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Banco de Gaia launches his new album 'Apollo' Reported by Andy Force / Submitted 10-04-13 14:38 Banco de Gaia is an alias that is embedded in the fabric of alternative electronic music. 10 Albums and over 25 years of experience have culminated in his new album ‘Apollo’, an entire festival of world electronica packed into one CD. Apollo showcases the quintessential Banco de Gaia with an amalgamation of earthly instruments and penetrating atmospheric landscapes that create a diverse musical journey, inducing scenic visions from international carnival culture to breathlessly still dreamworlds. It can rarely be said of musical works that they offer a sublime insight into a realm of something otherworldly. Apollo has captured and channelled a part of the human imagination that coaxes our creative being from its fortifications, and beckons it to breath life into the petering fire of human consciousness. So after a 7 year hiatus from releasing an album, Banco’s strident return will enthuse electronic music fans across generations and continents, as he eloquently conveys an enchanting universe of emotions through this stunning new release. Interested to explore the roots of his making, I was given the pleasure of carrying out an interview with Toby himself. Introducing: Banco De Gaia. What is your earliest memory of anything musical as a child? I have a very clear image of having a violin lesson as a child when I was at primary school. I only had one violin lesson and I remember being sat in this room with this weird thing in my hands, and I knew it was a violin, because I’d been told it was! I‘d seen people on TV with bows, and doing weird s**t with it. So, the teacher said “here’s a violin and the first thing you want to do is get used to this instrument”, so he taught us how to pluck the strings just to get a sound out of it. I must have been six at the time or something, it was so exciting getting what to me was the most amazing sound out of it, just by touching it. Suffice to say I decided it wasn’t for me so I didn’t go back for another lesson, but that’s the first thing I can remember. The satisfaction I got from making that musical sound was enough to make me want to do more of it. Where did you go from there, how did that lead into electronic music creation and so on? Well, we had a piano in the house as a kid, which I didn’t play, my sister played it and occasionally I’d play around with it and try and make interesting noises come out of it, but I only learned how to play one tune. Then when I was 9 I decided to I learn to play the trumpet, not too sure why, but for two years I had the most fantastic trumpet teacher who really managed to enthuse me about music. I wasn’t any good, it was incredibly simple stuff I was playing but I got huge satisfaction out of it. He just taught me the joy of making music, and then I got a different trumpet teacher, who I didn’t get on with at all so I gave that up! At that point I was starting to get into rock and more teenage things, so I decided I wanted to be a drummer instead. I got sick of sitting at the back and no-one taking my ideas seriously, so then decided to be play guitar instead, and spent a lot of time trying to be Jimi Hendrix or Dave Gilmour. Got into jazz for a while although I was far too lazy to be a jazz guitarist, and then acid house happened, and the rest is history, as they say. What year was that in? Err . . . 1988 when I first got a sampler, I reached a crossroads and decided I was either going to become a new age guitarist doing all acoustic with all sort of new age floaty stuff, but I was really intrigued by this new technology and samplers and sequencers and things, so I ended up taking that path. So, looking at your new album, are there any specific themes/stories that inspired it? There’s no specific concept behind it. What I was really conscious of was that I wanted it to be a Banco de Gaia album, because I’ve been working on some stuff elsewhere which is very not Banco, and I wanted this album to fit in the history of Banco, and to not go off on a weird tangent or something experimental, or dubsteppy or something. So I was very conscious of thinking about what I used to do, and what is ‘Banco de Gaia’, what defines the limits of Banco as opposed to ‘Toby Marks’? So that was quite a big thing in my head, to make it a ‘classic’, which was fairly straightforward to do because it’s not complicated (for me) to break down the ingredients that go into a lot of Banco stuff over the years, I wanted to have a lot of global influences, a lot of up tempo stuff, a lot of ambient stuff, the same old usual stuff really, and I tried to do it as well as I possibly could . . . obviously! Some of your tracks on your new album ‘Apollo’ feature some stunning, spine-tingling female vocals; whose voice do they belong to, and how were they produced? The singer is Zhenia Mahdi-Nau, who is Iranian, but currently lives in Belfast of all places. And we were put in contact because a friend of mine who is a filmmaker was completing a film about archeo-astronomy and he had a couple of parts of the film where he had a very strong idea of what he wanted musically, and for the rough cut he’d use a couple of Dead Can Dance/Lisa Gerrard tracks which worked great, but either he couldn’t clear them or he couldn’t afford to use them, so he wanted to replace them with something close to a similar mood to the tracks he’d used. He’d come across Zhenia through a contact of his who’d suggested she’s a great singer who might be good for the project. These two tracks are what came out of that, and we recorded them for the film called Ancient Skies, it’s not on release yet I don’t think. It’s a full dome movie, which means its super high resolution and it’s designed to be played on domed projection screens like planetariums, so it’s a fully immersive experience, absolutely beautifully shot. And the tracks were so good we put them on the Banco album. What is your creative process like? It tends to work several ways, sometimes I’ll sit down and deliberately write an up-tempo dance floor tune as my first track, and that’ll be pre-defined before I start. Other times I have no conception. For example, I’m just starting on a Kaya Project remix and I’m listening to all the parts he sent me and I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with it, or whether it’s going to be a dance track or a chill track. I love that freedom to go where the sounds take me, quite often I’ll have some samples I’ve found, or maybe a simple musical idea which I’ve come up with to start it off. I’m told you have a new studio being built, what does it look like? Well we moved house 2, nearly 3 years ago, and there was an extension on the back of the house that was nearly falling down that I thought would be perfect if I rebuilt it properly it’d make a great studio. So the first year and a half we were here was basically spent doing all that. It took a lot longer than I expected, so for all that time I had no studio at all! Which is partly why there’s been a delay on this album. But the great thing is we built it from scratch, literally from the ground up, I spoke to an acoustic designer who suggested what angle the walls should be, what materials we should use, and how to sound-proof it heavily, so it’s a completely purpose built studio – on a budget but it sounds absolutely wonderful, it’s a brilliant brilliant space to work in and I wish I’d had it all this time. Have you bought any interesting new equipment to go with it? The only thing I have bought is a pair of (Genelec 8050) speakers from Ebay. I borrowed some for a while and they’re fantastic, so much so that when I gave them back I really missed them. They’re gorgeous, they make a huge difference, and that combined with the clarity of the room has made it so much easier to work than it’s ever been before, I’m hearing exactly what’s going on for the first time ever it seems. Have you always done music, or have you ever had a ‘normal’ job? I have, I did 6 months working as an accounts clerk; I was 16, when I left school and got a job in an office for half a year which I hated. I then saved some money from that and then went off on the road and spent the summer going round free festivals and kinda never looked back really. It was obvious to me I was not going to spend my life in an office. Although ironically now I’ve got my own record label I spend quite a lot of time in an office, but it’s my office! But after that the first thing I did was go off to Portugal and go busking and playing in bars and restaurants, doing cover versions for the tourists just scraping by. I played in various bands and ran a small hire company for a while so we had a PA for our band, but I never really wanted to do anything other than write and play music. What’s going on in the next year for you/over this summer? Any travels/touring going on? I’m starting the Kaya Project remix and then gig season will begin, I’ve got a dozen festivals over summer and trying to get a few for the end of the year so hopefully it will be a busy year. I’ve got lots of ideas for other things I want to do, there are several other areas of music I really want to explore, like for years I’ve wanted to do a down-tempo guitar-based album. I’ve never had the time to do it and I expect this year will be the same, but at the back of my mind I’d love to make a space for. I’m also about to start