Tapes in the Attic: Oliver Cherer Interview

The omnipresent Oliver Cherer tells all on his sublime old-into-new solo album, I Feel Nothing Most Days, and his chameleonic career to date

It’s hard to know where to start with summarising the creative life of the Croydon-birthed and now Hastings-based Oliver Cherer, especially when he himself doesn’t know when to stop.

Having initially cut his musical teeth in the 80s (via goth outfit Kiss The Blade) and 90s (within big beat ensemble Cooler), Cherer’s last sixteen or so years have delivered a body of work, across various guises, that have established him as a veritable micro-label-backed renaissance man.

Between approximately 2003 and 2014 much of Cherer’s divergent work appeared incrementally beneath his Dollboy canopy; taking in ambient minimalism, folktronica, art-pop, folk-rock and musique concrète conceptualism along the way. However, Cherer’s artistry has gone into overdrive in the last five or so years – with the crucial enablement of imprints such as Deep Distance, Polytechnic Youth, Clay Pipe Music, Wayside & Woodland, Horror Pop Sounds, Modern Aviation and Second Language – under a variety of more genre-centric aliases.

Hence, amongst other things, Cherer has slipped out primordial-electro nuggets as The Assistant, freewheeling psych-rock with Rhododendron, motorik groovescapes through Australian Testing Labs Inc., bucolic psychogeographical explorations with Gilroy Mere, abstract hauntology courtesy of the still-living Dollboy pseudonym and ornate singer-songwriter detours credited to his given name. All have come with the bracing feeling of a man truly hitting his prime. This is all before we even get to Cherer’s role within Second Language super-group Silver Servants and his notable guest spots on recent records from The Home Current, Keiron Phelan, Piano Magic and Neotropic.

This year seems set to be no different in terms of productivity, with another string of studio statements due to hit our ears from Cherer. The first to arrive is a third ‘official’ solo album, in the shape of the sublime I Feel Nothing Most Days via Second Language. Rummaging pensively into the lost shadowy corners of lesser-known early-80s wares from vintage Factory, Cherry Red and Rough Trade artists as well as reconjuring the spells of David Crosby’s blissfully impressionistic If Only I Could Remember My Name LP – with plaintive electric guitars (one formerly belonging to The Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly, no less), rudimentary drum machines, lush tiered vocals, soprano saxophone, Fender Rhodes and assorted percussion – the album exquisitely sets scenes that are deeply melancholy yet warmly comforting. Whilst there are many exceptional Cherer releases out there already for late-comers to find, I Feel Nothing Most Days is certainly an outstanding place to begin a listening relationship with this uniquely gifted artisan. 

Tracked down via email to his home-studio den (as per self-portrait picture above), Oliver Cherer had plenty to say about how I Feel Nothing Most Days came together, as well as being open to accounting for his recent highly-prolific years.

Can you briefly explain how I Feel Nothing Most Days began some of its life in the early-80s and belatedly evolved into your first album of 2019?

Well, at school I was a bit obsessed with the Cherry Red compilation Pillows & Prayers, particularly the Ben Watt stuff. I remember working out “Some Things Don’t Matter” and busking it in the shopping centre in Gloucester. I was so into that stuff, all the jazzy chords and echoed vocals. But we were all punk rockers at that point, and it felt like that kind of thing was ‘verboten’. So, I was writing these songs, or bits of songs – I never finished anything in those days, but I never played them to anyone. Then, when I’d left school and moved into a squat in the Elephant, I acquired a four-track cassette recorder and made a series of demos which, again never saw light of day. Some of them were a bit rudimentary! Anyway, they went into a shoebox and I joined a goth band and forgot about them.

Cut to 30 years later and one of these tapes resurfaces in a box in my attic down here in St Leonards and I thought I’d use some of the sounds for something new. I was doing lots of stuff for Polytechnic Youth at the time so was going to make something a bit Throbbing Gristle-like or Berlinish – I was more interested in the lo-fi drum boxes and Casiotone samples than the songs. But I never really made it work until Glen at Second Language started talking about Disc de Crepuscule and Factory Benelux and putting together a 2L comp based on his memory of those things. So, I had these old songs and it all just crystallised at that point really. I was only going to contribute one song but you know, you get on a roll. In the end there were enough to consider pushing through for a whole album so that’s what we did. Oddly, the first song didn’t make it in the end.

