Geoff Barrow Interview.

As Britain suffers it’s iciest winter in years, Portishead’s Geoff Barrow (on right in above image) sits, wrapped up in his bedroom, sniffling through a cold and watching cars slide down his snow-laden street. His strong west-country accent is muffled, yet hearty as it passes through the phone-line to a much, much warmer place.

"You’re a very, very lucky, man to be where you are right now," Barrow laughs. "I’m a frequent visitor to Australia, if I had it my way I’d move over as soon as I could."

Barrow, although struggling with Bristol’s bleak days and snowy nights, has not needed any luck whatsoever, to enjoy a successful comeback to the musical world. After a lengthy artistic hiatus in the late nineties he has recently returned to form, establishing his own record company, and spearheading Portishead’s magnificent Third comeback.

2009, was another prolific year for Barrow, producing NME’s album-of-the-year, in the shape of the Horrors’ Primary Colours as well as launching his latest personal project, Beak>.

"It’s great to do stuff that is different, I used to be set in my ways so much with making beats that it forced me to quit music for five years," he explains

"I got to the point where I absolutely hated dance music and DJ culture, I’d just had enough of it. I preferred to stop, rather than keeping on doing something that I hate. Now I feel like I am on the right path, I have rediscovered what I love about making music, and I am going to continue making records."

Barrow watched the booming Bristol sound he helped establish in the nineties resound over the world. The eclectic, low-fi, electronic productions of Portishead as well as other groups such as Massive Attack were on heavy rotation in the trendiest bars, cafes and living rooms. Producer and multi-instrumentalist Barrow helped Portishead score the coveted Mercury Prize for their first release, Dummy, back in 1995. However, as quick as the lazy, trip-hop sound of Bristol blossomed, its popularity dissipated, as Labour Britain, and its musical renaissance, began to fall from grace. Spending time with his new family, Barrow’s interest in making music waned and by the end of the nineties Portishead were defunct.

It was on our distant shores, where Barrow chose to lay-low, in turn stumbling upon the work of Ashley Anderson, a producer we now know by the name of Katalyst. The friendship that arose between them was based on a mutual love and understanding of beat making, particularly in relation to hip-hop.

"Katalyst had recorded this album and it was just wicked, his brand of music was massive overseas but in Australia it didn’t really have its own voice," he explains.

"The Australian industry was still in the Powderfinger world, very kind of rock based. There was an underground hip-hop thing but it wasn’t really hitting the radio. People like Triple J obviously had a great amount of support for Australian bands and would play them. Ash and I finished up his album, then set up Invada Records, and everything just went really, really well."

One only has to flick through the artists Invada has helped establish to see the ripples they have created on the Australian hip-hop scene. Koolism, Ru C.L. And most recently, Space Invadas are just a few of the more successful artists on the Australian face of the company.

Nine years down the track the pair remain close, still successfully running the label together from opposite sides of the globe. Their latest endeavour is an exciting underground hip-hop project entitled ’Quakers’. The ingenious scheme positively utilises the huge musical network that MySpace has spun to seek out fresh, hip-hop talent.

"Quakers was born out of seeing MySpace as a door, to working with people that you had never heard or heard of before," says Barrow.

"Katalyst and I would drink a couple of bottles of wine and do a bit of searching. We found some great MC’s and they are well up for it. It’s not about the dough; it’s just about creating a really exciting record. We’ve got beats, and we contact them, and then ask them to record the lyrics at their place, they send us the vocals back and we mix it, there ain’t no business in it."

The Quakers project chooses to place emphasis on the music rather than the money, something Barrow believes the hip-hop industry often overlooks.

"In hip hop, everyone’s like, ’how much money am I going to get? How much money am I going to make?’ we’re just like, ’lets make a fucking record’," he laughs.

"Most of our MC’s are brand new, there is one kid who is just absolutely brilliant, he is just a proper wordsmith, and it’s a really new kind of hip-hop. Katalyst and this kid are working at such a rate of knots, they are just absolutely churning the stuff out!"

