On the last weekend of November in the city of Munich, a special event will take place. Andreas, very well known within the post-rock community persona, will hold his birthday party, and it will be a special two days-long, 12 bands-rich indoor music festival 5NDREAS. My blog became its official media partner and my task is to fill in the remaining 6 weeks of wait with something interesting. And what could be more interesting than reading about the bands that are about to play on the stage at Feierwerk Kranhalle in Munich? Yeah? Let's start.
They released their third (or second as they, against the whole world, claim) album Dark /// last autumn and almost exactly one year later, Civil Service will present it to the (mainland) European fans for the first time in Munich. Why is it so different than /// Light? How were they inspired by both Hope of the States, Future of the Left and Gustavo Santaolalla? And what happens if people don't stand for what they believe in?
The British lads turned to be extremely nice guys with tons of things to say (also in Polish weirdly!) and it was an absolute pleasure to start this project in their company. Let's go!
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ŁŚ: Civil service means the organization which runs the administration of a state as it is defined by dictionaries, but it also evokes some kind of mission towards people, towards other citizens. Does your name mean that you, as a band, feel some kind of responsibility towards listeners, towards other people with your music? If so, what is this mission?
Francis Atkinson: Yeah, so it's a name where we all hated every other name. Our old bassist, James [Wilkes - author’s note] had a list of names. We went through a few, I think Glimmer for a bit before we released anything. Civil Service is one that we all kind of liked. I think it was a reference kind of to the song I Am Civil Service by the UK punk band Future of the Left. But yeah, it's come to us to mean having some sort of responsibility. Being the servants of our fans, the servants of the public, the servants of others. We try and help other bands, try and help other people, we try and help charities and stuff. It was an accident, but the name has come to mean something about who we are. We all kind of still think it's a bit rubbish, but we're 10 years in now, so...
ŁŚ: It reminds me of Public Service Broadcasting as well.
FA: They're great, I was at their big show in London two days ago. They did The Race for Space. It was incredible.
AC: We almost played a show with them. The promoter was in some ways eager because they were looking for an act, but asked if we could be more acoustic poetic instead of post-rock. And we were like: that's the weirdest thing we've ever been asked.
ŁŚ: It would look weird on a poster too.
AC: You could do one of those crossword style, like they just take the Civil from us and the Public and Broadcasting from them.
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| How the poster could look like (probably not) - author's note |
ŁŚ: Your first album was called Life /// Death. The previous one was called /// Light and now you released the Dark /// album, I'm seeing that you are very much inspired by juxtaposing some very different things together.
FA: Yeah, I think as a post rock band we can be a bit all over the place. And sometimes we write some songs that are very much kind of dark, more sort of like the GY!BE side of things. And then sometimes we write some songs that are really quite bouncy, lots of synthesizers, more sort of, I don't know, Maybeshewill, perhaps. We like to live within the contradiction.
AC: [While recording Life /// Death - author’s note] We've got a song about the start of life. Got a song about death and then James kind of threw some song titles around and we instantly went: well, two of them really fit because one of them's about your work life in Monozukuri and then another one was Lost in This Forest, a thick and confusing song about adolescence. And we realized that this album kind of just speaks to the big stages of your life, so why don't we make that kind of the theme of the record? And then it kind of coincided, positively and negatively, that I had my first son just as we were releasing the album, which kind of fit the life section. And then Fran and I had some lost family as we were recording it as well. So it kind of felt like it all came together at the right time. It meant something, still means something.
When we started to write new stuff or whilst we were in the process of it, we had all these kinds of big post-rock themes that were a bit disparate. And then when we started drilling down into it, we decided we could just make an album that's about the positive side of what we're doing and then one that's the darker side of it. They're supposed to be like two parts of the same story, those two records. And if you listen to them together or if you listen to them separately, you're still getting kind of the overall message that there's good bits and bad bits and you've got to find the balance to keep yourself sane and happy and pushing forward.
ŁŚ: But you agree that this is not only a title, right?
FA: Yeah, it's quite literal. It tells you what it should sound like: /// Light is lighter, Dark /// is darker. But they were all written in similar time, maybe across two years.
AC: And recorded by the same person in the same room. Same musicians, same instruments, like nothing really changed between recording /// Light and Dark ///. Originally we wanted to record them at the same time together, but we found out that would be very expensive. I think we made the right decision.
