When Chris Malins first mentioned that his vinyl album Black and Red was available for just 50p I instinctively looked for a catch, however this is a limited edition you must get your hands on before they all go. This is a seriously good album and a must for the listener who wants layers and layers of guitar in his songs. Chris took time out to discuss his music and the idea behind this great offer......
Thank you for taking the time to do this interview Chris, can you tell us about your musical background?
I started playing in bands while at university in Hull in the late 80s. Hull was one of those places with a vibrant alternative music scene, possible because it was quite isolated. Big bands hardly ever went there, so you had to make your own fun. The scene revolved around the Adelphi Club, run by Paul Jackson, which is one of the few remaining venues of its type around the country. You’d get a smattering of second division indie bands touring there every now and again, but mostly it was local groups doing endless benefit gigs, hoping for more than 20 people to rock up. Must have done around 40 gigs there. Sometimes you’d get a tasty support slot where you’d get to play in front of a real audience of 200 or so. Supporting Manic Street Preachers on their first tour stands out. The week before Richie Edwards sliced his arm up. They were such sweet guys at the soundcheck. Nicky Wire grooving out the Fools Gold bass riff while testing the headroom on stage for when he jumped up and down and James Bradfield constantly telling Jim, the perennial Adelphi sound guy, to turn down Richie’s guitar. Spinal Tap in reverse – one lower! They disappeared back to their van for an hour and out came The Generation Terrorists. Who was that we were talking to earlier? Priceless insight to the realities of Big Time Indie. The only band that got signed in that era were called Tombstone Graffiti. They were nice guys but too much like Rattle & Hum era U2 for me. The legend goes that they were down to support Dr Phibes & The House of Wax Equations, who cancelled last minute, and they got to play to the full house. The A&R man who was there from Chrysalis to see Phibes signed them up and they reappeared a few weeks later after a full “Formula Indie” makeover going by the name of Kingmaker: 2 parts Wonderstuff to 1 part Carter USM. I was one of the crowd that night going “No Phibes? No way, and not these bastards again – I’ve heard their set of lumpy custard ten times already”. More insight into the realities of Big Time Indie.
After several years messing about in bands with people who couldn’t really keep time or play, I finally got a band where everyone could, and with none of the usual weak links, it seemed easy to make progress. It was Grunge time by then and we were nodding our caps to the likes of Sonic Youth, The Butthole Surfers and Dinosaur Jr, making a healthy guitar noise and getting noticed. It was really something for a while but people moved out of town and it fizzled out, but in the process of putting together two really well-oiled sets for that band I got into a rhythm of constantly writing new stuff, rather than just trying to figure out popular riffs when I picked up the guitar. I bought a Tascam 4 track recorder, the cheapest out there, and started making home demos.
After getting on for 10 years in Hull I finally got a job and worked around Europe for a few years, never again even coming close to finding a similar alternative live music scene with which I could get involved. I never had a band again, but kept on making the demos, improving my recording craft, trying to write lyrics and sing, but always just as a vehicle for guitar noise. For me, everything starts with an interesting guitar riff. I used to make a full C90 tape of songs every 3 or 4 months on this Tascam 4 track. You couldn’t bounce down on it as the subsequent sound quality was appalling, so it was bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, on three of the tracks, vox and another solo or two on the last one. I made hundreds of songs and I would send out copies of tapes to friends. If pressed to give an opinion, they might say it was “alright”, but I knew that most likely, they really didn’t even listen to them. It never stopped me though. I was kind of obsessed.
Around the turn of the millennium I started getting into what is known as crate digging these days. Searching out old vinyl for cheap from charity shops, car boot fairs and dusty second hand record shops. A lot of the people into that were searching for drum breaks to make their own trip hop stuff, on the back of Portishead and the Mo Wax label breaking through. However, as sonically literate as this crowd were, generally speaking, they would look down on anyone who could play an actual musical instrument, and showed absolutely no interest in the songs I was recording, so while immersed in that scene, I ploughed along in my own song writing furrow for years. On the positive side, it opened my eyes to the possibilities of computer recording, and I got myself set up with a sound card and a hooky copy of Cubase, one of the standard commercial studio software packages. I could really go to town with that. These songs are the results of having 24 tracks at my disposal.
