© Making–Playing-Listening-Loving
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© www.totalmusicmagazine.com http://www.totalmusicmagazine.com/- making–playing-listening-loving www.totalmusicmagazine.com Interview with Merv Pepler Total Music: Was there much music around when you were growing up (family/friends etc.)? Merv Pepler: "Funny you should ask that. It's a resounding yes of course. My parents are not musicians or even that musical but they had a very diverse and pretty large record collection. My mother grew up in a pub so she got all the 45's that came out the jukebox when they were finished with and when I was about six years old my grandmother gave me a radiogram (for the younger people amongst you that's a big old wooden cabinet thingy that had a radio built in and also a record player) You used to be able to load a whole bunch of 45s on the long spindle and they would drop one at a time. I remember being fascinated with the diversity of the stuff I was hearing and the other funny thing was that I always seemed to prefer the more experimental B sides. I also used to hear weird late night radio shows that it picked up, like Radio Luxembourg and probably some early pirate stations. We also used to have huge family gatherings on every Boxing day at my Nan's house and music was always blaring out on those occasions." Total Music: How did you first hook up with the Ozric Tentacles? Merv Pepler: "I was friends with a guy who ran Better Days distribution, which was basically a load of weird 'n' wonderful psychedelic bands releasing stuff on cassettes in the mid to late 80s. I was buying a lot of this music and had fallen in love with the Ozric sound, then one day he told me that they were looking for a new drummer so I went to London and auditioned, I wasn't the best drummer of that day but I fitted together with them personality wise (er, I was the only MAD one I think!) literally 10 days later I was doing my debut gig with them at the George Robey in Finsbury Park as part of a Club Dog night, coming from a small town in Somerset all this new hedonism was pretty eye opening!" Total Music: The period you were with the band was without doubt their most successful/popular era, you must have some great memoires of those days? Merv Pepler: "Loads of great memories for sure... I guess being that young I never stopped to think about what was actually going on, we were very anti-social and didn't enjoy trying to be the 'commercial' proper rock band type thing so stuff like gigging in HMV in Oxford St was pretty traumatic! I did enjoy the gigs though and we were legendary for going off on 5 to 6 hour gigs of jamming. I remember bands like the Levellers hating it when they had to wait for the stage while we were on. Also the recording of those early albums like Erpland hold very special memories for me, especially as the bass player died not long after I had left the band so yeah, good good times that taught me a lot about music and also a lot about myself." © www.totalmusicmagazine.com http://www.totalmusicmagazine.com/- making–playing-listening-loving Total Music: Tell us about the Wooden Baby project, are there any recordings? Merv Pepler: "Hah, yes there are recordings. Wooden Baby was the project I was doing before I actually met the Ozrics. I did many gigs including some Club Dog ones and the infamous Crypt Club in Deptford. It was myself and a guy called Charlie Daniels, kind of '60s garage psychedelia meets '80s goth with some punk chucked in." Total Music: What prompted you and Joie to start Eat Static? Merv Pepler: "Well we had met this guy, Steve Everitt, and had an immediate connection with him, he came down to Somerset for a new year around 1987 and brought with him an Akai sampler and some floppy discs containing some kick drums and some Kraftwerk samples. We were actually planning to do Ethnic inspired electronica, dance music with sitars and shehnais as we all had a deep passion for world music, the ethnic sounds quickly degenerated into wibbly wobbly squelches and then Steve started to play a 4/4 kick on top... That was that really." Total Music: When/Why did you decide to leave the Ozrics and make Eat Static a full time thing? Merv Pepler: "The touring and gigging became too much, even for me, away for months at a time, having to lose out on some interesting stuff 'cos of clashes etc.. We were at the stage where a five week tour of the states was becoming a regular thing and it pained me that Eat Static had to keep going onto the back burner 'cos of Ozric commitments. That plus the age old problem of greed and corruption was settling into some areas as lots of money started to be generated, this was in 1994, so we struck out on our own. It was quite weird having two albums simultaneously in the main album chart one week. Implant was no.11 and Jurassic Shift was no.9." Total Music: Any possibility of any more Nodens Ictus music? Merv Pepler: "One thing I do miss is working with Ed Ozric, we had a very special bond in the studio. In fact many an Ozric track was started by just me and him, a sequencer/a click track and hours of jamming all night. We used to live near each other here in Somerset so it was easy to hook up regularly but now he's living in Colorado so it's very difficult to see each other now... Never say never!" Total Music: Obviously extraterrestrial theme's are a major part of the Eat Static set-up, why is this such an all-prevailing subject? Merv Pepler: "Ahh, you noticed? Hehehe, well I grew up in Somerset and Wiltshire right bang centre in the middle of all the ancient sites and UFO hotspots. I also grew up in the early 70s so my school days consisted of me watching bloody strange school programmes that were littered with bleeps and bloops and all kinds of weird synth noises. I also had a massive love for sci-fi movies as a kid, and that was the golden age of sci-fi, so I guess all this went inside and genetically warped my mind. I must admit I never did feel like I belonged on this planet, almost as if I had realised how deep the human consciousness was at an early age and this had always had me deep in thought. I still do it now, I can be in a room full of people chatting and I'll be in the corner lost in thought." Total Music: It must have been sad when Joie decided to leave, did you ever think it was time to call it a day as well? Has Joie heard the new album? © www.totalmusicmagazine.com http://www.totalmusicmagazine.com/- making–playing-listening-loving Merv Pepler: "It was very sad for me, like losing a brother in a way, he dropped right out of everything, got a new girl and disappeared. I ain't seen him since 2008. I felt like chucking the towel in several times believe me! It's been a really tough rocky road to do this full time and scrape a living together. Funny you ask about Joie hearing the new album as I spoke to his ex yesterday who had taken him to a funeral this week and she had played him some on their way there, I heard he was very impressed!" Total Music: It's been a long time since Back To Earth, why was it on a different label and why the long wait before this album? Merv Pepler: "Back to Earth was recorded for Interchill records - I have been involved with them since their very first album release - Andrew, who runs the label, is a sweet lovely guy and I love his whole ethos with the label and it was a golden opportunity for me to do a whole album in one kinda vein, something I don't get to do that often (in fact my next album project will be a follow up to that album for that label). The reason for the long delay is that I have been really busy gigging constantly and had also gone through a major shit storm. What many people don't know is that Dead Planet was actually the Mk 2 version of the new album, yes there was a Mk 1... I actually deleted the WHOLE Mk 1, so it no longer exists, and that was nigh on 35 tracks! To cut a very long depressing story short I kinda got re- born, started the album again but this time I was on fire! Things had turned around and I actually felt like I could write the best stuff I could after surviving the crap I had gone through. I spent just under two years making Dead Planet and it was the first time I ever finished an album and felt dead proud, like I had gone full circle and Static had finally found its real established niche." Total Music: Steve Everitt is obviously still a big part of Eat Static... Merv Pepler: "Haha Steve is an enigma! A dark elf that always seems to pop up at the right moment.