Was returning to Second Language for this solo-billed record a natural fit in both terms of the introspective temperament it shares with your previous outing there with Sir Ollife Leigh and Other Ghosts and from knowing how much of fan label head Glen Johnson is of the sonic cross-references that have been made within?

Actually yeah, knowing what Glen loves definitely made a difference. We talked a lot about Vini Reilly with mutual enthusiasm – I’ve always loved that guitar sound [in The Durutti Column], always had strats. I kind of restricted myself to a simple palette of technology from that period too. I mean, I didn’t have a manifesto as such, but I pretty much went with old drum machines, a space echo and electric guitar. And it was very deliberately bedroom too. I even did some of the bass parts on a guitar with the bottom end turned up just as I might have done back in 1984. It’s pretty bloody lo-fi!

What else from that era seeped into the album’s DNA?

So yeah, Ben Watt and Vini Reilly for sure but there’s always a bit of Robert Wyatt in there I suppose. The less obvious influence would have to be David Crosby though. There are two tunes where I used his EBDGAD tuning. I’ve always done that, tried out other players’ tunings and techniques. I only used it those two times though and one of those sounds like “Guinevere”!

Where do you think some of the jazzier elements came from, particularly on “A Small Town”?

Ah well, “A Small Town” sounds to me like that Crosby tuning but it isn’t, it’s actually standard tuning. But I’d been deliberately writing in that jazzy style which I totally got from “Some Things Don’t Matter” by Ben Watt and probably a bit from Joni Mitchell and Robert Wyatt. They’re all making pop music in a jazz style rather than yer actual jazz though. The first music I loved was jazz – different to this of course; it was a Duke Ellington big band record from 1959 or so and a bit of Charlie Parker from my dad’s LPs. I’ve often joked that I only make the music I do because I don’t know how to make jazz.  Half-joke perhaps. Anyway, I’m not claiming this as jazz – just a bit jazzy in parts. Faux jazz. I’m not helping, am I?!

“Seberg” makes me think of a lost collaboration between Talk Talk and Prefab Sprout… can you hear that too?

Ha! I love that idea. I can’t pretend I know the Prefab Sprout stuff, apart form the hits of course, but I see where you’re coming from. Somewhere between bleakness and pop? Yeah, I’ll take that!

The closing “The Girl On Top of the Tree” almost has a hymnal feel and seems deliberately set apart from the rest of the record. What were you going for there?

That’s an old lyric. Old song. I mean one of those started in about 83/84. The record is a mix of songs started back then and things written since. Some are a bit of both. “The Girl…” has a weird lyric. I don’t remember what it was about and seems quite ‘stream of consciousness’ – very teenage! But it felt genuine, so I didn’t fix it up with my older, cynical sensibility. I think it works okay. Not all my early efforts made it. Some are so toe-curling they had to go.

Actually, and this appears on other tracks too, I finally tried a technique I’d been thinking about for years but never found the right place for. I had this idea that you might be able to employ a sort of musical ‘pointillism’ like Seurat did with paint to give what I thought would be a shimmering musical impressionism. It didn’t turn out quite so ethereal as I’d imagined but that’s the nature of experiments eh. What I did was play monophonic guitar lines on separate tracks and stacked them up so that they became chords – a bit like a pizzicato string section I suppose. So, these tracks have no chords in the traditional sense. I’m pleased with how it turned out though it’s a bugger to play live and I’ve still to get that original idea really working.

Who did you draft into help you assemble the final recordings? What did they bring to the table in terms of direction?

Ah well, Riz Maslen (Neotropic) is a constant. She always gives so much more than I ask for and is always a joy to work with. Great singer. Claudia Barton (Gamine, Claudia Skies, Edith Walks) did some vocals on an early version of “A Small Town” which got scrapped but I loved what she’d done so I spun that back into the later version. Darren Morris, who plays keys for Steve Mason did me a lovely Fender Rhodes part on that tune too. And of course, Elaine Edwards’ beautiful soprano sax is that extra voice that provides the final lift to turn it into an album I couldn’t really have made entirely on my own. I did sound for her band Afrit Nebula and just asked her after the show if she fancied playing on the record. So easy to work with and just ace. And lastly, I got Fritz Catlin from 23 Skidoo to do a better job of the extra percussion than I had been doing.

