Geordie Greep takes us round London to talk leaving black midi and debut solo album 'The New Sound' • Interview • DIY Magazine

Meeting in Soho over what will become the first of several whiskeys, Geordie Greep professes a hesitation when it comes to interviews. “It feels like a missed opportunity most of the time,” he says. “A bit transactional.” Rather than treat this afternoon as a chance to flog his debut solo album ‘The New Sound’, he would much prefer to strip away the formalities – to “have an interesting discussion” instead.

He suggests a wander through the surrounding streets. Though we assume Greep would like to indulge in the neighbourhood’s rich countercultural history, he’s more attracted to its status today as a heavily gentrified hub for mediocre nights out. “If you go to a trendy area like Hackney, there are so many wankers,” he begins. “The people around here don’t take themselves so seriously. They’re idiots, but not really wankers.”

Before long we walk past a plaque marking the building where David Bowie recorded ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, where our photographer suggests we dive into a nearby alleyway to take a couple of pictures. Greep politely declines. “I dunno man, I’m not The Clash…” He suggests we walk to Piccadilly Circus instead, so he can pose among the tourists, beneath the giant LED screens advertising cars and Coca-Cola. There, we muscle past the crowd circling a break-dancing street performer (“This guy’s cool,” Greep comments sincerely) and he climbs the steps of the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. “A picture here will be like: ‘London! Let’s take the city!’” he proclaims.

For most Londoners, Piccadilly Circus is hellish; a heaving tourist trap to be avoided at all costs. But then, Greep is not like most Londoners – nor most people, full stop. Unguarded and charismatic, speaking in a distinctive staccato, conversation freewheels from his childhood in Walthamstow to a specific phrase from Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’, to his travels with his prodigious band black midi, which took them from Russia (“Before any of the current shenanigans”) to China (“Really bizarre”) to Portsmouth (“It sucks, bro. It’s a dirge, like Ed Sheeran. Don’t go. Southampton’s worse…”).

black midi, he says, are now on hiatus for the foreseeable future. “I felt like, I don’t wanna do this forever,” Greep offers. The status it afforded him as a poster boy for the so-called South London scene, however, remains. He gets recognised on the street “about once a month”. “I don’t wanna be mean or anything,” he notes, “but it’s always the same kind of guy.” It’s not that he’s unappreciative; these are the fans that made a recently-announced six-night residency in a north London cafe an instant sell-out. By the time this issue lands, the residency will be complete and, when we speak, his plan is to make every gig there completely distinct – some rehearsed and tight, others completely improvised. He’s written an entire opera for one. He’s excited, he says, to keep his audience on the back foot.

“I found this process about 50 times more satisfying than any of the [black midi] albums.”

‘The New Sound’ was initially conceived as part of a songwriting partnership with black midi touring member Seth ‘Shank’ Evans, with recording beginning during a gap in his old band’s touring schedule in Brazil. Greep roped in a cast of prodigious session musicians at the last minute, harnessing the tension between their supreme abilities and the immediacy of first-take recording. “I made a big deal for them to play it straight, to play the songs as if they’re playing ‘Billie Jean’,” he says. “The songs are really arranged, really slick, but not over-rehearsed. Over rehearsing takes the juice out the fruit.”

He was also keen to leave room for moments of straight-up messing around, like when ‘Walk Up’ descends into a lopsided comedy hoe-down. “That was just me and Shank fucking around one night. Who knows if that’s a good idea or not. I like when you can tell something on an album was just a snap decision.” Shank also takes lead vocals for one song, ‘Motorbike. “I’m under no illusion that my voice is the easiest to listen to, so that one’s a little palate cleanser,” says Greep.

Having long-admired artists like Lou Reed and Frank Zappa, who produced solo work alongside their bands, he relished the opportunity to take full creative control. “Whether it’s a complete failure or not, it’s all on me,” he says. “I found this process about 50 times more satisfying than any of the [black midi] albums. I like those albums, I had a fun time, but for almost every song I had this vision of how it would have been good if we’d just done what I’d wanted, and I reckon it was the same for the other two [band members].”

By now we’ve departed Piccadilly Circus, muscling past the hordes of (mostly male) post-work drinkers spilling out onto the pavements with their pints in plastic cups as they begin a long evening’s boozing – idiots, but not wankers, as Greep might put it. The lyrics on ‘The New Sound’, he says, are partly inspired by encounters in such spaces: “The people you meet when you’re out drinking late. When everyone starts telling you things they don’t wanna tell you, and it’s too late to take it back.” On the record, he inhabits several different unreliable narrators who give in to their basest desires, deluding themselves as they imagine their lusting and boozing as scenes from a grand romance, given weight by the record’s flamboyant instrumentation. “It was like, let’s have a go at seeing what that’s like,” Greep says. “Not to be holier-than-thou sanctimonious, but a lot of men really are bastards, even to themselves.”

Eventually we arrive at Trisha’s, the legendary Soho speakeasy of which he’s a member, where yellowing pictures of footballers, a life-size cutout of Frank Sinatra and a poster from Scarface clutter the walls. He admires its eccentricities. “It’s kinda cringy, but it’s also like, why not? Everywhere else in London feels like they’re afraid of doing anything that’s not Instagram.” By now several whiskeys in, conversation departs from ‘The New Sound’ entirely in favour of a passionate exultation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and a detailed critique of James Joyce’s Ulysses. As he had hoped all along, this has long-ceased to be a traditional, transactional interview, and instead has morphed into an evening as strange as this bar; as mercurial as the man himself.

‘The New Sound’ is out 4th October via Rough Trade.

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