Interview With Ian Crause. Summer 2000.
-What was or is Floorshow? i think you were Rob, a girl (Cheryl ?) and you. May you tell me something about what will we find in Floorshow recordings?
Floorshow was the band I formed immediately after disco. It was myself, Cheryl Freedman (then my girlfriend) and Rob Whatley. Rob was replaced by Ritchie Thomas (a brilliant drummer who had played with the Jesus & Mary Chain, the Cocteaus and Dif Juz). However, apart from 2 or 3 songs, most of the material we recorded is directionless (giving it's title, "The Vertical Axis" an added level of irony) and best described as an abortion.
-These recordings created a big expectation in DI fans. Do you know if V2 is going to release any album or single? i think 'The Vertical Axis' was a possible title.
V2, to my knowledge, have no further involvement in any Floorshow offerings - although I may be wrong, as I often am - but I think Geoff Travis (founder of Rough Trade Records) has the say on what, if anything, happens. The recordings are really not worth airing bar 2 or 3 songs, if that. It has pleasantly surprised me recently, that anyone remembers us (DI) as we made no discernible impact while we were releasing records, so I am very flattered and grateful to the people you say have shown an interest, yourself included. It's a vindicating feeling to think that the hard work we put into the music has had an impact on people - all the more as it appears unsanctioned by career plans and marketing strategies.
-To compose those songs, did you use the same method than in Disco Inferno? Were they specific for Floorshow?
'The Vertical Axis' was the result of about 4 or 5 years work and so encompassed many changes in technique. With 'Technicolor," I wrote most of the songs on guitar with the soundscapes prefigured with lyrics they became the backing which, in hindsight was probably a mistake as it is ultimately a musical compromise. I felt unhappy about the blandness of the album and resolved to follow my instincts to become more innovative. Throughout the following year or two, I recorded tracks incorporating both guitar pop and cartoon sound effects, which excited me greatly. The only problem was, I was the only person who seemed to feel this way; so I was effectively forced back to a starting position and was at a loss as to how to write. The mental block I experienced ran from about 1994 (around during "Technicolor") until 1998/9 (after Floorshow). So, the style could be described as a fairly individual variation on mediocrity - but a variation specific to Floorshow!
- Some months ago DI fans were susprised with ' the mixing it session'. Have you more unreleased surprises like that?
The "Mixing It Session" surprised me as well when it was suggested by Glen - apparently the NME gave it a proper review (which I don't think they did with our studio albums) so, our star is in the ascendant. Perhaps I should buy a shiny shirt! There are no more unreleased tracks, save a bizarre effort knocked up for a BBC radio producer's seminar at Broadcasting House in London (we got the then Director General, John Birt, to sing "My Way" - rather badly) and some from the "DI Go Pop" sessions which I seem to remember totalling about 12 tracks in all, though I no longer have a copy.
- In your last interview you seemed quite interested in literature. How important your lyrics are?
Lyrics were the reason I became a musician - I picked up a guitar partly to hide behind and partly so that the band wouldn't have to find another person - always an ordeal. We figured that if New Order didn't have guitars running through every song then we didn't have to either. As for literature, I tend to read and study poetry, for the most part, as opposed to novels, with the main exception of the English novelist, Peter Ackroyd (one of my few living heroes). the poets seem to have a firmer grasp of the truer, more visionary perspective. Poetry, as close to music as it is the novel, seems a more suited vehicle. Read Peter Ackroyd - if his novels aren't available in Spanish, they will be eventually. Poets know there is little money in poetry, whereas novelists and visual artists (especially those of our generation) seem to work with an instinctive need for acceptance and easy reputation at the front of their minds and show no wareness of any conflict in doing that. Hence, England ends up with artists - writers of the calibre of Alex Garland and Tracy Emin touted as some sort of vanguard. This is a delusion and a bad omen for English culture in the long run. *Thee* poet to read is William Blake - the time elapsed between his writing and our reading is, ultimately, irrelevant. What at first will appear insanely incoherent, will show, in time, as the truest, most comprehensive record of the flux of the world, certainly in the European canon and, in any medium, he is truly worth studying. Luckily, I was born with English as my first language and thank God for precisely that reason. Nevertheless, Goya studied his painting technique, so aspects of his work undoubtedly cross national barriers (as they were supposed to). I stop now, or I never shall! I have also become inspired by Dante Alighieri (who, I have slowly begun to study) and find huge creative possibilities in Ovid's "Metamorphoses." His "Ars Amatonia" is viciously funny and should be read. The question you have asked, which by extension becomes, "how important is the written word?" should really be inverted and addressed to other modern musicians. Why do they not aspire to understand the world their work professes to illuminate, whilst being more than happy to receive money for publicising their thoughts> Is it too much like hard work? William Blake (employed first and foremost as an engraver) said that an artist in any medium who can't read, is not an artist. He was almost right. An artist who can read but won't is no artist. With no moral intellect, all is reduced to a pretty parade where artist become poodles, selling themselves at the earliest opportunity for the most base of reasons. Now I stop.
-And you didn't seem too happy with music bussiness. Is Floorshow ended? Have you other projects in mind?
The music business is the one part of my life left that still scares me. It is supposedly a world of delicacy and emotional power, yet it is a world driven by a relentless race to build careers and stay afloat financially. This is all well and good but I have found over the past decade that I am ill - suited to exist happily as part of it - so have to resist the temptation (which is really a combination of laziness and pride) to make a name for myself as an artist. Life is far simpler on a normal plain where I have a normal job and a modicum of financial stability for the first time in my life. Try as I might, I cannot reverse the inexorable realisation of the last couple of years - that, for me, art and money cannot mix successfully. As my previous career is the only part of my past that has come back to haunt me and cause me depression, I would have to be mad to return to it.
