The UK experimental rock outfit Squid has returned with Cowards, their third and most accessible record yet. We talked to vocalist/drummer Ollie Judge on Zoom to find out more.
How are you Ollie?
Ollie Judge: I’m good. It’s a cold day, but I’ve recently moved my house and now just set up a mini studio. I’ve been making music, which is fun.
Have you switched to your home entirely in terms of music production, or is it an extra hobby?
No, this is just for fun, when I haven’t got anything else to do.
I was there at your Istanbul concert. Although you had issues in the customs which forbid you to be at the venue on time, it was a pretty fun concert. Do you have anything to add about that day?
The show was great. Against all odds, it was fantastic. We had some lovely food after, some lovely kebabs. But yeah, it was very stressful. I think that trip took a few years of my life. (laughs)
Your third album Cowards is out now, and I honestly think it’s your best album yet. How are you enjoying the responses from your audience?
Thank you. It’s been amazing. We’re all really proud of the record, but it’s always really nice when you see people enjoying it, and people seem to have really understood the record, which is always amazing. I haven’t really heard many bad words about it yet. It’s only been a few days since it’s been out, so I’m sure some people will say some bad things, but that’s fine.
If you were to think of the creative process of this record and select two tracks, one easiest and one hardest to complete, which two would you pick?
I think “Building 650” was the easiest to write. That just felt like it wrote itself. I think we probably spent like two days on that, which is quite a short amount of time for us. In contrast, “Fieldworks 1” and “Fieldworks 2” took about, I want to say, a year and a half to finish. It was one song originally and we split it up on the record. We did a recording session with Marta (Salogni), who ended up producing the album, in January 2022. We tried to record “Fieldworks” with a completely different structure. It took us from then to finishing the album, so about a year and a half, yeah.
Actually, through the album, you’re somehow at your most accessible and your most complex simultaneously.
Yeah. I think it’s a nice balance between the two, isn’t it? It’s not too dense and it’s got some easily digestible song structures, for us anyway. So yeah, I agree.
Louis (Borlase) said in an earlier interview that humour is an essential part of your music. I would agree and extend the argument by saying most of the serious-sounding has some humour element in it, like the song lyrics of Leonard Cohen. Music bearing multiple and even contrasting emotions is a very human thing.
Yeah, definitely. With this new album, even at the moments where there isn’t any explicit humor, we as the creators of the music always have fun when we’re writing and recording. I think that sense of playfulness and dark humor in lyrics kind of comes through for us, ’cause we’ve had the experience of creating the whole thing. It might not be that explicit to a listener, they might just see it as really dark lyrics and quite playful music. But I think for us, it’s hard not to see any humour in it, because we just had so much fun making it and joking around with each other.
One of the activities I really love is watching music videos. Obviously we are not at the MTV age anymore and you have to actively seek videos in order to watch them, but there are still bands that pay so much attention to this craft, and I think you are one of them. Obviously, you are not the direct creative team behind them, but do you have any sort of mindset while communicating with the film team about your videos?
I think the usual thing that we think of when we make a music video is that we don’t want to be in it. (laughs) We have a lot of conversations about music videos and it can often be quite a tough process pleasing everyone. But we all talk about films and TV more than we talk about what music we’re listening to with each other. I think we’re all really into films and it’s been a really good few years for great cinema. We’re just always interested in not doing the regular band-performance-type video. I think that’s been done to death, five people standing around playing instruments that aren’t plugged in. The way we think about music videos is to draw people into a world that we’re building, and more often than not, we’re not really part of that world. So yeah, one rule that we have is that we don’t really want to be in our music videos. We have been in one one of them, but it was very heavily computer generated.
Maybe you can do some cameo appearances in the way directors do in their films.
Yeah (laughs).
Does a specific thing come to your mind when you think of your favorite music videos by other artists?
I’ve always loved the video to “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys. That’s a classic, I guess. And there are some that David Lynch has done, like the “Came Back Haunted” video by nİNE Inch Nails. Yeah, any music video that Lynch has done, I love. My friend James Hankins is a music video director, and he’s done loads of amazing videos. He did the music video for the “The Hermit” by Richard Dawson. It’s a 40 minute video that’s just amazing.
I’ll check that. By the way, should we squeeze in a little David Lynch tribute here? Because I just can’t talk about him enough.
Same (laughs).
What do you think you will miss most about Lynch?
It’s hard to say. I was really sad when he died, but he’s left so much amazing stuff that I’m not too bothered that there won’t be any new David Lynch stuff, I think just the stuff that he’s left is more than enough. But yeah, I really like his aura. I like his way of seeing the world. I will definitely miss seeing him every now and then.
And no matter how many times you see his works, you can always get new feelings or thoughts out of them.
Yeah, exactly. I can just rewatch Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, all of his stuff. You can just watch it and watch it again. And it never gets old. There’s always new things to see.
You’re very technically focused and locked in when it comes to your songs, especially in your live performances. During the creative process of Cowards, did you feel like you accomplished something you haven’t before through technicality?
No. I feel that for me, this was the first record that we haven’t been obsessed with sound design and technology. We used a lot more acoustic instruments on the record and tried to let the songs speak for themselves and not hide behind layers and layers of sound. It’s quite a new thing for us to leave the space between quieter moments and stuff like that.
Does the album cover have a story attached to it?
It’s a different approach from the previous two covers. Bright Green Field’s cover was made on a computer. It was actually made with AI, before people started going fully into it.
Before it became a real thing, yeah.
Yeah. It was made with AI, with an artist. O Monolith’s artwork was printed on a piece of fabric. So for Cowards we thought, “Well, one of the mediums that we haven’t explored is photography.” So we wanted it to be a photo, but we wanted it to be bright and almost like a hyperpop record or something. We found Tonje (Tielsen), went through her photos, and chose the scorpion, which we didn’t really like at first. It took a long time to agree on that photo, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s just really striking, colourful, and bold.
Do you have an active dream life, and do you think your dreams inspire your music making somehow?
I found recently that I haven’t really been dreaming that much. Or if I have been dreaming, they’ve just been so boring that they are not even worth thinking about. I don’t know how to interpret that. My sleep pattern is really good at the moment. So maybe I’m just completely Zen or something. I used to dream a lot. “Swing (In a Dream)” was literally about a dream that I thought was good. I was having quite a hard time trying to write the lyrics for O Monolith. So that was maybe my subconscious giving me inspiration in times of writer’s block.
Are there any new local acts that you can recommend?
My girlfriend’s band is really, really good. They’re called Minor Conflict. They have just released an EP, which is amazing. They got another one in the bag as well, which is even better. There’s a producer called Rat Heart that I really like from Manchester. He makes electronic music, but he also kind of dabbles in a Cocteau Twins-ie dream pop kind of thing. Sounds cool. And there’s another band from Bristol called Jabu who are amazing. They do dubby dream pop.
When you check out your streaming platform’s play history, what are the last three things that come up?
Oh God. Okay. I have been listening to a UK hip hop group called Task Force. Currently reading a book about UK hip hop. Yeah, “The Cosmic Gypsies” by Task Force, I listened to that. Then there is A Ghost is Born by Wilko. I also listened to Mun Sing’s new Frolic EP. Another Bristol person.
Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured has their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of the lyrics would you like to see written on Squid’s stone?
That’s a good question. What do I want to be remembered by? Something funny… Maybe “One hit right between the eyes.” I think that can be kind of my cause of death as well. (laughs)
You can check out Squid’s Bandcamp profile here.
