Alphane Moon

Alphane Moon interviewed in Hayfever Magazine sometime in the 90s 1. When did you first develop an interest in music? We've both always been really interested in music as far back as school where things were taught formally. The guitar is something that I liked because you could learn to play it in your own way without having to do it 'properly'. The flute is also a lazy person's instrument which you can play sitting down! Both our families are enthusiastic about music. Although, I think it is true to say that they are less enthusiastic about ours and are less inclined to call it music.

Alphane Moon interviewed in Hayfever Magazine sometime in the 90s 1. When did you first develop an interest in music? We've both always been really interested in music as far back as school where things were taught formally. The guitar is something that I liked because you could learn to play it in your own way without having to do it 'properly'. The flute is also a lazy person's instrument which you can play sitting down! Both our families are enthusiastic about music.

Although, I think it is true to say that they are less enthusiastic about ours and are less inclined to call it music. 2. What music were you exposed to and what is your musical history? We messed about in a folk group and a sort of aspirational Sun-Dial band just after I left college...but it was all too terrible and didn't work...I even did a few solo stints in a local folk club-the less said about that the better! It wasn't until we simultaneously discovered the fourtrack ,the underground and unemployment that any musical history worth thinking about began. 3. What was the intention to form 'Alphane Moon'? There are two reasons that led us to form Alphane Moon, three possibly. We had been playing in another group with a friend and we generally just messed about.

We played acoustic folk music and went busking several times. It was going nowhere really for a lot of reasons. Anyway, we suddenly discovered the four track. I had come in to some money so we blew it on one.

About the same time, we discovered the underground We started reading fanzines like Organ and listening to tapes on labels like Mick Magic's Music & Elsewhere, Betterdays, Acid Tapes. All of this occurred at a time of being unemployed. All these hidden things now stressed how you could do things yourself. You can make things happen.

Well, we thought we would try. It was [and still is, more than ever] an opportunity for us to be positive and less passive, less material. So, originally Alphane Moon was to be the magazine and simultaneously it became the first tape/single. I should say how slow we are with the magazine.

It is something we are sorry about. Now is an especially busy time for us and it has been pushed to the side lines. But it will happen. It is creeping out on to the internet in a really primitive way. 4.

What was the intention to found 'Our glassie Azoth'? We were renting an old cow shed in a place called Mydroilyn some years ago and it was really quiet and peaceful. We were down in the bottom of a valley and although it was quiet you could see a lot of activity on the hills, tractors, sheep being herded, cows etc, also the light on the fields and the shapes of the clouds casting themselves on the slopes. The idea was to do a tape for an Italian compilation on the themes of iron and or water and entropy. The label was, if I remember, Contaminated Productions.

We were able to play very loudly and you could almost see the sound-waves rolling out in to the valley and hills in the evening. The music was intended to be only four minutes but we got enthralled and carried away. We thought that the music was perhaps not the same as Alphane Moon and we didn't want people to get it and be disappointed. If truth be known, we thought it could make people not like Alphane Moon.

So we decided to be cowardly and change the name just for that tape. The fluidity and vitriolic edge of the music is denoted by the alchemical [cf Raymond Lull] appellation, 'Our glassie Azoth'. 5. Are the band members identical? I'm afraid that the short answer to that is yes. But the way we go about things is different.

Given that the two do have different identities but are essentially more similar than dissimilar, it is hard to analyse where the differences are. With Our glassie Azoth thing's are more amorphous whereas the Alphane Moon stuff is likely to be more traditional folk psychedelia. Our glassie Azoth is a more solitary thing though Ruth does play her flute on occasion. Our glassie Azoth is more vitriolic than Alphane Moon ever could be and Alphane Moon will have vocals and songs even whereas Our glassie Azoth will not.

It is a fine line. 6. I compared the music of 'Alphane Moon' to that of Flying Saucer Attack, even if there's a little influence, you don't like this comparison. How would you describe your music and where do your influences come from? I don't mind the Flying Saucer Attack comparison at all. I don't think it's that accurate though.

I really love some of their stuff-the way the vocals are mixed down. The first album really. But, if I didn't like the comparison it is ,I suppose, because we are inveterate worriers. Our music has been knocking about on the peripheries of the underground for awhile and in its earliest guise is contemporaneous with Flying Saucer Attack.

I don't want people to think we are mimicking them or are aiming to be like them. I can't see the semblance anyway We only heard their stuff after we had finished 'The Echoing Grove'. Anyway its no big deal. If people think we are as good as Flying Saucer Attack then that's nice too as I must admit I play their records a lot The most important thing for us is for people to be able to hear our music and to enjoy it.

I think underlying all the music we make is an organic feel and a folk idiom. That's how I feel about it. But I know how unsatisfactory an answer that is. 7. Listening to Our glassie Azoth there are obviously different influences working? I'm sure, a lot of people are tempted to throw you into the big 'space-rock/pop' pot.

To my opinion your music shows much more depth than all this 3rd rate 'My Bloody Valentine'-klones on dope who grow like mushrooms after a rain. These bands music is like sticky marmalade you put in your ears, acoustic wall papers, that can sing the word 'distortion'-hope, I'm not too unfair, but aren't 'Windy and Carl' somekind like 'sonny and cher' after taking some downers and smoke some dope. I know, its polemic, but most of these bands, that release dozen of 7"s on tiny labels, do not only have nothing to say, but they don't have nothing that's worth to listen to. Its some kind of hyped acoustic smog-and its so horizontal.

