BRNLV Tour Week Interview // Pagan Wanderer Lu vs Chris Alcxxk of Internet Forever

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Pagan Wanderer Lu’s new album European Monsoon is out now. He will soon release a new single, ‘Chemicals Like You’, and a special tour-only CD called A Neuron Poem Soon featuring remixes and outtakes from the European Monsoon sessions. Download one of the many album highlights, ‘A Girl Named Aeroplane’, below.

As part of BRNLV Tour Week, we got Chris Alcxxk of Internet Forever to put PWL under some pressue…

Pagan Wanderer Lu – A Girl Named Aeroplane by snipelondon

You got married fairly recently. Congratulations! Has this affected your music at all? The position that your music takes in your life?

Thanks! I don’t think it’s made any difference really. Music’s always been pretty fundamental to me and Mrs Lu knows that. We’ve been together for a long time and I only really started trying to do something with PWL outside my circle of friends after we got together. If anything having someone who’s always there for you makes it easier, it gives you a base of strength to work from. Plus if you travel five hours to do a shitty gig on your own you always know there’s someone to phone and moan about it to.

Mrs Lu’s usually the first person to hear a new song and she’s not afraid to say when she doesn’t like something, and I do value her opinion on things. So that’s good.

What’s been the best gig you’ve ever played? What was the format (band lineup etc) Why aren’t all of your gigs as good as the best one? Who do you blame for your answer to the last question?

I did a gig supporting The Blow in Manchester about three years ago. I think that was probably the best. It’s certainly the first one that springs to mind. It was my standard solo laptop gig. I just got a really good response from the crowd. I think it was just a good match. The Blow does quite backing-tracky electronic stuff as well so I think the crowd were receptive to something that was more just about the songs than bells and whistles. I sold more CD’s at gig than I think I have anywhere else. Also the Blow herself was really nice and friendly and I did keep in touch with her for a while afterwards.

I don’t know why all my gigs aren’t as good as that one. I think if you have a bad gig there’s rarely anyone to blame but yourself (or possibly the sound engineer). I’ve rarely done a gig where I thought ‘well everyone hated that’ – in fact I can think of only one. There is such a thing as a crap audience, but if they’re being crap you’ve got to reach out a bit. All the gigs I’ve done this year have been great actually, so I must be doing something right.

What publications do you read regularly? Music/tech/news/politics?

The only music website I read every day is Pitchfork. People mock their slightly anal scoring system and highbrow approach – but I’m a serious person and they’re a serious website so that suits me. Their reviews are well written but don’t come across as attempts to say ‘Look at me I’m a good writer!’, more as a genuine attempt to do justice to what they’re writing about – so that’s good. I also generally find that if they give something a good mark and it sounds interesting then I’ll like it.

There are lots of others I read quite a bit, like the Line of Best Fit, Sweeping the Nation, For Folk’s Sake, the Quietus – ones that seem to be done out of a genuine enthusiasm for a particular kind of music and don’t just seem to be an echo chamber for the latest batch of press releases.

I no longer feel the need to hear every single hot new band, if I never hear a record I might have liked… so what? My iPod might fit ten billion songs but there isn’t that much space in my head.

I also read the reviews on Boomkat because they seem to have cornered the market on in depth knowledge of these entire ecosystems of electronic music that intrigue me. I wish I had more money cos I’d probably order shedloads of stuff from them every month.

I read the Guardian and BBC News every day. Sometimes CNN. Bad science. The Next Web for techy stuff. Sound on Sound a fair bit for music/recording stuff. Whatever lefty blogs I spot on Twitter. I like Jack of Kent for his stuff about Libel Reform. Speak You’re Branes for amusement.

Have you read What A Carve Up by Jonathon Coe? It’s really good. Think you’d like it a lot. What are other novels that are good? Do you read comics/graphic novels?

I haven’t. You can lend it me if you want? At the moment I’m reading lots of Iain M Banks’ sci-fi stuff. I’ve read the whole of the Culture series in the last six months and now I’m reading ‘The Algebraist’. I just love the scale of the imagination he’s got. He’s come up with this entire universe with the Culture that just constantly rewards revisiting, and now he seems to be starting from scratch with another one. Plus he’s got this vein of politics running through everything that chimes quite well with my own.

The new David Mitchell novel ‘Jacob De Zoet’ is great too, again just a really in depth novel with a great story arc. Set in the Japanese port of Dejima in 1799 – I never thought I’d have found the intricacies of Dutch/Japanese trading so interesting. Plus there’s stuff about mad monks and child murder.

Best novel I’ve read for years was ‘A Fraction of the Whole’ by Steve Toltz. I can’t even being to describe it. It’s absolutely epic, funny, witty, thought provoking, deep and again it felt like a book that was ‘talking to me’ directly.

Have you got a Korg Monotron yet? They’re fucking awesome. Build quality is not incredible, but what the hell.

Not yet, I do fancy one. Can’t resist anything small and gadgety. It’d be good to rock out with one of them and a Korg Kaossilator.

I saw Dune the other day. It wasn’t very good, but it was at the same time amazing. Rank Lynch’s work.

I’ve only watched it once and I kept falling asleep. Not convinced it would have made any more sense if I’d stayed awake. Plus it’s got Sting in it. I keep thinking I’ll read the book then watch it again.

Lynch films ranked:

1. Mullholland Drive

2. Lost Highway

3. Blue Velvet

4. Wild at Heart

5. The Elephant Man

6. Eraserhead

7. The Straight Story

—-the goodness line—-

8. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

9. Inland Empire

10. Dune

What are your fantasies of the future, re: PWL?

Fantasies? For someone to suddenly pick up on ‘European Monsoon’ and make me so successful that I can quit my job, but not so successful that my life changes too much. For this to happen whilst bypassing every aspect of the depressing bullshit that seems to inhabit every aspect of music promotion. For Brainlove Records to make shitloads of money and be able to give me a massive advance for my next album so I can hire an orchestra and a proper studio. To get a full time band and tour all around the world.

In realistic terms, I’m happy just to keep making records until I stop thinking they’re any good. It’ll be interesting to discover whether, post-internet, it’s still possible for undiscovered artists to become more successful after they’ve stopped recording. Or whether the cycle of THE HOT NEW BAND YOU MUST HEAR THIS HOUR means you get one chance to be heard and that’s it.