The Trains Have Gone: Gilroy Mere Interview

To mark the release of new LP Adlestrop, the real Gilroy Mere talks to Stewart Gardiner about Clay Pipe Music, the Beeching Report and avoiding nostalgia

With Adlestrop, Oliver Cherer once again adopts the guise of Gilroy Mere for a second LP on Clay Pipe Music. It’s a record that not only continues in the transport-related conceptual vein of The Green Line, but also draws upon Cherer’s varied output under different names. That he does so without watering down the Gilroy Mere aesthetic feels less like a precarious balancing act than a natural response to the subject matter. Adlestrop specifically refers to one of the many railway stations that were victim to the Beeching cuts in the 1960s. The album engages not only with the place itself (as it is now), but also its evocation in Edward Thomas’s poem of the same name from the early 20th century (as it was then). Cherer is concerned with the passage of time – and its attendant ambiguities – rather than climbing aboard the nostalgia train.

Bucolic avant-garde opener “Appendix 2” illustrates how Adlestrop distinguishes itself from surrounding underground musical currents. It feels like a lightbulb moment perfectly realised, one that unlocks the rest of the album. The track has Cherer recite the names of stations from the Beeching Report, set to field recordings and pastoral ambience. It is almost Joycean in its poetic treatment of a list of names, with the listener as passenger moving through time. Modernity is the chosen mode of transport here.

Where does Oliver Cherer end and Gilroy Mere begin?

Subconsciously I think Oliver Cherer is distinct from Gilroy Mere simply by being the one that sings, though I realise that this is not quite true. GM came about because I wanted something that sounded very English for the Green Line record, but I think that this new one seems to be pulling all my strands together into one place now. There’s perhaps less space between the different projects than I had imagined. I had thought that the various ‘projects’ needed boxing and labeling for different audiences, but I’ve realized recently that that isn’t necessarily the case. There are even people who buy everything!

Your Gilroy Mere work for Clay Pipe Music has to date taken bus routes and train lines as inspiration. Did you intend to pursue such conceptual frameworks with this particular musical guise, for this particular label? Or did it just happen naturally?

Actually I think that almost everything I’ve done has had some kind of framework or concept behind it, however loose. But you’re right, that has come to the fore a bit more recently. I know Frances likes to work that way so I’m sure she’s had an influence and the records I’ve been doing with Glen at Second Language have all been somewhat conceptual – in the case of the new Second Language record it’s ‘a rainy Wednesday afternoon in Brussels, 1982’ – an oblique concept but one that truly underpins the material. I guess concept albums no longer have to involve other worlds and Roger Dean covers!

What is it about these subjects that has provided such rich source material for you?

Well, I know it doesn’t look like it but I really don’t like the idea of being a nostalgist. I don’t think ‘the old days were better’ and I don’t live in the past. What I am interested in though is the way our heritage helps to define or form who and where we are now. Old railway stations remain like scars that tell of past lives and landscapes and histories. Even on Green Line, where I’m really dealing with memories rather than artefacts – the fact that it’s a living memory is interesting to me – it informs who I am and hopefully others who remember too.

I am also very aware that there is something of a hauntology backlash gathering pace. It is very easy to drop nostalgic titles onto bits of atmospheric music in the hope that they evoke ghosts in some way and I can see why people would maybe reject that. There’s also a tendency towards the zealous use of old or ‘vintage’ kit, the fetishizing of analogue synths, tape echoes and the like, even recording to tape. Of course, I’m completely guilty of all that too though I have just moved on to a bit of vector synthesis and a dusting of FM – I’m almost into the 90s now!

But I think it’s a mistake to dismiss hauntology as being old hat – there’s lazy art and amazing art in all areas and certainly in amongst the uninspired there is a great deal of great new music too. You celebrate a good deal of it at Concrete Islands so I know you’ll agree.

I think maybe it’s my age that makes me interested in these subjects. I’ve lived long enough to actually have these old memories and to see a timeline and all the stuff dotted along it. Trains had compartments when I was a child and there were tube trains that seemed to have been running since the 30s and these things were not considered old fashioned or unusual. I live in an old house that has a history. My street has kerb stones with marks left by bath chair hire stations. The unnoticed fading marks of our history. They’re everywhere aren’t they?

Does Clay Pipe and indeed Frances’s artwork bring something out in your music that wouldn’t occur elsewhere?

