What's Cooking In The Thieves Kitchen ?
A new UK band is born. Ian Oakley chats to Mark Robotham about
the new band, album and the general state of the current UK
progressive music scene.
I.O To anyone that has not heard Thieves Kitchen how would you describe your music?
M.R How would I describe TK? You can't always hum along to it, you can't always tap your foot to it. It's rock without the 4/4 riffs, it's jazz without the horn section. It'll soothe you, it'll scare you - but more than anything, it's dangerous, intelligent, and they'd never play us on Radio 2. In short - it's truly progressive rock.
I.O. How was the band brought together?
M.R Well, I personally certainly wasn't instrumental (ha!) in bringing the band together - I simply got lucky. Paul and Phil, our bassist and guitarist, met by chance at the Whitchurch festival in 1998 and found they had a lot in common musically. Phil had long known Simon, the vocalist, so the hunt was on for a drummer and keyboard player. Paul was aware of the demise of GLD (Grey Lady Down) and tracked me down. One listen to a tape convinced me that there was no way I'd EVER be able to play this stuff, which is probably why I got in quick, before we could find an adequate keyboard player, so that by the time we did I'd be considered a permanent fixture! So far, the game plan seems to be working!
The 5th man - Wolfgang - took a hell of a lot of finding. It eventually took a lucky ad of ours in Kingfisher Music in Fleet to achieve that. Never could we have found a more appropriate player, after many false starts - like Phil, Wolfgang's influences are probably more jazz than rock, thus giving us a wonderful balance between the two forms and the ability to fearlessly dive headlong into either when opportunities permit!
I.O Where did the unusual name come from?
M.R The name was my doing - it clearly lodged itself in the back of my mind when I took an American friend of mine, a first-time visitor to this country, for a river trip along the Thames in London. Thanks to the tide being high, we passed under Tower Bridge and swung back round to dock - at which point the tour guide pointed out the location of Fagin's Thieves' Kitchen in Oliver Twist.
Some four months later, we were looking first and foremost for a band name that had not knowing been used before - we checked and double checked in the National Band Register before a brainstorming session led to the one name that was an easily memorable, well known phrase and yet appeared never to have been used for a band's name before!
With our tongues in our cheeks too, it was fun to choose a name that openly invites sarcasm regarding plagiarism when I can think of no less plagiarist band than TK, within the prog sphere, from England for many, many years!
I.O Tell me a little about each member
M.R A little about each? Alphabetically - Paul is the arty, cerebral one in the band - very much a lateral thinker and one who will invariably choose the least obvious approach to any problem. He approached the bass, logically enough, from classical training on woodwind! And yes, we're determined to make him get his oboe out on album number 2...
Simon is a full blooded, honest rock singer with a reputation for being completely insane on stage, which I'm yet to enjoy. One of the biggest failings of UK prog music - with a very few honourable exceptions like Gary Chandler - is a very poor standard of vocals. I've been lucky enough personally, first with Martin in GLD and now with Simon, never to have had to suffer from that!
Wolfgang had never even been to England until about 9 months ago, when he accepted a company transfer to this country. He came with a better grasp of spoken English than me, though, and is already developing a British sense of humour to match! TK is actually Wolfgang's first prog band - he's a very much from the jazz school and has a wonderfully dextrous feel to his playing, yet with a grounding in the classic keyboard sounds of the prog genre.
Words invariably fail me when I come to try to describe Phil. He's quite simply one of the most astonishing guitar talents in the UK today - Blisteringly fast, yet full of feel. Very much in the vain of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or Allan Holdsworth. Yet, being a Brummie, he has not a trace of arrogance and is one of the nicest guys I've ever met! I truly feel privileged to be working with him.
Me - I like beer, curry, and played in a band that, through sheer hard work and lack of personal pretension, become quite popular in the prog field despite breaking few boundaries, except in the latter part of our career. If nothing else, it probably gave me just enough self-confidence to have the balls to even attempt to play some of Phil's more technical compositions. I'm generally probably of more value to a band and have to bluff less as a manager rather than as a drummer.
I.O I notice that with this album you personally have taken up an electronic drum kit. Is there A reason for this and what advantage does it allow you?
