Οι In the Nursery δεν χρειάζονται συστάσεις. Είναι ένα συγκρότημα που μετράει 25 χρόνια καριέρας στη μουσική και μια πληθώρα από πολύ επιτυχημένες δουλειές. Πρόσφατα βρέθηκαν στην Αθήνα για να παρουσιάσουν στα πλαίσια του πρώτου Screaming Athens Horror Festival, που έγινε στο Gagarin, μια από τις δουλειές τους, τα Optical music series και συγκεκριμένα την δική τους μουσική επένδυση στην κλασσική ασπρόμαυρη ταινία του 1928, «The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari».
O Klive και ο Nigel αφιέρωσαν λίγο από τον πολύτιμο χρόνο τους στο ΕΒΜ.gr για να απαντήσουν στις ερωτήσεις μας. Στην παράστασή τους στο Gagarin, παρουσίες διακριτικές μέσα στις σκιές, μας χάρισαν πανέμορφες σουρεαλιστικές εικόνες, ήχους σκοτεινούς, γεμάτους πάθος και φεύγοντας μας άφησαν για άλλη μια φορά με τις καλύτερες εντυπώσεις.
In the Nursery need no special introduction as it is a band that counts 25 years in music, with a variety of very successful works. Recently, they were invited to Athens as part of the first Screaming Athens Horror Festival held at Gagarin 205 Music Space, in order to present their work called the “Optical music series” and more specifically their very own soundtrack for the classic black & white 1928 movie «The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari»
The afternoon, before their show, Klive and Nigel kindly devoted some of their valuable time to ΕΒΜ.gr to answer our questions… In their Gagarin show, discreet presences amongst the shadows, they presented some very beautiful, surreal images and dark sounds full of passion. At the end of the show, for once more, we were left with the best impressions…
Ακολουθεß το κεßμενο της συνÝντευξης. Για να δεßτε το video της συνÝντευξης κÜντε κλικ εδþ .
This is the text version of the interview. To watch the video click here.
EBM : Lets’s start from the beginning : What happened in your lives that made you decide to start making music?
Nigel
Many things really but I think the most sensual thing was going to see bands like Joy Division, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Buzzcocks, Yiardbirds, everything it was punk and post punk, that really inspired us to express ourselves with music.
Klive
Yeah it seems like it’s the old cliche a lot of people say they went to see punk bands and then they wanted to make music for themselves and it’s the same for us. We wanted to do that. We went back home and thought we can do this as well. It just all grew from that.
EBM : Why did you choose the name IN THE NURSERY, what does it mean for you and how this name reflects the band’s identity ?
Nigel
In the Nursery was a phrase which we chose for our first concert at 1981. I was in college studying sociology, psychology and I was interested in childhood memories and how children brought up, whether they develop their characters from their parents or wherever it is innate, wherever they born like it so it was like a psychological phrase “in the nursery” which we then had to keep because we decided for the name in our first concert and we never thought that we would still be using the name 25 years later.
Klive
So in a way it was more relevant when we first started.
EBM : Now? What about now?
Klive
Now we seem to tend abbreviate it to ITN but we still keep IN THE NURSERY as a name.
Nigel
It’s unusual
Klive
Yeah you can’t change the name after all these years.
EBM : What did you need to express by making this band and the kind of music you make and does your music has a certain sense of purpose or you just want to express your selves and if yes why did you choose music and didn’t choose painting or writing for example?
Klive
I guess it’s an expression of ideas. It’s what we want to express and we are quite happy to go on stage. When we first did it we were quite happy to go on stage and do that in front of one or two people. It didn’t matter of how many people were there. I think we initially wanted to do music for ourselves. We had no intention of playing live in front of people or even recording records at that time.
Nigel
I think we still do. We still make music that we want to listen to. We don’t compromise or we don’t say we will make the type of music which we think it’s popular. We just do whatever we feel is right.
