Interviews

Interview: Millimetre

Terence J. McGaughey is the man who can, when he puts on his music hat, become a creator of “urban-borne rural muck hammered into dream-pop”. When we got hold of Millimetre’s latest album we knew we needed more than just a narrow-minded review so spoke to the man himself about the method in his music and his love of all things sonic.

How would you best describe your music?

I like the term “dreampop”, it’s quite appropriate, in that the music as a whole should ‘generate’ a feeling, rather than ‘express’ it in the lyrics didactically or whatever. All my favourite musicians operate in that way, it creates more extreme reactions in the listener and forces them to become involved in it, though this tends to put off a lot of people. Any reaction is better than stasis in my books.

You’re based in Belfast. Is there something about the city that you find musically inspirational?

Actually I’ve been living in London for nearly ten years, but I did live in Belfast for almost the same length of time, in fact for most of my teens and early adulthood. In Belfast musicians and artists are cut off from the mainland, and so they tend to develop without the passing influences of trends, which you get in the big cities like London, Bristol and Manchester. Belfast is still pretty much a cultural backwater, but there are some great people still there trying to change it – the poet Leontia Flynn, the people who do the Black Box, Ruth McCarthy and OutBurst Arts. Its getting there, very very slowly..! In case you are wondering, no, I would never go back. I love London, I think it’s the best city in the world. Certainly the most diverse and integrated and with lots of room for oddballs like me.

You take samples from a multitude of sources – city traffic, the weather, church bells – how do you go about integrating them into your music? What software do you use and why do you prefer using it to others?

Integrating the ambient sounds into the music is pretty natural for me. I listen to ambient noise quite a lot at home, there’s a lot of it where I live so I don’t have much choice, but in terms of the music it’s just a matter of trial and error. I use Logic for most editing and mixing, though I have a notebook full of other techniques I’ve picked up such as microphone manipulation, spatial design and so on. Again, my knowledge is almost totally self-taught, so I couldn’t go into technical details if I tried.

You seem to have a knack for matching a sound with a mood. Do you think of a mood and then try and find a sound to match it or is it the sound that inspires the mood?

I tend to begin with a general framework for a mood and then tinker with ideas until it works. It doesn’t always work - in fact most times it’s a disaster - and at the risk of sounding like a hippie, a lot of the time a song will just appear out of nowhere, fall out onto the recorder almost as a finished piece. ‘Yew’ came out that way, almost everything on there was a first-take. It’s quite a weird but fulfilling experience actually, like I’m an antennae or something. There, I sound like a hippie now!

You’ve mentioned on your MySpace that you find films particularly inspirational. What’s your favourite genre?

Of film..? I’d probably be better listing my favourite directors – David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Atom Egoyan, Jean Cocteau, Maya Deren. Some Hitchcock and Bergman films too. I like films that feature a lot of space, and long unedited shots, like Roeg’s ‘Walkabout’. I have a soft spot for ‘Carry On’ and the classic ‘Hammer’ films though, I adore Christopher Lee and Kenneth Williams as much as the “arty” stuff.

Would you like to create a film score?

Most of my songs are miniature films, so most definitely yes. I’d love to do that. I have an album of instrumentals, which were scored by various times of the day, so that certain noises and movements occur at certain times. I’d love someone to make a film for that.

Who are your main musical influences, and what are your top five favourite albums?

Oh bloody hell! Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins and LOTS of fusion, electronic musicians, too many to mention. I tend to listen to music when doing stuff around the house, like cleaning or baking - Throbbing Gristle’s quieter recordings, Gavin Bryars’ ‘Sinking of the Titanic’, Karl Heinz Stockhausen can really get you going when you don’t feel like doing the dishes. I listen to quite a lot of unusual or slightly mental rock music too – Liars, The Smiths, My Bloody Valentine, Shock Headed Peters. Fave albums at the moment – ‘Funky Nassau (The Compass Point Story)’, ‘The Complete ‘Bitches Brew’ by Miles Davis, ‘Go Insane’ by Lindsey Buckingham, ‘Feral Vapours Of The Silver Ether’ by CarterTutti and ‘Underwater Dancehall’ by Pinch.

Are you a self-taught musician or have you had lessons? What lessons relating to composing music can you prescribe for todays up and coming musicians?

I’m totally self-taught, or as I like to put it, “feral”. Which I’m happy about, as it means avoiding being a parody. From what I can see, everyone is trying too hard to be part of some gang, or to be fashionable, and they have become jaded. I totally despise this whole upsurge for rock music degree courses, and all the crap singers who have come out of it. Call me naïve, but music to me is a way of escaping a sanitised lifestyle or education, and a way of rebelling, and now people get taught how to “do” rock and pop at a university. I mean, come on, can you really see a ‘pop star’ university producing another Elizabeth Fraser, John Lydon or Morrissey? I think not. Now the oddballs and misfits have had the last remaining escape route taken away from them by middle-aged marketing-fixated educationalists. The basic pop and rock music formula has been regurgitated so many times now in a single decade, and with fewer and fewer returns, that people just don’t seem to give a shit about music anymore, and as an art form it has become seriously devalued. I’m not saying that everyone should ditch their guitars and start listening to grime or dubstep, but personally speaking I think the Beatles/Stones/LedZep approach is dead. In saying that, the current liking for Mika, Scissor Sisters and Elton John - who to me are nothing but fag-hag and wedding reception entertainers - is just as nauseating. Trite, bland bollocks, the whole lot of it. Open your ears and move on for fuck’s sake!

Your new single ‘Missing Haitch’ was apparently inspired by a sectarian beating. What happened?

