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Having expressed pleasant surprise at the reviews of the album, do articles about the band affect you in any way?
Campbell: No, I don’t care much about the press, I only care about what they say about my band, and I don’t care much about that! I only ever got one album in my life because I read a review. I only care about a band because my friends like them, or because I’ve seen them live…
Just because of what shitehawk thinks in London, I couldn’t care less, because he’s probably a ba’bag anyway…
Craig B: I think you care more about the consequences because, although it’s less important now, but magazines like the NME and Melody Maker used to have a huge influence on peoples lives.
Campbell: It still fucking matters if we get a knockback, because people will read that, it reaches people. We’re so aware of the strength of editorial policies nowadays. Lots of people like us at (insert a certain ‘popular’ music publication here), they’re just not allowed to write about us, you know. I was shocked that they actually let a guy who liked the album actually write the review, instead of giving it to someone who hates us.
With mainstream magazines seemingly less influential now, word of mouth and the internet seems to be gaining importance…
Campbell: I’m not sure if you could have a prolific, successful band that doesn’t have a large five-figure marketing budget attached to it. Now, you can be relatively successful, have people who love what you do, but in order to catch the attention of the rest of the people, they only seem to respond to marketing…
That’s what happens with a major label, they spend shitloads of money on one artist, you see it happen all the time, and it has to be bad for the bands, getting fucked over… but when it works, it really fucking works, and they make enough money from all the bands that work to not really worry about all the other bands.
We keep working and trying to do as much as we can, but we don’t make any money, so we go out on tour, and we don’t come back with very much. I’m really proud of the record we’ve done, but we’re on Chemikal Underground, one of the very few independent label in Britain, so we are having to compete with major labels, bands with a five, ten, twenty thousand pound marketing campaign. It is always going to be hard, but at the end I’m very happy with the music we make, and we just have to trust they’ll come out and get it, and I really hope you can find it among all this marketing… palava.
Craig B: I mean, Chemikal can’t even afford put posters around Glasgow, let alone Britain!
Do you think you’re maybe hindered slightly by crossing into two different genres, metal and indie?
Campbell: I think it becomes more and more evident to me that that is entirely the case. I think that, not out of design, but because we play the music we like… I think we’re in danger of falling between the cracks. I know that we could excel in either one of those avenues, but I don’t fucking want to go that way, it would bore me to tears to play one kind of music all night.
It would be so easy to do a big Brian Wilson record, one that we could jerk off in ten minutes (laughter), and it’d be fucking blinding. We’d blow all the chancers out of the water that are doing that sort of thing, or we could make an absolutely fucking fabulous rock record, but I don’t want to do that. Most people who are successful in music have not thought about making fabulous music that they want to make, they’ve actually thought about successful in music. And we kinda stumbled into being reasonably successful, and you start to feel the band need to make real fucking decisions for serious success. Idlewild made a total fucking decision about “Let’s just be fucking massive. Fuck it”. And they’ve done it, and they’re going to continue to do it. And fair play to them, because it takes a lot of balls to make that decision…
Craig B: Genuinely, I don’t know who we attract, because I don’t see lots of young people going down the front, because we’re not that kind of band, and we don’t really see lots of old people at the back. When you’ve got a similar base put together, it’s great to be in a group… but if you’ve got all these sporadic groups of people, it’s a really bizarre mix…
It must be good in some ways, because if you attach yourself to a certain movement, then your that movement’s decline will be yours too…
Craig B: I’ve always known that we were in for the long run, because if we’d signed to a major label we would have been chucked by now, because we wouldn’t have sold the prerequisite amount of records for them. It’s really bizarre to try and work out where it’s going to go, but I’ve always known it’s going to be a good while. It’s doing my head in!
Campbell: We haven’t managed not to be grim here…
Craig B: We’re grim people!
You’re doing something that many people would love to do, which is going out and touring for weeks on end…
Campbell: Yeah, definitely, but it’s really, really easy to lose sight of that so fucking quickly. And I can really appreciate that. I really think you hit the nail on the head with the comment regarding two camps, well there’s maybe actually three camps, because there’s lots of people I know who like our music, but won’t come along if its an all-ages show. You know, the older crowd that are just a wee bit snobby, the old post-rock fans with the triangular beards on their chin (laughter). They like our stuff, those guys, but they wouldn’t necessarily come to those types of shows…
Craig B: It’s complete highs and lows. When I get on stage I will be having the time of my life, because that’s where it matters, but the low points are really fucking grim, and that’s just the reality of it. There are amazing, amazing moments, but you’ve got to take it with the really low points. Complete opposites.
Are they are any reasons why there are no lyrics in your album artwork?
