Music, Style & Culture

DIY Does ATP: Archers Of Loaf: ‘We’re Going For An Authentic, Rough Edged Feel’

We call up bassist Matt Gentling, as he drives to catch a flight to Somerset, and have a blinking good natter.

Back in the heady days of the 1990s, Archers Of Loaf were busy enthralling audiences around the world with their particular brand of off kilter, melodic indie rock. After their surprise reformation earlier this year (they didn't announce their first gig anywhere beforehand), they've played a few shows on their home turf of the US of A, but this weekend's ATP show will be their first date on UK soil in over ten years. And DIY couldn't miss the opportunity to call up bassist Matt Gentling, as he drove to catch his flight to Somerset, and have a blinking good natter.

Hi Matt! So, have you ever been to an ATP before? Do you know what to expect?
I have, the Archers have not, but I was playing bass with Band Of Horses on a tour, and they played the ATP vs The Fans one in May 2007.

Cool, so have you warned the others about the blue cider?
The WHAT? I don't remember that!

If you drink about three, your pee turns blue.
Oh my, I consider that a challenge! Nobody told me about that in '07! No one tells the bass player anything.

And I thought it was the drummer they didn't tell anything to...
Ha, yeah, that too! It's the rhythm section in general. But we're very much looking forward to ATP, it's funny, I'm not really a festival going kind of guy usually, but I had a blast at the Reading Festival, and I had a blast at ATP. It's something about the way they're set up. It's just a lot more fun, a lot more convivial, and a lot easier to navigate, I think.

Is there a big difference, do you think, between the UK festival scene and the American, then?
Absolutely, absolutely. I don't know what it is, I've blamed it on numerous things, but I think there's so many rules with the American ones, I guess it's out of our litigation mania, but it's a little stifling. And with the ATPs, at least in Minehead, you are sort of 'on the compound', and all your needs are met there, so you just do your own thing, and I liked that, I thought that was nice.

So can we expect any surprises during your ATP set?
I think the surprises will be all ours! Eric and I are sitting here saying to each other, what can we play? And right now we're working out what we can't play, because we don't have the guitars or whatever for it, but I don't think we'll have it all nailed down until we all four get together. We'll have a long flight to discuss it on. We have no idea, and we haven't practised in a while either, because (singer Eric Bachmann's other band – Ed) Crooked Fingers have been on the road, so we're going for a very authentic, rough edged feel.

So you reformed early this year, how's it been going?
It's been amazing playing with those guys again, and playing those old songs, it's been really really fun. But it's everything's so different now, I wouldn't know where to start. First off, the crowd has been bigger, and I almost feel like our style is a considered a little more mainstream than it was back in the day. You know, it draws more a mainstream crowd, and I don't that in a bad way at all. There's actually women in the crowd! It's a little strange. Obviously they're QUITE welcome! Now there's about 200 women in the crowd, fending off nerds, whereas in the old days it was nerds playing to nerds. Now it's it's nerds playing to cool people! And the world's different, there's all sorts of new technology.

So have you found the onslaught of new technology and social media has changed how you go about touring and connecting with people this time around?
Absolutely! For better and worse. It's so much easier now with cell phones and GPS to tour now, so much easier. In that sense, you get to the club, you can communicate with the club and each other, logistics are much easier. But with the social media thing, a lot of the mystery has gone. And everyone puts a lot of effort in to their music, they don't want it to just evaporate once it leaves their hands, so there's a big emphasis on marketing yourself, you have to really push yourself out there. So there's a lot of advertising, which is a bit alien to me, definitely. And also, it's tougher to get surprised, to have a band sneak up on you and blow your mind. That was a lot of fun, to go to a town you've never been to before and see a band that was insanely amazing. Usually you'd kind of known about them a little bit before, you'd only have an inkling beforehand.

So how did Les Savy Fav approach you for ATP? Did you know them already?
Actually, they're kind of friends, we'd played a show with them, I think it was in '98 maybe, in New York, and a friend of ours was doing sound for them, James Murphy, from LCD Soundsystem. So we were like, hey James, who are these guys you're doing sound for? And they they played that night and they were incredible. And we got on really well as people, we'd run into them here and there. Harrison, their current drummer, he is a North Carolina guy so we've got a lot of common friends. He's a top notch guy, they're all really wonderful people. And I got to see their set, I missed the first half of it, at the 2007 ATP, because we were getting checked in to our little room. We saw they were scheduled and all the Band of Horses guys made this mass exodus to see the show, it was great.

I love that the musicians all go watch each other at ATP, there's much more of a sense of community there.
I agree, and that was one of the things I loved about it, that there's not much separation between the bands and the festival goers, that's all blurred. It's more serendipitous. I remember I bumped into a group of Swedish people and ended up playing a game called 'categories' with them, Just drinking beer, playing a game, with a bunch of Swedes, that would not have happened if there was a separate attendee and band camp.

And in terms of the reunion, can we expect to see any new material?
I don't know, we're still working that out within the band. Obviously everything's different now, we're different as people, but we don't live in the same town now. We never wrote well on the road, but technology has changed all that, we could probably send each other little files that do that now. But if we don't write something that really moves us, then that probably won't go forward, you know. I'd love to write music with these guys, but I don't know that we'd pursue it to release or not release, I think the emphasis would be pretty insular. If we felt proud enough to put it out, then we'd look into that!

Maybe the blue cider can inspire you.
It might, I'd never rule that out!

ATP's Nightmare Before Christmas will take place from 9th - 11th December at Butlins Holiday Centre, Minehead.