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Sonic Imagery With ASHLEY TUBB From SUGAR HORSE · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: My name is Ash. I'm from a band called Sugar
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Horse in the UK, and.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: In early October twenty twenty four, will be releasing.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Our second album, The Grand Scheme of Things on Pelagic Records.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the flaw stakes for joining us the same and.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Runner good to be here, good to be here? All right? Sure?
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: So, as you say, Sugar Horse at least your new album,
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: The Grand Scheme of Things on October the fourth, Like, it's.
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: Still a couple of weeks away, brover.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: How you feel about it?
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Good, it's been a long time coming, Like, the release
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: campaign has been long.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: We recorded it quite a while.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Ago now, so I'm itching to finally have it out
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: in the world so folks can hear it and it's
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: not just me listening to it by myself.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: So can you tell us a bit more about the
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: album from musical point of view and what you were
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: actually going for with it? Yeah?
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Our previous releases have been pretty pretty extended, like between
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: six and nine minutes long, and it thought we thought
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: we'd try and move in a different.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Direction for this record.
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  Speaker 2: So all of the songs are kind of a more
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: like pop structure, So there's lots of verses, lots of choruses,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: and everything tends to be under the five minute mark, which,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: like most of our stuff is like we come to
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: We planned stuff out from a like songwriting challenge perspective,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: so that the challenge is fun for us. So like
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: shortening with music, as slow as we play it, you
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: get to like you get to like verse two and
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: like five minutes have already passed, So it's kind of
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: a it was it was like a big challenge to
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: condense all all of that into like a kind of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: four and a half minute like poppy song, you know,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: So they how.
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  Speaker 3: To actually do that, mate, because like people, a lot
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: of people are sort of listening and they go, it's easy,
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: you just cut out half the song. But if you
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: can't now have the song, you can't have the heart
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: and soul of as well. Like what's what's the actual
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: process when you used to being big to go smaller?
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's like.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: We all like as a band, we tend to be
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: in a hurry to get stuff done. We like the
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: kind of the feeling of like being in the moment,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Like when you've just written something, you record it straight
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: away afterwards, don't do too many takes like everything feels
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: like kind of raw. Still, we really like that, but
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: to shorten stuff, it takes a kind of editing brain, right,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: and editing brain doesn't usually come when you first put
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: something down. When you first put something down, you want
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: it to still be like twelve minutes long because that
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: feels like like.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: But I guess it comes.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: From like like having that initial idea, getting that all
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  Speaker 2: down and then and then putting it down and picking
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: it back up like a few times afterwards, and like
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: eventually you're like, oh, I could cut here, I could
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: cut here, this could be shorter, I could get to
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: the point a bit more here, and then you kind
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: of whittle it down like a I don't know, like
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: like making a sculpture or something, you know, And is.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: That something that you're more comfortable with now after having
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: to do it or are you still at it?
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: Uh?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was definitely like it was definitely difficult the
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: first couple of times, but then it kind of gets
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: in your head a little bit, so you almost start
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: writing with it in mind.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Which which has been nice. So it's a little bit.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: It got a little bit easier towards like the last
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: few tracks we wrote for the record, it definitely became
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: it became easier than it was at the start.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, now, friends, I remember the course of two albums
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: because this is your second follow on the twenty twenty
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: one Day Boo the Live Long After, But that's it's
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  Speaker 3: quite a directional shift to take, I guess from one
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  Speaker 3: album to others so early on in your career, Like,
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  Speaker 3: was that was that a risk in a way? I guess,
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Like do you might leave behind the people that were
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: with you for the first one?
