Dissing the reigning acousto-rock Simian make ‘psyberdilia’, music for road-trips through confused nights of the soul

The Mercury (commonly referred to as Merd-curry) Award nominees may include Super Fury Animals’ album despite barely making the cut-off date while one of the very few bands currently making music wired for the future is overlooked, proving again that the judges lag 5 years behind. Perhaps a quartet of the nominated albums should be there, the rest is industry managing the opposite to cool and hip…

Simian’s ‘Chemistry Is What We Are (lp)’ is a precious nugget in the right place but defiantly outta time. A plethora of influences can be scrutinized – Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, electro-DeutscheWelle – although all rebooted with startling results, amazing with the sonic scope; there are passing similarities with The Beta Band, Super Fury Animals and The Chemical Brothers.

“We weren’t aware of all these people,” singer Simon Lord leans toward the mike, “and only listened to them after people mentioned it. I recently bought an album by early Pink Floyd and I could hear certain things we’ve employed; the same with The Beach Boys or The Beta Band… We simply wanted some harmonies and ended up sounding like The Beach Boys; the only thing we really were up on was Krautrock, Alex is a great fan.”

Lucid fantasists

Simian’s music are verite songs for road-tripping through confused nights of the soul and to reflect their darkish approach the four members conduct interviews in an Antiques Warehouse (once a cinema), just South of the Tower Bridge. The strangest thing is that this is a working shop on a working day but shopping-around customers don’t appear to distract them from parting with their wisdom. Nobody did actually ask any of us to lift our posteriors from the £1000-a-piece to inspect it but such pricey sitting arrangements have hopefully raised the quality of conversation with Lord, James Ford, Jas Shaw and Alex MacNaghten.

“It might appear a bit surreal surrounding,” Ford comments, “but all the places used have become boring. We did a photo shoot here and it really fits the aural image of our music. It is the same with our Church Of Simian, it is all about being involved in organising, picking the support band, staging our concerts in selected places rather than the usual venues. We are playing the usual places but we like events rather than gigs.”

“Simian is our thing,” Jas interjects, “and we want to present it to reflect our true selves rather than some made-up personae.”

‘Church of Simian’ is not a clandestine way to establish a new religion, although Lord is quick to draw a parallel between fronting a band and mounting a pulpit, it is simply expansion of their commitment to the project. Just wait until Americans get the wind of it, Simian will be hailed as ‘Christian rockers’! Stigmata-blues, anyone?

Four riders of purple sage

Manchester is the place of their creative origin although none come from the once mighty industrial centre. Ford, Shaw and MacNaghten were at the college, “Making electronic, experimentally instrumental music,” Jas clarifies; after meeting Lord they went straight into a studio upon establishing to have the same references, likes and sharing a common ambition of football-talentless Brit-youth. That was 18 months ago and after completing recording in the former dance’n’drugs-capitol of the world (remember Hacienda?), they moved down to London. In a typical straightforward fashion Simian signed to a French label, Source.

“We heard that the label,” Ford illuminates on the French connection, “was setting up a London office and were looking to sign bands. There is little happening in the British music industry and we really couldn’t see any other label being interested in what we were doing. What our label let us do is be involved in all aspects of our career which is the most important to the kind of a band we are.”

Listening to the album repeatedly doesn’t provide a conclusion whether Simian, despite its gloomy, mysterious and ethereal qualityl, are truly dystopian?

“It’s gonna sound like a diplomatic answer,” Lord apologises, “but we are both in equal measure. We like that hovering between extremes, I don’t really think we are either, not decided yet. I feel we make music for lucid dreamers and are great practitioners of it.”

In the world obsessed with categorising everything, Simian demand their own genre; a suggestion of ‘psyberdelia’ is exultantly accepted. The definition has been copyrighted since and royalties should start rolling in, any year now.