10 things that inspired Wild Beasts’ Present Tense
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Guitarist and vocalist Tom Fleming details the high and low influences behind the four-piece's fourth album.
Published: 21/02/14
Interview by: Anthony Walker
01. Sans Soleil, a film by Chris Marker
Tom Fleming: “I acquired this film from the studio we did the last record in. It's called Sans Soleil, which translates to Sunless, and was made by a guy called Chris Marker who died in 2012 aged 91.
"His films are amazing; they're almost like anti-films because he'll show you loads of things pieced together through library footage and things he filmed himself, and it's a mediation on memory and how impossible it is to remember things; how everything slips away from you as you get older. He goes to Iceland, to Cape Verde and spends a lot of time Japan and puts all this stuff into an early visual synthesizer and his argument is: 'this is more real that what I've showed before because it's obviously artificial.'
"It's the idea that art doesn't have to imitate real life, because real life isn't real anyway, its all how you feel about it. There's things you can't possibly understand about real life. It's very much a French Arthouse film, but it blows my mind and continues to blow my mind. It's the only film I can take with me anywhere I go. I make it seem more inaccessible and highbrow than it seems, but I can't recommend it enough. It's beautiful."
02. Clams Casino
Tom Fleming: “I read something really interesting about Tricky recently, and the way he feminises violence. There's something gentle and vulnerable about it, and that spreads to Clams Casino's production. His beats are very layered, and they don't sound like any hip hop you've heard before – it's not 9th Wonder on an MPC or anything – it's mainly female vocals and it's spacious. I love all the things he's done for A$AP Rocky and Lil B, and his solo EP on Tri Angle, too.
"It's almost the idea of being anti-musical: it's all done with a computer and samples, and nothing else. Like, 'Fuck! That's possible!' It can almost make you feel like you've wasted some time! It's the Throbbing Gristle idea that the best music in the future will be made by non-musicians. I mean, obviously Clams Casino is a talented musician, but the idea that being good on an instrument isn't enough any more. It's a beautiful expression of that. The slow, hard drums, and the almost ambient backing. I'm a big fan."
03. Allan Holdsworth
Tom Fleming: "I'm a guitar player, and Allan Holdsworth is someone who I ran away from but recently got back into. Steve Vai once said that you could imagine what every other guitarists is doing with their hands when you hear them play, but not Allan Holdsworth. He's a proper gruff Yorkshireman and a hugely respected musician. He does amazing things with harmonies and layers, and makes sounds you couldn't imagine, but without effects or anything.
"Having spoken about non-musicians it's also amazing to see someone like that in full flow. He's a technical wizard, but he's a jazzer too, and has a great ear of melody and surprise."
04. June Tabor
Tom Fleming: "I'm very big on folk music, and it's one of the first things that got me out of listening to things like Korn and Tool and into a wider world of music. I like the earth and the dirt.
"Hayden and I have always had a slight problem with people from Britain singing like gospel or soul singers - it doesn't make any sense to me. Whereas if you sing like an English or Irish folk singer or a Music Hall singer, that makes a lot more sense.
"We try to be original, but really, we want to be part of a greater tradition. Plus, I love female folk singers with deep voices in general, I mean, who doesn't? There's a particular album, 'An Echo of Hooves', that's beautiful, it's all border ballads from near where I'm from: stories about murders and affairs and illegitimate children. It's all proper good stuff."
05. Deptford
Tom Fleming: "We made and recorded a lot of the album in Deptford, South East London. Being a northerner in London, I think I've found – we all have - the practicalities of London very difficult: getting a space where you can make noise and keep your stuff safe. I think that kind of compression is what makes the city tick and 'Present Tense' sounds different from our other records because of that. There's a sense of pushing against whatever limited space you have, living in tiny flats and always being on packed trains. As a country boy in the city it definitely does something to you, it gets something out of you."
06. Leo Abraham, Lexxx and Richard Formby, Wild Beasts' producers
Tom Fleming: “We worked with Leo and Lexxx on this album, and Richard previously, and I'd just like to talk about the importance of collaboration. The importance of being able to talk straight when it comes to ideas: saying, 'That isn't good enough', or, 'You need to do better than that'.
"They've taught us two things: first, that an idea is a very fragile thing and you have to be able to follow through with it, and second, that you have to be prepared to smash it to pieces. I think that's equally important and you have to choose your collaborators wisely in music.”
07. Dog memes
Tom Fleming: "This album was written a lot on the computer, with four of us sat around with tabs open at the same time we had Logic running, or whatever. Studios are a very heated environment, so anytime we needed light relief we'd be looking a dog memes; we're all big dog lovers. Just the stupidest things possible because dogs are hilarious.
