Nottingham based collective known simply as NottsNoise are very busy people indeed with their fingers in quite a few pies ranging from organising gigs under the NottsNoise banner, the Rottingham & Cuntstock Festivals to running Cheyne Stocking Records. Dan, one of their founder members also acts as a booking agent for The Old Angel and with his involvement with sludgers Zeder, I managed to find time in his busy schedule to fire a few questions over to him...
Hello Dan, how's life treating you at the moment? Fine & Dandy I hope!
Not too shabby at the minute, mate. Although it's that time of year again and I'm not looking forward to Christmas 'cause I'm a boring cunt.
Let's start off by giving us a brief introduction to the collective known as NottsNoise, why you started and who is involved?
NottsNoise is mainly run by me and Ian, whilst Suit, Ash, Chris, Shep, Alun, Barry and Ste have been known to help us out here and there with various things – it's just a collective of Notts drunks really. Although it was just me on my own at first. I originally started it up few years ago, because after the Notts Rocks webzine disbanded there wasn't really anything to cover the underground music scene in Nottingham. I always had an interest in music media as well as the idea of putting on my own gigs so I thought I'd have a crack at it. I set up a website, did a couple of reviews and interviews and put on one show, but I couldn't keep it running on my own and as I didn't know anybody suitable enough to bring in, I closed the lid on it. A couple of years later I met Ian on a hazy new years eve and he later asked me to help him run an event called Cuntstock that he was doing. After that I asked him if he wanted to help me set NottsNoise up again and we've been doing gigs ever since. But I've had various problems with computers and the internet, so I haven't been able to set up the webzine until now. It should be up next month - fingers crossed.
And how is the underground scene in Nottingham at the moment? Are gigs well attended? Any Nottingham based bands you can tell us about which we should be checking out?
It's not overly great at the minute really. People don't really make the effort to go to gigs unless their friends are playing so it's hard for unknown out-of-towners to draw a decent crowd. Nowadays it seems the bands with the best turn-outs are the ones with the most friends, especially since the smoking ban as a lot of folk are out having a fag whilst the other bands are playing. But I'm sure it's like that wherever you go.
As for the bands side of things, that's gone a bit down hill recently as well. A lot of good bands split up this year and that's why we'll be covering more than just Notts bands in our webzine, because otherwise it'd be practically empty. Although there are still a hand full of good bands around such as; Moloch, Jesus of Spazzareth, Blood Divided and Drunken Bastard. There are other good points as well that I should mention like; The Old Angel Venue, Stuck on a Name Studios and The Heavy Sounds independent record store.
NottsNoise will be playing host to the Rottingham Weekender, a 2 day festival on 28th Feb/1st March 2009 featuring a plethora of bands from Slow and Heavy through to Fast and Violent, but why did you decide to put on such an event?
Well when the Junior Showtime group folded, the Everything Went Heavier/Faster weekender folded with it, and since then you don't see those types of shows in Nottingham anymore which is a big shame.
I got to attend as well as play a couple of the EWH/F events and always had a great time myself, and there was always an atmosphere at those shows that hasn't been seen for a long time, so we just wanted to get that back really. It's just as much for ourselves as for anyone else because there's a lot of good sludge and doom bands in England that we haven't been able to see before. And some we've seen before but haven't seen in years. We're just hoping people will enjoy it as much as I'm sure we will.
How did the name Rottingham come about?
We were struggling for ideas on what to call it for a while. We didn't want the usual 'something Fest' and we already had Cuntstock, so 'something Stock' was out of the question.
We had some tee shirts done for us by Doyle (River Freshney) for Cuntstock '08 that said "Scream for me Rottingham" across the bottom and it caught my eye as I went to put one on. We thought it was fitting so we stuck with that.
What bands are confirmed at the moment and on which day/date will they be playing?
I've just this minute had the email confirming Sourvein. They'll headline the second day. Other than that, on the Saturday we've got (in no particular order); Charger, Lazarus Blackstar, Gloomy Sunday (from Sweden), Volition, Space Witch, Terratoid, Agent of the Morai, A Horse Called War, Red Stars Parade, They are Cowards, Gods of Hellfire, Berserkowitz and Drunken Bastard. And on the second day there is; The Sontaran Experiment, Reth, Koresh, River Freshney, Jesus of Spazzareth, Godsize and Rachmanite with more to be confirmed.
How did you come to the short list of bands you wanted to play and did you find that as the rumours of this festival spread, you had bands approaching you to play?
We made our short list mainly based on bands we've been interested in for a while that we haven't had a chance to see yet, as well as a few we've seen before that we just want to see again. We wanted to throw in two of three bands outside of the sludge and doom genres as well to break it up a bit. We've been approached quite a lot from people asking if their band can play, one or two good'ns as well which makes a change, but we've only got a couple of slots left and we want to keep them open for a bit.
You've also had a nightmare of a time getting a solid date booked with it being cancelled 3 times already, so can you tell us why it had to be postponed on 3 occasions and how much of a problem did this cause you? Were bands happy to rearrange or did you find it somewhat tricky to get the same or similar line up?
Yeah that was a massive problem for us. Basically, when we first started arranging Rottingham, The Old Angel was going through a transition period in regards to booking gigs, and at that time they were getting a load of club nights sorted out, and the first dates we had was blocking one of those off which would have fucked up the whole system, so we decided to move it back. We didn't have to like, but we didn't want to be awkward cunts, and with it being five months later we didn't think it'd matter too much. At this point I'd just started running the gigs at The Angel, and so I was given a list of all the free dates, that hadn't yet been updated with the club nights on, and chose two dates that clashed again. By the time we worked that out, I'd moved house and was offline, so we decided to post pone the whole thing just until I got connected, which took four fucking months.
