Music > Interviews

Jane Weaver

23/06/15

Jane Weaver’s been making music for 20 years. From Manchester, she runs her own record label and has had six albums out, the latest being The Silver Globe. Everyone loves it. She’s been all over the press and the radio these last few months with her epic electronic psychedelic tunes and is about to wow Latitude with a performance at The Alcove Stage. I spoke to her about the inspiration behind the album and The Bay City Rollers.

What music were you into when you were young and what’s stuck with you since then?

I suppose the first thing I heard were the Bay City Rollers who I suppose were a bit like One Direction, a manufactured boy band, in the early 70’s. They had an image, and I had a bag and a scarf…I was about 4 or 5. Then I saw Kate Bush on TV and my first album I bought was The Kick Inside on tape. I was obsessed with her; I thought she was like a fairy or a wood nymph. After that my mum got me a brown Bontempi keyboard and I would stand in front of the TV trying to play along to Tubeway Army or Are Friends Electric and Ultravox and OMD. It was quite easy for me to hear stuff and then work it out. After that I got more into heavier stuff, indie and metal as I got older.

Your sound has developed a lot since Like An Aspen Leaf came out in 2002. How has your song writing changed as you’ve grown older?

I think that probably as you get older you become more confident and less self aware when you’re writing. You don’t really care about what people think anymore. When you’re younger you tend to tailor what you’re doing, sometimes subconsciously, to what your peers are doing around you. I still must do that because what you listen to does seep into your consciousness but I feel freer artistically as I get older and that’s why I’m bolder and more experimental as I get older and don’t care. Like, I was thinking my next album might be solo piano…that’s the beauty of doing stuff independently, you can do what you want.

Your 6th album The Silver Globe came out late last year. You have collaborated with several people on there including David Holmes.  What was it like collaborating rather than it being just you?

Well I’ve always worked with other musicians. Studio time is expensive; I can play a lot of instruments but sometimes not very well or it might take me a lot of time. I don’t want to be spending all day doing one guitar part, so I’ll just ask a friend who’s good at playing guitar to come in and do that for me. A lot of collaborations are based on people around me that I know and ask if we can work together. David’s a friend, he was living in L.A at the time working with Primal Scream, and I was going there anyway so it just happened quite naturally.

It appears that as an artist from the North, you’ve received a lot of support from fellow Northerners like Jarvis Cocker, Elbow and Marc Riley. Is there a good network of people around Manchester, and a supportive scene?

It’s really nice. It’s more noticeable since this last record has come. I live just outside Manchester, and even though it’s only 25 minutes on the train it’s as if it’s in Derbyshire, it’s a bit further out there. I don’t hang around in Manchester as much and don’t see as many bands as I’d like to, or see other musicians. But since this album’s coming out I’ve felt more involved in the scene and more people have said “Oh, we’ve not seen you around for years!” but I haven’t really stooped making music. A lot of people seem to be enjoying this record.

You’re been everywhere in the media in the past few months, on Marc Riley’s iPlayer show All Shook Up, and had loads of support from Radio 6 Music. How does it feel to be thrust into that level of attention after plugging away at your career for 20 years?

It’s brilliant. A part of me is quite shocked by it. Recently I did a headline show at the Deaf Institute in Manchester and I came onstage and was taken aback. Someone commented that I looked shocked in their review actually! It is overwhelming, I’m used to playing to up to 50 people and then all of a sudden to sell out a headline show! But I’m very aware that it’s very here today, gone tomorrow, so I’m just trying to enjoy it and not frighten myself with it. I gave Laetitia Sadier from Stereolab was staying in our office last June and was doing a session with Marc Riley, so I gave her a CD of my album and asked her to give it to him when she went in, and he’s championed me since then. He’s been consistently so supportive, I’ve done two sessions already and doing another in September. The support from 6 Music has been amazing.

It’s a massive sprawling epic of an album, quite different from a lot of your past stuff. What do you think your next recording will be like? Maybe something simple?

