Hey! Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
We first fell in love with Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in 2002, discovering the odd 56-bitrate mp3 (the web equivalent of an old cassette tape) and splashing out on the second album, Pocket Symphonies for Lonesome Subway Cars, soon after.
Owen Ashworth’s lo-fi recordings (initially on answering machines) and commitment to the humble Casiotone keyboard inspired and mesmerised in equal measures, and fitted perfectly alongside East River Pipe, who we were also pretty obsessed with at the time.
Jump forward an album (the equally excellent Twinkle Echo), and CFTPA emerged in 2006 with Etiquette, a radically different prospect, more polished and pleasing to the ears but still as lyrically endearing and musically unique as ever. In the next few months CFTPA release two albums: Vs. Children – the follow-up to Etiquette – and Advance Base Battery Life, a compilation of singles. Here’s a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Philadelphia (featuring brother Gordon) from the latter, and a q&a with Owen about Morrissey, hecklers, failing health, samplers, soundtracking and his upcoming visit to Manchester.
We were listening to Toby, Take a Bow and chuckling along to the Smiths references the other day. What do you think of Morrissey’s solo stuff?
I’ve never owned any of the Morrissey solo records, but I’ve enjoyed listening to them in other people’s cars or dorm rooms or whatever. Musically, I don’t enjoy the solo stuff as much as I love that enchanted sound of actual Smiths, but lyrically, I find Morrissey is almost always on point. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: one of the greatest challenges I face as a songwriter is the harsh reality that most of the songs I’d ever want to write were already written by Morrissey.
And how do you rate Manchester bands generally?
Manchester does not need me to remind it that there are a zillion great bands from Manchester. You win, okay? There is something in the pollen or the water that makes you really good at bands while the rest of us struggle to not sound terrible. You don’t need to rub our noses in it, guys. We surrender.
Which artists are you listening to at the moment?
I recently became sort of obsessed with a talk radio programme out of Seattle called Too Beautiful To Live, with Luke Burbank. Their daily podcast has temporarily replaced music in my life. I had to travel to and from New York this week, and I was totally delighted that the flight gave me an excuse to listen to my TBTL totally guilt-free for many, many hours.
Before TBTL took over, I had been listening to a lot of MF DOOM (particularly that King Geedorah album and the first Viktor Vaughn album), the awesome new album by Papercuts, and an Irma Thomas record that Mississippi Records in Portland, Oregon recently reissued. Some of those Irma Thomas songs are just about the best music I’ve ever heard.
There was something of a rarity at your last show here: a heckler (of sorts – a drunk, over-eager fan really). Do you get much trouble with them, and what’s the best way to dispatch one?
Generally, I think I do pretty well with the hecklers. I enjoy the new dynamic that a loud, rude jerk can bring to a show, and I’ve dealt with some really quality assholes at Casiotone shows in the past. As long as the person behind the microphone has a good sense of humour about it, I think heckling can make for a hilarious team-building exercise, uniting the people on stage and the people in the audience against a common foe. One of the downsides of becoming an ‘established artist’ is that there is less of a wildcard element at my shows, meaning that most of the people standing in front of me while I’m playing my songs already like my songs, so there is less of a ‘who the fuck is this guy?’ from the audience, and as a result heckling doesn’t happen nearly much as it used to back in the bad old days.
I definitely have some heckler defence strategies up my sleeve, but oh man. Ohhh maaan. That last Manchester show was rough. I got pretty sick for most of that UK tour, but I couldn’t afford to cancel the shows and head home, so I just bucked up and played my best and remembered very little afterwards. My fever broke the night of the Manchester show. I think most doctors would have told me that playing a rock show was a poor rehabilitation strategy, and that night I was definitely too for gone to try to match wits with even the most drunken and ‘over-eager’ of ‘fans’ (beautiful euphemism, by the way). Was it just an extra strong dose of tough love that that guy was throwing me? Was I being a total baby? I barely even remember. What I do remember is rolling down the window of the car and yelling ‘Sorry Manchester!’ as we drove away the next morning.
You started making songs as it was ‘a far more cost-effective means of storytelling than film-making’. Would you like to combine film with music – for example, to illustrate your songs live?