Vocally, I Feel Nothing Most Days appears like a very richly-crafted extension of what you were doing with 2017’s last ‘official’ solo album The Myth of Violet Meek and what you contributed to Keiron Phelan’s recent Peace Signs LP, albeit set against a more minimalist musical palette. How much thought did you put into that side of recording arrangements?

I have never thought of myself as a singer really. I often struggle to find the right key or approach. I was determined to get that stuff right this time and I think that this is probably my best set of vocal performances yet, on the whole. I think I’m getting better but I’m never going to be Marvin Gaye! I was pleased with “Most Days” actually. It was improvised, first take and I just knew I wasn’t going to top it. It’s not perfect by any means but it was a good moment and felt authentic, so I went with it and that’s what’s on the record.

Who do you think has influenced you most as a singer over the years? Some have suggested Robert Wyatt, others have made favourable comparisons with Syd Barrett…

Ah yes, it’s the English Accent. Home counties anyway. I’ve been getting Robert Wyatt and Syd Barrett for years now and I am a fan of both but I honestly think its that flat English accent that does it. In my head I just sing the way I talk and don’t know any other way. I’d find singing in an American or transatlantic accent so embarrassing. There’s a bit in Tracey Thorn’s book where she says something about the American accent sounding authentic for pop or something and that the English accent sounds twee, but I honestly couldn’t do it any other way. I’m a middle-class, white, home counties Englishman and that’s just what I sound like. I’m really labouring this point, aren’t I?!

Lyrically, it’s one of your most poetically downcast affairs, are you voicing the connected thoughts of one or more recurring characters who appear lost in a seaside town?  Is it a concept album by accident or design?

Oh, I don’t know really. I thought I was evoking my past, squatting in the Elephant in the 80s and the grey, rainy ennui of that period but of course I’m rewriting and expanding on those themes as a middle-aged bloke who lives in a seaside town. You know, “A Small Town” starts with a street with no trees, which is where I live now and a milk round, which is clearly rooted in the past. No one has milk rounds anymore, right? But it definitely felt like it was all part of a train of thought. If there was ever any actual concept it was really about finishing or just making the record I wish I’d been able to make in the mid-80s.

Actually, I think that ‘lyrically downcast’ is a fair point. The words for “Most Days” came from an exercise with students at the college where I teach music. They were all asked various questions like “what makes you smile?” or “what’s the first thing you see when you wake up?” etc. and when I cleared up their note paper after they’d gone the entire lyric for that song was all that was written on one of them. It looked like the saddest ‘haiku’ I’d ever seen so when I came up with the guitar part, I just improvised over it using those words. It’s pretty bleak. I never worked out who actually wrote them either.

Latterly for your more song-based albums, it feels like you tapped into a specifically English sense of melancholy, is this something that you are mindful of?

“English melancholy”? Yeah. I think that might even have been a working title at one stage! Totally aware of that. I’m not nationalistic or even very patriotic but I am completely aware of where I come from and my Englishness. I guess that being aware of it probably drives it to some extent, but it is who I am so hopefully it’s authentic.

Given that you have been putting out two or three albums and sundry short form releases in various guises annually for the past few years with a high-level of quality control, do you think that you are currently in a purple patch of your creative life-cycle?

Well, my Englishness ought to prevent me from answering that I suppose. But actually, yes, I probably do. It has been pointed out to me on numerous occasions that being, to some extent a musical dilettante doesn’t do me any favours, but I honestly don’t really care. I just follow my nose. I like lots of different styles so want to investigate most of them. And really, the thing is, I’ve been doing this so long that I have piles of ideas on hard drives and CDs going way back, so it’s rare that anything is written in a completely contemporaneous way. I have lots of material to draw on. My Australian Testing Labs LP, for instance was put together in a week from proposal to delivery but really half of it existed in one form or another already so just needed compiling, finishing and mixing. And of course, this new one’s the same. I didn’t write it all last year, you know.

