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(Dec. 03 - www.pennyblackmusic.com)
Probably the first time that I
first heard of Garlic was about 2 years ago. At the time the band had been
going for about a year. but they could not have predicted what was waiting
ahead for them. The band, which consists of Mike Wyzgowski (guitar,
vocals), Sandra Yee (drums), Dominic Smith (bass), Jo Hillyer (keyboards),
and Marcus McCarroll (steel guitar), have since met with a lot of success.
The first music that Garlic released, 3 self-financed 7" singles, was good
enough to earn them a gig supporting New Order. A year later they
attracted the attention of the well established London-based record label
Bella Union who released their debut album, 'The Murky World of Seats'.
2003 saw the band playing South By South West , probably the United
States' biggest alternative music festival, alongside the Coral,
Jetscreamer, Polyphonic Spree and many other great bands.
The
music world is perhaps not so blind that it doesn't occasionally
appreciate good music, but ,having said that though, Garlic have worked
very hard to get this far and are far from slowing down yet if at all. The
band have just put out their second album 'Jam Sabbatical', again on Bella
Union, which the Independent called "a bright outing, spiced by British
eccentricity". They have often been compared to Pavement although as they
say that they can't really see that connection themselves. Their music
combines together raw guitars and rich keyboards, but they can be
unpredictable as well, and also play lots of slower and calmer tunes.
While the band now has 5 members, it originally had just 2.
"Dominic and me had another band " recalls Mike , sitting with me and the
rest of the band at a table in the Unicorn pub in North London on a rainy
Sunday morning. "We only did a few London gigs but not much more than
that. Then we decided to do it properly. We got Sandra to play guitar and
advertised for a singer because I didn’t really want to sing. We got about
20 tapes but nothing that we wanted. We wanted someone who sung a bit like
Lou Reed, but we were getting all these heavy metal and and country
singers. We booked some studio time but we still didn’t have a singer, so
I just ended up doing it by default and we carried on like that."
"I met Sandra at New Year’s Eve party" continues Jo. "They
happened to be looking for a keyboard player at the time and that's when I
joined."
Later on Sandra switched from bass to drums. "We had this
drummer that was a pain in the arse " explains Mike and laughs. "Then
Sandra said she could play drums, so we got another guitarist and that was
Richard and then Marcus also joined. And that was that."
Garlic
released their first two 7" singles 'Slave To The Summer Sun'' and 'The
Murky World of Seats' in 2000, and followed this with a third single 'Not
Over Yet' in 2001. The latter was the single of the week in the
Independent and all 3 of them earned favourable reviews. "When you are
doing it yourself", explains Mike, "you need to be quite quick. You don’t
want to spend too much time on it or too much money, but to do what you
want when you want. You don’t have to have some release schedule. You just
decide when you want to put it on or when it’s ready. That’s the benefit
when you do it yourself. Then you hit a brick wall…"
Garlic's
first major success was supporting New Order at the Brixton Academy in
September of 2001. "That was great especially as we were still only on our
own label and to get a support like that that was just great" enthuses Jo.
"Yeah and then the next day we were back to our jobs" adds Dominic
laughing.
Brixton Academy has a capacity of 4,500 people so for a
band that are used to playing venues for 200 to 300 people it must have
been a big change. "It seems even bigger when it's empty" admits Mike.
"When were sound checking it sounded bad because the venue was
empty and the sound was just bouncing off the walls" says Jo. "We thought
it was awful. But by the time we came on it was half full and sounded
great." Mike later reveals that there is a chance that Garlic will play
with New Order again next year, which will definitely be something to look
forward to.
In 2002 Garlic finally released their debut album 'The
Murky World of Seats' on Bella Union. This collaboration came about come
about by lucky chance when Sandra and Jo literally bumped into Simon
Raymonde, the co-owner of Bella Union. at the BBC where Garlic was doing a
session. "Yeah, the guys went in to play and Sandra and me stayed outside
and talked to Simon who was there because he is a friend of the presenter.
And the next thing we knew was we were being given the chance to release
our music on Bella Union."
We are now nearly up to date, but let's
not forget the South By South West (SXSW) music festival, which Garlic
played earlier this year. The festival takes place in Texas in Austin in
March every year. The music festival is actually only one part of the
whole event and runs along a film and an interactive festival.. Over the 5
days that the festival is on there is the opportunity to see many bands
from all over the world. There is no doubt about the quality of the music
and its amount . Perhaps the only down side is that there is just so much
happening at one time that you you can also miss out.
"It was
great! ' Jo says. "You usually play in one of the bars, .but they keep all
the windows open so you can hear it outside in the streets and people
dance to the music and you can hear their reaction. I think the only
criticism about it is that there is so much stuff on that you can’t see
all you want and that it gets so busy that a lot of people can’t always
get in to the bars."
