“I owe nothing to reality”: Irma Vep interviewed

I first caught Edwin Stevens perform as Irma Vep sometime in the late noughties at London’s Mascara Bar venue. He took to the stage solo and struck me as an earthier Will Oldham-type character: radiating emotion and pathos with only a guitar and voice. The set was intense and beautiful; it also involved humour and belching.

In the intervening years, Irma Vep has released a flurry of LPs, cassettes, books, 7”s and played all over the world.  Now in the bizarro reality of locked-down 2020 he has unleashed a full-length album via Nottingham’s Gringo Records entitled Embarrassed Landscape. 

Currently based in Glasgow (though previously Wales and Manchester), he sometimes plays with band and sometimes without. The ensemble version features regular collaborators  Mo Meade, Andrew Cheetham, dbh, Ruari MacLean and occasionally Stevie Jackson, all of whom feature on the new LP.

I wrote to Ed to get to the root of his vibe and the many aspects of his creative endeavour.

I wanted to know if Irma Vep is named after the 1996 film of the same name? 

I originally worked it out as an anagram but then a quick google led me to the film and I just thought fuck it. I don’t actually like the film though — I only watched it a couple of years ago and found it a bit shit (so the name works then, yes, very funny)

Previously you have been involved in groups such as Klaus Kinski, Sex Hands, A Middle Sex, etc. What was the impetus for establishing a project focused primarily on yourself?

I was recording my own stuff before those groups. I got a four-track when I was sixteen from a creep down the road. I could never sleep and had really shitty night terrors a lot back in the day, so I started recording my own stuff to pass the time, late at night. I guess that’s how it started. I used to call it Avalanche Band or Black Balloons and it was more noise-based stuff. The four-track was really big and shit. I miss it!

But, yeah, making music with people is definitely the most fun I can have and I would mainly concentrate on that during the day, and record Irma Vep stuff at night, half asleep.

Your writing is obviously parallel to your making of music, I am assuming? I am interested in how informed your songs are by words and themes? Have songs come from words and themes before the music sometimes or is the approach mixed and/or just spontaneous? Do you labour over lyrics or is the process smooth? Sorry, this is lots of questions.

They are, yeah. They come from different places, but both live under the same roof now, I guess.

I am always constantly “words first”. I have books of daft shite I write and when I clamp a riff down I like, its usually because I have a theme or lines banging round my mind already. I am also a very la-dee-da subconscious cool dude sometimes too.

I don’t and will not labour over anything to do with creative stuff. Making music and writing is a privilege. If it ever became a chore, I just wouldn’t do it.

There is a lineage of literate lyricists in the vein of David Berman, Stephen Malkmus, etc; do you feel drawn to this intersection between words and music, and aspire to a similar legacy?

I was eighteen or so when I started putting words to music and it felt super rewarding, so I kept on doing it. Its auto-pilot now! I cant see myself stopping, it’s whether or not people stop putting it out is the question.

The past two years I’ve written more stories, or words without music, than I ever have before. It’s a really long-winded but rewarding process that is completely the opposite of making music for me. I like the long burn, graft of it and the concentration involved. The struggle is fun! The more I learn how to do it, the more I learn about myself. Its selfish and narcissistic, I love it!

Could you tell me about the book you had published by the good press imprint Museums Press called Very Considerate? Are you working on another book and how did you come to work with good press on this?

Yeah! I wrote it as part of my portfolio for my masters that I was doing. It’s a short story about cleaners on the North Wales coast. Kind of autobiographical, kind of not! I’ve known Matt and Jess for years and years and years, and as you know, they are two of the most supportive, enthusiastic people around! I sent it to them for feedback and said they really liked it and asked to put it out.

The also let me help them edit a book of short fiction under the A Plume label along with Giuseppe Mistretta, who is really great. That collection features some amazing, amazing writers: Nuar Alsadir, Karen Brodine, Hannah Ellul and Ben Knight, Colin Herd, Bhanu Kapil, Anna Kavan, Ghislaine Leung, Sophie Macpherson, Lila Matsumoto and Mira Mattar. It’s definitely worth your time to seek it out!