Klive
I guess we also experimented a lot more with different types, forms of arts. On stage we started using slides and projecting films with this, so we’ve gone through that on a quite an early stage and we tend to keep in music now and just to music but I went to Art College so I was like trying and experimenting with lot’s of different arts like photography and video, everything really and I had the chance of trying them all and deciding what was the right thing to do.
EBM : Did you have to leave other things in your life so that you could concentrate in making music?
Klive
We took a course of not short of having any proper jobs and we had to subsidized our living by doing other short of part time jobs to keep making music and to play to concerts and to pay for the studio, to recording, buy our own equipment and things.
EBM : I have read that neither of you can read music…
Nigel
Or write it….
EBM : Which is simply amazing considering the number of successful albums IN THE NURSERY have made. Please could you explain us how can you do it?
Nigel
I think it all started from the punk ethic that anybody can make music and it was very liberating that people could just learn guitar and play music within a matter of months or weeks and from there we never took a conscious decision to learn music. And after the years I think we realized that if we did go back to look at the theory of music and study it then it would change our approach of making music. So we play everything by ear and by intuition and by making mistakes. You know we make mistakes at the stage but people don’t hear it and when we’re at the studio we find it.
EBM : In 1987 Dolores with Q joined the band. How did you find each other and please tell us some things about your collaboration.
Klive
Q was in Art College doing sculpture and we just got to know him as a friend and asked him to come along to some rehearsals cause we felt we wanted an other person when we played live. We wanted him to play drums with us. I think he said he used to play military snare drum when he was in like a cadet band and we always used snare drum before with Anthony the first formed member.
We asked Dolores to come along to a recording session cause we knew she could speak French and we wanted some French on a certain song, the track was called Elegy and that was the start and then we just kept asking them to come along to rehearsals.
Nigel
Yes
EBM: … she also has to travel Far East from time to time. She is also a mum. How difficult is for Dolores as an individual and for IN THE NURSERY to work together?
Klive
I guess we have to plan what we do and we tend to have the time to work in the studio on projects and we have to plan when we have to play live concerts or when we can get home to the studio to record.
Nigel
It is just careful planning and obviously we don’t play as much as we could if we had a full time vocalist or even percussionist cause our percussionist is quite busy as well, he has a full time job so he takes his time off for holidays and comes to play with us.
EBM : So it is a little bit difficult for you from time to time?
Klive
It’s never really proved difficult. We haven’t found we have to say no to go on doing concerts.
Nigel
But we work within our own guidelines and deadlines. We’ve never had a record company recently telling us “we need to play now” “we need to tour or release an album”, so we can schedule everything ourselves.
Nigel
I would say a mixture usually. Usually the music is always finished, we have a style or theme for the track and Dolores will write some lyrics or we will suggest maybe some.
Klive
She normally comes along to the studio and listens to the track. She has probably listened to it before but she listens to it and then she writes down some ideas or we give her some ideas and then we go through a certain stage of writing ideas and phrases and things like that.
EBM : So the music works as an inspiration for writing lyrics.
Klive
Yes we tend to decide this certain track whether it’s going to be instrumental or it needs vocals so it just happens. I don’t think we have ever written a track from the very beginning as a vocal track. So we never had sheets of lyrics and say “let’s make a song around this”.
Nigel
Yes, or during or half way through.
EBM : David Clarkson replaced Q. How easy was for him to adjust and co-operate with the rest of you?
Nigel
David is a drummer that normally plays a normal drum kit so it was different for him I think.
Klive
Yes he had to stand up.
Nigel
Yes we wouldn’t let him sit down and obviously he didn’t have a bass drum cause he is standing up so I don’t know if he really enjoys it.
Klive
Yes he enjoys playing live and he’s always got a really good attitude to the whole process of playing live and recording and stuff like that. He is quite a light drummer. I mean a lot of drummers tend to thrash about but he is very light, he hardly touches the drums but he makes a great sound.