“But that actually became a jumping off point because they're kind of tragic too. They think they're people and they never can be, and we all think we're something we're not. That idea actually informed the album: how do you deal with the idea you're never what you think you are? It's like dramatic irony knowing something they don't. And a dog has a short life span and it's loyal and lovable. I don't have a dog because I'm on tour all the time, but it was something that was meant to be a break in our day that became a real window into life."
08. John Tavener
Tom Fleming: “Another person who sadly died quite recently was the composer John Tavener. We listen to a lot of choral music – I should say that These New Puritans led us to the water – all these religious devotional pieces like The Lamb by John Tavener. The way simple harmony lines are brought together to make something complex is interesting and analogous to being in a band and having everyone do something small to make the whole work.
“That religious aspect is interesting too. We're not religious but that passion – literally – is an interesting thing. The idea of devotion and the drive and reason to make art. So much good stuff has been made in the name of religion. It's asking what drives someone to make something but musically it's just very beautiful too.”
09. World Wrestling Federation in the '90s
Tom Fleming: “This is a bit of a change of tack, but I've been thinking back to my childhood and how I watched a lot of WWF around the mid-'90s, just after Hulk Hogan left and before Vince McMahon took over and it got more adult and dark.
"Our band has always played with sexuality and ideas of being a man and getting in touch with camp and queer culture as a protest of the mainstream, going against the idea of a 'happy healthy heterosexual.' All the drag acts in the WWF - with people like Ric Flair and his arrogant nature boy shtick, and Jake The Snake's edgier persona. It's ultra macho: they're all in silver underpants and have ridiculous muscles, settling arguments with their fists. That had a real effect on me as a kid that I didn't realise had a big influence on my tastes today.
"I think there's layers of fiction and performance in there. I wouldn't want to call wrestling fake - it's not - but it's a performance. It's kind of like music – you're there to show people something about themselves and wrestling reflects back to the culture that produced it."
10. The Hour Of The Star, a novel by Clarice Lispector
Tom Fleming: “What I think is my favourite book, or certainly one that has had a big effect on me is called The Hour Of The Star by a Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector. It's a very short, very intense, and very dark story about a young woman who grows up having terrible things said and happen to her, then she dies.
"It's a brutal book but it's unflinching and unafraid to look at life like that. It's very powerful. It's a mocking of life that's a mocking of yourself. I think the point isn't look at this women but rather saying: 'this is you.'”
Guitarist and vocalist Tom Fleming details the high and low influences behind the four-piece's fourth album.
Published: 21/02/14
Interview by: Anthony Walker
01. Sans Soleil, a film by Chris Marker
 |
Tom Fleming: “I acquired this film from the studio we did the last record in. It's called Sans Soleil, which translates to Sunless, and was made by a guy called Chris Marker who died in 2012 aged 91.
"His films are amazing; they're almost like anti-films because he'll show you loads of things pieced together through library footage and things he filmed himself, and it's a mediation on memory and how impossible it is to remember things; how everything slips away from you as you get older. He goes to Iceland, to Cape Verde and spends a lot of time Japan and puts all this stuff into an early visual synthesizer and his argument is: 'this is more real that what I've showed before because it's obviously artificial.'
"It's the idea that art doesn't have to imitate real life, because real life isn't real anyway, its all how you feel about it. There's things you can't possibly understand about real life. It's very much a French Arthouse film, but it blows my mind and continues to blow my mind. It's the only film I can take with me anywhere I go. I make it seem more inaccessible and highbrow than it seems, but I can't recommend it enough. It's beautiful."
02. Clams Casino
 |
Tom Fleming: “I read something really interesting about Tricky recently, and the way he feminises violence. There's something gentle and vulnerable about it, and that spreads to Clams Casino's production. His beats are very layered, and they don't sound like any hip hop you've heard before – it's not 9th Wonder on an MPC or anything – it's mainly female vocals and it's spacious. I love all the things he's done for A$AP Rocky and Lil B, and his solo EP on Tri Angle, too.
"It's almost the idea of being anti-musical: it's all done with a computer and samples, and nothing else. Like, 'Fuck! That's possible!' It can almost make you feel like you've wasted some time! It's the Throbbing Gristle idea that the best music in the future will be made by non-musicians. I mean, obviously Clams Casino is a talented musician, but the idea that being good on an instrument isn't enough any more. It's a beautiful expression of that. The slow, hard drums, and the almost ambient backing. I'm a big fan."
03. Allan Holdsworth
 |
Tom Fleming: "I'm a guitar player, and Allan Holdsworth is someone who I ran away from but recently got back into. Steve Vai once said that you could imagine what every other guitarists is doing with their hands when you hear them play, but not Allan Holdsworth. He's a proper gruff Yorkshireman and a hugely respected musician. He does amazing things with harmonies and layers, and makes sounds you couldn't imagine, but without effects or anything.
