Interview with Nigel Turner
Pickled Egg Records
11 March 2010
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In August 2000 The Go! Team released its debut single, the Get It Together EP on the Leicester-based Pickled Egg label. Pickled Egg has been described as 'one of the most sharp-eyed, adventurous independent labels around, releasing some of the best music of any label, anywhere. Eclectic to a fault, and firmly out of step with current trends, since it's inception in 1998, it has dedicated itself to redressing the world’s musical balance in favour of quirky genius, bent tunefulness, noisy playfulness, jazz turmoil, inventive retro-futurism and downright emotional heart-on-sleeve belief, hope and passion'.

Nigel Turner, founder of Pickled Egg, kindly agreed to do an interview by e-mail for Titanic Fandalism which covers the history of the label and, ten years on, sheds some light on the very earliest days of The Go! Team. Many thanks to Nigel for the interview - check out the Pickled Egg website here and flyer cataloguing the label's releases here.

THE LABEL

TF: For those not familiar with Pickled Egg, please could you give us a potted history/overview of the label.

NT: I’ve been running the label since late ‘97, and during that time have released something like 25 singles and 50 albums.  I guess the label might best be described as eclectic.  Artistes I’ve released over the years have included: Pop-Off Tuesday, Volcano the Bear, Daniel Johnston, Bablicon, Big Eyes/The Big Eyes Family Players, The Evolution Control Committee, Marshmallow Coast, Suzy Mangion/George, Need New Body, Scatter, Nalle, Zukanican, Butchy Fuego, Oddfellows Casino, Fulborn Teversham, aPAtT, Now, Dragon or Emperor, Chandeliers, The Doozer, Freeze Puppy, and of course, The Go! Team.

Who or what inspired you to start a label?

It’s the frustrated musician inside me!  Making my own music has always been quite a traumatic experience for me, and having my own label is the next best thing to producing my own music.  I’ve been involved on the fringes of the music scene for a number of years, promoting gigs, running clubs and so on, and had toyed with the idea of starting a label for some time.  John Peel aired a session by the idiosyncratic Japanese art-pop duo, Pop-Off Tuesday in the summer of 1997, and announced that if he had a label, he'd release them immediately.  I seized the opportunity, and haven’t looked back since!

What do you look for in new bands/artists that would fit in with the Picked Egg approach?

I like music that retains a certain air of mystery; music you’re not quite sure where it’s coming from, or indeed where it’s going to.  It’s fair to say that I’m not a big fan of copyists!  I like musicians who express an artistic vision, uninhibited by current trends or commercial pressures.  That said, I am drawn to music that expresses new ideas with a pop sensibility, albeit one that to most ears would probably sound like quite warped.

The label's been going now for a very respectable 13 years - in retrospect what's been your most important attribute that's enabled the label to keep going through such massive changes in the music industry?

Belief in what I’m doing.  I know that the music is good, and I’m not interested in what the press thinks, or indeed what anyone else thinks for that matter.  Not having any commercial expectations helps, as does not having the slightest interest in current trends (I literally haven’t read a music paper in years).  I also like to think that I’m very open-minded.  I don’t have any pre-conceived ideas of what a Pickled Egg release should sound like: so when I listen to new music, I like to think that I listen with an open mind, and don’t impose any prejudices on it.

On the face of it Pickled Egg appears fiercely independent - outside of Cartel Distribution are there any other established companies or majors that you need to work with on a regular basis?

Fiercely independent artistically, but at a commercial level, even a label such as Pickled Egg needs to work with partners to survive.  I’ve had a distribution deal with Cargo right from the start, and whilst CD/vinyl sales are lamentable these days, digital sales just about manage to keep the label afloat.  Mind you, I’m fast running out of space to store unsold CDs!  Pickled Egg digital titles are available through all the major outlets such as Amazon, iTunes, etc.  I don’t have any problem with this – in fact, I welcome it.

What current bands are you listening to - both on the label and outside of it? 

a.P.A.t.T. are an incredible, schizophrenic genre-trashing ensemble from Liverpool; not afraid to throw death metal into the mix with free jazz, prog-opera and music hall madness.  It shouldn’t work, but they have the audacity and the skills to pull it off with great fluency.  www.apatt.com

Tom Wilson, aka Freeze Puppy, writes complex, avant garde, yet eminently listenable cartoon-like pop.  He crams more ideas into each song than most artists could muster in their entire careers, to create warped pop operas somewhat reminiscent of Song Cycle era Van Dyke Parks. http://www.myspace.com/freezepuppy

Chandeliers are a quartet of multi-instrumentalists from Chicago's blossoming young avant-rock scene.  They dig deep into groove mode, whilst snaking all over the musical map; from middle eastern synth pop to Congotronic clatter, electro and 21st century techno-funk.  www.thechadeliers.com

The Doozer makes angular psych-pop from guitar, keyboards and drum machines.  His songs have a lovely constructed precision underlying their surface awkwardness, with a gift for finding chords or sour melodic twists that initially sound wrong, but turn out right. His counter-intuitive logic and oblique associations put him in a lineage connecting The Incredible String Band, Kevin Ayres and Billy Childish, but most of all, that other Cambridge alumnus, Syd Barrett.  www.thedoozer.com

What's the best and worst aspects of running Pickled Egg?

