Exclusive Interview with SPÜNDAY

‘While my guitar gently beeps’ is a blistering attack on the music industry establishment’s lethargy, unwillingness to take risks on new music for fear of upsetting shareholders, and continual re-issues and repackaging of the same music.
SpunDay, who hail from Tonypandy, have released one album titled Shock Wave Gang Bang. Melt Banana and vivid imagination are their primary influences. Check out the song ‘While my guitar gently beeps’ and the exclusive interview with SPÜNDAY below:

1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how it all got started?

SPÜNDAY: The group are from Tonypandy in South Wales, UK. The initial spark was from a concert by Japanese noisemongers Melt Banana. It was my epiphany, if you will. My ‘Jimi Hendrix moment’. Listening to what Agata was doing with a guitar just knocked me sideways. I didn’t know you could get so many noises and textures from a guitar. Don’t forget that they’re a guitar, bass and drums band. An old format that has been used over and over again, so much so that you can trace the lineage of almost every guitar band back to blues and folk music. They sound like they come from another dimension. There’s no precedent. It was an audio pandemonium that resonated so strongly with me that I immediately quit the band I was in and started SpünDay.

2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?

SPÜNDAY: I have deliberately avoided any sort of instruction with regard to music, to the extent that I haven’t learned anyone else’s songs or styles or techniques. I’ve always wanted it to be uncontaminated and pure and ME writing and playing. If you need to be taught to write a song you’re probably in the wrong game anyway.

3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences and why the name ‘SPÜNDAY’?

SPÜNDAY: In no particular order; Mark E Smith, Robert M Pirsig, Oscar Wilde, J G Ballard, Bob Mould, US Maple, Kool Keith, Morrissey. The name comes from the Jonas Ackerlund movie Spun. I added the umlauts myself, more for the asthetic quality than anything else and if it’s good enough for Hüsker Dü and Mötörhead, it’s good enough for me.

4. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?

SPÜNDAY: We sound like no one and no one sounds like us. I’d like to resonate with listeners but at the moment we seem to be confusing most people. The noise we make usually comes with an angry screaming vocalist but I wanted to turn that on it’s head. My lyrics are as important as the music and it’s vital that they come across and are intelligible. One reviewer described us as a, ‘flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs.’ Pretty accurate I think.

5. For most artists, originality is first preceded by a phase of learning and, often, emulating others. What was this like for you? How would you describe your own development as an artist and music maker, and the transition towards your own style, which is known as ROCK?

SPÜNDAY:

I never wanted to emulate others. Be inspired by? Certainly. But that’s as far as it goes. I’ve never been in a covers band. I can’t understand why anyone would ever want to do that. It’s a creative dead end. We’re not a rock band, we’re a 21st century guitar band with everything that that entails. The use of technology, effects, samples and the avoidance of familiar rock and roll tropes. It’s an issue that we deal with directly in While my guitar gently beeps. ‘Give hard rock to the bald, tell ’em SpünDay called.’ Development has been slow but I think that in order to progress as an original artist you’ve got to write dozens of songs that are shite. Songwriting is a muscle that has to be worked and exercised.

6. What’s your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles – and do you try and affront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative, and entertainment?

SPÜNDAY:

Both. The current single is an attack on a music industry hellbent on stifling creativity, protecting shareholders investments, discouraging any imaginative or ground breaking ideas and regurgitating the same music you’ve heard a thousand times before. It’s like the Human Centipede meets Soylent Green. Deeply unpleasant and leaves a bad taste in you mouth. But I’m just as happy writing songs about fripperies.

7. Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfillment as the amount of work you are putting into it or are you expecting something more, or different in the future?

SPÜNDAY:

Absolutely yes. I know that all the hard work and frustration from learning and making mistakes and wrong turns and people not turning up for rehearsal and shit gigs to four disinterested people is all part of the learning curve. Persistence is underrated.

8. Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song? Do you usually start with a tune, a beat, or a narrative in your head? And do you collaborate with others in this process?

SPÜNDAY:

A line of dialogue in a movie, an overheard conversation, a mis-overheard conversation, a you tube comment, an old memory, an obscure sub-culture. I make a lot of notes and like a magic eye picture a song will gradually come into focus and if you’ve got enough ideas it’ll reach a tipping point and at that point the song virtually writes itself. I am but the conduit.

9. What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?

SPÜNDAY:

Metallica collaborating with Lou Reed. I love both those artists but who the fuck thought that would work.

10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?

SPÜNDAY: The video for While my guitar gently beeps, was a definite turning point for me. There’s a clear and concise message in the song and the video illuminates it perfectly. The music industry establishment is hostile to anything that could upset it’s monopoly on feeding it’s audience the same old songs while paying the artist an amount so miniscule it makes the minimum wage seem like a lottery win.