STACK #138 Apr 2016

MUSIC NEWS

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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

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.”

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I t’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 INTERVIEW

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

Chaosmosis by Primal Scream is out now via Warner.

MUSIC

BABYMETAL I f 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.

STEVE BERKOWITZ

INTERVIEW

Y ou'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

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.”

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

Metal Resistance by Babymetal is out now via Cooking Vinyl/Sony.

You And I by Jeff Buckley is out now via Sony.

APRIL 2016

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