The Land of Nod is an instrumental duo from Cheltenham consisting of guitarist Ant Walker and bass player Dave Battersby, who had previously played together in psychedelic indie groups The Lucid Dream and Reverb, both seasoned veterans of the Terrascope's reviews pages. To date they have released four albums on Ochre Records: 'Translucent' (February 1999), 'Timeless Point' (September 2000), the 'Archive:02' collection (March 2002), and 'Inducing The Sleep Sphere' (December 2002), plus the mini-album 'Mont Ventoux' on USA label Silber (May 2001). Elephant Stone Records will soon be releasing a compilation entitled 'Reality Channel: An Introduction to The Land of Nod', which will include material from all of the Ochre releases. While not as well known as some of the artists that they have been compared to, such as Spacemen 3, Ghost, Durutti Column, Mogwai, and Windy & Carl, The Land of Nod have received much critical acclaim throughout their career. Even the NME, in a review of 'Inducing The Sleep Sphere' commented, "With its glossy stare fixed on the darkest realms of inner space, 'Inducing…' sounds like the Spiritualized LP Jason Pierce could never get round to putting words to. A drifting slush of clicks and pulses, their twin obsessions with the fluffy end of electronic noise and Belgian sportsman Eddy Merckx could mean that The Land of Nod do for cycling what Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' did for motorway travel."
PT: Do you feel like what you're doing with the Land of Nod is a natural extension of the sounds created by bands you were initially inspired by such as Echo and The Bunnymen and your favourite '60s garage records? I ask this because I find it interesting that other artists you're linked with like Will Sergeant (Echo and The Bunnymen), Paul Simpson of Skyray (ex Teardrop Explodes/Wild Swans), and Sonic Boom (ex Spacemen 3) have undertaken a similar path of development.
DAVE: Subconscious influences will always appear in our music! You grow up listening to whatever and it gets stored up there in the old storage tank in the back of the brain and before you know it you are subconsciously re-creating that sound that you once heard in a track by Joy Division, Love, 13th Floor Elevators or Neu!
ANT: Personally, Will Sergeant's guitar playing has always been an influence. Spacemen 3, Spectrum and Spiritualized have shaped the Land of Nod sound to a certain extent.
PT: When did you guys first start playing music? I know that you were die-hard Echo and The Bunnymen fans when you were growing up, were they your first inspiration?
ANT: I began playing in the mid eighties when I was listening to The Bunnymen, Joy Division and New Order. They were easy songs to learn. Sixties stuff like Love and The Velvet Underground also had a big affect on me as well of course the punk scene.
PT: When did you start listening to more experimental music? Were you turned on by any records/artists in particular?
ANT: I've always enjoyed the more obscure and experimental types of music. The aforementioned Joy Division and Wire's 154 album still stands up as a classic. I liked the idea of moving away from three-minute pop. I think a lot of our sounds come from within and maybe our influences are subconscious rather than being obvious.
DAVE: The first album that I heard in an experimental/instrumental vein, which became a soundtrack to my short existence on the dole at the time was Will Sergeant's 'Themes For Grind'. It wasn't though until the early nineties when the whole post-rock, astral rock thing kicked off that we became big listeners to instrumental music.
PT: What inspired you to break up Reverb and make Land of Nod your full-time gig?
ANT: We played the CMJ Festival in New York in '97 with Spectrum and the Silver Apples. We decided after that gig that it would be the last. The band had run its course over five years. We enjoyed the freedom of the Nod, not trying to write crowd pleasers and playing with more feeling.
DAVE: We had already begun The Land of Nod as a side project. So we decided to end Reverb on a high with the gig at the Cooler in New York at the CMJ Festival. It was a great night! Adam Peters who did all the strings on the Bunnymen's 'Ocean Rain' album joined us on stage and played his electric cello. Leading up to the gig we rehearsed below the Centre For The Dull clothes store on Lafayette St. where Adam's group the Family of God recorded and rehearsed.
PT: Though you play instrumental music, Land of Nod seem to be more song oriented and, at times, more aggressive sounding than many groups in the space rock genre. Is this a conscious effort?
ANT: We usually build on an intense feel and mood and concentrate on melodies rather than ambience for the sake of it. We still like to rock out, also.
PT: You guys are pretty prolific, having recorded three albums and countless compilation and EP tracks over the past four or five years, not to mention Ant having done his Pulsar and Lakescene records. What do you credit this work ethic to?
ANT: Being constantly inspired to break new ground and the love of what we do. It's great to be in a position to do this.
DAVE: I think it would be different if we were signed to a so-called major label. Being signed to Ochre Records gives us the freedom to be more prolific!
PT: What are some of your thoughts on the new record? Did you approach it differently to some of the others? Are you happy with the results?
ANT: Yeah, it rocks a bit more. I think it's the best yet.
DAVE: So far those who have heard it have also said that as well. It's a natural progression I guess. Totally happy with it! If we were not happy with the result we would not include it on the album or re-record until we were happy with it.
PT: What are your thoughts on garage rock becoming more mainstream (i.e Hives, Strokes, White Stripes)? Do you think this might pave the way for more experimental sounding acts to become more popular?