When I finally got back online I was just desperate to get a date booked and like an idiot, I chose February 14th which is of course Valentines day. It wasn't until I got a load of "we can play, but the Mrs is going to kill me" type messages that I realised. It's a good job 'n all 'cause my Mrs would have had my balls on a plate. So yeah, not very professional on my part but all the bands were understanding which was good. In fact, at the time I think only two bands from the original line up couldn't do the re-scheduled dates, and one of those were Limbic Riot who only couldn't play because they unfortunately split up.
The plan was originally to have the Saturday for the more slower/heavier bands and the Sunday for the more faster, grind bands, what with all the chopping and changing of dates, is this something you still want to continue with, or are you now mixing it up a bit on both days?
Well that was the original idea when we first decided to do Rottingham, but then we thought it would've been too much of an Everything Went Heavier/Faster rip-off, so we decided against it. Plus the amount of slower/heavier bands we wanted out-weighed the faster group, so we just decided to mix it up.
And what are your long term plans for the Rottingham Weekender, is it something you hope to put on every year and maybe, in time, become as big/popular as the likes of Damnation or even Roadburn?
I don't see why we wouldn't do it again. If it all goes well and people enjoy the first one then we'll definitely do it again. I'd love to be able to do it every year, as for me personally, this is a lot more my thing compared to other gigs we've done/are doing. As for being as big as Damnation and Roadburn, I'm not sure about that. They're both great events that seem to get bigger every year. Should we do Rottingham as a yearly thing, it'll always stay at The Old Angel. We'll just be happy if everyone enjoys it.
Besides Rottingham, you also organise smaller gigs under the NottsNoise moniker, so can you give us an insight into who've you've put on in the past and what future gigs you have coming up?
We've done a fair few smaller gigs since August '07, as well as the Cuntstock weekender we had in April. Some of the bands we've had on include; Romeo Must Die, Ted Maul, River Freshney, Sanzen, Chaos Blood, Koresh, Godsize, Insidious, Jesus of Spazzareth, Honour Among Thieves, Reth, Kartel and Berserkowitz to name a few. We also arranged a tour taking Blood Divided round the country for a week. Coming up we've got Ringworm in January and we'll be doing Cuntstock again next summer. We're planning to do a lot more next year than we did this year and with me now living in Peterborough, we'll be putting gigs on here too.
You're also a booking agent for The Old Angel venue in Nottingham so how did this new found role come about and what is actually involved?
About 18 months ago The Angel came under new ownership, and since then the gig room upstairs has had massive improvements done on it in order to fetch some better bands in. The bloke who now owns the place doesn't know too much about bands and gigs etc so he needed a bit of help for that side of things. There was a lad doing it before me though but he didn't have the time to spare, where as I've quite a lot of time here in Peterborough, and as he knew me from doing NottsNoise shows he asked me if I'd help out. We're still setting up a system but we're hoping that by the New Year there'll a lot more better bands playing there regularly. We also thought it'd be a good idea to set up an extra page on My Space to separate the venue affairs from the pub business, and I run that for them.
Can you tell us a bit about your association with Cheyne Stoking records and although you don't have any releases to talk about at the moment, what's the idea behind it and what releases do you have planned?
That was started nearly two years ago by me and Lister (who's recently joined Jesus of Spazzareth) to put out a split of the band we were in together and another Nottingham band called Ape of Death. But before anything was finished Ape of Death split up so the project was scrapped. We kept the project open though just in case anything else came around. I got Ian involved seeing as we do NottsNoise together so there'll be the three of us running it once it's kicked off. In the future we've got plans of putting out Blood Divided's debut EP (when they're finished napping) as well as a compilation of Nottingham bands from past and present. We're just working on a few little things for that before the track list is finished.
And if everything else your involved with isn't enough, you also play in the 2 piece Doom/Sludge outfit Zeder along with Baz from Jesus Of Spazzareth, so can you elaborate a little on this project, why you are throwing the idea around about using a different vocalist for each track and do you have anyone lined up to feature on it?
I started this up to basically get down a load of riffs I've been writing for about a year now. I was going to use them with Quaid but then that fell through. Barry's been one of me best mates for years and we've been in a few bands/projects together since about 2002 so I'm sure it'll be a good crack, but it's still only a little project. As for having different vocalists for each track, that's just something I thought would be pretty decent to do, to get in folk from local bands to contribute, but I doubt anything will come of it as it'd be too much of a ball ache to do for a part-time project like this. We'll probably just share throat duties between us.
It's also been mentioned that it's very unlikely you will play live as Zeder, is there any reason for this and if the perfect opportunity arose, is it something you would consider?
It's just due to time really. Barry's already in two bands and I don't want to keep travelling to Nottingham to rehearse and all that lot. Too much effort. Plus, I can't be arsed with the annoying promoters for gigs side of things that comes with being in a live band. Maybe if something really good came up, we'd probably do it as a one-off if it didn't involve too much travelling. But it is just a recording project really, just to get some d.i.y recordings and stick 'em on the net. Maybe submit a few tracks for a compilation/split if we're ever asked. But that's as much as we'll do really.
Thanks Dan for the interview, I hope I've covered everything yourself & NottsNoise are involved in, if not, please use this space for anything I've missed as well as final words...
Not a problem, thanks for taking the interest.
For more information on NottsNoise and everything their associated with check out the following links:
NottsNoise: www.myspace.com/nottsnoise
Rottingham: www.myspace.com/rottinghamfestival
Cuntstock: www.myspace.com/cuntstocknottingham
Cheyne Stoking Records: www.myspace.com/cheynestokingrex
Zeder: www.myspace.com/zederband
The Old Angel Venue: www.myspace.com/theoldangelvenue
Interview conducted by Lee via email during October 2008