Neu Night Works: ‘Something Different And New’

If you’ve spent the last thirty seconds staring at Night Works wondering, ‘Where have I seen him before?’, chances are you won’t be alone. There are a few different options: certainly, he may look like someone you saw in Morrisons yesterday evening hovering near the chicken and pie counter (that’s what it’s called, right?); or, you may recognise him from previous work in both Metronomy and Your Twenties. Ah, that’s better isn’t it? Gabriel Stebbing is quite the musical busybody - and he’s right in the middle of launching a new band.

Hello Gabriel. How are you? What are you up to today?
I am fine thanks, DIY. So far today I have been for a run, had brunch, tended to my online life (like my Tamagotchi, it tends to wilt if I don’t give it enough attention). I’m about to go to the studio.

So, you’ve previously played in several other projects. Do you see each new band as a progression of the last, or are they different things entirely?
It’s difficult to know whether one project was a progression from the former - that’s probably not for me to decide. Imagine them as different pages in the same glossy brochure. I know that Night Works very much feels like the right fit for me, now.

What initially sparked this new project?
It was a song I wrote and that Joe Mount [also of Metronomy] produced called ‘Long Forgotten Boy’. It was obvious to us both that this was something different, and new.

You’re still working with Joe - how does what you’re trying to achieve here differ from what you were doing together in your former band?
I think we were trying to achieve the same thing in both cases - to make music that fits just right, and that was true to our sense of what music meant to us at the time we were making it.

When Night Works first started releasing material online, quite a lot of information about the project was kept under wraps. Did the secrecy have the effect you hoped it would?
Hopefully it didn’t come across too smoke and mirrors. I just wanted the listener to take the first track, ‘I Tried So Hard’, on its own terms, with no preconceptions or context. To actually take the time to listen to it, enjoy it and make up their own mind on it. You’ve heard of the Slow Food movement? I’d like to do that with music.

We heard you’ve finished your album - is it all done and dusted?
Oh yes. The gold master CD is safely under lock and key at the head office of Züricher Landesbank. Only myself, my manager and Phil and Steph from the label have access privileges. All four of us have to be present if we want to remove it.

How long did the album take to create, from start to finish? Has it been a long time coming?
The glint in the milkman’s eye would have been back in late 2009, but the album proper came together very quickly last year.

Are there any over-arching themes?
There’s a pair of characters I had in mind when writing the album, Long Forgotten Boy and Long Forgotten Girl. They’re both made up of parts of me and of people I know. There’s a bunch of other people on the record, too. It’s quite densely populated. I was thinking a lot about money, power, London, and the kind of transactions that take place in ‘The Eveningtime’: it’s all there in the soup.

Finally, when do you think we’ll be able to hear it?
Well, our flights to Zürich are booked but I can’t tell you when for, too risky. Sorry.

Night Works’ new single ‘The Eveningtime’ is out now via Loose Lips Records.

Taken from the September 2012 issue of DIY, available now. For more details click here.