"Having spoken about non-musicians it's also amazing to see someone like that in full flow. He's a technical wizard, but he's a jazzer too, and has a great ear of melody and surprise."
04. June Tabor
 |
Tom Fleming: "I'm very big on folk music, and it's one of the first things that got me out of listening to things like Korn and Tool and into a wider world of music. I like the earth and the dirt.
"Hayden and I have always had a slight problem with people from Britain singing like gospel or soul singers - it doesn't make any sense to me. Whereas if you sing like an English or Irish folk singer or a Music Hall singer, that makes a lot more sense.
"We try to be original, but really, we want to be part of a greater tradition. Plus, I love female folk singers with deep voices in general, I mean, who doesn't? There's a particular album, 'An Echo of Hooves', that's beautiful, it's all border ballads from near where I'm from: stories about murders and affairs and illegitimate children. It's all proper good stuff."
05. Deptford
 |
Tom Fleming: "We made and recorded a lot of the album in Deptford, South East London. Being a northerner in London, I think I've found – we all have - the practicalities of London very difficult: getting a space where you can make noise and keep your stuff safe. I think that kind of compression is what makes the city tick and 'Present Tense' sounds different from our other records because of that. There's a sense of pushing against whatever limited space you have, living in tiny flats and always being on packed trains. As a country boy in the city it definitely does something to you, it gets something out of you."
06. Leo Abraham, Lexxx and Richard Formby, Wild Beasts' producers
 |
Tom Fleming: “We worked with Leo and Lexxx on this album, and Richard previously, and I'd just like to talk about the importance of collaboration. The importance of being able to talk straight when it comes to ideas: saying, 'That isn't good enough', or, 'You need to do better than that'.
"They've taught us two things: first, that an idea is a very fragile thing and you have to be able to follow through with it, and second, that you have to be prepared to smash it to pieces. I think that's equally important and you have to choose your collaborators wisely in music.”
07. Dog memes
 |
Tom Fleming: "This album was written a lot on the computer, with four of us sat around with tabs open at the same time we had Logic running, or whatever. Studios are a very heated environment, so anytime we needed light relief we'd be looking a dog memes; we're all big dog lovers. Just the stupidest things possible because dogs are hilarious.
“But that actually became a jumping off point because they're kind of tragic too. They think they're people and they never can be, and we all think we're something we're not. That idea actually informed the album: how do you deal with the idea you're never what you think you are? It's like dramatic irony knowing something they don't. And a dog has a short life span and it's loyal and lovable. I don't have a dog because I'm on tour all the time, but it was something that was meant to be a break in our day that became a real window into life."
08. John Tavener
 |
Tom Fleming: “Another person who sadly died quite recently was the composer John Tavener. We listen to a lot of choral music – I should say that These New Puritans led us to the water – all these religious devotional pieces like The Lamb by John Tavener. The way simple harmony lines are brought together to make something complex is interesting and analogous to being in a band and having everyone do something small to make the whole work.
“That religious aspect is interesting too. We're not religious but that passion – literally – is an interesting thing. The idea of devotion and the drive and reason to make art. So much good stuff has been made in the name of religion. It's asking what drives someone to make something but musically it's just very beautiful too.”
09. World Wrestling Federation in the '90s
 |
Tom Fleming: “This is a bit of a change of tack, but I've been thinking back to my childhood and how I watched a lot of WWF around the mid-'90s, just after Hulk Hogan left and before Vince McMahon took over and it got more adult and dark.
"Our band has always played with sexuality and ideas of being a man and getting in touch with camp and queer culture as a protest of the mainstream, going against the idea of a 'happy healthy heterosexual.' All the drag acts in the WWF - with people like Ric Flair and his arrogant nature boy shtick, and Jake The Snake's edgier persona. It's ultra macho: they're all in silver underpants and have ridiculous muscles, settling arguments with their fists. That had a real effect on me as a kid that I didn't realise had a big influence on my tastes today.
"I think there's layers of fiction and performance in there. I wouldn't want to call wrestling fake - it's not - but it's a performance. It's kind of like music – you're there to show people something about themselves and wrestling reflects back to the culture that produced it."
10. The Hour Of The Star, a novel by Clarice Lispector
 |
Tom Fleming: “What I think is my favourite book, or certainly one that has had a big effect on me is called The Hour Of The Star by a Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector. It's a very short, very intense, and very dark story about a young woman who grows up having terrible things said and happen to her, then she dies.
"It's a brutal book but it's unflinching and unafraid to look at life like that. It's very powerful. It's a mocking of life that's a mocking of yourself. I think the point isn't look at this women but rather saying: 'this is you.'”