a PhD in electro-acoustic composition which is going to be fascinating because that gives me an excuse to do some really weird s**t. So that will start in Sept/Oct. Where are you studying that? That’ll be at Birmingham University, don’t know how much time I will spend there but that’s where it will be theoretically. I don’t know where that’s going to go at all but I’ll be interested to see where it leads. So that’ll lead to a lot of very very different music but it won’t be Banco de Gaia by any stretch of the imagination. But I also want to get started on some new Banco stuff as well hopefully by the end of this year, because I don’t want to go years again without another album! It was never intended to be a 7 year break . . . or gap! It was just one thing after another, that’s just how it happened. What’s the most difficult or ridiculous situation you’ve got yourself into on tour/at a gig etc? One thing that springs to mind immediately is in 1994 I was very fortunate just after my first album (Maya) had come out I was part of a tour to Russia - Britronica - ‘A festival of British electronic music’. We went to Moscow and there were 3 venues, and the idea was that a different line up would be in each venue every night, so there was me, Ultramarine, Aphex Twin, Autechre were there . . . Dreadzone, and Alex Patterson from the Orb. So we all trot off to Russia and . . .they had no idea what they had set up. Basically it was some mafia bloke putting this on as some sort of status or prestige thing, I don’t know what exactly his motivation was but he had no idea about music, no idea about the music industry, certainly had no idea about the sort of scene we lot were coming from, so we trot over there and it’s just absolute chaos, at the time it was very hard to get food and there weren’t supermarkets and we needed to be provided for. Unfortunately the ticket sales at this really strange event that they really weren’t ready for, didn’t materialize, so there was no money around. So we’re all basically being starved and living off 1 dollar bottles of vodka, so you can imagine the state we’re all getting into. Possibly the most ridiculous scenario was one night at this club where all the mafia guys used to hang out, where the favourite tune of the time was by Boy George. Alex Patterson had done his set and thoroughly pissed off all the disco dancers who wanted their Friday night disco, so then Aphex Twin takes over and you can imagine where he was coming from! About 20 seconds into his first record and security at this club was being done by off duty Russian soldiers, who come over saying “stop stop stop!” waving their guns at him. Alex Patterson by this point (he must correct me of I’m wrong about this, but as I recall) decided he was going to go and help his mate Richard out, ‘cos this wasn’t really fair’, so he goes striding up on to the stage swinging an aluminum record box and basically a fight is about to start between these armed soldiers and various English DJs and musicians. Then the soldiers noticed there was a photographer from the NME there, who had been clicking away happily and the soldiers absolutely freaked. At that point all that mattered was the camera! So there was a mad rush for the back door everyone trying to get the hell outta there being chased by these soldiers and someone, probably one of the members of Dreadzone, noticed the fuse box on the wall as they went out the back and flicked the switch plunging the whole club into darkness and escaped into the night. Purchase direct from artist @ Banco de Gaia Bandcamp :: http://bancodegaia.bandcamp.com/album/apollo Banco de Gaia Official Web :: http://www.banco.co.uk/ Banco de Gaia Facebook :: https://www.facebook.com/bancodegaia Marketing, PR, Press and Bookings :: robin@triskelemanagement.com Share this :: : : : Follow HarderFaster :: Other Features By Andy Force: Lifeforms detected at Astral Circus! Andy Force interviews Sourone ahead of his UK debut at the Zenon Records Special Dare to be different: Tribal Village meets Suduaya Keeping moving with Mechanimal! Land Switcher – The Earth is Moving at Tribal Village The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable. Comments: From: Slink. on 25th Apr 2013 08:00.20 Good interview. Have followed BdG since Maya was released, luckily got to see him at Reading Uni when it came out. Would so love to see him live again. Apollo, despite being a little more mellow than his other albums is still a beautifully crafted piece of work. From: voodoobass on 2nd May 2013 00:31.50 yeah I think I caught the Maya tour too, haha. Good anecdote with the ceazy russkies, haha From: Pete M on 2nd Aug 2017 19:01.48 Banco rocks!

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