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Interview: Wovoka Gentle

British experimental folk group Wovoka Gentle are taking Europe by storm through their challenging of the borders around musical genres. Made up of William J. Stokes and twins Ellie and Imogen Mason, I was lucky enough to interview the band as they embark upon their upcoming tour.

How did it all begin for Wovoka Gentle?

We were playing in separate bands- Imogen and Ellie’s band were booked to support William’s band in Edinburgh. We got on well and did some recordings together, and after those projects began to unwind we naturally came together and started to work together as a three. Our first official piece was creating a live electronic and soundscape score for a dance/performance art group called Stasis at the Edinburgh fringe in 2014.

Ellie and Imogen, you two are twins, does this impact the way you interact musically? Are you similar in your musical taste?

Being twins obviously means we’ve sung and played together for as long as we can remember- a lot of playing in a band is about reading each other well and being sympathetic to what everyone else is doing, so in that sense it definitely helps. We find it natural to blend our voices as well, although they each have quite distinctive tones. We both have the same musical background of course, for example a lot of English folk like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, but when you get older and discover music independently you start to formulate your own taste, so there are areas of overlap but there’s definitely a wide range between us.

While your songs are very much grounded in the tradition of folk music, they seem to deviate from the genre – what direction do you see the music magnetizing to?

We’re not trying to fundamentally subvert traditional forms of songwriting, as if to say they’re somehow stagnant, but at the same time hopefully we are making something that’s of NOW, of the twenty first century. A lot of it is really to do with instrumentation- about what happens if you were just to replace an acoustic guitar with a Korg MS-20, but keep it in the same spirit and the same roots-y setting, and also the inverse: what would happen if you were to take a fiddle playing slides and double stops into a setting more associated with electronic sounds and experimental music. It’s essentially this ongoing process of branching out and coming back… maybe one day we’ll branch out too far and forget where we started.

How has your music developed since you first formed?

We started off experimenting in this very aggressive way, using a lot of different points of influence and really piling sounds up into these really dense arrangements… Since then we’ve definitely developed more of an idea of what we actually sound like and where our strengths are. We’re maybe more respectful of sparsity for example, and allowing certain parts of the arrangements to feel very exposed and explored as valuable points of interest in themselves.

What was it like working with Gareth Jones for your new single “Branscombe”?

Gareth is amazing at what he does and is so experienced. It’s almost halfway between working with a producer and having a studio mentor. He has this great respect for the sanctity of a sound or a part created in a certain place or in a certain way- even if it’s something you made in your bedroom that you never intended to be used in the final mix, he’ll tell you to think carefully before throwing it away because it’s this magical moment of creativity you’ll never be able to recreate exactly.

When I saw you play in Scotland a few years ago, all three of you switched around instruments throughout the set, it gave the songs a more sporadic and performative nature – does this mean you don’t have specific roles in the band?

We definitely have our individual strengths and weaknesses, but fundamentally no, none of us have set roles in the band. We all sing, we all write songs and no instruments are off limits to anyone.

You are about to go on tour for the summer, where are you most looking forward to visiting?

We are currently on the road! We’re about to play Leeds having just come from Glasgow. Nottingham was a great place to visit that none of us knew very well before we got there, so that was great.

What excitements are to come for Wovoka Gentle?

We’re hopefully going to start work on our debut album in the next couple of months which is the definite focus now. We are also looking forward to going to Europe later this year.

“Branscombe” is available now on Spotify and itunes. Wovoka Gentle are currently on their UK Tour.



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