Interview: Kogumaza

Your album sleeves have an ethereal feel, while your song titles reference topics such as legendary lost cities, the USSR, and cosmology. Is this a way of creating an image that is separate from the individuals in the band or am I looking too much in to it?
Chris: We operate on instinct a lot. We never sat and planned the sleeves, but I feel it relates to the music in that we try and use imagery that has an alien feel but is from very ordinary sources. The artwork for the new record has a lunar quality but was taken forty miles from where we live. We're drawn to certain imagery, especially the Soviet imagery you mentioned, because we're trying to find things to use that don't signify something immediately - maybe the lack of understanding of Soviet Union imagery due to language means it becomes easier to react to it instinctively. It's anti-information-era, anti-internet in that we're trying to create something that can't be easily filed or understood.

You have always been careful not to align yourself to any kind of genre, yet often get called ‘post-rock’...
Katy: What is really lovely is that we are often championed by people who have very different reference points. I always felt we could be quite a difficult band for people but it always seems that we are rather palatable and easy to digest, and people ‘get it’ quite instantly.
Chris: People who review music are usually just reviewing sound and what that sound signifies and we make instrumental music using guitars, so it’s not surprising. Though, when you think about it that’s pretty crazy; it’s like hearing two people talking in French and concluding they are both saying the same thing because they’re using the same tool - language.

How about the ‘psychedelic’ tag?
Katy: It makes sense in the visual sense of the word, our music is about finding patterns, bending and pulling, twisting, distorting and inverting.
Chris: I’m deeply suspicious of anybody making music who willingly aligns themselves and what they do with any kind of catch-all term or genre. ‘Psychedelic’ in 2014 reminds me of all the lads making Oasis-style music in the nineties, just with more pedals – it's really male, really retro-minded and it has in-built rules to abide by. Much as I like some 'psychedelic' bands, those restrictions aren't for me. But I could say the same for doom or drone, or whatever...

Mark Spivey is your non-performing member. What does he bring to the band?
Chris: Mark runs our whole live sound, manipulating anything he likes through delay and reverb effects like you might do if you were creating a live ‘dub’ of something in a studio from the source material. So, for that, I would say Mark does perform with us. He performs more than most laptop electronica live performances you might go and see.
Neil: Mark is an unusual and special character. Most things he does are outside the box. He’s a real “feel” guy and while he has a lot of knowledge and understanding of what he does, he never lets this get in the way of how he wants things to sound. He brings stability, knowledge and experience as well giving us an added external perspective on situations. Humour is also a strong point.

How do you feel when you read about Nottingham finally having a music scene when bands and artists like you have been involved in it for twenty years?
Neil: It depends if you look under the surface. There are artists and bands in Nottingham that are doing well in a commercial sense but it’s not something I feel I’ve contributed to or that makes a scene. Bar a couple of diy venues and a few other things that go on in town I’m not really sure there is a scene here. I’m pleased Nottingham has these diy venues, promoters and collectives and is able to keep promoting music that is important to me and would otherwise more than likely be missed. Having said that, pre these places I used to feel part of a scene, perhaps because I was younger and went out a lot more. A lot of people attended the gigs that Chris and I and the rest of Damn You! and others put on. There have also been times when it felt there was a network of bands that helped each other out. Not meaning to sound overly negative or say all bands are guilty of this, but sometimes the commercial backing of music just parodies the problems I see with mainstream music today. I saw someone from a local band walk into a rehearsal room with a banner asking to vote for his band. That seems mentally close to X Factor to me.

Chris: I’m slightly ambivalent because it’s people with very different targets and goals to me. The only time it gets my back up is when it’s assumed that everyone making music or art in the town has those same goals of stardom or success. I can see that coming at the moment and it makes me personally wary - anything not meeting the same levels of success as the bigger acts becomes a failure. Nottingham has a rich history of hard work and a defiantly diy practice that values long term satisfaction over any commercial goals and it’d be a shame if that was undervalued and made working that way something to be ashamed of. You can kind of see the change in the city when you put on a gig on and people are asking if there's a cheaplist for a touring band from America and the door price is a fiver. Or someone wanting to get in free to take pictures or review a gig. There's an assumption that the money needed to tour is coming from 'somewhere else' as opposed to a simple transaction between you and the band. In corporate venues it's different because they are making money from both door entry and drinks so letting people in as guests can actually bring more money but when you're private hiring a venue and the door price to practically nothing, it's gobsmacking.

There’s this narrative of people from places like Nottingham using music to ‘get out’ and to find their stardom. That’s bullshit to me. I just want to be part of a community that values the endeavours it makes and where there is a modest platform to share them. It’s why we all work so hard to put on gigs or to be part of efforts to make the city better to live in. It can feel a bit like being a naked man in a glass soundproofed box in the middle of the Vic Centre though.

Your new album is titled Kолокол (Russian for ‘Bell’) after Nathan Bell who plays on it. What is the relevance of having him on your record?
Neil: He’s played on some of my favourite recordings and was in one of my favourite bands, Lungfish. A relaxed and humble guy with some serious skills. Truly inspiring to be around.
Chris: I’d been reading lots of books by Bill Drummond a couple of years ago and they had a profound effect on me. He always says it’s important to complete circles wherever possible because it creates new things and makes magic happen so having a primary influence like Nathan play music with us, and have him play the bass for the first time since he made those records we love, felt like we were doing that somehow. Also, Nathan knows Joan Jett. Joan Jett.

The new album took two years to make; is that due to complexity of music, having to work around day jobs, or just laziness?
Chris: I don't think our music is that complex but the way we record it certainly is. We’re not technologically savvy when it comes to recording so it's always an exercise in problem solving. We spend a lot of time struggling to describe what’s in our heads and that can be quite abstract. Pete Fletcher at First Love has helped us with both LPs we've done and I can see he has visibly aged from the process.

I saw the band in Lee Rosy’s and the teapots and cups were all rattling due to the excessive volume; where is the most inappropriate venue that you’ve played?
Chris: We’re not Swans but a heavy physical volume is important to our sound. We played a theatre in Brighton with a 90db noise limit. If I tickled you now, you’d emit in excess of 90db easily. Probably my favourite Kogumaza gig was last year's Sin Eater festival in Shropshire in a tent while it rained outside and a huge wicker man burnt in the background. It felt overwhelming. But even then the house sound engineer tried to pull Mark off the sound desk when we were playing.

You once ended up at Cannes Film Festival...
Chris: We toured Europe with Zomes in 2011 and had a day off and a huge drive between Barcelona and Bologna so we decided to head around the coast and pull into a hotel somewhere around halfway. When we saw ‘Cannes’ on signs we headed off towards the centre. We noticed it was pretty busy but thought nothing of it. We turned up a main street and all of a sudden security guards were blocking our path and hitting the disgusting, rusty van filled with disgusting, rusty people. We looked around and we were at the red carpet entrance to the premieres where the limos pull up and we were right in the middle of the Film Festival. We did an awkward 71-point turn and evacuated. We didn’t find a hotel but we did go to the beach.

You’ve started covering I Want You (She’s So Heavy) by The Beatles...
Katy: I think it’s the best song and riff ever. The coda, the riff that we cover, is just one of those perfect riffs. It sounds a little like a record stuck in a groove, so simple but unusual sounding.
Chris: So much of what is 'heavy' just kind of sounds heavy or uses sounds associated with heaviness. I Want You... is probably the heaviest riff of all time, but it's made by the last band you might associate with heaviness. Listening to our own music in the way we do has made us hear other people's music the same way, we find ourselves fixated on tiny bits of other songs.

Kолокол from Kogumaza is available now.