LEGACY - a few words with director richard bell

Acclaimed filmmaker Richard Bell of Christchurch-based production company Shuriken directed and shot the video for ‘Ourselves’. It stars Zachary Te Maari and was filmed on location across Canterbury. Richard is known for his work alongside Anton Corbijn with Joy Division, Depeche Mode, U2, Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana.

P: Thanks for taking the time to have a chat about your process Richard. I’d like to start by asking you about legacy. When you have created a rich body of work across decades, some of which has gone on to have its own enduring presence in popular culture, does that shift your perception of artistic choices made at the time? Can you put yourself back into the original headspace and does that sit alongside or within a more objective review?

R: Good starting point! I personally believe that each choice comes from the time it was made. I don’t carry a notebook of ideas around with me and look at those each time a song is being approached. But perhaps there is a subconscious memory system at work that brings previous ideas to the front when asked. What I do know is that each and every project is unique and has certain limitations, practical, physical, artistic, financial - looking at those as creative inspiration rather than barriers is really useful. I am not a meditator, like David Lynch, but do believe that listening to the song multiple times and letting your mind filter the images that come, again and again, till something rises to the top (Lynch uses a fishing metaphor) and then suddenly, Boom! That’s it! You have an idea and it seems obvious. Then you get the scary step… “what if Paul doesn’t like it”! But what I have found is that ideas flow well between us and bounce back stronger each time we discuss them.

So my question to you is: I feel your music is very visual, it creates many images in my head at every listen, Is that something you are conscious of? Do you think in images when writing at all? Or is it all sonics?

P: When I close my eyes and listen to a piece of music I don’t picture the rehearsal/recording/performance aspect of a group of musicians; for me it's always more allegorical, cinematic. I suppose that defines the kind of music I’ve been seduced by, which in turn feeds into my own creative voice. Music for me is its own world; much akin to a dreamspace. You can be didactic to some extent with lyrical choices; the description of a space, of a collision of metaphors and allusions. On the other hand music itself can be wholly evocative and that’s always my ambition because it's less prescriptive; the listener is invited to populate that emotional landscape with their own landmarks and totems. For me its the difference between telling somebody how you feel, or just showing them. That's why there are so many guitar solos on this new album ‘The Hinterlands’.

What I’m specifically aiming for with this new album is an exploration of the idea of landscapes as a shared cultural metaphor. Particularly the idea of the emotional interior; the vast terrain of self - our private universes of memory, regret, intent, solace etc. I want the music to feel as big as my emotions do. It’s interesting that you mention David Lynch as he is really at the forefront of that discipline of instinct; the recognition of it landing emotionally without the need to engage logic. Interestingly he has historically made much use of black and white when exploring that kind of work. What do you think that’s about?

R: I don’t think we have ever talked about Lynch together before, so this is really interesting that it comes up here, independently thought out by each of us. I think black and white touches on your point of  telling v showing. I think B&W is a great “show thing” and let’s people add all the “detail”. You and I have never shied away from colour in previous videos, but this time, indeed maybe the whole album, feels black and white to me. You mention the vastness of the spaces you want to encourage and associate with the music. I think that approach is super suitable for B&W - it’s actually more vast because it is less. Add all the extra that colour would give and maybe you actually have less. On that tangent, does the idea of images attached to your sonic evocation carry any pitfalls for you? Let’s take the simple landscape idea, when I chose locations I wanted a narrative from them alone. What if I did them backwards? Started in the forest (a mistake in my head) if I had done that how would it make you feel?

P: In regards to the video? I think it might if it were too prescriptive, but it’s not. I think you have avoided that pitfall by giving the video its own internal logic; much like a dream or memories of a hypnagogic state. They are as open for interpretation as the music is. In terms of my own visualisation I can’t share that anyway. It's like when you read a book (until they make the movie) in that there are as many imaginings of a character like Steerpike from Gormenghast as there have been readers of those books; despite Mervyn Peake’s specific descriptions and illustrations. I think I’ve always understood music as an invitation to collective imaginings. That must be a hard line to tread specifically in regards to music videos where there is fundamentally the ambition to align aesthetics? I mean Joy Division were never going to have a video with fluffy bunnies in it, shot in technicolour, right?

