In the depths of Cardiff lie three men and a woman collectively known as Mountain Men Anonymous. A somewhat elusive bunch, I managed with some difficulty to get two of these characters to partake in some friendly discussion on road accidents, Mogwai and each other.
First of all, how did you get the name?
Sam: “Adam!”
Adam: “For some reason I always tell this story! It's taken from an American rafting club called, surprisingly, Mountain Men Anonymous. As an initiation ceremony they decided it would be a wise thing to re-enact the William Tell shoot-an-apple-off-someone's-head effort. But in typical American styleee, they used a beer can and the guy who was being initiated got shot through the eye with the arrow, was nearly killed and blinded in one eye. Bright huh?”
What are your musical backgrounds?
Sam: “I played guitar when I was a little boy, it was nice but my fingers always smelt. When you hit things you make noises - it's nice. I hate guitars now, they smell of poo, but the future is bright.“
Adam: “Sam was always the 'musical one' and he'd been playing guitar for ages before any idea of a band came into being. I've messed about with guitars for a few years with limited end product and John [drums] has been battering seven shades out of various drumkits for a while now. Musical backgrounds can probably be summed up like this: Sam=weird noise/electronica, um… me=metal and now anything noisy and odd, John=metal, Lorna=indie/Jeff Buckley-type stuff.”
You’re a Cardiff based band but you hail from Gloucester. Why did you choose to be part of the so-called ‘Welsh scene’?
Sam: “The Welsh scene? Is there a scene, maybe like an old man reeling fish from his tethered trawler? Gloucester needs something organic to improve its structure, either that or something very plutonic - like a bomb. Cardiff is a lovely place; it has pride, sincerity and a sense of warmth. It's good to be there.“
Adam: “I don't think we ever made a conscious decision one day to become part of the Welsh scene. Coming from Gloucester was kind of pointless from a musical point of view because no-one there really gives a shit. Two of the band were at Uni in South Wales so we just got a few gigs in Cardiff and it went from there. I would rather not be part of any current Welsh 'scene' to be honest, as it’s often an over-commercialised, insular melting pot of pure unremarkable shit in my opinion.”
How would you describe you music?
Sam: “Our music is messy, pretentious, over-blown tosh which shouldn't really be allowed, but... God forbid, it is encouraged by regular sufferers of what can only be described as 'post-frigging-rockitis'. Stop this nonsense! It will be stopped! The future is bright.”
Adam: “Noisy? Boring? Goes on a bit? Punk-rock? I have no idea... “
Who are you most commonly compared to, and does it bother you?
Sam: “Hmmm… Let me see, this is hard! Nunspeedmewhitepony are very like Mountain Godspeed Anonymous and this is partially by accident and partially because we used to listen to the same records as most of 'post-rock-Canada.’ I am bored of these shenanigans - no more white violin shreds and dour drones from the Nunspeeds and the Mountain Goats!”
Adam: “In case you couldn't understand what the hell Sam was trying to say there, yes, Godspeed You Black Emperor! are the main band that keeps rearing its ugly head as a comparison. It’s more accurate than Mogwai comparisons in my opinion, and we still get these, but at the same time it's generally fuelled by ignorant people who hear instrumental music and shit their pants. It's like comparing Fugazi to Travis, just because they both use vocals and guitars. In my opinion we're much more direct than Godspeed, we don't use samples live and there's no violins, cellos, etc, plus just ONE drummer. Oh and I don't think we're quite as pretentious somehow. But at the same time, I suppose when people are writing about MMA they need to have some easily name-droppable benchmark to enlighten whoever may be reading their review/interview, etc.“
Are there any bands or performers that influence you particularly, then?
Sam: “No, not particularly in terms of the product but in terms of attitude... yes. Know Point do whatever they want to do with their music and art, and that’s exactly what should be done with any artform. All artforms, especially music, are being consolidated to the nether-regions of stability and compromise - and it sucks like Thom Yorke's lemon!”
Adam: “In the broadest sense I suppose everything we hear, whatever kind of music that is, 'influences' us. Even if it's some bland, middle of the road, radio-friendly junk - that influences us to make more noise probably.”
Best bands around the local/general scene at the moment?
Sam: “Is that supposes to be sarcastic? What scene? I'll try, but most of these aren't actually bands as such. Cardiff - Know Point, Teflon Monkey. Generally - Seefeel, Mira Calix, Autechre, Pheonecia, Zan Lyons, Kid 606.”
Adam: “The local 'scene' is depressingly poor in the main, full of the same bands playing the same venues each week - something that we too could have been guilty of in previous weeks. Teflon Monkey, Know Point and the missing-in-action Four Track Captain are the best of the South Wales crop at the moment although certainly the latter two are far removed from any perceived 'scene'. And rightly so. Worldwide, my personal faves, include Les Savy Fav and Chris Clark.”
