Based in London's East End and having released two rather amazing albums over the past nine months in "Chemical Jazz" and "Strange Little Creature" on his own Googlie Mooglie imprint, NICK TROOP is one of the underground's best kept secrets at the moment, but the quality of his songs and his band CatDesigners suggests Nick has a longevity-fuelled future ahead. Intrigued by everything we've heard to date, W&H thought it high time a strategically placed phone call to Nick was in order.
Nick is fiercely intelligent and both charming and entertaining in conversation. There's a lot of corners of his psyche W&H would like to delve into, but firstly let's get a little historical perspective sorted out. Nick, you're bsed in Bethnal Green these days, but you're from Harwich (in Essex): famous for the ferry port, yes?
"Yeah, that's right. It's a sleepy enough place with most of the industry tied in with the ferries and I suppose it's a place everyone tends to leave," muses Nick.
"I was in a band with Steve (CatDesigners bassist) there, though. We've been mates since we were 16 and at college together and uni. That band finished and then started again in London and I fell back in with Steve. It's the usual tale of trying to get somewhere with music."
Tried and tested, maybe, but in CatDesigners' case the usual round of trying out with different bands has come good in a roundabout way, which we'll see in a moment. Firstly though, tell us about your formative musical influences Nick. I know the quartet of monolithic B's (Bowie, Brel, Blur and Buckley, J) are all important to your raison d'etre...
"Mmm, yes, but it all started with the obvious letter B word...The Beatles," Nick reveals.
"It was when the albums were all re-issued 20 years later, on the anniversary of "Sgt.Pepper" that I got massively into music. From there, I started writing through hearing David Bowie and from him I got into Jacques Brel, T-Rex, Lou Reed....and Iggy Pop of course. It all snowballed really."
He pauses for reflection.
"Jeff Buckley though is much more recent. My twin sister told me it shocks her when she reads comparisons with Jeff Buckley because unlike the others he's not a formative influence. He's someone I got really into only prior to making the CatDesigners albums."
Nick speaks in the singular -with good reason. Although these days CatDesigners are a fully-fledged band, when "Chemical Jazz" and "Strange Little Creature" were recorded, the band's name was really a solo vehicle for Nick. How did you in effect become a solo artist before recruiting a band?
"Well, it was all out of frustration with the whole scenario of being in a band and going the traditional route really," replies Nick.
"The politics of being in a band on a small level can really get in the way," he sighs. "I mean, I'd been in a band called One Perfect Portrait for a while and it wasn't really going anywhere."
"From there I'd been arranging demos at home for a while," he continues.
"So after about 16 months I had about two albums' worth of material and at about that time I read an article in "Sound On Sound" magazine about starting your own label. That was the catalyst really...I thought bugger it and set up Googlie Mooglie as a result, mixed the songs and just did it, released "Chemical Jazz" last autumn. From there I hooked up with Steve again."
Presumably, the running of Googlie Mooglie pretty much goes hand in hand with what CatDesigners are doing?
"Yeah, but a lot of it's dull, boring stuff inevitably," says Nick.
"I mean, it's not exactly rivetting for people to hear that CD Baby wants more CDS to sell and I'm off to the post office to queue up and send them off, y'know? But it's all necessary, though trivial and time-consuming."
"The best part of it obviously is making the music," he continues, grateful to turn away from the business side for a moment.
"I mean, I'm actually quite lazy and this lot (Steve and drummer Fred) are actually really good musicians, so that's great because it makes me work that much harder. They're proper musicians, whereas I've never been a virtuoso (laughs)"
Right, but back to the dreaded business aspect for a second. There's a great quote on the Googlie Mooglie site saying: "Music is too important to be left entrely in the hands of the majors", which W&H wholeheartedly endorses. We hear a lot of misinformation about this kind of thing, but with the net and so forth do you think another independent label heyday (like the one in post-punk times spearheaded by the likes of Rough Trade, Factory, Postcard etc) is realistic in these times?
"Yes, it seems to be," Nick replies enthusiastically.
"Though the one danger I can see is that there are so many sites seeming to offer the world, so the chances of being spotted are relatively small. There again, there are great resources out there like CD Baby who can help make it possible and the opportunity to distribute worldwide are excellent."
"So yeah, I'd say a different kind of heyday is possible," he says in conclusion. "It's definitely a good way of being picked up on by potential fans who might not find you otherwise."
Even without a band to play live shows?
"Mmm, well there's the rub," says Nick.
"Because I initially thought I might be able to do this without a band and that seemed fantastic, but experience has proved that live work will probably still be the bedrock, so y'know....there you go."
Talking of the new three-piece version of CatDesigners, how are rehearsals going and when can we expect to be able to see you play live?
"Well, I have started actively looking for gigs," Nick divulges. "But I'm cautious about playing gigs too early at the same time, though I suppose that's in me as I haven't gigged now for a while. The live band has changed my perception of some of the songs on the two albums. "Freakshow" for example (riffmungous on record - Ed)didn't work well for ages, which was a surprise as I thought it would easily translate. It's still recognisable, but it's undergone serious change, which has sometimes been the case elsewhere too."
OK, but what happened to your previous henchman, keyboard player Qy? I read on the Googlie Mooglie site he's left the band?
"Ah well, I've a bit of a confession to make there," says Nick, laughing quietly.