The best aspects..... knowing that, in at least some small way, I’ve made an impact, a small footnote in musical history, if nothing more.  I personally believe that it’s better to produce music with the ability to affect in some profound way those who are prepared to really listen, rather than to churn out music that is purely fodder for the masses.  I hope, and indeed believe, that I’ve managed to achieve that.

The worst... although I like to think that it doesn’t bother me what the press think, after so many years of banging my head against a wall, it’s impossible not to feel a deep sense of frustration: how many more times can they be so stupid?!  And the ignorance of the press most definitely contributes towards the lack of commercial success.

THE GO! TEAM

When and how did you first come into contact with Ian Parton?  What were the first tracks you heard from him and what was your initial reaction?

When he first sent me a cassette tape (yes, that’s right, a cassette tape!) of the four tracks that comprised the Get it Together! EP I was totally knocked out by the songs, and played them over and over on my walkman (listening on my earphones at work in Cambridge, as it happens).  I believe Ian had come across Pickled Egg after seeing Pop-Off Tuesday play at the Brighton Crawl in 1999.

The Get It Together EP received positive press and several plays on John Peel - was there any interest from Peel in terms of Ian doing a session for him around that time?

I believe Peel played it a couple of times, but never expressed any interest in doing a session to the best of my knowledge. As for reviews - Record Collector made it Single of the Month, but aside from that, no other mainstream paper covered it.  Certainly not the NME - in spite of my sending copies to at least half a dozen of their journalists.   It’s important that these things are said, because the level of ignorance elicited by the music press towards genuinely new music – in particular the UK – is shameful.  And the press is more dumbed down today than ever before.

Sam Dook also released records on Pickled Egg with his band 100 Pets. How did you first come into contact with them?

I released the 100 Pets album ‘Easter Songs’ on vinyl LP.  Sam had sent me a CDR of the album – or at least, a large selection of songs that were to appear on the album.  I’m not really sure how he first came across Pickled Egg.  I stayed at his Brighton flat with Volcano the Bear and Bablicon, after they’d played a gig in 2000, but I think this must have been shortly after he’d sent me the CDR.  My recollection of the chronology of these events is a bit shaky.

Did Ian and Sam make contact through yourself/Picked Egg. If not, do you know how they met?

As far as I‘m aware, they didn’t know one another prior to the Pickled Egg connection.  I seem to recall that when Ian first mentioned the idea of putting together a band (The Go! Team was just him at this point), I suggested he should contact Sam.  I’m sure their recollections of this would be much more reliable.

I understand from yourself that an early version of what would become 'Thunder, Lightning, Strike' was put together while Ian was still at Pickled Egg. Are you able to elaborate on this in terms of the tracks that were included, any titles and the overall sound of it?

Yes, Ian sent me the master CD for what would have been a very different debut album, to be titled Junior Kickstart.  This would have have been around 2002 to 2003.  The track-listing was about 50% common with Thunder Lightning Strike: Ladyflash was on there, plus Panther Dash, Get it Together, Feelgood by Numbers, Junior Kickstart,  Friendship Update, Everyone’s a VIP to Someone - although some of these tracks were quite different versions.  Not all the tracks had titles at that stage, and some of them were in part incorporated into other tracks.  I’d say that that the album was more a collection of songs, and less of a complete album than Thunder, Lightning Strike.  If anything, there was quite a spaghetti western feel to it.

Ian and I had bounced ideas back and forth over many months as to which tracks should appear on the album.  All I was waiting for - all I thought I was waiting for - was the artwork; Ian having sent me the finished master.  But then, nothing.  Ian went all shy on me, and the next thing I knew, he’d announced that he’d signed to Memphis Industries, which naturally came as quite a shock to me.

I was told that the EP was mastered at Abbey Road. To someone outside the day to day workings of the music industry, this would seem like an expensive exercise. What's the story?

The record was cut at Abbey Road, not mastered (Ian mastered it himself, I believe. Even to this day, some people complain about the sound quality of that record, although personally I love its grainy quality).  Abbey Road just happened to be one of the cutting studios that the manufacturer (Key Production) used at the time.  I don’t believe it was any more expensive than any of the alternative studios.   I’ve not attended many cuts myself, as most of my vinyl releases were cut in the Czech Republic, but I must say that I was quite excited about seeing inside Abbey Road   In fact, I brought quite an entourage with me!  Those old Swiss cutting lathes were a sight to behold!  Even the cutting engineer seemed in awe of the technical process involved. This was also the first time I met Ian.

I often see the different sleeve artwork for the EP on various website (with the spray-painted text) which I understand was Ian's original sleeve design - why did it change and did any copies of this sleeve ever get printed or released?

 

I seem to recall asking Ian if he could re-make it, as I thought the original design rather sloppy!  It never got printed.  I put a jpeg of the original cover on the Pickled Egg website (it’s still up there, in fact), and this has been copied far and wide across the internet!

Is there any early/unreleased Go! Team material that you would be in a position to release in the future?

I’d say there’s a good mini album’s worth of unreleased stuff and significantly different versions of released songs.  I don’t know whether it will ever see the light of day – you’d have to ask Ian about that.  But I’d certainly be up for releasing it!