In Strict Tempo, vol. 88: Alexander Tucker/Microcorps Interview
Welcome back to In Strict Tempo, I’m feeling somewhat refreshed after two weeks in France and looking forward to getting back into it. I hope you all enjoyed the Semtek Ceremony mix last week which was a real reminder of just how fun clubbing in London was in the mid-00’s. There’ll be more Ceremony mixes before the year is out.
No music reviews this week, but I’ve got a bit old list of things to listen to, so next week will be a bumper issue.
Just before the August Bank Holiday I had the pleasure of speaking to Alexander Tucker, better known by his alias Microcorps. Alexander is an illustrator and musician, who’s also recorded as Brood X Cycles (with Nik Colk Void), NONEXISTENT (with Astrud Steehouder & Luke J Murray), Grumbling Fur (with Daniel O’Sullivan) and with Stephen O’Malley. His music has been released by the likes of Southern Records, Thrill Jockey, Downwards and ATP. His latest album as Microcorps, titled Clear Vortex Chamber is released today, and being a fan of his previous records I wanted to catch up with him and get an insight into the creation of the album.
In Strict Tempo: Hi Alexander, thanks for talking with me. How did you spend your Bank Holiday weekend?
Alexander Tucker: I was working on new sets for some gigs coming up. It can be difficult to play the new material live because with the modular you just have to set it up for a particular track and then once you've finished with it you have to take it apart. That’s the thing with modular, it's really expansive and also really reductive as well, but with electronic music you don't have to always play exactly what's on the record.
IST: Yeah, that's the beauty of electronic music, isn't it? You can remix things - for want of a better word - on the fly.
AT: Exactly
IST: I don't think anyone kind of going to a broadly experimental music gig is going to want to hear the album as recorded. Anyway, you have a new album out today. The second track, ZONA, was recorded with none other than Karl O’Connor on vocals…How did that come about?
AT: I've been friends with Karl for a few years, he put out the NONEXISTENT collaboration with Luke Murray and Astrud Steehouder, both of whom you know, so I spoke with Karl about possibly putting out the Microcorps record. Karl and I, every now and again, go for a fry up when he's in town, which is very rare. I was saying how unsatisfied I was with the results of things I've been doing recently. And he said, “look, get Ableton, you can multitrack the modular that way, you know, get this and that, these plugins” and just gave me some advice about how to record electronic music a little bit better. Beforehand when I first started working with modular, I'd been just mixing everything in the system. I would just take a stereo out from that and record. I was getting good results, that’s how I recorded the first album, Xmit.
But then after that, I was getting more and more unsatisfied with it because you can't go in and work on each individual layer, which I wanted to do. I couldn't go back in and sort the kick out a little, different things like that. As soon as I took his advice, all the tunes just started to sound better.
Another friend of mine, Freddie, gave me some more advice with the modular because I'd hit a bit of a wall with it. Initially I just had vague idea how it all worked. Between Karl's and Freddie's advice the album started to form a bit more. After that, Karl and I were talking about doing a collaboration for it. We went over to The Premises, which is great rehearsal space. They've got really great PAs and more importantly, a really great cafe at the front. So we had our fry up and did a bit of recording.
IST: So that's how you bribe Karl, is it? A full English?
AT: Exactly!
IST: So we touched on Karl's collaboration. But you also worked with J.K. Flesh on this album.
AT: Yeah, Justin. I’ve always been a massive fan of Godflesh
IST: That was my next question.
AT: I’ve been a fan since I was 16 or something like that. Because I was into hardcore and punk stuff it felt almost weird buying something that was so electronic.
At that time, all the kids where I grew up that were into techno and electronic music wanted to beat you up. I didn't have anything like Godflesh in my collection, so it was a nice way to slowly get into a few more electronic things, although I didn't realise at the time that music I’d been into since I was 14 - The Residents, Devo, different stuff on Ralph records like Tuxedomoon and Renaldo and the Loaf and the Vangelis soundtracks – were electronic or used electronics. I probably didn't realise at the time because I hadn’t thought about how it was made.
IST: Where did you grow up?
AT: Between Tunbridge and Tunbridge Wells, in a place called Southborough.