-Are you going to begin a remixer career with other bands, like mir?
It's a shame because I like the idea from a distance but when I'm presented with the reality of the situation, I tend to back away, remembering the hassles of dealing with the musicians (which I hope not have to do again unless they are exceptional) and the gulf I never seemed to be able to bridge with them. Most seemed to believe I was, and still am, mad. They tire and depress me. I think I could make an excellent producer of the right people but still have many ghosts to lay to rest. I'd like to temp as a guitarist, a la Robert Smith but who knows?
-For fans we never see you in live, DI gigs could seem quite complicated because all your samples and effects. Were they complicated?
Disco gigs were often vaguely amusing nightmares of malfunctioning and crashing equipment as none of us were technically-minded - I used to read the start of equipment manuals and then pretty much guess the rest. My favourite humiliation occurred when the equipment began to play itself randomly one night onstage. This was eventually rectified by standing a glass of iced water on the MIDI merge box as we took the stage. Apparently, they hadn't been designed to be used as we had used it and it was prone to rapid overheating. I should add that it is a unique feeling to walk through a crowded club full of staring people in front of whom you have soundly humiliated yourself barely fifteen minutes before. It should be tried.
-In 'Technicolour' you modified the appearance of your songs, they were more pop and less 'difficult', did you want to open your songs to more people or simply it was because most of them was composed with guitar, not with sampler?
"Technicolor" sounded the way it did due to a gentleman's agreement between Paul and myself. Paul acquired a sampler and wanted to write primarily with it. Meanwhile, I had bought a 12 string Rickenbacker and begun to play conventional guitar again. The idea was that half the album would be written by each of us and we'd meet in the middle. After about a year, I had generated almost an albums worth of songs and Paul had a couple of pieces on the sampler that he liked, so the balance had changed and the guitar dominated.
-DI, since your redefinition of Joy Division/New Order influence, was considered like an 'experimental' or 'serious' band, forgetting your pop essence. Is that pop essence what you wanted to remark in most of your last songs, in titles like 'DI go Pop' or in the single 'The Last Dance'?
The title "DI Go Pop" had a double meaning. It referred both to a musical implosion which left no stable generic direction and also to the rather fanciful idea that we could reinvent popular music by being freakishly popular. This second aim, I feel, was slightly unrealistic but one out of two is a pretty respectable result, all things considered.
-In your artwork you worked with Cactus and Fuel (you made something for Summer Last Sound single(?). With fuel you used some Clifton Hepburn illustrations, but i think David Spero photographies where nearest to DI music. Do you agree? Why did you choose these artists?
Concerning the artwork, I feel we had a similar relationship with the sleeve designers as the Factory bands and Peter Saville Associates or 4AD and Vaughn Oliver, in that they exercised (as far as we were concerned) total control and we trusted them. Fuel's work, I still feel, was peerless, yet no other record companies would employ them as they were considered to be too unconventional to shift product. Fuel always asked our opinion of their efforts and we invariably liked them. As simple as that. They were, and probably still are, for all I know, the best in their field.
-May you recommend us some of your last favorites CDs?
For the last five or so years, I listened to very little other than various Big Black, Public Enemy, Kraftwerk and REM. Albums - Beefheart's "Clear Spot" and PiL's "Metal Box." (Obviously Joy Division, New Order and The Smiths are always welcome in my house!). For the last two years or so I stopped listening to music almost totally as I started to hear it almost mocking me. So that wasn't particularly good, although i suspect many commercially unsuccessful musicians have had similar experiences over the years/ When Id di begin to listen to music again it was a distinctly two-fold experience. On the one hand, I listen to London's "indie" XFM radio - I'm sure you're aware of it - so I tend to be quite up on the latest Travis b-side, etc and on the other, I have discovered a burgeoning interest in Renaissance culture and music (which contains a particular magic that musics before and after seem, to me, to lack). A particular favourite of mine is a CD of Italian secular songs sung and played on the lute, cittern and Viol De Maro by an English lady called Shirley Rumsey. It is spellbinding from beginning to end and is published by NAXOS. I have next to no interest in the supposed "rock underground." Firstly, they had next to no interest in me or my band, so I hope it is understandable to you. Secondly, more relevantly, almost one of three band sI hear seems to one of two types - either polished, tuneful pop groups (which I liked but are in no way intellectually profound or daring) or aimless, noodling genre-dipping morons with an illogical lo-fi obsession. Lo-fidelity recording simply masks the faults of the recording. It makes fewer tracks sound bigger in the mix. It gives lazily thought out parts a sonic vibrancy and ultimately creates a kind of music with little complexity in the higher frequencies. The detail, the genius, of music is to be found almost exclusively at the top end, in it's use of complexity and space. Treble carries far, far more creative information than bass and a retrogressive sound is tailored to this approach - it makes for simple, more linear music. Surely the next break is to be with line of music, to make innumerable instants of perfection rather than a progressing line? Lo-fi restrictions inhibit this, whereas orchestral composition, ironically, holds the key! The randomised distortions of a tube amp or a saturated tape track are great in place but they are one tool - one element only. Language, for me, is the key. The real test for the ambitious, as it currently stands (listen to Hank Shocklee, Tim Simenon and William Orbit's production jobs) is to make it exciting AND hi-fidelity.
