Hey! Starless and Bible Black
Hey! Manchester first got to know Starless and Bible Black during our first year of promoting. They were main support for our sixth ever gig – Espers at Levenshulme’s Klondyke Club – and we invited them to play again at Vetiver’s sold-out Roadhouse show. They’re one of Manchester’s best bands so we only ask them to be main support for some of our bigger gigs.
Pete and Raz from the band got together to fill us in on their current activities, and they also provided us with a sneak peak from recent recordings.
How busy are things in the Starless universe right now?
Getting busier for lazy folk like us. We had a relatively quiet time in 2008 in terms of live shows but spent much of it working on two albums. The first album was finished earlier this year and is now due out in September. The second one is all home recordings on our eight-track tape machine and is coming together slowly and is about half done. Not sure when that will be released.
Various references are made about your music – including Pentangle, Mazzy Star and 4AD. Which artists have actually inspired you collectively?
Collectively we’ve all arrived from different schools of music, so there are quite a few things all thrown in the pot. Pentangle are definitely an influence on us. Where they brought folk revival, blues and jazz together we take a bit of what they did and throw it in with all sorts of other things, so it’s an evolution! We’re not really too conscious of what these other influences are but I reckon David Crosby, Stereolab, Cocteau Twins, Talk Talk, Radiophonic Workshop, The Smiths, Gene Clark and Alvin Lucier would cover most of it. So not tied to any one era.
You’ve been around for a few years now. How has the folk scene changed in Manchester?
There are so many scenes in Manchester, and several acoustic scenes are in there I suppose. The ones that we know best have grown with new promoters, events, labels and bands sprouting everywhere, and that can only be good.
Your first album’s released by Chicago label Locust Music. How did that particular connection come about?
We were into some of the Locust records. We already had plans to start our own label called Timbreland but we sent a CD of early album tracks off to Locust and they called us up a month later and offered to put it out.
Were you tempted to put it out on Timbreland? Why did you opt for another label rather than your own?
Yeah, the original plan was to release it ourselves but when Locust offered to do it, it seemed like a much better option given their vibe, experience and of course it meant we didn’t have to sell ourselves! We really had and still have great respect for the Locust label – Dawson who runs Locust is an articulate fanatic of weird and wonderful outsider music from many genres and eras so it was an honour to become a part of their catalogue. Some of the stuff they release goes deeply against the grain of what most record companies would consider commercially safe and we have respect for that. And we’re pleased to get our records out in the US and we’ve sold more there than over here. Dawson still doesn’t believe me when I tell him that we didn’t send any tracks off anywhere else.
And you’ve had coverage from the likes of the New York Times, Wire and Pitchfork. What’s the most pleasing thing that you’ve read about it?
They were all highly complimentary!! But my favourite is from a US blog that describes the first album as ‘distilled sunlight, perfume bottles on an aunt’s dresser, driving south, unplanned friends’ jams, certain bookstores on cold afternoons, and the raking of leaves’.
What can we expect from the new album later this year?
A bit of a mix. It’s a heavier, electric and more wide-screen album than the first record and is not very folk in any sense of the word. Much of it was recorded on tape at Bryn Derwen, a great haunted studio in Snowdonia – loads of Telecasters, Moogs and valve amps – and roomy drums and double basses – but with Helene crooning away in the middle. Other than that it’s still verses and choruses with the odd drone solo from Raz.
Which other Manchester artists should we be listening to right now?
I Am Your Autopilot, Magic Arm, The Winter Journey, John Stammers, Nancy Elizabeth, Denis Jones and David A. Jaycock.
Starless and Bible Black play at St Clements Church in Chorlton on Saturday 28 March
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