That’s an interesting question. It’s definitely a consideration that is informing my next move. I can see a third instalment with a similar cover – the shadowy figure in a window with reflections. I really don’t want to be typecast as the bloke who does transport records though. The truth is that I have lots of ideas all being worked on bit by bit and any one of them could turn into a Clay Pipe record but I do wonder if my decisions will now be informed by the prospect of another beautiful Frances Castle sleeve. I don’t see it as a problem anyway. Why should I, they’re beautiful!?

The Green Line was actually commissioned by Frances – that sounds a bit grand but she came to me to ask if I’d like to do something and I know that the prospect of one of her covers was definitely part of the attraction for me. The finished sleeve art, which came sometime after I delivered the LP was just stunning, probably my favourite up to that time (though I do love Plaint of Lapwing and Autre Directions a lot). Adlestrop happened quite naturally and without influence from Frances but the artwork she created for it has definitely made me think that there could be a third in the series. I was going to stop at this one but the draw of her artwork makes me think – just one more maybe. We’ll see.

Adlestrop is a lovely album. When I said this to you prior to the interview, you replied that you were experiencing “real trepidation over this release” and were relieved folks were starting to like it. What is it about Adlestrop that concerns you? Is there perhaps a lot of expectation on this as a follow up to Green Line? It has since sold out on pre-orders, so I imagine you must be feeling a little bit easier?

Ha! I wish the selling out had eased my worried mind! That makes it worse.  It sold out to people who hadn’t heard it yet. They could still hate it. I think that what worries me is, as you suggest, people will say that it’s not as good as the last one. I’ve been around long enough now for people to be able to say “I prefer his early stuff”. I know it’ll happen at some point and I guess I worry that my ego isn’t up to it! I should shut up and be grateful that some people seem to like what I do. Certainly, so far the few people who have heard it, like yourself, have said nice things. I guess I’m beginning to relax about it. So yes, thanks!

When did you encounter Edward Thomas’s poem “Adlestrop” and how did it lead to making this album? Your reading of the poem on the title track is particularly poignant.

I don’t know. It’s been a favourite for a long time. I was staying with a friend nearby and took the opportunity to visit Adlestrop because I loved the poem.  It struck me then that Thomas’s first line is sort of played out in modern reality, in that all that is left is the name – the old station sign is preserved and hangs in what looks like a bus shelter though in practice may not even have buses stop there anymore.

I may be confused about the poem’s date of origin, but I have it in my head that it represents a moment in time immediately before the chaos, horror and noise of the First World War and it perfectly captures that I think. That moment where the great steaming beast of the train is frozen and “all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire” combine in a heat haze with someone unseen clearing their throat. It is very poignant, and I’ve occasionally had those moments where I was suddenly very aware of everything around me and wondered if I would remember it forever. Occasionally one of those moments has stuck and it’s given me an anchor in another time. In one I am 10 years old and in the school toilet and I just thought, “I wonder if I’ll remember this moment in years to come” and it’s still with me. Always will be. I guess that’s what Adlestrop is to me; a moment in time, recorded. (Not the boys toilets at Ridgeway Primary in 1976!)

“Appendix 2” takes a different approach by creating poetry from the pages of the Beeching Report, where you read out the names of stations identified for closure. This is delightfully avant-garde as an idea and in execution. Could you talk about your thinking behind this?

Ah well really this was what turned musing about Adlestrop into something bigger (or at least longer). Having visited Adlestrop village I got hold of a copy of the Beeching Report and Appendix 2 is where the stations and services recommended for closure are listed. It’s full of really evocative British names and the idea for the album was formed in an instant at that point. The list (and there must be two thousand places on it) reads like an epic poem. Of course in my head it was inevitably John Betjeman reading them but it reminded me of the shipping forecast – I’m sure I heard that described as the great ongoing British epic poem – and the first piece on the album was improvised in one sitting there and then. A lot of the tracks were improvised fairly quickly like that. Most of them used the field recordings I started making once I had the concept. I would get the field recordings playing and just play along until something good happened. Once I had something, I would improvise very quickly over that. It was mostly very intuitive really.

Adlestrop combines readings, song and various shades of instrumentals, avoiding easy classification while crafting a cohesive whole. This must have been difficult to achieve? Although I must say that the results sound perfectly organic.

