The Eden House are a rare sort: a studio project drawing in three generations of musicians, taken out on the road and achieving much critical adulation for the debut album 'Smoke & Mirrors'. For the uninitiated, what we have here is a sound incorporating Goth, psychedelia and trip-hop, with a dash of folk, culminating in some seriously unique music. One could even call it 'progressive', but remember to mutter that one under your breath.
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| Image Credit: manchesterscenewipe.co.uk |
Being back out on the road after a break, how does it feel playing gigs again?
Tony: I’ll tell you later! No, I think that in an ideal world you’d write a load of stuff, play it live and then go and record it, but we don’t have that luxury; that said, playing live is a definite part of the creative process.
Andy: Having said that, we’re doing a new song tonight which may evolve again by the time you hear it on record. It’s very different to being in a studio; you can’t stop and talk about it when you’re play live – there’s no ‘let’s move the bridge here’.
Steve: Absolutely, the song hasn’t been recorded yet, and by the time we get to record it, it may be a little bit different to how it is now.
Tony: If you’re out on tour, doing gigs one after the other, things begin to take a new form; after three or four gigs the songs really start to come into their own. You get a sweet point after a week or so which we haven’t had a chance to do with this band yet.
Andy: The songs reveal themselves to you; doing this tour will open things up for the new material.
Having worked on a lot separate projects, coming from several areas of music, what keeps you passionate about doing it?
Andy: Well, it’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on really isn’t it!
Steve: It certainly is! There are times when you’re up on stage – it’s rare, but happens a lot within this band – and you get that moment when it all locks together and something happens. You look around you and everything jumps up a gear and it connects, elevates. We’re very lucky with the singers we’ve worked with over the years, that they’re actually proper singers as opposed to the penchant for the low vocal thing.
Tony: There’s a varying degree of growliness really!
Val: For me, I enjoy singing, I enjoy writing, and the whole creative process really; the vibe you get from it is something quite special. I’ve been singing since I was very young and I always thought that was what I wanted to do.
Andy: With the first album it fluked into being all-girl vocals – there were tracks recorded with guys singing it – but it kind of happened by accident. But we’ve seized upon that, and it’s really great.
Andy: With the first album it fluked into being all-girl vocals – there were tracks recorded with guys singing it – but it kind of happened by accident. But we’ve seized upon that, and it’s really great.
‘Timeflows’ has received universally positive reviews; everyone seems to have latched onto it pretty quickly. Were you aware of its strengths during the recording?
Tony: Because we had the opportunity to put out an EP, we thought ‘we can go really over the top’, as long as we like. To begin with, we were offered to do a 7 inch vinyl and then that turned into a 10 inch.
Steve: It quite literally went up by inches…
Tony: We worked out that if it was the length of a mini-album, we can get more out of it; more reviews, more gigs and stuff like that, you know?
Steve: It’s remarkable the way the press react to a 7 inch vinyl; it’s like a footnote, it comes out then it’s ignored. Whereas if you do an EP, it feels like it’s leading to something, and in a way it is – we pretty much have the rest of the album together.
Andy: The songs are in varying stages of completion but we’re getting there; we’ve pretty much decided what tracks are going to go on it – the EP was a good way of filling the gap before we release the next full length album.
Having a new singer with Val, are there any new directions that you’ve been exploring with the new material?
Having a new singer with Val, are there any new directions that you’ve been exploring with the new material?
Andy: We have moved forward, but then I don’t think it was particularly conscious. ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ was a different nature of project; it was distinctly a studio project, bringing guests in, and now it’s a bit more band-oriented.
Tony: That’s it, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ actually started off out of frustration, wanting to do something a little bit different to what we’d been doing before; it was for fun, it really was, and it’s just grown from there. Obviously now other people have got involved, different elements, and it really has taken on a life of its own.
Andy: We found Val by a fluke really; she supported us at our very first gig and it was like ‘wow, what a voice’. Val’s great because she’s so technically brilliant – she can do anything, sing anybody’s songs, and do any harmonies – so she’s a great person to work with.
Val: I actually hadn’t heard of them at that time. I got contacted to do a gig with them when they first started playing live, and a year later I was in the band permanently. It wasn’t particularly nerve-racking wirking with them, despite their calibre; I’ve collaborated with a lot of musicians before from different genres and styles, and I knew the work of the individual members, of course, I’m familiar with Pink Floyd, but then who isn’t…
Val: I actually hadn’t heard of them at that time. I got contacted to do a gig with them when they first started playing live, and a year later I was in the band permanently. It wasn’t particularly nerve-racking wirking with them, despite their calibre; I’ve collaborated with a lot of musicians before from different genres and styles, and I knew the work of the individual members, of course, I’m familiar with Pink Floyd, but then who isn’t…
Tony: After Val joined, she made us feel a bit secure in the fact that if it all went tits-up, she can always cover it. Whereas, with Evi and Amandine they’ve both got their own things going on, and with quite strong characters you never knew ‘are they gonna make this gig?’
With such a number of collaborators, is there a certain amount of push-and-pull with the song writing?
With such a number of collaborators, is there a certain amount of push-and-pull with the song writing?
Steve: Of course there will be some ideas that you just go ‘I think you should get rid of that bit’, or ‘let’s chop up that bit’, you know?
