“Those magnificent magicians of radiophonic sound, who can create a symphony from a stairwell, a concert from a creaking hinge or a gargantuan G flat from a garden gate… The possibilities are endless. Howlround – as represented by founder member, Robin The Fog – join SNS Online to discuss the extraordinary lengths they go to create the most incredible, outer-worldly sounds and music.”
Presented for your approval, a very special Howlround edition of the long-running interview podcast series SNS Online, focusing on the work of everyone’s favourite tape-loop quintet. Recorded in July 2017, shortly after the release of A Creak In Time and just before our performance at Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker as part of The Delaware Road, the show is hosted by ever-affable and relentlessly energetic Nick Randell and looks back over a short but eventful career that started back in 2012 in the basement of Bush House. Also briefly features 6Music presenter Shawn Keaveney taking the mickey, but I forgive him.
Never one for doing things by halves, such was Nick’s enthusiasm for this show that he even recorded an accompanying ‘bite-sized’ episode by joining us at live performance in our favourite South London venue Iklectik for their ‘Sonic Waterloo’ series, also in July 2017. Features contributions from our friends Steven McInerney, Pascal Savy, Janine A’Bear and many more.
The resulting interviews capture a moment in time from last summer that already feels somewhat remote, and listening back to this double-dose of tape loop action one year on, I feel there are a few things I should clear up. Firstly, while I confidently describe our output as musique concréte on the show, the intervening months have found me wondering if I actually have permission to describe the music of Howlround using that particular term after all, especially as the past year has seen the project experiment increasingly with more chance and improvisation-based forms of composition. Secondly, since then Howlround has returned to being a solo operation as my esteemed colleague in tape Chris Weaver is currently pursuing other projects – though I fully intend to brow-beat him into working together again at some point. And finally, I should emphatically confirm that Altern 8’s ‘Activ 8’ remains one of my all-time favourite records and one of the main reasons I got into music in the first place – even if their day-glo rave antics might have been a little incongruous on Top of the Pops! Such clarifications aside, thank you for having me, Mr. Nick Randell, and you can investigate the long and varied career of SNS Online in more depth on their Soundcloud page here, as well as following him on his Facebook and Twitter pages. The series is a force for good in the world and I’m certainly very proud to be joining an lineage of guests that includes Hank Marvin, Biddy Baxter MBE and Carol Decker from T’Pau!
Robin The Fog 