DAMON KRUKOWSKI & NAOMI YANG have always been big heroes of mine. They were two thirds of one of my all time favourite bands, Galaxie 500, who made three great albums in the 1990's before singer Dean Wareham prematurely called an end to the project and went on to form the equally wonderful, if somewhat more conventional sounding Luna.
Damon and Naomi chose to plug on as a couple, making records which aren't a million miles away from the original G500 sound, publishing books and doing an awful lot of other things besides, including a spell with the band Magic Hour, whom I never saw.
So it was with trepidation that I turned up early at the Cube Cinema in Bristol to meet them and ask them a few impertinent questions. They turned out to be a couple of dead nice people, if a bit awkward to extract information from!
WH - Welcome to Bristol Damon & Naomi - do you know how it is you've ended up playing at the Cube Cinema when you're only in the UK for four dates?
D&N - I don't know, we just feel lucky to be here, it seems like a great place..
WH - Do you know anything about Bristol's "underground" music scene?
D&N - No! Sorry.. Have we failed the test?
WH - How's the new record going?
D&N - We don't really know, we don't worry about the business side...
WH - This album is on vinyl too, does anyone still buy vinyl albums?
D&N - Well, its only just come out, they had to re-print the inner sleeve four times! Actually, vinyl's quite popular in the US..
WH - I read that you also had some problems with the pressing plant, something about them thinking Naomi's harmonium was unwanted background noise!
D&N - That was the live album we did - let's say they were "confused" by the sound!!
WH - Well then, how's the tour going?
D&N - This is the first night! we've had dinner already, that was good..
WH - Weren't you supposed to be doing some stuff in Paris? A gig and a book reading?
D&N - Oh yeah, we've done some shows as a duo, this is the first night with Kurihara.. We also played in Belgium and Amsterdam - and we've been touring the US as well.
WH - when you play as a duo, do you do the same material?
D&N - We change it around a little, we don't have any guitar solos! we change the set a little each night anyway - it evolves.
WH - Damon, do you play any drums now, or is it all guitar?
D - Its pretty much all guitar - I only play drums on the records, I haven't played drums live since Magic Hour.
WH - You had a hand in compiling the recent Galaxie 500 DVD, what do you think of those early videos? Are they embarrasing home movies to you now?
D&N - Well we put it together pretty much, so we've no one to blame but ourselves! We tried to put on the embarrasing but amusing ones, and leave off the embarrasing but dull ones.. That venue you're probably thinking of, the Middle East, is still the central rock club in Cambridge, Boston. Everyone plays there. The High School is still there too, but no one plays there, that was unique!
WH - I sat down to watch it with a bottle of wine and was so inspired I ended up re-spraying my guitar! Does music still have that kind of effect on you?
D&N - Sure, that's why we're out on tour! Its why we're in Bristol now. This is our 6th album as a duo - we don't do music unless we have something meaningful to say, we don't follow a schedule, you know, one album a year.. If we did, more people would probably know about us, but this is our first studio album in five years.
WH - Were you inspired to make music again because you've found a new friend in Kurihara?
D&N - Well, he's a genius, so its an honour to work with him - we're very lucky that he's willing to come all the way to Bristol from Tokyo..
WH - Didn't you record your last album across the two countries? Half in the US and half in Japan?
D&N - No that's not quite right - we mostly wrote it like that, sending ideas back and forth, but we recorded it all in one place - our home studio in Cambridge, which is where we did this new album too..
WH - Tell me a bit more about the new record?
D&N - We decided to put drums on every track this time, we felt the songs really deserved it, so we had to expand the studio for that!
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WH - So you have a proper big mixing desk and everything? None of this new digital technology?
D&N - No, we had to convert the guest room into a mixing room to accommodate the new equipment!
WH - This is the first Eurpoean date then with Kurihara, but you've been playing with him in the States lately?
D&N - Yes, we have a live record of us playing together actually, along with a DVD which is a kind of tour diary (compiled by Naomi) - we went to Europe, Taiwan, we've done a lot of touring since we met him..
WH - How do the American audiences take to the Japanese influences in your music, over here we tend to think of Americans as a bit insular in that respect?
D&N - Well, the US underground is very attuned to what's going on in Japan actually.
WH - And have you ever tried to break out of that kind of audience?
D&N - No, not really. We tend to make music for our colleagues, other musicians who might even know Kurihara's music.. There have been occasions when we've got an audience from outside that circle, but its not always welcome actually.. Its welcome if they buy the records, but its not always so helpful in terms of the way we communicate..
WH - The last show on the G500 DVD was at ULU, I guess there were about 800 people there for that?
D&N - The biggest show we ever did! Almost twice as big as anything we ever played in the US. That was in London, with a record company really hoping to make money from us at that point..So you know, I don't think we've ever communicated beyond a fairly small circle of people anyway..
WH - Were you uneasy about that, trying to make money out of the band? There was always a very natural image to Galaxie 500, fairly uncommercial - your videos weren't designed for MTV.. were there pressures coming in at that point to make more of an effort to break out?
D&N - No, the record company never tried to get us to do things we didn't want to - we knew the kind of people we were working with when we signed the deal.. When it gets bigger than that, its often just about fashion, passing novelty rather than about the music
W&H - Moving back to the present, how did (Damon's) recent poetry reading in Paris go down?
D - It was a lot of fun, there were a lot of Americans there, and we're Francophiles anyway, we get on very well with the French..I speak the language, I even read a poem in French, although it was an English-language bookshop.. The gig in Paris didn't happen though, which was a disappointment - but we just went out and ate instead!
WH - Do you make enough from touring for it to be viable?
D&N - We don't tour to make money, we just like to get out and play our music - there's a lot to do on tour. Today we went to see the stones at Avebury. we got to pet a sheep! They're very rare in the US, you never see one..
At this point the conversation deteriorates rapidly into a discussion about English roundabouts, sheep and Slough (D&N went there because they like The Office!). So I guess this was really the end of the interview.
Oddly, I didn't really enjoy the show that followed, it was something of a disappointment, but it was nice to meet two of the poeple who helped to make some of my favourite music of all time.
After this Damon & Naomi are off to Spain, the Far East and Istanbul - it sounds like a glamorous lifestyle, but they're very down to Earth people indeed..
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