'When we play it's organic, emotional, exciting,
fun and... well, a bit stupid'
In 2005, I interviewed Wire's Colin Newman
on his new group with wife and ex-Minimal Compact bassist
Malka Spigel and Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud)
after a concert supporting Krautrock legends Dieter Moebius and
Michael Rother as part of the South Bank's Ether series.
MAT SMITH : How did you come up with the name
Githead? It seems very British.
COLIN NEWMAN : It was one of those classic moments
really.
From the outside a group that has Scanner and 'the
bloke from Wire' in it must be expected to be pretty heavy duty
intellectual. Further more with the addition of Malka you’ve
got Immersion and Scanner so it must be at least ambient conceptual.
But the thing is that when we play it’s organic, emotional,
exciting, fun and. well a bit stupid.
We knew we wanted a name that lacked pretension
and somehow went more with how the band feels rather than what people
suppose it is. There was a moment when someone called someone else
a githead and someone else said 'Why not call ourselves Githead?'
Everyone just burst out laughing. Needless to say the name stuck!
I love the way it pisses people off. People want
us to have a more serious name but in a way it is deadly serious
because of the way it so beautifully subverts expectations about
us and allows the project to breathe!
MS : I had never known Robin Rimbaud to be a
guitarist. I know he remixed some of your stuff in the past, but
how did the Githead project come about?
CN : It wasn’t really particularly planned.
Malka felt we should do some kind of band for our 10th anniversary
of Swim [the label Malka and Colin co-own] at the ICA in April last
year. I played a one-off gig with the then-reformed Minimal Compact
at the back end of 2003. In rehearsals Malka, Max (Minimal’s
drummer) and myself started jamming round a bass riff which felt
really good. Unbelievably it was the first time Malka and I had
played our respective instruments along with a drummer and it really
felt there was a lot of potential in it. Back in London we didn’t
have a drummer but we knew that a band was the way forward.
Meanwhile Robin expressed interest in doing something
at the Swim anniversary. We go back a long way with Robin. He’s
from round our part of London and he’s always been 'family'
as it were. We figured the most creative thing to do would be to
see if we could do something with him playing guitar with us. It
was kind of a crazy idea but I know Robin to be highly adaptable
and he was very keen to do something that was quite out of the run
of stuff he does as Scanner. In our studio we had a similar 'light
switch on' moment as soon as we all started playing together. It
was obvious that it gels. You can't legislate for that kind of stuff,
it was magic from the off!
Interestingly he's played guitar since he was 16
years old and it’s been refreshing for him to offer a public
vehicle to demonstrate the fact that he can actually play an instrument
and not just process electronic sounds!
The first piece was 'Reset' (done within 15 minutes
of us starting to play together) but more importantly we knew this
was exciting to do and we wanted more!
MS : I really liked the sound on the Headgit
EP - very clean, with a bit of funk. I did notice some Wire-isms
from around the time of A Bell Is A Cup in the guitars, but
on the whole it sounds very different from 21st century Wire. Did
you have a particular sound in mind?
CN : The basic format isn't really planned as such.
Githead writes well as a band, which is something Wire doesn’t
do. The structures tend to be governed by continuous creative input.
Once we've got one bit we go for the next. Sometimes I just shout
a chord and we all go for it . Very often Malka will play something
and Robin and I torture her to get her to do it again while we fiddle
with chord shapes. Sometimes Robin has a riff he used to play when
he first got a guitar when he was at school. We try to keep it fluid
and interesting. There isn't really an attempt to make it into something
other than what pleases us.
When we have stuff recorded I then try to mix it
in the spirit of it’s creation. I make sure I keep a lot of
sonic options to build the pieces and of course I use all my skill
to make it sound as good as I can! It's all based on live performances
but with the precision the available tools will give us. I hope
I’m flexible enough as a mixer to be able to make each project
sound different but the reason 21st centaury Githead doesn’t
sound like 21st century wire is because it’s different people
playing in a different way!
MS : How did you write the songs? Were they jammed
out, or for example did you write some lyrics first. What ideas
did The Beat Monster (the 'drummer' prior to Max joining full time)
bring to the table?
CN : As I said up to now we wrote together in the
studio. The Beat Monster makes us funky! We might start seeing if
we can write in a studio with Max. Our live sound engineer is building
a studio in Rotterdam so we might use that when it's complete.
MS : From the outset, did you decide to steer
away from electronics?
CN : There’s a time & place for everything.
The subject of “electronics” is rather difficult to
pin down now. The way nearly all recorded music is made these days
has evolved from what we might have called the “electronic
revolution” of the 90’s (if we were pretentious J )
– We are really just swimming in the sea of the possible.
Githead loves toys but we love new toys much better than old ones!!
For example both Robin & I use “guitars” live which
are in fact tone modelling generators which are able to reproduce
tones from many different guitars & guitar like instruments
(this is why I gave Robin my guitar @ the QEH). Malka has her “bass
amp” in a little box on the floor. The big thing behind her
is just so she can hear what she plays on stage.
MS : You were on the bill with Rother / Moebius
at the Ether concert. Were you a fan of 'Krautrock'?
CN : Of course! Both Old School & 90’s.
No one could have steered their way through the late 70’s/
early 80’s without taking in at least Can.
MS : How do you put together your live set?
CN : Our plan was always to be a “stand up”
live band as soon as we could. What you saw at the QEH was the result
of 3 days rehearsal (shortened by snow delays & car break downs)
and one previous gig. In other words we are really only just getting
started. Some things you can make happen in rehearsal and some things
only come the more gigs you play. We all know the power of being
in a very effective live unit and are excited about where these
performances can take us!
MS : Finally, is there anything else on the way
from Githead? Or was it a one-off collaboration?
CN : I think you can probably guess the answer
to that one! The album Profile (wm36) is released in May/June
(although it will be available through posteverything before that).
We have a few live things planned for the summer but are going to
get a lot more serious with an actual tour in autumn.
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