Garlic's second album 'Jam Sabbatical' came
out in September this year. The 10 track album has been received well.
Reviews have compared the band to the Pixies, Neil Young, Lou Reed and
again Pavement.
One song, 'Waverley', especially attracted my
attention. The song has quite a fast rhythm and sounds quite positive
despite its subject matter . "As you might know Waverley is a bridge in
Edinburgh" says Mike, who comes from Scotland originally. " It's the
bridge at the train station and people sometimes commit suicide by jumping
off it, which probably sounds a bit disturbing" He adds, laughing.
There is also a song called 'Stenhousemuir of Love' which is named
after the Scottish Football club. "They never win anything" admits Mike in
his Scottish accent . "But it's also about people who sometimes just go
along to the games and nothing ever happens."
The artwork of the
album features 5 animals (a lion, a giraffe, a crocodile, x and x) all
coloured in with green or brown colours. The artwork was done by Mike.
"That was just a scribble I did" he says modestly.
"No one
liked it and then Rich said ‘Go and get a life, you sad bastard’" says
Dominic with laughter. "And then Mike called me up later saying ‘Have you
still got that picture ?’ which was quite funny."
The artwork of
the first album 'The Murky World of Seats' features an animal as well. It
has a man with a horse's head sitting in an electric chair with people
around it and is brown and white in colour. "Simon’s (Simon Raymonde) wife
sent us some stuff and it was just a picture of a guy in an electric
chair" recalls Mike. "We just thought it would be funny if we stuck a head
of a horse on it. I think it’s just brilliant and we will never top it."
I ask what the title of the album,'"Jam Sabbatical', means and the
band look a bit taken aback. "I have this friend" explains Mike while Jo
looks at him concerned. "And his wife was having her period. And he just
said she was on Jam Sabbatical and we just started laughing."
"But
there is also a slightly less revolting meaning to it. We do a lot of
jamming as well and it also means a break from jamming" adds Jo.
The band has already started writing and composing music for the
3rd Garlic album. "Hopefully next year we will start recording it" reveals
Mike. "We are also hoping to play the South By South West again. It’s
quite hard when you are self-financed. but we now know what we are doing
and it’s got a lot easier."
On top of that if their support gig
with New Order works out as well, then Garlic have another busy but
hopefully also successful year ahead of them.
Olga Sladeckova |
Garlic cook up a hot future (Aug. 2000 -
musicunsigned.com)
Welcome to Garlic, savoury
peddlers of delicious "downstroke". There's
Mike Wyzgowski, Sandra, Dominic and a few others & needless to say
they all like a spot of cooking and they know how to keep the vampires at
bay.
Forming through the unlikely serendipity of a Loot ad (I kid
you not) they have now been together for two years. This is a band that
charismatically deliver a quirksome line in analogic, idiosyncratic melody
with wonderfully inventive guitar lines. Comparisons to Pavement and
Grandaddy aren't exactly glaring but you might do better to imagine Lou
Reed sporadically smashed on helium, not heroin. Well, what I'm tryna say
is that Mike's laboured but addictively whining voice over multi-layered
rolling guitars is believable and sincere; God only knows how the man
pulls it off but he does, and quite brilliantly too.
In all
seriousness Garlic are actually quite impressive. The track "Our
Generation" for example, is a superbly penned drift into an opiate
whirlpool of whimsical textures that successfully demonstrate a band
capable of elevating the listener to far off domains.
I met up
with about 3/5ths of the band on a glaringly hot day in Camden. Mike's no
stranger to the industry you understand, having penned a certain tune that
the one-and-only Paul Oakenfold championed to lasting effect. Nope, it's
"not over yet" for this talented songwriter but things have got to
be right for Garlic to achieve the flavour of exposure they need, as
Scottish accented Mike says, "weez not really interested in getting a
deal for the sake of it. It would have to be with the right company that
knows how to deal with a band like us. Not somebody that just throws stuff
at the wall to see if it sticks".
This is a view I have total
sympathy for and for the moment Garlic have the nonce to begin early
single promotion themselves". We're funding it all ourselves well
we got a good mate quite drunk and he's agreed to help now and we've got
distribution with Cargo. Yeah, they're putting the single out and then
it's the album. We've certainly got the basis of a plan down now and
John Peel played the single the other day. You can get really stumped as a
small band or label, you know, the majors have got such a monopoly on all
the radio stations which is why the internet and the sort of thing
you guys are doing is totally brilliant because it gives band like us
access. The thing that really bugs me though is the way Radio 1 and
Capital are run by the majors. I wouldn't mind that so much but they're
basically dictating what people are listening to."
