White Noise Sound
e-mail interview June 2011

It's rare these days for a band to grab me by the neck, forcing me to scream at everyone I know 'Listen to this!' But with their Velvet Underground / Mary Chain inspired slabs of melody and noise, White Noise Sound have had me doing this regularly over the past months. In an age where Pop has become idle and emotionless emo by numbers enslaves too many kids, it's time to get dirty, dangerous, over-excited, blissed out and wired up to The White Noise Sound.

 

"Mesmeric" **** Q
"psychedelia meets krautrock" **** The Independent
"A psychedelic shoegaze gem" **** The Times
"one holy mothership of destruction and audible bliss" ***** Artrocker
"[A] monumental rock and roll juggernaut" 8/10 Contactmusic.com
"A bright racket indeed" BBC Radio 1

Even better, they come from Swansea. How could Rosey R*E*P*E*A*T resist?


Lucy: Your band have been quite quiet for the last few months. Are you looking forward to playing gigs again?
Katie Jane Garside: I think I give very obtuse ans

White Noise Sound – who, what and why?

Who? Dan - Synths, Adam - Guitars, Synths and Vocals, Paul - Guitars, Rhys - Guitars, Chris - Bass and Phil Drums

What? We’ve all know each other for years and we all have the same musical influences so in a relatively small place like Swansea it was inevitable we would be in a
band together

Why? we want people to like our music and want as many people as possible to hear it, we’ve been together for a few years and haven’t killed or seriously hurt each other so it just makes sense.


Describe your sound to a hard of hearing alien.

Are we assuming the alien speaks English?

Anyway, It’s Blissed out, quiet, loud, wall of sound, psychedelic guitar music!

Who are your heroes and heroines, musical. cultural, political, other...

There are six of us so there probably far to many to mention but here are a few, MBV, JAMC, Johnny Cash, David Lynch, Sigur Ros, Mogwai, Spacemen 3, The Warlocks, BJTM, Gram Parsons…………..


Have you seen the documentary about Creation Records, and if so what did you think? I imagine there's quite a few Creation bands that you like, can you tell us about them?

There have been a lot of amazing bands on Creation, the ones who have influenced us the most are My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Super Furry Animals, Ride. I would have to say that JAMC and MBV are probably the only ones that come to mind if you
listen to our music. We’ve always loved the loud fuzzy guitars of JAMC and MBV again definitely have a loudness to them but it’s more like layers of beautiful noises.


Do you like the term 'shoe gazing' and do you think it applies to you?

We’re definitely fans of shoe gaze music, I think maybe a couple of our songs are could fit into the shoe gaze category but it’s probably not the best term to describe our music in general.


As we were originally a Manic Street Preachers fanzine, I ought to ask you at least one related question, so I wonder if you feel the same need to move away from Wales to London to get a fair go at the 'music biz', or have you found that the group of Welsh bands that followed in their wake has made it easier for you to be taken seriously and continue being based in Wales?

To be honest it’s never been an issue for us. I mean we’re only three hours from London So we’re closer to it than some places in the North of England. Maybe twenty years ago when we didn’t have the internet we might have been forced in to it. There are plenty of bands in Wales,
some good, some bad. I wouldn't say we were part of any scene here though. I'd like to think we would have made this music where ever we came from, I don't think being Welsh has any bearing on the music we make.


You Jack Bastards...
White Noise Sound


Twin Town or Tiger Bay?

Twin Town


Write a 14 word lonely hearts adverts for White Noise Sound...


6 piece band seek 6 women. Must be easily lead and have no morals.

I get the impression that your pretty popular in the States, how did this come about?

Our record label is American, so I suppose it’s a lot to do with that. We sent a demo to Patrick at Alive, he came back to us saying he loved it and wanted to hear more, so we sent him the album and it went from there. We definitely would like to get over to the US at some point.



What can people expect on July 2nd in London and other of your live gigs?

Well Playing live is just another platform to get your music across to people, you can never get some songs as loud as you'd like them on record, so playing live gives you the chance to deafen people (in a good way) and try different ideas out. A record is set in stone, once its
done you can't change it, there's a lot more freedom playing live. Basically people can expect us to be a lot louder live!

I'm still on cloud 9 after the Swans unlikely promotion to the Premier League. What would be a parallel promotion for you as a band?

I don’t thinks it’s quite sunk in for us yet!

Maybe a parallel promotion for us would just be to get as many people as possible listening to our music and to keep making music.

 

 


 

Your album is one of the most exciting new CDs I've heard for a long time, what exciting new records are you listening to?

We don’t really listen to a lot of new music because we’re so busy at the moment. We got asked to compile our favourite albums of 2010 and not one of us could name an album released in that year.

There are plenty of good bands we have played with recenty, The Keys, El Good, Koolaid Electric Company, definitely worth checking out.

Do you experience white noise as soothing or inspiring?

Inspiring.

Is there a question you wish I'd asked?

No

How can our readers get hold of your music, and why should they bother?


It’s available on Amazon, HMV, etc.

Why should they bother? That’s the most difficult one to answer!

I guess they should buy it because it’s amazing!

Finally and most importantly, what's best, chips or cream, buns?

Chips!

Many thanks to Chris and the rest of the band for their time.

White Noise Sound play London Queen of Hoxton on July 2nd and Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach on July 8th. R*E*P*E*A*T means to be at both...

http://www.whitenoisesound.net/

wers to questions...It's never about looking forward to it. Actually maybe I should change the
script, maybe we are looeir musicm the 3rd album?