"Qy is actually a sequencer, not a real person. I suppose I did go out of my way to make him sound a bit like a real person...it's a litle ambiguous, I grant you. Maybe it's true he exists in his own space..."
A bit like Eko the drum machine, originally the "Echo" in Echo & The Bunnymen?
"Yeah, right!" says Nick in gales of laughter.
"Chemical Jazz," the first CatDesigners album is very eclectic, though I find the acoustic based songs like "While You Were Dancing" have a real power all of their own. I seem to remember describing that one as "romantic and creepy" all at once. How did that one come together?
"That was a weird one," recalls Nick.
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"I write songs quite slowly and have several things I've been working on that seem to have gone on for ages in different forms, yet with "While You Were Dancing" I wrote the whole thing in about 2-3 hours. Don't really know where it came from to be honest."
He trails off for a second and then picks up the thread again.
"It wasn't exactly stream of consciousness, but I remember It was written initially in the summer and then I put it away and put music to it the Christmas after. I cut some more words out, then left it another three months...then cut more words again. I left it in an ambiguous state and it does have a few dark little allusions without being too specific."
It strikes me some of CatDesigners music is pretty cinematic in execution. Is film an important influence on your music?
"No, it isn't really," replies Nick, surprising me a little.
"In the sense that I'm not a big film goer. People talk about films in such an exciting, flowery way that I often wish I was more into cinema and so on, but I'm not really."
"Having said that, I agree that the songs are pictorial," he continues.
"Actually I find writing lyrics a frustrating discipline and it's something I have to work on. I do change certain words along the way and it can entirely alter the meaning of a song. think it's a way of learning about yourself actually, though it's also equally true that I don't think too specifically about a song's true meaning before I've recorded it. That often becomes clearer later."
I like the song "Six Line Song" a lot. I know the title is based on Bowie's "Eight Line Poem" (from "Hunky Dory"), but how did that one come together? I like the vibrato guitar on it too...
"Yeah, "Eight Line Poem" was the major influence there and I tried my best to force my song into eight lines, but the syntax didn't work that way. Even then there's no obvious hook or title in there, which I quite like. Musically, that one was definitely influenced by Jeff Buckley, as was Vapour Trail" in a way."
The second CatDesigners album "Strange Little Creature", meanwhile, has only been out for the past couple of months, but sounds rockier and maybe a little more consistent to these ears. I like opening song "Vain As I Am", which has elements of Bowie and Brett Anderson about it. Like the line: "You can't read my mind" as it suggests you want to keep your audience guessing...
"Yes, well I'd like to think I can do that," replies Nick.
"That's one thing about following, say, Bowie's career, because every record's always different and there are glorious triumphs even though you get the occasional duff one en route. Thats' the way it goes."
"Besides," he says, "I don't like bands that make the same album three times anyway. With my own work, there is continuity between the albums, but the songs on my two records so far have fallen distinctly into those two camps for me, so they decided on their own fates in a way. "Chemical Jazz" was a deliberate attempt to alternate between rich and minimal arrangements....and there are a couple of homages, too. "Dizzy Q" is a very obvious homage to the band Dizzy Q Viper who featured Crispin Gray from Daisy Chainsaw who now does Queen Adreena."
Intriguingly, a couple of the songs from "Strange Little Creature" reminded me a bit of Peter Hammill (ex-Van Der Graaf Generator and seminal, own furrow-ploughing solo artist signed to Virgin for many years) and his brillant "Nadir's Big Chance" album - Glam-my, emotional, hedonistic, slightly psychotic, you know the kind of thing... "Good Thoughts" has all those things running through its' veins.
"Right," laughs Nick, "though I must confess I don't know his work really. Actually, "Good Thoughts" was written in retrospect about a very difficult period in my life. I should stress there's both distance and restraint in there too. It's changed a lot live, I've changed the guitar part around a bit. I like that one too even though it's quite an old song. It's stood the test of time well."
"Strange Little Creature" signs off with the positively Spectorian "White Fire". That's a bit of a departure too...
"Yeah, that song's quite negative and narcisstic really," Nick reveals.
"It's an odd song, culled from several other songs originally, some of it from on older tune I had called "Eve." The order of songs on "Strange Little Creature" is entirely deliberate. It starts quite benignly and ends in malign narcissism," he says very definitely, letting the term hang in the air for a few chilly seconds.
Talking of such malign narcissism, it's no wonder Nick's songs delve with such skill into the human psyche as when he's not composing and playing with CatDesigners, he's a psychologist by trade. Nick, I'll have to sign off soon, but first tell me a little about the mooted BBC6 Radio show on mental health you were tipped for recently. It is THE Tom Robinson (as in TRB and "War Baby") who presents it, yes?
"Yeah, that's right, " Nick confirms, "but sadly I only got to speak with the researchers for the programme. Because the topic dealt with music and mental health, my name got put forward because of my career and I had my CD ready as well! Pity it didn't happen in the end."
"But yeah," he finishes, "I think my work does inform the way I approach my music. My PhD was in psychology and after a three year course I had three intense months of writing all the stuff up and it meant I couldn't write a decent song for ages."
He takes a deep breath and concludes:
"So yeah, it's an important part of me and it nudges into my songs. It'd be nice to think I could continue doing both."
I see no reason why, Nick. Great to talk with you.
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