So you’ve decided to do away with all the mediocrity in the form of Anonymous Promotions?
Adam: “Yeah, this is my doing I'm afraid. To go all business sounding for a second, the aim of Anonymous Promotions is to bring some superb bands to South Wales that would otherwise come nowhere near Cardiff, etc mainly due to the fact that all the 'promoters' are too busy putting on another Terris gig or some such wank. Very few experimental or electronica bands make it this far out west and it would be nice to change that. Delicate AWOL played in May and they were really cool and Zan Lyons nearly vibrated the Barfly into crumbling around his ears earlier this month (June) - he was fucking fantastic, such a nice guy too. Billy Mahonie are going to be playing in September which should be one to look out for and there are plans for more events during the summer, although the horribly student-orientated gig-going public of Cardiff tends to disappear during non-term times, making putting gigs on near to impossible.”
How much does commercial success matter to you?
Sam: “Put it this way, we're in an instrumental guitar band and we could all probably sing and play guitars in a competently 'indiesque' way - but we don't! We have never made any money out of music, we have spent all the money we have on the band but we never get any money back, who would pay a band like us? We do it 'cause we need to - it makes us feel better. If people gave us money for our music, and as long as it was kept integral, that would be a lovely bonus.”
Adam: “Commercial success only really matters as a means to continue doing what we are doing. I don't give a shit really if one person or one million people buy our records but at the same time it's impossible to keep a band going with zero money. Although it would be funny to be on Top of the Pops, I think.”
So generally what are the best aspects of being in a band?
Sam: “You can pretend that you do something interesting and creative to all those people from yer old school days when they ask what you're doing. Going to different cities, meeting some mighty lovely people, in fact meeting the people we've met is worth it all on its own!”
Adam: “Getting to be so unbelievably poor that you owe more money than most countries' national debt? No, but it is nice to do something that at least feels worthwhile and we have made some great friends from all over the country and get to travel to some cool cities/areas that we would otherwise not have the time and money to see.”
How close are you as a band and what certain attributes does each member bring?
Sam: “We are close, sometimes too close, sometimes not close enough - we are extremely incompatible as personalities but we struggle on and help each other out. Sometimes only the music allows us to speak to each other because we are all sad and lonely. To this band I bring the attribute of reality, or is that surreality, or p’raps both. The rest of the band bring niceness ‘cause they are like my stolen children.”
Adam: “We are friends first and a band second. Sometimes this can get forgotten unfortunately, myself often being the biggest culprit, but we get on better than most bands I think. It's often really funny at gigs, etc as we tend to enjoy the odd shouting-obscenities-at-each-other argument and people think we're on the verge of splitting up or something when in fact we do it all the time. As for attributes, generally speaking, Sam brings inspiration and reason, I hopefully bring organisation and some kind of motivation, while John and Lorna bring a sometimes much needed dose of cigarettes and alcohol and remind us that everything shouldn't be taken so seriously. Maybe.”
Your first release, the ‘Mountain Men Anonymous EP’, did pretty well. When can we expect an album and what can we expect from it?
Sam: “An album should be in the shops from 4-8 weeks all being well. You should expect it to be lo-fi, loud, and cursed with a sense of evil. It seems old to us all now and its basically our 'rawk' album! It should be stocked in the stoner rock section cause that’s what it truly is.”
Adam: “You should expect to have to turn your stereo up due to the recording levels and also expect to think "what a load of shite". Well it's 50 minutes long and has five songs, so expect to be bored but expect it also to be cheap and in a nice digipak packaging hopefully.”
Has your music matured or progressed in any way?
Sam: “In a year we have changed from doing something a lot of people do, very badly, to doing the same thing quite well. The next stage is to truly do something that no-one has actually done before, in the next year we will be working on that. With time we can mature some of the strange ideas we have in our heads and hopefully some of it will turn out ok.”
Adam: “We used to be a lot quieter. And a lot shiter if that's possible. But we're now remarkably poorer than we've ever been.”
So finally it’s the question that every band gets asked at least 100 times in their lives, a phrase to describe yourselves and what you bring to the music industry?
Sam: “Erratic non-musicians making a loud noise because it makes them feel better. As a group we bring pretty much fuck all to the music industry in my opinion, because we aren't part of the 'industry' at all - we care about music too much to be involved in all the business.”
Adam: “Yeah I think that pretty much covers it. A phrase to describe us? Sometimes angry young people hellbent on making a good noise.”
They speak for themselves: raw, proud and bloody talented, MMA would set their sights on conquering the world, except they think they’re shite. Sigh… no pleasing some people, is there? |