M.R My Pintech kit? As we decided to take control of every aspect of this album's recording and distribution ourselves, Phil spent about £6,000 on a home studio set-up. Now, nice as Hungerford High Street is, it's not exactly secluded. Recording acoustic drums was always going to be a problem. So when Phil raised the idea of going electric, I had a fairly big redundancy cheque in my pocket and figured I'd humour him and lay out some cash - although much less than he'd spent on the studio. I figured I'd use the Pintech gear once, and then it would rust in peace in the attic.
……….Nah. Won't work out that way. Look at the advantages….
Its not a "click-click" machine… It sounds like 'real' drums -I can play at home through headphones. It takes half the time to set up. When we play live, I'll give the engineer a pair of leads, knowing full well that the source is perfect, rather than sitting around drooling going thwack...thwack... thwack' for hours on end and getting lots of dodgy buzzes and rings. The pads are far more responsive than acoustic drums - no need to shift a huge column of air before the top head stresses and bounces your stick back at you. The samples I trigger from the DM-5's are gorgeous... no buzzes or rattles! Yet, the actual playing of the kit is pretty much identical to the 'real' thing.
And to the Luddites - I used to make the point that somehow assuming there was something 'wrong' about a drummer using an electric kit - as if he was somehow cheating (and don't forget that Bill Bruford was very much the pioneer of electric drums in this country!) - was like restricting Wakeman or Emerson to nothing but piano and Hammond. No electric's, no synthesisers allowed! Where's the difference? How many people still use clockwork alarm clocks? No one - you have electric ones, right? Well - insisting that only acoustic drums are valid is like saying that not only is the clockwork clock more reliable, it sounds better, too! Yeah, right!
I.O There seems to be very few truly fresh ideas in 90s 'prog' rock music, especially in the UK Is it really so difficult to break new ground in this style of music?
M.R Certainly this is an area where I feel the UK deserves to be castigated. We're brought our demise upon ourselves. We fundamentally invented progressive rock, heavy metal, and numerous other forms. Yet - if you go to a pub or club - the lifeblood of the breaking band circuit - you'll now hear nothing but tribute bands. I'd love to know who these people think they'll be plagiarising in 20 years time if the current trend continues, as no-one who writes original material will be able to get a gig!
It's the same with the radio. Even if anyone over here does play a Floyd track, for example, it's ALWAYS 'Another Brick'. Anyone who's been to the US will know how vastly superior their radio is - where rock music still gets played! And I'm told it's the same in Sweden. Any wonder, then, that these countries currently lead the world in prog innovation?
The other point to be made in terms of prog innovation is that it's always been considered musicians' music. In the early 70's, when prog was fashionable, it was easy for a musician to earn enough money playing what he loved to be able to practice at length, become extremely skilled on his instrument. and use that knowledge to push back boundaries. Nowadays, if you're attempting to be a pro musician, you either know a hat full of Oasis songs or 'Sultans Of Swing'. If you don't, you don't eat. So no one with an inclination towards prog really hones their playing to be up to the challenges of the music we love - and thus they settle into safe, predictable neo-prog...
I.O You yourself come from the UK "Neo- Prog" band Grey Lady Down. Do you feel that Thieves Kitchen is in any way a progression of their music?
M.R No. GLD made a rod for its own back with the neo sound of our first two albums. Moving away from that would have alienated the bedrock of the band's support, so a new project was really the only answer for me.
I.O Your website mentions the word "complex" a number of times. Do you think this is an important aspect of Thieves Kitchen's music?
M.R As I said before, progressive music has always by definition involved skilled musicians attempting to break a few rules, stretch a few barriers. It's unashamedly muso's music - or should be, in its purest form. And that may sound self-indulgent, but when I watch the average prog crowd tapping along with my patterns or playing air guitar, it's perfectly clear that most are frustrated musicians! If non-complex is neo, then complex is a word I'm proud of, yeah, when I watch people's faces when they first hear the middle section of 'Mute' and clearly haven't got a CLUE what's going on! And believe me, I was just the same the first 20 times I heard it...
I.O So you feel that Thieves Kitchen are producing "true" Progressive rock - Putting the "progress" element back?
M.R Absolutely. Few outside jazz would be attempting to take on some of the material we are, and yet it's all underpinned by a hard driving rock feel and some great tunes! The diversity of influences within the band also means that none of us will be frightened to take on anything which the others may choose to throw at them. Put simply, we're pushing back boundaries because we've refused to set any for ourselves.