EBM : Are there any bands, or artists that influence or inspire IN THE NURSERY to make music and what music do you listen to in your spare time?
Klive
You tend to go through phases of not listening to anything and then thinking that you never ever going to hear something that inspires you again and you tend to go back to all the old bands you quite listened to. I quite listened to Neil Young and lots of old stuff and then you think that you will never listen to something like that. And then something like the Editors comes along.
We enjoy listening to them and we are going to see them live as well and then you get inspired again.
Nigel
I can’t think recently.
EBM : Old bands ?
Nigel
There was a guitarist Wilko Johnson from Dr. Feelgood. That was early last year we went to see him.
Dr. Feelgood we were listening to them before punk came along. They were like our introduction to punk music.
EBM : In the beginning you said Siouxsie
Both Nigel and Klive
Yes
Klive
Yes we listen to them (old bands) occasionally. You know sometimes you are going through phases that you are not listening to them for a long time and then you read a book about them and then you want to listen to the music again, reappraise it and watching films like Control the documentary about Joy Division’s life.
EBM : How did you like Control by the way?
Nigel
I felt it was a really great film
Yes it was well done.
Nigel
I didn’t like the incidental music from New Order.
EBM : Did you think that this film was accurate about Ian Kertis personality ?
Klive
Yes I think it is quite accurate and I think along with the Joy Division’s documentary which is coming out as well it is quite infinitive now. There is not much more you can say about it. It is almost that certain things are written to stone about what happened.
Nigel
You know having seen Joy Division live and lived through that period some scenes you just don’t think are right but I think the people who have done it, Anton Corbijn and people being closed to Ian, connected to him, you can tell from that that they tried to do it correctly.
Nigel
In those cases the music has already been made and we just chose it for the film trailer or the TV production.
Klive
Are you asking us how we feel about specific music which we have done for an album being used for something?
EBM : Yes and also if you were asked to make music for a trailer or for an advertisement for instance how would you feel and would be the process different than when you make an IN THE NURSERY album?
Klive
Ok. We have worked with agencies and companies for doing commercials. We did a Singapore airlines twice and that was really interesting cause they were based in New Zealand and Singapore as well and there was time issues but it was quite nice to collaborate and work distinctive image and sound so we could join, marry them together but sometimes people just take our music and work with it on their own to the image.
EBM: Where there any cases that someone took your music and used it matching with images that you didn’t like it?
Nigel
Not really no. I have noticed on youtube that some people did a compilation for the Tsunami and they used our music to that. It is ok but it is not always good to see our music used in those situations where its about tragedy. Our music is about melancholy but it always gets connected to melancholy and you know… horrible images, about bad thoughts. I think when princess Dianna died our music was on a compilation which was played throughout that day in England so everyone connects that piece of music with dying.
EBM : Not necessarily. I mean I am sure that people can find very optimistic moments in your albums.
Nigel
Yes I hope so.
Klive
I think we try to keep as much control on who uses our music. I mean we wouldn’t have it being used advertising drink or alcohol.
EBM : How easy it is to keep control about that?
Nigel
You can refuse to let your music being used.
EBM : That’s in cases people asking, because I know that there are some advertisers that use music from different bands and they don’t ask, they just use it.
Nigel
That’s true.
Klive
Yes there was in Mexico, they used our music to promote a commercial for the Mexican army I think it was…
Nigel
For recruitment.
Klive
Yes and we didn’t know about it. We were only told about it by someone else. There is not a lot you can do when something like that happens.
Nigel
Yes they don’t pay you anyway.
EBM : Apart from the payment thing weren’t you mad to see your music being used for recruitment for an army?
Klive
Yes we tried to find out who did it but we couldn’t get any more information about it.
EBM : Optical music series : New soundtrack scores for silent classics The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (which we are going to see in Greece) 1996, Asphalt 1997, Man with a Movie Camera 1999, HindleWakes 2000, A Page of Madness 2004 and Electric Edwardians 2005. How did the series get started? How did you like working on something like this
Nigel
I trust it is great because we can chose our projects, our films and do them ourselves. Nobody tell us which one to do and we can work individually on them we don’t have a director telling us what needs to be done so it is very personal for us.
