Interview
(Progressive Newsletter Nr.61 01/08)
excerpts from an interview with Gregory Spawton (Guitar)
"The Difference Machine" did take longer than we expected to complete. However, we only have a limited amount of time we can spend on Big Big Train so we worked steadily towards completing the album using the time available to us. We've always taken one album at a time in Big Big Train, but I don't think we ever felt this one wouldn't be completed as we really felt we had some strong material and we were very keen to get it released. One of the problems we are having at the moment is that we are selling more albums than we have ever done before and this means that a lot of our band time is tied up on sales and administration rather than writing and recording music, as we don't have the support of a record label. This means that things can seem to move very slowly, whilst we are, in fact, working very hard behind the scenes!
Can you tell a little bit more about the concept of the album?
The idea behind the album is that people's lives and deaths can cause huge effects beyond the immediate world that we inhabit. I was imagining this huge butterfly effect where the death of an individual was linked to the explosion of a distant star. That all sounds very abstract, but it is simply an idea against which I set a number of songs about an individual's life and how that life impacted on others. It also allowed me to explore a number of themes across the songs – communication or communication failure is a recurring theme, for example. All of the songs were informed by personal experience so I hope it is an album that people will relate to, and that seems to be happening if the e-mails we get from listeners are anything to go by.
Between the songs you've also included some instrumental interludes. What were the reasons for these interludes?
We've always enjoyed ambient music and we've had short ambient pieces on some of our other recordings. On "The Difference Machine", most of the album consists of three lengthy songs which are quite intense and complex and we felt the listener could use a bit of a breather between the long songs. It's important to make sure that albums work in a cohesive way and that the pacing is right - it's not just about putting a set of songs out. The ambient pieces can help with pacing and also add different sounds and textures to the album. The first of the ambient pieces was intended to just consist of some sound effects but we ended up with some additional Mellotron sections which I really like. And the second one is a short extract from a 20 minute song called "The Wide Open Sea" which may, or may not, see the light of day sometime.
“The difference machine” sounds in my ears like a new start for Big Big Train. Do you feel the same and do your think your fans will follow this new way?
I think the fresh start first began with the previous album, Gathering Speed. On that album we introduced our new singer Sean Filkins and, for the first time in many years focused on being an out and out progressive rock band which is the sort of music I enjoy the most and feel most comfortable with writing and recording. Most of the building blocks of our new style were on Gathering Speed, but I think The Difference Machine is a huge leap forward for us in terms of writing, ambition, performance and production, so it may seem like a new start. There may be some fans we leave behind who prefer the music on earlier albums, but we seem to be picking up a lot of new listeners as well as the existing fanbase, so we're very positive right now.
How did you get in contact with your well known guest musicians on the current album and how did you choose who's going to play on your album?
The guest musicians came about through working with Rob Aubrey. Rob has mixed all of our albums and he also works with Spock's Beard, Transatlantic, IQ, Pendragon and others. We've always been open to working with other musicians who can add something to our music and Rob suggested we worked with Nick D'Virgilio. We sent Nick a demo to listen to, he liked it and agreed to play on the album. Nick is an exceptionally gifted drummer and ended up playing on about half of the album, so he had a big impact. After we recorded the drums, we re-worked the songs and thought it would be fun to bring in Dave Meros and Pete Trewavas to make the rhythm parts even more exciting. Dave is an awesome bass player and brings that fantastic sound that he has to the album and it was great to work with Pete on a song that needed complex, fast and challenging playing.
Did you work directly with your guest musicians or just via internet?
With Pete and Nick we worked face-to-face at Aubitt studios in Southampton. We've done quite a lot of work with Nick now and have become good friends. We hope to go out and record at his studio some time soon. Dave was in the States when we needed the bass parts so we sent him the recordings and he worked up his parts in his studio and sent them back. Dave will also be appearing with Nick on our next album and I think Pete is also likely to be on there, along with some other musicians.
You have a history that goes back to the 80s. What has changed since when you've started your musical career?
Everything has changed! When we started recording in proper studios we were working on these huge, two-inch tape machines and if we wanted to edit a part out, then Rob Aubrey would literally cut the tape with a knife, which for someone of a nervous disposition like me was excruciating to watch! The technology hadn't advanced that far from the 60's and 70's really. Since then, we've been through various digital formats and started using Pro-Tools recording software in 2001. Purchasing Pro-Tools was the best decision we ever made. It allowed us to set up our own studio and freed us up to become more experimental with our music. Recording projects became a living evolutionary thing, rather than an attempt to record songs as quickly as possible within a set recording budget at a studio costing sometimes £200 an hour. Of course, it's not just music technology that has changed, the market we operate in is very different now. When we started, the neo-prog bands were at the tail end of their successful period and we were releasing music into a market place that was less than interested in progressive rock. It Bites were probably the biggest new band around at that time that clearly had a progressive rock influence. There were a few venues that would put on prog bands, a fanzine scene which was useful and run by some very dedicated people and there were also one or two prog record labels such as GEP and GFT, but it was really very difficult to get our music heard by anybody. Now, in 2007, there are many more progressive bands releasing high quality music than ever before. Modern prog rock is a small market with a limited number of fans, and bands where the musicians are trying to make a living from progressive rock are probably struggling, but those that see working in prog rock as only a part of their income-generating activities have got opportunities to let their imaginations loose and write, record and release what they want to. It's a great time for us. And mostly, it's down to the power of the internet and the changes in recording technology which have, to some extent, democratised the making and releasing of music in a way that hasn't happened since punk rock.
How did the internet affect the possibility of distribution and stay in contact with your fans?
We've been watching the growth of the internet and the opportunities and threats it provides with great interest. Marillion was one of the first bands to really understand how to use it to go it alone without record company support, and Steve Hackett and his management have also done a great job at Camino. The ability to communicate with a lot of people worldwide very quickly using e-mail and the internet became apparent early on, and the mechanism for selling directly to fans has also been very important. But it has been the growth of downloading that has really crept up on us and we've decided to go with the flow on that. Most of our new album is available for free download at high quality, whether on our main website or on our MySpace site, so people can get a good idea of what our music is like for free. And we've pitched the album price really low to encourage people to buy from us. We're competing against other music and other entertainment products, nobody owes us anything, but we believe that we are making some great music which would be enjoyed by many people and so we are trying to use the internet in a positive way.
Kristian Selm © Progressive Newsletter 2007