Circlesquare Exclusive

The Circlesquare feature in this month's issue of V-Rag is just one of many great interviews that include Lady Bunny, Miss Cotton, and of course Nina Flowers. For those of you curious to know more about Jeremy Shaw, here's the full interview exclusive to the V-Rag Blog.

CIRCLESQUARE
Interview by Jeff Lawrence
Photo by Zoe Bridgeman

Can you talk about the tour you just did - where you went, how long, and where this fits in on your 'biggest tours ever' list?

We just finished a short US trip and then a 2 week tour supporting Junior Boys around Europe and the UK – it went from Turin to Zurich to Basel to Brussels to London to Dublin to Manchester to London again and then to Paris. It actually was probably the longest solid time we’d played on the road as such – 12 shows in 14 days… We left Junior Boys after Paris and went on to do Luxembourg with Telefon Tel Aviv and then Moscow on our own for the final night; which was easily the craziest, and best show we’ve ever played. We just got home last night from playing the Glastonbury festival which was also something else…

On tour, did you receive different reactions from different crowds?

Yes always – each city varies so much! One night people will be losing their shit and the next they’re staring at you like you’ve just insulted their Mom. The European crowds were generally quite patient and polite, whereas the UK ones tend to usually be a little more out-to-party I find – and I wouldn’t necessarily deem us a real party band at this point. That said, our European shows on this tour were generally week nights, and the UK were weekends so… I think there can be a huge difference in what people are wanting out of their Friday night as opposed to their Tuesday evening. But a Saturday night in Moscow is a whole other story…

Talk about what you put into this album in terms of studio hours, energy, etc.

Well there was a lot of everything really. I worked on this record for nearly 3 years technically, but because I often had art commitments and live shows, it was worked on in bursts – sometimes things would get stalled and not returned to for months – I had to keep putting it down and then going back and inevitably reworking things as I’d forgotten what I was doing with them in the first place. There were definitely a lot of studio hours logged and a lot of energy put into it though - probably more so than any of my previous records as I was working between 2 different studios and working close with other people which was a something I hadn’t done in years - and even though it seems like that should expedite things, it rarely seems to.

And how do you take all that work and transfer it to the stage without losing the idiosyncrasies of your music?

I think that my music inevitably loses some of it’s detail when transferred to a live setting- but in knowing that, we’ve worked really hard to create a live sound that is different, but hopefully captures the essence of those missing intricacies. It’s hard to translate finite details of electronic music and production in a live setting in general, so we’ve learned to not be quite as precious with the sound when playing live – and to embrace the sort of machine-in-malfunction sound that tends to happen when we play. As we were still playing shows while the album was being written and recorded, the live show and this new sort of looseness influenced the final recordings quite heavily – so I think this record lent itself to the stage a lot better and easier than the past ones.

It's been interesting to read reviewers' analyses of the album. Do you ever find Circlesquare's music being misunderstood?

It’s difficult as the sound of Circlesquare isn’t easily categorized – which in turn leads people to some pretty odd conclusions. This can also be frustrating at times as it seems more like laziness by critics, than misunderstanding. Just like “Oh this is moody and has monotone vocals – they must want to sound like Joy Division!” (not that I don’t love Joy Divison, but really, listen a little closer…). I don’t think that there’s a particular way to ‘understand’ Circlesquare and it’s inevitable that the hyphens will come out in full-force when describing the sound (ie. pop-noir-shoegaze-techno-folk) as it really is a hybrid form. That said, I do think it requires a certain amount of patience and definitely more than a quick listen off a laptop before people can really make up their minds about it. It’s music that should be able to exist on varying levels and that I think you get a lot more out of on repeated listens (as well as proper speakers). It is really wonderful though to come across a review or text that real nails it in a way I’ve never been able to put into words. I think critics/writers can often explain what an artist is doing much better than the artists themselves – I guess that’s technically their job…

As an artist, do you care about reviews?

Sure yeah, of course I do. But at the end of the day I’m not writing music for good reviews. They can be really offensive at times – especially when you feel like the critic didn’t take enough time, had preconceived notions, or didn’t do their homework (see above). But you’re exposed to so many opinions these days because of the internet that you really can’t worry about it - absolutely everyone seems to be a critic and a ton of them feel the need to let the rest of the world know their opinion, so you can only accept whatever they feel the need to say very lightly otherwise you’d go crazy worrying. I do read them, I can’t help it – but I’m actually starting to enjoy both the good and the bad… the Youtube video comments (and subsequent arguments) are my favorite!

For more info on Circlesquare, check out the latest issue of V-Rag or go to www.circlesquare.ca.