EBM : what is the next step after this?
Nigel
I don’t’ know.
Klive
Do you mean our next project or the next thing for us to do?
EBM : The next thing for you to do. I expect that we will have soon after Era a new album.
Yes we are working on a new soundtrack.
EBM : A new soundtrack about a silent classic again?
Nigel
Yes it is a 1928 film “The Passion of Joan of Arc” by the Norwegian director Carl Theodor Dreyer.
EBM : And when you expect that this will be finished?
Nigel
It needs to be finished by the 16th of April cause that’s when the premiere is in Sheffield.
EBM : How much time do you usually need to finish such a project?
Nigel
Well you should say about three months, in between doing other things.
EBM : The Anatomy of a Poet : You used the voice of the writer Colin Willson reciting a selection of his favourite romantic poetry. What was the main idea of making such an album? What was the concept and what you wanted to reflect with this work?
Klive
We originally went down to Cornwall to record Colin Willson ‘s voice reading from his own work. He have written some books about “The outsider” specifically the outsiders in the arts, people like Van Gogh, people from the outer edges of creating things, so we wanted him to recite some of his work. But we tried it and it didn’t work very well. And it was his choice while we sat there just to go to his book shelf and pick up some of his favorite romantic poets and read those. So it was his idea and that worked very well.
Nigel
And the theme of the album is about the self destructive nature of artists. And it just so happened that a lot of the poets he was reciting their work they have been burned out early in life and you could connect with them. There was no work from Shelley but obviously he was one. Poets that often have come to a sticky end or committed suicide.
EBM : Your tenth album Deco was inspired from the Art Deco Movement. Would you like to tell us a bit more about that? How this movement influenced your music?
Klive
I think that Deco art movement inspired us not musically, but it inspired us more like reading about it maybe collecting pieces, I mean the whole period is interesting so I think in some ways it affected us sub-consciously the same way than going to the cinema or reading a book. So we tried to put it all together and formulate an album. You know a collection of songs. Thinking about it now I try hard to think of specific tracks…
Nigel
Well it’s a mixture of the art from the period and also the writers…
I am not sure totally what we were trying to do when we did it but it’s just have a source of inspiration for the music and for the words.
Klive
The same with the artwork.
EBM : What about Lingua, an exploration of language featuring vocal contributions from around the world. How did you came up with the idea?
Nigel
Originally the working title for the album was “The Living Tongue” but we changed it to Lingua just before it was released.
Klive
I think that what we probably looked at what we were doing and it was to put a lot of vocals to our music, lot of French or Spanish. I think we looked at that and we wondered how much further we can take it. I guess with the use of the internet as well, meeting friends when you are on tour and keep in touch with them. So we have met people in Mexico and so we had contacts with people who could get recordings of Mayan and tribal speaking.
Nigel
That was someone we had correspondence with e-mail.
Klive
We were like short of putting together the songs, the instrumental pieces and plating all these different takes and recordings that people were sending us or we were having done and working out which was gone work out best for each track and then working some more with the tracks. So for us it was a way of come up with an idea and it made the process of making music much more interesting.
EBM : Engel : an RPG, trilogy of novels an IN THE NURSERY album …. How did it work for you back then? Where you inspired by the game itself?
Nigel
We never got to play the game but we were inspired by the image really which was been written for the books. There has been a whole series of books made in German and there is a whole concept, a whole history behind the idea of Engel, the game. They have created a whole world and we found that really interesting. So we wrote some new music and we also re-adapted some interesting pieces that they wanted us to do.
Klive
The company in Germany wrote us that there were a lot of people who play role playing games using our music, previous tracks to play in the background anyway while playing, so it was a good idea for us to reach another origin as well to do that. That was like a great collaboration because the artwork is very specific as well to the whole thing.