Tony: Yeah there is, I think we’re each other’s bullshit filter!
Andy: There are no egos about it; if you play something and someone doesn’t like it then that’s fine, we’ll find something else. Or you fight your corner if you really believe in it, but nobody gets upset about it…
Val: When I write, I’ll come up with something, they’ll play to me and I will say ‘there you go’!
Val: When I write, I’ll come up with something, they’ll play to me and I will say ‘there you go’!
Steve: ...there are no pre-Madonnas, which is remarkable if you think about it; it’s actually quite painless!
How did the project come about in the first place?
How did the project come about in the first place?
Tony: It started off with Steve and I – we were both playing in NFD at the time – literally having a few smokes, a few drinks and some jams. We realised it doesn’t all have to be in-your-face 1988, 1989 Goth rehash stuff. The thing is we’ve all got different tastes in music; they meet in the middle, but are poles apart in other ways. We introduced each other to things that we grew up with.
Steve: Absolutely, I’ve learnt to love the Temptations and various other things from him [Tony] and equally there were some Cocteau Twins records that he never knew about!
Tony: Exactly, even though I was on their label; it was really weird; Steve was playing me this stuff and must have just passed me by. I love Liz Fraser’s voice, and for me the stuff she did with Massive Attack is the stuff that I love; I saw them years ago with the full line-up and it was one of the best gigs of my life. Really fantastic!
Andy, how did you first become involved in the project?
Andy, how did you first become involved in the project?
Andy: Well, I’d worked with Tony before, doing a couple of Nephilim albums; then Steve and Tony brought me ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ to master. That was the initial coming together, but then they needed a second guitarist going out live; Peter Yates [former Fields of the Nephilim] was going to do it originally, but had to pull out and for some reason they phoned me up, and it was like ‘okay, cool!’. Steve started showing me the parts and I’d play that initially.
Steve: More like, ‘this is what I think it is!’
Tony: I think as well we’re all local to each other and Andy’s sympathetic to the music we do; so it was a more-than-obvious choice. We’ve got a permanent studio set up in Steve’s house, which he’s given his rooms up for – he’s all squashed into one room now.
Andy: We did the Goldtop session to mix it, because obviously I can get the odd blag there [David Gilmour’s studio]. That was just a favour he did for me really!
For Andy personally, working on the Pink Floyd remasters, has it been difficult working simultaneously with the Eden House?
Andy: Only in as much as – like everybody else – going to work and then doing something in the evening.
Steve: He says ‘like everyone else’, annoyingly, it is his day job; his 9 to 5 is going and mixing Pink Floyd.
Andy: I do appreciate that compared with most peoples’ day jobs it’s a lot more interesting but it’s still work at the end of the day.
Tony: Plus, you’ve been doing it for so many years that it’s the norm and that’s just what you do really.
Andy: You listen to it with a different part of your head, and in some ways something you never get the opportunity to do as someone who makes records is listen to it as a fan; hearing it for the first time, you never get that.
Tony: Do you know what, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve been able to go back and listen to the Nephilim’s stuff seriously and objectively. Now I can think ‘oh that’s alright’, or ‘that isn’t alright’, or ‘that goes on a bit…’
They [Fields of the Nephilim] did that gig with the Mission in October, and because I’d got pretty pally with Simon [Hinkler, the Mission] after he’d played with us, he said ‘are you going to come down to the gig?’ I didn’t want to bump into that lot and I wasn’t really interested in seeing them but I watch a couple of songs and thought they were okay; I thought I’d be really pissed off that I wasn’t up there, but I felt ‘I’ve done that’ – I didn’t feel anything. I bumped into Carl [McCoy, Fields of the Nephilim] afterwards anyway, because we hadn’t spoken in a few years, so we had a little chat and buried the hatchet right in the back of his head. No, it was actually alright, I think we’ve just got so many issues with each other that we couldn’t be bothered to talk about it, and we’ve been mates since we were young so it was good to catch up. Making those records were some of the best times of my life, not just because we had some success out of it, but I had so many laughs with them all.
What can we expect from tonight’s set list?
Tony: A variety of material, some ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ stuff, a few things we haven’t recorded yet and of course something off of the new EP; we’ve tried to mix it up a bit.
Val: There will be plenty of the old stuff, and a few bits from ‘Timeflows’. There are a couple of songs in the set that either haven’t been recorded or seen the light of day yet, so there’s a lot of variety.
Val: There will be plenty of the old stuff, and a few bits from ‘Timeflows’. There are a couple of songs in the set that either haven’t been recorded or seen the light of day yet, so there’s a lot of variety.
Andy: We’re actually at the nice stage now that when we write it all out, we’ve got to thin it down, because we’ve got more material than can fit into a set.
Steve: Obviously the first album, when we went out live, people would say ‘right, play for an hour’ and we’d think ‘but the album’s only an hour’. So it’s nice now to have some leeway with that.
Tony: There’s actually one song we’ve never played live; ‘The Beauty of Science’ with Julianne [Regan; All About Eve].
Steve: Yeah that song’s just guitar and brushes, so unless we develop that with a real feel to it, doing it live would be a bit of nightmare.
When can we expect the second album to be released?
Val: Possibly in the summer, that’s what we’re working towards. Things may change of course, but we’ve got an aim there and hopefully we can stick to it.
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