IST: There’s so much crossover, with metal and techno, with people like Justin, Mick Harris, Surgeon recorded his first tracks in Mick Harris's toilet.
AT: Kevin Martin, all that lot are well into their metal and electronic music. I had a metal phase, a big Metallica phase, but then I got more into hardcore punk.
Then when I was in my early 20s, I got back into metal again. I've been listening to Carcass again quite a lot recently, and Sabbath.
IST: That's about as heavy as I can go. If it's kind of weird and dubby and punky, like post-punk kind of stuff, I can get it. You mentioned Renaldo and the Loaf, earlier that's just straight up weird, isn't it, but it’s fantastic. Then you kind of go deeper into that kind of darker world from there.
AT: Ralph Records is brilliant. My mum's cousin owned a record shop in Rye and he sent me a Ralph compilation which just totally blew my mind. The Residents, Snakefinger, Renaldo and the Loaf, Tuxedomoon, Fred Frith, just loads of incredible stuff. And I got really obsessed with a lot of those bands from that compilation.
IST: That was pretty cool having a cousin in a record shop.
AT: Yeah, my art teacher got me into Cardiacs, Residents and Devo. And then mum's cousin turned me on to a few things like The Art Bears.
So yeah, the collaboration with Justin: a few years ago Godflesh did two nights in London. I hadn't seen him for ages and we had really nice hangs with him after the show. Over the years I would bump into him a few times here and there, he was a fan of Grumbling Fur and some of my solo stuff as well so I sent him a message just saying are you up for collaborating? He replied “yeah, definitely”. I didn’t expect to have guitars on this record because Microcorps is very much about me not playing guitar but Justin had agreed to do vocals and then said “oh, I'll do a bit of guitar as well”. And I was like, shit! If Justin Broderick's saying he's going to do a bit on guitar, I'm going to go with that!
IST: So there’s also some of your own instruments on the album?
AT: I play cello yep, and Karl D’Silva plays the sax on one of the tracks. With the cello, I'm making very short samples by hitting it with mallets. So, I strike the cello strings, and double up with bass guitar and then I layer those on top of each other, boosting the low end so you get these really big, timbral sounds. I still like to keep everything quite raw and stripped back and minimal.
IST: You play the cello too?
AT: I’m self-taught, but I can play to a certain degree. If you sat me in a room with other people who were well trained, I wouldn't be able to play with them. But I like open tunings and just figuring things out. It's what I've always done with instruments, just learn a little bit, figure a bunch of things out and then just run with it. I’ve probably learnt most about the technicalities of Modular. I still feel like I'm learning all the time and there's still a lot of things that I find quite difficult. I'm dyslexic, so it can take me a bit of time to get my head around something but I feel like I've got enough confidence with making music; if you put me in a room full of instruments, I'd easily be able to make an album out of it.
IST: Do you prefer playing instruments or working with the modular?
AT: With the modular, even if it’s just drum modules, you need to form them and send them information to get them to do the things that you need to do. Sitting down with an instrument, it's the same. I always use open tunings with guitars and cello, that’s almost like a patch in itself. You’re working around a specific set of coordinates that you produce music from.
Yesterday I was trying to do a kick rhythm, something that I'd heard and I just couldn't get it. I just didn't know how to sequence it to get it to work. I don't know if it's just because of the sequencer I'm using or the BPM or what it was, I just couldn't get it. I think that's always the way with me: whenever I've gotten excited about someone else's work and thought, oh, I might try and do my own screwed up version of that, it never works. It's always better if I just sit and start with the module from scratch, then I start getting somewhere.
IST: So it says in the press release that you actually kind of discarded a year's worth of recordings, a year's worth of material.
AT: Pretty much! I couldn't get the production sounding the way I wanted it with everything being stereo takes. It just wasn't working at all until I spoke to Karl. But that's very, very rare for me to discard material. I usually pick an instrument up and start working but with modular, I was like, “oh, I've actually got to learn this stuff”.
Because of learning difficulties at school, it always freaked me out to have to learn something new, and trying to get my head around other people's structures or other people's ways of doing things. But there’s a bit of stubbornness in there as well as a bit of fear.
