Figuratively Speaking

Ann Shenton minus Add N To (X) still leaves a powerful and positive Large Number. Ann took time out to answer Parallax View's questions on her striking and diverse new album Spray On Sound (on release in the UK; out in the US as of this month). She was gentle with Dead Kenny but others, notably Joolz Holland, Jo Whiley and her former band members were not so lucky in a forthright (and indeed, exclusive) interview...

PV: To start off with a big dumb question, why Large Number?

Ann Shenton: Numbers numbers, everything is equated to the number. Fibinacci’s theory, binary, salary, telephone numbers, car registration, date of birth, carbon dating, price of beer, the budget, bank number, credit limit. It’s enough to drive you insane.

PV: You apparently recorded much of your album Spray On Sound in a barn on a disused military testing site. Any particular reason(s) for choosing this location?

AS: Well, we wanted to get away from a set up studio complete with pizza delivery, cocaine delivery and people ‘popping in’ to see what’s happening. We needed to take a gamble & just arrive somewhere & not know what it was going to be like. When we got to the place near the old military test site the farm owners came out to see us & wondered why we had so much ‘luggage’, we said we were from BBC Radio 3 & were recording bird song. You see if we had told them we were recording an album they might have got suspicious/upped the rent. The place also had a meter for the electric, so we had to pile loads of 50p’s in it coz the engineer was paranoid about t’ computer crashing.

PV: Did recording in a barn present any unusual technical problems? If so, how did you overcome these?

AS: The 50p problem was dealt with, but we also had a nosey neighbour who went through our rubbish, (no hypodermics), & a sheep dog (who we recorded on one of the tracks) who broke into the kitchen a lot & stole butter & meat. That was her sheep dog union payment. She left the cider alone thank the lord.

PV: I understand the members of Add N To (X) recorded their tracks separately for final album Loud Like Nature. Did this ultimately help your transition onto a solo project?

AS: Going off on my own was not so much of a big deal because, as you mentioned, add n to x had been recording separately anyway, it was a good transition as I didn’t have any happy memories of what it was like working with those 2, so it couldn’t be any worse.

PV: In a recent interview you suggested that yourself, Barry and Steve strip down to your underwear and sort out your issues once and for all in the boxing ring. Did they take up your challenge, and do you have the polaroids?

AS: The wrestling match, bare-knuckle boxing offer is still open, but Barry 7 & Steve Claydon have so far declined to take me up on it. I have sharpened some sticks, made a couple of pikestaffs and biting is allowed, perhaps they are in Ibiza DJ ing or something equally as common. I have made leotards for them, Barry 7’s is yellow with a cut away crotch for ventilation and extra absorbent under-arms, while Steve's is made of iron fillings and has a lovely bambi design on the rectum.

PV: Given the increased interest in experimental music and the post-punk period in the last year or so, do you think Add N To (X) were five years ahead of their time with On The Wires Of Their Nerves?

AS: I don’t know if on the wires was 5 whole years ahead of its time, but I do think it’s a bloody good album. Good memories, too much Sheffield cocaine (pink speed), too much of everything, a very limited recording period & a house we stayed in that had bogies on the sheets. I went to the local working men’s club with Addx, National Bandit & All Seeing I, & I took some tamazipan & the bar stretched like it was 1000 miles long & I was so worried that I was a sick as a dog & it was raining, I think it always rains in Sheffield. Arguments happened every 5 mins in those days, but it wasn’t serious, we were forgiving back then.


PV: You've gone on record in the past with your admiration of female music pioneers like Delia Derbyshire and Kate Bush. Are their any contemporaries you hold in similar regard?

AS: Well yes, I do admire Delia Derbyshire, Sonic Boom is submitting a track that he and Delia recorded for an electronic album we (white label) are compiling, and it should be very exciting, very good. It’s called the electronic bible.
I also like nico, is she more modern? Oh god I hate having to think of WOMEN I listen to, it sounds so old fashioned, like a women only radio station, or a women’s magazine, I think that people are great, clever or shit & mean, men & women both. I do like a Berlin based female singer/electronicist, called ‘RAUBER HOHLE’ [PV: Google is as ignorant as we are on Ms Hohle, dear readers]

PV: The playful, eclectic and seemingly spontaneous nature of Spray On Sound brought to mind the Leila records Like Weather and Courtesy Of Choice. Are you familiar with her work and do you see any parallels with her career?

