A Chat with The Spike Direction Effect (24.11.23)
Take a hearty dose of blues, mix it with scorching guitar rock and leave to simmer on the side. The result? The Spike Direction Effect. Known for their chaotic melodies and intoxicating charisma, UK-based musicians Spike, Stejy and Blake are turning heads across the globe. We speak with Spike about the band’s new album ARGH!, making music, favourite songs to sing in the shower and much more!
OSR: How did The Spike Direction Effect come about?
Spike: SDE is me (Spike), Blake on drums, and Stejy on Bass. We all knew each other for years before we got together, playing around the Medway scene in various bands, all of which gradually fizzled out. Fast forward a few years. I had a lot of songs written but no band to play them, and I knew these guys were around and both wanted to be more active, so I brought them in and we hit it off immediately.
OSR: You are about to release your album ARGH!. What can you tell us about it? Is there a particular theme or backstory?
Spike: ARGH! was recorded mostly live in my garage one weekend in May 2023. It’s a collection of songs we had ready to record, a mixture of tunes we’d been playing live for years, and some that were very new, but very important to me, that went straight in.
OSR: What were the most exciting and least exciting things about creating ARGH!?
Spike: One of the most exciting things was working out how we were even going to do this, live and with no studio. Originally I wanted to record it to four-track cassette for maximum garage rock grit, but I was persuaded to go a bit more user-friendly by Jim, our great friend and a brilliant producer who lent us his time for which I will be forever grateful. We played how we play, three guys in a room, and he just captured it. So it’s quite a clean recording, but the vibe makes it more Garage-y.
The least exciting thing is trying to plug your music on the internet afterwards, it can be quite a soul-destroying process, but we’ve also been lucky to find some friendly ears.
OSR: What do you hope people will take from the album? Also, what do you take from ARGH!
Spike: ARGH! contains some of my most personal songs. I’ve not been used to bearing my soul in my music in the past, but there’s quite a few moments on this one that have some weight.
‘Little Black Heart’ is for Mrs Direction, who also does guest vocals on ‘Billy The Quid’, ‘Monster Songs’ is for my little boy. ‘Underdog Trash’ and ‘Kleptomaniac’ are statements of intent with regards to my music and art. And ‘Bass Amp’ is a farewell and a f*ck you to a former friend who did some very bad things.
OSR: What about creating music in general? What are the most exciting and least exciting things about composing something?
Spike: I have taught myself guitar and songwriting basically from scratch. So the fact that I have put even one new tune into the world, let alone two albums, is kind of insane, so that has not yet ceased to fill me with delight.
I do most of my writing in February as part of FAWM (February Album Writing Month), and the community over there are so supportive of each other and really support a very free approach to creating. I love it. There’s nothing I don’t love about writing music.
OSR: What does music mean to you?
Spike: Music is the primal beat of life, which gives me the fuel I need to put up with everything else. The thing that seems like a virtue to me about my ‘unpolished’ state as a musician and songwriter, is I’m not afraid to retread old ground, maybe put my own little spin on it, maybe not. Lots of musicians tie themselves in knots trying to be as unique as they can be, getting more and more complex and obscure. I prefer to keep it simple, and I think the simplest stuff, that’s what resonates best with a listener. Certainly, it’s what resonates best with me.
OSR: As a group out there to play chaotic shows, have a good time, and bring some insanity into people’s lives (in a good way), what is your most chaotic gig to date?
Spike: There’s been a few over the years. One of the maddest was in a pub in Rochester where the landlady got a trombone from somewhere (that she couldn’t play and started dancing on the bar with it), then we had to let the pub dog out mid-guitar solo as we were set up right in front of the back door.
More recently I’ve got a wireless kit, so I like to go running off into the toilets and stuff, still playing, maybe start a moshpit going. Though the guitar gives me a bit of an advantage there!
OSR: What songs do you sing in the shower?
Spike: ‘This Is Why!’ by Paramore, my boy loves that song! I wasn’t a fan of theirs back in the day, but this one sounds like Jefferson Airplane, so it won me over.
OSR: What is something you can never seem to finish?
Spike: My Space Rock Opera about a cosmonaut travelling through the multiverse and meeting eternal space gods! ‘Knife Edge’ on this album is from that project, but the rest will probably never see the light of day
OSR: What fictional place would you most like to go?
Spike: I want to go to Mars as it appears in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy.
OSR: What future plans do you have for The Spike Direction Effect?
Spike: More songs. More shows. More merch. Plus we’d like to perform a surf rock version of Jeff Wayne’s ‘War of the Worlds’. We’d need a few guest players for that though!
Many thanks to Spike for speaking with us. For more from The Spike Direction Effect, check out their Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
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