I’m editing a book of short fiction called Seagulls that I’ve been writing at the moment. It feels really far away from being finished. It all loosely revolves around Pontins in Prestatyn. I’m still really enjoying learning how to write. I don’t know whether it’s publishable — it’s just fun to do. We’ll see, I guess!

Is Irma Vep you or a persona? Have you ever forgotten which is which?

It’s a vehicle! A vessel! I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten which is which… you’ve made me paranoid now. Is this a loaded question?

Is honesty and existentialism something that you are comfortable relaying through song or is there a complicated process of pain involved? I think some people find it very hard to be honest or earnest in music.

I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it like that, but yes, I’ve always tried to manipulate trauma into something I can look at or listen to and try to understand or just laugh at.

It’s not a painful process, but it is processing “pain”.

Have you ever pretended to be honest just to make a song more beautiful and if so did you feel bad afterwards? That is assuming you were always being honest most of the other time.

I’ve made songs over the top and la-dee-daa to help the character get their disgusting views across before, because that’s they way I think they would want it, not the way I feel. Is that the same thing? I didn’t feel bad about it. I owe nothing to reality!

Is there anything you wouldn’t write a song about?

I hope I will never write a song about writing songs.

You have a song called evil, how do you feel about evil?

I don’t know if I feel anything about EVIL, the concept. It’s a very loaded word that’s thrown about willy-nilly.

The song I wrote is about a man thinking of killing his family and forming a narrative in his mind to justify his actions. He’s not EVIL, he just has nowhere to turn because he’s a bloody blokey bloke who was taught to repress his emotions because he’s a bloody manly man! His peers would have most certainly called him EVIL for doing it. It’s all very English… or something. FUCK KNOWS.

You worked meticulously on mixing your latest record yourself — were there moments you nearly lost sight of this process and what do you gain from controlling these aspects?

Yes, I spent a lot longer on this album than I normally do. I’ve always tried to record and mix my own records, I wouldn’t like anyone else to do it for me. Plus, I’m a control freak and no matter what anyone else did to it it wouldn’t be right.

Ruari Maclean recorded the drum and guitar sessions between me and Andrew, and we got all the basics down across two days with him and it was great. It felt natural and right.

The record took a while longer than usual because I had to do some compromising. As there were more players on this record than previous ones, I wanted to it as good as possible for them and not just me. That was new! I sent it to a lot of friends who gave good feedback and helped me along with it. It was definitely the biggest-sounding record I’ve done. I don’t see the point in paying someone else to do it when learning the process and growing with the tunes is half the fun for me. This way each record is going to be better than the last for me personally.

Glasgow’s Stevie Jones (Sound of Yell) also features on the album too, is that right? Did Glasgow enable or inspire the creation of the record differently to, say, when you made records in Manchester or elsewhere? 

Absolutely! The record had already been half-recorded in Manchester by Dominic Tanner over two years earlier. I came into some trouble financially / mentally and had to head back to Wales for a time. When I was there, I applied for a masters in Glasgow as that’s where my girlfriend Mattie was heading anyway. I got in for some reason and moved up with her.

When we got here, it was hard to find a job and keep afloat. Matt and Jess and Ruari Maclean helped us out tremendously in getting us settled, which was really bloody good of them. We moved down the road from Ruari and ended up sharing a practice room and jamming with him and Matt and Jess.

I told Ruari I had an album ready to go, but found it hard to organise being in a new place with no money or any equipment. He asked friends and cobbled some good microphones together and got the process started. We got Andrew up from Manchester and recorded all his and my main guitar parts in two days, which was really, really fun and a massive confidence boost.

