Meme Magazine

Interview with Rough Fields

We’ve been very impressed with the EPs released by James Birchall, who records under the pseudonym Rough Fields. The music is intriguing on a number of levels, not least because of James’ background and musical journey from classical to electronica via techno, so we thought it would be well worth the effort putting a few well-crafted questions to him.

Meme Magazine: Can you explain a little about your background, particularly your musical education and the journey to where you are now with Rough Fields?

James Birchall: I was lucky enough to get onto a music degree the year before they scrapped grants and changed the loan model. I had studied music since I was a kid, playing in a lot of bands, and I was experimenting with cheap multi-track tape, bounce-down experiments and early sequencing stuff, but university gave me the opportunity to really examine what the sounds and structures in my head were made up of, and how to develop them. There’s absolutely no way I could have done that under the current system – it’s a complete tragedy what’s happened to education access since the rise of the lizards. Dark times ahead, etc. After the degree I moved around a lot, gradually amassed a large body of recorded work, catalogued it, deleted it all and started Rough Fields.

MM: So, explain this music-making process which consists of recording the music ‘indoors and outdoors, usually during the night, sometimes drunk, sometimes less drunk.’

JB: Rough Fields is, at its root, a sort of improvisation project. I go into a session with some vague ideas about moods, development from a texture to another texture or maybe a particular musical cell. Then it’s pretty much press record and see what turns up. Once something interesting has emerged, I can start working on it in a more structured, compositional way. It helps to be less drunk at that point.

MM: When you are recording your music, do you imagine the sort of person who will be listening to it and how they might be listening, or is it all a very introverted, personal experience for you?

JB: I can’t begin to imagine a particular type of person who listens to my music. And, although it makes me immensely happy to think that people might enjoy listening to the end result, writing and producing is definitely an introverted thing for me.

MM: There are some tracks (which we like very much), such as “Waller’s Cut”, that are hardly there at all. Are these ‘atmospheric’ tracks in some way complementary to the vocal ones, or are they just another musical outlet for you?

JB: I think a lot of the expressive side of what I make is about memory, longing, missing something, remembering distant places or people. So, in that way, the soundscapes are just as expressive as the composed pieces – they evoke something important for me. In many ways they’re even closer to true expression than the “songs”, having for the most part been recorded at the time and place which will later become the memory expressed. If you see what I mean.

MM: How do you think Rough Fields might develop in the future? Do you have any ultimate ambitions?

JB: Album in February – beyond that, I don’t know. That’s the thing about trying to be yourself as a creative artist, I suppose – you can’t really plan ambitiously into the distant future without missing out to some extent on the spontaneity of now. So I guess the plan is to be spontaneous. Do stuff. I’d like to be able to amplify some of the exciting activism going on at the minute – for the first time in a long time real change seems tangible. Maybe. Get a dog or two, eat more fruit, use more one-inch tape, write an opera about the rise of the lizards, get a solo show together, fry less, steam more, maybe get my hands on a gong.

MM: Well, good luck with that, and meantime we’ll look forward to the album next year. Thanks for answering our questions.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2011 at 10:05 pm. It is filed under Featured, Interviews and tagged with Bomb Shop, Rough Fields. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.