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I guess so.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: But we we really like putting out like little short releases,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: So we have lots of like EPs and singles scattered
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: like before that first album and between these two albums
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: as well, and they're all pretty different, to be honest,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: Like it's all kind of I guess you could hear
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: them as like related to each other. But there's lots
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  Speaker 2: We like to experiment a lot. We don't like doing
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: the same thing over and over again, and like I
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: like lots of bands that have basically released the same
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: album for thirty years.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: That's totally cool. It's just not something that like I'm
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: interested in doing essentially, so.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Like, yeah, that that kind of trying to like it
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  Speaker 2: almost feels pointless for us to just kind of re
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: tread the same ground with the release like four and
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: four released. To be part of the plan for us,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: it kind of has to has to be like a
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: new idea, you know.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So speaking about EPs, like, oh my god, this
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: is right, but your last release was EP Waterloo Teeth,
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  Speaker 4: which fatal collaborations with twelve different artists over four songs.
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  Speaker 3: So what's the sorts of things did you take out
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: of doing that, this very ambitious thing to do. What
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: did you take out of that into this album?
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Well, we've we've actually done a couple since then. But yeah,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I'll talk about what Luetooth just because it's a bit mad.
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  Speaker 1: That was.
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  Speaker 2: That was kind of an idea of like over kind
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: of the pandemic period slash when pandemic was just ending
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: and it was like it was.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Still kind of difficult to like meet in person.
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  Speaker 2: But the good thing about that was everyone was on
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  Speaker 2: the internet all the time, and I'm like, I'm tediously online.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I'm a tediously online person.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: So I enjoyed like being able to talk to people
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  Speaker 2: all of the time.
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  Speaker 1: Which is not normally the case. I normally can only
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: talk to.
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  Speaker 2: My like fellow like freakish online for people at like
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  Speaker 2: two in the morning on like a Tuesday, you know
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  Speaker 2: what I mean. But at that point in time, you
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: could talk to anyone at any point in time.
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  Speaker 1: It was pretty easy to like, like I say easy.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: It was kind of a difficult to have.
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  Speaker 2: But in the grand scheme of doing that, I don't
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  Speaker 2: think it would be possible for me to do that
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: now without having like an aneurysm. But back then you could,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: like you could get people on board pretty easily and
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: they didn't have that much to do, so they were like, yeah,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: I'll try and record a vocal for this, no worries,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: like you know. So it was again it was like
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: a challenge. Like we were thinking about doing it like
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: a collab record with someone else, and then we were
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: like lots of people do co lab records or like
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: future records or splits or whatever, and we were like, well,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: what's the like logical extreme of doing and that's per track.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: It was an interesting experience, like I don't think I
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: do that that exact same thing again, because as I saying,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: like now, it would be tough going, but but yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it was.
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  Speaker 1: It was. It was interesting. I think the thing took
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: away from it the most was.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Like a couple of people that we were working with
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: because we gave them like carte blanche to do whatever
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: they wanted and it would like go on the record, right.
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  Speaker 2: So a couple people that we sent stuff to because
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: we had like the bare Bones track recorded, we sent
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  Speaker 2: it over and they could do whatever they want with it.
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  Speaker 2: Some people like literally cut the song up and then
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: deleted bits and then put their bits or over like
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: like they basically wrote an entire section. And there's a
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: song called Gutted, for example, that has a middle section
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  Speaker 2: that was pretty much entirely written by someone else.
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  Speaker 1: And that kind of fearlessness.
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  Speaker 2: Of not just like going in and being like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: I have an idea about this, but it might tread
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: on what you're doing a little bit. The fearlessness to
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: just be like I've done my bit, here you go
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: and like part of the track is literally deleted was
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: very cool to me. That's the biggest thing that I
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: took away from it.
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  Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, so there's an artist mom. When you
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: do things like that, like you more invited people to
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: collaborate so you can learn off them and grow from
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: watching what they do, or is it more to making
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: your music better.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: But it's a bit of both.
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  Speaker 2: Like I'd be lying if I said you didn't want to,
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  Speaker 2: like grab a bit of their talent for free, have.
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  Speaker 1: It, have it applied to your stuff. But also yeah,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: like I don't know. For me, like working with other.
