Piano Magic - The troubled sleep of ghost-rock

Nearly three years after our last chat, we catch up with Glen Johnson to coincide with the release of his first album under his own name, “Details Not Recorded“. In the meantime, his feverish drive to write has led him to split his energies between Piano Magic and various other projects, each one going under a different name.

Meanwhile, his creative vitality hints at new goals ahead, suggesting further shifts in musical direction.

We last spoke after “Disaffected“: it seems that after that album, everyone – at least in Italy – took notice of Piano Magic, probably thanks to its dark atmospheres and the eighties flavour of some of its tracks. How does it feel to be identified specifically with that record, given such a long career and a much more varied body of work?

Maybe it's in Italy specifically that we're identified with that record, but I think it really depends on the person. There's no doubt “Disaffected” broke through in several countries, but for instance in Spain the albums considered Piano Magic's “definitive” ones are more likely “Artists’ Rifles” and “Low Birth Weight”. From what I've observed, dark, romantic music influenced by the 80s is understood more readily in Italy and Greece than anywhere else. And “Disaffected” certainly ticked all three of those boxes.

Many of those who discovered Piano Magic through “Disaffected” were left disoriented and somewhat disappointed by the follow-up, “Part-Monster“, an album drawing on a completely different kind of sound. What drove you to make a record with such a more immediate impact, and to revisit even tracks like “Incurable” and “The Last Engineer” with such a substantial guitar-driven sound?

Quite simply, at that time we enjoyed giving our music a more “rock” slant and playing on bigger stages than we were used to, and besides, we were writing songs that demanded a louder volume and a stronger dynamic impact. That said, roughly half of “Part-Monster” is fairly restrained!

And if anyone was taken aback by that, well, we make music that pleases us first and foremost, and we could never bring ourselves to tailor it to our fans without compromising our integrity.

Is the immediacy of “Part-Monster” and the EP “Dark Horses” something you deliberately pursued? Does it stem from a different approach to playing, or from the spirit in which you write your songs?

I think it was an evolutionary process. What started out mainly as an experimental project is now a band trying to combine that experimentation with genuine songwriting, an essential element for making songs stick in people's minds for a long time. In one sense, we're in the enviable position of being a cult band with a small but devoted following, while in another sense I think we still haven't fully realised our potential as a band, which gives me a constant sense of frustration but is also what drives me to keep pushing to improve and to make ever better music. “Part Monster” and “Dark Horses” sit in one drawer of the much bigger wardrobe that is Piano Magic's output. But I don't think that drawer will be opened again. The next album, which we're writing right now, will be very different from the last two.

Your lyrics continue to be, as always, very deep and symbolic: in many of the lyrics on “Part-Monster” you seem to reach the conclusion that human nature is one of the main reasons for suffering. Has your view of the human condition changed in your latest works? And how might that have affected the lyrics and mood of your music?

I hate humans! Really, I'd be happy if the human race were wiped out tomorrow, so that only plants and animals could thrive together in harmony. In the most absolute sense, we've destroyed the planet, and we've destroyed ourselves. We're scum! 

Lately I've found myself thinking a lot about machines. The older you get, the more you find yourself asking: “Will things get better or worse? Will we ever stop waging wars?  Will we put an end to the slaughter of animals? Will teenagers stop stabbing each other? Can fascism ever be fully overcome? Will Amanda Knox be set free?”. Questions like these are what keep me up at night. Especially the one about Amanda Knox, I have to admit.

“Dark Horses” marked your move to the “cult” label Make Mine Music: I read that it came down to a deliberate choice in favor of artistic independence and freedom in how your music is distributed. Can you tell us more about that, and how you first got in touch with them?

We could never end up on a major, first of all because we don't sell many records, and also because we're too old, out of fashion, and unwilling to compromise. I've had a long experience with the conventional music industry, and it left me with a really bad taste in my mouth. Almost all independent labels have the same flaws as the majors, except that at least the majors know what they're doing. Most indie labels keep running on the initial enthusiasm of a couple of people who thought something like “I love music, so why not start a label?”. But when it comes to working hard, promoting records, paying bands on time and splitting revenues fairly, things get a lot more complicated. I'd simply grown tired of working with inept labels that talked a lot but never delivered. 

With Make Mine Music, at least, we have complete control over everything we do. We release whatever we want, whenever we want. We have worldwide distribution through Cargo, great relationships with major mail order outlets like Norman and Boomkat, and we're paid automatically based on sales. That last point matters a lot: if a label doesn't pay every six months as agreed in the contract, how are you supposed to keep going? With Make Mine Music I no longer have to worry about that. 

