Stranger In The Midst Of It All: Gengahr's Pop Journey
Felix Bushe on the construction of their new album...
Being in a band is a journey; a voyage of hope and uncertainty. And *Gengahr’s *frontman *Felix Bushe* seems to know this more than anyone else…
After the success of their acclaimed first album, ‘A Dream Outside’, Gengahr felt an immense pressure to create something extraordinary. With the help of Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jack Steadman, the band hopes that their third album, ‘Sanctuary’, will steal hearts with it’s euphoric tendencies and signature, fey, Genghar sound.
Felix took a much-needed coffee break in a quaint pub in Stoke Newington, birthplace of Gengahr, where he spoke to* Meg Berridge* about the triumphs and conquests of their third album.
- - -
- - -
*The third album is out, how are you feeling about it?*
I’m feeling good, yeah. I think it’s definitely the best album overall. There’ll be bits that I love from all of them, but as a whole, I think this is the most accomplished record we’ve made. It’s also the best produced record we’ve made. I think all of us as songwriters have got better over the years.
*That’s interesting because you didn’t go with a label this time…*
It wasn’t really a choice we took lightly. We needed to change how we were working. It wasn’t sustainable what we were doing, you know. It seems mad that you’re selling a thousand tickets to a show, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people listening to your music online apparently, yet you’re working three jobs to keep going. I don’t know how long we could keep doing that for.
*You paid for the album out of your own pocket…*
We were having discussions with the label about what we were gonna do next, and basically they were very slow in putting together what they were willing to commit to it. I think we kind of used that initiative to be like “Well we wanna go and do this. So one way or the other, this is gonna happen.”
It was quite a bold thing to do, thinking back, but we didn’t feel like we had a choice. We didn’t want to make a bedroom, DIY record for our third album, it just seemed nuts. We had to make a choice really, it was either pay yourself for what you’ve done all year or spend it on an album and kind of go at it all again really.
*It’s nice that you can call this your own as something you’ve made yourselves…*
Yeah, and to be honest, we missed having the likes of Mike and Tim, who were always really helpful to us when it came to putting the albums together. They were very good people to lean on when you’re kind of not sure about things. But we had Jack (Bombay Bicycle Club) come on board, he took some of that weight off for us because we had someone from the outside looking in. Without that, I think it would have been very difficult, I think it wouldn’t have been a very quick process getting it finished.
I think the one thing we potentially missed out on that is when you involve other people you learn from them. Part of the best outcome of this album is that we did learn a lot from each other.
- - -
- - -
*As the main songwriter, you’ve described the album as a journey. What is the journey in this album?*
Um, I don’t think it was something that I was necessarily trying to get across. It just kind of ended up where it was. I started writing straight after we came off the road from touring ‘Where Wildness Grows’. I think there was a feeling of underlying disappointment after that album because I don’t think we probably met the expectations we set for ourselves.
*Especially after the critical success of the first album…*
Yeah, it was going to be hard to live up to. There was so much chaos, we changed management and everything just kind of felt all over the place.
I think my way of dealing with that was to start writing and I thought everything else would sort of piece itself together. It was a combination of that, and my own personal circumstances were pretty crap at that time - my mum had just died as we started to go on tour for ‘Where Wildness Grows’. As soon as we finished, my girlfriend at the time ended up losing her visa. I was just thinking “Shit. Things are pretty rubbish and I’m not really quite sure how I’m going to work my way out of this one...”
But having the music was a way for me to deal with that stuff and go through it all. Thankfully, by the time we finished writing, things that had gone horribly wrong had sorted themselves out. We did manage to get a visa and we got married. Now my wife lives back with me in the UK and we did find a label home for the record.
*BBC Radio 1 has shown you lots of support recently too…*
We’ve had really good support from Radio 1 and BBC 6. We’ve always kind of been in with 6, but the whole Radio 1 support has been completely new to us and we’re sort of achieving things now that we weren’t able to achieve previously with, I guess, a more traditional set up.
*Do you think this change of sonic direction has steered you towards BBC 1 compared to your previous sound?*
I don’t know if the songs themselves are that much ‘poppier’ than before. The ambition for me is to write, interesting, alternative pop music. Even with songs like ‘She’s A Witch’ right in the beginning - that’s a pop song.
The term ‘pop’ can seem quite trashy but if the song is really good it, it’s pop. It doesn’t really matter what genre we’re talking about because it transcends beyond that. The ambition is to try and make songs which are interesting and engaging enough that they become pop music, not necessarily to write pop music that belongs on the radio. We’re not trying to write a smash hit or a song you’d hear on a Mercedes advert.
