King Creosote – I’m Not Dead Yet

Then the Honest Words EP with Jon, came out quite soon afterwards – are you working on more things together?
It’s odd that we wrote and recorded an album for our two selves, with no consideration for record label requirements such as singles and radio friendly cuts, only for the dashed thing to take off the way it did, and for there to be a demand from radio. We weren’t keen to carve up our album, and so had to pen some singles basically, and along came “Honest Words”, a re-working of “Missionary” and then “Third Swan”. You’ll have noticed there’s only 5 songs, a mantra and an instrumental on the original Diamond Mine record, so not much in the way of B-sides either. It was a joy to learn that Domino would cobble all the extra tracks together for the “Jubilee” edition. We’re about to start Diamond Mine 2 in February or March, maybe as soon as 2016.

Going back to your forty or so records – are there any in particular that would be part of your own Desert Island Discs if you had to choose?
King Creosote in 1999 :- An Endless Round of Balls (Parties & Social Events) is the title of my sixth album. It is the correct balance of weird and epic I think. I recorded some of it when I was in a very happy/sad place. It’s ace.

Alan Sparhawk of Low recently said that he is getting increasingly panicked about the writing process, loathe to write words or metaphors that have been used before, and not even necessarily by him. He has been wondering how can he say something different using the same language, what is your relationship to the writing process?
I write songs when I’m down, so I have a habit of creating real upset for myself and others, just as things are going great in a somewhat dried up ink well. It’s a curse. I too yearn to pen original lyrics as poetry, even though I cringe reading poetry, moreso when reading out loud. I try to make each and every line of mine count, but more often than not they add up to less than two per song. Except “Circle My Demise” which is as good as I’ll ever get.

Yet your take on language is so distinctive. I really liked the project Ballads of the Books – the mingling of literature and music that you were part of – and your contribution, ‘Where and When’ with Laura Hird. The best writing has a cadence to it – Ulysses has a music all of its own – who are some of your own favourite writers?
Odd that – Laura Hird wasn’t overjoyed with my efforts! I had to carve up her prose to fit it into the meter of the verses. Oops. I probably changed the meaning altogether. My favourite writers all write historic fiction, or crime thrillers – my inspiration certainly does not come from P D James that’s for sure. The “Ballads” project put me in touch with Paul Savage at Chem19, and he’s produced a couple of great KC records.

Also, you had some less than nourishing experiences, particularly with Warner, but Domino seem more independently-minded – but I was wondering about how you view the evolution of Fence?
Fence just gets on with it. Once you reject the idea of “making it” in music and treat song writing as an art form it’s amazing where it can go. We’re more keen to engineer memorable live events than to get in a muddle trying to punt unwelcome albums to the world. The albums are important to us, and it’s great to have new faces along now and again to make us these albums, but we’ve started subscriptions of small runs of EPs aimed at those fans of ours that appreciate the importance of buying physical product above downloads, and we’re way less interested in having to pester radio deejays and the music press. We’re doing a good thing, and bands and punters all feel equally involved, and it’s like-minded souls that makes Fence the small farce that it is.

Diamond Mine seemed like an exhalation, an acceptance that time must march on and we must try and withstand it, but can do so in a more poetic way. It reminded me of Ulysses, when Molly Bloom says, “with that long kiss, I near lost my breath” – that is what your record with Jon feels like – a way of just stopping time, possessing a hypnotic quality.
Jon and I both despise the current trend for songs to be distilled into 3 minute and 13 second catchy nuisances, and the fact that people will skip through the intros of hit songs on playlist.com or youtube. We wanted to create a listening experience that yields more the more attention you pay to it, a record that can be over in a flash if played as background, or an emotional voyage lasting aeons if you allow yourself to be drawn in. I realise an aeon is a long time, so for this effect to be true feel free to use the repeat feature on your CD player. Some of my favourite songs are 3 minute 13 seconds long.

Could you tell me a little about the artwork for the record- the two Fife fishermen?I heard a lovely story that you were in the Fisheries Museum in Fife last year, and an older man said that he had seen the poster for the record, and that one of the men was his great-grandfather – that must have meant a lot to you. It also got me thinking about vanishing industries – I saw a BBC documentary about fishermen around Lough Derg a few years ago, about the slow decline, it went far beyond catching fish, it was about family, nature, community, love – something elemental.
I’d never eat a sea creature alive or dead, and communities are mostly hilarious, but actually, it’s greed that ruins everything, and until we learn to curb this one human trait we’re doomed.

Yes, the cover. We wanted something of quality, non-digital, timeless and evocative of the place this record comes from. We searched the Anstruther Fisheries Museum archive for pictures that had two men in them, one of whom had to have a beard. It turns out a local chap saw the album poster in a tube station, recognised the bearded fisherman – his great-grandfather – in the photograph. He himself is a relation to HMS Ginafore aka Jen Gordon the assistant curator of the museum, so now she knows who her great-great-grandfather is. Jen and I have had “relations” so it’s all a bit incestuous.

Could you expand a little on the series of EP’s? So far we have had I Learned From the Gaels, and imminently, To Deal With Things.
In December 2010 Jon wasn’t sure he’d get Diamond Mine finished in time for a 2011 release, so I started a new album That Might Well Be it, Darling and finished it in June 2011. I love vinyl, and seeing as Diamond Mine has out sold any of my other efforts by a factor of five, I didn’t want a new album to disappoint those chiefly waiting to hear the next King Creosote/John Hopkins instalment. I reckoned 3 such 12″ EPs might sneak out under the radar, and appease a longer toothed King Creosote fanbase. Turns out everyone’s disappointed! The third EP comes out in November.

You have a special relationship with Fife, and Crail in particular, and Scotland more generally – do you feel that the older you get the more your relationship with your country deepens?
No, I like France better the older I get! Although, coincidentally I’m just back from Eigg!

Have you any recommendations of music?
Hardsparrow with his string section.

You are so prolific, what are you presently working on?
I’m recording with Jo Shivers right now, and I finished a record called Greetings From Hamilton, Canada with Paul Savage a fortnight ago, and have a nearly finished album with Michael Johnston from the Burns Unit resting out in Toronto, and a record by the Dewarists to help complete next week.Not much really…

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins play Vicar Street this Friday, 27th July.

http://www.kcjh.co.uk
http://www.kingcreosote.com
http://www.fencerecords.com

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