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Interview
by SashaS
4-7-2000
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| Glide |
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A Solo Glide
Glide (aka Will Sergeant) Bunnyman in electro shock
Echo and The Bunnymen's Will Sergeant hasn't lived a rock lifestyle during the band's hiatus but invested time in project Glide. 'Performance' (on Ochre Records) is a half-live/half-studio experimental work which has more in common with the multicoloured spectrum of modern dance music. Some departure. So it's a good time to catch up with him.
"Glide allows me a fresh way of doing things," figures Sergeant, a guitarist who has bypassed six-stringed instruments in his new incarnation. "I can sit down and write tunes until they come out of my arse but I find it exciting to do something that is random. It's got a Dadaist aesthetic, if you like, and I'm very interested in sound-work as art like Cabaret Voltaire in 1917... The difference between a traditional song and an experimental piece is that the latter can go on forever and you have to decide when to end it."
"Perhaps people don't know it but I had another Glide album released in 1997, 'Space Age Freak Out', and it was well received. My interest in all these artists has been with me from the earliest Bunnymen days; I'm like a double-edged sword, I love traditional rock as much as experimental music; I've admired Kraftwerk ever since I was very little.
"People might have forgotten but Bunnymen started off with a drum-machine and it was unheard of. I used to experiment with tape-recorders, like move an electric razor over a guitar pickup just to see what'd happen. And if you re-listen old Bunnymen albums they are full of strange, atmospheric-kind of sounds..."
Happy in cyberspace
"I've always found this kind of music exciting because I couldn't deal with that pop-crap on the radio. There's too much bullshit around... My solo work started back in 1982, with the 'Themes For Grind' album, and more unofficially before that there had been a limited edition 'Weird As Fish.' It was so limited I made 7 tapes and gave it to my friends, of these strange, weird and experimental noises."
"I do this because I love doing it and it is different kind of music. I've always liked The Residents, bands that take your mind somewhere else. As well as the psychedelic bands from the 1960s, 13th Floor Elevator, Chocolate Watch Band, Third Bardo... And Brian Eno; that was and is quality, you know what it was meant to do, what it was all about..."
Bunnymen liberated
"The Bunnymen are also going cyber and our next release will be on the Net. After being dropped by our last record company (London Records) we decided to issue the next album on our own label, Porcupine... We are half way through recording it and it's nothing like the last one - that was too ballady. Bunnymen have just finished six tracks for a mini-album to be posted on the Internet label. It's gonna be on a new Internet label, www.gimmemusic.co.uk, sometime in July, either to download or buy on a CD."
"There are a couple of new songs, our version of 'Hang On To A Dream', which is a Tim Hardin's song (from 1967), 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' (Joan Baez, 1965) and we have redone several of the old Bunnymen ones, 'Zimbo', 'Silver; and 'Angels And Devils', plus a brand new one called 'Avalanche'. The last one indicates the direction we are going in right now. The Web-people only wanted one new song and we re-did the old songs in a more rocky way."
The newly independent Bunnymen are also due to release a full-length album in January, welcome relief to the second Millennium hangover. For now though, Sergeant's focus in online.
"My website address is: www.glide-hub.cwc.net. People can visit it and download something, with my blessing. Thank you and goodbye."
SashaS
4-7-2000
Performance is out now on Ochre Records
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