*Do you agree that the guitar is a lot less guitar-heavy?*
That’s mainly because it has been written in bedrooms by Hugh and myself. Writing a lot of the original demos, we were using less guitars and kind of experimenting with more samples and synth stuff and the guitars were more of a textual layer in the songs or a rhythmic part rather than the lead which we’ve done traditionally. But it felt like something we wanted to do. I didn’t really want to think too much about it. John probably played as much guitar as he did on the other records, just that guitar does a different job now.
*When you play live, who will play the keyboard parts?*
I am going to be playing most of the keyboard parts, but we have lots of triggers as well, some sound pads, so it’s kind of become a bit more of a beast. It used to be a lot more simple.
When we go out and see other bands play, I think “fuck that is incredibly complicated, what’s going on there?” with their backup laptops and shit. We’re nowhere near that. It is pretty straightforward still. We’ve just added two kind of live components. We don’t need any extra musicians. So we haven’t gone too far from the original set up.
*What’s your favourite song on the album?*
Uh... tough one. Maybe Anime. I feel for that song in particular, it was a lot of fun playing it together. It was originally two songs. We didn’t think that the verse in one and the chorus in the other were strong enough on their own, so we cut them up and then I sort of rewrote it as one track in the end. A lot of that happened in the studio. But that was a highlight for me. The whole process came together really easily and it was like “cool yeah that works.”
*How was the recording process as a whole?*
It was all a lot of fun. It didn’t feel like hard work. Especially after the last record, we kind of spent a lot of time working on that – we were in the studio for three months. We were in the studio for like three weeks this time.
The general process recording with Jack was quite easy. We had James from the first record. He co-produced the first Gengahr record with us. We decided late on, kind of half way through the process that we wanted to work with James again. We felt like he understood what Gengahr should be because he was there in the beginning. It felt important that we get him in when we finished off recording stuff. We took all the songs down to Cornwall to a studio down there and that’s where we finished off the record.
- - -
- - -
*Hugh designed the cover art for the last two albums, how come he didn’t do the work for this one?*
When you say it like that, it sounds quite bad. It was something we spoke about. We wanted it to feel visually different. We wanted people to think when they saw it that they weren’t getting something that they’ve already heard before. It needed to signify something of a change or a shift in style. All the single art is Hugh’s photos.
So it still kind of links in but just slightly different to what it was before. Dave took the photo on the cover who shot the videos, but he did all the singles which are pictures from when we were out shooting in Berlin.
*You’ve got a lot of songs you’ve written on your own, is a solo album still on the cards?*
Yeah, I don’t think I have time to be honest. That was in my head because I didn’t know if we were going to write another Gengahr record at the time. It wasn’t a conversation we’d had as a group. The last record really took it’s toll. We did a 35 show tour that ended at KOKO (London) and we were all just about sick of each other. It wasn’t like I was planning a solo album, but I was prepared for that reality if it came about. For me, I’ll always end up writing music, wherever that music ends up or gets released it kind of yet to be determined.
*What’s in store for the future because you started this album pretty much as soon as you finished the last one?*
I don’t know. It’s different this time around now we’re self-managed. There’s a lot more work on my plate and it was a lot more manageable when we were in the midst of releasing an album. My days are very long at the moment trying to fit in time to work on music, but I’m finding that harder and harder.
We all work other jobs until we start touring again. The ambition is try and shift and do less of that as quickly as possible. Because as you know it doesn’t help make records. We’ll see where it ends up. We’re always working on new music. Even songs that we didn’t quite get to finish when we were making the record, we’ll come back and revisit. How and when they will emerge, I don’t know because it’s all pretty full on now until, for about as long into the future as I’m willing to think about.
- - -
- - -
'Sanctuary' is out now. Catch Gengahr at the following shows:
*February*
13 *Manchester* Band On The Wall
14 *Leeds* Brudenell Social Club (Main Room)
16 *Glasgow* King Tuts
17 *Dublin* The Sound House
19 *Bristol* Fleece
20 *Brighton* Patterns
21 *London* EartH
Words: *Megan Berridge*
Photo Credit: *Jay Whitehead*
Join us on the ad-free creative social network Vero, as we get under the skin of global cultural happenings. Follow Clash Magazine as we skip merrily between clubs, concerts, interviews and photo shoots. Get backstage sneak peeks, exclusive content and access to Clash Live events and a true view into our world as the fun and games unfold.
Buy Clash Magazine