R: Agree there! For some reason Joy Division are ONLY black and white in my head, but Gramsci can be both. ‘The Hinterlands’ though, to me, a very positive record, feels black and white and perhaps we have hit on something here. The interior and exterior vastness of its themes are such that they encourage a less real space to encompass them. A bit like the end of ‘2001’; how do you “feel” that which is so huge? Perhaps you have to fly to the edge and play there, because being in the middle you’d burn up. The album feels like a flight path though to me, there is a journey being taken, so that fits too. Did you conceive of it like that or did each song come into being and then, once done, you could look at it and realise where you had been?

P: I had the idea to explore the idea of the emotional interior, and from the get go and I knew I wanted to access “landscape” as a kind of shared cultural metaphor. That was also a response to the live show we did last year at the Waterfront Theatre where we played behind a gauze screen onto which we projected early 20th century experimental animations. I remember playing that show thinking, “this should be landscapes next time… why? And started the creative process really.” Another source of inspiration was the novel ‘Erehwon’ and I started making musical sketches, making guitar arrangements and basic demos. I then put them to one side. Later I came back to them as if I was the singer in the band and the guitar player had sent me some music to write lyrics too. I’d say at least half of the album was written that way, including ‘Ourselves’. Scattered throughout are some more textural songs that I already had and fitted the theme; it’s interesting that your subconscious creative mind can already be two steps ahead and in retrospect you recognise that your conscious mind is playing catch up. Do you find that?

R: Yes! I love the idea of Paul-The-Composer sending Paul-The-Writer some music and getting lyrics done. The balance between separation and connection is vitally important. For me, I “direct”, “shoot” and also “edit” and, though they are connected sub-consciously of course, I try really hard to separate them out. I am always asking the director in my head if they like the images I am shooting and then the editor gets to moan at them both when the footage is not enough/not good enough, etc, etc! Creatively I find that that brings far more energy  as I retain the chance to make the film numerous times, each one with a specific main hat on. I find that really liberating.

SOUND AND VISION - a chat with photographer nick paulsen

Photographer Nick Paulsen and musician Paul McLaney (Gramsci/Impending Adorations) collaborated recently on press photography for the upcoming Gramsci album ‘The Hinterlands’ they also took the opportunity to discuss their individual artistic processes and identify the crossovers.

N: Is there any discomfort or apprehension on the idea of revealing oneself not just in music but in front of a camera lens? I know it can push the barrier for some artists? Often it's about a mutual collaboration to represent each other’s work so it’s more of a process rather than getting some quick snaps, much like a song, a strong image could resonate for some time rather than just come and go, what do you think?

P: I suppose that’s primarily about aesthetic alignment. It would be fair to say that over the course of the last decade I’ve attempted to approach that, visually, without actually being in the frame so to speak. That is, I have avoided having my picture taken! I’ve been engaged with the idea that music is something outside of the individual. With The Impending Adorations, it was the collision of antiquated imagery with the presentation of a style electronica that could only really happen now; the premise is that regardless of the technology employed its all fundamentally human experience - we are all still working on the same basic operating system we always have… love, hate, fear, anxiety, etc. But your question is thought-provoking to me because really at the heart of it is vulnerability. I’ve never had any issues with vulnerability within music, if anything that's what I’m drawn to as for me it is the hallmark of honesty. That and integrity. But in terms of putting myself in front of the lens, I’ve never been comfortable with it.

That said, I’m now at a point in my own personal journey where I recognise the strength and invitation to empathy that physically representing my artistry provides. ‘The Hinterlands’ album for me is the arrival of my true musical self and that arrival has been made by my 46-year-old self. All of my experiences, successes and failures, as a man, a son, brother, friend, husband, father, musician, collaborator have fed into this version of me and it makes sense to me, now finally, to front up and own this work and if that requires me to get over whatever hangovers and aspects of self-loathing that I carry around then so be it. This is my music, this is me.

