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Epileptic Gibbon: So obvious questions first: why Nunbient and how does it connect to your other musical projects?

Matt: Well, as you might be able to guess from the name, Nunbient was derived from our band “Nuns” (formally Antique Seeking Nuns) and the word “ambient”, so in a literal sense it is ambient/electro-acoustic music made by two members of Nuns. Musically we started to arrive at the idea after working on some of the more experimental areas of our music, in particular the link tracks that we developed for the Songs for Days album by our other (now defunct) project Joff Winks Band.

Epileptic Gibbon: There’s an obvious nod with Nunbient to contemporary electronica and IDM – acts on the Warp label, Boards of Canada, Autechre, etc. How much of Nunbient’s sound is a direct homage to that, how much is directly influenced by it, and how much would you say is entirely fresh, original and new?

Matt: We’ve both listened to Aphex Twin since the mid-nineties, and more recently Boards of Canada have had a real influence, especially in the types of keyboard sounds we create. But there are other influences as well, such as ECM records and drone based artists like Continuum. The whole approach to field recording is something we’ve been doing since the first Nuns E.P in 2001.

Joff: We’ve been interested in making ambient/electronic music right from our first recordings, especially with tracks like M.O.D.A.R, but lately we’ve achieved more of a focus in this particular musical style than we have before. I think there are elements of influence from Boards and Aphex Twin but I’m not sure we really touch on direct quotes from either of these artists. One of the areas I find most interesting in making this music is the field recording. You never know what might be captured or how the sound will turn out when it’s played back at half speed or quarter speed, certainly it’s always unpredictable and original.

Epileptic Gibbon: You’ve kind of implied that this was an easier musical project to do than some of your other recent efforts with other projects – how so?

Matt: It was easier in the sense that there was no “band” to record, which instantly makes things more straightforward from a recording perspective. But there is a certain feeling of freedom that we get from doing this music.

Joff: I think the working process when creating this type of music makes life a little easier. It seems to make my mind more concentrated, as the work itself is quite detailed and meticulous. The recording has a natural focus and flow to it that seems conducive to being able to finish things more directly.

Epileptic Gibbon: It feels quite a dark and cold album at some points. Was this intentional and was there a reason for this focus? Is it a comment in any way on the current almost apocalyptic, end of times mood put forward in the news, etc. what with global warming, wars, worldwide economic problems etc? A dark album for dark times perhaps?

Matt: It is absolutely meant to be a comment on our times, particularly the trilogy of tracks that close the album. A recurring theme for us recently has been this idea that we are currently standing on the edge of a cultural abyss, and possibly in it already. It’s a concept that links together some of our other projects as well: I’ve recently finished a 35 minute classical work for 10 piece chamber ensemble called “Here Come The Dark Ages”, and Joff has a song called simply “Dark Ages” which will be on the next Nuns album. So this album forms a trilogy with those other works.

Joff: As we were putting together some of the tracks for Nunbient – One this dark theme seemed to become really prominent. The record started to become an audio extension of an idea that Matt and I have been discussing for a while now. We have both been feeling that perhaps we are standing on the edge of another dark age period in history. That perhaps what’s in store for us as a species is not very promising. People don’t feel confident about the future or themselves and there is a lack of any direction or progress in our thought or our actions, we seem so almost mute and unable to respond to this culturally.

Epileptic Gibbon: Antique Seeking Nuns CDs often contain strong elements of humour but that’s less obvious with Nunbient. Is there humour on the Nunbient album? Does humour belong in Nunbient?

Matt: Not that it was a conscious decision of ours, but I think the lack of humour was simply a natural result of the subject matter and the genre.

Joff: Humour has always featured in our music and partly as a natural defence against taking ourselves too seriously. Although, I have to say, that perhaps what we’re most interested in is absurdity rather than humour. Taking something that is already ridiculous to an extreme point in terms of its development is a real joy and does create some weird and wonderfully macabre songs. In this record however the subject matter is serious and I think the album fits our emotional response to the matter in hand well.

Epileptic Gibbon: What are your favourite tracks on the album and why?

Matt: It’s tough to pick as the album has such a unified feel to it. I think “Indian Box” is a real standout and I also love the closing section of “Drone Frost Porous” when all of the guitar overdubs start fading in.

Joff: Fable Of Babel is one of my favourite tracks I love the voices in this recording. I think it’s a really great example of never knowing what might happen to a sound when it’s slowed down.

Epileptic Gibbon: The album is due out on Burning Shed: How did that come about? Do you have a particular affinity for the Burning Shed label/brand?