On a less formal level, I've known Scott Sinfield (aka Portal), one of the label's co-founders, for years, and it was through him that I learned about Make Mine Music's unique way of operating, which always fascinated me, to the point of becoming a real alternative to the terrible situation we were in. I also have huge respect for the bands on the label's roster, like July Skies, Epic45 and Portal.

Make Mine Music is now releasing an album under your own name: can you tell us why you made that choice, and say something about the title and the beautiful artwork?

I'm a very prolific songwriter. Every day I spend hours on the computer, filling up my hard drive with music for Piano Magic, Textile Ranch, Future Conditional, or for plenty of other nameless projects.

During a period when Piano Magic was on hold as a band, I thought about making a solo record while I waited for the other members to wake up. It's a more experimental record compared to what Piano Magic has become at this point. There are waltzes and baroque influences, plus a touch of Leonard Cohen, Björk and Disco Inferno.

The artwork came about while I was browsing MySpace, when I stumbled across the wonderful work of an American oil painter named Julia Haw, who also happens to be a Piano Magic fan. So I asked her if she'd like to paint something for the cover of my solo album, and she happily agreed, choosing her piece “The Headless Surgeon”. The twelve pages of the lyrics booklet, meanwhile, were put together by Gerald Tournier, from the French band For The Chosen Few. 

I want the artwork of my records to make an impact, just like the music inside them, actually even more so! I don't have time for downloads, I'm old-school, I want something you can hold in your hands and keep for the rest of your life, not something that will vanish from your iTunes library the day your computer stops working. It makes me think of all those bands whose entire legacy will end up being nothing but mp3s! They'll be on their deathbeds sighing “If only we'd pressed some vinyl!” Ha!

Piano Magic, Textile Ranch, Future Conditional, Glen Johnson: different names for music that always bears your recognizable stamp, despite its variety. But where is Glen Johnson headed today? And what should we expect from your upcoming releases?

Honestly, I just can't stop! Right now we're working hard on a new Piano Magic album, which should come out by September. There's also a Future Conditional album starting to take shape, and I had so much fun making the solo album that I'm planning a four-track cassette EP, to be released on a new Italian label that's partly run by Jukka Reverberi of Giardini Di Mirò, called Secret Furry Hole.

You're probably already aware of Piano Magic's growing popularity in Italy: do you think you'll be back to play here soon?

Is it really growing?

Well, yes, we can come back; we're planning some shows in Italy this year, maybe as early as summer.

(05/04/2009)

A little less than a year after the release of his latest work, the acclaimed “Disaffected“, which has established Piano Magic as one of the most original forces on the current pop-wave scene (and beyond), Glen Johnson, the mastermind behind this ever-shifting project now a decade old, tells us – as a man before a musician – about the feelings that inspire his songwriting.

His openness, combined with his willingness to speak candidly about his past and present emotions, turned a simple but somewhat troubled email exchange into an opportunity to get to know a sensitive, refined artist better, through that direct and profound style he expresses so well in his music too.

First of all, Piano Magic is one of the most versatile bands currently on the scene, able to move across genres and definitions. Does this stem from a deliberate artistic choice, or mostly from the moods of your soul in the various moments when you write?

It's interesting for us to hear that we manage to cross genres; it's not really a deliberate intention of ours. We simply make the music we want to make, without worrying too much about our position on some ideal musical map. No doubt our moods play an important role in shaping the music. Usually it's my lyrics that dictate the feeling of the songs and, as is probably noticeable, more often than not they're invariably introspective, melancholic, disenchanted. And yet that might lead to hasty conclusions about what I'm actually like, because, as anyone who knows me could confirm, I'm actually a fairly happy person.

In which of your albums do you think you best expressed your way of understanding life and music?

Well, they all represent, in their own way, a moment of my life, and I'm happy with how each of them turned out. Sure, I could go back through all of them and strip out every single track I'm not entirely sure about, but in the end those records are what they are. Still, it seems to me that “The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic” is the most complete portrait of my emotions. It takes me back to a depressing, dark period; a period which, ironically, I'd gladly forget if this damned “monument” weren't around now to remind me of it.

Speaking of “Disaffected” (though this applies more or less to all of your work), I wrote that you're an artist out of time, but not for that reason anachronistic. You could just as easily have written music in the '80s or throughout the '90s, so much so that I think the word “influence” doesn't really suit you at all; but do you think that listening to the music of those years shaped your musical sensibility, or would it have been the same even in past decades?

We're certainly still very happily “out of time”! I'd be lying if I said that, personally, I haven't been influenced by certain artists and “movements” in contemporary music – from the Velvet Underground to Nick Drake, from early-'80s synth-pop to the Smiths, from the output of Factory Records and 4AD, right through to early-'90s progressive bands like Disco Inferno. Those are the records I draw on, and so the ones that have the greatest influence on me as a writer and composer. And I'm not ashamed of any of them.