Craig B: Yeah, I think people’s own interpretations are far better, if don’t have the lyrics then it kind of becomes your own song. Because I have seen a couple of times where people have got the lyrics wildly wrong, and it’s fantastic, it’s sometimes a lot better than what I wrote…
Campbell: Listening to a song on your headphones, and you love it, and I’ve had it completely spoiled for me a couple of times. You find out what it’s about, and it becomes like “Oh my God, have I been getting it wrong?”
It’s great with a Sigur Ros song, because it’s got a melody, and it’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s absolute fucking gobbledegook, so I could apply it to whatever situation is happening in my life at the time, and that makes it mine. Although in Japan our lyrics had to be written in Japanese, because they like to sing along, it’s the karaoke culture. But the thing is we can’t write Japanese, so you get somebody to translate it for you… it could be complete shit!
Craig B: The thing is, I’ve met the guy who did it, his English was terrible! He’s a lovely guy, he lives in Glasgow now, and I’d just love to know what he’s actually written…
Campbell: You know how you can translate into a foreign language and then back again? We did that with some of our song titles, ‘Post-tour, pre-judgement’ became something like ‘Post-Office, pre-morning’, so I don’t know what the album lyrics came out like…
As Craig and Campbell feel that the interview has turned out to be incredibly grim, I ask them if they have anything optimistic to say. They merrily oblige, though it’s only a matter of time before the subject matter darkens again…
Craig B: I’m optimistic in the sense that I really want to influence people in the way that bands have influenced and helped us. A band that changes your life… and you can pass on that feeling.
Campbell: It’s great being able to tour. It’s incredible. Though the sad fact of the matter is that you’re always yearning for that sense of acceptance on a larger scale, so we’ll be playing tonight, but we’ll still be wondering why there aren’t a hundred more people there, or two hundred… and that’s how it starts to get really fucking grim, because it’ll seem like every single bit of talent and energy I had was in that record, and it doesn’t seem like it was good enough. And that’s a cancerous fucking of self-loathing…
That’s probably the grimmest thing said all night…
Craig B: Oh, I can top that one! (laughter) If you actually put everything you’ve got in what you do, and it doesn’t really cross over, then you have to decide whether to move over to the middle ground, and make music that is not particularly enjoyable. Because that sort of music is enjoyable to the sort of people who don’t actually like music. The people that buy Travis, coffee-table music, the sort of music if you have if you don’t actually go out and look for music. But that’s the choice, you either do that or go on to make music you’re real passionate about, but you fuck up your life, because you become forty, you don’t have any fucking money, you’ve maybe got a wife wondering…
Campbell: …you’ve got a bad back, your wife, daughter and girlfriend have all left you, you’re parents are sure you’re a failure when they just thought you are a failure…
Craig B: Or do you just play middle ground music, make lots of money, then probably shoot myself because I’ve wasted my fucking life! Even I hate us now! (laughter)
Campbell: We had a massive discussion about one song on the new album, which is really short, and we thought we could put in another verse and chorus and it’d be a big radio-friendly hit, but it’s really difficult to do, because it came out that way…
In other worlds of music, apart from contemporary rock, the song writing and the arranging are often completely separate. There’s a lot of bands who come from our world, and then cross into that world, where they write a good riff, and the producer says just leave, and I’ll take care of the rest. It’s not that Craig doesn’t write incredibly poppy, catchy tunes, it’s just that they come out fucked up (laughter). ‘Black Path’ on the new album is definitely like that, where if we did that and that and adjusted it in the right fashion, we could guarantee a forty or fifty thousand pound publishing deal, because you’re giving them what they want, and they expect the full package.
People think we’re a great band, critically acclaimed, but they think they can’t sell anything other than a specific format to the coffee-table cunts of America. And that is a really hefty decision that weighs on your shoulders, but if people can make that decision, then great. Five years ago I would have criticised bands for doing that, because I hadn’t seen what it’s actually like, but now I applaud them, fucking go for it, and tell me what it was like when it’s all over. There’s no special glory in playing the shitholes of the world for the rest of your life, because that’s how you get bitter, you get twisted, you get cynical and it’ll fucking kill you, you know what I mean? I don’t really give a fuck what decisions bands make, as long as they can live with the consequences.
And that was the happy thought at the end of the interview!
Craig B: That is a happy thought! I’m not trying to be grim, it’s just being realistic. I know it comes across as complaining, but I’m not complaining about my life, it’s the reality of what you do…
So there you go, coffee-table cunts of America beware (now there’s an insult to throw next time you’re in the middle of an argument with your parents), for Aereogramme aren’t here to take the easy option. Perhaps though, if they had the business acumen to get Pete Waterman in the studio, they could be appearing in a stadium near you soon…
