Factory Floor are one of those bands who test the limits of a music journalist’s vocabulary – they are, inevitably, ‘aggressive’, ‘propulsive’, ‘dark, ‘minimal’, ‘brutal’ the last three taken from, yes, the previous issue of Totally Dublin). A lack of convolution is what sets the London-based trio apart, and the approachability of their music despite being ensconced in the British experimental electronic tradition makes their inhumanely excellent debut album (self-titled, of course) one of the year’s pleasant surprises. Drummer Gabe Guernsey – originally from Pool-in-Wharfedale, West Yorkshire, “a weird town built around a mental asylum” – talked to us, pre-Electric Picnic, on the non-hermetic approach that fueled it.
So it feels like that album was in gestation for ages – does it in any way resemble, as a finished product, what it started out at?
It’s completely changed. I was listening back to four demos that we’d done a couple of years ago – usually we end up just using the demos as tracks, like Two Different Ways – they sounded totally different to what we’d ended up with. We weren’t ready to record an album then. We’ve developed our sound on stage. For the last two years there hasn’t been a month where we haven’t played a show. We wrote the songs on stage, and saw how the crowd fed back into them. It really helped in forging the album. If we gather up how much time we actually ended up in the studio, condensed, it ended up as quite a short amount of time – if it was done in one stretch it would’ve been maximum three weeks.
You used to be particular about only playing one-off shows, in art galleries and stuff. That obviously has to go out the window the bigger you get.
We miss it, especially in festival season. The intensity of our sets get heightened in more intimate spaces, the crowd being close to us in the venue is so important. We want to play right in the middle of the crowd, but you can still engage people by changing the set slightly, tailor it to festival crowds. We’re going to continue playing shows at the ICA and smaller venues, we don’t want to be a stadium band or something.
What’s the strangest gig you’ve played?
We went to France a couple of years back, travelled for what seemed like two days, turned up at this gallery and we ended up playing in the cafe. We ended up playing to like three people drinking lattés. It was the most sterile environment known to man.
Well, that’s intimate at least.
They didn’t even get out of their seats!
You remixed a Girls Names track recently, which is particularly sweet as their drummer happens to run Dublin’s best record shop – what’s you’re approach to remixing?
I always look for the rhythmical stuff first. They let me choose, which is nice since most of the time a band just sends you the track and say “you’re doing this one”. That track, Projections, has a really nice tom part which was enough for me to forge a new song out of. I like writing an almost entirely new track and then putting the elements that I find most interesting back into it. I found that it’s better to remix non-dancey tracks. How do you remix dancey tracks other than making them more dancey? I’m doing one at the minute and it’s getting a bit stupid.
Will there be some remixes of Factory Floor floating around soon?
There are some people but, it’s such a shit thing to say, I know, but I can’t say who. Let’s just say, some key inspirations! Remixes feed back into what you do yourself. Like the Richard H. Kirk [Cabaret Voltaire] remix of Two Different Ways, and the Chris Carter [Throbbing Gristle/Chris & Cosey] remix of Lion – when you hear what sounds they’ve pulled out of your music, you consider those aspects for future records.
Especially with artists as idiosyncratic as those guys working with their own weird processes, you’re getting so much more than a straightforward laptop cut-up.
Yeah, definitely. It’s fascinating to hear – they’re really fucking clever guys.
The drums on the album are almost all synthetic, but I’m presuming you started out playing Led Zeppelin like everybody else?
It’s funny you say that. I started drumming when I was eleven, my dad got me lessons and I fucking hated it, man. I can’t do it, I can’t read drum music. I just like to learn myself, so I started playing along to records on his headphones, and Led Zeppelin was one of them. That and Keith Moon and people like that. Then I discovered Stephen Morris when I was sixteen or seventeen and I just went “fuck, ok, that’s amazing”. Just the simplicity of it, that you don’t have to trash around and fill everything.
That sparsity seems to be key to you guys, there’s obviously a lot of self-control involved.
I think all three of us in Factory Floor had to learn that. When Nik joined, me and Dom had been playing a little bit together before that. Dom was playing bass, but then he bought a synth because he’d been so into dance. We had to learn again, and learn to let each other breathe within the tracks. Which is difficult, because when you’re starting you want to fill in as much as you can. We’re still learning how to hold back – (lead single) Turn It Up’s a good example of that. That track was in its current state for a while, but I kept wanting to tinker with it, to the point where I asked Peter Gordon [Love of Life Orchestra] to put some saxophone on it. Not that it wasn’t great, but… less is more for us.
You just mentioning Stephen Morris reminded me that he has a collection of tanks.
Yeah, I got to go on them! When we were recording, we went up to do some overdubs for REALLOVE with him. He’s got a house in Macclesfield, he’s just got this barn with four massive army tanks in them. Then I went up with a mate who was doing a short film, so I got to go on the back of one.
If Factory Floor gets to New Order levels of fame, are you going to start collecting weird things and settle back up North too?
I’m going to also get tanks and have a battle with Steve Morris on the moors of Maccles. It’s so weird being driven on a tank by one of your influences. He’s got a similar thing with collecting drum machines and music gear, he spends time on them on, renovating them and that. It’s quite a strange mix of interests, but I think there’s something aesthetic there… I don’t know what it is. I’m into the same kind of stuff. Maybe we’re mentally ill.
Catch Factory Floor performing their self-titled debut album at Electric Picnic next month.
