Later this week, the Quietus will have a full interview with Malka Spigel about the writing of her excellent, understated new pop Solo LP, Every Day Is Like The First Day. To whet your appetite, we’ve got a stream of the album to play for you… and information on the various people who joined this collaborative project, from Andy Ramsay of Stereolab, in whose studio the first sketches were laid down, to Nik Void of Factory floor, Johnny Marr, Alexander Balanescu and Lonelady. Also below, Malka’s iPhone-shot video for LP track ‘Dream Time’.
Andy Ramsay (Stereolab)
Andy was right there in the beginning, and part of the original recordings. I don’t think he’d recognise how the album finished up compared to how it started in his studio. I think he was quite surprised that we just played and it was so disorganised-sounding.
Ronald Lippok (Tarwater, To Rococo Rot)
We were in Berlin for Wire stuff and stayed on a couple of days. Rather than spend two days in a hotel, we decided to record in the Tarwater Studio with Ronald. We knew that we had the material pretty much ready to play drums on. To Rococo Rot are amazing. Ronald plays on top of the music, he rides the music. It’s perfect. The way he makes the music move is amazing. We sent him the material and he fell in love with it, so he put a lot of love in the way he played on it. Ronald’s approach to the kit is quite strange. The way he builds the track. He’ll start off and build a bed of shakers before he plays the kit.. For percussion on one track he just had a load of stuff on the floor that he was moving around making noises with it, completely not in time with the track. One of the tracks has a gaffer tape solo. He’s very inventive.
Gil Luz
We have a friend Gil in Tel Aviv who’s a huge Wire fan, that’s how we got to know him. He’s a DJ and politically very left, a very committed guy. He’s a fascinating character and we’d become friends… we’d go to his house and smoke joints and drink whiskey. He’s a weird keyboard player, and we thought well if he’s too prepared he’ll get nervous, so we said we’ll come round with the Pro Tools sessions and you can just play keyboards, but can you get an analogue synth, a Juno 60 I think it was. He basically went at the tracks, he played one magical part on ‘No More Running’ where it drops down to one note mmmwwwwwoorrrrmmmmwooorrrr, a one note synthesiser solo. That’s his big moment but there are lots of other textures through the album.
Teho Teardo
is someone that we’ve known for a while. His name in Italy is from the fact that he’s done some pretty big deal movie scores. He’s got that reputation. He started off in a punk band and is a huge music fan. He has a project with Martina Bertoni called Modern Institute, which is electronics and cello, but there was something about the harmonic combination that we really liked. Martina is a straight-up classical player who is mad about Sonic Youth. He can’t write down music, but he hums the string lines to her, and she plays them. He played this really nice baritone guitar on "After The Rain".
Alexander Balanescu
We recorded with Teho in Rome, after we’d finished Alexander Balanescu was coming to work with him and there was a one day overlap so we met up. We got on famously. I discovered that he went from Romania to Israel, and he lived ten minutes from my mum’s house. I was talking to my mum on the phone and he got all nostalgic about it. Teho said we should get him to play on it. When he was next in London he came round and played, and was totally brilliant. There is a violin in the string arrangements, a girl that Teho knows, but his parts are really distinctive. It’s the very romantic violin on ‘Ammonite’, but also on ‘Chasing Shadows’.
Matt Simms (Wire and It Hugs Back)
We both get on so well with Matt. He’s not just interested in Wire, he’s fascinated with what we do together as well. Colin spent a lot of time together with him, especially last year. We knew that he could play in between anything else, he has this way of sliding in there, so things grow without you necessarily being aware of what he’s playing. He’s very discrete in the way he does things, which was really perfect.
Nik Void (Factory Floor
We’ve known Nik since she was in Kaito. We kept in touch since then and played each other stuff we were working on. We are of course fans of Factory Floor and even saw them before Nik joined. We have of course discussed various collaboration ideas and she was an obvious choice for this album. She came over and recorded in our studio. We talked about vocals and felt that in many cases we have a similar, understated, approach. She ended up doubling my vocals on the chorus of ‘Chasing Shadows’, it’s quite a subtle effect as our voices are quite similar in tone but adds another colour.
Johnny Marr
We know Johnny through Jon Savage who told us that Johnny had been following our various exploits with swim~. When we finally met we got on really well and have been loosely talking about some kind of collaboration for a few years now. The chance finally came with this album. Originally Johnny was going to come down and play in our studio but by the time we were ready for him the time-tables became more difficult. In the end he recorded his contribution in his studio and sent it over. When we sent the music to him he said ‘I like it as it is’, he was quite cautious to put a stamp all over it. We’d been talking to him for a long time, and it ended up being a lot later than planned. After he’d done it he asked if he had been too polite in his contributions. He said he wanted to do it as a band member rather than it being ‘here comes Johnny Marr’, which we thought was the right attitude. He really fitted in there well. What Johnny ended up doing had a really subtle quality to it. He, like all the contributors was very sensitive to the material. I especially love his "shimmering guitar cloud" at the end of ‘Lost In Sound’.
Julie Campbell (LoneLady)
Lonelady supported Wire on a series of UK dates in 2008 and again at one of the Quietus sponsored Lexington shows in 2010. Although Julie is a great singer one thing that is also notable is that she is a really good and very distinctive guitarist. Julie felt she wanted to do her contribution in her own studio so she had time to really consider the parts, she is someone who likes to prepare well. She added some real sparkle to the tracks she played on and actually has some of the most distinctive parts on the whole album. Since the album has been done we also worked with her on the Marc Riley Session we did on 3rd September which worked out really well.