We spoke initially about the idea of taking a photograph of the person and it seems to me, from our conversations, that you really like to interrogate that philosophical content with your subjects, rather than just find a cool location and snap off a few frames. Can you maybe expand on that part of your process?

N: My nature is to be rather quiet. I observe my surroundings and take time to understand a space. Before discovering photography I would often pick apart the daily meanderings that life can bring and in my case, I felt lost, constantly walking in circles, looking but never knowing what for. To go through the process of losing everything in many ways gives you an opportunity to press restart. A camera is much like a microphone or guitar. It’s a tool that enables you to create and for some reason like a switch I began to obsessively take images, thousands of them. Initially, when I began photography I had no technical knowledge but I quickly learned by creating and I began to articulate in images what I had been experiencing in my mind for so long. For me, to photograph is something sacred. A person isn’t a subject and there are so many unspoken words in this world. To connect and collaborate with someone is an understanding that you are both creating something. A great portrait isn’t a photographer's achievement alone. To capture a moment or an undercurrent of feeling that exists is an emotive process that envelopes everyone in that scene. I don’t tend to direct as much as allow something to take shape naturally. Often people can be surprised at what has been captured. They never thought they would be capable of feeling free to express their own vulnerability, fear, happiness, or love in such an open way.  

The same can be said with music. I remember hearing your song ‘Icarus’ for the first time. It’s a track that resonates so strongly, often I wonder if as an artist are you aware of how your music resonates with others? Is it something you hope for? To have an effect on those listening? To almost feel the same as you did when you created it?

P: Thanks, that’s very kind of you. For me the key with any piece of music is empathy. Music without empathy is just noise. That piece of music in particular is me finally owning up to who I am as a musician and as such has a particular vulnerability. In my mind, I’m a guitarist who sings but I’m not sure that’s how what I do is perceived. The guitar is such an expressive instrument. I can’t think of another that is more capable of such idiosyncratic manipulation in the hands of an individual; there are so many players you can recognise instantly from their unique touch. With Icarus I was hoping to express something that was beyond words; verbal description could have come across as didactic. It’s like with Pink Floyd, I always say Roger Waters would tell you what he was feeling while Gilmour would just show you. If those emotions translate and connect then it’s a successful composition; I don’t think you can design it but you can hope to express it in performance. Music has been a safe harbour for me; reliable landscapes of melody, rhythm and harmony, emotion and expression. We moved around a lot when I was growing up so the music I fell in love with was where I could always escape to and explore every nook and cranny. I suppose that sort of experience fosters an ambition to hopefully provide the same escape and engagement for others. I think you know when you’ve got it - when it’s resonated. You must have the same thing when you recognise instinctively why one-shot is more resonant than another without intellectualising it too much/at all?

N: It’s actually really hard to know what will resonate with others. Every person feels something different. What one person may find significant, others may find obscure or meaningless. My most memorable moment I have had with my camera was when I was walking through Budapest late one night. I like to investigate and often put myself into environments when travelling that may feel foreboding or uneasy. Walking through an underpass, I came down some stairs that led into a small room which also had the exit to the street. It had this awful yellow hazy light and being summer it was hot and really claustrophobic. There was a feeling that something wasn't quite right and I turned and saw a homeless couple asleep in the corner. To be in that heat, car fumes blowing into the underpass, with all of their belongings scattered around them, I had invaded the only space that that couple had. They looked so uncomfortable and the scene was suffocating and desperately sad. I quickly took an image and headed to the exit. But I knew that I hadn’t captured the scene as it was. I had rushed out of respect but also because it made me feel conflicted. But the reason I wanted that photo was to feel the discomfort. So I went back and reframed it, the couple still attempting sleep. I walked out of there feeling like I had taken a strong image. I put that image up onto a photography community group as it was a good space to find constructive feedback and advice. I received so many negative comments that I had to turn Facebook off for a few days. The general feeling was that I had taken advantage of this couple and their privacy, that anyone can take a picture of homeless people without them knowing. But I did receive some positive feedback that found the picture as powerful as I did and supported me completely. The positive comments reinforced the very reason I am so passionate about photography. This picture was real, it wasn’t staged, with models and lights. It was a real situation with a very uncomfortable reality. The criticism came from the discomfort, not because I had necessarily done the wrong thing. To document and to be authentic was worth the critique and I knew I had broken a barrier. I have a determination to capture what I see and to not interfere with it as it may become something artificial. 

