THESE NEW PURITANS
HOW THE FORMER ART PUNKS BLOSSOMED INTO CLASSICAL COMPOSERS
After recruiting a huge number of singers and musicians, the bold ambition of These New Puritans has culminated with the neo-classical masterpiece Field Of Reeds. It’s arguably one of the finest albums released this year.
But it’s not like we’d have guessed These New Puritans would become one of England’s most innovative bands when they released their debut album Beat Pyramid in 2008. The record – characterised by angular, razor sharp guitar riffage and sneered, art-school brat sloganeering – established the band as a more antagonistic, radical prospect than most of the straight up post-punk revivalists they often found themselves sharing a stage with. Nevertheless, the record drew comparisons to the previously explored, antiquated sounds of Gang of Four and The Fall.
The album’s follow-up, 2010’s Hidden, was a thrilling curveball. With a drum sound inspired by club tailored hip-hop and the self-taught ability to compose classical instrumentation, These New Puritans unleashed an exhilaratingly original batch of ideas on a record that included contributions from a children’s choir, the stomp of Japanese taiko percussion and the satisfyingly aggressive sound of a sword being drawn.
And now Field of Reeds has been met with passionately favourable reviews. The album took a year to record across three different studios (the most intriguing being the Funkhaus Nalepastraße building in Germany) and the editing process was reportedly a gruelling experience shared by the band’s leader Jack Barnett and producer Graham Sutton, a former member of pioneering post-rock band Bark Psychosis. The credit list of musicians and singers involved with Field of Reeds contains over 40 names, including conductors Hans Ek and André de Ridder from Sweden and Germany respectively, bass singer Adrian Peacock, jazz trumpeter Henry Lowth, Portuguese singer Elisa Rodrigues – who is currently a member of These New Puritans’ live incarnation – and Shiloh, the hawk which was recorded for the album’s title track.
In a time when most popular music often feels more lazily referential and disposable than ever, and when our digitally dissipated brains suffer unquenchable cravings for instant gratification, there’s something therapeutic and deeply satisfying about burying your head inside Field Of Reeds‘ tender instrumentation, layered melodies and exercises in restraint. We caught up with Jack to talk about surpassing the expectations of classical composers, the risk-adverse tendencies of the music industry and why it’s sometimes necessary to record a drum track 76 times.
The ferocity and antagonistic feel to certain songs on Beat Pyramid and Hidden has been made absent in favour of tenderness and tranquility on the new record. Have there been changes of circumstance which have influenced this transition?
Yes, with this album the biggest change has been that I’ve tried to move away from abstraction or obscurity. At a certain point you can’t avoid writing about certain stuff, or you get feelings that just override any other consideration. In a way it’s almost like when I’d come home from school and write a song about how I felt on my guitar when I was eight.
On Hidden it sounded like you’d absorbed very contemporary influences. Were you still listening to new electronic/pop music during the recording process of Field Of Reeds?
No. I sort of got sick of that whole thing, bands going round saying ‘we’re a pop band really’. Well, we’re not a pop band. This music can sometimes be difficult. In fact we’re probably one of the most ‘difficult’ bands around, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sincere. I suppose I’m sick of the irony and retro that seems to be everywhere at the moment, I just want to do stuff that I mean 100% even if it’s not always the wisest career move. But also, pop music has become very conservative; it’s all become David Guetta-ised. The post-Timbaland stuff has died away now, that stuff had interesting rhythms and production and textures, but now the labels are even more skint so they can’t take risks.
Do you subscribe to the argument that contemporary guitar-based, song-orientated music is too retrogressive?
Personally I have nothing against guitars, I just don’t have anything to say with a guitar. Maybe I will one day. Also, there’s the financial side. Bands are expensive to record. Record labels are skint and see that you can make music on a laptop in your bedroom so why take the risk on the band? It kind of makes sense. So the supply and the demand are both being squeezed.
How did recording in the Funkhaus Nalepastraße affect the process and sound of Field Of Reeds?
It’s an incredible place, an old post-war west German radio complex, all these huge buildings where they used to produce radio plays, so you’ve got all these different spaces: wooden rooms and stone rooms and rooms with staircases that lead to nowhere, which they used for the sound of people going up and down stairs. We recorded there because André de Ridder, the conductor who we’ve worked with before on Hidden live, knows a lot of great musicians there. André understands the music. A lot of the time in ‘pop’ sessions, the conductor will be some anonymous person you’ve never met and couldn’t care less about the music. But obviously André knows the music, and he brought in musicians who he knows and trusts. We started off at the very beginning with the ensemble recording of brass and strings. Usually it’s the other way round, it’s something bands sprinkle on at the end,
but we built the album around it.
Was there any struggle involved when instructing heavyweight classical musicians and composers such as André de Ridder who’re much more experienced in this area?
There can be. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes you get classical musicians who roll up and think it’s going to be a stroll in the park because it’s a ‘pop’ session. And they’d be right 99 times out of a 100. But it’s funny watching the looks on their faces when they realise this is really difficult stuff, and we’re going to make them play it 100 times to get it just right if we have to. Having said that, it didn’t happen very often, but it’s just that this music demands that. Everything has to be just right or it all falls apart, because there are so many little things colliding and moving around each other. It has to be perfect. As well as getting really virtuosic classical people to play the music there’s also the energy of George (Barnett, Jack’s twin) and Tom (Hein) playing percussion and everything they bring to it. And some old British jazz guys … they’re this amazing resource in this country that people just don’t realise exists. Some of the best, most expressive musicians, just incredible, humbling to be around and a real pleasure to work with.
The drums and percussion parts are notably refined on the record. How did this new necessity for restraint affect George’s role?
Obviously it’s very different, but he played it as you hear it on the album, there isn’t much editing. It’s become more about performances, just because the nature of the music demands it. There are changes in sound over time and a good way of doing that is getting someone to play an instrument, rather than programming it or copy and pasting it, which is endemic. People playing musical instruments together, not ironing out all the irregularities with editing, but honing a performance through playing. For the song Fragment 2, George’s drum take is number 76. Also, because there’s less drumming, when it does happen it has more impact so it’s more powerful for that.
Do you feel confident about performing the new material live?
Yes, we have a seven piece band; trumpet, French horn, piano, Elisa, Tom on electronics and George on drums and vibraphone. Oh, and me. It’s good – not too big, not too small; agile but we can still make a big sound. It’s perfect. Some top musicians. Elisa is singing with us which is a pleasure because this album is a lot more melodic and harmonic. It’s quite easy to play live – you could play all these songs from start to finish on piano if you wanted. So it quite suits a honed version, it definitely brings something to the music. I really love this band at the moment; it would be good to record something with them.
Since Hidden, it’s been near impossible for us to predict TNP’s next step, and that feeling is even stronger now. Do you find it thrilling to totally abandon any concerns about the logistics of your future career?
[laughs] There is a part of me that’s quite contrary. But really I’m just putting one note in front of another, and seeing where it leads me.
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These New Puritans play Bristol’s Simple Things festival October 12th alongside Modeselektor, Nicolas Jaar, No Age and many other acts. More info can be found here. They also appear at Gorilla, Manchester, on October 11th.
Words: David Reed
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