I had always wanted to have some piano on a record, but never really had the time or money to explore it at all. When I said this in passing to Ruari one day, he reached out and asked his friend Stevie Jones, who turns out is an absolute legend and lovely man who recorded the piano parts within a week or so of sending the tracks to him. He instantly got the feel and what I wanted. I hope to do some more recording with Stevie at some point! His solo records, Sound of Yell, are amazing. He ended up only playing on “Standards” as I couldn’t mix the piano on “Disaster” properly. The recording of just piano and vocals works better than with the band, so I hope to release that version at some point anyway.

I don’t think the record would have been the same recorded anywhere else. I’m glad it came to life up here. It means more to me now because of the amount of shit I went through to get to it.

I have seen you play songs from the record completely solo and also with a large band; do you purposely write music that can be adaptable like that? 

It’s all written at home on the sofa watching stuff with no real intent. I play through it enough before recording that I’m comfortable performing it any way. It’s not really purposeful, but it works both ways.

The live band take it on and make it their own and that’s a really fucking ace, fun part of songwriting. It can constantly change and adapt. It’s never over. Playing with the band is the most fun I can have. Touring with them is a joy. Everyone’s in it to laugh and have fun and fuck about together. Moe, Ruari, dbh and Andrew are a bunch of mad weirdos who I love very much.

Tell me about the artists who have designed the great record sleeve of Embarrassed Landscape and many other previous releases of yours? 

Mike Redmond and Faye Coral Johnson! The best, funniest, weirdos around. They’re proper, full-time, pro art legends now. I worked with Faye in a café in Manchester and her and Mike quickly became good friends. Back then they worked separately, making amazing stuff and at some point started collaborating. Now they paint fuck-off massive abstract stuff together. I don’t know how they do it. Everything they do is somehow better than the last amazing thing they did. They’re both very inspiring and a massive influence on the way I make stuff!

You currently play in a wealth of other projects including the excellent Dom Jolly and Yerba Mansa. Tell me about some of these?

Dom Jolly is a metal band with Moe (who plays bass in Irma Vep), Jack Paton and Liam Nicolson. It’s our homage to Iron Monkey and Upside Down Cross and bands like that. One-riff legends. It’s very stupid and fun! Me, Moe and Jack did a group called Big Dummy that was more pop-rock, open-tuning weird stuff, but then got bored when we started jamming one-riff nonsense in practice. Liam joined when we were asked to do a show for his band’s “Public Service” 7″ launch and he jumped in on the drums. We have an album out on Bandcamp — it’s wonderful!

Yerba Mansa is me and Andrew Cheetham (who also plays drums in Irma Vep and with lots of other people, he’s very good). Its improvised free rock, nonsense that’s also REALLY fun to do. I love jamming with Andrew — we both come from a similar anxious place in the way we play. Frantic and stupid. We started doing it when we used to play in Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura back in Manchester, maybe 2014 or so. We’ve managed to tour a lot and release some okay records, I think. It’s all online now so have a listen aaaay.

If you weren’t Irma Vep, living in Glasgow and doing your thing, who might have you been instead?

I would still be in Llanfairfechan smoking buckets in my mum’s attic, wanking myself into a jiggling mess every night.

You have a close-knit band of collaborators around your various projects — what qualities do you look for in these confidantes? 

I’ve never really thought about it before. It’s always happened very naturally. Everyone I play with is usually a best friend or very close. However, everyone must be into post-gig dogging sessions and all guitarists have to be balder than me.

Whatever you thought Irma Vep would be the first day you ever did it, has it impacted your life in a way you imagined?

Yeah, when I started it I was pretty isolated out in the middle of nowhere, and all I wanted to do was go places and play music and go to good gigs and that. I was listening to a lot of Smog and Cat Power, but also improv things like Sunburned [Hand Of the Man] and No-Neck Blues Band, etc. I think I’m making a happy medium of those right now???

Moving to Manchester with the Klaus Kinski boys was the best thing I ever did. We met tons of ace people who were super supportive and eager and up for it. I’ve managed to go to bloody America and Europe and the UK tons, so I am very fuckin’ grateful to be honest! Now I’m in Glasgow and having a right nice time.

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Embarrassed Landscape is out via Gringo Records.

-Andrew Robert Doig-