I can see how that might align with songwriting? You can write a song, but to express the inspiration or tone of that song, do you have to stay in the space of the song to retain its authenticity?

P: Well, there are so many ways to write a song, generally of 3 methods for me: music first then lyrics, lyrics then music or both together. If it’s music first then it’s really harmonic preference I suppose and you are chasing something. If you are then adding lyrics the music is painting a picture you are trying to articulate so that there is a synergy and again you can sort of tell if you are hitting the mark. For a while, I got into writing the words first and then setting them as I’d enjoyed that formality when I was setting the Shakespeare texts for the ‘Play On’ album. It’s like trying to harmonically present the emotions outlined in the text. ‘The Old Traditions’ album with Raashi Malik was all written like that. It gives the text priority and you get to say exactly what it is you want to express and employ your musicality to embolden it. The new Gramsci album was written music first as if I was the lead singer and the band were giving me a format for expression - like Led Zep, etc. Bowie did that a lot with his collaborators too. I think that's because musically I knew I wanted a very particular aesthetic of post-punk guitars and skyscraper-sized solos - big music; intimate voice, the calm and the storm. So to answer your question: Yes, you try to find that songline, that emotional space, get your needle in the groove, and stay there for as long as possible!

The single ‘Ourselves’ by Gramsci is released on November 19 and will be accompanied by a new film by director Richard Bell (Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, U2).

Pre-save: https://smarturl.it/gramsciourselves

SINGULARITY - A CONVERSATION WITH JAKOB’S JEFF BOYLE

There are millions of guitar players on the planet but only a handful whose touch on the instrument is instantly recognisable. Jakob’s Jeff Boyle is one of those players. He makes a brief but dramatic cameo on the new Gramsci single ‘Ourselves’ - that’s him at 2.30. As a man of few words, it’s not often Jeff waxes lyrical about his craft but he is in fine form here. Enjoy.

P: Thanks for taking the time to dive into this conversation. I think it's fair to say that you are a musician who has added their own distinctive voice to the conversation of guitar playing. Your vocabulary of expression within the post-rock lexicon is immediately recognisable. I’d like to start by asking how that vocabulary developed over the years - was it the avoidance of certain things? Johnny Marr talks about actively avoiding any blues phrases etc. Further to that, I’d like to know how much the vocabulary informs the composition process; do you always write with an instrument in your hands?

J: I think it has, originally, a lot to do with the music that I grew up listening to from a very young age. My father listened to artists such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Alan Holdsworth, Jimi Hendrix, Al Di Meola, Paco De Lucía, Steve Hillage etc. so I think right from the start I was always looking for something progressive and new just from constantly hearing these guitarists trying to find new sounds and sonics. Certain albums/songs resonated with me and basically laid the blueprint for what I do now. It really is an accumulation of influences over the years that I’ve taken specific ideas from each guitarist along the way and moulded them into something, hopefully, unique. After an early obsession with Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler’s playing style and then discovering Van Halen and learning every song of theirs that I could (at the age of 10 or 11) I said to my father, very seriously, that I was going to be a guitar player like Eddie Van Halen and what he replied with had a lasting affect on me, he said, very seriously “you’ll never get anywhere copying other guitar players, you need to find a sound of your own”. Since then I’ve kind of had that in the back of mind as I’ve progressed through the stages of learning guitar, through different styles, genres and techniques, taking my favourite bits from each of them. Culminating in the approach I started to take when I was living in Auckland back in 1996 when I first started putting together demos of song ideas that eventually morphed into the origins of Jakobs first few songs. In regards to Johnny Marrs's quote I definitely agree, I think why what we and a few other bands did ended being called’ Post-Rock was because we were consciously eschewing overly used cliches. Towards the middle of the 90s I felt, personally at the time, that the Rock format had pretty much run its course and the dead horse had already been flogged to a certain degree. So I wanted to try and push my “style”, somehow, into a new direction, staying away from anything too obvious, staying away from the standard verse/chorus riff-oriented techniques. Creating textures as opposed to riffs, still trying to include and incorporate strong melody, became the new modus operandi. The use of delay was obviously a big part of that and if I was to try and pinpoint one particular influence that lead to that (amongst the many, Van Halen, The Edge, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai all used delay in very interesting ways) it would have to be Steve Hillages album “Open”. That was an album my father listened to a lot right from my earliest memories and it kind of haunted me for years after that. A lot of those ideas, the delay skipping, bouncing off the delay repeat, come directly from that album, probably more from a subconscious point, but as a result of haunting me for so long. The volume swelling techniques originally came from that obsession with Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler used that technique, without delays, frequently and then I discovered how much further you could take it using delays and reverbs, pushing notes and chords for long phrases and overlapping harmonics. That also led me to another obsession I had which was trying to make my guitar sound like a cello, I finally figured out how by tuning the guitar down to Bb and volume swelling notes using delays and reverbs to emulate a cello being bowed. 

