I'd like to say we would release other artists on Phantomcode, one of the difficulties though is time. The label is completely independent, and we only have a small amount of help from our friend Daniel Mars, so although we'd love to release other work, in order to record
which is very time consuming, to create our releases and send them out into the world, that's about as much as we can manage presently. Perhaps things might change and we'll be able to get more support one day, for now though we pretty much do it all.
Our motivation is to try and create music that essentially moves us, that transports us in a beautiful and overwhelming way, sound that perplexes us, shakes us. We want to make a very organic and alive sound, that oozes and seeps into the normal and transforms space, takes you out of time, so it's enveloping, like a giant Crab Nebula. So much of what we do I feel has a sense of reverie, I really want to convey those feelings in our work, Cyclobe for me is devotional music.
There is a continuity, a part of us is very much in
Coil, with the music we worked on together and the ideas we shared and developed back then… and the same works in reverse of course, with those influences and shared experiences together revealing or manifesting themselves subtly in what we do, feeding into the creative process's we explore now. It makes sense there should be finger prints, atmospheres echoing though.
Coil is part of our heritage, our family blood line, so it would be foolish to say it's not present and an influence.
It feels more like light refracting through a piece of quartz though, but seen from slightly different angles. We might be peering through the same crystals but the effect is unique to the work we do in
Cyclobe.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wounded Galaxies Tap at the Window has an alien atmosphere that reminded me a lot of the work of H.P. Lovecraft (like something menacing trying to invade our world).
Quite a few people refer to H P Lovecraft’s writing when they've talked about our work, that's fine. Steve would certainly embrace that description - it’s not something I feel personally, although he was without doubt a great American writer, both me and Steve have loved his books. Clark Ashton Smith was one of my favourite fantasy writers, he was a good friend of Lovecraft’s, and an artist and poet, also published by Arkham House.
A Star Change is a wonderful short story for instance.
There is a lot of unusual ethnic/folk instruments used in Cyclobe, can you name a few?
Rebabs, Hurdy Gurdies, Diples, Duduks, Tulums! A lot of this is thanks to Cliff and Michael. Michael’s also a craftsman and often tailors instruments for our pieces specifically. He has a wonderful collection of instruments a lot of them he's made himself. We've been incorporating this kind of folk instrumentation since our earliest recordings though, it's something we're very much enjoying bring to the forefront now with our music. We first started working with Hurdy Gurdies on 'Inevitable Black Horn', on our first album in 1999. Hearing
Cliff Stapleton play, the tunes he wrote was a big inspiration for me.
Those instruments are so evocative and pagan… made from goat skin, fur lined bags full of your breath, bodies carved out of wood, spinning wheels resonating, heating up and vibrating your body, against your belly. I find them so moving to hear, they effect me very deeply, they're so full of emotion and history. I play a Pajot lute-back hurdy gurdy, it's around 150 years old. When Michael plays his Tulum, you can smell Pan in the studio, it's very exciting.
It's also good though to be taking these instruments into new areas, playing them in ways they weren't intended, seeing what else we can conjure, blending them with other instruments, sounds we've created.
What can we expect from a Cyclobe live show?
We'll be making our first live performance here in England this August at
Meltdown, invited by Antony [from
Antony and the Johnsons] whose curating the festival. It'll be our second performance in 13 years, we don't come out often! I always been incredibly nervous about performing
Cyclobe live, increasingly less keen to be out in large public situations as well. We've become very hermetic in recent years.
We couldn't say no for Antony though, whom we dearly love and have such great admiration for. Antony's so brave and fearless… such a unique and essential artist. I think Antony's put together a fascinating selection of artists this year.
So many great and inspiring female performers, underground queer artists, and very driven visionary musicians as well, like
David Tibet for instance with his new group
Myrninerest. They'll be playing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with us, along with some magical and rarely seen super 8 films by Derek Jarman.
Our evening is called 'ALBION - HYPNAGOGUE - GHOST: Hallucinatory Queer British Paganism’. We'll be performing pieces from our last album '
Wounded Galaxies Tap at The Window' along with some new work, including a collaboration from our next album to be released in Spring 2013, performing with a very special guest which we're extremely excited about. It should be beautiful and telesmatic… an evening of mantrical moon pieces!
It's been fascinating recently, to hear our work developing, transforming them into compositions that can be performed live.
We're going to be working visually with artwork by Fred Tomaselli and Alex Rose, projecting films by Anna Thew and David Larcher, a very beautiful piece of film from his 'Mare's Tail' and Anna's arboreal meditations, her Equinox and Solstice films. I've felt very hesitant to play live since
Coil, those shows could be very intense, very stressful emotionally. With
Cyclobe, since then, I've been the stick in the mud really, the goat boy dragging his hooves, until Antony surprised us with such a flattering invitation.
We'll be performing with Michael and Cliff of course, but also with Dave Smith from
Miasma and the Carousel of Headless Horses, and our good friend Ivan Pavlov from
COH, Sleazy's partner in
Soisong.
What are your favorite music albums?
They change from week to week, I'd have to say though
The End,
Marble Index and
Desertshore by
Nico are three really important records for me, they exist out of time, there's nothing comparable. She could snuff out the stars with those songs, such beautiful, haunting and devastating work. At the moment I'm listening a lot to
John Jacob Niles,
Jimmy Scott - and
Moondog's ‘
A New Sound of an Old Instrument’,
Moondog always. I think I've listened to that album more than any other over the years. I'm playing a lot of
Billy Holiday right now,
Sylvester and
Sun-Ra, the Turkish singers
Bülent Ersoy and
Selda.
Lal Waterson has a very special place in my heart.
Cyclobe will be performing at Meltdown festival in august 2012
Photo credit: by Ruth Bayer
