STACK April 2016 Issue 138

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08 APRIL 2016
MUSIC
should be about pain. I call it ‘ecstatic depressive
realism.’ You just feel everything’s so f-cking
futile and you just can’t – here comes my wife,
actually,” he interrupts himself. “I’m talking about
relationships!” he yells out the car window at
her. “She just went ‘Oh,’ and winked,” he informs
me. “Looking good. Looking good.”
Chaosmosis is a gumbo of approaches, peeled
from the ten previous albums that Gillespie
and his bandmates – Andrew Innes (guitar),
Martin Duffy (keyboards), Simone Butler (bass)
and Darrin Mooney (drums) – have created
through the group's various embodiments over
the last three decades. “We did what we’ve
always done: we just mixed electronics with
live musicians,” Gillespie says. “Andrew was
going crazy with the plug-ins; he was coming
out with all these incredible sounds and riffs
and ideas. The atmosphere of the rhythm with
the riff, that would just trigger off an idea in my
mind and I’d start singing.” The connections
between musicians can be as volatile as romantic
ones, but you don’t get to thirty years of musical
success by resting on your laurels. “I don’t
think anyone said relationships were going to
be easy,” says Gillespie. “But I think some are
worth fighting for.”
It’s colder than belly-blue hell in Bobby
Gillespie’s car, but that’s where he’s sitting to
take my call; his house is full of people and he
can only get peace out here, but he refuses to
keep the motor running for the heater. “I was
going to try that but I’m scared in case I end up
f-cking poisoning myself,” he says in his sing-song
Glaswegian accent. “You’d get a great interview
out of that. Greatest f-cking byline!” The
conversation revolves around Primal Scream’s
new album Chaosmosis, which is a Catherine
wheel of analogue and electronic sounds that
blend into a compelling collection of disco-rock,
from the bossa nova of I Can Change (“That was
one of those plug-ins – you press down a key,
and it plays a chord and a beat behind that”) to
the brilliant duo with Sky Ferreira, Where The
Light Gets In (“Sometime in 2013, I discovered
Sky – I became obsessed by her song,
BOBBY GILLESPIE
PRIMAL SCREAM
continued
Chaosmosis by Primal Scream
is out now via Warner.
Everything Is Embarrassing. I played it on repeat.
There’s something deeply emotional about her,
and at the same time kind of vulnerable”). But
the veteran musician finds the most to say about
stand-out cut 100% Or Nothing. “The song ends
with: ‘100 percent or nothing can’t be true, I don’t
want you; 100 percent of nothing is what you
get, what did you expect’ – that’s the full chorus.
You want to feel commitment,” he explains. “I
think that’s the romantic in me. Of course, when I
was younger and f-cking about, I didn’t really care
so much. It was kind of cool to know the other
person didn’t want commitment. Those kind of
relationships, they are what they are. I guess
if you’re narcissistic like me, then you want to
worship and be worshipped.” Those contradictory
thoughts bled through into the track’s form:
“The music is euphoric and you can dance to it,
but the music suggested to me that the lyrics
INTERVIEW
BABYMETAL STEVE BERKOWITZ
If you haven't spent any
time sing-screaming
"Domo ne chokoreto" in the
last two years, but think that
sounds like a pretty fun thing
to do, it's time you got on
to Babymetal. The Japanese
trio are basically what would
happen if The Powerpuff Girls
liked black tutus and double-
kick drums, and their second
album Metal Resistance is
just like a poisoned toffee
apple. Mean and cute.
Metal
Resistance by
Babymetal is out
now via Cooking
Vinyl/Sony.
You And I
by Jeff Buckley
is out now via Sony.
You'd best make sure you have
a couple of hours put aside if
you’re going to speak to producer,
musician, A&R man and music
industry veteran Steve Berkowitz –
because the man has stories, and
he likes to tell them. The “musical
shepherd” famously discovered
the late, beloved Jeff Buckley – in
a café where Sinead O’Connor
was making coffees, no less – in
the East Village of NewYork in
the early ‘90s, and chaperoned
the recording of the as yet
unreleased tracks on last month’s
You And I. “He was certainly not
reluctant,” Berkowitz says of why
he sat with Buckley during these
sessions. “My goal was for him
to go where he wanted to go,
and he wasn’t allowing himself
to do that yet. He was reluctant
to make a commitment to the
record company, as to what the
first record would be. It’s also a
limitless desire to figure yourself
out: ‘What have I got?’” Berkowitz
reiterates that Buckley “didn’t
perform”; he endlessly created,
and built something anew each
time he played. “Jeff would
internalise the music, feel the
music, and develop it,” he says.
“Then it would emit out of him
into the room. He would literally
gather you into it; he didn’t play
at you, he wanted you to be in
this experience and feel what
was going on. ‘Are we getting
somewhere? Do you feel this,
are we rocking, am I p-ssing
you off, is this gorgeous, am I
ripping your heart out?’” There
are some instances of Buckley
speaking on the record, most
notably during the titular track,
in which he describes a song he
heard in a dream. His voice is
gentle and serene, but Berkowitz
also remembers him as full of
laughter and slapstick silliness.
“He was a full-ranged dude,” he
says. “He was as beautiful and
gentle as he was focused, when
he would just go into his own
thing. Some people would think
that meant you were getting cut
off. But it was just him going into
himself and thinking. Jeff was not
insular: he was as friendly with
the people of Sin-é as he was with
the homeless people in the park.”
Berkowitz makes clear that this
album represents the first chapter
of the Jeff Buckley story – and we
already know chapters two (Live
at Sin-é), three ( Grace) and four
(Sketches for My Sweetheart the
Drunk). “I was opening the doors,”
Berkowitz says simply. “You
couldn’t tell him what to do; it was
for me to keep people away and
leave him alone. If you push the
flower it will just fall off the vine.
He only really had his one chance
to do it, and look at the amazing
things he did.”
INTERVIEW