IST: With the modular, you’re able to essentially make your own rules?
AT: Totally. You can design your own system to suit your personal preferences and create your own “brain” with many different possibilities. Recently, I've been making my own kicks and drum sounds out of synths and oscillators and it’s all quite fascinating. I did a show recently where I didn't use a single drum module, all I used were oscillators. I used various techniques to ping them. You can take a sine wave oscillator and then make a massive kick out of them.
IST: Do you ever kind of look outside of, electronic music and experimental music for inspiration? Do you ever hear something on the radio or hear like a rock or metal track you like and think there's an element about it or a vibe to it you want to try and replicate?
AT: I think everything comes from outside of techno and electronic music, in a way.
I'm not a massive techno head, I don't really know that much about techno music. It’s the synth sounds I’m more interested in, and that's why I love Karl's stuff, especially his more recent stuff from the past 15/16 years more than the earlier, really pummeling, minimal kind of stuff. It’s still great, obviously, but I like the more experimental stuff. When I'm making tracks, I'm sometimes thinking more about like bands like New Zealand band, The Dead C, and feedback and noise. I got more into electronic stuff after a period of being into a lot of psychedelic, noise stuff after hearing this album by Gate [Michael Morley from The Dead C], A Republic of Sadness, which is a really, really great album. Some tracks like sound like almost a techno-y version of The Fall.
I'd always like bits of Aphex, but then I got massively into Aphex, and bands like Pan Sonic, who I think about all the time, even though my music doesn't necessarily sound like Pan Sonic, and none of my influences really sound like Pan Sonic.
IST: I mean, nothing else really sounds like Pan Sonic does it?
AT: You can't ever do it. There are people that try and then you're just like, it just sounds like Pan Sonic. With this album I was thinking about this, the composer Arnold Dreyblatt, who uses a double bass with, I think, piano strings. They’re really taut strings, and he hits the strings with a bow like this kind of dong, dong, dong, dong, dong. So, he gets these rhythmic sounds by barely even touching the strings, using it like this percussive instrument. I was imagining if he made a techno track, what it would sound like. What if Arnold Dreybatt collaborated with Regis, what would that sound like? So, it’s often these things outside of techno that are really triggering ideas.
IST: I saw you’re playing with Cabaret Voltaire in November, how much of an influence have they been on your work?
AT: Probably not that much, really.
IST: I think you must be the first person who said that, they're just named by everyone, aren't they?!
AT: I know, I know, I feel bad! It's actually Mal's band Wrangler that have been more of an influence and that I've got really excited about. I really like Cabs and I have listened to them over the years, but it’s actually Mal's solo stuff and Richard's solo stuff that I've listened to a bit more. It’s similar with something like Throbbing Gristle, I own a few Throbbing Gristle albums, but over the last few years, I’ve been more into Cosey’s solo stuff and Chris's solo stuff where you can just hear all the electronics are way more updated and sound bigger and brighter and kind of heavier. So yeah, I love the Cabs, but as a group they’re not a massive influence.
IST: My last question is about the music industry in general, experimental music seems to thrive despite the industry really being set up against it doing so, with the focus on Spotify numbers and things like that. I’d be keen to hear your thoughts on it all?
AT: I don't really think about it that much in a way, which is a terrible thing to say. I'm sad that the physical thing has dropped off and I'm sad that it costs so much these days, and that people don't have that extra coin to pick up records. Bandcamp is great, and I can sell my comics through there too and have that direct connection with the fans. I’ve been thinking it would be quite nice to actually maybe release a short vinyl run of something at some point on my own. I feel like for us on the underground that the odds are always been stacked against you a bit, but yeah we just keep trucking on.
IST: My personal opinion is that good music will always find its audience
AT: It’s always been like that hasn’t it? Why aren’t Fugazi as big as Oasis? They’re way better!
IST: I take it you’re not going to the reunion then?
AT: No, the greedy bastards! But that’s what we’re battling against, when you’re really into underground bands. We hated Nirvana at the time, now I love Nirvana!
Thanks to Alex for his time, and to Zoe Miller for organising the interview. Clear Vortex Chamber - one of the albums of the year in my opinion - is out now on Downwards Records and all good streaming services.