I.O Now that sounds like a great attitude to take but I feel I must take up something - A quote from your site
Musically the band is clearly in the vanguard of the current prog scene. The safe path of major key, 4/4 'neo' prog has been avoided in favour of virtuosity, experimentation, impossibly fast unison riffs, baroque fugueing and bizarre time signatures - but not for one moment at the expense of melody. With two songs on the CD running at over 16 minutes, the band are moving in those circles once occupied by the likes of King Crimson, National Health, Frank Zappa, Gentle Giant, It Bites and Allan Holdsworth rather than Genesis or Marillion.
A lot of bands are derided for being plagiarist, "regressive" rather than "progressive". You have stated that the band is in the vanguard of the current scene but in that above paragraph you have mentioned 30-year-old bands as an influence of Thieves Kitchen. Aren't you therefore taking a risk inviting the same criticism?
M.R It's impossible to be a musician and not have influences. If you sit a child in a padded cell for its early life, it'll have no concept of what music is. From the first thing we hear we're sucking in influences, and some of those will invariably get regurgitated, if not melodically then in form. And there are only 12 notes, after all!
It's really what you do with those influences. Progressive rock has always been regressive by definition! It's only progressive in its combination of influences - the assimilation of classical music or jazz, for example. You only have to look at the pioneering bands, the likes of ELP or King Crimson for example, to see that.
My problem is with those - particularly in the UK - who just churn out the same hackneyed Genesis "neo prog" pastiches time after time. There's nothing wrong, surely, with taking a leaf from the books of some of the other bands who've approached the genre from a very different angle? Furthermore, it's not even good marketing to try to tell people that a band doesn't sound like any other band. Firstly it's rarely true and secondly; people find it very hard to cope without a frame of reference! Notwithstanding that, though, I think people will find it hard to pick up too many other bands within our sound. Reviews always have a bit where they say 'they sound like X or Y'. I'll be intrigued to see what names people pull out of the hat for us.
I.O Your website displays a great deal of "confidence" in your abilities and the bands future. Being that the band has not yet performed live or released an album, do you feel that there is a risk that you are setting yourself up for "a fall"?
M.R We're not going to go out and say 'ermm... we're Thieves' Kitchen - we're not really sure about our stuff - and if you don't like it, we're really sorry we bothered you'.... Yes, there'll be people who don't like it - that's normal. But I think few people, certainly in the UK, will criticise us for having the balls to try something a bit different... US readers, however, have viewed UK prog as a lost cause for quite some time. It'll take a band who are really prepared to stand up and make a noise to break through that. And, as I strongly believe the US will be our best market, that's why I've pitched it as I have....
It's useful too having had a good grounding in the progressive field through a band like GLD. It does bring it home to you that, particularly in the US and Japan; there is a market for something more adventurous - yet many of the prog contacts remain the same. I've a feeling we'll be embraced fairly warmly....
I.O How would you respond if the album is badly received?
M.R Criticism happens! No one should present an art form of any kind to the world without accepting that some people won't like it. But whatever happens, we'll go on making music that we love and hoping that it eventually lands in the heads and hearts of the prog fraternity. I can't see us compromising for the sake of mass acceptance. After all, if anyone's attempting to do that, they really shouldn't be in prog in the first place!
I.O Currently bands like yourselves are known only to the tiny clique of fans interested in the so Called "Progressive" rock scene. Do you ever see a return to a commercially successful prog scene as we had in the early 70s?
M.R Frankly, it probably won't happen - again, certainly not in this country. The stranglehold that tribute bands and our incredibly narrow spectrum of radio has over the fledgling music fan means that our genre never gets a break. As I said just now, we won't compromise to achieve commercial success - really, it's the market that needs to change. But at present, we're far too conservative here for that to happen. It's not a bright prognosis.
I.O You have made mention before that you see the bands success or breakthrough as happening in the American market. Why? Do you think that country has a more "open" attitude to "new" music?
M.R Yes, undoubtedly. The first time I ever went to the US just over four years ago, the very first thing that impressed me was their radio. So many channels, and maybe 50% of them rock orientated. Instead of hearing 'Another Brick...', as I said earlier, you're just as likely to hear the first five parts of 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' - uninterrupted by banal chatter! People grow up with a consciousness of rock music, and it's a much more viable genre. The biggest crying shame of all is that we fundamentally invented progressive music, heavy metal, and so many other forms of the general family of 'rock' - yet it's completely ignored by the media here! What's up with that? I can easily imagine TK being played on the radio in the US. Never in a million years here!