How is the current Lockdown affecting your creativity?
The LP was released (if you can call it that – it came back from the pressing plant) not long before Lockdown and I was then honing a set of the songs that might work well in an early Billy Bragg electric guitar and voice kind of way, just in case the opportunity came to play out. Covid did for all that, but it did offer the opportunity to have time to pick up a guitar every day, which I hadn’t managed for years. I practiced, with a capital P, stuff I’d never had the time to study, as it were. I decided to nail down all of the tricky stuff from Television. Marquee Moon was instantly my favourite LP after I first heard it not long before they reformed and I managed to see them at Glastonbury in 1992. Anyway, getting into these guitar parts I discovered the murky world of the youtube guitar cover. It’s a niche thing, guitar nerds pointing a camera at a fretboard to reveal where your fingers go. I’m seriously considering getting something up there for “Ain’t That Nothin”, as it’s a sprawlingly good Richard Lloyd solo that no one has had a crack at yet. I digress…
Your album is called 'Black and Red', can you tell us the idea or theme behind the project and how would you describe your sound?
I wanted to turn my tracks into a coherent vinyl LP. Pure misguided vanity! The aforementioned crate digging led me into a partnership in a boutique record label, the lasting legacy of which is collecting two volumes of tracks from what are called Private Press LPs, or sometimes Road Albums. Small acts made their own records to sell at gigs. Highly obscure vinyl artefacts, and to be fair, mostly rubbish, but there is some cracking stuff from the 1970s out there. We called our compilations Working Man’s Soul (as in working man’s club, you get the idea). Anyway, I wanted to make my own Private Press LP. I had heard about how it was supposedly dead easy to get your music out there online these days (although I would disagree with that thought after going through this process – it’s as hard as it ever was to get any traction), but I really had no interest in just setting up the tracks for download. I’m a vinyl-aholic, so it was all about making an LP. Essentially, it’s a Best Of, without a back catalogue. I chose my favourite cuts that I had the best recordings of. Black and Red because I used to lift those nice scientific notebooks from work to use for my jottings and filled several of them with song after song. The cover is a picture of one of the actual books, broken spine, mug stain and all. I deliberately chose the heaviest guitar driven stuff. The sound is rooted in my 80s/90s alternative guitar upbringing. To me it feels like a kind of Sebadoh underachieving hotchpotch, but its difficult to judge your own work.
Who's worked with you on the album?
It’s all just me: played, sung, engineered and mixed. With a single cheap microphone, my Telecaster that I bought new from the legendary A1 Guitars in Manchester (now a trendy wine bar of course), a knackered old bass that I paid a mate 30 quid for the same number of years ago, and a Yamaha DJX keyboard that I used for the drums. I’d record a rhythm guitar as a guide then do the drums, played in real time on the keyboard. I was never interested in drum programming. Playing them live on the keyboard at least felt like being a musician. Then maybe
do a couple of vocal tracks (which I always loathed), then the fun part. Loads and loads of lead guitar. I tend to throw the kitchen sink at it in that respect…
Where can folks get to listen to the album?
Interested parties should head for my bandcamp page. The album is there and a couple of extra tracks. I plan to add more tracks as the interest comes along. It’s getting the traction from a standing start that is the tricky part as bandcamp doesn’t really offer any help in that respect.
Can you tell folks about your generous offer on your album?
Basically, it is as free as I can make it. Its free to download, but for me, that’s not the point anyway. I struggle to believe that an album actually exists without it appearing on vinyl. Bandcamp don’t allow you to give objects away through their system. There is a minimum charge of 50p, so that’s how much the LP costs, plus postage. I had this plan to drop off copies at record shops and ask them to give them away. From my previous experience in the boutique label game I figured this would be more difficult than it sounds, as shops tend not to want stock that they can’t shift within a couple of weeks. Finding record shops is a task in itself these days, but I started off with Rough Trade in Nottingham, who were happy enough to take 10 copies to put in their Local Bands rack. Then lockdown happened and I’ve not been further than the supermarket since…
What's next for you?
If the LP gets a bit of interest, I might make another. I’ve a massive stockpile of tracks!
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