I was stopped in the street by a pair of loyalist thugs who were trying to work out if I was a Catholic. So I got thumped on the back of the head a few times, kicked to the ground, but I got up and ran off like the clappers. Had it just been one guy I could have easily punched his lights out, but they always hunt in packs. In Ulster it is said that Catholics pronounce the letter ‘H’ with an emphasis on the ‘h’, as opposed to pronouncing it “aitch”, and this is apparently a heinous act. This occurred in the week when the three-year build-up of the Portadown/Garvaghy Road fracas drove the whole province more or less into open war with each other. The Loyalists and their fuck-wit minions blockaded almost every suburb of Belfast, the police had to set up curfews and blockades of their own. When you walked around the streets, the feeling of fear was palpable; the hairs would stand up on the back of your neck, even when it seemed to be quiet. Almost everyone I knew in Belfast that summer had been beaten up, violently accosted or at least verbally abused by spides in tracksuits who were looking to damage something in the name of their Ulster pride, eugh. I hope I’m not the only one who thinks that this abiding mentality in Ulster is now totally unacceptable in the 21st Century. I suppose it’s ironic, as I’m from a mixed marriage and am neither one nor the other. I was a pariah amongst the Catholics AND Protestants in my town, and high school was even worse. But that’s history, man.

We reviewed your album ‘Obsidian’ recently and loved the fact that it tested us – do you deliberately set out to challenge the listener?

Oh yeah! What would be the point not to? I detest coffee-table music, and if I don’t hear something slightly unnerving or challenging in a piece of music, I’m not interested. So this always applies to Millimetre music.

You’re quite courageous in your choice of samples. ‘I Fell Into A Mirror’ has the bells of Southwark Cathedral rattling the nerves. What made you choose them?

Courageous? Hardly. Rattling the nerves..? My favourite feeling! There was a really strong wind the day I recorded them, so what you’re hearing is the sound of the bells carried over several hundred metres by the wind to my studio window, obviously distorted somewhat by some effects I set up beforehand. The same sound appears again in the dub sections of ‘Black Dog Avenue’, though again it’s heavily effected. There’s something magical about the sound of church bells, I’m not at all religious, but as my flat is quite near Southwark Cathedral, the sound of the bells frequently drifts across and it’s hard not to be hypnotised, especially when the bells are accompanied by other ambient city sounds. I could listen to that forever and never get bored.

Your new album ‘13 Homes’ is out in June and you’ve got some collaborators this time round. What can we expect?

Actually my new album is called ‘Heliography’, and it’s the ‘happy’ side to ‘Obsidian’, kind of like the baby brother album. It’s quite short - just over half an hour - but the songs are from the same period as ‘Obsidian’, and are more upbeat, though this wasn’t my original intention. Most people who have heard it are shocked by how melodic it is, believe it or not. My friend Ruth sings with me on a song called ‘Fault’, which is about the weird behaviour of a certain generation of British working class people, from which we both came. There are a few songs on ‘Heliography’ which nail a few things down that I previously had trouble discussing, plus all my friends have started having children and I thought about how nice it would be to make something that might get a baby interested in sound, using lots of resonant mid-range frequencies. ’13 Homes’, which will be the next ‘proper’ Millimetre album, is still being made, but so far Cosey Fanni Tutti sings on a couple of songs and EJP Walker, who is on my label, will be singing too. Chris Carter has helped set the sound for it, and hopefully will be doing more work on it with me in the autumn. I’m very excited about it, but it may not come out now until the spring of next year – it’s a big project.

You’re fairly prolific - that’s two albums in the space of 6 months – any reason?

That’s what a musician with something to say HAS to do. Well, a proper musician, haha! I don’t like playing live, in fact I hate it. Just standing there, like a zoological exhibit. I’d rather perform behind a curtain to be honest, so people aren’t expecting you to start jumping around and acting like a tosser because “that’s what happens”. It’s really important for a serious musician to have a body of work out there, since so many others like you are competing for limited audiences and giving up at the first hurdle. Even if I was blind, crippled, deaf or paralysed, I’d be doing this, it’s as basic to me as feeling hungry.

You started up your own record label – Orectic Records – what inspired you?

It was done out of necessity more than anything else, as an operation it’s so small scale, and I don’t even have a proper distributor! When I started doing music, talk had already begun about the music industry meltdown, and I figured “I’m NEVER gonna be signed”. So it was sink or swim, basically. Part of me would have liked to have been signed, to have someone take care of all the crap that comes with making an album or single, but then the idea of having to please a bunch of businessmen and accountants I might never meet always takes the silver lining off my recording contract dreams. Now that reality has sunk in, I couldn’t give a shite.

Any plans to expand it further?

Well, I already released music by a couple of other artists - EJP Walker’s EP ‘Loveless Space’ for instance, which is brilliant. I would like to release more unusual and experimental music; I have two completed instrumental albums with which I may do special ‘art’ editions in the near future. Though in the short-term, there’s the new single, the mini-album ‘Heliography’ and EJP’s debut to look forward to. Which is plenty enough work for one boy haha!

If you could choose a venue to play live which one would you play, and why?

The Union Chapel – a lot of my favourite ever gigs were played there. Or in fact any small cave-type space. Maybe a disused swimming pool or the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. I’d love to play somewhere where you couldn’t see the band or the equipment, but could hear the music. At the end of the day that’s all that matters.

Finally, if there was one ideal place your albums should be listened to where would it be? (I.E. In the Bath? Whilst driving? Top of the Eiffel Tower?)

With headphones in a dark forest. No only kidding! Anywhere is good, I think. Just not on the bus. I was recently treated to the horrendous ordeal of hearing Moby played at full volume by a skinny teen all the way from Bermondsey to Waterloo bus station. I sat there feeling like Victor Meldrew, thinking “anything but that old whore!”

Band links = Millmetre

Thanks to Tony @ Manilla for helping set this interview up.

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