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  Speaker 2: People makes you see things that you have already done
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: in a different light. And obviously I like what I do.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Otherwise I wouldn't be like doing it and releasing it
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: into the general population. Right, But any anything makes you
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: look at makes you look at a piece of art
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  Speaker 2: from a different angle and still appreciate it is good.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Is a good thing to me anyway.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the press release calls your music of course, you
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: guys sludge metal experimentalists, Like could do you find experimenting
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: in music for us? So does that mean like it's
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: just throw a holy pursuit of the wall and whatever
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: stick sticks and when it force off doesn't. Does it
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  Speaker 3: mean to sit there and your methodically go through things
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: to see what works? Like in modern age? What is experimentalization?
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: I can't comment on anyone else, like, because I know
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: loads of people work in very different ways. But for me,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: it's like quite a it's quite a thoughtful process where
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: it's not necessarily like I know lots of people just
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: right by like sitting with the guitar for long periods
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  Speaker 2: of time and kind of throwing stuff at the wall
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: and then picking the best ideas, right.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I tend to have to like this is so stupid
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: to say out loud, but.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Like like visualize an idea before I sit in front
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  Speaker 2: of like an instrument or whatever. So I'll hear like
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: another bit of a song, or I'll read a bit
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: of a book or see a film, and that will
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: give me an idea for like we call them like
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: moved in the band, but they're there. I guess you
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: describe them as moving from like one kind of sound
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: to another, and they're like the most interesting things to
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: me is like of I guess the most obvious example
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: would be like the last song on the ground Scheme
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  Speaker 2: of Things is called Space Tourist. It's kind of a
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: popish song that moves into a heavy thing and then
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: kind of out of nowhere goes into this big drone
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: section to when the record right. And that came from
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: thinking about something called a lot groove on a on
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: a vinyl, So a lot groove, a lot groove is
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: essentially you can put it anywhere on a vinyl, but
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: it's basically joining the groove of a vinyl. It's normally
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: a spiral joined to the ends, so it forms a circle,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: so it never stops playing, so it's only playing what's
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: on that lock groove for the entire like for eternity,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: as long as you can power the turntable, right, And
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I thought if you could, if you could put a
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: rhythmless like cord on that lock groove, then it would
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: sound like there would be no rhythm in it, so
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  Speaker 2: you couldn't tell where the start of that loop was
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: or the end of it, so it would literally just
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: sound like an endless drone at the end of a record.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: And so that was the plan. That was the plan
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: to end this record. But obviously that's on vinyl, So
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: how could you do that like on seed or on streaming. Well,
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: you just make it really long so no one could
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: be bothered to.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Listen to the whole thing. So that's why there's so
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: it's like, it's it's like, that's that's what we'd call
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: like a move in the band. It's like and I I.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Think we think of those things like externally to like
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: playing our instruments and then use the instruments to generate them,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: if that makes sense.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very interesting, yes, so thanks for that. So
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: you guys are only two albums into your career and
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: you've already gone through so much growth musically. But how
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: much do you reckon you've got left in here?
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: That's a good question.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know, okay, whether that be like a verse
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: or a chorus, or like a riff or sometimes on
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: the like you know, the big days where I am
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: blessed by some external power, I'll write a whole song
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: in one go. But like most of the time that
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: is utter crap. And then sometimes you get good things,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: and then over time those good things mount up and
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: you get like a record or I don't know, you
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: get a sense of like a direction that you can
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: go in, you know, And I think I have a
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: sense of direction for the next thing now, which is
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: a good thing. So that means there's probably going to
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: be a next record, But beyond that, I can't.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Go beca what seven at the time? Buddy? Very good?
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Oh right, that's all, Thanks very much for your time.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Then the album, The Grand Scheme of Things is out
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: October fourth. There's a few singles out now if you
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: want to check it out. See what it sounds like
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: that all it am sounds like a good album.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: It's the best of luck with it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, thanks for having me.
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: Why I like Loud my low live Wall Loud by
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: Arid I sat Yll do my sid well not Wow
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: wow wall Row Battle, ride.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Like that, jod.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Ll do do not.
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: Loud, brou like that yr Sup with a leading jobs
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: but ride out right so well dif we're all says
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: it all back, So don't myself.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: To kill.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Said screams so storm to track all d