Matt: We sent the album off to various labels, but were always hopeful that Burning Shed might respond to it as we have always been inspired by the label’s approach to music and how they work with artists.

Joff: It is also a huge pleasure to have the CD packaged by Burning Shed as the Carl Glover designs are always inspirational.

Epileptic Gibbon: Is there likely to be a second Nunbient album? Is there more material that didn’t make it onto the first album?

Matt: The second Nunbient album called “Nunbient Two: Like Glass” is about 50% written and a third album is in the conceptual stage as well. There is nothing specifically left over from this album, but there are still some of the link pieces that we mentioned that we didn’t have room for on Songs for Days. There is also some music in the Nunbient style that we recently completed for a short film. Hopefully we’ll get the second Nunbient album out in 2009 along with the new Nuns album, and of course the archival Antique Seeking Nuns recordings that have still to be released.

Joff: We have discussed some conceptual ideas for a third record which I’m really excited to explore and as Matt has mentioned we are currently recording a follow up to Nunbient – One.

Audio interview click here

1. Who is Joff Winks?

This is a really hard question! Joff Winks is me, he is the person who writes the songs and gives them a vocal personality. I can’t really say much more than that.

2. At what age did you realise you were going to be a musician?

I started playing the guitar really young, around the age of six, but music didn’t start to grab me until I was about twelve. I played other instruments for a time but the guitar was the thing that I kept plugging away at, it would get me so mad sometimes that I’d cry and yet I would always come back to it, over and over, eventually I became obsessed with it, I’d play it to the point of neglecting a lot of other things. I think when something like music has such a strong and positive effect you begin to have a good idea that this is what I’ve got to be doing, for the rest of my life. Once that happened I realised that as my life moves from point A (being born) to point B (dying) all I needed to do was try to fill the spaces in between creatively, an idea that is sometimes easier said than done.

3. What inspired you about kite flying enough to make you want to
write a song?

Well, firstly the kind of songs I like by other people tend not to be the love type, so I’m not really interested in writing about the content of my own emotional life. That’s not to say that the writing is devoid of emotion, rather the opposite, it’s just that I don’t know how much creative scope there is in autobiographical writing and I think it can get pretty dull pretty quickly. Once I had started listening to musicians like Robert Wyatt and Richard Synclair I began to open up to a wider array of possibilities and to feel more comfortable in my writing, for the following two reasons (a) you can sing with your regional accent! It doesn’t have to be a contrived American one and (b) that you can write songs about what you know and have experienced and if this happens to be kite flying, then it’s a song about that. Secondly, I like to write songs with a narrative, I think Juniper, which is the song with the Kite lyric fits into this category. Usually I’ll start with a lyric or even just a word that I like the sound of and before long there’s a story unfolding. Juniper, rather than being about Kite flying per se is actually about a boy called Juniper who develops a strange death phobia and consequently an even stranger obsession with his Kite. The kite for him represents escape from the ground, from the earth and ultimately from his own mortality.

4. What’s your personal description of your music?

This is probably the hardest question of all to answer. The description of my music is a sum of all the music I have listened to. I would like to say that it is heavily inspired by Steely Dan, Hatfield and the North, Neil Young, Tortoise, Miles Davis, Coltrane and many others but weather it actually sounds like that to other listeners is another thing. If you enjoy The Dan, Flaming Lips, Neil Young and the Rachel’s then I would hope that there is something you could get into on Songs For Days.

5. When is the album out?

The album is due for release on the 2nd of July digitally via Itunes and preceding this is the first single ‘Cast Adrift’, which will be released on the 25th of June. After this I’m hoping to move to CD copies later in the year once the initial digital part of the release is completed.

6. How does your album compare to your two singles?

Well, we have included one of the singles on the album and I think that this track represents where we’ve come from but along side this there are much larger works, songs that wouldn’t be possible out of the context of an album. I think the album is still the greatest medium for music to exist on. Single tracks are fine but as a body of work an album becomes more than the sum of its parts. I tried to make Songs For Days feel like a story it just appeals to me to sculpt the songs in that way. Sequencing the tracks is a real joy as you get to play around with how the songs segue into each other or the positioning of one song in certain key against another which compliments it, it’s the final piece of creativity after all the hard work in the recording stage is finally done and it’s something you don’t have much of a chance to do with a single release.

7. What next?

Next? Well I’ve begun writing a set of new tracks that I hope will form the basis of a new release and along side this we will be knuckling down to promote Songs For Days, ultimately I hope this will lead to a first deal with a like minded label who can help us move on to a much larger scale.

The Mag