Barrow could talk about hip-hop for hours, he speaks warmly of underground producers such as Madlib and Quasimoto, and old school MC’s such as Mos Def. Mainstream hip-hop however, is a bit of a sour point, he has turned down an offer to work with Jay Z, and sees the cash-hungry genre in a digressive state.

"I just think it is a bit boring, hip-hop is just a weird thing, you listen to rap now and it is just men talking about...whatever...with a load of Euro Disco, behind it!" he jokes.

"They all just want commercial success, so they end up with Mark fucking Ronson producing... Jesus fucking wept."

It’s not only Jay-Z that is after Barrow’s talent in the studio, last year he helped lay down the empathic Primary Colours, by indie goth-rockers, The Horrors. The dark, visceral ambience and haunting production was channelled through Barrow, although he insists he was only there to catalyse their sound.

"It just needed to be recorded right, I am proud of it, but really I just wanted to help them represent themselves," he says. "I am pleased that the NME recognised it, I just wish more people would realise what a good record it is, I don’t mean that because I produced it I just mean it for the actual band."

At the moment the focus of all Barrow’s time and energy is Beak>, a band that he formed along with two seasoned Bristol musicians, Billy Fuller and Matt Williams. Their self-titled release has been steadily progressing since a memorable studio session almost a year ago, and has just been released to critical acclaim. The group’s idea behind the album is interestingly abstract, no rules, and minimal production, just jams.

"We did 25 tracks in twelve days, we didn’t talk about what sound we wanted, we just went into the studio, set up the channels, set up the instruments and just played," he elaborates.

"I mean the first track we actually started playing was the first track on the album. That set the rules, no overdubs, we did edit, but not Pro Tools kind of stuff. We just kind of edited the best chunks together, we didn’t even really mix it, and we just mastered it with the levels up. It was a very organic process, we call it regressive rock!"

The results are jaunty and disjointed at times, but raw and hearty all the way through, Barrow believes the improvised flair could only be achieved through these measures.

"It is a record that sounds like it’s live, it’s a groove based thing, at the moment everyone’s got all this computer processed stuff with loops etc. We wanted our own sound, which is just the instruments and our voices really. It was incredibly enjoyable, it’s not very powerful, everything in rock music has to be so powerful at the moment and this is like the opposite of that, we kind of wanted to capture how Can and The Doors did it without being ’retro’. We didn’t want to sound like the Killers."

While recording the album was an organic and musically empowering experience, the rock ’n’ roll tour that ensued was a much more barbarous affair.

"Some promoter tried to fuck us over in France, we nearly got in a fight, we got drunk a lot it was just a proper little tour, an old man rock ’n’ roll tour!" he jokes. "We played from 2000 people to 18, just a few blokes travelling round on the bus, watching all the Terminators and Back to the Futures. Everyone dug it and got on, it was a proper family atmosphere. First we had to learn the tracks that we had made up on the spot, which was weird, and then we got to take them in different directions."

Wrapping up the Beak> tour in France, this weekend, Barrow is now turning his attention, back to where it all began, Portishead.

"We’ve just recorded a track for Amnesty, and we are currently writing a new album and planning a tour," he says.

The Amnesty track was recorded for the anniversary of their bill of rights and is part of a new initiative Barrow has helped form called, ’Amnesty Released’.

"I set up a project with Amnesty where bands give the rights of their recording to Amnesty, forever," he says. "It’s not like 10 pence of every pound goes to Amnesty, it’s like everything goes to them, forever, so it could be used in a film and they would receive the royalties. I’ve got a nice house, I can afford to buy nice things for my kids, but there is no point going to some far off country and wearing a ’Stop War’ T-shirt. We are better off funding people like Amnesty so they can afford to send well-trained lawyers to defend people who haven’t got any rights."

With a new Portishead album and tour on the horizon, his charity and record label to run as well as a young family at home, it seems like 2010 is going to be a very hectic year for Barrow.

"I know I’m a very busy man, but I should be really...everyone else has got to work!"

Beak> is out now through Remote Control.

Nolan Giles

ENDS