DAVE: It's healthy for the kids to have something like that to latch on to! I agree it has been done better before. The Hives remind me of The Stooges meets The Monks. But those kids have not got a clue where The Strokes etc get their influences from and I guess to a lot of them they think they are being original!
PT: I'm guessing that you do most of your recordings at a home studio. What kind of set up do you have? What's some of your favorite gear?
ANT: The current stuff is done on Tascam Porta studios, which are great, but I'm thinking of upgrading to a Yamaha 16 Track. Fave gear has to be my Fender Telecaster, Line 6 Amp Simulator and my Zoom Sampler.
DAVE: Tascam Porta. My favourite has to be my Moog Rogue. Also my Roland SH1000 but it needs fixing.
PT: What other studios have you recorded at? If money was not an issue, what would be the dream producer to work with?
DAVE: We recorded some stuff up at Bryn Derwen, Bethesda in North Wales, which was great fun. Dave Wrench engineered and we got him in to play on a couple of the tracks on the first album. In fact the remix of "Quadrant Zero" features Dave's piano quite up-front in the mix. And also a couple of tracks on the "Masaki" 10" at the Sea Horses old studio up near Leeds. But apart from that it's our good old trusted porta studios. Dream producer? Jim O'Rourke perhaps.
PT: What has inspired you to write about cycling so much? "Mont Ventoux" was written about the highest summit in the Tour De France and "Anquetil" was named after five times Tour De France winner Jacques Anquetil whilst "Sommet" featured the voice of the great Eddy Merckx. Also, I'm assuming that the song "Eddy" on the new CD is also written about Merckx.
DAVE: Yes! Eddy Merckx is featured on the album. Eddy as you know, won the Tour De France five times. The vocal is taken from a great cycling film titled 'La Course en Tete'. A film by Joel Santoni from circa 1974. We released "Mont Ventoux" on the Silber Records mini-album in the USA about the legendary mountain top finish in the Tour De France. We wanted to record it differently for the 'Inducing…' album. So we re-recorded the beginning and end bit and write a new middle section. So as the majority of the track was different we decided to give it a new title 'Le Sommet A Mont Ventoux'. Mont Ventoux is a barren lunar landscape where nothing grows. On the track "Eddy", the chants of Eddy are from when Eddy won one of his three Paris-Roubaix races.
PT: A lot of your song titles are about very specific things, i.e. "San Juan Capistrano", "Masaki", "Tropical Dust Cloud", "Ice Station Nod". Do you often come up with a song title first and then try to write music that conjures up the vibe of the subject?
ANT: Usually the music comes first. San Juan Capistrano is a place between L.A and San Diego where we had a high speed blow out in a pick up truck and spun out and nearly rolled over. The chaotic sound of the track seems to sum up those 30 seconds or so. We shouldn't really be here. Sometimes a title will inspire us to create certain sounds and acts as a starting point.
DAVE: A few years back, we were high up, looking out from the viewpoint that overlooks San Diego Harbour. It was just so inspirational. You could hear in the distance the sounds of the horns from the boats as they came into the harbour. We wanted to capture what we were seeing and hearing and put all into a recording.
PT: When writing music, how do you decide what is more suitable for Land of Nod and what is more appropriate for Lakescene or Pulsar?
ANT: Pulsar was my first solo project and had quite a spacey feel to it and was more keyboard and synth based than Nod stuff. I wanted to move away from guitars on that one. Lakescene had a different feel with more samples and tracks were built on specific sounds. I'm currently working on the follow up Lakescene album and four tracks are appearing on the Ochre seasons compilation, which is out soon. The Land of Nod are touring L.A and San Francisco in the spring and Lakescene may be making a debut live performance.
PT: You have a pretty lengthy discography, so was it a difficult process deciding what tracks to include for the Elephant Stone Best-of?
DAVE: Totally! I quite like the original version of 'Masaki' on the 10" but in the end we went for the version off 'Timeless Point'. We thought about the selection of the tracks and running order very carefully. We have not included any tracks from our other American release, the 'Mont Ventoux' mini-album. The release is probably the first time a lot of listeners will hear music from us, so it is totally important that 'Reality Channel' gives a fair representation of what the world of The Land of Nod is all about!
PT: What are some of your expectations/hopes for the US release.
ANT: A few good reviews and some airplay to hopefully encourage a few more heads into the gigs on the Californian Tour and make people aware of what The Land Of Nod is all about. We have a lot of underlying influences of 60's psych in our music as well as influences of bands like the Bunnymen and Spacemen 3, all of whom have done well in California.
PT: What are your thoughts on the current post rock/experimental scene? Who are some artists that you have been listening to lately?
ANT: The scene has established itself now, and to some extent will always be around as long as musicians have the desire to break new ground.
DAVE: Two of my favourite albums of the year have been Susumu Yokota's 'The Boy And The Tree' and P.A.T.E's 'Mo Psycho'. I had the pleasure of working with Cornelius in the summer and their bass player is Nobuyuki Ohashi. Nobu has his own band back home in Japan called Pop Art Tradition Experiment (P.A.T.E). I think the experimental scene is very healthy. It has evolved over time since the likes of Raymond Scott, John Cale, Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, Tom Recchion, Stockhausen etc. Artists from the past and present are influencing what artists will musically produce in the future and like Ant says, as long as they are prepared to create their own unique sounds then everything shall remain healthy.
