Josaka meets Sleep Room
Tucked away in the corner of Great Expectations, hiding from the pub quiz and the Thursday night revellers, Josaka spoke to Nigel Weston, Ryan Cook and Alex Bowen; three quarters of Berkshire band Sleep Room, about their recent CD 'Gone' and how they managed to release it themselves.
'Gone' is a huge record, full of washes of guitars and melodies and swooping crescendos and decrescendos, in a mid-period Radiohead/Witness (remember them?)/Pink Floyd type freak out way. It is the band's fourth release.
Guitarist Nigel explained how he and fellow guitarist and lead singer Ryan met;
Nigel: It was quite bizarre, I had advertised for a guitarist and arranged to meet this guy who was due to come down to rehearsal. A few days before I was in a restaurant, and there was this weird looking guy in front of me in the queue, and I nearly pushed in front of him by accident, so I kind of apologised and stuff. But he had a quite distinctive face. And I remember when this guy turned up for rehearsal later in the week I was like - I'm sure I've seen him somewhere before - and it turned out to be the guy from the restaurant. So there you are. Rich [King, drummer] was with us and then we went through a number of bassists before meeting Alex and getting him involved. I think that in Alex we've really found someone who fits the bill perfectly and kind of completes the Sleep Room sound.
Josaka: Your sound is very distinctive throughout the new record. How do you write your stuff? As a band or individually?
Ryan: Normally Nigel or me will come up with something outside of the band, and then we'll get together and we'll sort of jam it out and see where it goes. We get kind of a feel of the music and the overlapping melodies and stuff, then I'll take it away and try to put some kind of structure together, piece it together try to give it some sort of cohesion
Nigel: The lyrics sort of come quite late on, like we'll sort out the music and then Ryan will start to think about it, you have to have a certain amount of music there to hang the lyrics on it.
Ryan: When we were doing our early stuff I didn't really think about the lyrics at all. It was always like the vocals were another instrument and would be more like a melody which added to the overall sound rather than the main bit of the song. We like bands like Mogwai, who are instrumental anyway, where you've got the dynamic and the classical element, the way they build with crescendos and everything.
Nigel: Mogwai would be the best band in the world if they had vocals
Ryan: Yeah, I think you need the human element to latch onto, and to connect with. I mean I liked the idea at the time of trying to make the lyrics not too personal to shut out a lot of people, not make it too specific, but not make it too vague to make it completely meaningless
Josaka: On this new record there seems to be a theme that goes all the way through; the idea of the end of something, the end of a relationship.
Ryan: Yeah, well I think on this one we decided to change the way we did things a little bit, maybe change the way we thought about the lyrics, bringing the vocals to the forefront for a change. I mean, Nigel is a very technical guitarist, and I think it's a shame when you listen to music and the music tends to be in the background, and you only really notice the vocalist - I mean it's all about the vocalist and you sort of miss out the music, maybe you get it later, but you do miss it sometimes. I never wanted to drown the band out with the singing, but on this one we did want to move it forward because I think we were probably too conscious of that sort of thing before.
And around the time I was writing the lyrics, someone who's quite close to me was going through a bit of shit in his relationship, and he's not normally a particularly emotional guy, but when I looked at what was going on with him at the time, it really struck me, you know?
Nigel: There's more cohesion on this one [the new record] too I think, with lyrical content, like you said there is a running theme and lyrically we are much happier with it so you don't mind putting it to the forefront.
Alex: I think the record is more accessible because of it. I don't think that was the intention but it probably has helped tighten it up a little bit
Ryan: When we first started we had a bass player who was very conscious of the fact that me and Nigel wanted to take things a little bit extravagant and pretentious, go off on one for ten minutes, but with Alex's playing I think we're more locked into what we're trying to achieve rather than going into some insanely long jam all the time.
Going back to what you were saying about a theme though, you're right - I was interested in getting the idea across of abandonment, and all these different situations where it can happen and how people deal with it. There's not actually a huge amount of lyrics, I sent them across to the rest of the guys on email for them to have a look at after I'd written them because I think it's important for everyone in the band to be conscious of what they're playing; really the lyrics are representing each band member and it's important each of us are aware of that I think
Alex: Yeah, I think that's the first time I'd ever really considered it really, with other bands I hadn't taken too much interest in the lyrics, but it's good to be able to properly know the songs, rather than just the bass line. I think you then can have much more of an idea of what's required of you.
Josaka: So you self released this? How did you go about it?
Alex: We signed up with the PPL with the name of our record label (in our case, Mechanical Republic Records) and they get you onto a database to which you upload your music. When you want to do a release, you buy a barcode from an organisation called GS1, and then you can release the music. When you upload your music, it gives your music a unique ID and then it's registered with the PPL, which gives you these different benefits. So if it gets any play on the radio or whatever, then it gets clocked and we hopefully see something come of it.
Ryan: We got the barcode for our release, so you can stick it on Amazon, HMV and you actually get it sold properly, which is good. We had to do that to get it on Spotify too. It's like officialising your release.
Alex: I mean it's not that difficult to set up a record label as an entity - anyone can do it
Ryan: It is bunce though. Costs a bit
Alex: Yeah, not a lot, but also takes a bit of time, you can't just bosh it out
Ryan: Because we've set up a record label, and signed up to GS1 for barcodes, it means that we can provide a service as a label for other bands, so if another band comes along or we see a band that we like, we can say to them, well, we can't give you any fucking money, but we can legitimise your product. It was that sort of idea, that if we ever wanted to expand - and I think it's something we're interested in - it gives us an ability to do that.
Nigel: I mean it's a vehicle for us to release our own stuff, but there is also a desire for a bit of a communal thing.
Ryan: Yeah the communal thing is very much an idea. I mean, we run a rehearsal space in Hurst and I like the idea of all the bands who practise down there getting together and becoming a bit of a community and sort of helping each other out under this umbrella of Mechanical Republic. Anyway, that's another discussion!
Sleep Room's 'Gone' is now available and they will be playing the album in full at the Oakford Social Club in Reading on Wednesday 14 April
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