After /// Light, we've played a few more shows, but we haven't really had a breakout moment. And then it just felt like a couple of the songs people have really taken to and a couple of guests really made the songs work. We remain just immensely grateful to anyone who's pitched in for anything, but it felt particularly gratifying when Luke [Daly - author’s note] from Overhead the Albatross joined us to open Dark ///. People were listening to our record going: “so there is a new Overhead the Albatross album out?” And Luke told us afterwards that that's the first time he's ever sung with anyone else other than OtA for 15 years. And he'd never done it live before ArcTanGent a couple of weeks ago. That's the first time he'd ever sung with another band, which is hugely honouring.
ŁŚ: I would say that Dark ///, except for the obvious fact that this is sort of darker in tone, it is also kind of maybe more complex musically. Do you have also this feeling?I feel it especially in my favourite track here, Black Giraffes. It also involves some strings and you don't play violins, do you?
AC: When it comes to Black Giraffes, I think you're going to get a kick out of this more than most people. The origin of the song is that I was playing around with a riff and then I was kind of musing on The Last of Us main theme tune by Gustavo Santaolalla. And as I was playing it, I was like, this pattern's really similar to something but I couldn't work out what it was. And then I turned to James, and I went, is this Hope of the States?
It's the same, it's the same pattern. It's the same notes. It's just like different ascending and descending parts. The song was always going to be about Ukraine. We'd just been over there, all five of the original recording members, in 2019. So before /// Light had been written, and we started working up this new song as the invasion was happening. So we wanted to find themes that would connect and obviously The Last of Us being kind of post-apocalyptic felt perfect. The Black Amnesias [a track from the debut album by Hope of the States - author’s note] for me has always felt like a post-apocalyptic opening to a record so it kind of felt like two things hand in glove.
And then because I loved Mike Siddel's violin playing on that so much, I was like: “There's got to be some strings at some point on it” and we tried to get him and almost did.
ŁŚ: [being a Hope of the States fanboy] My God, that would be so perfect.
AC: But I said: you know what, we can't just let the dream die there. So I just approached some people that were offering online services and they ended up recording a bit like a string quartet on Black Giraffes, on Every Beam of Light is an Invitation to Death, and a little bit on An Infant Wave in a Savage Ocean as well. Honestly, if we had more time before we put the record out, we probably would have got them to do maybe every song, because I think they did such a great job and it's something that I think we know really adds to the sound.
FA: On the complexity front, I think Thom takes the credit here. We tend to write, me and Alex will write stuff, and it tends to be very boring. And then Thom will shout at us that we have to do something interesting rhythmically. And I think he brings a lot of that. Because post-rock can often just be playing the same thing, but a bit louder.
Thom Hamper: And with Dark ///, I think the way we wrote the songs, it just created more space for more instruments, which with /// Light, there's already a lot of that taken up by synths. And I think we thought, well, as much as we love our synth, let's see if there's something else that we can fit that moment better with. And I suspect that's how a lot of it came about as well.
AC: I think doing the process slightly differently helped redefine the songs. The synths really come to the fore in /// Light so much because it is supposed to feel like an ethereal record with rising, soaring moments. And Dark /// was always supposed to have moments of pause, of making you listen for something that's maybe not there and then suddenly you hit with something that you're not expecting.
TH: Within /// Light, there's not a lot of space. And then in recording that, we could hear a lot of the implied melody of bits that we maybe could have done with a bit more time. So then when it came to Dark ///, I think we recognized where those spaces were and were like: well, if we can hear it, let's fill it. I think that came about quite organically and unconsciously, really.
FA: Yeah, we learned a lot recording. When we worked with Dave [Sanderson, on /// Light - author’s note], it was the first time we had been produced and you know he was giving feedback and he was giving ideas and he was pushing and prodding us.
AC: We approached Dave because he'd done like four of 65daysofstatic's best records. So if he turned 65daysofstatic into like the band they went on to be then he's going to be able to take us to a level that we couldn't do ourselves.
And I still have moments where I'll hear something that Dave's done, either for 65daysofstatic or for us or some of the other projects he's worked on and you just hear little bits that are like Dave, that's just him. And whenever I have those moments when listening to 65daysofstatic I say: holy hell, that sounds like us! But it doesn't sound like us. We sound like them, but everything sounds like Dave.
ŁŚ: Coming back to Black Giraffes, you already said it is about the Russian invasion on Ukraine. There are some voice samples with a girl speaking Ukrainian.
AC: So we sponsor a Ukrainian humanitarian aid worker called Glynn. He's a chap from Hull in the UK, which is a very desolate, rundown part of the country. I'm sure they won't mind me saying. And he retired after working his entire life and decided to spend the last four or five years going over to Ukraine, driving ambulances and delivering food and aid and power banks and whatever they need.
