Black Eddy is a collective of punky, grungy, prog-fueled madness from Blackpool in the UK. The band formed in 2012 and their music examines the darker sides of life and the human mind.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with Black Eddy about the latest project, dream collabs, motivations, and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Are you able to choose a favourite song of all time? Or would you label this an impossible task? If yes, what’s the song? If no, what’s your current Top 3?
It’s not possible! There are different songs that work in different contexts and many are dependent on your state of mind at the time. The range we’re listening to at the moment is huge and we’ve been to so many different gigs. We’ll all pick one song that’s really doing it for us at the moment, so here’s a list of four!
Jamie: Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues by Mclusky
Luke: Perilous Flesh And The Devouring Light by Kosmovorous
Thom: Unknown Male 01 by Biffy Clyro
Joel: Uptown Folks by Dope Lemon
What about this project makes you most proud? Was there a specific goal you were trying to accomplish with this release?
After our last release, we still had plenty of musical ideas we wanted to work on and present to the world. We ended up parting with long-time guitarist Jay Devine before the record was launched, meaning that we were entering a new chapter in our musical journey. These two new songs are a first glimpse in to the future of the band and are a way to introduce Joel to audiences who haven’t seen us in a while.
“Insanity” is a song that Luke had been working on when Jay was still in the band. Joel has added his own interpretation to the guitar work in the song and we believe it’s a fun and energetic addition to our back catalogue. “Johann’s Path” is a very different song for us and is the first song written where Joel was a part of the writing process from its inception. As a pair of songs, they represent a good range of what we can do whilst still being identifiable as Black Eddy songs.
We’re aware that a lot of modern audiences have a different relationship with music these days. Whilst we won’t deviate from the album format because we strongly believe in structure and musical journeys, we would like to be able to keep people engaged when we’re between writing albums. Giving glimpses into our future is one way that we can do this and it’s also an opportunity for people to tell us what they think of our current direction.
What inspires you to create music? What motivates you to keep going?
Those moments when you’re listening to a song, even if it’s one that you don’t particularly like, and something catches our attention and makes us go “Have we tried something like that before? There’s an idea there!”. It can come in the most unexpected places. There is still a lot of older music that we haven’t yet discovered that may well hold something that excites us.
That said, there is so much new music out now that really captures our imaginations. It’s a total myth when some people say that there’s no good new music coming out now. Loads of musicians are getting inspired by different kinds of music and melding them together into something that they truly love. Even genres that we don’t normally listen to often have beats, melodies or structural ideas that excite and inspire us.
We’ve been fortunate to see many great live performances by an assortment of different musical artists. In the last year alone, we’ve had the pleasure of seeing acts such as Tommy Emmanuel, Igorrr, Alice Cooper, Rammstein, Psychic Graveyard, Cock Sparrer, Pig Destroyer, De Staat, Zeal & Ardor, Devin Townsend, Froze Mode and Goldie Lookin’ Chain. This isn’t something we take for granted and we try to take in how these different acts approach live shows so that we can aim to do better in ours.
We’re motivated to keep going every time people react well to us at a gig or when they come and talk to us to say how much they enjoyed it. We get a lot of personal gratification from writing music that we enjoy, but it’s increased tenfold when others like it too. Having a vision also helps. Around the time when we were releasing our first EP, we came up with the idea of doing a trilogy of 3 records where the titles would combine to make a “road sign” to our fictional town of Black Eddy. With that in mind, we knew we had to at least get those 3 records done. With our third record, “Home of the Mad and the Shameless”, we pushed the boat out much further by creating a special dossier that elaborated on our world. It’s available as the special edition of that album and contains all sorts of fun stuff, including a personalised certificate that certifies the recipient sane for 1 year!
Having established this world, we now want to go further. We have a load of ideas that we want to see the light of day, so that’s keeping us going. It’s all an accompaniment to the music we’re doing, so progress on one element inevitably drives us to do better on the other.
Where does this project fit into the bigger picture for Black Eddy?
The next step for us is to continue fleshing out our fictional world: The Town and Independent State of Black Eddy. It’s meant to be fun and is also intended to be somewhere that people can immerse themselves in our lore and use it as a form of escapism if they’re struggling mentally. Both of these new songs deal with mental health in different ways.
“Insanity” is much more light-hearted and is meant to be fun. The implication is that the subject has been deemed insane but is perfectly happy as they are. There are many plays on words, however one message we’d like people to take from seems like an obvious one that we believe is still important: being or feeling different is okay. Everyone is at the end of the day, so don’t be afraid feel like a unique part of a greater whole.