Yup. It can
be arse-achingly frustrating when you hear the same old same old shuvved
down the air-waves every fucking day can't it? Mate. Thank God for the
pirates. Delivering us from more 'slate-the-sytemisms'. I grill the
Garlicsters about where they've been recording. "Basically those tracks
cost about 150 quid in a studio in Greenwich and a friend's studio in
Maida Vale he's got this thing called a 'finaliser' if more
people knew about it there'd be a lot better demos kickin' around. You
can bump your track up about 30%, it sorta widens the frequencies. It's
like a glorified graphic equaliser. It separates the sound-waves and you
can affect different parts of the mix".
Mike tells me more about
the band's plans for the single. "We're releasing vinyl initially.
It's easier to create a buzz with vinyl 'cos there's a hard core of vinyl
junkies who are good to get on your side and you get some credibility".
The single in question is 'Slave to the Summer, Son'. It's about the
choice or option to do this or go and work and make money if that makes
you happy, if that's what your life's about, or go and do something
else instead.
Mike's not doing too badly right now. Royalties
still trickle through and give him the financial space to get on with his
music. Although a little reluctant to admit it Mike went through a phase
where he was quite into dance music and this led him working with Tricky
and getting involved with Paul Oakenfold and Perfecto records. "I really
can't remember how Paul came into the equation but basically we were
writing tunes and Perfecto kicked off and we were doing stuff for London
records, Pete Tong's crew. So many people were licking each other's
asses, none of em had a mind of their own and so it was a year until my
tune got about. I mean Paul liked it one week and then the next his right
hand man didn't and so on eventually he just thought fuck it,
let's put it out and it became this huge cult dance record. me and my mate
wrote it but Paul got a lot of the credit and the money. That's industry
all over. DJ's nowadays have the divine right to take a cut of
publishing".
So with Mike having worked with dance illuminati
like Oakey and Tricky what are the real influences on Garlic? " I've
always been into Lou Reed and Pavement and Bowie and all these sorts of
things. I like funk and soul and when I was writing with Rob that was the
thing but after years I got bored in the studio, plus the eighties was
generally pretty shit for music until late eighties early nineties.
I've had some other club song-hits but the politics and industry
bullshit so now I've got this merry lot. We're all mega-contented
with it now and if we could make a reasonable living it'd be
great".
The sound of Garlic is fairly wide and their sound has been
allowed to settle into a proper vintage for at least two years. "I think
we've got quite a distinctive sound that people like and relate to.
We've got an old module to abstract it all a bit, like Grandaddy or Flaming
Lips do. There's always scope for good songs, cos like a friend said to
me 'you can polish a turd a lot but it's still a turd'. I always try
for a distinctive melody although Sandra's always on to me to be more
upbeat. Now, because we're doing it ourselves we've only got ourselves
to blame. There's nothing more frustrating than watching someone else
fuck it up for ya so we're totally in charge..
And good for them
too. Garlic care about getting their music to the right people in the
right way. Mike wouldn't sign over to a record company unless it was the
right one, he'd rather have less money with the right kind of deal. "I
never want to be in a situation where someone tells us what to say, what
to do, anything like that. I think we've got the potential to do one or
two cult big-selling albums. I'm sure we could do some big damage in
America. Really we want to sell 10,000 or so on an indy which is the
same as 60 000 in a Major".
Garlic are now about to undertake a
tour of the UK to promote their single 'Slave to the Summer, Son' due out
on Propylactic Records in August 2000. With an accomplished rawness rammed
with melody, aggression and humour, Garlic could almost be described as
pop but with a disturbing twist.
The vinyl single is released in
the UK in August and they have just signed a distribution deal with
American media company Altavoz in Washington DC, who will handle radio and
retail distribution throughout the USA.
Check
the gigs info on the site for a whole host of
gigs they are about embark on or go see garlicmusic.co.uk. Remember
to buy some mouthwash after a long session wontcha. Look out for 'em,
they're Garlic and guess what, they're good.
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| (Crud Magazine www.2-4-7-music.com)
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Garlic: - John Peel
favourites and Paul Oakenfield chums talk to Crud about the murky
and often dull story behind their new album title
17/08/2001 |
For any band who
dare call themselves "alternative" the benchmark of greatness is
being asked to do a John Peel Session. Well, it's happened for six
piece Garlic, who will begin recording the aforementioned session at
the Tail end of September .Such giddy indie rock heights are pretty
good going for a band whose formation was Pretty unconventional to
say the least.
They began as a three piece,and by singer,
Mikes own admission "it all sounded pretty crap". After advertising
for or another singer and a drummer though, the band began to
receive tapes. However, they were not exactly prepared for the aural
delights that eminated from the C-90's, "We got tapes from 20 of the
worst singer to have graced a microphone " Mike says, " Our ad said
something to the effect of 'must be into Lou Reed/Pavement and must
have gigging experience' 19 of them had barely heard of Lou Reed let
alone Pavement, the other was a strip-o-gram. Nuff said!"
