Several fantastic bands have emerged from the rubble of Brighton psychobilly cult heroes The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster: Piano Wire, The DSM IV and Primitive Ignorant have all become Joyzine favourites since TEMBLD’s split, as did Vile Imbeciles, featuring guitarist Andy Huxley, who made fantastically wonky nerve-jangling weird punk music between 2005 and 2013, before disappearing seemingly never to be seen again.
Or so we thought… Ten years later Vile Imbeciles re-emerged for a gig at The Hope & Ruin, and now they’ve faced us with the knee trembling prospect of their first new release since 2011’s D Is for W with the announcement of new single ‘Tassled Death Wish’, due out on 22nd May, with an album, Violent What to follow soon.
John Clay caught up with the band to find out more.
‘I was obsessed with being original and authentic, but I don’t think any of that matters and it leads nowhere. It’s a bit like staring at yourself in the mirror trying to work out if you’re ugly or not. Your face just continually morphs and makes no sense.’
Andy Huxley, Guitar/Vocals
John Clay: Let’s say I’m a fan of 80’s Matchbox B Line Disaster and Piano Wire and I’ve just heard Vile Imbeciles’ new track ‘Tasseled Death Wish’. After looking up what a makuta is I’d like to know how that headdress wiggled itself way into the lyrics of ‘Tasseled Death Wish’?
Andy Huxley: Makuta is a play on the crown symbol that features throughout the Vile Imbeciles stuff. It’s usually upside down but this is a development of that. They have them in Sri Lanka which is my heritage.
John: Is the lyrical content created by committee?
Andy: The lyrics originate from me in one way or another but people sort of use my stuff and make something work on top of it. It can involve a rewrite or making sense of some garbling sounds etc. It’s got something to do with death and new life/ loss/ failure/ and then understanding/ acceptance/ defeating dumb desires for fame or general bullshit. Obviously we want the band to be successful and work, but no one is interested in personal glory or anything like that. It’s just a really pure moment for all of us. Long may it continue!
‘I think everyone kind of hated me at the time for it but I really pushed for not overdubbing on the record. It made us commit early on to what we were going to do.’
Evan Reinhold, Drums/Vocals
John: Well done on creating all these new spiky songs from the upcoming album Violent What. Can lead single, ‘Tasseled Death Wish’ be described as a form of aestheticised violence?
Andy: We’ve discussed violence as a band in making some of this new content. Deen may have some thoughts on that as it’s all been kind of an accident. They turned up and we had to do a double take and work out if they should be kept in. It’s just some colour or a bit of absurdity to stir into the pot and give it some flavour.
Caspian Rospigliosi: For me the song is more emphatically, flamboyantly and yet somehow solemnly or knowingly trudging towards something sinister. I’d say the violence may be a misinterpretation of what I’d describe as strictly-controlled chaos – but I’m sure amongst that chaos, some violence may have made it in – it knows to behave itself though, obviously.
Deen Lim: The sound of ‘Tasseled Death Wish’ certainly could be described in that way – it’s characterised by tense build ups that explode into frenetic dissonance. As Andy mentioned, the band needed to discuss whether we would use the word ‘Violent’ as part of the album title. A close friend Cameron Devlin — who was a producer of our third album ‘D is for W’ — passed away five years ago as a result of being physically attacked. A devastatingly tragic incident that affected us all. That experience fed into both the emotion and some lyrical content you’ll hear on the new record. I feel that using the word is disarming, and, as it’s abstract, can mean many different things.
John: Lots to return to here and thank you for all being so specific, open and candid.
There is a decades old Western tradition of upsetting the calm of suburbia to push through the concerns and politics of the youth so to speak. Arguably that dialogue has become gentrified. Perhaps we ought to investigate your relationship to violence in music and how personal loss could recalibrate a band’s chosen expression. Is it fair to say that we in the global north access violence in our alternative rock because for the most part we experience it as cinema or television?
