Space Oddities interview w/ Biggles
Photo: Tabea Hüberli
In 2008, the Swiss musician Biggles released his third album, “Oh My God, It’s Full of Stars” which featured Spacehog’s Royston Langdon on bass, Jonny Cragg on drums and Bryce Goggin producing.
This April 1st, Biggles will release his latest album, “Beauty Knows No Pain” on the Swiss label, Chop Records and internationally on iTunes.
Biggles, Grüezi! Please introduce yourself, and don’t be modest.
Grüetzi Captain, thanks for that nice welcome. It seems you’ve done some research there! I’m a Swiss singer and guitarist who is very much into 70s Glamrock, Krautrock and many other Rocks. Writing and performing my songs I try to keep a tradition alive – the tradition of making music for human beings. These days I think too much music is being made only for the charts. I always wanted to keep the listening experience not too easy and still have everything simple and full of melodies.
The charts have certainly become a very dreary place for music lovers. The music made for the masses has become very sterile, safe and disposable. The music industry has completely lost touch with its customers and is completely floundering right now. How does an artist such as yourself survive in today’s musical climate?
You have to be flexible and keep things simple and small. For example: Having a degree in photography and art I design a lot of the visual items myself. I enjoy taking care of covers and flyers and so on. At the moment I am even cutting the first video clip for my next album on my iMac. That’s a luxury people in the 80s simply didn’t have. For me it’s nice that I don’t have to do those things out of necessity but because it’s fun. For me it’s a way to complete the picture and it helps to keep check of the finances.
A look back…Jonny Cragg Interview 1996
As we all look forward to new Spacehog music, here is a peek at the past. It’s 1996 and Nickel City Scene is interviewing Jonny Cragg at Melody Fair during the 1996 EDGEfest concert. Enjoy!
Contributor Magazine/Q & A Les freres Langdon
Have you ever longed to know the candy of choice of your favorite Langdon brother? Favorite car? Favorite year?
Whether the questions ever crossed your thoughts or not, they fortunately were on the mind of Contributor Magazine editor Sophie Caby who posed all three questions to Antony, Royston, and Christian in a recent interview. Three simple questions to three talkative musicians, resulting in eight lengthy and amusing answers (plus one answered as only a father could).
All this, and new photographs to boot, can be found here:
http://www.contributormagazine.com/344.php
You’ll find a place to leave a comment after the interview. Don’t be shy! Rumor has it, that your comments are appreciated!
Space Oddities interview w/ David Heinke (Arckid Session Drummer)
Can you detail your involvement in the music industry and association with Bryce Goggin prior to your time in the studio with Arckid?
I’ve been playing drums since I can remember, but my professional career began when I was 15 and played on an album by a band called Beggars (Island). It’s a solid debut album, but was deleted immediately by the record company. The only people who look for it now are fans of BRMC; Robert Been played bass on the record with me. That gig got me lots of other singer-songwriter-type demo gigs in the SF Bay area. I mean, they were demos, but it was still great to fly out from time to time. I grew up in Rockford, IL, and was in high school, so to fly anywhere to play drums was really cool.
Around 2000, I was in a proper band called Fuse, which got a small publishing deal from Warner-Chappell. We decided to use that money to fund an album, and Bryce was immediately on our short list based on the first two Spacehog albums. We met with him, we got on great, and we recorded the album in May of 2001. We tracked in CA and mixed in NJ. Sadly, like many great bands with great debut albums, we did not get signed and eventually broke up. But Bryce and I would email each other every couple of months–we definitely stayed in touch. So one day, out of the blue at the beginning of ’06, Bryce called me and told me to call Roy right away.