“Johann’s Path” deals more with the importance of reaching out to others and being connected. It’s important to reflect on your pain and anything that’s made you feel bad in the past, but you don’t have to do it alone. It isn’t always easy to each out though, so we hope this song can at least speak to people and be relatable in those moments when they think “Oh this has gotta change”.
Apart from their thematic relevance to our future, these songs should also represent an evolution for our sound and vision. It’s hard to strike a balance between having a sonic identity and reinventing a sound. Many bands are criticised for being inconsistent whereas others get flak for sticking with the same style for too long. It’s impossible to please everybody, so we will try to find our own way of keeping things fresh whilst not losing sight of who we are. All being well, people will want to come on the journey with us.
If you could collaborate with anyone – dead or alive, famous or unknown – who would it be and why? If it’s an indie/DIY artist, please include a link so readers can check them out.
It would be a lot of fun to collaborate with De Staat! They’re a Dutch band who we discovered when our producer (James Routh) showed us the video to “Witch Doctor” when we were recording our second EP: “Population 4”. They tick a lot of boxes for us by having great, memorable songs that are varied yet immediately identifiable as De Staat songs. We don’t think that we sound similar, but there is something about their overall aesthetic that is somehow related to what we do. Perhaps we’re distant cousins or something!
It’s hard to imagine what a collaboration between us would sound like, which is all the more reason why it would be so cool! We’ve never put a specific label on ourselves because we don’t want to feel obliged to stick to a certain genre, which also means that it’s a surprise for us when we find out where our songs are going. Imagine the added surprise of seeing where De Staat would take it! It would also push us very hard as they are all extremely talented musicians.
We would highly recommend that people check them out. These things must be shared! Their website is a great starting point: https://www.destaat.net/
What was the last song you listened to? Favourite all-time bands/artists?
As of this writing, the last song listened to was Himalaya Massive Ritual by Igorrr. It’s a great, well-structured song that mixes so many musical influences, featuring operatic vocals, traditional Indian instruments and an incredible production job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VmaTdnL0ek
Some artists will inevitably be missed out, but the following are definitely some of our all-time favourite artists:
Jamie:
Marilyn Manson, Placebo, Igorrr, Therapy?, New Model Army, Oasis, Billy Joel, Johnny Cash, Elton John, Ocean Colour Scene, Slipknot, Machine Head, Pantera, Korn, NOFX, Dead Kennedys, Rancid
Winty:
Slayer, Mr. Bungle, Dead Kennedys, Pig Destroyer, Manowar, Emperor, Gorgoroth, Cannibal Corpse, Carcass, System Of A Down, De Staat, Rammstein, Knorkator
Thom:
Slipknot, Biffy Clyro, Enter Shikari, Igorrr, The Devil Wears Prada, Muse, Children Of Bodom, Bring Me The Horizon, Cradle Of Filth
Joel:
Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stevie Ray Vaughn, White Stripes, Angus And Julia Stone, Pink Floyd
Where is the best place to find you and stay connected?
Facebook is a great way to keep an eye on what gigs we have in the pipeline. Our videos are available on YouTube and you can listen to and buy merchandise on Bandcamp. We’re slowly drip-feeding elements of our story onto Instagram too if you’re interested in following!
To contact us directly, there’s also good, old-fashioned e-mails.
You can also listen to our music on Spotify and iTunes.
Last but not least, you can come down and see us at our gigs. We love meeting people afterwards and connecting with our audiences. We may be playing the music for 30-40 minutes, but we’re there for the exact same reason as them: to have fun and enjoy great music.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blackeddy/
Bandcamp: https://blackeddy.bandcamp.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackeddymusic/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY_D7d6ZY-9jpCxIYosDY5g
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2sH0QPb5RBGucNv83dghxV
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/1330289358
E-Mail: blackeddymusic@gmail.com
I appreciate Your time. Want to say or plug any other projects before we part ways?
Yes! Jamie has organised a charity gig on the 24th of June to raise money and awareness for SUDC UK. The charity was founded by three mothers who lost their children to Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood and aims to fund research in order to make this predictable and preventable. Black Eddy will be performing at the gig along with two other acts and there will also be talks by parents who have been affected by SUDC. We believe this is a worthwhile cause, so please come down if you’re able. The even page can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/903361860935102/?ref=newsfeed
