Recorded august 2023

"It hasn't actually got any notes in it; I think you're just supposed to find it catchy because it's got maracas on it."

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INTERVIEW - STUPID NAME GROUP

we spoke to stupid name group (sng) in our own heads, because we are them.

currently based in rural south-east england, through no fault of their own, and certainly not deserving it, stupid name group have been doing music for aeons, initially on shoestring items and borrowed gear. they started in the late 80s, on portable cassette machines and then the luxury of borrowed portastudios. "our first proper synth was a DX100. that was a bad first synth. we just found it baffling, and synth music done by other people still seemed like magic. we had no idea that analogue synthesis was actually easy".

they sometimes write songs, sometimes soundscapes, sometimes melodic instrumentals. on that subject of melody, from time to time they have a knack for earworms. they note that they'll have to get back to doing that.

on instrumentation, sng note "we're technological, in that we do synthesiser-based music. we like guitars too, we just can't play them. we have a hardware-based setup, and record our tracks as live as possible", adding "we want to sound good, but we do not strive to be hi-fi. we're incapable of that. we don't even consider all of our releases to be electronic music. it's just music that happens to be done on synthesizers."

when pressed on their influences, they frown and shake their heads, eventually saying "lots of things: folk, dub reggae, ambient, synth pop, but probably most of all post-punk and the pop music of that time".

"look, you're trying to nail down what genre we are, so you can describe us in those terms. we certainly have our musical and theoretical influences, but we do not consider ourselves to have a genre, or even multiple genres. you will just have to listen to us and decide if you like us." they can't resist adding "our bandcamp bio says we're the precise midpoint between john cage and roger whittaker. if you must put something, please put that."

"it was school music classes that inspired us to try to do what we heard in the culture - the early 80s pop that excited us. we were lucky to have a music teacher who encouraged people to experiment. we had piano lessons but we never learned to play properly, because we diverted the agenda into talking about specific pop tracks and doing compositional training. as a result, we are always disinclined to loop the same chord for three minutes, not that that doesn't have its charms sometimes."

"we definitely have a world. you're welcome to come in, lucky you... actually, you're very welcome. on the other hand, we do wonder if you will get much from listening at the door. you do need to come in. not least because we don't put enough high end into our recordings, and things are muffled enough as they are, even if you aren't outside with your ear pressed to the door."

sng's world seems to sit outside the actual world, but is infected by it. and on that interface with the world they say: "we are sparing about how we interact with the world. heritage sites... going into cafes for us is still a special event. you should always take a notebook. we're currently planning to build a studio, a space, a womb, a cell, where we can be more prolific and lose perspective."

we suggest that sng's lyrics and themes are about that interface with the world. "isn't that true of any writer? certainly, our songs aren't often directly political, but you can't not write about the world in everything you do. on the whole, young people give us hope. they have their heads screwed on more than any generation for a long time. It's not fair to put it on them - other generations have screwed things up. but that's where we see hope".

stupid name group have given up recording and resumed multiple times. "we haven't always known what to do, but still felt we should record something, and that's resulted in some very strained releases - particularly in the late 90s. we've learned from that. this time, we have no plans to stop, but we know when to slow down now. we'll see where it takes us. we like to think we know better what we're doing now, and the ratio of good stuff is better."

sng thought they'd stopped recording in the early 2000s. the modern analogue revolution inspired them to return. their bandcamp account encompasses their output since they resumed recording in 2013, plus a selection of older releases, but nothing from the cassette era yet.

sng are still toying with the idea of playing live, "before we get even more too old".

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