Steep Gloss - Interview
Steep Gloss is a Wigan-based DIY cassette label specialising in collaborative, indefinable music. STAT spoke with Ross Scott-Buccleuch who runs the label to find out more ...
It can be easy when talking of abstract and indefinable music, as is on Steep Gloss, to lump it all under the label of 'experimental'. Do you find this label helpful? How would you describe Steep Gloss to a prospective listener?
Experimental seems outdated as a descriptor now. In the 60s it was used to describe practitioners of emerging new sounds and referred to the musical experiments these people were undertaking.
Nowadays it seems to be an umbrella term for anything unusual, whether it contains any actual experimentation or not. But for something that is hard to describe and sounds like nothing else, 'experimental' kind of fits, so it can be useful.
SG releases collaborative projects, from two or more people working together. These releases can be abstract, bewildering, delirious, sinister - sometimes in isolation, sometimes all at once!
I'm interested in the idea that collaborating makes an artist go to creative places they wouldn't go to, or more importantly, couldn't get to without the impetus from working with somebody creatively stimulating.
It's those further out realms I'm hoping to get to with SG and hopefully that's what a listener will experience by listening to any release.
A flick through your bandcamp shows you've released works by artists from across Europe, and from as far as Japan. Do you find music like Steep Gloss' needs to be actively sought out or is ever-present worldwide?
We have so far released music by artists from France, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Argentina, Norway, Denmark, UK, Spain, USA, Japan...
The music I release is for a niche audience, certainly, which means that it is harder to find than more popular music.
However the support for this type of music is global and passionately loved by the people who have found this unusual path. There's a real sense of community amongst its followers, and it's really heartening to get either a new listener, some feedback or some recordings from somewhere else in the world. As the label is on Bandcamp, what I release goes worldwide.
Locality isn't important for me as a label. For example, I haven't met most of the people whose work I have released!
UK seems to have hotspots where there is increased interest in weird music: the North East, Yorkshire and Brighton etc
How do you find the right music?
Releases so far have been a mixture of either me inviting somebody I'm already a fan of, balanced out with works being sent to me out of the blue.
As for what is 'right', there's a publisher I like called Chomu Press who, in their guidelines state that submissions need to have a particular Japanese aesthetic called yuugen, which crudely translates as “a quiet and profound sense of mystery" or “the feeling of a deep, unfathomable atmosphere, beyond words".
This has always appealed to me and in many ways has influenced my approach to deciding on the 'right' music for Steep Gloss. It's not that I insist on yuugen for everything I release, but more that submissions generally need to sound like they've come from elsewhere, somewhere unfathomable, for it to be a good fit for the label. As I mentioned above, it's through collaboration that these unfathomable areas can be reached.
You release exclusively on cassette - purely aesthetic or deep reasoning?
Cassettes have been part of my music listening since being very young. My dad would make me mixtapes of pop music in the early 80s, which cemented a love, not only of synth pop but also of the cassette. At the risk of sounding like a fetishist, there really is something special about not only the sound but the tactility of a cassette that just feels like the perfect embodiment of music in the physical sense to me. You can unroll your eyes now!
So my chosen physical format is cassette, (though we do have digital).
There's a long history of cassettes being the perfect medium for genres such as noise, drone, ambient etc. The surface noise and warm compression complimenting the sounds in a way that seems meant to be.
People often refer to cassettes as 'having a revival' but for this type of music they've never gone away. Tape trading is still just as active today as it was in the 80s!
Pre-lockdown, have you seen Wigan (or the north-west in general) to be a breeding ground for performers and artists such as on your label? What's it been doing well and what could it do better?
In short, no. Not in Wigan or surrounding areas. I've occasionally been lucky over the years, in that I've managed to play the odd gig locally, for example, Wigan Live Festival, Old Courts prison cells and Cross Street Arts, but as far as there being a scene or a breeding ground, I certainly haven't come across it. There's certainly nothing regular, just these one-offs now and again.
As far as what the area could do better, perhaps the venues catering for visual arts/artists could encourage people who produce sound-art to do this in a public space locally too. And to demonstrate that there is a potential outlet for what they do locally, whereas they would normally head off to somewhere like Manchester for that kind of thing. Or perhaps there's genuinely no audience/practitioners in this area - I'm really at a loss to say for sure.
My nearest tape customers have been from Warrington and Bolton incidentally.
Focusing on local creatives, is there anything that's caught your ear (or eyes) during lockdown? Anything you'd like to recommend?
My friend and neighbour Amy Cecilia Leigh is putting out some great illustrations in various printed forms. Featuring cats, plants, bored girls contemplating their very existence.
You can buy her stuff on Etsy - she's known as Ewfreak there.
Beyond that, Cafe Rosso have been killing it on the cake front during lockdown.
I've just heard they're doing a Jaffa Cake Cheesecake so I need to do everything in my power to possess one of those - by hook or by crook!
Throughout lockdown, artists and promoters from areas such as Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle and Brighton, have been putting on live streaming events showcasing huge amounts of talent often on a weekly basis. Live streams such as Heinous Whining, Isolated Mass/Isolated Mess, TOPH and Plague Time TV have all been hugely important in keeping the scene alive as well as being innovative, inspiring and enjoyable! The streams can be found archived on YouTube.
And finally: to those wanting to venture out into the expanses of 'experimental' & 'abstract' music, where would you point them first?
There's a ton of avenues I could send people down and there's perhaps a temptation to ease people in gently, but I'm not going to! So, other than me saying just dive into the Steep Gloss back catalogue and see if you make it out the other side, here's a few randomly chosen works from the last few decades to bewilder, confuse and hopefully intrigue. All should be easy to find online.
Robert Ashley - Automatic Writing (1979)
Eliane Radigue - Trilogie de la Mort (1993)
Else Marie Pade - Electronic Works (1958-1995)
Bernard Parmegiani - De Natura Sonorum (1975)
The New Blockaders - History of Nothing (2001)
More recently
Blue Chemise - Daughters of Time (2018)
Small Cruel Party - Unroof the House of the Fishes (2014)
Body Has No Head - Spasms (2017)
The Conduits - Attenuating Circumstances (2020)
Pharoah Chromium - Eros+Massacre (2019)
And anything from these labels: Chocolate Monk, Invisible City Records, Falt, Important Drone Records, The Tapeworm, Royal Sperm, Czaszka
questions
Pete Mercer
answers
Ross Scott-Buccleuch
images
courtesy of Steep Gloss