Round and around and around and around
Ex-Giant’S new track Pheasant is a heavy, intense piece with prominent riffs, a nod to the British folk-horror tradition. Read our discussion with the band below!
Describe your sound in 3 words
Falling down stairs
Can you share any interesting anecdotes or stories related to the creation or recording process of Pheasant that might give us further insight into its conception?
A lot happened between starting and finishing that song. It was written collectively in a practice in early 2022 as a much shorter track. After that, two members quit the band and Joel (singer) got married. Ed took over on drums and Tati joined the band as a clarinetist, after which we started writing longer, more melody-driven songs. Pheasant was reshaped in that mould. When demoing we recorded about 5 different layers of guitars, mostly improvised over each other. We rewrote those parts by cutting up snippets of melody and splicing them into lines that developed over the song. We then wrote that out with clarinet parts into sheet music in order to try to impose some kind of harmonic sense onto them. We recorded the song with Matt at Head Cold studios whose input was invaluable. Shout out to Matt!
Favourite album of the past 2 years?
Some of the bands we have played with on the local scene over the last two years have released music which we really like. An album that we have all enjoyed is Gentle Stranger’s album “Upon Return”, which is consistently inventive and playful – they’re also an incredible live band and well worth making a special effort to see. One of the songs off an earlier album, “Call Me Back L8r” is about having a poo, which Joel used to woo his then girlfriend, Tati. They’re now married and she’s the newest member of Ex-Giant, so there’s a nice personal connection there.
If the music of Ex-Giant was a British folk-horror film, which film would that be?
Kill List! or maybe A Field in England. We’re big Ben Wheatley fans. A Field in England has some narrative resonances with Pheasant, so I would really recommend that to anyone who has not seen it and likes the track.
What would you change in the music industry?
We’re quite peripheral to the industry at the moment, but there are a couple of things which stand out as particularly bad. The first is that a number of factors – streaming being an obvious example – make it very difficult for musicians to make a living out of what they do, even if they are successful. The second is that social media engagement is weighted so heavily as a metric for success that a certain type of online following seems to be becoming a prerequisite for opportunities. In essence, this means that musicians end up having to spend their time working out how to game algorithms if they want to make it big, whereas in the past there might have been more of a hope of being signed and then a publicist doing that sort of work. There are similar pressures in publishing and other creative industries too, so it’s indicative of a broader trend.
What do you love/hate about London? What are the elements that, at least in our opinion, makes it the world capital of music?
It’s obviously great for seeing smaller bands – you could go to a gig every day of the week and hear something new and interesting, so it’s really exciting in that sense. By comparison, some of us used to play around in Essex when we were still at school and the best venue near us was an old post-office building that was a front for an underage drinking operation. It’s now been replaced with a supermarket car park, so we don’t have to worry about getting them in trouble. In terms of it being the music capital of the world, most of us have only ever lived in or near London, so we can’t write everywhere else off. However, the flipside of the vast choice in London is that the music scene is quite atomised, so there’s less of a chance for cross-genre scenes that you might get in smaller cities.
What is the first album you remember hearing as a child?
We’ve all got a different answer, but the best is Iain’s, which is Kylie Minogue’s “Fever”.
If you were arrested, what would it be for?
We’re all quite boring, so I think the most likely thing would be some kind of mistaken identity. Aspirationally, it would be something sexy, like being gentlemen cat burglars or some kind of righteous protest against tyranny.
Thank you!
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