boring. So certainly for me I wanted to try something different. But then I guess for a lot of other people it became a thing like it inevitably does. I mean, I remember playing a thing with 100% Silk or something and it was like, "Oh God, everyone's playing this?"
Luke: The kind of lo-fi house thing.
Steven: Yeah, the lofi house thing became the thing and I was like, "I'm playing a fucking Casio because I don't have any money" [laughter] You know?
Jack: You're like, "This is not an aesthetic choice, this is necessity."
Steven: Yeah, I was like, if anything I wanted to sound like Patrick Cowley stuff, but I couldn't afford the equipment.
Luke: But I mean, the keyboard that you were using for the early Heatsick stuff was the same one you were using for Birds of Delay tours and all of the keys had fallen off on the tour we did with Emeralds.
Jack: Amazing, the origin story.
Steven: But that's where we can thank what's his name, that dickhead from Jackie-O, for throwing my keyboard across the room.
Jack: Oh God. Well, yeah, it is interesting talking about that era, that transitional era where... I don't know what your experiences were at the time, but the David Keenan, hypnagogic pop era or something like that, coming out of the noise scene and there being an understanding that there's maybe there could be more at stake. The ceiling was a little bit higher.
Luke: Yeah, it was where I think some people kind of started to maybe get a sense of like, "Oh, I could go somewhere to this, you know?"
Jack: This could actually PAN out for me, no pun intended.
Luke: Yeah, it was just a bit of a different time really. I think a lot of people were offered shows and gigs that they never would have expected to get, you know? And I also think a lot of the people around it, like the festival bookers, the journalists that were writing about it, they didn't have the same kind of contextual understanding that we necessarily had for each other's own work, if that makes sense.
Jack: Of course, because you arrived at this place from somewhere else. If you don't know that, you would contextualize the work a lot differently.
Luke: Well, this is the thing where we'd gone from playing noise shows for nothing to then all of a sudden playing these gigs where people are actually going to pay you money.
Steven: Yeah, just having a booking agent or getting an artist visa and going to America and playing. Having those kind of things.
Luke: Which are just things that we never even comprehended before, you know? You never had to.
Steven: Yeah, because you basically used to go as a tourist, you certainly didn't make money. You would literally just go and hang out. I don't know, it was just... I'd say what's different or funny about that period is I've met younger people - I think that time has also changed now, thank God - in 2017 or something, where people would be, like, 23 and move to Berlin and they'd be like, "Oh, if I'm not on Boiler Room within six months or playing Tresor or Berghain, I'm freaking out about my career." And I was like, "Dude, I've played in a fucking basement to ten people for the last ten years, chill."
Luke: But I mean what I do sort of like about the whole era, that era of noise as well, is that so much of the music that was made and released was pretty much documented only on a format which is pretty much now obsolete, you know?
Jack: You can't even play it. You literally can't play it.
Luke: I imagine all of these CDrs that we released now are just completely unplayable.
Jack: Yeah, the foil is peeling off of them.
Luke: Yeah, so there's something kind of beautiful about that in a way, you know?
Jack: It was a transient thing. Well, I mean, thankfully everybody put out 500 different CDrs, so at least, you know, by rule of probability at least some of those will still be around.
Steven: Yeah, and it's all on Soulseek. [laughter]
Jack: Exactly, oh my God.
Luke: That's true, actually.
Jack: Seriously. Yeah, that's how I'm going to get all the music for this podcast anyway, so... [laughter]
Jack: I think that's a pretty good place to tie the bow. Thank you guys so much for joining me. I'm glad after there were some slight technical difficulties in the beginning you guys stuck it out for all this time.
Luke: Yeah, thanks for bearing with us.
Jack: Oh my God, of course. This was great.
Steven: Alright, Jack. Nice one.
Luke: Nice one.
Jack: Yeah, talk to you guys soon.
