Sick pay
“It’s become a bit of a catchall statement, it’s become a little bit lazy,” says The Sick Man of Europe, referring to the now almost ubiquitous ‘post-punk’ tag.
“It’s incredibly diverse,” he continues, “and every little area that bubbled up after punk has its unique flavour, which is kind of lost a bit when it’s used as that catchall phrase.”
While the phrase has become a go-to pigeonhole for every guitar band doing the rounds with the slightest hint of jerkiness about them, in the case of The Sick Man of Europe, it’s not that simple. Their – or is that ‘his’ – debut album for The Leaf Label is an intriguing and highly riginal combination of elements taking in everything from driving Krautrock and industrial/post-industrial music to Joy Division, Suicide‘s sequencer thrusts and 80s synthpop, all mixed up together without sounding precisely like any of them.
Smitten with the album, and hearing glowing reports of the band playing live too, we thought we’d put a name to the face and catch up with them. But, chatting to Juno Daily on Zoom from the Sick Man’s East London studio, it’s more a case of no name, no pack drill – and very much video camera off.
“It’s like, there’s no camera on, you don’t know my name… It’s not trying to be mysterious, but I feel people ask different questions when there’s no face returning the answer, it kind of quietens the room a little bit, it leaves a little more breathing room.”
We do learn this much. The voice’s belong to someone apparently male, from the “generic post-industrial north” – although when we ask which side of the Pennines it might be, he replies simply “the good side”. He’s no newbie, admitting “I’ve been in this for a while”, though details of any former or current bands remain unshared.
The Sick Man of Europe, he says, is more of a vehicle, a container. “It can be anyone, essentially. It’s very malleable, but it’s very fixed too. It’s a way of transferring these ideas and these songs, the sounds and the performance as well. I’m speaking on behalf of The Sick Man of Europe at the moment, but there are many limbs that help it come to life.”
Likewise, he remains tightlipped about the lyrical content too, not out of being deliberately mysterious, but rather to give space for others’ interpretations.
“Mystery is not the aim or the point here,” he insists, but I think music is more beautiful when people interpret it in their own way. I obviously have my own personal interpretations, but doesn’t mean that’s how everyone should feel about them.”
As for the name itself, we venture we might think it’s a reference to the same post-punk period in the late 70s characterised by strikes, electricity blackouts and the three day week. Britian, it was said at the time, had become the sick man of Europe. It must have been then that the phrase was coined, right?
Wrong!
“It was a long time before that – I think it was the 1850s. It was a Russian Czar, Nicholas the First, who used it in the 1850s, about the Ottoman Empire, which I think was in decline at that point. Correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not an historian. It’s been a phrase that has been repeated, since then. That phrase has been around since we started measuring societies in terms of production.
“It’s like a diplomatic slur, it’s a badge of shame that you can apply to a nation. It’s the fear of decline, basically, the anxiety of your nation declining in wealth and productivity. It’s a great motivator I think. That fear is very very apparent at the moment.” As well as being alluring because “everyone has a slightly different interpretation of what it means”, he says the name is a reminder that that fear has always been with us.
His own musical journey, he tells us, has been a long one, and one that won’t necessarily end with this project. He recalls a number of moments of conversion, when his view of music has been irrevocably changed.
“Many people over the years who have introduced me to something that has subverted my concept of what music is, from the first time I heard The Velvet Underground I realised you didn’t need to sound like what you heard on the radio, all the way through to getting into industrial music and post-industrial music, which was another layer of subversion.
“I played the trumpet first but gave up out of fear of being bullied in high school, the guitar was a much more socially acceptable thing to play. I started documenting the things I saw and the things around me in songs from the moment I picked that up in my early teens and I’ve been doing it ever since really.”
The songs came before the idea of an album and even the idea behind the project.
“It came together very quickly. I had a very defined and intentional vision of what I wanted it to sound like, it’s the rejection of standard bank setups. It was also kind of seeing how far I could push the intention in the minimalism and the economy of it, as far as possible.
“It became very clear very early on that it was an album, and it was something new. When I was writing I wasn’t aware this was going to be The Sick Man of Europe. The songs emerged and I was like, OK, I need a way of communicating that. It made sense to create the project around that.”
Rising out of the economy of minimalism that the music bore, came the Sick Man aesthetic – videos often in black and white and rough-edged photocopied fanzine textures.
“The aesthetic is important,” he tells us, “rather than it being photos of people and humans it tends to focus on objects. It’s like the removal of oneself from the project, more like a collection of the items that make the sound.”
The final piece of the puzzle is, of course, live performances. They’ve been out on the road as tour support for their Leaf labelmates Snapped Ankles for starters. “That was great, now we’re easing into more of the festival-type stuff, it’s that time.
“I’m very keen to see where this project develops to, with the live element as well. That’s really exciting. It’s a very different kind of experience from what’s on the record. The record is a lot more considered and very intentional and minimal, the live show kind of does the opposite.
“We’re not trying to replicate the album’s sounds live, I wouldn’t want to hear that. It’s the opposite, much more expanded… And it’s very, very loud. The more we’ve played then the more loud and intense it’s got. Very excited to see where that side of things goes. There’s hope that this vehicle has legs – and I intend to push it as far as I can.”
Ben Willmott
Buy The Sick Man of Europe on vinyl
Buy The Sick Man of Europe on red vinyl
Buy The Sick Man of Europe on CD
Photos: Bella Keery
