TRANSCRIBING the interview later on digital Dictaphone, it’s hard at times telling Peter and David Brewis apart. For the two brothers at the heart of Field Music are that rarest thing - a genuine creative partnership. Even if they were not bonded by blood, they’d be drawn together by their passion for music and an unfashionable belief in the importance of intelligence. The show that follows at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds sees the Brewises and the two newer members of the band Ian Black and Kevin Dosdale run their own songs ragged from recently-released double album Field Music (Measure) and its predecessor Tones of Town. Swapping instruments as the moment demands between guitar, drums and keyboards, Field Music are flamboyant but purely in the service of the songs, not their egos. Their ambition seems to lie solely in the music, the exchange of glances and smiles between band members at moments of particular brilliance a sure sign that the one thing this band cares about above all else is the sheer joy of creativity.　

Peter: It’s funny thinking about that Sheffield gig at The Harley, I think it was. I remember it being quite stressful in terms of the other bands. There was three other bands playing.

GC: We kept on leaving the venue and drinking somewhere else and coming back and each time we came back the time you were supposed to be going got later and later.

Peter: Ah - I remember.

David: Was it Cat in Paris that were playing?

Peter: That’s right.

Graham: It was certainly worth the wait.

Peter: And you were writing it for modernmusicreview?

Graham: I wondered where I’d heard that before.

Peter: I met someone in Sheffield from it.

Graham: That was me. I was right at the front, really enjoying The Week That Was then confronting you afterwards about us both having seen The Flaming Lips at The Leadmill in Sheffield in the late 90s.

Peter: That was you? That makes sense now. I was thinking “I know that you know.” I’ve been on the website.

Graham: I remember being at the gig thinking “there’s no way they’re going to be able to reproduce the album live and being quite astonished you did.

David: (laughs) We kind of did.

Graham: I suppose I better ask some serious questions and the first serious question is why would you be attracted to doing those shitty Mojo compilations?

David: Cos they ask. They ask you if you want to do it and they‘ve been so nice to us.

Graham:Your version of Terrapin is very good on the magazine’s recent Syd Barrett compilation.

David: We just think “yeah, we’ll try it again.” I subscribe to Mojo but even I don’t usually play the CDs.

Graham: I always listen and some of them are good but I don’t usually like the compilations based on a theme where everyone does a track off a famous album. I always end up thinking “God you’ve wasted your time.” Didn’t you do Don’t Pass Me By on the White album one. That again was one of the few tracks on that was worth keeping cos you actually managed to make that song sound good and it’s not one of the world’s greatest!

David: No - actually one of the worst. It worked out quite fortuitously cos you know we did get asked but we do get asked quite far down the list, so that by the time we do get asked it’s like, oh, all the good songs are taken. By the time it came to the Syd Barrett one there are only one or two songs left.

Peter: But that was because we took ages deciding which one to do.

Graham: That’s quite funny because I know which bands sell lots of records so, logically, I know which bands are big. But whenever I rate a band as being really good I always end up thinking they’re a big band, so in my head Field Music are a big band, so I cannot believe they would treat you like that amongst all the rest of the bands that are on those compilations.

Peter: We get asked you know, but obviously for them, if J Mascis comes on and says oh you know, I wanna do, say, It’s No Good Trying. His guitar playing was pretty good on that one. Pretty wild.

David: I think that’s the best song on Madcap Laughs.

Graham: Overall I think that compilation is one of the better ones. But did you hear the Abbey Road one?

David: I think what happens is that people are trying to do their tracks too quickly.

Peter: The thing is they think being on the CD is good exposure for them but it’s not good exposure if you come across as not sounding very good.

Graham: The exposure’s having your name on the sleeve then…after that it’s all down hill.

Peter: Good question.

Graham: That was the serious question! Anyway, congratulations on the album which I think is one of the best albums I’ve ever heard by anybody.

Peter: Get out.

Graham: I like the previous albums but, although on this one you’ve managed to get much broader and still sound like Field Music, which is a pretty neat trick to pull off.

David: It came from doing the solo records (School of Language and The Week That Was) where we tried out different ideas. Before we started the new album we said “either we need to have a good reason why those sort of ideas can’t be in Field Music or we need to redefine Field Music so it can be all of these things. It was just the two of us making it for the most part.

Graham: There’s more interesting drumming going on and the lead vocal seems more important, the harmonies are even better. Even the bass is really important on a few tracks, plays prominent role, which it hasn’t on previous Field Music tracks.

