The High Wire make the kind of music that makes you daydream of shooting a video for them in fields full of sunshine and wildflowers while above blazes brilliant blue skies, dotted with puffy white clouds, before fading into a perfect sunset and twilight. Or maybe that’s just our desperate ambition to get behind a camera.
In any case, The High Wire’s fuzzed out soundscapes have caught the attention of many since their inception and with their debut album on the way, DisorderOnline pulls mainman Tim Crompton aside for some virtual questions.
1. From being invited by Chris Martin onto the Coldplay tour to releasing an album this March, things have been moving at a fairly frenetic pace for the band… what’s been your take on the past 12 months?
I guess it seems frenetic when you put it like that, but we get restless so easily. Waiting ‘til March feels like forever because we finished recording so long ago (well, a few months). I just want to be gigging or recording every day. We’ve been filling up the time by writing almost a whole new album’s worth of songs.
2. Your debut album, The Sleep Tape, is said to be fuelled by night after night of being up recording… did some kind of sleep-deprived madness come over you and which songs best capture that state?
Yes, definitely, both in the writing and recording process. ‘Bodyclocks’ is a good example because that hasn’t been touched from the original demo. It was a track I only worked on when I couldn’t sleep. It had to be really quiet with no guitars or anything so as to not wake anyone up. The timing’s all messed up on it (in fact it’s musically pretty disastrous) but it just seemed to make sense in that state. Stuart’s instrumental ‘Honeycomb’ (which is probably my favourite track from the album), ‘New Lovers’, ‘Sleep Tape’ and ‘Exit’ also come from a similar place.
3. When I’m falling asleep, I have mini-dreams that feel very real and are sometimes utterly bizarre. Just to let you know, since, like, I would definitely have your music on when I’m curled up in bed and the LP is called The Sleep Tape… want to share any of your between-waking-and-sleeping moments?
I keep conceiving fully arranged songs in that state, but never manage to remember them. Probably a good thing, I like holding on to the idea they are Paul McCartney-style amazing, if I remembered one and realised how rubbish it actually was I’d have to accept that we are never going to be The Beatles.
4. Shoe-gaze, dream-pop, ecstasy-pop… it all sounds very lovely and fabulous and soundbytey, but how does The High Wire see themselves?
When we were working on the album we thought of different songs as being from different genres: electro (Leave me in Love), heavy rock (A Future Ending), pop (Odds and Evens) etc. Er, we even thought ‘The Midnight Bell’ was hip hop. I guess we were very deluded.
5. Since beginning as you working alone before becoming the current 3-piece, how has the process of song-writing, or even the musical direction, changed?
The song writing has changed in that some of the songs are now written by Stuart and he’s worked closely with me on my songs (ideally in future we’d like to get Lex more involved too because she’s actually by far the most musical out of us). I don’t think we consciously have any musical direction, so I’m not sure about it changing. Stuart has probably brought a more guitar-driven sound than I had on ‘Ahead of the Rain’ because he’s better than me at playing guitar. And has a lot more effects pedals.
5. As more and more bands become hyped and the speed at which they are discarded grows faster, are you at all concerned (as a young band) about the growing amount of plaudits being heaped upon you?
We’re very definitely outside that world. This album is just building on the small amount of attention we got for ‘Ahead of the Rain’ (our mini album) and we are a long way off being a hyped band. I can’t see that happening partly because, however much bands may deny it, you have to be complicit in that occurring. It’s just not something that I see as at all possible with our personalities or the type of music we make.
6. New single, ‘The Midnight Bell’, has a video directed by Mat Whitecross – how did this come about?
Mat is someone who I’ve known for along time. He introduced me to bands like Sparklehorse and Mercuy Rev and forced me to understand that Bob Dylan was actually great in the 70s too. He also encouraged me musically when not many people seemed to get it. I’m a bit scared to talk about the video because, with his film ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’ coming out, he’s the busiest man in the world at the moment. Hopefully it’ll get finished!
7. The High Wire are said to be the sound of the summer.. how will THW be spending the coming sunshine months?
Indoors…still striving to actually write that electro track, that heavy rock song and that massive no. 1 pop hit.
Image by Vasialia Forbes
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