Guillemots Interview

The Guillemots first gained critical acclaim in 2006 with their debut album ‘Through the Windowpane’ which was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.  The band started to collected fans all over the world with their unique sound and diverse live shows. Before setting off on a UK tour to bring their latest album ‘Walk the River’ to their dedicated fans, guitarist McLord Magrão took some time to talk to us.

Did you have a clear vision of where you wanted the latest album to go?

We don’t want to repeat ourselves with things we do, we always try to approach things in different ways and the main thing is we always try to challenge ourselves, give a new goal to where we go with music. Not that we have ever had discussions about it. We always talked about bringing out a live album, to reflect performing live as a band, trying to capture the band sounds. With ‘Walk the River’ we were like, let’s really try to capture playing together and see how that comes across.

As a band you have varied backgrounds, do you think that has helped you gain more varied influences?

Yeah I guess so, we all have different tastes of music and different ideas of music but, at the same time, we have a lot in common when it comes to music. We have always been interested in loads of things, there are always things that I didn’t know about and other members didn’t know about, being from different countries we have access to different music. We introduced music to each other and it’s always been good to learn about new things, new ways of doing things. I guess we kind of complement each other.

What’s the band’s approach to song writing?

In general it’s a mess; we don’t know where we are going with things. We each write things in different ways, one way that we do it quite often is that we improvise for a long time, then we go back and try to combine all these things together and start to give it a structure. In general, to start with, it’s just seventeen minutes of us playing the same thing over and over again. Then we think how we can change it into a song and then comes the arrangement for that. Sometimes Fyfe writes songs and then we try to develop his songs and turn it into something we are all happy with, that has that Guillemot sound through it. Other times we just start messing around with stuff, electronics or sound and some loops, and then we go “this can be a verse, this can be a chorus” and see what happens.

You are known for making music from objects that you wouldn’t normally associate with music, is there any object you would like to play?

 The one thing I want to play but I haven’t had the chance because apparently its dangerous is a jackhammer. I really want to use one. I used to use electric power drills and they are quite easy to use, I suppose, and not as dangerous. I got an endorsement from this company, they gave me a couple of power drills, they had a jack hammer and I asked if I could get one of those. It never happened because of all the safety reasons. That’s the one thing I’d really like to use. I am sure there are other weird things I want to try if I had a chance. One thing I want to do when I am older is grow a really long beard. There is this Brazilian musician who has a huge beard, it goes to his waist. He puts water in it and he squeezes the water out and makes sounds that he uses on his music. That’s the one thing I really want to copy but I guess I need to be much older to grow a beard that long. I think we are talking a few years and loads of food stains on your beard, which is not very nice.

Does the band read its own reviews?

Some of us do, I try to avoid as much as I can. Sometimes I do read one or two. The thing with reviews, in general, is its one guy’s opinion of music and everyone has their own opinion and their own tastes. If it’s a good review or a bad review I would rather not get distracted with what people think, keep focused on what I actually think about the music.

Do you think musical excellence is something you can teach or something you are born with?

I have never been trained as a musician; it’s always been about sounds that I like. Some ideas work and some ideas don’t, some of us have been trained as musicians. When it comes to write or to compose together, I don’t think the element of trained musicians comes in to it. It’s about what sounds good and it’s not really about right and wrong, I don’t really believe there is such a thing in music. It should be free for you to decide. If it sounds good then it sounds good. Being trained musically is a good skill to have but you can get carried away and just become very boring and monotonous with it, so I just try to see what might work. Sometimes its great and sometimes it’s a disaster but that’s the risk you have to take.

Do you think music should be emotionally evocative?

I guess with music it should have that emotion in there, independent of the way you are delivering it. I think there is music for different moods and for different times in your live. I guess everything has its place, you know. I grew up listening to heavy music like New York hardcore bands and stuff like that. I don’t think there is much emotion involved, its much more political and aggressive, for teenagers it’s a good way to release energy. As I grow older I find the stuff that’s more emotional is good because it kind of suits me, if I am going through a different time in life or I’m happy. I guess music should be a very broad thing and each song has its own place and time.

You have directed some of the bands videos, how was that?

I’ve been playing music since I was really young, at the time it was a good way for me to let energy out. Photography and film directing was something I was really interested in from a young age but when it came to it, I just couldn’t afford to go to film school and music was something that was pretty affordable for me to do. Now I am coming back to directing and stuff, its great because in Guillemots in general, when we talk about music we don’t necessarily use music as reference, we always use images or creatures or whatever that we think suits the music. It really helps in a sense of ok that’s the kind of sound we want to create; we want a giant butterfly flying through London or something.  Having that vision, that cinematic aspect to it really helps for everyone’s understanding of what we are going for. If I say to someone we really need like an open sea with a little dolphin jumping in the water, then everyone gets a crack of what I’m trying to make it sound like and everyone uses visuals as a reference to sound instead of using other music or sound.

Published in the Metro