PENTATONIK INTERVIEW
July 23rd, 2004 by susanna
Jez Wells gets up close and personal with Pentatonik
Big Chill festivals are always packed with special moments. Those moments where environment, vibe, vision and sound collide in the presence of you and people you love to create memories of bliss to be cherished for ever.
Some of them are those moments when you are suddenly reminded of how beautiful music can be, like Tom Middleton’s Amba set at Larmer Tree and Plaid’s Saturday night performance at Eastnor a couple of years back. And listening to Pentatonik’s new album, ‘The Five Angels’ I’m getting those nervous jitters of excitement again. Pentatonik is one Simeon Bowring in the studio but he’s bringing his band to Eastnor for a truly live electronic and acoustic set and it should be stunning. Indeed, I think their gig at this year’s festival could be one of those ‘blown away’ moments.
For those of you who missed it, Pentatonik’s ‘Anthology’ LP was one of the many highlights of British (Derbyshire to be precise) electronic music in the mid-90s. Although, ‘electronic’ only tells half the story, as Simeon’s musical reach extends to piano, flute, guitar, drums and guitar as well as tape machines, sequencers and samplers. Although he’s been a busy man in the last decade remixing, DJing and producing he’s finally put together a follow up collection that shows he hasn’t lost his touch when it comes to creating intricate and emotional music that blurs the boundary between the electronic and acoustic worlds.
To warm you up for his gig and the new album I pestered him about where’s he’s been, picked his brain about the how and why of his music and had a nosey into his future….
Welcome back. Where have you been in the nine years since Anthology and what have you been doing?
“Well, I never went away. In the last nine years I’ve released 3 albums (4th is on its way) with my band A1 People and 8 singles, I’ve remixed and produced over 50 artists, written over 30 songs for bands, toured the world with A1 People and as the bass player for Apollo 440 and James Maker’s Frankenstein. I also learnt to DJ, I guess I play in the region of about 20-30 hours a week in clubs and on the radio (my DJ name is Dr D-Lorean). I’m DJing on the Big Chill radio and as A1 People.”
So, kind of busy then! And you don’t just do electronics, you play a number of acoustic instruments as well and these elements get woven into the music you create how do you combine these two elements so seamlessly in your music?
“Well I never really thought about it too much, it just happened naturally. I was always sampling the sounds acoustic instruments made and I was always trying to make them make weird noises. It’s the same with any instrument and where do you draw the line between traditional and electronic anyway. Everything is recorded to CD these days and I would view a CD as an electronic instrument. Most ‘guitar’ music is made using computers now so it ’s not about actually how you make the music it’s about how the public perceives it. I once heard that the drums on Nirvana’s Nevermind album were programmed out of bits the drummer had played. At the time I was shocked but then when my track Credo came out no one could tell what was man and what was machine, in fact people nearly always get it the wrong way round!”
Your appearance at Eastnor this year, will be your first live gig for many years, how are you going to realise this electronic and acoustic sound in a live gig?
“It will be my first Pentatonik gig for 9 years but I’ve been playing loads of other gigs. I love playing live and I come from a background of playing on stages in bands. I’m not really a fan on nodding heads and lap tops on stage, to be frank I find it a bit dull watching someone work on a computer (even when I saw Kraftwerk- thank God for the amazing visuals). So what you get with Pentatonik is five musicians and a load of instruments (everything from sythesizers, guitars, saxophone, drums etc) and some machines ie a computer and tapes that take care of what we can’t. It makes life quite complicated having all those people to co-ordinate and you have to rehearse for ages, it really would be easier to stand in front of the laptop but it wouldn’t be any fun. I don’t want to have amazing visuals either, I make music and the band play it, I guess if you want visuals I would prefer the audiences imagination generates them, I don’t want to brand the music with a set of images.”
You describe your work as neo-classical, and since your earliest realeases is you’ve certainly paid more attention to form and melody than most people producing this kind of music. Your new material for Hydrogen Dukebox, which seems to be a natural progession from the ‘Awakenings’ on ‘Anthology’, suggests there’s a neo-romantic in you as well. What are the inspirations and motivations for this music?
“Yes, I see what you mean. The form of the music in Awakenings has more of a naivety and is less developed than the new material but there is a simplicity of melody that I felt I wanted to bring back. The new material sounds fresh because it was not overworked, I wanted the instrumentation to be very precise but for the sounds to be quite simple, for example piano and strings feature quite a lot. Using well recorded instruments playing simple melodies allows the listener to really be propelled into the music, they are not struggling to understand the instrumentation and that is part of what makes it neo-classical. But also the chord structures and melodic forms largely adhere to the rules of classical music and are influenced heavily by the romanticism of music such as Rachmaninov. The music is very different of course but the sweeping romantic gestures are there, I studied the chord progressions from Rachmaninov for days back in the early nineties trying to work it all out.”
Pentatonik is very emotionally charged and very emotionally inspired. In one way that’s why I had to take a break from writing it, it gets very intense working on it! I would say the emotions regarding my relationships have had a very powerful effect on the music and also a personal journey of self discovery that started in a retreat in La Gommerra (an island Paradise in the Canary Islands). I had a very powerful experience of seeing what can only be described as an Angel, the track La Gommerra Angelic probably says more about the experience than I can describe but needless to say it was a life changing experience!! I am also lucky that I met a wonderful woman who has been an enormous inspiration to the music and had a very deep impact on me! I hope that the music acts as a universal language to the listener and that it can in some ways soothe or inspire, I know when I listen to something sad or happy it some how play my internal strings, you resonate with the music. I hope that Pentatonik has that resonance with people.
There’s a level of detail in your music that is bound to draw comparisons with Oribtal, is that a comparison that pleases you or pisses you off?
“I spoke to Paul Hartnol after the last Orbital gig at Glastonbury and he said ‘now that we are splitting up no one will mention Orbital in the same sentence as Pentatonik’, well Paul you were wrong! I don’t really see that the music is very similar now at all, but having said that I haven’t listened to any new Orbital records for years. I’m not really a fan, I liked the early work and was influenced then and I think the Brown album was genius but I don’t see the link to Pentatonik. We were all good friends back in the early nineties and we used to swap ideas and tips but I think it was a lazy way for a journalist to describe Pentatonik ie a bit like Orbital and a bit like Ultramarine (who I really wasn’t a fan of either). Bands sort of get grouped together but if you actually listen to what they sound like they are very different. At the end of the day all these comparisons and labels are just marketing. I remember when there wasn’t the term Chill Out music or even ambient and I wasn’t comfortable when my music started to be classified in that way. Pentatonik music is varied and dynamic like the landscape around us can be, I wouldn’t describe a beautiful summers day or a ferocious storm as ambient or chilled out and I guess I wouldn’t describe the music like that either!! It makes more sense for a festival because that is what you are going there to do ie Chill Out!”
Where next for Pentatonik and when can everyone get their hands on the new album?
“I would like to do more gigs and play Europe again! Anthology is going to be re-released later in the year and I’ve started collecting ideas for more new tunes. The new album ‘ The Five Angels’ will be available later in the year (October I think) but I am trying to persuade the record company to do a limited edition Big Chill special pre-release version of the album, so look out for it.”
Got any must see acts amongst the other artists performing at Eastnor this year?
“The Durutti Column, Higher Intelligence Agency and Crazy Penis.”
Pentatonik’s ‘The Five Angels’ is out later this year on Hydrogen DukeboxPentatonik plays the Sanctuary Tent on Saturday at Eastnor 2004