I.O As I know you are aware, in America the largest underground movement is the so-called "Jam band" genre. Focussing on a large part of a live set to be purely improvised. Do you feel this could be a way to "progress" your own music?
M.R Nice idea, and maybe it will come, but I think you have to develop a very sound empathy for your fellow musicians' feel before you can attempt that... Bear in mind that 73/74 Crimson is probably my favourite band ever, and I do have enormous respect for those who will take that on, but...
I.O Again, improvised, as well as Progressive, music seems to be generally poorly supported in European countries like the UK. What are your thoughts on this?
M.R For me, it really goes back to the radio and live circuit thing we were talking about earlier. To draw an analogy - up till I was 15, I'd never had Indian food. My Mum told me it was all red hot, comprised of bits of cats and dogs, and that I'd die of food poisoning and I wouldn't like it. Because I'd never experienced it, I assumed I wouldn't like it because of what I'd been fed at home - literally and figuratively. Now, you can't keep me away from it - it was love at first taste at 16!
Similarly, if we feed kids Westlife, Phil Collins and some bunch of Europoppers with a drum machine, how can we expect them to open their ears and embrace the unknown?
As for improvisation - Let's face it, in the UK, it simply wouldn't work - there isn't the appreciation for attempting to create on the spot. If there's no readily recognisable theme or structure, we're off down the pub - coz we haven't learned to cope with it. Very few current rock bands - with the notable exceptions of the Flower Kings and Phish - will even attempt it. We'd be capable, but we'd just be seen as vanishing up our own bums, the validity would unfortunately be lost even on a so-called educated prog crowd. People don't take as many drugs these days as they did when Zappa was doing 'Tinseltown Rebellion'!
I.O What current bands do you really like and who would you recommend?
M.R My own musical loves are far from just prog ones - But in our genre, I would have immediately said the Flower Kings and Spock's Beard - even though SB are definitely becoming a bit Radio Two, for all their compositional and technical brilliance - until about a week ago...
At our mastering session, I heard something so fresh that it blew my ears off. Just watch out for a band called 'Nought' from Oxford. Imagine if Robert Fripp and Frank Zappa were asked to write the score for a Bond film together. There's little more to be said! Their album, 'The New Themes', will be out very shortly....
From recent years I'd also have to recommend the brief flash of genius that was Anglagard, and also their compatriots Anekdoten, who've now outgrown the wonderful if somewhat naive Crimson pastiche of their first album and moved on to something very dark and nasty indeed.
Oh, and some band called Thieves' Kitchen, too!
I.O If you were to pick one to play to a new listener, from any of the recordings you have made (GLD or otherwise) which would they be?
M.R From a personal point of view? TK is clearly the pinnacle of my modest achievements as a musician to date, so it'd have to be a TK track.. And almost certainly the opener on the album, 'Mute'. I will still never forget the feeling of terror I had when I first heard it, that I was going to be expected to play THAT... and also one of our many keyboard auditionees, who pronounced it quite simply 'impossible - for anyone, not just me'!
I.O Finally. The desert island question - If you were put on a desert island and could only take 5 albums/ CDs with you what would they be?
M.R I guess I'd have to choose the five albums that had lived with me the longest and from which I've got the most long-term pleasure, rather than something which captured my attention last week... given that, the majority of these albums would have been on my list five years ago and probably will be in another five. In some kind of rough order, #1 to #5...
Jewel - Pieces Of You - because everyone should have an album that strikes such a chord in their heart that they can't listen to it in public.
Tusk - Fleetwood Mac - for the balls to go out and make exactly the album they wanted to after the multi-million selling 'Rumours', instead of just pitching in for more megabucks. Such a warm and genuine album and, I'd always thought, unsurpassable until I heard our Alaskan friend above...
Starless And Bible Black - King Crimson - most people got into Crimson through 'In The Court...', and battled with some of the latter stuff. I was lucky enough to hear 'SABB' when I was 15, and it entranced me immediately and still does, dark as it is. Hard to choose though between this album and 'Lark's Tongues' or 'Red' - all are beyond brilliant.
Queen 2 - Queen - I think this was the second album I ever owned. Before Freddie Mercury turned them into a vaudeville band from 'Day At The Races' onwards, they were capable of some of the most inspiring music I've ever heard.
Blind - The Icicle Works - for perfect pop songwriting personified. Ian McNabb is an unsung genius far beyond McCartney or Lennon.
Thanks for having me!
Ian Oakley February 2000