I asked him to take his phone and just ask the question: why did you stay in Ukraine? Why haven't you left? Why do you continue to fight for your country? And we got, I think it's about 12 or 13 samples from people kind of all over the eastern side of Ukraine. And they're all the quotes already harrowing and kind of meaningful. So for our live shows, we project the lyrics to the song, but we project them in English as they're being spoken in Ukrainian.
ŁŚ: So I guess it brings us to the remixes album that is being released this November. Darker is made in support of Ukrainian humanitarian aid. You’ve already answered why you decided to do it this way, but tell me why now? It’s almost five years since the beginning of full scale invasion.
FA: Before we weren't really popular, it wouldn’t have had any impact, maybe made any sales. It's also taken us time to gather people to work with us.
AC: Like specifically on the timing, I think I really wanted to release this now to kind of make that point that we appreciate loads of other causes that are going on in the world right now, but it seems even madder to me now than it did five years ago that there is still a conflict right on our doorstep. And it's crazy that like we're doing it to prove a point that you can't let these things just slip to the back of your mind. Because it's not okay that it's still a problem. Ultimately, if people aren't shouting about it, about the things they believe in, then people just get used to it and it becomes the norm.
FA: There can be an assumption that Ukraine are just holding them to a standstill and that's fine and it can just carry on, but in the meantime, people in Ukraine are suffering and it could all collapse in a month if people stop sending aid, if governments stop supporting. So we're doing our little bit. I don't think there's ever a wrong time to support something you believe in.
ŁS: I'm very glad that this is your view on this matter, because I understand that for a person in Great Britain this actually can be a distant problem, well for me, you know, I could get into a car and in three hours I would be in Ukraine.
TH: We’re still all Europeans, whether people in this country think so or not.
FA: Yeah, we're very proud Europeans.
AC: The ultimate dream when writing that song was to someday perform it in Ukraine. And like it seems completely impossible right now, but hopefully things change.
At this point, I'd love to give a shout out to some of the people on Darker because obviously they have given so generously their time and their talent, sometimes not necessarily knowing us as people
Eugenie hosts Lviv Wave Radio and she's going to be contributing something to the record, which again, for someone who's living the experience of being in Ukraine right now, trying to keep spirits up, trying to kind of battle against propaganda from other sides, trying to keep that message strong. It's amazing that she's contributing to something and playing the songs over there as well, which is amazing.
And Robin Southby from Maybeshewill, I mean, Maybeshewill are far too big a band to have anything to do with us. He messaged us on the internet and he followed us rather than us following him, which was weird. And then I messaged him: you know, our band loves your band. If you're ever near any of our shows, you’re invited. I thought that he'd never pick us up on that, but he came to the next show that we played.
That's been the real lesson for Darker as a project: if you don't ask, you're definitely getting nothing. Whereas if you ask, the worst, honestly, the worst thing that happens is you never hear anything. I won't name the band because, you know, who knows if they'd want to talk about it or not. But we had a band who we invited to be part of the project who said, we just try, you know, our absolute best not to be involved in any kind of political causes.
ŁŚ: Was that Ed Sheeran?
(all laugh)
AC: Like with everything else, we know what the problem is politically motivated by a smaller group than an entire nation. We had the pleasure of playing with a couple of Russian bands over in China and they were honestly so lovely and they were as devastated as everyone else because they'd been doing European tours and then suddenly it's all gone.
FA: The Iron Curtain comes down again.
AC: [On Darker - author’s note] there's a few bands that I think we've not even kind of mentioned publicly who are going to be on the record, but if you know who we are, then I suppose they become pretty easy to guess.
ŁŚ: In November, you will play in Munich at 5NDREAS festival. What can the audience expect from your show at the festival? Songs from Dark /// or some older ones?
FA: It's going to be a nice mixture. And probably something new. We're still writing it. We're going to go and rehearse it after this interview. We may have a fight. It may get scrapped. It may be our new favorite song. We'll let you know, but we hope to play a new song.
AC: So we asked Andreas to pick the set list. It's your birthday, tell us what you want to play. He's seen us before, he's always commented, oh, I wish you'd played this song or I wish you'd played that song. So we wanted to give him the chance. But I think it's also probably fair to say that we're planning to play the two songs that we've debuted on his channel. So Black Giraffes and Their Lines of Communication, Severed.
FA: We're not playing Turn Out the /// Light because Andreas doesn't like the screaming.
(That's not true! I love Turn Out the /// Light! - Andreas' note)
AC: We'll keep it within the post-rock realms for sure. 🦢
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Civil Service will perform at the 5NDREAS Festival on Saturday 28.11.
Save your ticket now (limited availability): https://rausgegangen.de/events/5ndreas-postrock-festival-0/
Check the event on FB: https://fb.me/e/8cyEexXaV
