Hi, how do you feel today?
Craig: I feel very, very good.
What do you think of the venue here?
I think it's beautiful, it's very, very rare for us to play places so special, so I'm really, really glad to be here.
In your songs you are continously shifting between very agressive and distorted music and very beautiful melodies. Is this on purpose or is this just like the songwriting happened?
It's a natural process. It's just the emotions that we feel on a day to day basis. So it makes sense to us to go through both extremes in one song. It's a very natural process.
Speaking of your songwriting, is it more a whole-band effort or is it only one or 2 who do it?
No, it's the complete band. It starts out with me when I write something on the acoustic, and then Campbell usually has the ideas, and then it's ian who puts those ideas into practise and then Martin has an incredible, I think, unique slant on the whole process, so everybody is involved. I really, really enjoy it, because it's the most fullfilled I felt musically.
Apart from all those garage bands which come from the UK right now, there are some kind of similar bands from across the channel which now get a bit of attention over here, like your band, Biffy Clyro and Mogwai. Is there a special mood up there that makes it easier for this kind of music to happen?
You know, we get asked this a lot and the only explanation that we can give is that Glasgow is one of the best cities to stay in but it's the furthest one away from London so I think everybody thought they had to go to London and everyone thought London controlled the whole of the UK until a certain part of Scotland kind of said, you know, "fuck you, we do it on ourselves, we don't need your opinion, we don't need your approval". It's just that I think the Scots are feisty and they don't like to be told what to do, so they did it themselves.
Your kind of music is often labeled as "post rock". Do you feel comfortable with this description?
Well, I just think we're rock, because I think the term "post rock" is redundant. It doesn't make sense, because you don't get "post jazz", you don't get "post soul", you don't get "post techno", well, you may actually, you know. So, why post rock? It doesn't make any sense they are just rock bands. If you have to give us a label just go for it, whatever suits you...
Well, on you webpage you labeled your last output, which you recorded in the US, as "van core" so...
That was just because we recorded two songs in the van ...
So you were kind of mocking that whole thing?
Yeah, emo-core, van-core.....
Would you describe yourself rather as a studio band or as a live band?
I think you have to take it both. You can't really take one without the other, and it's good that way, because we are slightly different playing live. I think live we are a lot more aggressive. But I like doing it both ways.
Is it easy for you to get the sound you create in the studio on the stage?
We use the laptop, because we really don't wanna play with an orchestra. That would be just more people to argue with. Everything we do on the laptop we have created, so it's just because we have tiny budgets to deal with. So you bring the laptop and not an orchestra.
Your latest album "Sleep & Release" has earned high critical acclaim. How important are critics to you?
It is dangerous to allow them to affect what you do, because that shouldn't really be. If you allow them to affect the things you do, you're starting to go down a route which you aren't really pleased with yourself. You just try to please other people, and that's never a good thing for our music or for anything. It always has to be for a purely personal reason.
Do you still use your "Babi Yaga" label for anything?
Oh, it's in hibernation. We've run out of money so just now we can barely make enough to get by, but once we can start making money we'd like to start up again. There's a lot of bands in Glasgow that we'd like to let the world hear.
You explicitly state on your webpage that you are "proud beard wearers". Is there a special meaning behind this statement or do you just like the looks?
It's lazyness really, that's all it is. We never thought about it, we just all slowly started to grow beards. It's a gang thing.
The music industry right now is not what you could call healthy. Does this make it more difficult for bands like you who are away from the mainstream to get the support from the labels?
It's terrible. You know, there's loads of band politcs that many people have to deal with. When you are on an independent label it is very hard to compete with the major labels, and I think that the generation which is coming up now dong music don't really have a concept of an independent label. They've only just been used to the majors. So they don't really know that there is a difference.
We've come to my final question, which is, where do you see the band in 5 or 10 years?
Hopefully somewehere like a band like The Flaming Lips, who are recognized and are really appreciated for what they do. And they do something very special and I think that's an incredible thing and to be able to exist and to keep on going as long as they have and they seem to get better as well. That's the kind of position I'd love to be in. Just to create stuff that changes...hopefully
Interview courtesy of wwwWiesen-Fanscom (http://www.wiesen-fans.org)