Craig Tattersall and Andrew Johnson have been releasing tasty electronic music for a few years now as The Remote Viewer. Here I Go Again On My Own was released mid-2002 on City Centre Offices, and was an excellent follow-up to their untitled debut on 555 Recordings of Philadelphia. Michael Upton decided to get in touch and conduct a bit of an email interview. Sadly Andrew wasn’t available to answer questions, but Craig gave his responses and had a shot at filling in for Andrew.
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Igloo: How long have the two of you been doing music together?
Craig: We have been doing stuff in one form or another since 1991, so that would be what, 11 years or so? God is it that long? It must stop.
Igloo: What do you each do with yourselves outside the Remote Viewer?
Craig: Well I work as an art and design technician at Burnley College. I also do a little bit of teaching there. Other than that I do my own art work, mainly printmaking. I have also just bought a house with my lovely girlfriend so I do a lot of stuff like gardening and cleaning and things. Apart from that it is just resting, watching TV and drinking wine.
Andrew works for a large record store in Accrigton. He lives with his girlfriend. Other than doing music he likes things like eating, sleeping and drinking – oh God yeah – and television. Oh he loves TV. He probably likes other things but I don’t know…
Igloo: In the land of press releases and so on much is made of the fact you two were in the band Hood, and I’ve heard various descriptions of what you do as “indie-tronica” and so on. I have to be frank that the Remote Viewer stuff I’ve heard doesn’t sound any more indie than an older Autechre or Aphex Twin record. There are some obvious exceptions, but still you seem to be firmly in the realm of “electronic music” or whatever you’d like to call it. What are your thoughts on where you fit? Do you feel part of a scene?
Craig: I don’t really feel part of a scene. I think you have to do lots of gigs to get like that and I hate doing gigs, so it will never happen. I also hate all the various sub-names for what we do – as far as I am concerned we do electronica, whether we use acoustic instruments or not. In the end it all goes into one sampler and out the other end as a song, so the sounds are electronic.
Igloo: How do you find the process of electronic composition compared with playing in a band?
Craig: It is so much easier, as you don’t have all the heavy equipment or any of the bickering about stuff, and I can do it at home watching TV if I want. What could be better?
Igloo: One notable exception to the electronic feel of Here I Go Again On My Own is the track “Snow It Falls On”, which reminds me a bit of someone like Movietone. How did that song come about in the midst of all this instrumental music?
Craig: I don’t really know, we write stuff using anything that fits the sound we want and if we think singing would be good then we use it. This is also the problem with giving types of music names. We just make the music that we like – if other people like it then good, if not I am not arsed…
Igloo: Have you done any gigs as the Remote Viewer? If so how have you found that?
Craig: Yes we have done loads, way too many – at least 20, and I don’t like them. The last 2 have been good as we both got drunk and arsed about. They are never very serious. We certainly don’t sit behind laptops trying to look like we are doing something. We just press play on the mini-disc player and drink and jump around … but still I don’t like it.
Igloo: The tunes on Here I Go Again… strike me as much quieter than the relatively crunchy first album. Just tired of distortion?
Craig: I am not sure, I still like distortion, but we are always finding new things out about what our sampler can do and this influences the sound we produce. At the moment I have lost the distortion on the sampler and found the quiet button, so that’s why the songs are quiet.
Igloo: More generally, what influences your sound?
Craig: All sorts of things do. I am listening to loads of Talk Talk stuff now – Andrew was probably listening to it 4 years ago – and Andrew is listening to all the stuff I liked four years ago. It just goes in cycles like that. We both tend to like decent chart hip hop and RnB and all the old favorites for us such as the Carpenters and Glen Campbell. I don’t listen to much electronica…
Igloo: What’s the last bit of music each of you has bought?
Craig: I bought the Mark Hollis solo album and I have no idea about Andrew, sorry.
Igloo: Your album on 555 Recordings was entirely untitled, unlike the tracks on Here I Go Again On My Own. Presumably the album title’s a bit of a laugh and there are a couple of tunes on there with vocals, which have ended up as the titles, but the others are a mix of poetical and mundane phrases. Basically, I was just curious how important naming tracks is for the two of you and perhaps any stories behind some of the names on the latest album.
Craig: Well yes the titles are important in the sense they are not the typical electronica title such as “skwizle pop” or whatever but as far as stories are concerned I could not say. Andrew titles all the songs and LPs and he is unavailable for comment sorry.
Igloo: I have to say Here I Go Again… is a really nice album; Very low-key, yet intriguing and never boring. Probably most importantly, I reckon, is its cohesiveness. How do you feel about it listening back on it?
Craig: As always listening back is difficult for me, as the wait from writing the songs to them actually being released is massive. So songs can be up to a year or two old. By that time I have stopped listening to the songs long before the LP is out, so things tend to sound really old and dated to me, but still the LP sounds pretty good…
Igloo: The classic interview closer: what’s coming up next for the Remote Viewer?
Craig: We are trying to set up our label at the moment and a release on that will be out very soon, I believe. The pressing is being done at the moment, so look out for it. The label is called Moteer and the first release should be by Kind Transport.
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Here I Go Again On My Own is out now on City Centre Offices