EBM : Your latest album ERA has on the cover the Abbeydale picture house (build in 1920) which was one of the biggest and luxurious cinemas in Sheffield your home basis.
Nigel
You must have researched that because I didn’t know that. Maybe it was. Not any more, not the biggest now.
Nigel
The album started off influenced by architecture but as we were recording the album and writing music, the idea of architecture became urban decay regeneration and I have seen a picture of the Abbeydale picture house in a local paper and contacted the photographer. And there was this one particular image I saw that it was on his web site which is not recognizable, it’s inside the theatre. It’s a back stair, you don’t normally see it but it seems to have that sense of mystery about it and also the sense of decay.
EBM : And a sense of little horror. When I saw the picture for the first time I felt a little bit scared. Old buildings sometimes scare you.
Nigel
The style of photography is called high dynamic range. If anybody just looks on that image, looked at being in that stairway they wouldn’t have seen much cause it would all be in shadow. And he (the photographer) takes about ten or twelve images at different exposures and you see the corners you wouldn’t normally see and it brings out all the detail but also gives that type of unnatural scene.
EBM : Talking about Sheffield… how is the music scene now in Sheffield, what is the thing you love the most in it and if you were about to move which is the place you would like to stay?
Klive
I haven’t really thought about moving. It is strange, in Sheffield there seems to be a lot of re-development. A lot buildings they seem to tend to be quite tall short of 20 story flats and it seems that they’re knocking down a lot of the older buildings which is a shame. Where our studio is there seems to be knocking down all around us. We seem to be the only place left. It’s just quite wasteland at the moment and ready for new buildings. It has happened in the last four or five years and it is quite sad in a way.
The Sheffield scene….
Nigel
What I like about it is the diversity. There is lots of creative people there doing some different things.
And there are still people like the Human League still playing live and they still write music as well.
EBM : After almost 25 years of presence in the music industry you sure have observed and lived the evolution and also a lot of changes in music. How does this influence IN THE NURSERY? What is your opinion about the present music tendencies?
Nigel
We like being kept up to date about with what’s happening with the way music is delivered to people and so we have emrassed distract formats. You can buy music from our website, from i-tunes, we also did the music for Wave Gothic last year and we thought we just to release it on a distract format because it is difficult to know if you release on cd, if it would sell enough for you to finance it, so you have to be careful about decisions and what gets released on cd now. It is not going to go away so… I think it works.
EBM : With no compromises. No compromising at all.
Nigel
Yes you try to make sure because the thing with the Mp3 is the sound quality so you have to make sure that it’s a good level. A good sample rate.
It’s difficult to make a living just releasing cds. I don’t think we could do that. If we just continued making cds we wouldn’t make a living.
EBM : In those 25 years there have been performed dramatic changes in Technology, obviously helping you a lot with your compositions. Which is the most helpful tool for you?
Klive
The computer. I think you’ve got to be aware that the computer is just a computer. It doesn’t make the music for you. It will help you make it but you still got to have the ideas. I think you’ve got to be aware of that and to use the computer as a way to experiment as well cause you can experiment a lot. I guess when we first started, we started with basic guitar, base and a drum and then we tried to find different ways of experimenting and making new sounds like using an old stream machine, listen to classical music and cooperating that into our music and we were able to do that by using samplers and some sounds of orchestral instruments. So we’ve always been short of looking around ways of bringing new input into the sound which people recognised you know as IN THE NURSERY. But it always comes back down to having some expressions, some ideas to express rather than pressing a button and say make that music from my computer.
EBM : You have decided to start your own label after releasing on Sweatbox and Third Mind. What were the reasons for taking this decision and eventually what do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?
Nigel
We took the decision after Third Mind who owned by Road Runner at the time decided no to take up an album option and it just made sense because we had so much experience in the business to start our own label and we had control of all of our earlier recordings from Sweatbox and the main advantage is having greater control, financial control and the disadvantage is that it just takes up a lot of time and there’s nobody behind you for financial support, so you have to make sure you can.