Being so prolific, do you ever worry that some things could have been given more space and momentum to reach a wider audience? I don’t necessarily mean in terms of chasing commercial success but more in terms of a deeper recognition outside your immediate circle of followers…

Yes, for sure. I wish the last two hadn’t come out two weeks apart. It felt like Violet Meek went relatively unnoticed compared to Green Line and that’s disappointing as I’m equally proud of both. I’m going to make more effort this time around, even if only to give the different label a fair crack.

From your most recent run of wares under various aliases, which do you feel most proud of and which do you think have been overlooked?

You know, I really couldn’t say. In 2017 I made the best three records I’d ever made – well I thought so anyway, and I’m still proud of them all, really.

I’m particularly fond of your electro-primitivism detours with The Assistant. Is there any prospect of making a full album under that umbrella or does that sonic persona work best as a single/EP-led operation?

Well, there sort of was, only it was disguised as a Czech archival thing on Alan Outram’s Horror Pop Sounds and it was spelled differently! I did put an album together, but it got split into smaller chunks and went out as limited lathe-cuts. Some of it anyway. Actually, I’ve drifted away from synths recently. I’ve been rediscovering the guitar, but I know I shall drift back at some point. I’m a butterfly you know!

How important has the support of labels like Second Language, Polytechnic Youth and Clay Pipe Music been in sustaining your creative ecosystem? Would you still be stockpiling so much material if you didn’t have them to put out your wares? Do you feel part of extended-family network?

Now that’s an interesting question. It certainly feels like family. Glen, Frances and Dom are all mates and it never feels like business. I think I’d still be writing stuff without them, but they have a huge hand in crystallising ideas into projects. Having said that, I have plenty of projects without a home. You know, stuff that wouldn’t work on any of those labels. I have this fantasy of making the best record I can, getting Phil Pio to lathe-cut a single copy, doing a proper sleeve and everything and then just putting it on my shelf and moving onto the next thing. Not release it. Ever. You know, a kind of proof that it’s only about the music.  Not sure my ego could handle it of course. It’ll probably remain a fantasy. We’ll see.

I hear that you have a sequel to the Gilroy Mere album in the offing for Clay Pipe Music and a collaborative release planned for Modern Aviation. Can you say more about them?

Yes, that’s right. I think the Clay Pipe one is a way off yet as Frances has a couple of LPs on her schedule before mine, but it is finished and is ready to go. I don’t want to give too much away but it is based on field recordings made at railway stations lost to Dr Beeching’s axe in the 60s. Somewhere between Ghost Stations and Green Line I suppose.

The Modern Aviation one is a psychogeographic thing, a collaboration with Isan’s Robin Saville and was, similarly based on field recordings made at Sizewell nuclear power station near where he lives. Both these records have been lovely to do as they’ve involved so much travel for research. It’s a lovely place, England. In parts.

There’s also an odd spoken words LP in the offing too. It’s rather bizarrely me reading a short story by Pete Crowther set to some music I made for it. It’s already a really busy year again.

How important to your musical productivity was moving to Hastings? It’s gaining a reputation as an affordable arts mecca…

Ah, Hastings, yes what can I say? It’s a complicated discussion, I think. People like me move here because it’s cheap but it’s really the poverty here that allows that to happen. “Cheap Holidays in other peoples’ misery” and all that.

But certainly, my productivity went up exponentially once I got started down here. My street is chock full of musicians and artists and there are things happening all the time. I’m surrounded by people doing stuff constantly. It’s great. It probably sounds irritating but really, it’s all happening down here. Lots of doers.

As somebody with such a large body of work under their belt, do you have any artistic ambitions left to fulfil?

Ha! I’m not sure I’ve ever had any real ambitions. Actually no, I did. For years I just wanted to make an album but once I’d done that, I’ve pretty much worked project to project, I think. Little goals, you know. It’s just about the music. I was talking to Glen at 2L about this though. I think, just once, it’d be nice to record an album properly, in a big studio with a good producer, engineer and a brilliant band. I’m happy enough being an amateur home studio type but just once it’d be interesting to try that costume out for size.

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