David: We’re always trying to play better.

Peter: Or sing better.

David: We try to record things better. Again, because of the touring we did for the solo albums we can play better than we did. I still listen back and cringe to my drumming on Tones of Town and I only drummed on a couple of songs.

Peter: It is funny. One of the things when we first started out, was tat we wanted to hide the fact that we could play our instruments, like, it was a bit of an anti kind of rock thing when we first started. We wanted to hide the fact that we were alright musicians really, that we could play guitar solos if we wanted to, we could play drum fills if we wanted to. But for this album we said “you know what, let’s play guitar like we’re enjoying it or let’s play bass.

David: Part of that I think is to do with what we were doing consciously on the first album which was like a rejection of cliché, trying not to use cliché, and then during Tones of Town we realised that we could use cliché but you have to subvert it, you have to do something with it.

You have to accept that originality is a complicated idea. You can’t be just completely original with no forebears, no predecessors, not inspired by anything - that doesn’t make sense and it wouldn’t be very good if you could do that. So instead you have to take things and change them and make them your own.

Our initial rejection of cliché meant a rejection of things like, singing, in the fullest voice you have cos those are all like rock clichés. But now we think, well maybe we can do those things because they are like very much truly a part of us.

Graham: You were the edited versions of Raymond Carver’s short stories but now you’ve gone back to the original, longer versions before the editor trimmed them back to virtually nothing?

David: Sounds like a good idea!

Graham: I notice that the sleeve and the insert’s got the studio diagrams, a list of all the amps and the instruments except the guitars and computer programs. It’s a bit of a prog rock approach. Yet all your songs are around the three-minute mark. A four-minute song’s still long for you. Are you prog or are you pop or what the hell are you?

Ian: (shouts) Rock!

David: Initially what we were thinking of the album artwork was “on the outside cover we’ll have this score with a splatter of paint…and that’s like one representation of the music that’s on there.

But the same time you want to have a story of how you made the record and people ask us, it’s there you go – that’s how we made it. That’s the room, that’s the equipment, that’s how you make the record.

People don’t usually want to talk about how they make music as if that would spoil the magic and I say nonsense to that. I could talk about it all day and give it to you in as much detail as I can muster. If there was any magic there it would still be there no matter how much I explained it to you. That’s the reason for the album cover.

Peter: I think people are scared of exposing how the actually make things.

Graham: It’s also the convention that nobody does that kind of thing in music. It’s almost as if a musician would be breaking ranks to get really verbose about music. Everyone would think you’re being pretentious.

David: It’s terrible really. Everyone’s trying to pretend that what they do is not contrived but by necessity it is contrived once you’re in the studio. Every record you hear which sounds like there’s loads of energy and passion, they’ve decided to put that there and in a particular way.

Graham: It’s a conscious decision.

David: We’re going to show the contrivance because it is. That doesn’t make it less honest. Absolutely not. But we’re not a prog band.

Graham: How about ‘pocket prog’ - there’s a really naff term!

Peter: Basically of all the bands I like there’ll always be some song which has like strange structural changes and those are the ones that I’ve love most you know, like Happiness is a Warm Gun. I‘ve been listening to Odelay by Beck today and, actually, if it was just a rock band playing that stuff it would sound like prog because it changes all the time.

Graham: I like Mutations a lot, that’s my favourite Beck album.

Peter: What’s that one called at the end - Diamond Bollocks? If that’s not prog then I don’t know what is.

Graham: On Fear of Music by Talking Heads, the last track on side one of the old vinyl version has a track called Memories Can’t Wait and I love that. It goes through different phases and then completely changes direction all of a sudden in the last minute.

Peter: They do something on the first album called - David - It’s called No Compassion. They do something on their first album erm, it’s called erm,

Graham: Anyway are you about the process or are you about the content. You do seem to be very interested in the process of creation.

David: I think they’re indivisible really.

Peter: The content is..David - I think one of the things we realise is that if you make a record while you’re feeling shit then what comes out at the end will sound like you’re feeling shit.

If you make a record while you’re feeling energised and excited then the album will come out sounding energised and excited, to an extent – and it’s the same with how you write songs. The process and the content’s never separate, not for me

Graham: But you are interested in the process I think.

David: Oh, yeah. We have to be.

Peter: Essentially we do everything on the new album so we need to be aware of what we’re doing and if we weren’t it would end up. . .

David: We’d end up making the same mistakes.

Peter: And we’d need help from other musicians.

Graham: You might not be in control of it then?

David: Yeah, I think we do normally want to control everything.

(Laughter)

Peter: That’s why doing the tour, doing it live, has been a massive eye opener for me. When we started doing The Week That Was live when we realised “look, we cannot replicate this record live because there’s not really a real drummer on it and. when there is, everything’s so hugely gated. It was just total construction of a record, total artifice, the whole thing.

Suddenly it’s bad, you know it’s good, but how do we play it live, well, we just have to play it as if we’re a rock band playing it so you still get the essence of it. But, like you said, you thought it was pretty good at The Harley so I think with that in mind well, the things I was making for this album I didn’t worry about that thing “you know what, we won’t be able to play this thing live.”

It was always a case of like well we can do whatever we want, we don’t need to worry about whether we CAN play it live. Ian wasn’t in the band then. . .

Ian: We starting to rehearse by doing classic stuff rocking out.

Peter: The four of us playing together gave me the confidence that whatever stupid things we come up with and it doesn’t matter how silly the ideas might seem, we will be able to play it with this band Graham: What - even the last track on the second CD?!

Peter: No!

David: Well, actually, we kind of are.

Peter: Kind of are? It’s not like we’re getting a café with cars driving past and we get a string quartet to play along!

Graham: The new album is definitely different to Tones of Town, there’s actually space in some of the tracks. A lot of it feels like it could have been recorded live anyway. The strange thing is that, although there’s space and a lot of it sounds like you know sexier and more rocky, at the same time it’s still tightly-constructed as well. It’s loose but it’s not loose really.

Peter: Zeppelin - tight but loose.

Graham: Anyway, lyrics – your lyrics always sound like they’re telling a story but it sounds like a small domestic drama in someone’s living room it doesn’t sound big.

Peter: Those are the sort of stories we live, I think.

Graham: The lyrics sound personal – are they personal?

David: Yeah, other than one of the songs, one of my songs.

Graham: But the lyrics still have a story-telling feel.

David: I think we tend to write around situations rather than saying “ this happened then this happened then this happened“ like a linear narrative. We like to tell the story by never mentioning the thing in the centre. I think a lot of lyricists do a similar thing.

Graham: Is the narrative in rock or pop songs dead? You’ve got a whole history there from a concept album like Tommy by The Who with a proper narrative then you’ve got Bruce Springsteen and Born to Run and that sort of self-mythologizing or Pink Floyd’s The Wall . Even something like Blur’s Parklife seemed to be telling stories about characters. But in last 10 years I don’t seem to spot – apart from Lily Allen – any real narratives whatsoever, lyrics all seem very personal and vague.

David: You have to go with like Nick Cave, I guess or Joanna Newsom to some extent. People who are still doing things which have that kind of narrative. I’ve never been able to write like that.

Peter: The Week That Was was meant to have a kind of story.

Graham: I read about that and I couldn’t work it out from listening to the album and I listened a lot.

Peter: I don’t write songs about how I feel. I think most people write songs about oh this is how I am feeling. I don’t know whether you do but I like to write about a situation and I analyse a situation and ask questions about the situation and they essentially become the lyrics.

It’s not like (sings) “I love you.”

(Laugher)

David: Lyrics are really bad at describing things, lyrics are really bad at explaining things, lyrics can be good at invoking something.

Peter: Or questioning something.

David: Better to ask a question in lyrics than give an answer in lyrics because and explanation in lyrics always ends up being fairly trite and simplified.

Graham: And you’re not really about simplifying things.

Peter: No.

Graham: Despite the fact you’ve got such small songs.

David: Small complicated songs.

Graham: A lot of your lyrics involve words like change and understanding and time. (Pause)

I don’t actually know what my question is.

Peter: I think you’ve answered it really. That’s right.

Graham: Changing the subject entirely, I went to see the Northern Symphonia at The Sage in Gateshead last year doing Stravinsky, Messian, Stockhausen and Cage. A great occasion. The last track on your new double album, it sounds like you’re in a playpen with Stockhausen trying things out. Is this by accident or was it self-conscious?

Peter: That was me trying something out. It was kind of inspired by a guy called Luc Ferrari, he’s still alive, a French composer. He was an electro-acoustic composer to begin with but then he started making narratives from hitting objects, like Peter Schaffer and people like that who were interested in the sound of objects, like a mug hitting the table. When it ceases to be a mug, it’s just a sound and we should rejoice.

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong or anything but for me I wanted to make a piece of music that essentially invoked a place so I just did field recording of the street outside my house ad at my favourite café in Sunderland and just edited them and found the musical gestures that the machines and the people made and then built music round them as if the environment itself was giving rise to it rather than piped-in music forcing itself on the environment. We were trying to do the antithesis to muzak.

Graham: It was like the soundtrack to the cover of your last album, Tones of Town.

David: Yeah. That very last track is the café in Tones of Town.

Graham: I love that sort of stuff but I’m not sure I could listen to a whole double album’s worth.

Peter: No. We put it at the end so people. . .

Graham: It’s like Revolution no 9 at the end of the White Album.

David: I tried playing our new album in the car and you get to that track and you basically can’t hear it properly for the other noises around you, so we thought it had to be at the end. It’s good on headphones.

Graham: My car has a fantastic stereo. It’s a Fiat Punto so I don’t know why that should be but I can hear that track really well. (Pause) Anyway. . .The Rest Is Noise - hardback or paperback?

David: I’ve got it in hardback.

Peter: Actually, I’ve got David’s copy in hardback.

Graham: Okay, we’re obviously all in the pretentious, self-regarding, hardback club.

David: It was a Christmas present.

Graham: What a book. It got me to all sorts of music that, even though I’d heard about, I’d never dreamt of getting into.

David: I started raking through charity shops for Schoenberg on vinyl.

Graham: I’ve gone for the end it. I haven’t done the early 20^th century. I’ve gone straight to buying Messian and Ligetti and Steve Reich. I’ve got scripts like…

David: I enjoyed reading the first half of the book more. Reading about Strauss and Mahler, I found really interesting.

Graham: They do come across as more interesting. The way classical music is presented and written about in general is so dull.

David: They were just punks, y’know.

Peter: Maybe not Mahler.

Graham: I really like Mahler.

David: The book played down Stravinsky but, I suppose, I order to tell a rounded history of the 20^th century you have to play down Stravinksy in the same way that in art you have to play down Picasso.

Graham: I suppose it’s like writing about pop history. You could do the whole book just about The Beatles?

David: Good book though.

Graham: Everything’s restless in your music. It’s non stop. It’s full of energy. The thing is to be that non-stop, always moving, even when there’s a little space and it stops, it goes back on the offensive really quickly. It means you’ve got lots of energy but it’s also very tightly arranged. It’s quite odd to come across musicians who are really energetic but completely carefully arranged. The two attributes don’t usually go together.

Peter: I think Blur are like that, I think Blur are really energetic but well arranged.

Graham: But Blur sound like compressed anger. I don’t detect anger in your music. Blur sound like they want to explode at times but you don’t.

Peter: Maybe we’re more inwardly furious!

Graham: Are you guys well-behaved when you’re drunk as well or don’t you get drunk?

Peter: We haven’t been drunk together yet, I don’t think.

David: We’re going to have a night out in Crewe.

Graham: I suppose you’ve got to do something in Crewe?

Peter: We’re on our London date then we go to Dublin, so it falls in between so we’re planning not to get totally wrecked.

Ian: Are we?

Peter: I’m not.

David: It’d be nice to have a couple of pints and try and relax.

Graham: I’ve interviewed stacks of bands over the years and at first I used to assume that any music that reminded me of anything else must mean the band was influenced by it and I learnt after a couple of years that this is just complete crap that most stuff that listeners hear in music isn’t consciously put there by the musicians at all. Often they haven’t even heard the music that’s supposedly had such a big effect on them. Having said that, have you heard the following albums and I don’t mean have you heard them and enjoyed them and liked them or been influenced by them but have you actually heard these albums.

Graham: 10cc - How Dare You?

Peter and David: Yes.

Graham: Flaming Lips - Embryonic?

David: Peter listened to it yesterday. I’ve heard it, yeah.

Graham: The Who - Tommy?

Peter: I have but I only got the CD a couple of months ago.

Graham: That album reminds me of you in some small way.

David: I hadn’t heard it until recently There were a couple of albums that we didn’t want to listen to until we finished our new album. Tommy, Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Meddle.

GC I’ve seen the film Tommy.

David: I haven’t.

Graham: It’s fantastic but hideous. It’s really hard to watch the whole thing at once. It gives you a headache after about an hour.

Kate Bush - Aerial?

Peter: Yes.

David: I haven’t listened to all of it.

Graham: Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy?

Peter: Oh yes.

David: I listen to it every day.

