In just one short week, the majestic backdrop of Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries and Galloway will play host to the most exciting music festival to come out of Scotland since Rockness and Connect. Now in its third incarnation, Electric Fields has secured some of the hottest names in music, at the forefront of which are Public Service Broadcasting. In anticipation of the event, I managed to get the band’s founding member J Willgoose Esq on the blower earlier this month to discuss the festival, PSB’s music and the recipe for the perfect dinner party.
For the uninitiated, PSB pore through the archives of the British Film Institute to locate the most remarkable and noteworthy snippets of dialogue and broadcasts. Around this raw material they then construct a rich melody of sounds, using all manner of instruments from guitars and drums to banjos and pianos, as well as a healthy dollop of electronic jiggery-pokery. The end result is a gorgeous soundtrack to the history of the human race, by turns invigorating, poignant and hilarious. Transplanted to a live setting, the band’s work takes on a new dimension with the addition of visuals, vintage television sets and a pre-recorded voiceover. At Electric Fields, it promises to be an absolute show-stopper.
From the moment our telephone conversation begins, it becomes clear that J is an educated and eloquent man, which begs the question – from whence did this corduroyed character spring? What was J’s occupation before he was J? ‘Well, it depends on who you’re talking to, really. Some people might tell you I was a chef, others might say I was a trapeze artist. Some people even say I was a bricklayer!’ As with the adoption of the pseudonyms for himself and his accomplice Wrigglesworth, it seems J is keen to retain an air of mystery about his past, preferring to having ostensibly sprung up as a fully-formed 29-year-old, clad head to toe in The Chosen Fabric and whipping out irresistible anthems like nobody’s business.
Of course, such whipping out doesn’t take place overnight. How long does a song take to craft, and which bit of it is the craftiest? The tracking down of the sample or the resampling of the track? ‘It varies greatly from track to track. Some take hours, some take weeks; but actually, finding the sample is not the most time-consuming part. That’s the easy bit. It’s once you’ve got hold of that the real work begins, and it can take ages to whittle away at it to achieve what we’re looking for.’ J confesses that Everest took three months to create, and that was fairly rapid at the time – though that was before he’d taken on the PSB mantle full-time and was still squeezing samples in between meals / trapeze stunts / walls.
So which are his favourite samples? ‘I really like the whole of Lit Up.’ (For those unfamiliar, Lit Up features Lieutenant Commander Thomas Woodrooffe’s infamous ramble about the British fleet in 1937, after which he was suspended for a week for becoming overly “tired and emotional”, which seems a generous way of describing his obvious inebriation.) ‘I also really like the over-enthusiastic guy on Go!. One of the guys really gets into it and at one point, you can even hear [flight director] Gene Kranz laughing. I just like the funny ones, really.’ So do we, J. So do we.
After a year or so of working on his material, J decided to take the show to the place where dreams come to take flight (or, perhaps more often, die a horribly painful death) – the Edinburgh Festival. How was that? ‘Boot camp for musicians… it was gruelling and exhausting, what with the flyering and sometimes playing shows to only four people.’ Did it ever make him lose faith? ‘No, because even though sometimes the crowds were smaller, I had some good nights too, and even if the crowd wasn’t big, I could tell that people didn’t hate what I was doing. I knew there was something there.’ These days, the melange of live shows, tours and telephone interviews – not to mention finding the time to work on new material – means that J has not been back to the Fringe. Despite this, he says he’d love to go back one day… as a punter, of course.
Speaking of new material, are the band working on anything now? And will the next record be formed by a single idea (as with most recent offering The Race for Space) or will it comprise a more scattergun approach (like the earlier LP, Inform-Educate-Entertain)? ‘I think I much prefer to keep it cohesive with a central theme that ties it all together. It flows better that way.’ After tackling such big themes of war and space conquest with PSB’s first two albums, does he worry that it will be difficult to match that level of grandstanding? ‘I don’t think we’ll continue with the same formula of tackling a big theme like that in the future. I think with the next one we’ll try and bring it down to a more human level. What we don’t want to do is become predictable or formulaic.’
Though J confesses that PSB do have some demos in the works, he confirms that there will be no shiny unveiling of new songs at Electric Fields. ‘The live show is the last link in the chain. First we find the sample, then build the song, then the stage show comes last. So no, no new stuff at Electric Fields.’ As for the festival itself, is there anyone he’s particularly interested in seeing? ‘Primal Scream are there, aren’t they? They’re always a good live show, I’ll definitely take that in. Normally with festivals though, my favourite thing is just to wander round and listen out for a band to grab me. Maybe I’ll hear a song and drift in to a tent for a bit. I don’t like to have a firm game plan – maybe just one or two acts I want to see and then take it from there.’ Sounds like sound advice.
Of course, Electric Fields promises to be the highlight of his career when it rolls around (NB – author’s conjecture, not artist’s opinion), but what has been his finest moment to date? ‘Brixton Academy. I don’t think we’ll ever top that. I never thought we’d play there and could hardly believe it when we did – in fact I still can’t really now; I had an anxiety nightmare about it last night! Just imagining it all went wrong. It was a dream come true… but never again!’
Don’t worry J, we won’t make you play Brixton. But what about a dinner party of your dreams? You know the drill – four people, living or dead, who come round to your house for overdone chops, a splash of plonk and some light ridicule from Dave Lamb.
‘Hmm… that’s a good question. I guess George Orwell [presumably injecting a dose of boot-in-your-face-pessimism into proceedings] and Johnny Cash, I’d love to have met him. I’m so impressed by what he did and I’d love to have met him. We’ll need a raconteur in there, won’t we? How about Peter Ustinov? Did you hear what Ustinov wrote on his immigration form to the States? In reply to the question: “Do you intend to overthrow the US government?” he wrote “Sole purpose of visit”.’ Ustinov’s hijinks should also work well to counteract the droopiness of Orwell’s moustache as well, I assume. ‘And we can’t have all guys, can we? Let’s have Stella Gibbons in there, Cold Comfort Farm is brilliant.’
To avoid missing out Public Service Broadcasting’s live show in the flesh, get your filthy grubby mitts on Electric Fields tickets here. Come on, they’ll give you a real ride!