By
default, Mike began singing full time and recruited Marcus to pedal
steel guitar and Jo to keyboards. The band proper then began gigging
across the country and recording along the way garnering the support
of the aforementioned Mr.Peel and XFM.
The music on their
debut album "The Murky World Of Seats" evokes images of
Sunsets,Tumbleweeds, and arid deserts. So how do the very English
band reconcile this with their music, which is up their with the
most cooing of Americana favourites, THE SILVER JEWS?:
"I
don't really. I think you sub-consciously make music that you like
and are influenced by " says Mike. " Vocally, if I was to sing songs
in an Edinburgh accent we'd sound like the Proclaimers and we don't
want that to happen do we ! And it's generally unnatural to sing the
way you speak. Musically, the same theory applies, Rich and I are
both predominantly into American bands and tend to compliment each
other's style of guitar playing (i.e not particularly good but the
right bits in the right places) so all we are doing is creating
something we'd like to listen to." .:
Happily, on this
occasion at least, we'd like to listen to it too.
As a
bizarre footnote to the history of Garlic, Mike co-wrote the handbag
house classic "It's Not Over Yet", performed by long forgotten
singer Grace,and co-written by the DJ who always seems to be
"Largin' It" Paul Oakenfold. A much different version of the song
appears on the Garlic album. But how, pray tell, did this unholy
union come about?:
" I was writing with my mate Rob Davis at
the time and we wrote "Not Over Yet" which was put forward for some
tuneless bint's album on London Record produced by
Oakenfold/Osborne. London fannied about so long on it that Paul
reckoned that the tune was a hit, recorded it for Grace and put it
out in his own label (Perfecto) on the proviso that he gets a third
of the publishing. So "Co-written with Paul Oakenfold" is not
entirely accurate. This practice is not uncommon in the corporate
music industry and is in fact encouraged. I know the song wouldn't
have seen the light of day without his intervention and I readily
accepted the dosh for it, but I wasn't comfortable with the whole
scenario so I thought get the guitars out!!!":
Seems fair
enough to us. Lastly however, it seemed necessary to ask about the
somewhat clunky album title. Was it some sort of mystical reference?
Or was it perhaps some literary line that went over our
heads?:
"My girlfriend worked for a company selling seating
for airports and was telling us some story about someone who had
shagged someone elses wife or mother or something like that, and my
mate Gary, who always says things like this, followed it up by
saying 'that would be a good album title'. I said something like
'aye that's the murky world of seats'. So we thought that would be a
good album title. Dull but true!":
Enigma and intrigue aside,
the future looks bright for Garlic,not at all
murky.
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(Jan. 2001 - Network of The World's MP3tv now.com) |
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Garlic
What's
that smell? Don't be offended, it's just rock'n'rollers Garlic
doing their thing.
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The Band
Mike
Wyzgowski – vocals and guitar
Rich Cramp - guitar
Dominic
Smith - bass
Jo - keyboards
Sandra Yee – drums
Marcus –
steel guitar
The History
As a
veteran of the music business, Wyzgowski has become rather
scrupulous in his dealings with the industry and its fickle
standards. Having already worked alongside trance wizard Paul
Oakenfold and twisted trip-hop mastermind Tricky, he is not about to
settle for any old label.
He said: "We're not really
interested in getting a deal for the sake of it. It would have to be
with the right company which knows how to deal with a band like
us."
Wyzgowski has some very specific plans for how to
promote the band. He's decided to target an esoteric audience by
concentrating on the true music lover's format of choice.
He
said: "Initially, we're releasing vinyl. It's easier to create a
buzz with vinyl because there's a hard core of vinyl junkies who are
good to get on your side, and you get some
credibility."
Inspiration
Information
Fashioning themselves just as much on US
cult bands, including Pavement and Sonic Youth, as the legendary
Neil Young and Lou Reed, Garlic have all the right ingredients for
indie success.
While not the only band to emerge out the UK
with a distinct US indie sound, they're determined to break into the
American industry. All they have to do now is to find the right
people to do business with.
Garlic are convinced their new
style will turn heads. With backing from dignitaries like UK radio
god John Peel and London's Xfm radio station, they're optimistic
about US success.
Wyzgowski said: "I'm sure we could do some
big damage in America. We want to sell 10,000 or so on an indie
[label], which is the same as 60,000 on a major".
Webwise
Website
www.garlicmusic.co.uk is the place to go for all your
Garlic-related needs - it's regularly updated and as informative as
anyone could want.
Breaking
News
Having been championed by Peel and Xfm, both
giving Slave To The Summer Sun their full support last
August, the band embarked on a UK tour in conjunction with
Propylactic Records.
For details of upcoming, gigs check out
their Website.
- Marie
Cairns-Berteau
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