Andy: This is interesting and I’ve not thought about it. It’s in the mix, and in the background to our story of the record as Deen and Caz (Caspian) have mentioned and it’s around isn’t it? Still, we’ve used it pretty casually. I guess that was the concern really. Was it ok after all we’ve been through?
Caspian: I usually think of violence in music – on a general level – as being something more personal and expressive than a natural byproduct of other media and culture. I’m sure, even if only subliminally, both are true. Where I appreciate violence in music is when it feels like an expression of something personal, rather than glorification of violence.
When we perform, I don’t think of our music as an expression of violence or with a connection to violence. The ever-changing and at times frantic pace of the music and the drums is something that pulls me in a million directions. There is something that it invokes internally which is comparable to music that is more violent sounding or feeling in its nature.
John: Has your relationship to violence evolved after the tragic passing of Cameron?
Deen: I can’t remember having ever not been anti-violence. Since the event led to me having to pull myself through many difficult waves of grief, I’m much more sensitive now to how our lives can be affected so deeply by mindless, or even calculated actions of others. Impactful events leave a mark, and inform how life unfolds whether you like it or not.
Caspian: Themes of violence for us personally, including the album name require careful consideration. Terrible events like the loss of Cameron should tell us all that it’s not something to be taken lightly, ever.
John: It’s worth examining our motivations as creators although it’s easy to become needlessly puritanical. That said, it’s not like Vile Imbeciles would exist if the players were living in a war zone.
Andy: Speaking of war zones, we haven’t travelled too much as a band but we spent some time in Ukraine about fifteen years ago and had some bizarre experiences there, fundamental to the band’s story. Deen has loads of footage from our time there for a future documentary. So it’s been weird with the whole Ukraine war as I have memories of us there with the band.
John: Hopefully we’ll get into the specifics of your time in Ukraine in a future interview.
Listening to early single ‘Slack Hands’ (great performance vid by the way) confirms that you’re working within a familiar territory of jagged rhythms and sonic shock value but with a new mindset. This time around the new material is drum led rather than vocal or guitar driven.
Caspian: Agree – from my point of view in relation to the drumming and drum led aspects, speaking as neither the drummer, nor the songwriter I will say that drums are king here.
Andy: Evan probably can talk about the drums. We put him through hell.
John: Evan … opportunity knocks. Spill the beans on everything.
Evan Reinhold: I think if you took the drum sticks out of the equation, Andy would hands down be the best drummer in the band, and as Caspian mentioned, something literally clicked into place when we were turning Andy’s digital demos into the finished songs.
John: Was ‘Tasseled Death Wish’ easy to drum? Andy says you were ‘put through hell’.
Evan: ‘Tasseled Death Wish’ isn’t spectacularly complex drumwise but it’s all about the execution.
John: Has your ability matured alongside your time with the band?
Evan: When we first started we set off an inevitable chain of events where we spent endless hours in dark stinky rooms honing something. I think for a long time we didn’t really know what that was. We wanted to make weird janky jarring music and we did for years. What was special for me and super surreal was that after a ten year hiatus it was like not a moment had passed.
‘Evan has an incredible talent and patience for figuring out a way to translate incredible things from Andy’s head into things a human with the regular amount of limbs can perform.’
Caspian Rospigliosi, Guitar/Vocals
John: Were there teething problems in relearning your challenging material?
Evan: It was like in some other dimension we had all been chugging away getting better. The connections between each other, the little looks, pauses – weird rhythms became more intentional – all those moments felt a bit like we had grown up a bit. The greatest thing I ever did for my drumming was to not pick up any sticks for the best part of four years. I think nowadays bands and musicians are not really allowed to mature, especially if successful, so for us our apparent lack of success ten years ago was probably our greatest victory. We didn’t need to stick to something, we could just grab that bull by the horns and yank it along into new territory of our weird legacy.
John: You’ve managed to philosophically weigh up your past with your immediate present. Great stuff. Caspian, by all accounts you seem to be very involved with the drumming process…
Caspian: Drums are the element I focus on in most music, my favourite instrument and a key differentiator in music being interesting. I’m an incredibly annoying back seat drummer and have far more specific opinions when it comes to the drum writing process than should be listened to.
