2009 promises to be an exciting year for Amy, Astrud & Jessamine from The Rayographs. A debut 7″ getting raving reviews in the UK, a second one coming late Spring and a debut album in the writing stage. Check out their playlist + bonus interview below:

1. Who are The Rayographs and how did the project start?
Jess: I think we’d all agree The Rayographs really began about two years ago. That was when we began to focus more, play regularly and start working towards the music we’re playing now.

However Astrud (guitar/vocals), Amy (drums) and I (bass/vocals) have been playing music together for many years under different names and in different forms. We met when we were teenagers and started playing music together a few years later, in Amy’s bedroom during the long, hot summer of 2003. None of us really played our instruments then, so we were starting from scratch, learning how to play as we wrote songs.

2. Are you on other projects?
Jess: Astrud and I have an occasional side project where we set Blake poems to music. We started it because Astrud’s boyfriend Andrew puts on a night called Blakespeare where people are invited to use Blake and Shakespeare as a starting point for creating music, poetry and prose. It’s quite nice to have the discipline of setting someone else’s completed poetry to music, as it’s very different from how we usually work – doing everything as we go along! We have to get around to recording those songs soon.

Astrud:Yes we really do need to get those songs on tape! We actually want to incorporate one of them into our live set, The Rayographs vs. William Blake. We do a version of “The Garden of Love” where Jess plays a calypso beat with a maraca, it’s compelling! I do a side project called Paper Dollhouse (www.myspace.com/paperdollhouses) which is a cross between film soundtracks and some haunted folky stuff. I record on a four-track on keyboard and guitar in my bedroom. I love Angelo Badalamenti who does all the David Lynch films and Twin Peaks, Lubos Fiser who wrote the Valerie and her Week Of Wonders S/T, White Noise- Delia Derbyshire et al, Christine Harwood- lush 60s folky stuff, Danny Elfman etc. I need to turn my room into a the BBC Radiophonic Workshop!

3. You are just starting a band in a difficult time for the music industry: how do you see the future for it?
Jess: I’m not sure if you mean the future for our band or the music industry as a whole. I think with the band we’ve never really expected to make money from making music, though being able to sustain ourselves making music full time would be fantastic! People will continue to make and buy music forever of course, though there is obviously a huge shift in how money is being spent. It seems like the future is that record companies will be making a lot less out of selling records…more and more bands will probably self-release music on the internet and have booking agents and press agents but perhaps not a record company behind them, or if they do it’ll be for one or two releases rather than a five album deal. In a way I think that’s quite positive for musicians, but it’s obviously a massive blow to the music industry.

4. How’s the scene in London?
Amy: I think the general London music scene is brilliant at most times, at others I get really annoyed with it. Its like any city you live in in that sense. We just went to see the Arthur Russell documentary ‘Wild Combination’ at The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and I’ve also been going through a book about the same era in New York in the art/underground scene. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of disappointment when seeing how thriving this scene appeared to be in comparing it to today in london, but as someone said maybe this is utopic thinking. My frustration with London is that it sometimes seems very fragmented in terms of musical ‘houses’.. even in the ‘guitar music’ world. What I mean is it has lots of little pockets of good stuff, under the basic gig surface and a genuine sense of scene/s can take a bit of time to find – which perhaps is inevitable because London’s music world can be pretty vast.

It does have them though and once you hunt around a bit or start to know some people there are some really decent ‘micro-scenes’ here in London that have been doing really cool stuff or have a nice approach. In terms of the more ‘band’ orientated stuff some of the gems are Stolen Records who often have a lovely lo-fi approach to their sounds and art work/packaging…Upset The Rythmm who’ve had a nice thing going on for a good few years now – they often put on the American bands on the experimental scene – and more recently a house in Dalston that just gets bands to come play for the evening. These are often the nights I end up really appreciating London. I also really value Resonance Fm 104.4fm (an arts/community station based in London) which has a very varied programme, some of which really do constanly cover new stuff at extreemly grass-roots level and support new bands, which we’ve really appreciated as The Rayographs. I think some of the shows on Resonance are the best place to really get to hear about new and exciting music in London.

At the risk of sounding like a total muso-journalist desperate to latch on to a trend, some the more prominent musical threads around London at the moment would be the following: Lo-fi indie/?post-punk? , ‘East-London-Doom’ , or high-agit-experimental/complex-pop. Sometimes I’m not quite sure where we fit in, in terms of ‘a scene’ but the way I’m beginning to see it is that as long as the people who like our music can get to hear it then it may not neccessarily be a negative thing that there’s not that many people around at the moment who sound like us. When its put that way I’d much rather feel a little out on a limb than sound like just another ‘……’ band!