It took me three and half years from start to finish to make this album. I knew when I started it I knew it was going to be quite layered and it would be quite hard work. I knew in my head when I was hearing it, it would be quite an epic thing. But I think the next thing I do might be more minimal or not as layered. I’m just not sure yet. I’m writing stuff and there’s stuff that’s on the Amber Light, like another album really that I did,. My favourite track on there is I Need A Connection, I love doing that one live. It’s a lot more pure electronic, minimal…maybe it will go in that direction. I just don’t know until I start committing myself.

The title was taken from a film called On the Silver Globe. What was it about that film that made you want to work with it as an inspiration?

I saw it part way through making the album. My husband Andy (Votel, world renowned DJ and producer) was working on the soundtrack to On The Silver Globe at the time and he had it on in the background while he was doing his work. I started watching it and it totally freaked me out because it looked like it was in a Russian post-apocalyptic landscape and at times it was quite horrific, and stark. The cinematography is quite blue and they use a fisheye lens. So it’s pretty weird! It’s about a group of astronauts who go to another planet to start another civilisation. Sat the end it goes pearshaped. But there was something I felt a link between the film and what I was doing. Being an artist years ago there was a certain way of doing things but now due to the internet it’s a completely different thing. Who owns your art anymore? In the future what’s it going to be like? So the album was this idea that came out of that.

You run her own boutique label, Bird Records as part of independent label Finders Keepers. Who can you recommend to us?

I’ve curating a stage at Festival #6 at the moment, and one of the acts I’ve chosen is Let’s Eat Grandma, from Norwich! I played with them before in London so I though it would be great to get them on. There’s also Emma Tricca, and Paper Dollhouse, as well as Novella, who are like a psychedelic pop band, and Orlando who are from London. I like all of those!

I saw that Finders Keepers is releasing stuff on cassette tape as well as vinyl…what do think of this return to cassettes? I looked on Argos and it seems there are more boomboxes with tape players available than there were a few years back!

Even though everyone’s into digital and when it first came out everyone was like this is amazing, we don’t need to clutter our houses up with heavy vinyl, or CD’s, there was a yearning there for vinyl. I think it was young people who rediscovered it. I have friends who have children who are 16 or 17 are have started using their parents record players. Vinyl sales have gone up in the past few years. It’s great but there’s only so many vinyl pressing plants that can make records! It’s the same with tapes, But people are realising that they want to produce a physical thing, and also to have some control over what they do. So they can make 100 tapes and sell them for a fiver each and then they’ve got a tidy little cottage industry going on there. It’s great, that DIY thing which has always been so important for independent music. I think it’s out of control now. I mean you look at how many hits you get on Youtube and Spotify and realise that it has no bearing on your bank balance; if it equated to physical sales you’d be loaded!

Coldplay used part of your song Silver Cloud for a sample for their song Another’s Arms. How did that come about?

Yeah! I got a phone call out of the blue from their lawyer who said they’d used the sample on their album and he said that Chris wanted to speak to me about it. So I had a conversation with Chris Martin where he apologised for not asking permission ahead of time and you know, it was all cool. They just used a bit of my vocals for layering in a bit of a song; I can hear but whether I would have heard it I don’t know. Sometimes you hear things and you can identify samples. Like my husband can hear samples because of his hip hop background very easily, he’s a record collector. It’s absolutely fine, I’m not a Coldplay hater!

You’ve got a headline tour in November, but before that you’re playing The Alcove Stage at Latitude. Have you been to Latitude before either as a performer or a punter?

No I’ve never been or to that part of the country before but I’ve always wanted to go. I did my family tree a few years ago and the last point I got up to was that some of my mother’s father’s side of the family were from Southwold which is right where Latitude is! I think they were cockle pickers! I’ve always wanted to go to that part of the country to check it out.

 Lizz Page

Jane Weaver plays The Alcove Stage at Latitude on Saturday.