AS: Oh gosh, I remember playing at the same place as Leila in Manchester, at a place called ‘night & day’ or ‘day & night’ any way it was run by Raki, she was great, she went on to run another venue, anyway, all the ‘twisted nerve’ records people were there & badly drawn boy, I used to call him ‘badly born droid’ & I let a champagne cork off up his arse.

PV: There's a funny verbal exchange at the end of Lexical Synesthesis regarding the dubious merits of cheap microphones. Did you really use microphones that cost just 99p?

AS: Yes, the mic did cost 99p, I got it ages ago & kept it much to other peoples dismay because as we all know 'you never know when something is going to come in handy’ & like most inhabitants of this ‘froth corrupted lung’* we call planet earth, I find it very difficult to throw anything away. Does it make us feel immortal to collect?
*Wilfred Owen. 1918.

PV: The track titles on Spray on Sound like Hunchback In The Dark; The transgenic banjo player and The creaky O.K. sound like DVD chapters on a David Lynch film...

AS: Titles? Titles are important, titles should tease, tease you before you listen, like a forward to a book, or a starter in a restaurant or a woman dressed up in a Weimar republic /cabaret outfit, or a man wearing a leotard with stains up the front and a bandaged head, all these thing aim to tease...


PV: Despite the rise in specialist stations in the digital era like Xfm and 6music, it still seems very difficult to get daytime exposure for genuinely experimental and progressive work. Would you agree, and how do you feel about that?

AS: One station I do like is Resonance FM. VERY experimental, a friend of mine did a show there & didn’t operate the faders with much success, but they thought that the silence being broadcast was intentional. It’s a wonderful station, if you can get it. As for cutting edge music programs; well it’s a joke, for example: Jo Wiley & Joolz Holland go & retire to your middle class, piss stained self-satisfied retirement homes. Do the odd advert for the worst whiskey in the world while you’re at it, I mean for Christ’s sake, who drinks Bells whiskey, I bet Joolz don’t, I’d like to copy that scene from ‘Get Carter' with him & shove a whole bottle of the filth down his jazzy throat.

PV: Large Number seem to have embraced the internet with gusto, and the website has fantastic attention to detail. What do you feel about the role of the internet in spreading word-of-mouth about new acts?

AS: Web sites should be a SONIC/VISUAL portal in to the brain of the person; you don’t get enough information on a record cover. It’s like the modern version of a fanzine or something like that. Although it has taken me a while to get into the internet, I have caught the bug. Some people that my sister works with just use the internet for looking up pictures of horrific accidents or porn but it is a brilliant tool. Bad luck Encyclopaedia Britannica.

PV: Tell me a little about the thinking behind the Dedworth Echo project...

AS: Well, the Echo was something we wrote when we got back late from the pub, & something we wrote when we didn’t have any money to go to the pub. A version of a local paper, full of shit & the unreal.

PV: You've been described as a 'serial theremin and moog abuser' and have talked frankly about the wild sex and drugs during the early years of Add N To (X). Do you consider yourself to have an addictive personality, and if so, what is your current craving?

AS: Serial theremin abuser? Me, no surely not? No. I didn’t like it when Barry smashed up the gear on stage, it was a waste of good equipment, plus my boyfriend had to fix it every night so we had less time to go out and see the sights. A downs syndrome boy totally destroyed my theremin at one concert in America, but he needed to, to explain his feelings.
Addictive personality? Yes. I could never be a righteous healthy person, I do have a love for red wine, but so did Delia Derbyshire. I smoke roll ups & drink wine these days. I would love some magic mushrooms but my ‘nurse’ has advised me against it. No more heroin for breakfast or cocaine for lunch. I have been working on a huge heart attack and some deep vein thrombosis.


PV: The first time I saw Add N To (X) live was at Reading Festival. Do you have any plans for Large Number festival appearances this summer? And will Becky the sheepdog be making an appearance?

AS: You saw us at Reading? I thought that gig was awful, no monitor sound. I don’t think Becky the sheep dog would like the travelling on tour, plus she would have to get a rabies injection & do the 6-month quarantine thing & she is far too busy for that, plus her fee is too high. We are arranging some gigs in the autumn; I am doing future sonic in Manchester on May 1st. playing the laser harp in a leotard.

And with that lovely image in our heads, we bid adieu to Ann and it just leaves me to advise you can buy the excellent 'Spray On Sound' by Large Number from here.