5. We are in a world with a lot of different models on the net (free streaming, digital stores, mobile, collector vinyl etc.): what kind of service should be brought to the table?
Astrud: I think there are people paid to try to develop new ways of trying to do this stuff all the time; it’s a strange time for the industry but really good in a way because everything’s got really abstract and away from the music at the centre of it. Sometimes things need to implode a little for new ways of doing things to be worked out- I don’t know what the answers are to that in terms of making money from music. I take a while to wake up to technology so I’m probably not the best person to answer this…I don’t have an Ipod- until yesterday we just had a record player in the living room!

6. As artists how do you use the web today?
Astrud: We rely on myspace as a focal point for the band, as many bands or artists do to present their music and basic gig information. I like writing blogs about what we’re up to and whatever thoughts are in my head that may give more of a personal insight into what we’re doing. People are more likely to read my ridiculous tangents than anything useful but that’s the way my mind operates! I use myspace and lastfm to listen to new bands that someone has mentioned to me- lastfm can open an aladdin’s lamp of groups or a scene that you know a little about because you have the “similar artists” tool- great for musos but probably pretty annoying for anyone you live with if they’re not into Diamanda Galas for example.

7. And how is it important for you today?
Astrud: Myspace is very important because it’s the only web-based source of information that we can contribute to and update on a regular basis; and it’s usually the first place where someone will hear your music on the web.

8. How do you see it evolving in the coming years?
Astrud: I can see a lot more people self-releasing albums, releasing albums digitally- the music “industry” doesn’t mean the same as it did even five years ago. Maybe everyone got too comfortable and that needs shaking up. What is really noticeable I think is that everyone I know that makes music has full time jobs, so you have to do things creatively after work and if you’re self-releasing stuff, you need to work to pay for recording, rehearsal time etc. That is how it is in London, and from that you get a different type of community. There’s like a duality where everyone’s doing these pretty involved jobs during the day, then creating their art in the evening and weekends. This is mainly to do with the cost of living in London. In some ways it gives you freedom in that if you are not intending to make money from music you will be freer in the way you write, but on the other hand, if you have less time, you think “right, I’ve got to write something good now!”. I wonder if the artistic community in London will be like this if everyone loses their jobs in the recession! What I’ve noticed especially since reading about downtown New York in the late 70s and early 80s and watching this film about Arthur Russell is that artistic communities are more virtual now- I think you lose something from that. When you see photos or film footage from that period you think those guys were “there”, in the moment. They weren’t isolated or distracted or living in their own heads. Maybe this is just my rose-tinted projection. I guess with forums/ blogs/ online music sites, there are plenty of other benefits and ways to exchange ideas, but everyone becomes like cells drifting around with their own ideas. It’s good to try and work against this- it’s why DIY festivals like Ladyfest are good because you wake up from your own little world. I’ve been watching a few films at the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival at the BFI that have been really inspiring- DIY music documentaries that people have made about their band or music that’s important to them. It makes you think “wow, that’s what my peers are coming up with”- it’s very important to engage in what other people are doing.

9. What are you currently listening to?
Jess: I have somehow only just discovered Can, so have been listening to Tago Mago non-stop. It is indescribably good. Also Silver Apples ‘Contact’, which has a lot of similarities to Can in a way. And Ponytail who we played with recently, who are one of the best live bands I think I’ve ever seen. Molly, the singer, is the most amazingly primal performer. Their songs in no way resemble songs in the traditional sense, but somehow manage to worm their way into your head for days.

Astrud: Right now I’m listening to Arthur Russell- I just went to see an amazing documentary about him which had been recommended to me by several people. I’ve been listening a lot to the ‘Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus’ soundtrack, this week- “Jehovahkill” Julian Cope’s “heathen rock masterpiece”- ‘Upwards At 45 Degrees’ is great. I’ve also been listening to Can actually- ‘Future Days’ is one of the greatest tracks ever. As is ‘She Cracked’ By The Modern Lovers which was in the film I saw tonight. I’ve also been listening to a band called Ut and Scott Walker- The Drift but and ‘The Old Man’s Back Again’, the one about Stalin- amazing.

10. 10 albums that define Rayographs’s influences:
(sorry I know it’s not 10, we can count, we just couldn’t choose! They are in no particular order)

Pixies- Surferosa
PJ Harvey- Dry / Dancehall at Louse Point (with John Parish)
Patti Smith- Horses/ Easter
Thee Headcoatees- We Are Thee Headcoatees
Erase Errata – Nightlife
The Breeders – Pod/ Last Splash
Shellac – Action Park
Sons and Daughters – Love The Cup
The Stooges- Funhouse/ The Stooges
Can- Tago Mago/ Future Days

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