Would you care to introduce yourself?
We're Aggi Doom, and more personally, Claudia Nova, Scott Caruth, Joan Sweeney and Hillary Van Scoy.
How would you describe the music you make?
We're mostly new to our instruments, apart from Hillary who almost entirely spent her teenage years playing guitar in her bedroom. That probably informs a lot of the way we sound, it can be quite primitive and minimal but then we'll layer it up melodically on top.
We do listen to a lot of the bands that people have compared us to like Dolly Mixture, Kleenex or Grass Widow, but we never made sounding like anyone our priority, any similarity is pretty accidental. They're great bands but they're also noted "female" bands and it would be a shame to have ours and their music judged solely in terms of gender because that's not the whole story. We're always sharing music that we find with each other. Some people have commented on how different the A and B sides of our single are and maybe that's a reflection of that; we wouldn't want every song we made to sound like it came from exactly the same place.
How did you start out making music?
Joan: When me, Claudia and Scott were making some stage pieces for a club night we realised we really wanted to do the same sort of thing and were wanting to try out playing different instruments from each other. Hillary and me used to live together and wanted to play together for a while, but had been a bit too involved in other groups and things. It also seemed like a good idea to have someone who knew what they were doing on at least one of the instruments, plus we all had a really instant friendship so it went from there.
What process goes into the way you write songs?
Claudia: We tend to start off by improvising and then responding to something that one of us is playing. We focus on a musical phrase or beat that stands out and we build the song from that point. Usually I'll go away with a recording of the music and write some lyrics to fit it. I have a notebook full of disjointed phrases that I pull out if I'm stuck for inspiration. Sometimes one of the other band members has bits of lyrics too and we give each other suggestions as we go along. Each of us have input in pretty much every aspect of the songwriting.
What can people expect from your live shows?
We can be pretty shambolic sounding cos we're new, but we don't mind. The look of a show differs quite a lot depending on the occasion, we could be under acid clouds by volcanos in Ancient Aliens-style get-up or relaxing in our day clothes.
What are you all listening to at the moment?
Joan: I tend to get obsessed with a few songs on a loop moving in rotation. At the moment I'm mostly obsessed with Absolute Beginners/Bowie, Loner With A Boner/Black Randy and Dream/Minny Pops. The new French Kissing single Wild Woman just arrived in the post and I can see that becoming part of my loop soon.
Claudia: I'm the same. Lately I've just been listening to 'Blue Hotel' by Chris Isaak on repeat.
Joan: Do you need a hug?
Scott: I also tend to listen to one thing to death at a time which at the moment is Tears for Fears and Optimo's Fabric Live mix.
Hillary: I got perpetually locked into Thee Oh Sees' "The Master's Bedroom is Worth Spending a Night In" cos I finally got it about 4 months ago and have been listening to it on the road (Hillary is currently touring in America with Phat Trophies) - same with IAMX's Volatile Times; I have a little musical crush on Chris Corner... I also re-fell in love with Title TK by the Breeders recently- the songs are all so sporadically weird and kind of sweet; they're in my head quite a lot at odd moments...
What can we expect to see/hear from you in the future?
Single first (which is out on Soft Power, 28th May), then we're putting out a split tape with our friends Palms and hoping to do a little tour with them in August. We're pretty excited to get out of Glasgow for a while, not that we don't love it. I think after that we might try and just write more, practise more and maybe punt our songs around and see if anyone wants them.
Bring Me The Head by Aggi Doom SOFT006 by Soft Power
SoundCloud
Bandcamp
Soft Power Records
No comments:
Post a Comment