I recently had an email exchange with David Tibet of Current 93, in which he told me, among other things, that his influences date back ten years earlier than mine, so I think we probably live in different time frames.

You're really the prototype of the “European artist”: Piano Magic is now three-quarters made up of French musicians, and the last two albums were released by a small Spanish label. It seems you have a close bond with a Mediterranean, or “Latin”, sensibility, but where does your heart actually beat?

My heart beats everywhere, fortunately! But I feel more “alive” in Europe – and I mean Europe outside of England, which after all is a small island. I appreciate and envy the culture, the romanticism, the people (well, not all of them…) and, by comparison, I've always felt disillusioned with England. Piano Magic draws its inspiration mainly from environments and landscapes, I could say, from Perugia to Landes, to Valencia…

Your lyrics repeatedly reference London (“Comets”, “I Must Leave London”, just to name the most recent ones): do you have such a strong bond with the city, or is London for you more a kind of “place of the soul”?

I have a love/hate relationship with London. The city loves me, and I hate it. Right now (as for the past nine years), it's necessary for me to live here, whether for work, for the band, or for personal reasons, but I always try to look beyond the fence of my current life, imagining it somewhere else. And there aren't really that many reasons why I couldn't move to Paris tomorrow.

What's your ideal state of mind for composing? Does it depend on your emotions in the moment, or do your songs come together in a more incremental, technical way?

Emotions first and foremost. The band has by now cemented a unique alchemy, so after playing together for so long, at any given moment we could literally build a song starting only from the lyrics. Some tracks are written in our rehearsal studio, but the lyrics have to be written by me first, at home, next to a bottle of wine and in front of the photo of my dead girlfriend.

It seems like your music is always suspended between different fascinations and aesthetics – simplifying things, from soundtrack to pop, from wave to electronica – yet, whatever shape it takes, it still bears a distinctive, easily recognizable stamp. Could this be proof that schemes and definitions matter less than emotions, and that listeners should therefore move beyond a superficial approach to your music?

Whatever we do ends up sounding like Piano Magic; that's the central and most important factor in our songs. To be really honest, the fact that we operate across different genres is something that goes beyond our own awareness. Somewhere deep in my mind there's the intention of composing grand, romantic, epic music, a kind of hymn capable of moving whoever listens to it – something like "Dead Can Dance meets Low"! – but I still feel very far from that, and it's terribly frustrating. We do what we can, given our limited resources.

You started out playing toy keyboards, then gradually developed your approach to electronics in your compositions over the years, from the impetuous drumming of "Saint Marie" to the minimal, glacial tracks of the "Open Cast Heart" EP, right through to the unexpected (very 80s) dance turn of "Disaffected" and "Deleted Scenes". So what's your relationship with electronic instrumentation, and above all, what kind of electronica do you prefer?

I should point out that only myself, Cedric and Jerome are interested in electronic music. Al and Franck, on the other hand, not at all. But yes, the band's three "techno" heads have a deep love for all kinds of electronica, from Kraftwerk to Soft Cell, to Depeche Mode, to New Order, to Aphex Twin, right up to recent releases on labels like Type or City Centre Offices. We're lucky enough to live near a great electronic music shop (Smallfish Records), which supplies us according to our wishes. My first infatuations with electronica date back to the early 90s, when I tried to emulate Cabaret Voltaire and Soft Cell with a terrible cheap Yamaha keyboard; and of course I still make electronic music in my solo project Textile Ranch and, more recently (with Cedric), in Future Conditional.

You seem to be in perpetual search of a musical and also vocal form; in particular, Piano Magic has featured several female voices, from Rachel Leigh to Angele David-Gilliou. Does the choice to entrust some of your songs to a female voice happen while you're composing, or later, based on some particular characteristic of the songs themselves?

In the early days of Piano Magic, we simply took on whoever wanted to sing our songs! The only criterion was finding some female person with a half-decent voice. Rachel's voice, luckily, sounded like that of a Victorian porcelain doll. Still, I think Angele is the quintessential Piano Magic voice, warm and cold at the same time, romantic, out of time. She's recently sung with Hubert-Felix Thiefaine and previously with Etienne Daho, as well as in her own French rock band, Ginger Ale (whose album is due out in January on the Discograph label). She'll also be releasing her solo album this spring, under the alias Klima, on Peacefrog (the label of Nouvelle Vague and José González). I think she's about to become a real star. Now that I know her well, both as a person and as a singer, I tend to write mostly for her.

Even though you've gone through countless collaborators, in recent albums Piano Magic seems to have settled into a stable band. If that's the case, have you finally found the band's ideal setup? And if so, what caused all the line-up changes in the past?

It seems to me that the band has now been more or less stable for five years – ever since Jerome and Alasdair became permanent members. Along with me, they've been the backbone of the band throughout this long stretch. But of course, Franck was brought in because I'm a really limited guitarist, while he's far more skilled than me, to the point that he even teaches guitar. And we also badly felt the need for Cedric's keyboard contributions, to give the sound more depth. We've now been stable for about a year. Even though every now and then someone else orbits around us, like Angele and John Grant of the Czars. Essentially, these are people we consider capable of giving our songs something we couldn't otherwise provide ourselves. More depth, resonance, emotion. I can't sing, you have to understand that. My voice is shaky, sickly.

What do you think of the term "post-rock"? And of the music usually filed under it? Do you feel like "post-something"?

Whenever anyone asks us about post-rock, I always give the same answer: what is it? Shouldn't rock have to be dead for there to be a post-rock? And rock is certainly alive and in very good health. We don't feel part of any "scene" or any particular aesthetic. And we certainly don't feel any kinship with, or inspired by, Mogwai.

Your writing often seems restless and feverish, and your output has always been prolific: what are you looking for in writing? Can it be read as an outlet?

An outlet, or maybe an exorcism. I'm well aware that I'm making my private life public, but it doesn't bother me if someone takes an interest in my troubles. That said, I'd rather the music be made one's own and lived by the listener, who should interpret it as something that speaks to them, rather than digging too deep into why I wrote one thing or another. When I was a kid, I certainly wasn't picturing Morrissey standing in front of a cemetery gate: I was picturing myself.

Your output ranges from an ethereal, dilated dimension to the more "concrete" songwriting of the last two albums: is this part of your compositional evolution – so that a soundtrack like "Son De Mar" now falls outside your usual projects – or do you think you might go back to writing music specifically for a film, or at least music suited to one?

We've been waiting for a call ever since we finished "Son De Mar", but so far no one else has bothered to pick up the phone and make it. We're undoubtedly capable of writing film music, probably more so now than ever, but it seems like most film production companies tend to use already-existing tracks to pair with their images. Anyway, one of our tracks, "You Can Hear The Room", was used this week for an American police drama, "CSI".

There was a deliberate decision to "write songs", as opposed to "making noises", when it came to putting together "Disaffected". We wanted to try to sell more records, but at the same time we felt the need to test ourselves and see if we could write a melodic, even "catchy", pop song. I think "Jacknifed" (a track included only on the Green Ufos edition of "Disaffected", ed.) comes close to representing the point we've reached. So I think that, since it took us so long to head down this road, it'll be very hard for us to turn back now. I'm sure the next album will be just as melodic as "Disaffected", if not more so. And yet, as absurd as it may sound, right now we're listening a lot to bands like Liars, who are heading in exactly the opposite direction.

Your songs often convey a sense of lack, of absence, which brings to mind themes so dear to My Bloody Valentine some fifteen years ago; and yet at times it seems like the urgency and heartache over these absences is trying to be calmed, smothered beneath a cold surface; does that reflect an attitude of your own temperament, or is it just down to your relationship with writing?

Everything about me has to do with lack. I live in the past. I find myself at three in the morning, outside my ex-girlfriends' houses, crying... No, I don't actually do that, but I dwell too much on what's gone and can never come back, as if I were resisting a bright, beautiful future. I don't know if we're cold. I'm more inclined to think our nostalgia is very human, very warm.

Your lyrics often talk about ghosts, especially on "Disaffected"; do you really believe in their existence, or are these ghosts real-life memories you can't shake off, and so you try to do that through music?

Well, the ghosts I'm referring to are simply people who are no longer part of my life – not necessarily dead. It's a metaphor. Do I believe in their existence? I haven't had any clear proof of it lately, though I did have some interesting experiences when I was younger, which might explain my negative energy.

"Love & Music" could be the perfect anthem for anyone who experiences music as a vehicle for their own emotions, but which of the two stirs more emotion in your life, and how? Do you think you could ever fall out of love with either of them?

Love is far more powerful than music; but, since the Beatles had already written "All You Need Is Love", I had to come up with something else on the subject. I could certainly live without playing or making records, but I need to listen to music. I've got over a thousand CDs and I have no intention of getting rid of them. But yes, love really is at the center of life, no doubt about it. My partner, my family, my friends. Music is of marginal importance by comparison.

Lastly, do you still believe, as you wrote in "Writers Without Homes", that "music can't save you from anything but silence"?

Music is wonderfully overrated. It does whatever you want it to. It's inanimate. You're free to project onto it whatever feelings you like. I can put on Nick Drake because I'm sad. But his music won't make me any happier or any sadder – only I can make myself happier or sadder. Get it?

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