[Exclusive] Pagan Wanderer Lu VIDEO (& interview)

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‘Banish Negative Thoughts’ is the first single from Pagan Wanderer Lu’s European Monsoon. To celebrate the TLOBF premiere of the new video, we caught up with the man himself to talk about anger, awfulness, being misunderstood and jumping in the air 400 times.

Hi PWL! This is a pretty angry song. What’s eating you?

The usual really. The comforting embrace of bullshit which I envy and despise in equal measure…

So what’s that crazy sound on the start of the track? What have you been circuit bending now, a kettle with a phono out?

It’s actually the omnichord. I took the back off it and played it with my fingers (being careful to use battery rather than AC power kids). I basically did seven minutes of jamming on a single chord for each chord of the song and then edited the best few seconds of each jam into little riffs. There’s so much left over that I’ll probably use more of it in another song one day.

Is the phrase “Banish Negative Thoughts” one of your own or did you pluck it from somewhere?

It didn’t come from anywhere specific but it’s often used in those sorts of self-help books that allegedly teach you to re-wire your brain to be succesful, happy, more attractive etc. It’s such a vapid thing to say – as if just by saying it you can do it. If things are bad then you need to acknowledge they’re bad and do something about it rather than magically dismiss it with a slogan.

There’s no benefit in wallowing in negativity, but likewise you can’t just ignore the fact that things aren’t right with the world. It’s difficult to strike a balance, because there’s no one less able to effect change in the world than someone wallowing in depression, but there’s no one more oblivious to the need for change than someone who’s all happy-clappy…

Tell us about the making of the video – you must have had to do lots of jumping.

I did. David took about four thousand still photos for the video and about four hundred of them were of me jumping in the air. It was quite tiring. If you look closely there’s one frame where you can see a dad and his two kids joining in with the jumping in the air in the background. Also Cardiff legend Sweet Baboo is visible in two frames. The guy playing the ‘guru’ in the video is Ben who plays bass in the new band.

The video’s really all David’s idea this time (we previously did the video for ‘The Tree of Knowledge’ and he also played on FMBFM). There’s some sort of plot which, no matter how many times he explains it to me, I don’t quite understand. I think I’m supposed to have disappeared inside my own head. The planets represent the negative thoughts… or something…

I didn’t see it at all until it was completely finished and it was brilliant. Really funny. Especially the animated bits, which sort of remind me of Oliver Postgate in some ways. The initial idea for a stop motion video came from watching the first episode of the new Doctor Who. We actually filmed a bit in the same location – Llandaff village green. It’s a Pop Culture Reference.

I also think/hope it’s more obvious that the song is supposed to be amusingly hyperbolic when you see it with the video.

Dreamtrak and Napoleon IIIrd remix tracks on the single… what have they done? You a fan?

Napoleon basically took the omnichord/circuit bending parts and looped it into a drone for about seven minutes. It really reminds me of the Spiritualized ‘Electric Mainline’ stuff they did before ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’ – also a bit Fuck Buttons maybe? I love it. It’s like a completely different thing. He stuck a bit of vocals in as well, possibly just to avoid offending me but really he could’ve just spun the drone out for twice as long with no vocals at all and it would still have been good.

When Oli Dreamtrak said he wanted to do ‘A Girl Named Aeroplane’ I was intrigued. It wasn’t an obvious choice for his big dancefloor-style productions but I knew he’d come up with something good. He’s reworked it so one of the more peripheral parts of the track is now this huge synth riff. You can see a club full of people loving it, but then being bummed out by the words…

Is everything really unbearably awful?

Not everything. Not always. There’s lots to be happy about. Hopefully people don’t take the song at complete face value – although past experience suggests some people will.

And here’s the video….

Catch him live at the following locations:
11th July – CARDIFF – Clwb Ifor Bach – w/The School, Gindrinker + more
16th July – LONDON – Betsey Trotswood – Records Make Great Pets
21st July – CARDIFF – Buffalo Bar – w/The Felt Tips