Last year, I did a score for a movie called Stay The Same Never Change, and most of that score turned into the Town Topic EP. I pretty much did all of the sound design for the whole movie, including sound effects and ringtones for some of the characters (sadly, only one of my ringtones made the final cut). It was a fun challenge making music as an accompaniment for someone else’s story. It was a very different process from the way I usually do things, where the song is the whole story. I think I mostly make music as a sort of proxy cinema, where music and lyrics are meant to replace any sort of visual component. I’ve always had a thing for radio drama. I like that it requires some listener participation and imagination. I’ve seen some beautiful visual accompaniments to live music, but I just don’t think it’s right for me. I like to think of my concerts as a simple sort of demonstration of how my music is made. It’s all meant to be a bit boring and uncomfortable. Sorry, light show and video projector operators of the world!
Your music’s change considerably over the years. Which instruments have you stuck by, and what’s becoming more prominent now?
I still use a Casio SK-1 for writing and live performance. I’ve been playing with that particular model of keyboard since the first album. I have a Korg ES-1 sampler that I’ve used an awful lot for recording and writing since 2004 or so. I’m on my second one now. I move the samples over to a Korg ESX-1 sampler for the live shows, and I keep the ES-1 safe at home. Over the past few years, I have built up two separate sets of gear: one for recording and writing; and the travel version that goes on tour with me. I break stuff constantly, so it’s a relief to have a back-up SK-1, mixer, or reverb box at home when I need one.
For the past few years, I’ve used a Nord Electro for piano, electric piano and organ sounds when for writing and full band shows, but I try to use real pianos for recording as much as possible. Most recently, I’ve been in love with this fake Mellotron called M-Tron, and it shows up on maybe half of the tracks on Vs. Children. Sorry, world, that isn’t an actual boys choir or bassoon ensemble you’re hearing.
We read that you’re hoping to make an analogue album. Is that what we’ll have with the one out this year?
For Vs. Children, I wanted to use as many non-electronic sounds as possible, as opposed to relying on the usual synths and pre-sets or samples of other people’s music (sadly, I don’t know any boys choirs or bassoon ensembles, so I had to fake those). I also knew that I didn’t want to use Pro-Tools. So, about half of the album was recorded at Pan American Recording in San Francisco, which is Jason Quever from Papercuts’ analogue home studio. We recorded everything to two-inch tape, and then I sampled and edited a lot of parts at home. Jason is a great engineer with tonnes of beautiful old instruments, mics, pre-amps, compressors, and reverbs, so I was able to get some really lush sounds (by my standards at least), and then chop them up to build the arrangements. So, while almost all of the sound sources on the album came from live performances on analogue tape, maybe half of what you’re hearing went through that Korg ES-1 sampler at some point. I used a Tascam cassette four-track and an extremely frustrating free computer audio editing program called Audacity for the pieces I recorded at home.
You’re touring with a band this time. Tell us about who’s in it – and are you planning on making Casiotone a ‘band’ permanently?
Tyson Thurston from the band Magical, Beautiful will play baritone guitar and piano, Gordon Ashworth from Concern (he’s my brother!) will play lap steel and piano on the songs that Tyson doesn’t play piano on, and Nick Tamburro from the Dead Science will play drums. I will also do a short solo electronic set before the rest of the dudes jump up. It’s a total pleasure when I’m able to convince some friends to learn my songs and come on tour with me, but it hasn’t stopped feeling like a very special sort of situation. I’ll keep playing music with other great people whenever it works out, but I’m sure there will continue to be solo tours in between. I will have my band-cake and eat it too.
Which have been your favourite cities or countries to visit in Europe?
Anywhere but Manchester. Just kidding! Anywhere but Dresden.
Finally, how’s the music scene where you are in Chicago?
Last night I went to see Lichens, which is a solo voice, loops, and effects project by a dude named Robert Lowe who happens to work at my local video store. His vocal style sort of sounds like a cross between whale songs and yawning, but it’s great. It was a really nice performance. I don’t get out and see a whole lot of live music when I’m home, unfortunately. Tour is basically weeks and weeks worth of big nights out, so once I get back to Chicago, I am usually due for some quiet nights of reading, cooking, cat petting, and video rentals. Chicago has tonnes of great venues for music, though, and there are like a zillion bands.
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone‘s new album, Vs. Children, is out on Tomlab on 6 April. Advance Base Battery Life, a compilation of singles, precedes it on 2 March. CFTPA and Concern play at the Deaf Institute on 20 April.
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Tags:
bruce springsteen • casiotone for the painfully alone • cftpa • charlies • chicago • concern • dead science • dresden • hecklers • lichens • magical beautiful • morrissey • owen ashworth • the smiths
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February 21st, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Can’t wait, see y’all at the Deaf Institute!