John: You’ve got such a bond of trust in this group considering how there’s a venn diagram of responsibility, especially in regards to translating Andy’s demos.
Caspian: Evan has an incredible talent and patience for figuring out a way to translate incredible things from Andy’s head into things a human with the regular amount of limbs can perform. I think that the slightly unnatural way in which they come to be drum beats is a big part of what makes the music and this track so rhythmically interesting and drum-led. Evan can talk more about how annoying it is when I try to make the drums even more complicated with my own input if he likes.
John: Go for it Evan, and feel free to weigh in on the subject of violence as an aesthetic in music chit chat from earlier on.
Evan: As quite an angry man myself there is some pride that comes out of creating valuable things with anger. When a song like ‘Last Nursery’ (track off forthcoming album Violent What) charges along like a lumbering breaker on the shore, I get a thrill out of it. If I go too fast, I fuck it up, too loose, I fuck it up. When something seems like it’s out of control we do have it locked in.
It is annoying for me because if I fuck up I derail the whole band. It’s all frowns and daggers. I think we have honed this skill of communicating without words and operate on some zen plane.
John: Let’s chat a bit about communication in regards to songwriting. Is it fair to namecheck Slint or Shellac as influences around the time of writing? Perhaps it’s fair to say that as musicians mature they develop a dialogue which is free from name checking and dependent on more personal language.
Andy: Nope I’m not mature at all and happy to be a total fanboy. I’ll never compare to them.
I think that’s part of staying youthful and your music staying good. I’m sure they are the same with the bands they love too. I think there was a point in my life where I was obsessed with being original and authentic, but I don’t think any of that matters and it leads nowhere. It’s a bit like staring at yourself in the mirror trying to work out if you’re ugly or not. Your face just continually morphs and makes no sense.
John: That face staring analogy is fascinating. Arguably it’s good to go through a phase of seeking authenticity just so you realise how to arrive at a place of surety. That said, there is the adage of not seeking comfort as an artist. Comfort can lead to writing through a formula as opposed to challenging the self. You worked with Bob Weston of Shellac. What was that like?
Andy: We asked Bob Weston to master this record and he kindly agreed and did a smashing job. I’ve been emailing him on and off for years probably annoying the fuck out of him sending him every crap demo I make. Britt Walford is an absolute genius isn’t he. There’s a video of him playing ‘Good Morning Captain’ on YouTube and he looks like he’s twelve or something but he’s playing the most sophisticated drumbeat. It’s incredible. To say they are influences would be the understatement of the year!
John: Before we backtrack to something that Deen mentioned earlier, let’s discuss your process as it relates to ‘Tasseled Death Wish’: What was your process in writing the song and how do you prevent yourself from relying on a formula?
Andy: I don’t think the songwriting process is particularly interesting, I just create demos at home. I think I heard that guy from Dinosaur Jr talk about how it’s like fishing. Not much to say. But I think what’s probably the most interesting thing is the arrangement process which the others can speak to, because that’s the machine of the band kicking into gear. Almost everything gets rewritten in the process, song structure/ chords/ parts/ lyrics/ melodies. I was going to pull Caz up earlier on his comment about not being a songwriter as 80% of the work is the arrangement and lyric writing which we all contribute to.
Evan: On a writing point – on D is for W – we had a song ‘Bertie Lean’ running at a speed of 240bpm. Andy had basically dumped every drum sample available to him into a 2 minute clip and Caz and I forensically dissected it into playable drums parts.
Another key personality to mention is Steven Santa Cruz. He (alongside Cam) produced the sessions for D is for W – before mixing himself into a total frenzied mess that only Cam could fix. That intricacy summed us up at that point. Everything was like that. Five vocals, notes on every beat and subdivision.
‘It’s important to note that both Cam and Steve left this earth suddenly, each having worked tirelessly on the third Vile Imbeciles album at different stages of the process. Seems inevitable that themes of loss and life would leave an imprint on the music of the fourth.’