Klive
I guess before that happened we were always organizing tours and dates ourselves we weren’t letting other people doing it for us and we’d be always been involved with the artwork as well and we always were too kin to find out it was costing to press up a record and things like that, so we were always aware. It wasn’t too difficult to do it ourselves. It was quite liberating.
EBM : You also record as Les Jumeaux. What is the difference between IN THE NUSRERY and Le Jumeaux?
Nigel
I suppose when you look at Les Jumeaux the two albums, they are a bit more experimental, a bit more dance based. Because we are working on a different name it gives us the opportunity just to try different things which people wouldn’t normally not except but wouldn’t expect from IN THE NURSERY. So we were talking about it last night and I think if there is to be another Les Jumeaux album maybe it wouldn’t be dance based because that is something which isn’t really relevant anyway. I suppose in some respects it is but maybe it would go more basic, back to more punk roots where we come from.
Nigel
There is the opportunity there to be another album yes. It is just that we have the time, we have the inspiration.
EBM : We had the pleasure to see IN THE NURSERY performing live in Elfentanz Fest. No 4 in 2005 and we will have the pleasure to see you on stage again presenting one of your Optical Music Series. Which will be the difference between the two shows and what do you expect to give to your Greek audience?
Klive
The live show is quite different to optical soundtracks. I mean there is four of us on stage, there is lots of percussion, it is like a proper show with lights. What we do with the optical music scores… we’re not so much tend to stand on stage, we’re more off to the side in the shadows, we are looking at the screen and the film and we short of performing music to the film as it goes along. And I guess it’s more of a cinema event than a live show.
EBM : So during this show IN THE NURSERY are part of the film?
Nigel
No we don’t take part on the film.
EBM : No I mean metaphorically. You don’t perform in front of the audience but you perform for the film so the audience can see the film which is very different than performing to the audience straight forward.
Nigel
Yeah.
EBM : You were also in the last WGT fest. Are there any plans to see you in this year’s WGT fest too?
Nigel
Yes we think so….
Klive
Well yes… probably not as a live show. We may be performing the new optical music piece. It depends. I mean we have played live there maybe six times now over the years.
EBM : It will be hard to choose after so many albums but could you please choose each of you one fav.IN THE NURSERY album and tell us why it is your fav.?
Klive
Album or track?
EBM : Album
Nigel
Just one album?
Klive
Just one of us?
EBM : You don’t have to agree on that. You can choose different ones.
Klive
I would probably say “The Anatomy of a Poet” because you can listen to it and it brings back a lot of memories about certain things. Especially recording the sessions with Colin Willson. All you have to do is listen to his voice and the music. I can remember that… quite vividly.
Nigel
Well I would probably have said that one same one but a close second would be the new album Era because it is interesting to look back at how the album came out of nothing. We started with just a few ideas and then slowly the album builds up meaning over the months and I hadn’t listened to that for a long time when you listen back to tracks it does bring back your memories about how you went through the process of making an album. So I think it will stand the test of time so we can look back in 14 years and still appreciate it the way we appreciate “The Anatomy of a Poet”.
EBM : Lets end this interview with a message to your Greek fans and an IN THE NURSERY Lyric/quote.
Nigel
We are always resulting just to the line from To The Faithful. To the people who have been faithful to listening to our music over the years.
Klive
I am always humble by listening to and receiving e-mails from people who get so many different things from our music. That’s always been a buy product of what we do cause what we do is make music purely for ourselves. Quite selfish way but it is a way of expressing ourselves so to have other people enjoy your music and use it to benefit in so many different ways is always refreshing, to get a feedback from them.
EBM : And a lyric for them?
Klive
One by one our hearts return …
To the faithful
I am not going to sing it.
A special thanks goes to Nikos Sari
kostas
Official Home Page : www.inthenursery.com
www.myspace.com/inthenursery