Photo: Andrea Barro
If Gigwise was to pre-guess many of those beginning of the year lists predicting the bands to watch out for in 2007 we’d hazard that London’s Assembly Now will be appearing on plenty of them (They’ll certainly be on ours). With their last double A-side single ‘It’s Magnetic/ Out On 24s’ being lauded by all and sundry for its epic re-evaluation of the current fondness for whippet thin post-punk and an A&R circus for their signatures well under way its fair to say that they’re on the tips of many peoples tongues when comes to the future stars of the British indie world. So we thought it would be a good idea to get ahead of the game, in our role as new music lovers, and introduce to you through the words of front man Gavin Dwight to the world of Assembly Now.
The band came together at the beginning of 2005 after a number of chance meetings but it was never certain from the start which direction their music would take. "Me and Max (Fernandez) , the lead guitarist, studied at Goldsmiths together but weirdly it wasn't until our third year when we were finishing up that we bumped into each other," explains Dwight. “I was doing solo stuff, playing acoustic gigs on my own when he came along and we got talking. He’d just come round my house and we’d just sit on the ground and just play. I was doing all country stuff and he was into much more punky stuff, mostly 80s New Order and Echo & The Bunnymen.” The pair began writing material together with the feeling that it could actually go somewhere before they were joined by bass player Howard Sutton and drummer Andrew Lusher. “It was kind of a weird story really. We weren’t all best mates or anything, we just came together to make music and it ended up working out,” relates Dwight.
Each member, surprisingly for a band with such a definitive sound, came with very different musical backgrounds but this seemingly helped rather than hindered the band according to Dwight. “The weird thing about our band is that it really shouldn’t work because everyone’s into quite different music. Lush is into some really technical math rock where everything is really precise. I’m just bumbling along into Ryan Adams and Dylan, Gram Parsons and Neil Young with this more folk tradition.” He goes on offer: “We’ve never had a unified vision but that’s just kind of worked for us because we haven’t tried to be The Strokes or The Kings of Leon or any one band. It’s hard sometimes because there is a lot of compromise. Everyone’s pretty critical and involved in the writing process.”
What has come out of this seemingly awkward meeting of minds has been described as an epic retake of bands such as Bloc Party and Good Shoes with enough passion to make even the coolest kid on the block sweat profusely. Dwight agrees with this analogy adding that “punk, post-punk and new wave can so easily be two dimensional and quite dry. I think what we’re trying to do is take the energy and just colour it with some more interesting things both rhythmically and sonically”. And to say they’ve been pretty successful in achieving that goal is something of an understatement. Their ‘Apollo Control’ demo, produced by Art Brut and Razorlight collaborator John Fortis, from 2005 was rightly hailed as one of the best of the year and it was far from a blip.
In August of this year they released their debut single via the Kids label and as we said earlier it was greeted from most quarters with glowing praise. “We were really happy with it and really excited by it,” says Dwight. “Especially as it was only a little single release. It’s just given us a little bit of a buzz and a bit of confidence that what we’re doing is maybe in the right direction.” The band even welcome the scant criticism from some that say they’ve heard it all before. “I feel that we’ve been taking notes from that as well. Hopefully the next single release will be another step on and a lot more mature but people will still feel the same way about it.” That single is expected to arrive once again with the aid of John Fortis in January, backed by a full UK tour, and the band are currently recording demos for several possibilities though no firm decision has been made as of yet for the final track listing.
And so we venture on from the recent past and onto the subject of the future and we’re surprised to find that Assembly Now have a pretty philosophical view of where they want to go and how long it will take them. It seems not them the current boom and bust culture of hyped up one month and disappearing into obscurity the next. Dwight Says, “I remember talking with the guys a year ago and saying, ‘Lets build this this slowly’. We’ve always thought that it’ll be single, single, EP and then album. And even then with the album why not just put out a record that doesn’t have to be massive.” Equating it to careers of some of his favourite artists he adds: “Thinking about the bands we grew up with, the likes of Wilco or the Flaming Lips, they released loads of records before they got big.”
The singer expects the eventual long player to be released at the end of 2007 and says that the band won’t be taking any chances with its quality, building up a huge portfolio of tracks before picking the final sequence. “I think we’d like to have thirty songs that we could break down into a eleven or twelve track album. And I’d like it to be thirty good songs. I’d like us to crying over dropping songs, I’d like a really strong record. We really don’t want to release a quick record.” He goes on to say that in some ways the climate of increasingly short careers scares and that he’d like to think that if the band are still writing material that excites and challenges them then Assembly Now would make it to a land where most bands of the past five years will most certainly not tread - the realm of the fifth or even sixth album.
Dwight is eloquent is his understanding of the music world for man who has barely dipped at toe in at the shallow end. He has the sensibilities of a seasoned veteran on the subject and a cynicism of its workings, though it is neither angry or vitriolic, which a lot of people would probably agree with. “I see it as almost political - like how people talk about Tony Blair and spin,” he explains. “Bands just get a load of spin and a load of hype and its generated by this machine of ‘cool’. To like a certain band is to own a certain coolness of that band. And the music, although often is can still be good, seems to come second to the hype and this brand identity that record labels have become so good at doing. And I think eventually its going to confuse people about exactly what good music is.” Many would say this has already happened.
That’s not say that the band would be wary of trying their luck with Major when it comes to signing the deal to release the album. When we raise the question Dwight replies: “No, I don’t think we would. I think the way we would approach a major deal now would be not grabbing at whatever we could get but sitting down and talking about it. The last thing I am is anti Majors, I just think you need to stipulate and be clear about exactly what you want without compromise.” The A&R men had better bring their A game then.
Once again if we were to pre-guess many of those lists us music commentators love to put together, this time at the end of the year, Gigwise would make the bold statement that if things go to plan for Assembly Now they could well be appearing in many a Album of the Year countdown by December 2007. Just remember, you heard it here first!