As for how much the vocabulary informs the compositional process, it’s kind of hard to pinpoint as it’s become so inherently how I play guitar that I don’t consider it to be particularly influential on how I write at all. I generally start most ideas on either an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar unplugged so the delay techniques often have nothing to do with the initial ideas at all. Then I’ll play those ideas through the whole rig and see how they translate using those techniques. Sometimes they will take on a whole new shape and direction and evolve into something entirely different and sometimes it’s clear it just won’t work at all and is best left as it is. More often these days I will start ideas on a piano and then try playing that through the rig just to try and break away from my own playing cliches. I’m still trying to find something new on the guitar, and I guess the longer you do that, the more limited finding something new becomes. So I find that the techniques I have developed over the years are becoming like the cliches that they were once a reaction to. 

P: I love how candid you are namechecking such a wide and disparate gallery of player influences without any snobbery; that the engagement or interest in each of them is fundamentally recognising aspects of your potential self in all of them. It's not an issue of amalgamating a bunch of influences into your own identity but glimpsing aspects of your own identity in all of them. All of those plates you have mentioned are hyper-melodic too. One conversation we have had in the past was in regards to players like Knopfler, Beck, Gilmour, Richard Thompson, etc and their knack for ‘storytelling’ in their playing; narrative arcs. When you combine that with a textural approach and influences like Fripp and Eno collaborations (‘No Pussyfooting’) you are really stepping into a cinematic space. How much do visuals influence/provoke/steer your compositional process?

J: To be honest they don’t overly influence or steer the compositions much really. From time to time I will see something that will provoke something that makes me want to write something to fit that visual 

P: I know you’re a voracious reader. Is it more like you are expressing something in your mind's eye? Perhaps not even something specific or is it more an emotional space you are building? I mean what's going on in your head when you are playing live and when you listen back to what you’ve recorded? What is it you want to recognise in the music for you to deem it a success? I know you have very high standards so what are they?

J: It is definitely more of an emotional space most of the time. I’m after something that’s going to take the listener somewhere, to another place and somewhere that’s going to leave an impression of some kind.. And it starts with how it affects me, if it takes me somewhere while I’m playing it. I remember hearing Albatross by Fleetwood Mac for the first time, I remember it like it was yesterday, one of my earliest memories in fact. It was the first piece of music I remember really taking me to another place and it had a seriously profound effect on me from then on. It had a kind of melancholic darkness but uplifting feel to it to me and I guess I’ve been subconsciously chasing that feeling in what I write ever since. I recognised that feeling in more songs over the years following that were like that, like Drifting by Jimi Hendrix, Where Do You Think You’re Going by Dire Straits, Something by the Beatles etc. For some reason I really connected with these songs and they kind of set a blueprint of where I’m trying to go with some of the songs I write. Then there are the songs that are created from an organic space, where they happen out of a result of the 3 of us bouncing ideas of each other as we jam on an idea, they tend to be the best songs for sure, where we all push the songs in the direction we hear them going and creates something that is greater than the sum of of its parts.