Your music [Our glassie Azoth] has a lot more to offer. In your best moments it sounds like you are playing a piece that originally has been written by Karl-Heinz Stockhausen for a string orchestra, on ten distorted guitars. And this sounds as transparent as well as mystic like the stuff stockhausen wrote in the late seventies/early eighties [hymnen, sternklang etc]. It's amazing! Could you comment these partly polemic statements? So many of these ultra rare ltd edition 7"s are expensive and we just don't have the finances to buy a lot of them.

In fact, most of that stuff has passed us by. A friend taped some Windy and Carl for us and it seemed a bit saccharin to me. It was ok, but nothing to write home about. So many groups at the moment seem to be name checking people like Can and Neu and Silver Apples and what have you.

I should perhaps be embarrassed to say that we have no records of theirs. It would only be as a result of thinking about them now that we might look them up. It seems to me a hard thing to try and analyse how adequately meaningful something is. Generally it depends on your background and what you are normally exposed to.

So I couldn't comment on whether they have something to say or not. With Our glassie Azoth we try and make music that is of itself and of a moment out of time. When we make the music it is often with our one effects box gone mad, feeding back on itself. We can push it in a certain direction, reorder things, squeeze and reshape them afterwards. But at the best times the music then made comes of itself.

It feels on an edge, which we enjoy. Whether the music is saying anything is, I think, besides the point. What Our glassie Azoth aspires to ,though, is a freshness and a singularity. Our glassie Azoth aims at being experiential, pure. Our glassie Azoth would like to be a numinous sound.

But we cannot seek to emulate a style or genre ; that would be an artificial construction. Form is an implicit part of our sound: or really, our sound is made of its form. That sounds fatuous. Essentially it has to be 'out there'. Yeh, I have a tape of Hymnen from some years ago when it was performed at the Proms.

I don't listen to a lot of modern 'classical' music now though. But as a result of writing this I may start to. Years ago I went through a period of listening to Steve Reich and Glass and Stockhausen as well, also the Ganyalin trio a free jazz outfit form Russia [I believe]. Around that same time I listened to Alban Berg and serial music or twelvetone stuff.

That was a very influential time in my life. Possibly that music and its structures may have influenced how I hear and make music now. In the middle of all of that I heard Vaughan Williams' s Mass In G Minor and Five Mystical Songs. His music ,with Ernest Tomlinson, Delius ,Moeran and Butterworth, well, I'd love to say they were influential.

But that also would be fatuous- maybe? It is most likely that only I can hear the resemblance. 8. What artists would you state as influences over the years? The records and tapes we listen to? If that is the question that is easy to answer. How far they are really influential is beyond me, though. I am afraid they will make us sound like unreconstructed hippies! Ozrics, Hawkwind, COB, Oroonies, Wooden Baby, Robin Williamson & Incredible String Band, Martin Carthy, Sandy Denny, Bevis Frond, Muzicas, Sheila Chandra, Shiv Kumar Sharma, that sort of thing.

The new Alphane Moon stuff aspires to be a culmination of Vaughan Williams/Steve Hillage/Nick Drake. Whether it will ever sound like that is another thing altogether. There are other less tangible influences, too. Being immersed in the recondite literature of alchemy is an influence.

Its symbols of self-transformation lend themselves to Our glassie Azoth. A literary influence is the writing of Thomas and Henry Vaughan [17th century Welsh writers] and their ideas about innocence, nature and 'retreat'. Alphane Moon have also used the poetry of Mike Burrows on the single 'To Almandine'. It's well possible his poetry will surface again on the next tape.

The biggest influence in all of the music is hiraeth; a sense of time passing and stillness. 9. What releases of 'Alphane Moon/Our glassie Azoth can we look forward to? SpifFing Records [New York]will imminently be releasing The Echoing Grove on CD.[This should be Summer 1997].They are a fabulous little label and did the A Circle of Four ep. Its just one guy and he puts loads of attention into what he's doing so we are looking forward to that immensely. I think circa July/August or Autumn Plate Lunch will be issuing a vinyl version of Our glassie Azoth.

Plate Lunch have recently released some stuff by Conrad Schnitzler. This music is really still. For me it's a real discovery, I know he's been about for donkey's years. So, again, we are thrilled about that. We were hoping to put out a 7" split with Mourning Cloak.

That hasn't worked out. Generally their finances didn't 'happen' the same time as ours and the whole thing went up and then down. We were also going to do a collaborative piece with them...which might have been interesting...we haven't heard from them for a while so I guess it's off for now. Our glassie Azoth have contributed a one minute track to a compilation cd run by Thorazine [that should be ready now; but it isn't].

The Cd consists of seventy one minute pieces of noise/experimental things. The next Alphane Moon release will be hopefully ready for release this Autumn. Yew Dark on Daze will be on the Colourful Clouds for Acoustics label. This is the label ran by Azusa Plane. We are well pleased to be asked to do something for him!! Everything is all a bit go at the moment.

It seems also that Our glassie Azoth will be having a CD, Euterpe Sequence, put out on the Australian Camera Obscura Label this Autumn/Winter. Again, this is a great new label. It's got stuff by Alastair Galbraith and Black Swan Network coming out on it so, as you can imagine, we are excited about the prospect of that,too. There is a slim chance that we may hit on some money this summer...if we do then we will be releasing something on our Oggum label. A lot of people 'bought' advance copies of the Mourning Cloak split 7" and so we feel inclined to do something like that for them, as well as ourselves. 9.

Any chances to see/hear one of your bands live? Well there were suggestions about that possibility. I would like us to. But I have to say I think it is unlikely this year. We'd need to work out how to do stuff live that we do using all our bits and bobs on the four track.

We are looking for someone to play tabla with us right now. The possibility of attending CMJ in New York has been put to us. I think we won't be able to get a tabla player from around Lampeter. But also our nerves may give out.

I would like to, one day. One day, perhaps.. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL..