FESTIVAL MUSIC | And So I Watch You From Afar
GO THE DISTANCE
And So I Watch You From Afar, the complex post-rock instrumentalists from Northern Ireland, chat to David Pollock about the thrill of live performance and creating
music their fans can let go to
‘M y dad would love to hear you say that!’ laughs Rory Friers of Northern Irish instrumental rock group And So I Watch You From Afar, when I put it to him there’s as much of the whimsical lightness of Genesis in their music, as there is the roiling sternness of their early post-rock heroes Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky and Pelican. ‘It’s completely true. Our MO was always just to squeeze whatever’s fuli lling and exciting into our music, regardless of what people perceive an instrumental band to be. We’re sincere about it, we try to create that moment of escapism, music you can let go to.’
The live aspect of And So I Watch You From Afar – who play Summerhall as part of this August’s Nothing Ever Happens Here music programme – has always been the most important to the group since they formed on the north coast of County Antrim in the mid-2000s. The quartet now includes guitarist Friers, his oldest friend Chris Wee on drums (‘we’ve been playing Nirvana covers in our bedrooms for 30 years,’ says Friers, ‘but it doesn’t feel much different doing it for a job’), guitarist Niall Kennedy and bassist Johnny Adger.
These grunge-obsessed kids hanging round the local skater and surfer community had one eye on getting into Belfast’s busy live music venues. Now they’re internationally recognised, with i ve records (the most recent was last year’s The Endless Shimmering). ‘There was a period where we were becoming more proi cient at playing our instruments, and I felt really proud, really accomplished,’ says Friers. ‘Then we remembered it’s not really about that, and we found a more rounded perspective of what’s important about music, that it can be really full, or empty; a void. We have a better understanding now of what sort of journey we want to take people on.’ For this band, that journey happens best when it’s live. ‘It’s like when we were teenagers,’ says Friers. ‘Growing up where we did, it was about Friday night, the end of the week, going to see a favourite band that had come to town. That was one of the few moments of congregation, and it was important to completely escape in that. For me it’s about how it feels live, and whether it’s really going to be worth people’s hard-earned money to come and get those moments we all yearn for, where you can forget the day job and go into another world.’
And So I Watch You From Afar, Summerhall, 8 Aug, 8pm, £16.50.
98 THE LIST FESTIVAL 1–8 Aug 2018
LUCKY STAR Henry Northmore chats to New York troubadour Dean Friedman as he prepares to revisit his classic album “Well, Well,” Said the Rocking Chair
American singer-songwriter Dean Friedman occupies a unique place in the world of music. ‘I grew up listening to people like Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, writers who painted pictures using very vivid imagery,’ says Friedman. He scored a series of top ten hits in the late 70s with ‘Ariel’, ‘Lucky Stars’, ‘Woman of Mine’ and ‘Lydia’, just as punk was taking hold on the music scene. ‘I think it was unlike anything else on the radio at the time,’ he says of his work. ‘Punk was just happening, I did Top of the Pops with the Boomtown Rats and the Buzzcocks!’ Friedman is returning for his 15th Fringe to
celebrate the 40th anniversary of his most successful album, 1978’s “Well, Well,” Said the Rocking Chair, a collection of pastoral acoustica inspired by his move to New York. ‘It’s impossible not to be inl uenced by the sights and sounds, colours, textures, even the tastes and smells of a city like that,’ he says. ‘Inevitably those colours and sounds ended up on the album.’ However, that’s just half the story. Friedman has
cropped up in all manner of unlikely places – as a world authority on synthesisers with people still checking out his YouTube videos to this day; an early pioneer of virtual reality gaming; a designer of musical playground equipment and writer of the soundtrack to beyond-cult British horror movie I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle. Surely his most surreal musical adventure was as the subject of a song by Half Man Half Biscuit (‘The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman’). ‘It was great, he’s a brilliant writer. I met Nigel [Blackwell] and the band at the Fringe in 2003, and he confessed he had “Well, Well,” Said the Rocking Chair.’ Friedman did the maths and soon realised he was only seven-years-old when Blackwell was conceived and wrote cheeky rebuttal ‘A Baker’s Tale’ in 2009. ‘I have a lot of respect for those guys and I feel like we have musically addressed each other’s place in the pop music i rmament,’ laughs Friedman. ■ Sweet Grassmarket, 8–19 Aug (not 13 & 14), 7.30pm, £20–£22 (£18–£20).