Peter: Every note.

David: I could probably sing along to every guitar solo on that.

Graham: I’m not asking you this because I’m saying it’s influenced you.

Can - Future Days?

Peter: Yes. It’s the only one I’ve got.

David: I’ve got two. I’ve got Tago Mago and Monster Movie.

Graham: I’ve got the one before Future Days - Ege Yambasi.

David: It’s meant to be fantastic.

Graham: It is.

Prefab Sprout - Let’s Change The World With Music?

David: That’s the new one of songs he recorded from the early 90s.

Graham: I was really surprised. It’s really good. Really good songs.

Peter: It’s produced weirdly, though.

Graham: It’s got really cheap backing. It sounds like it’s been recorded with one of these little old fashioned computer machines without anyone else getting involved. Even though the songs are lush and really brilliant. He should have got a proper band to do it.

David: I think we should go out to County Durham and try and find Paddy McAloon and kind of force him to do an album with us. We’d just be his backing band.

Graham: That would be a great idea.

David: We’ll find him.

Peter: He’s the guy with the big beard and the purple suit.

Graham: I bet you that beard’s not been there a long time. He’s got a sense of humour as well.

Peter: Aw absolutely.

Graham: Big Star - Sister/Lovers?

Peter: Yeah.

David: No one ever picks up on Big Star.

Graham: On your new album I can definitely hear faint traces.

David: Really?

Graham: Both bands have got a brittle sound.

Brian Wilson - Smile?

Peter: Yes.

David: I haven’t heard Brian Wilson’s version of Smile.

Peter: It’s a bit polished. It’s got a sheen to it. I enjoyed it.

David: Peter got me the bootlegs of the Beach Boys’ original versions - Sea of Tunes. I heard a bit of the Brian Wilson version of it and it’s too good. The musicians know exactly what they’re doing.

Graham: It doesn’t sound scary, either. The originals from 1966-67, they’re really ethereal as if they’re reaching beyond man’s knowledge. They’re a little bit spooky.

Peter: It kind of reminds me of what Jeff Wayne’s doing now with War of the Worlds on tour.

David: We went to see him playing it live and we had to leave. It was terrible. It was like hearing a cruise ship band.

Peter: Everyone else absolutely loved it. It was a big production but. . .

David: Some bits looked like the children’s show Nightmare where some little kid has a little helmet on and somebody else is sitting in another room saying “go two steps to the left, turn clockwise.“ Some of the computer visuals were like that! The first thing you see is actual Martians and they’re talking about whether they should attack Earth. Good idea - let’s go!

Graham: I thought about going to see that. I thought it might at least have had kitsch value.

Peter: Tickets at £50 - that’s expensive kitsch value.

Graham: TV and the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain?

Ian: I’ve got it.

Graham: Great album isn’t it?

Here’s a controversial one because I haven’t met anyone who’s a fan of this. The Guillemots - Red?

Peter: No.

David: We saw them play and I thought they were quite good live. I haven’t heard their records. Their drummer is absolutely crazy, crazy guy.

Graham: It’s a great album but it’s all over the shop.

David: Have you heard the new Fyfe Dangerfield stuff? I heard the single and it’s very Radio 2. It’s very toned down and sits happily with the James’s Blunt and Morrison, if you like that sort of thing.

Actually, it’s better than James Blunt and James Morrison.

Graham: That’s not saying much, for goodness sake. I’d rather have the world’s worst Paul McCartney track than James Blunt.

David: Is there still a good record shop in Harrogate?

Graham: All we’ve got is HMV and if that closes there will be nothing.

David: You know I was looking for Change Clothes by JC Young and I finally found it in Harrogate. There was a little independent record shop on the main street.

Graham: Mix Music, just round the corner from McDonalds? That shut down after Music Zone moved in nearby full of cheap CDs. And then it went bust after buying FOPP. So all it achieved was to shut down an independent record shop.

David: That’s a real shame.

Graham: Although it’s good your new album has been getting four stars in all the reviews, it annoys me you never get five. I think it’s one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. It’s almost as if all the old critics in the magazines, all the ones that just love Americana, refuse to give anything modern more than four stars because they’re not the Beatles or Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or whatever so you can’t possibly be as good. As far as I’m concerned, Field Music are this era’s Beatles, Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.

Band: Awhhh.

Graham: And in 20 years time or whenever, you will be the great band they all remember and give five stars to.

Peter: We can’t wait that long.

Graham Chalmers