Actually it really wasn’t that hard. I didn’t think about it. Perhaps if I had, I’d have baulked at the idea. As I said before, it was largely improvised with no aim. I hadn’t intended writing conventional songs but on “Just a River” for instance, I found myself strumming and picking over summer meadow recordings and the very simple lyric just came naturally and I felt no need to reject it. “Coppermines” is all voice (apart from some birdsong), there are some fairly ambient pieces, even bits of hymns, or something reminiscent at least. But you’re right, it is a bit mixed up, but I think lots of my favourite records are. Eno’s Another Green World and Bowie’s Low are never very far away from my turntable and I think they do the same thing. I refer back to these two records again and again actually.

I think that in the last couple of years I’ve felt less and less pressure to compartmentalize the various strands of what I do. I love ambient and esoteric things, field recordings, songwriting, electronic music, all things really. I co-own a record shop and we stock all sorts and I find the lines of demarcation of genres more and more blurred I think. 

My grandad was station master at Banff railway station (in the north east of Scotland) when the Beeching Report was published in 1963. The station was closed to passengers in 1964 and the entire line shut down in 1968. He retired the year before after 47 years of service; a sad way to end his career. Which is to say that I have some sort of personal connection to the material. Did you find anything in the Beeching Report that you weren’t previously aware of? It had such a negative impact on local communities and was the beginning of the end in many ways for what was once a great system. I wonder whether it reads like Beeching knew what he was doing and didn’t care about the consequences to the average person (which fits with what we’re seeing today from government)?

OK, I confess, I didn’t read the whole thing! It’s really long and explores stats in depths that had me subconsciously skipping paragraphs. One thing that emerged was that Beeching hadn’t been interested in anything but the finances and fiscal efficiency. There’s no mention of social impacts etc. It’s full of diagrams relating to revenue and ticket sales and I already knew that I was more interested in the places that had lost their stations and what those places are like now. Obviously, there is a debate about the whys and wherefores of the Beeching Axe and, while I’d certainly come down on the Betjeman side (which is to say your grandad’s side) I’m not attempting to grind my own axe with this record.  Actually, when I consider what I have learned about Beeching since starting this project it does look like a scandal – certain vested interest in road development etc. The phrase “state sponsored vandalism” came up a lot.   

With some places it’s hard to imagine that trains ever went anywhere near them, they’re so tranquil and in others you could really feel the missing presence of the trains and the industries they supported. It even occurred to me that just as people were angry to see their stations go, some people must have been angry when they arrived in the first place. And to see how nature reclaims these places, where it’s allowed to, is often very impressive too. I think my favourite places were those that felt reclaimed but on closer inspection revealed signs of a previous life. Tregarth for instance (near Bethesda in North Wales), has a river and a playing field with a community centre planted obliquely across where its station would have been. It’s not until you start to spot the discarded concrete remnants of some railway building components in the bushes and then realise that the path taken by the dog walkers leads into a tunnel through the mountain, that you discover its secrets. The trains have gone but its railwayness will be there for hundreds of years to come. I love that.

The vinyl comes with another cardboard model. Is it wrong that I imagine you sitting cross-legged in a cardboard model village, pondering your next move? Will there be further transport-related adventures for Clay Pipe down the line?

Haha! Now you mention it I can see it too. I love Gary’s cut-outs. You should see what he has been doing in lockdown. He did this series on Instagram (garywillis875) where he decided that if he couldn’t go on holiday he’d make a holiday instead and he’s been posting up pictures of his imagined seaside resort, all made of cardboard cut-outs. There’s an ice cream seller, a Punch & Judy stall that opens to reveal Punch and the alligator, a carousel and even a station. He’s quite brilliant. He also did this thing where he took a copy of Adlestrop and photographed it in the bus shelter in Adlestrop – this appeals to me a lot in a way I’m not sure I can explain.

As far as a third installment is concerned, I don’t know at this stage. The last two have happened quite organically without any initial plan so planning volume three feels a little contrived perhaps. Frances and I have briefly discussed one or two ideas but whether they turn into anything I don’t know at this stage. I’ve been working on some new music with an author and poet called Alex Woodcock which seems to be about medieval stone carving. His first book King of Dust was published last year and is loosely based on the same subject. I’m also halfway through a completely different kind of recording collaboration (for me) of loud, noisy driving music which has been great fun to do during lockdown. I’ve been file swapping with Justin Welch from Piroshka/Elastica – all muscular motorik drums and guitar feedback. Long motorway driving tracks. There you go, there’s your transport theme!

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