Deen Lim, Bass/Vocals
John: Tell us more of your experience working with Steve, Evan.
Evan: I have thought of Steve a lot in making this record. His infectious enthusiasm and raucous enjoyment of the perfect ugly songs we make, this record would have brought him so much joy. He is someone who totally just got it – no explanation.
John: Thankfully we’re scheduled for a deep dive into the specifics about the new album soon. For now, can you give us more hints of what to expect on Violent What?
Evan: We made and produced this album in a totally different way… whole takes, chords that ring out, chords in general I’d love to send Cam and Steve. They nudged us into making a record like this. I think everyone kind of hated me at the time for it but I really pushed for not overdubbing on the record. It made us commit early on to what we were going to do.
I love literature and reading but I hate having to use words. I’m quite severely dyslexic. I think because of the way my brain works I love making the kind of music we play because there are all these established ways of communicating ”correctly” but what we do is we speak backwards, we stutter, we butt in on each other, we count really odd numbers but to us nothing could ever feel more right.
John: Your observations on music between people as an uneven dialogue is an eyeopener. Philosophically speaking it sounds like your sensibilities are not dissimilar from a jazz band, albeit with distortion and fuzz.
Deen, you spoke a bit about how the death of Cameron affected you all, and that the experience fed into the lyrical content on the record. Care to go into that? If anyone else has some truth to offer on that, do feel free to speak up.
Andy: Steve Santa Cruz’s death also was a massive blow. Collaborations with both Cam and Steve were ongoing, we have work with both wonderful mavericks still unreleased and it feels good for the time being to hold on to them still.
Deen: It’s important to note that both Cam and Steve left this earth suddenly, each having worked tirelessly on the third Vile Imbeciles album at different stages of the process. Seems inevitable that themes of loss and life would leave an imprint on the music of the fourth, not in a planned or deliberate way, but as a subconscious creative expression of what we’ve lived through together.
Andy’s demos are usually programmed drums and guitar parts accompanied by vocalisation. Not necessarily deliberately formed words, more rhythmically precise and characterful mouth sounds. These articulations, and vowel sounds informed the words I chose that fit with a predetermined concept.
John: It’s understandable how much you don’t like to interfere with the interpretation of lyrics but if you’d care to let us in on the process of hooking your words up to music…
Deen: The lyrics on this record are abstract enough that listeners can interpret them in their own way, but there are clear threads of anger and a kind of resolute determination that surface — not just in the language itself, but in the emotional tone of the delivery. That’s what makes Violent What feel cathartic to me. That said, there are tracks that are completely free of those feelings that I’d call playful in their own way, or at least as close as we ever get to that kind of thing.
John: ‘Tasseled Death Wish’ is a great representative of the album. What personal images come to mind when you reflect on the music?
Andy: There are a few morbid images in the track. Not intentionally connected to memories. There is one line about my door being red which is a bit personal. We had BNP painted in red on my door I think when I was a kid in Manchester.
John: Oh man.
Andy: We also had a stabbing outside the door of my flat in London and our patio where my kids play and the door and driveway was stained with pints and pints of blood. So that’s a couple of times in my life I’ve ended up with a menacing red door.
John: Thankfully At least you had the music to escape to. Long may your escape continue.
Andy: Indeed. There has been a total creative reckoning within Vile Imbeciles. Oddly enough we’ve come out of the other side with a lot of the themes and aesthetics of the band intact but the controlling and insular creative cul de sac that once defined us has largely disappeared. An output of that is everyone fronting the project in one way or another like a four dimensional thing. Don’t ask me how this has happened but it’s a beautiful miracle.
John: Thank you ever so much for your time gentlemen. May ‘Tasseled Death Wish’ receive a warm reception from fans old and new.
‘Tassled Death Wish’ will be released on 22nd May – pre-save on Spotify
Vile Imbeciles play live in Brighton at the Green Door Store on the 12th June with OZ as main support.
Vile Imbeciles: Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Interview by John Clay
Photography by Keira Cullinane and Cally Begg
Introduction by Paul Maps
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